Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 287 | Christians and the Age of Tyranny

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

As John MacArthur, his church, and many of the churches across the nation defy their local governments' orders not to gather as a church, we as Christians must continue to examine what it truly means to obey God over the government. This issue will continue to be more prevalent, especially in places like Hong Kong, where Christian protesters cry out for their freedom from the oppressive Chinese government.  Today's Link: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Today's Sponsors: Express VPN keeps all of your information secure by encrypting 100% of your data with the most powerful encryption available. Get an extra 3 months FREE! Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/ALLIE With 24/7 access to your classroom, daily support, and financial aid available, Ashford gives you the tools you need to help make your dreams a reality. Enroll now by going to https://Ashford.edu/ALLIE

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 Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far.

Some of you guys are sending your kids back to school and I know you're super excited about that. If you are in an area where, in fact, your kids can go to school in person, maybe some of you are starting online. classes, no matter what the school year looks like for you guys, maybe you are excited about and relieved about the fact that there is going to be some sense of normalcy, there's going to be some routine. It's crazy just how much human beings need that. We need seasons. We need something to start. We need something to end. The monotonous nature of everything being the same day after day, it really wears on us. It wears on our mind. It wears on our soul. God made us to enjoy seasons, even though everything is the same pretty much year after year.

Things change month by month and day by day. And it's really the rhythm of life that human beings depend on to flourish. And so I hope that the start of this school year for a lot of you just brings a reprieve from the just a sameness that we have all been experiencing. Of course, we're not complaining if sameness and things being boring is our biggest complaint right now, we are very privileged. We are very blessed. There are unfortunately a lot of people who have been hit hard by everything that's happened over the past few months and they are truly destitute. They are despairing. They are looking for some kind of hope, some kind of financial

relief right now. And so I certainly don't want to make light of people who are going through a serious trial right now by saying that being bored is the worst thing that can happen to you. Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that the rhythms of life are are good and hopefully this kind of kickstarts that rhythm again. I'm so tired of hearing people say the new normal. And while that might be true in some ways, maybe that things will never go back exactly to how they were before this whole pandemic happened.

I just haven't gotten myself to accept the fact that things are going to be this weird, this distanced, this closed down and this monotonous forever. I just will not accept that. I am not going to keep saying new normal. new normal, new normal, new normal. I'm just not. I'm just not. And maybe I'm just in denial about it, but I guess time will tell. So, okay, it's Wednesday. It's August 12th, which means that yesterday my book came out. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about this because if you have listened to Relatable for a long time, you've heard me talk about this book for a while. So

I won't bore you in talking too much about it again, but you might be new to this podcast because maybe you heard about my book and you're like, okay, I'll check Allie out. My book is you're not enough and that's okay. Escaping the toxic culture of self-love came out August 11th. And you guys have just been so wonderful. I have said so many times, and it's true that I have the best listeners, the best audience, the best followers in the world, the smartest, the kindest, the most thoughtful and insightful and wisest audience in the entire world. And as I've said, this has been a group project. This book has been a group project with the people who have been listening to me, following me, messaging me, and emailing me for the past few years and helping me shape my views

and giving me wisdom and insight on this particular subject and what the Bible has to say about this toxic culture of self-love and this lie that you and I are sufficient in and of ourselves. So this book is a compilation of a lot of the things that I've learned from you guys, things that I've learned from scripture, things that I've observed and analyzed in the culture. And my desire is that it encourages people, especially women, to dismiss. mantle, a lot of the myths that maybe unknowingly we have believed because we've been fed them by people that we trusted, the lie that you have to love yourself before you love other people, the lie that you're perfect the way you are, the lie that you determine your own

truth, all lies that sound very liberating, very comforting, very good. But actually, as I talk about in the book, weigh you down, burden you with an obligation and with a responsibility, with a weight that you and I were not meant to carry. So this book is about good news. It's not about saying, hey, you should feel inadequate, you should feel insufficient, you should just wallow into your insecurity. Not at all. It's actually the opposite of that. It's telling us where to find our value, where to find our purpose, where to find that satisfaction and fulfillment that we are trying and so desperately failing to find inside ourselves. I actually heard a statistic that my pastor said on Sunday that 55% of Generation Z reports bad mental health. So they report

anxiety, depression, loneliness, isolation, purposelessness. That has not been true as much for the previous generations. The millennial generation, my generation has dealt with that a lot. And while, of course, mental health issues and instability in that way has always existed, it has become more and more prevalent, more and more commonplace, the more the generations go on. So the younger Americans are, the more likely they are to report bad mental health. And yet, we've had decades upon decades of this psychology saying that high self-esteem is the answer to all of our problems. It's the answer to all of society's issues. It's the answer to crime. It's the answer to low academic performance. It's the answer to whatever ails society or whatever ails someone. Personally, we've been told

for decades now that the only thing that needs to change in your life is that you need to love yourself more and that you need higher self-esteem. And now people are capitalizing off of that industry that is so prevalent, especially on places like Instagram, and it's even evangelized to the church. And the church is taking on some of these lies. So rather than getting our rest, our satisfaction, our peace, our purpose, our truth, our value from Jesus Christ, we are getting those things from ourselves. And we are finding that we end up at a dead end of disappointment when we realize, wow, we're not enough, but God actually made us flawed. He actually made us finite. He actually made us to depend on him. And it is through realizing that and living that out,

as I explain in my book, that we find such relief. We find such joy. And so I really encourage you, if that sounds like something that you would get something out of, I really encourage you to purchase this book. You can go to Alliebethsducky.com slash book. and you can see all the places you can find it. If you've got independent bookstores close by, I encourage you to go there that will really help your independent bookstore if they're open. And if they're not, you can ask the bookstore to order the book. You can go to your local Barnes & Noble.

You can hopefully go to your local public library. You can buy a few of these books and then donate them to your local public library. That would be really helpful as well. So thank you guys so much. Thank you to everyone who has supported the book. who is reading the book, who has already reviewed the book. If you have already read the book and you love it, I would love for you to leave a five-star review on Amazon.

That helps me a lot if, of course, you love the book. Thank you guys so much for your prayers and for your support and for your wisdom and just for everything that you have offered in helping shape this book and helping the launch be successful and it has been successful so far. So thank you so much. Okay, today let's actually get into the podcast. We are going to talk about a few things. We're going to talk about John McArthur, his Grace Community Church in L.A. and other churches in California that are defying the local government, what that looks like and kind of what the biblical support and the historical support for that kind of decision is. And then we are going to talk about just standing strong amidst persecution. We are going to talk about the demonstrators, the protesters in Hong Kong versus what's happening in Portland and Seattle. We're going to look at a little bit.

but of the contrast of that. And we're going to talk about the consequences of all of these things and leave you with a little bit of practical advice and encouragement. Okay, let's talk about first what's happening in California. So this is from the Federalist. This is a quote. The city of Los Angeles has issued a cease and desist letter to Grace Community Church and its pastor, John McArthur, for continuing indoor worship services threatening a daily $1,000 fine or McArthur's arrest. According to a press release, the church's legal counsel released on Wednesday. On July 13th, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered churches in 30 counties, including Los Angeles County, where MacArthur's church is located to stop all indoor services

indefinitely. In response, McArthur and his church continued meeting and issued a public statement declaring their freedom to worship, end quote. And that it goes on to say, it has never been the prerogative of civil government to order modify, forbid, or mandate worship, said McArthur, and the church's elder board in their statement. Freedom of worship is a command of God, not a privilege granted by the state. So churches are not allowed to meet together in California inside right now due to coronavirus restrictions. Most churches are getting around that by congregating in smaller groups or outside,

but Grace Community Church is not the only church that is meeting indoors. There are a lot of pastors who have led their congregation. to say basically the same thing that Grace Community Church is saying now, and they were even saying it before. They were saying it a couple months ago, and they simply continued to meet together. The mayor of L.A., Eric Garcetti, has restricted home gatherings of all kinds, too, by threatening to cut off water and power to people whom he found broke the rules and had too many people in their home. So you can't have some people in your home, but you have to be under a certain limit, according to Mayor Eric Garcetti.

And if you break that rule, he said a couple months ago, we will cut off your water and power. Now, let's think about that for a second. In the summer, in California, cutting off someone's air conditioning, cutting off their water, the things that they need to survive. You don't know if they have elderly people in their home. You don't know if they have babies in their home. You don't know what kind of situation they're in.

You don't know why they had a certain number of people in their house. And honestly, it's really none of Eric Garcetti's business. I mean, this is some evil fascist stuff right here. And this is not the fascism, ironically, that, quote, Antifa, who call themselves anti-fascists and yet employ fascist tactics themselves. This is not the fascism that they are protesting, unfortunately. And yet this is fascist. This is completely totalitarian absurdity. This is evil. This is what I call a tiny tyrant. So I did an episode a few months ago called tiny tyrants. everywhere where we talked about how some of the leaders in this country are just getting drunk on power and controlling people's lives, just down to the minute details of their day-to-day schedule. Eric Garcetti, DeBlasio, New York, Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, Gavin Newsom in California, like Governor Cuomo in New York. These are petty tyrants. These are tiny tyrants. Back to the main story, churches are deemed non-essential in California, while liquor stores and abortion clinics,

stay open. They never had to close. A John McArthur's Church abided by those restrictions for a few months and have recently decided to defy them for a few reasons that they've articulated. One, the virus actually hasn't ended up being as deadly as they originally thought. Originally, they, we just didn't know how deadly it was going to be. I certainly was one of those people who said, yes, we just need to do what they say because they were telling us this is like a 20% fatality rate. And I thought, okay, I am loving my neighbor. and I am thinking about the most vulnerable by basically no questions asked just doing what they say. And of course, to some degree, it is true to be respectful of other people.

But at the very beginning, I didn't see the threat to some of these draconian and arbitrary restrictions. I'll just admit that. And John McArthur's Church has said they just didn't know the deadliness of the virus in the beginning. Another reason they cited is because of the clear discrimination of the policies against the churches and the unconstitutionality of the government putting special restrictions on churches that they're not putting on other places of business. Now, this is a little bit probably, I don't know if they would describe it like this and I want to describe it how they would fairly describe it. I think this is a little bit of an honest evolution for Grace Community Church a few

months ago. I did an episode titled Should Christians Resist Tyranny where I made a lot of the arguments that they are making now and other churches are making now in light of Romans 13, that the Bible is clear that we are to submit to governing authorities. First Peter 2 makes this clear also, and not just to nice governing authorities, not just to governing authorities that we agree with on everything, but our lives are supposed to be marked by submission. Except, and there is a big except here. And not all Christians agree with this, but I think history in the Bible make this clear. Except when submission to the earthly authority means defiance. to God. So there are many examples of this in the Bible. A few of them are the Hebrew midwives in Egypt

refusing to kill the baby boys, even though they were ordered to by the Egyptian government. Daniel continued to pray when he was ordered not to. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to the idol of Nebuchadnezzar. Jesus and the apostles obviously proclaimed the gospel, even when they were ordered not to. Church history, Protestant history, especially is colored red with the blood of Christians define tyrants. We see the Protestant Reformation resisted not just spiritual tyranny, but governmental tyranny. Scottish reformer John Knox said resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. We are obligated to resist tyranny when tyranny is attempting to subvert God's authority in our lives. That was a huge reason for the revolution, for the American Revolution,

for independence from Britain, freedom of faith, freedom of religion, despite what the 1619 project says about the revolution actually being about slavery. It wasn't. It was for freedom from tyranny, including religious tyranny. Now, just as a side note, the lead essayist of the 1619 project, Nicole Hannah-Jones, has come out and said repeatedly, look, the 1619 project wasn't meant to be history. It wasn't meant to be fact. It was narrative. So just know that. If you're someone who listens to the 1619 project that is now, by the way, being used as curriculum and a lot of public schools across the country, it's not fact. It apparently was never meant to be fact. The problem is it was displayed as that. It was advertised as real history, not just a counter-narrative,

not just, quote, journalism, what she calls it, but it was portrayed as this is real history, everything you have believed is a myth and this is what actually happened. She's admitted this is not what actually happened. And the New York Times even had to say, okay, we made a mistake by saying the revolution was about slavery because it wasn't actually about slavery. So just know that. I'm not saying don't listen to it, maybe if you're listening to it critically, but just realize that the author that New York Times has said that they were just challenging a narrative with their own personal perspectives and with their own ideology. It's not historical fact. I would encourage you to learn historical fact rather than someone's biased narrative that is trying to push a particular political

agenda if you are interested in learning about history. It's okay to learn about different people's perspectives too, but we all have to make sure that we have an underlying knowledge of the facts, right? Okay. So not only do Christians, especially Protestant, and remember, that's protestant. So this is a part of our name, this is a part of our history, especially Protestant Christians, have a long history of resisting tyrants for the glory of God. But obviously, Americans specifically do as well. And in America, thankfully, for now, the law of our land is the U.S. Constitution. That is the document under which all laws and all government authorities must submit.

That is what they must abide by. The Constitution limits the government's power, not the people's power. So the Constitution is about what the government can and cannot do, not what the people can and cannot do. Of course, it recognizes our God-given rights and the things that we have a right to exercise, but it is limiting the power of the government to restrict those rights. Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. We are supposed to be the governing authorities, and the people in office are simply supposed to be the ones representing us in the things.

we want. Now, we know that there are a lot of corrupt systems out there, and that's not exactly what happens, unfortunately, but the First Amendment to the Constitution says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. No government leader is supposed to be able to defy that. So, the leaders of California, and especially in L.A., are the ones who are rebelling against the law of the land right now. Now, all of that said, I do not believe that any of these things excuse Christians to just willy-nilly disobey our authorities, even when they are in the wrong, in some things. The spirit of Romans 13 and 1st Peter 2 is that of respect, it's that of deference. We should make every effort

to be obedient. We should be respectful. We should be kind. We should make our case clear. And many churches have decided that they're not going to meet in person in light of Romans 13. They're going to be more strategic in meeting, but trying to obey earthly authorities as much as they can. So they're meeting in small groups at home. They're meeting outside. And that may be well and good. But there is certainly something different in corporate worship that the Christian needs. Grace Community Church, other churches, they recognize that necessity.

People are isolated right now. some people are destitute. They're struggling with loneliness. They're struggling with sin. They're struggling with addiction, with sorrow, with mourning over the loss of a loved one, just in need of spiritual nourishment, of spiritual refreshment and in-person teaching. And the church needs to be gathered for that. We know that Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, and let us consider how to stir up one another, to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another in all the more as you see the day drawing near. I think that we do all see the day drawing near. And this passage could be more clear,

not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Now, that doesn't mean if you listen to the end of Friday's podcast, I talked about this with Joel Webbin, who is a pastor in San Diego, that yes, of course, there are some threats in which you say, okay, as the shepherd of my flock, as the leader of this congregation, I am going to make sure that we don't meet in this building on Sunday. If you know there's going to be a hurricane there, if you know there is going to be some terrible thing that's going to happen that is going to be detrimental for your church, then of course there are ways that you can protect your flock and still make sure they're getting the spiritual nourishment that you

need. But at some point, when it comes to this virus and you look at the statistics and you look at the likelihood of hospitalization. You look at the likelihood of death. You assess that risk. You look at the regulations. You look at the restrictions. You look at the needs of your church. At some point, a leader of a church has to make the decision to make sure that they are obeying Hebrews 10, 24 through 25. And right now, as Grace Community Church has decided, as a lot of other church has decided, have decided as well, the church needs to be gathered. If you are vulnerable, of course, stay home. But while virtual worship is good, while it's a luxury we all get to enjoy, it's not the same as meeting in person. I've seen, I've heard a lot of people say the church is

not a building. It's not a building. It's okay if we're not meeting together. That's true to an extent. Again, this goes back to the conversation I had on Friday. That is true. The church is not a building. That is absolutely true. But it is a body and it is an assembly. Now, the church scattered. Is the church gathered again, as I heard Joel Webbin say on Friday? And so yes, the church when it goes out to be the hands and feet of Jesus is still the church, absolutely. The entire church is universal. Our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are part of the church. They're part of the body of Christ, even though we don't assemble together. But part of the church and part of what we do as Christians is gathered together. And that is essential.

God created us for the need for corporate learning, for corporate worship. And so Grace Community Church and other churches have seen the necessity of that, and they are deciding that they are going to defy tyrants. The defiance that we see of tyranny throughout Christian history and in the Bible is not just resistance for the sake of resistance, not just defiance for the sake of defiance, but in order to obey God, they defyance. in order to obey and glorify God, they resist. So we're not talking about a bunch of people that are pushing for anarchy. That's not what we're talking about in Christianity. We're not talking about a

bunch of people who are just going out and resisting for the sake of resisting. We are talking about specific defiance, specifically so that we can obey God, who is the supreme and transcendent authority for the glory of God. So that's why I, I think that there are very specific instances in which Christians are called to defy tyrants, but in general, we are called to submission. In general, we are called to respect. In general, we are called to deference. And the great thing is, in America, we still have means by which we can hold tyrants to account.

And that means that they're not true. They might act like tyrants, but thankfully, we don't have full tyranny yet. We do have our voices still do matter. we do get to speak up, we do get to say something, we do get to push back, we do have recourse, we do have means by which we can vote these people out hopefully and hold them accountable. And so I do believe Christians also can exercise that as much as we possibly can while still being respectful and while still trying to obey earthly authorities as long as that does not mean that we are disobeying God.

That is our highest authority. that is who we are always bowing down to. Okay, before I transition, I want to tell you guys about ExpressVPN. Let's talk about censorship on social media sites. I know that you guys know about this, that you guys are concerned about this. I am too. The left wants to silence and remove any ideas they don't agree with, not the entirety of the left, but there are definitely a lot of extreme voices on the left who are just

not interested in entertaining any other idea or debate. Twitter and Facebook, we're supposed to be open platforms, unbiased platforms. but I don't need their content moderators acting like the op-ed section of the New York Times, which is what they do right now. So instead of letting social media sites revoke our right to free speech, we should revoke their right to our data. You could just deactivate all your social media accounts, but that would be giving the left just what they wanted in the first place.

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of its existence and not just in the past, but also in the present. What we have to realize is that religious freedom is not the norm. Tyranny is the norm. Persecution for Christians is the norm. If you look at any report, you will find that the number one most persecuted religion in the world, not necessarily in America, but in the world is Christianity. So the norm for Christians throughout history and still today in places outside of America and especially outside of the West is persecution. is torture, is imprisonment, is martyrdom. So we have to realize that we live in this very privileged bubble of history, this very rare, this very unique place in history where Christians have been able to have incredible influence over the mainstream culture. And we also have been

free in a lot of ways from major persecution. That is rare in world history. That is rare in the world right now. that is why Christians want to protect it so much. Religious liberty, by the way, doesn't just protect Christianity, doesn't just protect Christians. It protects people from of other faiths as well. So right now, while we still can, because you know there's a force in this country who doesn't believe in religious liberty, we need to be exercising that as much as we possibly can. We need to be using that First Amendment right to push back on the tyrants that want to take away that freedom, especially those who do so discriminatorily and arbitrarily. In places like China, there's no such a thing as religious freedom. And no communist country ever and no socialist country ever. Is there such thing as free speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion? You just can't find it. Here is a headline from Daily Wire. China forces Christians to renounce faith, destroy Christian symbols, or be cut off from welfare reports say this is from Daily Wire's Ryan Tevedra. Here's a quote. Kea Yan, I guess that's how you pronounce it, chairman of the Juan Jimbo, People's Congress told the South China Morning Post in 2017,

many poor households have plunged into poverty because of illness in the family. Some resorted to believing in Jesus to cure their illnesses. But we tried to tell them that getting ill is a physical thing and that the people who can really help them are the Communist Party and General Secretary Zai. Many rural people are ignorant. They think God is their savior. After our cater's work, they'll realize their mistakes and think we should no longer rely on Jesus, but on the party for help. Does that not sound extremely similar to people here, to people

who say they're not communist? No, they're just democratic socialist. People on the left here who make fun of the hillbillies who actually believe in Jesus. I think it was Barack Obama in 2008 at a fundraiser who said the only people who aren't voting for him are the ones who are cleaning to God guns in the Bible or something like that. Well, that attitude he helped spread, of course, during his presidency, but is extremely pervasive, extremely popular today on the left. And they mock Christianity in the same way that in China they mock the people who believe in Jesus and believe that Jesus can hear their prayers and heal their ailments if he so chooses. And they would rather them depend completely on the party.

And this is exactly why I just said communism and religious liberty never coexist. Because in order for communism to exist, you have to have a strong centralized power. You have to have a timer in the middle making sure. that everyone is obeying authorities, that making sure that everyone is having the outcomes in life that the party wants them to. You cannot derive values from your family. You can't derive values from your faith. You can't derive values from any institution other than the party or else that subverts the party's authority and that hinders them from being able to do their work. And so they have to make sure that everyone looks to the party for truth. everyone looks to the party for help everyone looks to the party for worth and meaning and purpose and all of

that you can't be you can't be going and believing in an authority that is higher than the government in a communist or in a socialist regime regime you just can't do it because that means that communists can't have power remember power corrupts and total power complete power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so there is great risk to Christians that are in China and yet they continue to meet together and yet they continue to worship. And yet they continue to congregate. They continue to assemble. There is much greater risk to Christians not just in China, but in the Middle East and in other parts of the world than there are to Americans here when we are looking at a virus that 99.99, I was going to say 99.9.9, but I don't think it's 99.9. I think it's about

99.6 maybe, 99.6% of people survive. I mean, we're talking about threats to their life, threats to their livelihoods that are happening in other parts of the world, and they are continuing to assemble, and they are continuing to congregate. So we should probably be taking our views and taking our cues on defiance from them. Now, I want you to listen to this New York Times. It's an article from last year. I want you to listen to the description of Hong Kong demonstration. So this is the title of that article. With hymns and prayers, Christians help drive Hong Kong's protest. So for you guys that don't know, Hong Kong was under British law. It was autonomous. It was obviously in China, but it was an autonomous area. It was not governed by China.

Over the past few years, China has tried to take control over Hong Kong. And there has been lots of pro-democracy, pro-freedom, pro-independence demonstrators there in Hong Kong. They have free press. They have freedom of religion there. They really are just like this Western bubble in the tyranny that is China. And China just can't handle that because China's aim is world domination. That is why they won't recognize the independence of Taiwan. That's why they're colonizing countries in Africa. That's why they're colonizing poor countries in South America. That is why they try to infiltrate the United States. That's why they try to spy on the United States, as we heard about at the consulate in Houston at the consulate in San Francisco.

The Chinese Communist Party is an evil, evil actor. An evil actor. We already know that they have put over a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps. We already know, as we just read about the persecution against Christians, all ethnic religious minorities. There are persecuted, are pushed to the margins of society in China, and there's no freedom. There's no freedom of any kind. not even freedom of thought, not freedom of belief. And unfortunately, they have taken their

tyranny, their hatred of freedom and their communism, and they have now taken over Hong Kong. So Hong Kong is no longer autonomous, and there were protests for many, many months in Hong Kong, waving American flags and singing Christian hymns fighting for, demonstrating for the freedom and the autonomy of Hong Kong. So the New York Times reported on this. With hymns and prayers, Christians help drive Hong Kong. Kong's protests. Christianity has had, this is what the article said, has had a striking influence and demonstrations against a proposed law that would allow extraditions to mainland China. So that means if you broke the law in Hong Kong, then you would be extradited to mainland China. And

this was written in 2019. This has taken effect now. Quote, Hong Kong's Christians have long played an important role in the politics of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on issues like religious freedom, democracy, and human rights. And though Catholics and Protestants make up only about one and nine people in the city of 7.5 million, the influence of Christianity and the protest has been striking, providing a source of inspiration and solace. Hong Kong, like I said, it's no longer autonomous, but the activists, there are still activists there that are trying to fight for freedom, that are trying to fight for freedom of the press. Unfortunately, a very notable journalist who has been fighting for freedom for his people

has just been detained. And apparently there are reports that the Chinese government has rounded up his family as well as a tactic to try to get him to break. I mean, this is all 1984 being made manifest, but there are still activists there who are tweeting, who are publicly talking about the freedom of Hong Kong or the need for the freedom of Hong Kong, who are still trying to fight for liberty there and for autonomy there. And if you follow them on Twitter, you will see that there is a very strong influence of Christianity in most of their lives. They're quoting scripture.

they're citing psalms. They were talking about the importance of justice and not just any kind of justice. Unfortunately, a lot of people here crane out for justice have no idea what justice means, but actual biblical justice. Here, here in Portland and Seattle, in other big cities, what do we have? We talked about last week. You have Antifa burning the Bible. So you've got protesters in Hong Kong that are reading the Bible, that are citing the Bible, that are singing Christian hymns. and then the protesters here, so-called Antifa, who are, again, really fascists, but they call themselves anarcho-communists. They are burning the Bible. Again, can you tell me why we can't switch these two groups? Like, I would love to take all 7.4 million Hong Kongers, bring them over here, take all the

communists in the United States that hate the Bible, that hate the American flag, that hate America, all of our institutions that hate freedom, and send them over to China. Then it's just a win-win. The people who want democracy over in Hong Kong, they get freedom here. And the people who want communism, they can go to China and they can see exactly what that's like. And I've proposed this program before. It's called HKX, the Hong Kong Exchange Program. I am all for it. And I think that we should be pushing really hard to push this through.

I'm kidding. Of course, I think that it should be a voluntary exchange program. But I don't see why we aren't tossing around this idea more and more. If the communists here really do hate America, they really do hate Christianity. You can go to the country where Christianity isn't legal. How about that? If you don't like democracy and you really think communism is the way, there's an entire world superpower that believes in communism.

It can give you exactly what you believe that you want. So go over there. Let us know how it goes. Report back if you're allowed to do that. Hey, this is Steve Deast. 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 Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

liberty and Christianity go hand in hand. Christianity is inherently anti-tirony. It always has been, especially Protestants. And it is today. It is anti-tyrony today. We see this in small ways, comparatively, at least in the United States. We see that happening in big ways in China. That is a huge reason why, and I always get so much flack for saying this from people on the left, but it's a huge reason why when people become Christians, their politics change. That's also why, and this is what people don't like to hear me say as people begin to read the Bible more, as they begin to take the Bible more seriously, as they submit their lives to the authority of God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, who therefore has the authority to say what is and what isn't,

what's right and what's wrong, to define things like morality, to define things like marriage, to define things like right sexuality, to define things like righteousness. once a person starts submitting themselves to the authority of God above all else, as they take the Bible in His Word, Scripture, or more seriously, their politics change. They start caring about things like religious liberty. They start caring about things like the preservation of the biblical family, like individual responsibility, like biblical justice. That means fair justice, impartial justice, direct justice.

They start seeing the importance of something like voluntary. charity rather than coerced charity, which is an oxymoron, which is what socialism and communism, of course, demand. So we as Christians have to realize that part of being a Christian is obeying God, no matter what, and that often comes with resistance to tyrants. And again, that doesn't mean some necessarily, always some crazy revolution. It doesn't mean necessarily going out there and protesting, and it does mean we submit as much as we possibly can until it means that we are disobeying God. I do believe that's what the Bible calls us to do in Romans 13. That's what the Bible calls us to do in places like 1st Peter 2. But we do have to realize that we are entering

into a time, and I think in America's history, where it's no longer going to be popular to be a Christian, it's going to become very difficult, legally difficult, to obey God with how we worship and the things that we say, and we have to be prepared for that. We have to be prepared for that. A lot of people ask, you know, what can I do? How can I help, you know, Christians across the world who unfortunately are being cracked down upon? How can I make sure that things don't turn out like that here?

Well, there's a lot of different things. Of course, you can pray. I think the most important thing is being obedient in your own life, making sure that you are reading your Bible, that you are grounded in the truth, that your church that you're going to. It's grounded in the truth is preaching from the Bible, not preaching social justice and Marxism. You can go back and listen to my old episodes if you don't know what I'm talking about, is not preaching critical theory, but that you are taking the word of God seriously,

that you know why you believe what you believe, and then you turn around and you teach that to your kids, you teach that to the people around you, you have those conversations with your friends, and you make sure this is really the most that you can do is that you are obedient in everything in your own life. You can't control everything that goes on in the world. You pray, and then you give that to God, and you don't let anxiety wait. you down and you are obedient with what is right in front of you and you don't shrink back from hard conversations with your friends. You don't shrink back from the hard conversations with your

pastor. You don't shrink back from the hard conversations with your spouse or with your kids. You stand on the Word of God and you don't apologize for it. And this is really, it's part of why it's really the underneath of what we have to do to push back against a lot of the nonsense and the communistic, collectivist nonsense that's happening in our country right now that is attempting to revolutionize and abolish all of the institutions that have made America, this beacon of hope and light for so long. Imperfect. Very imperfect beacon of hope and light. And yet we are the best country that has ever existed, not because of our flaws, but because of the things that we have done well that other countries simply have not been able to do. Here's what we have to do as Christians

as people who don't believe in tyranny. We have to push back against this idea that truth is relative. So there's this conversation going on right now. If you follow someone named James Lindsay, I've talked about him before, but he is a math PhD. I'm pretty sure that he is also a professor, but he has been getting woke Twitter into a tizzy by saying two plus two equals four. And yes, this is true. There are woke math people who are trying to say, well, two plus two doesn't necessarily equal four. That's actually just a product of Western thought. that's actually just a product of oppressive objectivism and two plus two can sometimes equal

five or it can equal something else. And this is the worldview of critical theory that says everything must be viewed through the lens of the oppressed versus the oppressor and any idea of absolute truth, absolute religious truth, absolute scientific truth, absolute mathematic truth. It's a product of oppression because that means some people are wrong. And so we have to push back against this with this wild idea of subjectivism and relativism. Well, obviously you see the problem with that. Like, you can't build a rocket. You can't build a plane or anything like that. You can't build a bridge by believing that 2 plus 2 equals 5. Like we have to believe in some kind of objective reality. And that is a really good metaphor or maybe even just a really good example of how

societies also fall apart if you don't believe in an objective moral truth. So the objective mathematical truth is that 2 plus 2 has to equal 4, you can't build a bridge. Like the bridge is going to fall down in the same way, if we don't believe in certain inalienable rights or certain unchangeable moral truths that also connects to our certain inalienable rights, we're going to fall apart as a country. So objectivism is the basis, the belief in objective truth. And furthermore, the belief that objective truth comes from a transcendent creator is the basis of the cohesiveness of the United States. And if we let go of objectivism from two plus two equals four to, hey, God is real and he is the creator that gave us our inalienable rights among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness, then we will just crumble as a nation. Now, some people don't realize that. Some people don't see the connection between those two things, that without the objective source of objective wisdom, God himself, that everything truly is relative, everything truly is. So, objective, but because we believe that our creator exists, and again, because we believe that he is the authority, the creator of the universe, he says what is and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. He has the sole authority to define things to tell us what truth is, then we have to believe in objectivism. But communism and the critical theory worldview has to push back against that because in order for people to be good sheep, in order for people to be good

communists. In order for people to be good, um, uh, submitters to tyranny, then you have to get your definition of truth from the governmental authority. You have to get your values from the governmental authority. So they push back against the cohesion of the family. They push back against religion. They push back against freedom of thought. They push back against freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Just read 1984 if you didn't read it with us in a women's book club with Ali Stucky on Facebook. And so in order for us to push back against all of that, the tyranny of the mind, the revolution against free thinking, the revolution against objectivism that is happening from the far left and is trying to reach into the rest of the party and the rest of the side is that we have to

insist upon objective truth. We have to insist upon two plus two equaling four. We have to insist upon the existence of God and his definition of what justice is, his definition of what truth is, his definition of what sexuality should look like, his definition of what gender is, what sex is, what marriage is, we have to insist upon these things without apology. Because it matters. The truth matters, as you can see. Without objective truth, everything shatters. Now, that doesn't mean that we insist upon living in a theocracy.

We can still believe that people are free to believe what they believe in this country, that people are free to worship the way they want to worship or not worship the way they want to not worship and still insist upon biblical values that have made this country as free and is flourishing as it is. We are all beneficiaries right now of the biblical worldview, of the biblical definition of equal justice under the law, the biblical definition of what it looks like to live in a free and a fair country. We are beneficiaries of those things and perfectly implemented, but they are still benefiting us today. And in abolishing those things, in the name of critical theory, in the name of social justice is only going to end in more suffering. So what we have

to do is insist upon the truth. You know, I've seen a lot of conservatives say, this whole gender sex thing is not a big deal. I'm just going to say, you know, yeah, sure, a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man as if that doesn't matter. So all of a sudden, objective truth, when it comes to sex and biology and gender, it doesn't matter. matter anymore. So we're just going to acquiesce on that front too. I don't think conservative has realized that when you acquiesce on that, like when you say, okay, whatever, I'm just going to go along with the gender revolution, well, you've just given up everything. You've just said objective reality doesn't matter. That what God says is and isn't doesn't matter. That biology, that it doesn't

matter. That objective isn't doesn't matter. And that actually one of the most basic parts of being human being, being a man or a woman, that it's all just relative. Okay, well, then everything is relative. No, you hold the line. And you know what? We don't have a lot of Republican politicians willing to go there. We don't have a lot of Republican politicians willing to hold the line on the culture issues because it's so unpopular. The left has bullied us so far to where we're scared to say things like that. Politicians are scared to say things like that. So they think they're just going to be able to talk about capitalism and, you know, foreign policy and that they are going to get by. Well, they are exactly why we are in the position that we are in with conservatives.

is getting canceled for saying very basic normal truthful things like a man is a man and a woman is a woman. And oh, by the way, I think traditional families are good for society. I think it's best for human flourishing for us to preserve and for us to promote that. They're not willing to say that kind of stuff because it's unpopular. And that's why we are where we are in the culture war. So I'm just encouraging you as a Christian, as a conservative to hold the line on that stuff and don't compromise just because people are telling you that those views are not in vogue anymore. Objective truth and morality matter. They matter.

Without it, we shatter not just personally as people, but in general. And part of that is being anti-tirony when it means, when it means, when tyranny means that we are going to have to disobey God. So don't relent, don't compromise. Don't just let the redefinition of words happen when it comes to things like racism, when it to things like justice and injustice, don't allow the redefinition of those words to put you in a corner to where you feel like you have to agree with them. Make sure you go to God's word to define what these things are and that you have a biblical perspective of these things. I have a resource page on my website, alleybethducky.com slash blog. You can click on culture, I think, but, or you can

just Google it. I have a whole resource page for you. So resources of history books, of books, of political books, of theological books to help you shape a biblical worldview, because now it's more important than ever for us to hold the line and for us to be relentless in this because the tyranny is coming. It's coming for us. It's coming for you. It's coming for your family. It's coming for your kids. It's coming for our faith. It's coming for our churches. And if we don't stand up right now, then unfortunately this country is going look very different in 10 years. It's going to look very different by the time our kids are grown. And God is sovereign, absolutely, and he is in complete control. And one day, we can look forward to

him ruling a perfect peace and righteousness. There will be no partisanship. There will be no politics. There will be no chaos. There will be no sadness, no sorrow, no sickness, no pandemic, no deceit, no manipulation, no tyranny, no communism. None of that. Thankfully, and we can trust Jesus to rule and perfect righteousness and perfect peace. And that is what we have to look forward to. We will be in fellowship, not just with our Savior, but we will be in fellowship with Christians who here on earth we disagreed with politically, by the way. And that'll be a beautiful moment that we will be able to share in the joy in the presence of Christ. So that's what we have to look forward to. That's our hope. Until then, we are as obedient as we possibly can be.

and we make sure that how we are viewing the world and how we are acting as people line up with the Word of God. Okay, that's all I have for today. I will see you back here on Friday. 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.