Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable.

Happy Friday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week doing things a little bit differently, unrelatable today. Typically we do our interview on Friday, but today we're going to talk about the things that are going on in Philadelphia. We are going to relook at some of the statistics surrounding police brutality. And we're going to talk about the effects of rioting and looting, how we should look at that from a Christian perspective. I'm also going to give you some solace about all the craziness and chaos coming from the word of God. And then on Monday, I'm going to have an amazing interview. I've already recorded it with Rod Dreher. He is the author of a few books. One of them is The Benedict Option that came out a few years ago. And then his most recent book is Live Not By Lies in Guys. This was a fascinating conversation. It was incredible. He is such a resource for knowledge and for Christian wisdom. But we talked about how America is in this pre totalitarian state and how Christian dissidents can push back on the impending doom and control of communism and what we should be doing to resist it in a God glorifying church, uniting where you are going to be motivated by that conversation, but also, I hope, highly encouraged by it as well. So please tune into Monday's episode. I actually think it's the perfect episode going to election into Election Day on Tuesday, just trying to get our perspective right and to realize that our citizenship is in heaven. Our kingdom is not of this world, but we have work to do until we get there. So I'm going to read you a passage. And this is where Christians is. We are looking out our window. We're seeing the chaos that is raging in the streets is we're seeing people that are torn apart by resentment, anger and selfishness and division as we see a world that is so confused and lost in desperate and lonely and anxious. This is where we get our serenity. This is where we get our solace, our peace, our assurance, our confidence. And it's from this passage, Matthew ten, twenty six through thirty three. Jesus says this, "So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark say in the light and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell are not to Speros sold for a penny. And we say this line on this podcast all the time. A lot of you have said I know this line because of relatable Jesus says, and not one of them, not one of these sparrows will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not. Therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my father, who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven." So that is our calling. That is our purpose. That is our aim. No matter what goes on in the world, no matter who is elected, no matter who is in power, our goal is to proclaim the truth of Christ from the rooftops, to be unashamedly representative of him, representative of the gospel, realizing that we have a good father who takes care of us that has no to all the heroes on our head, who knows every single part about us, who loves us, and sent his son to die for us so we could be friends with him and spend forever with him. And until then, our goal is to glorify him. Our goal is to share the good news about him, and our goal is to glorify him in every thing that we do because he takes care of us. So as we get into everything that's going on and in Philadelphia, everything that's going on in the world right now and as we take an assessment of the things that are going on, I don't think it's good for us to just put our heads in the sand and to pretend like the chaos is happening outside our door. I think we have to very honestly look at what's going on and what our reaction should be according to God's word. But we cannot let this take our joy. We can't let this take our peace and take our assurance, even as we work to be knowledgeable and be aware of things that are going on. We also have to have a perspective that is eternal and that is of heaven and not of the anxieties of the world that will weigh us down. So all of that said, let us take a look at some of the things that are going on in Philadelphia and the political practical implications of this. So you guys know, since May, we have seen looting. We have seen rioting. We have seen anarchy. We have seen the destruction of property, we have seen violence, we have seen murder, I come from left wing anarchist, namely Black Lives Matter activists and people who go by Antifa, an anti fascist, that's actually a misnomer. There are they are very fascist in nature. But these organizations and activists from these organizations are creating chaos in major cities. All of them, by the way, are led by Democrats and are characterized by Democratic policies in order to, they say, create an uprising in the name of racial justice. And that's what's happening right now in Philadelphia, because a black man by the name of Walter Wallace Jr. was shot and killed by the police. I will include a link of the video of the incident in the description of this podcast. I won't play it right now just in case there are some trigger issues there or you're listening with people that you that that don't want to see or hear that. But if you want to go watch it, I will include the YouTube link to the video to show what actually happened. I'll describe it to you in the video. You hear officers and you see the officers holding their guns and they are saying, drop the knife, drop the knife. And you see Wallace holding a knife. And instead of dropping the knife as they order him multiple times, he comes towards the police. There are lots of people around as well who are kind of screaming, obviously frantic. There are reports that Wallace was mentally ill, that he had bipolar disorder. Maybe this was an episode. We just don't know. But the police, when he started charging them with the knife, shot him and they were shots that were ultimately fatal. Just a little bit about Walter Wallace. He was twenty seven years old and a father of nine children. Some people are going to say, look, this is just another while. Some people are going to say that this is a symptom of systemic racism, that this only happens to black Americans. That's obviously not true. And we will talk about the data in a little bit. But there are also people that are saying that, look, this guy was mentally ill. This is why we need major reform.

This is why we need different people to meet these scenarios. We need social workers or mental health counselors responding to these situations and not armed police. They would say, you know, he could have been having an episode, he needed a psychologist. He needed something like that. I personally don't think that that is that is a good answer. When someone is perpetuating violence and when they are armed, I think the better answer is to help these people like Wallace, who apparently are very seriously mentally ill before they get into this situation.

Because once you have a grown man who has armed mental illness or not, that is posing a threat to people in order to protect the people around them, to prevent people from getting killed, you're going to have to send in armed authorities. Now, I am always for the preservation of life. I wish that he was not dead. He is an image bearer of God. I wish that he could have served his time for whatever crime was being committed.

He is obviously was while he was alive, obviously redeemable just like the rest of us. If you know he was not saved, he was dead in his sin apart from Christ. And we should desire that everyone be saved. Are my desires always restoration for people to turn around their lives? My desire is not for death, and that is certainly true in this case. Do I wish that this could have had a different outcome? Do I wish that this wouldn't have gone that way?

Of course, that is my desire. I wish that in every situation there was preservation of life, but that is not always possible. Tragically, that's just not the reality typically of these kinds of confrontations, that in order to protect the lives of the people around the suspect, the armed person, very often force has to be used depending on the threat, fatal force. In this situation, there was a seemingly manic man running around and charging with a knife.

They asked him in the video to put it down multiple times. We don't know how long they had been trying to de-escalate before the video started, before it started being recorded or what they had been trying to do before this video was filmed. All we know from the video is that they were yelling at him to drop the knife and instead he came at them and they shot him. And not only that, they probably knew this person's record before they actually arrived, which could be why they were especially cautious in why they were more apt to take the actions that they did in order to protect themselves in the people around them.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Wallace had been in and out of court for nearly a decade with convictions for crimes including resisting arrest and robbery, NBC reported that he had been arrested in March after he allegedly threatened his child's mother over one of his child's mothers over the phone saying, I'll shoot you and that house up. He was actually awaiting trial for for that threat. The New York Post says this, quote, In twenty nineteen, he was charged with resisting arrest by kicking the windows and door panels of a police patrol car in 2016.

During a robbery, he allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck and held what she believed to be a gun to her head, NBC said, citing court records he was sentenced to 11 to 23 months behind bars. His mother had a protective order against him in 2013, which he allegedly violated when he, quote, threw water in her face and punched her in the face and threatened to return and shoot her. The report said again, citing court records that same year, he pleaded guilty to assault and resisting arrest after punching a police officer in the face that same year.

A judge also ordered a psychiatric evaluation, along with mental health treatment, the reports said. So mentally ill or not, this was an individual who probably should not have been or definitely should not have been on the street. He probably should not have had any access at this point to women and children, specifically the people he had threatened. His mother apparently was there. He had already assaulted and threatened. His mother, threatened to kill her. He has multiple alleged victims and clearly posed a threat to the people around him.

And if you want to talk about problems with our justice system, this is one of those problems. We just don't have great ways. It seems to compassionately and effectively help people with mental illness, especially in poor communities who can't just afford to go out and, you know, pay a psychologist seven hundred dollars an hour to treat them. Our justice system very often, it seems, lets people back into society, despite them being a danger to themselves, being a danger to their victims in other potential victims.

There was another terrible story of this. Just to emphasize this point coming out of Norman, Oklahoma, a young pregnant woman was beaten almost to death by her boyfriend, who reportedly wanted to kill her baby. And the reason he was able to beat her the second time is because he made bail after his first arrest because the judge, Judge Scott Brockmann, only issued a fifteen hundred dollar bail while the prosecution recommended a thirty thousand dollar bail. While this judge said that he doesn't believe in holding people on bail before being convicted.

And so he made the bail very small. He was this guy, this alleged abuser was able to easily post bail on October 17th. That boyfriend beat the girlfriend again, almost to death, put her in the hospital. Now, thankfully, he is in jail, being held on a two hundred fifty thousand dollar bail. And apparently the baby and the mom are doing OK. But that never had that never had to happen because he was able to post bond because it was only a fifteen hundred dollar bail, because this apparently social justice judge doesn't believe in high bail amounts before someone is convicted.

This person was able to be let out of jail and rebukes his victim and his baby. There is this idea that's popular in more social justice circles that bail is immoral. It shouldn't be issued at all. They created bail reform in New York that drastically reduced the kinds of cases where judges were allowed to set bail. They had to amend it just a few months later to expand the kinds of cases where a judge or judges could issue cash bail because there are forms coincided with huge spikes in violent crime.

So there may very well actually, I think there are reforms that need to be had with the bail system. I think it disproportionately and unfairly in some cases affect poor affects poor suspects for sure. But as with all policy, especially social justice policy, that is always made to sound compassionate, you have to weigh the other side of the equation. So sure, it might decrease the incarcerated population. That's what bail reform aims to do. But there is very likely a human cost to that reduction in jail population, a cost to the safety and security of previous and potential victims.

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I say all this to say that the reaction to situations like this with Walter Wallace is that while the police just need to be neutered, they need to be weakened, we need to do less. The justice system needs to be less harsh and smaller. Police need to be weaker. It all needs to be replaced by social workers and social justice activists. And again, I'm not saying that there aren't, in many cases, areas where the justice system needs to be made better.

It needs to be reformed in that police the police system could be reformed in some ways and that there could be better training. We've talked about the situations in which I believe the police were totally unjustified in using the force that they did with suspects. That certainly happens. But when we're talking about criminal justice in general, people almost always focus on the accused and the convicted getting treated too harshly and not about the cost to changing that, not about their accusers in the victims of their crimes.

We hardly ever hear from criminal justice advocates about the failures of the justice system when they set bail too low or when they let people out too early or when the perpetrators are are let off too easily. That happens regularly, by the way, and that's a problem, again, that has a human cost to it. And in the case of Walter Wallace, like I said, he had a record that told us that he was very likely a violent threat to his mother, to the women in his life, to police officers and potentially his children.

We should not be putting people, especially those who struggle with mental illness that leads to violence in jail for 20 months for violent crime, then letting them out without any help, without any kind of real accountability and without any kind of checkup like in Walter Wallace. I think the the judge actually did instruct or say that he needed some kind of mental illness treatment. Was there ever any accountability for that? Was there ever any checking in on him to make sure that he was not a threat to himself or the people around him?

It's just not fair for us to put people like that in jail for a few months and then let them out without any kind of real help or safeguards around them. So the justice problems for Wallace predated him getting shot. That's that's the real problem here, in my opinion. Knowing what we know now, the police officers were justified in this particular situation from what we know in using force, not just for their sake, but for the sake of everyone around them who are at risk of getting stabbed by a man running in circles with a knife.

This is very similar to the story of Jacob Blake. Again, someone who I am very glad was not actually killed. I am glad that he is is still alive. But he had already been accused of sexually assaulting and threatening the mother of his children. And the reason why that is relevant is because he was at her house at this time and she called the police and said, hey, this guy is supposed to be here. He's already sexually assaulted me.

He's already threatened me. You know, she was probably scared for her life and for her children's life, called 911. One said, can the police please come and take care of this? And Blake came at the police with a knife and reached into his car and the police didn't know he was reaching for. Apparently, there was a fear that not just that he would be violent, but also that he would harm or kidnap the children. And so in that particular case, from what we know, yes, the police were justified in taking the steps they did to protect all of the people around them in that scenario.

And just a reminder, this is the guy that Kamala Harris told. Went to him, visited him and said that he is is she is is proud of him, regardless of how you feel about the police shooting him. That is ridiculous. I mean, apparently about to get graphic, but apparently, according to accusations, he had just digitally raped the mother of his children while she was sleeping in the bed with one of her sons at her house and accused her of all these things that apparently well, it doesn't even matter whether they were true or not.

He had sexually assaulted her in front of their children. There is no mind paid to her at all. Like there's no attention or sympathy given at all to her in this situation. It just doesn't fit the narrative. It doesn't matter that Jacob Blake was armed. Does it matter that police told him to put the knife down? It does it matter he was apparently harassing the girlfriend he had already allegedly assaulted. Does it matter that the children of the people around him were at risk?

Kenosha, Wisconsin, burned to the ground thanks to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. People's lives and livelihoods who were not involved in the situation at all were ruined. That's the opposite of justice, by the way. Punishing innocent people for punishing innocent people because you want to for doing nothing wrong. That is the definition of injustice. Here are some of the footage of what is going on right now in Philadelphia after.

I guess that is just not healthy. So, as you can tell. It's chaos, it's violence, it's a mob again, this is not justice for the millionth time, and I know when all of this was happening in Minneapolis, people got so mad at the people who were saying this, but these people are not looting because they're righteously angry. I guarantee that a lot of these people do not know Walter Wallace's name. It is most likely not because they are starving.

We see them. These are not homeless people. These are not destitute people. They see an opportunity to do wrong, to steal. And so they are I mean, we as Christians know how human depravity works. This is in all of our hearts. We've read the book of Proverbs. This is what wickedness is. It does this is the outworking of evil. That doesn't mean that many of them haven't had hard lives and that we can't have compassion for them.

That doesn't mean that they're not valuable people made in the image of God with the potential for redemption. Of course they are. They're not worse than the rest of us are when we're when we were without Christ. But we don't have to pretend that this isn't wickedness just because the social justice narrative in critical race theory tells us that we can't call wickedness because of the color of their skin. That is, like I said, a critical race theory view that says that non-white people are oppressed and white people are oppressors no matter what their life experiences are or what their actual actions are.

And therefore, non white people are not responsible for their behavior. But white people, according to critical race theory, are responsible for not just our behavior, but also the reactions to our behavior, whether they are actually racist or not, and the behavior of all of our ancestors. That's madness. That is not God's standard of right and wrong. That's not God's standard of judgment and righteousness. God's judgment will not and does not work that way when God orders us not to steal.

And the Ten Commandments are even to what our neighbor thinks. He means that when Ephesians four orders us not to steal God means that when John Tenten tells us that Satan steals, kills and destroys, and that the world without Christ is ruled and influenced by Satan, God means that. That's the second part of that is what he says in Ephesians to God's righteous judgment will not categorize us as white versus black or oppressed versus the oppressor, but rather as a living Christ or dead in sin.

And when we refuse to call out wickedness in one group because it's politically incorrect or unpopular and critical, race theory tells us that we can't we fail to love those people by refusing to call them to repentance. So right now, the people who are refusing to say that looting and rioting is bad because somehow that is condoning police brutality when that's not at all true. By the way, the Bible also says not to murder. So any situation in which the police or anyone is not justified in using fatal force that is murder and obviously is atrocious to God is something that we should stand up against.

But that was not the case in this scenario. And that does not also mean that we can't say that looting and rioting and destruction of property and theft are also wrong and soul crushing and life crushing on people who buy into that, who won't criticize what's going on in some of these cities. They are following the spirit of this world, which steals, kills and destroys. But Christ offers abundant life. So when we excuse the stealing, the killing, the destroying, when we patronize the people doing these things as if they don't have agency, as if they don't have the ability to make choices, we rob them of the power of the gospel, which is freedom from sin, which is not just which is not just destroying these store owners, the employees of of the of the stores, the people who rely on the economy of the city to live.

But the sin is also destroying the sinners themselves. It is hateful. It is the pinnacle of hate to say that this is OK for them when it is not. That's one thing I keep saying about critical race theory and social justice seeping into the church. Pastors who have adopted this stuff are too scared to talk to their non-white congregants about sin and repentance.

They speak to them only as victims of oppression rather than as victims of their own sin who can be made victorious in Christ. And that has eternal implications. This is what happens when the church takes on the world standards of right and wrong, of justice and injustice. We know from the book that NPR covered, we talked about it a few weeks ago on this podcast called In Defense of Looting, that this is even more sinister in organized than a bunch of of people stealing stuff spontaneously.

This is being orchestrated by left wing anarchist groups who believe that looting is a way to protest against the evils of capitalism. The goal is to slow economic recovery after the lockdown's as a way to create a foundation for a new socialistic order. Now, the people that are going out there and looting and stealing flat screen TVs and are emptying out a dollar store, they don't realize that, but they are being used and exploited by these groups in order to accomplish that goal.

The author of the book In Defense of Looting said this in April. In April. So before George Floyd happened, before the riots and looting broke out in Minneapolis at the end of May, beginning of June, the author said this, quote, A new energy of resistance is building across the country. And he this person I actually don't know what the author's name is, but this author said that looting is coming, that the organization of protests against capitalism via looting is coming, said that in April, wrote this book before that this is much of this chaos is orchestrated.

It is organized. It is not just spontaneous anger. Now, the people who are organizing it are using probably some of the spontaneous anger and desperation and emotions of some of these young people to advance their goals. But behind the scenes, this is not just righteous, spontaneous anger and a push for racial justice. Again, that's not to say that there aren't people who are who are legitimately angry about racism or that there aren't peaceful protesters because there are many of them, or that there aren't a lot of sincere people who support black lives matter and think racism in the police force is systemic.

There are a lot of sincere, good, compassionate people who do and believe those things. Now, I think they're wrong to latch themselves to those movements, but of course, not all of the people who are on that side are, you know, far left wing, anarcho communist. So it's important to make that distinction. But my assertion is that their sincerity and genuine empathy is being manipulated into buying into a movement that is led by bad people with bad goals and is already reaping bad results and the very communities and lives that these very pathetic people claim to want to help.

And this is what Black Lives Matter is about. They are a self-proclaimed Marxist. That means communist organization, self proclaimed. I'm not just applying that to them. They have set it themselves. They are a Marxist organization that does not care about black lives in general. They do not care about Zachariah Turner, the eight year old killed by rioters in Atlanta a couple months ago. They do not care about Antonio Mays, the black 16 year old killed by rioters in Seattle a few months ago.

They do not care about David Dorn, the black former police chief killed by rioters in St. Louis. When they say their names, they're not talking about these people. They do not care about black people killed by other black people, which is ninety three percent of all black homicides, by the way, they are not concerned with gang violence or the babies and toddlers killed in drive by shootings every week in Compton, Chicago, New York. They do not care about the hundreds of thousands of black babies being killed in the womb every year because Planned Parenthood specifically targets these communities and sets up shop in these communities.

They do not care that abortion is disproportionate among black women. They do not care about that. They are not concerned with black lives in general. They only care about black lives taken in a particular way that will justify cries of racism that they can then use to exploit the emotions and desperation of young black people to get them to loot and burn and kill. They in a TIFA want the chaos. They think that it is a revolution and this is what Marxism is.

It has always been it is violent. It is deadly. It is never about justice. It is about retribution. We have talked about all of this stuff so many times, read about the Soviet revolution, the Zimbabwean revolution, the Cuban revolution, the Chinese revolution, even much of the French Revolution all waged in the name of liberation and love, only to end in tyranny and oppression. History is our guide here. Guys like we are not waiting in the darkness wondering if there's ever been a revolution like this and how it ended.

We know how it is. It doesn't end well. We don't have to wonder this stuff. Is it new? This is also the product of of our school system, not teaching history. Leftism is an ideology that cannot be built. It cannot grow. It cannot unite. It's just not in its nature. Its nature is deconstruction, deconstruction of the nuclear family, of gender, of all social norms, of capitalism. Black Lives Matter has openly put themselves against the nuclear family, against what they call gender stereotypes against capitalism.

They're open about these things. That is why Black Lives Matter used to say on their site they took it down after several months, but we've got the receipts that they want to disrupt the nuclear family. Why they won't mention fathers, but they'll mention parents and families and children on their website. They want to dismantle gender. They want to destroy capitalism. They want to do away with the Western rule of law. That is what you Mexican do in all the critical race theorists are about it never ends.

Well, we've seen it before. It never ends well. There's never been a functioning society in the history of the world that has existed without the basic categories of male and female. There's ever been a better society than the ones that have been built on the Western rule of law, due process, free speech, freedom of religion, which draws on biblical principles like the like property rights. The nuclear family is the bedrock of all thriving nations and societies, and we are seeing people seek to dismantle each of them in the name of liberation.

It will make things worse. We're seeing that right now in Minneapolis, in Kenosha, in Philadelphia. But if we are discerning as Christians and we abandon all preconceived notions and political narratives, we can look at this particular situation and simply say that this man with tragically a history of serious violence, possibly, potentially, from what we know, mental illness is well charged at police officers with a knife after they told him to put it down multiple times. And because of that, they used fatal force.

We don't have evidence as of right now that this is a story of racism. We don't know that at all. That doesn't mean that there are no racist cops who are never motivated by racism. But we don't know that here. And in the previous situations where we have had these discussions, we also don't know that in those scenarios either. It's not just for us to ascribe racism to a situation simply because it involves a white person and a black person.

That's not truthful, that's not discerning, that's not wise, as we have talked about many times, just getting into the data. And I know this is the part that people have the biggest issue with, but these are just the these are just the numbers. There are 50 to 60 million interactions between the police and the populace every year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Of those interactions in twenty nineteen, according to the Washington Post database, nine hundred ninety nine ended in a police officer fatally shooting a suspect.

That is zero point zero zero two percent of all police interactions with the public. If we say that there are about 60 million interactions per year, point zero zero two percent, that is very comforting that the vast majority of police interactions, the vast majority of police interactions, ninety nine point nine nine and that end well, they end with, you know, peacefully, at least without someone actually getting killed.

Of the nine hundred ninety nine fatal police shooting, fifty five were unarmed and that is technically unarmed. So they could have been trying to assault the officer or someone else in some other way, but they weren't actually armed. That is zero point zero zero zero zero nine percent of all police interactions. Of those, 14 were black, 25 were white. So 14 unarmed black people killed by the police last year. And again, that is technically unarmed.

There were two thousand nine hundred and twenty five black victims of homicide in twenty eighteen, according to FBI data. And 90 percent of them were killed by black perpetrators. And we don't know any of the names of those victims. Most people also don't know the names. Daniel Shavar, Justin Damon, Tony Tempa, Cameron, Eli, Maggie Brooks. I could go on and on because they're white. The media don't cover those in the same way and with the same vigor that they cover the other shootings.

The assertion, though, is that disproportionately black people are shot by the police compared to white people, that black people only make up 12 to 13 percent of the population, yet make up a higher percentage of police shootings. And that is an indication we hear of systemic racism. Jason Riley, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal. He also happens to be black. He has wrote many books about this situation. He argues that is because, unfortunately, tragically and you can say that there are a million different reasons for this, these Inner-City communities end up taking the lion's share of the crime and therefore they take the lion's share of the police attention.

That is not saying that they deserve to be shot by the police or that we should just look away. We should ignore it, especially when it's unjustified. But you have to control for that factor when you're trying to figure out whether or not racism in bias is involved here. They make up. Black Americans make up. About 12 to 13 percent of the population, but unfortunately account for about 40 percent of the homicides, so they are disproportionately victims of violent crimes, which means that they are going to have a disproportionate number of interactions with the police every year.

We just have to factor that in when we are trying to figure out whether or not the police are actually systemically racist in whether or not they are killing people because of their race. Again, I'm not using that statistic to say that there is anything inherent about these communities or that the police are always justified in using the force that they are. I'm just saying this is a factor that you have to factor in when you are figuring out whether or not the police are shooting people because of the color of their skin.

These numbers, these facts actually matter. But I understand if people bring these facts up, you were automatically called a racist. Not for any good reason, but you just are. And if people talk about the ways that we could definitely improve inner city communities, welfare reform, encouraging cohesive family unit, school choice, you're also called a racist. And so we're just stuck in this stupid, vicious cycle. Every time one of these things happens, we're told that we have to repeat the talking points and that's it.

We have to go along with the narrative. We have to pretend that defunding the police and abolishing the prison system, that these are the only solutions. We have to agree that the police in this country are systemically racist. We have to read all the books that critical race theorists tell us to read corporations, an entire political party, the news media, social media, kowtow to the narrative that these far left organizations are perpetuating. And it does nothing but stir up strife and division and ignite racial tensions where they should not exist.

That eventually leads to the kind of violence and destruction that we are seeing in places like Philadelphia. These organizations enable and encourage the chaos. All of these cities experiencing the rioting are run by Democrats. It was reported in Philadelphia that police were instructed to only disperse the looters, not to arrest them. That's not justice. That is the government failing to fulfill their Romans 13 duty that is hateful toward the people affected by the rioting and the looting. But this is what the modern Democratic Party does.

This is the left wing ideology that they are now motivated by. They are scared to do anything because they're scared of being seen as racist. They're scared of the left wing mob. So they'll let people's lives be ruined while they hide away in their homes. Safe. It's sick. I just don't understand why you would vote for more of this. You keep seeing leftist celebrities and influencers saying that they're voting Democrat for people of color. Democrats have been running the cities with the largest concentrations of people of color for decades.

These cases of police brutality and rioting and looting and mob violence have all happened this year in Democrat controlled cities and mostly Democrat controlled states. Democrats aren't going to fix this. They can't fix this. They're already in power in these places. And if you criticize all the the chaos, somehow you are accused of lacking empathy. But the Christian, we have an obligation to master using discernment, speaking truth, resisting deceit, especially popular deceit, and having love and compassion for everyone involved so you can seek and speak the truth and still say that Wallace was an image bear of God whose life mattered.

You can't and should still pray for his friends and family. You can and should also care about the store owners whose livelihoods have been stripped from them because of of looting, not because of anything that they did. The people who are affected by mob violence. We can have compassion and care about all of these groups and care about real injustice when it happens without buying into the popular narratives. Christian, if you're thinking and your mentality and your definitions of justice and right and wrong are reiterated by the entirety of the secular world, that is enough for you at least to take a step back into wonder and to wonder if you're on the right side here.

We should not be informed by the world what justice is, what right and wrong is, what human dignity and the sanctity of life looks like. And so if there is a narrative this that is being pushed down people's throats by every institution, large institution that exists, that's enough for the Christian to take a step back and say, is that right? Is that biblical? Is this going to lead to more peace and justice and unity and equality and fairness?

Something that we should all want is the mainstream narrative on this, right? Maybe in some cases it is, but it is incumbent upon us to know the details, to know the truth, to know the facts and not be scared of that and to not say, you know what, I'm not even going to look at the facts. I'm not going to look. At the statistics, I'm not even going to look at what really happened, I'm just going to empathise with people's anger that's not loving.

Empathy without truth is hate, not love, not love. We have to be able to we have to be able to pair both compassion and truth together, or else we are either entirely fluffy and we're enabling bad and destructive and sinful and ultimately soul crushing behavior. But if we don't have love, then we are just, oh, we're yelling into the wind. We're not going to have any effect or any witness to the world. But it's possible and necessary for us to have both.

Unfortunately, I've I've talked to a lot of Christian women over the past couple of weeks who identify as social justice, left leaning. And when I try to engage with them on these issues, you know, they'll end up responding to one of my stories and say, you're so polarizing, you're so divisive, you're wrong about this. This is a mischaracterization. This is wrong. I say, hey, can you please give me an example of of what you're of what you're talking about?

Can you give me an example of how they have been hateful, not just disagreeing with an ideology or disagree with people's ideas, but can you give me an example of the demonization or the polarizing? Now, I'm not talking about a lot of people. I'm talking about like two people that I've had interactions with in the past couple of weeks and say, can you give me an example? Or, you know, you say that I'm wrong. Can you give me can you talk about where I'm wrong and how I'm wrong?

And the response is always the same. Look, I'm not trying to make a case. Look, I'm look, I'm not on trial here. Look, if you are interested in that, you can just Google it. Look, I don't need to give you examples. And what I found is that much of the pushback is emotional. And when you try to engage with truth, they ask you, they accuse you of not being loving. We can't be factual as people, guys.

We can't be truthful as people. We can't just be filled with these emotions and call ourselves loving. That's not loving at all. That's not an effective witness. Like, have you read the Gospels? Have you read how Jesus speaks? Have you read how he talks? Have you read the letters? Have you read about who God is and how he speaks truth and how important truth is? It's so important for us to be able to couple those two things.

Speaking of love and showing our love, there was an organization. I'm going to pull it up on Instagram right now. There was an organization that is raising money for children who have been affected by the mob violence in Philadelphia. So the fridge on 50 second they posted something that said this hate community. This is an urgent call to action. The students over at Bryant Elementary School are in need of supplies. Many of their homes have been broken into over the last few days because of the rioting and the looting.

They've experienced direct consequences because of their close proximity to. Now, this group calls it the uprising. But I would say that they are riots. And so some things that they need, they need nonperishable foods. They need school supplies, winter coats, gloves and scarves, baby supplies, shoes and clothes. So we're talking about babies that are now missing their supplies. We're talking about kids that don't have their winter coats because they've been stolen by these looters and these rioters.

So if if you want to show love, you can help the people that have been unjustly affected by this by this violence. And so talking about speaking the truth in law, this is how we couple action. This is how we couple love with speaking the truth. We show it and we speak it. Don't look like the rest of the world. Guys, don't let the world evangelize to you about what justice looks like, what love looks like, what compassion and empathy look like.

It doesn't end well. It doesn't end well. You will get nowhere by kowtowing to the secular social justice mob. Trust me on that. There will be more of all this talk on Monday with Rod Dreher and you will leave feeling encouraged and you will feel leaving motivated as well, especially as we go into the election. There's a lot of craziness coming up, guys. I know. And there's a lot of chaos going on. You're scared. You're worried.

You're anxious. I understand. I've had butterflies in my stomach for the past week, just kind of anticipating the tensions and the chaos that is going to happen no matter what Tuesday night holds for us. I think that there will be unrest, unfortunately, and that worries me. I don't want that. I don't want that at all. And so I understand all of your concerns. I really do. But I trust in the fact that God has never been more sovereign or less sovereign than he is right now, that he is steadily on his throne and that he doesn't change.

Hebrews thirteen eight. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. His standards of righteousness don't change. He doesn't move with the culture. He doesn't change with politics. He doesn't get less in charge or less authoritative, depending on who is in the White House are calling. Our purpose does not change because God does not change. So he is in control. He's got it. He knows who is going to win the election. He knows what the next year holds.

He knew what this entire year was going to hold. And he is absolutely in charge. And when he is doing one thing, he's doing a million things, many of which we cannot see. But he promises us that in the end he will claim victory and until then, he is going to use us to bring glory to himself.

It's all that that purpose has it changed? Our job is to love him with all of our hearts, mind, soul and strength, to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means meeting their needs. That means caring for them. That means loving them. That means sharing the gospel within. That also means speaking truth to them and not giving in to what the world says we must look like and sound like and be like. OK, that's all I have for today. I will see you back here on Monday.