Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 256 | George Floyd and the Burning of Minneapolis

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Today, we discuss the tragedy of George Floyd's death and the difference between true justice and mob justice. Meanwhile, Hawk Nelson lead singer Jonathan Steingard has denied his faith, and we explore the “why” behind the trend of deconversion. Today's Sponsors: The Classical Learning Test is shorter than the SAT and ACT and students now take it from the comfort of their home through remote proctoring technology. To register for the June 20th official college entrance exam visit https://www.cltexam.com/. SimpliSafe: "Best overall home security of 2020." Go to https://simplisafe.com/allie and get FREE shipping and a 60-day risk-free trial.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. I hope everyone has had a great week. Today we are going to talk about George Floyd and what's going on in Minneapolis.

We're also going to talk about mob justice in general. We will also, if we have time, talk about the lead. singer for Hawk Nelson and his deconversion story and why we're seeing this trend of deconversion. We will start with this very heavy topic of George Floyd. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality

itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narrative. and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave,

even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed,

you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Let's talk about George Floyd. He is the man that you've probably heard about on social media, especially if you are on Twitter.

I saw a video A few days ago that showed a police officer putting his knee on this man's neck who was under arrest. So he had his handcuffs behind his back. He was laying down on the pavement. And this officer had his knee on his neck. And George Floyd was saying, I can't breathe, officer. I can't breathe. So I'm going to show you just a few seconds of that clip.

Wow. I can't breathe. Oh, man. Ah. Shut up. They will kill me. They will kill me, man. Bro, with your feet on his neck, man, you get out.

His nose is bleeding. Like, come on him on. That's wrong right, yeah, with his feet on his neck. Look at his nose. You just see your knee on his neck up. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. You're just a grown guy.

You're a tough guy. You're a tough guy, huh? So that should break your heart. It broke my heart. I didn't know at that point when I originally saw the video. that it was going to become what it is now and caused the reaction that it has. And the reaction that we have seen of anger and of wanting justice for him is, of course, justified. There is, I can't even imagine any kind of second angle or second side of the story that would excuse that

kind of behavior for nine minutes. Apparently, this officer had his knee on George Floyd's neck and then George Floyd later died in custody. Now, the police report said that he was resisting arrest, but he wasn't being arrested for a violent crime. He was apparently being arrested for being in the middle of forgery. He was accused of forgery. So a nonviolent crime for a police officer to pin this guy down to the point to where he couldn't breathe and died later in custody. That is not justice. So, of course, people have a right and should be angry about this. We should be upset about this. As a human being, I am upset about this because this isn't just happening to him. This has happened to others. This could happen to anyone. As a conservative, I'm upset about this.

I believe in limited government. I don't believe in disproportionate police force or police power. As a Christian, I'm upset about this because this human being, like all human beings, was made in the image of God. This person has a soul. That means he's living forever. That means he is eternal valuable. This person is a brother, a friend, a son. This is a human being. We should care about police brutality. We should care about situations like this, whether they are caught on tape or not. Now, this particular situation was caught on tape. And of course, the reaction was intense. The reaction on social media calling for the conviction of the police officer who pinned this guy down to conviction of murder.

That was a popular thing that was going on. We do know that the four police officers that were involved in the arrest of Floyd were fired the next day. But of course, we don't believe that that's enough. President Trump, he ordered the DOJ to investigate into this to make sure, you know, to see everything that's going on. And so it may very well be that this police officer is charged with murder. I'm not going to pretend like I know.

exactly how that's going to go down or even exactly how it should go down. We all do have the right of due process and I'm not necessarily interested in giving this police officer the benefit of the doubt. Like I said, I don't see any other angle or any other side of the story that could possibly excuse this kind of brutality, but of course, I am not the judge and jury. So I don't know how it's going to go down and I can't say authoritatively how I think it's going to go down. Now, we are in a very, or how I think it should go down. We are in a very similar situation to where we were a few weeks ago when we were talking about Ahmaud Arbery.

And you can go back and you can listen to that episode and I won't rehash everything that I said there. But it is a similar situation in that we see a video that looks condemning, that is condemning as far as we know. We see a video that causes outrage and that causes justifiable anger. and then it becomes a hashtag, then it becomes a trend. And then we hear certain storylines that say, okay, Amad Arbery was just on a jog and he was racially profiled. Of course, here in the case of George Floyd, we are also hearing that this is a classic case of racialized police brutality.

And I'm going to say probably the most controversial thing that I could say, the thing that I said then and the thing that I will say now. even as I am agreeing that this looks to be a miscarriage of justice, this looks to be abuse, just like in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, that was murder. It looks to be murder. It was wrong no matter what their reasoning was to chase this guy down. I don't care if they said that it was a citizen's arrest or vigilanteism. It was wrong. And they are right to be imprisoned right now.

In the same way, while I think that this police officer was certainly in the wrong, and I believe from what I can tell that he will be charged with murder, I don't know if this was racially motivated. And again, that's the most scandalous and controversial thing that I could say. And I don't say that again, because I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the perpetrator. Like, I don't have a dog in this fight in that I'm not going to automatically defend the police officer because that's typically what conservatives do. I'm not interested in that. I am trying. I desire some kind of humility. for me to say that I just don't know. I don't know what the motivations are. And that is not me denying the existence of racism ever in all places. It is me simply saying that in these cases, which do seem and are cases of injustice, I don't know if they were racially motivated. But of course, that is the storyline that is going on on social media right now. And it is that idea, which people are free to hold that idea. They're free to talk.

about that idea. They're free to assert that idea. That's that's totally fine. But it is that idea that is perpetuating the riots that are going on in Minneapolis. Now, there were peaceful protesters in Minneapolis about this. They had a lot of signs that said, I can't breathe, which is exactly what George Floyd said before he died as he was being pinned down on the pavement. There were a lot of peaceful protesters. They had their masks on. And that's fine. That's a beautiful part of living in the United States of America is that you are free to do. that and you should be free to do that without punishment, by the way. There were some stories of peaceful protesters being tear gassed. I don't know if that's true. I didn't see videos of that,

but of course, if that is true, I don't believe that that's right. People should have a right to peacefully protest without being cracked down upon by the police. But those peaceful protests turned into very violent and mob-like riots. So I'm going to show you some clips that demonstrate that. So that is, that's terrifying. That's terrifying. And I said something about it on Twitter. I said, you know, peaceful protests can be very effective and they are constitutional and they are good. I believe in people exercising their rights to protest peacefully. However, that is not a protest. I mean, you saw mobs of people looting a target. You saw them and maybe if you didn't see that in the clip, you saw them trying to break into ATMs and break into banks, burning down auto parts stores,

burning down a dollar general. There was a clip of a small mob of young men attacking an elderly woman who was trying to defend herself in a wheelchair. And so this has moved beyond. It seems like it appears crying out for justice, which is something that I think that we have a right to do and that we should do, that we should be angry about instances of injustice. But you're going to have to tell me how looting a target correlates to justice for this poor man, George Floyd. You're going to have to tell me what it actually accomplishes. Now, when I said that on Twitter, when I talked about that peaceful protests are effective

and this looting and things are not, I got a lot of angry people saying, well, obviously peaceful protests are not effective. and you are just, you're just a Karen because you don't want these people to loot in Target. You care more about this billion dollar business target than you care about the death of George Floyd. The death of George Floyd was also unconstitutional. And this is, again, this crazy binary that Twitter always comes up with that exists in the social media realm, is that you are not allowed to hold two thoughts at the same time. The fact of the matter is is that George Floyd's death was a tragedy and was an injustice.

It can also be true at the exact same time that there are better ways to cry out for justice than looting a target, then breaking into banks, then assaulting people who get in your way. Can we not just agree on that? All of us who care about justice and who care about truth and who care about holding people to account and care about people's lives, black, white, whatever, can't we all agree that both of those things are wrong? And now it's true that murder is worse than looting. Yes, that's absolutely true. But for the people who are saying that, oh, you just care about Target, they're a billion dollar company, you'll be fine. Okay, let's think through this just a little bit. So we're in the

middle of a pandemic. Well, hopefully we're on the tail end of a pandemic. And we know that we have lost roughly 100,000 people to the coronavirus, which is just devastating. But on top of that, we have other losses. We have employment losses. And so there are millions and millions of people that are freshly unemployed. There are millions of people now who are experiencing economic calamity. And I would suppose that that is true in Minneapolis in the same way that it's true in other places. People who have jobs are hanging on to their jobs for dear life because they want to be able to feed their family just like everyone else does. These riots, this burning down, of various buildings. These instances of looting and theft, this is only going to exacerbate those

problems, these economic problems. I don't care about Target as a company, but Target employs people. All of these businesses, the auto parts stores that were burned down, the banks that were looted and almost destroyed, all of these different stores and small businesses that were destroyed by these mobs, they represent people. And so when you are looting Target, you're not hurting the billion-dollar company of Target. Like, Target is going to be fine. What they're going to do is they're going to raise prices

on everyone else to make up for the losses in their Minneapolis store. And so we're all going to be hurt by that. But I don't even care about that. I care about all the employees of Target, all the employees of all of these small businesses in Minneapolis who don't have a job on Monday, who aren't going to be able to feed their families because they no longer have that paycheck coming in.

I mean, this affects, this affects people. This affects families. This is not justice. This is not justice. All you're doing is hurting the people that you say that you're defending. There are people of all different races that work at Target, that work at these small businesses, and now their livelihoods have been destroyed. Because these mobs and these riots do not correlate with trying to get justice.

for George Floyd. The fact of the matter is, is that I didn't see anyone, and maybe they do exist. I didn't see anyone saying, yeah, that police officer was in the right. That was fine. It's okay. I didn't see anyone saying that everyone that I saw was equally outraged, that, hey, this is disproportionate police force. This is wrong. And a lot of people saying this could possibly be racist. This is a problem. I saw everyone crying out for justice and accountability. And he was fired, and I agree that there needs to be an investigation. there and there needs to be a longer process to make sure that justice is truly served and that George Floyd's blood is truly avenged. But still, these riots broke out that ended up having nothing

to do with this poor man's life. I mean, you are going to have to show me. You're going to have to show me some evidence that proves that these kinds of riots have any kind of correlation to the death of this man and are giving us anything productive in the way of justice. I just have a hard time believing that the motivations for all of the people that are going out there and stealing alcohol that are stealing items from Target and these small businesses are truly looking out for justice. Injustice doesn't perpetuate justice. Injustice begets injustice. It just keeps going. And in situations like this, I think that we believe that in order to be virtuous, we have to show a high amount of emotion. We have to latch on to the mainstream narrative.

We can't criticize any movement. We can't criticize any reaction. We can't criticize any narrative or else we are not sufficiently righteous. But as Christians, we know that we are not beholden to the mob. We're not beholden to mob justice, that's for sure. We're not beholden to the mainstream narrative. We have to be able to have the humility to say, I'm against injustice. too. I'm against racism where it exists. I'm against brutality and abuse and murder. And I am for

people fighting for these things and sticking up for these things and sticking up for the least of these. I also care about truth. I also want to know all the facts of every case, not just this case, but every case. I'm also going to question what the media tells me, what the mainstream narratives are. I'm not going to latch on to hashtags just because they're available. I'm not going to post something or share a post just because doing so shows how virtuous I am. I am going to be thoughtful about this. I am going to be biblical about this. I am going to be careful about this.

I am going to show compassion and love without sacrificing truth. I think that is what Christians are called to in the midst of this. And I'm not saying that we can't call this racism if it is racism. Of course, I think we should. I think we should call out real instances of racism. But again, these assumptions, these jumping to. conclusions, this inability to say, hey, riots and looting and thievery and violence and abuse in the name of justice for someone who is killed by the police is also wrong. Like, that's also

not biblical justice. Mob justice isn't justice. That's something that we've talked about before, and it's still true. Godly virtue is not measured by emotionalism. It is not measured by how quickly you latch on to a hashtag or latch on to a trending post or latch on to a mainstream narrative. That is not what godliness looks like. That is not what justice looks like. So we have to be able to simultaneously hold these thoughts in our head no matter what people tell us, no matter what people say, hey, you must just not care enough if you are criticizing the people that are looting. No, of course you do. Of course you do. You can care about both things and you can still believe that murder is worse, but you can also say that these riots are counterproductive and that they affect the real lives of people.

They affect the lives mostly of poor people. They affect the lives of minorities. They affect the lives of all the people who are already hurting in need of help. This doesn't help anyone. And I look at all of these people that are rioting and I'm not angry at them. I'm sad for them. They too are also people made in the image of God. And I have no doubt that a lot of them feel true pain and they feel a lot of anger about this. And they too want justice. I believe that a lot of their motives are real.

I'm not saying that they're right, but a lot of their motives and maybe eluding and doing all of the things, acting out of anger. I believe that those emotions are real. Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. And I feel for them. I do. I feel for them. I mean, we have a media who tells us that this kind of stuff, that this kind of police brutality happens on a daily basis against black people.

We have a media and blue checkmarks on Twitter who say that black people are murdered by white people on a daily basis. I hate reading statistics and conversations like this. And so I always have them and I don't want to because it seems callous. You can look it up yourself. But that doesn't bear out. Those kinds of states. are not true. They're not factual that these things are happening on a daily basis. Now, one

racialized instance or incident is one too many. I completely agree with that, but it is simply not factual. The statistics do not bear out the narrative that white on black crime is happening on a daily basis. I had someone tweet at me that white people are murdering black people on a daily basis. If I were hearing that as a black person, I would be really terrified as well. But the facts are that just not true. That's just not true. And we can still care about truth and care about justice and care about the murder of a man. We can still care about police brutality. We can still care about riots and what it looks like to peacefully protest and fight for justice. You can still care about all of these things at the same time. But unfortunately, we live in a very reactionary

culture where, again, our virtue is measured by our quickness of reaction. And the emotionalism of our reaction. And that was also true in this case of a woman named Amy Cooper, who was walking her dog in a part of Central Park where you were supposed to have your dog on a leash because people are bird watching. And so if you've got, like she had a Cocker Spaniel running around in this part of Central Park, then you're going to scare the birds away. And these people who are bird watching aren't going to be happy with you. So she had her dog off of the leash. And this man, and this is pertinent to the conversation. He was a black man.

He approached her and he said, hey, ma'am, can you please put your dog on the leash? And she said, no, she don't want to put her dog on the leash. And so he called the dog over, gave the dog treats. She started freaking out. He started recording. She called the police and said, I have an African-American man who is approaching me,

threatening me and my dog. And this whole time, she's holding, I don't want to show the video because I don't think that this situation needs to be, I don't think the video needs to be shared anymore than it already has, but the whole time she's holding the Cocker Spaniel on the poor cock. I'm watching this and the poor Cocker Spaniel is like, is choking because she's holding the, holding the collar so hard. And so this goes viral because it's posted on the internet. She is threatening, she's basically threatening this guy knowing that, hey, the police might show disproportionate force to you if I tell them that you're an African American, which I think that we can very clearly and confidently say that that was a. racist thing to do. I don't think that we need to wonder whether or not that was racist. I mean,

we see the racist comments on tape. And this ends up going viral. Now, what happens to her? Her name wasn't shared in the original tweet. Well, she gets doxed by people. So that means that her personal information, all of the, all of her information about her employment, her address, her phone number were put on the internet for everyone to see, which ended up with her getting fired from her job and her losing her dog. So this is what mob justice looks like. It doesn't actually correlate to any real or substantial view of justice and truth. So this person obviously was racist. She obviously freaked out. She shouldn't have done what she did. And she should have calmed down. the guy birdwatching didn't do anything wrong in the video. He was very calm. All we have really

is his side to the story. He actually went on CNN and was like, okay, the reaction to this was way too much. Like this lady got death threats. I was just trying to kind of like show what happened. So she ends up getting death threats. She ends up getting fired from her job. She ends up, she ends up losing her dog because of mob justice and doxing online. No one ever said, asked, hey, has she been racist at any other point in her life? We don't know if she was good at her job. We don't know the rest of her history. We do know that apparently she is a lifelong Democrat, that she is a big Obama supporter and Hillary Clinton supporter. So that part of the media narrative was taken out from under them. But of course, it still perpetuated this idea that these kinds

of instances are happening on a daily basis. And hey, maybe they, maybe they are in some cases. This was just one that was recorded, but this lady ended up losing everything because of a really bad and what we as Christians know was a really sinful moment. Now, I'm not sure that that represents any sort of real justice. Like, I don't know if that kind of reaction and that kind of outcome has any real grounding and truth and virtue. But when you have a culture that is morally relative, like when you have a culture that is not dictated, by godly morality or the biblical rule of law or any kind of objective standard of morality. Your definition of justice is defined by whatever the mob says, and that has really dire

outcomes for people's lives. Like you can put people on blast, you can call them out and you can criticize them, but I'm not sure that things got any better, that any good was produced from this lady losing everything that she has from a really bad moment. Like, would you like to be recorded in your very worst moment and lose everything based on that moment? Probably not. And again, this lady was totally in the wrong. Like, she definitely needs some kind of counseling or something like that. She had a very disproportionate reaction to this situation. However, I'm not sure that the outcome, that mob justice was the best conclusion to what was a bad situation to begin with.

I'm not sure that justice was advanced at all. Okay. So if all of this has you feeling heavy-hearted the way that it has me feeling, I just look at all of the contention that's going on in the world between races, between political parties, between different factions within Christianity, between Christians and secularists. And it makes me sad. It makes me sad.

Not because I want my side to be right, because ultimately, as Christians, we know that Christianity, God's kingdom, God's church will prevail. So I'm not concerned about that. I am concerned about people that are living with so much fear and hate in their heart on both sides of the aisle that they are wasting their lives in misery. And what we actually need, the only thing that can bring us together is the gospel. That is ultimately the only thing that can reconcile the races. That's the only thing that can reconcile the races. That's the only thing that can stop class warfare or race warfare or gender warfare or any of the contention and the conflict that we are dealing with today. It's the only thing that can turn a heart of stone

to a heart of flesh. I read the storybook Bible every morning to my daughter and one of the themes in it is having a heart that is soft towards God. Right now, what we are viewing throughout the country, both sides of the aisle and different sections of the population is a hard heart toward God. which concludes in a hard heart toward other people, which causes the kind of conflict that we are seeing today and an inability or unwillingness to defer to the Word of God for morality, for virtue, for justice. And so you have a lot of confused people,

a lot of confused, hateful, fearful people who are caught up in these conflicts that just, they don't just divide our country, but they divide your own heart. They fracture your own heart. They're not good individually. They're not good collectively. They're not good in communities.

They're not good for society as a whole. It's not good for the church. And if we want any hope of reconciliation, any hope of restoration, then we should be looking to the gospel ourselves. Even those of us who know the gospel, we need to refresh our minds with the gospel on a daily basis. We need to live out the gospel as the hands and feet of Jesus taking care of the least of these. loving our neighbors as ourselves, pursuing real justice, pursuing real mercy, pursuing real truth, and we need to be sharing the gospel to other people. We have to trust that the good

news today is still as good as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus died and rose again. It is still just as powerful today. It is powerful enough to change hearts, to change families, to change communities, to have a generational impact. And so, yes, we can care about current events. obviously we talk about politics, we talk about different issues on this podcast that I think actually, you know, require action and may even require activism. But at the end of the day, and underneath it all, above it all, what transcends it all is the gospel of Jesus Christ, knowing that that is the only thing that can change hearts. And in order to change society, in order to change systems, you have to be able to change the heart. And there's nothing.

There's nothing that can change the human heart other than, the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I want to read the scripture because it reminds us what our responsibility is as Christians. And it gave me a lot of good urgency, but it also gave me a lot of comfort. And that is 1 Peter 4-7 through, well, we'll see how long I want to go once I start reading. We'll start with verse 7. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly. Since, love covers a multitude of sins, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery church. trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of glory

and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him. glorify God in that name. So I think that's a good reminder of us, that if we are to suffer, if we're to suffer injustice, if we are to suffer condemnation, if we are to suffer persecution, it should not be for wrongdoing, but for doing good and obeying the Lord sharing the gospel. That is what we should focus on, continuing to obey the Lord, because the call to obedience, the call to holiness, the call to love and to faith and to hope is unconcernation.

no matter what's going on around us. So let us cling to that when we feel like the rest of the world is burning down. Those of you who are in my women's book club, we're reading screw tape letters. And a lot of us have talked about how that passage in screw tape letters that just hits us so hard is that when screw tape, the uncle demon is talking to his nephew demon. And he's saying, our situation is no more dire than when a patient, that's a human being that the demon is trying to torment, than when a patient looks around. sees no reason to have faith in God and still persist in his faith. And that is what Christians are called to do. And I do want to talk that does lead me into the conversation about this

trend of deconversion and the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. And I'll talk about it for just a second. But I'm also going to talk about it more on Monday. I'm talking to Kosti Hinn. He's the author of God, Greed in the Prosperity Gospel. It's going to be an awesome conversation. We're going to talk about deconversion more on Monday. But I'll just say this. briefly, that there are so many Christians that do not do what the screw tape letters describes. We look around and we see all these reasons to question God. We see tragedy. We see injustice.

We see suffering. We see oppression. And we say there's no way that a good and powerful God can allow this to happen. And we say, well, it must not be true. It must not be true. We trust our reasoning. We trust our faculties. Worst of all, we trust our emotions.

And we say, okay, well, God must not be real, at least not the God of the Bible. And as I read this deconversion testimony from the lead singer of Hawk Nelson, these were some of the questions that he had. How can a good and powerful God allow something, you know, allow all of these bad things to happen? What about these confusing parts in the Bible that seem, you know, oppressive towards women or seen like they contradict one another? And once he decided that he was going to agree with his doubts, he then felt like the word of God wasn't trustworthy at all and that the rug had been pulled out from underneath him and that he no longer had any kind of faith to believe in. And this is very similar to the deconversion story of the Hill Song Singer that happened almost a year ago now.

And we also saw the deconversion story of Josh Harris, the guy who wrote the Christian book, I Kiss dating goodbye. He also came out and said, you know what, I am just not a Christian anymore. And here's the comment, we could go into so many different things with the trend of deconversion and kind of doubt as virtue, that trend that's going on right now. But the one thing that I see so often and that really breaks my heart is that pastors, it seems like, are failing these people, that these people, the questions that they're asking, that they're presenting as groundbreaking, that why do bad things seemingly happen

to good people, or how, why did natural disasters happen? Or what about the verses about women not being able to teach in the church? And how do we reconcile that with, you know, women being made to. the image of God. These are very basic theological questions that theologians have been asking, answering, wrestling with, preaching about for literally thousands of years. So all of these deconversion stories, they present questions and seeming quandaries as if they are novel. They're not novel. Millions of Christians everywhere have asked these same questions. The difference is instead of resting on my reasoning, instead of agreeing with my doubt,

instead of viewing myself as sovereign over truth or like the arbiter of truth, I go into the word of God. I have to start with the idea that God is good, that God is in control, and that the word of God is true. And then I have to go into the Word of God to answer the questions and the seeming quandaries that I've created in my head about my faith. I have to go into the faith. I have to go into Christianity.

I have to ask people who are smarter than me. I have to read people who know more than I do. I have to talk to people who have more experience than I do, whose faith has been tested more than mine has and who has ended up on the other side. We have to go into the faith when we have these questions, not step out of them and go into our doubts because we're always going to get confused. We're always going to get confused. And another theme that I see in these Deconversion stories is that they want to retain parts of Christianity, but not Christianity itself. So in this story, he said, you know, I want love, joy, peace, and all of that stuff, and eventually maybe it'll lead me to God. But don't you see that if you want to pursue the love and joy and peace and satisfaction and purpose,

all of these things that Christ offers through his gospel, plus eternal life and the greatest gift, reconciliation to a holy and wrathful and merciful God, that you have to add Jesus into that. You have to pursue Jesus for those things, that you don't find happiness truly. you don't find satisfaction and purpose and true joy and unconditional love outside of Christ. You don't find those things. You find replacements for them. You find pleasure. You might find what feels like freedom.

You might find what feels like temporary happiness. But all of the things that you are looking for are found in the bread of life and living water. And of course, Satan, exactly like he told Eve, is going to convince you that did God really say? Did God really say that you have to be a Christian to have those things? Did God really say that you have to follow Him, that you have to follow Jesus in order to be joyful? No, surely not. Just take a bite of this fruit and you'll have everything that you need and you'll even be like God being wiser and being more open-minded. You'll be more tolerant this way and you'll get all the things that Christianity offers to.

But you just don't have to follow that whole archaic religion with its confusing. Bible. And unfortunately, people buy into that. And it just shows me how a lot of pastors, obviously not all, maybe not even most, but a lot of pastors have failed its congregants. And I started this thought earlier and now I'm going to finish it. These basic theological questions that these people who are converting away from Christianity are asking should be answered in the pulpit. Like, these are basic theological questions. I think too many pastors don't preach theology. They don't preach theology. Why do bad things happen to good people? There are no good people. Why did natural disasters happen? How did the fall happen? Why did God create human beings with the

capacity to send? All of these questions have been answered by people who are way smarter than we are. And pastors, unfortunately, aren't teaching this kind of thing. They're afraid to go into controversy. They're afraid to hurt people's feelings. They're afraid to offend people. And so every weekend, they get up and say, Jesus exists to make you feel good about yourself. And if you follow Jesus, then you'll finally have the confidence that you need to go on and live your life. Self-love. Well, there's a reason why the number one denomination that is dwindling is mainline Protestantism. So that is the liberal theological churches, the churches who basically preach universalism,

that yes, sure, Jesus might be one way and we preach some parts of the Bible, but the Bible isn't in inerrant. It's not necessarily authoritative. We pick and choose. We're a cafeteria Christians. We pick and choose the parts of the Bible that we want. And you just kind of live your life. And God just wants you to be whoever you want to be.

We don't really worry about sin and holiness and the wrath of God and all that stuff. We just follow Jesus for what we decide is the tolerant Jesus or hipster Jesus is what I call it. Well, there's a reason why those churches are dwindling much faster than conservative evangelical churches? Because why go to church every Sunday when you're just going to get agnosticism? Like go to brunch on Sunday. You don't have to go to church if you are just going to be fed the same thing that you're going to read in Cosmo. Like why go to church? Why dedicate any part of your week to something that is not offering you anything different than what the rest of the world is teaching you?

So my challenge, I'm not a pastor and I don't know everything about pastoring churches. But my encouragement or just, I guess just desire and hope is for more pastors to be willing to offend for the gospel, to be willing to answer these tough theological questions because you've got people that have been in your churches for 20 years that are leaving your doors, not knowing basic theological questions and walking out of their faith because they think their doubts are the end-all be-all. And you've got that combined with the virtue of this age, which is not knowing, which is agnosticism. We are taught to believe in modern-day culture that it is virtuous and good and righteous and even kind of holy to not know things, to not know who God really is,

to not really know theology, to just kind of be vaguely spiritual and to go on with your life and to kind of just whatever, live and let live. Like that has now become the brand of righteousness, doubt as virtue as I've heard it said and as I call it. Combine that trends with pastors not preaching theology, not preaching the gospel, afraid to preach about sin, afraid to talk about these very fundamental theological questions, and you've got a lot of congregants walking away because they don't find anything different in the church than they find in the rest of the world. And quite frankly, they would rather do something else

on Sunday mornings than go to church and listen to something that they could read in any kind of secular new age book. So those are my thoughts about deconversion in general. Now, I pray for him. I pray that he would be restored. I pray that he would be brought back. I pray that he would be brought to his knees at the eyes of his heart would be enlightened to the hope to which he has been called. I hope he understands Jesus. I hope he understands the gospel for the first time. I pray that for all of the people who have latched on to this trend of deconversion, that they would know the God who made them and that they would realize that you don't get purpose, joy, happiness, all the things that you're longing for outside of your creator, outside of the gospel of Jesus

Christ. Okay. Another long episode. We We'll be back here on Monday with Kosti Hend, and I will talk to you guys then. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.