Yes, Our Daily Bread is Compromised

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We have a long podcast today. We're gonna be talking about Our Daily Bread Ministries. And many of you have asked me about this and I promised to do one.

So here is me keeping my promise. I have a letter in front of me. This is to one of the listeners of this podcast from the president of Our Daily Bread Ministries. His name is Matt Lucas. And he writes a letter in defense of Our Daily Bread against podcasts such as mine, where I suggested that they had compromised or promoted social justice ideology last fall.

I showed you some examples of that beyond just the conference that he mentions in this. I'll read it to you in a second, but also stuff from their website, from their X page. And so he essentially denies that Our Daily Bread Ministries has changed at all, that they are compromising on any of their convictions.

None of this is true. He wishes people like myself would reach out to him. And so I'm gonna give you a reaction to all of this. And then I'm gonna play you some content from their website and, or at least from their YouTube channel.

And frankly, I'm just scratching the surface on the content that's out there, promoted by, financed by Our Daily Bread Ministries, that is social justice, that frankly even compromises the gospel. You're gonna be a little surprised if you are someone who really likes Our Daily Bread, which many in this audience apparently do, and you see what Our Daily Bread has been promoting.

And it might make you wonder whether or not you should be giving your finances to Our Daily Bread Ministries. So it doesn't do me any pleasure to bring you this information. I don't like listening to hours of woke content.

I mean, I've obviously done a lot of that in my life already, but I will certainly do more of it to warn you about a ministry that is frankly acting, at least the president, in a duplicitous fashion. He is trying to, people reaching out confused about this, and including the gentleman who sent me this letter, are thinking, well, they have great devotionals, I think.

And this letter seems to indicate that there's no problems there. And one of the things, I'll just say this real quick. One of the things that I know I've said this before is I don't mind reaching out to folks at these ministries and just really for the sake of warning more than anything else to say, hey, did you know this was on your website?

Did you know you guys are promoting this? This is a problem. Have you thought about this? Reaching out to get confirmation or to find out whether or not they are in fact, or have promoted social justice teachings, nine out of 10 times, if not, I can't think of an exception.

I'm gonna say 10 out of 10 times, it always winds up the same way. And it's the way that this letter right here, it's the way that this letter is framed. Basically what happens is it's denied, it's disguised, it's downplayed, and you are made to feel like a judgmental Christian of some kind, or a Christian who doesn't have his facts straight.

You're just confused, you're the problem. There's no apology, there's no rectification, there's no acknowledgement, no repentance. It's just a bunch of, well, I'll read this to you and you can decide for yourself whether what I'm saying is accurate, but it's a bunch of gymnastics to say, we're not compromised.

And anyone who would suggest we are, they're the ones that have the problem. And it almost always goes this way. And so I would suggest if you're really trying to nail down, hey, is the ministry compromised in this way?

Don't email them and ask them, hey, are you compromised? Do you know what you're gonna get? Do a little research, go to their website, go to their YouTube page, go to their social media. You could look up keywords if you wanna do a search, or you could just go through their timeline and just look at the kind of content they're putting out.

And that's really all I did. It took me about 15 seconds as I went onto their YouTube page yesterday to find out, yes, they are compromised on social justice teachings. I listened to a few hours from different podcasts.

I feel like I scratched the surface, but I have more than enough to show you today that yes, they have stuff that's not even 2020. It's stuff that's happened since then. More recent material that's on their YouTube channel currently, financed by them, sponsored by them, that is thoroughly compromised to the point of denying the gospel.

So I will, or at least, yeah, I'm comfortable saying that. Some of it I think really does deny the gospel. So I'm gonna show you that stuff. Before we get to all that though, I want to thank everyone who went and purchased or streamed my album, gave me some feedback, gave it a rating.

It's called Driving Down a Mountain Road. You can go to johnharristunes .com to find all the links on social media or the streaming services. So it's on iTunes and Amazon and Spotify. You can get a physical CD on that website if you want, johnharristunes .com.

But one of the things I wanted to do was put out a few songs that were intended for congregational worship. This is one of the songs we actually do at my church and they seem to enjoy it called, Oh Grace, How Great Your Story, if you like it.

Then I would just encourage you to go to the website, check out that song. The sheet music is even there for it. And maybe it's something that you could do at your church. And since I'm the author and I'm telling you, it's not a violation of any copyright.

I'm giving you permission to play it in any live setting, including at church. So the song, Oh Grace, How Great Your Story was written in probably about 20 minutes after I came back from a trip in New Mexico and Colorado last year.

And I just got to see so many beautiful sights in the desert and then in the mountains, the Rocky Mountains obviously spectacular and breathtaking. And I had a lot of windshield time just thinking about my own life, where it had led, what the Lord was doing.

And this is the result of that. And so I hope you enjoy it. We sing it at my church and people seem to enjoy it there. And maybe it's something that you could incorporate at your own church. I have the music online at johnharristunes .com, johnharristunes .com.

But the song, Oh Grace, How Great Your Story, I think is great for congregational singing. Check it out. The doors they broke and opened wide, I'm alive, I'm alive Oh grace, how great your story.

The President’s Letter and the Charge of Social Justice Drift

All right, let's talk about the subject at hand. I'm gonna read for you this letter. I have the physical copy in my hand. I have blocked out portions of it so that those who send it to me are not in trouble or anything like that.

But this is the letter that was sent on January 14th to an unnamed individual. And this is what the president, Matt Lucas of Our Daily Bread Ministries has to say. He says, greetings from the Philippines.

I am currently meeting with our team here and we'll be returning at the end of the week. Thank you for reaching out with your concerns. I believe your query came from a situation last fall related to the Joy and Justice 2024.

Now, this is just part of it. Yes, Joy and Justice 2024, at least for this podcast, we talked about that, but then we also went deeper. I showed you stuff from their X account, from their YouTube account, I think their website.

So that was one part of it. I understand someone told me that they backed out of sponsoring this conference, which is good. That means they do respond to pressure when it's rightly applied, when it's good kind of pressure.

For biblical fidelity. But here's what he has to say. He says that the conference and its association with Our Daily Bread Ministries, specifically that there was a suggestion our organization has altered its convictions to accommodate cultural norms that are convulsing the church today.

Nothing could be further from the truth. So the accusation, what I even talked about on this podcast, I guess is perhaps not true. Now, here's the thing. I never actually said that they had altered their, as far as I remember, altered their convictions.

I don't know. They may not have had any convictions on this. So they're just open to social justice teachings. They may not have had to alter much of anything. That's possible. I'm open to that. But he's saying that that's, he's framing that as the accusation and then saying that that's not true.

"'I have been tracking such posts,' he said, "'and have been frustrated that none of the podcast hosts "'have reached out to us for information or clarification.'". Now, this is pretty classic. I had this even recently with Sean McDowell.

I've had this, I don't know, for however long, since the beginning with various ministries. And they almost always say the same thing. Like, well, if you just reach out to us. Well, what's that gonna do?

Like, I don't mind reaching out to say, you have a problem. Here's an opportunity to change course, repent, warn people about the teachings you've previously promoted. But that's not what they're saying.

10 times out of 10, that's not what's going on. And it's, because I've actually gotten into these conversations and it's a wine and dine routine. It's more mental gymnastics. It's trying to say, you're the problem, essentially.

You're the problem. You're not being nice to us. I think there are times to reach out privately. This was already a public thing before I touched it, but this is a big ministry. They've, I think even at my own church, we have our daily bread stuff there.

If we don't, not long ago, we did. And it's troubling. The amount of social justice stuff they have on their YouTube channel is troubling. But reaching out, it's not gonna change any of that. None of the facts change, right?

There's no clarification that can be offered. There's no way to disassociate what they've promoted. They've promoted it. It's on their platforms. It's their sponsorships, et cetera. So I don't find that much good comes from this.

I find that people in the audience who have gone down this path of reaching out to these organizations get the runaround. That's never a way in my mind to confirm whether or not an organization is compromised by asking them if they're compromised.

I mean, if you think there's an issue that's confusing and you want clarification, that's one thing. These aren't confusing issues though. And the material is on their website. So what's the point of reaching out?

What's the discussion going to do essentially? I mean, there's already more than enough information to say there's a problem here and we don't need to have a discussion to confirm any of that. Anyway, let's see.

Misinformation can quickly go viral before anyone falsely accused is able to respond. So now they're being falsely accused. They're the victims, right? Unfortunately, not everyone practices Second Timothy 2, 24 through 25 and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.

Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to acknowledge the truth. So yes, yours truly, I suppose, is in violation of this according to the president here.

And if it's not me, there's others online. I'm not sure who else. I think Protesti did an article about it, but they're not a podcast. So while they do it, there is a Protesti podcast. Maybe they talked about it, I don't know.

But I can guarantee you they weren't violating Second Timothy 2, 24. According to this, Paul would be violating his own teachings by pointing out false teaching. In the podcast, two issues have been raised.

Our Daily Bread Ministries has changed its biblical convictions and we supported positions that do not align with scripture. Okay, number two is absolutely correct and I will demonstrate it. Despite cultural changes we are experiencing in our society, our ministry remains faithful and unwavering in our commitment to historic biblical Christianity and its teachings on everything from believing in the infallibility of scripture.

This is so classic. Salvation is in Christ, diversity is to be celebrated. This is an interesting one. So this is historic biblical Christianity. You ready? Diversity is to be celebrated and is a reflection of God's image in humanity.

I don't remember that Bible verse about diversity needing to be celebrated. There's an obligation to celebrate diversity in the Bible. What does that mean? And why would you just put that in the modern context?

If you mean something biblical by it, what do you mean? Because in our world, everyone, and I mean, everyone hears that and they're thinking immediately, celebrate diversity. Oh yeah, we're going down the DEI path.

And that's God's design for marriage and sex is between a man and a woman and it's from this biblical foundation that we produce our content. It is this standard to which all our employees in the United States and globally adhere.

So this is interesting, all the employees. So if you wanna, all the employees, including the ones who were part of sponsoring some of what I'm about to show you or distributing and producing what I'm about to show you.

Since our ministry was founded in 1938, we have been, you think in 1938, the first president of our Daily Bread Ministries was saying, you know, one of those historic biblical things, right along with salvation in Christ alone, the infallibility of scripture, celebrating diversity.

I don't think so. I just, for some reason, think maybe that's a change. Maybe that is a difference between 1938 and today. I'm just saying, I stand corrected if you can produce a document from 1938 that shows our Daily Bread Ministries was dedicated from the beginning, from the inception to historic biblical Christianity, which included in their minds, celebrating diversity.

But I do digress. We have been working with a broad spectrum of organizations to distribute our resources and fulfill our mission to make the life-changing wisdom of the Bible understandable and accessible to all.

One of those relationships was with the Witness Foundation to distribute our material through their Joy and Justice Conference. What we did not know, nor did we agree to, was their statement that we were sponsoring the conference.

They corrected this, but the damage has been done. This situation has raised a lot of questions. So what is that? I do, I mean, this just raises more questions in my mind. And this is such a minor point in the whole thing, because it really doesn't matter whether they sponsored it or not.

Their stuff is obviously, the stuff I'm about to show you is much more important than whether or not they sponsored this particular conference. But, you know, so they worked with this ministry in order to fulfill their mission, and they've formed a relationship to distribute material.

So they let the Witness Foundation distribute their material at their conference. Okay, so, I mean, I don't know how that came about. I don't know exactly what that looks like. That seems like that's more than just a vendor relationship.

If you're, if they're distributing material, if the organization itself is, then someone's paying to have that happen. Either Our Daily Bread is paying to have that happen, in which case money is being transferred from Our Daily Bread to the Witness Foundation, or the Witness Foundation just purchased a bunch of Daily Bread stuff.

And in which case, then the Witness Foundation lied, and they should be thrown under the bus. Well, you know, they should be called to account for that. Like, you know, you just lied about us. But he doesn't really tell you which it is, just that they didn't agree to be a sponsor.

So, but yeah, I mean, I've been, obviously I'm getting my feet wet and doing conferences and stuff. And when you specifically, this is one of the things that TrueScript has been talking about. When you specifically give materials and you're donating them, right?

This is, or you're paying to have them distributed, which is what that is. There is a level of sponsorship happening. There is, you are helping that organization. You are attracting people. You are helping, help, you know, the finances.

You're bearing that burden of the conference. So I don't, I'm, my suspicion is something, there was some transfer that happened here. Anyway, he says, this situation has raised a lot of questions for us.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss those with you and hear from feedback over a phone call. It would also give me the opportunity to share other things we are doing to ensure that this does not happen again.

I will return to Grand Rapids on January 18th. My cell number is, and I'm not gonna read that. I hope we can connect soon. Well, there you have it. I think that it's important to remind everyone, including myself as we proceed, that the reason that we're engaged in this is not because simply the fact that there are corrupt or compromised ministries.

There are people who say things that aren't true in ministries, who project, whatever. I think that ultimately this comes down to some doctrinal issues. And we want to defend the word of God. We want to defend Christ, his mission.

I think that it's funny because the big ministries that promote DEI and social justice stuff will often say that the reason they're doing it is because they want to be a good witness. When in reality, and you'll actually, you'll hear this in one of the clips, it takes away from the witness.

It takes away from the witness of the church. And it, I think, detracts and takes resources that should be used for actual discipleship and reroutes them into just the opposite of that. It literally is the opposite, and you'll see that.

Jesus Identifying with the Poor

So I'm gonna start with a pretty mild example of what I'm talking about. We're gonna go in sequential order with some of the podcasts that I listen to. This is from 2021, a gentleman named Rasul Barry, who is fairly connected with Crew, as I understand it.

If you go to his website, sorry, did I say Crew? He is connected to Crew, but he's also connected to Our Daily Bread. So I think he's done some stuff for Crew as well in the past. But if you go to his website, Our Daily Bread is front and center.

So they're connected somehow. But he is, this is on the Our Daily Bread YouTube channel. This is where all the information that I'm about to show you I pulled from. And this is the end of 2021, and it's a short video, Our Daily Bread video devotional.

So they have video devotionals in addition to their printed material. And this is what Rasul Barry had to say.

Hey, it's Rasul Barry, and I'm here in Nazareth, Israel, reflecting on how this city gives hope to anyone who comes from broken backgrounds. I began to really reflect and discover the words and the life of Jesus.

I love how the apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians. He said, he who was rich became poor so that we who were poor could become rich. There's this generous exchange that Paul refers to as the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, where he essentially helps us understand that it's not by coincidence that Jesus comes from Nazareth.

It was very much part of the divine mission to have the savior of the universe identify with those who come from brokenness, from those who come from poverty.

And I Okay, let's stop there. That's a very, I would say, liberation theology read of that passage. If you go to the passage, I'm gonna back up here so you can see what we were looking at. 2 Corinthians 8, 9.

You could read 2 Corinthians 8. Paul is commending sacrificial giving, and he uses Christ as an example of that. He does not command. He even says, I think, in chapter, in verse eight or so, I'm not giving you a command here.

He's not commanding believers that they need to be giving to the point of impoverishing themselves, but giving is important. And the bigger thing and the more important thing to recognize in all of this, though, is that there is nothing said about Nazareth and Jesus going to Nazareth as an identification with the poor.

He's not going there because he specifically wanted to be with the poor people because there's something more noble or virtuous or supreme about being poor. And that's a way liberation theologians would read that passage, but it's not actually in the passage.

They have to smuggle that in. So yes, Christ is giving, and he came from heaven and we call it the condescension. I mean, he condescended to this earth in order to live with humans. Even if he was in the richest palace there could be on this earth, he would still be giving up so much to be here.

So this is a reading of, he's first taking Nazareth as if this represents God's identification with the oppressed and the poor. Then he's reading that into 2 Corinthians 8 and saying that when it talks about Christ's condescension, that Nazareth is somehow part of this, and that being from Nazareth means there is an identification with the poor.

It's a universal message. Christ came to rescue all of us, poor, rich, whether or not you have material goods is irrelevant to that. So that's a good message for everyone, not just the poor. But, and you might think this is mild, this is no big deal.

Yeah, fine, okay. There's a lot more coming, but I thought that this was a twisting and that twisting is not something that you want in your devotional materials, right?

Those who come from brokenness.

Healing Racial Trauma and the Language of Victimhood

All right, so we already heard him. Let's get to some more stuff here that I think is more concerning. This is from the God Hears Her podcast. This is all, again, from Our Daily Bread Ministries, Healing Racial Trauma, Episode 119 with Sheila Wise Rowe.

And this was posted on February 20th, 2023. So it's not ancient history. And there's what the podcast has to say.

My experience is completely different. And I also grew up in Texas, which is a very different expression of the whole crisis that we were all going through. Can you describe what you mean by racial trauma and even trauma to begin with?

So she's saying, this is the host, as she, and I clipped it, but as a white woman is what you didn't hear. So as a white woman who has a set of experiences, I don't understand racial trauma, but then she goes to the extra step and saying, or trauma, just, you know, tell me about trauma, because I'm a white woman.

So this is, again, you're getting a sense of that standpoint theory, whereas a white woman, you don't have access to something that's universal. This is a universal thing. Understanding something that they're saying is biblical, something that's related to the human experience of, and I'm putting obviously the best possible face on this, but sin and its effects on people, trauma, i .e. trauma.

This is something that obviously you can look in scripture, you can find out about, but as a white woman, she's got this big barrier, apparently. She doesn't know exactly what it is. So she asks, and here's part of the answer.

We saw what happened with George Floyd, horrific. It has a special meaning and a deeper meaning for a black mother who's watching this man be killed before our eyes and having him cry out, mama. It was gut-wrenching because we have thoughts about our own family members and that's traumatizing.

There are ways in which racial trauma happens when, and it may seem like, well, that's just a statue. What's the big deal? But that statue, a statue of a Confederate statue possibly, has a meaning and it may have meaning to certain people.

And it's one of, well, this is part of the culture, the heritage or whatever. And for black folk, the meaning of that statue is very different. The meaning is enslavement. The meaning is who's in charge and who's superior.

So all of those things contribute towards racial trauma. The first step really is

All right, so you wanna understand trauma, you gotta understand George Floyd. You gotta understand statues that may have an admiration for Confederate soldiers or generals. And these have, I agree, they do have meanings, but she's reading these meanings through a certain filter where it's not the authors, it's not the people who erected these statues.

It's not objectively what actually happened to George Floyd, that he died of a fentanyl overdose. Those things aren't front and center at all. And by February 20th, 2023, we knew what had happened to George Floyd.

These are read through the experience, frankly, people who have, I think, by and large, been conditioned to read the past, to read these events in certain ways. So it's not the monument marker that will define what the monument was about.

And most of the vast majority, I've seen probably a hundred of these things. I've seen a lot of them. I mean, I did a whole documentary on monuments called American Monuments. So not only have I been to many of these, but I've also seen, obviously, online monument markers and plaques and things.

And they are pretty standard. I mean, they say things like it's to heroism, it's to bravery, it's to sacrifice. It's the same thing that you'll see in union monuments or war monuments to Revolutionary War soldiers or World War II soldiers or Vietnam veterans.

It's the same kinds of things. But for some reason, these particular monuments get a different reading because they're meant to intimidate. They're meant to promote slavery. You're not gonna get that from the authors who put them up.

You're not gonna get that from the plaques that are on the monuments. Where you get that from are modern retellings, modern memory studied, propelled retellings of these monuments and what they actually mean.

So we'll tell you what they mean. And then if, of course, if you do this with any, do this with the Bible, right? We'll tell you what it means. We don't need to understand it according to the original audience and what Paul meant when he was talking about women being submissive.

We're just gonna tell you that that's chauvinistic today. And I mean, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do that, right? If those are the rules. So it's preferring this one particular reading, which of the past of events, even in the current world that forward a particular narrative.

Are we able to listen to one another and to validate one another's stories? And if you look at scripture, this whole notion of grieving with those who are grieving, meeting people exactly where they are, looking at scriptures around the parts of the body and the importance of all the different parts of the body.

So if we're talking about believers, if the foot is in pain, you better pay attention to the foot. You can't ignore it. Don't pretend it's not there.

This is part of the problem because rejoice with those who rejoice, right? So Donald Trump won and I'm rejoicing that Donald Trump won. So shouldn't Sheila Wise Rowe rejoice with me because scripture commands rejoicing, right?

This gets silly because really at the end of the day, what we're talking about are differences of opinion based upon a lot of preconceptions. Let me give you a crazy example. And this is admittedly a crazy example.

What if someone was rejoicing because they won the lottery but they didn't actually win the lottery, right? They're just deceived into thinking, should you rejoice with them? What if they're upset because they, I don't know, they think that they should be, I mean, this is actually a, this is sort of a real example because this is a current debate over transgender stuff, right?

But someone thinks that they are actually a woman when biologically they're a man and they want you to weep with them and well, they're engaging in a lie. You can't weep with them on that, right? That would be the wrong thing.

You could weep with them over the fact that they're confused, that maybe there's sin at play here. You could weep over that, but you're not gonna be able to join with them and engage in a lie. And I think that's what you're being asked to do here.

You're being asked to, there's an emotional response because of conditioning to what happened with George Floyd, for example. And you can certainly rejoice over, or rather weep over many things connected to that.

But if you're being specifically asked to weep over the fact that this is a racially motivated incident, there's not evidence to demonstrate that. So what do you do, right? This is a big problem. You can weep over the fact that this man died, that there was a tragic life here, that there was a life of crime and this crime led him to this area and this, but you can't weep over the fact that, well, he was unjustifiably killed by the police and the police are racist and that's why they did it.

And this is what you're being asked to engage in. So you need the truth first. If you want to rejoice with someone or weep with someone, it's important that you're doing it with over something that's actually true.

And just to, this is emotionally manipulative to just say, well, you just got it. We got to listen. You got to believe what I say and then you got to react accordingly.

Pay attention, ask the questions, listen to the stories. I think that's just, that's the starting point. And right now I feel like what's happening is that that's been just cut off. It's like, we're not listening to anybody's stories.

We just, we have our narrative, our perspective and often it's based politically. And so therefore we're not going to entertain the notion that somebody else is having an alternative experience. It's often interpersonal.

You see, this is, sounds like projection to me. Like we're not going to objectively look at these things because we have this political narrative that we need to uphold, but that's what she's upholding.

She's upholding a political narrative. If you look into the George Floyd thing, if you look into the plaques that, and the motivations behind putting up Confederate monuments, and there's a myriad of historic, I mean, it's not like we don't have historical examples of these things.

There's a small handful of things they try to use to show that universally, hundreds of these things are all racist. If you actually do an actual study, you take in, you have a paradigm that takes account of all the information.

You won't come up with this kind of narrative about them, but it's a political agenda that wants to erase this kind of history and wants to frame the George Floyd thing in a certain way that gives you the narrative that Sheila Wise Rose is promoting here and saying, these are the facts, essentially.

These are the facts and you must listen, you must accept.

Racism that causes racial trauma, but that there are systems that are in place. And that is the reality. And whether you believe that or not, it's true. So it's, if you actually want to do the research, you will discover there are many

It's just true. You just got to accept, it's just true. It's the systems that are causing the racial trauma. And well, let's keep playing. I'll give you more.

Ways in which there are blocks that are set up. And so just being aware, like is this possibly an issue in this particular situation, whatever that situation might be, that there was something systemic that is going on here that needs to be addressed.

And particularly if you're looking at, okay, how is the church functioning, your particular church? How is your community functioning? How do you relate to those outside of your community? What are the differences that you see?

Is there a difference between the services that you see in your community and it's mostly white? And yet when you look at the inner city communities and you see trash isn't being picked up, schools are horrible.

It's just like an under-resourced. It's not even just about bad teachers, it's bad buildings, bad school supplies. When you look at those two and you can say, okay, it's a tax issue, but it's not just that because both of these are public schools.

There's an organ.

All right, well, there you have it. Public schools that don't have the resources or there aren't in the same bracket as schools in other areas that are more white. If majority black public schools have deteriorating materials or buildings, you can chalk that up to, it must be systemic in some way.

It's gotta be the fact that our system is favoring white schools, white neighborhoods, white people over black people. And that's just true. That's what she wants you to think. That's just true that that is a problem or maybe perhaps even the problem, depending on the situation.

And because of that, you must react accordingly. You must look to systemic solutions to solve these systemic problems. I've said this before, if you can frame the problem, then the solution will follow.

So if you frame it that way, then the solution becomes, well, it's a systemic thing. And what does that give you? Well, if it's money that's not going, not enough money is going to these schools, we just need more money.

And this is, I mean, I live in New York, right? So this is something we hear all the time. New York City is not very, I mean, it's like an hour and a half, two hour drive south of where I'm sitting right now.

This is constantly a topic of conversation. And some of the schools that get, some of the best funded schools in the country that have the most money per student coming to them are failing. And Donald Trump is right about this.

Our American education system is extremely expensive and yet the results are terrible. We don't have good results. And this would, and the solution is always this, we always get the same thing. When politicians start talking about it, it's like, well, we just don't have the resources.

We just don't pay the teachers enough. We just don't, we need more, better updated computers. We need better updated textbooks. We just don't have what we need. And the question I have is at what point, like where's the actual number or what's the actual like threshold that we need to match in order to finally say that we're meeting the, do they have to be funded twice as much, three times as much as some comparable suburban white school?

What, how do we measure this? And it's what you hear here. It's never actual metrics, very rarely at least. I have not heard it. It is appeals to emotion. It is just chalking it up to that must be the problem.

Well, maybe there's another problem. Have you thought of that? Maybe there's actually other issues going on, maybe crime. Maybe there's cultural factors at play here. There's probably a lot of things in play and it just say, well, it's gotta be this.

Frankly, it's irresponsible. You're not going to get this kind of solutions you need. Again, this is a ministry that is known for promoting devotional materials that is giving you this stuff. Is this really, I mean, is this what you would expect from that kind of a ministry?

I think is a fair question to ask.

Sexual Abuse, Power, and the MeToo Framework

Organization called TEL that only deals with adult victims of therapist and clergy.

This is out of the cage podcast, episode 142 with Amy Nordhus also on 20, it was October 30th, 2023. So not ancient history. And this is what Amy Nordhus has to say.

Clergy abuse and they tell me they get 40 to 50 ,000 people to their website every year. And these are adults who are being taken advantage of. And there's so much shame, even more shame for an adult.