Is Woke-ism Dying?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilkie here with Will Herb and Joe Wilkie. We are excited this week to talk about a, I don't know, change in the winds culturally, see maybe if the world's going in a different direction, what that means for Christians. Before we get to that, I want to remind you about the FOCUS Press Benefit dinner. This is your last week to register because it's just a week and a half away at this point. And so focuspress.org benefit it'll be in Lebanon, Tennessee, on Friday night, February 28th. Join us out there. We're going to tell you about some new projects we're rolling out and just kind of have a night to share the work of FOCUS Press. Check that out again, focuspress.org benefit and we would love to see you there. I don't think there's anything else we need to tell you about. And so let's go ahead and jump into the discussion of Is wokeism dead? Is wokeness dead? I think most people are probably familiar with what that means, the idea of wokeness. I've said before, one of our, like Rosetta Stone, if you want to listen to one episode things was the how to know if your church has been captured because we talked about critical theory. And wokeness is kind of the cultural manifestation of critical theory of kind of are you woke or you you know what's going on and you know who's being oppressed and who's, you know, kind of it's hard to explain. Yeah. Somebody else run with, with your definition of it? [00:01:31] Speaker C: Well, I think it's will do. You got it. [00:01:33] Speaker A: You go ahead and I'll go. [00:01:35] Speaker C: Yeah. I think it's as you said with critical theory, it's you've been awoken to these things, I think is kind of where it comes from that you're awake to all of the injustices that are taking place in the world. You're awake to the power dynamics. You're seeing things clearly as to. Yeah. Once again, the, the power struggles that exist between maybe that be race, maybe that be sex with with gender issues and things that are going on there, the people against the government, the 99% versus the 1% when it comes to wealth distribution. All of those things really kind of capture the woke culture of your seeing things, quote, unquote, as they are finally. And everybody else is blind to it. [00:02:12] Speaker A: That's a great definition of how to follow that up. Basically, you're very sympathetic to the plight of all the oppressed people. Is the way that I was going to put that. So again, you've got women, you've got black people, you've got gays, you've got, you know, so you are, you are incredibly sympathetic. And even more than sympathetic, you stand up and are actively voicing your support for those things, if that makes sense. [00:02:34] Speaker B: Right. I meant to have this pulled up a minute ago. The Cambridge Dictionary has added wokeness to their dictionary. Merriam Webster as well, with Cambridge one says a state of being aware especially of social problems such as racism and inequality. Kind of like, do you know, do you know what time it is? Do you know what's up with race, with sex, with whatever other inequality? LGBT movement is part of this feminism, all of these things. Again, it's the power dynamics thing. So again, we did a whole episode on the power dynamics idea, critical theory, but now we're talking about where things stand with that right now. Because the interesting thing is that episode was how to know when your church has been captured. Because so many churches have, so many churches read the Bible through that lens, preach in that way, talk in that way. But culturally, things might be going a different direction. Things that might be something that's going away. And so I want to talk about toward the end of the episode what that means for churches and how I think churches are going to respond to it. But I think before it's one of those that we all have a short memory. I think some people forget, like how bad Covid was and how bad the lockdowns and how crazy things got. People forget how crazy things got with the, the wokeness thing of, you know, the, the black square profile pictures on social media. This. A woman was fired from her job because she posted. Well, I think it's okay to say all lives matter. And people online found it, sent it to her employer, she got fired for it. I mean, just you're unemployable because you said all lives matter or the me too thing. How many people had their, their lives damaged by false claims, by dubious claims, by things like that? And so I, I'm sure we highlighted this briefly that like this was not like, oh, that happened for a couple months. This was a years. It has been a years long thing. [00:04:22] Speaker A: Go all the way back to 2016. We're all sports fans. Colin Kaepernick. Is that name ring a bell like that? That was just sent shockwaves through the sports world. And that's really kind of. I, I remember my first exposure to it. You had the me too. You had kind of, if you were of any notoriety whatsoever as a celebrity, athlete, actress, musician, you. If you were speaking out politically, it was in a woke fashion, you know, standing up for the oppressed again, gays or women or whatever it is. That was the social media world that I lived in from 2015 all the way. Obviously then Covid was kind of the pinnacle of that with, as you talked about the black square profile picture, the Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, all those things. And even beyond that, then you had the vaccine stuff that was the center of kind of. Kind of what became a caricature for the Wokeism of why won't you just love your neighbor and get the vaccine? And all those things. So as somebody who has only been on social media since 2015 or so, this has been all that I've known since I've been on social media. And as we're going to get into, to kind of see the changing of the tide is very fascinating. Joe. [00:05:28] Speaker B: Well, one other thing real quick is it wasn't just that they. They were saying those things. [00:05:34] Speaker C: You had to. [00:05:35] Speaker B: I remember 21 pilots, really popular band. I think it was when Obergefell, the. The gay marriage ruling passed and they didn't post about it and their fan base went nuts. I mean, it was just livid with them of. You haven't said anything in support of this. All the other artists have come out and like, they make music. Why do they need to say. But like, if you didn't bow the. [00:05:52] Speaker C: Knee, if you didn't silence is violence. [00:05:54] Speaker B: You didn't pay homage. Yeah, I mean, all of these things. So go ahead, Joe. [00:05:58] Speaker C: No, I just. This is very interesting thought of Will kind of being on social media for this because I do remember a time when that was not the case. You could post some other things. Not that people are going nuts with it, but you could still post some other stuff. You could see the shift, the. The tide turning where it's like, oh, boy, you know, fired. The cancellation started. Exactly. [00:06:17] Speaker B: Old stuff that people had said and. [00:06:18] Speaker C: All that going back for years. Because you had some things that I certainly wouldn't have posted on Twitter at the time or whatever. It may be going back to 29 or whatever. And yeah, people would go back and dig it up. Did you say this? And there's no grace, there's no mercy. We've talked about some of those things before. But just to highlight that, like that's the. That's what we're talking about. This was really bad. And I think people can forget how much this has dominated the last decade of our Lives. With the cancellation, with the again, the Me too with the. The Black Lives Matter, all the things you had to do along the way, you couldn't stay silent about it. Like you said, as a celebrity. Not that I feel bad for these people in the least, but imagine being them where like every step that you make in with ads, any ads you do, any social media posts you have, any press tour you go on, you're speaking to people hours and hours and hours every single day when you go on these press tours and such, to never say anything out of line, to never use the wrong term, to. I mean, I remember one guy used the term appropriately, but it sounded like a racist term. And I think the guy got fired from his job because he used a perfectly appropriate term, but it sounded bad. This is the world that we lived in. We're finally starting to see the light of day and that's why we titled this Wokeism is Dead. Tides are turning. The we're shifting back and I don't even think it's the way things were. And that's the interesting thing that we want to parse out. I don't even think we're shifting back to the way things were because there's very much a kind of like with the gay marriage, hey, you do you, I'll do me. We're just not going to talk about it. Just. And that's what the gay marriage pushed is, hey, we can love who we want to love. And then it became not only that, like with the trans movement, you have to affirm our preferred pronouns. You have to do these things. And so it went from, okay, we'll just kind of let it happen to you're forced to have it happen. And now we've shifted not just back to letting it happen to the I don't think we're going to even allow it to happen. We're not letting this happen. We are going to actively come against it. So we're in a very interesting time in our culture to see what this next year or two is going to look like, especially with the things coming out about USAID and things like that. [00:08:18] Speaker A: One of the other things I was going to bring up very quickly surrounding the whole Wokeism thing is what you saw was the power of certain words and terms. Jack, you've got on here people, man. That person is that that viewpoint is problematic. Another one that I remember, you know, that's just disingenuous. You know, like words like that that people would use to, you know, people who were supporting the woke ideas would Use to kind of almost shout down the people who were trying to stand up and say, well, what about common sense here? What about lots. That's just toxic abuse. You're just. Yeah, all those words we've talked about before, but you're just being disingenuous. And it's like they refute. We refuse to have any conversation based on again, the hard facts, the merits of the situation, what actually happened. And it was all kind of these trigger words of problematic and disingenuous. And as you brought up Joe, well, that's just a toxic thing to do, like. And so what you saw, again, just what I'm trying to say here is 10 years ago those words carried a lot of weight and people were very scared of those words. I don't want to be problematic. I do not want to be accused of being disingenuous now for what I see. People can try that and it doesn't work quite as well. It doesn't carry the same weight that it did eight years. Eight, 10 years ago, which I think is fascinating. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's. I don't know. I obviously, I think there's some good things in this. I think we can get to the overcorrection here in a bit because I think that is something that's coming generationally. But we have, we did something on boycotts very early on in the Think deeper era in 2022, especially about Disney because they were one of the worst of this. They put the disclaimers on movies like Peter Pan or whatever, like, oh, this is racially insensitive. Like, just know what you're going to watch. There's some things on here we don't agree with. Like, yeah, okay, we got it kind of. And so they, they were really bad. Target, of course, has been one of the leading proponents of all this, of the transgender bathroom. They were the first ones corporation to do that. I think like 2014, they had the transgender swimwear for like 5 year olds a couple years ago. I mean like just over the top. Well, Disney has rolled some of that back. Disney has canceled some of their theme park stuff. Disney apparently is pulling the disclaimers off of their movies off on Disney plus. [00:10:32] Speaker A: They'Re backtracking quite a bit. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot, A lot of different ways they're doing it. Target, same thing. They're canceling so many corporations are canceling their DEI program. The DEI thing is a wokeness of we've got a diversity, equity, inclusion, Everybody's got to have a part, We've got to have a Trans REPRESENTATIVE on the board. We got to have all of the racial things, and they're all coming out and saying, yeah, okay, either quietly or whatever, but it's coming out. We're not doing that anymore. And I think the tipping point was the Bud Light thing. When they tried the Trans Dylan Mulvaney. DYLAN Mulvaney TRANS REPRESENTATIVE it went so badly. They had the biggest market destruction, like, ever for a company. And I think that was kind of a hint that things are starting to change. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Two examples come to mind for me as well. Just kind of evidence for this. The first one being all the celebrity endorsements that Kamala Harris got did nothing. Nobody cared. Nobody. Nobody cared that Beyonce or, you know, all the Taylor Swift of the Avengers or Taylor Swift came out there to endorse. I mean, she had every A Lister you can imagine come out endorse. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. And then the other thing again, sports guy here, the NFL removing their in racism, end racism stuff out of their end zones and off of their helmet, stuff that has been on there for five, six years, took it off. And like that. Those are things that you can see just kind of see visibly. It's almost one of those things where you're like, okay, so now you guys are changing now that the tides are turning, but still, I think that's at least some kind of positive development, is that, you know, specifically with the DEI stuff, that people are no longer buying into that. [00:12:08] Speaker B: I want to talk about that in a minute. The idea of the genuineness or what it means. But, yeah, I just want to know, like, I want to ask some exec there. So is that mission accomplished? We did end racism. Have you given up? We did, I guess, said we're never going to win it. And so I guess it's just hopeless. Racism wins. I mean, like, what. What does that mean? I just would love to know. Because the same thing, of all the people who are out rioting and protesting in black squares and 2020, similar things have been happening ever since. I mean, you can find people who are shot every year and make a case out of it or whatever. I either. I want them to say, did. Did we end racism? Did we fix the whole thing and that's why you're not protesting and burning down cities anymore? Or did the news just not tell you to get out in the streets and so you stopped? I mean, the whole thing was manufactured. Joe brought up USAID earlier that this was all paid for. So much of these things around the world of promoting LGBT ideas and all that, like, it was not legitimate. This was. People were putting money in pockets to make these things happen. And so that's good to see that. There really isn't as much energy for this as maybe was thought. But I don't know that it's going away without accountability. I mean, I'm glad it's going away, but I would love some accountability there for, like, what happened. Why? Why are you not doing this? Do you not believe it anymore, or is this just bad for the bottom line? Go ahead, Joe. [00:13:21] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I was going to say, will you bring it up ahead of time? Before this, The Blake Lively situation and how the MeToo movement kind of seems to have jumped the shark as well, where, I don't know, there was a time where that carried a lot of weight. The Harvey Weinstein thing, of course, that comes out, that kicks off all of this. Kevin Spacey. There's some really bad guys that were added, but there's also kind of becomes a witch hunt. This happens. A lot of people are fired for false accusations. I've worked with some of these guys where that's the case. The Blake Lively situation seems to be one of those where we are allowing logic and reason, and I don't know hardly anything about it. I'll let you speak to it. But it seems like we're allowing logic and reason back into the room. [00:13:59] Speaker A: Well, I think what's so interesting about is what I was bringing up beforehand. You know, if you're not familiar with kind of what's going on, Joe, I know you said you weren't. I think most people probably are. Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively are involved in lawsuits against each other. They were in a movie called It Ends With Us that came out last year, a pretty popular movie based off a popular book. But essentially, she accused. She filed a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment. And I was telling the guys, man, if that was eight years ago, his career would be over. That case would be over. She would be kind of held up, you know, on her pedestal and, you know, paraded around the street, so to speak. Look at this. This brave survivor. [00:14:34] Speaker B: It would be the best thing for her career. [00:14:36] Speaker C: It would. [00:14:36] Speaker A: And instead, what has happened is he has filed several lawsuits kind of back at her for faking a lot of this stuff. And he's got the receipts, he's got the evidence. From what we've seen so far, randomly, it's been released, and it's not going very well for her. He is the one that is being kind of held up. As, you know, noble guy hasn't done Anything wrong. And it's just to me, it is a microcosm for where we are now versus where we are eight, 10 years ago. Where once again, that would, as Jack said, that would have been the best thing for Blake Lively's career. Justin Baldoni would have. His career would have been over. And now all the public on the Internet, the public. What's that word? The. The public is against her, I guess, is the best way to put that. And that, that, I think to Joe, as you brought up, is demonstrating just how far we've come as a society to where it's not. Believe all women was the thing that, you know, 18 years ago. Believe all women doesn't. Not the case anymore. [00:15:27] Speaker B: When you start seeing things come back, people whose careers were ruined, but they're kind of allowed back in, you're starting to see some of that. The, the Daniel Penney case in New York, that was the. A guy who stopped an attacker on the subway and ended up choking him out. And he went to trial. The fact that he won and is not spending life in prison and ruined and all that. Well, then he was invited to the Army Navy game with the president and vice president. He just got a job with some big firm or whatever. Like these people were radioactive, untouchable a few years ago, and now they're being brought back in. So that again, I think all of this establishes the tides have turned, the wind is blowing in another direction. But to talk about why that's happening, why we think that has come to pass, then we'll talk about. We mentioned a minute ago, like, is it real? Do we really think minds are being changed or are people just following the money? And then we'll get into the Christian side of it. So let's start with why we think it's happening. I gotta give credit to Gen Z. I think they're. Some of the heroes here. [00:16:28] Speaker A: Represent. Yeah, there we go. [00:16:30] Speaker C: That's right. Gen Z, that's right. [00:16:33] Speaker A: I'll just take full credit for this one, guys. No, I had another question. I'll speak on the Gen Z thing for a second and then I have a question I want to ask kind of similar to Jack, I think you phrased it, why this is happening. I wanted to ask what was the tipping point? Do you guys think, like, what was there a tipping point to where? Or was it just kind of a slow, gradual thing? Because there's kind of one thing that sticks out in my mind that was somewhat of a tipping point. Maybe two things that I'll. That I'll talk about in a second. But as far as the Gen Z thing goes. Yeah, I mean we're seeing specifically Gen Z guys, young men, you know, using, you know, the word based and it's kind of a Gen Z term ironically. But you know, they, they are holding the more traditional views. They are really wanting to go back to real masculine, real masculinity and they're want, you know, the trad wives thing of course was, was kind of blew up on a. So from a social media standpoint, but you're seeing even on social media these guys that are again, these Gen Z guys that are like, yep, we are going to go back to common sense, we're going to go back to logic. And you know, I'm sorry, this, you know, this high powered career woman that just, you know, works 80 hours a week is not that attractive to us anymore. We are more attracted to the, the housewife, the woman who wants to have a family and be a mother. And man, you come out and say that 10 years ago, what is wrong with you? You're a sexist. Now that is common. I mean people are posting, I mean a lot of our followers or listeners probably aren't on X, but that's a lot of the demographic on X is these young Gen Z guys who are kind of slamming the left, especially when it comes to women. And so yeah, I mean, I do think Gen Z, I mean you even see political voices, young people. I know Brett Cooper from the Daily Wire is one that comes to mind and you know, like just young people who are coming out saying we're kind of tired of this woke virus that has been fed our way for the last 10 years. We want to go back to something different. But Joe, what are your thoughts on that? I know you brought the Gen Z thing before, so I know you probably have thoughts on that. [00:18:28] Speaker C: No, I just think they're incredibly based in a lot of ways, which is fascinating. The women, as we said before, getting worse. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Just briefly, I think the basic definition of that is not caring what other people think. And that's how this whole thing. Yeah, and that's how this whole thing started was you got to get in line. Oh man, people are going to think you're. That we're going to cancel you. We're going to. And just saying, okay, I don't care. Like that. That's all it took to crumple this whole thing. [00:18:52] Speaker C: The guys are going to love this. Another Incredibles reference here. When everybody's racist, nobody is. You know, when you throw these words around and we're all, every white person is racist and every male is a potential sexual predator. And you know when you throw these out in these large scale things, yeah, you're going to get a lot of people that go, okay, I'm racist. So what if you're going to call me that, that, I've never done anything like that in my life. But if you're going to call me that, then what? Like, where do we go from here? You have to get to the point where you don't care. Well, you know, you are a misogynist. You're a potential sexual predator. Like I've never ever had thoughts like that. 95% of guys or whatever are probably not ever going to do that. But if that's the way you're going to view it and that's the way you're going to paint this light of we can't, basically, we're guilty until proven innocent. And even when we're proven innocent, we're still guilty based off of our skin color, based off of our, our gender, whatever it may be. You have to get to the I don't care point because at some point there is no absolution, there is no grace given, there is no hey, you know, I proved my innocence in this one. I did everything. If you bow the knee, if you post the black, the black square, if you make sure you say every last thing, at the end of the day they still don't care. That's the problem. And so you did get to the point where I think this younger generation has been force fed this stuff in public schools and going, wait a minute, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense in leagues. Why would that be the case? Why are specifically what, like with whites? Why is every white person racist? I'm not racist. I don't do these things, I don't say these things. I love, you know, I love everybody. And nope, doesn't matter. And so yeah, you get to the point where they say, I guess your point doesn't matter. And Jack, this is your base point. Well, Gen Z is the culmination of a lot of decades of this kind of taking place. Where it started, the boomers got a little bit X kind of came to the schools. Millennials were really hammered with this stuff in the schools and the culture. And now we come down to Gen Z and I think they're just over it. I think they're really tired. They're carrying the weight of the entire nation kind of in that way where it's Just distilled all the way down to okay, what do we do here? Where do we go from here? And they're saying completely different direction. We can't continue to go the way things are, otherwise we're going to collapse. [00:21:04] Speaker B: Hey folks, I wanted to tell you about a couple of books from our friends over at Cobb Publishing. Holy Me and Grow Up. Holiness is frequently ignored or minimized. But in Holy Me, Paul Clements shows that it is at the center of the Christian Life. This simple 13 lesson study explains what holiness is, how we get it and why it matters. Designed for both personal and Bible class study, this book will both encourage and challenge you to greater levels of dedication to God and Christ. His latest book, Grow up is a simple 13 lesson study on spiritual growth designed to help Christians understand the what, the why and the how of becoming a mature Christian. Both Holy Me and Grow up are available from Amazon.com and Cobb Publishing. So this guy has his way of framing it of he said that we're entering the age of the vengeful son because we had been in the age of the devouring mother. And honestly you look at, we've talked about feminism and the, the matriarchal thing of a man not standing up to their wives, churches being run by the women, all of those things. And the has been and the crystallization of that. The perfect like the ultimate apex of its power was the COVID lockdowns. Like I can't let you out, can't let you see your friends. You know, you go out there and play on the beach by yourself within, not within a thousand yards of anybody. We're going to take you to jail. What you get from that is especially for young men, like I don't care, I'm not listening to you anymore. If this is your system, I don't, I'll burn your system down. I'm done with it. And so, oh, you're going to like you say, you're going to call me racist because I'm just a normal person. Okay, I'm a racist now. Now what? You're going to call me sexist now what? So I think they overplayed their hand. I think Will's question is a really interesting one about what was the tipping point? I think it was the trans stuff. I think they went way too far with that. And that was the point at which normal good hearted people who went along with all this in the name of tolerance and just getting along and not being a jerk and all of the social pressuring kind of thing when okay, that's get him out of the locker room. That's just not okay. And when some dads did that to stand up for their daughters who had been violated and the FBI came after them, it was like, nope, we're, we're not doing this anymore. And the Drag Queen Story hour, I mean like the, the Blues Clues having a Pride Parade kind of thing where it's like, we're coming after your kids. You don't mess with people's kids. Now I think that turned some things, I think for the young men, again, there was other stuff. Andrew Tate, the trad wife thing, young men and women not endorsing Andrew Tate, but it pushed in a different direction. And then you saw comedy start picking it up. It was on PC because comedy got so bad there for a few years. It was, people said they're playing to Clapter. You're not, not making people laugh, making them clap, because you're saying the right thing. Well then Dave Chappelle started saying some anti trans stuff. And then what's the guy, Shane Gillis, kind of the new guy, said, you know, he's used all the words you weren't allowed to say for a long time and, and kind of transgressive. And yeah, these are foul mouth people. I'm not endorsing their work, but you notice when Bud Light tried to recover from their enormous trans blunder, what do they do? They call Shane Gillis, they get the transgressive comic that goes in the other direction. You know, the guy that'll say unpc offensive stuff. And so, yeah, I think the tipping point was the trans stuff. I think the MeToo thing hit a tipping point after a couple years where it was kind of like because it was believe all women, basically anything they say, it just goes, well, they got a couple of them badly wrong. And so that one cooled off. But it didn't roll the woke back until they started going after people's kids. [00:24:36] Speaker C: I think Covid, as you mentioned, Jack, I think Covid woke a lot of people up because not to say woke, right, the true waking up from some of these things because you're in your house for six months to a year and you have nothing but getting to see things unfold on social media going, this is ridiculous, this can't happen. You know, and you had some people that double down and we're going to kill grandma and things like that. But you had a lot of people going, wait a minute, I have lost my entire livelihood and you're going to send me a measly $2,000 check, ramp up inflation, everything else. Because of this, when I could easily go back to work. I think that radicalized a lot of people to start not trusting their government. And when you start distrusting government, it opens your eyes to distressing a lot of things. What else is the government pushing? Lgbtq, Black Lives Matter, things like that. And so to me, the government distrust and people waking up to these things. Covid was a big factor, in my opinion. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Just briefly, Will, before you get back in here. Sure. The, the greatest example of that, I think it was a Washington Post. It was one of the major newspapers, had a headline of our protests safe, like to go out. You know, with the virus and all that. And it says it depends on what you're protesting. Experts say, like if you're going out to protest the lockdowns. No, not safe. If you're going out to, you know. [00:25:48] Speaker A: Protest abortion or something. [00:25:50] Speaker B: Well, the George Floyd, you know, the riots going on and stuff like that. Yeah, like that's okay. You're not to spread the, the virus there, but you will if you're protesting something that like, wow, all credibility gone, no experts. [00:26:03] Speaker A: I've obviously got several thoughts on the. The tipping point thing. My main answer was the trans thing. I think Jack hit the nail on the head that once you started seeing like libs of tick tock on on Twitter now X that was posting videos of. Of just some of the stuff they were doing, you know, out west and up north with these prides parades, like, you know, stripping in front of kids like this. Like that was I think in such a small corner of the world that nobody really knew until they saw this account, started really posting this stuff. And people were waking up going, what. What are they doing? What exactly is this supposed to be for? And so I agree that overplayed their hand is a perfect way to put it. I think that was the tipping point for a lot of people. The other thing that I think is interesting is I think cancel culture was a major tipping point as well. As you saw people who, you guys are gonna laugh, but somebody that I really enjoy their music that almost got canceled in. Or they had tried to get him canceled in about 20. About the 2020 range. Got caught on camera saying a word that he shouldn't have been saying. And man, the, the public was out in droves to have this guy canceled. Went on to have the most popular album, popular five year run of any music artist in his particular genre. People didn't care. The, the cancel culture had. Had officially stalled. I think you saw that with several people that, you know, people would have finally realized, you know what people make mistakes. We're not going to cancel them over one thing that they did or one thing that they said, which is. Which was predominant in. In the mid 2010s. And so I think it was the. A lot of it was the trans stuff. Cancel culture, I don't think helped their case. The other thing that I was going to say about the tipping point, you can only get away from logic and common sense for so long. You can only dodge facts and reality and again, just logic and common sense for a certain amount of time before it eventually wins out. Like that train eventually stops. And I think they were riding high, kind of going off of emotion and tolerance and, you know, again, just with the trans stuff, not really. Not really relying on any kind of logic or hard facts or reality. And that train only goes so far, in my opinion. And so I think we are. We, of course, have reached the point where that is. That engine is running out of steam significantly, and they thought they could go on forever with it, and the American people just aren't having it. Those are kind of long, rambling thoughts there, but those were kind of my thoughts around that question. [00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good stuff. It's funny you mentioned the musician we had mentioned, Shane Gillis. I forgot. He got on Saturday Night Live, and before he ever got to film an episode, they found an old podcast clip where he had said something offensive and he lost the job. And now, of course, he is more famous than anybody on the cast right now. Like, he. In fact, they invited him back to host the show because he's gotten that big. And again, it's just people saying, I don't care. We'll. We'll forgive it. You know, he's said he's sorry, we move on. Yeah, that's. And a normal society looks at that and goes, yeah, don't do that anymore. Okay, yeah, I won't do that again. That was wrong. Sorry. You know, that was a. And then you move on. That's it. And that's how things are supposed to work. And this idea of you're buried for life that so many people went through, it's no good. So, yeah, again, all of that overplayed the hand. All of it just went to the point where I think people looked around realizing, like, there's going to be nobody left. We're all going down at some point or another. A lot of people got on the first wave of it, like, yeah, you can't say that. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah. And the other thing is, I think there is a time to cancel somebody. Some of these people that make, you know, like pedophile jokes or whatever. No, sorry, you don't, you don't get to come back from that. You know, you kind of doing live comedy, make a joke that somebody kind of gets on the wrong side of their, you know, gets under their skin. Okay. You know, yeah, there's, there's. We kind of case by case. But anyway, one last thing real fast. [00:29:47] Speaker A: That I was going to say, where you really saw the trans thing overplay being overplayed was they started turning on each other. J.K. rowling is obviously the best example for this. She was incredibly feminist and, you know, very woke to some extent, would not cross the line with the trans people or with supporting the trans agenda. And they turned on her. And you saw you, you did see that throughout. Kind of, kind of this, this woke war was. It was no longer the left against the right. It was the left against the left against the left, where you had to follow them down their whole line of everything they were pushing. And as soon as somebody stopped say, I'm not going to go that far. It was not a. They were no longer tolerant. It was. They turned on them and said, well, now you're the problem. [00:30:32] Speaker C: You also had gays against groomers, where homosexuals are coming out, going, guys, this trans stuff is crazy. Like, you can't go that far. And it's like, hold on a second. You guys are saying, well, yeah, because they just wanted to do their traditional debauchery. This is completely brand new. I think you guys are right that the trans stuff is crazy. But let me just say this before we move on, because I want to ask, exactly as you said, Jack, is this real? Can we trust it? When you have a lot of Christians. We've gone on this soapbox plenty before, but when you have a lot of Christians go, don't, don't get involved in politics. You know, we just don't get involved. And, you know, voting does nothing. And we just got to trust Jesus and everything else. Like, yeah, we do have to trust Jesus. One of the things that Jesus did is he gave us, he allowed us to live in a country where our vote does potentially sway things. And this is made possible based off of who is in the presidency. Now, let's just call it as we see it. This is made possible. They would have doubled down on all the DEI stuff. They would have done. They would have gone way. We would be living in even Worse Sodom and Gomorrah if things hadn't changed. And so you got a lot of Christians going, well, we're above it. Like, truly, thank God that there are a lot of people that are not above this, that are willing to get into the trenches and make these things happen, because we are now able to roll back a lot of these terrible practices that have destroyed people's lives, that allow for no grace. And people are starting to turn back toward God. They're starting to see, like, there's got to be something out there. So people that have historically been atheists, been agnostics, been, you know, just don't care, whatever it is, they're starting to turn back toward God. That is made possible based off of the world that we live in and the culture that we're surrounded in. And that's shifting based off of who's. Who's in power. So for any Christian that's looking at it, go, well, it doesn't matter. It absolutely matters. For these reasons, it's good when we live in a culture that's discouraging this evil that we're seeing. And so, fellas, I want to ask, is this real? We're seeing this tide shifting. We're seeing it turn back, but can we trust it? I mean, is this something that is a reprieve for a year? 2. Do we just wait for four years, then we go back? Because the case you could make toward this not being real is, man, the American public has been subject to this for well over a decade. And really, if we're honest, this stuff has been in the works for several decades. Can we really change people's hearts and minds? And is this a legit thing that plans to stick around? What are your guys's thoughts on that? [00:32:47] Speaker B: If. If Harris had won, I think a lot of these rollbacks wouldn't be happening for sure. On the other hand, I. I think at first people would always be like, well, money. Money is what gets them to buckle. This is such a religious thing for them that there was a lot of money lost. And what people didn't realize is there was money coming from behind the scenes to say, keep it up. [00:33:11] Speaker C: Keep. [00:33:11] Speaker B: Like, you have to do this. That there was, you know, some of the big kind of investments, you know, capital behind the scenes was so ideologically committed to this that it was basically, well, yeah, you're losing sales, but you're going to lose our investment if you give up on this. So you got to pick between one or the other. And it just got so bad that eventually, of course, they, they gave it up, a lot of these, these companies, but it wasn't good for business, but they kept doing it. Well, now it's. So I, I don't think it's a purely money thing where people are realizing, oh, it's just bad business to do this. I think that is a factor. And they're saying it's better business to not be that way, to, to be normal, to have some more traditional values. It was pointed out that even in the super bowl, they're really there. There was not a lot of pride stuff. And I mean, previous years, the ads, things like that, were very much pushing in the other direction, other than the. [00:34:01] Speaker C: Christian ad, of course. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the one Christian. We'll get to evangelical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely want to save that, but, yeah, I mean, you can feel it moving in that direction. I don't think it's ideological. I think maybe it's just been defeated and it's kind of a giving it now. There are the ideologues that the minute it goes, they get an opportunity to go back, they're going to go back, they're going to push back hard in the other direction. That's why you can't just give up after one victory. You can't go, oh, well, okay, they stopped that. No, you keep going. [00:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just going to say the question of isn't real or not. I think it is in the sense of, you know, there has been parts where I've been like, okay, the guy that I think of, again, I keep bringing up the sports stuff. It's just because it's a lot of the world that I live in. Stephen A. Smith has been a pretty well known left leftist political guy. He has come out and said, I regret voting for Harris. The Democrats are, you know, kind of off the defend and like pretty well slamming the left. And a lot of people are accusing him of saying, okay, well now you're saying all this stuff now that Trump won, you know, where is this being kind of viewing that as pretty disingenuous. And I do, I, I get why people say that. But once again, I'm just gonna go back to beat my same drum I beat a second ago. Common sense is in again. Common sense is cool again. And I think people like Stephen A. Or, you know, other people that you see. Bill, what's the guy name? Bill. Bill Mar. Bill Mayer, however you say his last name, pretty leftist guy, has come out repeatedly and slammed the left. Mark Zuckerberg is another one Just you, you. These people are popping up everywhere who are coming over to kind of the other side, so to speak. And I do think it is be. It is be. A lot of it is because it's like, okay, you know, we can't deny our common sense any longer. There is logic to this. [00:35:51] Speaker C: I do think there's sanity. [00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I do think there's an immorality component to consider in the sense of some of these people are just wanting to live immorally and the leftist wokeism platform kind of gave them a reason to do that and so they sided with it. And now that there's no longer any wind in those sails, they're kind of coming over to the other side and it's pretty disingenuous. But I don't know, man. A lot of the stuff that I'm seeing seems to be pretty real. But Joe, I'm curious, curious your thoughts on kind of this question of is it real? [00:36:18] Speaker C: Here's the other side that I do think is making it more real. It goes to your question of why is this taking place? What's maybe the focal point of the shift? I talked about COVID one of the big things we can't forget and our hallmark on the podcast. People pull their kids out of public school in droves. People were able to see what was being taught in the public schools. It's like, I'm sorry, excuse me, what did they just say? What did the teacher say? And so they look at it and they go, wait a minute. And so you had a lot more pushback in the schools and such. That's what tells me, I don't think this is going to be a. I think this is legit. We're not just going to go back because you have a lot of people that have woken up to this, a lot of people that are seeing what's in the school's bone. I don't go along with that. They pull their kids out in droves. Millions are starting to homeschool. I don't necessarily agree with everybody that I think homeschooling is great. I'm not saying I agree with all the reasons why people might homeschool. There are some people that homeschool because the schools weren't strong enough on masks and stuff during COVID So different reasons and such. On the other hand, people waking up to what's being taught. That tells me Gen Z is already based and the next generation, hopefully Gen Alpha. We'll see where it goes from there, but hopefully this continues to get better and hopefully that means parents have woken up to this. And when they have, I think you're going to be a lot more grounded. Not as blowing with the wind as before. Most will blow at the wind. But I think there's a large portion of America that has finally woken up to kind of some of the schemes going, wait a minute, you're not going to be able to run the same plays that you used to, to the same effect or the same plays that they used to the culture that the government, things like that would. So I think this is legit. I think people are changing. People are realizing the insanity. And just to your point, Will, the same thing as Rogan. So many guys listen to Joe Rogan and he was a Bernie guy and pretty liberal. And then he starts asking questions and he'd have these guests on like, I can't answer that. Wow, that's. That's crazy. I didn't know that. You know, and so the more that you learn this, more knowledge starts shifting away from it. You have a lot of people that now have too much knowledge to be able to go back. It's kind of like, I've talked before, I have too much knowledge of God to be an atheist. And that's not, you know, pumping my own tires. Pat me on the back. I'm just saying, like, I don't think I could ever attempt to be an atheist because you just know too much. There's no possible way you could go back to that unless it's a complete heart issue. And I think a lot of this has been heart, but a lot of this people just didn't know. Well, now they don't have that excuse. They are not ignorant of this anymore. The play has been run. They now see it. So I think this is real legitimately. [00:38:42] Speaker B: The other thing is the courage is contagious thing. I think a lot of people have had reservations. It's kind of the thing like behind closed doors, if you're around safe company, like, man, I think this is all going a little bit too far. I think, you know, like, maybe, maybe there's too much on, on any of these things. And yet saying it was publicly was so costly that they wouldn't do it. Well, a lot of people don't like him. A lot of people love him. Very divided opinions on this guy. Elon buying Twitter, turning it into X was a big factor in all this of like, hey, you can say stuff. Your life will not be ended. Your account will not be ended. In fact, they had a thing of, if you're fired for something you posted on this site, contact us. We'll see what we can do to help you out. Because they wanted it to be a free speech platform. That helps a lot. And that he himself came out and said, they killed my son. His son's not dead. His son decided he's a girl. And like he said, the trans people got a hold of my son and killed him. And so that in itself was like, that is a extreme claim that somebody would be canceled for a few years ago. You can't cancel the richest man in the world. And so when he stands up and takes a stand on that. And so courage is contagious. I think that that is another part of this as well. And so your point of, like, it's spreading and people waking up to these things, and I think it's kind of the. A lot of people looking out from under their rock going, oh, okay, it's safe to say. [00:40:00] Speaker A: Is it safe to come out? Yeah. [00:40:01] Speaker B: And then they see that it is, and they are, and it's very hard to push those people back under the rock. So that's. That's a great move in the right direction. But I think that gets us to. Is there anything else we want to cover before we get to the Christian side of this? [00:40:14] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to ask very quickly if there was something to throw this off the rails and kick us back down the woke spiral, what do you guys think that would be? Because obviously it's one of those things like, you know, again, go back to sports. You see, in football, oh, we've got the momentum right now. Well, the momentum can shift pretty quick based on, in sports, of course, a play, few minutes or whatever. Culturally, I do think it takes a whole lot longer, obviously, for the. For momentum to change, but I'm kind of just. Maybe this is the. You know, I consider myself an optimist. Maybe. Maybe this is just the kind of skepticism of, like, this is all I've known for so long. And so I'm projecting 10 years out saying, okay, if we were to go back down the woke spiral, what would be the cause of that? And I don't really have an answer. I'm just obviously political power. Who's in power, I think has a lot to say in this. But I'm curious your guys's thoughts on if you're nervous about the momentum shifting back in the other direction and if you think it might. What might be the cause of that kind of put you on the spot here. I don't, like, I don't really have an answer. [00:41:11] Speaker B: But seeing how manufactured this whole thing was, I think they are going to need political power to do that. The funding, all that to make these things continue to happen. So I think that's a factor in it. The other is if people get complacent, you can't I make this analogy a lot. You cannot park your car halfway up the slippery slope. And so it's interesting there's rumblings that the gay marriage ruling of 2014 might go back to the Supreme Court and they other the I think it was the abortion decision itself, the Dobbs decision. People are legal experts. I don't know this stuff well enough but I've read some of them saying the argumentation they use there would be efficient or sufficient to overturn the gay marriage thing. And so if you, you have to keep winning victories backwards, you have to keep like things that were unimaginable a year ago, you can roll things back. That doesn't mean it's going to go away forever. That doesn't mean you'll never see a rainbow flag. It doesn't mean any of those things. But it does mean you can set the conversation and there has to be the will to do that. There has to be the desire to keep pushing those things for Christians to keep standing and realize hey this is a good thing that it's moving in this direction or else, you know, it's, it's the what Jesus said of you can clean the place out if you don't fill it with something new. They're going to come back and bring more with them. [00:42:31] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great answer. I was going to say maybe the leaders of the some major scandals rocking the major leaders but there's so many scandals that have tried to, been tried to or been foisted upon Trump, the Gene Carroll and things like that that he seems to have overcome. I honestly I don't see the political power be a big one. But in four years where are we going to be if he really does all the anti woke stuff for four years, you're going to wake a lot of people up to this. You're going to see I think hopefully that the world is a much better place without it. So even if somebody does try to come back into power and enact all of these things, you may have some corporations for money purposes to go along with it but by and large I don't know. I think this has been in the making for the last five, 10 years. Yes, 10 years. We talked about the woke thing but I think the, the this overcoming, especially since COVID which five years ago is insane. But since COVID I think these things have been like the wheels have been turning to kind of break this down. So I think it's going to take a long time for the woke to kind of come back in. I'm pretty optimistic about it. I'm not saying that there's not going to be individualized cases where maybe a company here, there does this or, you know, does something, but by and large, the fact that the American people are waking up to it, I think bodes pretty well. [00:43:48] Speaker B: Hey guys, just wanted to tell you about Dr. Brad and Melinda Harb's new book, Arrows in the Hands of a Discipling Children toward Heaven with God's Grace. It's a great book for couples to read together or for churches to study in a Bible class setting with a 13 week plan. We also give bulk discounts if you buy it through focuspress.org or it's also available on Amazon. So check out Arrows in the Hands of a Warrior today. [00:44:09] Speaker A: Foreign. Yeah, those, those are good. I was just curious because like I said, I call it just Senate cynicism or skepticism based on all I've known. But Jack, I know you were going to go ahead and move us into a different direction, so go right ahead. [00:44:22] Speaker B: Yeah, so let's talk about this as it pertains to Christianity because as we said, the church went along with a lot of churches went along with this. Some of them, I mean, just all in kind of the whole ideology, some of them picking and choosing a little more of the race and the sexuality or a little more of the feminism than whatever else. But even generally conservative churches did a little bit kind of dabbling, kind of paid homage, I guess to, you know, at least did some token appreciation of this thing. And I'm not saying all of them did, but, but that was a pretty common thing with these tides turning. The funny thing is so many times evangelicalism is so far like trails the culture. It's years behind and it might take years for them to realize, oh, people don't care about this anymore. Like this is not a thing anymore. Especially young people. They, they are totally turned off by this, the politically correct garbage, the WOKE garbage, whatever it may be, as evidenced by where we, I don't think we have time to get into the he gets us. But they were the only super bowl commercial with a pride flag in it and it was the one supposed to be representing Jesus. Like get with the times. We're not doing that anymore. You shouldn't have been doing in the first place, but especially now, that's the wrong direction to go. So I think with, in Christianity you're gonna see a few different things. You're gonna see those that are not paying attention and are still just beating that same drum. The, the race hustlers over at Christian Chronicle. I don't think they can help themselves. I think that's what they're going to keep doing. There's, there's quite a few and so I think that's. I, I don't really want to start calling out all the names, but I mean people who pay attention. We've had people message us like, go for it, man. Well, there's this guy, there's that guy. There's, you know, like there's a lot of very pro woke Church of Christ podcast or blog or whatever you want to call them. I think they're going to stay planted on that and, and like that's the churches they have built, the ministries they've built. It's very hard to turn that back the other direction. But you are also going to see the people who were leading that bandwagon running as fast as they can to get in front of the other bandwagon. You're already starting to see this within the Church of Christ, but also in the denominational world. There's a guy in the Dallas area megachurch. It was about 15 minutes from where I was when I was in that area. Huge name in 2020. He was doing all the BLM stuff. He had Beth Moore preach at his church and said she had the voice of one of the prophets. I mean like he was just all in on all this stuff. Now he is Mr. Based right wing and people are allowed to change their minds. But you need to explain it. You need to apologize, you need to correct yourself, not just be like, well, we're doing this now and again. Go with the popular thing. I think you're going to see a lot of popular front running in the other direction. Because not that anyone's so cynical to be like, oh, people like that, that's what I'm going to give them. It's. They don't have any beliefs they just blow with. It might be that cynical. I mean it might be some that are peddling the gospel, as the Apostle Paul would say, but that's two of them. We'll stop there before we get to the third one. But what do you guys have thoughts on what you. I'll put it this way. Which one of those do you think is more likely? People to stay camped out and not understand that wokeism is being shoved back into a locker, or the people who are going to all of a sudden be the champion that didn't have any courage, that were getting on to us for saying these kinds of things the last few years are now going to be the courageous spokesman on the front runner of the bandwagon. [00:47:49] Speaker A: That's such a man. That's a tough question. Because I could see arguments for both. [00:47:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:55] Speaker A: My answer, probably the latter, unfortunately. I. I was initially thinking, you know, it's pretty tough for people to come off of positions that they've held for so long. Perspectives, viewpoints that they've held for so long. And so to immediately backtrack into, you know, again, whether it be the masculinity or femininity or just the non politically correct thing, it's hard to do that. And so I was initially thinking the former. The reason I would say the latter of the two, Jack, what you talked about kind of trying to. I love the word front running. I think that's exactly the. The word to use there of getting out in front. Yeah. All right, guys, now we're all together. It's like, okay, where was that four years ago? The now we're all together thing? One of the things I've always appreciated about Jack with his political views, you know, shifting, he's come out and said multiple times, yep, five years ago, I was wrong. That article that I wrote, that was. I was way off on that. [00:48:45] Speaker B: Or you have to own it. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you have to own it. Otherwise nobody takes you seriously, or at least nobody should take you seriously. And so real fast, Joe, before you go, the reason I would say it's the latter. So many of these guys, whether it be evangelical community or unfortunately, or unfortunately, Church of Christ community, there's a need to be relevant, there's a need to be listened to. There is a need to be looked up to as he or, you know, he's the voice of the church of Christ when it comes to cultural things. And I think those people, and this is not me, sound coming across very cynical. I understand. But I think a lot of it is kind of testing the winds. And which way is everybody blowing? Let me get out in front of that so that people can still think that I'm the main voice of reason, the voice of the church of Christ. Whereas you had, and this is not to toot our own horns, we haven't shifted a ton. We've been pro masculinity for two and a half years. We said when Abortion got overturned. Yeah, let's celebrate it. Let's, let's be proud of that. Where everybody else would say ah, maybe we should tone it down a little bit and not rub it in and all these things like we haven't really shifted. I do think there is a desire in a lot of these, especially when it comes to unfortunately church leadership, ministers etc, there is a need to stay relevant and a need to, for people to look up to them as the voice. And so I think that will trump, pardon the pun, that will overrule the, you know, hesitancy to come off of past held positions. So my answer, long winded answer is the latter. Joe, what do you, what do you think about Jack's question? [00:50:17] Speaker C: I was actually thinking the former. I think church Christ is especially evangelicals and especially church Christ are 10 to 15 years behind the culture and I think we will continue down this path for maybe not 10, 15 years, couple years longer than should be. The other thing is you got to realize part of it, saving face of being the front runner to the other one part of saving face is like no, no, I wasn't wrong. No, you know, people are going to hold on to that position because they really, a lot of people have made their livelihoods off of this. We just saw a post earlier on, on Facebook this, this week, 300 comments later of you know, a racial anti white and it was kind of shocking. You know there was some pushback, there was some agreement. But to see the agreement that went along with it like they are not understanding the times, they're not understanding where we are. I think that's way more likely in the church of Christ. I'm not trying to, to be mean but church Christ, we have an echo chamber within the church because a lot of people in the church are very anti reading anything outside of church or Christ. Was that brotherhood material? Like I don't know, is it biblical? Does it have some good stuff? I don't know. Then I guess I'm going to read it. Well, you got to be careful. Yeah, absolutely. You got to be careful. But we're the first ones that are going to say be very careful with what you read. But on the other hand, yeah, we've read Presbyterian, we've read Baptist, we've read things like that. You got to weigh it against scripture on all of these things. On the other hand, guess who's the one talking about these things? Guess who are the ones. Doug Wilson we referenced before he is, he got big in Covid because he was saying things nobody else would Say, but Doug's been doing this since the 80s. But in Covid is kind of where he exploded because he was willing to take on the establishment and go, no, that's not right. People in the church, we had people pushing Covid stuff on us and the masks and everything else for two years after it came out that this was in a lab and everything else. So, yeah, I think it's going to be a while before we start seeing people turn. [00:52:09] Speaker B: In my opinion, the funniest thing in the world was it was literally two years after the original lockdown. One of these types wrote an article, guys, we can no longer afford to sit back and not do the work of the church. It's time to get back together in the building. It had been two years, and like, thank you, Mr. You. We got his permission, everybody. The spokesman of the Churches of Christ has let us know that it's okay to go back in the building at this point. Like, it just. [00:52:36] Speaker C: That's my point. And it'll take two, three years, and then they'll. Then they'll come back, in my opinion. So I don't. I don't think you're wrong. It's a little bit of both. [00:52:42] Speaker B: Yeah, they'll be the front runners way, way late, and, you know, they lose some credibility. But I think a lot of people don't pay attention long enough to realize, oh, wow. That, you know, like that guy in Dallas, he's. Very few people are holding him to account. He's becoming one of the spokesmen of this new movement. And it's like, come on, man. All right, we are running out of time. How much time, you guys? What's your. Your out time here? [00:53:06] Speaker C: I got another few minutes. [00:53:07] Speaker B: Okay, let's. The other thing I think we have. [00:53:09] Speaker C: To guard against is important. We have to. [00:53:11] Speaker B: Is the overcorrection. You start seeing polls of young people, their view on the Nazis, their view on Hitler, their view on things like that and crazy. You know, one of the things is historical World War revisionism is becoming popular. I think there's room for that. I think there's room to go. Yeah, we can look at history, and it's a little more nuanced, complex. There were a lot of bad people involved in World War II. I don't think you need to go all the way to being like, nope, the good guys were the bad guys. The bad guys were the good guy. Like, it's not West. [00:53:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:53:39] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not a Star wars movie in which it's like, the good guys are 100% good. And the bad guys were all bad. Like there was, you know, just, I mean, we can get into breaking down that whole thing. But you, you do see young people in the same sense of Andrew Tate masculinity of you go from mama's boy feminized young guys to dominate women, sleep with as many as you can. Like, yeah, that's an over correction big time. It's a move away from a bad direction, but you've gone way too far in the other direction to make it bad. I think the same thing will probably happen with Wokeness. The getting away from politically correctness is great. That doesn't mean you should say everything all the time, have no filter, things like that. But one of the things is, I think a lot of churches are very uncomfortable with any move in that direction at all. And so they're going to run off their young men toward bad actors who are corrupting the young men. And so we've got to be very careful to make room for them to go a little farther than we're comfortable generationally, but still put a cap on. You can't go this far. [00:54:43] Speaker C: Nazis and such as we're talking, they project power. And when you take power away from all of these young kids, what do you think you're going to do? They're going to gravitate. That's why Andrew Tate's a big deal. That's why the, the Kanye seems like a big deal is because he projects this power that. Do I think either of those guys have it? Absolutely not. Do I think both of them are morons? Yeah, absolutely. I think the, the way that they are corrupting the youth is abhorrent. On the other hand, you have to realize when you strip power away from somebody, they're going to try to find it somewhere else. And unfortunately, this is what's filling in. So when we have the Jesus is the lamb and not the lion, and we're talking all this anti power woke garbage in the church, what do you think young men are going to do? Young men would rather follow a lion. And Jesus is both. He can be the lamb and he can be the lion. But when we downplay the power parts of Christianity, this is how you have the Andrew Tates going toward Islam. It's all about power. And we can look at it and go, that's so bad. Look, it's masculinity. Guys have been seeking power for, you know, millennia. So I don't think we can look at it and say, well, they're really bad for wanting power. No, we just have to find the right power. There's power in crisis, power of the cross. You know, there's power a lot of things. Power isn't bad. It's just what we do with it and where we find it. And I think the overcorrection is taking place with the woke or with, with the anti woke of like, hey, let's just swing the pendulum. No, no, let's keep, make sure there's some breaks on this thing because we're already seeing it. Like you said with Kanye pushing this. Did you see they had to take down. They apologize for airing Kanye's commercial, the Shopify, because on his site he was selling swastika T shirts. What an idiot. I'm sorry, but just all of the people that are going along with this, pump the brakes parents. Be paying attention to your kids, be paying attention to what your boys are, are into. If they're listening to Andrew Tate, if they're buying the Kanye T shirts like, man, we got to be plugged into these things because the overcorrection can be pretty bad too. [00:56:28] Speaker B: This is why you need strong, virtuous Christian men. [00:56:31] Speaker C: Because virtuous, absolutely. [00:56:33] Speaker B: These kind of critiques from guys who are run by their, their wives or churches that are run by the elders wives, they're going to land hollow. These guys are going to blow you off because like they are ahead of you in masculinity. And like whether you like that or not, they might be going into some, some terrible directions, but at least they're not. That is what the way they're going to view it. And so you've got to have good, strong, solid Christian men to set these boundaries. And, and which is why we have. [00:56:58] Speaker A: Been pushing for this for two years. [00:56:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:57:00] Speaker A: Because it's, it's the way the world works. It's kind of like, I'm sorry, but, and this is not to call anybody out, but like you said, Jack, if, if you are run, you know, listen to your wife, kind of bow to the woke idol. Don't have a lot of control over yourself, what your diet, you're not self disciplined, whatever. Nobody who is, who, who wants to follow Andrew Tater wants to follow the, you know, this, this in their eyes, really powerful version of masculinity is going to listen to somebody like that. And so this is just to echo you, Jack. We need Christian men to stand up and say, no, this is the way to be masculine biblically. And being masculine biblically does not mean, you know, just, I mean, read your Bible and pray and that's what masculinity is like. No, that's what being a Christian is. Masculinity is something, you know, there are different elements of that that it's time to highlight. But guys, I want to get us into think fast because this is something that goes very well with the episode. But also it's been on my mind for really since the super bowl, since Jack was posting about it. And so I thought it would make a very good think fast. So we kind of purposely saved it for think fast. But that is the he gets us commercial. So for the last couple Super Bowls, they have, you know, you haven't really heard much from them during the football season or really throughout the year. And then they go all in on the super bowl to push these ads, these commercials that are pretty woke. And we came out against it last year when they, you know, it was flashing up all these pictures of. Of Jesus serving and he was serving, you know, somebody that looked like a homosexual or transgender. He was serving all these people. And, you know, the ad was last year was, in our view, problematic. I used that word earlier in our view, like, you know, not something that, you know, was putting forth a good message about true Christianity. But it was subtle enough to where there were a lot of people that came out and said, well, you know, it's good that we're getting the news of Jesus out. The commercial's not all that bad. And, you know, a lot of people that we would kind of, you know, back their views on a lot of things came out and were very pro that commercial. Once again, because it was getting the message out. It was pro Jesus. It was all these things. Then this year rolls around and I'll be. I'm going to turn it over to Jack here. Basically. I just want to get Yalls thoughts. What's Yalls reaction to the he gets us commercial? Full disclosure, I've not watched the whole commercial. I got through a little bit of it. And then we got to, you know, the part that I'm going to let Jack share about in a second. I think this is one of those things that us as the Think Deeper crew can take a victory lap about. We can take a victory lap about the Disney boycotts and then about this one too, because just like we suspected, it was a bit of a subtle way to try to feed wokeism into Christianity. So, Jack, take it away or I guess, Joe, do you want to go first on your kind of reaction to the commercial? [00:59:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I was in shock. Go read Jack's article. I'm sure there's a lot of people that already have probably that are listening to us. Jack had a fantastic article on it where he went back to the one that he wrote a year or two ago where he was kind of taking a baseball bat to it, used some of that but then built on it of the skin suit of Christianity and talking about shift in Aslan and and you know such from Aslan, from Chronicles, Narnia and just did a masterful job of kind of explaining it. So that's. That would be my one comment is make sure to go reject's article on it because he makes some very, very good points on kind of the ridiculousness of, of what took place on that and how the crazy thing to me is Jack already mentioned this earlier, but it's the one commercial that had a gay pride flag. Was the Christian Jesus commercial like that can't go miss they this is my point of us being way behind the culture. The tide has shifted. We are now having Shane Gillis on beer ads or whatever. Not the word endorsing any beer obviously, but we're now having somebody like that on there. Like the tide is shifting once again. And yet you have the Jesus commercial holding fast to hey, well there wasn't any problem with it. You have a guy who's hugging the gay man at the gay Pride press Gay Pride parade will, as you said, if you go and look at Toronto's, if you go and look at Seattle's or any of the other Gay Pride parades, horrific. Like put Sodom and Gomorrah to shame on some of the things that are taking place there. So yeah, Jesus would go there. He'd start hugging people at this. I don't think so. I think he'd be ready to call hellfire and brimstone down on their heads for all the things that they're doing and not protecting the kids. You got kids dance is horrific. And so the fact that they were the one just mind blowing. [01:01:19] Speaker B: So Jack, my biggest thing is the Christians who fall for it and keep falling for it. Well, what's wrong with it? Oh, there was just that one thing in there. Yeah, the one like that undermines the whole thing. Tells you all of their values are off. It was about greatness and greatness through serving as Jesus told us about. And they included that in there and there was a part in there about immigration. But we'll focus on the pride thing and that's not going to lead people to Jesus, to a true version of Jesus who calls people to repentance or Whatever. But I, I just, I don't understand. Especially the preachers who have so little discernment that they go, yeah, this is good. It's getting the name of Jesus out there. It's a fake version of Jesus. Just anything with you could put Jesus's name on a porn dvd. That doesn't mean, you know, his name's out there. Like, there are good way. There's right ways and wrong ways to do it. And if you're misrepresenting him, you're presenting your own version of God. You say we get to make him in our image. That doesn't work that way. [01:02:09] Speaker A: Last thing I'll say, then we got to wrap up. We're studying Romans at our congregation. Paul lays out for Paul does not start out the book of Romans talking about how great Jesus is and why, you know, Jesus is going to serve you and Jesus is going to accept you. No, he starts out with, you guys are all sinners. Here's why you need Jesus. And, you know, you can. We can, you know, kind of parse words about, well, how should we approach the gospel? How should we spread the gospel? One thing is for sure is the way that that commercial presents Jesus is there's no sacrifice. There's no, here's what you've got to give up. Here's why you need Jesus. It's more so. Look how kind and loving Jesus is. And Jesus will serve everybody, y'all. Y'all already said it. It's just a fake version of Jesus that, you know. You know, I'd rather have a commercial that does not display Jesus than a commercial that displays a fake Jesus is, I guess, kind of my take on it. So I think that's where we're going to wrap again. Kind of goes with the episode. We've got to kind of get going out of here. But I would love to hear the comments. This is one. I really am excited to see the feedback, see what people think, specifically, our deep thinkers on Focus Plus. Get your comments in by Wednesday night. But Facebook, YouTube, let us know what you think. This is something that obviously we just went over an hour on, we're pretty passionate about. But, guys, any closing thoughts before we wrap up? All right, I would say mark the benefit dinner February 28th. We'll remind you one more time, and we very much appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to the Deep Thinkers on Friday and everybody else next Monday. Thanks for listening. [01:03:35] Speaker C: Sa.