Next Week | The Demand of Justice

Next Week Opens With Satire and Cultural Commentary

All right, guys, welcome back, of course, again to season 2, episode 1. Now, of course, as you know, this is our first episode back after a very short break, and that's good news for people who love sanity, logic, family, capitalism, guns, Jesus, homeschool, and Minecraft.

Now, it's bad news for people who love this.

I'm calling the police.

We are calling the police, ma 'am. You are. I'm calling the police right now.

What you are is a racist mother f**ker as well. How dare you f**king do this kind of s**t, a**hole?

I'm reading.

And the feminist who is pushing your daughter down the slippery slope of slothhood by giving her a high five when she says she keeps her own supply of condoms.

That's right. Now, guys, it's obvious not a lot has changed since we last saw each other. Abortion is still legal. President Trump is still running the country. Liberals are still severely depressed. Taxation is still theft.

Fake news is still a thing. And secular late-night talk shows have officially run out of meaningful things to talk about.

You know, every day here, we use jokes to try to bring awareness to the awful state of American politics. We try to provide depth, insight, and clarity on complex and important issues. But then sometimes something like this happens.

That means it's time for our new segment, Let's Get Petty.

I think we might have to see that again. Yeah, so you can see. This is why Darth Vader had the good sense to wear a helmet.

I'm so sorry. That video should come with a warning saying these sort of images would be disturbing for younger viewers.

We also learned with the release of a formerly confidential document that the federal government is as corrupt as ever. And the FBI has the ethical standards of Tony Soprano, Al Capone, John Gotti, and any one of Joe Pesci's characters in any of his gangster films.

In fact, if you put all those people together, you get a picture like this. Speaking of gangsters and hitmen, Cecil Richards announced that she'll be resigning from her many years as their Führer of Planned Parenthood.

That's worthy of applause, for sure. Now, she now joins next week's top five most horrible things list. Starting at the top of the list, of course, is Cecil Richards. With Hitler, of course, at number two.

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, at number three. And the president of Planned Parenthood after Margaret, Alan Frank Guttmacher, who started the whole attitude toward the freedom of women's reproductive system at number four.

And of course, at the bottom of the list is Burger King. This has been the top five most horrible things list right here on Next Week, guys. Now, speaking of abortion, do any of you guys remember this from presidential candidate Donald.

Trump? But I want to ask you specifically, do you want the court, including the justices that you will name, to overturn Roe v. Wade, which includes, in fact states, a woman's right to abortion?

Well, if that would happen, because I am pro-life and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states.

But I'm asking you specifically, would you like...

If they overturned it, it'll go back to the states.

But what I'm asking you, sir, is, do you want to see the court overturned? You just said you want to see the court protect the Second Amendment. Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?

Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what's going to be, that will happen. And that'll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.

I will say this, it will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination.

Abortion, Criminalization, and the Pro-Life Movement

Now, like many of you, we all had high and prayerful hopes about President Trump's promises to work to end abortion, no question. And like many of you, we were very encouraged to hear Trump's coherent thinking when it comes to the necessary conversation of criminalizing abortion.

This is what he said.

Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle? The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.

For the woman?

Yeah, there has to be some form.

Now, finally, right, finally, we have a person who understands what apparently the entire pro-life movement hasn't understood for over 40 years. If abortion is murder and ought to be considered a criminal act, then we have to work toward consistent legislation that does not treat the perpetrators of this act as victims, but as criminals.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about the potential before us. We are grateful that our current president stood for the life of the unborn and spoke at the recent March for Life. That's excellent.

That's wonderful. And we're, of course, excited about the conversation shift in the culture in which many are talking about the issue of the unborn in more consistent terms.

She believes that that organization, which engages in the systematic murder of children in the womb in order to maximize the value of their body parts for sale on the open market, is an acceptable position.

My position is that murder is murder and you shouldn't do it.

Thank you.

The idea that you get to murder a kid. OK, no one has a right to choose that picture. Go back to the other one. No one has a right to choose this. No one. No one has a right to choose this. You don't have a right to choose this, OK?

That's a baby. You don't get to kill it just because it's convenient to you. You don't have a right to say, it's my decision where and when and how to have the baby. That's an individual human being. And if that baby were outside the womb and you stuck a knife through its chest, you'd be charged with first degree murder.

Now, look, I think we should all find it very distressing that someone like Milo Yiannopoulos maintains a more consistent and biblical approach to defining abortion than many leaders in the largest pro-life organizations on the planet.

For a flamboyantly proud homosexual man who brags about the amount of men he has had sexual encounters with, abortion is murder. Yet the approach taken by the people being paid millions of dollars to end abortion is expressed like this.

Do you think that women who have abortions are murderers?

I don't think that's the proper thing to do. The person that's actually doing the killing is the abortionist. But a lot of these women are scared.

God commands us not to murder.

They know they're going to hell.

They're confused.

What's your name?

They don't know what they're doing.

Their choice.

So we want to maintain the right to murder children.

Yes, that's correct.

That is correct. The right to murder children.

Yes, abortion is an act of homicide, one person killing another person. We're always going to say it is that, it's murder. But we have to look at what's going on in society, what's going on, what they're being told, how they're being lied to, and how do we reach them the best way.

Now, it isn't wrong for those of us who want to see abortion ended to raise an eyebrow and to look a little squinty-eyed when we see a presidential candidate who doesn't believe he needs to ask God for forgiveness, and certainly nobody on Twitter either, recognizing that if abortion is the unjust taking of a human life, then it needs to be seen as a criminal act for those involved with it.

And yet, we see the president of one of the most highly funded pro-life organizations on the planet saying this.

The pro-life movement has a lot of women who are active in it who have had abortions, and they very much argue that the mother who got the abortion is also a victim. So the pro-life movement, for the almost 50 years that it's been in existence, have never called for punishing the woman who gets the abortion.

Now, it's important that you don't misunderstand our position on this. We should all, all of us, be grateful for every single life that has been preserved by the work of many in the pro-life movement.

And my favorite philosopher of all time, Cornelius Van Til, has a well-known saying, God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick. However, I don't believe that we should be looking around for crooked sticks to hit people with.

If we look, if we look on the baseball field and see a kid losing the game for everyone because he is trying to hit the ball with a pool noodle and the false confidence his two mommies gave him, at a certain point, it isn't sweet or cute to just let him be.

He is trying, after all. But you see, he's losing the game for a reason. You can't play like that and expect to win. And we shouldn't be upset with the person who walks on that field and pats him on the head and hands the kid a bat.

He's trying to help him. If the emperor has no clothes, those of us who don't want to see him like that should have the right to hand him a robe without fear of reprisal. Now, we are living in a curious time in history, very curious.

Justice for Victims in This Life

In the past, Christians understood that God has ordained government to be the institution that would execute the demand of justice for victims in this life. We want mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life from God for all of the criminals in God's universe.

However, as can be seen from the Old and New Testament, God has a concern for victims in this life. And he desires that the civil realm be the institution that makes sure that even thieves that he has forgiven pay back their victims.

Now, many of you are aware of the recent case of Larry Nassar. Larry Nassar was an Olympic doctor who engaged in hundreds of acts of molestation and sexual assault. Recently, his victims had the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

It lasted for days and days. Family after family and victim after victim faced him in a court of law and they were allowed to express their pain publicly to his face. Now, we all recognize in this instance that though Larry Nassar needs forgiveness from God, and we certainly all hope for that, the victims here and now have a right to justice in this life.

The demand for justice is so unavoidable that one of the fathers even did this.

I would ask you to, as part of this sentencing, to grant me five minutes in a locked room with this demon.

I have a few.

Would you do that?

That is not how I... Yes or no? No, sir, I can't do that. Would you give me one minute? You know that I can't do that. That's not how our legal system...

Rachel Denhollander, Forgiveness, and the Gospel of Christ

Now, one of the most powerful moments in this case was when Rachel Denhollander delivered the final victim speech to Larry.

In our early hearings, you brought your Bible into the courtroom and you have spoken of praying for forgiveness, and so it is on that basis that I appeal to you. If you have read the Bible you carry, you know that the definition of sacrificial love portrayed is of God himself loving so sacrificially that he gave up everything to pay a penalty for the sin he did not commit.

By his grace, I too choose to love this way. You spoke of praying for forgiveness, but Larry, if you have read the Bible you carry, you know forgiveness does not come from doing good things, as if good deeds can erase what you have done.

It comes from repentance, which requires facing and acknowledging the truth about what you have done in all of its utter depravity and horror, without mitigation, without excuse, without acting as if good deeds can erase what you have seen in this courtroom today.

The Bible you carry says it is better for a millstone to be thrown around your neck and you thrown into a lake than for you to make even one child stumble. And you have damaged hundreds. The Bible you speak carries a final judgment where all of God's wrath and its eternal terror is poured out on men like you.

Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet.

Beautiful.

You see, a truly biblical worldview, a consistent worldview, recognizes both essential things, the gospel and justice. Now our modern evangelism has led us to believe that it's more loving to just let everything be.

We have bought into the fiction that God wants us to love the criminal at the expense of the victim. You see, the Bible teaches that the victim has rights. Now we, we have raised the banner that the victim has no rights and we're asking victims to carry it even if it crushes them.

No, Rachel Den Hollander has it right. She gets to hope for Larry Nassar's forgiveness and peace with God and she gets to hope that the judge takes away his life. Harmony. That's what she wants as a victim.

And that, my friends, is what God wants too. If we continue to fight against abortion, not defining it as what it is, the unjust taking of a human life with malice of forethought, that's murder for all of you keeping score.

And if we continue to call the people who participate in this act victims, and if we continue to ignore the need to fight for legislation that actually criminalizes the act, then we show the deepest level of hatred for the victims.

Over 60 million for those of you guys keeping score. And we commit ourselves to the disciplining hand of God that should rightly come upon a nation that victimizes the most vulnerable among us and refuses to acknowledge that it is actually so.