Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. On Monday, we continue to our election series. We talked about immigration. That's a hot button issue for a lot of you and a lot of your friends, especially for Christians knowing what is going on at the border and how we are treated.

We are treating migrants. So go back and listen to that episode. It's a very complicated subject. We just didn't have time to go into all the facets of it. If you want more detail on our immigration system and some of the problems with it, you can go back and listen to an episode that I did last summer called immigration. Just type in relatable immigration wherever you get your podcasts and you will be able to listen to that and learn a little bit more about our very complex and bogged

down immigration system in the United States. Today, we are going to talk about the latest in police shootings and the riots that are still going on in the country. There's still chaos that's waging. Maybe you've noticed that I've posted about this less on Instagram. And that is because, as I said last week, I am trying to be on Twitter left. That is where I am seeing a lot of the depictions of the violence that's going on.

I think it's really important to stay in the know. I think it's important for me to keep you all in the know and to know the things that are going on in America's major cities. But at the same time, sometimes it's just too much. It's not that I want to put my head in the sand and pretend like nothing bad is going on. But it's just easy to get overwhelmed. And sometimes we have to take a set back and realize that the realist reality is we've talked about on this show is God's eternal.

Plan of redemption that has not faltered that has not been hindered that has not been paused that has not been messed up or thwarted in any way. As Job 42 to says, I know that you can do all things in no plan of yours can be thwarted. No plan of gods can be hindered or stopped in any way. And that is ultimately the plan, the track that we are on. God is above all the mess. He's above all the chaos. He is not limited by time and space.

So that means that he is not going along this path of life in the same way that we are. He is sovereign over all of it. He is suspended in the eternal now. So he is not looking at what's going on and wondering what's going to happen next. How he is going to have to come in later and clean up the mess.

He is completely in control. He is immovably on his throne. And sometimes I have to take a set back from social media and the news to remind myself of that.

Again, that doesn't mean that you have to deny the craziness that's going on or that you can't simultaneously remember God's sovereignty and be in the know because you can. And I try my best to do that. But sometimes sometimes you just need a break.

Nevertheless, today I need to get back into it and just remind you of the things that are going on in America's major cities. There has been a report that has been circulating for the past week or so that 93% of the Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful. And a lot of you guys have sent me that and have said my friends sent me this. Can you please respond to it? Well, I don't have that much to say about that. That isn't surprised me at all actually.

I don't think that that makes a difference to me that doesn't make a difference in the argument that riots and looting are bad. I have always said from the beginning after the George Floyd incident, I have said we should not conflate the violent looters and the protesters and the arsonists with the peaceful protesters that these are different demonstrations.

Sometimes there is crossover in the people and there is a crossover of mission and purpose a lot of times, but they're not the same groups of people. Sometimes they don't have the same aims. And sometimes they do not even share the same values or anything like that. And so we should not conflate the peaceful protest. Whether or not we agree with the reason for the peaceful protest, we cannot conflate that with the rioters and looters. I have said that from the beginning.

They are distinct. The media have actually been the ones doing the conflating much more than the people on the right have. They claim every time someone criticizes the looters or criticizes the rioters that we are criticizing racial justice, so called racial justice.

Are we are criticizing peaceful demonstrators and protesters when that's just not the case? Like I said, I don't agree with most of the protesters in their aims. And I think the media hypocrisy covering the protests versus covering church gatherings in regard to COVID, the COVID and the threat that those gatherings pose. I think that that is appalling. I think that the hypocrisy is laughable.

But I do believe in these protesters right to protest peacefully. COVID or not without government interference, not without argumentation and not without criticism, but without government interference.

Are all BLM protesters or activists writing and looting and burning and killing people? No, of course not.

But is BLM and their supporters? Are they, uh, their supporters on the laps? Are they denouncing the writing and the looting and the killing of cops? No, they're not. No, they're not. At least not Black Lives Matter, the organization. There might be people that support Black Lives Matter that are denouncing the shooting of police officers, but as an organization, the core of the movement. No, they're not denouncing these things.

Remember, Ion Appressley, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, she said on MSNBC, there must be unrest in the streets as long as there is quote unrest in our lives. AOC said that people are going to loot and and riot and commit crimes as long as we do not meet their economic demands.

We have heard that riots are the voice of the unheard that's that decontextualized quote from Martin Luther King in an attempt to defend destroying people's property who committed no crime.

Nicole Hannah Jones, who is the lead essayist of the 1619 project, she said burning down property is not violence. We have heard that property can be replaced. Um, that businesses have insurance. And so it's really not that big of a deal and that we shouldn't have anger about those things. CNN stood in front of Kenosha was constant when it was burning down to the ground and said the demonstrations were mostly peaceful.

So the left, the media have been carrying water for these violent protests, whether or not they were the majority of these protests, the ones that were violent that are violent, the minority of these protests that were violent have been defended by the left and by the leftist media.

So that 7% means that even though it's not fair to characterize every supporter of BLM is violent by any means, it does mean that the movement as a whole in the organization itself is supportive of it.

It certainly will not come out and say, hey, this is bad. This is not what we're about. This is not what we're fighting for. It is what they're fighting for. There's a reason why you will not hear the leaders of BLM talk about Sequoia Williams, the eight year old black girl that was murdered by BLM writer.

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