Best of the Program with Ed Stetzer | 10/10/18

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Hey, welcome to the podcast.

It's Glenn, and what's your name again?

Bill.

Okay.

Or Sten.

Bill or Stu.

Doesn't matter.

Stu's not your real name either.

Yeah, Mr.

So I'm going to start calling you Bill.

Anyway, we've got a great podcast for you today.

Had a little bit of an issue with Glenn, I would say, attacking a caller.

It's almost like rage.

Almost like a mob.

I was almost as bad as Kevin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was interesting because we did talk about Kavan on the media

saying that this is not a mob.

They're just banging on the walls of the Supreme Court, but no mob.

They're just surrounding people like Ted Cruz

and forcing them to get out of a restaurant.

But that's no big deal.

Yeah, and we had a caller who seemed to be saying, is it time for us to do something drastic, maybe violent?

Yeah.

And

you reacted negatively to that impulse and explained yourself afterwards.

I chose poorly.

No, I thought you chose pretty well.

I liked you yelling at them.

But after that, you explained it in depth, and we went through that and how that's worked out in history before.

Yeah.

And we all remember, too, like,

every once in a while, I think we forget that we're doing fairly well right now.

We're winning.

We're winning.

They're not reacting this way because we're losing and they're winning.

Their back is against the wall.

So we go into the details on that.

And I will say,

More importantly, at the end of the show, Glenn discusses some new Star Wars virtual reality thing that it's now the only thing I'm thinking about.

It's game-changing.

It's absolutely game-changing.

It's at the end of the podcast.

Yeah, so

check it out.

You're listening to

the best of the Glenn Beck program.

It's Wednesday, October 10th.

Glenn back.

Well, good news.

Hillary Clinton is back again.

Kind of like herpes.

You just can't, no matter what you take, you just can't shake it.

Now,

was that unkind?

Oh,

this is an interesting comparison.

Well, it just won't ever seem to go away, will it?

She's there to remind us that she is relevant, and her husband, a Democrat, is not a rapist.

Definitely not a rapist.

So we shouldn't listen to the dozen or so women who have accused him of sexual assault over the past few decades.

Instead, we should focus on the evil Republicans and their plot to fill the Supreme Court with sexual predators.

Also, she's going on tour and wants everybody to know that $700 a ticket, totally worth it.

Here she is talking about her tour in an interview with the very fair and balanced Christiane Anampour.

You say that you're going to talk about the difficulties that your husband went through, that you went through.

Obviously, you're going to be prepared to have questions about that moment in 1998, the impeachment,

the allegations of sexual harassment against your own husband.

Are you prepared to answer those questions?

Is he prepared to answer them?

And how do you see that similar or different from what President Trump is being accused of and Kavanaugh and others today?

Well, there's a very significant difference, and that is

the intense,

long-lasting partisan investigation that was conducted in the 90s.

If

the Republicans, starting with President Trump on down,

want

a comparison, they should welcome such an investigation themselves.

I do.

I welcome the comparison.

The investigation, I don't need to welcome it.

It's already happening.

There's been a partisan investigation on Donald Trump since before he was elected.

Now, one woman who hasn't remained quiet about Bill Clinton's bad behavior and the hypocrisy of the left is Juanita Broderick.

You know, the woman who said, Bill Clinton raped me.

She says, I have 20 times more evidence for my rape by Bill Clinton than Dr.

Ford has against Kavanaugh.

Democrats all turn their backs on me.

All women are believed as long as they're not conservative, as long as the assault was not done by Democrats, end quote.

Here she is in a recent interview with Laura Ingram when asked what she thought about the Democrats' circus-like handling of Kavanaugh's confirmation.

It makes me go back to 1999 when

Diane Feinstein, along with every other Democrat, refused to read my deposition to the independent counsel.

They wouldn't have nothing to do with it.

That just shows you the difference in the double standard that existed back then and still does today.

I think this is astonishing that they can do this to Mr.

Kavanaugh.

Astonishing certainly is the word.

It's astonishing that someone could survive with such cognitive dissidence, isn't it?

She complains Democrats should be tougher and fight harder, but she clams up and starts speaking full-blown legalese when someone asks, how can you go on huge rants about sexual predators when your husband is widely considered to be a sexual predator and has a very credible charge of rape?

Of course, she responds by hardening her face into that stony grin.

Hillary Clinton.

Certainly astonishing.

It's Wednesday, October 10th.

You're listening to the Glenbeck program.

You know the nice thing though about Hillary Clinton?

Everybody knows she's lying.

You know what I mean?

Nobody buys, nobody buys her act anymore.

No.

Which is really nice.

It's really, well, CNN, Christiana Anampour, she still buys into it.

Yeah, I don't know that I would really make that distinction.

I mean, who cares what she thinks?

Really, either of them.

I mean, it's two voices that I almost can't hear.

I care so little about what they're talking about.

It's almost like they're cutting woods in a forest.

Yeah.

Trees are falling and nobody's hearing it.

And I'm in the middle of a city

many, many hundreds of miles away.

I cannot hear the trees falling.

I try to remember.

I watched something that was so outrageous last night.

What was it?

And I thought to myself, wow,

I'm really not outraged.

I don't care.

It's hard.

I just don't care.

It's hard.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff today.

I mean,

the things that the people that are trying to cover this election and the Kavanaugh thing are actually saying, I mean, they're incredible.

It's as if they don't care what the words they're saying mean.

No.

Well, for instance, let's use this because we're changing definitions of words.

Here's Brooke Baldwin on CNN.

They're talking about how...

We've got to be careful because people are going to be hurt because

we're seeing mobs start to form.

Here it is.

I believe it's the overreaction of the left.

When you see people like Ted Cruz getting chased out of restaurants by a mob,

you're not going to use the mob.

I would say that.

Oh, it's totally a mob.

It is, without a doubt.

There's no other word for it.

It's a

put up.

Stop.

Stop.

A mob is what we saw in Charlottesville, Virginia two Augusts ago.

No, a mob is not what we saw chasing.

I'm not saying what they did with rights.

What about the people who were at the Supreme Court banging on the walls?

What do you call that?

Civil protest?

Or is that a mob?

I think it's easily a mob.

Yeah, and if it were tea partiers, we'd call it a mob for sure.

Come on, let's peace.

I mean, because I saw lots of tea partiers going to the Supreme Court and banging on the walls.

And by the way, I got plenty of Supreme Court decisions that make me want to bang on the walls of the Supreme Court.

Right.

But we don't do those things because we're supposed to be in a civil society.

Right.

I'm trying to remember.

I'm trying to remember all of the people the tea partiers chased down with their children, you know, and the homemade signs.

How many people they chased down in restaurants and surrounded.

I cannot think of one example.

In fact, if you want an example of this, what did Nancy Pelosi do during the health care bill?

She and

was it John Lewis marched out into the crowd,

into the crowd, trying to get them to do that, and they wouldn't.

Do you remember?

Yeah.

They tried to get them to be violent.

They said all kinds of crazy things, throw gasoline all over them, and then they linked arms and marched bravely through that crowd when they didn't have to.

They were trying

to get the Tea Party to become a violent mob.

They didn't.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh would have linked arms and tried to walk through the crowd in Washington, D.C.?

It would not have been pretty.

It would not have been pretty.

And by the way, I mean, you know, you can talk about some of these things.

I mean, Antifa, that's not a mob.

They're like torching cities and they're taking over

institutions.

That's a riot.

That is a riot by a mob.

Could you define mob, please?

Look it up in the dictionary.

Find out.

Let's make sure we know what we're talking about.

Mob.

Mob.

A large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.

Okay.

And the quote is, a mob of protesters.

That's their usage.

So is this not a disorderly crowd of people

that are trying to

say

intent on causing trouble.

Intent on causing trouble.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you think, well, Brett Kavanaugh is a terrible person and stopping him is good, so that's not causing trouble.

I mean, if you want to go down that road, I guess you can.

That doesn't, does it say there, unless you're right?

It just says intent on causing trouble already.

It doesn't say, you know,

with an exception of those who are absolutely right.

What I'm saying, though, is that the media does not see harassing conservatives as causing trouble.

Correct.

That is the issue.

Correct.

They see this as a correct.

They see this as like that, you know, they're, it's basically, you know, charity work, right?

I mean, they're doing good for the people.

You're stopping these evil, old white people who have names like Cruz.

That, you know.

Thanks.

Thanks, Betto.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, but it's.

The Irish guy.

The Irish guy.

Robert Francis O'Rourke.

Let me tell you, these white people, these old white people will do you.

Really, Betto?

Really?

Okay, so let's listen to a couple of things.

First, we have CNN.

We just played.

Oh, you're not going to call it a mob.

Yes, I'm going to call it a mob.

Now here's Maxine Waters trying to say, we're trying to redefine protest as mob rule.

Here it is.

Protest is guaranteed to a democratic society.

We know that this is guaranteed to us by the Constitution.

They're trying to change the description of protest and call it a mob.

Well,

this president is the poster boy for what a mob protester looks like.

He is a matter of fact.

He's the one who has been violent in his speech.

He's the one in his rallies that said things like this.

I'd like to punch him in the face.

Trump said that at one of his rallies.

He said, Knock the crap out of them, would you?

And seriously, okay, just knock the hell.

I mean, okay,

okay, we got it.

Now, that's what she's saying.

She's saying that Donald Trump is the one who's violent in their speech.

Let's go to Jennifer Epps

Addison.

She's the network president and co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy.

Here's what she's saying to the crowds:

Lawmakers and leftists continue to push.

Protest is guaranteed to

survivors was enough to shake and intimidate them.

But wait till they go home, wait till they go to the state fair, wait till they go to the coffee shop, wait till they go to the movies, wait till they go anywhere we see them.

Wait till they go anywhere we see them.

Now here's

the problem.

Let's ratchet things down just a bit and listen to somebody who says,

I think there's real trouble on the way and has reason to say that.

Here's Rand Paul.

When people like Corey Booker say, get up in their face, he may think that that's okay, but what he doesn't realize is that for about every thousand person that might want to get up in your face, one of them is going to be unstable enough to commit violence.

When I was at the ball field and Steve Scalise was nearly killed, the guy shooting up the ball field and shooting, I think five or six people were shot.

Steve Scalise was almost killed.

He was yelling, this is for health care.

He had a list in his pocket of conservative Republicans that he wanted to kill.

You know, when I was attacked in my yard and had six of my ribs broken,

pneumonia, lung contusion, all of that.

These are people that are unstable.

We don't want to encourage them.

We have to somehow ratchet it down and say, we're not encouraging that violence is ever okay,

ever a reason for or a means for trying to resolve things.

I feel that there's going to be an assassination.

I really worry that someone is going to be killed and that those who are ratcheting up

the conversation, those who are ratcheting up saying get in their face, they have to realize that they bear some responsibility if this elevates to violence.

So do you remember the time when people like Brooke Baldwin and CNN were lecturing us that you couldn't say

you're going to target a district because that, of course, led to violence.

Couldn't target a district.

Remember the lectures of your words have power because you don't know who's listening to them.

And we said,

unless you're endorsing this, we are calling for peaceful rallies.

And they were.

And they were.

These are not peaceful.

How many people were arrested from the Tea Party?

Riots.

mobs.

How many?

I don't remember any.

There's 400 just last weekend on the left.

400.

That's disorderly.

That's not a peaceful protest.

Your words do have power because you do

mean violence.

Now, how can Glenn Beck even say that?

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Let me go to Dan in Georgia.

Hello, Dan.

You're on the Glenbeck program.

Hey.

Hey, Glenn.

How are you doing this morning?

Hey, Stu.

Hey.

Hey,

I want to ask you a serious question.

All right.

When is it our turn?

When is it our turn for what?

Fight back.

When is it our turn to take back the capital?

In what way?

In what way are you talking about?

You got to get a couple, a few weeks.

You can go vote and get that taken care of.

I intend to vote.

Yeah, so do I.

Since

2009 and 2010, when I told my wife that there will be blood in the streets.

So, what is your question?

Define when is it our turn?

Tell me what you mean by that.

When are we going to be allowed to protect ourselves, protect our representatives, protect our streets, protect our businesses, protect the innocent?

Okay, well, you are allowed to protect yourself.

If your life is in danger and you are under threat, you do have a right to protect yourself.

Right.

So that's a natural

natural law.

That's a natural right.

You have that.

If you're talking about when are we going to grab guns and go kill people,

you can count me out in that.

Yeah, never o'clock on that one.

Yeah, you can count me out on that.

Now, if I'm not asking you for guns,

what are you asking for?

no okay what are you asking for when it well you keep saying do not do not push back do not give no i do not say i do not say that i do not say don't you no sir no sir do not tell us all the time to not fall for the trick don't let them win don't let them don't you know that this is what don't

become them

yes don't become what you despise.

Do you want to become them?

You want to become that.

But I want to protect my children.

I want to protect

my streets.

So do I.

Okay, so I don't have $6 million in security guards.

So how do I do it?

When do we

tell me, sir, what your threat level is right now.

Tell me what your threat level is right now.

Well, if I wear a shirt that says stand for the flag and I wear it to Kroger and I get dirty looks from two dudes much bigger than that.

Oh my gosh, dirty looks

really high.

Not dirty looks

right to protect ourselves against dirty looks,

right?

So, you guys make a joke out of it.

No, sir, I'm not making a joke of it.

You are, you

know, I'm not.

You are obviously ready to fight right now.

I am.

I feel that it's getting to a point where we have to fight because the way that this is going

to fight.

at which it's ramping up.

How do you want to fight?

How do you want to fight?

I don't know.

You do.

You do.

You just won't say it on national radio.

How do you want to fight?

I'll say it.

I don't go ahead then.

Say it.

I don't care about it.

Go ahead then, say it, man.

Fire with fire.

They're in our face.

We get up and get back in their face.

They threaten us at a dinner table.

We protect our dinner table.

I mean, can we hose them down with pepper spray and mace, or are we going to go to jail and be called certain names?

I mean, at what point are we allowed to defend ourselves?

You are allowed to defend yourself today.

If you are under threat and you feel that your family and you are in a actual unsafe condition, not a college, I feel unsafe, but an actual threat.

Excuse me, sir.

Let me talk.

Stood up.

Let me talk.

If you stood up and took a protester down, would he have been

allowed to have done that?

I don't mean down like that.

I mean, you know, if he thought,

would he have been in his right to defend his family and his circle from further escalation of violence?

He would have been foolish to do it.

Escalating violence is not a defense against the further escalation of violence.

That's just going to make it worse.

I mean, what Ted Cruz did was win, right?

Did you tell me Ted Cruz lost that?

Did we lose the Kavanaugh thing?

We didn't come out in the streets and scream and beat the crap out of people with Kavanaugh.

Is he in the Supreme Court?

We would have lost the Kavanaugh case.

Yeah, you would have lost it.

You would have lost.

You certainly would have lost Jeff Flake.

He was dying to vote no.

But we didn't give them the opportunity.

You went through and handled the situation right, and now Kavanaugh's on the Supreme Court.

It was handled well.

And what's the next level they're going to go to now?

I don't know.

We'll have to wait and see.

You seem to want to predict it and act on it now.

Yeah, and I'm not with you on that.

Believe me, I will protect my family

without my security guards.

I'm sorry.

My threats are a little bit more than getting dirty looks in the grocery store.

Well, there's two dudes at Kroger, though.

Have you ever had that security?

No, I've never had a few dudes at Kroger.

Look at my shirt.

So I am sorry that you don't have my

security.

I am sorry that my family has to go through the threats.

I just wrote to a friend.

I just wrote to a friend this morning who said, hey, I want to come and stay with you guys or, you know, just hang out with you guys over the weekend, blah, blah, blah.

I said, my wife doesn't do that anymore.

I've been trying to get my life, my wife to

put her guard down.

We don't have people over at our house anymore.

We don't have anyone over at our house anymore.

We don't do things like that because our life has been so unbelievably chaotic.

And yes, a little more than Kroger.

I am not mocking you for what you have to go through.

I would just like to remind you that

Martin Luther King went through a lot more.

Abraham Lincoln went through a lot more.

Abraham Lincoln, if you don't think Abraham Lincoln, as a man wanted to make the South pay,

if you don't think he did, you don't know history.

If you think that

our greatest founding fathers

said exactly the same thing, we do not want war.

We do not want bloodshed.

Take it, take it, take it, until they couldn't take it anymore.

And they then wrote the Declaration of Independence, which did not lead with why they were so mad.

Instead, they wrote a plea.

This is who we are, and we'll stand.

You just seem to want to fight.

I am not with you.

I

look to win.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

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Want you to understand that you are on a path to victory right now.

You are on a path to victory.

If you are angry this morning, I understand.

I understand because you're watching television or you're reading things on social media and you're like, I can't believe these people are calling for mobs or riots,

and the media is excusing them.

And

is the media winning?

The media is only winning because we're allowing them into our life to win.

They're meaningless.

The media is not winning.

You are.

Think of this.

You got the most unelectable man in American history elected.

You got a guy that everyone said cannot do it.

The ultimate outsider doesn't play politics, doesn't play game, doesn't do anything that anyone would say you should do that.

You got him elected.

Then what did he do?

Started doing the things he said he would do.

What the hell is that?

I've never seen that from a politician.

You're winning.

Do you think the left has become unhinged because

they think you're on the ropes?

Do you think the left has

just signed on to democratic socialism,

a radical un-American idea?

Do you think that they're excusing Antifa because they think we're about to win?

This is the last gasp in death throes.

Backed into a corner, no place to go.

What do you do?

You just start throwing punches.

You're not in the corner.

They're in the corner.

Why are you acting like you're in the corner?

They are trying to get you to feel like you're in the corner.

You're not.

They're not protesting because you're weak.

They're protesting because you're strong.

People who say, I don't want to talk to the Democrats, you can't talk to the Democrats.

Really?

Really?

I'm not talking about the politicians.

I'm not talking about the crazy antifaw, people on the edges.

I'm talking about your neighbor.

Now, a lot of people can't.

I get that.

I can't talk to a lot of people.

I get it.

I do get it.

But let's not forget 20% of the people who voted for Donald Trump voted for Barack Obama.

Where do they come from?

We don't want to talk to people who voted for Barack Obama, really?

Because 20%.

Now you're not hearing that on TV because the Democrats and the media don't want you to know that they're 20% responsible for this monster.

You're winning.

African American unemployment is the lowest in history.

Our current unemployment rate overall is the lowest since the 1960s.

You're winning.

You have a conservative court.

And if things continue this way, if we go out and vote,

guess what?

You might have two other court appointments.

Why do you think they'll be mad about that?

Because you're winning.

Let's remember that and keep that into perspective

when we call for violence.

No, why?

Why punch down?

We have a bigger vision for America, and it's happening.

Why punch down?

It's irrelevant.

It's easy to get mad.

It's easy to get mad, especially in today's world.

It used to be that we had to be mad about something that was real.

Now Americans are just mad because, oh my gosh, did you hear they use the M-word?

I actually had to click on the story because I didn't know what the M-word was.

The headline was, uh, CNN host goes crazy because guest uses M-word.

What the hell is the M-word?

Mob.

Mob.

Don't use that word word now.

Can't call Antifa or what's happening at the steps of the Supreme Court a mob.

No, no, no.

400 arrests?

That's not a mob.

So it's easy to get angry.

But when you are angry, that is when character comes out.

That's when people see who you really are.

And if people are looking for a home because I'm not comfortable with socialism, I'm not comfortable with people who are saying I don't like capitalism.

I'm not comfortable with people who are calling for mobs and calling for riots and surrounding people in restaurants.

I'm not comfortable.

I can't vote for them.

Who do I vote with?

Where do I go?

If the other side is saying, kill them, get them, bunch back.

They're not going to go to you either.

April 4th, 1968.

On the back of a flatbed pickup truck in the heart of the worst part of town, the ghetto in Indianapolis, in front of an almost entirely black crowd before social media.

Martin Luther King is shot.

RFK is on the way to speak.

Everyone, the sheriff, everyone says, you can't go there.

You're a white man in a black crowd.

They will kill you.

He said, no, they won't.

No handler, no cell phones, no writers, nothing.

He takes a little piece of paper and he jots down a few notes and he gets up to break the news

to this black crowd that Martin Luther King had just been shot.

I want you to listen to his message because his message is exactly the message that I would love to hear from people today.

Listen.

This is a difficult time for the United States.

it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are

and what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are black,

considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible,

you can be filled with bitterness

and with hatred

and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country

in greater polarization.

Black people amongst blacks and white amongst whites

filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did,

to understand

and to comprehend and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that is spread across our land

with an effort to understand

compassion

and love.

For those of you who are

black

and are tempted to

be filled with hatred and distrust

of the injustice of such an act

against all white people,

I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.

I had a member of my family killed,

but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States.

We have to make an effort to understand,

to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times.

A favorite poem,

my favorite poet, was Aeschylus.

He once wrote,

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart

until in our own despair

against our will

comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division.

What we need in the United States is not hatred.

What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness,

but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another.

Feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

One of the greatest speeches given by any man in the United States, RFK.

Martin Luther King

had won already.

He had won.

If a politician would have gotten up on the back of a pickup truck and said what politicians are saying today,

get him.

Martin Luther King's life

would have been wasted.

Because

nobody would have wanted to be a part of that.

And they would have identified.

People would have looked at that and said, yeah, it's justified, but I don't want to be a part of that.

You're winning.

Stay the course.

Do not play into the game of those who are in their death throes.

They're eating their own.

Don't be fooled.

You're listening to the best of the Glendeck program.

I want to thank Ed Stetzer.

He's a guy that we had booked last hour, and I kind of went in a different direction, but it fits right in what we have been talking about today.

I had a caller about an hour and a half ago who said that, you know, when is it time that we're going to fight back?

And we should fight back.

We should fight back at the polls.

We should stand true and steady.

We have to speak truth.

Do not forget the things that we were all taught and we all know are true.

To be civil and kind to one another.

But

we're not at a place where

I think you grab a gun.

I won't.

Christians in the age of outrage.

How to bring our best when the world is at its worst.

Ed Stetzer just wrote that book.

Welcome to the program, Ed.

How are you?

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

And I think we both wrote books on outrage.

So it's kind of a nice timing to talk about outrage.

We did.

And have you found, Ed, that it's not necessarily an understood topic or a popular topic right now to try to defuse it or explain what it does to us?

You know, it's interesting.

I see the word used more than I've ever seen it before in my lifetime.

And, you know, rage and outrage is in headlines of articles all the time.

But it's when you go a little deeper, and in your case, talking about his relationship to addiction, or in my case, talking about how Christians might engage the age of outrage.

So

I think there's a lot of references to it, but not a lot of, okay, what do we do?

And I think, you know, Dan from Georgia, who fascinating, fascinating call.

And as you kind of walk through that with him, he's clearly outraged.

His response would be very different than yours.

And I appreciate how you responded.

And mine.

And I think ultimately, part of the challenges is Dan's response is, I mean, Dan just said, I'll just say it.

I'll just say it.

You know, Dan's response is the way a lot of people feel right now.

There's a lot of built-up outrage that is, and it's, you know, both on the conservative and the liberal side.

And it's in many ways tearing our country apart.

From my concern as a Christian leader, you know, I'm here at the Billy Graham Center.

My concern is, is as Christians, how are we going to engage in a world filled with outrage

when sometimes we're the cause of it, sometimes we're the targets of it?

It's a mix.

And I love your comments about religious liberty, too.

I mean,

I'm deeply concerned about religious liberty around the world.

Thankful for you bringing that up, bringing that case up even today.

But again, I see Christians who are outraged about Starbucks cups rather than about persecution around the world.

And I think so we got got our own issues to deal with, but also it's the culture as a whole.

So tell me, because, and I don't know if you heard last hour when I was talking about Bonhoeffer, and that we have this closing window.

Bonhoeffer did not succeed in what he tried to do, although he was in the end victorious.

But he didn't change the people because the people had already abandoned their Judeo-Christian values.

They were angry, they were outraged, and

they wanted political solutions, not a spiritual solution.

And

they just went for it.

We have this window on our Judeo-Christian culture and our underpinnings.

They're being lost.

And if we don't get through that window and keep people's hearts open, we're going to go really awry.

Really awry.

And I think ultimately this is our moment.

And, you know, not every, we don't get to pick the moment we're born or that we live into.

And every generation has faced their challenges.

but this is our moment and in in the book i sort of go through i have a chart and some stats we have some new statistics in each chapter and i talk about how in many ways uh that judeo-christian uh consensus has been lost and now the views of you know christians different groups maybe uh that are more on the conservative side are now outside in many ways of the mainstream of society where once they were the mainstream and that's kind of led to an accelerated uh outrage cycle it's led to well everyone's turning up the volume to 11.

And ultimately, I don't think that's the path.

And I appreciate what you just said earlier when you were talking to Dan, is

we've got to choose a different way.

Now, one of the key things is Christians are consistently choosing a different way.

And, you know, we don't need to be discipled by our cable news network.

We don't need to be shaped spiritually by our social media feed.

I think ultimately we need to be shaped as Christians by who Christ is.

And Jesus was unafraid to stand up.

I mean, he was in the temple and he turned over tables.

But he also showed this remarkable ability that we can model to build bridges with people with whom he shouldn't even be around.

Think of the Samaritan woman at the well.

And I think ultimately we need a better path.

The answer is not to get like the world.

The answer for Christians in this age of outrage is to really follow the way of Jesus into the world.

And I'm not some, you know, well, don't stand up for things.

I mean, even you said you fight, but you fight.

you know, for example, you can't war at a people and reach a people at the same time.

And so it's a question of how you approach that.

And we're just, we're, to use your title, we're addicted to outrage right now.

And I'm trying to say there's a better way for Christians to

rebel, even when they're the targets of the outrage, and certainly to not participate in creating faux and false crises and outrage.

Trevor Burrus: Well, here's what's interesting to me, and I pointed it out last hour.

If you talk politically,

we're winning.

I mean, look at the Supreme Court.

Brett Kavanaugh, I don't know of any president that would have stood up for that.

Look what happened with Israel.

In many ways,

you know, we're winning.

It's not, they're not forming mobs and going out and, you know, trying to get into people's face and getting them to react in anger because they're winning.

They're doing that because they're desperate.

We're actually making progress.

And somehow or another,

we're just being swept up in their drama.

Well, I think people are, it's kind of weird that appeals to us.

There's a part of us.

And I think that's why

we'll find

some crisis on social media that Christians will be very attracted to.

And then we find out later that wasn't true.

And it kind of spread around.

And I think that's part of the concern.

What is it in us that draws us to outrage rather than to engage.

And I think there's a difference between the two.

And, you know, I'm some, for example, I'm someone who's deeply pro-life.

You know, I spoke at the March for Life here in Chicago not that long ago.

And, you know, you had kind of, you know,

those of us in the March for Life speaking up and standing for life.

And then you had some protester around the side just calling us terrible people.

But then you had some...

some self-identified Christians yelling horrible things at them.

And here's what, I don't want to be, I want to be in the group that's saying, I'm going to stand for life, not yelling horrible things at one another and thinking even the counter protesters who were kind of part of the march for life but left and started yelling, that's the problem.

We look too much like them.

And I don't think that that's our goal.

If our goal, and we talk about this a lot in Christians in the Age of Outrages, is to hold a biblical worldview, but then to engage the world with a winsome approach.

And Glenn, for what's worth, I mean, I've been fascinated to watch you sort of walk through that journey as well.

And I think it really challenged a lot of people in in the way that they would think.

And so, so, so, kudos to you for even writing on this subject.

I think it matters.

I'd like to talk to you about your solutions.

So, let me take a quick break.

The name of the book is Christians in the Age of Outrage.

I think it is really important.

We cannot become that which we despise.

We cannot play the same game.

First of all, just strategically, you lose.

The name of the book is Christians in the Age of Outrage.

And it is very frank.

It talks about what Christians can and should do and also have not done and how we're actually hurting ourselves.

You talk about our God really kind of being identity now.

Can you explain that, Ed?

I think ultimately we've kind of, as a nation, moved ourselves into factions.

And what I don't want is Christians to be a faction in a world of factions.

I think that's the part of the problem.

But I think, you know, people identify themselves as, you know, I'm this or I'm that.

I've got a social media community.

And then that faction sort of becomes, identity becomes a faction.

The faction becomes an echo chamber.

And then ultimately,

the volume just goes up, up and up, and up, and the anger just goes up, up, and up, and up.

And we can't survive, I think, as a nation factionalizing at this level.

Eventually, you'll balkanize, to use a term from history, where we'll kind of break apart.

And so I think the ultimate thing is, now

I can't solve all the political things.

You've got a much bigger platform talking about politics than I do.

I'm just trying to help Christians to say, all right, how do we react?

How do we respond?

And the answer is, is not to take our identity from anything other than King Jesus.

And again, I know that's overtly spiritual, but we're talking here in this focus.

I mean, so it's to take our identity from King Jesus.

Jesus is not coming back on Air Force One.

He's not riding a donkey or an elephant when he does.

And to acknowledge that I'm only all in as a Christian in following Christ, and everything else is shaped around that.

My identity is more to Christ and his kingdom.

That's kind of our motto here at Wheaton College.

My identity is more to Christ and his kingdom than to anything else.

So I explained this yesterday that,

you know,

the so-called Christians of the Westboro Baptist Church, you know, they hold up signs, you know, God hates this, God hates that, blah, blah, blah.

They're just despicable.

You don't win by...

by holding up signs, no, God hates you, and shouting things back.

You win by listening, by understanding, by embracing them as a soul or a brother and sister, not what they're doing, standing up.

But people have been changed.

There's one woman in particular that actually left her own family in the Westboro Baptist Church

because somebody spoke to her with

civility and said, let's just reason here for a minute.

Yeah, that's so key.

I have on my desk, I actually right here in front of me, a nameplate because they actually protested at my church.

We went out and served served them coffee and donuts, and they called me in the national news, I can't use one of the words probably on the radio, but a lying beep false prophet.

And so it's actually, and one of my staff made it into a name plate.

It says lying blank false prophet, Westboro Baptist Church, which, by the way,

is neither Baptist nor a church.

But in doing so, I mean, the question is, how do we respond?

Well, somebody reached out.

I actually interviewed one of the members of the family as well at Christianity Day.

So somebody reached out.

And I will tell you, I think that's what we can do right now with people who deeply disagree with us.

And the book is filled with examples of Christians who actually built relationships with people who radically disagreed.

And in the process, we're able to come to maybe a better understanding.

One of the examples, for example, is the president of Biola University, which is a Christian university in California.

I met with kind of the leader of the party in the state legislature there in California that was trying to change laws that would make it illegal for Biola.

to live their Christian beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and more.

Well, they ended up getting to understand each other better.

The bill was ultimately not moved forward, but dropped, and now we're at a very different place.

Now, I'm not saying you can always do that, but I am saying that Christians need to try to do that.

And I do think that in doing so, we'll act a lot more like Jesus.

Or even this, how about a lot more like Christians historically?

Because the moment we're in is not...

time for us to join in ratcheting up the outrage and and as you said earlier to your caller i mean calling people to arms Yet that's not, I mean, Glenn, that's not an uncommon view.

And

some of the worst things I see on social media, I click on a link and I find, go to the bio, and it's the first thing lists on the thing is Christian.

And I'm like, that's not what it's supposed to look like.

And I think that's what we need is a change in a lot of hearts.

I will tell you this.

The ones who can teach us this right now are the victims of ISIS and the ones who were literally chained as slaves.

You know, story after story after story of these Christians who, I mean, I know one family that actually wrote to ISIS after they said, you're all dead.

We're coming Saturday to kill you.

I think it was on Sunday.

We're going to come on Sunday and kill you if you don't submit.

And we're going to crucify you.

The family sat down, kids and all, and wrote a letter and said,

We understand.

We forgive you for that.

We're not going to leave.

We'll be here.

You can come at 3 o'clock.

We only ask that you do not crucify us.

We're not worthy of that kind of a death.

And they lived because they stood up with peace.

It's unbelievable what's happening.

Well, and we can learn from global Christians or also historically.

There was this emperor, fascinating emperor called Julian the Apostate.

I write about this in the book.

And he actually, he's called the apostate because, you know, victors write the history and the Christians eventually became more and more prominent.

And here's what he writes because because he's so angry about trying to hold back the advance of Christians.

He's a pagan.

And he says, This, whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity.

He goes on and says, These impious Galileans, impious Galileans, not only feed their own poor, but ours also welcome them into their agape.

The name of the book is Christians in the Age of Outrage.

Pick it up.

It is well worth the read.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

I've seen some things that are game-changing in certain ways.

You know, being able to do it online instead of a TV.

It's pretty big.

No, no, no.

I went to something called The Void.

Have you heard about this yet?

No.

There's only one in Texas.

It's Lucas.

It's George Lucas that has done it.

And the one in Texas is at the Cinemark in West Plano.

I think it's $30 for 15 minutes.

Whoa.

I'd pay $60.

What?

What is it?

Okay.

It is

virtual reality.

And

you go in, you put on this virtual reality suit, you put on the...

the goggles and then you go into this this room that's just like it looks like a cubicle when your goggles are up it looks like a cubicle it's just it's all it is you put the goggles down and they start and you are now in star wars what yeah it's unbelievable you all the people you only go with four people maximum four

and so you're going in and like you know my kids we were all stormtroopers and i could tell who was who because we all are linked by comms and the sizes are there but you put the goggles down they're in suits you are in a suit you look down at yourself and you're in a suit you put your hands out, and you're in a suit.

And

you go and you reach for things, and it happens.

At one point, the Empire is pulling you over.

You're on this mission, and it pulls you over.

And you're on, you remember that, no, probably nobody remembers this, but whatever that I, whatever that planet was, it was all lava, that, you know, episode three.

Okay, you're pulled over on that planet.

And the doors open up, and you have to, you have to

get off of your ship and get into theirs the doors open up you feel the heat of the lava and wherever you look you're on the planet it's unbelievable how is it I've not heard of this place it's brand new just open the left void the void

and it's in Plano it's in West Plano the only one in Texas it is game-changing wow I said to I said to Rafe because I don't play games all that stuff on like

I don't know how you're going to leave virtual reality.

It was the coolest experience I've ever had.

You were there.

I fought Darth Vader.

It was unbelievable.

You really feel when you're walking out on the ship, you're walking out, and it looks, when you look down, it looks like you're on a grate.

So you're seeing the lava beneath you.

It actually gives you that spooky feeling of like, I'm going to fall.

Really?

Yeah, it is unbelievable.

I have to do it.

Unbelievable.

This, this month is.

How many digs do you have nationwide, dudo?

Don't know.

This month it is Star Wars.

Next month is Ghostbusters.

And you're going in and you have the power pack.

It's crazy.

Oh, my God.

I got to try.

I mean, you know, obviously the virtual reality thing

is not done to this level normally.

Like, they have some stuff, and I don't think it's

serious.

This is well done.

My sons have a little mobile unit, and it's like, okay, it's kind of no here.

You fight.

You're fighting.

When you're fighting,

you've got a blaster and you're fighting.

And when you're shot, you feel it.

You get a tingle in your chest or wherever it is, they shoot you.

Wow.

It's amazing.

It is the closest thing to

ready player one.

I didn't know that was available now.

They talk about that being

something that's going to happen in the future, but to have it here, that's amazing.

And tickets, it's sold out all the time.

Really?

All the time, it's sold out.

And it is fancy.

So asking.

How far in advance do you have to?

I don't know.

You just have to call and just see.

Wow.

But get your ticket.

You will love it.

And find it if it's in your state or in your area.

Again, only one in Texas so far.

It's at the Cinemark in West Plano, and it's called The Void.

The Blaze Radio Network.

On demand.