Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 996 ｜ How Feminism Misunderstands Gender

00:00:00.960 Christian nationalism, the origins of feminism, and much, much more will be discussed on this

00:00:07.780 highly controversial episode of Relatable with Gabe Pinocchio. He is the founder of

00:00:14.960 Theosu, an online seminary. He is also the host of a podcast called The Reactionary

00:00:19.120 Christian, and he's got some very interesting and nuanced and, yes, as I said, some controversial

00:00:25.040 takes on some of the hottest topics of our day, and he will be fleshing out all of those and much

00:00:30.880 more on today's episode of Relatable, which is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:34.740 Go to GoodRanchers.com, use code ALI at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code ALI.

00:00:47.780 Gabe, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I really appreciate it.

00:00:51.280 Thanks for having me on. This is a pleasure and a privilege.

00:00:56.800 Well, for those who may not know, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:01:02.400 Jeez, where do I begin? Well, my name is Gabriel Pinocchio, and I started an online theology

00:01:12.480 Netflix-style company where we teach theology in bite-sized formats. It's called Theosu.

00:01:20.760 And from there, I've done a couple other things. I started Awoke Jesus meme page, and then I moved

00:01:30.960 on and started a podcast called The Reactionary Christian. A lot of my friends were like,

00:01:37.220 Gabe, you have to start a podcast. And I didn't know what I was going to call it or what it would

00:01:42.180 be about. But I consider myself to be a reactionary, and I've always kind of been that way. And so it

00:01:50.380 just kind of fits like a glove. And so yeah, so that's the latest and the greatest.

00:01:56.700 And you know, I love following you, and I've loved following you and your brother. And I've

00:02:01.700 had your brother on several years ago. But I have loved following y'all for so long. I mean,

00:02:07.320 some of just the most articulate and not just articulate, but interesting people. And you and

00:02:14.780 your brother, Nathan, are different in a lot of ways, I think, theologically and personality-wise,

00:02:20.340 not that I know y'all super well, but just even your Instagram personalities are kind of different.

00:02:25.380 Would you call yourself more conservative than Nathan in some ways?

00:02:29.660 Yeah, I mean, we are very different. Maybe like a yin and a yang. Maybe like good versus evil. No.

00:02:42.060 He's my arch nemesis. He's a wonderful guy. I love Nathan so much. But yeah, Nathan and I,

00:02:50.180 I think we generally share the same convictions. But yeah, I would probably be to the right of my

00:02:59.980 brother. You know, I might even be to the right of, you know, people on the right. So

00:03:06.460 I think that you are. How would you describe yourself theologically? Like, okay, I would say

00:03:13.080 I'm a Reformed Baptist. How would you describe yourself?

00:03:18.540 Wow. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question, because I think I've arrived at a point where

00:03:27.260 I'm not trying to just consider the last 500 years of Christian history. I'm trying to consider the

00:03:35.020 last 2,000 years of Christian history. And so, you know, it's just, I really have a love for the

00:03:46.380 church fathers. And so I always try to find, you know, go back to the kind of root system that we

00:03:57.300 had in the early church. And I try to align my views with the views of the church fathers.

00:04:06.160 And I don't believe that the church fathers were infallible. We know that the Word of God is

00:04:11.200 infallible. But I think the church fathers would have agreed with that, but also, you know, just would

00:04:18.740 have had a less modern view of things. Because we are very, you know, I love how C.S. Lewis said,

00:04:31.440 you know, we need to read old books, because they help us to understand that we are living in a

00:04:37.460 particular day and age. And they kind of breathe, you know, fresh air into our minds. And they help to

00:04:46.680 expand our understanding. And I look at the church fathers that same way. So I would, I suppose,

00:04:53.400 describe myself as a Christian who loves historic Christian orthodoxy.

00:05:00.600 Yeah.

00:05:01.000 And, yeah.

00:05:02.740 So when you say that you're not really just looking at the past 500 years, of course, like since the

00:05:07.960 Protestant Reformation, but you don't consider yourself Roman Catholic, but would you call yourself

00:05:14.520 a Protestant? I mean, obviously you're going before a Luther, but would you call yourself a Protestant?

00:05:19.860 Yeah, I would call myself a Protestant. Because I am not a Roman Catholic. And I, yeah, I have

00:05:31.220 some issues with the Roman Catholic Church. And, but, you know, so do the Eastern Orthodox.

00:05:38.000 Right. Right. And the Eastern Orthodox wouldn't really call themselves Protestant.

00:05:43.360 True. Right. But they would still object. Yeah. And, and so, and they would still protest,

00:05:48.940 if you will. So I, I would just say that, you know, I, I try not to make my protest

00:05:56.240 disproportionate. And I think that that's the issue. I think the issue is, you know, I kind of look at

00:06:04.400 where we're at right now as the, in the scenario of the Lord of the Rings and Mordor is on the

00:06:11.800 march and our civilization is in decay. As Chesterton said, we're forgetting obvious things like the fact

00:06:20.760 that men are men and women are women. But there's, there's, there's, there's, it's not just decaying

00:06:26.760 like a cheese. It is also being attacked by the orcs. And, and there's anti-Christianity that is

00:06:36.200 attacking our Christian, our, our Christian civilization. And so we can, we have a decision

00:06:41.140 to make. We can, we can go back and forth about differences in our respective Christian denominations

00:06:50.260 and, and, and, and, you know, churches, which is fine. I'm totally cool with having all those

00:06:56.700 conversations and maintaining those distinctions. But if we are not careful and if we do it in a

00:07:07.000 disproportionate way, we're going to be doing it in a concentration camp eventually. And, and I just

00:07:14.140 don't like, I, I am totally fine having the conversations and, uh, going deep into the

00:07:20.380 differences of theology, uh, that we have as Christians, but I don't want to be doing it in

00:07:26.040 a concentration camp. I'd rather be doing it in a, in a Christian society, um, that identifies itself

00:07:32.700 in the main as Christian, um, with a sort of what I would call Christian pluralism, as opposed to

00:07:40.400 what we have now, which is a sec, yeah, a secular pluralism. Yeah.

00:07:58.680 And one thing that you talk about that I think is really interesting is this idea of

00:08:02.940 so-called Christian nationalism. And I say so-called just because there are so many

00:08:07.320 different definitions of it. If you let the secularists define it, then they will say that

00:08:12.800 it's some kind of fascism where Christians take charge and they force everyone to bow

00:08:18.820 before Jesus. If you talk to someone who would call themselves pro-Christian nationalism, they

00:08:24.200 might just say, look, this was founded as a Christian nation and all morality and all laws

00:08:29.360 have to come from somewhere. So it might as well be Christian, Christianity. Um, there are

00:08:34.100 different definitions of it, but I mean, what's your take on this whole Christian nationalism

00:08:38.860 debate? Is America a Christian country? And what should it look like if you're looking at

00:08:45.500 the constitution, but also, uh, looking at an effort to make a society more Christian?

00:08:54.060 Okay. Well, yeah, I, I, I've called myself a conservative Christian nationalist in the past.

00:09:00.020 And I start with conservatism simply because I do believe that there are certain, uh, major

00:09:05.340 things that must be conserved, um, in order for life to exist. Uh, there, we, you know, we,

00:09:11.800 there are, if you look around, like, you know, there's the moral order that needs to be conserved,

00:09:17.740 right? Um, there are chief, uh, issues of human doom that, that are being weighed in the balance

00:09:25.480 in any civilization. Uh, so I, I suppose, you know, I I'm, I'm wanting to conserve the main elements of

00:09:34.180 our civilization. But when I look at the main elements of our civilization, uh, things to

00:09:39.820 conserve, I look at it and I say, well, we have, you know, the main element of our civilization has

00:09:45.240 been Christianity. And so I want to, as a conservative, I want to conserve Christianity because

00:09:51.100 I think Christianity is the most important element of our civilization, um, because it's given birth to

00:09:59.300 our civilization. And without Christianity, we wouldn't have a civilization. Uh, we would be back

00:10:06.380 in the, uh, first century. Uh, we would be back in the catacombs. We would be back in pagan times,

00:10:14.860 uh, genuine pagan times where they worship Caesar. Um, and they're, and then all, and all of their

00:10:22.020 cultural customs, you know, they didn't celebrate Christmas day. They didn't celebrate Easter. They

00:10:26.400 didn't, they didn't even celebrate St. Valentine's day. So, you know, again, our, our customs, our

00:10:33.000 conventions, our Christian conventions, and, um, our, even our psychology is Christian. You know,

00:10:39.380 when we walk down the street and we see someone begging for money, we reach into our pockets.

00:10:44.500 That's not a pagan custom. The pagans would have said, well, the gods have decided that he should

00:10:49.280 be poor and I should be rich. But Christianity has changed all of that, even down to our psychology.

00:10:55.860 And, and that's for, that goes for the atheists too. Their psychology is very Christian. Um,

00:11:01.920 yeah, we have, we have Christian atheists is what we have. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So our culture

00:11:07.400 is very Christian. And so again, I think the number one thing to conserve as a conservative

00:11:12.860 is our religion, because I believe that every, everything is a by-product of religion, of

00:11:19.500 religion. Um, and that doesn't just go for our civilization. That goes for every civilization

00:11:25.180 that you study in human history. Um, it starts with, uh, massive truth claims and then it, it,

00:11:34.280 you know, those truth claims, uh, and convictions in the soul extend to the society and, and eventually

00:11:40.860 trickle down and create, uh, and you know, that the civilizations that existed. So, so again,

00:11:48.180 I want to conserve Christianity and I want to conserve, uh, I think it's a good idea to conserve our

00:11:54.320 nations. I think, I think it's a good idea for Americans to conserve America, uh, and for the

00:12:01.180 French to conserve France and for the English to conserve England. And so, uh, I'm a nationalist,

00:12:07.780 um, because I think that nationalism was the tradition of the founding fathers. I think,

00:12:16.780 I think if we don't have nationalism, what we will have is internationalism. And I, I look at

00:12:23.340 internationalism as the, you know, we call it globalism. Um, but it's internationalism and it

00:12:31.800 is the refusal to recognize nations as nations and as sovereign. And, uh, I think America is being

00:12:39.360 attacked by, uh, globalist interests, uh, cosmopolitan interests, uh, people who are indifferent

00:12:46.980 to, uh, the, the, the, the nation of America and, and really all nations. And they want to destroy

00:12:56.760 the identities of these nations and the rich heritage and histories of these nations. So,

00:13:02.020 uh, the real danger is, uh, that we would, that, that I'm trying to avoid

00:13:08.760 is, uh, is the danger of idolatry. Because you see, if we don't worship God, we will fall into

00:13:17.720 idolatry. Yeah. And, uh, I think pluralism is idolatry. I think pluralism, uh, the, the allowance

00:13:26.440 to, to worship any God and every God that, you know, imaginable, um, to the refusal to define who God

00:13:33.720 is, that is idolatry. And, uh, the, the, the problem with idolatry, um, on a practical level

00:13:41.400 is that God punishes idolatry. And so, um, uh, you know, people who, who fall into idolatry,

00:13:48.880 nations who fall into idolatry, uh, they become, they fall into immorality, which is the natural

00:13:55.100 consequence of idolatry because a degraded God makes a degraded worshiper. But God avenges

00:14:03.040 these issues. And so I don't want God's punishment to fall upon America. Uh, but I know that God

00:14:09.560 punishes idolatry and he punishes immorality as we see in Romans chapter one. Yeah. So, you know,

00:14:16.880 that's kind of it in a nutshell. And it just makes me think about the fact, like you said,

00:14:21.340 Christian atheists, that the people who are trying to fundamentally change our country and who would

00:14:29.600 like to forgo this idea of Christian morality entirety, they think that they will be able

00:14:35.300 to conserve the Christian things they like in a godless nation. So they think that we can still

00:14:42.180 have compassion. We can still have charity. We can still be against things like theft and murder.

00:14:48.440 If we no longer have the foundation that the Bible gives us for these things, they don't of course

00:14:55.360 correlate, uh, this right to property with God's commandment against theft and against covetousness.

00:15:01.980 But of course, that's actually where it comes from. And the founders knew that too. And so they

00:15:06.760 think that they can remove the foundation and that the edifice won't fall down, but it will. You're

00:15:11.720 never going to be able to preserve the vestiges of Christianity that you like in a pagan nation.

00:15:18.320 And progressives don't realize that. Atheists that I've had on this podcast, when I ask them,

00:15:22.980 okay, you and I agree that murder is wrong, or sometimes we might agree that like Marxism is

00:15:28.280 wrong or all of these things. And when I ask them why, but why, why do you believe that's wrong?

00:15:34.260 Where are you getting that idea that that is wrong and that this is right? And even the most clever

00:15:39.160 atheists that I've had, they can't really tell me that. And they actually think it's the more

00:15:43.900 sophisticated position to be like, well, it just is. And I am the rube over here that has to have God

00:15:50.640 to determine my morality, when really it's the opposite. It is very absurd to say that something

00:15:55.580 is wrong if no one has ultimately told you that it is.

00:15:59.860 Yeah, excellent point. And I totally agree. The issue I find is that people are unaware of the fact

00:16:08.120 of how Christian they are culturally, nationally, you know, in a civilizational sense. And in that

00:16:15.640 sense, I think Christian consciousness needs to rise. We need to reawaken ourselves to the fact

00:16:24.020 that, you know, like, for example, they don't teach this in high school, but, or probably even college,

00:16:30.980 but the original 13 colonies enshrined Christianity into their state constitutions.

00:16:40.120 And the first amendment was not an amendment to make America secular or create a secular

00:16:49.200 pluralism. The first amendment was made so that the state constitutions could maintain their Christian

00:16:56.420 identity and that the states themselves could maintain Christian identity within their politics.

00:17:03.640 And so what I'm basically saying is that the founding fathers were Christian nationalists in the sense

00:17:09.580 that they wanted Christianity to be officially recognized as the official religion, favored religion of the

00:17:17.380 government. And they wanted, you know, they wanted that Christian identity to be recognized because,

00:17:24.860 because they recognized the importance of religion. And what we've done is, you know,

00:17:30.660 slowly over time, we have eroded that consciousness and that awareness of the importance of religion,

00:17:40.760 particularly Christianity, within the public square. And we've said, no, you know, we've come up with

00:17:48.160 this idea called secularism, which has never been in the history of the world regarded as a sane notion

00:17:58.820 religion, that, you know, religion is this sideshow. And, and so really, you know, like, it's, again, what you

00:18:07.620 were saying, like, these, you know, these people who hate religion, they don't want religion, particularly

00:18:13.080 Christianity, in, in politics, they think they can maintain the culture that, that is downstream from the cult of

00:18:24.360 Christ. Yeah. Because we forget that, you know, culture is the product, product of cult. Yeah. And I

00:18:30.780 don't mean, I don't mean cult in the, you know, derogatory, just religious beliefs. Exactly. And it, and so

00:18:39.080 they're trying to kick the ladder out from underneath them. Yeah. Well, good luck, you know, good luck with

00:18:45.960 that, because you're not going to be able to maintain, as you said, those, those, those traditions. We use the

00:18:52.900 word love all the time. Love is a Christian virtue. Yeah. It's a Christian virtue. Hope is a Christian virtue. And we

00:19:00.360 love these words, hope, you know, I remember when Barack Obama was running, it was hope and change, right? But hope is a, a

00:19:07.860 Christian virtue. We're getting, we're using these words, because we're Christians. And we're, you know, love, we're using

00:19:14.400 that word. That's a Christian word. That's, that's not a word that is, that you can find in the ancient

00:19:24.900 world. Right. What's, it's just in, in, again, we just, we don't understand like a lot of the history

00:19:31.760 behind these concepts. Yeah. And, and the different, the forms of love that, I mean, you can find the

00:19:38.580 concept of love in the ancient world. Obviously there are ancient Greek words for love, but the

00:19:44.860 kind of love that we see as a virtue today, that we uphold and we say, you have to be loving. Even

00:19:52.020 like the most secular atheist person will say, even though we have different definitions of it now,

00:19:57.180 they would still say, you have to be loving. The being loving is the most important thing you can do.

00:20:02.180 Now, of course, they see loving as completely affirming someone's sin. And we have the biblical form

00:20:08.060 of love. But again, everyone, everyone agrees. There are very few people out there who are going

00:20:14.380 to say, no, actually hate is a virtue, at least in America. And they don't realize it's because they

00:20:19.740 have been so washed over with Christianity for so long, the same Christianity that they say that they

00:20:25.760 hate. Interestingly. Well, yeah. Yeah. Even our, you know, we, non-profit organizations are called

00:20:33.040 charities. Right. Well, charity is love. Yeah. So we've, we've created these organizations called

00:20:41.780 love organizations, you know? Um, and, and that's again, a Christian thing. Yeah. And, and, and that's

00:20:50.600 why, and, and Christianity, you know, Christians are responsible for feeding the world and, and, uh,

00:20:56.000 you know, making, making the world a better place on a very practical level. Uh, you know,

00:21:01.060 the red cross, you know, and, and, uh, world vision and, you know, like we feed the world,

00:21:07.200 we take care of the world. We, you know, but that's Christian. That's a, that's the, that's

00:21:11.860 the effect, uh, that Christianity has had upon us and upon our world. But these things cannot

00:21:19.360 be maintained if you take Christianity away. And I, I simply want to recognize officially

00:21:23.700 what we're already doing. Right. And I don't know if you have read, you would probably love

00:21:30.280 it, but I bring it up all the time. So my audience is probably annoyed with me talking

00:21:33.860 about it all the time, but it's the, it's a book by a historian named O.M. Backey and it's

00:21:39.720 called when children became people. And it just emphasizes the point that you make, like

00:21:44.780 he looks at ancient Greece and Rome and how women and children and the elderly and the sick

00:21:49.000 were all treated. While the adult free male was seen as, you know, the apex was seen as

00:21:54.660 the only one who really contained logos and logos was how they defined value, the ability

00:21:59.120 to rationalize, to speak and women and children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, they were all

00:22:04.280 kind of pushed to the side. Children especially were regarded as, you know, objects for sexual

00:22:08.600 exploitation. At best, they were seen as people who could grow up and take care of their parents.

00:22:14.360 At worst, they were seen as slaves or barbarians or basically on the same level as animals because

00:22:19.820 they couldn't reason, like the adult free male. And when Christianity came along and disrupted

00:22:26.200 the view of humanity in this pagan world that, no, no, no, we're all made in the image of God.

00:22:33.780 We are all equally dead in sin apart from Christ. We can all by grace through faith be made alive

00:22:39.360 in him. That completely revolutionized how the ancient world saw people and in particular children,

00:22:45.680 because they said, not only do we all have the same dignity as people made in the image of God,

00:22:50.540 but we are actually going to show special care to children, the most vulnerable, the powerless among

00:22:55.460 us. They are going to get special attention and special care, the hungry, the homeless, the sick.

00:23:01.380 I mean, Jesus obviously led us an example of that, of treating the vulnerable and the marginalized,

00:23:10.260 truly marginalized, not in today's progressive sense, but like with the most care. And then you

00:23:14.760 see the establishment and the growth of hospitals, of charities, of homeless shelters, of schools,

00:23:19.700 of children's hospitals, of adoption agencies, orphanages. All of these are Christian ideas,

00:23:26.980 Christian institutions that progressives today would all say in one way or another are good.

00:23:33.320 And they think that they just came out of like the natural evolution of human compassion,

00:23:39.580 which they think that we are all headed towards the more progressive that we get. And they do not at

00:23:45.660 all see them as the foundation of America or the foundation of these institutions that they

00:23:53.280 appreciate the institutions of charity, like you said, but they are. And when Christianity goes,

00:24:00.220 all of those things will eventually go to. All of those things will leave our society as America

00:24:07.660 is pushed into the margins. And I don't think that we can even think of, those of us who have been able

00:24:15.160 to be beneficiaries of Christianity in America for so long, I don't think that we can even fully wrap

00:24:22.020 our minds around what a scary world that will look like. Because none of us have lived through

00:24:27.360 paganism. You know, none of us have really seen that. We can see bits and pieces of it today with

00:24:33.460 the gender madness and with abortion and all of that. All of those are just forms of child sacrifice

00:24:38.580 that we saw in pre-Christian paganism. We'll see it in post-Christian paganism too,

00:24:43.740 but on a much larger scale, if Christianity no longer tempers, I think, the evil that we see today.

00:24:53.580 Yes, I totally agree. On that note about hospitals, there's a reason why all your hospitals are named

00:25:00.820 after saints. There's a reason why you have Lutheran hospitals and things like this, because the church

00:25:07.660 was the first organization to create hospitals. I believe it was St. Basil the Great who created

00:25:15.400 the first hospital. And, you know, so we are, yeah, like we are absolutely responsible for all the

00:25:23.680 amazing things, you know, and yes, and I literally mean that. I mean, you know, we invented the printing

00:25:31.120 press. We, you know, we, we, you know, we, we, we're, we're the ones that created the Renaissance,

00:25:39.340 you know, that has, that has caused technology to, to, to bloom, um, for better, for worse.

00:25:47.420 But yes.

00:25:47.700 Even the universities here. I mean, the university, you mentioned the States and I'll actually read some

00:25:52.440 of those things that you posted on Instagram, but the universities were started by Christians with

00:25:57.120 an express Christian purpose and intent. And it's not a, people need to understand. It's not a

00:26:02.920 coincidence that when these universities, when these States, when these places, when these hospitals

00:26:07.780 have decided to forego their Christian foundation, that the quality of the education and the care that

00:26:14.380 they offer has gone down. There's a reason for that.

00:26:17.800 Completely agree. Yes. And I, you know, I think that there's obviously like, again, we're seeing a

00:26:23.500 resurgence of different things because you have the classical school movement, uh, that's, that's

00:26:28.480 taking place, homeschool, uh, kids are being homeschooled. The internet has helped, uh, to help

00:26:36.140 parents, uh, homeschool their kids. Um, so there, you have a lot of, uh, Christian resurgence taking

00:26:45.320 place within culture. Um, and, and I just think that we need to continue to expand that and continue to,

00:26:51.560 to promote these, these ideas. Um, but yes, in terms of, yeah, paganism and the return to paganism,

00:26:58.620 you know, I, I, I genuinely don't think that it's possible to, uh, simply remove the foundation

00:27:06.680 of a home without destroying the home.

00:27:21.240 Okay. Let's get into some of your other hot takes. And I have quite a few here that I'm looking at.

00:27:26.700 And so let's see. Okay. Here's one that I would just love to hear you explain that we are definitely

00:27:32.820 in agreement on. Religion is not your personal relationship with God. This is something that I

00:27:40.660 hear a lot, that it's relationship, not religion, that Christianity is not a religion, that it's

00:27:45.640 just a relationship. And I think we have a, uh, take talk of a pastor basically arguing that, right?

00:27:52.840 Stop one. Okay.

00:27:53.800 And they'll always ask the question. Uh, so what do you do for a living? What happens is if you say,

00:27:59.940 well, I'm a pastor, they'll say this, well, I hate religion. I always say, well, me too. And they're

00:28:04.680 like, wait, you're a pastor. You hate your job. And I'm like, no, I just hate religion. I'm not a

00:28:09.960 religious person. I am a person that is in love with Jesus. Okay. Tell me about that. Tell me about

00:28:16.680 that. Do you, do you agree that it's relationship and not religion? Well, yeah, I understand what

00:28:25.440 he's trying to say. Um, I, I get the spirit of what he's trying to say. Um, it's just bad thinking

00:28:32.940 though. And, uh, you know, he needs to, you know, he needs to do a little bit more thinking. I, I, I,

00:28:39.380 I think, um, he, you know, is trying to characterize Christianity as though it's a personal relationship

00:28:47.640 merely. Um, the, the, and, and then I would also say, you know, even within that, um, the problem

00:28:57.320 is that that language, like it's a personal relationship, um, it, it kind of assumes that

00:29:05.140 it's on our terms. Uh, the truth is that the, our relationship, my relationship with God

00:29:12.420 is not in any way, shape and form on my terms. Um, it's on God's terms. God is the one who sets

00:29:21.360 the terms for the relationship. And, and, and, you know, I must, you know, if I want relationship

00:29:28.860 with God, I must meet him on his terms. And, and those terms, I would say form religion. Um,

00:29:38.520 because, you know, the word religion etymologically is simply, uh, derived from, uh, you know, the,

00:29:46.600 the, the understanding that it means to bind it. It's, it's like where we get the word obligation

00:29:53.080 from, um, or the word ligament. It's, it's a binding of things together. And so, uh, in that

00:30:01.280 sense, religion is kind of like a restraint. And I know we don't like that, you know? Um, and,

00:30:08.100 and I would say that perhaps part of the problem in America, uh, particularly in American churches

00:30:14.380 is that we've cast off restraint. Uh, we've, we, we've cast off religion, if you will. And, uh,

00:30:22.120 we've said, it's just a relationship. It's just a relationship. I'm just in love with Jesus. Well,

00:30:26.540 I'm in love with Jesus. You know, I, I, I don't, I think I could probably do better, uh, in my love

00:30:32.380 for Christ. And I'm trying to grow in my love for Christ. Um, but there, there are guidelines. There

00:30:41.040 is, uh, Christ, uh, allows us to have relationship with him, but not on our own terms. And the terms that

00:30:50.320 he set are in scripture, the word of God is essentially his terms and, and the, the word

00:31:00.700 of God accurately and properly interpreted, uh, also forms terms, which I would say historically

00:31:08.960 has been the apostles creed, uh, the Nicene creed, uh, that has, that creed has been the test of

00:31:16.860 Christian orthodoxy as in the thing that separates us from every other religion in the world,

00:31:23.000 including Mormonism and Jehovah's witnesses and all that stuff, um, for 2000 years. And so the,

00:31:31.620 the, the scripture, um, you know, forms, uh, well, the scripture makes claims that we have to adhere to,

00:31:39.940 we have to believe. And so, you know, I, I say this, Christ did not die for a religion,

00:31:46.260 but he died for a church, but the church is part of the body of Christ. And in that sense,

00:31:54.660 as a body, it is, it has ligaments. There is a religion to it. There's an order to it. You know,

00:32:01.060 it's amazing. People always, um, hate on organized religion, but they, they, uh, love everything else

00:32:10.000 to be organized. Why is the only thing that we, that we want to be disorganized, uh, religion?

00:32:17.420 You know, we, if I, if I said, would you like a disorganized company? Would you like a disorganized

00:32:22.240 home? Would you like a disorganized body? Uh, no, they, everybody wants everything to be organized

00:32:28.320 except for religion and except for their faith. And I just, you know, Chesterton, I think said

00:32:34.280 this, that the, the modern man is, is, is interested in introducing order into everything except his

00:32:39.920 ideas. And, uh, you know, there's an order in Christianity. Uh, there's an order, you know,

00:32:46.180 even Christ said the first there's, there's an order to the commandments. Christ said the first

00:32:50.680 commandment is to love the Lord, your God with all your heart and soul and mind strength.

00:32:54.060 The second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. And, you know, I just noticed on the,

00:33:00.320 he gets us commercial, you know, they're reversing the order there. So it's in a sense, part of,

00:33:07.220 part of our problem is that we, we have cast off restraint, uh, and the, and the order that,

00:33:13.420 that religion brings to us, that it is meant to be, it is meant to be healthy. The Sabbath was made for

00:33:20.020 man and man was not made for the Sabbath. So the point is that our, you know, religion was made for

00:33:25.600 the church so that the church could properly grow as the body of Christ. And so, uh, yes,

00:33:33.180 we don't want to put the, uh, cart, uh, before the horse, uh, or sorry, the horse before the cart.

00:33:40.520 I'm just all a mess right now, but I'm getting all these analogies mixed up. But the point is,

00:33:46.060 the point is simply that, yes, we, we have to order things properly and, um, religion helps us

00:33:53.440 to order our lives. And, and again, you'll find that the people who always emphasize relationship

00:34:00.380 are the ones who really have cast off restraint in their lives and they kind of live lawlessly,

00:34:09.400 you know, they, they, they don't, they don't have, if you ask them, you know, Hey, uh, what are the

00:34:14.920 10 commandments? They don't know, you know, and they live like it. Right. And, and, you know,

00:34:21.340 like in speaking of, in terms of kind of what you said about organization and other parts of our life

00:34:28.500 and order and parameters and definitions and rules and other parts of our life, we get it. But when

00:34:32.780 it comes to morality or our ideas or our beliefs or our faith, like we say, or some people say they

00:34:40.180 don't want any order or parameters or anything, but if you're thinking about a relationship,

00:34:45.660 a relationship, say a romantic relationship that is disordered or has no parameters or has no

00:34:52.040 definitions, that's called a toxic relationship, a relationship in which I just do whatever I want.

00:34:57.660 And I don't care, you know, what the person says that I love, and I don't care about any boundaries.

00:35:03.720 That's called, that's, that's actually more of an abusive relationship than a loving relationship.

00:35:10.260 Every loving relationship has terms and conditions. And that's not to say that we have to earn God's

00:35:16.440 love. That's not to say that we have to clean ourselves up before God loves us. But as you said,

00:35:21.940 if we love God, we will follow his commandments. We don't, we don't order, we don't follow his

00:35:29.600 commandments for him to love us, but because he loves us, we follow his commandments. So there has

00:35:35.740 to be a priority there. We first have the relationship. That is what makes Christianity

00:35:39.780 unique, by the way. There are other religions that are only rules, but we do have a uniqueness in that

00:35:46.540 God became flesh in order to be reconciled to us and have a friendship with us. We do have a

00:35:51.980 relationship, but from that does flow a religion. It does flow terms. It does flow, you know,

00:35:58.540 there are ligaments that come from that in the body of Christ. Like you said,

00:36:02.600 there are rules that we follow because of that relationship. Go ahead.

00:36:06.500 Yes, we are, we are obliged. There are things we are obliged to. Jesus commands us to do.

00:36:13.820 Jesus said, if you, if you love me, you will obey my commands. You will keep my commands.

00:36:20.600 Paul, the apostle says in Romans chapter one, he, he talks about the obedience of the gospel,

00:36:26.720 that we are to be obedient to the gospel. Um, uh, when he says, when Jesus comes back,

00:36:33.580 uh, in first or second Thessalonians chapter one, he says he will punish those who are not obedient

00:36:39.380 to the gospel. And so there is an obedience that is required. And like, this is, this is a dirty word.

00:36:48.140 You know, people, people do not like the word obedience.

00:36:51.320 Or submission. Definitely not.

00:36:53.380 Or submission. You know, all the libertarians are freaking out right now.

00:36:56.480 Yeah.

00:36:56.860 But, but the point is simply that obedience is a part of our faith. We are, there are things we

00:37:03.940 are commanded to do and, um, and those constitute, uh, religion. And there are, there are things that

00:37:11.460 we are, we are supposed to believe. And those, you know, there's 12 articles in the Nicene Creed and

00:37:18.820 every single one of those articles is mandatory for Christian, uh, identity. We have to believe

00:37:24.040 those articles of faith. Uh, those are, those are articles of faith constitute, as I said,

00:37:29.380 the test of Christian orthodoxy. Um, and, and it's very simple, but we have to believe those,

00:37:35.240 those doctrines, um, in order to be Christian. And so, you know, this is not negotiable, but,

00:37:42.020 you know, the other thing about, um, sin is that it's, you know, it like, because Christianity

00:37:48.860 is a religion of relationship, um, you know, when we sin, the, the, I think St. Thomas Aquinas said

00:37:57.600 that, uh, sin is chiefly an offense against God before it's anything else, you know, before it's

00:38:05.600 rule-breaking or, um, something that is done against reason, um, which it certainly is. The,

00:38:13.520 the, the, the main problem with sin is that it offends God. And I don't want to offend the Lord.

00:38:20.380 I don't want to offend God because, because I have relationship with God. And so I want to live my life

00:38:27.000 in a way, as the scriptures say, 1 Thessalonians chapter, um, four, I believe it says that you ought

00:38:34.200 to walk in a way that pleases the Lord. I want to live my life in a way that pleases God.

00:38:41.600 And because I have relationship with him, I want to be very careful not to offend God and to properly

00:38:49.220 reverence him. And this is another thing that's gone away in a lot of our churches is, is this

00:38:55.980 concept of reverence. Um, because we've reduced everything to this concept of relationship, but,

00:39:03.200 but oddly we talk about relationship with the Lord, but oddly we're not afraid of offending him.

00:39:08.880 And what kind of a relationship is that? So I even doubt the, the genuineness of people who talk

00:39:15.740 about, you know, religion or relationship without religion, because as you just said, uh, that's,

00:39:23.600 that actually breeds a very toxic relationship.

00:39:25.600 Yeah, it does. And I was looking up, I was thinking as you were talking about Psalm

00:39:31.060 51 against, I can't find the verse at this moment, you probably know exactly what it is, but

00:39:37.200 where he says against you and you alone, have I sinned. And that's what I was thinking as you were

00:39:43.360 saying that sin is against God first. It's not against other people, even if it is against other

00:39:49.320 people, it's not against other people first. And I think about the fact that, and I'm guilty of this

00:39:54.340 too. I'm not just talking about our culture in general. I'm actually sometimes more worried

00:39:58.380 about offending someone that I do not have a relationship with than I am like offending God.

00:40:04.220 When you think about, for example, like stating someone's pronouns or affirming someone's choice

00:40:09.600 to have an abortion, like actually I think, and this too reminds me of the spirit of the

00:40:14.840 He Gets Us ads. Like we're actually more afraid of offending people out there that we do not know

00:40:22.100 and whose opinion really should carry no weight with us, who really would not care if we lived

00:40:26.700 or died. And yet we care more about offending people that we don't have a relationship with

00:40:32.460 than offending the God that we say that we do have a relationship with. And that, going back to

00:40:39.260 what we were talking about, is disorder. That is the disorder of the kind of relationship over religion

00:40:45.180 thinking. Yes, absolutely. It's a lack of the fear of the Lord. And it's a lack of the love of

00:40:52.420 the Lord. Because when we love God, we fear Him in a way that is reverent. It's not, you know,

00:41:00.380 when we love the Lord, we're not afraid of Him as in, you know, terror, because perfect love casts out

00:41:09.480 that sort of fear. Yes. But there is a reverence. You see, I don't want to offend my dad. I love my

00:41:16.920 dad. And, you know, I don't want to do anything to offend him. I'm not afraid of my dad as in

00:41:22.800 being terrified of my father. But there's a deep respect and a deep reverence for my father.

00:41:29.400 And that is like how we are to fear the Lord as Christians who love the Lord. We are to have a

00:41:36.660 proper reverence for God. And yeah, as you said, you know, that observation is excellent, that we

00:41:44.160 are living in a day and age where we're more afraid of offending people than we are afraid of

00:41:51.540 offending God. And I fear that the Lord is deeply offended with so much of our behavior. But we don't

00:41:59.500 care about offending Him. We care more about pleasing man and appealing to, you know, we have,

00:42:07.560 instead of a fear of the Lord, we have a fear of man. And the Bible says that the fear of man is a

00:42:14.020 snare. So we need to get back to the fear of the Lord and understanding that, no, like, I don't want

00:42:22.080 to offend people, but I have to choose between who I'm going to serve. Am I going to serve people first

00:42:30.160 or God first? Well, the command is to love the Lord my God first, the Lord our God first. And as the

00:42:36.900 apostles said in Acts chapter 5, we must obey God rather than man. If man tells us, you know, to close

00:42:46.100 the churches during COVID, sorry, we're not going to obey you. We're going to defy that order. Yeah.

00:42:51.600 And thank God, thank God for the pastors who did. And it's shame on the pastors who didn't.

00:42:57.540 Yeah. And who actually said, I mean, I'll just say Andy Stanley said at Liberty Convocation,

00:43:02.840 I remember he gave a virtual speech saying, oh, some people are saying the Bible commands us to

00:43:07.360 meet together. And he did this kind of like, I think, condescending thing where he was like,

00:43:11.200 come close. No, he didn't. And, you know, he basically said that Christians aren't obligated

00:43:16.880 to meet together. And there were a lot of pastors, not even like hardcore progressive pastors, but

00:43:22.120 people considered conservative saying things like that. I was thinking about the verse,

00:43:28.040 Matthew 10, 28, where Jesus says, don't be afraid of those who kill your body, but fear God who can

00:43:36.360 destroy both body and soul in hell. So it's not just, it's not just spiritually wrong, obviously,

00:43:44.460 to disobey God, but it's also like irrational. It's irrational for us to prioritize not offending

00:43:51.660 someone out there over prioritize not offending God, because they do have some power. They can put us

00:44:00.100 in jail if it's the government. They can silence us. They can censor us. They can take away our ability

00:44:04.360 to make a living. They can kill us. The worst thing that they can do, they can do all kinds of

00:44:09.340 horrible things. They can take away your kids if you don't use preferred pronouns. I'm not saying

00:44:12.840 that there are no consequences. But Jesus said, it's better that those things happen to you than you

00:44:20.260 disobey God and you go to hell forever. Right. Right. Yes, absolutely. You know, God is the author of

00:44:28.560 our soul, and he has the right over every other right. And recognizing God's rights, you know,

00:44:38.360 we talk a lot about the rights of men. We talk very little about the rights of God. And, you know,

00:44:45.320 God has a right to be recognized in the state, but he also has a right to be obeyed above the state

00:44:51.660 and above every other human authority because all human authority, all authority is derived from

00:44:58.360 his authority. He is the author, which is the root word of authority, of all life. And so his rights

00:45:06.720 come first.

00:45:19.620 Okay, let's talk about your favorite set of beliefs, your favorite ideology, which is feminism.

00:45:29.260 Yes, I am a rabid feminist.

00:45:31.800 You're the most feminist. You're the most feminist.

00:45:34.700 Okay, just tell me, can you, I don't even know if you can summarize. Can you summarize just like

00:45:41.040 if someone were sitting next to you on an airplane and they said, okay, we got 30 minutes until we land

00:45:47.920 into plane. Okay, not 30 minutes. Let's say 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Let's think of where we are

00:45:54.740 right now.

00:45:55.060 To tell me, what's your problem with feminism? What would you say?

00:45:59.480 Yeah. I would just say that the fundamental issue with feminism is that it is gender dysphoria and

00:46:07.500 it's rooted in a misunderstanding of what it means to be gendered.

00:46:15.360 That is such an interesting way to say it. And I love that. That's very interesting.

00:46:19.140 Yeah. I mean, well, I suppose, you know, this is, um, I think all the problems that we're seeing

00:46:27.780 with, with gender currently are, you know, the, the children of feminism, uh, because

00:46:35.200 in, in this, I would say this goes all the way back to first wave feminism. Um, and, you know,

00:46:41.560 take, and that's a take that most conservatives won't say. So yeah, let's hear it.

00:46:46.380 Well, I fear the Lord rather than man. All right. Yeah. Uh, you know, I do, I, I fear the Lord

00:46:52.560 rather than woman, um, which is, which is, you know, I fear women more than men. But the point

00:46:58.180 is simply that, um, that, you know, the issue with, uh, first wave feminism is that if you read

00:47:05.760 these, these articles, you know, I'm referencing the Seneca Falls convention, um, I think it was

00:47:11.940 in 1848, um, they listed a number of their goals and it was essentially all, uh, based

00:47:19.660 around a desire to, um, to basically be equal to men in, in all things. Um, and, and, but

00:47:30.160 also to, to attack the, the, the understanding of what it was to be a woman up until that point.

00:47:39.060 And, um, and that understanding of what it was to be a woman up until that point, um, was a part of

00:47:47.280 the basic, you know, order of society, Christian society. And, and, uh, you know, even, you know,

00:47:54.520 50 years prior to that, you, you would have had Jane Austen writing these novels that we still

00:47:59.920 read today and that we love, but Jane Austen wasn't a feminist and she really understood,

00:48:05.360 uh, the female psyche as well as, you know, the male psychology and, and how men think she

00:48:12.880 actually writes very good, accurate descriptions of men. Um, but, but Jane Austen wasn't a feminist.

00:48:20.040 Um, it's, it's, you know, 50 years later that we see the rise of this feminist movement that

00:48:25.100 was really, again, uh, gender dysphoric. And it was, it was an attempt to, uh, confuse the natures

00:48:33.140 of both men and women, but, but it, uh, you know, it was mainly an assault on women, in my opinion.

00:48:42.120 And that, and it caused it, you know, caused these women to rise up and say, you know, well, we, you

00:48:48.320 know, we've been, uh, oppressed, you know, well, where have we heard that language before? You know,

00:48:52.800 we've been marginalized. Where have we heard that language before we've been, you know,

00:48:57.540 and it's, it's kind of like this devil's advocate. Like, couldn't it have been true? I mean,

00:49:03.680 couldn't it have been true that women say in marriages didn't have as many rights as men say,

00:49:08.700 for example, in some cases, women weren't allowed to file charges against their husband for rape.

00:49:14.780 Abuse might've been swept under the rug. Like, couldn't you have, couldn't you see how maybe

00:49:20.440 some of that oppression and marginalization was actually true in that time? And that there

00:49:26.020 may have necessitated again, just playing devil's advocate. Cause I know what some people are going

00:49:30.980 to say. Couldn't you see how maybe there was a need for a movement that didn't say, Hey, we want to be

00:49:37.280 men, but said, Hey, we're also made in the image of God with just as much dignity. And we should have

00:49:42.780 at least the same rights of due process. It seems at least the same rights to say, we deserve not

00:49:48.840 to be assaulted or to be raped and to have a voice in the court system that weighs the same as a man.

00:49:57.540 Don't you see how, or couldn't you see maybe how there was a reason for that kind of protest or

00:50:04.600 movement at the time? Well, it's an interesting thing that the feminist movement rose in the age of

00:50:11.440 Queen Victoria. Um, because we're talking about the Victorian era, you know, an era of time that was

00:50:18.020 based upon, uh, a queen, you know, a, a woman. Um, I think that Christianity has, has in history elevated

00:50:28.380 the position of, of women. Um, but I think that, uh, with the rise of democracy, uh, particularly in the

00:50:36.820 19th or in, well, in this, in the 18th century, um, you know, with the American revolution, the French

00:50:42.900 revolution, these, these ideas of what it means to be a citizen were fresh. And, and, and I can,

00:50:52.520 I could see how there's, there was more of a, of a, of a questioning of, well, do women get to be

00:50:58.460 represented as citizens? Do women get to be citizens? Do women get to have the vote? Um, but again,

00:51:04.460 when you, when you look at these, um, these issues as they've come one by one since feminism,

00:51:12.200 uh, take the, take the vote, you know, women overwhelmingly did not want the vote on a democratic

00:51:20.560 level, just, just straight up. Women did not want to be politically enfranchised. Um, now the question

00:51:28.440 would be, okay, but w you know, would the vote have benefited some women, um, who were in peculiar,

00:51:37.880 uh, scenarios where, you know, let's say they were, they were widows that, you know, could,

00:51:44.460 could the widows vote, could the widows be politically enfranchised or, you know, when the

00:51:49.800 husband died, um, you know, did, did, did she just not exist as a citizen anymore? Could she own

00:51:56.180 property, things like this? Well, okay. I, I understand that there can be exceptions to a rule,

00:52:01.240 but in general, um, no, I don't think that women needed the vote. Um, I think that it was forced

00:52:09.860 upon them to be honest. And I think that what we've seen in a lot of cases is women being forced

00:52:17.620 to go along with an agenda that is actually against their nature. As I said, from the beginning,

00:52:24.140 I think feminism is rooted in gender dysphoria. And I think that, um, you know, it's, it's been a

00:52:32.300 movement that has regressed, uh, uh, female development as a, as it pertains to, you know,

00:52:40.780 what women, how women view themselves in public life. I think there's a confusion about it and

00:52:46.860 it's resulted, as I said, the child of, of feminism is transgenderism where, you know,

00:52:53.680 if there's really no difference between men and women, then really what's the difference at all

00:52:59.220 in gender? Why do we even need gender? Can't gender just be, isn't gender just a social construct,

00:53:04.700 just a, uh, an idea of our minds. Isn't sex itself just an idea of our minds. Can't we be,

00:53:10.680 you know, kind of bend this and shape this? Um, that is, those are the logical conclusions,

00:53:17.460 um, from this premise that says that women, uh, do not have a particular role to play. Um,

00:53:27.820 that the, the female, that femininity does not have, uh, definition to it and that there,

00:53:35.000 there, there are not, uh, particular things that, uh, women should do that they ought to do. And again,

00:53:41.640 you know, when you look at the, the articles in the, uh, Seneca Falls convention, they pull,

00:53:46.360 they're trying to pull women out of, out of their, uh, wifely duty to their husband. They're trying to

00:53:52.400 pull women out of their motherly duty to their children. They're trying to pull them out into the

00:53:58.180 world, into the workplace, uh, into the, into the, the, the public sphere so that women are no longer,

00:54:04.200 um, in the main, again, I understand there are exceptions. Um, I think Ali Beth, you are, uh,

00:54:11.500 an exception, uh, a wonderful exception, but I think that there, I think in the main, you know,

00:54:18.280 uh, uh, saying, well, you know, we just, you know, basically up, you know, fast forward until,

00:54:23.780 you know, right now, basically what we do is we just cookie cut everybody and we say, all right,

00:54:29.820 women are going to do the same pathway, uh, uh, as men, you know, women, we expect the women to go

00:54:36.260 to, uh, all, you know, all years of high school, same high school as the boys. We want women to go

00:54:42.540 to college. We want everybody to be get together in college. We're going to push everybody out of

00:54:47.060 college and into the, the career now and, uh, or to get your, you know, masters. And then, uh, you know,

00:54:53.640 you get your career and then you're, you're, you're going to work that corporate ladder. You're going

00:54:57.780 to climb that corporate ladder just like the men do. And then, and then, and, and look what it's

00:55:02.460 produced. You know, we're at a point where we don't, we're below the, you know, Elon Musk is

00:55:09.060 saying, Hey, if we don't start having children, we're going to die off like a, like a, like the

00:55:14.460 dinosaurs. Um, we're below the, the, the birth rate is below the replacement rate. Um, and so we,

00:55:23.220 so we're, we've, what we've done is we've said, you know, women need to do all the things that men

00:55:27.760 need to do. But then they, these women, they hit 35, they're unmarried. They, they start freaking

00:55:34.860 out. They're like, what do I do? They start freezing their eggs. They start doing all these

00:55:40.320 different things, trying to get married, but then they realize, but they've, they've spent the,

00:55:44.880 the best years of birthing years, you know, the prime years of birthing in, in the workforce,

00:55:52.300 in college, delaying marriage, delaying childbirth. And that's just unnatural. And so we're having less

00:55:59.480 children. We're having less marriage. We're having so, but this, and this, I would say this is

00:56:05.240 because feminism has told women what to do and said, no, you will, you will act like men. Well,

00:56:11.780 so now we just have a society of men now and people that act like men. It's like, we, no wonder we're not

00:56:19.380 having kids. You know, there's no complimentarity. There's no, the family isn't what it, it ought to

00:56:25.340 be. It's an unnatural, um, feminism is it, it's an, it's, it's foisting an unnatural expectation

00:56:33.500 upon women and it's deleting femininity. You know, we, we talk about toxic masculinity, but really

00:56:40.160 feminism is toxic femininity. And, um, and I think it's an attack on women because some people will

00:56:48.260 object and say, well, that sounds so misogynistic. It's like feminism is misogynistic. You know,

00:56:54.400 I think again, I, I, when you, I, I referenced, um, uh, Jane Austen before, but you know, when you're

00:57:02.020 reading Jane Austen novels, you're not reading the novels of a, of a woman, you're reading the novels

00:57:07.440 of a highly intelligent woman, um, who has no problem expressing herself, but she doesn't spend

00:57:14.200 any time on the oppression of women. Uh, she, she, she, and you know, she, she was unmarried.

00:57:20.860 She never married. I think she had, you know, an opportunity, but it was later and, you know,

00:57:25.180 she just bypassed it, but she was not a, she was not, you know, you know, uh, rallying the troops

00:57:34.140 trying to, you know, start a movement saying, you know, these, all, all the, all the female

00:57:40.820 characters that I write, uh, are oppressed. I mean, none of them were, and they were all,

00:57:45.800 you know, she was just dealing with, with women as women and men as men and society as it was. And,

00:57:51.700 and, but yet in a highly intelligent way. Um, and it was just a, it was, it was, there was a peace,

00:57:58.500 there was a calmness in her writing, um, as it pertained to the differences between the sexes.

00:58:04.740 And it was, it was like, no, this is good. This is healthy. And this is why we still enjoy these,

00:58:09.780 these stories, but all that to say, like, you know, all, if you look at the stories today,

00:58:15.740 it's, you know, the stories today are all about a feud between the sexes.

00:58:21.200 There's no peace between the sexes. There's war between the sexes, because I think, you know,

00:58:27.360 again, there's been a war, uh, uh, on women. Okay. There's been a war on women. All right.

00:58:34.580 The war on women, in my opinion, is feminism. Yes. It has really hurt women. And again, I I'm,

00:58:43.360 I'm speaking in the main, uh, because, because, uh, you know, I, I don't believe that every single

00:58:48.960 woman, uh, you know, I think, I think women can handle things differently. Some women are,

00:58:55.040 you know, one talent, three talent, five talent. There's, there's a, there's a degree of ability.

00:59:02.700 Um, but I'm just saying that, um, what we've done is we've, we've essentially, you know,

00:59:11.300 de-sexed women and said, no, just act like a dude and don't, you know, delay marriage,

00:59:17.340 delay childbirth, you know, uh, do all these things that are against your instincts and then

00:59:23.700 you're going to be happy. Well, I don't think, I think the studies even show that women are,

00:59:28.280 are, are not as happy, um, as they, they ought to be. Um, I don't, I just don't think this is a

00:59:35.400 happy situation. And I know so many wonderful single women in their thirties who are unhappy,

00:59:41.480 but at the same time have chosen, have listened, have listened to the, to the deception of feminism,

00:59:49.020 you know, uh, uh, that is a little bit tantalizing because they do, you know, there, there is,

00:59:56.960 there's a lot of bribery that takes place. Like, you know, you're going to be financially

01:00:01.760 independent. You're going to be, people are going to respect you. You're going to be an

01:00:04.860 independent woman like Beyonce. Um, yeah. And you know, Beyonce is not even independent. She's

01:00:11.880 married. So with kids, you know, I have, I have so, I have so many thoughts on what she said. And I,

01:00:16.760 I know that when, you know, you say something like that, I know that you get a lot of like

01:00:21.400 heated responses from people. And so my, I don't hear you saying, and you can correct me if I'm

01:00:28.800 wrong. I don't hear you saying that women have no talents or strengths outside of homemaking or

01:00:35.360 child rearing, or that they shouldn't ever be educated or that they shouldn't ever have a job,

01:00:40.520 but that these things should not come at the expense of marriage and child bearing.

01:00:48.240 And what I think of when you say that, and I do, I agree, the more that you're talking,

01:00:52.740 the more I'm thinking about how it really is kind of a form of gender dysphoria. Um,

01:00:56.980 Nancy Piercy wrote a book called love thy body. And she's not, she's not talking specifically about

01:01:01.860 feminism. She does mention it, but she talks about the different forms kind of, of like body dysphoria,

01:01:08.120 where you are ignoring your telos and like your telos tells you something telos meaning purpose.

01:01:16.460 Like there is a teleology to the world, including the human body. And that is kind of going back to

01:01:22.680 what we were saying about how people want order and everything except for in themselves. That is

01:01:27.260 true now of gender. It's true now of our body. We see the purpose in a pillow. We see the purpose in

01:01:31.540 a bird. We know that a bird can't be an elephant, but we do believe for some reason that we're so

01:01:36.260 different that a man can be a woman and vice versa. And even if it is not in the form of actual

01:01:41.320 transgenderism, it does come in the form of gender roles. The fact of the matter is, is that a woman's

01:01:47.020 body has a womb for a reason. And our telos tells us something, not just about who we are, but what we

01:01:55.380 are for. Now we know that we live in a fallen world. There are women who want to be married, have

01:02:01.080 done everything possible to try to be married. And they're not who want to have children. They

01:02:06.040 have tried everything possible to have children. They haven't been able to have children naturally.

01:02:11.980 So we understand that, but that does not mean that in principle, like women should be avoiding

01:02:21.220 having children and marriage just because it is possible for us to do other things. If it means that

01:02:29.500 we are like bypassing marriage and children to pursue those other things. So that's like, that's

01:02:36.760 what I hear you saying. And I agree with that. I also would not call myself like, I love women. I love

01:02:43.600 being a woman. I'm a mom of daughters. And so I do have a unique perspective in that I do see like the

01:02:49.380 unique obstacles that we face. I do look at things around the world that of course, women are always the

01:02:55.260 number one victims of sexual violence. When you look at sex based abortions, women are girls are

01:03:01.140 primarily the victims of those things. When we zoom out of the United States, you do see that when it

01:03:06.340 comes to like the Muslim majority world and the Far East and the Middle East, it is women and children

01:03:12.200 who bear the brunt of like male violence and even systemic oppression in that it's literally like

01:03:19.500 legalized to be able to abuse your wife and rape your wife and some of these and some of these

01:03:25.600 cultures. So I view things like that. And I see that's a problem. What I say, though, is not that

01:03:30.900 feminism is the solution to those things, but the gospel is the solution to those things. And that's why

01:03:36.180 I don't call myself a Christian feminist, because yes, I do believe, of course, that women are of equal

01:03:41.680 worth. Women can be brilliant. They can be talented. They can be hardworking. They can do all of these

01:03:46.900 things and we have equal dignity. But I don't need feminism to tell me that. I just need Jesus,

01:03:53.660 because Jesus is who tells me that. And so the world needs more Christianity if we want to uplift

01:03:59.540 women in the healthy biblical sense, not feminism, which, as you said, has actually hurt women in

01:04:07.060 providing for us hormonal birth control and abortion and pushing us into the nine to five grind

01:04:14.100 and telling us you can just freeze your eggs and go through IVF when you're 45 and then have 20

01:04:20.520 embryos on ice that you pay to have frozen every month. That's, as you said, that is not liberation.

01:04:27.560 That is not what was promised to us by the first generation of feminists. And yet that is where we

01:04:33.120 are. So I think I do find myself in agreement with you, mostly.

01:04:37.080 Yeah. Well, yeah, I agree with everything you just said, really. I might call it Christian

01:04:46.140 femininity, because I do think that Christianity maintains natural distinctions that are based on

01:04:56.160 Genesis chapter one and chapter two and chapter three, but the beginnings of mankind. I think those

01:05:05.520 distinctions are there and Christianity augments and amplifies those distinctions. And, you know,

01:05:15.520 in terms of the Muslim issue, yes, I mean, that's a false religion. And so they're going to, you know,

01:05:22.320 they're going to treat people differently because they don't, they're not Christians. But as it pertains

01:05:29.940 to Christianity and its relationship with the natural law, Christianity believes in the natural

01:05:35.860 law and sees the natural law even clearer because of the light of faith. And so, you know, in that sense,

01:05:46.580 I just, yeah, I concur with what you're saying. In terms of, you know, I didn't even bring up the

01:05:52.260 abortion issue because I fast forwarded too quickly. But yeah, abortion has essentially been used as birth

01:05:58.380 control. And the, you know, the stats are astounding that, you know, the majority of women who get

01:06:05.540 these abortions, they're single women. And they're, you know, and so basically they're being, you know,

01:06:14.060 the women that are being targeted by feminism in many cases are single women. They're being pushed

01:06:20.480 into this pipeline. And if they get pregnant in college, they get an abortion. If they get pregnant

01:06:26.700 in their career, in their job, they get an abortion, you know? And so, and then as you said,

01:06:33.020 they, they hit, you know, their mid to late thirties and start freezing their eggs. There's

01:06:37.520 a story about this woman who was on the front cover of this business magazine and she froze her eggs at

01:06:43.500 35 and she was this, you know, business leader. Yeah. Do you, have you covered this?

01:06:48.080 No, I don't think I covered it, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:06:50.680 I mean, it's so crazy because, you know, I think 10 years later, she de-thaws the eggs.

01:06:56.800 She had, you know, 10 or 12 and I think eight died in the de-thawing process. And then she tried to,

01:07:04.320 you know, uh, have, you know, she, she tried to have them, you know, uh, I don't know the whole

01:07:10.940 process. Yeah. There we go. There we go. And, and it just, it all failed. And she just, you know,

01:07:16.880 in the article, she just admits, she's like, it was the worst day of my life. She's like, I just,

01:07:22.360 I, I just, I fell on the floor yelling and screaming because, because there's a, there is

01:07:28.520 something instinctive there, uh, that is a part of the identity. And, and, you know, it's, it's not

01:07:35.840 evil. Like women should not hate their body. They should love their body. You know, pregnancy is not

01:07:43.060 a disease. Pregnancy should, should be. And, and this goes back to also the, what we were talking

01:07:49.240 about earlier in terms of, uh, being a conservative, we should be conserving family values. You know,

01:07:56.720 why are we not conserve, conserve? That's a part of the reason why I'm an anti-feminist is because

01:08:02.820 feminism is an attack on the family because, because we're not just isolated individuals,

01:08:08.160 you know, we're not just, and you know, we're, I, I, so I, I oppose this radical individualism

01:08:14.720 that feminism is rooted on, but I also oppose, you know, obviously the, the, uh, the group think

01:08:21.880 and, you know, saying that we're just, you know, we're not, we're not individuals. No,

01:08:25.720 we're just big groups of people. No, we're, society is composed of families. You know, the human race

01:08:32.260 has come from the family. It was one man and one woman that, that God created and they had children.

01:08:41.820 And, and so I think, you know, uh, there's a wonderful Chesterton quote that says, we will

01:08:46.780 not return to social sanity until we return to the family. And really that's, I think, uh, that should

01:08:54.440 be a part of the credo of the conservative movement is that we want to focus on the family. We want to,

01:09:02.240 uh, we want to recognize that the family is society, uh, uh, you know, in a small sense,

01:09:10.540 in a miniature sense, because it has, the family is the first society. The family has its own, uh,

01:09:17.820 loyalties and its own, uh, laws that, that, and rights that come before, in my opinion, the rights

01:09:25.760 of government. And so the family, if we don't start with the family, if we don't bring things back to the,

01:09:30.960 the human family, we're going to become more and more, uh, inhuman. And if we don't, you know,

01:09:37.820 if we're not, if we're not understanding the importance of the family, um, we're, we're heading

01:09:44.260 for, uh, social destruction because again, society is based upon the family. So if our policies,

01:09:50.880 our social reforms and social policies do not begin with the family, which is the first society,

01:09:57.800 um, then, then we are, uh, doomed. And it, and, and so really my, my, uh, perspective

01:10:08.120 on feminism is fundamentally rooted in the fact that I believe the family is God's plan

01:10:14.300 and the fam, the, and mare, you know, in terms of marriage, marriage creates families, sex is meant

01:10:22.240 to create the family. And so, you know, again, you know, we've, we've sort of abandoned this notion.

01:10:31.440 Um, and unfortunately, you know, like we have some repenting to do as Protestants, I would say,

01:10:37.960 because, you know, we've abandoned as Protestants, the, the, the, you know, reformation teaching that

01:10:46.580 birth control is immoral. And, you know, I, I, I don't think there was one Protestant theologian

01:10:53.620 before the year 1900, who would have believed that, that birth control, um, was moral. Um,

01:11:02.360 but we've, we've acquiesced and we've compromised.

01:11:06.280 On IVF too. Like, I, I would say just like one thing about Protestants and particularly evangelicals

01:11:12.460 is that we don't have a cohesive theology of the body the way that Catholics do. And Catholics,

01:11:17.780 obviously we disagree on a lot of things, but the, I think one of the reasons why I have as

01:11:22.640 many Catholic listeners as I do is because of how much I talk about surrogacy and IVF and things like

01:11:27.160 that. And, um, yeah, a lot of Protestants just won't talk about those things because we don't

01:11:32.440 have a cohesive understanding of what the, what biblical principles are when it comes to that.

01:11:37.440 So yeah, I agree.

01:11:38.240 Don't, don't you think that, you know, we're, we've kind of backed off because of fear or like,

01:11:43.720 what do you think that, where do you think that comes from?

01:11:48.620 Um, where do I think that comes from?

01:11:54.880 Probably, oh, I could give an answer that my Catholic friends would really like,

01:11:59.760 like, why have we, my, my question is more like, why have we abandoned even as Protestants,

01:12:10.440 you know, the teachings of Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Synod of Dort, you know, like all of

01:12:16.840 these, all of these, uh, historic Protestant positions on birth control, we've just abandoned

01:12:22.280 them, but we still consider ourselves to be historic Protestants, you know?

01:12:26.260 So, okay. Don't you think that most Protestants, not unlike Catholics, we don't have, most Protestants

01:12:33.880 don't think of ourselves as Protestants. Most Protestants think of themselves as Christians

01:12:39.140 and they would say something like Christians and Catholics. We don't really, I, I grew up

01:12:44.080 Protestant. My family has literally been Baptist for 300 years. I went to a Christian school,

01:12:50.780 kindergarten through 12th grade, and I did not learn maybe once about Martin Luther. Um, I learned

01:12:58.080 very little about the Reformation. We didn't learn about that in our new Christians class when I was

01:13:03.240 little and got baptized. We didn't learn about that in Sunday school. We didn't learn about that as far

01:13:08.940 as I remember in any kind of Christian history class in my Protestant evangelical school growing up.

01:13:15.620 And so it could just be a lack of attachment to our history as Protestants. And I don't know,

01:13:24.520 like, I think that probably my Catholic friends would say, well, that's the problem with Sola

01:13:28.100 Scriptura is that you aren't, you know, that's probably what they would say is that you've got

01:13:33.260 all these different interpretations and you're not looking to, um, any kind of like cohesive and

01:13:38.900 official teaching on things or any like one catechism. And I think that we failed in that. I don't

01:13:44.120 think that we should go for the Catholic catechism, but I think most Protestants don't even know what

01:13:48.740 the Westminster catechism is. You mentioned the Apostles' Creed. I don't think most Protestants

01:13:53.520 know what that is. So I think obviously there's so much beauty in the freedom that came from the

01:13:59.060 Protestant Reformation and individuals being able to read the Bible, understand the Bible,

01:14:03.480 understand what the gospel really is by grace through faith and all of that. But with freedom,

01:14:09.040 there are also some, um, consequences. And I think the individualism that comes with Protestantism,

01:14:16.320 Protestantism has led to some wonky theology when it goes back to like relationship, not religion.

01:14:24.360 Ooh, we can't talk about rules or commands or what is right and wrong when it comes to individual

01:14:28.640 choice. It's just about, you can say that you love Jesus and then, I don't know, do some of the

01:14:34.100 things you want to do. Yeah. I said, yeah. And I suppose there's, for me, it's more of an issue

01:14:40.380 of like, you know, we're all of my forefathers idiots. You know, if, if all of my forefathers

01:14:47.940 were idiots, then, uh, I hope it's not in my genes, you know, I hope it's not a, you know, a thing that

01:14:54.560 I have to deal with, uh, the idiocy there. You know, it's, it's one of the, it's one of the questions

01:14:59.580 that I have is like, why wouldn't we listen to the, to the wisdom of our forefathers on these issues?

01:15:06.400 Why, why do we just throw, uh, these things to the wind and say, no, we don't, you know,

01:15:13.940 casting off restraint again, you know, like everybody before us, are they looking down at us

01:15:19.100 in heaven and just scowling, you know, do they, do our, do our forefathers and ancestors all hate us?

01:15:24.860 You know, that those are questions that I ask myself because, because they, because, because I

01:15:31.260 don't, it's like, I'm looking at what they're saying almost collectively, really, you know,

01:15:37.120 in church history, even if you read the church fathers, they're all saying, you know, birth control

01:15:41.940 is immoral. Uh, the purpose of marriage is, is family life. The purpose of sexuality is children

01:15:49.160 and procreation. Um, well, you know, like we've lost that concept. So why have we lost that? You

01:15:58.220 know, what has it been, what, why has there been such compromise, um, in the church on these issues?

01:16:05.040 And then we, and then we look around and we wonder why everything's going to pot and we're,

01:16:09.480 you know, saying, well, this is, this society sucks and we're not even taking care of our,

01:16:14.920 our first societies, which are the families, you know? Um, so I just, again, you know, I'm,

01:16:21.020 I'm an equal opportunity offender here. And, uh, and, and, and I, I just, you know, I don't just

01:16:27.640 want to pick on the gays, you know, I, I want to say, look, you know, we're acting just like them,

01:16:33.180 you know, because we're having sterile sex. Um, so what's the difference? What's the difference

01:16:38.300 between our, our form of sex and theirs, you know? And, and, and it's, you know, so it's like

01:16:44.220 when it comes to gay marriage, it's like, well, we're getting divorced all the time. Divorce is

01:16:48.080 no, or marriage is no longer, uh, sacred, you know, and, and there's no longer a sanctity to

01:16:54.920 this. So yeah. So now everybody's getting married, you know, look what we've done to ourselves.

01:16:59.480 So I just, you know, I'm not a fan of hypocrisy. I want there to be consistency. And, but, but at the

01:17:06.500 same time, I think that, you know, there needs to be obviously like this should all be connected to

01:17:12.400 reason. And so I'm looking for the reasons in these things too. Um, but I just, it's, I'm just

01:17:19.400 coming up short when I'm thinking about why these things have changed over the years. And it just

01:17:26.220 seems like we've changed, um, because, well, the secret sensitive movement and the, you know,

01:17:36.060 C.S. Lewis talks about, I think it's in, I think it's in Screwtape Letters. He talks about how, um,

01:17:43.900 if you, I'm, I'm, yeah, it's not mere Christianity. It's definitely Screwtape Letters where he talks

01:17:49.360 about trying to convince the patient, the person that the demon is trying to tempt that every

01:17:55.260 Christian virtue is puritanicalism or Puritanism and everything Puritan is too far. Sure. You can be

01:18:03.280 religious, but not that kind of religious. So it's okay if you just sin a little bit and then

01:18:09.080 you can be a cool Christian. Um, if you convince him that things like chastity and sobriety or,

01:18:14.900 um, charity are all a Puritan form of religion, then you can convince him that really being a

01:18:21.400 Christian is just too much and too radical. And today I think we see that with fundamentalism.

01:18:26.900 Anyone who takes Christianity seriously, any biblical morality seriously, you might not be called a

01:18:32.660 Puritan, but you're called a fundamentalist. Yeah. And the fundamentalist is the kind of

01:18:37.540 Christian that you can't be. Sure. You can be a Christian as long as you're okay, basically with

01:18:42.460 secular morality and you just kind of privately, you know, sing songs about God in your home.

01:18:47.560 But that's the only form of Christian that you can be. You have to be the Christian that checks your

01:18:51.820 faith at the door before you go into the public sphere, before you go into work, before you get on

01:18:57.480 the internet. Um, so I do think it's, it's partly that this fear of being fundamentalist and really

01:19:04.460 everything else that we talked about today, a fear of being seen as that kind of Christian,

01:19:09.280 which is just a Christian who lives out Christian morality.

01:19:13.120 Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a, um, there's a tension there that I would say there, when they call

01:19:20.080 you a fundamentalist, they're arguing from association, which is a logical fallacy. Um, they've,

01:19:25.120 they create a mo, a boogeyman, you know, in their minds of, you know, fundamentalism, uh, and you

01:19:32.680 know, they're the, what they think it, it means. And then they project that onto you and they say,

01:19:39.900 you know, this is what you're doing at the same time. At the same time, uh, you know, I grew up in

01:19:46.520 the nineties and my, one of my favorite albums was Jesus freak by, uh, DC talk. I was only allowed to

01:19:52.640 listen to Christian music when I was a kid. And so that was, that was, uh, what I listened to.

01:19:57.300 And I love that album so much, but when you, when I, when I, the more I thought about it,

01:20:01.700 it's like, you know what, I am a Jesus freak, you know, like, I like, and I'm, I'm actually cool with

01:20:08.440 that. Like, if I'm going to be a fool, I'll be a fool for Christ. You know, like if I'm going to be,

01:20:13.860 if I'm going to be regarded as a fool, I should say, because true, truly objectively, we're not fools.

01:20:19.640 Um, because we have, we're walking in divine wisdom, uh, but the world doesn't see divine

01:20:25.740 wisdom, doesn't understand it. And it, and it, it thinks that we're fools. Um, but yeah, like,

01:20:31.680 you know, we have to come to a point where we, we surrender all and we become radically, uh, Christian,

01:20:38.260 uh, and, and re and, and, and, and what I mean by that is to be, to be radically Christian is to be

01:20:45.300 in touch with the gospel, uh, to be grounded in the gospel, uh, to let the gospel, uh, uh, turn,

01:20:54.200 you know, our, our lives around and change us, uh, in a radical way, uh, because, you know,

01:21:01.040 it's getting down to the root system here. So, so I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Jesus freak, you know, like,

01:21:07.240 and I'm, I'm cool with that. I love that actually. I kind of bask in that. I'm not afraid of being

01:21:13.340 called a Jesus freak. Um, I think it's awesome. And, and I think Christians ought to look at

01:21:19.640 themselves radically and say, no, I'm, I am fundamentally different. Um, I'm fundamentally

01:21:25.680 different because I'm, I've been born again and I'm a new creation in Christ. Uh, as the Bible

01:21:31.520 says, if any man is in Christ, uh, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and all

01:21:37.240 things have become new. Well, we have to regard ourselves that way. We can no longer be,

01:21:42.800 you know, um, and, and, and again, if the association there is fundamentalism, well,

01:21:48.000 yes, a fundamental change has occurred, uh, in a Christian's life. That doesn't mean that,

01:21:54.400 you know, we're associated with fundamentalism in its modern iterations or forms. But the point

01:22:01.920 is simply that, yes, uh, you know, we are fundamentally different than the rest of the world in, in,

01:22:09.220 in that sense. And we, we, the gospel is a, if a thing that affects the human, uh, person

01:22:16.640 fundamentally and changes the human person fundamentally, that's why Jesus said, you must

01:22:22.540 be born again. Gabe, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I encourage people to follow

01:22:28.260 you on Instagram, either both your Instagram, but also the reactionary Christian, listen to your

01:22:32.620 podcast, all that good stuff. They can get all the hot takes from you on a daily basis. So thank you so

01:22:38.060 much for joining us. Hey, Allie, you are my favorite female podcaster. Wow. And I really

01:22:44.400 appreciate, uh, that you offered, uh, to have me on your show today. It has, as I said, it's been a

01:22:50.820 pleasure and a privilege. Thank you so much.

01:23:08.060 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 02, 2024

Ep 996 ｜ How Feminism Misunderstands Gender ｜ Guest： Gabriel Finochio

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