Ep.9: Jesus is too Liberal

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.9: Jesus is too Liberal

[Lilin Lavin]
Welcome, dear listeners, to Satanist Next Door. We're your hosts, Lilin Lavin and Tommy Lavin. Whether you're an open-minded curious onlooker or a fellow Satanist seeking camaraderie, our goal is to share our personal experiences and delve into the intricate tapestry of Satanism in our daily lives, occasionally inviting other guests to share their unique perspectives, leaving no pentagram unturned.

We'll explore how our beliefs shape our views on society, dive into struggles and triumphs we've encountered, and reveal the humanity that unites us all. So grab your favorite chalice and join us on this captivating journey. Satanist Next Door is ready to peel back the curtain and offer you a glimpse into our world, one captivating episode at a time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hello, welcome to another episode of Satanist Next Door. Today, you know, we were just kind of hanging out and, you know, watching the news, kind of going through articles and stuff like that. And today, I noticed an article come out that they also touched on, you know, one of the new shows that we watched a little bit, which was basically saying that evangelicals are now rejecting liberal teachings of Jesus.

So I thought this was a good subject, because as Lillian and I talked about this, it was like, you know, a lot of the topics that we're talking about kind of come back to this, this hate and this bigotry that we see primarily, and we've, you know, tried to point it out on our podcast, and, you know, even in social media, primarily from a lot of the evangelicals, you know, that that's sort of the main pushing power behind, well, you know, what you see with these laws being pushed, MAGA, you know, all of that sort of stuff is sort of being pushed by this, this large evangelical push over the last decade or so, you know, where you just see so much hate coming from.

[Lilin Lavin]
Lillian Yeah, it's really crazy to me, because while I've never really aligned with Christian beliefs or most modern Abrahamic beliefs, I knew there were aspects of it that could be definitely positive and could help people to formulate a really good foundation for their lives and go out and do good things for their community and for others and for themselves, you know, if utilized properly. And so, as this has evolved into this much more hate-filled, bigoted, racist, segregationist, white nationalist craziness, I have just been appalled at, it just seems to drastically snowball into this, I don't even know what to call it at this point. Earlier came to my attention that there was an issue yesterday brought up in the news about a school in Texas in Conroe ISD, where they were noticing that there were some issues going on this Conroe ISD trustee who says they want to crack down on displays of racial inclusivity and pride, saying that they represent symbols of personal ideologies.

I said to myself, well, everything is kind of colored with personal ideology. We, as human beings, see the world through the lens in which we have formed to look through. So, it got crazier when in the article, and this is an ABC 13 article that, you know, you can look up by Shannon Ryan, and it's titled Conroe ISD trustee argues displays of racial inclusivity and pride in classrooms should be removed.

And the craziest part about this, they go on to say, a number of parents reaching out to this individual, this trustee, a number of parents reaching out to her about supposed displays of personal ideologies in classrooms. This individual saying I was shocked by each of the examples that were shared with me. However, I'm aware these trends have been happening.

I don't have pictures of it, so I can't directly see which ones. But then they go on to explain how there was a child, this is weird. One trustee says a child was traumatized by a poster showing different colored children holding hands and had to switch classrooms.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, so anybody that is still on the fence on whether, you know, evangelical Christians are this, you know, movement of love, that right there, I mean, you're basically saying a bunch of children of different colors, holding hands, which is, you know, inclusivity, where, you know, it doesn't matter what you look like that.

[Lilin Lavin]
Let's just take a little labels off of it. It's a group of kids being kids holding hands and just being in we're not talking about kids that are in middle school or high school. This was elementary level.

An example of an element first grader, first grade student, his parent claimed they were so upset by the poster showing hands of people of different races that they had to transfer classrooms. A first grader. So I'm telling you right now, this first grader wasn't traumatized by the picture of children of different colors holding hands because that's natural.

That is not a normal response to just a bunch of kids holding hands. Most kids, and I do really sincerely believe most kids in first grade, kindergarten, preschool are not looking around them saying, oh my gosh, I'm surrounded by all these different ethnicities. They're trying to find commonalities and sort out basic interactive skills.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
So, you know, obviously, like you're, you're sort of leaning into is this behavior was learned, you know?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes. I believe that if this was that traumatizing that they had to switch classrooms, and I'm questioning what the hell classroom they put them into. Is there like a special, you know, only alt-right classroom within the school?

This is just, you know, where are you going to school? What is your surroundings that you're so just appalled? Texas does have a lot of very rural-ish areas where there aren't a ton of minority representation, but there is usually still some representation.

And we live in a very global society overall. So if this was that traumatizing, I really have to question what this child was being taught.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, that is, I mean, that is just like the pinnacle of hate and bigotry. What I saw a picture of people of different colors and nationalities holding hands, and that traumatized me.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And the board members tried to say that this was political, and that there should be something and there was apparently they were told that there are already policies in place prohibiting teachers from displaying political items not relevant to curriculum. Now, I ask you, how is people, kids, relating to one another and just holding hands political?

Make it make sense.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, it shouldn't be. But again, you know, we have, you know, we've seen this movement for the last, you know, a little bit over 10 years, but it's really, really picked up steam over the last decade where, you know, evangelicals, now Christian nationalists, they've sort of merged into this Magus or machine of hate, and they're just kind of going after anything that is not, you know, anything that doesn't fall under the way that they view America should be, you know, because they want a Christian America, they want and not just a Christian America, like, you know, let's go by Jesus's words, because obviously, you know, and this article wasn't written by a non Christian, this, this article was written by the former top official of the Southern Baptist Convention, and is also the editor chief, in chief of Christianity Today, you know, so this, this, these are Christians calling out these other Christians saying, No, this is not the you know, this hate this bigotry, that you all are showing against immigrants, or the LGBTQIA community, or just anybody different than you is not the teachings of Christ. And they actually gave an example in here, where they said multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount.

And in their preaching, they, they, you know, they preach about turn the other cheek, and you know, all that, all that sort of stuff. And they will have members of their congregation come up to them and say, Where did you get these liberal talking points from? And, and their answer is like, Jesus.

So it makes me wonder is it's like, you know, it kind of shows when, you know, when Trump went after, you know, when, when, when Trump went for, you know, went running, he obviously, you know, he was trying to quote the Bible. And he said, like, to two Corinthians, you know, and anybody who's been to either a Bible study or to church or anything like that knows it's pronounced second Corinthians. But he said it wrong.

He said it wrong, because he's not a Christian. He's pretending to be a Christian, just like, I think a lot of these other evangelicals, they got on the bandwagon. Because it's like a, it's a weekly dopamine fix.

If you ever go to an evangelical church, especially, you know, they've got laying on hands, they've got speaking in tongues, they've got the big band, they got all of that sort of stuff going. Sometimes even have people with ribbons, ribbons dancing around and all of that sort of dance. I mean, it's like a rock concert on Sunday without, you know, all the good stuff that happens at a rock concert.

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, I get it, though. I understand people enjoy it. It's a fun experience, you know, whatever.

[Tommy Lavin]
But it's the teaching of hate that is getting out of control.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, I don't care if you're dancing and praising with music or having a wonderful dopamine-laden time in a church. What I care about is that a lot of the people sitting there talking, standing at the pulpit are saying things that are increasingly concerning. They are segregationist ideals, they are bigoted statements, they are actual calls to violence at times.

And that is incredibly concerning. It's the sort of thing that you see in a lot of extremist ideal-filled countries where you have individuals essentially calling out, you know, holy war on people that don't live extreme lifestyles and break certain commands.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I mean, you see more and more, both from a political standpoint and even from a religious ideological standpoint, you see more and more calls for America to become a quote-unquote Christian nation. So what does that mean? I mean, to me, if you're saying America needs to become a Christian nation and our laws need to become Bible-based laws, you're basically saying you want a theocracy.

You just want a Christian theocracy. And as you can clearly see from, you know, if you look at any of these articles or you spend any time online talking to any of these individuals, these are not nice people, you know. And so what often happens in theocracies, it is the most extreme, the most radical, the most violent and hateful that wind up taking over control and power.

And instead of having just, you know, look, I've got disagreements with Christianity as a religion. You know, I don't believe in anything supernatural. I don't believe in God or the devil.

I don't believe in heaven or hell or anything like that. But I do think that there were some good positive messages that you can pull from things that Jesus said. I don't agree with everything that Jesus said or the way that he said it, but, you know, there are some good positive things in there.

But it seems like, and I've kind of said this for a while, it's like if you talk to modern Christians, especially the evangelicals and the Christian nationalists, it's like they took the Bible and if you ever look at an NIV Bible, New International Version, they highlight the things that Jesus was supposed to say in red. So they try and make it really easy for you that if you're looking through the Bible and you want to see, you know, a quote from Jesus or something like that, it's highlighted in red. So if it's not in red, it's not specifically from Jesus, you know, it's somebody else's, you know, their experience or whatnot.

And so it's like the evangelical church has taken the Bible and basically removed everything in red, you know, in there, all the sort of peaceful talk, the love one another, the, you know, Jesus hung out with all the misfits and things like this, you know, Jesus got mad at the church and flipped over the table because, you know, they were taking money and they were, you know, making themselves wealthy, you know, all the things that he did that I could kind of be like, I could kind of get along with that.

You know, I look at people like Joel Osteen and stuff like that, who have mansions and airplanes and all that sort of shit.

[Lilin Lavin]
So many problems with Joel.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. But it's like, that's not what I envision Jesus, you know, even metaphorically speaking, was talking about, you know, that's and I've challenged some of these evangelicals on it. I was like, do you really believe that, you know, this is Jesus wanted pastors to have mega churches and airplanes and mansions and private cars and some of them come back and they say, yes.

And I'm like, where? Did you show me where in your storybook it says that?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, it gets really bizarre to me, because let's just go with the Joel example. That one, in my opinion, is such a strange stray away from what I see as a Christian church, because it's really the church of Joel and Joel's family. Joel's face is on the books, and Joel is the ministry, and Joel is the word, and the word is all things are good.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, he's kind of like a motivational speaker with the Bible.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And, you know, be that as it may, if people find strength from it, and it works for them, and they're not taking away people's rights, quoting it, whatever. My issue is that a lot of these are the stepping stones that lead to some of the worst individuals I've probably had the unfortunate, you know, privilege of coming across, where they're literally asking for parents of LGBTQ plus kids to be harmed, and, you know, for harm to come to those kids and those adults and people that are just literally out there living their lives, not harming them or their beliefs. Many actually identify as Christians.

And so I really have a hard time being comfortable with a lot of Christians, because I don't know where they're coming from. And even very seemingly pleasant people have really shared some things that caused me concern.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, it's so much like I have to vet, you know, if I meet somebody, and they're Christian, I have to kind of almost vet, okay, what kind of Christian are you? You know, are you a, you know, a Christian that actually believes in the words that Jesus said, and we can have a peaceful conversation and talk about theology and where I disagree and where you disagree with me, but you know, we can kind of walk away? Or is this going to be a hateful conversation where, you know, the LGBTQIA community need to be converted, or the parents need to be punished?

And, you know, or if you've had an abortion, you're, you're a murderer. And, you know, that should be homicide, you know, and some of the questions that I ask out there as I see these bills coming, you know, because you see more and more of these political bills coming. So the questions that I have is now that Roe v.

Wade is gone, you know, they use the Supreme Court to get rid of that. It's gone to states to try and figure this out. Any of the states that allowed a vote on abortion, abortion won.

Overwhelmingly. It wasn't like a 1% margin or something like that. It overwhelmingly won.

The people are saying, we want this. We want women to have the right to choice. We want abortion to be legal.

The people in charge, the politicians and the Christian nationalists do not care. They are ignoring that. Even though it's a losing, I mean, if you look at it from a Republican standpoint, if this was any other subject, they would have dropped it because it's, it's a losing talking point.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, let's just come at it from this point. If there are people out there listening or know people that are incredibly religious, I ask you, how comfortable are you with people using your beliefs as a weapon? And what does that do to, you know, you as a person?

Because one of the worst instances of this recently came about. Many of you probably know about the buoys that Greg Abbott has condoned having out there and the harm that it's causing to people. I mean, these are giant orange flotation devices that are incredibly buoyant.

They have barbed wire wrapped around them. They have saw blades in between them. And then there's fencing that goes below it that is meant to trap and kill.

And we're not just talking about people. This is going to, inevitably, harm wildlife, fish, migratory patterns. It's going to affect a great many things outside of just human beings.

But these are human beings. And these people actually had the nerve to use an argument based on Genesis, stating that, you know, we're going to the period of Noah in Genesis, where, well, at one point, all of the world was covered in water. And so, you know, if you go off this, everything in Texas is at risk from what these people are trying to present as not, you know, a place that these protections should exist.

I'm sorry, what?

[Tommy Lavin]
So because at one point in their book of fables, the entire earth was covered in water, you said it, it went back to some sort of waterway, or something like that. So because all the earth was covered in water, we can basically take this law or this defense and use it no matter where you're at. I mean, how it could be in the middle of Colorado, then and say, well, you know, at one point, Colorado was according to Genesis, Colorado was underwater.

So we can we can use this as a defense, because Genesis, whatever, whatever, well, and they're specifically only applying it to Texas, which, yeah, it doesn't make this better.

[Lilin Lavin]
Because, you know, it's just atrocious, no matter how you look at it. But that's like the mentality people are using that they're having now. So that they're saying, well, you know, this biblical argument makes sense.

And it's my beliefs, and I have a right to it. But I'm just trying to find the actual, it was a motion filed on behalf of the US Rep. Jody Arrington, a Republican out of Lubbock, Texas, and other GOP members.

So there's about, I believe, 22 House Republicans signed on to a motion filed in federal court requesting to be allowed to join Governor Greg Abbott in defending the Texas Republicans against a federal government lawsuit alleging his 1,000 foot of razor wire and floating buoys constructed of circular sawblades designed to prevent migrants from crossing the United States from Texas, into the United States from Texas are illegal.

And essentially, they're saying, this is a human rights violation, it has to come down, you don't have the right to do this, because it's a waterway. And there are waterway rights that protect these areas. And they decided to go like way far with it.

I'm not surprised, because the organization that worked with Abbott on this is also an organization that was trying to use biblical arguments to essentially ban the LGBTQIA plus community from having rights. And it just, it goes back to a court case from 1870, suggesting the term navigatable waterway is intended to mean moving commerce from one state to another or to a different country, and not just one where any small boat occasionally uses the river, which is what they're claiming that this waterway, in fact, is. So they go to, like I said, Genesis.

And they argue, indeed, if one takes a book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigatable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock. The proposed amicus brief reads, under the federal government's theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation. And so this fear mongering, and this wording is essentially telling people that are very in touch with the GOP and very in tune with biblical philosophy, that they are going to take away your land rights, your fences, your protections from migrants traveling from other countries into the state of Texas.

The federal government is going to take away all of your property rights and your safeties and your security. That's the dog whistle we're shouting now. Because according to Genesis, at one point, the world was covered in water, making the entire world at one point, traversable by large water craft.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I mean, I know for, you know, obviously, nobody with a brain would would try and put through a law in the middle of the state of Texas that says this is a waterway. But it is scary, because it shows you where just how extreme and radicalized these politicians, how much of this Christian nationalism, evangelicalism has creeped into the politics, that that's the dog whistle that they're using. You could be in Dallas, Texas, and at one time, according to Genesis, if you took it literally, Dallas, Texas was underwater.

And so they're going to try and push a law that says this has waterway rights in the middle of Dallas, Texas. Right.

[Lilin Lavin]
And it's really only created to fear monger. What it does is it rallies a base of fanatics. And, and it's dangerous.

You look at what recently happened with an individual who had threatened to harm the president, vice president in Utah. And I mean, it was not just a couple little stupid things that this guy was saying this guy was making threats scary enough that true social Trump's very own platform saw the things that this man was sharing picture wise verbiage and was so alarmed that they were the ones that alerted the FBI that there was a serious problem. And this is a radical mindset that they're playing off of when they use these, these incredibly inflammatory statements, because these people live in a state of heightened fear, that the government's going to take away their property, that it's going to invade their home, they're going to take their guns, they're going to take their children, they're brainwashing society.

This is the mindset that they're playing with. And it is in fact playing with fire. And if you want to know the organization that Abbott's working with, it's the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

And go ahead and look up this organization, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, like I said, are the same groups that and I believe it was 2017, I could be wrong on the year, they were using the same type of argument to essentially ban same sex marriage and end all LGBTQIA plus protections in the state of Texas. This is the kind of organization he's working with that's now entirely focused on this migrant border issue. And it's, it's very concerning to me.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, I would argue that the, the tea leaves are, you know, they you can read the tea leaves when when they got rid of Roe, they they kind of said what they were going to be going after. But the question that I've asked, and I've asked this quite a few times when I'm talking to people on social media about either abortion or something like that, because the argument that they make for abortion is every human life matters. And so then I will kind of turn it back around.

And I'll say, Okay, well, if every human life matters, then what about this atrocity that Abbott has put up at the Texas border that is designed? I mean, this isn't designed to repel, this is designed to maim and kill people. And I'm like, what about that?

You know, and it's like, well, they shouldn't be crossing the border. Okay, yes, but either every human life matters, or it doesn't. What about, you know, you've all the the, you know, and all these school shootings, I mean, our kids started high school, they already had their first shooting drill, you know, I mean, Jesus, when I was a kid, we didn't have she we had tornado drills, we had fire drills, we didn't have shooting drills.

[Lilin Lavin]
And it's not to say there weren't shootings in schools at that point, it just wasn't at the level that that you're seeing today. And that's as a parent, I feel like all parents should be incredibly concerned about this, or people with nieces, nephews, grandkids, this can't not be affecting people in these communities, you have to be concerned about where we're going in this extremist mentality. And what do you do to combat that you combat these false notions, you address these things that people are claiming or this abuse of, I mean, sorry, if you're a Christian, this is an abuse of your faith, this is abuse of your religious doctrine, they are abusing your beliefs to actually harm people.

Do you really feel like if Jesus was a real person, he would be looking at you favorably for using the Bible to argue why migrants should be allowed to drown, trying to find safety and seek asylum?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, especially when, you know, if you actually look at the story of Jesus, I mean, I would argue that Joseph and Mary were refugees.

[Lilin Lavin]
They were, you know, they were seeking asylum, they were essentially, you know, in that story, she was not able to find a place to have her baby, and had to essentially do that in a barn because they had no home. You know, so you're looking at that storyline, and you have that image in your mind. Now, I want you to think about the woman that was plastered all over the news not that long ago, a migrant trying to get into the United States to seek asylum for her and her unborn child.

And there she is, wrapped in razor wire, and crying and suffering and miscarrying because of the strain and stress from this experience.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So, you know, you kind of look at where this is going, where they're in. I'm glad that finally, I'm starting to see other Christians call out the evangelicals and the Christian nationalists.

It's almost like they've said, enough's enough. You know, I mean, yeah, okay, the, you know, the left or whatever you want to say, you know, the Satanists say this about Christianity, and the left says this, but you know what, they're right. Because this is not the way that we are supposed to be acting if we are truly, you know, going off of Jesus' word.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I want to clarify, when I was talking about this woman and her unborn child, I'm a very big advocate for the pro-choice movement. I do believe abortion is a thing people should be able to do. But when I say that, she was leaving a desperate situation in the hopes that she would be able to carry her fetus to term and give it a life when it's born that would be better than anything she could provide for it elsewhere.

So, in this case, it forced her into a situation where she was trying to do the best thing for her and her future child. And I don't want people twisting my words when I say these things.

[Tommy Lavin]
To me, pro-choice means choice. It means I'm going to fight just as hard for a woman that wants an abortion to be able to get an abortion, and I'm going to fight just as hard for the woman that doesn't want an abortion and is trying to be pressured into an abortion for her not to have one because she wants to carry that child to term. She has that choice.

Nobody else should be making that decision for her. So choice goes both ways. And if there was a guy or somebody that was putting pressure on her, I would tell him to sit down and shut the fuck up.

He made his decision when he started having sex.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And people are like, well, these people didn't have to cross like that. There are legal ways.

No, dude, look, hold on. Do you have any idea what these people have gone through even to get to that point? There's dangers from coyotes.

And I don't mean the animal. I mean people that are transporting human beings at great financial cost because people are scared. They don't know the way to go where they need to go.

And there's a lot of dangers involved in that traverse. But these people have gone through 100 degree plus conditions without water, without – yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Assaulted.

[Lilin Lavin]
This is not like, oh, they just decided to go for a leisurely stroll and just stumble across a border and then go, oh, I'm here. I have all the rights. That's not how this works.

No, that's not.

[Tommy Lavin]
And again, so I was – this whole sort of discussion kicked off because I've been saying this for a while now, and it was nice to see. And I've noticed over the last couple days, even in some of my discussions online, I have had a couple Christians pop in and have gone back against these hate-filled bigots that are calling themselves Christians and said, no, that is not Christianity. That's fake Christianity.

You all are using our religion. And so it was nice when this article came out because it sort of reinforced some of the things that I was already seeing. And it reinforced things that I've been talking about for a while, which is if you claim to be a religion, if you claim to be part of a religion, then your ideology should at least line up with that religion's ideology.

And if your Savior, you know, aka Jesus in this case, you know, was a man of peace and love and acceptance, and you are living and teaching everything other than that, then how are you a Christian?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And how do you put someone like, just for example, it's something I've seen literally being done. How do you put someone like Donald Trump in that place?

How do you, you know, come to terms with the fact that someone that is a misogynist, who is a, you know, nationalist and not positively, I don't see nationalism as positive, but there's no positive attributes here. This is someone that is selfish, greedy, has no problem having affairs, has no care for other human beings that aren't them. And how do you conflate that with somebody like this character of Jesus, who's supposed to, you know, offer people hope and salvation and all this crap?

How do you put the two together and say, this makes sense?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, that's the part that I have a hard time putting together in my brain is like, you're to have this belief, you're using a book of stories and things like that. And then, yeah, there's a whole lot of violence in the Bible. I mean, it's not like the Bible is this big, peaceful book or anything.

There's a whole lot of violence in there. But specifically, if you are claiming to be a Christian, you are supposed to be hanging off of Jesus's last words, not literally his last, but you're supposed to be hanging off of Jesus's words. What he said, what he did not what quote unquote, God did beforehand, because God was a pretty vengeful asshole.

[Lilin Lavin]
I say this one again, a lot. In my opinion, that character as written is a malignant, narcissistic, just sociopath. This is someone that was perfectly fine with murdering pretty much the entire population of the world.

You cannot tell me I gained my moral compass from reading this lovely book based on this genocidal maniac.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, and we get asked that all the time to Oh, as Satanists, or if you're an atheist, then how can you have morals and ethics without the Bible? And I'm kind of like, look, if I need if you need a book, or the threat of a pretend sky person to tell you that murder or rape or stealing is wrong, you're the one that really has the problem here. I can, in my own ethics and morals, without the threat of damnation or anything like that, I can know that those things are wrong.

You know, that's, that's just a bit of common sense, some social contracts. I mean, there's, you know, all sorts of shit in there. And I don't need religion to tell me that you shouldn't, shouldn't.

Yeah. But if you do, and if you didn't have that, that book telling you that, then what does that mean that you would be out there raping, stealing, robbing people or murdering people? Because you didn't have a book to tell you not to do it?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, that's kind of terrifying to to me as a person. If I harm someone, I know I've harmed them. If I you know, there's compassion, empathy are ingrained in people.

And if you're missing the ability to connect and notice when you cause harm to someone, or when you bring joy to someone, if you can't see that, then there's something else going on.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, there's there's a lot more going on there. So yeah, I mean, it was just really nice to see this discussion finally coming out into the open. And I really hope that more, quote unquote, true Christians, and even though I disagree with their theology, I can respect a true Christian that is peaceful love, you know, that isn't trying to take rights away through laws that accepts people for who they are, that, you know, actually tries to live in the way that Jesus lived.

I hope more of them speak out against this, you know, what we've seen this almost virus that is spreading that's called Christian nationalism or evangelicalism. It's just, it's kind of crazy.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, I yeah, it is crazy. It is concerning. It is strange.

Because I don't think people Okay, it's hard to quantify that. I don't feel most people at their core really want to harm other people or hate other people. I don't think the majority of people really feel that way.

And it's really scary to watch. Otherwise, like normal people seem to shift into this mentality where they are okay with these things. I mean, even family members that we've known, and I quite literally stepped away from Facebook back right around when Trump was elected, because family members that I had known or met became very volatile and angry and just ugly human beings.

And it was just so hard to sit there and watch it. It's not that I just turned it off and pretend that it wasn't happening. I just completely separated myself from these people.

I have no desire to interact with people that are going to do this and act that way. I'll try to talk to you. But when it's obvious, you can't listen or won't listen.

I'm not going to subject my subject myself to just constant nastiness.

[Tommy Lavin]
See, and that's where you and I, and we've had this discussion a hundred times. I kind of think the opposite of you. I believe humans at their core are kind of bad.

And when given permission, they will do bad things. And to me, what this kind of shows, what this evangelical Christian nationalist MAGA movement shows is they got permission to be bad, and so they're doing it because they got permission to do it. They got permission to be bigots.

They got permission to hate on an entire community and to point their finger and say, oh, look, drag queens and anybody in the LGBTQIA, they're all groomers and pedophiles. When, in fact, on a daily basis, I see Christian ministers, youth group leaders, all of those, those people arrested for being pedophiles and sexually assaulting children. I don't see a whole lot of drag queens being arrested for that.

Yes, I'm sure that you can go find some case out, some one-off case or something. But when you look at the magnitude and the number, the predators are in the churches.

[Lilin Lavin]
You know, that's… The churches, unfortunately, the police force, other places, education, teachers. So there are a lot of people with power type positions.

If you look very carefully, when you have a population that has a high power dynamic shift between individuals, you often find predators find this incredibly appealing because it's a built-in base of people that already see you as someone that is safe, as someone that has answers, as someone that they should respect. And it allows them to blend in, use these very natural instincts of people, and then to abuse them to harm people.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, it gives them the authority, you know, because people are told, you know, and especially in religion, a lot of times you're told not to quit, you know, the preacher or the youth group leader or whoever it is that, you know, they are the ones that are right. They are righteous. They have that authority.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's more sinister than that. In some cases, there was actual material out there in some of the Goddard religious schools that would actually tell you that rape, and I'm sorry to say that, sexual assault, things like that were tests, intentional things that you're made to go through. They were things that were supposed to happen.

And that's appalling. And then there's also the people within religion that use that as a way to threaten family. Well, if you, you know, share this is happening to you with other people, then those people are going to be condemned to hell.

And that's where you really have to, as a parent, be incredibly careful about who you're exposing your kids to. And I don't care what the situation is. Again, teachers, police officers, religious leaders, all religions, religious leaders, these people just naturally have more to work with.

And if you're not carefully monitoring and watching for behavioral changes and talking to your kids, you're leaving them exposed to incredibly awful situations.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, that's why I hate the, you know, where they teach abstinence now, you know, because abstinence is the lack of sex education. So, you know, sometimes these people, these children don't even understand what's happening to them, because they have no sex education. They haven't been taught anything.

And I think it's just yet another way for those predators to use a religion to use a system against their, you know, their victims.

[Lilin Lavin]
But that's, you know, again, this is a big bunch of stuff we're dumping out here. And I think the most important thing to take away from all of this is something is not okay right now. People are not okay right now.

Normal human beings don't go around trying to pretend bigotry, racism, segregation, hate, bias is sanctified by any belief system. That's not religion. That's a hate group.

That's a hate group.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
And if you're seeing these things in your circles, your religious organizations, like question what's going on? What are you exposing yourself and your loved ones to? Is this healthy?

Is it productive? Will it build a better society? Do you really want a future built on these beliefs?

Yeah, I think you wrapped that up pretty damn good.

[Tommy Lavin]
I don't think I got anything else to add to it. So no, I mean, obviously we'll have more talks on this subject, but it is something that was on our mind today. It was fresh.

You know, there is actual articles out there and it was on the news and stuff like that. So it was something that we felt sort of compelled to talk about and to reinforce some of our past subjects that we've talked about as well.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, if you have any thoughts on this particular episode or you have other things you'd like to hear us talk about, feel free to hit us up on social media and let us know your thoughts or ideas.