Will the media make this story another George Floyd? It depends on how much it helps Democrats. It will have an effect on the Wisconsin governor's primary coming up in 3 weeks. But more importantly, how should we react to this police shooting? This...JUSTIFIED police shooting.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. We do this because there's new headlines every day, and that can get exhausting. It can cause anxiety, but Ecclesiastes says it's not the new under the sun. So thanks for being here for the true story, the story of the day today. Another black man murdered by police.
Here's what happened. When I first heard about this story, an old friend of mine, I haven't talked to him in 25 years, but I'm still friends with him on Facebook. I saw a post they put, and It was a picture of a memorial and the caption said, one tased him, two others pinned him down. A fourth police officer fatally shot a black man in Madison, Wisconsin. So one tased, two pinned him down, and then another shot him dead. And you have this visual because there was a picture of the vigil, not of the shooting or the interaction itself.
So you get this image of just like execution on the street. That was the first I heard of this. I said, Oh, I wonder what happened. So I looked it up. Someone called 9 -1 -1 because there was a suspicious looking person checking parked cars, peering through windows, trying to get into cars. So we had an anti -social, some anti -social, not even anti -social, anti -civilization behavior.
So normal productive people in Madison, Wisconsin called 9 -1 -1. Police arrived as they're supposed to. They tried to detain him. He resisted. They tased him. Looks like it didn't work.
Somehow, he then pulled out a knife and injured an officer. at which point another officer shot him three times. He attacked police officers in the middle of this tussle. He, I don't exactly know the injuries, so either cut or stabbed a police officer. Case closed. What are we even talking about?
This will keep happening for one very simple reason. People don't want to go to jail. I've said this a billion times, I guess we'll say it a billion more. Until jail is Disney World, no one will want to go. Now he's been in jail already. He didn't want to go back.
Did he not want to go back enough to not break into cars anymore? But what he really wanted to do is keep breaking in cars and not go to jail. So we have to decide if we want to allow that behavior. He had a criminal record of drug possession, theft, resisting, or obstructing an officer, the whole thing. So he didn't want to go back. That's what happened.
So we have two stories here, two side stories. First, body cameras. Madison, Wisconsin police don't have body cameras. Now, body cameras are really interesting. Black Lives Matter activists, they don't want them anymore. They did want them.
One of their demands during George Floyd and that whole riot, that whole whatever, one of their demands was we want body cameras on all police officers. Now they don't because all these videos were coming out where Black Lives Matter activists would say, oh, police shot an unarmed black man. And then the video comes out and the unarmed black man is running at the police officers full speed with a knife in their hand. There was one story in particular, I forget where it was, but a black man was murdered by police officers and they demanded answers, right? And how could police do such a thing? My baby would never, he's a great, my baby's amazing and he would never do something bad.
And then the body camera, no, you know what this was? This was, ah, this was a, like a road rage incident. And these two guys got out of the car And the white guy who was an off -duty police officer murdered the black man. That's what happened. Then a dash camera footage came out and the black man pulled out a gun. That's when the police officer, the off -duty police officer shot back.
So when the camera came out, the footage came out to the family's credit, their lawyer backed down, the family apologized and said they were shocked that their son would do such a thing. They never would have believed it and we're sorry. And he, and he, he was in the wrong and the whole thing was over again to the family's credit for doing that. But there are few who are as humble as that, even in the face of video evidence, which this shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, there is. Apparently there's three different videos from different angles. So anyway, but let me be clear.
Black Lives Matter wanted body camera footage. Now they don't. Normal black people do want body camera footage. Black Lives Matter activists don't. Also progressive white women don't. They don't want it.
They don't want body camera footage for the same reason that they don't want voter ID. And that's because they think black people don't know where the DMV is, or they're too stupid to understand what an ID is, or they can't afford to go get an ID. So progressive white women, they don't want body camera footage either, because that's their way of being nice to vulnerable oppressed black, their little black babies that they need to take care of. So you got normal black people, they want body camera footage, but Black Lives Matter activists and white women in Madison do not. So the body camera footage is a side story. Politically, there's another story here.
I don't know how much of an influence this story is going to have nationwide. This may be the first you're hearing about this story. I don't know how much the media is going to run with it. They got to kind of test it for a little bit and see if this is a political win for the Democratic Party or not. Remember, the lamestream media, they're just an arm of the Democratic Party. So if they think this will help them in midterms, then this is going to be another George Floyd.
If they don't think it will, then they'll abandon the story immediately. Locally, though, in Wisconsin, this will have some implications. So Democrats, their primaries in three weeks. Democrats are down to their current lieutenant governor, No, so sorry, it was their current lieutenant governor and their former lieutenant governor. The current lieutenant governor dropped out. So we got the former lieutenant governor, who's a black guy.
Then you have the Milwaukee County executive, who's another black guy. He actually dropped or he suspended his race, but then the current governor endorsed him. So he got back in. Never heard of that happening before. So we got these Democrats in Wisconsin. It's a purple state.
They can't seem to get their act together because the front runner is a communist. She's a state representative, Francesca Hong. She's a Mamdani -endorsed DSA communist. If you listen to this podcast, you know all about him. Abolish ICE, public grocery stores, public banks, defund the police, right? Like the whole thing.
So full -on DSA, Democrats, Socialists of America, communists. But Manhattan is different than Wisconsin. Maybe. We'll see. I hope it is. Denver's not different than Manhattan.
Denver nominated a communist. We'll see if the entire state of Wisconsin will. So is this story going to energize her base to get her across the finish line in their primary? I don't know. If she does win, you would think that'd be better for the Republican candidate, Tom Tiffany. But in my policies, it's a bad idea to play with fire.
I don't want communists getting anywhere near the possibility of winning elected office. So three weeks. So you got body camera footage and the politics of this. We'll put those aside. Let's get to some biblical points here. First, thou shalt not steal.
Second, you should obey police officers when they tell you to stop. We can go on with all these obvious points that you would think are obvious, but maybe they're not. There's a lot of people out there who think that police shouldn't exist at all. So third point, people want to talk about the overreaction of police officers. They killed a man and yeah, it's terrible. Remember these officers, I'm sure they're distraught about this all.
They didn't want to go to work that day hoping to be a part of all this. But the police are there to secure law and order. And we can't live in a society where we just let people roam the streets stealing stuff from people's cars. We've got to stop that behavior. It's anti -civilization. But don't be tricked into thinking that they killed a man because he was stealing stuff from cars.
It's not it. Because the activists are going to say that. They'll be like, oh, you shouldn't get the death penalty for stealing stuff. No, they shot him because he had a knife. And he already injured a police officer. And would have killed him.
Maybe. There's nothing just. There's nothing righteous about living in chaos. So like, let's think of their progressive vision of government, like no police, right? So he just gets out a knife and stabs a social worker or what? And what are you talking about?
Forget even the socialist utopia. Let's just, let's pretend that these police officers acted as these communists maybe would prefer them, or the activists would prefer them to act, be nice and kind or whatever. The guy pulls out a knife. So first you just want to let him go. Okay. So what's that?
And then let's say you're like, no, you got to come with us, man. And he pulls out a knife. Just let him stab you in the face. Let him stab you in the heart. Austin Metcalf died with a knife, like two and a half inches long. Or again, maybe it's just a minor flesh wound.
And then he runs away, ready to steal again tomorrow. And it's just chaos. What are we talking about? And then people don't go downtown. People don't go to businesses. The town suffers.
And you end up in the ghetto like Chicago the other day where seven grocery stores are now closing down. Seven save -a -lots. Who are we going to let run the show here? My fourth point is there's a total disregard for human life. His family's distraught, you know, mom crying on TV. Police are criticized for having a disregard of human life, but what about the people around him?
And not only his family, but because I understand people can be very mentally ill and family has to let the person go, right? But what about our institutions around us that let homeless and mentally ill people just roam the streets? I don't know much about Corey. Corey Ruiz is his name or Ruiz. Ruiz is the guy's name. I don't know what his deal is. I don't know if he's just straight up criminal or mentally ill, or he's a drug addict out of his mind.
But either of these three require different interventions that we don't take, because we don't really value human life. If we did, we would help people like this, even if it's against their will. That has been the big concern for like 50 years now. Oh, we can't do anything against their will. Their will is out of their mind. They don't have a will to take the person against their will.
All right. Well, their will is to steal money, to get things, to get money, to get high. That's their will. So yeah, we got to do stuff against their will. Getting help, getting them better is against their will at the moment, but we can't do it. Got to be nice.
So the real disregard for human life. Again, you're going to hear that the police officers have a disregard for human life. That is wrong. The real disregard of human life. Let me flip it around. The real regard for human life should have been to focus on this person a long time ago.
Let's go to the Bible. Admit something here that I don't like. I'm becoming callous. My parents, they grew up in Long Island and they worked in New York city. When I was growing up, they would tell me a story about this woman who had elephantitis. I want that for a name.
I don't know what the new politically correct term for this disease is, but I'm sure it's not elephantitis. It's a severe swelling of their body parts. Like, I don't know. I don't know what swells like their tissues. I don't know. But like their legs are huge, enormous, and just disgusting covered with sores and all this stuff.
It'd be like, it's like kind of like our modern day leprosy, like a biblical leprosy. And this woman, she would lay there on the subway platform. and everyone would step over them all day long. My parents told this story to me growing up a lot. I heard about this person often and I look back on it like, man, how terrible. How sad for that person, of course.
but then for the rest of us who get calloused. We get calloused to this human suffering. We become hard -hearted. Now, hard -hearted in the Bible is more like stubborn, but I mean it more like the opposite of having a soft heart. And I don't like it. When a homeless person or addict like this gets shot by police officers, they're so far down a very bad road, and there are so many places along the way where things could have gone differently.
but we don't really care for the oppressed when they cry out. We instead, progressives have come up with this policy to let them stay oppressed in the name of compassion. And then they spiral deeper and deeper. I think the first thing we can do, and they keep doing, is to pray for the people who have a tender heart for the homeless and the addicted. There's a lot of people in California I know who, well, let me do the negative first. I know for sure that there's people in California in particular who are in this for the money, believe it or not.
There's a lot of money in the homeless industrial complex. But there's also a lot of great people I know who are doing it for the right reasons, and they're doing good work. They're saving lives and they're saving souls. The saving soul part's an essential part of it. We need to pray for those people because they're doing God's work. Jesus said the poor will always be with us, which is a really interesting sentence.
Why? Now it's not to say, nah, you know, whatever. Don't think about them. Don't care about them because no matter what you do, they're going to be with us forever. They're going to be poor people. So whatever.
That's not what Jesus means by that. Charles Spurgeon gave a wonderful sermon on this. It's called the duty of remembering the poor. And I really like the sermon a lot because it speaks to my callousness, which I don't like. So I make a couple of points here. First, why does God allow there to be poor people?
He could make everyone rich. I was talking to the kids today about creativity and beauty, and God could have made, we were driving through this beautiful back country road with hills, and I said, God could have made the whole earth flat. Sorry, I was going to do a flat earth story here. That's not what I mean. He could have made the whole earth just bland, gray, desert, just blah, the whole planet. But he didn't.
Look, kids he made this beautiful rolling hills with green and lush and it's just stunning and all these different variety did everything right god could have made everyone rich one reason that there are poor people is so that people can be grateful for the blessings they do have charles spurge said oh ye discontented ones so people who are whining you who are always murmuring at your households because all kinds of delicacies are not provided for you oh i just wish my life were better people whining it would do you good if you could sit down for a while to work house fair And sometimes eat a little less than that and fast a day or two to find your appetites. So quit your whining. You can eat like a lot of other people who don't have nearly what you have. So one reason why there's poor people is so that you can be grateful for what you have. Second reason is to get us to see that the real comforts of life aren't in the physical comforts of this world, but in the gospel, the good news and his promises for eternity. Spurgeon said, when we find some that have not where to lay their heads and yet can say, still will I trust in the Lord.
When we see someone with nothing but bread and water who's still glorying Jesus? When we see them wondering where the scene shall end, seeing that every day new straits attend. Every day is horrible. Every day is difficult. And yet having faith in Christ, what an honor it reflects on the gospel. Check out this from Spurgeon.
Grace is tested in the poverty of believers. This is no doubt one reason why God puts his people in poor circumstances. There, says the architect, this building is strong. Aye, sir, but it must be tested. Let the wind blow against it. There's a lighthouse out at sea.
It's a calm night. I cannot tell whether the edifice is firm. The tempest must howl about it, and then I shall know whether it will stand. And so with religion, if it were not on many occasions surrounded with tempestuous waters, we should not know that the ship was strong. If the winds did not blow upon it, as they do on our poor, tired brethren, we should not know how firm and secure it is. " It's beautiful.
Spurgeon's wonderful. So we've got to be grateful for what we have. Second, to get us to see that the real comforts of life are not in the physical comforts of the world, but of heaven and eternity. We all need to know that. 3 to be an inspiration to all of us. For those who are going through difficult times and can still trust the Lord, it's a beautiful thing.
But I'll leave you with this one. It's what I really wanted to share. The Lord, Spurgeon says, has poor people in the midst of us for this reason, that he determines to give us opportunities of showing our love to him. Now, we show our Christ in love when we sing of him and when we pray to him, but if there were no poor people in the world, we should often say within ourselves, oh, how I wish I could one of Christ. I wish there were one of Christ's brethren that I could help.
I should like to give Christ something. I should like to show my master that I loved him, not by words only, but by deeds too. And if all the poor saints were clean taken away and we were all well to do and had abundance, there would not, there'd be none to acquire any assistance. And I think we might begin to weep because there were no poor saints to help. So let us look upon it, not as a mere duty, but as a delight and a privilege. For if we were not able to give something of our substance to Christ, We should have to go down on our knees to ask him to give us some opportunity of showing our love to him.
I say all this to remind us that there are good people doing good work to help those who are in need and want it. If you have the heart for that work, God bless you. You're a wonderful person. If you don't personally have that calling, pray about it and maybe give out of our abundance and out of our gratitude to local charities that help people who need it. And if people need help, but don't want it, that's a political thing. It's a political solution.
We need to force them to take it. They need to go to prison. They need to go an addiction center. They need to be in a mental health hospital. If we had this attitude towards the poor, who will always be with us, we could then hopefully prevent situations like this person in Wisconsin from getting to this point. And more importantly, save souls in the process.
Let's pray we don't grow even more calloused towards human life.
