Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
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to discuss religious
liberty events and principles
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and my guest on this
program is Elijah Mvundura,
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Liberty author,
and I'm discovering,
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a very perceptive
philosopher of sorts.
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I've never met anybody
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other than my
predecessor Clifford Goldstein
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who's as comfortable
discussing philosophy,
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particularly in
relation to religion
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and biblical truths.
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But let's talk about truth,
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you know, or as
Pilate said, "What is truth?"
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Right? Yeah.
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Or as the president
said, "That's fake news."
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Yes, it's fake news.
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You know, we're in a context now
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where, you know, we
point to President Trump,
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but he's not the
first one to say it,
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but it's now hit the mainstream,
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the idea that a
lot of the information
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we get is false,
not to be relied on.
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You know what,
actually, it's very interesting.
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It's nice actually
mentioning President Trump
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because, to many liberals,
the people in the liberal side,
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Trump is the...
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Personification.
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Yes, of fake news.
Yes, that's the irony.
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They believe that he
is the liar and all that.
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But actually, the
people who studied all this
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is post-modernism,
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the whole thing
I've been referring
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to Nietzsche and the like,
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and the whole
thing about Nietzsche
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is that you can
create your own truth,
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Critical Theory that
dominated American universities
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since World War II
is the one that said,
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"We can create our own reality."
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And so they are
blaming Trump for this thing.
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I would put that on the
door of radical liberalism.
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Yeah.
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They literally destroyed
the Christian foundation,
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the Christian
aspect of American culture,
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and put, literally,
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that's what
Critical Theory is all about,
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it's about suspicion.
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Actually, there is
one French philosopher
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who calls Freud,
Marx, and Nietzsche
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the masters of suspicion,
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they are
suspicious of everything.
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And so they have been literally
pulling down all absolutes.
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There are no moral absolutes.
There is no transcendent truth.
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And they talk about
Trump, I'm not defending Trump,
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I'm from Zimbabwe,
and I'm from Canada,
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but we need to know
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that this thing has got
a philosophical lineage.
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Yeah, I agree with you.
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They created the context
in which we are there today.
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Yeah.
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Trump would
never have been there
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if some of these
foundations of American culture
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had not been undermined
by radical individualism.
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And I think this
is where I'm coming
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that we need to understand this,
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before feminism.
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I'm not against
equal rights for women,
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God created us all equal,
but the whole agenda of gender,
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where gender can
be deconstructed,
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and it's not enough
to... gender equality,
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humanity itself has
got to be deconstructed,
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our gender, the
markers of gender...
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We've been in a long process.
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And you're
correctly identifying,
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I think, the philosophical
shifts that took place.
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In my view, short-term,
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what we're seeing
is the immediate payoff
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of the computerization of ideas.
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Yes.
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And, you know, at
least 20-30 years ago,
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journalism, which was
always subject to bias.
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I mean, if you doubt that,
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go and read the story
of the American Aurora,
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a newspaper in
early American history.
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It was banned and
accused of being seditious
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and all the rest
because newspapers back then
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would, as some of them do now,
would sort of buy into a party
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and twist
everything to their own agenda.
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But journalism used to be
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subject to certain
checks and balances.
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You would send out
investigative reporters,
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the editors,
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as the Washington Post
even did this recently as the...
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the Nixon
affair, Watergate papers.
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You know, they
would then double check,
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they wouldn't
just take something
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because the
reporter brought it in,
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but with the computer
and the online opinions,
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and online news,
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and the cutting budgets
for mainline newspapers.
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I know, I go to meetings
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where there's a
government handout at the door,
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and I see the
reporters taking it,
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and that's what I read
in the news the next day.
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They haven't checked anything.
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So this whole instant use
and the superficial way news
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is being
gathered and disseminated
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is played into,
exactly what you're saying,
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a process of
cutting loose from truth.
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Yes.
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And the checks
and balances have gone
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and relatively suddenly.
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You can't rely on anything. Yes.
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But the climate of
opinion that is created,
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even social media...
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It's bigger than the mechanics
of the situation, of course.
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Yes, we're operating in a
certain climate of opinion
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where we believe
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that the human being is
a creator of his own truth.
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And if we are...
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Incidentally, there is a way
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even philosophy
has gone off track
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because when you
go back to Plato.
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Plato, today, we just
read Plato's philosophy,
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but Plato wrote his philosophy
in opposition to the Sophists.
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The Sophists, they said,
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"Man is the
measure of all things."
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And when Plato
spoke of that ideal world,
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Plato was
saying, "No, no, no, no,
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there is a standard of good,
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man is not the
measure of all things."
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Of course, yes, God
is an abstract concept
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but still the
principle is the same,
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man is not the
measure of all things.
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So what has happened with
post-modernism is not new.
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We're almost back
at the foundations.
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We must know that
Western civilization
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is built on two foundations,
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the Judeo-Christian
and the Greco-Roman.
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And both the...
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Indeed they were
pagans, but they believed
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that human beings do not
create their own reality.
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There are the gods
that are above human beings.
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And so...
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Well, until the emperors
started calling themselves God.
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Yes, but still he
was somebody was who...
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he got his
authority from the gods.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So what we're
hearing in the modern era
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that is so radical
and very, very different
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is that man is the
measure of all things.
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And if everyone is
creating their own values,
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then allow Trump to
create his own values,
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the philosophers,
they have said that.
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But they wanted that
privilege to themselves.
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So what we have here,
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what they have a
problem with Trump
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is that Trump has democratized
the production of fake news
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because they're
already doing it,
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and because now it
has been democratized,
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we're now in a case.
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Well, he has
legitimized it. Yes, yes.
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It is now...
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everybody's
creating their own facts,
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and that's why we
have this moral chaos.
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And so, for me,
we need to recover
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the basis of our
civilization, and what is that,
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there is a reality
that we do not make.
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I think it's so
basic. But have we recovered?
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That's why I believe
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that we need a
religious reformation.
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And I think that
this is the uniqueness
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of the Christian revelation,
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it has changed the way
people perceive reality.
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And that's why we have
been going back and forth
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to English Reformation.
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The English Civil War
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was the first
revolution in the world.
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The same thing with Newton,
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they were operating
within atheistic contexts,
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and that divine ground has
been taken off and based...
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And that's what Descartes did.
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Descartes moved this
from God to the self.
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He says, "I
think, therefore I am."
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Yeah.
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Right? Yes.
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And this is basically
what we are seeing today.
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It is read out Descartes,
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what Trump thinks is
the truth is the truth,
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but that's the trend
in modern philosophy.
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But short term
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and apart from
the spiritual renewal,
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which I think is central,
I mean, within our church,
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I've been saying that
religious liberty argues
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as it did at the
beginnings of our church
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that we need a
broad-based revival.
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No question on that.
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But when we're
talking about fake news
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for a moral person of
integrity, and perception,
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and even education,
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how do you know what's drawn up?
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Because it's all
put out as equal.
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Other than comparing it to
your own facts, and figures,
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and knowledge,
which you would do anyway,
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and bounce it off that,
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there's very little distinction
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between something
totally fabricated.
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During the election,
there were entire narratives,
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complete with video,
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of different
candidates' activities
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and so on that
we found out later
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they were
fictional movie productions.
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I think that I don't know
whether people buy to this,
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I know that people...
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But truth in the
Christian context
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with the Greeks,
truth is a proposition.
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Yes.
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Does it align,
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you know, the
principle of non-contradiction?
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But in the Bible,
truth is not abstract,
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truth is a person.
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That's why you cited
Pilate before, "What is true?"
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Yes, "What is truth?"
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And Christ
said, "I am the truth,
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the way, and the life."
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The reason why we
have got fake news
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is because we
have got fake people.
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But he didn't mean
truth in the factual sense.
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It was from a Latin...
It was veritatas or verity.
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But that's more integrity,
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what has
integrity, what is validity?
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Yes, it was...
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I think in the
English translation,
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it's sort of, you know,
like what is right or wrong,
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whatever, it's not
as deep as what is...
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Or in Italian,
verismo, what is...
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I think that's
the word they use,
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absolute bedrock
reality, what is it?
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Yes, then maybe it
brings up the thing
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that I was trying raise up here.
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I think it's very philosophical.
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Yes. Truth is in a
person. We need to...
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And it's very important
to underline this point.
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Jesus said, "I am the
truth, the way, and the life."
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Ultimately, the
truth is in a person.
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What makes genuine news,
or if we want genuine news
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and the truth and not fake news,
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we must first
have genuine people.
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Fake people will
produce fake news.
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And I think that's
where the importance
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of a Christian revival comes.
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Christ reforms us.
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He gives us integrity.
And what is integrity?
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Yes. Join with
Christ, you have...
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Integrity, yes, and I
think that that's, again,
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why it's very, very important
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that we do not
seek political solutions
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to the problems
that are confronting us.
00:10:30.39\00:10:34.23
In the Book of
Ezekiel and in Jeremiah,
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he speaks about whitewashing.
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Says, "You're putting
up your whitewashing."
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Jeremiah actually
is very strong on that,
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they've healed the
wound of my people, lightly,
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as if it was not serious.
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It's like giving a Tylenol
to somebody who's got cancer.
00:10:48.71\00:10:52.91
I think the
problems in our society
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are very, very deep.
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If we want to be
able to get the truth
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in our public discourse,
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it's important that we
build truth for people.
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And we can never
build truthful people
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without a grounding in God.
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There must be a
transcendent source of truth.
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And when I speak
of the importance
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of a
transcendent source of truth
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or of a divine source of truth,
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on that point, Greek philosophy
in the classical sense
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is in total
agreement with the Bible
00:11:21.64\00:11:24.05
because Plato's
insistence was that
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man is not the
measure of all things,
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there is a transcendent
source of truth, the God,
00:11:28.55\00:11:31.79
and that all the
things that we see down here,
00:11:31.82\00:11:33.96
it's a mirror of
that transcendent ground.
00:11:33.99\00:11:37.59
And so we have got to condemn
the radical individualism,
00:11:37.63\00:11:42.06
the kind of radical identity
00:11:42.10\00:11:44.03
that we have in the world today.
00:11:44.07\00:11:45.50
We can never have truth
00:11:45.53\00:11:48.47
unless we ground it
in a certain source.
00:11:48.50\00:11:51.44
As far as I
believe exactly as you say,
00:11:51.47\00:11:56.64
in the immediate sense,
00:11:56.68\00:11:58.38
how could the Christian
or any person of integrity
00:11:58.41\00:12:02.52
relate to the multiplicity
of misleading "news items"?
00:12:02.55\00:12:08.09
Yes, we did mention
00:12:08.12\00:12:09.72
at the beginning
of the Reformation
00:12:09.76\00:12:11.26
that there were
many, many Christian sects.
00:12:11.29\00:12:13.63
This debate is not new.
00:12:13.66\00:12:15.73
In the early modern period,
there was all competing truth,
00:12:15.76\00:12:19.97
and I can only go
back to the revival,
00:12:20.00\00:12:22.47
the more there is a genuine
revival of real godliness,
00:12:22.50\00:12:26.78
when people can
see the truth walking,
00:12:26.81\00:12:29.81
when they can see the
truth embodied in real people,
00:12:29.84\00:12:34.05
that's the only thing
that can reform our society
00:12:34.08\00:12:36.82
because it's not just fake news.
00:12:36.85\00:12:39.29
One of the main
themes today is...
00:12:39.32\00:12:40.82
It's the fake society.
00:12:40.86\00:12:42.19
Fake society, yes,
00:12:42.22\00:12:43.56
the fraying of the social fabric
00:12:43.59\00:12:45.59
where people are
alienated from one another.
00:12:45.63\00:12:48.46
And if we're going
to build a community
00:12:48.50\00:12:50.40
where we can
live with one another,
00:12:50.43\00:12:51.77
there is only one
thing that can do it,
00:12:51.80\00:12:53.34
it's the power of the gospel.
00:12:53.37\00:12:55.17
And the gospel
already did announce
00:12:55.20\00:12:57.57
that it breaks
barriers between people.
00:12:57.61\00:13:00.54
And to me, I've always found...
00:13:00.58\00:13:03.55
Before I came
for this recording,
00:13:03.58\00:13:04.95
I went to my old church.
00:13:04.98\00:13:07.65
Most of the
members in that church
00:13:07.68\00:13:09.38
were predominantly white.
00:13:09.42\00:13:11.32
But the way they treated
me was like a brother, why?
00:13:11.35\00:13:15.36
It is the power
of the gospel. Yeah.
00:13:15.39\00:13:18.63
It is the one that makes
friends out of strangers.
00:13:18.66\00:13:24.13
Indeed, even friends out
of enemies, and I think...
00:13:24.17\00:13:26.84
Well, if God can
reconcile man to... himself,
00:13:26.87\00:13:30.57
that's a huge gap, pretty easy,
00:13:30.61\00:13:32.24
relevantly speaking
00:13:32.27\00:13:33.61
to reconcile other
humans to each other.
00:13:33.64\00:13:35.21
Yes. Yes, yes.
00:13:35.24\00:13:36.58
And again, I see
that reconciliation
00:13:36.61\00:13:38.41
in the three angels' message
00:13:38.45\00:13:39.78
because the
three angels' message
00:13:39.81\00:13:41.45
calls all people to
worship the Creator God.
00:13:41.48\00:13:44.25
And I think it speaks of
the internal gospel anyway,
00:13:44.29\00:13:47.06
it speaks of
the internal gospel.
00:13:47.09\00:13:48.92
And as we preach
that internal gospel,
00:13:48.96\00:13:51.09
I believe it's the only thing
00:13:51.13\00:13:52.59
that is going to
bring people together,
00:13:52.63\00:13:54.80
we can either
do it by ourselves,
00:13:54.83\00:13:56.70
if we try to unite,
00:13:56.73\00:13:58.07
and that's what multiculturalism
00:13:58.10\00:13:59.57
and this gender
identity are trying to do.
00:13:59.60\00:14:01.44
Yes, it's a false way of unity.
00:14:01.47\00:14:02.80
But if you try to
bring unity by human means,
00:14:02.84\00:14:05.91
what you have is a Babylon.
00:14:05.94\00:14:07.54
Yeah, absolutely.
We'll take a break now.
00:14:07.58\00:14:10.71
Stay with us, and we'll be
back to finish our discussion
00:14:10.75\00:14:13.05
of fake news with real news.
00:14:13.08\00:14:15.75
We're not spreading
fake news here, stay with us.
00:14:15.78\00:14:18.12