- 00:08
- Talk about Bruno. No, no, no, no. All right, let's jump into it today.
- 00:14
- I went ice fishing this morning and it's been pretty warm the last couple of days. The ice was a little sketchy.
- 00:20
- I'm not going to lie. There's definitely some water on top, but it's still like 8 inches, 10 inches thick. So I felt safe.
- 00:25
- I didn't feel any weirdness, but it was, you know, a little strange to see water on top of the ice. I got one pickerel.
- 00:32
- I almost got a pike. I lost it right at the hole. I was so frustrated about that. And then there was another fish that it felt pretty heavy.
- 00:39
- It was running with the bait, but I never was able to hook it. So a couple of pieces of failure, but I did get one.
- 00:46
- So I'm excited about that. Also discovered why people don't go. I don't usually see people out there when it's windy because the wind just like takes all your stuff and it's gone.
- 00:56
- Basically, after that, I lost a bucket, so nothing important. Anyway, I wanted to just quickly make a few quick comments here.
- 01:06
- One of the things that I consider a tremendous blessing is all the people that reach out to me.
- 01:14
- They have questions about something in the Bible, but it's not like theology per se.
- 01:23
- When people ask me theological questions, I'll tell them what I think. Normally, I say, go to your pastor kind of thing.
- 01:31
- But what's a big blessing is when people come to me about embarrassing passages that they believe a certain way.
- 01:39
- That's kind of embarrassing, and they want to know if they're crazy. For example, oftentimes people will come to me about the existence of giants.
- 01:47
- And I'm not talking about someone 10 feet tall. I'm talking about people, things like that, or dragons.
- 01:56
- The Bible talks about dragons. The Bible talks about unicorns, things of that nature.
- 02:03
- And people ask me about that kind of stuff. And quite frankly, that's such an honor. I count that a blessing that people are comfortable enough with me to know that they can ask me that kind of stuff.
- 02:14
- And pretty much every time, I'm like, yeah, I believe that. I believe in donkey talk. I believe in dragons because the
- 02:20
- Bible talks about dragons. I believe in giants, like real giants, not like Shaquille O 'Neal type giants, like actual giants.
- 02:30
- I believe in that kind of stuff. In fact, I believe that when God created the world, he actually separated the waters below with the waters above, and that there was water up there above the firmament.
- 02:43
- And when he flooded the earth, when it says he opened up the gates of heaven, the windows of heaven, that's what it says,
- 02:49
- I think, in the King James, it calls them windows. I believe the water that was up there fell down, and that's what flooded the earth and all of that.
- 02:57
- If you haven't really considered that theory, I think you really should. It's very clear in the creation narrative that that's how it went down.
- 03:05
- But in any case, by the way, I just want you all to know, if you were one of these people that came to me with something that you felt kind of embarrassed about, because quite frankly, let's just face it,
- 03:16
- Evangelical leaders like to explain that kind of stuff away. And often they go on the offensive, as if, like, oh, you're reading it wrong.
- 03:23
- It's like, well, no, I'm not reading it wrong. That's exactly what it says. And they want to explain things away.
- 03:29
- I find that very frustrating when Evangelical leaders are clearly embarrassed about what the
- 03:35
- Bible actually says, and they try to explain it away in a way that doesn't—it doesn't come from the text.
- 03:41
- It comes from a desire to please people. And I find it such an honor to be someone that you feel comfortable with telling me about your, you know, what you believe the
- 03:52
- Bible says, and so regularly I believe it too. So it's like, God bless you. You know, I'm not embarrassed to believe in dragons, not even a little bit.
- 04:00
- I'm not embarrassed to believe in giants, not even a little bit. So in any case, speaking of that,
- 04:08
- I wanted to just kind of mention this. This is so—it's not frustrating because I expect it, so why would
- 04:17
- I be frustrated about it? But it makes me feel—it's cringey sort of, but it makes me feel, like, weird to feel— what would it be like to be a man like Dan Darling?
- 04:29
- And this is the example I'm going to use. He actually posted a tweet that was actually a pretty good tweet.
- 04:34
- It's about how the people that had donated to the trucker convoy in Canada, somebody had hacked the system they were using to donate and released all of their information.
- 04:46
- And so the Washington Post, because, you know, this is an evil organization, right?
- 04:51
- The Washington Post is an evil conglomerate. They, of course, started reaching out to people. Why'd you donate?
- 04:56
- You know, like, and things like that. And imagine being, like, a regular person. Like, if the Washington Post reached out to me, like,
- 05:02
- I wouldn't be that surprised because I've got, you know, a thousand videos on YouTube. Like, I put my stuff out there, whatever. But imagine being, like, a regular
- 05:08
- Joe, and you did, like, an anonymous, like, $40 donation to the trucker convoy just to support the truckers.
- 05:14
- You know, again, you know how I feel about that. Whatever. And then you get the Washington Post—well, what was the reason you did that?
- 05:21
- And then, you know, who knows what they're asking? And people are all freaking out and stuff like that. And that's—and so Dan Darling here, he recognizes that for what it is.
- 05:29
- It's weaponizing some illegally sourced information. And the media—listen, like,
- 05:35
- Dan Darling trusts the media. So when he sees this and he doesn't like it, you know, he's not going to really say anything that serious because he wants a column in the
- 05:44
- Washington Post as far as he's concerned. I mean, the Washington Post is a force for good. So he says this.
- 05:50
- This is a good tweet. It's not strong enough, but it's a good tweet. He says, Good point.
- 06:09
- I mean, Dan Darling made a great tweet here. And I agree. I mean, like, when you make an anonymous donation, you shouldn't have to worry about somebody hacking the site and releasing your information and then, you know, the mainstream media coming to your door to ask you why you made the donation.
- 06:26
- It's like—it's just ridiculous. This stuff happens very regularly. Obviously, I believe that if this was the
- 06:33
- Black Lives Matter rally, for example, I don't think Dan Darling would have been that nuanced about it. He would have came out,
- 06:39
- Oh, this is an outrage! You know, things like that. But whatever. I mean, that's common. You know, people of this persuasion, they just—they don't have even scales.
- 06:48
- We can't expect them to have them and all of that. So the next tweet, though, is this woman,
- 06:54
- Morgan, who challenges him, right? And so she says,
- 06:59
- What do you mean by doxing? Like, she's obviously very for this. She's obviously a very liberal person because she supports the doxing.
- 07:07
- And, you know, Dan Darling kind of says what he means. And then she challenges him and says, So she's saying, like, it's
- 07:23
- OK because they only actually named the people that responded to their request for inquiry.
- 07:31
- Now, again, imagine being a normie. Like, if The Washington Post contacts me at this point,
- 07:36
- I already have planned what I'm going to say. I'm going to tell them to go pound sand. I'm not going to talk to them. I don't care what it is.
- 07:41
- And I don't know. Maybe I'll come up with something more flowery at the end. But I don't talk to—I don't talk to journalists anymore.
- 07:47
- But imagine just being a normie, right? And you get—the WAPO comes to you, and now you don't know what they're going to do because as far as you're concerned, these are evil people because they are evil people.
- 07:57
- They're going to probably try to destroy your life. And so you respond. And so Morgan here—I don't know her, so I'm not going to say anything about her.
- 08:04
- But Morgan here thinks that just the response—see, that's ethical. It's ethical now to publish this information, even though you got it from an illegal source and all of that kind of thing.
- 08:14
- And at first, Dan Darling says, Well, I'm still uncomfortable with it. Imagine being called by a journalist after what you thought was an anonymous donation.
- 08:22
- And he says—he paints this picture like you'd be nervous. You wouldn't know quite what to do. Maybe you don't have your wits about you.
- 08:29
- You're not used to this kind of thing, so maybe you'll just respond. And so he's still uncomfortable with it. And then—so you think,
- 08:36
- Okay, well, that's good. I mean, at least he's kind of pushing back, Dan Darling. At least he's kind of pushing back. But then the very next tweet is—those are some good points, though.
- 08:45
- This is complicated stuff. And it's like, Are you serious, Dan? Like, can you imagine being such a puddle of goo that somebody makes some ridiculous point about how it's totally okay to publish people's names, even though it's anonymous, even though you got the information through hacking, if they respond to you.
- 09:04
- It makes it totally okay. And Dan Darling just melts into a puddle of goo. Great points!
- 09:09
- This is so complicated. And they're terrible points, obviously. These are horrible points.
- 09:14
- Here's Megan Basham here telling—it's not a good point, obviously. And I agree with her.
- 09:20
- It's a terrible point. But I'm not so interested in the point. What I'm interested in is just the—no—there's nothing here.
- 09:31
- Like, this is what's so frustrating about this. I'm going to use the word frustrating because that's the best I can do. Like, Christians actually have a leg to stand on on some of this stuff, right?
- 09:40
- Like, you know, if someone's doing something illegal and you participate in it, you're part of it now.
- 09:47
- Like, we have a standard here. There's nothing complicated about this, right? Nothing. And, again, we understand that if this was a
- 09:55
- Black Lives Matter donation and someone—you know, Fox News started publishing people that were donated to Black Lives Matter or to Antifa or something like that, all the nuance would go away.
- 10:05
- Like, we understand that, right? Because, again, this would be messed up, right?
- 10:12
- But Dan Dollar melts into a puddle of goo with, like, minimal pressure. Like, nothing really happened here.
- 10:17
- Morgan just said, no, it's totally ethical. And he's like, well, I guess you're right. I'm still not comfortable with it, but, you know, it's complicated.
- 10:25
- It's like all the nuances there. And I think I know where this comes from, guys. And maybe you disagree.
- 10:30
- You think this is a small thing. It is a small thing. Whatever. I mean, it is what it is, right? But the thing is, like,
- 10:37
- I think that there's a drive in a lot of evangelical leaders to—and
- 10:44
- I'm going to quote a Bible verse here—do what is honorable in the sight of all, right? And what that actually means is, like, do something—you know, be honest, because, of course,
- 10:56
- God requires that. But also be completely on the up and up with people as well by their standard.
- 11:02
- Like, we should be doing the honest thing. We should be on the up and up with everybody, right? Not only
- 11:08
- God, but also people. But I think when Big Eva hears that verse about doing what's honorable in the sight of all, it's not that—it's just the doing of it.
- 11:19
- It's actually deciding how you feel about something or how hard you go against it based on what the world thinks is honorable.
- 11:29
- So if the world thinks that it's icky or wrong to use the word sodomite, then you don't use the word sodomite because you've got to contextualize this, right?
- 11:38
- So you say something like, well, gayness is not God's best for you. Like, if the
- 11:43
- Bible says that sodomy is an abomination before God, but the world doesn't like that, that's too aggressive, well, you've got to do what's honorable in the sight of all.
- 11:54
- And so you start softening it. And I think that when you see Dan Darling come out hard against something, it's only going to be stuff that the world approves of coming hard against.
- 12:04
- So white supremacy or racism or something like that, sex trafficking, something like that.
- 12:10
- He'll come hard against that because it is honorable in the sight of God, but also in the world to come hard against that, right?
- 12:17
- But as a Christian, we have a standard of how to decide these things. We don't decide how hard to go against something based on what the world is going to think about it.
- 12:27
- And I think that that verse is very misunderstood. In fact, I remember someone telling me that it was okay to mandate vaccines and masks at a church, even though God didn't say to do that.
- 12:37
- It's okay to do it because it's honorable in the sight of all, and you want to do what's honorable in the sight of all. That's a complete misunderstanding of that verse.
- 12:44
- What it's saying is, look, it was in the context of bringing money to—I should have had it up.
- 12:51
- It's like 1 Corinthians. I should have brought it up. Whatever, I don't have a lot of time to record this video.
- 12:56
- So the context of that verse is Paul was sending money through someone to another church.
- 13:03
- And he says, do what's honorable in the sight of all, not just God, but also men.
- 13:10
- What he means is, you should be honest with the money before God, obviously. I mean, that's an obvious one.
- 13:15
- But also, go above and beyond to make sure people know that you're being honest because we want to do what's honorable, honest in the sight of all.
- 13:24
- And so it's like, you know, it's not like changing the standard. The standard is the same.
- 13:30
- You need to be honest with this money. But if it was just before God, you could be honest in a secret way, no worries.
- 13:36
- But Paul's saying, but make sure, take care that everyone knows you're doing this in an honest way because we want to make sure that people don't have anything against you or whatever, things like that.
- 13:47
- It's not talking about changing the standard or altering the standard or contextualizing this to death where the meaning is completely lost now because that's what's honorable in the sight of men.
- 13:59
- See, this is the mistake that I think Big Eva makes, right? So Dan Darling here says, oh, these are good points.
- 14:04
- This is complicated. He thinks that's going to give him more credibility with pagans. It won't. It won't because they see how you were turned into a puddle of goo instantly, and they don't respect that.
- 14:14
- They don't respect when they see Matt Chandler on vice .com, and he's hemming and hawing, you know, gayness is not
- 14:22
- God's mess for you because they know what that scripture says, and now you just look like a liar to them. They know what the
- 14:28
- Bible says about homosexuality, and now you look like a liar because you're trying to apologize for the
- 14:34
- Bible. I don't think that's the way you should go. Look, obviously, don't cause needless offense, right?
- 14:39
- You shouldn't necessarily use slurs to talk about gays and stuff like that, and I'm not saying that that's a hard and fast rule.
- 14:47
- There might be a time for something like that, but what I'm saying, though, is we don't alter biblical language to do what is honorable in the sight of all when doing so actually softens what people hear.
- 15:02
- We don't do that. There's no reason to do it. In fact, I would argue it's dishonest. When you do that kind of stuff, when
- 15:09
- Dan Darling says, these are good points, this is very complicated, when he knows it's not complicated because he knows exactly how we would feel about it if it was
- 15:16
- Black Lives Matter, he's actually being dishonest when he says that. This is not complicated. Megan's 100 % right.
- 15:22
- These are terrible points. It's not complicated. And so when Dan Darling, his initial tweet, he was right on in the beginning.
- 15:29
- He was right on in the beginning when he said that this is bad. This is bad precedent.
- 15:34
- This is not good. This is a chilling effect, all that. He was right on then. He should have stuck with the original thing instead of turning into a puddle of goo the minute he got even a modicum of pushback.
- 15:43
- I think that is one of the biggest things that we need to focus on as a church in 2022, saying what we mean, standing firm, not bending, not being flexible.
- 15:54
- We don't have to be curmudgeon -y, but we cannot be flexible in what the Word of God says to try to please the pagans into being nice to us.
- 16:01
- It's not going to work. They don't respect you. In fact, it's like a bully, right? When they know you're not going to stand up for yourself, they're going to just come at you all the more, and you're going to have to compromise more and more and more and more until you're just denying
- 16:13
- Christ because you want people to be friends with you. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.