What was happening in her heart and mind in the minutes before she hit an ICE agent with a car? Today we look at what influences our choices—and how, through Scripture, we can learn to guard our hearts and act in wisdom.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Trying to think how we should approach today's podcast in regards to the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. Trying to think if I should do more of just a news presentation and then get to the Bible or how much hot take to give on this episode here. I'm going to lean a little more towards the hot take. I think we'll see how it goes. 

I think the reason I'm actually waiting for the news part, it sounds backwards, but I need to see more of the video. I need to see not only the video of the woman in the car reversing and then driving forward while there's an ICE agent in front of her where the ICE agent then fires and kills her. I need to see more than that and the eight seconds before it when ICE agents get out of their car and tell her to get out of her car and then she reverses and goes for it. I need to see more than the eight seconds before that. I got a lot of questions. Why is she there? 

Was this just her neighborhood and she heard stuff going on and she showed up or was she tipped off that something was going to happen? Did she get a call? hurry get here i don't i don't know where is she from where she live how far does she drive to get there why was she there what was her intention was she in the hour before was she following ice was she harassing ice before this was this not the first time she blocked ice from driving down the street maybe and i don't know i've heard anyone say this i don't know did she ram an ice car already at some other point maybe not but i just don't know i can't judge the situation just off of a few seconds Was there some other evidence that she had already used her car as a weapon? I think these are good and fair questions that I don't have answers for. I'd also like to know more about the ICE agent. Where did he come from? 

What direction was he coming from? How long was he engaged in this specific scenario? Did he know anything else about this car, the person in the car? Did he see this person do erratic things already? Did that add to the data that he had in the moment where he decided to fire his weapon instead of something else? There's a totality of the situation that I don't have right now. 

Hopefully we will soon. I do though, feel comfortable making some other conclusions. These are more of the hot takes because I'm just fascinated by the person who would put themselves in this situation, which is a very dangerous situation, interfering with a law enforcement operation. You have no business being a part of. What's going on here? And that's what I want to try to explain here in just a few minutes, and then we'll bring the Bible into it. 

There's something that I've heard called the kindergarten teacher complex. Think of your stereotypical kindergarten teacher. sweet, wonderful, amazing, heart of gold woman who loves profoundly, deeply in her heart, loves her babies. Now imagine a woman who has that same mentality, but instead of five -year -olds being her babies in her kindergarten classroom, it's refugees. It's illegal aliens. This woman felt, I guess, so strongly about caring for the Somalis in her neighborhood that she felt the need to go to this ICE operation and get in their face. 

Why? 

Because in her mind with the kindergarten teacher complex, Somalis are helpless little babies who need her protection. She's the teacher and the Somalis are her students. who need love and care. They're cared for and they need protected. And the Ice Agents are mean bad guys who are coming into the classroom and want to cause harm to her babies. And she's going to launch her mama bear instinct upon them in all her fury. 

Does that make sense? There's a lot of words for this. Toxic empathy is a good word for it. I've heard misplaced mothering, where you take a feminine mother's instinct, but when it's not placed on your own children, then it's placed on other things that don't make sense, that aren't wise. But maybe a misplaced mother instinct would be placed on not a baby who is a weak, but on a Somali immigrant or someone else who's oppressed in their worldview, and they have to protect it. That's why people are yelling, like, get away, get out of here, go, get out of my neighborhood, kindergarten teacher mentality. 

Combine that with a mob mentality, this constant inputs from wherever, MSNBC, whatever's online, people who are on your team. 

crazy. 

kept LARPing, it's like, okay, but when you LARP as fighting Nazis and you roll into a law enforcement operation against real men with real guns, your LARPing will be met with real life real fast. I don't know what she was thinking in the car, obviously. Maybe she was driving away, right? The officer comes up and says, get the blank out of the car. And maybe that was her moment where she was like, oh, I'm in way over my head. 

This got real, I gotta get out of here. And she was leaving and unfortunately there was an ICE agent in front of the car. Maybe she didn't even see the ICE agent. But there, I'm guessing, I'm totally making this up, but I'm guessing there was a moment when she, it hit her that it got real fast. And we've all had those moments as a kid. You're playing with your friends, you're playing war with your friends, maybe you're throwing mud balls at each other and you're having a grand time and then one of the mud balls has a rock in it and you throw it. 

at a friend and it hits them in the head and now they're on the ground bleeding. In that instant it gets real and everyone stops playing. Every kid instantly knows it got real and we're gonna get in trouble and if it's your little brother the first thing you tell your little brother is don't tell mom and you wish you could take it all back because you're playing abruptly confronted real life and maybe that was this woman too where that instant she thought oh jeez I wish this I wish I didn't do this I wish it could all go away but that's not how it works. So we have kindergarten teacher complex mixed with this TDS -fueled online mob frenzy of fellow activists and freedom fighters, which can make you feel invincible, mixed with LARPing as a superhero against the Nazis, and it can all culminate in a situation that is not a good one to be in, where you end up driving your car towards an ICE agent. That's the situation, that's my hot take. Here's my Bible take. 

And this message I want to share, I want to be very clear. This is not me saying all you liberals out there be more like me. That's that's not it. We all, myself included, need this message all the time. I love all the Bible verses, period. I could just stop my sentence right there. 

I love all the Bible verses, but I love especially, I guess, the Bible verses around this concept of guarding your heart or keeping your heart. I think of the information diet that so many people have, an information diet that keeps people uninformed or misinformed and a lifetime of that can really mess with you. And it could be little things. I saw a video the other day of a guy who was asking his coworkers, he showed him a picture of Missouri and they asked his coworkers, what state is this? This is in America. What state is this? 

And no one knew that it was Missouri. And everyone's laughing because they don't know. And you're like, well, that's not good. So like that's uninformed. But it's even beyond that. That's just like trivia. 

What state is this? But it's beyond that would be people who lack wisdom to just like navigate life and more important than anything who don't understand, people who don't understand that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and that we need to be in the Bible every day to connect to that source of all wisdom. Otherwise, we're going to end up in places that are not good, that are not wise. So a couple of scriptures on this point, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely. 

I mean, think about that. 

Are the things that you input into your soul every day, are they true, honest, just, pure, and lovely? Think about these things, Paul says. Romans 12 .1, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. If we have wisdom and we think about good, true, lovely, pure things, and our mind is renewed, then we can discern good from evil. This is Hebrews 5 .14. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. 

To go back to Philippians 4, the way to be these things, true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, we've got to be more like Jesus, because he is all these things. This is sanctification, becoming more like Jesus. Proverbs 4 .23, watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. Pastor Stephen Cole made the point that the way to watch your heart, he gave it five ways, five ways to watch your heart. One, be converted. First and foremost, before you're converted, before you're saved, you have a depraved mind. 

And once you're saved, you have the Holy Spirit. Number two, we have to clean out and block out all sources for sinful thoughts. Maybe it's a New Year's resolution episode two, where the challenge is to get rid of anything that you're watching, shows, movies, whatever, that aren't good enough for you. Do you know what I mean? They're not of a good enough standard that are worthy of your time. and are not good for your soul. 

Get rid of them. Third advice, take in God's word from every source. I heard the line that you cannot be profoundly influenced by that which you do not know. So read the Bible, listen to podcasts, whatever it is, take in God's word as much as possible. Read from the greats, read all the old good stuff. There's plenty of old good stuff out there. 

And then number five, similar to the one about inputs, music, listen to wholesome music, listen to good classical music, listen to the great hymns. And the more you do this, Your mind will be more focused. You'll be thinking about more things that are just and pure and true and lovely. You'll have a renewal of your mind. The more you read the word, you'll be able better to distinguish between good and evil. You'll be quicker to act on it when you see it. 

I love this too. Ephesians 5, 25, sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. " There's a cleansing that happens when you read the word, so that you might present the church to himself in splendor, without blemish. Isn't that amazing? We're going to wash ourselves with the word. 

And the more you do, you'll have more wisdom, you'll have better discernment, you'll make better decisions. You'll care about the things that you should be caring about. You'll care about the things that matter the most, and you'll care about them in the right way. I'm grateful for that. This show right here is part of your information guide. Slater Radio on Twitter and Instagram. 

My website where you can listen to this podcast. No commercials and the transcript is on mikeslater . locals . com.

We can no longer rely on our European allies for global security. It is also true that any reworking of global leadership has to start with renewed faithfulness to God. In this episode, we talk about Jason’s courage in Acts 17 and what it means to stand firm when you don't know who to rely on.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. 

Thanks for being here. 

Got an email from yesterday's episode that we did about how God's hand was clearly protecting our service members during the operation in Venezuela. There's no question about it. Steve wrote me a note, Steve in Ohio. He said, I was thinking not long after the success of the mission to Gran Maduro was promulgated, how many prayers for God to be with the troops at the beginning of this mission were offered up? I bet more than a couple. Knowing this administration, knowing the secretary of war like we do. 

I'm certain that that was true. I want today to provide one more broad overview of what's going on right now and what time we're living in. And then I want to bring in a biblical story of Jason that I think can drive all this home. One point, the big overall point I want to make is that, and maybe you've said this in your life as well, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself. So what we outlined over the last couple of days is that we live in a post -Cold War era. where we've been told by academia that all empires are bad. 

All of human history has only been about empires, more empires than we can count, more empires than we've ever heard of. Some have totally been forgotten. There'll be empires just listed in the Bible. Just like one little mention of it. That's it. You never hear about it ever again, even though there was like an empire for hundreds of years that existed. 

I'm reading one book and it mentions an empire that existed that we know nothing. 

We don't know anything about. 

We have no evidence of it existing other than several different mentions of it in ancient texts. And it's a real thing, a real place, we don't even know where it was or what it's about or anything, right? It's only been empire. But after the Cold War, academia said, empire's bad. The problem was we were the only empire, therefore America bad. 

So from like 1970s or so on, empire's bad, therefore America bad. So from that point forward, our country went on a decades long intentional weakening of America. We gave authority over the UN, which is just a cabal of our enemies. We outsourced more and more of our manufacturing, more of our power. We imported more and more of the third world here, right? So we're going to make ourselves weaker by exporting what is good, or not exporting, outsourcing what is good. 

And we're going to bring in more of what is bad, more things that make us weak. And we were told diversity is our strength, of course, in that process. Everything that was done was done to make us weaker in the last just like 50 years. That's never been the case. I think the Panama canals, I know it's in the news too, but it's the perfect analogy. Everything in our history that we ever did was done to make us a player on the world stage, and the Panama Canal is such a perfect example. 

We built it, we finished it in 1914. The point of it, other than, of course, the geopolitical significance and economic significance, but the other point of it was to show the world what we're made of. The fact that the French who built the Suez Canal, which was easy, flat and straight, thought that they could come and build the Panama Canal here and failed, and then we had the gumption, the bravado to think that we could come in and get it done, and we did. It was crazy.

A poetry reading on this Christmas Eve, from the great T.S. Eliot. He starts by quoting a Christmas sermon from 1622 and then ends with a line I hope to think of every day this year.

Welcome to Politics by Faith, a very special Christmas Eve edition. Taking a time out from preparing Christmas Eve and a little bit of prep on Christmas Day's feast for a quick poetry reading. 

T . S. Eliot became a Christian when he was 38 years old. There's a lot to share there in his journey as well, but this poem of his was his proclamation of becoming a Christian. It's called The Journey of the Magi. He wrote it in 1927. It starts off with a quote. 

A cold cuts three stanzas. A cold coming, we had of it. Just the worst time of the year for a journey. Such a long journey. The waves deep and the weather sharp. The very dead of winter. 

That quote is a paraphrase of a Christmas sermon that was given in 1622 by Lancelot Andrews. How about that for a name? Lancelot Andrews. The original line is, so this is the preacher speaking of the Magi. T . S. 

Eliot's poem is from the perspective of the Magi, so he changes a little bit there, but here's the original sermon. A cold coming they had of it at this time of year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and especially a long journey. The waves deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, the very dead of winter. Let me read a little more from that sermon, actually. It's so good. Come is soon said, but a short word, but many a wide and weary step they made. 

before they could come to say lo here we are come and at our journey's end it's like easy to be like yeah yeah we're coming this was a journey we don't exactly know but somewhere between 500 and 900 miles maybe took one to three months for the magic. We just read about it in a sentence or two in the Bible. And we're like, oh yeah, they saw a star and they followed it and they arrived. You're like, well, hold on. That's a very long journey, a miserable journey. 

And certainly a journey that somewhere along the line, one of the guys had to be like, meh, are we, do we really want to do this? Do we need to do this? We just do something else instead. Should we just turn around? Should we turn around? We should turn around. 

Shouldn't we turn around? 

Months. 

Of this journey, the preacher goes on, we must consider the distance of the place they came from. It was not hard as by the shepherds. This was riding many a hundred miles. The shepherds only came a little bit. The way they came was through deserts, all the way waste and desolate. It was exceedingly dangerous through the midst of thieves and cutthroats. 

At the time of their coming, the season of the year, it was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it at this time of year, just the worst time to take a journey. And he goes on, that's where the weather deep, sharp, days short. And these difficulties they overcame of a wearisome, dangerous, unseasonable journey. And for all this, they came to see Jesus because there was a star. These pagans saw a star. 

That's what they did. They studied the stars. If you heard our interview with Lee Strobel recently, he talked about how these were people who studied stars. So they would have noticed something odd and they followed it. Just hard for us to imagine, right? Navigation by the stars. 

They did that back then. Okay. Let's keep going. So that's just the first little opening quote. And then so T . S. 

Eliot then speaks just like this preacher did about how difficult this journey was. And the camels galled, sore -footed, refractory, lying down in the melting snow. 

There were times we regretted. 

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces and the silken girls bringing sherbert. This is what they left. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away and wanting their liquor and women. And the night fires going out and the lack of shelters and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly and the villages dirty and charging high prices. A hard time we had of it. At the end, we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches with the voices singing in our ears, saying that this was all folly. 

What are we doing? Look what we left. We left a beautiful place for this. And all day, sleeping in snatches, singing in our voices, singing in our ears, saying, what are we doing? Let's go to stanza number two. Then at dawn, we came down to a temperate valley, wet below the snow line, smelling of vegetation with a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness and three trees on the low sky. 

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine leaves over the lintel, six hands at an open door, dicing for pieces of silver and feet kicking the empty wine skins. But there was no information. And so we continued and arrived that evening. Not a moment too soon finding the place. It was, you may say, satisfactory. 

You can go back and listen to that stanza again and, or better yet, you read it and you can see, maybe easier to see, the, um, all the allusions to Jesus. Three trees. for the three chords. A white horse. Maybe the water mill beating the darkness is baptism. We have a river here, like a water river of life. 

We have dice, right? Casting of lots. Jesus is the vine. We have wineskins. A lot of biblical imagery here as they're on their journey. And essays and essays could be written about the last line of this penultimate stanza. 

And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon, finding the place, it was, you may say, satisfactory. When I first hear the word satisfactory, I think, uh, it's like, uh, all right, I guess. I guess it's fine. It's like a motel six or something like, all right, like it's a bad, I guess, I guess it's fine. Right. But no, that's not what satisfactory meant. 

So I went back to Webster's 1828 dictionary. Satisfactory, a most wise and sufficient means of salvation by the satisfactory. 

and meritorious death and obedience of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. 

" That's their definition of the word satisfactory. It means Christ is the satisfaction of the law. Satisfied. We've turned satisfied into a performance review. Satisfactory, not satisfactory, above satisfactory. Satisfactory is amazing. 

Satisfactory is unbelievably profound. We have this long and this constant longing that we can never fulfill until we die and go to heaven to be satisfied. And Jesus was the price paid. His death on the cross was the price paid for our sins. It's satisfied. It was satisfactory. 

So it shouldn't be read, and arrived that evening, not a moment too soon, finding the place. Were we led all that way for birth? There was a birth, certainly. We had evidence, no doubt. I had seen birth and death, but I thought they were different. This birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death. 

We returned to our places, these kingdoms, but no longer at ease here. And the old dispensation, just way of things, and our old way of things. With an alien people clutching their gods, I should be glad of another death. No longer at ease here. Everything's different for them. It's the same. 

The place is the same, but they are different. They now see these alien people clutching their gods. They saw Jesus. And we know Jesus. We put to death our old ways. Once they saw the Savior, the old way of things for them was a death. 

Just like when we become Christians. And they didn't feel at ease where they were anymore. And neither should we. Our real home is heaven. Hence this unbelievable last line, I should be glad of another death. I think of the story of the Magi as a bit of an odd placement in the Bible. 

I love that like I'm a Like, I'm the editor. I mean, I don't know, God. I don't know if you really needed to put this part in here. It seems a little random. God put it in there for a reason. He wanted us to know the Magi as a part of the birth of Jesus. 

And I don't think it was just plot development to get Herod involved and all. He wanted us to know their story. And I love this poem. 

It's a nice reminder that God came with us, Emmanuel, to save us so we can go to heaven. 

We are with an alien people clutching their gods down here. I should be glad of another death. Merry Christmas. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.