Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 354 | Far-Left Cabinet Picks + the Dangers of Today's 'Accountability'

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Let's take a look at some of Biden's picks for Cabinet positions and see if they tell us anything about the direction his administration will take the country. Also, we discuss the word "accountability" and how it's being used by the Left as a way to control people. -- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs has the perfect subscription box for both boys & girls! Kids develop actual skills, mastering real-world building or new crafting techniques while expressing their creativity. Go to https://www.annieskitclubs.com/allie and save 75% off your first shipment! ExpressVPN masks your IP address with its secure VPN server. Stop handing over your data to big tech companies! Visit https://www.expressvpn.com/allie to get three (3) extra months free! -- Sources: Chris Rufo tweet thread: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1351206666818248704  Biden selects transgender doctor Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/19/rachel-levine-transgender-biden-hhs-pick/  Attorney General Shapiro says he has opened criminal investigations into several nursing homes https://www.pressandjournal.com/stories/pa-attorney-general-shapiro-says-he-has-opened-criminal-investigations-into-several-nursing-homes,92617  Health Secretary Rachel Levine’s removal of mom from care home amid epidemic draws scrutiny https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/05/health-secretary-rachel-levines-removal-of-mom-from-care-home-amid-epidemic-draws-scrutiny.html  Biden says California AG who tried to force pro-life centers to promote abortion would be his HHS chief https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/biden-picks-pro-abortion-pro-lockdown-xavier-becerra-for-hhs-chief  AOC’s tweet: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1281392795748569089  Mariah’s tweet: https://twitter.com/riahthelee/status/1349371713323200513 -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday, once again, have a lot to talk about today. We are going to first talk about a couple of Biden's latest picks for his administration. We are also going to talk about if we have time, some of the other censorship that has been going on in Twitter, BigTac, even in cable news. And then we are going to end with a new segment called Word Watch. And that's just how I envision. Once we have like an actual branding for this segment, I imagine it's saying word watch. And so that is us keeping an eye on the language in how the evolution of the use of words is affecting our understanding, our cultural understanding, our political understanding. Because the definition of words, especially nowadays, changes very quickly, in particular on the left side of the aisle.

And so we really need to understand how these words are being used, what they mean and what the actual meanings of them are. And so we're going to go through that and we're going to look at the biblical use of a term that I think is being overused and misused right now and what that all means and what we should think about it as Christians. First, let's go ahead and start out with a couple of Biden's latest pick. So Biden announced last week, I believe, that he is nominating San Diego School superintendent Cindy Martin to be. Deputy Secretary of Education, Christopher Rufo, whom I had on the podcast yesterday, if you did not listen to yesterday's podcast, even if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, I highly recommend listening to my about 20 or so minute interview with him about what's going on in our public school system as far as what is being taught to our children and how it's

going to affect their minds and their lives and even what they think about their family, what they think about their faith. Go listen to that episode from yesterday. But Christopher Rufo, being the investigator that he is, into our education system, has done some digging on Cindy Martin. He did a tweet thread not too long ago talking about how Martin's, I don't know if it's Martin or Martins actually, promoted the concept that schools, quote, spirit murder black children and that white teachers should undergo, quote, anti-racist therapy. Now, again, if you listen to yesterday's episode, if you listen to the interview between Christopher Rufo and me, you will know that this term, anti-racist, is really a misnomer.

It sounds really good because, of course, we're not racist and we want to be against any form of racism, but it is really a term of critical race theory, which means that you have to see racism in every part of American life from your interpersonal relationships, to the systems and the institutions that are in place. It is an idea that is promoted not just by Ibermax Kendi and other academics, but also people like Robin DiAngelo who wrote the book, White Fragility. It's this idea that we have to divest of whiteness or decolonize our minds, all of these very academic, very strange, meaningless, hollow, vapid terms.

it really, it means a lot of self-hatred and self-loathing and self-resentment for white people in the hopes that that will create equality and liberation and equity and all of these things. It doesn't. It just creates more bias. It creates more hatred, not just of yourself, but also of other people. Remember, the nature of critical race theory is to divide people by their racial identities, by their skin color. and allocate oppression points based on that. There's no game plan after that happens for how people then come together.

There's no game plan for unity after that. There's no game plan for reconciliation. So people that are using critical race theory, using Ibrax-Kindy, using Robin DiAngelo, using some of these people who may not even realize that they're using critical race theory, but are using their teachings to try to bring about racial reconciliation. It's never going to happen. It's not in the nature of critical race theory. And so this woman is a perfect representation of the effects and really the effects of the mind virus that is this ideology, the idea that schools are spirit murdering, whatever the heck that means.

Black children and white teachers should undergo anti-racist therapy. San Diego Unified School District tells white teachers they are guilty of this spirit murder of black children. and he obtained Christopher Russo obtained whistleblower documents from the training, from the training session. They hired the school district that, again, the Deputy Secretary of Education, Cindy Martin, was in charge of, hired a critical race theorist Bettina Love for a district-wide training on, quote, challenging the oppressive practices that live within school organizations. The district forbade recordings, but a whistleblower, took screenshots and detailed notes.

According to the whistleblower notes, this is a Christopher Rufo on Twitter. Love began by saying that racism runs deep in America. And remember, that is the cornerstone. That is the idea that critical race theory asserts. And that's not an argument, by the way. That's why they don't accept debate. That's why they won't actually talk about,

okay, can you talk about evidence of systemic racism? Can we talk about why disparities actually exist, maybe beyond or in addition to or instead of? discrimination, it's an axiom, it's a statement, it's self-certifying. So you're not actually allowed to argue against it. If you tried to debate someone who holds to critical race theory, who believes that everything in America is systemically racist, then you are just a part of the problem. That's, this is a Kafka trap. You are just fragile, perhaps, or you are just a white oppressor. Therefore, you cannot argue against it. So understand that critical race theory is full

of axioms, not arguments. It's not up for debate. And so, So this critical race theorist, too, is teaching these educators in San Diego saying that racism runs deep. She's not looking for a debate. She's not looking for a discussion. And she doesn't, therefore, have to bring any proof or evidence or objective fact in that. That is why these people listen to people. That's why critical race theorists love Ibermax Kendi, but hate Thomas Sol because Thomas Sol talks about facts.

He talks about numbers. People like Ibrahimskindy make assertions. and present axioms without actually presenting any objective argument. This critical race theory trainer says in San Diego says that public schools, quote, don't see blacks as human. They perpetuate anti-blackness in spirit murder babies. Now, what do you want to bet that this person actually advocates for the choice of murdering actual babies, of actually murdering babies?

And she says that public school spirit murder babies, what does that even mean? If that has a tangible definition, if that has an objective reality, I want to know because spirit murder sounds really bad. And I don't want that to be happening. And hey, any chance we get to criticize the public school system, I am for, I think that there is a lot of oppression and a lot of abuse that goes on in our public school system. So if this person has legitimate examples of this happening, I, you know, I believe it. I just want some definitions here.

I just want to know what she's talking about rather than just these very superstitious sounding terms. But there is apparently some kind of definition. This concept is at the heart of Love's teachings. She says that this is a death that is built on racism and intended to reduce, humiliate, and destroy people of color. She said that that's what's happening in our public schools. Now, I also would guess that this person's probably not in favor of school choice. Like, I would say if there is a racist school that is discriminating against black and brown children

that is not serving black and brown children well, then I would say that that family should absolutely have the right in the ability to be able to switch schools and that the money should follow the child rather than as just funding these failing institutions. I would also bet that this person doesn't agree with me on that. And also people who traffic in critical race theory and who make money off of this stuff aren't interested in actual practical solutions, by the way, to failing public school systems because then they would not have a job. Now, she argues that, see, okay, here we go.

She says to correct this spirit murder that's happening, she argued that reform will not work and that schools must adopt abolitionist teaching to remove oppression from its roots. Again, what the heck does this mean? What does this look like? It looks like what we talked about with Christopher Rufo, what's happening in Cupertino, making eight and nine-year-old children deconstruct their sexual and racial identities to know where they are in the great hegemony of the United States, where their power and their privilege really lies and whether or not they are oppressed or an oppressor.

That's what it looks like. It looks like self-loathing. It looks like psychological abuse. In this age of self-love and what I call trendy narcissism, what I talk about in my book, we are also teaching kids to hate themselves and hate each other's as either hating themselves as an oppressor or hating someone else as an oppressor. It's not healthy. Academic theories very rarely when they're implemented on a practical scale do well.

And yet, the people who purport these academic theories like intersectionality and critical theory don't care whether or not they have a positive practical effect. because unlike in the world of science and in the scientific method, you have a hypothesis, you test it. And if your hypothesis is wrong, your conclusion is based on the data, not whether or not you wanted your hypothesis to be true. Unfortunately, in a lot of science nowadays and in academia, they make a hypothesis like, hey, if we split everyone up, if we categorize people by their race, then maybe we can

eliminate oppression. when that is actually practiced in our school districts, and it doesn't accomplish that. It accomplishes division. It accomplishes forms of abuse. It accomplishes more bias and more hatred and more resentment and even violence in some cases. You never see the academics backtrack and say, oh, okay, I was wrong. My ideas were bad. No, they just doubled down.

And that's precisely what's going to happen. That's precisely what's happening by making Cindy Martin. who is the head of the school district that is using this training by making her deputy secretary of education. They're doubling down on ideas, on bad ideas, ideas that do not work. San Diego Unified School District, again, that Cindy Martin ran has been radicalized. In recent months, the district announced mandatory diversity training, added a new racial grievance curriculum, and abolished their requirement to turn in homework on time. So I think that we might have talked about this on the podcast that this school district in San Diego decided that having a time that you have to turn in your homework and offering grades based on timeliness and being punctual was racist because they said that, you know, black and brown students weren't able to meet this standard.

And so rather than giving them the tools to meet this standard or helping them in any way, they just said, you know, we're not going to have a standard. We're just going to take the standard away, and we're just going to say whenever you want to turn it in, you can turn it in. There's nothing good about punctuality. There's nothing good about, you know, staying organized and being able to manage your time well. This is only going to create more disparities because the kids who are taking school seriously, the kids whose parents are involved in their schoolwork, are still going to make sure that they turn things in on time, whether or not there's a grading scale that applies to the punctuality of their work. And so all you're doing is you're teaching kids that may already be struggling with punctuality, that may already be struggling with getting all of their work done. You're teaching kids that they don't have to work to meet that standard.

What's going to happen when they get to the real world? And things are actually dependent on timeliness and things are actually dependent on punctuality. I mean, this has real effects in people's lives. I mean, the market is dependent on things happening on a certain schedule. So when they get to a job and they don't know how to show up on time, they don't know how to finish an assignment on time, and they get fired and they're unemployed because they were never taught by their teachers to be able to abide by these principles. What's going to happen to them then? You are creating more failure.

You're creating more disparities. Sure, it might end disparities, at least the appearance of disparities in the short run. But how are you hurting these kids in the long run? If some kids need extra help because of their socioeconomic status or whatever, then they get extra help. They get extra tools. But you don't lower the standard. Remember, the people who talk about equality and equity most always mean equality and equity downward. They mean lowering the standards to the lowest common denominator.

They never mean helping and resourcing the people who are struggling to move up to reach a high standard. And so that's why those who talk loudest about equality and equity, are always pulling people backward rather than actually pushing people afford. And this is, by the way, this taking away, this grading scale is in the name of becoming, quote, an anti-racist school district. It is not a coincidence that these people who say that they care about disparities between white, Asian, and then black and brown students are never interested in what I would call conservative solutions to things. They're never interested in school choice. They're never interested in talking about how the funding is allocated. They're never interested in talking about the corruption of public school or public teachers' unions.

They're never interested in talking about particular programs that can maybe help these kids achieve punctuality and timeliness in their work. They're only interested in these vague, weird academic theories and lowering the standards for everyone, bringing everyone to the lowest common denominator. and thus creating misery and creating a lack of success and it's really sad. Christopher Rufo points out rightly that these policies will ultimately harm all students, including minorities. As charter school leader Ian Rowe argues, the district's policies are a modern-day version of the soft bigotry of low expectations that will dumb down the grading system for all. That is absolutely true.

How low do you have to think of these kids that you imagine that they are not even, they're not even able. They're not even able to meet the standards of other kids. Again, rather than helping them, you say there's just no, there's just no standard. Are you really helping them in the long term? You're absolutely not. You're taking the easy way out. Unfortunately, this is what happens when wokeism affects people's minds and is applied in practical ways in our children's education. It's going to have a real effect on their lives. And unless parents stand up and say, no, I don't. I'm not going to allow my child to be affected that way.

I'm not going to allow my child to be taught in this way unless you say something. And, you know, I always encourage you to take your kids out of public school if that is at all an option. Like it's just not, it's just not worth it. But if you have to stay in public school, you need to be saying something. You need to be speaking up. The hard thing is the public school system doesn't really care because you're going to pay through your taxes for that public school and for the teachers and for all the curriculum that they are, that they are teaching these kids, whether or not your kid goes there, whether or not you have a complaint. If you send your kid to a private school, if that's something

that you can afford, you actually have more power because you're able to go directly to the administration and say, look, this teacher is teaching this hogwash. You got to change it, or I'm taking my money elsewhere. You don't have that kind of power or leverage when you're trying to reason with people at a public school district. Now, nevertheless, I do think it's important for parents to stand up and say, this is craziness. This is craziness. Okay, we're going to talk about another pick, health secretary that Biden picked, a person called Rachel Levine. And I'll get into that craziness in just one second. All right. Let's talk about another Biden pick, a person called Rachel Levine. Now, I say a person called Rachel Levine, because this is a biological man who

identifies as a woman, and that's pertinent to our conversation, at least according to these media outlets. And of course, these media outlets refer to Rachel by the preferred pronouns that Rachel has. And so I'm going to be reading these articles verbatim. So Washington Post reports this. President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will nominate Pennsylvania's top health official Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health, Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Levine serves as Pennsylvania Secretary of Health and has been leading the state's public health response to the coronavirus pandemic. Serving under Xavier Becerra, whom we will talk about in just one second, Biden's nominee to

had the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Levine would oversee key health offices and programs across the department, 10 regional health offices nationwide, the Office of the Surgeon General and the U.S. Public Health Service commissioned Corps. Now, Rachel has some baggage. Remember, Rachel is Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health has been leading the state's public health response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to PressinJournal.com, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced today, this is back in May, that over the past several weeks, his office has opened criminal investigations, into several Pennsylvania nursing homes.

Shapiro said in a press release that his office is going to investigate any nursing home engaging in criminal and neglect of patients and residents because there had been several allegations of that. According to State Department of Health Numbers released Tuesday, there are 12,130 resident cases. Again, this was in May of COVID-19 and 1,724 cases among employees and nursing and personal care homes nationwide, sorry, statewide, for a total of 13,854 at 540 facilities in 44 counties, the state has 57,991 cases total out of the total deaths, 2,611 have occurred in residents from nursing or personal care facilities that is about 68.6%. So remember, Levine led the coronavirus to

response in Pennsylvania. And there were so many allegations of nursing home residents not being cared for, being completely neglected in some cases. Unfortunately, this is very pervasive, it seems, across the country being abused in some cases. And what does Levine do? Levin, this is according to pinlive.com, had removed her 95-year-old mother from a personal care home amid a statewide coronavirus outbreak that has been particularly devastating to facilities that house elderly populations. So Rachel Levine said death and decay for thee, but not for me, or at least not for my mother. And that is very typical of bureaucrats. That's very typical of people in power.

This is, I've talked about this, I think, before. If not on my podcast on Twitter, this is shaping up to be a Kekist. that is a government made up by the least qualified people. I mean, that's what's happening, for example, in the state of New York, Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo have done a terrible job with the coronavirus, whether it's economically or in regards to public health. And yet they continue to be honored by the media. Governor Cuomo gets a book deal. He gets an award. Apparently he was even being talked about as attorney general.

That is what we call a cacistocracy, someone who has failed. so many times and yet continues to be rewarded with positions in power for their failure. Now, I want to talk about Xavier Bacera because, remember, he is apparently going to be, he's the nominee to had the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This is according to LifeS. News on Xavier Bacera, and I actually, when I interviewed Alexandra DeSaintiff, this was in December. So a few weeks ago, we talked about him specifically. Specifically, this is what LifeSight News reports on Xavier Bacera.

As Attorney General of the Golden State, Bacera was responsible for enforcing draconian restrictions on religious assembly in the name of containing COVID-19 and has joined other Democrat officials across the country and using the pandemic as a justification to demand abortion pills be approved for unsupervised home use. Bacera has also shown a marked hostility to Americans who follow Judeo-Christian teaching on matters such as abortion and homosexuality from forcing churches. to subsidize elective abortions and health insurance pro choice, right? Forcing churches to subsidize elective abortions and health insurance, forcing pro-life

pregnancy centers to advertise abortion resources. That was a measure that was in particular championed by Kamala Harris, also when she was attorney general of California, forcing pro-life centers, crisis pregnancy centers to advertise openly for cheap or free abortions in their facilities. How cruel? Just how cruel? How bloodthirsty do you have to be? This also, this article goes on to say about Bacera, refusing to fund state employees

travel to South Carolina in protest of its law protecting adoption agencies that insist on giving children both a mother and a father. That is going to be the head of health and human services under Joe Biden. again, a cake ofocracy, and not just that, but far left, anyone who voted for Biden thinking he's going to be thinking he's going to be the moderate choice, thinking that he's not going to pander to far leftism, that we're just going to get this modern, or I mean, this moderate and normal administration who is not going to push a far left agenda. That's not what his staffing says.

That's not what his administration nominees say. Absolutely not. He is going to pander to the far left in everything he does. and you so-called pro-life evangelical conservatives, you voted for him in the name of decency and normalcy, you're going to see how quickly your purported values are attacked. You're going to see very quickly what you voted for. Again, this is characteristic. This is characteristic, I would say, of both parties rewarding failures and rewarding incompetent people and corrupt people sometimes with power and with privilege. Remember Eric Swalwell.

It was found out that he was actually in cahoots. We don't know how far those cahoots went with the Chinese Communist Party spy named, I think, Feng Feng. And Speaker Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi named Eric Swalwell to the Homeland Security Committee. despite the fact that he was in cahoots with a Chinese Communist Party spy. So that's great. This is going to be great. AOC and the Finance Committee in the House, Bernie Sanders is the new chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He said that he is going to cut military spending and he, of course, is going to make sure dollars are allocated to every pet issue that he has.

It's going to be great. It's going to be great, guys. I mean, Marxism has always worked, right? socialism has always been great. It's always fulfilled its promises. I mean, just look at how wonderful the 20th century was. I mean, Camar Rouge, a great time. Right. Everyone loves Camar Rouge. They think about it and they're like, wow, that was just, that was a wonderful time. Venezuela, great place. Everyone's doing very well there. Everyone has a lot of food, tons of resources, good jobs. Let's see. Cuba doing really great, doing really well. Zimbabwe, wonderfully. Can't think of anything

wrong that has gone on there. Soviet Union, absolutely splendid. Yeah, when I think about everywhere that socialism has been tried, where far leftism has been implemented for the past, I don't know, 100 years, all I can think of are these just wonderful success. success stories. So it's going to be great. It's going to be great. I'm super excited. So before we move on to the next part of our podcast, we're not going to be able to talk about censorship. I need to get into the Word Watch episode so I can fit everything in. Okay. Word Watch, our new segment where we are going to break down how words are evolving to take on new political, cultural, social meanings. And today we are going to talk about this phrase held accountable. You've probably

seen this a lot. And it's used in this very, I think, creepy fashion. Like, oh, you're not getting canceled. You're just being held accountable. Oh, we're not punishing you for your speech. Oh, this boycott that we're doing, this doc scene that we're doing over here just because we don't like what you have to say. It's not canceled culture. It's not bad. We're just holding you accountable. Like how fascistic can you possibly get? It's just holding accountable. I mean, that's really draconian and like I said, creepy and a little cruel sounding. And of course, this phrase comes from none other than AOC.

She tweeted this a few months ago. The term cancel culture comes from entitlement, as though the person complaining has the right to a large captive audience and what is a victim if people choose to tune them out? Odds are you're not actually can'tled. You're just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked. That is rich coming from the person who, every time she is criticized, says that she is being attacked. This tweet is from someone named Mariah, but the reason why it's pertinent is not just like a random tweet or random thing that I found.

Right now it has been retweeted almost 50,000 times has somewhere close to like 300,000 likes. So it's a viral tweet. and I think it's representative of what I am seeing a lot of people say in the world, in particular of progressive Christianity. She says, I'm so sick of seeing Christians in America claim persecution. You aren't being persecuted for loving Jesus. You are being held accountable for not acting like him. So let's look at this word accountable.

What it actually means. It has French origins and literally means to answer for or to answer to. Now, in the Bible, and this is what I think is really important, and I'm going to kind of explore its use in the Bible, I'm going to bring it back to our daily use today, and how we should view it and what it actually means for us in our daily lives. So we only see this exact word accountable once in the Bible. Romans 319, quote, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be. be held accountable to God. This word in the Greek is Hupodicos. I'm sorry. My Greek is it great. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, which literally means under sentence or judgment or subject to prosecution. In this verse, it is used in the context of this chapter to explain that everyone in the world stands condemned before God in light of his perfect law. God gave the law to Israel,

not just to set them apart as a people, but also to demonstrate the perfect. standard of righteousness that is required to be in his presence, to be in fellowship and in communion with him. And this chapter explains referencing Psalm 14 and 53 that none of us can meet the standard. That's why we stand condemned. That's why we are accountable to God. The chapter says, referencing these Psalms, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks God. There is no fear of God before their eyes. And so are we hopeless, all of us who are accountable to God, who stand condemned before God? No, there's really good news. There is one, just one person who can and has met this standard, and he's done it on our behalf. Paul explains this in verses 21 through 25.

Quote, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. all who believe, for there is no distinction for all of sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. So this man, Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, has become our righteousness. So that we don't have to be perfect keepers of the law. Instead of having to work to be in fellowship with God through perfection, he has given us the gift of righteousness and fellowship and salvation through Christ.

We are still held accountable to God, all of us. The question is, who is giving an account on our behalf? If it's us, then we're condemned forever. If it's Christ, then we are seen as righteous and acceptable and perfect. And that gift of salvation in Christ is given to us by a gift, revolution or by grace. Revelation 2011 through 15 describes the fate of those who do not know Christ. Quote, then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it and I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne and books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. But those who are in Christ, those whom by grace through faith have taken. taken up their cross and follow Jesus, we are justified before God. We are righteous. Not because of our own goodness, but because of God's grace. So that accountability has been taken care of. We are accounted for. Our sins were answered for on the cross. Christ gave the answer to God on our behalf. He paid the

price for our inability to keep the law. He bridged the gap between a holy God and an unholy people, all of us. He gave us his holiness. He imputed his righteousness. He imputed his righteousness. He gave us his perfection, his acceptability before God. It became ours so that we could approach God confidently and live with him forever. We don't have to give an account for our sins. Jesus has taken care of that for us. That is the only time in that Romans passage that we see that specific word accountable in the Bible in a vertical sense between us and God.

We are accountable to God. And unless our answer is Christ, unless he gives an account on our behalf, unless he is our righteousness, we will be condemned forever. we will justly and rightly be prosecuted for our sin eternally. Typically, when we today use the word accountable, we mean in a horizontal sense, holding one another accountable. But really, the term is meant to denote some kind of hierarchical relationship. So we are answering to someone who is in charge, who has the power or authority to convict

or condemn us. It can literally mean to be under something. The only time even the synonym of Hupodicos is used in NICO or in NACO is used, it's meant to hold a grudge or to entangle or to be subject to. So again, it's that kind of power dynamic relationship or that person in power and that person in subjugation relationship. And it's used in the Bible in a negative sense. In Mark 619, it's used Herodius, held a grudge against John the Baptist. Luke 1153. were trying to trap Jesus with what they saw as trick questions. Galatians 5-1, we are warned against

submitting to the yoke of slavery to sin. So even in this sense, we are talking about power. We are talking about someone or something in power trying to subjugate someone else. And this is what accountability really means. It means someone in power demanding an answer and or submission from someone beneath them. And this is not what the word just means biblically, but literally what it means in our language as well. And yet a lot of us use it as, like I said, my friend is holding me accountable in my diet or in my Bible reading or we're holding people accountable for sin. But really, that's not exactly the right word because accountability has to do most of the time with punishment or again, someone in power demanding something from someone else. And that has to do with some kind

authority. And so people like AOC and that other person and other people that you might see tweeting, hey, we're just holding people that we don't agree with or who say something that we consider harmful accountable. That is actually exactly what they mean. They are using it in a very frightening way correctly. They are talking about punishment. They are talking about using power and influence and leverage to exclude from polite society to drag through the mud until that person loses their job or their livelihood or their sponsors or their access to common spaces or services like Twitter. The question is, does that, quote, accountability make for a good society where all of us are using our power or voice or influence to punish each other by meddling in each other's lives

to bring one another to ruin, either because one of us does something legitimately bad or because one of us says or does something that we disagree with? Sounds a whole lot like bitterness and resentment and malice and anger, all the things Ephesians 431 tells Christians that we are to put away. It sounds a whole lot like the communist cultural revolutions of the 20th century, which ended in widespread oppression and punishment and murder and arbitrary imprisonment of all people and nothing like Christianity or freedom. That doesn't mean accountability. Real accountability shouldn't exist.

It's just a matter of where and how in a society that can function in any kind of peaceable way. If someone breaks the law, it is the job of the arbiters and enforcers of the law to hold you accountable. If someone violates employment policy, it is the job of their boss to fire them or to chastise them. If someone violates their oath of office, it's the job of the people in charge to ensure they're removed. Our elected officials are supposed to be accountable to us by relying on our vote. They're supposed to answer to us. We are supposed to hold them to account by not voting for them if we don't want to or if they haven't fulfilled their promises or their duties to their constituents. As far as we relate to one in

another, yes, we can discuss and debate. We can refute and disagree. We can point out wrong. We can even call for resignations, whatever. But when we get to the point of trying to punish one another, hurt one another, call for the cancellation of one another, we have placed ourselves in a position of authority that we are not in. We have given ourselves a job that we don't have. And this is also something I talk about in my book that we've created a culture, this postmodern culture in which we worship the God of self. And that does lead to cancel culture. That's what I argue in my book,

because the standard of morality doesn't come from a transcendent source. God, it comes from all of us. And so this kind of moral relativism in a world that has to function on the idea of absolute truth and objective morality launches us into canceling one another

for not meeting our ever-changing subjective standards. It's chaos. A peaceable society cannot exist that way. we need to, as 1 Peter 5, 6 says, humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and realize we don't get to come up with morality. We don't get to say what's right and what's wrong, what is, and what is that. We submit to God's way, all of us as the great transcendent moral lawgiver, even the deist that founded our country knew that. Within the church, we don't hold one another accountable in the way

that the word really means and is biblically used. We rebuke and encourage one another. According to passages in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Christians, and in particular Christian leaders are to rebuke those who persist in sin, those who contradict sound doctrine, false teachers, even sometimes there is a process of excommunication in these cases. This word rebuke in the Greek means to expose, to tell fault. So it's different than our cancel culture than the so-called accountability that we see in the world of random people on the internet, punishing you and canceling you. you and doxing you because you say something that they don't like this so-called Christian who said,

oh, we're just holding you accountable. You're not called as a Christian to hold accountable, to punish and to ruin the lives of random people on the internet. Christians are called to Ephesians 415, rather speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ. So the difference in Christian rebuking, and in particular in the body of Christ, but the difference in Christian rebuking and the quote holding accountable, aka cancel culture, is not just the howl behind it, but also the why. We rebuke one another in Christ because we love God, because we love each other. We want holiness for each other.

We want obedience for each other. We want growth in Christ for one another. We want the very best today and forever for one another. Another word for encourage is edify, which literally means to build up in edifice, as you know is a building. We build one another up. Worldly accountability. cancel culture tears people down. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love in good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more is you see the day drawing near. So we're not just building one another up.

we are propelling each other forward. We are propelling each other forward toward Christ, forward toward love, forward toward more good works, toward hope, toward heaven. Worldly so-called accountability cancellation doesn't seek just to tear down. It also seeks to hold back. It is everything that Christians are not supposed to be a part of. Also, remember, there is a difference not just between Christian rebuke and encouragement and encouragement and worldly accountability cancellation.

but there's also a difference between worldly accountability, cancel culture, and actual justice. Real justice, as we've talked about so many times on this podcast and have looked at the scripture supporting these descriptors, justice according to the Bible, according to the God who created it, is primarily four things. It is impartial. It is truthful. It is direct. And it is proportional.

Justice is enacted by the proper authority and the proper way with the purpose. proper proportionate repercussions. It is not Twitter, taking it upon themselves to ruin a life of someone they don't like. It is not a mob. It is not a riot. That is satanic. This is a good reminder for all of us. We can call out. We can correct. We can disagree. We can debate publicly. But this bait and switch of saying that cancel culture, the mob mentality, this cruelty toward people is actually just accountability is unbiblical. It's totalitarian. It's distorting. It's. It's Orwellian. It's nonsense. And for Christians to be using this language tells me that those who are using this, in this sense, are much more worldly than they are Christian. We rebuke, we encourage. We shed light and we build up. We reveal and we propel forward. Our motivation is love. Our motivation is biblical unity. We don't seek to tear down. We don't seek to punish in this way to place ourselves in a position of authority that we do not. occupy. We don't seek vengeance. We don't do anything out of rivalry or jealousy or bitterness. James

3 says that that is demonic. Ephesians 4 says that that's only how non-Christians live. Philippians 2 says that that's a sin. Romans 12 says that vengeance is not our job. Our goal is truth and love. That is how we are distinguished from the rest of the world and the craziness and the chaos of cancel culture. And so let us be very careful about the words that we use. let us make sure that we are speaking in a way that is the truth in love. And let us encourage and rebuke one another in that because I'm sure that I have used words flippantly or used phrases flippantly without actually thinking about what I mean or how the evolution of the word actually affects its meaning.

If we want to stay sane through this crazy postmodern post-truth era, we have to be very specific about our definitions and we have to hold fast to absolute truth that is primarily found in God's word and that he is also revealed to us by general revelation in nature. We have to be absolutely dogged in our pursuit of and our adherence to the truth. And we have to be so careful as we watch how our language and the language of culture changes. All right. That's all I have today. Tomorrow, I've got a big interview with Glenn Beck.

He is going to talk to us about what we can expect from the Biden administration. Tomorrow is inauguration. and so we will also be talking about all of that and what we can expect. And then later in the week on Thursday, I have an interview with Dan Crenshaw. So if you've got any specific questions that you want me to ask, Representative Crenshaw, then please let me know. I'll be talking to him about immigration. I'll be talking to him about some things going on in Texas and how the Republican minority

in both the House and the Senate are going to be able to function and stand up for the rights and the needs of their constituents when Democrats are controlled. both the White House and Congress. So make sure that you tune into that, and I will see you guys tomorrow.