Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 8 | "Clumps of Cells" to "Dying with Dignity:" The Lunacy of the Left on Life

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

The tragic case of Alfie Evans brings to light the absolute illogic and evil of the culture of death presently perpetuated throughout Europe, and, to a lesser extent (for now), in America. I break down the current impact and trajectory of this devastating cultural and political trend and what it means for the Christian.

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable, where I, your host, Allie Beth Stuckey, give my Christian conservative take on politics and culture one topic at a time. If you like this podcast, you should definitely go over to CRTV.com slash Allie, where I have weekly videos of all kinds that give shareable commentary on relevant political, cultural, and theological issues. If you hate this podcast, you should definitely not go over to CRTV.com slash Alley because you will probably hate all of my videos. But if you do, you can also follow me on Twitter or Instagram if you so choose. Again, if you don't like me, probably won't like following me on social media. So you might just want to avoid your misery. You can usually find me on social media by typing my name into the search bar

or typing the conservative millennial into Facebook and there I will be. Okay, there is a ton that I want to talk about today. So I'm going to try to fit multiple topics or really multiple points under one umbrella. Last week, we talked about the contradictions between being a Bible-believing Christian and being a political progressive. I got a few really good emails that offered some pushback and some feedback against that topic. And I really enjoyed the dialogue that that created between me and people who disagreed with me. And I just really appreciate people who listen to this podcast, knowing going in that they're going to disagree with me. And then take the time to send me a thoughtful email asking questions and offering counterpoints and counter arguments.

Even though I always try to approach my opinions from a very well-reasoned and well-researched standpoint, obviously I am very aware that I am a fallible human being and there probably are holes in my arguments and I always appreciate people pointing that out or just offering me a new and different perspective. So if that's ever you, if you want to offer me constructive criticism or have any questions or feel like I miss something or purposely misled something, then please email me. It's Ali at the Conservative millennial blog.com. It sometimes takes me a little bit to respond to all of my emails, but I always try to send a response that is just as thoughtful as the question that I received. So feel free to do that. So last week, I explained how progressivism advocates for more government control and where government power expands, so does godlessness. If you are interested in a thorough explanation of that conclusion, then you can check out

last week's episode. But one of the particular and perhaps the most evil symptoms of the consequential godlessness of government control is the eventual degradation of human dignity. I am talking about abortion. I am talking about infanticide. I am talking about government-sanctioned murder. I am talking about assisted suicide, where the power of the central government is allowed to grow without restraint, the value of human life decreases. At no time throughout history has a central figure or governing body having all the power turned out well for the people being governed.

Not in ancient history, not in medieval history, not in modern history, not in the West, not in the East. never has it turned out peachy for us plebeians. In no communist or socialist or fascist society have people thrived. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, communist China, North Korea, Venezuela today. Every place where essential government has been able to enjoy unfettered growth, pain, suffering, and death of the people they are governing has ensued. You've heard the quote, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, that has been and always will be true.

matter who is in power that is the nature of power. It doesn't matter what the people in power promise they can do for you. The more power you give them, the closer they get to absolute corruption. Let's think about the most obvious example, Nazi Germany. Nazi stands for national socialist. Think about what Hitler was able to get away with with all of his power in the name of common good. He swore he was doing what was best for Germany by exterminating not just Jews, but all the people that he saw as less than black people, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled. There were people who at the time, I'm sure, thought Hitler was doing a service to humanity. They justified his cruelty because it was advancing and protecting the Aryan race,

which Hitler deemed a worthy cause. They viewed the people being sent to concentration camps as subhuman, which I am positive helped assuage any kind of guilt they would have felt about treating their fellow countrymen as chattel. We know the horrific human suffering that that kind of thinking caused. Now, before I go any further, we need to be honest. America, the country that I love more than, well, I don't want to say more than anything, I was just being hyperbolic. The country that I love very, very much, the freest and the best country in the world has also caused pain and suffering. We have also dehumanized and mistreated people via slavery.

We had Japanese internment camps after Pearl Harbor for crying hell loud. We certainly don't have a crystal clear record on human rights. So you can't say that it is always an only totalitarian governments that treat its citizens unfairly. In the case of slavery, we actually had to have the federal government step in and say, no, you can't do that. Injustice can definitely happen anywhere. The point is not that republics or democracies are completely immune to civil rights abuses. Sin happens no matter what.

Even systemic sin can happen no matter what. The truth is this. Not all human rights violations happen in totalitarian governments, but all totalitarian governments violate human rights. So the principle is still true. Greater government leads to godlessness in human suffering, but greater government is not the only cause of godlessness in human suffering. and I will get more into that soon. The lesson is that when we give the government more power, usually power in the form of

taking care of us, human dignity tends to die. That is certainly what is happening in the UK right now. You have probably heard at this point about little Alfie Evans, the 23-month-old, who was diagnosed with some kind of apparently incurable brain disease. He was on life support and the hospital wanted to take. him off of it. His parents didn't want this. They pushed hard against this. But the British courts ruled in the hospital's favor. So the hospital took him off life support against his parents' wishes. The doctor said that he would die right away. He didn't. He lived for, I think, three days after being

taken off life support while his parents were forced to watch him die. Now, that's not even the worst part about this. The UK operates under socialized government-run healthcare. So because of that, It is somewhat understandable, though definitely an evil of a socialist health care system, that the judge ruled in favor of the hospital because, hey, we pay for your health care, we get to determine what that health care looks like, which, again, is an awful consequence of having the government take over your health care. But what is worse than that is that just like with little Charlie Guard, the courts refuse to allow the parents to take their son elsewhere to seek further treatment.

The couple was Catholic, his parents, so the Pope offered to cover the cost of getting this kid to Italy where they granted him automatic citizenship. So he could receive experimental care there. Why wouldn't the UK allow this to happen? Why should the courts or the hospital via the courts get to make that choice? What cost is it to them? That is the scariest part of this. Not that the court said no, sorry, the hospital has done what they can and were not treating him anymore, but that they said not only are we not going to treat him anymore, no one else can treat him either.

There is an act called the Children Act of 1989 in the UK, a very sweet sounding name, which the UK courts interpreted to mean that a child who is living with a severe disability and dependency doesn't have the same right to life and preservation that you and I do. This is a quote from the act. It is no longer in the child's best interest to continue living. in those cases where the severity of the child's condition is such that it is difficult or impossible for them to derive benefit from continued life. Therefore, because of this act, it is not just recommended to end all efforts to keep the child

alive. It is actually illegal. So that is where the UK stands on people, especially children with degenerative diseases and severe special needs that lead to absolute dependence. And if that does not boil your blood, I mean, this, I, I, I, I, I can't even wrap my mind around it. Not just because of the absolute deterioration of the family this represents by totally taking away the parents right to their child, though that's horrible in and of itself,

but because of the demeaning of those with disabilities and dependency. I have spent a lot of time with people with severe special needs. My brother is highly functioning but autistic. I have spent a lot of time volunteering with people who are much further on the spectrum a lot more severely autistic than he is. I have spent time with people who are basically non-responsive, who have special needs that basically disable all of their physical and almost all of their mental capabilities. A lot of people would probably determine that because of that these people are a burden to society, they will never contribute the way your

I can to science and culture. They are in a lot of ways vegetables. They can't talk or move on their own. They can't do anything without the help of an able-bodied person. But I am telling you that if, as a Christian, you can look at one of those people and say that their life is worth less than yours or anyone else's in an effort to justify what the UK court has ruled, which there are Christians trying to do that, then you and I worship two very different gods. Oh, and by the way, yours is not the God of the Bible. Oh, and by the way, that means that your God doesn't exist. For the Christian, this is an absolutely irrefutable truth. Humans and only humans are made in the image of God, which means that a human being who is, for example, mentally retarded, severely autistic,

paraplegic, can't walk, can't talk, is more valuable in God's eyes than the strongest, fastest, most majestic, winningest animal in existence. And that's scandalous to say these days, but it doesn't make it any less true. There is no room for the Christian to agree with the UK on this or with the general principle that the government should dictate what innocent humans deserve to live or die. The government in the UK made up of fallible human beings, just like all governments and courts, is taking on the rule of God by determining which people, people's lives are worth protecting and which ones aren't based on how much they can contribute to society, which is a completely made up arbitrary standard. And once you set a subjective arbitrary standard

for the worthiness of human life, you open up the door to allowing the government to determine that anyone based on anything is not valuable. Who's to say it won't one day be dyslexic people? Or people with cerebral palsy, people with red hair, Christians. You might think, okay, that sounds hyperbolic, that sounds crazy, that sounds like a slippery slope fallacy. But I have no logical reason to believe that we won't go in that direction. I have no reason to believe humanity has its limits to evil based on the atrocities that we've seen in just the last century. Dehumanizing one class of people always makes way for dehumanizing multiple classes of people depending on who is in power. That is what happens when the government

becomes God. And this is not just the UK. This is not just an isolated instance. This is always what happens when people allow the government to take the place of a higher supreme being. The government gets to determine who lives and who dies based on who they think is valuable and who isn't. And this is the undeniable path of progressivism. There's no way around it. Like I said last week, so many Christians are falling into the trap of thinking leftism, socialism is more compassionate because it offers free health care and health for the poor. Well, here is what that looks like ultimately. The poor and the needy have what they need for a little while at the expense of everyone else while the government grows in power and then devastation always ensues. Because guess what, guys,

the government is not a merciful God. The government is not a merciful God. And the government is not a merciful God. And the more power we give the government, the more we ask the government to care for the people that we, you and I, Christ followers are supposed to be caring for, the closer the government comes to fully eclipsing the roles of God, the church, and parents in our society. And as the cases of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard can attest, that does not end well. A government that becomes the caretaker of the populace is not actually concerned with taking care of the populace. They're concerned with staying in power. They know if they can get people to depend on them enough, then they will always have enough power. Like I've said, it's not like we haven't

seen this before. The nature of totalitarianism, of socialism and communism has not changed since the beginning of time. It has always dehumanized its populace as tools of the state, just like in Nazi Germany, Soviet, Russia, Cambodia, et cetera, et cetera. But this is not so. It's not. strictly a political problem. It is also a cultural one. As you've probably heard before, politics is downstream from culture. Yes, the Alfie Evans case is a consequence of what happens when you give the government too much power. But as I mentioned earlier and said that I would get further into, dehumanization of citizens is not exclusive to socialist societies, as we've seen in our own history, and as we see today in our country, and the normalization and even glorification

of abortion. We have not yet become a socialist society, and yet we too have classified an entire group of people as subhuman and have legalized discarding them like garbage. We have not yet gotten to the point where we routinely force parents to watch their child die at a hospital, but with enough satanic force coupled with the growth of the government, I can bet you we will get there. but just because we are not to that point politically doesn't mean we don't have a problem festering culturally a problem of devaluing human life manifesting itself right now in abortion a problem that will grow that will manifest itself in other disturbing ways since i have talked about this publicly in detail before and because i spent a lot of time writing a particular

speech about this and so i probably couldn't reiterate it any better than i did then I am going to play you a few minutes of a speech that I gave at CPAC this year, where I sat on a panel discussing human dignity. I talk about where this devaluing of human life takes us. First of all, I think it's such an honor to get to talk about this subject that, like you said, is increasingly pressing and is always hanging in the balance in our politics, is always being threatened to be kind of disregarded as this hushed conversation that we can only have behind this veil of euphemisms like bodily autonomy. So the fact that we're having this open conversation right now means that there is still hope, like you noted. So let me just kind of give some perspective about

where I think we are and why it's so important, not just for millennials like myself, but for everyone to care about this subject. So first, track with me for a second, because it's going to seem like I'm not talking about abortion, but I am. So I just saw the second Godfather for the first time this past week. And there's this conversation. If you haven't seen it, you should. But there's this conversation that two main characters are having, Kay and Michael. And Kay compares her abortion, or compares her marriage to an abortion. She calls it evil and unholy. And that just struck me, because how far have we come in 45 years, not just since the movie was made, but since Roe v. Wade, from calling an abortion evil and unholy to calling it reproductive freedom, to call it reproductive freedom,

to calling it women's rights, to calling it privacy. But what you and I know is that no amount of political correctness, no amount of manipulation can hide the fact that just one abortion provider is murdering over a thousand children every single day in this country. abortion, the principle of abortion is literally why we look at, or we look and discussed at Hitler's Germany, for example. It's the same exact principle of having a subjective standard of human worthiness and exterminating anyone who doesn't meet that standard that has literally been the mark of every dictatorial and depraved regime and nation since the beginning of time. And we look back at history in shame on those crimes against humanity.

But why today do we not look in shame at where we are right now in 2018 in the United States of America, not just allowing it, but normalizing it, glorifying it, and calling it choice? And if you think that our absolute apathy and disregard for human, dignity stops with life inside the womb. Unfortunately, you are wrong. There is an abortion advocate. He's also a bioethicist. He's a professor at Princeton. And really the leading intellectual and academic voice for abortion. His name is Peter Singer. I also say that he is one of the only honest abortion advocates as well. So his argument for the moral acceptance of abortion is that the baby inside the womb, he acknowledges that it is scientifically human being.

but it does not meet the standards of personhood, and that is rationality, autonomy, and the ability to be self-conscious. So he says, because of that, because they don't meet the standard of that personhood, then life inside the womb doesn't really have any rights. But here's where the honesty comes in, because most pro-choices would probably agree with that,

but here's his honesty. He says, if that is our standard of human worthiness to live, then logically we have to apply that to everyone. to life inside the womb and outside the womb. So he is an open advocate for infanticide. He is an open advocate for terminating people with severe special needs and severe mental illness because they don't meet that subjective standard of personhood.

Now, you're probably thinking, okay, well, he's radical. That's a radical pro-choice stance, but it's actually not. It's becoming mainstream. Last year in January, the house passed the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act, which says a doctor who is performing abortion has to save the life of the child who survived that abortion. So outside the womb, all but six Democrats, all but six Democrats in the House voted no to saving the infant. To show you where we've come back in 2002, a very similar, if not stricter bill passed the House in both chambers by

just a voice vote. So that's where we've come now, and I'm wrapping up because I know I don't have that much time, but I want to create a segue. Now, most pro-choicers prefer that life is terminated inside the womb because the PR strategy for Planned Parenthood to be openly pro-infanticide is a little bit tricky. So they prefer that life be terminated inside the womb, which is why they're completely fine with places like Iceland, having a 99.9% rate of terminating babies inside the womb with Down syndrome. That's why they're okay with it happening here at a 60% rate. And if you don't think that that's going to eventually extend to people with autism or different kinds of special needs, then you're absolutely blind. And here's why this matters.

Here's why human dignity matters. Here's why it's important that we don't set some subjective, arbitrary standard of human worthiness that people don't meet. One, because we've already joined the ranks of North Korea and China and being one of only seven countries to allow abortion after 20 weeks when a baby is known to flinch from the abortion needle, but also because without life, not a single one of our rights granted to us by God and guaranteed to us in the Constitution is secure. Every single one of them is at stake. And the founders knew this. That is exactly why, in the Declaration, life is listed before liberty or the pursuit of happiness, because without life, without the protection of life, the understanding and agreement that human dignity starts

in the womb, neither liberty nor the pursuit of happiness exists. How did we get here, guys? How did we get to the point in our country, the freest and best country in the world, a country for the people by the people, get to the point where dismembering a living, feeling, defenseless baby inside the womb is called women's health? How did we get here? How did we get to the point where murdering a baby is called choice? How do we get to the point where it's not just seen as a necessary evil like it used to be by pro-choice advocates, but something disgusting human beings like Michelle Wolfe make jokes about and people laugh at? The answer is, at the most basic level we Christians know, is sin. It is sin. It is the trajectory of man without God.

It's nothing new, though. It is the same thing that perpetuates, and glorified slavery as state's rights. We fought a war over that, though, and we ended it. You think that's going to happen with abortion? No, I don't. We've got a Republican Congress and White House, and we are still giving $500 million of our tax money to the largest abortion provider in the country.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I don't think the government is going to deliver us on this one, guys. I just don't. I don't think that that means, though, that there's no hope. There is hope. I think the real counterwork against abortion is done by the church, by clinics who don't provide abortions, by pro-life organizations, true women's health organizations, not by the government. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't push for legislation.

I obviously do, and I talk about it a lot. And I will, I hope, I will gladly embrace being wrong about this. But that doesn't change the fact that it is our job primarily as the body of Christ to do everything we can to end the cycle of abortion. That means helping mothers every way we can and providing them with options other than abortion and giving our time, our energy, our money to clinics and centers that do so much more than health care, that they provide women's shelter. They help women get jobs, go to school. They help them with the adoption process. Help them even with the citizenship process. Hope 139 house is in Watkinsville, Georgia. I think you can go to Hope139.com.

They're an amazing organization like this. You should also check to see if one of the centers are in your area or a clinic like this is in your area. We have a lot of pro-life clinics that offer these kinds of totally free services to women with unwanted pregnancies. And they're really great. So you can Google it and hopefully find it if Google doesn't censor your search. But the weird thing, is the left in America doesn't want you to think this way in this life-affirming way. It hampers their narrative that abortion is health care. It diminishes a key part of their platform and quite frankly, if we truly take Planned Parenthood out of business, which would just be amazing, then the Democrats lose millions of dollars in campaign funding.

Planned Parenthood votes is a part of Planned Parenthood that has just joined a coalition that is dishing out $30 million in campaign funding for the 2018 midterms. Abortion itself is a huge part of the Democratic platform. Tom Perez, the head of the DNC, said, in fact, you don't even have a place in the Democratic Party if you are anti-abortion. Also, just parenthetically, as a side note here, I like how pro-choicers think that it's somehow a pejorative to say anti-abortion instead of calling us pro-life.

They won't call us pro-life, so they call us anti-abortion. or anti-choice and I'm like, okay, I love it. Thank you so much. I love being called anti-abortion or anti-choice. Put it on a freaking bumper sticker. I'll buy it. I'll put it in my bio. Anti-choice, anti-abortion alley. I love it. If that was, if we still had AOL instant messenger, I would make that my screen name. So anyway, nice try and offending me. It doesn't. I really like it. But anyway, isn't that funny? The left's absolute refusal to acknowledge that killing an unborn child is evil and that maybe, just maybe, we should all be taking steps towards ending it? I mean, that is something I could settle for. If they could just go back to acknowledging that it is

evil and sad and gruesome and that it's something that should be avoided at all costs, if pro-choicers just saw abortion as a last resort for women in dire situations, then maybe we can work together. Now, I still wouldn't agree with their reasoning on that because murder is murder, but at least we could work toward a common cause of trying to make the need for abortion obsolete. But they are not interested in that. They're not interested. Women's marches have signs and t-shirts that say, I heart abortion. Gosh, I mean, it's crazy. I can't even say it. They make jokes about abortion. They call it women's health care, women's rights. They say abortion, the killing, the taking the life of a child inside the woman.

womb is synonymous with privacy and liberty. That is bodily autonomy. It's reproductive freedom. What? First of all, you have bodily autonomy over your own body, but not someone else's body. Where's their bodily autonomy? And reproductive freedom? Reproductive freedom is the freedom to use a condom or not have sex, not to murder a baby. So instead, we are expected to pretend like abortion has anything to do with agency or independence or empowerment. It doesn't. This is why I say you can't be pro-choice and anti-abortion, as many of my followers have tried to argue before. You don't believe in killing a child, but you want someone to have the choice to do so? Um, in what scenario do you think it's moral for you to advocate for the freedom of someone to kill an innocent, defenseless human being?

It's the same thing as saying, I would never murder someone, but I want someone to have the freedom to murder someone. That means that you're probably not really against murder. You are either against murder or you're not. Would you say, I'm against rape, but I think someone should be free to rape, you know, their body, their choice? What? Then you're probably not really against rape.

Trying to be in both camps on both sides of the fence or just ride the fence means that you're really just too afraid of making a moral stance. And quite frankly, there isn't any logic to that wishy-washy position and there's really not any room for it in honest political and moral dialogue. Being pro-choice is being pro-murder. It is. I mean, there's really no way around that. And the only thing worse than being pro-murder is to pretend that it is not murder. To normalize it, to glorify it. to glorify it and to call it health care.

It's really amazing. It's amazing in a sad way how the pro-abortion side has manipulated people with their completely deceptive rhetoric. I mean, have you ever tried arguing with a pro-abortion person? It's literally the most maddening thing in the entire world.

I've probably lost 15 years off of my life arguing with pro-choice people because they won't actually address abortion. they only have straw men to defend their position. Really, the only question that matters should be, are you killing a defenseless human being or not? But they really don't like to answer that because it's really hard to justify it if that's the case.

If you admit that yes, you're killing a baby, you have to be ready to defend that. Most people aren't. So here are the ways that they try to avoid that question. And here, they're straw men. You're not pro-life. You're pro-birth. The world is overpopulated.

There are too many kids in foster care. What about rape or incest? An unwanted child would have a bad life. And they also do the whole bodily autonomy, her body, her choice, freedom thing. These are all illegitimate arguments because they don't address the only question that matters. Are you killing a human life or not? And that is why Peter Singer is one of the only honest advocates of abortion out there. Because the only intellectually honest start to an abortion conversation is one where both sides

acknowledge that you are killing a human being. Then the pro-choice side has to defend it. But they won't ever go there or they will hardly ever go there because it is so evil and difficult to justify. And I think they know deep down, just like Peter Singer has articulated, the implications of killing a human being in the womb will soon extend two babies outside the womb. That is simply the logical next step. And once that happens, once we deem life outside the womb disposable based on its disability

or dependence the way that the UK has, what's stopping us from disposing of all people who are disabled or dependent? The sick, the elderly, even the homeless. And it's that kind of thing that is already happening. That's what this whole stupid evil dying with dignity, movement that you've heard about is, which is prevalent in Europe, but not quite yet in the United States. Dying with Dignity is assisted suicide, which isn't actually dignified at all. Sadly, the main reasons that people choose assisted suicide, the reasons that have been cited,

they're not because of pain or sickness like the Dying with Dignity Movement wants us to think, but because of loneliness and discontent. The same reasons to commit, people commit regular suicide. But again, this is the natural trajectory of devaluing human life. And here in America, most people aren't willing to say that they want to go that far yet. They don't want to admit that that is where abortion takes us. So instead, when you really press them on whether or not abortion murders an innocent human being, they go with the whole idiotic clump of cells think. And honestly, that one's getting pretty old.

because any even pro-choice embryologist will tell you that that's not true. Life starts at conception. If it doesn't start a conception, you need to ask, when does it start? Like, we should probably be able to answer that question if we're going to suck people out of the womb and kill them, right? You get a whole bunch of answers when you ask that question, which shows that unless you say that life starts at conception, the whole beginning of life thing is completely arbitrary and subjective. And when you're talking about killing someone, don't you think we should probably play it

safe and be pretty exact? Don't you think just to be sure we should just start a conception? Plus, people who use the whole clump of cells argument still advocate for abortion after the heart starts beating, which is at eight weeks, even after the child can feel pain they advocate for it, even after the child is fully formed and moving around in the womb, when the unborn child has visibly taken the form of a baby, these people are still okay with abortion when it's quite obvious that it's not a clump of cells. So the clump of cells thing is stupid and any honest, smart pro-choicer doesn't revert to that kind of lunacy. Our mainstream left and our government is probably going to continue down this path of extremism toward abortion, demanding it all the time without restriction for free.

The government will probably continue to support it. I hope not, but I'm not holding a out too much hope. And we will see, too, the normalization, legalization, and popularization of assisted suicide, of infanticide, and euthanasia for the severely disabled for or the dependent. Because as I say, once you give the government the power to say that one class of people doesn't have rights simply because we don't want them to have rights, then you open the door to allowing them to do so to any class of people they arbitrarily deem less worthy of life. This is what happens when society decides that they have no use for God. They take on a naturalist point of view in which the only thing that really exists and

therefore the only thing that matters is what we can see and feel. And in that kind of world, when tangibility is the sole qualification for reality and importance, people stop subscribing to rules and laws they can't see. Because without God or a higher power, there really is no good argument for a transcendent moral law. Now, you don't have to believe in God to be pro-life. You can look at the direction abortion leads us in and realize, hey, that's probably not great for society. You can do that without believing in God. But the absence of a supreme law giver and therefore a supreme law makes all morality relative and subjective, really, including the moral of defending innocent

human life. That is why Christians, it is our job to stand up for the least of these, including the unborn, to fight for their rights. to advocate for their sanctity. We have a responsibility to push back darkness with the power of the gospel. That includes fighting against the culture of death that seems to be consuming our world, knowing, though, that ultimately darkness will consume the world until Jesus comes back. That doesn't mean, though, that we don't fight. We save lives, and more importantly, we save souls.

We don't save souls, but we introduce people to the truth of Christ and him crucified, and he saves their soul, which is far more important than any physical work that we do. Now, there are a couple of things that I want to mention that I didn't really find room for it in the main chunk of this, but there are two pieces of the life conversation that need to be touched on. One is the idea that animals and humans have the same value. Believe it or not, this seems to be a prevalent idea, even in Christian circles these days, which is just sad. the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, makes very clear that humans alone are made in the image of God and therefore have supreme worth to any other creature and should be regarded as such.

I can see why atheists might disagree, I guess. If you don't believe people are made in the image of God, maybe you think that animals and people are the same. I don't know, though. I don't know. That still doesn't make very much sense to me. There's a reason why humans have created art, culture, science, governments, and no animal has or ever will. An animal will never have a podcast. An animal will never contribute to any type of cultural, technological, or political advancement, except if they are used by humans to do so. They don't have agency.

They don't have morality beyond feelings of sadness sometimes because they disappointed the people that feed them. That's true only for dogs, by the way, not for cats. Cats are like, you are welcome for getting to feed me and clean my litter box. but beyond that, whether you believe in God or not, there's an undeniable spark in human beings that no other creature has. This is true of every human being, no matter their mental capacities or physical capabilities. No animal will ever do anything of cultural and political and real meaning apart from the

existence of humans, whereas human beings as a whole are independently both valuable and influential. That's to say, animals are valuable. We should treat them with respect and love. three pets. I'm obsessed with them. I cry anytime. I hear a story about animal cruelty. I think people that inflict violence on animals should be punished as severely as the law allows. I hate it. And I also think it's typically a prequel to human violence. So it's pretty serious. But they are not. Animals are not. Never have been. Never should be equal and worth to people. That's not how it

works. Trying to elevate animals to the level of humans will end in actually lowering humans to the level of animals because animals don't have the capacity to operate on the same level that we do so they couldn't possibly enjoy and exercise the same rights that we have. Also, people trying to say that those who are pro-life are hypocrites if they eat meat, no. Nothing against veganism, honestly, but being vegan isn't any more moral and certainly not more biblical than eating meat. There are some animals that were literally made for eating. And some animals need to be eaten to control their population or they at least need to be hunted. That's why hunting is actually good for the environment.

No one talks about that. Now, I am against cruel treatment of animals, like I said, including cruel treatment of animals that we eat for food. I have watched PETA videos, okay? Probably shouldn't have, but I have and it makes me really sad. That's bad. Shining light on that and trying to get your meat from places that treat their animals decently, I think is great.

That's a great thing to do. I also think that being a vegetarian or being a vegan is totally fine and great. There's nothing wrong with that. But vegetarians and vegans who have no place to judge people who do choose to eat meat, especially from a biblical perspective. And being pro-life and a carnivore is not hypocritical. Because again, human life is distinct and superior in war to animal life, period. Another thing that I hear a lot is that pro-lifers are hypocritical because many of us,

are conservatives. And so people assume that we are okay with war and the death penalty, which is probably true of a lot of conservatives and conservative pro-lifers. Well, first, on war, I don't think any of us like war. We don't prefer it. I certainly don't, especially not libertarians. But yes, we do believe or I believe in peace through strength. We see war as a necessary tool.

It was a necessary tool at times in the Bible. And unfortunately, it's still a necessary. tool now. Not all wars are good. Not all wars are necessary, but some war is. The revolutionary war, the civil war, the world wars. While sad and while really imperfect in a lot of ways, they ended up accomplishing, for the most part, what we set out to accomplish. And the world would not be where it is now without war. We wouldn't have America without war. And I think we would all agree that we and the entire world is better off having America as the only existing beacon of liberty and hope. I don't believe in killing civilians, obviously, that's horrific. I don't believe in excessive or

undue or cruel force, but yes, I do believe that military action is acceptable and not at all seen as a sin, but is rather a, like I said, a necessary tool in our fallen and broken world. The Bible seems to agree. Also, engaging in voluntary violence in which both sides are armed is a little bit different than a doctor pulling a defenseless baby's head off with forceups. Okay. On the death penalty. Do I like it? No, I really, really don't.

Do I worry that there have been people on death row and there are people on death row that have been wrongfully convicted? Yes, I do. I mean, it breaks my heart. I have a pit in my stomach thinking about that. I really hate the idea of killing someone who is unable to defend themselves. I really do. And I know that they're criminals, but it makes me sad.

I hate it. but we do see the death penalty in the Old Testament for things like murder, which goes to show just how much God cares about the sanctity of human life that taking someone else's life is punishable by death. Genesis 9 6 says, Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image. That just shows how much it breaks God's heart and how murder was not part of his plan. Now, the other side of that is that Christ, as we know, fulfilled the Old Testament law in the New Testament. We Christians are not bound to everything the ancient Israelites were bound to.

Jesus offered a new picture of grace and mercy and reconciliation in the New Testament that is also an example of the grace and mercy we should extend to others. So some people take that to me that Jesus' new covenant means that the death penalty is out the door, that it may be. obsolete the need for a bloodshed to make up for your sins. But I'm not really sure that that alone means we should no longer have the death penalty. Because by that logic, we could also say that we should extend grace to all criminals and punish no one. Sometimes extending grace doesn't mean that you relieve people of their earthly consequences. I just don't think it's feasible to do that either.

Or good for society or necessarily matches our God-given desire in need. for justice. In my research on this, I came across something that I agree with, that biblical punishment should have five characteristics. One, proportionality, which you can find in Exodus 21. Wow, I put that reference in really weird. So now I don't know what the references I'm trying to read it. I said Exodus 21, 23, 25, but I'm not really sure what's the verse and what's the chapter on that. So I'll get back to you. Number two, I should have certainty of guilt, which you can find in Deuteronomy 17.6. It should have intent. You can find that in numbers 35, 22 through 24. We should expect in due process, numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 17. And also for Christians, there should be a

reluctance to execute. We should not rejoice in execution. In Ezekiel 3311, God says, As sure as I live, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. That doesn't mean execution isn't a consequence or necessarily that it shouldn't be, but that we should mourn the death of evil people. And I'll tell you, that is not always my attitude towards terrorists or people who murder and torture children or murder and torture anyone who is defenseless and vulnerable. I want them to pay for it, which is partly natural, yes, like I said, we all have a desire for justice, but also because I to God and really no different without Jesus than these murders. I should see them with the same mercy that God

through Christ has chosen to see me. So this to say, I understand where Christians are coming from who are against the death penalty, but I personally don't find any solid biblical evidence to be unequivocally against it. So I don't think that people who are for it are condemned by God by any means. And again, believing and punishing by death a murder is not the same thing, killing a defenseless baby that does not somehow negate your pro-lifeness. There's also something very, very important that I want to say, anyone who has had an abortion, there is grace for her. There is grace for you.

There is no condemnation in Christ. There is no shame to be had in Christ. There is full 1,000% forgiveness for that. if Jesus could make Paul, who used to murder Christians into the greatest missionary that has ever lived, know that there is forgiveness for all of us. And God doesn't see you as any worse or any less than any of the rest of us because of that. Just know that his grace and his love and his compassion is just as available to you as anyone else. And all you have to do is turn a around and he comes running. That is the God that we serve. And so even though I talk in a very clear

terms about abortion, because I do have strong feelings about it, the women who have had abortion, I have the utmost compassion and sympathy for. And I, I want you to know and I want them to know that God loves them immeasurably, amazingly, and that there is no, there is no fear in going to him with that pain and with that sin because he is there and ready to forgive it and to reconcile. So I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that. Okay. Now, I am going to answer a couple questions that I have gotten and I want to answer. So thank you to you all for sending them. One question. Allie, what is your favorite passage of scripture? Well, Genesis is probably my favorite book of the Bible, Genesis and Ephesians.

I love Genesis because I love being introduced to the character and the nature of God through the stories that we read in Genesis. They are genuinely entertaining. Like, I have laughed reading Genesis. You probably can't say that about much of the Bible. And they're fascinating. They tell us so much about who God is, what he cares about. Wow.

I'm just going to leave that in there. I'm not even going to edit it out, what he cares about and how he loves us. I love in particular, Genesis 32, when Jacob wrestles with God and God renames him Israel. Before God makes Jacob Israel the namesake of his chosen people, God wrestles with him and breaks his hip so that Jacob or Israel walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Jacob calls the place penile or pinnual, meaning face of God because he knew he had seen God face to face yet survived. And I think that this wrestling between God and Jacob is a really interesting metaphor for God's relationship with Israel, his willingness to be up close and personal, even intimate, his willingness to break them,

wrestle with them in order to build them into the people that he wanted them to be. And I think that's often true of the nature of God's relationship with us, his personal engaging with us, his breaking of us in order to restore us into something better, something of his design, even renaming us in the way that he did Jacob. And ultimately, everything in the Bible is a reflection of Christ. And so I think also the wrestling story is an interesting story of the brokenness that often leads to redemption. Another question, how do churches like Joel Osteen's keep the numbers coming in?

So for those of you who don't know, Joel Osteen, is a false teacher who preaches something called the prosperity gospel, which I have made many videos about at CRTV.com slash alley. These are also known as word of faith preachers, which means that they teach that if you speak something or believe something or pray something hard enough and faithfully enough, it will happen. That God wants you to have the promotion, that God wants you to be happy and fulfilled in this life. Sorry, fam. That's not the gospel. God wants you to be holy and happy in him. When he says, I will give you the desires of your heart in Psalm 37, when he says in John 14, you may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. He is talking about things and only

things that align with his well, which may or may not be a promotion, material success, or healing from sickness. Psalm 374, let's look at these verses in context. Psalm 374 says, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. That does not mean he will give you what you want. But when you are delighting in the Lord, the desires of your heart will align with his. And when your will aligns with his, then yes, he will carry it out because it is his well. And then the context of John 1414 is, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. Asking something in Jesus's name doesn't just mean saying his name. It means asking something consistent with his will and his character to his glory,

not ours. God does not promise to make us healthy and wealthy. He doesn't. I mean, we probably all know Christians, wonderful Christians, grace followers who love God who have died from cancer or who have had something horrible happen in their lives. I mean, think about Job, for example. And Jesus tells us this in John 1633, in this world, you will have tribulation, but take hard, I have overcome the world. That's a promise. That's a guarantee that our hope shouldn't be in this world, but in Jesus who has overcome the world. Luke 923, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily,

and follow me. That doesn't sound too much like an easy life. This doesn't mean, though, that God wants us to be melancholy or to look for ways to make our life hard. He's just saying that if you follow him, you're not getting a guarantee of a life of ease, but of ultimate fulfillment in Christ in eternal life, which means far more than any earthly gain. To believe that God will or has to answer all of our prayers for comfort and wealth is to reduce God to a genie. And as Galatian 6.7 says, do not be deceived. God will not be mocked. Yikes.

the Bible has a lot to say about false teachers and why and why people follow them. Here are a couple examples of that. Galatians 1-8, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

2 Timothy 4.3 through 5 says, For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And we'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering. Do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry. 2.1.3. But false prophets also arose among the people just as there will be false teachers among you,

who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, and many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not. to sleep. Sheesh. So I think the answer is that a lot of people have itching ears. I think a lot of people are looking for comfort and ease. Don't get me wrong, God is our comforter and our strength. But he's not there to make us feel better about ourselves. Joel Osteen is a great communicator.

His messages are easy to listen to. I've listened to many of them. And he's probably a great motivational speaker. And maybe some of the things that he says, probably a lot of the things that he says are true, but they're not the whole truth, not for a preacher of the gospel. From what I've heard, he doesn't preach the true gospel. And unfortunately, he is not the only one. He's far from the only one. Okay, guys, longest podcast ever yet again.

It's getting like a little bit longer every week. I know I had a lot more questions that you guys sent me, but that's all I have time for for today. If you like this podcast, please leave me a good review. If you have feedback, constructive criticism, please email me at Alley at the conservative millennial blog.com. If you want more of my content, like my weekly videos that I produce, go to CRTV.com slash Alley. You can also find them on my Facebook page, The Conservative Millennium. Follow me on Instagram, Ali B. Stecky and Twitter, conserve Millen, if you want to.

Okay, bye. Have a great week.