Truthscript Tuesday: Women Pastors, Moving to Red States, and Tyranny

Why Female Pastors Contradict Scripture

Welcome once again to TruthScript Tuesday. I'm your host, John Harris. Happy Fourth of July. It is Fourth of July today. As I'm recording this, I'm actually smoking some meat outside for a family get-together later today.

Looking forward to that. I hope whatever you're doing is enjoyable, and I hope you take some time today to think about what Fourth of July means. I know it is difficult for Christians in some ways after having a whole month in June called Pride Month, and the phrase love is love put on everything.

In fact, it was on the grocery shopping bags at the local grocery store near me. It's hard in this circumstance sometimes to wonder how love for one's country, which generally that's the theme of the Fourth of July, fits into that, and it doesn't, but we have conflicting narratives of what love is, and also, frankly, conflicting narratives of what the country is.

What is America? What was it meant to be? I know all that's going on, but at the very least, even for those who have a hard time squaring the founders and what they believed and what they were trying to set up versus what we have today, you can at least celebrate some of the good and positive, true, valuable things from the tradition that, as Americans, and I'm assuming most of the audience is, that we've inherited.

With that, I just wanted to bring your attention to three articles today. I'll save announcements for the end, but there's three articles today that I wanna talk about, really good articles, on the TruthScript website, and just a reminder to everyone, TruthScript does exist, really, on the generous donations of people who have volunteered their time and on the generous donations of people like yourselves, so if you go to the TruthScript website, you can scroll down to the bottom, and there is a tab that says Donate.

If you like the content that TruthScript is putting out there, then you can go to that tab and donate. Okay, well, today, I wanted to start off, we're gonna lead up to kind of a 4th of July, at least, I don't know, it's not directly 4th of July, but it is very applicable to 4th of July theme here, but I wanna start off with this particular article called Why I Reject Female Pastors by Susan White.

You can follow Susan White on Twitter, actually, that's where I think most people know Susan White from, she's with Steadfast Women, but she wrote this article, I believe she's in the Southern Baptist Convention, they just had this big debate over this, and she has an interesting perspective because she came from the United Methodist Church, so I'll read you part of this article, she says, I grew up in the United Methodist Church where women were ordained as pastors my entire life.

I saw no issue with this, and once filled the pulpit myself when our pastor was out of town. So she's saying, I've done this, I've preached to a mixed congregation, and now she's against it. She says, my view on female pastors, however, began to change when, after 20 years as a false convert, God saved me and I began to read his word for myself for the first time in my life.

I think this is a key point, that those who are in these churches that are compromised, let's say, in some ways, it doesn't even have to be a compromised church, frankly, but you grow up in a setting where you assume that you're a Christian.

And the word of God is, maybe the value that it has is it's a tradition, it's part of your family identity in some way, or it's just good moral rules, stories for your kids. But when you actually come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, it comes alive for you.

You actually look at it and it's precious, and you want to follow it, and those things that maybe before didn't matter as much to you, now all of a sudden matter. And including commands like this, this would be a command very out of step with the modern zeitgeist, and I'll read for you some of these commands, but to exclusively say that only men can be pastors, that is, for a woman to say that, who has filled the pulpit before, means that there's been a heart change, and that's what she's trying to say.

Passages such as 1 Timothy 3, one, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. And Titus 1, six, an elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, are clear that men are biblically qualified not only to fulfill, but also to aspire to the office of pastor, elder, overseer.

Concerning women in the gathering of the church, 1 Corinthians 14, 34 confirms women should remain silent in the churches. The people I encounter who dispute these verses in order to make a case for female pastors do so using irrelevant texts.

I think this is a good part of this article because she's not just asserting, here's what I think, here's what the scripture says, she's saying, she's acknowledging, there are people who have tried to disagree with this, and here's some of the logic they've used, but here's why it doesn't actually work.

Whether it is Miriam, Deborah, Priscilla, Phoebe, or Mary Magdalene, none of these women fulfilled the role of pastor, and none of the passages that speak of these women concern themselves with the order and function of the local church assembly.

So you think of, and Phoebe's probably the one that's most often brought up, she wasn't a pastor. Mary Magdalene was not a pastor. Miriam was not, and you could say, well, they led in various capacities, sure.

Sure, there was, Deborah certainly led. But in fact, in that passage, it's very telling that she basically tells Barack that if she's the one that leads, that he's not gonna get the credit for, and it's rightfully his, he should be the one leading as a male, and as the one who was more fit for that particular role in the book of Judges.

But anyway, she points out that they weren't pastors. Others will point to passages such as Ephesians 4 .11 -13 or 1 Corinthians 11 .5, but those passages likewise do not pertain to the gathering of the local church.

And one of the cool things about truth script, and I know this is probably on most blogs, but it does take extra work, just so you know, is all the Bible verses are there. You can click on it. What does 1 Corinthians 4 .11 say?

Oh, it says, so Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers. Okay, that's what it says. So just a little feature there. Anyway, since the Bible speaks clearly on the subject why the vigorous debates, I believe it goes back to Genesis 3.

So she's trying to explain why people would grasp at straws to try to overturn the Bible's clear teaching. The serpent asked Eve, did God actually say, you shall not eat of the tree of the garden? To which Eve confirmed that yes, God really did say this.

And not only did God say it, but if Adam and Eve disobeyed by eating or touching the fruit that their consequence would be death, then the serpent proclaimed you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

You see two tactics here used by Satan, she says. And it is the same two tactics I see used by those who defend female pastors. The first tactic is to doubt what God's word says. The second is to doubt that he meant it.

And it really is that simple for Susan and I think for myself as well and anyone who's a serious student of scripture. To overturn these very clear passages, you have to, there has to be a motive there that seeks to undermine.

I think of as we are listening to this, many of us at least, on the 4th of July. How many judges throughout history have tried to undermine the U .S. Constitution, let's say, through, it's not that they're trying to be faithful to the intent, to the words, to what they actually mean.

They try to insert or inject their own meaning and overturn the clear meaning. And this is the same throughout, I mean, business contracts, this is just the human spirit. The sinful spirit that humans have at least is to try to take the clear sometimes and muddy it, make it unclear.

And in this case, it's to accomplish a goal and the goal is to have an egalitarian outlook in the pulpit. So anyway, she goes on and I'll let people read the rest of it if they're interested, but she talks about how Jesus never called a female apostle, the apostles never appointed a female apostle or elder, the biblical qualification for elder pastors are clear.

So that's Susan White and why I reject female pastors. Now, TruthScript is not a discernment blog, quote unquote. It's not a blog that's dedicated to controversies in the church, doctrinal disputes, necessarily, and the people who are pushing those things.

You're gonna get an article now and then here though that is gonna tackle a subject. And this particular subject I think is important just because there's multiple denominations that are facing this issue.

And so one of the things TruthScript is intended to do is to give good resources to Christians, good, short, easy to digest resources on current issues. So sometimes that's going to involve things like this, which is there's a discernment element to it.

Cultural Christianity as a Path to Conversion

The next article is called The Surprising Fruit of Cultural Christianity by David Harris. And this one is interesting because there was a whole debate online last week about whether or not Christians should move to red states to get out of blue states where they're marginalized.

In some cases, and I know people were mocking this, but in some cases there is persecution going on. It may not be severe persecution, but people are being fired from their jobs. I've seen that firsthand in the state that I live in.

You say, well, how so? Well, one of the most obvious ones recently was it never happened before, but New York state where I live decided that they would deny the religious exemption. And of course, most of the people who would wanna take advantage of that are Christians.

Well, in regards to the COVID vaccine. And so this happened in 2020. Well, that was seen as a clear attack on religion and by extension, the most common forms of religion in the United States, Christianity, because Christians were the ones who were objecting to this.

So, I mean, there could be probably 100 more examples given of the little ways in which there are either things that make one's life more inconvenient if they're a Christian living in a blue state or a blue region, or things that sometimes can be outright persecution.

People who are evangelists, and this has happened more and more and more. It doesn't get reported often, but evangelists in various areas, normally areas that are more controlled by liberal progressives facing opposition, sometimes violent, sometimes just being shut down.

They're not allowed to put their message out there whereas others are. I mean, this is the kind of thing that's more and more happening. And I think people who see the writing on the wall and say, hey, this could get worse are trying to get out.

That's the situation that we're in. So anyways, this is written by David Harris who has this experience to some extent. He said, several months ago, I had the opportunity to visit some family friends who recently relocated to rural East Tennessee from New York City.

The couple, I'll call them Tony and Susan, not Susan White, both in their 60s are as quintessentially New York as it can get. They talk, sound, and act like New Yorkers. And as someone who was raised no more than 60 miles from New York City, being around them feels familiar and comfortable.

I thought it was super strange that they chose to move to a relatively remote part of the Tennessee instead of a more suburban area of Knoxville or Nashville. And this is an interesting thing because I know living in Virginia, North Carolina, even in California, I guess, because most people don't know a lot of California is red, actually.

It's a blue state. But if you look at a map, the blue counties just happen to have more population. But the people who move from more progressive areas, we'll say, end up landing in an urban area. Even if they're going to be in a red state, they're going to land in an urban area generally or a suburban area in those red states that's more accommodating.

And a lot of other people who are just like them have moved there. And this particular couple, they wanted to get away from that. They didn't, they moved to a rural area. I thought it was super strange that they chose to move to a relatively remote part of Tennessee.

We were having dinner. We learned that they had started going to a local Baptist church. I was intrigued. What were a couple of lapsed Italian Catholics doing with a bunch of backroads Baptists? Further conversation revealed that Susan truly understood the gospel and was planning on getting baptized.

This was independent of any influence coming from us as we hadn't seen them in years. So this is an interesting, that you can see where this is going already, right? This has led to an exposure to Christianity that would not have happened had they not moved.

When I asked what prompted them to start attending church, especially after having no involvement in any church for most of their lives, Susan said something like, well, down here, that's what people do.

So we figured we would as well. She went on to explain that after attending church for a few months, she started reading the Bible and was convicted that she was a sinner in need of God's grace. We had the privilege of being at her baptism this last Sunday.

We're still working on Tony. What initially struck me after hearing her story was how somebody on the right politically that had chosen to relocate to a place primarily for its support of their value structure had found their way into saving faith in Christ simply by following the logical flow of the cultural Christianity around them.

Now, obviously, salvation is a work and gift of God, and he had no doubt been working on Susan for some time. It's probably just a coincidence because after all, we're often warned about the dangers of Bible Belt cultural Christianity.

A similar pattern. However, Susan's story isn't really an outlier. In fact, I've heard and encountered similar stories for several years now, most of them since the great paradigm shift that began in 2020.

Now, you can think to yourself whether this strikes a chord with you. Here's some examples. Either because of the COVID -19 restrictions, the 2020 BLM rioting, or an increasing number of local drag queen story hours at the local library, an individual or family decides that the blue area they live in isn't ideal anymore.

How many people can raise their hand and testify to this? They relocate either to a red state like Idaho, Texas, or Florida, Tennessee, or they move to a more red area inside their blue state. And I think that's a key thing to hear because I saw some people online trying to say, it's not about the state, it's about the region.

And I would agree, it's more about the region. Of course, state governments have a lot of control. And so being in a red state, there's perhaps more safety of a safety net there than being in a red area in a blue state, but both are preferable, right?

While getting acclimated to the area, they start to deal with the normal things that happen when you relocate, isolation, loneliness, an act of familial community. So they decide to start attending the local evangelical church.

Since they're typically already conservative, the ground is fertile for accepting biblical teaching that already serves as the foundation for much of their worldview. This is another thing that's very true.

Conservative political views are built upon basic premises that flow from the Bible, essentially. The vision of reality that Christians in this fallen world seek to construct, whatever form that takes, culturally speaking, is going to come from an understanding of the created order, and that created order, and then an explanation for it is found in the Bible.

This is really something that wasn't controversial that long ago, it is now. But of course, conservatism, the right politically in the United States, is less and less Christian, unfortunately. But, and as they become less and less Christian, they're giving up some of their conservative beliefs.

The problem is, this isn't how it's supposed to, actually, let me just back up here. They get saved, if they're a Baptistic church, they get dunked, in a more high church setting, they're probably sprinkled.

All right, the problem is, this isn't how it's supposed to work. We're constantly reminded, often by the likes of Christianity Today or the Gospel Coalition, that the development of cultural Christianity is essentially the worst thing that can happen to Christianity, because faith that's tied to the Republican Party is inauthentic, fake, and ultimately damning.

Cultural Christianity is something to be eschewed and not embraced by true Christians. In fact, it's increasingly thought that the less popular and popular Christianity becomes, the more of an impact it will have.

And there is, in some of the more extreme forms of this, almost a persecution complex. Like, it's really, really good to be, now look, if you have a missionary mindset, you want to remain in an area where it gets tough.

That's good, that's fine. In fact, I grew up that way. I'm in New York right now. And my father moved here, and he told me from a young kid that we were missionaries. And that's just the mentality you have to have if you're gonna live in one of these blue areas, at least more and more.

The irony of the vilification of Bible Belt Christianity is that it's routinely vilified by Christian leaders who live in the Bible Belt. I've noticed this too. Those who retain Bible Belt values and relocate to more culturally Christian areas tend to be immensely grateful to live in the places where biblical morality is more common.

Even if there's hypocrisy that comes along with it, parts of the country and world that you will more closely align with biblical values provide freedom for Christians to live lives more in line with 1 Thessalonians 4 .11, and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you.

So there's a lot more to this article. Let me, let's actually just make our way through. This is a good article. While there's a benefit to those who are already Christian, there's also seems to be a current phenomenon of conversion to Christianity coming about from a progression of values, as I saw in Susan's case.

While there are several other examples I could go into, there are a few as dramatic as the conversion of one of the famous atheists, Richard Dawkins' former assistant, Josh Timonen. If you haven't heard this story, this is great.

Richard Dawkins' former assistant converts to Christianity. Living Waters carried this. Here's the overview. Josh worked on Richard Dawkins' United States team and built his website. He made and marketed some of Dawkins' merchandise and accompanied him on tours throughout the US.

After a legal dispute with Dawkins' organization, Josh left working for the atheist cause and moved to Portland, Oregon. During the lockdowns and subsequent rioting in Portland in 2020, Josh and his wife determined that relocation to a more peaceful, family-friendly part of the country would be smart.

Landing in Waco, Texas, the Timonens realized that they didn't really have any community in their home. The locals went to church, and in 2020, there wasn't a whole lot open, so they started attending a local cowboy church.

Over time, Josh and his wife both, by the way, just a quick note on cowboy church. I'd never been to one, but I happen to know. This is one of the things. It's often that this particular church setting, and then cowboy churches are out west.

They're where cowboys are. It's often mocked. It's often looked down on. It's often despised by people in more, I don't know what to call it, ecclesiocentric circles, I guess, where, to their credit, they wanna be about good doctrine, and good doctrine in the church, and the church really matters, and biblical eldership and all that.

And it's like, understand, understand maybe calling it cowboy church is appealing to one segment. It's like when you go fishing, you should use multiple lures if you're trying to catch all the fish, and this is only gonna catch one.

But according to this example, it caught more than just a cowboy, and so it's just very interesting to me, and the gospel was there, so you can disparage it all you want. God even uses this kind of thing.

Over time, Josh and his wife both experienced a softening of their hearts by hearing the scriptures preached each week, and finally both committed their lives to Christ. Obviously, being a conservative, family-focused, gun-owning Republican doesn't save your soul, right?

That goes without saying. And if you die without trusting in Christ, then you're not any better off than a purple-haired vegan who lives in Amsterdam and still wears a surgical mask everywhere they go.

Also, God saves his people out of cultures and communities very far from Christianity. The one who interacts with a cultural context that generally adheres to biblical principles can also experience a draw to true faith, one that is driven by the faith of those around them, those who are truly followers of Christ.

These are just a few examples of a larger trend, but the overall point is this. Bible Belt, cultural Christianity isn't necessarily the spoiler of true faith, and it's often made out to be. In fact, cultural conformity to biblical morality can even work as a catalyst to help an unbeliever realize that they need Christ.

Additionally, God is at work in our day and age bringing sinners to himself through various means, including the stark contrast of values between secular progressive values and traditional biblical values.

This is what happens when someone who isn't used to living in an area that includes more Christians and people hold to biblical values moves there, and they realize, wow, this is so much better. And it's interesting.

I've lived in the Bible Belt, and I've lived in a blue area, and one of the things that you notice is, I remember when my wife and I moved down to North Carolina, there was, not with myself, because I have a lot of family in Mississippi, but generally in the water in New York, there are these certain bigotries that arise that without any experience of having lived in a Bible Belt area, the assumption is all of those people are a bunch of backwards, hayseed, bigots.

They have racist tendencies. They probably have sexist tendencies. There's all these things associated with them. They're lazy. It's just in the water, in a blue area. That's what you're told. And then when you move there, and when you see that actually this is preferable, and it's not what I was told it was, but living here is preferable to what I left, your eyes are open.

This is, in fact, I'll just be personal for a moment myself. When I went to seminary, and I saw that the seminary that I was in in North Carolina, in Wake Forest, was adopting a lot of social justice stuff, I thought to myself, this is what ruined the area that I came from.

This is what caused so many of the problems. How are you? Well, the thing is, they haven't had to live in that. Garbage is attractive sometimes when you haven't had to live in the dumpster. And so, John's calling blue area just dumpsters.

No, I'm not saying they're dumpsters. I'm saying that, I'm making an analogy, and I'm just saying that there's a lot more sin, and at least it's more prevalent, it's more celebrated, it's more overt in your face.

And when you go to an area where it's just not the case, you don't have the billboards, you don't have the raunchy magazines. Even in the grocery store, you have Christian music playing there. Like, you start to think, this is better.

What did they have right that the group that I was with had wrong? And it leads to asking these questions, and it leads to sometimes conversion. J .P. Spears, by the way, is another example of this. J .P. Spears, the internet comedian who lived, I believe, in Northern California somewhere, I think near San Francisco, moved to Texas, and now he's pro-life, and he's made a profession of faith, and it's interesting.

Growing up in the Northeast, I've often heard conversations about our part of the country as being hard soil when it comes to evangelism. Outreach and discipleship. In fact, many areas of the U .S. and rest of the world are described in the same terms.

Amongst the hard soil, it's worth considering that those who share similar cultural, political, and social values might actually be, in many instances, softer soil. So if you live in a part of the country or world that's more culturally Christian, don't merely look down on those who live among, who you live among, rather, as being inauthentic Christians.

That's your mission field, and the fields just might be ripe for harvest. And I think this is so true. This is what so many Christian organizations have missed. They are busy bending over backwards for the progressive voter in a blue region, like the Tim Keller model.

And the people who are most ripe, it seems, for receiving the gospel right now are political conservatives. And no one's reaching out to them. They are forgotten, as far as anyone of any cultural clout in evangelical circles.

It's just, they're not the shiny object. And they are the ones that I think most, where the fields are more ripe. In fact, I share the frustration of some who go down South and they try to witness to everyone, and everyone says they're a Christian, and they're like, no, you're not.

And they have a hard time, and they're like, well, at least in more blue areas, people admit they're not Christians. And that is true, that is true. That's a fair point. But it doesn't mean that it's hard.

The ground is hard where I am right now. The ground is very hard. In fact, we have a team right now, I couldn't do it because of a family obligation later, but we have a team that's going to witness at a 4th of July parade.

And they've been doing this for years, from the church I attend. And I mean, they've had some people in the community that appreciate them, or recognize them. But as far as people coming to the church based off of that, or making professions publicly that we're aware of, not really.

It's rare, it's not like it's so much better, and it's so much easier to convert. It really just depends on where God's moving. God could move, and people could get converted. But it seems like right now, he is tending to move with people who are more politically conservative.

So that's a really good article, check that out. And then yesterday, and this was leading up to the 4th of July, we posted an article called Resisting Tyranny. This is from a pastor in Germany, actually, named Tobias Reimenschneider.

Resisting Tyranny and Government Overreach

And he is the pastor of the Evangelical Reform Baptist Church in Frankfurt. I don't think there's a lot of Reform Baptists in Germany. So Pastor Tobias is probably unique in that sense. But he asked a question, what is tyranny?

According to the German version of a well-known online encyclopedia, tyranny is the term used to describe a regime of violence, an arbitrary rule by a ruler, or a group regarded as illegitimate. According to this definition, three characteristics make a tyrannical regime.

Arbitrary rule, violence, and illegitimacy. So that's arbitrary rule number one, violence and illegitimacy. Based on this definition, what was the COVID regime? So he goes through, and this is a great article on what happened during COVID.

In Germany, it was much worse than even where I am. And he talks about how basically what they did was tyrannical. What they did was shutting down churches, and not just churches, but other places of employment and livelihood.

They shut down, there was social ostracization associated with this, and he talks about all that. I don't wanna give people PTSD, but he recounts what happened. And he says, what do you call people who rule in a tyrannical manner?

That's right, tyrants. We need to be consistent here, even if it hurts. Those who enacted the COVID measures were tyrants. Likewise, those who did not enact the measures themselves, but enforced them in their areas of rule and authority were also tyrants.

And as a German, he made the connection with what happened in the 1930s and 40s in Germany. He says, don't be a tyrant. It is not good to be a tyrant, whether on a large scale or as a state leader, or on a smaller scale as a pastor.

So this is an interesting point, because he's saying, look, pastors can be tyrants too. This isn't just the government. We think of it as the pastor can be a tyrant. And I saw this first hand. There was a lot of pastors who were tyrants.

He's saying, if you went along with the tyranny as a pastor when you could have stood up against it, you're being a tyrant. Ooh, that is a hard pill to swallow. Now he says, or actually, let's see. He says, this could be husbands, fathers, employers.

For all authority comes from God, and God will demand an account of those who use that authority. So the idea here is that there's accountability set up, and that we are stewards of God's resources, accountable to him.

We are not self-contained, authoritative people who can make autonomous decisions. That's not who we are. The chief shepherds commands his under-shepherds to shepherd the flock of God by eagerly exercising oversight, not domineering over those in their charge, but being examples to their flock by being humble, casting all their anxieties on him, being sober-minded and watchful, and by firm in faith, resisting their adversary, the devil.

Now, I do want to talk about this on my other podcast, Conversations That Matter, later in the week, because there is something to this. I'm calling them ecclesiocentric churches for now, but there are these churches that have pastors that are, frankly, they're tyrannical.

And I think there's a lot of Christians in them that think they're just submitting to biblical authority, and they're not. They're submitting to a tyrant. They're not submitting to God. They're submitting to someone who sees themselves as an authority outside, even if they don't self-consciously say that, but their actions prove outside of the lane that God has put them in.

And I want to ask some very crucial questions, I think, that will help people understand and open their eyes if they're in that kind of a setting, and realize, oh, wow, okay. And so, Pastor Tobias is starting to make this connection that I'm gonna make more fully later in the week in the other podcast.

But anyway, he quotes Samuel Rutherford from Lex Rex, which is the Law's King, and he says, since tyranny is satanic, not to resist it is to resist God. To resist tyranny is to honor God. And he gives some reasons for that.

If we do not resist tyranny, we support its lies. He says, when we allow tyrants to encroach on the realm for which God has given us authority, we are no longer fulfilling our duty. He says, if a pastor allows the state to encroach upon his church, he also denies the exclusive headship of Christ.

If we do not resist tyranny, we do not love our neighbor. This is a twist, right? This is a reverse move, almost a jujitsu move against those who said, actually loving your neighbor is obeying the state.

He's saying, no, loving your neighbor is obeying God. Resisting tyranny by God's grace alone. During COVID, the Lord gave me, my co-pastor, and my entire church the grace to resist tyranny. I cannot emphasize enough that this was not my merit.

It is God who gave me courage. It is by his grace that we resisted state encroachment on the church and the family, and it's by his grace that we opened our mouth and spoke against tyranny. We wrote statements against those in the church who called the submission to tyranny.

We preached sermons, worked out our statements, published articles and books, wrote letters to the rulers, et cetera. We did this to defend biblical truth and to stand by the afflicted brethren. And then this all leads to a book, and you can purchase it, Resisting Tyranny, A Christian Response to Government Overreach.

Resisting Tyranny, A Christian Response to Government Overreach. So if you click on this link, it'll take you right there to the website where you can order this book and its contributions from John MacArthur, James White, and others.

And it deals more fully with this topic. What a relevant topic and what an applicable topic in our day and age, but particularly relevant to the 4th of July as we today in the United States of America, we are busy celebrating, at least some.

I mean, like I said, I know for some people this feels a little kind of, I don't know, just, I think there's some that would wanna bring back King George if there wasn't like drag queen story hours and things like that.

They're saying, hey, King George might've been better than what we got now. But King George, of course, failed to defend the colonies against the tyrannical edicts of Parliament, and that included taxation.

I know there's a narrative now going around that it really wasn't about taxation. Taxation had a big part of it. But it was more than just taxation. If you read the Declaration of Independence, you find a whole list of things that the colonists were disgruntled with, that they were disturbed by, including overriding local governments, local legislatures, jailing local representatives of local governments, basically making war on their citizens in various areas.

And it was more of a recognition. That's what the Declaration of Independence, it's more of a recognition that, hey, this is how you're treating us. It's not that we're making the move that we wanna separate.

We've tried to amend things. We've given you the Olive Branch Petition, and now it's come to the point where you keep treating us like we're not part of the same country. So we're just gonna recognize that fact.

And there's a lot of people right now in red state America who are saying similar things. They're saying, you know, the people in D .C. They don't seem to really share the same country with us. They don't share the same values.

They don't make policies that help us. They don't see us, they don't identify with us. And so we have similar dynamics at play. I don't know what that means moving forward exactly, but we are looking back today at a time when there was a tyrant, essentially, who wanted to use a region for his own purposes, or at least allow Parliament to use it for their own purposes without standing up for their rights as British people.

And this is, I think, this is the challenge, like I said, today, is do we have similar dynamics forming over maybe more fundamental issues? Sexual ethics, murder. I mean, murder is celebrated in New York in the form of abortion.

And the overturning of Roger Fell didn't do anything. It probably ramped up that stuff in New York just because people are coming from other states to the blue state. So there are just some big differences, even the way that they look at immigration between red states and blue states, even the way that they look at things like the way history should be taught and remembered.

So there's so many things across the board that are differences between these two basic, and these are broad categories, but the blue state and red states of the United States of America. And so today is a day to reflect on that, to reflect on where we've come from, and then where are we going.