Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 36 | The Left Can't Not Be Crazy

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

I give my take on everything you guys have been asking me about: the Statement on Social Justice, the Kavanaugh hearing, Nike's Kaepernick ad, Obama's rallies, and the tragic shooting of a Dallas local by an off-duty cop. Then, Q&A.  Copyright CRTV. All rights reserved.

I want you all to know what you work here. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. This is a podcast of CRTV. If you want to watch this podcast rather than just listen to it, you can go to CRTV.

dot com slash alley you can use promo code alley 20 and you can sign up to watch me tell you what you need to know twice a week um okay i first want to start with acknowledging that today is 9-11 um so on 9-11 in 2001 i was in fourth grade i was 10 years old and i remember distinctly everything that happened that day. I remember exactly what my teacher was wearing. I remember that she was crying and she handed out these enclosed letters and envelopes to all of us. And I had no idea what was going on when you're 10 years old and you see your teacher crying. You just, you have no idea. It's just weird. You kind of feel helpless. And I remember our parents came to pick us up early from school. And I remember sitting down in my kitchen and my mom opening the envelope and her telling us that

there have been plane crashes. But I knew, even in that moment, I think I knew it was bigger than just a regular plane crash that there had to be something else for which we were, you know, taken out of school and everyone was so upset. I remember her saying that we might have to leave Dallas, I guess because Dallas was a big city and maybe they thought that it could be a target of another terrorist attack that we might have to leave and go to a smaller town. And I really, I didn't understand. I remember there being a moment a few weeks later when I was at church when I think one of my grandmother's friends said, wow, your generation has seen a lot. First, you saw the Bush Gore election and the recount and all of that. And now you're seeing 9-11. You guys have had a lot happen in your young years. And that's absolutely true. I remember both of those nights so well. And I just remember, even at the age of 10, the camaraderie and the bravery that surged after 9-11. Or I really should say the camaraderie and the unity that served after 9-11 and the bravery that really existed, not just on 9-11 by all of the heroes that saved people's lives, but the men and

women who have sacrificed their lives since then to protect our freedoms. I just could never, ever repay them or think them enough. And I can't, I can't imagine just the kind of fortitude you had to have on that day on 9-11 to run into a burning tower to save people's life that you probably didn't even know. I am extremely, extremely thankful for the God-given courage that people are given in those moments when spirits and character is really tested. There is no country. I'm like about to cry as I'm saying all of this. There is no country that even holds a candle to the bravery into the selflessness, to the generosity, to the fearlessness of America. It doesn't even come close. George Bush, I know that people have, you know, different opinions of him,

but the leadership that he exemplified in the days and months and years after 9-11, it's exactly what we needed. And I've said this before. This is something that Crowell Hammer has pointed out, and I think is just so true. And he said, that, you know, the fact that in every single moment turning point in American history that God has provided us the man or a woman that we needed is enough to make the staunchest atheist pause. If you look back when we needed an Abraham Lincoln, we got an Abraham Lincoln. When we needed an FDR, we got an FDR, when we needed a Martin Luther King, we got a Martin Luther King when we needed a Ronald Reagan, we got a Ronald Reagan, and when we needed a George

W. Bush, we got a George W. Bush. I don't know any other country's history that is so reflective of God's providence as ours, except for, of course, Israel. And I just think back to that day 17 years ago and how far we've gotten from that feeling of pride in not just our leadership, but our country and who we are as Americans. If you look at the numbers even after 9-11, for the couple years after 9-11, I think it was 2003 that patriotism really soared that more people than ever said, I'm extremely proud to be an American and how much those numbers have fallen since then. And maybe that can't be blamed on any particular political party. Maybe it's a whole host of things. Maybe it's the fact that millennials are old and we have a voice and we tend to have

very stupid opinions about patriotism and politics. I don't know what it is. But I don't want another 9-11 to happen for us to come together and to remember, hey, before we're Republicans, and Democrats before we are conservatives and liberals, we're Americans. I don't know if it's possible for us to go back there. I just don't. I don't know if we're too far fallen, but at the same time, you look throughout our history and you see, you see that when we thought that it was impossible for us to come together, when we thought it was impossible to overcome odds, we did. That's the American spirit and I just hope and pray that that that's not lost. I hope and pray that that's not dead yet, that we still have that. So God bless anyone who is listening who has served our country

or families of people who have served our country. God bless you if you knew anyone that that died that day on 9-11. And gosh, God bless America. I just, I pray that all hope is is not lost. And may we never, ever forget that day and the feelings that we had that day. Okay. Now to transition to the rest of this podcast is going to be very different because I was gone last week and a lot of you have been asking me my opinions on a whole host of things. So much happened last week. So I want to give my take on all of it.

I want to talk about the statement on social justice. I want to talk about the Kavanaugh here. and just the insanity of the people on the left, the Women's March, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris. I want to talk about Obama's rallies. I want to talk about Nike and Kaepernick. I want to talk about this really terrible murder.

I don't know if you guys have heard about this that happened in Dallas and how the left leveraged it to push this false race narrative. I don't know how much we're actually going to be able to get to in this 30 minutes, but I'm going to try. So first, kind of briefly, the statement on social justice in the gospel was a project of John MacArthur, whom we've talked about on this podcast before, and other Christian leaders that really, in my opinion, added a lot of clarity to the biblical stance on social justice. You can just go to statement on social justice.com to read that.

I would go ahead and read all of it, pray about it, think about it, make sure that it lines up with scripture, I think that you will find that it does. So here's the part of this statement in particular that I thought was very good and very clarifying. So it says under the category of justice, it says, we affirm that since God is holy, righteous, and just that he requires those who bear his image to live justly in the world. This includes showing appropriate, appropriate respect to every person and giving to each one what he or she is due. We affirm that societies must establish laws to correct injustices that have been imposed through cultural prejudice.

We deny that true justice can be culturally defined or that standards of justice that are merely socially constructed can be imposed with the same authority as those that are derived from scripture. We further deny that Christians can live justly. in the world under any principles other than the biblical standard of righteousness, relativism, socially constructed standards of truth or morality, and notions of virtue and vice that are constantly in flux cannot result in authentic justice. So this is basically saying what we have said many times on this podcast that social justice,

as defined today by the modern left and the progressive political movement, is not really true justice. It demeans one group by lifting up another group based on some arbitrary standard of oppression. That is not biblical. And unfortunately, too many people are buying into this. But we don't need secular movements to tell us what the Bible has been telling us for thousands of years. We don't need society to inform our biblical views. It should be the other way around. And it's the same thing when it comes to feminism. The Bible already tells me that I am of equal worth and dignity to a man that has been true since the Garden of Eden. That I have, I was made in God's image in the same way that a man was. I might have different roles, but I have the same value. I don't need feminism to

tell me that. I don't need to redeem feminism. I don't need to reclaim feminism. All I need is to look to scripture to tell me who I am. It already has a message of equality of worth. That's all I need. Um, there's been a lot of pushback on this statement. There are a bunch of people in the church who, uh, think that, no, we need to be talking about social justice. We need secular movements to inform what we think about other people. Uh, they think that we need to be talking about racial reconciliation and racial issues more than we need to talk about anything else. Um, that we, uh, that Jesus came to, uh, reconcile the races to each other. Well, that's simply not true, as we've said many times on this podcast before. Jesus came to reconcile all races to himself, that now we who are in Christ are one

in Christ, that there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor free, nor male, nor female. And what we don't need is a movement that all of a sudden defines people by their skin color and defines people by their unique oppression. I'm not saying that we can't talk about racism. We absolutely should. Racism is a sin. We should talk about real instances of discrimination. We should talk about any kind of bigotry that really exists, whether it is individual or systemic. But what we should not do is to buy into this message of intersectionality that says your worth, your identity is defined by the oppression of your racial or your socioeconomic group. Unfortunately, that idea is perversectuary. Unfortunately, that idea is pervasive, this idea of racial reconciliation, which is really racial reparations,

and intersectionality is infiltrating the church. And a lot of people are buying into it. And it is just not biblical. So I am very thankful for this statement on social justice. I signed it. I agree with it. It's really interesting. The pushback that I've seen on it from other people in the church, it doesn't actually cite the Bible. It cites, you know, references to popular cultural trends and norms, but the people who agree with it are signing the Bible. So it's funny how that works. Speaking of race, a lot of you have been messaging me to hear my take on Colin Kaepernick. I did talk about it on Twitter. You guys can probably guess what I think for those of you who don't know if you've been living under a giant boulder or something.

Colin Kaepernick is the guy who started the whole kneeling phenomenon in the NFL. This is something that apparently, apparently according to some people in the media that white people are not allowed to talk about. And a lot of white people, I think, feel like that. And that just shows you how effective the left has been in promoting this oppression point system that allocates credibility points to people based on their skin color, their gender, their socioeconomic status, their religion, their sexual orientation. So I, just so you know, I only have one credibility point, to these people because I am a woman. So there's my point, but I'm a Christian and I'm white.

And, oh, dang it. I'm a Republican. I'm from Texas. So that just, you know, that negates all credibility that I have. So thank you to you guys for listening to my very irrelevant opinion. But nevertheless, I want to tell you what I think about this. My husband tells me that Colin Kaepernick was mediocre at football. I don't follow football.

So I don't know. I'm just believing that. So the fact that he got rejected by all these. football teams isn't all that surprising. Of course, there was probably a PR reasoning to this. I don't think any team wants that kind of distraction or a liability. Apparently also, he was offered backup positions on football teams and he turned those down.

And do you know why he probably turned those down? Because he's probably making a lot of money being the left's newest vigilante. He is now the face of this Nike campaign. And on it, it says, believe in something. even if it means sacrificing everything. Of course, when this was announced, Twitter absolutely went nuts. Conservatives are upset, and there are a few reasons for that. First reason is because this ad is stupid.

Okay? It's just stupid. It's illogical. Believing in something, even if it means sacrificing everything, first of all, believing in something isn't virtuous. So if I believe in leprechauns and I sacrifice my entire life, my entire savings, everything, to go chase after leprechauns in Ireland. Is that virtuous?

Is that moral? Is that something I should be applauded for? No, that makes me a lunatic. That's actually not a good thing at all. Also, sacrificing everything. What did Kaepernick sacrifice? He's still famous. He's still making money,

probably more than he would be if he was still playing. He is on a Nike ad. So what did he really sacrifice? A career as a mediocre quarterback? Okay. The second reason, that we don't like this is because this is a slap in the face of all of the servicemen and women, whether they're in the police force or in the military, who actually do sacrifice everything.

Let us not forget that Kaepernick is not just the guy who kneeled. He, or is it knelt? Nealt, knelt? I think it's kneeled. I think it has knelt, but kneeled. Okay. Anyway, y'all can correct me on that if you want to. But this is also the guy who wore, uh, who wore socks depicting cops at.

as pigs. So when people say, oh, this is not anti-police. This is just anti-police brutality. Well, why don't you tell that to Colin Kaepernick? Clearly, he has deep-seated antipathy towards all of cops or else I don't think that you would be wearing socks depicting them as pigs. And also, we take issue with the protests, not because he doesn't have a First Amendment right to protest on his own time, but because why would you choose to one protest on time that is not, not your own, you're an employee of the NFL, and also protest during the national anthem. There have been thousands of men and women who have fought and bled and died for your right, Colin Kaepernick, to run up and down a field and get paid millions of dollars to do it.

Now, of course, like I said, I believe in his First Amendment right to protest, whether or not I agree with that protest. but he should be doing so on his own time. The NFL has a right to create policies that prevent their players from protesting. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but you're an employee. You follow company rules. That's true of any company. Now, let's talk about some of the reactions. A lot of people on the right said they were going to boycott Nike.

And there are a lot of people that are against boycotts. I don't really participate in boycotts. I'm not against them, though. I'm not against boycotts. I mean, I think it's a very good free market way to express your disappointment in a company. Now, there were a lot of people posting on social media about burning all of their Nike gear and about like cutting the Nike emblem off of their clothes. like, oh, that's going to show Nike.

Well, guess what happened? So the next day, Nike stock was down. And all of these conservative outlets were like, oh, look, Nike stock is down. That's what happens when you use someone like Kaepernick on your ad. But now it's showing that Nike sales are up, that they are drastically up. So all the conservatives that tried to make that point right after it happened didn't really have a case to make because Nike actually succeeded. What they wanted was to get.

all of these woke people to start buying their clothes again, all of the people who were very mad at one point that Nike was using children in sweatshops to make their gear. They wanted to win those people back. They knew it was a good ad campaign. And so that's why they used an anti-cop protester to promote their brand. Now, some of you are saying, Ali, what about police brutality though? Shouldn't he use employee or his employer's time to protest something?

something this awful. What's wrong with that? And look, police brutality is, it's a terrible thing. People that abuse their power in order to hurt people that are more vulnerable the matter what their skin color is, is awful. Any instance, even just one isolated instance of police brutality in which, you know, a policeman or policewoman abused someone that wasn't doing anything wrong or, you know, unnecessarily used force to, you know, subdue a person. I think. think that's wrong no matter what. But this idea that is propagated by people on the left that there is systemic racism within our police force is just wrong. Like we never hear about the many white and Hispanic people that are abused by the police. And I think it's just a ridiculous, it's a ridiculous

narrative. Now, like I said, any instance of racism, any instance of wrong abuse is bad. And we should bring that to light. But this idea that cops are specifically targeting black men more than people of other races is it's just not backed up by statistics. And I think it's sad when we throw all cops under the bus, the majority of which are good, hardworking people that sacrifice everything to protect our communities. I don't know why this guy would be held as a hero when he really hasn't sacrificed anything at all. So that's what I think about that. Now, that said, that said, there was a very, a very sad, horrible, weird, unfortunate story out of Dallas last week where an off-duty cop, a woman came into an apartment that she says she thought was hers. And she shot and killed the man in the apartment who happened to be black.

We still don't know a ton of details on how this could have possibly happened. And she apparently parked in the wrong parking garage. She didn't notice the indicators that, hey, this isn't the right building. She went into the door that she thought was hers. It was unlocked. She saw a man in what she thought was her apartment. And she shot him and killed him. There's just a lot of questions about that.

And there's a lot that we don't know. Was she under the influence? In my opinion, she had to have been inebriated in some way to not catch on at any point. that, hey, this is not your apartment and I shouldn't be taking my gun out. Maybe she was really distracted. Maybe she was on the phone. I don't know. She was eventually charged for manslaughter.

And the victim, his name is, I think it's pronounced Botham or maybe it's Botham, Gene. He, you know, his family and friends are understandably devastated. His funeral was last week. This guy worked at PWC in Dallas and we actually have some mutual friends. He, from every account, he was successful, ambitious, smart, this friendly person, apparently, and he had his whole life ahead of him. And it really is tragic.

He wasn't in the wrong place. He wasn't, you know, doing something wrong. He was probably about to go to bed. He probably was really caught off guard. It's completely awful. And this police officer should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I don't care that it was an accident. It wasn't premeditated.

murder obviously, but it was manslaughter and it was completely her fault. And, you know, it's right that she was charged. But sadly, this quickly turned into this political debacle with people saying on social media that this was race fueled. It was, you know, a white cop killing, a black man. But the reality is we have no idea. We have no idea if this had anything to do with race whatsoever. In fact, there is no evidence for that. We have no idea if this. had to do with any kind of bigotry or discrimination. And in fact, it probably didn't because it wasn't premeditated in any way. They weren't in some kind of conflict. This isn't really a crime that perpetuates that kind of all cops are racist narrative. There's just no proof to it. It is a tragic,

terrible event that occurred between two people who happened to be, just happened to be of different races. But unfortunately, that was not enough for some people on the left. this random guy, as far as I can tell, on Facebook posted a picture that he took from the victim's Facebook page where he was with three different girls. All of them were white. Well, the guy shared the picture and claimed that one of the girls in the picture, the girl on Jean's right, was the cop who killed him. He wanted to make the claim that they knew each other and so it couldn't have been an accident. Well, it turns out that that was not true. The girl in the picture was a good friend of jeans, but she wasn't a cop.

And this guy completely lied. Well, Facebook being the cesspool that it is, it went viral. It was shared all across different social media channels. The poor girl in the picture couldn't even go to her friend's funeral because people were sending her death threats and she was scared. That is so sad. People will literally do anything to perpetuate their narrative, even if it means ruining the lives of innocent people. It's just awful. And, and, and, you know, They did nothing to help the situation whatsoever. That's quite literally, quite literally insane. And I'm just praying for his family and his friends. It's such an awful, awful situation. And there's really nothing to politicize about it. But speaking of insanity and politicizing things that aren't really that political, Kavanaugh's hearing.

I'm sure you guys have been following it. It started last week and presidential hopefuls, Corey Booker and Kamala. Harris, Democratic senators, had quite the performances. At this point, you've probably listened to a lot of the craziness that was said by them. But basically, they tried to trap Kavanaugh and all of these ridiculous lies and tried to portray him as a right-wing extremist who's a racist. It doesn't care about women's rights. Corey Booker tried to convince everyone on every mainstream news outlet, that he violated

the rules by uncovering some confidential documents that, A, weren't actually confidential and B showed absolutely nothing of consequence. It's all political posturing. It's all idiotic. People were dressed up in hands, handmade's tail outfits. I guarantee you that most of those protesters don't even know who Brett Kavanaugh is. But it doesn't matter because here are, here are the kinds of emails that people are getting from organizations from like the Women's March. I think I signed up for them a long time ago just to see the insanity that they're peddling. So here's what they said in their email about the Cabinon hearing. Our future will look like rights being taken away from women and all people of color,

from people with disabilities, from workers, from LGBTQ and gender non-conforming folks. It will look like crumbling infrastructure of a once forward-looking country. Oh my gosh. It will look like contaminated water served to children. this is ridiculous. It will look like women dying and back alley abortions. It will look like a wall separating us from our closest neighbors and families. It will look like regular people working and earning less while the rich get richer. That future doesn't have to be the one we live in. To avoid it, we have to act. We have to continue to build power in our communities and make the

politicians who allowed us to get to this place feel the power of our votes. Let Congress know that those who are complicit in Trump's white supremacist agenda will be voted out. That is real. That what? What? What does Brett Kavanaugh have to do with any of those things? There is no evidence, no evidence to any of that whatsoever, but they say it like it is the gospel truth.

There's no reason for anyone to resist Kavanaugh, except maybe there's some contention with his views on the Fourth Amendment, which is really. really just held by a libertarian. So I'm not really sure the women's march is concerned about that. I'm sorry, they're just idiots, idiots. Even if, even if this is their, you know, biggest talking point that he's going to overturn Roe v. Wade, even if he did, and I pray to God he does, that doesn't make abortion illegal, you raving idiots. It just means that it's going to go to the state. So the states get to decide whether or not they're going to ban abortion or regulate it, whatever it is. So it's just a lie. It's just a lie. It's so sad. Speaking of absolute,

absolute stupidity and completely vacuous people, let's talk about Obama and his ridiculous rallies. Here's a clip of Obama explaining where Trump came from. It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He's just a capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, a fear and anger that's rooted in our past, but it's also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes. As other conservatives have pointed out over the past week, this is actually how we got Trump, not what he pointed out, but his lecturing in general.

not the racism that he talks about, not the resentment that he talks about, not the paranoia, not people on the left, or not people on the left, you know, standing up for bigotry or whatever. It is people like this who are lecturing us about not being good enough people to be Democrats, basically. People who make this claim, there are a lot of people on the left who do, who claim that it's white fragility that, you know, is supporting Trump. they really don't acknowledge the real and rapid pace at which the moral and sexual and political revolution put on by progressives has moved forward in the past 20 years. They don't want to talk about how much they love to bully conservatives that if you don't hop on the progressive express, they are going to run you over.

And then if we're mad about that, they say, what's the problem? Why don't you like our, why don't you like our tactics? We just ran you over with the train. It's not that big of a deal. We're so tolerant. We're so loving. We're so kind. Why don't you get on the train with us, you evil bigots?

And then they wonder why we don't like them and why people would ever support a crazy candidate like Donald Trump. You are why. You are why. You know, it's really hard, in my opinion, to out crazy Donald Trump. To out, you know, to out indecency him. that makes any sense. But the left accomplishes it on a daily basis to out nasty Donald Trump. That's really difficult. But they do it really well. So if they want to know how we got Donald Trump,

they shouldn't be looking to white America or even the middle class. They should be looking to themselves. Because the fact of the matter is, I think a lot of Republicans, honestly, I mean, we know from statistics that a lot of Republicans are even going to the left on social issues, they might jump their Republicanship and go over to the Democratic side. If Democrats, weren't so insane. All Democrats have to do, all they have to do to take over the country for the next 50 years is not be crazy. And they cannot do it. They cannot not be crazy. So I guess, I guess we should be happy about that. I hope that they continue to be crazy. I, I love their craziness. I hope that Obama continues to have lots and lots of rallies because it's clearly

helping the Republican Party. He's just never going to be able to compete anyway with Donald Trump and Donald Trump's ability to engage people in a rally. So more power to him. Now for some of the questions that you guys ask me, the first question is what advice would you give someone who is thinking about converting to the Christian faith? Well, I don't know if this is for you or your friend, but either way, I think it's really exciting. Obviously, eternal salvation is at stake. And so I would highly recommend converting to Christianity. And what I would do is obviously I would pray. And the way that you do that is found in scripture. I would start in the book of John. And I would read through the New Testament,

learn how to pray, learn how to study the scriptures. I would seek out someone who is a Christian themselves who goes to a church in your area. I would look for a godly community and just be really open and honest and say, this is where I'm coming from. And I just want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ and to be a Christian. They are going to see that as an enormous privilege. And if they are truly following Christ, they're not going to judge you for what you know, what you don't know. They're not going to judge you for your past, any mistakes that you've made, how imperfect you might think that you are. What they're going to tell you is to lay all of those the foot of the cross and that Jesus accepts you exactly how you are. And they're going to guide you

hopefully into really how to read the scripture, how to study scripture, how to ask hard questions and to seek his wisdom in those questions. Don't be afraid to be skeptical. Don't be afraid to have doubts. Don't be afraid to ask the difficult things. There's absolutely nothing that scripture isn't going to be able to answer for you. And so I would pray too and be honest. with yourself and be honest with God about your concerns, your questions, your doubts, your skepticism, what you desire. But if you have any, you know, more specific questions about theology or salvation or any of those things, you can always email me if you want. It's Alley at the conservative millennial blog.com. I get emails a lot, too, about picking particular

churches in your area. And I like to help that. Obviously, I don't know every church in your area depending on where you live, but I'm happy to do some research on your behalf. So feel free to email me if you have any more specific questions about that. Um, next question. Um, did your husband have a rebellious phase like you did? If not, how did that conversation with him go? Were you anxious? Or did you know he'd accept your history regardless? I think that's a great question. Now, my husband did. I don't know if I want to tell like his entire backstory because I think maybe he should probably tell it. But he did. He went through an even more rebellious age than I did when he was in college.

And that's actually when he became a Christian. And he told me that before I told him anything. So maybe that made it a little bit easier for me at that point. It was really before we even started dating. I remember we went to Chick-fil-A and he was nervous and he sat down. He was like, okay, I want to tell you X, Y, Z happened when I was in college. And I don't know. Something very calming and peaceful kind of came over me. And I just didn't have, I never felt any like, wow, I don't, I think differently of him or I don't trust him anymore.

I'm not really sure about this. And I didn't feel that at all. I just kind of felt like, you know, the past is the past, especially since that was before he actually knew Christ. He's different now. Sure, is he, you know, does he sin? Is he imperfect? Yes. But I just felt like, you know, it's okay. And I was very honest about my own past. And I just think that, you know, when you know, you know. And I don't want to just say, oh, you should only rely on your emotions when it comes to choosing your spouses. Not at all. You should choose someone who is seeking after Christ and who's going to help you do that as well and love you unconditionally.

But also, there, of course, is this kind of intangible thing to knowing who your quote unquote soulmate is going to be. And I just knew. I just knew it was going to be okay. And he felt the same way about me. And I'm just so, I'm so glad of that too. You want to marry someone who loves every single part of you. No matter what.

You want someone who is going to love you unconditionally. And we found that in each other. So good question. Okay. I think I have one more question. Are you a predestination Christian or a free will Christian? I spent the summer at a Presbyterian camp, but it got me thinking about.

the difference. So I think I've talked about this in the past. So I believe in something called concurrence. I don't just believe in it. I think scripture backs it up very well. I am reformed. And so I ask a lot of theological questions and get them answered in a book called systematic theology by Wayne Grudum. Not every theological question that I have is answered by that book, but it informs a lot of the knowledge and wisdom and perspective that I have on theology. It talks a lot about predestination versus free will. And there's something called concurrence in which God is absolutely and completely and ultimately sovereign over everything.

There is nothing, not a single thing on earth in the entire universe that happens outside of his will. A lot of people like to say, well, you know, God allowed this to happen. But I don't think that that is accurate. There is, there's really not biblical support for God kind of stepping back and letting chaos ensue or something happen. He actually preordains all of it. Now, how does that coincide with the fact that God never desires for someone to sin? God doesn't take joy and sin. He doesn't want sin to happen. And how does that also coincide with God actually holding us responsible for the actions that we take,

the choices that we make? And of course, you know, our eternal destination, whether that is heaven or hell. Yeah, that's a very difficult question. And Paul actually wrestles with this a lot in Romans 9 through 11. He talks about, you know, how can we hold, how can God hold someone accountable for what he does if God predestined everything? He talks about how, you know, God hardened Pharaoh's heart in the Old Testament that he loved Jacob, Jacob and hated Esau even before they were born. So he clearly predestined his, his favor. Ephesians 1 talks about predestination that we were chosen in him before the foundation of the world. So I think that there is ample support in the Bible for predestination that he chooses

us and that we are, any profession of faith that we have is just a response to his irresistible will. Now, within that, he clearly holds people responsible, like I said, for their actions within the Bible. So there are two things, and that's where the word concurrence comes in. There are two things that are happening at once. God is predestining everything. We are making real decisions with a real sense of freedom, but he is over everything.

Now, I'm not saying that I can perfectly match those up in a way that makes sense in my finite mind. That's one of those things that I just think is infinite. It's bigger than any of us can really comprehend. But it's kind of, it's both and. But ultimately, ultimately, because I am a Calvinist, I believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, salvation, anything happens outside of God's will, that he is intimately involved in all of it. So that's my answer to that. Very good question.

Okay, I hope this was a sufficient recap for you guys. Thank you for listening. Feel free to give me any feedback. Please leave any positive reviews here. Five stars would be awesome. and you can tell me what you like about the podcast. If you do have any constructive feedback, feel free to email me at Alley at the conservative millennial blog.com.

I love your constructive feedback. Oh, one thing on that, I did want to say this. And I've been debating on whether or not I'm going to say it. Maybe you guys have stopped listening by now. But I've gotten a few emails about cussing. And I don't think I've cussed very much, but I think there have been a few times. And I really struggled with this at first.

At first, I was like, whatever. It's fine. a few cuss words here here and there, not that big of a deal. But you know what? I think that you guys are right. I think that you guys are right. The Bible says that no unwholesome talk should be coming out of our mouths. And we talk about the gospel and Christianity and biblical living a lot. And it's pretty hypocritical for me to use words that don't glorify God. And also I know a lot of you listen to this with your children. And I want this to be a family friendly podcast. So I apologize for that. You guys are right. And I was wrong and I'm not going to do that anymore. If I do, if I forget for some reason,

please feel free to call me out. But I appreciate that constructive criticism. And I just say that to say that I really do listen to you guys and you're concerned. So if you have any more, feel free to reach out to me. Of course, you can follow me and message me on Instagram. That's where I get a lot of questions for this podcast. Have a great week. I'll see you on Thursday.