News Roundup: Gig Eva, Reading While Black, Platforming, Same Sex Marriage, Gen Z

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stations, that matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I already, I'm getting mocked in the comments.

00:05

Kimberly Murphy, never heard of Yankee time. And I am one New Yorker because humpy toast is

00:11

Mr. Harris is running on Yankee time. Apparently bless his heart. Yeah, I'm four minutes after a three 50.

00:18

So there you go. That's Yankee time for you. I don't know if that's Yankee time. That might be, I've heard it referred to as homeschool time and I've heard it referred to as some other things that I won't mention on the podcast as well.

00:31

I call it fashionably late, but I was reading some important things, right? I was about to get on and then

00:37

I realized I hadn't opened up Signal and I was gonna post and I did post the link to this particular live stream in the

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Patreon. By the way, thank you, Patreons. Really appreciate your support, but I was posting it in the Signal group for Patreon and lo and behold,

00:52

I had all these messages. So I was trying to get to them. But we got a big show for you today. Lots of News Roundup stuff, because there's lots of stuff.

01:00

Stuff doesn't slow down. Stuff just keeps going. You have to whittle through what stuff you wanna talk about.

01:08

Especially if you do a weekly or a bi -weekly News Roundup. I mean, you could do one every day and just get into the nitty gritty of this and that.

01:16

I'm reminded just because maybe I went to FDR's home the other day, the

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National Park Service has shut down, obviously, the tours and all of that, but you can walk on the property.

01:28

And so I went there as soon as I got home. I'd been away for a few days and took my little daughter and she likes to walk around, right?

01:37

And especially in the leaves and stuff. She collects leaves that are different colors, puts them in her stroller.

01:44

And now we don't even take the stroller sometimes. She's walking so well. But FDR's home was a great place to go.

01:50

And one of the things, it's attributed to his wife, Eleanor. I don't know if she actually said it.

01:56

I think it's one of those famous quotes that probably came from someone else, but it's something to the effect of small minds talk about people and big minds talk about ideas.

02:13

And I've thought of that, that's resonated with me as someone who does talk about people on this podcast, but always, hopefully, in connection to the bigger picture, the ideas, because if you just talk about people, if it's just this person said this, and this person did this, and it's just drama, and you don't actually gain from it, you're not learning anything, you're not progressing in even pulling out lessons from the stories that take place on a weekly basis, what's the point?

02:43

It's just a reality TV show at that point. And that's not why we do what we do here. This is conversations that matter and it's the ideas.

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It's obviously people embody ideas and you need to know what to do about and react to certain people.

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I mean, if there's an election coming up, who are you gonna vote for, right? You gotta talk about people, but what do they represent? What kind of person are you gonna be as a man, as a woman with all the responsibilities you have?

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I think it's important if you're gonna invest your time, especially in a podcast, make sure it's a podcast that isn't just going through gossip and giving you the juicy details about this and that.

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Make sure it's a podcast that has some meat to it. That's what we do here on Conversations That Matter.

03:29

So it's about 4 p .m. Eastern Standard Time now, and I'm gonna get started with stuff.

03:35

I need to just mention one thing to you, and that is this. I'm gonna be at the Truth Is Forever Conference coming up November 7th through 9th,

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November 7th through 9th at Grace Community Church at Palm Harbor. You can go to truthisforever .org.

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I'm speaking on discernment, and I have three sessions, including Sunday morning.

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So that's quite a bit of speaking, actually. I'm trying to remember the last time I did three sessions at a conference. I think at the beginning of the social justice days, when

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I had just written Christianity and Social Justice, which you'll see behind me. Sadly, I had to give up my last copy of Against the

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Waves. I'm waiting for more books to come in, but that's why you don't see it there. You see my older one there, Christianity and Social Justice.

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I think I did a few conferences like that, but it's been a while, and it's gonna be the fire hose on discernment.

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So looking forward to seeing you all there. Right now, though, we have some stories to go over, some lessons to pull, some lessons to learn, and some questions to get to.

04:35

So if you are streaming, please feel free to put a question, a comment, a cry of outrage in the comment section.

04:43

You can do so on Facebook, on YouTube, and on X. Not on Rumble, but on those other three, you can.

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And we'll be sure, I will be sure to get to it, if I can.

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I can't get to all of them, of course, but I will try to get to the ones that seem pertinent. So where are we gonna start is the question today, because I have so many things lined up.

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I got videos, Nine Marks Ministries, a JD Greer video that I think we may watch.

05:11

It's pretty short, just on the third way stuff. Well, we'll talk a little bit about third way. That still seems to be somewhat of a topic.

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We're gonna talk a little bit about Boyce College and what's going on there.

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It's still there. What's still there, John? Social justice.

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It's still going on. All you have to do actually is go into their library and look at the books that are on display.

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I don't know what category they have it at. Someone just contacted me recently and said they had gone there and seen all these woke books and even complained.

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I think one of them was taken down, but that's not what I'm gonna talk about. I'm gonna talk about some really concrete stuff that played out online, showing that they're still using

05:57

Esau Macaulay's book, Reading the Bible While Black. I did a whole show on it, about an hour long, where I get into the standpoint theory and the false gospel that that book promotes.

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Not a good book, but being promoted in a positive way, not to critique it, but to endorse it and find good ideas from it.

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We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about Jen Hatmaker, wrote an article on ditching the evangelical script.

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She's very, she's a deconstructionist, I think, at this point. I mean, how else would you categorize her?

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But we'll get into it a little, just because I think there's a lot of people who have made this journey, who have gone through this arc, and what should we think about it?

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We probably have friends that have gone through the kind of thing Jen Hatmaker's talking about. Carl Truman talks about Big Eva and Gig Eva.

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I think, am I Gig Eva? I don't know, maybe. And we'll get into some domestic issues as well.

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Allie Beth Stuckey giving some advice at a conference and a lot of pushback online for the advice that she gave.

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Kevin Roberts also going out there. He is the president of the Heritage Foundation and essentially saying,

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I have concerns about Nick Fuentes. I think some of the stuff he says is terrible, but I'm not gonna just distance ourselves from Tucker Carlson.

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And of course, that made some people somewhat happy. That made other people very upset.

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And maybe this is a good opportunity to apply some of the things that I've been talking about in the last two podcasts.

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And if you haven't watched those, ah, it's kind of like required reading, right?

07:38

Before you get to the stage we're at in examining some of these things. But I did do a podcast on friends, enemies in a political sense.

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I also did a podcast on politics and morality. I dropped that yesterday. Go check those out if you haven't listened to those.

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I think those are really important. Those are evergreen episodes. And I'm really trying to convey what my thinking has been for years.

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I think I've always just about thought this way about politics. And I think it does come from a mindset that wants to preserve biblical fidelity, but also recognizes the nature of the political fight.

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I won't say anything more. Just go check those out. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about Gen Z a little bit.

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Maybe the dip, supposedly there's a dip. I'm gonna give you the long and short of it. What's really going on on the support for same -sex marriage and more.

08:31

So we're gonna get to all of that. We already have someone giving $5. Wow, $5.

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Thank you, the Lincoln Rail split for the super sticker of $5. I don't know what a super sticker is, but I'm really,

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I'm happy that I have it. Thank you. Thank you for the super sticker. All right. Well, let's start,

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I guess with evangelical stuff and then we'll get to more political stuff as we go. I had a pastor, pastors,

08:58

I should say, in the PCA send this to me. This isn't anything new. And I think that's why they sent it to me to say, look, this has been in the

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PCA for a long time. It's a book called Alongside Care, Alongside Care, a Vision for Churches to Care for Women in Crises.

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And the description of it is in every church, every Sunday, if we were to be honest with each other, there are men and women weighed down by life that lived in this fallen world.

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So is the command to bear one another's burden and to fill the law of Christ only for the ordained. How does the male leadership minister to women who are hurting, suffering and in crisis?

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What if there is a church discipline issue? So this book attempts to provide reasons for, and guidelines to start a ministry for the hurting women in your church, for men and women to walk with them in crisis.

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It's been intentionally written by a variety of authors who represent the church. Okay, and this, why am

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I even mentioning this? Well, this is a book that is at the PCA bookstore.

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That's the Presbyterian church in America. It was, it's alongside, let's see.

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I'm not seeing it referenced here. It was, it's actually formed though internally. It's a

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PCA internal book. I don't know why I can't get to that website. So I got some screenshots, which

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I don't have display. I'm gonna actually see if I can pull them up real quick here because I do want to mention them.

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Going back to the text thread that I saw this all in right now. Um, can

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I get back to, we're professional here in the conversations that matter podcast.

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We got big media teams ready to go. Yeah, I can't pull up the screenshot,

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I don't think. Oh, maybe this is it. Let's see here. Let me make sure if this is, this is it. Okay.

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So within this book, apparently, the pastor, this is a section in the appendix of the book, appendix six, the pastor may ask the caregiver to affirm, these are similar vows, do you believe, and it goes through some biblical fidelity and that kind of thing.

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But I think the wiggle room here, what people are concerned about is the, there's this role that's created, the caregiver, and this could be a female who's in the role of a caregiver, basically doing the things that pastors do, but without the title of pastor.

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Do you promise by enabling grace of God to help the elders provide pastoral care? That's literally in this book.

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And this is an official book of the PCA, or I mean, it's endorsed by the PCA more or less.

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And this was, when was this written? This was years ago, I think, but it's still being sold. It's still out there and 2024.

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So not that many years ago, like one. Okay, so maybe this is more recent than I thought. Anyway, whole point is we're seeing this in the

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SBC, we're seeing this in the PCA, and this is gonna be part of a larger discussion later when

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I get to the Allie Beth Stuckey stuff. But I think people are trying to figure out what does it mean to be a pastor and have that exclusively a male office?

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Where are the lines on that? And in the SBC, of course, we've seen something similar to the

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PCA where you can just change the term from pastor to minister or from pastor to shepherd. And there are churches who think now they're covered.

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They are not in violation of the Baptist faith and message. They're not in violation of the bylaws of the PCA. They are fine.

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And all that's happened is a term has changed. The question is who's actually doing the shepherding and how does the shepherding being administered?

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Now, here's, I think, food for thought here, right? Is it permissible for a woman to disciple another woman?

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Well, we have precedent in scripture for older women teaching younger women, do we not?

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Is it permissible for someone to call that shepherding?

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That's a good question. You are guiding someone, but you're technically not the shepherd.

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The shepherd or the pastor, same role, is reserved for a male, a male leader. And the male leader in the church who has attained to this position through virtue, the recognition of others, and most of all, the gifting by the

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Holy Spirit is watching over the souls of the flock. There's an aggressiveness to him.

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He actually goes after threats. There are certain things that the shepherd does that are not fitting for a female to do.

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I think this is one of the reasons Paul says in the book of 1 Timothy 2, that he does not permit a man to have authority over a woman and that was the very next thing he says.

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He references creation. The example that he gives when he says this is

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Adam who was first created and then Eve. Now he is talking about the ecclesiastical office.

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He is talking about leadership, I think at least, I mean, in the context. Now, some people broaden this to include other things, but you're certainly talking about, at the very least, the office that the husband occupies in the home, and then extended from that, the office of the pastor.

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And we see that backed up in many other passages. There's leadership in the home, there's leadership in the church. I think there's also a principle here.

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If this is from creation, leadership in the political arena ought to be a man. I don't, maybe

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I'm getting ahead of myself because we're going to get to the Allie Beth Stuckey stuff here in a few minutes, but I don't think that is quite the same in the sense that I think there is a universal moral principle that is laid down in scripture and you're in violation of it when you start ordaining women pastors.

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I don't think it is a sin in and of itself for a woman to be in elected office. It can be, it certainly can be, but there are circumstances where if men aren't stepping up, you have a

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Deborah and Brock kind of situation. I don't think it's necessarily a sinful thing for that to happen.

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It's not, certainly not ideal. It's certainly not the design. It's not what a woman ought to be doing or pursuing according to a biblical framework and really according to what

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Western societies have interpreted as the natural law given by God in the nature of a thing, right?

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Not, I'm not saying just observation. I'm saying like within the nature of what it means to be a man and woman, they've looked at this and men have been the leaders, even in the political arena.

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But what are the limits on this, right? This is a good question. And the progressives, unfortunately, in these denominations, you give them an inch, they take a mile.

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You tell them, well, you can be a, you can occupy this office we've created under the pastor and do the shepherding.

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Well, I'm sorry, you're not a shepherd though. Shepherds do shepherding. You can be, you can disciple someone, you can help someone.

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And many of those things might parallel what a shepherd does, but it's not the full spectrum of what a shepherd does.

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It can't be. The office and the function go together. So that's the

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PCA. Someone sent that to me. I thought it was worth highlighting. Let's move on as we're going through evangelical stuff.

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And let's talk a little bit about what's going on at Southern. Yeah, I almost said Southwestern. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Patrick Schreiner, excited to lead our Advanced Hermeneutics Seminar this week as we trace the history of interpretation.

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There are so many great books. I keep swapping them out. We read both primary and secondary literature in each major arena or era rather, sorry.

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So this is, it begs the question, are you endorsing these things? Is this a survey?

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What is this? I mean, we have early church stuff because there's origin there, but then we're going all the way to the last one in the sequence is reading the

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Bible while black by Esau McCulley. Now, like I said, I did a whole podcast on this.

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I pointed out he mixes activism or works with grace. You don't have a full gospel unless you are somehow doing a social justice thing, or you're keeping yourself within the parameters of a social justice construct.

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You don't understand the Bible really fully at least, unless you read it from a minority or oppressed perspective.

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It's standpoint theory. And he turns books like Philemon on their head doing this.

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Now, Nate Schloman, Pastor Nate Schloman pulled up a tweet and there were multiple tweets by the way from Patrick Schreiner regarding this, but he pulled up a tweet from 2020 where Patrick Schreiner says there's a good review of Esau McCulley's new book on the gospel coalition.

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In that review, it says McCulley's work is stimulating and edifying a book in which believers, black believers particularly, will find fresh confidence in the scriptures power to speak to both the body and soul of our lived experience.

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A very positive review. Now, someone sent me a syllabus that I posted from the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And it is from a course called History of the Bible.

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And in that particular course, the Boyce College remember is linked. It's the undergrad at the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And lo and behold, reading the Bible while black is also in this course.

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And in the discussion forum where people, students, or pastors, soon to be pastors are discussing this.

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It says, how might the perspective expressed in reading while black provide a critique that helps you to not distort scripture to fit a majority culture point of view?

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How does this reading equip you to minister more effectively in diverse contexts? Name one potential danger that you see in the perspective expressed in this reading.

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Post your reflections in the forum. It is a positive reading of the book. It's not a critical understanding in the sense of, here's a book that's in error, let's critique it.

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That's not what's happening here. What's happening here is you have a institution that is tasked with the training of future pastors, mostly in missionaries, giving these, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, a young skull's full of mush, a bunch of poison.

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Now they're giving them good things too, but they're also giving them poison. You can't really understand this book, the Bible, unless you understand some kind of a modern oppressed perspective.

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You can't just go back to the authorial intent. You can't just understand what it said to the original audience. You need more than that.

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And you need to understand that the gospel is not simply justification through faith in the finished work of Christ.

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It is something that must be in tandem, must be connected to, found with some degree of social justice activism.

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The slave masters in Antebellum South did not have the gospel.

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They could have been Orthodox in their beliefs. They could have taught. I mean, that's where the Christianity primarily came from.

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That's the influence in the black community, but they can't be Christians because look, they're involved in this labor arrangement.

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Well, that's certainly not Christian and that undercuts the Bible. But you see, you have to understand the Bible from our perspective.

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That's what's going on in a book like that. And it's poison. It's not good. This is still being taught at the place that Al Mohler is in charge of.

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And I know some of you think Al Mohler, he's all pivoted on it. Yeah, I know he changed his view on same -sex attraction and on the abuse issue, the

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Me Too issue. He's changed, it seems like his view on even critical race theory to some extent, at least what he's saying now is not what he used to be saying about this.

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And he still has this under his nose at his institution though. It's still happening.

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So that being said, let's move on to the next topic as we survey some of these stories.

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A PCA pastor, we're going back to the PCA. I should have put this first, but a PCA pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma has been caught for soliciting prostitution.

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Jeremy Fair was in the progressive wing of the denomination. Now that's the wrong church. It's not Covenant Presbyterian. I got this wrong and I corrected it later.

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Oh, I don't see the comment correcting. I think it's, what was the name of it? I can't remember now. It wasn't Covenant though.

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It was a Presbyterian church though in Tulsa. Anyway, Jeremy Fair was in the progressive wing of the denomination.

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He tried to shield opposition to revoice, which normalized homosexual orientation. And I asked people to pray.

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There's a picture of him. And there's a picture of the sting operation where it was a tactic by the police to try to attract those who were interested in prostitution.

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Some of it was underage. I don't know. I don't think that was the case for Jeremy Fair. I'm not sure. But yeah,

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I don't know how strong of a connection I want to draw. I will say this.

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If you are soft peddling sexual immorality, LGBT type stuff, then

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I'm not surprised. I'll put it that way because it's consistent to an extent, right?

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It's not, it would be more surprising I suppose if it was someone who is really against that stuff.

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Although there's exceptions, right? There are people who sometimes want to make up for the deficiencies in their own life.

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And by doing so, they're very vocal about opposition to certain sins that they're involved with.

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But I'm saying it's consistent to be a part of an effort to normalize sexual deviancy and then to be found to be a sexually deviant on some level later on.

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Very sad. And my hope is that as people see this, they'll wake up to it. They'll realize, yeah, that is a problem.

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That should be suspect. I think for the members of this church, hopefully this is a big wake -up call.

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I understand from PCA pastors, this is one of the more progressive pastors in the PCA. So if this is true, and I know there's certainly backing for him supporting the revoice, then maybe this should offer an opportunity for some self -reflection.

24:03

Jen Hatmaker, on ditching evangelical scripts, the system robbed us, originally published at Religion News Service.

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Jen Hatmaker married at 19 and for 26 years lived with an enviable evangelical life.

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She had kids, pastor. She was a thriving author, had a women's ministry. It all fell apart. Her new memoir,

24:24

Awake Hatmaker, begins with the end of her marriage, devastating middle of the night discovery of betrayal, and then returns to the beginning to the

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Bible college meet cute. She chronicles the ways purity culture, complimentarianism and ministry zeal, both choked and fueled her fledgling marriage.

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And she finds there in the evangelical origin of that love story, the seeds of what she now calls bad fruit.

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Awake, which was published September 23rd as a divorce memoir, but it was also an ex -evangelical testimony.

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Whether or not she would claim that label for herself, Hatmaker's divorce is one of the part of a deconstruction journey that has her reckoning with purity culture, homophobia, racism, sexism, and Christian nationalism.

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These beats may sound familiar to many of you. So this is the book and the article goes on.

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I guess there's some quotes from her. It's actually an interview style.

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I'm trying to determine which questions I actually wanna read on the podcast. Let's see.

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You talk a fair amount in your book about learning to listen and trust your body and your intuitions and your gut.

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How did you learn to trust yourself? Oh, so brave. Well, that is one of the most diabolical results of not just purity culture, but evangelicalism.

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We were taught this is just some fleshly container. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are a soul people, not a body people.

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These bodies are untrustworthy and suspect. It was really interesting over the course of my divorce and recovery that my body was actually my best leader.

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My body led me through all the most important phases. It was my body where I first appropriately, appropriately, there we go, grieved.

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My brain was trying to talk me out of it, like we don't have time for this, but my body allowed me to breathe. Ultimately, my body's where I found healing.

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I'm working on a new story for myself. I have promised my dear body, this container of mine, that I'll never, ever, ever abandon my own wisdom again.

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I would be curious where that wisdom comes from. Is that wisdom from God? I mean, someone made the body, right?

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So even if true, where does that wisdom come from? And obviously there are intuitions, or if you want to call them instincts, that God gives, that even people who aren't

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Christians sometimes operate by, loving your own, that kind of thing. But there's also the desire of the flesh.

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And the desire of the flesh, if you're following that, then you are going to wind up in a heap of trouble.

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And let's see if there's any other interesting responses before I analyze this further.

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Women are considered emotional hysterical leaders in the church, I guess.

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Now we have this whole argument about toxic empathy, that women are the problem, the church has become too feminized.

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Okay. She goes after Allie Beth Stuckey, it looks like. Stuckey is the author of Toxic Empathy.

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And she says, it's so depressing to see all these women in the sunken place. I'm so devastated at the lengths of which we will go to vote against the act and against our best interests, but this isn't new.

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There's always been this huge contingency of women who are complicit in every work of injustice. We know we need to maintain our proximity to the men in power for our own protection.

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And if I'm being altruistic, which I don't care to be, but I guess here we are, I can understand how someone in that system might feel like it delivers a sense of security.

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All right. She goes on. So she hasn't quite given up on Jesus, I guess.

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This is so typical. I feel like I've read this story so many times or I've seen it actually more often in real life.

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I'm very drawn to Jesus, she says. I'm very drawn to his story. I'm incredibly drawn to the way he lived through the years on this earth and what he found important and what he found valuable.

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So she says, I was afraid of God before. And so right now my deal with Jesus is that we're pretty relaxed.

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All right. The guy coming back with a double -edged sword to put his enemies under his feet.

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Now, let's talk about this just a little bit. And I don't know

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Jen Hatmaker, so I gotta be careful reading too much into what we heard. So I'm gonna be careful in how

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I phrase it. I have heard very similar things, if not identical things from people that I've even known who have rejected the church, even if they've grown up in the church.

28:56

The most, I would say, aggressive anti -Christian people

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I've ever met are those who generally grew up in the church. And I can't say this is universal, but very often they grew up with an understanding that if they did certain things, it would produce a certain outcome.

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If they were the dutiful wife, if they did their devotions every day, they didn't have sex before marriage.

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If they went to church faithfully on Sunday, then they were going to be assured of having a good life and reaping the rewards of that life.

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And then as Jen Hatmaker describes in her own story, they wake up and one day their husband has been cheating on them.

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Their pastor has a scandal. One of their children dies.

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Something happens to shake them and they just throw the whole thing out. They say that, well, this never worked.

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I thought this was the key to the good life and this formula doesn't work.

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And oftentimes I think what's really going on is they've been playing pretend the whole time. They know the lingo, they understand the rules, they operate by them, but there's no heart.

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Jen Hatmaker, I'm sure would disagree and say that she had heart. She was legitimate and all of that.

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But they're following Christ for the good they think it will produce in their lives.

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And there's a fear that if they don't, they're gonna reap evil. Now, can we admit as Christians that there's some truth to this, right?

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We understand that if you do good things, if you follow God's law, if you obey the principles that are found in the book of Proverbs, there are in general, good rewards that follow.

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And if not on this earth, we know, and we have assurance that in the life to come, we will certainly gain a reward.

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Now, these good works though, must be motivated by a response to the love of Christ.

31:16

It's not just doing good works to do good works. Even our righteous deeds do not attain to the level of goodness that God represents.

31:26

Our righteous deeds are filthy rags before him. So the good works that we do after being a

31:34

Christian are good works that please God because they are generated by God.

31:41

And yes, this is a mystery. Yes, we do have a volition in this, but also

31:47

God is motivating these actions. James talks about the fact that there are rewards for those who actually follow

31:55

God's law. But it's out of a love for Christ. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

32:04

So some of these people, I don't think, they never knew Christ, but they're just using the formula, thinking it's gonna produce good.

32:10

Now there are some, even if you're not a Christian and you do things like you save your money and you operate by biblical financial principles, yes, most likely you will reap something better than had you not done that.

32:24

But even for those who are Christians and later really struggle in this area because a tragedy happened, there's a legalism that comes in of some kind.

32:35

There's a performative kind of way of living the Christian life where you fear

32:43

God because you have not come to the place or you are, let's say, if you have come to the place, you are not operating as someone who has come to the place as truly repenting and receiving the love and forgiveness of Christ.

33:03

And I think if you separate the grace, if you separate those things, if religion just becomes this stale thing and that's what you think it is, and the only reason for it to exist is to benefit you in some way and then you don't think it's benefiting you, of course, you're gonna turn on it.

33:18

Of course, you're gonna say this is terrible. I think Ray Comfort gives the analogy of the parachute. You throw the parachute away because you think that it's just uncomfortable, it's making the plane ride worse, but there's a jump coming.

33:30

And if you knew there's a jump coming, you would keep the parachute on. So anyway, that's kind of my initial understanding when

33:40

I hear of a deconstruction story. I'm thinking of that template in my head. I'm thinking, okay, was this about a love for Christ that they were motivated?

33:48

Were they willing to go to the cross to bear their cross daily like Christ if it meant receiving Him? Was that the reward or was the reward a cookie cutter family and book deals and financial prosperity?

33:59

And let's admit it, let's just face the facts here. I think many of us who, we do love Christ, we are pursuing that, that thinking can invade.

34:08

If we're not careful, that thinking can invade and we have to be vigilant against it.

34:14

And we start blaming purity culture for the reason that we're in the spot we're in or something else.

34:20

It was something that the church told us to do. We did it and we didn't get what we wanted out of it.

34:27

And so now I'm gonna trust myself. Now I'm just gonna do what I feel is good. And you know what? Initially, especially when you start just doing what you feel is good, indulging the flesh, there is a sin that is pleasurable for a season, especially if you're someone who's not convicted because maybe you're not a

34:46

Christian, truly. You know, it's like you can breathe a sigh of relief.

34:52

You're not pretending or acting anymore. You just be yourself. We know where that leads eventually. We know that there's a consequence.

34:59

There's a price you're gonna pay, both on this earth and certainly in the life to come.

35:06

But it's sad. Pray for Jen Hatmaker. Just pray for her. She's in a spot

35:12

I would not like to be in on judgment day. All right, one more story before I get to the political stuff and I'll take questions, take a break, and then we'll get to the political stuff.

35:22

First things, put an article out there and it is, oh, sorry, okay, two things. I forgot about the nine mark stuff.

35:28

So anyway, first things, second to last thing in the evangelical space, space,

35:36

I don't like using that word, the evangelical news. Carl Truman writes this article,

35:41

Goodbye Big Eva, Hello Gig Eva. And he talks about how this term was coined.

35:47

Actually, Phil Johnson coined it and it's about celebrity pastors in his mind.

35:53

He says, by celebrity pastor, I don't mean those church leaders who happen to be well -known. I mean, those who consciously leverage their public platforms to exert influence beyond their church, thereby weakening it.

36:04

They're not simply podcasters or bloggers or op -ed writers. They were key players in large parachurch organizations.

36:10

That's Big Eva. And he says, the era of Big Eva seems to have run its course. The conservative Protestant scene in the

36:16

U .S. is no longer dominated by a few big name celebrities or by a handful of large conferences. Those large conferences still exist and are often well attended, but they do not grip the popular evangelical imagination.

36:26

Yeah, I mean, we've all sensed this. We all can see we are entering a new era for sure.

36:33

He says, the problems at the heart of Big Eva have not disappeared. They have migrated into new forums. The broader business dynamics in the

36:40

U .S. are now sometimes referred to as a gig economy. A term that describes a shift from the traditional business model institutions as sources of income to more disparate and informal network of opportunities offered by new media.

36:51

That would be me. Yeah. You got Ubers that have squeezed licensed taxi drivers.

36:57

Airbnb has opened. And of course, you know, my family's involved in that as well. That's the reason we can make it effectively financially, at least right now, is a couple of different streams of income.

37:08

We have to have a couple. I can't just, the podcast alone really won't even do it.

37:14

So it's, we're in the gig economy. My wife and I are part of this. Anyway, he says that Big Eva is being challenged by what we might call a

37:22

Gig Eva. There are some obvious differences between Big and Gig. Even in the world of Big Eva, the headline acts were generally men and women who had first established their reputations through service of local churches or talented writing for established publishers.

37:34

They had a certain authority that predated their rise to Big Eva influence. In Gig Eva, everyone with the time to spend online can become a celebrity without having to prove himself beforehand in any real service to any church.

37:46

But there are also similarities such as in the matter of accountability. Big Eva gurus were accountable only to each other.

37:53

Their heirs in the Gig Eva are accountable to nobody. To put it another way, both tend to marginalize the actual church by making their own platforms and declarations the source of all wisdom.

38:02

But Gig Eva has only intensified the problem that led to the coin, the term Big Eva. I'm actually gonna say,

38:08

I think I agree with him on this as far as the mechanism is concerned. So he's saying that there's this market mechanism and someone even like myself can get out there and say whatever

38:18

I say, if I have an audience that receives it and likes it and wants to fund it, and there's advertisers who see the numbers, then

38:26

I am effectively going to be a leader in an evangelical place.

38:33

And this could be beyond evangelical. It's obviously there's podcasts for everything. And you might not know who

38:39

I am. How many times have I said this on a podcast? I don't replace your pastor. I've said, I'm very careful about this.

38:44

And I always have been from the beginning because I've recognized it. In fact, I had a professor who really warned me about this and warned me about the democratization of truth, that the online world is by nature egalitarian as far as yes, there's a hierarchy and how many followers on what platforms and respect and all this, which creates a whole bunch of drama and turf wars.

39:06

But that hierarchy can change all the time very quickly.

39:12

I was just realizing, the other day I saw something from Jenna Ellis and I was realizing how I haven't thought of Jenna Ellis in years.

39:19

And I'm like, what happened to Jenna Ellis? Well, she did a few things that alienated parts of her audience and she's not relevant now.

39:29

Now that could change, but it's very volatile and it's not the virtue metrics as much.

39:35

I mean, I would hope that would be the case. I've encouraged you in this audience, use virtue metrics, be slow to just trust someone because they say something you resonate with.

39:44

You get to know someone truly and in a virtuous way over the long period and generally in closer proximity.

39:53

That's hard to tell from a podcast, it really is. So if you get good information from a podcast, that's great, but you gotta be careful outsourcing your thinking to someone.

40:02

You need to be careful when you don't know who someone is or what their motivation is, just trusting everything they say.

40:10

And the internet does present this opportunity, but also this downside.

40:16

I think Carl Truman's right about that. Now, where I would maybe disagree to some extent or at least quibble, we'll say that, he talks about previously,

40:26

Big Eva had mechanisms for accountability. I agree, but the accountability was managerialism.

40:32

The accountability was loyalty to the guild. I don't sense that orthodoxy was as much of an accountability.

40:40

Maybe egregious things would have been punished, but you really, social pressure had to come to bear before that would happen.

40:46

So, I mean, this is kind of the failure of Big Eva, right?

40:52

The failure of these mechanisms to actually produce and platform virtuous, trustworthy leaders who had good theology and it wasn't a club where it simply came down to a fraternity that overshadowed the orthodoxy when necessary.

41:20

It didn't happen. It didn't happen in Big Eva. That picture I just painted didn't exist.

41:26

It was the ruins of something that may have existed at one point. Some people say it never existed.

41:33

Well, there's still denominations, there's still institutions that do Christian things. There's still parachurches, but Big Eva was failing.

41:42

And that's what I think in part gave an opportunity for this quote unquote gig Eva, people who actually were interested in things like orthodoxy.

41:51

Now there's those who are interested in building a platform for a platform sake. There are those who are not wise, who have podcasts and who preach even in the pulpits on Sunday.

42:01

That should be no surprise to any of us. There's all kinds of people and it's the wild west. And I think

42:07

Karl Truman agrees with that. It's the wild west now. You gotta be very careful. That's why the discernment conference that's coming up is so important.

42:16

He says, there's a further similarity. There's a further similarity. Both are shaped by economic, the economy rather of their chosen media.

42:25

It's about selling tickets, but Big Eva. So Big Eva wanted people to come to events. Gig Eva is more about like online

42:32

Twitter ratios and views on YouTube and iTunes reviews and these kinds of things.

42:40

He said, let's see, both men imploded in public scandal. What men is he talking about? Let's see.

42:49

So there were those, okay. So he doesn't say who this is. He just says, he asked a

42:55

Big Eva boss if he thought a couple of his headline acts were men who offered godly models of a pastor. He said, no, but then did nothing.

43:02

So that's a problem. Yeah, that is a problem. The economics of social media are different. So he goes through that.

43:09

I think he's right about this in general, like as far as the mechanisms. No individual group or writer in Gig Eva will likely enjoy the breadth of influence experienced by their

43:18

Big Eva forefathers. That's probably true. The diffused nature of online discourse means that there will never be a focal point of the kind provided by the conference stage.

43:30

And then he says, this is his last sentence.

43:35

Okay, second to last sentence. Its advocates validate their personal authenticity by their constant iconoclasm.

43:41

They're decrying of anything that stands in their way. Their priority of disembodied cost -free online engagement over the more expensive demands of service and accountability to real people in real time in church and in homes.

43:51

Big Eva has its problems. Gig Eva is set only to intensify them. I actually agree with much of this article.

43:59

Here is where I would differ with him. I would say this, you don't wanna paint with too broad a brush here.

44:10

If you're just analyzing the managerialism versus this sort of disestablished online environment,

44:19

I think what he's saying is true. But there are those who do actually have good character. Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice, right?

44:26

I think there are actual people that are echoing the things that Jesus said, trying to do the things that Jesus would do in various situations.

44:35

And it's going to resonate with the right people, with those who are truly Christians. That never goes away.

44:43

And regardless of the mechanism used, I do think that there's an opportunity here for also accountability.

44:50

Accountability of bigger names. So if someone in Gig Eva says something, right? You can make a response or a video or whatever you want and challenge it immediately.

45:00

You couldn't do that on the conference stage, right? You'd have to, I mean, I'm used to this. I had to write books. I was trying to get the word out everywhere on media.

45:08

And it was reluctant. I was reluctant to do that at first. I wanted to go through the proper channels.

45:14

I believe in a hierarchy. But when everything's rotten, what do you do? And that's the situation we were in.

45:20

I mean, he admits this. A Big Eva boss who knew that the pastors were bad, but platforms them anyway.

45:27

So I actually see an upside and an opportunity here that Carl Truman doesn't really reflect on.

45:35

He's just saying, it's all bad. I don't think it's all bad. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of bad platforms. There's a lot of grifters.

45:41

There's a lot of people saying evil, incorrect, false things, true. But there's also going to be the people saying true things.

45:48

And they can all take advantage of the same mechanisms, essentially. No one's monopolizing those mechanisms because the people who monopolize them before didn't have the virtue necessary to steward them.

46:01

So Big Eva being broken is actually, I think, a good thing. And yeah, there might be some monsters that are created in the process, some new monsters, but there's also some new heroes.

46:11

And there are pastors who are faithful, who have small congregations that you would never have heard of that now you can listen to, because they're on Sermon Audio.

46:19

They're on YouTube, they're on X or Facebook, and their sermons are now available.

46:25

And if you don't have, if you need supplemental teaching, if you don't have it available in your local community, because that's where you first should be going, obviously, then those opportunities exist.

46:37

And if you have discernment, it's a great time to be able to go find those kinds of gems. So yes, this is a bad mechanism if everyone doesn't have discernment, hint, hint, a lot of people don't.

46:47

But if you're someone with discernment, it can be a great tool. So like anything, technological.

46:54

All right, last thing, I was gonna talk about Nine Marks real quick. So two clips, oh, and Greer, I forgot about Greer.

47:00

We might skip Greer. Let's skip Greer. Let's talk about Nine Marks. So this is a podcast that Jonathan Lehman and Mark Dever were on last, or maybe it was, yeah, it was last week.

47:13

Friends a little bit to the right, friends a little bit to the left. I mean, how many times have I heard you say, well, you know what?

47:19

He's still right on the gospel, and he's still right on these basic areas of doctrine. And so you maintain that gospel charity and regard somebody as a gospel partner.

47:29

And so, obviously, including things like disqualifying sin as well, but maintaining a basic integrity of a man who is a basic integrity of his gospel message,

47:40

I appreciate the way you continue to extend that charity. And partnership to such brothers.

47:48

And I think that's gotten you in trouble at times. There's probably been a cost to you for that.

47:53

I think autobiographically, I think I could attribute that, a few things to sort of contributing to that. I think I certainly mean to do what you've said.

48:05

I don't think I, I certainly don't think I do that perfectly, but I think growing up and serving the

48:12

Lord largely in a Southern Baptist context, where in some ways I feel like a theological minority, I think having myself been an agnostic and become a

48:21

Christian, I think the gospel is always very fresh to me, always at the forefront of my mind. Yeah, the fact that I deserve

48:29

God's judgment. And, you know, I may disagree with somebody on, dear

48:35

Matt Pinson, who's an Armenian believer at the Welch College in Nashville, but I think Matt's trusting the same

48:40

Christ that I am. And I think he trusts in his atoning blood. And that is far more important than anything divides us.

48:48

And whether I'm talking to John Piper or John MacArthur or Kevin DeYoung, yeah, or Thabiti Anyabwile, I mean, that's just the fact that, you know, this dear brother,

49:00

Scott Sundquist, president of Word and Commodore right now, PCUSA, egalitarian, but I think

49:07

Scott and I are trusting the same Christ. I think we would share the same gospel with somebody on the plane next to us. And in my mind, that just outweighs everything else.

49:13

Doesn't mean everything else is of no significance. Depends on the conversations we need to have. But when

49:18

Ray Hilton and I have lunch, he's the pastor of the National Presbyterian Church here in town, we have the same

49:24

Savior. And that is more important than everything we would disagree on. Okay, so there you have it.

49:34

That's Mark Dever and Jonathan Lehman from Nymarx Ministries. They're gonna be speaking at the Shepherds Conference. That's the context here.

49:40

And they haven't been there since 2019 or 2018, and 2019, 2019 at the

49:46

ShepCon Q &A. And there's a controversy somewhat over this.

49:54

And so they are addressing that in this clip. And I think a number of people pointed this out when

50:03

I posted it online, that the examples they give, at least the political examples, are left.

50:10

They're left examples. And if you know Nymarx's history, within the evangelical world, they have a reputation for being more left, justifying voting for a pro -abortion candidate, counter signaling

50:25

John MacArthur over opening his church up during COVID, recommending books that are either adjacent to or endorsing in some way critical race theory, figures in their organization that have promoted very heavy social justice thinking like the

50:47

BD and Abouyla. And so they did not sign the Dallas Statement on Social Justice.

50:54

This became a dividing thing, but it wasn't just because they didn't sign it. It's because of the reason given. Mark Dever's on stage and he's saying, essentially, if I were to do this, it would be contradicting my commitment to anti -racism, essentially.

51:13

And so implying that John MacArthur's signing this is the point of disagreement is John MacArthur must be not acknowledging racism.

51:22

So this has been a separation for years. And John MacArthur, at the time,

51:28

I've said this before, he said social justice was the greatest threat he saw to the gospel in his lifetime with all the things that he had fought.

51:36

And now it's like, it's just sort of pushed down to this very secondary matter.

51:46

It's not really worthy of debate when you have so much in common because you have the gospel in common.

51:54

Now, Mark Dever, I'm not saying he's not a believer.

52:00

I think he has very poor ethical judgment. I think the reason John MacArthur said it was a challenge to the gospel is because of how often social justice advocates in the church would link the two, just like Esau McCulley did, and how they turned justice on its head.

52:18

Justice now, instead of just being a violation of God's law, sin being a violation of God's law, and then the just penalty being what

52:27

Christ did, justice is now this social disparity. And it doesn't have to involve sin.

52:36

And you'd have an injustice and no one's sinning. It's just, you're reaping the benefits of global trade patterns or something.

52:44

And of course, once you redefine sin, you're tampering with the gospel as well. I mean, there's multiple steps, but you are two steps away from tampering with the gospel when you start playing with these things.

52:57

And so that was an important issue. It still is an important issue to me, but it's being downgraded and it's just being reduced to a political disagreement, but it wasn't just a political disagreement.

53:10

I think that's what I wanna emphasize because I remember I was there. It was a theological disagreement.

53:17

Remember Nine Marks is the one that started this. They brought in all of this leftist leaning stuff into their organization.

53:29

I can show you articles. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe we'll do an episode or I'll just show you Nine Marks articles that push the needle in this direction.

53:36

But I think it was Mark Dever who was the first one prominently to recommend divided by faith.

53:48

I know that recently Daniel Keene, if you remember my interview with Daniel Keene from a few weeks ago, he's the one that went to Matt Boswell's church, right?

53:56

And he was disciplined essentially because he'd made that video and he stood by it where it was a

54:04

Hindu celebration in his neighborhood. And he said he wanted his kids to grow up in America, not India. He just revealed a few days ago that Mark Dever and Jonathan Lehman were in agreement with his elders.

54:16

They were advising his elders on this matter. I don't think this issue has stopped.

54:22

I think it's still going on. I think it's still out there, but that's just me and I'm part of Gig Eva.

54:28

All right, let's play this. This is another Nine Marks podcast.

54:36

This is Jim Hamilton for Nine Marks, who's a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary once again.

54:44

And he said this on a recent podcast. Here, Trump is not bringing in the millennial kingdom and no other human king is bringing in the millennial kingdom.

54:53

And I think it is a sign actually that you're not idolizing the political process if your faith is unaffected by whoever gets elected president.

55:05

If your faith is like shipwrecked because one guy got elected rather than the other guy, or if you no longer get along with other

55:11

Christians because one guy got elected rather than the other, you're the one with the problem with the political process and who's idolizing the political process, not the people who are like, we'll either endure or we'll be glad, you know?

55:27

Okay. Kind of an odd, I don't know who he's talking to.

55:34

If you're gonna make a statement, and Jesus and the apostles did do this, right? And you're not gonna mention who because everyone, it's obvious, it's a large group or it's someone, everyone knows who you're talking about, fine.

55:45

But I can't think of any example of this. Trump's gonna usher in the millennial kingdom, okay.

55:51

Maybe he knows someone I don't. But then the second part's the more important part there that again, it's like the political support that a

56:01

Christian gives to a candidate should not affect your relationship with them. So if someone was supporting

56:07

Kamala Harris, then I guess that's not gonna affect my relationship with them.

56:13

I think it would affect my relationship with them. This is the future of my country, the future of my children.

56:21

You're voting against the best interests of my children. You're making a poor ethical decision. I'm probably going to have, there's gonna be a problem there, we're not.

56:29

And even the kind of thinking it would take to get to that point is going to have many other points of disagreement that conflict with Christian ethics or just the interest that a

56:47

Christian American is gonna have. So I would expect you to have, if you're close to someone and they have a completely different political view, maybe in 1950, that was something that you could have said.

57:01

Well, they have different views, but they're still fundamentally, they're American and they're not against Christian.

57:08

That ship has sailed, right? That's not the case. So this desire to down, again, the same thing that you heard from Lehman and from Dover to downgrade these disputes to just their political things.

57:22

They're in this political sphere we're in the spiritual sphere. It doesn't really affect it.

57:27

Well, there are connecting points and it is going to put you in a bad relationship with someone if they keep making decisions that are bad for your family.

57:38

We wouldn't, if they were making decisions that are bad for your family, very poor decisions on a local level, we probably wouldn't think this as much, right?

57:49

Even something as simple as a change in the development of the community around you and whether or not

57:58

I gave this example yesterday, whether or not someone could put condos up or whether it should be open land, something like that, which you think, that's not even a universal moral thing, but something like that, if you're voting against the interests of my family, my kids, that is gonna bank a strain there probably.

58:17

Now, and that's a great example of something where you should be able to kind of work through that, but there still might even be some strain.

58:27

And you may have just your interests, even if you have fellowship in Christ, your interests are so divergent, you're just not gonna be close anymore.

58:34

It's gonna affect the relationship. Come on. It's something as drastic as the chasm between Trump and Kamala Harris.

58:42

That's not gonna affect the relationship. Give me a break. I think the desire here is to just punt all these issues to this political metric or something.

58:56

Okay, let's take some questions. And then, and if you haven't gotten a question in, this is the time to do it while we enter the second half of the show, which will be a shorter half,

59:08

I think. Cosmic treason, let's see. Cosmic treason, you have so many comments.

59:14

I don't know which one to go to. Let's start with, okay, we'll start.

59:21

There's a discussion between Kiana Shaw and cosmic treason. The scripture, what does scripture say about what women are going through?

59:31

You start there and work out the application. So we're going back to the discussion previously on the authority of women and can they pastor and that kind of thing.

59:40

Cosmic treason says, Kiana, have you gotten any elders or married couples at your church to network for you to make? Okay, so I think we're sort of on the cusp of a discussion about also finding a husband, finding a wife, that kind of thing.

59:54

But then it gets into, okay, here it is. Cosmic treason. My answer is that 1 Timothy 2 is not limited to the church service.

01:00:01

It's a universal injunction. Women may not have authority anywhere. Yeah, and I mentioned that. I have seen people say that, that women may never have authority in any sphere because of that, over men, right?

01:00:13

It's over men. I think there's a difficulty in this. What is it, is something like Priscilla and Aquila, like is this having authority to teach someone privately?

01:00:28

Now you say she's with her husband. So you're teaching Apollos, but you're with your husband, but there's an involvement.

01:00:37

You know, Lois and Eunice is there. Well, Timothy maybe isn't an adult yet.

01:00:42

So does this include boys or is it all males? Traditionally, this, at least for the last 100 years or so, this has been viewed as women can teach

01:00:57

Sunday school. Women can teach in a nursery or something. The very least children can be under their authority.

01:01:04

A woman can have a conversation about ethical issues with a man.

01:01:11

In fact, so many of our decisions in life have an ethical component. You can't really live life and avoid that.

01:01:18

You're going to have to even make ethical stands at certain points.

01:01:24

And there's actually some great examples in scripture of this. You know, you think of, let me give you some, just off the top of my head.

01:01:32

So Esther, Esther's an example of this. Esther actually gave instructions.

01:01:40

And you could say they're political, I guess, right? You could say, you know, where do you, how would you make this an exception is

01:01:47

I guess the question, right? So Esther has access to the king and she's warning

01:01:58

King Ahasuerus about Haman. She goes to Mordecai. She says, basically, you tell everyone, instruct everyone.

01:02:06

She's giving, she's giving orders. She's saying, tell them to pray for me. Tell them to be ready because Haman's wanting to kill them, right?

01:02:16

Prepare. And then she goes and she arranges a whole situation to expose

01:02:23

Haman. Is that a political operation? And when the king finds out what was going on, this is a celebration, right?

01:02:32

This is in our scripture. We're supposed to be learning from this. And the lesson that's taken away from Esther is a lesson that I referenced today on Acts that God puts you where he did for such a time as this.

01:02:45

What about the woman at the well? The woman at the well heard from Jesus. And then immediately, what did she do?

01:02:54

She went out and she didn't just tell her friends. She told her friends.

01:02:59

She instructed her friends to come with her to meet Jesus, to meet the man who had told her about herself, about the five husbands she had.

01:03:11

She was repentant. She was joyful that this, the Messiah had showed up and she's telling people to, she's proclaiming the news to others.

01:03:20

Now these are, of course, could a PCUSA minister try to grab these examples and then universalize and say, a woman can be a pastor or a woman can lead in the home.

01:03:32

Maybe. Now, would that be an abuse of these passages? I think so. I do.

01:03:38

Now they're gonna go to other passages. They're gonna go to examples of prophetesses in scripture, giving spiritual advice.

01:03:44

They're gonna go to Deborah and Barak. Those who have been in this conversation have memorized the various places that they go to.

01:03:53

It is, we know though, it is a shameful thing. Deborah and Barak even shows this for a woman to lead.

01:03:59

He says, look, a woman's not, you're not gonna get the credit. A woman's gonna get the credit for defeating Sisera.

01:04:08

So where do we put those examples, right, is the question. And I think this is, maybe

01:04:15

I'm not gonna break my stride here, even though I have other questions. I bookmarked them.

01:04:20

I'll come back to them. This is gonna get into the alley stucky stuff a little bit.

01:04:26

And I wanna give some food for thought on this. Here it is. This is,

01:04:32

I'm not gonna play the video for the sake of time, but this is the post that got so much attention and it's from the

01:04:39

Blaze. And it's one quote, men, we need you. We need your masculinity and your strength and courage.

01:04:46

And we need those things to be harnessed for good. Now, this was very mocked by all kinds of people, not just Christians.

01:04:53

I saw some red pill influencers really mocking this. Even females, there were a number of females

01:04:59

I thought it was a little funny. It's females who are making these public moral judgments and against Allie, because she's making a public moral judgment with, and I think it wasn't just the fact that she made a public moral judgment.

01:05:14

She did so specifically addressing men. It wasn't general. It was like the men in the audience, men, we need you.

01:05:22

Now, in the context, she has talked about the threat feminism poses to women. Then she's talking about the threat pornography poses to men.

01:05:31

And I thought one of the things that was interesting, and I saw some overlap with this. There were people who were really just defending to the hilt,

01:05:43

Nick Fuentes. And one of the arguments used was he's saying things no one says, right?

01:05:49

He's going after pornography. And if you're, your pastor didn't do that, come on. He's saying what your pastor doesn't have the courage to say in these kinds of things.

01:05:58

He did say true things about pornography. Now, the unfortunate part of it is he has got, he has a pornographic mind and has a history of saying very pornographic things, painting those pictures on his podcast and having tabs open and things like that that are pornographic.

01:06:18

There's a lot of carnal knowledge on, in vile things that Nick Fuentes propagates.

01:06:23

It's like, you don't really have the moral leg to stand on when talking about this. At least there's a hypocrisy there, we could say.

01:06:30

But this was one of the arguments brought up was like, you have to support the guy because no one's saying what he's saying.

01:06:37

And I don't know if I just live in a different world or something, but I'm thinking to myself, a lot of people are saying what he's saying.

01:06:43

I mean, I don't know, I hear this from the pulpit. I mean,

01:06:49

I'm sure there are many pastors who are not saying these things and they need to be saying them. I'm not denying that, but there's a lot of people in our public life saying these kinds of things.

01:06:59

It's not like unique. Josh Hawley called pornography a public health crisis.

01:07:05

JD Vance wants a ban on pornography. We just saw the

01:07:11

Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, who said that he wants to see,

01:07:21

I think he even said prosecuted. Those who run the porn companies essentially prosecuted.

01:07:28

I mean, there's three examples, including Nick's, that are prominent from this week alone on this particular topic.

01:07:36

So I don't think it's unique to him, but if that's the case though, if that's the argument, then no one's talking about this, then that's a great argument for we need a

01:07:45

Deborah, I guess, right? If a man's not gonna do it, if men are falling down on the job, that's a great argument.

01:07:52

I don't actually buy that though. I think there are men saying this. So I'm just pointing out, let's be consistent with that at least.

01:08:01

If it's something that no one's saying and it's killing us and someone needs to say something, then that's a great argument for Ali needs to say it.

01:08:14

Now, was there anything, I think the, so the other thing, and this is, I'll cap it sort of on this, then we'll take questions.

01:08:20

Actually, then I'll go through a few more new stories and then we'll take questions. This is my take on this.

01:08:27

Ali is speaking at Turning Point USA. It is not a pulpit. She is not a pastor. I saw people saying that she's preaching.

01:08:36

She's not preaching or she's occupying the office of a pastor because she's giving advice. I think a woman can say true ethical things.

01:08:46

And it's a true ethical thing to say, men, we need you. Now, should she step aside and let a man take her place?

01:08:54

That's the other thing I saw. I don't think that's quite how conservative media works, to be quite honest with you.

01:09:04

You attain a stage because of connections. It's complicated. There's a lot of things that factor into you being invited to be the platform, headliner at Turning Point USA.

01:09:16

It's not just as simple as if I step down, a man will take my place necessarily. I don't think that is how it necessarily works.

01:09:24

That being said, if there are men who are willing to say the same kinds of things that Ali is saying,

01:09:34

I'm very much in favor of them taking on that role. I think where we're having a bit of a difficulty is we are in a period of time where we've had about a century of women being involved in political life on some level.

01:09:54

Women representatives, senators. I think the first example of this, of a woman delegate in the United States was around the turn of not the last century, but the century before that, like 1900.

01:10:04

And since that time, we have just, we're so used to this. And there's sort of a major problem with men don't trust women and women don't trust men for various reasons.

01:10:18

And I think there's actually merit to both of these things on some level, to be quite honest with you. Women feel that they need to protect themselves against men who are not responsible, who are immature, who want to be babied and these kinds of things.

01:10:32

I know, cause I've heard it, I don't know how many times. And oftentimes that means getting into the career field, looking to the government, if you're a leftist,

01:10:42

I suppose, to fill that role in some level, not good, but this is the water we swim in.

01:10:50

There's a mistrust there. And I've thought this too about, I mean, some, I talk about this in the historical sense.

01:10:57

I talk about the moral lessons that you can learn from this particular example, but even like the 19th amendment and that kind of thing, this is brought up now, this is sort of like an edgy thing to bring up now, very commonly on some

01:11:08

Christian right -wing circles as if this is like a viable thing that's gonna happen tomorrow. I think the conditions would have to change, to be quite honest with you.

01:11:18

And this is something I've realized, and this is the historian in me, I suppose, right? This is sort of like looking at things over the long view.

01:11:27

Generally, the social arrangements are going to follow on the heels of moral revolutions, religious conversions, revivals, wars and cataclysmic things that take place.

01:11:45

If all the technology turned off tomorrow, the patriarchy would be ascending very quickly, right?

01:11:53

Because strength, your muscles are gonna matter quite a bit more. Technology has made this environment where it's not quite, it's still needed, but it's not quite as in demand.

01:12:07

The more bad people do bad things, especially physically bad things, the more you need good people who are able to match that threat.

01:12:16

As things degrade, which we're in right now to some extent, I think naturally you're going to have more ascension of male leaders.

01:12:24

Now, the same goes for, I think, if people become more virtuous, let's say we had a big religious revival in this country and people just all realize

01:12:33

God's design is for men to be the political leaders, you are going to have men ascend to political offices because women are going to trust them more.

01:12:45

Not just women, but those who are in authority. There's obviously more, that's not, the analysis

01:12:53

I'm bringing isn't like the only analysis. There's obviously other strands you can trace and so forth.

01:12:59

But I think, and this is sort of the good news, I suppose, that there's a silver lining here. I think we're in a transitional period that's only transitional.

01:13:08

I don't think we're able to maintain what we have currently where women are graduating at much higher rates from college and ascending to much more influential areas in the workforce, in sectors like the media, and even in politics, they run the

01:13:30

HR departments, which we know effectively control the moral, the mores of a business culture.

01:13:38

I encourage men to pursue influential things, but most men, a lot of men don't want to do that, right?

01:13:44

And for various reasons, sometimes they're just looking at it and they're like, it's so much more easy for me to go out and be a small businessman or to work for the man and just use what

01:13:55

I have, use my labor, I'll do the dirty jobs, the things that they won't do, I'll do.

01:14:01

I've never had a woman plumber or electrician come to my house. It just doesn't happen. There's construction workers across the street right now, and not one of them's a female.

01:14:11

They're all male who are doing that work. It's funny how that works. I think men do need to pursue the legal profession, political profession, all of these things, and be willing to take the shots, be brave about it, all the downsides to that, to try to overcome that for the good of the future of your country.

01:14:32

I do believe that. But when we have a crisis, naturally men are looked to.

01:14:40

See that every time a hurricane comes through, right? So I think what a lot of people want is for me to come down or for any leader they have to come down, very hard line on this.

01:14:52

Ali is in sin, she should not be doing this, right? There's a lot of people who believe that. Or she, it's perfectly fine for a female to give ethical opinions on a non -ecclesiastical stage.

01:15:09

There's nothing, she's not in sin, and there's a dearth of male leadership, allegedly.

01:15:16

So there's nothing, so she should be able to do that. I actually think there's a validity to both those things, to be quite honest with you.

01:15:22

The goal though, I think should be in a political sense, you want ethical instruction being given primarily by men.

01:15:33

That doesn't mean there's not place for testimonies. That doesn't mean there's not places for declarations of the truth.

01:15:39

But I'm saying when you're giving the marching orders, when you are in a position of authority, giving instruction, and you're at the top of the hierarchy, people should listen to you because of your rank.

01:15:55

That's something that God intended for men. But I have no hard feelings about Ali for doing, in fact,

01:16:00

I'm actually glad that she said this. I'm glad for really anyone, including someone that I consider to have a terrible character like Nick Fuentes.

01:16:07

I'm glad for anyone who's willing to say something true that needs to be said, that pornography is bad.

01:16:13

You should stop looking at it if you look at it. I'm totally fine with that. So now I will make myself available for all the pushback and I will consider whatever pushback you have.

01:16:25

I do have a few more things to get to, but I feel like this is probably something that I should give attention to now before, we'll sort of cut the show into three parts.

01:16:33

So I'll just respond to some of this right now. John is going soft on woke feminist

01:16:40

Ali Beth Stuckey. Thanks, Dr. Bob. Yes, very soft. Timothy learned faith through his mother and grandmother.

01:16:47

Yes, very true. That's the example I brought up. John, please do an episode examining different Nine Marks articles.

01:16:54

I may do that. Dr. Bob, can Truman ever not third way in his writings? Matt says,

01:17:02

I love John's comment on X about PCH church names. Oh yeah, I was saying they have like five names. You guys need some more names.

01:17:08

HS, John, do you have a written article criticizing Rita all black or can you recommend a good written? No, nothing written.

01:17:14

I just did a podcast on it. Cosmic treason, let's see. What's authority when you're in a position where you have the right to tell others, people what to do?

01:17:26

Oh, that's an interesting way to put it. So the right to put, so you can tell people what to do or you could give them ethical instruction of some kind but you don't have the right to do it unless you're in a position of authority.

01:17:37

I think I might like that. I don't wanna just like embrace something right away when I first hear it because I haven't considered every implication but reading that at first cosmic treason,

01:17:47

I think I'm tracking with you on that. That's probably a good way to put it.

01:17:54

You have a right to say something when you have the office to say it from. Let's see.

01:18:03

Allie Bath both engaged in false witness as shown by the fact that she was falsely speaking for other women that they want and need men.

01:18:11

Man, I don't, maybe I'm ignorant of this. I don't know what this is referring to. Allie was also a false witness because she doesn't want masculinity.

01:18:19

She has attacked Brian Sovea and Michael Foster on Twitter over patriarchy. Well, it could be that we have some strong disagreements.

01:18:26

That may be the case. I haven't seen those attacks. Not to me, if I have, I don't remember seeing them.

01:18:32

So maybe I have, and I just don't remember it. I would agree with Michael Foster, I think, at least everything

01:18:38

I've heard from him on the subject of patriarchy. And then cosmic treason is giving me a lot of information here.

01:18:47

She is usurping authority by telling men what they have to do. And she's doing this rather than Titus II telling the women what to do.

01:18:54

She should be teaching them to treat them. So the context was she was, she had just finished talking about what women need to do.

01:19:02

So make sure that that's clear. But this is also another kind of like gray area in my mind.

01:19:13

Was it a plea for, a cry for help? Was it like a, so here's a good example for you, okay?

01:19:20

Megan Basham, I had her on the podcast not too long ago. And some of you disagree with that, right? This is an issue I have thought through though.

01:19:26

And I actually think it's perfectly permissible to do that. One of the analogies that I know Megan says is like, there's a difference between firing ammunition and putting ammunition in the gun.

01:19:37

Like she wants to make ammunition for others who are male presumably to use in the context of ecclesiastical things.

01:19:45

And if, Megan's always been receptive. If there's ever a time that I've noticed online, like, man, you're getting into the, you're getting into the dirty stuff here on X.

01:19:58

Cause X could get dirty, right? It could, you punch someone, you punch it back and stuff. She's very receptive.

01:20:03

Now it's, I don't see every comment or anything like that. But I think she understands this.

01:20:08

I know both Allie and Megan have husbands. They have families and the husbands are part of the decision -making process.

01:20:15

At least that's what they say, right? I don't know Allie, I do know Megan more. And I think what

01:20:21

Megan does as a journalist is very beneficial because she is researching what's happening. And then she is telling you, here are the facts.

01:20:28

Here are what these people believe. Sometimes she's making connections.

01:20:33

Here is the reason that this person is lying over here. They said this before, but now they're saying this.

01:20:40

And a journalist can track those things, can record those things, and then put them in the hands of people who can actually use them to struggle authority out of the hands of those who are wielding it in an unfaithful manner.

01:20:56

I think that's, and you're gonna be making moral determinations when you do this kind of thing. That's inescapable, right?

01:21:03

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't see anything in scripture that would say there's anything necessarily wrong with that.

01:21:09

I think where it becomes a problem is when you occupy the place of, the office of a leader in the culture, in society, and you start ordering men around.

01:21:24

And there's a difference, I think, between a plea for help, which women are, so give you an example, like this typical fairy tale, where you're gonna say the damsel in distress from the dragon or something, right?

01:21:38

The damsel in distress is saying, help me, there's a dragon. Help me.

01:21:46

Some of you single guys really would like to hear this from someone, and my prayer is that you will, hopefully sooner rather than later.

01:21:52

Help me, I'm lonely. I need a man. Is that giving you, is that ordering you around?

01:22:00

Is that dominating you? The domineering is where it becomes a problem.

01:22:05

Or is that a plea for help, right? Is Ali, when she says, men, we need you, is that a plea for help?

01:22:13

Is that a statement of fact? Men, we do need you? Or is it a dominating thing?

01:22:19

Is she domineering over men? I think that's a significant difference.

01:22:27

And if I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt, I'm gonna say she's, it sounds to me like she's giving a plea for help.

01:22:35

But again, I'm still, I'm saying this is a political context, I'm assuming it is.

01:22:40

Turning Point USA, I think that's a political organization, right, Charlie Kirk's organization. I prefer that in the realm of politics, that Turning Point's its own kind of hard gray area, because they have

01:22:51

Turning Point faith, and they have Turning Point. And then they do things that look like spring break, throwing t -shirts out in the audience, like a youth rally.

01:23:01

So it's hard sometimes for me to tell exactly what's going on at a Turning Point event. But if it's a political thing, then yeah,

01:23:08

I think it's appropriate. The standard should be, what we should be shooting for is having men there.

01:23:13

Even though it's not technically a sin, if men aren't stepping up for a woman to be involved in that.

01:23:20

But God designed men for that kind of thing. So I'm still very much there. But I do think people are having a very strong knee -jerk reaction.

01:23:28

Some of it I understand. It's like, for years, you're told that toxic masculinity is terrible, that women are morally superior to men, and these narratives kind of get you deeply.

01:23:42

And then anything that might look like that, you go after. I get that, I understand that.

01:23:48

I don't, I think we gotta be careful. It's not always that way. Even though it's certainly happening, and continues to happen.

01:23:56

And as I said at the beginning of the program, to PCA, there's people in the PCA that still seem to want to pave a way for women to do shepherding when they're not shepherds.

01:24:05

That's clearly in violation of universal principles that God has laid down. Caleb says, we need men, but they can't lead us.

01:24:17

I guess that's a direct, oh, is that a direct quote from Allie Bestucky? I don't think so. They can't lead us? I don't think she said that.

01:24:25

Cosmic Treason, let's see. How would you, okay, there's a discussion now going on about hyper patriarchy.

01:24:33

Women are allowed to call, send, send. This conversation is strained, says beautifully. Listen, I gotta,

01:24:42

I'm, if I wasn't on X, truth be told, I probably wouldn't have even thought about it.

01:24:49

But I saw the blow up over this and I gotta beat people where they're at. And some of these people are in my audience, right?

01:24:55

So I gotta navigate this, thinking through all the issues so that we can think through it rightly.

01:25:03

It may be strange, but there's definitely people out there who are, and I understand it, they're coming to terms with the fact that we need patriarchy, right?

01:25:11

The Bible gives leadership positions to men, certainly in the home, certainly in the church.

01:25:17

And based on the natural law and examples we're given in scripture, it is assumed that in the political office, it should be men.

01:25:25

So when you're coming to those terms, especially when you're in the cage stage, every nail is, everything becomes a nail because what you have in your hand is a hammer.

01:25:39

So J .R. says, I do wonder why Allie's husband isn't the forward facing one.

01:25:44

Why is it her and not him? I have no clue. I think her platform is appealing to women, to be quite honest with you.

01:25:51

I think that's why she was speaking. I just assume this. I don't even, it's not even something that I look into her research.

01:25:58

I've just always assumed, of course, Allie's a podcaster for women. Of course, when she does conferences, women's conferences, that's for women.

01:26:05

When she speaks in an event that men are present for, I've never thought that the intention was for her to have authority over men.

01:26:14

It was more gathering information so that men could lead better in their homes and in the church.

01:26:21

And I'll point to Tom Askell as an example of that. He had Allie down at Founders. And Tom Askell's very much a patriarchal figure.

01:26:29

I don't think that he was intending for Allie to be assuming a role of leadership in that particular context.

01:26:40

So that's been always my assumption. Now, if she's looking to be a pastor or run for office or she wants to outclass her husband and call the shots in the home, those are very, like, you can bring in all the things

01:26:59

I've been talking about the Bible and say that she's in the wrong. Okay, Kayla Moody, not a direct quote, just an accurate description of her beliefs.

01:27:07

Okay, well, if you have a direct quote that says that men shouldn't lead, I would definitely be curious to see that for sure.

01:27:13

And I have no problem condemning that. Andrew Smith, she was very specifically telling men what to do, what to be.

01:27:23

Right, I would just point back to the example I gave a moment ago. In what way is she doing it?

01:27:29

Is it a cry for help? It is a statement of fact, or is it an assertion of authority that, like Jordan Peterson, go clean your room kind of stuff.

01:27:41

Okay, I think for those who are the most concerned about this, the best thing you can do is work toward the best that you can, getting into those rooms, filling those positions, leading culturally, especially politically.

01:27:56

And if you do that well, I really think if men, if we can really step up and do this kind of thing well, because we're designed for it, guys.

01:28:04

Here's the thing, we're designed for politics. We're designed for war. We're designed to lead in the home. We're designed to lead in the church.

01:28:11

We can make sure that those spaces where women are, whether they're there from good motives or not,

01:28:19

I'm talking more about cultural, political things. We can make sure that it's not them, it's us. I think one of the things,

01:28:27

I'm not saying it's the only thing, but one of the things we definitely have to do is over and over prove ourselves to be virtuous.

01:28:34

And when I keep hearing that very people who have a track record of not being virtuous at all are getting so many likes, getting so much traction, right?

01:28:47

And I'm being told that they're unique. I gave the example of Nick Fuentes earlier. He's not the only one though, like he's unique.

01:28:55

No one's doing what he's doing. No one's doing what Elijah Schaefer's doing. No one's saying the things that Andrew Tate is willing to say.

01:29:01

You know, the list goes on. If those are the guys, right?

01:29:06

If it's coming from that world that are gonna be like the next male leaders who are gonna replace these people,

01:29:12

I'm just telling you right now, any woman seeing that is gonna say, oh no, that's not an option.

01:29:21

These aren't men that you want having authorities. Aren't men you want having any kind of role in power or making ethical decisions.

01:29:29

Qualifications for an elder are first the personal virtue. And then it comes into faithful and little, faithful and much.

01:29:37

If you can't be faithful in the little, I don't want those men. And if those are the men that are popular, I don't want those guys in those positions, right?

01:29:44

I'm gonna, we have to have very virtuous men ascending the ranks to replace the women who are in these places.

01:29:53

And this is not a statement of recommendation that I'm giving you. This isn't a statement of, I mean,

01:29:58

I do recommend men pursue these things, but I'm not telling you like in a sense of like, this is what

01:30:04

I want to be. This is just what is. That's just how it is right now. I'm just, it's a statement of fact.

01:30:11

So that's my analysis of that whole thing. Okay, I didn't please anyone.

01:30:19

We need men, yes. And we are, our society is doomed without them. I did a sermon, what is it?

01:30:26

Last year, maybe the year before, Act Like Men. I also have a chapter in Against the Waves, Act Like Men.

01:30:32

And I basically say that like every single issue roots back into a problem, like on some level of a lack of male leadership.

01:30:40

If we actually had male leaders, virtuous male leaders, we would not have the social problems we have.

01:30:46

And it's the lack of them that we feel so sorely in every arena. I am more motivated to make sure virtuous male leaders get into positions of influence than I am almost anything else.

01:31:00

I really am. And it's one of the reasons I even say the hard things that cost me sometimes to young men about like, look, don't get involved with stuff that distracts you, that wastes your time.

01:31:11

Don't disqualify yourself at early stages. Don't mess around with dumb stuff.

01:31:17

Look around you at the people that God has given you to love. Find people to love in your local proximity and environment, and then level up in every area.

01:31:27

Pursue virtue, pursue righteousness, obey the law of God. Find a mentor. Look as hard as you need to look.

01:31:35

Look for a wife if you don't have one. Look as hard as you need to look. Don't stop looking. I know I get, I'm just a boomer.

01:31:41

I don't understand. No, I think I do understand. These are things that are universal. This is how God designed you. You're meant to walk uphill.

01:31:49

Keep walking uphill. Don't get discouraged. Don't, and I put a post out there on X about this earlier today, but don't just look around you and see all the things to complain about.

01:31:58

There's plenty. And look in black pill and think like, oh, it's all arrayed against me. It's the gynocracy.

01:32:04

I can't ever, I'm not gonna be able to get a girlfriend. I'm not gonna be able to afford a home. I'm not gonna be able to break my addictions to various things.

01:32:13

I just might as well, you know, rage online about it, but I'm not gonna do constructive things. I'm not saying that's everyone, but I know there's people in that category because I know them.

01:32:22

Don't do that. That's, find goals, work towards them, and then find a bigger goal, work towards it.

01:32:30

Keep doing that. Be the best version of yourself. Take on leadership so that we don't need women feeling like they even need to be in those roles.

01:32:40

And then the women who want to usurp the men, yes, absolutely call it out, but there's a competition there.

01:32:49

And I see my little daughter is walking in the room during the live stream. Darlene, I got a,

01:32:55

I'm doing a podcast right now. Are you gonna show me your bunny and your baby? I can't, right now, where's your mom?

01:33:03

Where's, my family isn't even put together right now. See, I don't wanna show you on camera, even though you're the cutest thing in the world right now.

01:33:11

Can you go find mommy? I'm gonna do the podcast, okay? All right, you go run in the other room.

01:33:17

I don't know if she understands me yet. Here, okay, yes, yes. We have her toy bunny, here.

01:33:24

Go, go play with the baby and the buddy. Thank you, Danielle. She just walked in.

01:33:30

I'm in the middle of a live stream. All right, well, those are the women in my life.

01:33:38

Okay, a few more comments, and then I'm gonna finish the podcast with some more important things, especially regarding the same -sex marriage issue.

01:33:47

We got a debate forming, let's see in the chats. Okay, Caleb says, we need men.

01:33:56

When men try to lead, we attack them. Therefore, we need men just not to lead.

01:34:02

I don't, maybe I'm lacking the context. I don't know what the attacks you're referring to are over, or it is true that men who are masculine are going to be attacked just because they're being masculine, but you just keep going, right?

01:34:20

That's, you don't stop. You, in fact, that's a time to, with masculine maturity.

01:34:27

So in a gentle but firm way, sometimes if the threat's too great, not even gentle, you double down and you keep going.

01:34:35

That's what a man does. I mean, that's what I've had to do my whole life. I think many in the, listening to podcasts would certainly testify to the same thing.

01:34:47

John, don't let your daughter speak with authority over us. I know, she just, she ordered me around. I could see, she was saying with her eyes to me, even though she can't speak yet, daddy, come play with me.

01:34:56

And I was getting a little, it's like, you don't order me around, Missy. Listen, I'm the man of this house.

01:35:01

You don't tell me to come play with you. Oh, okay.

01:35:07

If there's more comments coming in, if you put the question mark, I'll be sure to see it in a better way.

01:35:13

And I will get to it at the end. I wanna talk about a few more things as we navigate the chaos that is modernity.

01:35:21

Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation. I thought he did a good job, but this became a battle line.

01:35:29

There's been speculations that Heritage is distancing itself from Tucker Carlson over the past 24 hours. I wanna put that to rest right now.

01:35:35

Here are my thoughts. I'm gonna be so brief on this. I actually think I agree with Kevin Roberts. Basically, what Kevin Roberts said was, there's views that this person he interviewed has that I do not agree with at all.

01:35:47

And I find them morally repugnant. Now, he didn't go into the details. If I were making the speech, would

01:35:53

I have given some examples? Probably, like I did online, but whatever. I don't think he has to.

01:35:59

Just saying I find these views repugnant, but it doesn't mean, because Tucker Carlson interviewed him,

01:36:05

Tucker's endorsing those views necessarily. And then

01:36:12

I'm not gonna do like the third degree separation thing where we just pull back from Tucker. So I actually, I got into this a little bit with Bethel, is it

01:36:18

McGrew? And she was against this. And basically, I think what it came down to is,

01:36:24

I think our principles were the same, but she thinks Tucker is like, has been a bad actor for a while.

01:36:31

And so this is just like the latest example of Tucker being a bad actor. And I'm thinking, I don't know if Tucker is a bad actor.

01:36:37

I think he just made a move that I certainly think is probably not wise.

01:36:42

It should have, he's gonna interview someone like this that has these very strong ethical issues, these very deep, wrong ethical issues that he's known for.

01:36:53

You should at least talk about those things. And Tucker did a little, but you should push back on those things, right?

01:36:59

There's gonna have to be a combative part of this interview. It can't all be as affable as it was.

01:37:05

That's really my only critique. I mean, I don't have a problem. He's a journalist. He interviewed Vladimir Putin. He's gonna interview different people.

01:37:11

Now, it's true. He went in on Ted Cruz like super hard, right? And then letting someone with,

01:37:18

I would say, at least on a personal level, okay, a personal level, much worse baggage, and has set an example with that baggage.

01:37:30

He just sort of lets him get away with much of this. Maybe he didn't do his research. I don't know, but he's a journalist.

01:37:37

I think that things could change, people change. Sometimes their true colors start to show, and maybe

01:37:44

I'm not the first to see it. I don't know, but I thought, yeah, that's a good way to do it. Say, look, we have lines, we have gates, we have standards.

01:37:53

These views are not in keeping with them, but I'm not just going to distance myself from someone because a donor wants me to do that.

01:38:01

When they haven't done any, maybe they did something foolish, but someone does one thing that's foolish, it doesn't always mean we have to distance ourselves from them, like they're gonna blow up everything.

01:38:14

We'll see how well this segment ages. Maybe it won't age well, I don't know, but that's kind of where I come down on it.

01:38:23

Let's talk about, do we have time for this? Do we have time for the politics of Gen Z?

01:38:29

We're gonna have to. The young are not interested in politics. This is from Chronicles Magazine. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while.

01:38:35

The media constantly encourages the youth to participate in politics, but we should be happy that typically they are more interested in bad pop music, worse

01:38:42

Hollywood movies, and voting or political activism. When they do get involved, their political ideas reliably tilt heavy towards vapid and idealistic and too often towards the revolutionary.

01:38:54

No kidding. A political scientist, Melissa Deckman, who previously authored a book on the role of women in the

01:39:00

Tea Party Movement, has now written a book full of helpful insight into just how politically out there today's youth are.

01:39:06

Of course, it was not Deckman's intentions to criticize Gen Z's role in politics. In fact, she came off as sympathetic to the most extreme among the so -called

01:39:14

Zoomer Generation's political activists, but her evidence speaks for itself. The book is based on 87 interviews with Gen Z activists, 15 focus groups with college students, and two national surveys of young people in this generation.

01:39:27

Deckman gives us a lot of activists' accounts of how they see the world and what they want the world to be like.

01:39:35

Our planet is dying. If we don't have a planet in 10 years, there's no point in fighting for all these other issues.

01:39:41

Oh, that's great. The most oppressed group in the world is black women. We are dealing with so many systemic issues.

01:39:47

These are just quotes. I've been in school, a shooter drill since third grade. I don't know how to explain the feeling of being 10 and locked in the bathroom for an hour.

01:39:57

To meaningfully engage. Actually, this is funny. Apparently this child has never listened to Robert Klain hilariously discuss the nuclear

01:40:06

Holocaust drills that all of those in his generation experienced during the Cold War and somehow survived, yeah.

01:40:11

Yeah, people forget that. Like my parents' generation literally was afraid that at any moment, a nuclear

01:40:18

Holocaust might kill them. And so they did drills in school. We never hear about, though, the baggage and just all the harmful psychological stuff that that caused, but yeah.

01:40:29

To meaningfully engage with politics requires you to talk about what you're passionate about. Straight, cisgender men are not socialized to express what makes them feel scared or hopeful.

01:40:38

A lot of these emotions are so central to activism, are emotions that men are told not to express or feel.

01:40:45

Young women have more to worry about than young men. They don't have to think about the things we have to think about.

01:40:51

It's just, this just goes on and on and on. And it's mostly just leftist stuff. So basically, yeah, sorry, big black pill here.

01:41:02

A look at the generation's demographics gives insight into the causes of their politics. More than four in 10

01:41:08

Gen Z women and six in 10 LGBTQ identified Zoomers are religiously unaffiliated.

01:41:16

Women have been more likely to earn a college degree than men for a century now. An educational gap between men and women is growing.

01:41:25

I just mentioned that earlier. Education correlates neatly with political participation. It exposes children to leftist propaganda on every unimaginable issue.

01:41:35

The more time an individual spends in educational institutions, the more likely they're going to be captured by the reigning elite ideology.

01:41:45

Gen Z, let's see, began in the mid nineties. The oldest members were college juniors and seniors when

01:41:51

Trump won in 2016. The defeat of Hillary Clinton was a collective trauma for them. Gen Z women and LGBTQ individuals are especially psychologically, or no, psychically.

01:42:03

Okay, I guess that's the word, damaged by the event. They tend to be much more negative about the state of America than men in their generation.

01:42:11

Okay, it goes on about the role of social media and reinforcing things. Gen Z has a greater concern about politics of reproductive rights, all these other issues.

01:42:24

Menstrual justice, okay. Sexual radicalism goes deeper in Gen Z. 25 % of Zoomers identify as LGBTQ with a much higher than in the general population.

01:42:39

Gen Z is considerably more anti -capitalist. I've told you before, we're getting socialism. I just don't see any way around it.

01:42:45

We're going to get socialism. The amount of debt Gen Z's in, it naturally lends itself to this.

01:42:53

I have many stories of personal interactions with these Gen Z activists in my professional life. So we're getting a revolution.

01:43:01

That's basically the prediction here. And some of you might be like, what about the

01:43:06

Gen Z men, right? Well, the Gen Z, here's the thing, and things can change, but I was looking up the stats on this today.

01:43:14

X, right? If you look on X, you think things are just like tilted right wing to the point that even just very sometimes egregious things are being, shocking things are being promoted there as mainstream.

01:43:29

The thing about X though, is it is eight or 9 % of the social media share.

01:43:35

Worldwide. Facebook is 30%. YouTube, I think is like 24, 25%.

01:43:42

It's, X is actually one of the platforms that has a lower amount of participation than other social media platforms.

01:43:52

Gen Z's on TikTok. I'm wondering, let me ask a grok real quick. TikTok. And what's the other one?

01:43:59

Instagram? TikTok and Instagram. Percentage of social media share.

01:44:10

See what it says. I am curious, given how low X is.

01:44:17

Share of, okay, so it's giving me a different. So share of total social media users on TikTok, 37 % and 35 to 37 % on X.

01:44:27

I think it's using a different metric than I was. Let's see. Compare it to X. Let me compare apples with apples here.

01:44:35

So X, well, it's telling me that X is, ooh, 11 to 12%.

01:44:40

Okay. So that's based upon users. So not activity, but users.

01:44:47

Okay, so much less people on X. Gen Z does slant pretty hard left.

01:44:53

I was actually just looking at all these stats and it's, I want to believe,

01:44:58

I help my unbelief. I want to believe that things are going right wing. And it's sort of like dystopian in a way because you do have all these factors.

01:45:07

Charlie Kirk's assassination, the response to that, the hunger for spiritual things, the, what's happening with Gen Z males.

01:45:16

I think overall, all generations kind of rejecting more or less the wokeness. That's all happening, but at the same time, it's like you're sitting on this bomb that feels like it's going to be going off and it's going to reverse all of this stuff.

01:45:30

Not saying that, I'm not predicting that. I'm not saying that it's a foregone conclusion, but I am saying with the trends, with all the research

01:45:37

I've been looking into, it looks like that's probably what's going to happen. And this plays into an article

01:45:47

I wrote. I don't know if the Federalist is going to run it. I sent it to them. We'll see if they do. If not, I'll just probably send it to TrueScript.

01:45:54

And yeah, the Federalist, they said they were going to review it. I'm assuming I'm not going to get an answer till Monday. So I'll wait till Monday and then

01:46:00

I'll publish it on TrueScript if not. But I wrote an article on the, YouGov's 54 % of same -sex marriage support, which seems like a big outlier.

01:46:10

And it actually is. So they published this poll and it said that 54 % of American adults support legalized same -sex marriage ceremonies, which seems awfully low, at least in recent years.

01:46:23

They did one last year that showed also 54 % support same -sex marriage as a constitutional right.

01:46:30

26 % believed it should be decided by the states. So that was last year, the same poll.

01:46:37

Pew Research, however, found that 67 % of US adults support legalized same -sex marriage, including 55 % of self -identified

01:46:44

Christians. Now among evangelicals, the lone bulwark, it is 36%. So that's still way too high, 36 % of evangelicals.

01:46:55

Gallup reported 68 % support among American adults. So very close to Pew. And all the other polls, which are like three or four, they all hovered between 67 and 72 % in the last year or two.

01:47:08

So this is total outlier, this latest poll. According to Gallup, since 2022, the trend has been for Republicans to favor legislation, or sorry, legalization less strongly at around 41%, while Democrats maintain high support at 88%.

01:47:23

Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute found that support for legalization among Gen Z declined from 77 to 71.

01:47:30

The age group least supportive of legalization are the baby boomers. So all this stuff you hear on X about the boomers are the ones that are for,

01:47:39

I saw comments like this. They're the ones that are the most supportive. That's not true at all. They're the least supportive of same -sex marriage.

01:47:45

At 61%. The high support among younger adults is likely connected to the fact that one in five

01:47:51

Americans ages 18 to 29 identify as LGBTQ, and it's a much higher rate than any other generation.

01:47:57

There's only 3 % that are in that category for the baby boomers, for example. So then

01:48:05

I get into analyzing this, and I pull up a bunch of other stats on Gen Z and just give my ideas. So I'm gonna wait till all the articles out there to talk about this.

01:48:18

Looks like I'm frozen. I don't know what's going on. Maybe I will restart my camera.

01:48:25

I don't know what's going on here. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait a minute, see if things correct themselves.

01:48:46

Okay, I'm back. I don't know what happened there. I'm gonna just keep streaming here, and we're gonna try to finish the episode.

01:48:52

I had a temporary frozen situation with my browser. Okay, another few issues

01:49:00

I wanna talk about. The federal judge, a federal judge just said that USDA must pay

01:49:07

SNAP benefits in November. This just happened. These judges, man, look, we're in a problem here.

01:49:16

The food security, there are states that are basically saying we're in an emergency situation if we can't pay

01:49:21

SNAP program benefits. And they're probably right. They're probably right. People can't eat, you're gonna have rioting.

01:49:28

You're gonna have all kinds of problems, crime. That's not a good situation to be in, but it begs the question, what's the purpose?

01:49:36

What's the point of a government shutdown? Why even have a government shutdown? What's affected, the national parks?

01:49:44

I guess the military doesn't get their pay. That's kind of a big deal. I got a donor stepped in to pay, but if welfare continues on, what's the point, right?

01:49:54

I mean, this is like, it's sort of like the administrative state just keeps on chugging along, no matter what squabbles the

01:50:03

Republicans and Democrats have. No matter what disagreements politicians have with each other, no matter what the will of the

01:50:09

American people is, the administrative state will just keep going.

01:50:16

That's the lesson I'm pulling from this. Kind of a dismal thing. I know I'm giving you all these black pills, but it's like, normally when you have sides that disagree with each other this much, what happens is there's a gridlock, there's a crisis that comes from it, there's an emergency, and then this either becomes war or this becomes a solution, right?

01:50:37

The problem is you keep kicking the can down the road with stuff like this. The pressure to come up with an actual solution is less.

01:50:49

The welfare checks will go out. It doesn't matter. That gives you an idea of who's actually making decisions on political, like who's actually running the government.

01:51:01

Right? It is a managerial elite that are loyal to themselves involved in a system, really.

01:51:08

I mean, it's not just one person. It's not even just like a group of people. It's a large group of people who have these mutual, and now

01:51:15

I know it took one judge to do this, but it's like the system is very interested in propagating itself and continuing.

01:51:25

Government Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I thought this was great. Here's a white pill. She has a new gospel -inspired 1033 initiative that offers a hand up, not a handout.

01:51:35

She says she's offering residents of her state, Arkansas, a hand up, not a handout, through the state's new 1033 initiative, which derives its name from the gospel of Luke and vows to uplift

01:51:44

Arkansas in crisis by connecting them with local faith and community partners who can meet their needs. It comes from Luke 1033, which is the story of the

01:51:52

Good Samaritan. And this is a pilot program that they're trying out to see if it works.

01:51:58

I think it's a great idea. And you might say, well, we don't need any welfare. It's okay. Yeah, I wanna get to the point where the government's out of it, but you have to deal with reality.

01:52:08

Where are we at? What are the conditions we need to work towards so that we can actually get to the point of charity again, and not welfare?

01:52:20

It takes a process. We didn't get here in a day. We're not gonna get out of all of it in a day.

01:52:28

Okay, Megan Basham just made a really great post. She just called attention to the fact that Donald Trump actually is the one who made a good post.

01:52:36

Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for the mass slaughter.

01:52:42

I am making Nigeria a country of particular concern. He's gonna have Congressman Riley Moore, together with Chairman Tom Cole of the

01:52:48

House Appropriations Committee, report back to him on the state of the situation in Nigeria.

01:52:54

You know this is an issue near and dear to my heart. I've talked about it many times. Equipping the persecuted, Judd Saul's organization is going into Nigeria, helping the persecuted

01:53:03

Christians. Please consider, if you have the kind of resources to be able to do this, helping them out with that.

01:53:09

It's a political win to have the president categorize

01:53:14

Nigeria as this. And I know some of you with a very humble foreign policy do not wanna see this. This is what I would say.

01:53:20

I'm also someone who wants a George Washington foreign policy. If though we are going to get involved in places like Palestine, we should be getting involved in places where our brothers and sisters in Christ are dying in very large numbers.

01:53:34

It's a Holocaust itself that's going on there, basically. It's a genocide. That's, I mean, it's awful what's happening.

01:53:41

So if we're gonna focus on these other countries, might as well be focusing on Nigeria. Okay, well, that's the podcast.

01:53:49

I'll take any questions and then that will be it. Have I thoroughly offended everyone yet?

01:53:55

Ha ha ha ha. John just mentioned Suave and he's been off the rocker.

01:54:02

I've been off the rocker or someone else's, I don't know. I don't know what you said, brother.

01:54:09

I'm not following you on a regular basis or anything. I see you in John's chat. It's John, it's J -O -N, unless you're talking about a different John.

01:54:16

A lot, which I always appreciate. I'm not too offended, but there is a Jahan, which is the

01:54:21

H, and then there's John and that's me. Cosmic Treason, you're essentially giving a counter proposal.

01:54:27

What if God cursed today's, okay, is this even for me? I don't think, it's hard for me sometimes.

01:54:34

I'm popping in the middle of discussions and I think they're for me and then I realized they're not. Pastor Michael Grant says, hello all.

01:54:40

Hello, Michael. Matt Ruff says, we don't need federal welfare, but state or local can still be useful until Christ's church gets its act together.

01:54:50

Well, the members of Christ's church are paying a whole lot of money that's going into welfare programs. So this has to be scaled back in phases.

01:54:58

It is a delicate thing. You end it immediately, you're going to have like a civil unrest like we've never seen it.

01:55:08

Stormy Squad says, I'm 100 % for atheist, Jewish and Hindu tax dollars going to protect

01:55:13

Christians. The wealth of the wicked stored up for the righteous. I mean, it's a proverb, right? Is that apply there?

01:55:20

I mean, I would think a lot of wicked people we could help some Christians out there who need it.

01:55:30

All right. Well, I'm not getting involved in the back and forth that I don't know if I'm involved in.

01:55:37

Sam says, what controversial things are we discussing? I just popped on. Oh boy, Sam, we're ending the podcast is what we're doing.

01:55:43

Good. So we are going to come back next week.

01:55:49

I'll probably do one podcast. If that, it's going to be rough just because I got a lot going on, but I would look forward to seeing you at the

01:55:55

Truth is Forever Conference, truthisforever .org down in Palm Harbor, Florida. And that's where you can come and you can ask me anything and you can tell me anything you want to tell me.

01:56:07

You can, you know, whatever. It's going to be a great time.

01:56:12

We're talking about discernment. So that's the topic. I mean, I'm not veering from that, but you know, if you have questions about other stuff,

01:56:18

I would love to get into anything. I don't know if we're doing a panel. Those are always fun, right? A Q and A, maybe. Oh, we have two, okay.

01:56:25

Two last questions or one last question. What conversations that matter be considered giggy?

01:56:31

But I think so. I think so. I think Carl Truman is lamenting the fact that guys like me and guys like AD Robles or, you know, and others who have critiqued big

01:56:44

Eva, we've made, had traction, but I think it's more than that. But I think, yes, I'm giggy

01:56:49

Eva. There you go. And everyone stood up and said, I'm Spartacus. All right, guys. God bless.