Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Hate Fuels Big Businesses & Politicians but Destroys Us

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

After Georgia passed new voting laws the MLB and politicians on both sides seem vested in keeping using it to keep both sides angry. Who wins in this deal? Hint: it’s not you Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-all-christians-conservative-guest-interview-with-dr-kristin-kobes-du-mez/ (Donald Trump and Evangelical Masculinity) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/have-politics-become-the-new-religion-is-the-west-dying-should-christians-engage-in-politics-or-step-out-completely-get-answers-to-these-questions-from-pastor-patrick-millers-interview-with-dr-c/ (Do You Worship Politics?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Maybe you heard about the MLB moving its all-star game from Atlanta to Denver and Colorado. And maybe you care about that or maybe you're like me and you've been boycotting baseball your whole life. But here's the deal. We're going to talk about not just that particular event, but what it says about our culture and our cultural moment. But speaking of cultural moments, Keith's been on the struggle bus lately.

I live on the struggle bus. I drive the struggle bus. My spiritual gift is making life hard. than it needs to be. Your spiritual gift is breaking computers. Well, so lately it's been Dropbox. Yeah, but before that, remember, you couldn't use Google. Your computer was automatically making you use Bing. Well, yes, that was malware, but I got that fixed. Now I'm on Duck Duck, Goose. But it's sad. Duck Goose is a cousin. Okay, that's good. That's good. So the other day I walked in and there's another staff member who I've discovered, apparently Keith will occasionally call into his office to

help explain his technical things because she's the only person nice enough to do it without making fun of him for it. That's exactly right. She's so nice that she won't mock me from my idiocy. So this latest one, though, is Dropbox. Yeah. I think it's your problem, Patrick. All I know is that people look at Dropbox what you send me and we can't figure it out. I can't figure it out. So I've been on a quest. Did you just call yourself people? Well, no, I've recruited others. And so, no, I'm not referring to myself in the third person, plural. But, but. But, you just call yourself, But I still don't know what I'm doing. No.

No, you sent me a Dropbox file for the first time yesterday. I was really impressed by it. I know, but I don't know if I could do it again. But what we really need for you is someone to explain all technology like a five-year-old. Keith, every time you come to me with your technology problems, whether it's Microsoft Word or your inability to find your own page on Facebook. Come on, man. Don't tell all my secrets.

That's good. I am reminded of a great clip from the office when Oscar, he's the accountant at the office, comes to Michael, who's the manager, and Michael is, of course, kind of the village idiot, and Oscar's trying to explain some pretty basic accounting stuff. But he is the boss. Yeah, he is the boss. Michael's the boss, and Oscar can't seem to get through to him, and we'll just watch what happens because it's a good clip.

Here are our final actual cost for this year. Okay. As you can see, we did pretty well. Yes, I can see that we did indeed. Why don't you explain this to me like I am an eight-year-old? All right. Well, this is the overall budget for this fiscal year along the X-axis. Yes.

That's me. He's trying to be all confident. You can see clearly on this page that we have a surplus of $4,300. Mm-hmm. Okay. We have to spend that by the end of the day or it will be deducted from next year's budget. Why don't you explain this to me like I'm five? your mommy and daddy give you $10 to open up a lemonade stand.

So you go out and you buy cups and you buy lemons and you buy sugar. And now you find out that it only costs you $9. So you have an extra dollar. Yeah. So you can give that dollar back to mommy and daddy. But guess what? Next summer. I'll be six.

And you ask them for money. They're going to give you $9. Because that's what they think it costs to understand. So what you want to do is spend that dollar on something now so that your parents think that it costs $10 to run the lemonade stand. So the dollars are surplus. This is a surplus. We have to spend that $4,300 by the end of the day, or it'll be deducted from next year's budget. It's like the government.

Just spend all the money whether you need it or not. You got to spend it or you lose it. But that is Keith, too. It's she, we walk again and watching Reagan, our friend, trying to explain to Keith. I've never actually heard you say the words, explain it to me like a five-year-old, but... I've thought him. It probably still wouldn't work, but... It might help.

I'm cursed. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, so like I said today, we're talking about something that is on everybody's mind. And, oh, I feel a song. I feel a song coming on. Won't my mind? You try, Keith, you do yours. Ray Charles, yeah.

Can you sing? If you want a real treat, sit next to Keith during worship. Come on, man. It's bad. Come on, man. I'm making a joyful noise. Joyful noise of the world. Lord you're evaluating me. Oh, no. Well, it might be a noise. I don't know how. It sure is joyful. That's

right. Come on, man. So Georgia, Georgia's on our mind. There's a new voter ID law that just got passed in Georgia, and it's been the topic of conversation culturally. And probably the big thing that most people have heard about who aren't even interested in politics is that, and I said this earlier, the MLB has moved its All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver. Yeah, that's what brought it up in our family. We eat dinner once a week as a family, and my boys who paid a little bit of attention to politics and current events were much more interested in talking about this because it affected baseball. And their take on it was why in the world is the All-Star game moving? And so we kind of dove into the issue a little bit. But Major League Baseball decided to move the All-Star game because they received some pressure from Joe Biden.

I mean, ultimately, President Biden was being interviewed by Sage Steele on ESPN. in, and she asked him about the Georgia law and then asked him if Major League Baseball should move the All-Star game out of Atlanta in response to it. And he said, sure, and minutes later, it seemed, Rob Bannford, the commissioner of baseball, made that change. He said that they were going to pull it out of Georgia, and now we know later that it's now moved to Denver. But in response to that, the Republican governor of Texas decided not to throw out the first pitch at the opening day of the new stadium for the Texas Rangers because he was kind of protesting Joe Biden's protesting of the Georgia voting law. This is getting complicated. It's a multi-layered protest.

And so in response to these Georgia laws, the MLB isn't the only corporation responding. Coca-Cola's CEO came out with a statement condemning Georgia. I should get some context here. There have been people who have been pushing against companies that have their headquarters located in Atlanta specifically, but also the rest of Georgia. That's Coca-Cola. And so the CEO spoke out and said, hey, I'm against this law. The same thing happened with Delta. We'll get to the Georgia law and why people are so upset in a moment. But for now, a bunch of companies feeling pressured by a community activist or the president of the United States or whoever, Twitter mobs kind of have decided to speak out against these Georgia voting laws. So one of my favorite moments in the midst of this was PayPal was among the corporations who were critiquing this Georgia voter ID law. and someone on Twitter posted, hey, by the way, PayPal, it requires an ID for you to open up an account.

Someone else gets on, they respond and they tweet at PayPal and they say, hey, can you please let my account open up without an idea? So they're saying, hey, PayPal, if you're against this Georgia law, why can't I open up my PayPal account without an idea? And then I love this. Some poor social media person replied, didn't read the whole thread. And they just say, well, great question. We usually require customers to confirm their identity with a government.

issued photo ID, which is of course what they just condemn the state of Georgia for doing. Regrettably, we're unable to bypass this step. It is required. So people are kind of caught in between reality and how they run their business and what they feel like the social media mob wants them to do. And these businesses have entered into politics. And this has been happening gradually over the last few years. But now these businesses have gone all in over this issue of the Georgia voting laws. And so maybe we just need to stop for a moment and think about what happened in those laws. And so maybe I put it this way. Patrick, could you explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old? Like going back to the office clip, how about for a five-year-old?

Like private school, Patrick explains it to public school Keith. I am not personally optimistic about my ability to do that because I'm terrible at communicating with five-year-olds, but here we go. Here's nothing. So here's the deal. Like Keith and I state the obvious. We are not experts in anything. Anything. Just to be honest, absolutely nothing. I'm an expert in. Masters of none. We're not experts in voter laws. We're not trying to pretend to be that. What we want to do right now is not make a political statement of what we think is right or what we think is wrong. We're just trying to analyze the moment, and it's hard to talk about this law if we don't just get the facts on the ground. Here's what the law does entail and doesn't entail. So let's start here. This new voter ID law,

It actually liberalized many parts of Georgia's voter laws. For example, it extended early voting. By liberalized, you just mean made it easier for Georgians to vote. Yes. These are measures that most progressives would say those are good things. I'm for these things. It extended early voting. So again, if you imagine voting in November, you could vote on October 12th in the state of Georgia,

and you could compare that to October 24th in New York State. And also, it's better than the state of Colorado. One of the big things... Which is important because that's where Major League Baseball ended up moving the All-Star Game to Colorado. Yeah, they ended up moving it there. One of the big reasons why this early voting matters is that black churches, some of them, have this thing called souls to polls. You go to church, and then there's a message, and then everybody goes, and they vote together. And Georgia's law actually allows that to happen because it allows multiple Sundays to be included within the early voting.

Beyond that, it also extended the mailing period. So how long you have to mail in things to the state of Georgia? It allows mail-in ballots without reason. So, for example, in Joe Biden's home state of Delaware, you can't send in a mail-in ballot without a reason. But in Georgia, you don't have to have a reason. You can send in a mail-in ballot. Lastly, it expands the number of voting locations inside of Georgia to reduce wait times.

In fact, at large precincts, they're requiring people now to measure the weight three times during the voting day. And if the wait's ever longer than an hour during the next election, the plan is to add in more voting locations. So those are some of the liberalizing laws. Let's go on the other side, Keith, and let's talk about why it was so controversial. Yeah, if those were the ways that Georgia made it easier to vote, there are some other ways that Georgia restricted voting, or at least that's how it is interpreted by some. And one of those is they're requiring a voter ID.

So there are six different forms of identification allowed to serve that purpose, but you have to have some sort of proof that you are who you say you are. And almost every state requires that. Is that correct? That's not abnormal. Now, the amount is different. So, for example, in Colorado, there's 16 different forms of identification that you can use to vote. So six is significantly less than that. In Colorado, but it's not beyond the pale of what other states do.

And when you vote by mail in Georgia, this is back to how they made it a little harder to vote, you have to include some sort of ID number. So this could be your driver's license or another form of government identification. Social Security, birth certificate. Now, there have been people who've made the point that people who are economically disadvantaged, marginalized, marginalized, poor, oftentimes don't have these kind of IDs. All the IDs are free and available through the state, but it does create another hoop you've got to jump through it in order to be able to vote. In other states, you can use signatures on your mail-in ballot, and they do something where they basically compare signatures to confirm whether or not you're that person. Now, there's actually drawbacks to this, because if your signature isn't confirmed, it might really be you, but you've changed your signature in some fashion, your vote will be thrown out. And that actually happened in the state of Georgia. I think it was 4,500 votes in a previous election were thrown out because of signatures, and about half of those were African-American. Now, of course, we should note, the person who's looking at the signatures has no- They know they're African-American. They didn't. They don't know the identity of the person. Oh, just the counties 50%. It just happened to be the case that 54% were African. Again, they don't have these names.

There's no way for them to know. It was just after the fact they looked and they said, oh, gosh, well, this is what happened. So that's one of the reasons why some people say we need to get rid of signatures because legitimate voters are thrown out as a result of it. Do you like your signature? Oh, I hate my signature. I hate my signature. I would love to change it my signature.

Sometimes I draw like this up and down. It looks like one of those heartbeat monitor things. Oh, like a doctor. Oh gosh, I just told... Maybe you're a doctor. I just told thousands of people how to fake my signature. It's the opposite. It's a flat line.

My dad had the most beautiful signature, and it's probably the thing I liked most about him. If I could be like him in any way, it'd probably be a signature. I don't know what that says. But anyway, all right. That's a really depressing comment. Let's just move on. Okay. I can tell you more.

That's good. That's another episode. And last is that it put restrictions on water and food that could be distributed to people in the voting lines. And so what it says is that people can bring their own water or the people working at the polls can provide water and food, but no one else can. No third party can. So you can't walk up to people in line with just to go back to the last election, Trump or Biden t-shirts on, handing out pizzas to people in line. It's worth noting that in other states, they prevent that as well. They say you can't give out water and electioneer until you'll have care teams that have no association with the political. party who will come and give water to help people. But that's also prohibited in this law. Yeah, that's not the Georgia law. Yeah, you can't do this in the Georgia law. And so like we said, you can probably get better analysis and you can double check all those facts, but I think everybody agrees

on what we just shared. We're not trying to tip the balance there. We're just trying to tell you the facts that we've been able to learn. And so let's think about this. Why did this happen? And there's kind of an optimistic view, and then maybe you'd say a pessimistic view about why it happened. And depending on which view you take, it's probably going to, in a large sense, control your response to these. I think when you say optimistic, we're actually almost trying to say there's a sincere view and then there's probably a cynical view. So sincerely, what's a good reason why someone might want these kinds of laws? Well, the positive reason would be that they're concerned over election integrity. State secretaries, they have a really hard job because they have to balance two things.

They have to balance integrity, making sure that there aren't fake voters voting, making sure that the people, who are supposed to be voting are voting, and they also have to balance right alongside that voter accessibility, making sure that they haven't put a bar so high that people who should be able to vote, now all of a sudden are disenfranchised and they're unable to vote. So the optimistic perspective or the sincere perspective of this law would be saying, look, that was the heart and the motive behind this. I think the other sincere thing is that there really are sincere concerns over Jim Crow laws. I mean, it's worth pointing out Jim Crow is within living memory. I think that people like me need to realize that these voting laws come inside of a historical context. And the historical

context in Atlanta in the South has been that in the past, people in power, white people, have used poll taxes or white only primaries. They've used test. Poll tests. Yeah, poll tests. Questions. Some of them impossible to answer. No white person would have ever gotten these questions right, but they're only given to black people. To keep people from voting, to keep minorities from voting, to keep black people from voting. So any time that you're in the South and you're going to talk about restricting votes in any way, shape, or form, you've got to realize that all the concerns are going to come out of, is this disenfranchising minority people from voting? Just imagine, first second, if you're white like me, if your grandma or grandpa or maybe even your parent had told you stories about not being able to vote because of Jim Crow laws,

someone you know, someone you trust, someone you love is telling you true real history. And then you hear about laws which are restricting voting. You're hearing it in a context. And it's a really, really important context that I think we would be remiss not to acknowledge and talk about it. To me, I think about it kind of in a marital sense. Let's say you're married to someone and that person has cheated on you. And you find out, hey, we're going to stay together in the marriage, but you find out a few years later that they're spending a lot of time with someone else at the opposite sex. Well, there might not be anything bad happening there, sincerely.

You might be a little suspicious. But you're going to be real suspicious. And you might even say, you know what, given your history, you really probably shouldn't have this time with this person because you haven't earned the right or the trust or the ability to do that. And when we start thinking that way, we can really understand why when we start talking about restricting voter access, it should bring up some big questions. And for people to resist and ask those questions is not them being against voter integrity.

It's them being aware of a historical context. Yeah, so I think what every state has to do is to try to balance two things. I want as many people to have access to voting as possible. And I want elections that are free and fair, that there's an integrity and confidence that people can have. And trying to balance those two is always tough. But that's what each state legislature is charged with. So if we were trying to assume the best right now about both sides, we would say to the left that their accusations about this being a Jim Crow law, they sincerely come out of a historical context. And if we were looking at people on the right and we were trying to assume the best, we would say that they are sincerely concerned about voter integrity.

A democracy cannot function if you don't have polls that are run properly. If people are able to send in fake votes, that's not going to work. Okay, but let's be honest. Nobody thinks that these people are being sincere. Do you? I mean, I want to believe that, but come on. I want to say that there's an ad mixture of both, that there are real sincere concerns that are also layered on top of with insincere concerns. Or maybe even reframe it, that if you take the crowd of people on each side, there are some people who are being very sincere or they're being sincerely misled. And there are people who are trying to use this moment to bolster their own power. I'm just a cynical person by nature. I wish I wasn't. I wish I was an optimist. But I've just come to believe that a lot of times what you've got going on here is a power play and people on both sides trying to gain power for themselves. And so I think what we've seen play out since this law was passed and signed by the governor of Georgia, it kind of confirms that what I think is true. And that is that people are about power.

You're making me think of a great clip by Charles Barkley. Oh, time out. Tell me, don't know who Charles Barkley is. You know, basketball guy. Famous. He played for the, what was it, the Bowls, right? Yeah, right. Was I right or wrong?

I really don't know. No, you were way wrong. In the private school, Patrick went to, they didn't have sports. He was conjugating Latin verbs while the rest of us were playing sports. And so Patrick learns about sports through the books, the dummies series. like basketball for dummies, football for dummies. You've read football for dummies, right? I've read football for dummies. I've read basketball for dummies. But here's the deal. You're right. I didn't play sports, but I am invested in understanding other people. So Charles Barkley, let me share it. Charles Barkley is on the halftime show of T&T, and it was during the NCAA March Madness. And they asked him a question. And here's how he responded to it. And I think you might identify with Sir Charles.

Yeah, but the one thing I took out of that piece was, man, I think most white people and black people are great people. I really believe that in my heart. But I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power. They divide and conquer. I truly believe in my heart, most white people and black people are awesome people. we're so stupid following our politicians, whether they're Republicans or Democrats. And their only job is, hey, let's make these people not like each other. We don't live in their neighborhoods.

We're all got money. Let's make the whites and blacks not like each other. Let's make rich people and poor people not like each other. Let's scramble the middle class. I truly believe that in my heart. So there's Sir Charles dropping some wisdom. I saw a lot of people on Twitter agreeing. And then some people, of course, making fun of him how naive he is because they didn't like that he wasn't on their side.

But it sounds like Charles is saying what I kind of believe, and that is that a lot of politicians, I don't want to say all. And I don't want to say anyone all the time. But they're more interested in accumulating power. And they do that by stirring up division. Here's a big problem. When you stir up division over confidence in election results, that is really dangerous. because our government depends on free and fair elections. So if I'm understanding you and Charles Barkley correctly,

it seems like what we're getting at is there are people, whether they're politicians, their corporations, or individuals who have a vested interest in stirring up hatred, in stirring up disdain for each other. In other words, I can get more political power if I take something, which is maybe not actually that controversial, and turning it into something that's an issue of tremendous controversy. Well, I think the politicians definitely have a motivation to do that. It's one way they raise money. You don't raise any money by saying, hey, here are two or three things I want to do. But you raise a lot of money by saying the other side is doing this horrible thing. We must stop them. And all of a sudden, the money pours in. So I know politicians do it for sure. You see it. It's very obvious. But I think as we keep talking today, we're going to see that private companies are starting to get into the same.

game. They're starting to monetize division. And I don't know, but it seems like a really bad step for our country. So let's explore this for a second. Why is this controversy happening? It is a controversy on both sides. So you have people on the left who this is a controversial law because it's the new Jim Crow. And you have people on the right, this is controversial because you have all of these corporations and individuals calling them racist for being for voter integrity. And so it's a controversy on both sides. Why is it a controversy? I think the first thing is what actually what you just said a second ago. Part of why it's a controversy is because we have politicians who are invested in undermining our confidence in elections because it helps them gain power.

So Patrick, we're going to play a little game, all right? A little timeout, little game. All right. So I'm going to ask you a question and you tell me which politician fits this criteria. Okay. So here we go. One, this politician never conceded when they lost the state of Georgia. Okay? Got it? Got it. Two, this politician lost the state of Georgia by more than 10,000 votes. Three, this politician blamed the Republican leadership, specifically Brian Kemp for their loss.

And four, this politician claimed that the election was stolen from the voters. Now, who fits all four of those? Who is this politician? Name it. Name the person. Well, Keith, I know. you're a tricky guy. This is a trick question right here. I'm full of tricks. So the answer is Donald Trump, of course, but also Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for Georgia's

governorship in, was that 2018? 2016. She was in the contest against Brian Kemp. She lost by 50,000 votes. Brian Kemp, who now is the governor, and Brian Kemp was the state secretary in charge of voting in the elections in Georgia. That was his position when he was running for governor against Stacey Abrams, and she accused him of suppressing the votes by purging the voter rolls of minority voters. And this has since been pretty comprehensively disproven. And even if it were true, it could never have been enough to make up 50,000 votes worth of a loss, right? Even if that happened, it didn't wipe out 50,000 votes. And Stacey Abrams never conceded the election and has kind of gone around with this attitude that the election was stolen from her. But

so did Donald Trump. In fact, it's bizarre. Donald Trump's playbook seems to have been pulled, at times, verbatim from Stacey Abrams' playbook. Now, he lost the state of Georgia by 12,000 votes, and he blamed Brian Kemp and Republican leadership for not being strong enough and standing up to the various electorate and saying, look, no, we need to redo this entire election because it was stolen from Donald Trump. They said, no, our elections were fair. Our elections were done properly. Yeah, and so it's kind of interesting that both sides are undermining the election. And both sides have had their advocates, I think you'd say. Hillary Clinton, Cory Booker, other people have said Stacey Abrams should be the governor of Georgia. And of course,

lots of people, including Trump's lawyers, went on television and made absolute fools of themselves saying that had been stolen when clearly it hadn't. The Georgia election might have had some hiccups. It might have had some problems. But it for sure wasn't stolen. The people of Georgia voted in higher numbers for Joe Biden. And if I could talk to you, the person listening right now, I would just ask you to look inside and ask how you're responding to this. Do you hear one story and say, well, that seems legitimate? The Donald Trump thing, that one really had something to it.

Or maybe you're on the other side. Oh, the Stacey Abrams thing, you guys aren't really being fair. I would just propose to you. Stop, slow down, look inside, look in the mirror, and ask yourself, have you been caught up into this little political black hole that is keeping you going with Ames? anger and frustration and all of these claims of disenfranchisement on both sides. Are you allowing it to suck you in? Or can you take a sober look and realize that both sides are doing the exact same thing? Yeah, go back to Charles Barkley, because this isn't about adjudicating who won what

election, not at all. Those have been already settled. The claim Barclay made was that our politicians are stirring up division. And all we're saying is that both sides are doing it. In fact, before this Georgia bill was completed, before it had been voted into law, Stacey Abrams had actually bought the website www.jimcrow2.com in order to, whenever the bill went live and was voted in, in order to have this website to say, see, this is Jim Crow. So she had anticipated this happening and bought it, and that's significant because when President Biden was on ESPN in that interview I referred to earlier with Sage Steel, he said this was Jim Crow 2.0. Well, it turned out that Stacey Abrams, like you said, had already

bought that website, so they were up ready to go. Here's my point. If you're watching a football game and you see a play that was just the perfect play to beat the other team, you think, wow, that coach was really prepared. He knew exactly how to do what he needed to do against the other team. You know that he was prepped. Now, that's fine in football, but when it comes to politics, if you're prepping to call something Jim Crow before it's even done, that should alarm you. It might be a great play, and it actually has turned out to be a great play, but it's not an honest play. Well, and you can say the same thing about the Georgia Republicans. One of the reasons that the Democrats took both Senate seats from the state of Georgia on the special election on January 5th is because a lot of Trump voters in Georgia sat out that election because they thought the election was fraudulent. Their president had told them, look, elections are frauds, so they didn't go to the polls. So now it seems a little disingenuous other Republicans to say, hey, we're going to tighten these up. We're going to change our voter laws. people have said it's probably a power grab, probably an outreach to all those Trump voters who sat out the Senate election trying to bring them back into the fold saying, hey, look, we tighten it up. These elections are reliable now. So both sides are playing to their base. Yeah, this isn't just a voter integrity law. It's a law that is designed to bring people back into the fold who said that the last election was fraudulent. That I think is clearly one of the goals of Republicans in passing this. Really quick, before we move on from politicians,

Let's talk about Joe Biden again. So he again, you said this. He called this Jim Crow in the 21st century. He said what happened before the voter rights act was Jim Crow. This is Jim Eagle. Which I don't get that at all. Well, it's kind of funny because he kind of imagined like an old guy who doesn't know how to get a joke at and it comes out. This is Jim Eagle.

Just imagine if you're a Jim Eagle out there and you go to work the next morning and people are looking at it and suspiciously. You racist, you. You're Jim Eagle. Jim Eagle. So I'm not even sure what it means. But Biden used this law as an opportunity to prop up himself, to get his message out there, and to mobilize people against Republicans. Now, I'm going to read a quote from what he said. He said, what I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is.

It's sick. It's sick. Deciding that you're going to end voting at five o'clock when working people are just getting off. Well, there's one big problem. This wasn't the only place he did it. That's incorrect. In fact, the Washington Post, which is no bastion of conservatism, said that he got four Pinocchio's for everything that he said because he was deceiving people. This does start to sound like Jim Crow if you lie about it.

I just want to read more of the quote from Biden. He said, among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early, so working people can't cast their vote after their shift is over. So Biden has kind of presented himself as the working man. The working Joe? Oh, good. From Scranton, Pennsylvania, a working class town. Also the home of the office.

Scranton is? That's where the show takes place. Scranton, Pennsylvania. Wow. Keith doesn't watch TV. People are mystified that you don't know that Scranton Pennsylvania is. Do they make a book called Office for Dummies? Because maybe while you're reading football for dummies, I could watch office.

That is a great idea for you. I'll look it up. Or maybe I could read Dropbox for dummy. Oh, that would save us all so much time. Wouldn't it, though? But here's what Lynn Kessler, who, like you said, is the fact checker for the Washington Post. He said, quote, on election day in Georgia polling places, are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. And if you're in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing

in the new law changes those rules. So it's like Barkley said, politicians on both sides are motivated to stir up division to accumulate more and more power. It's a power grab. I found it so alarming on every side. Back when Donald Trump was being elected in 2016, I can't remember the precise moment. I'm pretty sure it was when he was given the nomination by the Republican Party. There's this moment where they start bringing on stage all of these people who had family members killed by immigrants. I remember that. Sad stories. Oh, super sad stories. And I'm not trying to minimize that, but watching it, you would get the impression that there's an immigrant on every corner with a gun ready to kill you or someone that you love. Now, I'm sorry, go look at the facts.

The amount of people who are killed by illegal immigrants is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly small. I mean, tiny, tiny, tiny. Now, I don't want that to ever happen. I'm not okay with it. But the presentation of it is exactly what Joe Biden was doing with Jim Eagle. He's making something look true that wasn't true. Both sides are trying to make you scared of the other side. That's exactly right. And they're trying to do it to accumulate power. But we've said that enough. The media companies, this won't surprise you. They are for sure into it because they have monetized division. So when I say they're into it, all I mean is that they profit off of division. whether like Berkeley said it's black, white, rich, poor, Republican Democrat, they don't want to really cover the policies. They want to cover the horse race. They want to cover the stories around that because that's what people tune in for it. They've made politics into a blood sport so they can broadcast it.

You want to know the only person who loves Donald Trump more than Donald Trump? Let me guess. CNN. CNN. See? Yeah. I mean, CNN in New York Times, their viewers or subscriptions in the case of the New York Times, they've gone down since, Trump left office. Trump takes office. The New York Times has three million subscribers. Trump leaves office. They have raised that to 7.5 million subscribers. Let's go to CNN. Trump enters office. Their viewership among people between the ages of 25 and 54 is incredibly low. By the time he leaves office, they have more viewers than Fox, which had never happened in history. Now, this is where things get real interesting. Between Biden's inauguration and March 15th and the end of the election, CNN lost almost

half of its prime time viewers. So Trump and CNN hated each other, but not really, right? They're frenemies. They're business partners. They were in business together. They both used each other for their own personal gain. The same for the Times and same for a lot of other media. And the exact same thing is happening around this Georgia case. We are watching, frankly, as mainstream media. On both sides of the coin are using this as a propaganda machine to get out their own message. Probably the worst offender with CBS News, who had an article titled, Three Ways, Companies Can Fight Georgia's Restrictive Voting Law. I think that was a tweet.

They tweeted that the article wasn't near as incredibly biased as that sounds. But the tweet that packaged the article, that sold the article, and what the vast majority of people read was the tweet was, here's our plan for how the companies can take this down. Now, that's fine if you're a political advocacy group, but not if you're supposed to be like mainstream journalism. mainstream, supposedly nonpartisan, fair-minded media. There's nothing fair-minded about that. So let's skip out of the media because nobody's surprised by that.

Let's get to what I think is really interesting, and that is how private companies are starting to get wrapped up, drug into this division. So if Barclay mentioned politicians, we're saying, yeah, sure, could have mentioned media, could have mentioned even these companies that we are so familiar with, brand names that we buy every day. Let's talk about some funny examples around the Georgia thing. The commissioner of the MLB apparently also has a membership to Augusta, which is in Georgia. And I think it was Marco Rubio sent him a letter saying, as long as you're taking the All-Star game out of Georgia, I assume you'll be relinquishing your membership to Augusta. Yeah, revoking your membership at this high-class club, but I don't think Rob Manfred has responded to that.

And what's so ironic about the MLB moving out of Atlanta is that in the name of helping minority rights, they've hurt a lot of minorities. I think it was $100 million that the Atlanta area lost. Atlanta is a majority minority city. And so they lost $100 million in revenue. That'll hurt businesses owned by people of all races. And they moved, catch this, they moved the All-Star game to Denver, Colorado, which is far more white. as a city and a state than Atlanta and Georgia. And the voting laws are not appreciably different. When you get into the details, you start realizing this is an advertising campaign.

This is the MLB's way of, frankly, reaching people in my age demographic. Everybody wants to get the younger demographic and saying, hey, your social causes that you care so much about, we care about them to. I think it's totally disingenuous. I don't believe it for a second. So Coca-Cola, Delta, they do the exact same thing. And yet, Delta has received a lot of capital, a lot of investment from Chinese businesses to create flight paths to China. They are literally business partners with a state, which is genociting people. Genociding a verb? I don't know. Well, I guess it is now. Privacy school, Patrick says it's a verb. You live with it. It's a verb now. Yeah, so China is going to coming up here because it turns out that China is a huge test case to measure the sincerity

of any sports league or any business. Yeah, because China is widely known as a tremendous human rights violator. Tremendous. Like, they are exterminating Uyghurs, Muslims in China right now, minority groups in China. And a lot of these businesses and sports leagues, MBA, MLB, and some of the businesses are deeply invested in China. Absolutely, why? Because there's so many eyeballs. therefore there's so much money to be made in China. So if you really care about social justice, that's fine. If it has a corporation you want to say our cause is social justice, that's why we really

do what we do. That's fine, but you should be consistent. Yeah, and if you're not, if you don't... Then stop it. Well, if you're not consistent in the places that it costs you money, then you'll have to forgive us if we doubt your sincerity. Let's take this outside of the Georgia example and talk about PNG, and Gamble. They own Gillette and Pantene ProV.

I use Pantine, do you? I do not. I don't wash my hair every day. Wow. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. I've probably washed my hair two to three times a week. How do you think it looks so good, man?

Got to keep those natural oils. I'm stunned. I wish I had something to say, but I am stunned. Why don't you wash your hair? I wash my hair three times a day. Wow, no wonder it looks so dry. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. I'm now going to be getting hygiene advice from you?

Yeah, Pantine has not done its job. I don't know, I just bought Pantene. All right, go. Tell me, why should I not have bought Pantyne? Oh, I have zero interest. I'm not boycotting Pantin. You're boycotting Shoulet. I am boycotting showers.

Do you only shower? I do shower. I do shower just, no, I shower my body. How do you know, never mind. You want me to draw a picture on the board? Well, maybe. After this, though. All right, let's go.

So, Procter and Gamble own Gillette and Pantin ProV. Now, they made news, you might say, at least amongst conservative circles, because Gillette had a series of advertisements which were decrying toxic masculinity. And it wasn't in the most nuanced way ever. And people are kind of wondering, well, gosh, your audience is clearly men. So who are you winning over? And I think people who said that, what they didn't understand is that again, for millennials, who are men, we don't like toxic masculinity any more than anybody else does. And so we say, yeah, I would like to buy my razor from a company that's against that kind of masculinity, because that's not me. Did that work out for them? I mean, how's that gone, do you know?

I have no idea how any of these things go, but they've stayed entrenched in it. Pantine ProVee then does a whole series of advertisements which are showing transgender children, same-sex couple moms and dads. I mean, it was bizarre this year with the NFL. I always kind of had to watch what was happening on the commercials, that there was something violent or sexual, making sure that my kids wouldn't watch it. But now I've got this whole new category of, are they going to be introduced to transgenderism? It was like a drag queen on every other advertisement. It felt like sometimes. times. You know what we do to solve that problem? We get the NFL Sunday ticket. It's what real fans do, people that don't read football for dummies. And me and my boys, we watch no commercials on football Sunday. I think you have to have satellite or something for that, right? Direct TV. See, I don't have satellite. I'm a cord cutter, man. God bless you, but I will always have DirecTV as long as they're the only people to have NFL Sunday tickets. It's the best invention ever. The Red Zone channel? Yeah, never mind. I've heard it's awesome, but I'm not going to have that. It's true fans.

I'm going to suffer through these advertisements. Now, here's the deal. Is Procter & Gamble truly for hashtag LGBTQ beauty? Is it really against toxic masculinity? Or is this just a big advertising campaign to convince you as a consumer that they are? Well, the Wall Street Journal just reported today as we record this, that Procter & Gamble has been deeply invested with a Chinese company whose main job is to break Apple's security features

so that Procter & Gamble can surveil you. Oh, wow. So do millennials care about being surveilled? Go social justice. Or do they do that through their Dropbox? They're working with a Chinese company. By the way, they're giving money to a company that works with a state

that has a vested interest in surveilling us as well, but they're working with a company to watch us. And by the way, you're like, what kind of things is Apple trying to protect us from? They don't want apps to scan your thumbprint. that seems like important. They don't want apps to be listening to you as you. You mean say Apple has companies come to them and say, hey, will you give us the data from people's thumbprint? As far as tech companies go, Apple has been the most invested in saying that people should own their own data. And so they have invested and they're actually rolling out a new privacy system right now, which basically makes it so that if you are an app and you are taking people's data from them without their knowledge, you have to ask the person for permission. And if you don't abide by this, Apple is going to take.

you off their app store. So you have people like Mark Zuckerberg and other saying, oh, this is terrible. It's so bad. I can't run my business. To us consumers, what we need to realize is that we are being listened to, our names, our information, where we walk, where we go, where we buy things. All of this is being collected. Procter and Gamble, in fact, Google and Facebook, they weren't doing a good enough job collecting people's information. So P&G made a database of 1.5 billion people. Billion with a B. In other words, if you take out the billion people who don't have the internet, you've got about a one in five, actually more than that, chance of being in this database. In fact, probably everybody listening is actually inside of that database. And they have profound

details about you and your personality. Why? So they can send you targeted advertisements, targeted to you to manipulate your behavior so that you will buy their product. But I guess, honest question here, what's the point? How does this connect back to their sincerity with transgender commercials? My point is really simple. How many LGBTQ people or how having their information surveilled by P&G without their permission and used against them so that P&G can tell them stuff. How many toxic men out there are having the exact same? Where people who are against it are having it happen? And can we think of anything perhaps more toxic than stealing people's information, collecting it into a database and using it so that you

can treat them like your personal piggy bank? Yeah, I think all these private companies, at least the ones who are publicly owned, they report to stockholders. They report to a board of directors. What they're about is their bottom line. They're about making money. And so if putting transgender people in a commercial help make money, God bless them, they'll do that. If having commercial against toxic masculinity will help, great. Well, it doesn't matter. It's just an advertising strategy. So you think, wow, these companies are noble and they care about things I care about. No, what they care about is getting money out of your pocket and into their pocket. And they'll do that through data surveillance. They'll do it by going to China. They'll do it by putting on a commercial that makes you think therefore the causes you are.

But it's just a strategy to get money from you to them. Now, let's go back to Charles Barkley. Remember what he said. He said that there's politicians who are invested in keeping us angry at each other. It's not just them. There are media corporations and there are businesses that are invested in it. Because guess what we've discovered over the last six years with Facebook and other advertising platforms? If you get people angry, you elicit a response.

People want to buy things when they're angry. People want to do something when they're angry. And so it's not an accident that they're picking causes. Because what they realize is if I can get this person angry, if I can get them to say that Pantene ProV is in my tribe, that will cause them to do a behavior, to go and buy their product. So they are also invested in keeping us angry at each other. And so all these social media things, we all know that people will stay on social media if they're angry, upset, if their emotions are high.

And so there's a lot of money to be made by keeping people stirred up. So this just leads us, I think, to a bigger, broader question and why we even talked about this in the podcast to begin with. Is this really the America that we want to live in? Is this really the world that Christians want to participate in? Do Christians want to buy into the narrative that everything is politicized, that everybody does have to be into a political tribe? That I need to hate you and be against you, whether you're a politician or a media corporation or a business, if you don't agree with everything that I agree with. There's a lot of things that we used to be able to find unity in,

and sports was a big part of that. Now, it's not just major league baseball, right? It's the whole Colin Kaepernick take a knee, and then all these people on the conservative side said, oh, I'm not going to watch the NFL if they're going to take a knee, if they're going to disrespect the flag. Of course, that's not what the people taking the knee said they were doing, or their intention, but it was all politicized.

Remember Mike Pence went to the game in Indianapolis, And as soon as they took a knee, he marched out of his suite. Now, that was all staged. They knew what was going to happen. They were just doing that to make a point to stir up more division. And nobody was better at that, I don't think, than President Trump. He made a living, built a campaign and a presidency on stoking that division. But again, like we've said, it happens on both sides.

And so people are playing with your emotions. They are toying with you for their own gain. And do you really want to do that? Do you want to walk around in a constant stage of outrage? addicted to outrage in order to make Facebook or Google or the Republicans or the Democrats or... A lot of money. Yeah, is that what you want to do? Because it makes you miserable and it makes them money.

It doesn't just do that. It tears apart our communities. I mean, we've experienced this a lot over the last five years. You go back before 2015 with the church that we're pastors of, and we were able to make partnerships with a lot of organizations. And both organizations knew we really don't agree on a lot. of things, but there are a few things that we hold in common. And so we would choose to emphasize what we shared rather than what we disagreed over. Those days are long gone. It's amazing.

I mean, like tolerance used to mean I can work with people who have different views than me. I can tolerate dissenting views and still work together for common good. Now tolerance means that you have to support what I believe. And if you don't, then I have to be against you. So we send donuts to all the teachers in our public school system here and different school every day. Just the way of saying thank you. We appreciate what you do. You're blessing our children, our community. Especially in this last year. Teachers been on the front line. So we'll send donuts and pastries and just say, hey, thank you for what you do. And it's for everybody on their staff. Well, we get some feedback and be as vague as possible here. You still get the point. We got some feedback from one school that they weren't interested. in it. And just one person probably in the school said that they weren't interested in getting donuts from us because they didn't agree with us. And I'm like, really? Like you can't even

accept donuts for us saying thank you to all the teachers there. If you want to send donuts to me, I don't care who you are. You can be atheist. You can be against me in any way you want. I'll just say, hey, thank you and eat the donut. I hope it's moist. That's the one I like. I mean, why do we have to make divisions over who can get what cinnamon roll? But that's where we are. I would like to make a division. I can only eat cinnamon rolls from people who agree with me. And so I can only buy shoes from companies that agree with me. I can only buy shampoo for companies that agree with me.

I'll only watch sports leagues of companies that agree with me. This is insanity. I opt out. No, I opt out. We could continue to multiply stories. One of my favorite partnerships that we had years back was with a local film festival. That's a documentary film festival. And I still love it.

I've advertised for them and put their stuff on to my Twitter and Facebook and other places because I hope that they continue to be successful. They're great for our city. Yeah, and the people who run it, we really think are great people. But we preached a sermon here in town as we're just going through the book of Genesis. And we said some things about gender that every person who knew us in this organization knew exactly where we stood on these issues before we ever preached about it. It wasn't, Brandon, I have memories, conversations of discussing.

Now, they disagreed with us vehemently, vehemently. But we used to be able to have conversations about that kind of stuff and talk and process and learn and work together. And by the way, the main point in the sermon was just we actually need to love our neighbors no matter what their sexuality, gender, fill in the blank is. We should show the people whoever they are, anybody, dignity, love, respect, care, concern. Yeah, look, we said some things that they disagreed with. But I think the point is that instead of saying, let's kind of learn from one another and still work together on the areas that we sharing common, they said, well, we've got to cancel you. We've got to walk away from you. We can't

work with you. We can't accept your advertising dollars because we don't agree on everything. Yeah. So it wasn't just them. I don't even agree with myself on everything. I think. So how in the world I share an office with you and you don't shower evidently. So there's a lot more things that we should divide over. One of my personal mantras is don't believe everything you think. My life has a lot happier the more I tell myself, think about it for a second. I tell myself, don't believe everything you think. Because there are lots of things I think that I should not believe that are just stupid. I mean, if you were married to me, you'd have way more concerns than how frequently I shower.

No, no, no, I wouldn't. That'd be behind the list still. But my point in bringing up this example was they as well as several other arts organizations that we supported. And again, all of them knew exactly where we sit on these things. We were never trying to hide the ball. They all said we cannot work with someone who doesn't agree with us on everything. In fact, I think some of the organizations had to create their own little ethical codes, which they never previously had to articulate their, I guess, vision of human life.

I think we're living in a weird world when arts organizations, when schools, when privately owned businesses are starting to think that they have to articulate a vision of ethics in the good life. I thought what we shared in common was that we both like documentaries. Yeah, both like... We both like art. We both like art. Well, not you. Just that we could all rally around... We all like baseball. But now baseball is going to get...

political or football. Now football is going to get political and we can't just enjoy something together. I don't know. It's all weird. Here's the deal. When our culture lost a sense of common good and common truth that we could work together, the name of the game became power. The name of the game is who has the most power. And that goes back to Charles Barkley quote, the more that our politicians, the more that our media, the more that companies can divide us, scramble us, as he said, then what that gives them is the upper hand. At least they think it does. But here's how we take back their power. We say, no, I'm not going to play that game. I'm not getting sucked up into outrage. I'm not going to say people who disagree with me are my enemies. No, they're just good people who have different opinions than I do, at least largely. So we've got to stop this. They're not going to stop it. As long as they can make money off of you, they will. You've got to opt out and say, no more. I'm not doing it. And the church should be the one place where this happens. When we look at Jesus' ethic, how we treat others, how we love others, he said things, which is.

which were deeply offensive in his day, and as they turn out, they're still deeply offensive today. He said to love your enemies. When asked the question, who's my neighbor? Who should I really love? He found the most hated person, a Samaritan, and said, that's who you should love. If Jesus was here today and you are a deeply committed Republican and he told you the story of the good Samaritan, it would be the good anti-racist. If you were a Democrat and Jesus was to tell you the story of the Good Samaritan, it would be the story of the good Maga guy.

that's how Jesus would lean into you. And the challenge for us in the church is to not get sucked up into this vortex of anger and instead to love our neighbor no matter who they are, to find what we share in common, to emphasize those things, to use those things as bridges for love and for charity, so that we can have communities that aren't divided. The church should be the place that's coming to actually reconcile communities,

which are being ripped apart by this maelstrom of anger. And now Patrick's going to go take a shower. I will not be taking it. I actually do have to go get my hair cut. So in my hair cutter's defense, I did wash my hair last night. It doesn't seem fair to someone who's cutting my hair to make them touch my dirty hair. You talk about loving your neighbor. I mean, right there it is.

Patrick Miller deciding to wash his hair. I mean, watch it an extra day. I mean, the sacrifice, it must have taken for you. I, you wash your hair for your hair cutter, is that we call it? Your barber? If you think about it. You're a stylist. I bet you go to a stylist.

I don't go to a stylist. You go to a stylist. Oh, my gosh. If you spend on average maybe two to three minutes, well, if you're washing your hair three times a day, we're probably at the six to ten minute mark of how much time you spend on your hair every day. I save all that time. Oh, wow. What do you do with it?

What do you do with it? What do you do with extra six minutes? Well, you couldn't believe the amount of effective things I do with my sense. I'm just conjugating like a boss. All right. Later, everybody. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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