Are People Who Use The Term Safe Space in a Positive Sense Exceptionally Immature?
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With safe spaces becoming more and more common, especially amongst college campuses, many questions need to be raised as a Christian. How do I love others? How does God define love? Does love mean affirming everything about someone else? Can I love someone by telling them the truth even if they don't want to hear it? Can words cause harm? Should I honor someone else's safe space? Find out on this episode of Bible Bashed.
- 00:00
- Yeah, but I mean, like, my goodness, I don't if you're trying to protect people from every danger, particularly boys, you don't protect them from every danger in life.
- 00:08
- You tell them you have courage, you face your fears. And if I know you can do something that you're too scared to do,
- 00:13
- I'm going to make you do it. All right,
- 00:33
- Tim, the question for today's episode is, are people who use the term safe space as a positive term exceptionally childish?
- 00:44
- They are childish. So why, though? I mean, safe spaces are, you know, that's that's something that our culture right now is really invested in.
- 00:56
- I mean, even, you know, even universities are providing safe spaces for their students of for their students of color to protect them from white people and, you know, white whatever the white harm or white fragility or white, you know, whatever.
- 01:16
- So so obviously, you know, something that even the universities don't know.
- 01:23
- So enlighten us. Yeah, I mean, God's wisdom makes me wiser than my adversaries for sure.
- 01:30
- Now, I mean, look, man, growing up, no one ever used this expression. Like this is this is this is an expression with a particular origin.
- 01:39
- So if you if you look up safe space on the academic source,
- 01:45
- Wikipedia, OK, OK, then the infallible
- 01:50
- Wikipedia, the infallible Wikipedia, it says this. Right. So the term safe space refers to places intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism or potentially threatening actions, ideas or conversations.
- 02:04
- Yeah, so totally reasonable to places intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism or potentially threatening actions, ideas or conversations.
- 02:15
- So the term originated in LGBT culture, but has since expanded to include any place where a marginalized minority, you know, example, gender, ethnic, religious can come together to communicate regarding their shared experiences.
- 02:30
- So safe spaces are the most are most commonly located on university campuses in the Western world, but are also but are also at workplaces, as in the case of Nokia.
- 02:40
- But yeah, so there you go. But you're saying you're saying that's bad. The universities are saying that's self -refuting.
- 02:47
- It's self -refuting. Why is it self -refuting? If you're a university, you're supposed to learn.
- 02:55
- I'm trying to have I'm trying to I'm trying to have a serious conversation here.
- 03:00
- All right. There's nothing more immature and childish than a person who can't handle differences of opinion.
- 03:08
- OK, so universities are supposed to be places of learning. They're not supposed to be places where you're protected from ideas that you find particularly threatening.
- 03:15
- OK, well, hang on, Tim. Hang on, Tim. Haven't you heard the haven't you heard the song six and stones may break my bones, but words will do more damage than even this.
- 03:30
- So, yeah, we didn't know how the song goes. No, that's not OK. It's not.
- 03:36
- OK, no. So this is I mean, this is about as immature as you can possibly get.
- 03:42
- OK, OK. So if you if you demand to have some sort of location that is going to be free from, you know, any and every criticism, you know, any conflict, any, you know, bias, quote unquote, or a potentially threatening like ideas, right?
- 04:00
- Or conversations like you. You've just left the realm of being an adult at that point.
- 04:05
- There's no there's no being adult. At that point, like, you know, I don't I don't know how you even function as a normal human being living in that kind of room.
- 04:15
- Well, I mean, if if you're creating a safe space free of bias. So, for example, going back to the, you know, university safe space for people of color, you know, for black people or something.
- 04:29
- To to free them from the oppressive white people that might infringe on their their ideas or whatever.
- 04:38
- Rights for reparations. Right. Aren't you then creating a space filled with bias? Well, that's why it's self -defeating at that point.
- 04:48
- Yeah. I mean, basically what this is, is it's a demand. You're demanding an echo chamber, essentially. Right. Yeah. Demanding an echo chamber where are you going to hear as ideas that you like and agree with?
- 04:57
- And I mean, like any adult, I mean, any adult should know that this is just not the way to do anything well in the world at all.
- 05:05
- So, I mean, the conflict is built into the system of God's creation in such a way that, you know, the Bible is the
- 05:11
- Bible says, like, as iron sharpens iron, so one believer will sharpen another. Iron sharpening iron doesn't happen when you're in an echo chamber environment.
- 05:18
- So, like, like, you know, Paul says it's necessary for divisions to be among you so that the genuine among you will be revealed.
- 05:26
- Now, God's created the world in such a way that conflict produces like careful thought and produces technology, technology even.
- 05:35
- Right. So, I mean, like most of your technological innovations that happen throughout the history of the world have happened because there's problems.
- 05:42
- Every story that exists, like if you want to write a good story, there's no way to write a good story that is conflict free.
- 05:48
- OK. So so there's no you're telling me there's no way to write a story around a safe space that's actually good.
- 05:58
- It would be the dumbest story in the history of the world. Well, what if the story was like, hey, we have the safe space, but then some people who aren't welcome in our safe space come and now there's conflict in our safe space when there should be no conflict in our safe space.
- 06:15
- So then you have then you have like a rising and falling action there. So that might be a pretty good story for where you and then, you know, until you try to imagine what it's like on the other end of the conflict narrative or whatever.
- 06:30
- But, you know, I mean, like the gods have built the world in such a way that conflict is like like central to doing anything well in life is central to thinking.
- 06:39
- Well, you know, the church is like the church. Their early doctrinal formations were clarified in the presence of conflict.
- 06:47
- OK. Yeah. Yeah. Like like you can't even be a good counselor to any other person unless you've experienced significant conflict or trouble in your life so that you know what to say to help people to get out of certain situations.
- 07:01
- Right. So God, you know, talks about like, blessed be the God of all comfort who comforts us where we're in any affliction so that we may comfort others with the same comfort with which we've been comforted in Christ.
- 07:12
- That's a lot of comfort. That's a lot of comfort, man. I mean, but it's part of life. It's like trials are part of life trials, like like test our faith.
- 07:20
- They test our faith. They produce in the steadfastness that we may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. What you have is you have individuals who are trying to like ward off this mean like this divine means of having clear thought.
- 07:32
- Right. Yeah. Of having clear convictions that you communicate. And this is why like woke culture is such a bankrupt culture is because they refuse to debate their ideas because they like what they demand is like shelter from those ideas.
- 07:46
- And so their ideas can't be held up to public scrutiny and tested in that way. And what is that?
- 07:52
- Because then you're challenging me as a person and invalidating my experience and whatever else.
- 07:58
- Right. Right. And the entire act of having to explain myself is an act of patriarchal dominance that you're exerting over me or colonialism and all that.
- 08:05
- You know, so like it's just nonsense. Like this is just a very immature, childish way of dealing with life.
- 08:10
- I mean, part of like you have boys, you have girls, you you teach them to grow up. And part of teaching them to grow up is to not care so much about what other people think about you and to not have to have your way in every single encounter and not have to demand that everyone does everything that you want to do.
- 08:25
- I mean, so it's like a safe space. Culture is essentially like the equivalent of a, you know, a four year old girl who only knows how to play with people when they follow her exact instructions about how to play.
- 08:38
- Yeah, I can. That's not the way life works. And if you think that's the way life works and what you're going to be doing is you're going to be like profound.
- 08:45
- Like all you can do is just get in your little ghetto, right? Get in your little ghetto with like minded people are going to tell you everything they want to hear.
- 08:52
- You're just sheltering yourself from any kind of meaningful relationships that you could ever have in life, because every life, every relationship has some kind of disagreements, have some kind of, you know, conflict, has some sort of criticism, you know, and in like the people who demand this kind of thing, they just have like they're emotionally stunted, childish people who are incapable of having a healthy relationship in their life.
- 09:18
- Right. You know, it reminds me a lot of I was looking it up just now. Proverbs 27, six.
- 09:25
- This says faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
- 09:31
- That's right. And so basically what's being stated here is the person who loves you is going to be the one who comes alongside you and says, like, hey, man, you know,
- 09:42
- I love you. You're wrong, you know, and you need to know that you're wrong with this specific thing.
- 09:50
- Right. But let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It is oil for my head.
- 09:56
- Let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continuing against their evil deeds. Right. But then the opposite of it is, you know, the the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
- 10:05
- So the one who's coming alongside you and just saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The whole time they don't care about you.
- 10:11
- Well, that's flattery. That's essentially what flattery is. Right. Yeah. And so we we're living in a very sycophantic kind of culture that demands that everyone flatter you for no reason, apart from any achievement that you might have on your own.
- 10:24
- You must be agreed with. You must be affirmed. You must be validated. You must be flattered. Like it's flattery on like with no breaks whatsoever.
- 10:31
- Right. So give me flattery or else you hate me. And you're literally Hitler. That sounds totally reasonable.
- 10:41
- Yeah. So, OK, but shouldn't we want to protect people from harm, though?
- 10:49
- It's fun talking this way sometimes and just and just mocking it by trying to take it seriously and failing.
- 10:59
- It's it's so like part of the agenda here is every single word is a nonsense word that has no meaning anymore.
- 11:06
- OK. So I mean, if you want to understand how these dialogues work, you have to ask what every single one of these words mean.
- 11:12
- And so like we've you've just taken a word harm like that. Literally. I mean, growing up, we knew what harm was.
- 11:19
- OK. Yeah, it was violent words, of course. So what we've done is like you've just used a word now that in the minds of many people, they really cannot differentiate between saying
- 11:34
- I disagree with you and saying I welcome to the gas chamber over here, right?
- 11:40
- Like I want to literally put you in a gas chamber and kill you like they so like they have no way of distinguishing between those two very different moral actions.
- 11:48
- Right. So everything is like protecting people from harm. But I don't I don't protect my kids from like the mildest threat of harms.
- 11:58
- My sons, you know, I have an 11 year old son and I had to have a a nine year old son.
- 12:04
- And they somehow found their way on top of my shed in the backyard. And they were there on top of the shed.
- 12:09
- And they were looking at me and they were like, and I just got home from work. And they're like, oh, good.
- 12:15
- Can you help us down? I was like, I'm not helping you down. Like, what do you mean you're not? Oh, good.
- 12:20
- Get us out of this. I'm like, what do you mean we're scared?
- 12:26
- I said, well, you better get I'm scared, you know, you're going to get down. But it's really far down.
- 12:32
- It's like it's not that far. You know, what's the worst that can happen? Go ahead and just just just fall. You know, just just hang off of there and fall, you know, and see what happens.
- 12:40
- You know, and it was fine. You know, they I knew that they wouldn't die. But, you know, I didn't have some vested interest in protecting them from all the dangers that there are life and all the possibilities of danger.
- 12:51
- I mean, like they had a wasp upstairs in their room. And I took and they're like, can you go kill the wasp? I'm not killing the wasp.
- 12:57
- You go kill the wasp. You know, they're like, well, what are we going to do? I don't say you go figure it out.
- 13:02
- Go. Don't come down until you kill the wasp. It's just a wasp. Like, but what if it stings us? It's like, I don't care if it stinks, you know.
- 13:12
- So they went upstairs and they came up with a plan and they killed. They got the wasp.
- 13:17
- No, they killed it. Mission accomplished. Yeah. But I mean, like, my goodness, I don't. If you're trying to protect people from every danger, particularly boys, you don't protect them from every danger in life.
- 13:28
- You tell them you have courage, you face your fears. And if I know you can do something that you're too scared to do,
- 13:33
- I'm going to make you do it. Right. I feel like as a parent, I have a moral obligation that my kids are too scared to do something to make them do it.
- 13:41
- And you know what? Like that teaches them to be the kind of men that one day might be able to defend us from, you know, invading enemies.
- 13:51
- Yeah, like. But right now, I mean, like, can you imagine like how like what would happen if we got attacked by a country and we had to draft all these snowflakes?
- 14:04
- They can't even they can't even handle like scary words. What do you think they're going to do when they're in a real tough situation?
- 14:10
- You know, and I see this all the time on Twitter. You know, it's just like people are just like they just have lost their mind.
- 14:17
- Like we are in trouble, man. We're ready for conquest. I hope that the Chinese people and the Russians aren't hearing this because they they should know like we're just such we're such wimps, man.
- 14:26
- We're in trouble. Well, I mean, if we ever wanted to defeat those guys, we could just, you know, type up some mean tweets and that ought to subdue them.
- 14:36
- I mean, if we just say something like, you know, hey, men can't be women. That's sure to defeat
- 14:41
- China. Silence is violence. I mean, come on. That's foolproof. I don't know what else will stop them if that won't stop them.
- 14:48
- The mean names and the mean. Yeah, it's all going to do it. So final verdict, um, safe space, your child, if you actually think that we need these things, your baby, you need to grow up, man.
- 15:02
- But I mean, on a serious note, serious note, we do have some responsibility to train up the next generation.
- 15:11
- And like you get what you subsidize, man. So like with this kind of thing, like you just like we like Bible says, be strong, you know, be courageous, act like men, strength and courage are the province of men.
- 15:24
- And we're raising a generation of men who've never had dads come along and make them do hard things. And you have a bunch of moms trying to protect them from all the dangerous mean stuff out there in the world.
- 15:33
- And you know, that's what happens when you don't have, like when you have all these broken homes and you don't have like men being men, you get a bunch of wimps that are not able to face just normal everyday life.
- 15:46
- And it's not just the women, you know, it's the men, like it's the men out there who are just like, when someone says something mean to them, they lay on their floor and suck their thumb essentially and cry themselves to sleep, you know, and that's just a recipe for like disaster.
- 15:59
- So, okay. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible bashed.
- 16:08
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- 16:20
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- 16:29
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- 16:40
- Now go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.