Allie Beth Stuckey (18:01)
Oh, that sweet boy. I just feel for him so much. Here's my take on this, because a lot of people were mad. How could the father go on there and forgive? There was a story a couple years, a few years ago now, might have been five years ago. So I can't even remember the names of the people, but it was a white female police officer who accidentally shot and killed a young black man. It was a terrible thing. She was definitely in the wrong, but it wasn't some purposeful, malicious incident. And I remember the name is on the tip of my tongue, but I remember the brother in the courtroom, the brother of the victim hugged the police officer and held her and said, I forgive you. And a lot of people on the left were upset with him for showing that kind of. Of grace and mercy to her. But it was really a beautiful moment. Here's, here's my take on this, is that both of these reactions right now by the mom and brother and by the dad are okay. I think both of these reactions are okay. I understand where both of them are coming from. I do not think it is correct to say the Christian is called to unconditionally and immediately forgive, no matter what. Now, that might be scandalous to say. I don't think that that is the biblical example or the explanation that we are given for Christian forgiveness. So let me. Let me explain this a little more. Ephesians 4. 32. One of my favorite verses. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. So as God in Christ forgave you. Obviously, God in Christ forgave us a lot. We are born in sin, we are dead in our sin, apart from Christ. As Ephesians 2 says, there's nothing we can do to clean ourselves off, to pick ourselves up, to make ourselves worthy or acceptable before God. It was Jesus's perfect sacrifice that wiped our slate clean, that saved us by grace, through faith in him. This was a gift, not our own doing, not a result of work so that no one can boast. That's the rest of Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 10. And so how God in Christ forgave us. It was a whole lot for people who completely betrayed him, who were following the prince of the power of the air, who were sons and daughters of disobedience, for God to reach down and to save those who mocked him, who disdained him, who wanted nothing to do with him simply because of his love for us, like that is a lot of forgiveness. But we do know that God's forgiveness through Christ comes by grace, through faith. And that grace powered repentance before God is a prerequisite for God's forgiveness. That does not mean that we earn it. That doesn't mean that we are making ourselves acceptable before him on our own, through our own efforts. It is powered by the Holy Spirit, but that repentance is a necessary step in forgiveness and ultimately salvation. And so I think that when we read in Matthew 18, Jesus say, that you are to forgive. Uh, how many times are you to forgive? He answers, peter, I don't say seven times, but I say to you 77 times. That's Matthew 18:21. When Peter says, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Jesus is basically saying, he's not literally saying 77 times. He's like as many times as it takes. You keep on forgiving. But I think if we read in context, we are not just talking about blanket, a blanket unconditional forgiveness immediately in every circumstance. We are talking about within these interpersonal relationships, especially with our fellow Christians, people who are seeking our forgiveness, people who are repenting. If we read, read the parable directly after Jesus says this, I think we get some clarity. If you start in verse 23. This is kind of long. You probably know this parable already. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when the same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on You. And in anger, his Master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. So Jesus is saying, God had this great mercy on you, forgave you all of your wrongs, your sins, everything you did against him. You now therefore have the responsibility to show the same mercy and forgiveness to someone else. You can't be cruel to others who are seeking your forgiveness after God has forgiven you. But we see in this story that the fellow servant that needed that forgiveness and mercy was seeking it, that he was repentant. He was seeking that forgiveness and the other servant should have given it to him. And same at the very beginning, when we see the original servant who ended up being a wicked servant, when he got his debt cleared, he was asking, he was repentant. And so I think it is okay in some cases to withhold forgiveness from someone who is not repentant. Now let me give a caveat to that, because we also read in Ephesians 4:31, Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Okay? So even if someone has not repented, even if Carmelo Anthony is proud of what he has done, even if he is not repentant, I still think that the Father is right to let go of bitterness and to say the justice system is going to work, how it's going to work and God avenges and he's going to take care of me and he's going to take care of the situation. And I am letting this go. I will not allow it to make me calloused. I will not allow it to make me hateful. I will not allow it to cause me anxiety and to burden me. I think that that is still correct. And I. I wonder, and you can let me know what you think about this, because I'm still working this out myself. I wonder if it is possible to say, I have not forgiven that person yet, but I have let it go, but I'm not allowing it to crush me anymore. I am not allowing it to make me bitter or resentful because I trust in God's goodness. I trust that he is going to take care of wickedness once and for all. And for you to pray for that person as your enemy and to bless them instead of curse them, and to want salvation for them, want redemption for them, want what is best for them. That doesn't mean that you want them to escape Escape justice, because earthly justice is instituted by God for our good and for the good of the most vulnerable. I wonder if it's possible to hold all of those things at the same time. You can let me know what you think about that. Obviously, for the Christian, having bitterness and resentment and hatred and not trusting God to take care of you is really not the option. But, but even there, I do think that there is a Holy Spirit powered process that has to happen after situations like this. The reaction to this has just been insane and it's been very, very sad. Carmelo's dad says that Carmelo was a quote, unquote, good kid, emphasizing his positive attributes by noting that he works two jobs, is an A student, and it's pretty typical for parents to defend their kids in situations like this. But he insisted to the New York Post that Carmelo was not the aggressor and not the one who started the altercation that led to the stabbing, suggesting his son was provoked into the violent act. And that's just where we've gone too far. That's just where we've gone too far. There is no witness that says that, yeah, this was justified because it looked like Austin Metcalfe was trying to kill him. This was a disproportionate reaction. It does not matter if Austin Metcalfe said something intimidating to him, was rude to him, cussed at him, and I'm not even saying he did any of these things, but hypothetically, if he had, if he had been aggressive, if he had pulled him up by his backpack, if he had pushed him over, if he had punched him, none of that is a justification for stabbing someone in the heart. That is not an excuse for fatal force. You have to feel, you have to reasonably believe that your life is in danger, that someone is about to take fatal force against you to justify your own fatal force in self defense. And the fact that we have not only his dad, but as you will see, hundreds, if not thousands of people online saying, well, that's what you get for starting a fight. That's what you get for putting your hands on someone. That's what you get for disrespect. You even have people making up complete, total rumors that this guy said the N word to him. There is absolutely no witness testimony verifying that. It's almost become a meme at this point when something like this happens. When there is a black aggressor against a white person, you always see this rumor start to circulate. Oh, he must have said the worst thing possible. That you can say to a black person without any evidence whatsoever. It is. That is a horrible accusation to lodge against a person. And guess what? Even if he had said it, it wouldn't justify this. You know that, right? That it doesn't matter what someone says to you, what someone calls you, that doesn't justify violence, especially fatal violence. It doesn't matter the amount of disrespect you feel. It doesn't matter how rude they were to you. That. That doesn't justify killing someone ever, no matter what your skin color is. I just want to make sure that we all know that, because we can't live as a society if there's one subset of Americans being taught by their said, okay, words are never a justification for violence. Murder is absolutely off the table, and you should avoid all forms of physical aggression as long as you possibly can. In every circumstance that you possibly can. And physical aggression should only be reserved for certain situations where you have to defend yourself or defend a vulnerable person that is. Is being abused or being assaulted or being seriously endangered in some way. In every other circumstance, you should use your words. Now you can say, okay, well, Austin Metcalf should have done that, too. He shouldn't have pulled the backpack. Okay, that's fine. But that's not a justification for murder. Okay, so one subset of Americans is hearing that message from their parents. And if another subset of Americans is hearing, yeah, if you're disrespected, you get yours. If someone says something to you or calls you by a name, it's because of your skin color, or it's because of your background, or it's because of xyz, and you got to defend yourself. You got to do whatever it takes. You got to kill them, you got to get them, you got to ruin them. This reminds me of Ethan Lemming. Remember this story? This happened in Ohio a couple years ago at LeBron James's school that he established there. There was a white kid that was shooting, like, a water gun with his friends at kids who happen to be black in, like, a parking lot at their school while those kids that were getting shot with a water gun, it was, like, very obviously a water gun. It didn't look like a real gun. They beat this kid to a pulp until he died. And even when Ethan's friends were saying, stop, stop, like, he's unconscious, stop, they didn't stop. They curbs, stomp, dump. They. They beat him to death. You probably didn't see a whole lot of media outrage about that, because apparently they felt disrespected a disproportionate response is a sign of a lack of impulse control, very often a sign of bad parenting, but definitely like a deep character issue. And if that is true on any systemic level among any kind of person with any kind of skin color, that is a huge threat to the safety of society. Okay, so there's no excuse for this going on, despite what some people are saying. We'll get into that in a second. Let me pause and tell you about Share the Arrows. I just wanted to remind you that Share The Arrows is October 11th in Dallas, Texas, outside of Dallas, Texas, and we're super excited about it. We are so pumped about all the speakers that we have. We've got Ginger Duggar Volo. We've got Elisa Childers, the apologist. We've got. Got a health panel, Shauna Holman, Taylor Dukes. We've got Katie Faust. We are being led in worship by Francesca Batticelli. If you are a Christian woman in need of good, challenging, deep theology and apologetics and equipment, then you need to come to Share the Arrows lifelong fellowship, too. It is such an edifying day, and you will be given so much courage. And I will be speaking as well. Go to sharethe arrows.com that's sharethe arrows.com. all right, so we've got this person, Tariq Nasheed. Now, he is. I almost don't even think he's a person, a real human, because he says stuff like this all of the time. But the reason why it's, I think, important to include him is because he riles real people up with these ridiculous statements. And so he posted two pictures, very strategic pictures. You've got Carmelo Anthony in his suit and tie. And then, I mean, there are pictures where, I mean, Carmelo Anthony is holding guns. He's, like flicking off the camera, too. And I'm not saying that that is what makes someone a murderer or makes someone guilty. But I'm just saying strategic choice of picture here. He's got a suit and tie on, and then he's got a picture of the Metcalf brothers. And they are clearly in hunting gear and they're holding guns. They're in camo. And I guess that's supposed to make us think that they're bad people. I actually saw one commenter say, I saw those brothers in camo, knew they were racist, and knew Carmelo Anthony was defending himself, which is really sad. But Tariq Nasheeds had a suspected white supremacist named Austin Metcalfe pictured with his twin, allegedly demanded Honor student Carmelo Anthony give up his seat like it was the Jim Crow era. Carmelo defended himself from the alleged threat. The Daniel Penny case case set this precedent. This is so ridiculous. And every single level, Daniel Penny actually did stop a threat. The person that he was trying to hold back was threatening people on a subway. And so he put him in a headlock until he calmed down. And we all hope for people like Daniel Penny. When we are in public places and a dude who is losing his mind is making us feel unsafe, all of us are really hoping that there's a brave, strong man around who is willing to do the right thing. This has nothing to do with that. Austin Metcalfe was not a threat to anybody, and he was in the wrong seat. Carmelo Anthony was, according to witness testimony, actually in the wrong seat. And then you've got people mike bags. Whenever white supremacists immediately flood our mentions before the full story is even out, you know something's up. It turns out Austin Metcalfe was the aggressor. And the black kid, Carmelo Anthony was defending himself. Again, completely, completely wrong. You've got people comparing this to Kyle Rittenhouse again. Whatever you think about where Kyle Rittenhouse should have been in Waukesha on that night, he also was defending himself, literally against fatal force. You've got Bishop, Talbert, Swan, another one of these ridiculous grifters who said y'all said 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse was justified in killing two people with an AR15 because he felt threatened. 17 year old Carmelo Anthony was defending himself when he killed Austin Metcalf with a knife. Okay. No, it's different. When someone, when you are defending yourself against someone who is armed, who is trying to kill you, that self defense, when you kill someone because they touched your backpack and told you to move, that's not self defense. And then I posted a video about how awful this is and that it speaks to so many societal issues that we have parenting problems, violence problems, lack of self control problems, disrespect, culture problems, so many different things. And I posted that video on Instagram and Facebook and I got a ton of comments from people saying things like this. There's a video of twins bullying, bullying brothers jumping him. Okay, the grammar is not great on Facebook. Jumping him and others. You forgot to say they put their hands on him first. Y'all say whatever soothes your soulless soul. What? I don't even know. That's not even true. There's not video of the brothers bullying him. Another person really Was you there first, learned the truth, talking on something you don't know about? Was you in Frisco, Texas? No. So you saying this is bad, but what you think you doing is good? But the child had a choice. That was adult's job, not the child. Why? No adult called to handle it. Not that. Okay. I'm actually not trying to, like, make fun of this person. And the. The thrust of what they're saying is you're blaming a child for doing something and you shouldn't have. Someone else said, stop lying. Those twins were bullies, and the young man was defending himself. Again, not true. Another person. Y'all doing a whole lot of assuming over headlines. Witnesses said that Austin was the one putting his hands on Carmelo before it escalated. You're promoting the death penalty and assuming you know what that child's home is like. You, ma'am, are sick. I don't know what the child's home was like. I have no idea what his parent. But, yeah, I do think that he should be tried as an adult and that the death penalty should be on the table. We read biblically, Genesis 9, that the death penalty is the proportionate and right punishment for murder. And by the way, I think it can be argued that this was premeditated. Possibly. I mean, he brought a knife to attract me. Why would you bring a knife to attract me? Now, the person, girl, child, carry on the sins of generations of oppressors. God is judging. If you know, you know. So apparently the argument there is that Austin Metcalfe was murdered because someone who might have looked like him 200 years ago owned slaves. Yeah, that's the biblical definition of justice. We all know that God punishes the current generation for the sins of not just their ancestors, but someone who might have looked like them a very long time ago. Definitely another person. Tell the truth. The kid attacked him first. Should he have stabbed him? No. Okay. He didn't attack him. He didn't attack him. It is very frightening to me that these people, many of these people who probably have kids themselves, believe that you can stab someone, murder someone, murder someone because they touched your backpack, because they pushed you. We can't. We can't live in society together if that is how we feel. And I saw someone, because I posted some of the screenshots of these. I posted them on X and I saw someone say, why are you only posting the comments of black women? I didn't do that on purpose at all. I just screenshotted the comments on my Facebook post. Maybe there are people commenting on My Facebook post who don't fit that demographic, I have no idea. These were just the comments I saw. The fact that they all happen to be black women. I don't know. Like, I'll let you decide why that is. It's crazy to me, though, that we would be defending a murderer. I don't know if these people are defending him because of his skin color, because of shared ethnicity, shared melanin count. But that is idolatry. That is sick. You cannot think this way whether you are white or black, as a race idolater and still execute justice. You can't, because justice is blind. Justice is impartial. Justice is truthful. We see that modeled for us throughout Scripture. So if you are unable to see right from wrong, if you are unable to see truth from facts because of the skin colors of the perpetrators, of the victims, of the people involved, then you have no business, no business being a part of a society that values freedom and justice. You just don't. You are actually an impediment to justice for all kinds of people. I mean, that is why our justice system works. It's not perfect because it's made up of fallible people, but because we believe in this unique concept that justice must be blind, that it must not be a respecter of persons, that we should not be prosecuting people or sentencing people based on their background, based on their skin color. Unfortunately, though, that is what social justice ideology teaches, because social justice and actual justice are not the same. They're very different. Social justice says you should weigh someone's skin color. You should weigh their socioeconomic background. You should weigh whether or not their parents or grandparents or great grandparents may have been oppressed or may have been oppressors. And if you're making all of those calculations, you're never going to get to an actual, just, equitable conclusion. You should read Quest for Cosmic justice by Thomas Soul. You'll understand it. So there is a GoFundMe, or was a GoFundMe for Carmelo Anthony. Support Carmelo Anthony's legal defense. But thankfully, GoFundMe reportedly took down the fundraiser. And now there's a Gifts and go. Someone named Malcolm X is king to me on X. Posted a screenshot, an old screenshot of the gifts and go. The whites are in shambles because we took care of our own. See, this is the kind of like April Thompson was saying yesterday, she calls it ethnic narcissism. This kind of ethnic narcissism blinds you to reality and morality. It always will, no matter what your skin color is and it's very sad. Now there are some hot takes about this and you can tell me what you think and I'll tell you what I think about it. But let me pause, let me tell you about our next sponsor before we get into that. And that is Good ranchers. So thankful for a good rancher. Ranchers. We eat good ranchers meat almost every night. We love that it is all American meat and that this is a Christian family owned company that we can trust. The meat is sent to our front door every month on dry ice. It's better than organic chicken. You can get pre marinated, non pre marinated. I like the fajita chicken if I'm making tacos or fajitas or any kind of Mexican dish. But the non pre marinated chicken is really great for really anything. I especially like to bake it and you can put it in pasta and salads, all kinds of stuff. It's really great for meal prepping too. And I use the ground beef all the time. I love beef. I love hamburgers, I love tacos, I love enchiladas. It's so good. We love our different cuts of steak. Last night we ate pork chops. I think that was my first time eating a pork chop from Good Ranchers. And it was really good. We just put salt and pepper on it. I was shocked that that's all CR put on it. It would. They were so good. So there really is a wide variety of stuff. There's seafood, it's all American. Right now you can go to goodranchers.com you can use my code ALI for $40 off. Plus when you subscribe to any good Ranchers box you get free bacon, ground beef, chicken nuggets or salmon in your box for a year. Go to good ranchers.com code ally. Okay, so Mount Walsh said this. He just came out and said it in response to all of this. And this has 173, 000 likes or at least when we got the screenshot it did. It probably has more than that now. And it had over 7, 000 comments. And Matt Walsh is always just gonna say it. Like he's always going to say what he's thinking. He's always going to say it on the clearest terms and there's just a lot to appreciate about that. He said if I told you that a young man stabbed another young man to death for telling him that he was in the wrong seat seat and then I told you that one young man in this altercation was white and the other Black. And then I asked you to guess the race of the assailant. Every single person would know the answer immediately. Young black males are violent to a wildly, outrageously disproportionate degree. That's just a fact. We all know it. And it's time that we speak honestly about it, or nothing will ever change. So this is actually true? True, it is. It is a very uncomfortable truth. And maybe you could argue that this is not relevant to what happened with Carmelo Anthony and Austin Metcalfe, that this could have happened between any two people. Maybe this Carmelo Anthony kid doesn't have a history of violence at all. But when the conversation is almost always that the white person is in the wrong, that they had what was coming to them, that they must have been racist, or if the roles are reversed, that it must have been motivated by white supremacy, you're going to have people out there trying to set the record straight factually. And the reality is that this is true. We have a very small portion of the population. I think black men make up about probably 6% of the population. If black Americans are 13% of the population, then black men would probably be about half of that. So you've got 6% of the population that account for 40 to 50% of all homicides and this country. And it's actually less than that because obviously not every black American man is going to be a murderer. So you're looking at probably like 3% or less of the population accounting for a huge percentage of the homicides in this country. And actually, you wouldn't know it by the media coverage that we have, but according to FBI data, homicide data from 2019, it is. A Black person is 2.3 times more likely to kill a white person than the reverse. And yet, if you look at the media coverage, you will only see the races of the people involved when there is a white perpetrator and a black victim. The Washington Free Beacon noted this. They said, according to a review by the Washington Free beacon done in 2022, analyzing articles published between 2019 and 2021, a white offender's race was mentioned in roughly one out of every four articles, compared with one in 17 articles about a black offender. And so the reason why there is. Why there was so much backlash to what Matt Walsh said, of course, there are some people out there who think that you can't say anything negative at all about a black person without it being white supremacist or racist or bigoted or wrong. Um, but also the reason why there was such pushback is because people don't believe that that's true. They don't believe the statistics bear that out when it actually is statistically true. Even according to hate crime data, which Matt Walsh notes, which I'm not even sure is reliable, because I don't think the FBI really has any motivation to like, properly, to properly report on this. But it is far more likely for a black person to commit it a crime against a white person of that nature than the other way around, even though white people make up about 60% of the population and black Americans make up about 13% of the population. So when he says, yeah, there's a disproportionate violence problem among those who happen to be black, that is actually statistically and factually true. Now, they are most likely black Americans are most likely to kill black Americans. White Americans most likely to kill white Americans. Same with Hispanic Americans. Only demographic that that is not true for Asian Americans are most likely to be killed not by another Asian, but actually by a black person. Again, that is remarkable considering that they are such a small portion of the population. That is a very uncomfortable truth. No one should take joy in talking about that. Maybe you could argue that's not the time, the place. That's not relevant here again, but it is actually true. And if we care about black lives, like if we care about our communities who are filled with all different kinds of people, if we care about our children, we should care about that fact. The facts actually do matter. The statistics actually do matter. And we should be asking why? What is going on? And there are people. I'm certainly not the first person to say that. But beyond just, well, it's probably white Republicans. Like, it's probably just this abstract issue of white supremacy. I promise you, nothing will ever, ever, ever get done or ever get better if that is the direction that we always go. Jason Whitlock pointed this out. Of course, he got a lot of applause, but also a lot of pushback. Jason says, unfortunately, black Americans have been brainwashed into the demonic black culture religion established by Hollywood and the music industry. I don't know what you think about that. If you think that is, is if you think that's true. But Jason Whitlock talks about this a lot. And obviously, as someone who grew up in, quote, unquote, black culture himself, it would seem like he knows a little bit about it. No matter what, no matter what races were involved. This is absolutely a tragedy. Some people are like, don't just pray for Austin Metcalfe's family. Pray for Anthony Carmel's too. And obviously I agree with that. Please, like, pray for their comfort, but. But pray that they would see truth. Pray that justice would be carried out here. Pray somehow for God to be glorified and pray somehow for revival and awakening in all of our hearts that we would all be pursuing goodness and do a better job of raising our kids. To not be like this, to not make this kind of decision. It's very sad. All right. My last sponsor for the day is Adele Natural Cosmetics. I love Adele. I use their products every day. I use their essential cleanser every night. It takes all my makeup off and makes my skin feel really smooth. I love their exfoliator too. It's got like a coffee smell to it. I do that about once a week and it makes your skin just really clean and really fresh. Their essential moisturizing spray, it's all really good. When I'm not in the studio. I also use their moisturizing foundation and bronzing stick and their moisturizing blush. I love the a coral shade. It's just perfect for my skin tone. It's all really good. And it all is made from holistic, totally natural ingredients, all from God's medicine cabinet. You don't have any fake fragrances or anything like that. Another unapologetically Christian family owned company that you should support. Go to adelenaturalcosmetics.com use code ally at checkout. That's Adele natural cosmetics.com code ally. All right, guys, that's all we have time for. We had a whole other story that we were going to get to, but we'll talk about that tomorrow. We'll talk about American Girl and the strange, strange direction they are going. And we will talk about tariffs with my dad tomorrow. We just didn't have time for it. But I did want to say, please, if you have not subscribed to Blaze tv, do so. We've got a couple new episodes coming out for Blaze TV subscribers. One about the liturgical calendar and how we can order our homes in a way that follows the church's rhythms, the historic church's rhythms. Really fascinating conversation, uplifting conversation. And then we get into all of the parenting questions with two parenting experts that I love and have been following for a while. So lots of good stuff at relatable for relatable at home. When you subscribe to Blaze tv, it helps us out so much when you do that. It supports us and it helps make sure that we do not fall victim to the sensors because we've got y'all there on Blaze TV, so go to blazetv.com alli you'll get 20 off your subscription when you do access to all Blaze TV content and that good stuff. Also, if you love this show, please leave us a five star review. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube, like comment all that good stuff, but leave us a five star review on Spotify where you could also watch video now and on Apple podcast. Thank you guys so much and I'll be back here tomorrow.
