Banning Christian Media: Next Week with Jeff Durbin

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down by me, down by me, down by me, down by me

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I don't really have the answer when someone's in your face asking why they got cancer How do you deal with the dilemmas in religion?

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Trying to consider both theirs and your feelings Who's really right, who's really wrong? Him by what authority you even stand on?

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What can you say to the oppressed in the ghettos? And the depressed in the suburb meadows?

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Listen up, I got something to tell you Nothing makes sense unless God compels you

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Give me more to do, give me more to say I'ma speak the truth, he gon' make a way

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Give me more to do, give me more to say I'ma speak the truth, he gon' make a way

01:19

How we still free when we can't trump Trump? Let's make America great again, we ain't been a dump

01:24

They dumping hundreds of years of slavery I'm on my Jeff, socialism is theft

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We crazy? I won't apologize Why I apologize? Not built by human hands We the ecclesia

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You don't know about the alpha and omega, boy I wrote with Luke Marcus about a joy

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And the love that we got for each other I have many brothers, and we ain't undercover like that KKK What you looking at?

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Who's to blame, Republicans or Democrats? Why do morals matter if we just blow the plaza?

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Accidents make sense? I'm on that sarcasm Listen up, I got something to tell you Nothing makes sense unless Christ compels you

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Give me more to do, give me more to say I'ma speak the truth, he gon' make a way

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Give me more to do, give me more to say I'ma speak the truth, he gon' make a way

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I met someone who told me nothing had meaning So I asked, did you mean that? And who's the one deceiving?

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They killing babies before they could even cry I guess they plan for parenthood to just die

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When Houston was underwater, Cali was on fire If we only stardust, then why do we all bother?

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If it wasn't for the straight, you wouldn't have a game Cause if the whole world was gay, how do we procreate?

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Should we all die because of fantasies? Or should we practice doers that will autonomy?

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So if I wanna kill anybody for any reason You shouldn't judge, I'm just doing what's pleasing

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Heavy belief system is about works But I rest in Christ, therefore there is works

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Listen up, I got something to tell you Nothing makes sense unless the Spirit compels you

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Give me more to do, give me more to say I'ma speak the truth, he gon' make a way

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Without price, give me more to do Come on, give me more to say

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I'ma speak the truth, oh yeah He gon' make a way My foundation,

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Yeshua Yah, yah

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Otherwise you can't make sense of nothing Fear the Lord is the beginning of knowledge His death, burial, resurrection and ascension

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Is essential All that's left

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That's right I don't know Talk about things Yes, we do

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Yes, I'm very excited about that, yep Don't just listen

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Yep No, just listen Don't just listen, that's it Yep Okay, don't just listen

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Yeah Okay, I'll let him explain that So yeah, it's the name of his album Okay, great

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He's been on tour a lot lately actually Has he? It's cool to get him back in here With the hog mob? With the hog mob, he's mobbing That's right

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Was mobbing Yeah, I know what that's like, I'm doing that all the time Yeah, you're always mobbing I'm always steady mobbing Yeah What's that mean?

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I don't know Okay, I heard that somewhere in some song Yeah Okay, anyways What are we talking about today?

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Okay, so I figured since we have Ivan talking about Or doing his music and, you know, talk about art and Christian media

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And making it good to the glory of God, right? So I happened to just see this article on BuzzFeed And it's titled,

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What Happens When Christian Movies Go Mainstream? It was actually a pretty interesting article They're horrible?

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Well, yes So there's specifically two quotes I want to focus on The second one, we'll get into that But the first quote, which

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I thought was interesting It said, it's gotten harder to make the case that Hollywood is hostile toward Christianity Or at least it's gotten harder to claim that what's being argued over here is really faith

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Rather than conservative Christian values Which are at least as much cultural and political as they are religious

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So this is BuzzFeed talking about, you know, Christian values And how they're cultural and political

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So I thought that was really interesting What do you think they're getting at with that? I don't know,

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I didn't get Honestly, I didn't follow the point they were trying to make But I thought it was interesting just because Well, we would say that, well, this culture used to be

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You know, used to value Christian conservative values And politics as well

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And now we're just vestiges, really, of what used to be

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So anyways, I just thought that was interesting Well, it's an interesting point too Because what Dr. White said on last week's episode of Next Week Was even old writers who were not

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Christian That created good narratives and stories and everything Had to essentially borrow capital from the

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Christian worldview To make their stories good Like that's how entrenched the Christian worldview was

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In every aspect of society If you're going to write a good story Even if somebody was not professing

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Christian They were so used to the Christian worldview And as a foundation, really

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Even the ethical systems and all that stuff You had to borrow capital from the Christian worldview To write a good story

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Because there had to be actually a thing called good and evil There had to be a flow to history and a telos, a goal

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This is what we're all going towards And so stories had to make sense like that To a Christian culture

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And a predominantly Christian audience And now we have an abandonment of the

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Christian worldview In every area of life possible And there's a forceful pushing out of the

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Christian worldview In every area of life Whether it's education on any level Or politics or media

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Just think in terms of social media today Even social media today is essentially Pushing anybody out of the conversation

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That holds to a perspective A worldview that is explicitly Christian So if you say that there's a pure or holy

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Or legitimate harmonious sexuality Between only a man and a woman

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If you say that You can be essentially derided for hate speech You can get in trouble for hate speech today

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If you say that men are awful wicked sinners And rebels against a holy God You can have your sermon taken off of Facebook So that conversation is being controlled now

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But in terms of Christian media It's interesting because When you look at popular

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Christian films That come out today That come out to the theaters They're not even good

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They're not well done They're not well written They're very poorly acted And I think we can all say that It's almost like it becomes a sin

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In Christian communities at times To say that was a really horrible movie Like the acting was horrible It's like you hate

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God if you say that Right, the script Just because it's Christian Doesn't mean I have to like it Like it wasn't good But I think a lot of times

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When we have like a film That's a Christian film That does well in the theaters Whether it's

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God's Not Dead Or Unplanned Or whatever the film may be It does well in the theaters I personally

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And I'm willing to be wrong I don't know everything I'm not the supreme authority on this But it's just my feeling Like how come a really terribly done film

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In every respect Script, acting, storyline You name it It's just poorly done

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It's just not good How come it can do so well in the theaters I think it's because Christians often think

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Like it's our duty as Christians To pay for this film To go to this film And to support it

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Because it's Christian Right I think that We didn't used to think that way Like we're the ones

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That gave the world the best art Exactly Like it wasn't atheism That built the great monuments

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To beauty and architecture Artistry It wasn't atheism Atheism didn't develop that The Christian world view

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Made those things Because we have a world view That can make sense of beauty And art and goodness

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And all those things And like doing things To the glory of God Doing things that last And that are meaningful Atheism doesn't develop those things

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Right We built those things Right And they remain in history As beautiful monuments Because Christianity Gave the world those things

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Right But now we suck at art Like now we're terrible And now what's amazing

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Is the secularists The humanists Have co -opted our Beautiful strategy

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Of beautifying the world And cultivating God's garden And doing amazing things And growing this thing up Into awesome stuff

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They've co -opted it And they're using it But they're using it In a perverse way Exactly They distort it Like Dr.

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White said In last week's episode Like if they're gonna do A film series This is what makes it horrible

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The cinematography is better Exactly Than Christian films There's more money spent There's better acting

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Yeah the acting You know it's just It's so much more well done In terms of the visual

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But in substance It's corrupt Yeah And horrible It doesn't even tell A good story ultimately

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It doesn't have Like good foundations And in order to make it Something that's appealing You have to sell flesh

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Exactly So it's all sex And it's nudity And everything Why? Because I need that shocking moment Like to really enjoy this film

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That's an hour and a half Or an hour and 45 minutes long I've gotta have at least One or two moments Of like a Of an appeal to my flesh

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Where I go Oh that was so good Right? Because it was nudity Or a sex Like we gotta sell it like that Because why?

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Because you can't just Have a good story That's fundamentally good But so So unbelieving art

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In film Goes one direction In terms of It's better cinematography They have more concern

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That it looks visually Stunning and beautiful That the acting Is actually quality Good acting

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That draws somebody Into catharsis Where you're into the story Like all They're concerned with that But their

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But their foundation is horrible Like the What comes out of their mouths Is not horrible The story they're trying to tell

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To get to the end goal You go None of that is good Right? Like the ethical system

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Underneath what you just Try to promote Was not good Because all storytelling Is supposed to Is supposed to project meaning

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Right It's supposed to influence you In some way Like if you read The Chronicles of Narnia It's It's amazing writing

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It's an amazing character It draws you into the story You just You've 45 minutes later You're reading going

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Oh I'm I didn't I forgot I was in my bedroom Like I was I was in that world But you get to the end of the story

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And you learn something The author was trying to Project something onto you You should adopt My view of reality

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So all stories Are trying to do that And the unbelievers Try to project A reality upon you To adopt

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That's not a good one And we should all reject But hey I'd rather watch that In terms of cinematography

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And art Artistry Because we go over To the Christian film And while it might have A better moral foundation

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Everything else around it They almost like act like It doesn't matter That it's aesthetically pleasing It doesn't matter That the

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That the artists Who are doing the acting Are good at their acting job Or Or anything like that So like It's almost like I can agree with everything

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In the Christian film That it needs to be heard And adopted But can you give me Something that actually Glorifies God Right In terms of beauty

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Like when If you look at In a night sky In Arizona That God does that every night And gives the most

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Bangin' amazing sunset He has some amazing sunsets Every night And he It's effortless for God He spoke it into existence

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And it just carries along All the time In the most beautiful artistry When you and I Went to go out

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Shooting recently In the desert Remember that It was incredible We're in the middle of the desert And the sun's going down You had to stop

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And just watch Because it was Insanely glorious And that for God Is just like nothing

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He just speaks it Into existence And that's our creator We're his image In the world

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We shouldn't create Bad art Because God Is not a bad artist Right He's not a poor artist

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So why are we Emulating the creator And his artistry In a way that Actually disfigures it

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And actually brings shame To him as an artist Because we're his image We're supposed to be the

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We're supposed to be The artist in the world Why are we doing Such bad art Like that should matter To Christians Yeah It's not just The foundational story

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That should be moral I agree with all That in Christian film But I dare you To do this I dare you

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To take two Devices And on one device Get a subscription

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To Netflix And on the other device Get a subscription To Pureflix And here's the thing

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I'm not asking you To go watch The sinful stuff On Netflix Yeah yeah But just watch The stuff

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That's just The general stuff That's on Netflix And just watch it And look at the difference

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Between the artistry And the sin And the dedication To the actual form

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It's unbelievable Yes And then I dare you To try to stay On Pureflix For more than 30 days

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Without cancelling Your subscription Because it's horrible Yeah It's all bad And what we've learned

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Is that people That do stay on Pureflix Are the old people That don't really Watch it anyways

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Or And how many times Did we run into this Somebody that's on Pureflix For like say six months

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Or a year And you'll ask Are you watching Anything on there And they're like Nah not really But like They feel like They're doing their duty

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Like they're tithing To Pureflix Right Like why are you Supporting Pureflix Supporting Jesus Well because I want to support

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Jesus and the gospel And like it's like It's like But it's really terrible So this guy comes up to me

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At the conference last week And he's like Hey your ministry Has really blessed me He was mentioning you And just all that God has done

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To really encourage him And to give him A solid foundation He said you guys Have really inspired me To become a director

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And I said Great A film director He says yeah Like I want to direct films

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I said So you just want to be A director of films Right And make good movies He's like yeah

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I said Not a Christian director Right He said No no no no I just want to I want to make good movies

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I said good Now of course We want them to be Movies that glorify God And are in their substance

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Christian With a Christian world view But just because Just because you're a

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Christian And you want to make film Doesn't mean you have to make Christian films That go on PureFlix Right Why don't you make

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Christian films That go on Netflix And that unbelievers go Hey did you see that movie

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Right That was awesome Yeah Like What we should be creating The stories

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And the films And the artistry That they build conventions around Right Like why aren't people

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Going to wear our costumes For our stories And our characters Right Like how come

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How come it's the unbelievers now That are owning all of that Right And they're not The stories that everyone Wants to be in Where Where the

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Christians now Are making the stories Yeah That people only want to donate to Oh gosh

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Right So Sorry That was my rant Yeah I was going to say Like Darren Like our friend Darren Doan That's what he does

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You know He had a series on What was it On Amazon Amazon Prime Amazon Prime It was amazing

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And what was the name Shorebreak Shorebreak Yes you should check it out Go check out Shorebreak So yeah Yeah and I think Going back to What Dr.

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White said Even I think There's an argument to be made That Good Stories When it comes to movies

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Can't be good Unless they Borrow from The Christian world Yes You know like I'm even thinking like I don't know

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I don't know if it's too soon To give out spoilers For Endgame Right But there was Spoiler alert So don't cry

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There was a definite Messianic theme In Endgame That was amazing But where did they

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Get that from Yeah Christianity Right And so So yeah I mean if In order

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So like Dr. White said When they stop using Good themes From Christianity Then they have to resort

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To the garbage Yeah The shock value The perverse Shock value And so You know one thing

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We've learned too From people That are in the industry And know Is that Big name companies

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Like Sony for example Will pay Christians To make these Christian films

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And they'll pay them well Because they know That they're going to Make a ton of money

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On them Because Christians Will donate to them Yeah And then the budgets Aren't that big In these Christian films

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But they know There's a huge Profit margin In those films

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Which is terrible So that brings me Into the next Quote then So it's It says

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Faith based films Provide the sense Of being Safe for their audience They're clean

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And family friendly In their context Unchallenging This is where it gets crazy

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They're unchallenging In their storytelling And feel good In their arcs Their qualities

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Seem largely Incidental To many of the people Who seek them out

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In critical derision May only make audiences Embrace them more What matters is

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That they confirm The beliefs And the world view Of their viewership There you go Critical derision

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Will only make people Want to view them more What's that mean What are they saying there It sounds like They're saying That Christians Who have these films

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Go to the theater And all the Christians Are going to see them When people are critical Of the film Like it's just A poorly made film

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It's a bad story Bad acting It's just a terrible Terrible film That Christians will feel Like they're being persecuted

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For righteousness sake Yeah Yeah When in reality You may not be Being persecuted

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For righteousness sake No It's just bad You're being persecuted Because it's just Terrible artistry Right You say righteousness snake

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Righteousness snake It's been a long day So that's interesting Even unbelievers

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Will see that Yeah Like if you say This is a bad film The Christians Are going to respond with Everybody Let's all hashtag it

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And go see the film Right And you're on your phone The whole time Because it's such A terrible film It's just terrible

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You're at least there For the popcorn Yeah True And that's about it And it's expensive popcorn

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Yeah So what I have appreciated I think you and I When we first started

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Really hanging out You and I Had like a huge Hip hop Christian hip hop

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Yeah And rap Sort of phase And the reason why I think is because You and I Were doing all that In a time where Christian hip hop artists

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Were actually making Some really good Excellent Hip hop Yeah Lyrically They were very very good

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With what they were doing And it was quality It was actually Higher quality Than the secular Hip hop and rap

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That was out Yeah And that's why we Appreciated it so much But it was only I think it was a good Experience for that For us

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Because it was After a time period Where Christians Were trying to get Into the rap game And they were

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Just really bad at it They were making bad stuff Like the DC talk Nobody would want To listen to it

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At all No one wanted To listen to it But actually Starting to get To the point Where people Were actually trying To follow

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Like the Christian Hip hop artists They're making Better stuff They're making Really good stuff

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So you have artists Like Lecrae He was better than Better than All the secular artists

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Like lyrically His skills And all that stuff And so that's why People were so impressed

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With him Because Lecrae Didn't get so popular And really break out Of the Christian Section of it

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Like as an act Of their grace Going okay We'll let you over Like people Recognized He's good

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Like when he was On Sway in the Morning Sway in the Morning Is one of the biggest Shows And everyone

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Wants to be on that show If you're anybody That's an Anybody who Is an inspiring Hip hop artist Or you're just The dominant person

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In the hip hop industry You're supposed to be On Sway in the Morning Well when Lecrae Was on Sway in the Morning Sway was

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Out of his mind Impressed with Lecrae He's like You're what this was Supposed to be about And here's a

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Christian artist In this rap game That is doing better Than anybody else He was just good

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Now no matter What you think about Lecrae now And like some of the Things he's said and done In terms of like Christian commitments

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Let's be honest Like that's a good example Of like how Christians Should lead an industry If Christians get

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Into the rap game They should be the best In the rap game If they get into rock They should be the best In rock And they should just Make great stuff

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If they're in the Film industry They should be the Leaders there Where everyone says This is what this Industry is supposed

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To be about And the point is From my perspective It's not about the person It's about God Being glorified

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And of course The influence you Can have there In that whole genre You can have Godly influence there

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Where now the people Who are making Perverse content In the hip hop industry Or in the film industry

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Or television The people who are Making perverse content Recognize now They're in the back

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And they're like We better start Making content That's like that That tells those Kinds of stories

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Or we're not gonna Have any money anymore So it should be Christians that actually Lead and say No you tell these

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Kinds of stories You have this Kind of language You have these Foundations and you Do it with this

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Kind of skill We should lead Everywhere For the glory of God And that's one reason

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Why I like Ivy so much You guys will hear Some of his stuff I think he's He's a good storyteller

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And he's very raw About this stuff He grew up Hard life in the hood And he

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But he tells it From a Christian World view To the glory of God Right So he can tell A raw story

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About what it's like Growing up in the streets And seeing Dudes get Their heads blown off And selling drugs

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And all that stuff But he can do it In a way that glorifies God Yeah And that's what we need Is more of that So you can

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You can be real With people But you can You can do it

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In a way that glorifies God You don't have to be vile Right To tell a real story Well that's Maybe we should end

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On this point Yeah I think that's a really good Point you're making right there Is that I think A lot of times

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Christians are afraid To tell hard stories Right Because they think

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Christians Or people Are too sensitive Yeah Well the failure of that Is that it's not honest

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Exactly You're not You're not being honest Exactly You're not telling the truth Or you're not actually Pricking an image bearer of God Where they need to be pricked

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Like here's what I'm saying When Christians create a film Or a television show Or music And they're not honest

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I'm not saying be vile But if they're not honest About like hard How hard life is

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How sad it is If you don't tell Like a true story About the way things are If you don't do that Then people don't believe you

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Right And I would just challenge People with this If you're an artist And you're in a Particular field And you're trying to tell

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Good stories Whether it's music Whether it's film If that's not honest If that's where you're at I would just say Read the

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Bible Like that's God's story of history And there's a lot of ugliness in it

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Yeah Right There's a lot of ugliness And there's a lot of honesty in it And you don't chastise

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God Forgive me for even suggesting Such a thing But you don't chastise God Because in his story of history

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He tells all the truth About certain elements of history Whether it's adultery

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Whether it's murder Whether it's about a father Getting drunk And sleeping with his daughters And you just mentioned

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All of the Sunday school Bible heroes Exactly Yeah Right And you've got even God In the book of Isaiah Talking about his bride

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In some pretty graphic terms Using words like Prostitute Harlot Whore Like God tells the truth

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When he tells a story But he's not vile Because he has a point He has something He wants you to know

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Something that's true about that It's a serrated edge It's a serrated edge He wants you to change Your mind about it He's not saying

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Here's the ugly thing It's good, accept it Just that's the way that it is And I'll glorify it He's saying

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Here's the ugly thing Look how ugly Believe how ugly this is And now watch what

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I do with it And that's what storytellers should do So what I'm saying is Tell stories like God Yeah Have integrity

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Tell the truth And make it awesome Amen And speaking of that We have Ivy Connerly So before we get to that guys

26:22

This is Next week with Jeff Durbin That's Luke the Bear I'm Jeff Durbin Make sure you guys go to Endabortionnow .com

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Endabortionnow .com To get linked up With the over 400 churches Across the United States of America That are saving children right now

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God has saved through this mission Over Well Thousands and thousands of children From death

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You give me a part of that work Just by going to Endabortionnow .com When you go You can get signed up with your church

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