Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, are we just venting now? And this is prompted by an opinion piece I read by Jonathan Alpert in the Wall Street Journal recently about the no Kings Day protest. Now, no Kings, if you're not familiar, is a rally, event around the country claiming to resist tyranny, basically arguing that President Trump in particular, acts not as an elected official, not as a representative, not as a president, but rather as a tyrannical monarch, a king. And then in America, we don't want kings. And so this ra to reject his form of leadership. No King's Day. Now, Jonathan Alpert, who wrote this opinion piece, basically destroying the no Kings movement, is not a politician. He is a psychotherapist. And this is key. And he actually says that the no Kings movement represents his words, not mine. Bad group therapy. Here's how he defines bad group therapy, where emotional validation replaces meaningful engagement with ideas. In other words, what matters most is that you express your feelings and your feelings are validated. Then you actually engage with ideas. Now, Alpert points two places for this. One is he points that the survey data shows overwhelmingly participants in the no Kings movement are largely educated, progressive white women in their 40s. And what Alpert notes about this subsect of the population, and again, these are his words, not mine, is that that's a demographic inclined to lean far more heavily into emotional, feelings than actual engagement with ideas. In other words, it's a group of women who are highly emotional, feeding off of each other's emotions. And he points to actual what actually happens in the no Kings movement as evidence of that. He talks about costumes and slogans and dramatics. What he says you won't find at a no Kings rally is persuasion, because it's an echo chamber just designed to be one kind of loud session of tantrum throwing by a group of people who don't wanna change anyone's minds. They just wanna stomp their feet until you notice them. And Alpert's concern is this, that this is indicative of a larger societal trend. And on this, I think he's 100% right, that emotional intensity is, is more important than intellectual integrity. We've lost the ability as a culture to actually engage ideas, to actually defeat ideas with more ideas, to argue principle. And when you can't do that, you do what the toddler does in the aisle at Target. When they want a toy. They don't know how to debate economics, so they just throw themselves on the ground, kick and scream, hoping eventually someone will hand them, a toy. Look at 1 Thessalonians 5. 21. Paul says this. Test everything and hold fast what is good. What he's calling Christians to is away from the tantrum, throwing away from the echo chamber, away from the emotional experience, detached from what is actually true. What Paul's talking about is a true, authentic intellectual engagement with ideas. If you don't like President Trump's policies, that's fine. Then go at them on an ideological level. We do that often on Wooloo. If you do like them, then great. Support your affirmation with actual ideas and examples. We do that sometimes on Wake Up Lookup. As a culture, we have got to get back to actual engagement, not just, by the way, on a national political level, but on a, on a one to one level, on a familial level. We have to go back to being able to actually debate ideas and principles with an open mind, with a mind that can be changed. a mind that can be reasoned with because that's how you actually make progress. Again, Paul says test everything and hold fast to what is good. Of course, what's implicit there is that if you test everything, some things you're going to find are not that good. He's telling you, throw those out. Keep what is actually good. No. King's Day could be about ideas if they wanted it to be. It could be about promoting an alternative view of how to lead the country. It could be about elections and voting and actual societal change. But no, it's just temper tantrum throwing unless we point the finger at that group. That's just what we've become. But Christians can elevate the conversation, be the one in the conversation that doesn't get heated, that doesn't lose control of their emotions, that doesn't resort to name calling or building strawmen or tearing down ideas that no one actually supports. Listen well, reason well, get rid of what isn't good and hold fast to what is. What a great template for civic engagement. It's the one you're gonna find in the Bible. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. 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