Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 07, 2024


Ep 964 ｜ Be a Godly Woman, Not Just a 'Trad Wife'


Episode Stats

Length

55 minutes

Words per Minute

158.40738

Word Count

8,831

Sentence Count

488

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

32


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.500 Is cannibalism making a comeback? Well, not if Christianity has anything to say about it. Also,
00:00:07.020 I am finally weighing in on that Trad Life Trad Wife drama that apparently I started a couple
00:00:12.500 weeks ago on X, and Alabama has just passed a law as of this morning protecting IVF. What does
00:00:22.800 that mean for all of the helpless embryos in the state? We'll tell you all about it on today's
00:00:29.100 episode of Relatable. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone has
00:00:43.120 a wonderful week, has a wonderful week, has had a wonderful week, but I hope that you're still
00:00:48.260 having a wonderful week. Tomorrow is Friday, and so that is always good news. Okay, I got so many
00:00:54.520 differing opinions on yesterday's episode. We've got a lot of feelings in this crowd about things
00:01:00.180 like SEL. A lot of you are teachers, and bless you, I am so, so thankful for Christian teachers
00:01:07.880 who take their jobs so seriously. A lot of you, especially those of you in public education who
00:01:13.940 are Christian teachers, you are the only example of a Christian that many of these kids have ever
00:01:22.180 seen, and so your job is so important, and I'm so thankful for you. And many of you think that SEL,
00:01:27.240 social emotional learning, has been helpful for you. But it's interesting, some others are saying
00:01:34.340 that it is like the worst thing that has ever happened to your school, and is causing your
00:01:39.880 students to believe that their feelings are the boss, rather than them being the boss of their
00:01:46.660 feelings, which of course is the Christian biblical perspective, that we are actually able, through the
00:01:51.400 power of the Holy Spirit, to reign in our emotions, that our emotions don't rule us, that our heart is
00:01:58.180 actually desperately sick, that it cannot be followed. It can't even fully properly be understood.
00:02:04.420 Only the Holy Spirit can perfectly and fully search out our hearts. And so it's just interesting,
00:02:11.900 the differing opinions that I have, and I respect those differing opinions. My guess is it's probably
00:02:17.780 dependent upon where you are, your students, the specific SEL curriculum that you are using,
00:02:25.560 who you are as a teacher, what you're actually learning. Now, some of you who defended SEL,
00:02:31.100 and how you described SEL curriculum in your school, it doesn't really sound like SEL. It just sounds like
00:02:38.120 the biblical principle of teaching self-control, and of having compassion for other people, and putting
00:02:44.520 other people before yourself. And if that is the case, I wouldn't call it SEL. I would just say you
00:02:50.020 are teaching biblical principles. Maybe it's been placed under, I think erroneously, the umbrella of
00:02:56.540 SEL, but really you're probably just teaching biblical values. And then others of you, again, have said that
00:03:02.320 it's just absolutely disastrous, and that it's created a lot of children who are constantly in their
00:03:10.160 fields, and who are unable to get out of their heads. And also, kids who don't understand the
00:03:17.520 immediate consequences of their actions, and really don't care about authority at all. So it was really
00:03:22.900 interesting seeing the wide range of responses that I got in my Instagram DMs, and my comments,
00:03:29.280 and the YouTube comments, and I appreciate that. So thank you for giving your perspective. I do encourage
00:03:35.260 you to read her book. We weren't able to get into everything. There were some things that I wish I
00:03:41.300 had asked that I wasn't able to ask, but go listen to the book. And even if you don't agree with
00:03:47.240 everything, or in your experience, things have been different than how she describes, I still think that
00:03:52.080 there is so much that you can get out of what she said. Here's something, and this is just kind of an
00:03:58.100 aside, but this is something that you can take with you, because maybe it applies to outside of social
00:04:03.700 media and the internet and podcasting. Maybe this is just true when you're communicating to any group.
00:04:09.580 What I've noticed is that a lot of people have a very hard time understanding on social media
00:04:18.060 qualifiers, and generalities, and statistics, or just personal observation. So what I mean by that
00:04:29.160 is no matter how many times I or a guest or someone on social media says something like many times,
00:04:36.900 or often, or sometimes, or at times, or in general, or statistically speaking, you will still get so
00:04:48.720 many people coming out of the woodwork saying, yeah, but what about this exception? Or what about this
00:04:55.000 caveat? Or my personal experience was different than that? Or you're wrong because I don't feel
00:05:00.780 that way, or I don't see it like that, or that's not what happened to me, or I have a friend's aunt's
00:05:05.220 cousin who went through something different than what you're talking about. Okay, just remember that if
00:05:11.680 how that person is describing things does not describe you or what you've experienced, then it's not
00:05:17.700 about you. I think it's important for all of us to see those qualifiers. I'm very purposeful.
00:05:23.960 When I say things like many times, or oftentimes, or most, or statistically, or generally,
00:05:30.340 I'm very careful in using those qualifiers. And if I say that, then that is what I mean.
00:05:35.720 And we don't have to, and I'm speaking to myself and speaking to all of us, like we don't have to
00:05:39.780 get worked up in getting angry at someone for not covering all of the possible exceptions to the
00:05:47.900 rule that they have observed and that they're talking about, or their opinion. It doesn't mean they're
00:05:53.740 hating your perspective or attacking you, which actually leads into the next subject that I want
00:06:02.300 to talk about, or really the first subject that I want to talk about, this continuation of the
00:06:07.140 conversation online about trad life, trad wife, and the comments that I've made, I guess, getting me
00:06:13.240 into hot water for some reason. But before we get into that first subject, I just want to remind you
00:06:18.600 guys. We've got our first installment of our Behind the Paywall, our subscriber-only series,
00:06:26.120 Debatable with Allie Beth Stuckey. We've got Trent Horn, Catholic apologist. We've got Dr. James White,
00:06:31.880 Protestant apologist, going at it for about two hours on Debatable. It's a great conversation. I
00:06:38.160 personally learned a lot from them. I could have sat with them for hours and hours asking them both
00:06:43.980 different questions about Protestantism and Catholicism. So I really do hope it edifies
00:06:48.440 you. We've got many more debates coming down the pipeline. We've also just got other really fun
00:06:55.200 not-debate content coming for just subscribers so we can protect ourselves from those sensors
00:07:00.800 on the main free platform. So go to blazetv.com slash Allie. If you use code Allie, you'll get $30 off
00:07:08.340 your subscription. You'll get access to all of the different kinds of content that we've got. We've
00:07:14.540 got Glenn. We've got the Robertsons. We've got Steve Dace. They've all got content just for Blaze
00:07:21.380 subscribers that you will access when you subscribe at blazetv.com slash Allie. I think it is well worth
00:07:28.780 your money. All right. We can get into... Actually, okay, before we get into the trad stuff, I do have
00:07:36.200 one more update. I've got another update to talk about, and that has to do with what was just passed
00:07:41.400 in Alabama with IVF and the hypocrisy that I see among pro-life Republicans. Just absurd.
00:07:51.740 All right. So Alabama has just passed SB 159. It was introduced on February 27th, 2024. It passed
00:08:17.400 last night. 81-12 was signed into law by Republican Governor Kay Ivey. This morning, it was sponsored
00:08:25.160 all by Republicans. Several Republicans wrote this legislation. They pushed it through. And this,
00:08:33.540 of course, is in response to the story that we've already talked about this week that we talked about
00:08:38.440 a couple of weeks ago, that the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos count as children and
00:08:46.600 therefore you are liable under the law if you destroy them. And remember, even though the media
00:08:53.560 is trying to make it seem like this is an anti-IVF, anti-abortion group of people that have been trying
00:09:02.580 to tear down reproductive technology, that's not what happened. This case made its way to the Supreme
00:09:09.080 Court because of parents who were going through IVF. The embryos at their fertility clinic were destroyed.
00:09:15.620 They wanted justice for their embryos. So these are pro-IVF parents seeking justice for their
00:09:23.180 embryos. And they got it in the sense that the Supreme Court said, yeah, those embryos,
00:09:29.020 those human beings, because they scientifically are, and they're made in the image of God,
00:09:33.580 people are really mad that they cited the Bible. They count because they're human beings. They count
00:09:38.820 as minors and therefore they have a fundamental right to life. Therefore, destroying them has
00:09:45.220 legal consequences. Well, everyone is freaking out about this. Everyone is like, oh my gosh,
00:09:50.840 what's going to happen with IVF? And again, it should make you pause to think, well, why would a ruling that
00:09:58.580 says that embryos count as human beings and therefore cannot be legally destroyed, why would that have an
00:10:05.280 effect on IVF? Well, that is because IVF and the destruction of embryos goes hand in hand. Now, I know
00:10:12.920 there are some couples out there who have used every embryo that they created that was on ice. That is
00:10:18.980 very rare though. Most IVF processes include eugenics, where you're testing for different abnormalities.
00:10:25.960 You're testing for different genders. Weak so-called embryos are destroyed. Embryos are thrown out all the
00:10:32.960 time because you're encouraged to make as many embryos as you possibly can, to raise your chances of
00:10:40.660 having a successful transfer and implantation. And so, so many ethical issues, but you really can't have
00:10:47.300 the IVF industry the way that it is right now in the United States, which is so unregulated,
00:10:53.560 without having the destruction of embryos. So, when there is any kind of restriction on destroying
00:11:00.240 embryos, that is going to halt IVF. So, that should make all of us pro-lifers really stop and think
00:11:06.440 about that, right? Because we've been saying when it comes to abortion that life in the womb matters,
00:11:12.520 that life starts at conception, that embryos are made in the image of God, that it doesn't matter
00:11:16.720 your location, doesn't matter your size, doesn't matter your sentience, doesn't matter your stage
00:11:20.060 of development, that all those babies are made in God's image and therefore they have the fundamental
00:11:25.380 right to life. We get that when it comes to abortion. We don't get that when it comes to
00:11:29.980 these embryos in a lab that are regularly discarded. And so, that is the hypocrisy that I think is going
00:11:38.520 on here. And it's highlighted in this bill that has now become law in the state of Alabama. I
00:11:45.060 understand why Republicans did it. It is a very popular, no matter how incongruent it is, it's a very
00:11:51.200 popular position to say that you are pro-life, but also not care about the destruction of embryos
00:11:56.700 when it comes to in vitro fertilization. So, here's the summary. The bill provides civil and
00:12:00.900 criminal immunity to providers and patients of IVF services and is aimed at restarting IVF programs
00:12:06.540 that had paused in the state due to the Alabama Supreme Court's recent decision that embryos using
00:12:10.400 IVF are human persons. It will shield IVF providers from lawsuits or criminal charges over the death or damage
00:12:16.180 to an embryo during the IVF process. So, you see what just happened here.
00:12:19.500 So, now, if you are a parent, like this should, it should, but unfortunately it doesn't because we
00:12:27.760 don't think logically, but this should enrage parents of those embryos in a lab too. Because now,
00:12:35.620 if your embryos are destroyed, the way that the parents who originally filed this lawsuit,
00:12:42.900 the way that their embryos were destroyed, you cannot sue the fertility clinic.
00:12:47.100 So, if they just, whoops, sorry, we killed your sons and daughters, or, you know, they accidentally
00:12:55.280 thought out, not really sure what happened, oh, you said that you wanted a girl instead of these
00:13:02.760 boys, well, we accidentally made the switch and we discarded the girls instead of the boys. I mean,
00:13:08.080 there are so many things that happened during these processes that we don't even talk about,
00:13:12.420 but now you are unable, according to this law, to bring a lawsuit. There can be no criminal
00:13:19.140 charges over the death or damage to an embryo. So, the fact that these so-called pro-life Republicans
00:13:26.060 are putting forth this bill, that this pro-life Republican governor has signed this bill,
00:13:31.820 that these pro-life conservatives in the state of Alabama have supported this bill,
00:13:36.240 what you're saying is that you don't actually believe that all human life matters. You don't
00:13:43.020 actually believe that life starts at conception. You don't actually believe that embryos have a right
00:13:48.340 to life. You are pro-choice. You are. You're pro-choice because you have now decided that some babies do not
00:13:56.280 deserve the right not to be murdered. That's what you've decided. That really, they can be discarded,
00:14:04.360 they can be destroyed, according to the whims of adults, and that's okay because some magical
00:14:11.580 category of IVF makes it different. It's so much hypocrisy, but again, I understand the politics of
00:14:21.080 it, and that's why I don't like politics. That's why I don't like politics. So, it provides civil and
00:14:30.100 criminal immunity to persons providing goods and services related to in vitro fertilization,
00:14:34.700 except acts or omission that are intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services. The
00:14:39.980 bill would provide for retroactive effect and would automatically repeal on April 1st, 2025. Okay,
00:14:47.540 interesting. Notwithstanding any provision of law, including any cause of action provided in
00:14:54.520 Chapter 5, Title 6, Code of Alabama, 1975. No action, suit, or criminal prosecution shall be
00:14:59.000 brought or maintained against any individual or entity providing goods or services related to
00:15:02.960 in vitro fertilization, except for an act or omission that is both intentional and not arising from or
00:15:08.220 related to IVF services. So, just to clarify what I said earlier, it can't be that they intentionally
00:15:15.260 destroyed the embryos. I guess there could still be a legal consequence for that, but if within the course
00:15:23.080 of the IVF process, embryos are destroyed, either accidentally or because the parents decided that
00:15:32.240 they want the rest of their embryos destroyed, or you're destroying the embryos that say have Down
00:15:37.540 Syndrome, all of that is fine. So, that might be a slight correction from the examples that I gave
00:15:43.720 earlier, and I just want to clarify that. But it's still saying that there is a double standard,
00:15:49.100 that these embryos don't deserve the same protection as the rest of us, even though we have
00:15:54.560 been saying ad nauseum that they are made in the image of God when it comes to the abortion
00:15:59.780 conversation. Here's part of what I said on Twitter about this, and it kind of echoes what I've said
00:16:11.580 earlier. On the one hand, pro-life Republicans say they believe babies have the right to life. They'll
00:16:16.420 even say that life starts at conception. They know the pro-life talking points. They talk as if they
00:16:20.860 believe babies in the womb matter from the earliest stages of development. 125 House Republicans,
00:16:26.200 including Speaker Mike Johnson, just signed on to the Life at Conception Act, which states that the
00:16:30.760 definition of human being includes humans at the point of fertilization. On the other hand, many of
00:16:36.780 these same pro-life Republicans adamantly support unrestricted access to IVF, which has resulted in the
00:16:42.080 destruction and abandonment and indefinite freezing of millions of embryos over the past several
00:16:47.380 decades. And most people just don't know about this subject at all, but we've talked in detail
00:16:51.940 about what a lot of these unethical practices and consequences are. Mike Johnson, as we talked about
00:17:02.000 just the other day, he said not only does he support IVF, it should be something every American supports.
00:17:07.960 Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Carrie Lake, they've all said, we want to get rid of these restrictions.
00:17:13.200 The government shouldn't even be involved. So these are the very same embryos. These are the
00:17:19.740 very same embryos that some of these same Republicans would say have dignity and rights when it comes to
00:17:23.960 abortion, but not when it comes to the much less popular conversation about reproductive technology.
00:17:30.540 Republicans are hypocrites. They just are. Are they better than Democrats still? Yes. I mean,
00:17:35.240 Democrats are completely unabashed in their consistent celebration of destroying babies inside
00:17:42.720 the womb, but at least they're consistent. They're consistently horrible, but at least they're
00:17:47.340 consistent. In some ways, doesn't it seem like the hypocrisy is a little bit worse? I mean, I'm
00:17:53.000 thankful that there are Republicans who stand up against abortion, but let's have some logical and
00:17:59.800 moral consistency here. But I think that's just too much to ask. It's just too much to ask when it
00:18:04.620 comes to politics. But I just wanted to, I wanted to give you a bit of an update, a bit of an update
00:18:11.100 there. All right. Let's move on to this conversation. Now there is part of me who doesn't want to step in
00:18:19.220 this again. I don't want to talk about this subject because every time I talk about it, there is just
00:18:27.380 like a cacophony of whining and complaining from the peanut gallery about what I'm saying. It's
00:18:38.120 purposely misconstrued and misrepresented. And yet the reason why I am stepping into this and talking
00:18:45.280 about it again is because over the past couple weeks, as I've dealt with a lot of just craziness on
00:18:54.060 social media because of these things, I've gotten some very earnest and meaningful encouragement
00:19:01.260 from both men and women that this actually is an important subject to talk about and that it is an
00:19:09.200 important distinction to make between trad social media trends and true biblical womanhood. And because
00:19:19.740 of that encouragement, I don't want to allow trolls to stop me from talking about something that is
00:19:26.760 significant, talking about something that is important and talking about something that not
00:19:31.000 quite enough people I think are talking about. So a couple of weeks ago, a certain subset of the
00:19:39.600 internet was very mad. They were very mad at me because of what I said in an interview at a conference
00:19:45.500 in January. I was asked in this interview, my thoughts on the so-called trad trend, trad stands for
00:19:52.780 traditional, trad wife, trad mom, trad life, whatever it is. I've shared these thoughts before a few times
00:20:01.320 and here's the clip of what I said that ended up just, I mean, starting the silliest, silliest,
00:20:10.900 most chaotic dialogue between professing Christians on X. So here are my scandalous comments.
00:20:20.100 The trend of being a trad wife or having a trad life on social media, which is really less about
00:20:27.300 traditional or biblical values and a lot more about aesthetics. And obviously there's nothing wrong with
00:20:33.660 living on a farm and making your own sourdough and homesteading and all of those wonderful things.
00:20:39.580 But because this has become a trend on TikTok and the trend on social media, unfortunately,
00:20:45.740 some people have made the mistake of conflating that so-called trad life and being a trad wife with
00:20:52.740 being a biblical wife or a biblical mom or having a biblical life. There are biblical standards, of
00:20:59.260 course, that women are called to, but it is, they're not standards that are set by social media.
00:21:06.980 They're not standards that are set by a TikTok trend. They're not standards set by whatever social
00:21:12.100 media influencer you follow that says, in order to be a good mom, you have to make your own sourdough.
00:21:17.140 That's a wonderful thing, but you can be a great and biblical wife and mom without doing some of
00:21:24.020 those things, which is good news for me because I like to buy my sourdough.
00:21:27.580 All right. So obviously a little repetitive there when it's that extemporaneous and answering
00:21:35.100 questions in an interview, but you probably heard me say quite a few times that I believe that making
00:21:40.900 sourdough and being a truly traditional wife and mom is wonderful. Like I think homesteading and
00:21:47.820 gardening and doing all of the things that it takes to be self-reliant as a family is wonderful and
00:21:57.020 awesome. And I admire that. And we do some of those things in our family. I love it. But that was not
00:22:06.000 my, that was, that's not my point. My point is not to criticize any of that. So let me explain a little
00:22:14.940 bit. And I think that this is important for people who haven't heard this perspective before.
00:22:18.740 Now I'm not going to get into all the drama that that caused. I certainly will not be giving a
00:22:23.220 shout out to any of my haters because I understand that more than anything, these particular terminally
00:22:29.280 online critics really, really want recognition and attention. So instead, suffice it to say that
00:22:35.520 after that clip went around, they have so purposely and perpetually misconstrued and misrepresented what I
00:22:44.340 said, accusing me because of that clip and other things of being a feminist, claiming that I am
00:22:49.140 in that clip, attacking traditional moms, attacking traditional lives and wives, attacking sourdough,
00:22:56.320 when clearly that's not even close to what I said, not here or not anywhere. Now I have my guesses as to
00:23:01.980 the motives behind why they are purposely misconstruing the things that I'm saying, and none of them are
00:23:08.500 good motives, but I don't have the time or the energy to share my speculations right now. Those of you
00:23:14.220 who know me, who have followed my content and who have discernment at all, know what I'm about,
00:23:19.800 know what I've encouraged my audience to do, to read your Bibles, to discern truth from a lie,
00:23:24.820 to seek to glorify God in every big and small thing that you do. And as far as it depends on you,
00:23:31.360 do not put off getting married or having children. I've dedicated hours and hours of this show to
00:23:38.040 refuting as best as I can the lies of progressivism, of feminist-centric self-love, self-help, self-empowerment
00:23:45.880 culture. That's what my whole first book is about, the lies of you are enough, you're perfect the way
00:23:51.080 you are, trust your heart, follow your dreams. In that book were birthed many concepts and phrases
00:23:56.440 that you still hear me use today, like the cult of self-affirmation or toxic mommy culture or trendy
00:24:01.740 narcissism, all of which I think are trends that disproportionately affect women and encourage
00:24:06.680 us to idolize our feelings and do only that which makes us happy in the moment. We have
00:24:13.360 continually unraveled the deceptions of the new age and of witchcraft, again, things that I think
00:24:18.840 disproportionately target women at every turn. We have tried together imperfectly but earnestly to
00:24:25.540 combat what the world tells us is good and right and true, especially when it comes to womanhood,
00:24:29.740 and instead to look at scripture. So I very much think that I have my finger on the pulse
00:24:36.580 of what Christian women our age, in general, say the age range of 25 to 45, are worried about and
00:24:45.880 thinking about and are wondering about, confused about, and I do my best to speak to that. And one
00:24:51.660 thing that I have noticed, in addition to all of the many, many other trends that we have talked about
00:24:56.660 over the years, is the recent pressure to reach a certain standard of homemaker that resembles
00:25:03.160 something close to a 19th century homesteader, to homeschool, bake bread, throw out all the toxic
00:25:09.800 things, replace them with their crunchy alternatives, and listen. Are you listening? Are you listening?
00:25:16.420 I'm gonna say this again. None of these things is bad. In fact, they're really good in a lot of ways.
00:25:22.120 I mean, how many times have I pled with you to please ensure that your children have a Christian
00:25:30.040 education, homeschool or private school? I am so adamant about that. We've talked about that so much.
00:25:36.460 There are so many goods to all of this. But my point is that if you live in the suburbs,
00:25:45.580 if you don't have all the non-toxic alternatives, if you buy your bread from a bakery like I do,
00:25:53.640 or, oh my goodness, you might buy your bread from a grocery store, if you send your kids to
00:26:00.180 in-person school, that does not mean that you are not a biblical wife and mom. You can still be a present,
00:26:10.280 loving, discipling, wonderful, amazing wife and mother, biblical wife and mother, even if it doesn't
00:26:20.380 look exactly like the trad trend looks on social media. Those can be great things to aspire to.
00:26:28.840 But for the Christian, motherhood is a calling that is empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is not just
00:26:36.100 an aesthetic that we have to match. And look, that's good news. There are so many different kinds of trends.
00:26:42.060 We'll continue to be so many different kinds of trends that tempt us to conform to them, tempt us to
00:26:50.980 compare ourselves to them, can tempt us to discontentment, can make us think that what we're doing is
00:26:56.500 insufficient, that how our house looks, that how our kids act, that what we are doing and how things look
00:27:04.520 in our home, that they're just not good enough. That's been, I mean, the story really forever.
00:27:11.680 I think that we've always been tempted to comparison in one way or another. Like even our parents'
00:27:16.440 generation, there was a temptation to comparison and feeling like you weren't good enough or doing
00:27:21.280 all the right things or up with the trends or reading all the right parenting books. And then I
00:27:26.240 think social media has just taken that to another level. Now, do I think that this is a better direction?
00:27:33.540 than the direction of feminism that you should, or the really just narcissism that you should put off
00:27:42.780 marriage and kids to just make yourself happy and do what you want to do and make as much money as
00:27:47.380 possible? Yeah, I do. Like, I think that there are some redeeming parts to this trend. I think that
00:27:52.520 there are some redeeming good things to having a home aesthetic to kind of admire and aspire to.
00:28:01.580 But it can also be easily conflated with being a biblical wife and mom. And that's what I want
00:28:10.060 to make sure that we are free from. That the Bible sets a standard for us, as we have talked about
00:28:16.200 several times, that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, that social media is not our judge and jury and
00:28:22.000 social media is not our standard. And wow, that is such good news. So even if your house doesn't look
00:28:28.820 like the 1850s, like even if you don't have this same aesthetic as you're seeing on social media,
00:28:36.880 you can still be a wonderful and godly keeper of your home. And you can still be working along with
00:28:43.140 your husband to lay a great and Christian foundation for your kids. And so like, I just praise God for
00:28:50.300 that, that social media doesn't set the standard. And somehow that was construed as me attacking
00:28:55.660 traditionalism or attacking an aesthetic. In fact, I have defended the likes of Ballerina Farms
00:29:03.760 from her critics, because this is another part of all of this that I will say, because I think that
00:29:09.840 it is wrong to center all content on ourselves. If you're consuming a kind of content that always is
00:29:19.100 making you feel bad about yourself, at the end of the day, that is a you problem. That is an us
00:29:25.420 problem. If you are constantly tempted to covetousness, constantly tempted to discontentment,
00:29:32.040 to dissatisfaction about the things that the Lord has given you, then it is up to you to make the effort
00:29:39.220 and to employ the discipline required to no longer look at that content. That's not the fault of someone
00:29:45.960 like Ballerina Farms or any of these influencers. So I want to make that clear. I'm not hating on any
00:29:51.220 of these influencers, many of whom I follow, and I can follow and be grateful for what they do
00:29:56.240 without feeling like I have to copy, you know, everything that they do, because people are in
00:30:01.140 different stages of life and live in different regions and things like that. But if you are following
00:30:06.100 someone, there's no shame in this. And you're like, wow, I cannot be on social media. I cannot look at
00:30:11.600 this person's content without feeling insecure, without feeling ungrateful for what I've been
00:30:18.200 given, then I would just encourage you to unfollow them. And so I'm not putting the hate on the
00:30:25.440 trad influencers out there. I am simply saying that for whatever, however we can, however much it depends
00:30:36.720 on us, that we should ensure that we are not trying to live up to a social media trend that is
00:30:47.500 not explicitly spelled out for us in scripture. And I just want to give you some examples of this
00:30:54.360 trad trend that is not actually biblical. Like it's not actually in God's word. And like these things are
00:31:01.220 really important. There is a distinction between what is called a trad life on social media and
00:31:09.480 what the Bible actually prescribes for Christians.
00:31:14.180 Okay, so you've probably seen some of these people online who are influencers. And now some I've
00:31:33.820 talked about like this 19th century aesthetic, which would be closer to the kinds of people that I follow
00:31:39.320 because like I've told you, I'm kind of like a crunchy, crispy mom, but not 100%. So if you don't
00:31:46.540 know, like they're silky over here. And silky is like, you don't care about any of the non-toxic
00:31:53.280 stuff. You're not into the holistic stuff. You're just going to do, you know, you're totally fine with
00:31:59.260 all of the processed things. And I don't want you to hear condemnation and judgment in my voice when I
00:32:04.900 say that. That's just what silky mom means. The crunchy mom is like anti-traditional medicine
00:32:12.660 and like fully crunchy. Like you are making all your own food from scratch. You have no polyester in
00:32:20.980 your home. You only use essential oils for, you know, like washing your hands. I mean, there's kind
00:32:27.200 of even a spectrum within that. And then there's somewhere in between. And I would put myself somewhere
00:32:32.760 in between all of that. So I like following kind of the crunchy world. And there's a big crossover
00:32:41.400 between like conservative Christian women and the crunchy scene, especially since COVID. And I think
00:32:47.180 for good reason, we've started to question a lot of the things that we've been told about modern medicine
00:32:52.400 from the, you know, medical industrial complex. We started to question the reliability of institutions
00:32:59.740 like the CDC. We've started to think more about what we're feeding our family, what the grocery store
00:33:05.760 is selling, what labels mean like organic versus natural and all of that. Also, we've started to see
00:33:13.560 the craziness in the public school system even more. And so understandably, and I am on this train too,
00:33:20.500 I have started to take these things a lot more seriously. So I am more like following that camp.
00:33:26.040 And so I see all the good and the bad and the ugly and all of that and the redeeming parts and the
00:33:31.840 pressure to conform, all of it. That all comes with social media trend. But then there's also
00:33:36.640 this part of the trad trend that I guess is more on TikTok. Now I am old. I am 32. So I, like a good
00:33:44.840 millennial, only see TikTok trends on Instagram like two months later. I am not on TikTok. I have never
00:33:51.820 opened to the TikTok app in my life. And so I don't know as much about all of this, but there is a form
00:34:00.880 of tradness that is like 1950s, okay? And it is much less about like homesteading and certainly nothing
00:34:10.440 to do with Christianity and more about cosplaying, okay? I think it's more about fetishes. Like that's
00:34:18.620 really what it is. And so there is this young woman. She's a beautiful young woman. I've actually
00:34:25.360 met this person before. And her name is Estee Williams. She became famous for advocating for
00:34:30.580 the trad wife movement on TikTok. And she explains how to be a trad wife. One, implement ultra,
00:34:36.020 ultra traditional gender roles into your marriage. I don't know what ultra traditional means. Two,
00:34:39.880 marry the right man, masculine, faith-centered, who appreciates the divide of gender roles. Three,
00:34:43.860 learn to cook, clean, and host. Four, have something just for you. Five, upkeep your beauty
00:34:48.960 maintenance. She prefers house dresses. Now, in and of themselves, I don't see anything wrong with this.
00:34:54.740 Here is an example of Estee, like the reigning trad wife of TikTok.
00:34:59.520 Okay, so we had to censor that a little bit for YouTube because she is dressed, like I think,
00:35:15.760 so scandalously. So this is a person who is considered a trad wife and a trad life. And she
00:35:22.040 calls herself a Christian and she and her husband are Christians. Now, they are very open also about
00:35:27.620 living together before a marriage. And she is dressed in a way that most Christian women who
00:35:33.700 wouldn't even call themselves trad wives would not dress because it is so insanely immodest. Like it
00:35:41.100 is so obviously about trying to attract the male gaze and male lust. And there is absolutely nothing
00:35:49.500 biblical about that. There was this other Daily Mail article that I saw the other day. And the headline
00:36:00.440 is, I live to please my husband. Trad wife, 37, reveals she lets her spouse have sexual relations with
00:36:09.600 other women while she caters to his every whim, admitting 98% of her day revolves around him.
00:36:17.260 So this is a form of trad life, trad wife, that is obviously not biblical because it is encouraging
00:36:25.200 adultery. And these are just two examples. There was also this story that I saw, and I
00:36:29.920 wouldn't typically read a story like this because I don't want it to seem like I am purposely
00:36:33.820 misrepresenting like a greater movement, but I've actually gotten a number of messages
00:36:38.160 saying something similar to this. So I think it's important to talk about. This is from the New York
00:36:42.560 Post. This headline is, TikTok ruined my husband of 12 years. Now he wants a quote unquote
00:36:47.020 trad wife and we are getting and we are getting a divorce. She said that prior to her husband
00:36:53.940 watching trad wife videos, they were both working, contributing to chores, sharing child care
00:36:57.440 responsibilities without complaint. But around March this year, she said he started acting weird.
00:37:02.380 He complained about how I looked. He complained about the food. He complained about me working
00:37:05.740 long hours. I work the same hours that he does. Throughout our marriage, he never had any complaints
00:37:10.240 about the food. I cook. I dress up in a more comfortable attire when I'm in my house. He never had a
00:37:15.020 problem with that ever. The devastated wife learned that her spouse had started becoming obsessed with
00:37:18.960 one particular trad wife TikToker whom she did not name. Shockingly, she claimed her husband became
00:37:23.600 very verbally abusive for the first time in their marriage and insisted that she be a quote submissive
00:37:28.720 wife. Her husband had been talking to another woman online telling his wife that he deserves
00:37:32.900 better. So look, I mean, this is the problem with being perpetually online period. And this is like a form,
00:37:41.320 I think, of cheating. It's certainly a form of lust. It's certainly a form of discontentment. Now, I'm not
00:37:49.040 saying that it's wrong for a husband to realize, you know what, I don't really like my wife working. Like, I don't
00:37:55.420 really like how our home is ordered. So I think that we should change things some. Like, I don't think that that's
00:38:01.180 wrong. I don't think it's wrong for a husband to lead in a way and say, you know what, I think that going in a different
00:38:06.360 direction is best for our family and here's why. But that's not what went on here. And it's not just
00:38:12.540 this. It is also the red pill phenomenon online that is so insanely objectifying to women and so
00:38:22.780 insanely, incredibly hateful that I have gotten several messages from women who say that after
00:38:32.880 their husband has started following content like this, it's not that he's become more manly or more masculine or a
00:38:39.040 better leader, or just that he wants his wife to stay home. I mean, that's all that's all fine. It's that he has become
00:38:47.480 entitled, he has become obsessed with certain forms of domestic life that previously he wasn't fixated on, or wasn't,
00:39:02.060 didn't have such high unreachable standards for. And I worry about this. I mean, this is this is the
00:39:09.680 problem, right? This is the problem with any social media trend is that it sets this superficial, arbitrary
00:39:15.440 standard and unrealistic expectations. Like, these people who are giving you this facade of having this
00:39:24.920 perfectly traditional 1950s or 1850s home, very often they don't live that way. Like, have you ever
00:39:31.720 noticed how many of these trad accounts talk about the importance of just staying home and yet they
00:39:37.840 are making bank off of being social media influencers? How many of them sell merchandise, are writing books,
00:39:46.100 are writing articles, are going on shows, giving interviews, and speaking, and selling their courses,
00:39:54.720 are selling sponsorships? They're spending a ton of money, or a ton of time, rather.
00:40:01.380 They're spending a ton of time and energy online telling you the importance of staying home and
00:40:08.780 homesteading. But they're not really focusing their time and their energy on that. That's what I'm
00:40:15.500 talking about when I say that motherhood for the Christian, that being a godly wife and mom for the
00:40:23.080 Christian is more and bigger and better and deeper than all of that. Like, this is the danger of any
00:40:30.180 social media trend. This is not an attack on traditionalism. This is not an attack on
00:40:35.760 homemaking in any regard. Those are all things that I love and admire very much. But this is not it.
00:40:44.840 Like, this stuff is not synonymous with being a biblical wife and mom. And husbands have to realize
00:40:51.700 that and wives have to realize that. That even as the wife, according to Ephesians 5, is called to
00:40:58.360 submit to her husband as she submits to the Lord, so the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the
00:41:06.320 church and gave himself up for her. That is a sacrificial form of love that is so demanding.
00:41:16.020 It's such a high standard for love and respect and gentleness that I would rather see that
00:41:23.800 trending on social media than the kind of cosplay fantasy that we're seeing in some of these subsets
00:41:30.600 online. And it's good news, right? Like, it's good news that we can be freed from worldly standards,
00:41:37.460 that God's ways are actually so much better and so much deeper, so much more substantive,
00:41:43.720 and so much more life-giving than what we see on social media.
00:41:49.420 All right. Let's see if there's anything else that we want to discuss in that before we close
00:41:58.580 out. I did have a segment on cannibalism that I wanted to quickly discuss. Maybe I will close
00:42:04.580 out with that. Okay. I know that sounds weird, but I actually think it'll be encouraging. And I think I
00:42:09.140 can synthesize this whole big subject that we were going to talk to you about and just encourage you,
00:42:14.840 again, that God's ways are better.
00:42:18.080 Okay. So I had sent this article to my team a few weeks ago, and we're just now getting to it. And I
00:42:35.140 know it sounds totally random and dark. Why would we talk about cannibalism? But the reason I sent it
00:42:40.220 to them because it got my wheels turning about just how much Christianity has done for the world that we
00:42:46.500 just absolutely take for granted. So this article in The New Scientist is titled, Is It Time for a More
00:42:52.680 Subtle View on the Ultimate Taboo? Cannibalism. Okay. Can I just give my own commentary for a second
00:42:58.180 before I get into the Christianity part of this? Why? Why? Why? Why does everything have to be
00:43:04.040 destigmatized? Can't we just like, okay, so we look in the stigma camp, and we look at all the things
00:43:09.440 that are stigmatized. Can't we just say, you know what? Most of those things deserve to stay there.
00:43:13.440 Like most of those things deserve to stay stigmatized. Men wearing a dress, yes, there
00:43:18.400 was a stigma around that. That deserves stigma. A lot of things deserve stigma. Like even things that
00:43:24.580 aren't even necessarily morally bad, when there is a stigma around them, they are less likely to be
00:43:34.220 glorified and therefore less likely to become popularized. Like some people complain, for example,
00:43:40.120 about the stigma of being on government assistance or the stigma of being on welfare. We need to
00:43:45.800 destigmatize that. Okay. On the one hand, I understand that sometimes you just need help,
00:43:51.800 and that is the only place that you can get it. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world,
00:43:56.040 and that's just the way that it is. But at the same time, that stigma is what can motivate a family
00:44:02.420 to say, you know what? I'm going to work as hard as possible so that I'm no longer on the government
00:44:06.820 dole, and I am providing for my own family. And that is a good thing. Stigmas aren't all bad. So
00:44:13.220 this push to destigmatize everything is just a result of moral relativism, in which the only bad
00:44:20.420 is saying that something is bad. And that's where this is coming from. It's coming from post-modern
00:44:26.060 moral relativism, which is just a bunch of godless rot and has real consequences, like normalizing
00:44:32.060 eating people. So let's get into this. So new archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans
00:44:37.300 ate each other surprisingly often. Now, again, this is like kind of my question about dinosaurs.
00:44:42.120 How do we, how? How do you know? Archaeological evidence showed you that? Okay. It's one thing
00:44:48.340 if you were able to read the old papyrus, and it said, we are eating each other surprisingly often.
00:44:53.780 And then, and then I could see how you could deduce that, like you would take that conclusion.
00:45:00.720 But how is archaeology showing you that? I mean, maybe there's an easy answer for that. I don't
00:45:05.440 know. So, but archaeologists today, just like paleontologists, a bunch of them are just,
00:45:10.820 they're just a bunch of nerds in a room saying this is what we want to say, and they don't really
00:45:15.220 know. But anyways, they're saying that people ate each other surprisingly often. And so they're
00:45:19.140 asking the question, ethically, cannibalism, or they're saying ethically, cannibalism poses fewer
00:45:23.620 issues than you might imagine. If a body can be bequeathed with consent to medical science,
00:45:29.000 why can't it be left to feed the hungry? Perhaps it is down to the fact that in Western religious
00:45:36.320 traditions, aka Christianity, bodies are seen as the seat of the soul and have a whiff of the sacred.
00:45:43.320 A whiff of the sacred. Now, Bree, or my researcher, decided to highlight that portion of
00:45:48.680 my document because they wanted me to say that. Because these people are weird. A whiff of the
00:45:54.340 sacred. Researchers have unearthed evidence suggesting that our hominin ancestors ate each
00:46:02.200 other surprisingly often, but often as funerary rituals to honor their dead. Cannibalism is an
00:46:09.940 important part of our story as human beings. Okay. Above all, these discoveries invite us to
00:46:15.440 reconsider our revulsion to cannibalism in the context of our evolutionary past. So, okay,
00:46:20.900 say you believe in evolution. Say you believe in evolution. I don't believe in evolution, of course,
00:46:26.540 because I think it's a very silly position. But say you believe in evolution, that we all became,
00:46:30.420 we all came from, you know, the same place, the big bang, and we've evolved over time, and we've
00:46:36.080 passed down these characteristics that have made it possible for us to survive. Survival of the fittest,
00:46:41.060 natural selection, natural selection, all that stuff. That would mean that stigmas and revulsions
00:46:45.800 have been passed down to us by our ancestors to help us stay alive. Okay? So that's the atheist
00:46:52.500 perspective. Now, the Christian perspective is that we are made in God's image, and God has given us
00:46:57.980 particular revulsions because he has written his law on our heart, and we know some things are just
00:47:03.320 wrong. And that would be including cannibalism. And they are right, that we do believe that the body
00:47:13.160 is sacred. Like, we are not like the Gnostics. We are not like the people who believe that the material
00:47:19.780 world is bad, or the material world is just trapping the soul. We actually believe that God
00:47:24.720 made the world, every part of the world, with purpose, with intentionality, and that it all
00:47:31.520 matters, and that it actually plays a story in this grand scheme, eternal plan of redemption,
00:47:37.740 that there will be a resurrection of the bodies, that God became flesh to dwell among us. And so we
00:47:45.140 believe so much in the importance of the body. And so, yes, they're right about that, that because of
00:47:52.480 how the West has been forged by Christianity, cannibalism has a stigma, as it should.
00:48:02.120 So they say, understanding cannibalism's deep roots might shift our perspective on the few
00:48:07.360 cultures that still practice cannibalism today, albeit only occasionally, such as the Agoria Hindu
00:48:13.040 sect in India, that does it in the pursuit of transcendence. Above all, these discoveries invite
00:48:19.600 us to reconsider our revulsion, blah, blah, blah. He said, that, no, thank you, no, thank you.
00:48:24.520 Another reason why I will never be visiting India. Okay, so here's what the Bible has to say.
00:48:30.720 A little bit about cannibalism. So after the flood in Genesis 9, God gives Noah permission
00:48:39.200 to eat meat. He says, everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I have
00:48:44.760 given you the green plant, I now give you everything. But he specifies that that food does not include
00:48:50.820 us, because in Genesis 9, 6, whoever sheds human blood by humans shall their blood be shed. So he is
00:48:56.680 there commanding the death penalty for our capital murder there. And every time we see cannibalism
00:49:02.480 throughout scripture, it is depicted in a negative way, in a cursed way. Leviticus 26, 29, this is a
00:49:08.220 curse. You shall eat the flesh of your sons. You shall eat the flesh of your daughters. Deuteronomy 28,
00:49:13.660 53 through 57, he is describing curses for disobedience, which is eating like the flesh of your womb,
00:49:20.840 eating the flesh of other humans. Jeremiah 19, 9, I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and
00:49:26.060 daughters. Lamentations 2, 20 and 4, 10, describing judgment. The hands of compassionate women have
00:49:31.220 boiled their own children. They become their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.
00:49:37.260 Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in your midst. Cannibalism has always been a pagan practice.
00:49:47.560 It has always been a non-Christian practice. Whenever throughout scripture, cannibalism is
00:49:51.980 mentioned, whether it's symbolism or a metaphor or whether it's talking literally, it is seen as evil.
00:49:59.420 So not only is the act itself wrong, but also the reason behind the act is wrong because it has been
00:50:05.920 a part of pagan rituals. So this is why Christianity has so stigmatized something as grotesque as
00:50:18.520 cannibalism and why we are now seeing in our godless culture this sudden desire to bring it back. This was
00:50:28.120 not the only article I saw. I think I saw another article in the New Yorker saying that we need to
00:50:34.620 destigmatize these kinds of things. There was also this article, and it was by John Piper,
00:50:42.160 and it was about John Patton. He was a 19th century missionary. He left a successful urban
00:50:47.780 ministry in Glasgow to bring the gospel to the tribes of the Southern Pacific Islands, many of whom
00:50:53.400 practiced cannibalism. He also said this amazing quote that I think about a lot.
00:50:59.100 I realized I was immortal till my master's work was done. So we cannot die until God wills it.
00:51:07.480 And so he got to this small island in 1866. The natives were cannibals and occasionally ate the
00:51:14.020 flesh of their defeated foes. They practiced infanticide and widow sacrifice, killing the
00:51:18.740 widows of deceased men so that they could serve their husbands in the next world. This is true throughout
00:51:24.700 Africa too. By the way, this has been true in many parts of the barbaric world. In the next 15 years,
00:51:31.460 however, John and Margaret Patton saw the entire island of Inewa turn to Christ. At the moment when
00:51:37.760 I put the bread and wine into these dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, but now
00:51:41.840 stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste
00:51:46.880 of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss till I
00:51:52.880 gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself. Years later, when people argued that the aborigines
00:52:00.120 of Australia were subhuman and incapable of conversion or civilization, this was very popular
00:52:06.980 in the late 19th century and early 20th century, this kind of terrible idea, Patton fought back with
00:52:13.560 mission facts as well as biblical truth. He said this to those kinds of arguments,
00:52:17.760 recall what the gospel has done for the near kindred of these same aborigines.
00:52:23.140 He talks about his own experience. Cannibals have been led to renounce their heathenism. In Fiji,
00:52:28.920 79,000 cannibals have been brought under the influence of the gospel, and 13,000 members of
00:52:33.740 the churches are professing to live and work for Jesus. In Samoa, 34,000 cannibals have professed
00:52:39.320 Christianity. And in 19 years, its college has sent forth 206 Native teachers and evangelists.
00:52:44.700 On our new Hippides, more than 12,000 cannibals have been brought to sit at the feet of Christ.
00:52:53.260 And so that's what Christianity has done. Again, throughout Africa, throughout much of the Eastern
00:52:58.160 world, wherever Christianity places its flag, proverbially, wherever Christianity comes,
00:53:05.360 wherever the gospel is spread, cannibalism and child sacrifice and that kind of barbarism
00:53:12.440 is put to an end because that's what the gospel of Jesus does. And so it makes a lot of sense that
00:53:19.680 as we are moving into an era of godlessness, as we are moving further into the bleak future of
00:53:26.620 postmodernism, that we would abandon the things that for so long we just assumed were a product of
00:53:34.560 liberalism, a product of civilization that, of course, we don't do barbaric things like cannibalism
00:53:41.020 anymore because gross. When in fact, this is not something that we have inherited from our ancestors,
00:53:47.700 it is something that is distinctly biblical. It is something that is distinctly Christian.
00:53:53.540 You do not understand the darkness that is headed our way if we abandon the Christian ideals that have
00:54:01.140 placed the foundation for human rights, the foundation for loving your neighbor,
00:54:07.940 the foundation for decency and respect and civilization. When Christianity goes, all these
00:54:15.040 things go too. We can see it in normalizing something like the barbaric and tribal pagan practice
00:54:23.240 of cannibalism. But look, Christ still reigns. If the gospel was able to do that hundreds of years ago,
00:54:33.360 change cannibals to Christians, then it can still do the same today. That same power, that same Holy
00:54:41.760 Spirit, that same gospel is at work within Christians today. And actually, we're seeing so much of what the
00:54:49.860 ancient church saw in the way of gender bending and sexual immorality and depravity and child sacrifice and
00:54:56.280 objectifying people. We see so much of that today in different forms. And we have the same spirit, the same
00:55:06.720 Jesus Christ working through us. Hebrews 13a, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We have the same
00:55:13.860 ability to push back against darkness as our Christian predecessors always have had. So that's my
00:55:21.040 encouraging note to end this week on Relatable. We went a lot of places today, but I think the theme is
00:55:28.680 that God and his word are better. They're a better standard, gives us better power than the world could
00:55:33.700 ever give. So, okay, that's all we got for today. We will see you back here on Monday with an amazing,
00:55:40.140 amazing, amazing interview that you've got to tune in for. All right. See you guys then.