The Way the Wind’s Blowing

Travel Update, Family Funeral, and Recent Ministry Encouragement

Hey everyone, welcome to Conversations That Matter cell phone travel edition. I'm actually flying home today, but I've been traveling for the last few days for those who don't know. I was in Arizona at First Baptist Church of Williams and had a wonderful time there and stayed with the pastor's family and they're just wonderful people.

Just a great, if you're looking for a place to move to, I know a lot of people are moving around. Williams, Arizona has many perks to it. And then also I spoke at Grace Bible Church in San Diego, a Reformed Baptist Church, and that was a great time as well and just wonderful people.

I'm just so encouraged and I wanna share more about that with you in the coming weeks, but just how God is raising up people. And oftentimes we don't see them in the limelight because they don't reach the same levels of platforming and institutional power as those who are usually afforded those positions through relationships, but they are still out there and they're still doing a great work and God has not left himself without a witness.

So very encouraged by that, both my wife and I. The main reason though that I've been traveling is my grandfather's funeral was on Saturday. And because we live so far away, it's been visiting with family for days and going through my grandpa's old stuff.

And I mean, the houses that he lived in is gonna be sold. So that's been a whole ordeal with just going through every item that he's owned and whether or not, questioning whether or not different items might have a sentimental value for different members of the family.

And so I have my grandfather's old watch. I'm not even sure if it works, but we'll find out. And just a few things. My wife got some of his old records. He really loved a lot of jazz standards, big band music, and then some classic pop stuff.

I think that's mostly what she got. And so anyway, that's been kind of emotional, but also very good. We scattered his ashes actually yesterday. And so that's what I've been up to lately. So I haven't been able to get to a lot of the questions and some objections that I've received.

And I want to though, because on, I think it was last Thursday, I was doing some work on the house because we're gonna sell my grandfather's house. So we were making it look nice, painting some things.

Responding to the Dave Rubin Surrogacy Reaction

And so I had a little bit of time to listen to some stuff and I thought, well, what should I listen to? And so I want to address something because I've had probably about 15 or so people message me or they've just left comments, but it might even be more than that, about this whole issue with David Rubin and whether or not talk show hosts on The Blaze and The Daily Wire congratulated him for having surrogate children with his quote unquote husband.

So I talked about that and I mentioned it in a podcast, I want to say about a week ago or so, maybe a week and a half ago. And I think I made an offhanded comment, something about every host at The Daily Wire congratulating him according to David Rubin.

And then I released another podcast a few days ago and I just played David Rubin's clip where he talks about how every host at The Daily Wire congratulated him and how The Blaze family was supportive of him and all of that.

And I was concerned maybe I didn't make the necessary qualifications. So first I listened to my podcast because a lot of people were pushing back saying, hold on, there's a lot of people at both The Blaze and The Daily Wire who have said that they disagree with David Rubin and his choice in having these surrogate children and the relationship in which he's calling a family that he's bringing them up in and this is wrong.

And so I was worried. I thought at first, maybe I said something off. So I listened to the podcast and I just want to let everyone know, if you listen to what I said carefully, I did, I think, make the necessary qualifications.

I said, in David Rubin's mind, I said, look, in David Rubin's mind, all the hosts at The Daily Wire are supportive of him. The Blaze is supportive of him. And then at the end, I also mentioned, I hadn't listened to these podcasts at the time, but I said, look, I don't think Steve Dace or Matt Walsh, I think those are the two I mentioned, would be supportive of David Rubin.

And Matt Walsh is at The Daily Wire. Steve Dace is at The Blaze. These are both conservative talk show hosts. I said, it would surprise me if they were supportive of this. So for whatever that's worth, I haven't listened to their podcast, but maybe I opened the door for, maybe David Rubin's exaggerating this a little bit.

So I wanna give you, first, a sequencing issue in all this that might help make sense of why I said what I did. And then I'm gonna get into responding, actually, to, I listened to Ali Stuckey, to Steve Dace, and to Matt Walsh on this topic.

And I just wanna give you my general thoughts, because I think, actually, this is very significant. In any downplaying of this moment, where you have PragerU, The Blaze, their official Twitter accounts, Megan McCain, Megan Kelly, I think there was an anchor at OAN, coming out and congratulating publicly David Rubin on his children through surrogate moms that he's having, this is a moment that I'll remember for a long time.

And any downplaying of this, like it's not a big deal, I think is mistaken. And I think that the responses have really solidified that more, even from those who are disagreeing with this, like Steve Dace, like Matt Walsh, their responses reveal something.

And so I want to just address that real quick. So number one, sequencing here. The sequencing here is, I think it now must have been about a month ago, almost, that Dave Rubin came out publicly and said, well, he didn't even say, he just posted a picture of two babies from, I'm assuming, different surrogate mothers.

And it's him and his alleged husband, I don't know if, I'm not even sure what the nature of that relationship is there, but from other talk show hosts that I've now listened to, they refer to this other individual as Dave Rubin's husband.

So I'm not an expert on Dave Rubin, I don't listen to Dave Rubin, really, I'm not sure about all that. All I know is that he was proud of, look, here's two children that he and his partner or his husband are going to bring into their quote-unquote family there.

And this, of course, is not a traditional family, this is, or a biblical family or anything like that, this is a homosexual couple having two children, basically paying two women to give them their DNA.

And, because you need, I mean, in this whole process, right, you have to have some DNA from the egg. So they, those are their mothers, but then, and I'm assuming it's the same women probably, I don't know, but you have these surrogate mothers bringing these children into the world.

And then once they're brought into the world, it'll be David Rubin and his husband claiming to be, I guess, the husbands or the husband and wife, or what, I don't know how they have it arranged, but that's what the children will know.

And so there's a lot of ways to approach this as a conservative. You could go to stats about children who grow up with moms and dads being more successful. You could talk about marriage being the building block of society and how this undermines the traditional roles and what marriage is supposed to be.

And it really annihilates the very definition of marriage. You could talk about surrogacy and how surrogacy has created, some are calling this like you're just buying humans, like it's a modern slave trade almost, like where are we going with this?

And kind of a slippery slope of where does this end up going where we're gonna have a slave class that just carries children for the people who don't want that and the rich people don't wanna have children.

So there's a lot of different angles that by which I've seen different people, not mainstream people as much, but people commenting, trying to approach this, mostly conservatives who don't have much of a platform.

But I think for me, the big thing that stands out to me in all this is it's the way the wind's blowing, okay? It's the way that the cultural waters are flowing. It's the fact that now if you deviate from that, if you don't think that that's a good arrangement, if you think that's a bad arrangement to normalize, you are on the defense, even if you're a conservative.

That's the significant thing to me in all this. You're on the defense. If you endorse this kind of behavior and think it should be normalized and it's perfectly acceptable, you are acceptable. And this is on the conservative side I'm talking about, political conservatives.

You don't have, you're not on the defense. You're perfectly within the boundaries of even modern conservatism. This is totally fine. And this is a position that I pointed out, I think in the video that I did last week, even 10 years ago, the progressive left would have been, that would have been a controversial thing for someone on the progressive left.

Even if Obama had come out and endorsed this kind of thing, that would be kind of controversial. But now you're seeing within a decade, 15 years to a decade, you see conservative, political conservatives are now endorsing this kind of thing.

And the people who are on the other side who are saying that this is wrong are kind of more outlying voices and they're defensive voices. So sequence wise, you had Matt or David Rubin make this announcement, right?

Then I think maybe it was a week later or so I made this offhanded comment on one of my podcasts about that, the Daily Wire folks congratulating him. I had even a good friend of mine actually. And I totally understand why, John, you wanna make sure you don't paint with a broad brush here.

You don't wanna slander people. There's people like Matt Walsh who are against this, which I totally get. And then I released the video last week and so more people are responding saying, John, hey, hold on, you gotta make sure that you're not painting with a broad brush here.

And I think I did make the necessary qualifications in the video last week. I never said anything that wasn't true. It was very, I was careful. But it definitely left people with the impression that I was very open to the idea that all of the Daily Wire hosts had endorsed this kind of behavior because I was open to it, I didn't know.

And I was just going off of what David Rubin had said. So I'm happy to report to you that that's not exactly true. And here are the possibilities. Number one, Dave Rubin, he released that video before some of the responses came out from Matt Walsh and others.

So in his mind at the time, it was all the hosts at the Daily Wire. Another possibility is he received messages from hosts at the Daily Wire who publicly might even be against it, but then sent him whatever they could privately to congratulate him.

I don't know. That's a possibility, I suppose, though. And then, of course, the other possibility is Dave Rubin's just exaggerating and he's ignoring the pushback that he's received. So he never said that every host at the Blaze, he just said the Blaze family, which certainly does, I can see why people would think that he's saying every host at the Blaze, which Allie Beth Stuckey, I believe she's at the Blaze, and she disagrees with this.

By the way, I think she had one of the best videos against this, and so I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. So anyway, that's some of the sequencing stuff. Now, for me, I'm traveling. I've been traveling about 10 days.

I recorded a bunch of podcasts before I left, and that particular podcast from last week that people are asking about where I mentioned this stuff, that was recorded now almost two weeks ago. And so, and that's part of the deal, right?

If I'm gonna travel and I wanna release podcasts, I mean, I don't really have much of a choice. I have to record stuff, especially when I'm really busy, ahead of time. I don't normally do it that far ahead, but because I knew I was gonna be gone for a while, I did.

And so, it's possible even since then, some of these pod, there's been a little bit more pushback. So just wanna let you know all about that. Now, the content. This is what's significant to me, and this is what I want to talk about.

The Defensive Posture of Political Conservatism

So, I listened to Allie Stuckey, I listened to Matt Walsh, and I listened to Steve Dace while I was painting my Krampus house. And here's the main thing that stuck out to me. Number one, defensive. All three of them were on the defense.

And I thought, why is that? This should be, especially for a conservative, especially for Christian conservatives, right? This shouldn't be something you're very defensive on. This is just basic Orthodox Christian teaching that, I mean, Jesus even said he made them male and female.

There's a difference between the two. There's different roles and responsibilities attached with being male and female, and they're rooted in creation. They're not rooted, they're not arbitrary. They're not just because God decided that, oh, I'm just gonna make men do this and women do this.

Men have to take responsibility to protect and provide, and women have to nurture. No, that stuff is rooted in creation. That's recognized universally until about two seconds ago. And so it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be fair wages for women.

It doesn't mean that women can't take on certain roles that, I mean, you look at the Proverbs 31 woman. She takes on some very managerial roles. But it does mean that there are created differences between men and women that make them unique, different, and they compliment one another because of that.

This is just, this is no duh. This is basic Christian teaching. This should be basic conservative thought, which is why I read the excerpt from Edmund Burke I did last night. I'm like, this is the founder of modern conservatism, according to some.

And look, he's showing in his own mind that, look, family is the building block. And his conception of a family is that traditional nuclear family. He believes that that is the social arrangement that is fundamental to actually creating a fair, just well-functioning society.

So we've already talked about this. Why though should any conservative feel ashamed or not even, ashamed is not even the word necessarily, but maybe, or feel like they have to hide, feel like they have to be delayed in their response, feel like they have to cushion their response when they disagree with that kind of behavior.

Why would that be? That's what doesn't make any sense to me. Why in the world would a conservative have to cushion any of that? Just be direct about it. Say this is wrong. This is against the created order.

Normalizing this is unhealthy for society. It's not good for the kids in the relationship. It confuses them. It creates, I mean, you could open up a lot of the stats about suicides and all kinds of things.

You could talk about how successful one is in school and in life in general, and whether or not this contributes to that. You could talk about whether or not this was God's intention to have homosexual couples then pay for surrogate mothers to carry children of which these children actually have a mother and it's the mother who's carrying them, and whether or not it's acceptable to then tell that child for their lifetime that actually their parents are these two men or two women, or however that works.

And in this case, obviously two men paying surrogate mothers, so two men. The thing is, that's the anomaly. That's the strange thing. That's the experiment. That's what's new, right? That's the innovation.

But we're kind of in this defensive posture, we, I mean, political conservatives, of thinking like, oh, that's actually commonplace, that's normal, that's what people do, and it's acceptable, and in order to deviate from this and share a different opinion on it, then I have to then really cushion it.

I have to qualify everything very strongly because I'm afraid that I might get pushback, and that's what I'm keying into. Why be afraid that you're gonna get pushback? Why is that? That indicates something.

What that indicates is that things are changing. Even on the ground, they're changing. And I'm not trying to say the sky's falling and this is the end of everything we believe in just because of this one thing.

I'm just saying it's a significant barometer. That's all I'm saying. It's very significant to note how political conservatism is changing. So their posture is a big thing to me, their posture. Romans 1, we're going down the Romans 1 slide, and our society and those who object have to be super careful with how they object because if they just come out and say this is evil or this is against God's design or it's toiva, it's abomination according to the Old Testament or whatever, then they're the ones that, they're in trouble.

So they have to be awfully careful with how they approach it. So that's the first thing. And I found in all three of these videos, there was a lot of defense. Now, I think, like I said, Allie Stuckey, I'm very grateful for her.

I think Allie Stuckey did the best job with responding to this. She walked people down the garden road. She showed them, here's what the Bible teaches about all these things. Here's how God created things.

She rooted it in creative design. She did a very good job on all this as far as explaining to people why she could not. But the very fact, this is my whole point, the very fact that she had to do that, that that was kind of a necessary thing, that it wasn't just an obvious, there wasn't an obvious condemnation or an obvious, oh yeah, we don't agree with that.

It had to be very particularly explained, which I do a lot on this podcast. I'm not against that. I think she did a great job. I'm thankful for her. But I'm just saying that indicates something because she's got one of the most conservative audiences you would think.

And yet she even had to like very qualify it, talk about how David, I think she said David Rubin would make a good dad and just really soften it as much as she possibly could, not use some of the harsh words sometimes that scripture uses, but really get into the mechanics of why this would be bad, which I think was a great thing for her to do.

But it just indicates kind of where we're at, the fact that she had to approach it that way. Now, as far as Steve Dace and Matt Walsh, I'm not as positive about their responses to this because I really thought I was gonna hear some big pushback.

We'll start with Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh's response to this whole issue was first, and I love Matt Walsh. I love Steve Dace, by the way. I just gotta tell you, I'm grateful that they said something, all right?

So this isn't meant to be this big critique of them. I'm just thinking they could have been more, it could have been better, okay? So think about Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh, in his segment, he talks about this whole issue.

I guess it's Leah Thomas, I think was the name. I don't know what the male name was there, but I keep hearing Leah Thomas won the swimming thing, and so the championship. And so he did a whole segment on that, of how this is terrible, and this is the end of sports, girls' sports.

This is significant. Literally, the very next segment, after a commercial break, is him answering a question about this situation that we're talking about. And so as he gets into it, most of his energy is spent on the trolls and the critics of him.

And the people that wanted him to respond, and to Dave Rubin, and that situation, and how he doesn't have to respond, and how, and it was just very strange to me. It seemed like there was tension almost in my mind.

I'm like, you just had this whole segment on Leah Thomas, and now you get to Dave Rubin. It's kind of the same issue. He may have even said it's the same issue. There were Steve Dazed did, I think. But now it's like, it was just so different.

He disagreed with it, which was good, but he was more frustrated with the people who wanted him to comment on it. And I guess they were kind of attacking him for not commenting on it, which maybe that was all wrong.

I haven't seen that. But he was more frustrated with that than he was the actual situation with Dave Rubin, and the normalization of this kind of thing. And so I don't know 100 what to make of all that, but I thought it was unusual to me.

Like, this is a big moment to have conservative organizations endorsing that kind of behavior. And he just didn't seem to think it was as big of a deal. In fact, he said with the Leah Thomas stuff, he says, we're winning this, we're winning.

We're winning the gender stuff, all of that. We're starting to win this. Not declaring victory yet, but the tide is turning. And then it's like the very evidence of conservative organizations endorsing Dave Rubin showed the tide's not turning.

The tide's not turning in the same way. Yeah, maybe some parents are upset, like this has gone too far, but on a political level. But then when you think about the infiltration of conservatives and how they're normalizing that kind of behavior when it's one of their own, when it's Dave Rubin, well, that shows actually no.

So there was a lot of tension, just the tide's turning. And then all of a sudden being very defensive of people that wanted him to comment on the Dave Rubin situation when he didn't feel the need to or didn't think it was maybe as big of a deal as they were making it out to be.

It's a pretty big deal. And so I think Matt Walsh and I would totally agree. I think we'd have the same position on this. I think he thinks it's wrong. I think it's wrong. I think it's more the sense of proportion that's being given to this, where we might differ if there's a difference there.

This is a big thing in my mind, and I don't know if it's as big in his mind. Now, Steve Dace, that one was, in my mind, awkward as well. Steve Dace talked about the parable of, or not the parable, but the story of the adulterous woman who's brought before Jesus, and basically puts himself in the position of Jesus.

The conservatives are the Pharisees, and I guess, I don't know who the adulterous woman is. I guess Dave Rubin. And so he basically says that the conservatives are being hypocritical because in the story of the adulterous woman, they bring this woman, but there's no man present.

So they're not following, they're not being consistent. Because there's no man present, they're not actually following the Mosaic law, but they want Jesus to follow the Mosaic law, and they try to entrap him, see if he will or he won't.

And so what basically Steve Dace says is that, well, all these conservatives really upset about Dave Rubin are, and it's not platformed conservatives with institutional power, it's conservatives like you and me.

All those conservatives that are upset about that, well, where were they when Trump was running? They really wanted Trump to win. And let me point out something to you right now. This is not a fair comparison, and the reason is no conservative organization I know of with any mainstream influence said, you know what, we're gonna congratulate, let's go out there and congratulate Donald Trump's adultery.

Let's go out there and congratulate Donald Trump's sexual escapades. Let's normalize them and mainstream them and say that never happened, but yet you do have conservative organizations and personalities going out there and congratulating Dave Rubin and rejoicing in what Dave Rubin's doing.

People didn't rejoice in Donald Trump's adultery, they looked at that as a negative they had to overcome in order to try to get him to win. That's a completely different scenario. And so Steve Dase conflates that, and I don't know why he does that, but that was most of his energy.

It was bashing conservatives who would have a problem with Dave Rubin because they're hypocrites. Maybe there are hypocrites, I'm not saying there's not, but that's to not see the significance of this moment.

And he talks about how the blaze, that anyone can say what they want at the blaze. Yeah, but your organization just went publicly and congratulated Dave Rubin for this. So at least maybe some pushback with like, not just we don't agree with the blaze and what they did was wrong.

It's hard, it's awkward when that's the company you work for, I get that, but this is so fundamental, so fundamental. I mean, I can't think, so I don't know, I don't have words for it. It's so fundamental.

I don't know what a conservative is. If you're not, if you don't believe in the traditional family, if you think that men can be, it's fine if men act like women, women act like men, children are brought up with people they pay for surrogacy and then that those mothers aren't their mothers, but they're told that this artificial arrangement is actually real.

And I don't even know what conservative is, if that's permissible in a conservative mindset. That just doesn't, that doesn't jive, right? So for Matt Walsh and for Steve Dase to kind of, I don't know, they just not see how monumental this situation is, how significant it is that you have organizations, including the one Steve Dase works for, endorsing that kind of thing.

That's what I don't quite understand. And it may have been, honestly, and I'm willing to say this, because I, in 2016, especially, I was like, let's not let Trump get the, he cannot get the nomination.

I was really against that. And part of it was his moral stuff. And I think that was one of the things that I think has led, and it's not the only thing, and it's certainly not maybe even the most significant thing, but it was a barometer showing where conservatives were going with sexual morality and the family and all of that, to let a guy like that, to really want that guy.

And I think it's more indicative of something else. It's more indicative of how weak the rest of the party is, that there wasn't someone who was seen as strong. That's why Trump was elected, probably, more than anything.

He was seen as strong, that he would actually, he wouldn't go along to get along, he would push back. But yeah, he is, no one's defending some of his personal morality. And so, yeah, you could say that that was a compromise, but the thing is that this, in my mind, is just as significant, in some ways, more significant, in some ways, not in every way, but in some ways, when you have conservative organizations that are taking money from conservatives that are representing conservatives, like the Blaze, like people like Candace Owens at the Daily Wire, like Megyn Kelly, when you have PragerU coming out and endorsing Dave Rubin's scenario as a positive, that's a big deal.

That's way, that's past stuff that Donald Trump's done. As bad as that's been, this is, no one was trying to normalize what Donald Trump did. They knew it was bad. This is now being normalized, that's my whole point.

And that is a huge paradigm shift. So that's what I have to say about that. There's a lot of other things I wanna talk about, things I've had thoughts on over the last few days. I'm gonna do an episode.

Actually, one of the things, I'll just give you a preview on how to, what considerations we should have, how we should approach examining people. And like John MacArthur, even, like people that many of us in this audience like, but how do we approach, because I've done this all the time.

I've had some, my own criticism for Al Mohler and Tim Keller and others, and how do I approach that? What's the best way, the respectful way, the most biblical way to approach those things and not fall into unnecessarily worshiping someone almost, putting them on such a pedestal that you ascribe to them non-communicable attributes of God, but at the same time, respect them.

Because some people are deserving of respect and they've shown that. And you wanna give the benefit of the doubt when there's an accusation against them. So how do you verify things? How do you, and then if you have, you do see that there's a problem, how do you approach that?

So I'm gonna do a podcast on that. I hope that'll be helpful for you all, but that's gonna come later in the week cause I gotta catch a flight right now. So I appreciate again, all your prayers. I'm just so happy.

The gospel was presented at the funeral that I was at, which I am grateful for. You can just pray that that was received well. And yeah, so more coming later in the week and I'm looking forward to it.

Bye now.