TheSpace - Episode 4 - Matt Travis

You're about to watch a conversation

I had with Matt Travis. Matt Travis has a couple of ideas on how we can really determine the difference between actual justice, you know, defined biblically.

So you know, God is the standard of justice. He tells us what's right from wrong is. If you want to know what right from wrong is, you look to the scriptures because that is where we find that out for sure.

You know, we all believe, all Christians anyway, that the heart is desperately wicked. It's not trustworthy.

So what we think sounds like justice might not be. We got to compare it to the scripture.

And so Matt has three, actually four different ways that we can determine the difference between social justice defined incorrectly and justice defined scripturally.

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. Give this video a like, share it, and go ahead and check out

Matt Travis on his social media and websites as well. Enjoy. All right. So I am here with Matt Travis.

Matt's the writer of the blog, thekingsrights .com, and he wanted to talk, he had an idea to talk about what do you know, social justice, and I thought it was a good idea.

So Matt, good to talk to you. Yeah, good to see you, man. All right. So I'm going to share my screen because I thought this would be a good place to start.

So let me just do this really quick. I found one of the most official news sources that you could find in Vermont anyway, and that is

BenandJerrys .com. Yes, the ice cream people are absolutely in the social justice movement.

What do you know? So I just wanted to start here because I thought this was pretty helpful.

Matt wanted to talk about, correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, you wanted to talk about how do we know if something is a systemic injustice or institutional, well, why don't you tell me what you want to talk about?

I want to get this right. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the main thing is how do we know something is an actual systemic injustice?

And I'm talking about specifically systemic injustices because that's what the social justice crowd is alluding to whenever they talk about social justice is that there are these systemic issues that are injustices.

And I don't know, did you want me to jump into some points about just particularly what

I think, how do we know if something is a systemic injustice or would you like to?

Let's read the first paragraph of this article because I think this will help us. So this is from BenandJerrys .com.

So it starts off like this. It wasn't too long ago that a lot of people were talking about a post -racial

America. We had elected a black president for the first time and then we went ahead and reelected him four years later and the country was feeling pretty good about itself.

Let me just stop there. Not everyone in the country was feeling pretty good about it. You know what I mean? Barack Obama's presidency was indeed a profound and meaningful mark of true progress.

Racism, of course, never really went away. The presence of a black president or a hockey star or a movie franchise superhero, however welcoming and exciting, cannot reverse centuries of racial injustice.

And then the article goes on to talk about how what systemic injustice is, or in this case what systemic racism is, is racism at every level of society.

And what I thought was so interesting about that is that I think people who would deny that there are rampant systemic racist issues in our country,

I don't think they would deny that there probably exists someone somewhere at every level of society that is in fact a racist.

Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Right. Okay. So, so, I mean, you know,

I thought this article is so interesting because I'm like, okay, well, every level of society, fine. It goes on and it says, systemic racism persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments and elsewhere.

Why? Well, think about it. When white people occupy most positions of decision -making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead.

We all have to do a better job of calling out systemic racism. Here are seven ways that we know it's real. And what happens, and I'm not going to read the rest of this, but as you can see it, what, what it basically does is what essentially everybody does.

This is typically what happens when you ask about systemic racism and you ask for evidence. They'll start to point out these disparities.

So in this case, it's a wealth disparity. So white people have 90 % of the wealth, even though they're only 77 % of the population.

Employment disparities, African -Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed. Education, criminal justice, housing, surveillance, healthcare, whatever it is.

I mean, there's a bunch of them. And I think we were just talking before we started recording, Matt, and you know,

I would say that I personally don't find the need to have to dispute the numbers. I don't think that that's really where the issue lies.

I mean, what are your thoughts when you see these kinds of disparities? Well, whenever I see these, my first thing that comes to mind is

I'd say they do a decent job of defining what they're talking about and being specific.

And in this particular, in these particular infographics, but generally when people bring up income inequalities, and even whenever I look at these infographics,

I still to some extent don't know what they're actually calling the injustice. Because by this standard, are they saying that everybody has to have an equal amount of things in order for there not to be an injustice?

Or are they saying that there's some arbitrary number of the percentage of money that I'm supposed to have versus what you're supposed to have?

So that's the first thing I think of, is that they're defining their terms kind of, but not really, because they're not telling me what the injustice is.

They're just giving me some like broad thing that's going on, and I'm supposed to assume it's an injustice.

Yeah, I think you're right. And so, but I will say this, you know, Matt, that there is sort of a,

I don't know if intuitive is the right word, but there's something that sounds right when you say, well, if African Americans are 13 % of the population, they should have 13 % of the wealth.

Like that just makes sense to a lot of people. And so, you know, I'm trying to think, what is it about that that just automatically sounds right to us?

Like, cause I'll admit, like when people say, well, you know, blacks are 13 % of the population, but they're 50 % of the people in jail or whatever it is, you know,

I don't know if that's the real number, but there's something about that. That sounds unfair to people when they, when they first hear that, why do you think that is?

I, man, I think it's, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why it sounds unfair to people, to be honest.

It's, I think a lot of it has to do with just an inability to rationalize, to use logic to figure out like why things are the way they are.

People immediately jump to somebody must be a victim.

I think that's just part of our sin nature is to jump to, I'm a victim. And so therefore that's whenever we see an inequality, we think of ourselves at a time whenever we were unequal in some way, whether it be because of income or because of a job, whatever, or, or anything.

And so we immediately think, well, we have empathy essentially, like Ben Shapiro talks about this, how empathy is a horrible way to go about doing public policy.

And I think our natural inclination is to either, either have a disgust for someone or to have empathy for a certain group.

But both of those are wrong. Neither one is actually helpful. You have to have compassion combined with reason.

Yeah. That's interesting that you say that because, you know, and you kind of connected it to the sin nature.

I'm sure that triggered a lot of people because that, cause you know, that's, that's really personal because it's like, you know, you know,

I, I remember the, for the first time a pastor, you know, kind of,

I remember this was in person or if this is in a video, I can't remember, but, um, we were reading a passage about the, like the rich and the poor and there's tons of stuff in the

Bible that compare and contrast the rich and the poor. And I remember the pastor said to me, you know, if you're in this room right now, or you're listening to this podcast, you're not in the poor category.

You need to understand that. You know what I mean? And I remember like, that was jarring to me, but the minute

I thought about it for another second, I was like, yeah, he's exactly right. Why did I just assume

I was in this other class? Yeah. I was talking. Go ahead. No, sorry, man.

I thought you were done. No, I was. I was just going to say, I was talking to, uh, uh, my boss actually today about,

I just realized I have the wrong camera. Oh, well, um, I was talking to my boss today and, uh, and, and, uh, he, he's a conservative and he's not, he's not a

Christian, but he's, he's conservative. So we talk about social justice from time to time. We come, come with some pretty interesting conversations and you talk about your pastor saying that, that we're not in poverty.

Uh, we were looking at some stats on something in, in poverty was brought up that there's an equal amount of poverty today as there was 50 years ago or something along those lines.

It wasn't exactly that, but something along those lines. And I remember pointing to him telling, I don't even know how to take that step because if we looked at the standard of living 50 years ago today, it would be equal to the standard of the poverty standard of living today.

So I'm like, I don't even understand how we get to that conclusion that there's an equal amount of poverty, in which case it depends on how you're defining poverty,

I guess. So, so yeah, I would agree with your pastor in that, in that there's not really poverty, at least not in America.

There's not, I mean, there is poverty in America, but it's, it's nothing compared to the rest of the world and nothing compared to 50, a hundred years ago.

Right. So, so when we're looking at income inequality as an injustice in America, whenever you're not really that bad off, if you're, if you're, if you're, you know, if you have low income, yeah, if you're poor, right.

It's kind of, it's kind of an absurd notion to call it an injustice because that would mean that there was some level of injustice with like 90 % of the population 50 years ago.

So it, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but. So, so yeah.

So let's talk about, you know, what, what is a systemic injustice? Because I think, so, so the, kind of the caricature of people like me is that I don't believe any, there's any injustice in the world.

And I don't believe in it. People even say, we were talking about this earlier, people even say, we don't really even believe in, in total depravity if we don't agree with this stuff.

And so, but, but I think that most people that would be on our side of this issue would say that there are injustices obviously, and potentially are open to the idea of systemic injustice.

So what, so why don't you tell me, I mean, I know you have a few notes. I mean, how do we determine what a systemic injustice is or, you know, because I would imagine that you would agree that they do exist and have existed in the past.

Yeah. Yeah. And they don't exist, just exist in the past, but they currently exist now. Right. And, and there's actually quite a bit of systemic injustice going on.

It's not the ones that people like to talk about because people like to, people like to sound like they're empathetic.

Like we mentioned earlier about, like I had mentioned earlier about empathy versus hostility and how our sin nature kind of makes us, our immediate reaction is to lean either way.

People tend to want to be empathetic. So, and this is, I've talked about this issue before with Jacob Brunton and Cody Leibel about how people don't seem to, and Jacob actually brought it up,

I think in one of your, brought this point up in a podcast that you did with him and a few other guys on social justice that people seem to not understand that, or not that they don't understand, but they don't want to be, or no,

I guess that they don't understand that they're responsible for what they believe, which is kind of a weird notion for,

I mean, a weird, weird thing for a Christian because the entire basis of our salvation is based on the fact that we're responsible for what we believe.

But the reason that I say that is because if you look at, there are a number of issues that if you look at, like police shootings, that people tend, and income inequality, that people tend to favor the poor.

They shouldn't just show partiality to the poor when it comes to these things. And they don't seem to understand that we should not, and this is what

I think they're doing, and I don't like to speak to people's intent a lot, but this is the only sense that I can make of it. What I think that they might be doing is, oh, how do

I word this, basically, they're just erring on the side of caution towards the poor, right?

But that's not taking responsibility for what you believe. So like with the instance of Michael Brown, the hands up, don't shoot thing, they just kept running with that narrative.

And the reason that, and you would bring up that it's not true, and they'd be like, well, the overall narrative about police shootings is true, and they'd be like, well, the statistics show that that's not exactly true.

And they'd still be willing to give the benefit of the doubt every time erring on the side of the poor rather than the police, or rather than the rich when it comes to income inequality and whatnot.

And I think that's a big problem. And I think you see that problem whenever it comes to their, not inability, but them not defining justice correctly.

So a few ways that I've looked at, interrupt me at any time if you want to throw something in. Well, let me just say this, you brought it up, so I'm going to mention it.

But from my perspective, Michael Brown, that whole situation did more damage to the minority community than anything.

And then what I mean by that is that's always the, sort of the turning point that's cited by people.

Lots of people cite that as one of the turning points for their own thinking and becoming a social justice advocate. And honestly, that was one of the most bizarre things to me, because out of all the shootings that were very broadcast and everything, that one was the most very clear cut, obviously justified shooting, in my opinion.

Now I would argue that some of the other ones, there were some nuances and some people think that they were justified, some people think they weren't.

And I fall on the non -justified side on a number of ones where my friends don't.

But it's like the boy who cried wolf. It's like, if you're saying that this Michael Brown thing is unjust, then how can

I believe anything you're saying? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Anyway, but I think you're right,

I mean, you know, if we're not able to define these things and we're able to identify the factors that make it a real injustice, and instead we're just kind of like, well,

I'm just going to err on the side of the disenfranchised. And that's, that does the truth of disservice.

And so, so clearly it does everyone a disservice. And it shows a willingness, one of the first,

I guess, taglines, you would call it, that I had for my website was truth matters. And it was actually,

I came up with that before, I think the whole Black Lives Matter thing started. And that's how

I see a lot of this willingness to err on the side of, you know, taking care of the poor or taking care of the minority or being on the side of the marginalized, right?

I see this as a rejection of truth. It's that me being cautious is more important than me knowing the truth, or me being cautious is more important than me telling what

I truly believe is the truth. But I don't know, I don't want to get too deep into that, because I don't think that,

I think a lot of these people are sincere in their belief that these things are injustices. And once I start getting too deep into that, then

I might start questioning their intent entirely. Yeah, I'll say this too, though,

I mean, and this is just kind of a side note, we can move on. But, you know, if, again,

I'm going to refer back to the Michael Brown thing, if you're willing to sort of just kind of err on the side of whatever the injustice and put such a little thought into actually determining, is this an injustice or is it not?

I don't think it's a surprise that also the supposed solutions to these injustices, there's a lot of, there's not that much thought that goes into those either.

It ends up being what just kind of looks good, rather than what actually is good. And so it's like, it's kind of lazy thinking, to be perfectly honest, in my opinion.

I'm not going to put those words in your mouth, I'm saying it. But lazy thinking doesn't lead to good things, you know what

I mean, ever. Anyway, let's move on. You had something you wanted to get into. So I guess, I mean, I don't know,

I guess you can jump into how I would define something as an injustice.

And I think this is a relatively objective standard. Yeah. And there's three main points that I have for something, if I'm going to call it a systemic,

I should be very more specific, an actual systemic injustice, not just an injustice, because there's a difference. Because we can look at individual police shootings and say that was an injustice, but also deny the idea that there's a systemic injustice as far as racial based police shootings.

And I think that some people would say you can't do that. So if, but I would agree, I think most reasonable people would say that you can say there's an injustice, but not have it be systemic.

So I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think that that's worth saying that some people would say you can't actually do that.

Yeah. And that's kind of what my three points here deal with. So the first one I've kind of already mentioned is that you have to be specific and definable.

So, for instance, when you say income inequality, that doesn't mean anything to me because I don't know what you really mean.

Do you mean when you say income inequality is an injustice, do you mean that anyone having more money than anyone else is an injustice or is there something more specific that you're turning to, you know, pointing to?

But but I kind of went over that a little bit already. And that's kind of self -evident. In my example that I give, the example that I normally use, because every

Christian agrees with this, I think even the majority of the social justice side agrees with this, that abortion is an injustice and it's a systemic injustice.

And the reason we agree with it is, number one, because we can all define it. We all know exactly what we're talking about.

When I say abortion, I don't mean anything except the killing of an unborn offspring of a human.

I mean that. Every time I say abortion, right? And we can go further than that and call it murder and whatnot.

But if we're just giving a simple definition, if I give that definition, everybody knows what I'm talking about. And with abortion, too,

I don't even have to give that definition. And they already know what I'm talking about whenever I say abortion. So if I say abortion is a systemic injustice, we may disagree whether it's a systemic injustice, but we don't disagree on specifically what

I'm talking about. And we don't disagree on the definition of abortion. Right. So that would be the first point.

We kind of went over a little bit of that earlier. Yeah. So in other words, what you're saying is the first thing you need to do out of the gate is make sure we all understand what we're talking about.

We all understand. We're all using either we're using the same language or we at least know what the language means and all of that.

Yeah. And that's a problem even when it comes to stuff that's more specific that the social justice side talks about.

But anyway, I'll move on to my second point because we've kind of hit that pretty good. The second point is that it must if it if it is a systemic injustice and this is where I think a lot of the discussion needs to happen in the in reformed circles and in Christian circles.

If it is a systemic injustice, we must be defining that using the

Bible. It must be both defined by and or not contradictory to biblical justice.

Right. So what the Bible lays out as injustices, what the

Bible says are injustices and the principles behind why those things are injustices must line up with what we're calling a systemic injustice.

The example with abortion would be that abortion is sometimes defined by the culture as a systemic injustice.

And sometimes it's not. It depends on where you live and at what time you live and whatnot. But the Bible clearly says that thou shalt not kill.

The Bible clearly says, I think it's in there's actually a passage in Deuteronomy, not Deuteronomy, Exodus, Exodus 21.

I think Exodus 21 where it talks about if you strike a pregnant woman and her child dies, if there's no harm, no foul, essentially no harm, then there's no punishment.

If there is harm, then eye for an eye. Yep. Right. So there are actual passages in the Bible that we point to and say, look, the

Bible defines this as an injustice. So now we can all agree. Right. We don't even really have to look much further than that.

But I would also add on that the Bible cannot contradict that is an injustice. So, for instance, the

Bible doesn't. The Bible contradicts the idea that income inequality is an injustice.

Right. And so, for instance, I'll pull. I actually have a passage I was reading earlier today that pertains perfectly in Matthew 20, the labors in the vineyard passage.

Well, I'll just go ahead and read the whole thing. Yeah, read it. For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, for his vineyard.

I don't know why I keep saying vineyard. That's how it's spelled. Yeah. Yeah, that is how it's spelled. After agreeing with the laborers for denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

Oh, I did it again. And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing in the marketplace. And to them, he said, you go into the vineyard, too.

And whatever it is, whatever is right, I will give you. Right. And that's crucial. So he says, whatever is right.

Right. In a parable may not be something that actually happened, but everything in the parable is true. Like it wouldn't be true.

Jesus wouldn't be giving this as a parable if it wasn't true. So the concepts in it wouldn't be true. So I think that's that's a crucial point, too.

And to them, he said, you go into the vineyard and whatever is right, I will give you.

Right. And then we get to the end. And what does he say was right? He says. So some of the guys are complaining about getting paid less or getting paid the same, even though they worked more.

And a lot of people at that point might look at that and say, well, that's a that's a point for Marxism, because it's saying that to to from each what they were able to do and to each what he needs.

Right. Right. Like these guys couldn't find work. So they ended up coming to work later. Right. Because they finally found work, but they still got paid the same.

Sure. But it's contradicted whenever it says later on. So it says, and on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, saying these last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have been born, who have borne the burden on the day of the scorched heat.

But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius that what belongs to you, that what belongs to you and go.

Oh, take what belongs to you and go. Sorry. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? So, first of all, the property private property rights argument, it's this belongs to me, which contradicts the idea of income inequality, because if we own our private property, if the

Bible says we own private property and I own more than you, then how can that be an injustice? But also he says,

I am am I not allowed to do what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? Right.

So then that comes back to the argument that we've heard made several times throughout this debate over the past couple of years of confusing justice and mercy that it is in his generosity that he's giving more.

He's not obligated to do it. Sure. But. And then also.

Also, another very important sentence is, did you not agree with me for a denarius, which shows that the just amount that we're supposed to see.

So the just income that we're supposed to see is what we agree with somebody that they are going to pay us.

And the labor that we're supposed to provide is what we agree with somebody that we are going to provide. Yeah.

So there's there's clear indications in the Bible that income inequality in and of itself, if you're defining it, it's a literal sense that differences in income between people is not an injustice.

So there's things in the Bible, going back to my point, there's things in the Bible that contradict the idea that income inequality.

So that's why I say income equality is not an injustice. But but abortion is now to all my social justice followers, which there are some people who watch a lot of my videos that that really don't like my opinions.

And that's that's great. I'm glad that they do. I would say that and I think I don't want to speak for you,

Matt, but I think you would agree that just because an income inequality isn't an injustice does not mean that something happened that caused that income inequality that could be an injustice.

But we have to but we have to be careful to make sure that we're actually, you know, looking at the right thing.

So, you know, this Ben and Jerry's thing that I shared, you know, this, you know, here we go.

This Ben and Jerry's thing that I shared, it doesn't go the next step. But all it shows is the inequality. So if there's a wealth inequality, that's fine.

That's nice information to have. There could be something that led to this that we would want to say, OK, well, we, you know, we need to take a look at the injustices there or whatever.

Maybe there is maybe there isn't, though. And so the problem is, you know, from a biblical perspective, we got to go with what the

Bible defines as an actual sin or as a or as a crime or whatever it is or actual justice is not the results of it, because the results of it may or may not be said.

It's like you said in that example from the vineyard. Yeah, exactly. There was an income inequality there. Some people made a lot per hour.

Some people made a little bit per hour, but it was totally fair. There was fear based on a voluntary transaction based on a voluntary transaction.

Right. And so anyway. So, yeah, I think I think that's exactly right. And I would agree with you, Matt, that at least at this stage in the game, the majority of the debate and conversation inside reform circles has to be in this area because we haven't gotten to this point yet.

We really just haven't. Exactly. And that brings me to my next point. So this is the third point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That brings me to my third point. And this is why these kind of all to go together and you have to have all three.

If you don't have all three, then you don't have or you don't have what appears to be a system systemic injustice.

The next point is that we have to have clear and direct evidence that the injustice is actually occurring. So, for instance, income inequality,

I say that that's not an injustice. Well, somebody might say, like you said, well, but the reason that there's income inequality is because of an injustice.

Well, OK, that might be. But in order to know for me to know if it's a systemic injustice and therefore for me to be justified in fighting against that systemic injustice rather than just erring on the side of the poor, you have to give me direct evidence that it is sanctioned by the state and sanctioned is kind of a weird word.

So let me explain what I mean by that. I don't necessarily mean like so, for instance, abortion may not be sanctioned by the state in every definition of the word sanction.

Sure. Right. But the way that I'm using sanction, that's the best word I could come up with. I'm thinking there might be a better word and that might be something

I need to work on. But what I mean by sanctioned is that either the state is doing something that is an injustice, systemic injustice, or the state is not stepping in when they have an obligation, like we said in our last point, a biblical obligation to step in and stop an injustice that is occurring on a large scale.

Yeah. And I would say that the key word there is biblical, because, you know, when

I spoke with the brothers at the Native Speaks podcast, you know, one of the things that we got, we got into it towards the end when we didn't have a lot of time.

So unfortunately, this was where I wanted the conversation to go, but it didn't get there till the end. But what we were debating was where it's

OK and where it's not OK for the state to step in. And so I was I was making the point that the state was wrong to not do anything about the man stealing that was going on during the slave trade.

That wasn't that was wrong. And the correct thing for the state to do would be would have been to persecute the man stealers and the death penalty for people who kidnap and things like that.

That would have been just. But then they kind of were saying I was inconsistent because I was saying it wouldn't be correct for the state to step in and say, well, this restaurant,

I know you don't like Latinos, and so you don't want to have Latinos there. I I think that the state would be wrong to step in and say you have to have

Latinos at your restaurant. I think that that's not correct because I don't think that I think that oversteps the state's bounds, even though it is a sin.

And if someone was in my church and owned a restaurant and didn't allow Latinos, I would excommunicate them if they didn't repent. And it's a sin and you will go face your maker for that.

It's not a crime. And so there's when you talk about biblical sanctions by the state, like there are certain things the

Bible gives the state the ability to do and other things in the Bible does not give the state the ability to do.

And that's another key aspect of this debate, in my opinion. Well, I would say that that comes in into play with our obligation, the difference between obligation to God versus an obligation to man.

Right. And things that are a matter of systemic injustices are at least as far as I can think are always going to be obligations that we have to man.

Right. Not that every obligation to man would be able to define whether something is a systemic injustice or not.

But but everything that is a systemic injustice is going to be an issue that's an obligation to man. Yeah. And that's not to say that there are other things that as Christians we owe the

Lord. We owe the Lord a lot of things that we don't owe man to man. Exactly.

Right. Exactly. And when it's something that we owe the Lord, which is we owe the Lord charity.

Right. We owe the Lord that we help our brothers and sisters out with charity. We owe the

Lord that we do not, like you were talking about earlier, we do not discriminate against people based on race or ethnicity or class or whatever.

But. Yeah. OK. I think you made an excellent point there.

So number three is basically evidence that the systemic injustice is actually happening and is sanctioned, even though that might not be the best way.

I know what you mean by that. I think it's a good word. It's a good word. But I see why you say it's not the best.

Sanctioned by the state. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think, you know, your example, again, you know, if we're going to stick with the abortion thing, clearly the state allows for abortion.

So they allow for that injustice, which typically defines an injustice.

They allow for it. And I think it's clearly sanctioned by the state. Yeah. And in the verse we talked about earlier in Exodus 21, where if you strike a pregnant woman and she dies, that's a perfect example.

And it or not strike a pregnant woman and she dies. If you strike a pregnant woman and there's harm to the child, the punishment is eye for an eye.

That's a perfect example of a biblical standard that shows that the state has an obligation, has a biblical obligation to to punish the wrongdoer who murders an unborn child.

And so that's where our biblical standard is. Right. And you won't find a similar verse with a similar prescription for a punishment for some of the things that are called systemic injustices today.

Yeah, exactly. And so and so and that's I always say this in my videos and I don't know if you'd agree with this or not, but but if you could find similar things with similar sanctions prescribed by the scripture,

I would join the cause. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I was going back and forth with somebody on Twitter today about that very thing.

Like if you provide me direct, if you find me provide me evidence that this is sanctioned by the state.

Yes, I will absolutely be on your side. Yeah. And so. Oh, yeah.

Another another point as far as evidence goes is just to show a contrast.

Between a couple of things, so, for instance, abortion. The contrast. Well, you know what?

I'm going to jump into a fourth point that I had that I was kind of playing with, but I don't know if it really helps to define what a systemic injustice is or if it more so just helps to define what should we really be concerned the most about.

Sure. And so my fourth point was that it's important to recognize whether the supposed injustice is a statistically significant issue, not rarely or never occurring.

Right. So so this would be. For instance, an abortion is a perfect.

The reason I thought of it is because abortion is a perfect example in the world

The perfect example of something that is statistically significant and not rarely and never occurring.

Right. So we have the evidence, as we talked about in our third point, we have the evidence because we literally have statistics. We have statistics that show how many babies are murdered in the womb every year.

Right. We have statistics showing that. And not only do we have statistics, but we can believe the statistics because they're coming from the people doing the murderers murdering who are perfectly fine with putting them out there because they know they aren't going to get in trouble for it.

Right. Right. So there's statistics and we can believe the statistics and the interpretation of the statistics is extremely easy.

And it's roughly eight hundred fifty thousand per year. If you average over like the last 10 years, that is a statistically significant issue that is not rarely or never occurring.

Like so it's whenever. And the reason I bring that up, too, is because you hear a lot of people say, well, every time

I bring up social injustice, and particularly when they're talking about who we should vote for, like, is it OK to vote for a pro -choice candidate, essentially

Democrats? But that's essentially what amounts to. They'll bring that up and they'll say, well, why does everybody always say, but what about abortion?

And it's like, well, because the social justice issue you're talking about, if it is an injustice, a lot of times it's not even occurring on that radical of a scale.

Right. On that, on that, there's just not a significant amount of it occurring. But abortion, we should be more concerned about.

Absolutely. Even if there is racial injustice happening, there's not eight hundred fifty thousand people dying from racial injustice.

So I'm sorry, but I'm going to be far more concerned about eight hundred fifty thousand deaths than I am police brutality.

Now, that doesn't mean I completely ignore police brutality. That doesn't mean I'm justified in not talking about police brutality against blacks simply because of the color of their skin, if that is happening.

Right. Right. But it does mean that we can't sit here and pretend like these are equal issues in modern society.

Right. Well, I think I think that's exactly right. And, you know, this is this is so I have a hard time with this because it's it seems so obvious to me, but it's very not obvious to a lot of people.

But, you know, if if something is so rare that. To be to be to be like seriously traumatized or concerned about it would be like irrational, like,

I don't know, I don't feel bad about not not being so concerned about it. In other words, like I don't

I don't know if this statistic still holds true. But a few years ago, Larry Elder liked to to bring this point up that statistically speaking, you're much more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than by a police officer.

Right. Yeah. And, you know, nobody goes around outside wondering,

I wonder if today's my day. I don't even know if I can go outside today because I might get struck by lightning. And if somebody were to do that, you would

I mean, you would feel bad for them and you would probably ask them to seek help. You know, you need help from a professional to get over this fear of going outside and being struck by light.

And that doesn't mean that people don't get struck by lightning either. See, that's the tricky part because because you say, look, you shouldn't go through life fearing that you're going to be shot by a cop.

Doesn't mean that people don't get shot by cops in an unjust way. Yeah. What I'm saying is you have to prioritize your worries.

Yeah. And so I don't a lot of times people will try to pressure me and others. Like, why aren't you weeping about the police brutality in this country?

And I'm like, well, you know, I'm sorry I don't do that. But I also don't weep for victims of lightning strikes.

And that's very sad. I just don't do it because it doesn't affect my life that much. Now, if I knew someone who was struck by lightning,

I would weep for them. You know what I mean? If I knew someone who had been shot by a police officer in an unjust way,

I would weep for them. I'm just I don't know. Why don't you weep for the thousands of people who died today?

You know, I don't know. Is that is that kind of a depravity? In itself? Maybe. But, you know, we can't spend all our time weeping.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not not as productive. But it's good. Well, I was just going to say, and it's and it's a

I lost my thought.

Go ahead. We're going to say. But no, I was just going to say that I see, you know, on your on the notes you sent me ahead of this, like there's you said that there's potentially something missing from this point or, you know,

I don't know. I see what you mean, because statistically significant, I mean, it seems like there's a little wiggle room there.

I know what you mean by that, though. And there are some things like abortion that are obviously statistically significant.

And then there are some things like, I don't know, being killed by a paper cut that are obviously not statistically significant. But then there's a lot of in between there.

And again, like it's not to say that you're you don't care about police brutality. I mean, well, this is what

I mean by that. This is what I mean by there might be something missing in that that number four point and why

I didn't feel comfortable including it in a strict definition of what I would consider an injustice. Yeah.

For instance, let's say abortion. Let's say no laws chained on abortion and it was still legal to get abortions.

But instead of eight hundred fifty thousand, it was. Fifty, would it still be a system, a systemic injustice that the government doesn't punish aborting children?

Probably. Right. But is it is it something that we're going to worry about over over some other form of murder that may or may not be punished?

That happens at a rate of a thousand a year or ten thousand a year? Right. Yeah, I see.

It would still be. So that's one of the reasons why I didn't feel comfortable when I was trying to figure out maybe I'm not wording it right.

Maybe in the end I was kind of like, I don't know, maybe it just doesn't include maybe it's less of a matter of using that point to define what is a systematic injustice and more so just using it as a point to say, hey, there's a reason why we worry about abortion more than we do police brutality, because the consequences in modern day society, maybe a hundred years ago, the consequences would have been different.

Right. The consequences in modern day society of not not worrying about abortion versus not worrying about police brutality are radically different.

Right. Right. Yeah. No, that's I think you're right. And I see what you mean. I definitely see for the black community, too, because 40 percent of black children are murdered in the womb.

Like it's it's not this is this also applies to minority communities. This is not just a white issue. I'm like, oh, this is a white worried about it because it's more of a white issue.

No, it's it's right. Well, there are some cities there are some cities where more black and Latino kids are killed than that are actually born.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's outrageous. And so so clearly in those cities and one of those cities is

New York. So there's more in New York City, more Latino and black kids are actually killed in the womb than are actually born.

And so excuse me if I'm more concerned with that than, you know, somebody getting choked out and killed by the cops.

Now, that's not right either. I'm just saying that if I'm going to spend some time working on a systemic injustice, you know, you got to pick your battles.

That's again, if somebody wants to to focus on that, that's fine. But I do see what you're saying.

And, you know, one of the things that I always think is is the safest place to be is and this kind of speaks to your point about, you know, even if like only 50 people, kids were aborted in the womb and but the laws weren't changed, it was still legal to do it.

Would that still be a systemic injustice? I think it would be. But I one of the places safest places to be is to define these things biblically, to define these things biblically, because if if you define an injustice according to the scripture, then you'll be in a safe place because you won't miss one.

You know what I mean? Yeah, you won't miss one. And you won't and you won't and you won't over define things either.

You won't you won't you won't accidentally cause an injustice. That's not if you're going by the scripture. And that's one of the reasons why

I don't like we'll probably move on to some other stuff, I guess, in a minute of what we think are injustices.

But but one more last point on abortion. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the argument that people make of abortion of we just need to change hearts and minds and then it won't happen anymore.

Right. And I mean, in theory, yeah, that's that's correct. If everybody was a true believing

Christian, nobody would be aborting their children. Right. Well, not not necessarily. But you know what I mean? I know chances of it are much lower.

But but in theory, yeah. But also we are, I think, called biblically to have laws that punish it, even if it doesn't happen at all.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. You'll have a law that says if you do happen to do it, you still get punished. Right.

Well, we have a standard. Right. We do need to change hearts and minds, but we also need to change the law. Yeah. You know what

I mean? We have to because because the scripture calls the state an avenger that carries out, you know, the wrath of the of the

Lord. So we need to have that, too. Like, that's not an option. You know what I mean? When you preach the gospel, but also have a state that carries out vengeance from the

Lord. Yeah, exactly. You know, OK, no, that's cool. That's cool. Would you want to test these these points on some other things that maybe one of us thinks are in a systemic, a systemic injustice that's happening right now that isn't being recognized by the social justice community at large?

Well, I like your short list up here that you that you wrote. And so I'll let you kind of pick whichever is your favorite.

My favorite, my favorite system. Man, we're going to be in trouble.

Hey, this is up to you. Well, the easiest one for me is, and I'm very specific here, forced wealth redistribution, otherwise known as welfare.

I would say that is obviously a systemic injustice. And this goes to a point of of what you were talking about earlier is how the solutions for supposed systemic injustices have to also be just, have to also be biblically defined or at least not contrary to biblical standards.

Right. Whereas welfare is a response to the income inequality issue, but it's an unjust response.

And therefore, in fact, I was I was talking about, well, never mind,

I'll get into that later whenever we hit on another point. I don't want to get distracted. But but so so the reason why I say that forced wealth redistribution or welfare, which would include even things like WIC, even things that are food for children,

I would include that in there. So that's that's the extent that I'm going. I'm not just saying people, you know, the system is a little bit corrupt and some people that are lazy get it right.

I'm saying that down to giving to infants and women, right, that the forced giving of infants to women is an injustice.

Right. And the reason I would say that is for a number of reasons. First of all, second, the welfare system, my main overall point would be that the welfare system does not fit any biblical definition of the way we're supposed to do charity.

I did I did a video on Tim Keller's article in The New York Times where he talked about there was some nuance between socialism and capitalism, basically, is what it came down to.

Yeah, I remember that may maybe these have some things right. And these people have some things right. And we kind of need to fall in the middle.

But I think that's even more unjust than falling all the way on one side, because at least you're being truthful about what you believe when you fall on all the way on all the way on the side of Marxism or socialism.

But so so my problem with with his with this piece was that he said that we don't have how did he word it?

He said he said that there's not moral imperatives or biblical commands that show us how we are supposed to take care of the poor.

And he used that phrase take care of the poor because he likes to mess mess around with with with justice and charity.

So he doesn't use the word charity because he knows that that will. That's my theory. At least he knows that that's going to get him in trouble saying that the

Bible doesn't tell us how to do charity because it so clearly tells us how to do charity. But taking care of the poor is doing charity.

Right. That's what it is. We don't have an obligation to man to take care of them. We have an obligation to God. Therefore, it's charity when we take care of the poor.

So so some of the verses that I'd say show that the welfare system does not is not the biblical way to take care of the poor is not the biblical way to do charity.

And therefore is immoral and therefore is an injustice. And because it's perpetuated, the state is a systemic injustice would be

Second Thessalonians, which says Second Thessalonians 3, 7, 7 to 10, about where it says, if you're not willing to work, you do not get to eat welfare in no way.

Fits with that verse because it is inherently ineffective and inefficient.

It is always going to give to the lazy. It is always going to be horrible and not weeding out the lazy.

Right. And then even if they disagree with that point, they can go on to Second Corinthians 9, 5 to 7, where it talks about not being not forcing your brothers in Christ to give under compulsion.

Right. Right. It's a little bit the passage is a little bit deeper than that, but that's still something that you can take out of the passage.

Right. Is that we should not force others to give under compulsion. In fact, the church that I go to doesn't pass around an offering plate because they think that is compulsive, which surprises me because if I talk to anybody in that church, they would probably think that welfare programs are perfectly fine.

So welfare, not compulsive. Passing around a plate where you can voluntarily put money in impulsive.

But anyway, I won't bash people anymore for the time being. But so you have that Second Corinthians.

And then even whenever you get into passages like Leviticus 19, 9, you've mentioned this before on some of your podcasts, even whenever you get into some of these passages where it talks about the systems that were set up in Israel.

Sure. So that the poor and sojourners could eat if they were hungry. Yep. There was no punishment for these.

So it wasn't forced in the sense that a government entity was forcing, forcing it at the threat of guns.

Right. God, God required it, but if you didn't, if you didn't do it, no one could force you to do it.

And not only that, but the other thing about that is that fits perfectly with what

Paul was saying, because you know what you had to do if you were poor and you have to go into the field and actually do the work of picking that stuff and gleaning that stuff.

And, you know, listen, you're already in the field. Why don't you just work for the guy? You know what I mean? You're already going there every day and you couldn't take enough to sell.

You can only take enough to eat. Like this was, this was all built in. And idea is that you wouldn't be in, in, in poverty and in need for very long.

You would eventually get yourself out of that. Welfare system as it's set up now, incentivizes you to be on welfare for as long as you want.

I mean, um, not, not, and this is the thing, this is where, this is where people get emotional because, because this is, this is not to say that welfare hasn't helped people out.

Okay. There hasn't been some good results. It's not to say that everyone on welfare is lazy and wants to be on welfare for a long time.

That's not the case at all. You know, living on welfare, a lot of people really want to get out of it.

You know what I mean? Um, but the system itself actually de -incentivizes them because if they start making a little bit of side money, then they're no longer eligible for the benefits and they can't, they're not even actually making as much as they were on welfare.

So like there's all kinds of stories that I've heard of, of especially women, single women that say,

I'd like to work, but if I start working, then I lose all these other benefits and I can't afford it.

You know what I mean? So like this is, this is the problem. This is the injustice of, of, of this. It's not to say that doesn't help people.

If we're talking pragmatically, yeah, it does help some people. Okay, sure. But it's still, even if, even though it does help people, it's still unjust according to the scripture.

And I would like to elaborate on that point you made of, uh, of the, the, the the system of a sojourner or a poor person harvesting somebody else's land.

Uh, you said that you said that, um, you're only supposed to take what you could eat at that time, basically.

So basically enough to fill your belly and that's it. That's also another way that, that I didn't think of at the moment.

Um, and I, and, and I think, uh, Tim Keller tweeted out something a little while back, uh, from a

Bible study that he was doing that was talking about this verse and how this shows that we should have some combination of capitalism and socialism and not a strict system either way.

Um, but, but that, that shows also that, um, that, uh, we, the, the, the welfare system we have now is unbiblical because it does the exact opposite of giving you only what you need.

Right. It's, it's a future plan ahead of time essentially is what it is. So it's not,

Hey, I'm hungry. I need something. Let me go get some fruit from this guy's land who, by the way, there, there, there's a semi -presumption that the culture, the cultural norm is that you are allowed to do that, which means that there's a level of consent.

It's not that you're just going on somebody's land that you don't have consent and God said, you can go on somebody's land without consent.

You had to, you had to be allowed to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And even if you, even if you didn't technically have to ask, right.

Even if it was that, that was the case, it was still the cultural norm. Right. So it was assumed that you could, unless you were told that you could not because of how the system was set up, not to mention that it remained your property.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You remained your property, which that brings me to acts two to five.

Uh, I think specifically in acts five, which one is it? Whenever, uh, Ananias, um, yeah, he was, he was killed because he didn't provide all the, uh, yeah,

I think it's an X five. Yeah. I think it's five. Yep. Well, uh, so, so if you look at that,

Peter doesn't say, Peter doesn't rebuke him for not giving money, right?

He rebukes him for saying, I'm going to sell my property and give you all the money from my property and then holding some back, right?

And his comment was, you did not lie to man. You lied to the Holy spirit, which proves the entire point that this is an obligation to God.

And guess you struck him down. It wasn't Peter. It was God. There was no punishment on earth for it. They're not on earth, but there was no punishment by man for it.

It was the punishment was brought down by God. So again, again, that runs into the same general narrative that we're talking about here, as far as, uh, uh, the injustice of a forced, uh, wealth redistribution system.

Let's do one more and then, uh, well, we'll end this. I think we've been at it for just a little under an hour at this point.

Okay, cool. So what's, what's your second favorite one? So welfare is your favorite injustice. So I noticed, okay.

So I start making this list and I realized that these are all basically the same thing, except for two of them.

But cause I have, it happens a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Actually, I want to go with one.

That's a little bit off the wall. That wouldn't, this wouldn't be a, a, uh, a rejection of a typical social justice narrative.

This would be more rejection of the more radical leftist social justice crowd.

Let's hear it. That borderlines not really Christian.

Yeah. I don't mean that in like a slanderous, like, you know, you're not a believer way. I mean that in like, literally they don't believe a good portion of the

Bible. Okay. Generally, generally the people that believe this are in that camp, but they, but they are culturally

Christians and they like to use the, the, the happy go lucky, help the poor do good passage.

Let me just say, I'm excited to hear what this is. And I honestly have no idea what you're going to say. So let's hear it. All right. This is all right.

So this one, this one is really obvious. So, so it's not even all that worth bringing up, but I have a specific point that I want to make, but whenever you're talking about paying, having to pay for abortions, or let's even get off the abortion topic, having to pay for something like transgender surgeries.

Sure. This is not just an injustice to me because it hurts the person that you're doing it to, but it, and not just to just injustice.

Cause you're stealing money in order to do it. Because if it's paid for by what I'm talking about, it's like when it's paid for by Medicare. Sure.

If you want to pay for your own transgender surgery, I don't know that that's necessarily an injustice against anybody, but yourself.

But, but if, uh, and God, but, but if you're using federal money to pay for it, not only are you stealing from people to pay for your transgender surgery, not only is the government allowing you to steal people through Medicare to pay for the surgery, but also you're forcing, um, in Christians.

This is why I bring up the so -called Christians that think that these types of services are, are good and should be paid for by tax dollars.

Christians that believe this are violating Romans, uh, 14. Romans 14.

Okay. It talks about at least my, the, the way I, the way I understand it. And let, let me know if I'm wrong.

Cause you might know more about this than I do. Um, uh, but in Romans 14, it talks about eating unclean foods.

Um, and how you should not try to get your brother to eat unclean foods because it would get in for him to violate his conscience.

Yeah, but that's essentially what you're doing to your brothers and sisters of Christ, when you're saying, I'm going to force you to pay for this thing that you think is sin.

Right. I think that goes along with a lot of things. So I've had a conversation with my friend before on, on what, uh, on what, on how

I relate to like Romans 14 to Romans 13, where it says that we must pay taxes and must by the law that to income tax to, to, uh, welfare and all that, how

I interconnect all that. And basically the way I see it is that we are required to follow the law, even if it is an injustice against us, right?

Like I think taxes or, or let's go a little more moderate here that welfare or Medicare in this case would be an injustice against us.

So we are required to follow that law in the, but in that, and that we can only violate that law if it's doing something that violates our conscience directly, right?

So what you're forcing your brother do is to choose between saying, nope, I'm out,

I opt out of the system or forcing him to violate his conscience and pay for a transgender surgery via the fungible, you know, money that's within the federal government and the taxes that are taken out of his paycheck.

Yeah. See, that was, that was a little more, a little more off the wall, but I don't know if that made sense completely.

It does. No, it does make sense. And I think, um, you know, there are a lot of things that you could use the same principle that aren't as off the wall, that would be for some reason, controversial, you know what

I mean? Like, like, I'll give you an example. Like, like, uh, in my state, we have a Republican governor,

I say Republican, but he's not really a Republican. Um, he's one of these pro -choice Republicans. So, so even, even our, even the

Republicans are pro -choice in Vermont, but, um, he has, he, you know, he's one of his, his, his new initiatives is diversity and all this, all this social justice stuff.

And so he's hiring a director of diversity or something or other and someone else in diversity.

I don't know, a couple of positions are open for, for, for, for all this stuff. And, and to me, it's like, well,

I don't even agree with the, with the idea. So, and on top of that, you're using money that's not even yours.

Like you shouldn't be able to do all this stuff. You shouldn't have enough money for this stuff, you know, this nonsense, but, but it's even a double insult that it's stuff that I don't even agree with.

Well, you're forcing me to pay for it. Like I, it puts, there are lots of things that, that, that put

Christians in this weird situation that they kind of have to, and I, you know, I don't know. It's, it's,

I think, I think that the main point and, and, you know, we, we obviously talked about a lot of things, but I think that, you know, your, your second and third point, you said that they're, those are the critical ones.

I, I, I completely agree with you. I, you know, in this debate, we have to be able to, to not just say, oh, well, the overarching principle is that God doesn't want people poor.

And the overarching principle is that God doesn't want these inequalities. And like, it's so easy to say that, but it doesn't really mean anything.

We need to actually go to the Bible. We have to know what we're talking about. And abortion is such a good example because it's so clear abortion is wrong, according to the scripture.

Abortion is something that the state should restrain and they, they should be, um, involved in, in stopping.

Like these are like, it's very clearly that way, but it's not that way with some of these other things.

And so that's what we need to talk about. Because if I'm missing it, I'd like to see it, you know, what else do you got?

You got anything else before we wrap up? Well, actually I might, I might get you to put some input on one. I don't know where you stand on this, but one of the things on my list was criminalization of drug use.

And that's one that I actually do have trouble coming up with passages for.

And this is one that I think a lot of social justice Christians might actually agree with us on. Yeah. That the criminalization of drug use.

Well, actually I take that back. They wouldn't agree with us on it for the most part. They would agree that there is a systemic oppression against particularly minorities when it comes to how these laws are, are carried out.

How, how the prosecution rates and whatnot, but, but obviously we would get rid of that problem if, if criminalization of drug use is unjust, you would get rid of that entire problem of minorities being convicted more if that is happening by getting rid of the drug laws.

And so this is, this is why I love God's law because, because, you know, look, it's not going to look God's God.

If we implemented God's law and the general equity of God's law today, which we should, if we did that, it wouldn't stop sins from happening.

It wouldn't stop all crime, but it would, but it would eliminate a lot of the problems that are man made, like from the law system.

And so I think, so I understand people's viewpoints that say that the scripture does forbid sorcery and they, they kind of tie that to certain forms of drug use and things like that.

And I get all those arguments. I think that, you know, for the most part, a lot of the drugs that, that are illegal, let's just talk about marijuana.

That's like the, that's like the big one that everyone wants to talk about. The fact that that's illegal, not only is that an injustice, biblically speaking, but it's also the cause of a lot of problems.

And so I think if you eliminate the, if you, if you decriminalize marijuana, that's not to say that, you know, blacks and Latinos are the only ones smoking pot, but a lot of the people that are in jail for these, for these supposed crimes, we could just, we could just solve that right then and there.

You know what I mean? That's not to, that's not going to solve problems in black communities and Latino communities and white communities that are using drugs.

Obviously there are a lot of problems associated with drug addiction and things like that, but let's actually focus on the actual crimes.

So if somebody is so hopped up on, on, on heroin that they rob somebody, let's prosecute the robbery.

Yeah, I agree. You know what I mean? And, and let's let, you know, that's the thing. And so, um, yeah,

I don't know if most of my listeners would agree with me on that. And that's fine. But again, we have to take, we have to use

God's law as a standard for all of this stuff. Even the stuff that's not popular amongst conservatives. Yeah.

And you know, this is one of the issues that probably frustrates me the most because there are so much nonsense from both sides when it comes to drug criminalization.

Right. So for instance, a lot of people will say that, oh, it creates more crime and more murder and yada, yada, but that's actually not true.

That's the libertarian side, the side that I tend to fall on, on this issue. And I hear them make these arguments and I go, no, that's not true.

Though, because if you look at the stats, right. As see, I make, I make it the, my argument against drug criminalization is from a strictly moral standpoint, not from a practical standpoint.

Right. Because if you look at what happened in the eighties, as people start getting sent to jail, as it starts going up and people start getting sent to jail more and more and more for drugs, the murder rate plummets, it literally plummets.

And what I think is happening there. And it's not just people were getting sent to jail for drugs. There was also a lot of other things that, that started getting longer sentences, um, that, that did that as well, like gun crimes and stuff like that.

But, but I think what was happening there is the people, if you are more likely to be a criminal. Like, like, all right.

So you have a population of people who don't sell drugs and you have population people who do sell drugs. Right. Most of the murderers exist in here.

Right. You know what I'm saying? It's not that most of these people are murderers. It's a very small percentage of people that are willing to sell drugs are also willing to kill somebody.

It's still very, very small. But if you're not willing to sell drugs, if you're not willing to even touch a drug, even smoke weed at all, you're probably not likely to murder somebody.

Right. Like that might be what's happening. The chances are lower. Yeah. Yeah. The chances are much lower. Put it that way.

And we know that because most of the, most of the murders in this country are gang crimes that are drug related. Right.

It's that's, that it's very obvious, but like I said, my objection to it is from a moral standpoint, not a practical standpoint.

That would be a practical issue that keep it illegal so that we, by putting all these people that sell drugs in prison, we also get the people who would have murdered somebody.

Therefore the murder rate goes down. Right. I have an objection to that on a moral basis because we don't stick people in prison, a whole bunch of people in prison, just so we can get those few people that were those few people that we're going to do for it.

Right. Well, I mean, all you, all kinds of shenanigans could happen if you started, if you started justifying that that way.

I mean, look, a lot, lots of murders happen in cities too. You're going to, you're going to start, you know, putting people that live in cities in prison.

You know what I mean? Like not a lot of murders happen in Vermont, but a lot of murders happen in New York city. So you're just going to start, you know what

I mean? Like it doesn't make sense. So it's, it's, well, it might make sense on a, on a twisted level, but it's not just.

Well, and the left makes the same argument. Of course their argument is even more twisted because crime, basic crime is not worse than, than abortion.

But a lot of their argument for abortion is, well, all these, a lot of these people would be growing up in poor communities and we all know the poor communities have more crime, so you just create more crime, which is an absurd third thing to say, because you're talking about murder versus some other less offensive crime, but they're not going to grow up to be a murderer.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're literally doing the worst crime possible to stop a lesser crime.

Yeah. Anyway. Hey, listen, this was, this was cool. Um, thanks so much for doing this.

And obviously I'd like to do this kind of thing more often, you know, with the baby. It's been hard to get anything done.

Oh yeah. Congratulations, man. Yeah, man. Actually, uh, actually I can, I can make this announcement now. Finally, my wife's told pretty much everybody, um, we actually found out we're pregnant about 14 weeks ago or my wife found out she's pregnant.

I'm not pregnant. Wow. That's awesome, man. Good stuff.

But yeah, do you have other children or no? No, no. This is our first.

Wow. That's pretty awesome, man. So when you're, you're, you're a little ones, what, like a few weeks old now?

Yeah. So he's a, oh man, how old is he? He is. I got my calendar over here.

He's like going to be four weeks old, man. That's crazy. Awesome. My life is a blur right now.

So he's going to be four weeks old. I've got a three -year -old and a, or almost four -year -old and an almost two -year -old.

So pretty crazy. Hey man, thanks a lot for doing this. And, uh, again,

Matt is at the kingsrights .com. Is that right? Yeah, that's right.

The kingsrights .com. He also has a YouTube channel. So I'll be posting that in the link here. God bless, man.

Have a good night. Yeah, you too, man. Take care. Well, hopefully you enjoyed that conversation.

I thought it was pretty helpful in general. And, uh, you know, like I said at the end of that video, I'd like to do more of those kinds of conversations.

So if you have a topic you want to talk about, please do what Matt did and reach out to me. I'd love to do, uh, you know, one -on -one conversations, or we can even do groups or we can even do debates or conversations, you know, for all the talk of wanting dialogue and wanting a conversation, many on the social justice side of this really don't want to talk.

They want to just call you names and, uh, assume all kinds of evil things about your intention. That's actually a ninth commandment violation.

I, we, we preached on that at my church on Sunday, but anyway, looking forward to talking to you with you.

Uh, and again, even if you don't agree with me, let's, let's have a conversation. Let's do this. Let's not make this just a one -sided thing.

Cause as you saw, Matt and I agreed on many things, um, which is fine. I'll, I'll do those conversations too.