Elizabeth Graham and Benjamin Watson on Southside Rabbi
KB: What’s going on family. Here we are yet again for another episode of Southside Rabbi and boy, do we have one for you today. Okay. I have to start by saying in 2014, there was the annual Grammy awards where we watched Macklemore take album of the year.
Ameen: It was an injustice.
KB: From Kendrick Lamar and the entire music industry was up in a fit. They were totally devastated by the injustice that what was called perhaps one of the greatest albums of all time lost to Macklemore’s project about thrift stores. Macklemore was so moved by the injustice that he shot Kendrick Lamar a text message that night posted on Instagram saying, you were robbed. I’m giving you this Grammy. To which Kendrick said, I don’t want it, which is in the same spirit of Eminem. Who said back in the top of the two thousands that he felt as though the Grammys was losing credibility because there were moments where albums should have been given to hip hop legends like Jay Z or Kanye West, but it would go to folks who were tantamount to Milli Vanilli. What all of that says to us is that every year a Grammy goes out to someone who really shouldn’t have it or is overlooking who should have it. It brings question, it brings challenge to the organization itself. Brothers and sisters, I am in a similar dilemma today because every year that goes by that our next two guests do not receive Nobel Peace prizes.
Ameen: MacArthur Genius Awards.
KB: MacArthur Genius Awards. Every year that goes by that they don’t, they don’t even act or sing or rap or perform, but they don’t have Emmys, and I’m bothered by it. It brings into question the entire organization. How can you have a world where a man and a woman like this just walk around freely.
Ameen: With no accolades that people are giving them.
KB: Without having the places where accolades are distributed at the highest level not honoring them. It makes me question the entire institution. I mean the dream mean machine Hudson. Who are these people? Please talk to them. Talk to the people about these people.
Ameen: I have to talk to the people. First of all, I don’t know what to say because it’s describing them…It’s ineffable. It is ineffable. You don’t have any words to describe, but I will try. So first of all…
KB: Do your best. Your humble offering.
Ameen: All I’m going to say is that…
KB: Your loaves and fish.
Ameen: Lord, please multiply. In this world, and in culture, you know, sometimes you just get a dynamic duo that impacts culture and society.
KB: Absolutely.
Ameen: Kobe and Shaq.
KB: That’s right.
Ameen: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
KB: Absolutely.
Ameen: Batman and Robin.
KB: Batman and Robin. Absolutely.
Ameen: John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
KB: Yes, brother. Yes.
Ameen: Uh, who else? Ben and Jerry.
KB: Ben and Jerry.
Ameen: Some of y’all enjoyed it.
KB: Tom and Jerry.
Ameen: Some of us may enjoy that a little bit too much. Tom and Jerry. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski.
KB: Come on, brother.
Ameen: And, if you like food, hamburgers and fries. Just great dynamic duo always together.
KB: Absolutely.
Ameen: And go, and just match with one another. Y’all get the picture. Y’all get what I’m trying to say. Well today, the brother, sister, and Christ that I have to my left. We got some heavy hitters in here. Heavy hitters. Today. Now, we have brother Benjamin Watson.
KB: Yes, and we should be able to stop right there. Because he has one of those names that when you just say we’re like, oh, we know who you’re talking about. Like when you say Oprah.
Ameen: No, but all I’m saying is we got Benjamin Watson who is first of all, not only a first-round draft pick, but also a Super Bowl champion as a Titan in the National Football League. Now, you know, as they say, NFL can mean not for long, but that didn’t apply to Benjamin Watson. That’s all I’m saying. But even off the field. Ben is just as much as a beast. He’s an author and commentator. One of the only people that I know that had Laura Ingraham that was like, well, what do we do, Go to commercial! You know, he’s also dad of the century. He got mad kids.
KB: Absolutely.
Ameen: I think that he’s the dad of the century.
KB: He’s got all the awards there. All the dad awards.
Ameen: Yes. I think that he has them. So, we have Brother Benjamin Watson. We also have sister Elizabeth Graham, CEO for Life Collective Inc. Previously at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission as vice president of operations, I think, right? Operations and life initiatives. That’s what it was. And Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and also Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So, mind is so sharp, might mess around and cut your head off. So give it up for our guests, please, please, please, please, brothers and sisters.
KB: Welcome the brother and the sister to the podcast. Now we are here for a special conversation about a ministry that is doing wonderful things in terms of advocacy for the rights, well-being, protection of the unborn and the mothers that have those children. And if you all could just start us off talking a little bit about Stand For Life. Why we all need to know about it and what it is doing in the world.
Ben: I’m gonna start with my sister. First of all, I gotta say, I am just honored to be here. Like, we are on set.
Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Ben: Let’s not, we’re here, we’re gonna get to it. But we are in person, live, and in color, in Florida. Like, on the set, we done seen a tour of the way God is blessing y’all’s ministry. I mean, it’s really tremendous. I told my dad; my dad is 66 years old. I said, Daddy, I’m down here in Florida. He said what you doing on there, son? I said – Well, you may have heard of it or not. This thing called Southside Rabbi that I’m going on. He’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve seen it before. Pastor Ken Watson, Rocky Hill, South Carolina knows who y’all are. So, this is like a big deal to be here in person, not on Zoom. So, we are honored. I’m honored to be here with y’all.
Ameen: We are honored as well. Stand For Life.
Ben: Absolutely.
Elizabeth: Yeah. It’s a tremendous honor to be here. Like I’ve been watching the podcast for a long time. Like y’all are doing such incredible things and it’s just, it’s amazing. So, it’s a tremendous privilege to be here – but Stand for Life. So the reason that we started Stand for Life is because we believed that we wanted to see a more beautiful vision for engaging the church on what does it mean to be holistically about defending and affirming the dignity of the human person, which we believe theologically is rooted in the image of God and our understanding of that.
And so, at Stand for Life, our desire is to equip and educate and mobilize the church. So, we want them to have that, like, theological underpinning of the Imago Dei so that we can apply consistently our theological ethic and not just to one particular position. And so we believe that in order to do that, we needed to create a brand and our hope and our desire was like, not out of a spirit of like arrogance, but out of a spirit of humility, like create a brand where people could unite under it that just had a more beautiful vision, rooted in the scriptures, about what does it mean to be created in the image of God. What are the implications, and we want to see the flourishing of the human person?
Ben: Yeah, and the thing is like coming alongside the church. Because yes, the church is the prophetic priesthood if you would, of people that God has charged with influencing the culture.
All: Yes. Yeah.
Ben: And what we’ve seen, not just you know, I hate when people say what we’ve seen lately… No throughout time.
Elizabeth: Mmhmm
Ben: That’s what the church has been. The church has been the moral compass for the culture. And so, when the church is not equipped, when the church starts to believe the lies of the culture, especially when it comes to the issue of life and in our American context, it is very political. When you talk about pro-life, pro-choice, abortion, all the things we’ll get into.
But when you talk about some other social issues, that’s still life. And so, our hope is to equip the church, stand beside the church, but also, I think challenge the church to remove themselves from the political dichotomy and that whole paradigm and tried to be more Biblio-centric, if I could say that. When it comes to how we express and how we stand, stand for life because right now there is a lot of confusion. And if we don’t, if we don’t understand the image of God in every person, even the people we disagree with… if we don’t understand the value of human beings as being created in that image, being different than the animals, being that God breathed into life in demand…
All: right, right, right, right.
Ben: I mean, that he sent his son to die for mankind, not for the animals. We are different. If we don’t start with that basis, that foundation, it influences how we treat people. It influences the things that we say. It influences how we teach our children. It influences how we engage in politics. It influences how we get engaged in philanthropy. All those things start with the image of God and what does that mean for the person. And so.
Elizabeth: That’s right.
Ben: Specifically in this time where you’ve got Roe v Wade being overturned last year. Where you’ve got people digging in on all sides, where you’ve got churches being split down the center on the issue of life and the issue of social services and all that type of stuff. It is imperative that we at least come together and be able to talk about this from a scriptural centered standpoint and get back to that and out of the culture war, because that’s, that’s what we’re…
KB: It’s culture war. That’s what it is.
Ben: It’s culture war.
KB: That is powerful.
Ameen: Yep.
Elizabeth: Yeah, to like put it back where the conversation belongs. Like we… our understanding of this issue is rooted in the gospel and in scripture. And so, when we take it out of that context it’s such a polarizing issue. So, it’s either like, you’re on the left and you care about serving women, or you’re on the right and you only care about, this is what they would say, that you only care about the life of the preborn child. And we’re like… No. The image of God requires that we understand human flourishing in a way that sees the immeasurable worth and the dignity in every human person; and that has implications. So, I’m not buying into the lie that I can’t care about women, children, and families while addressing the issue holistically that understands it that way. And also, not divorcing the issue, like a life issue, whether it’s justice or whether it’s what’s considered traditionally pro-life. Any assault on one who bears the image of Christ, I believe is an assault on the image of God himself. And so, therefore, we can’t take those issues and, like, pull them apart. We have to think of them consistently. We have to consistently think about, okay, what does the Bible say about this? Why do I see race as an image of God issue? Why do I see immigration as an image of God issue? Why do I see human trafficking as an image of God issue? And I’m not buying the lie that it’s a binary issue. That I can only care about one or the other – I can’t care about the whole of the human person. And so I just refuse to be caught in that trap that says, if you don’t care about the most vulnerable… well, I don’t believe that scripture talks about the most vulnerable. I believe that scripture talks about the vulnerable. And so anyone who bears the image of Christ and is in a situation that’s vulnerable, is a vulnerable person and should be defended and affirmed.
KB: Yeah, that’s powerful. That’s powerful.
KB: I do want to underscore the paradigm shift that y’all are leading with because typically, at least I’ve seen this in my own Christian walk, I was discipled to really process the world only through redemption, the cross. I start at the cross of Christ, where at the cross there are sinners who are disconnected from God and on the other side are those who trust Him and now are united with God. The cross stands in the center. But that’s pretty much how the world works.
And it kind of shows up in a way that I mean, we’ll describe it, in Christian’s view of the world in that it’s more like the walking dead, right? So, you got people who are healthy, who are in Jesus, who are living in little silos, and they got their team, and they got their politicians, and they got their emphasis. And then we will, when we need supplies, go out into the world and try not to get touched while we’re out there as these people are walking around dead in their sins and trespasses. And one of the things that Francis Schaeffer has helped us with a lot, in what you all are rooting your ministry in, is that the cross is supreme. Let’s not get it twisted.
Ameen: Yes.
KB: There is no future without the cross of Jesus Christ. Yet the Bible doesn’t start with the cross per se – it starts with creation.
Elizabeth: Right.
KB: And there’s something that the cross does in working forward and backwards.
Ameen: Right. Right.
KB: That it goes back to the garden where people are being made, where people are made in the image of God, every man and woman that follows that, they are made in the image of God. Paul says that God, in Jesus, is restoring that image in us.
All: Yes.
KB: But the truth of the matter is everyone that has the breath of life coursing through their lungs.
All: Yeah.
KB: They are made in the image of God. And the image of God demands certain… rights, certain reactions, certain protections, certain access, and to have that paradigm shift is everything for a people, I think for us, I’m even thinking about my own Christian walk and how I looked at the world before… where my heart would sort of, you know, I wouldn’t look at, like Jesus looked at the countryside and saw sheep without a shepherd, right? And he felt compassion. The scripture is constantly saying that he felt compassion for folks. You can kind of turn your nose at folks. You can see them as – see them through their problem.
All: Yeah.
KB: You see them through where they stand ideologically, and you only estimate those who are not in Jesus through what you perceive is wrong with them and you miss the rightness of the image of God that even our Enemies, even those who are forgotten and then as in terms of those who are vulnerable… It should flow out of us to see them as image bearers. We ought to be reminded because we can only see things through the binary of sinners and saints.
Ben: Well, the problem is that we start with the cross, but, but if we start with the holiness of God, you always start with the holiness of God.
All: Yeah.
Ben: And so, when you start with the holiness of God, you put yourself in the proper perspective.
All: That’s right.
Ben: And so when you juxtapose yourself with the holiness of God, you see the wretchedness of yourself.
Ameen: Absolutely.
Elizabeth: Mm-Hmm
Ben: And you see how sinful you are, and how less than you are… and how dare you think you’re better than someone else because we’re all in the same boat.
Ameen: Absolutely.
Ben: And so that proper world view, and proper self-view, is what propels you to care about everybody.
All: Yeah.
Ben: You know, and what propels you to say, you know, even if this person can’t help me. Even if this person is my enemy, which is what Jesus talked about. Which is what it’s very hard for us to do, myself included, today.
Ameen: Yeah.
Ben: You see yourself against the wholeness of God and realize your need for a savior. So how dare you think of yourself as better than anyone else. And so that’s what propels our fights for justice.
KB: I love that.
Ben: That’s what makes us care about the preborn child. That’s what makes us care about the mother. That’s what cares about, like, in the book of James, where it talks about workers who were not receiving their proper wages. That’s what makes us care about those sorts of social injustices because we see ourselves in proper perspective against the holiness of God. And that’s what we love about the cross because as you mentioned, KB, the cross, through the blood of Christ, eventually, our image will be restored in heaven to what it was in the beginning, because now we bear the image of God, but it’s marred. It’s marred by sin, the mirror is cracked, it’s marred by sin. We bear the image of Adam, but through Christ, we bear the image of God and that is restored through his blood.
Ameen: That’s good. I love that we’re talking about redemption because, as you said, like we start with the cross, but the Bible doesn’t necessarily always start with the cross. I think that when we think about redemption, we’re all also thinking about redemption of man, which is key, but I feel like we also don’t necessarily focus on the redemption of God’s world, which is why I think the Bible starts with men being made in the Imago Dei. Not necessarily men. It’s us being made in the Imago Dei and then we see the fall happen. Right. But I think that one of the things that we also have to think about is the redemption of creation as a whole. We’re included in that though.
All: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Ameen: Right. So, we think about us, but we are also included in this holistic redemption that God has that is not just about you and your soul, but all creation in God’s world is going to be redeemed.
KB: God’s a holistic God.
Ameen: He’s a holistic God. And we as God’s ambassadors are bringing that heaven to earth, which means that is why we have to care for the vulnerable. Because in a redeemed society, in a society in which God is ruling as King, the vulnerable are taken care of and the vulnerable is holistic. That’s why the Bible doesn’t, like you said, doesn’t describe necessarily the most vulnerable. It’s the vulnerable. So, it’s a holistic view of the vulnerable. And as we see, why we see God all throughout scripture, but I’m thinking especially in the Old Testament telling folks – Hey, take care of the vulnerable. Hey, when, when aliens come, do not oppress them because remember you were oppressed in Egypt, and I took you out. So don’t turn around and take your freedom and then start oppressing others the way that you would… Remember how it was when y’all were crying out for me to be delivered? Don’t turn around and do the same thing. Because I am trying to create a kind of people for a kind of world. And those kinds of people care about the vulnerable. So that redemption is not just a redemption of our souls. Uh, but it’s also the redemption of God’s world.
So, Paul is talking about how creation is groaning. Everything is waiting for this redemption.
Ben: Absolutely.
Ameen: And we are agents of that. So, I love that the holistic life, whole life, includes that.
All: Yes. Yeah.
Ben: I mean, I think… You know, even back to the holiness, we as believers should be set apart. And a lot of times we think about being set apart in the sense of piety or our, our behaviors or, you know, how we, how we act, do we follow, a prescriptive we’ve seen in scripture, how closely do we follow that; but part of being set apart is we ought to be a people who has extraordinary generosity. And we have an extraordinary love that is different than the world. And we do things, and we operate in ways that is not necessarily counter cultural all the time, but it’s different than how the culture would expect us to act. And when it comes to the issue of standing for life, and when it comes to the issue of abortion, we as believers need to be a people that offer a different message than the rest of America. Than the rest of the world, than our neighbors. But like our conversations shouldn’t look the same as theirs. Not because we just want to be different, but because we have always been a royal priesthood of people that have been set apart. When God was telling people not to treat foreigners a certain way, it wasn’t just ’cause he wanted to do that he wanted them to be different than the others.
Ameen: Than other nations.
Ben: Nations that they were around.
Ameen: Yes. Come on. Amen.
Ben: He was calling them to be different. When Jesus was challenging his disciples in the 72 and all the others, he came, he was telling them to be different. To be different – and we as believers too often look the same. Like we have the same talking points. We have the same jokes. We have the same stereotypes when we talk about this issue and other issues. We have the same ideas about policy and politics and politicians and all that type of stuff. And in the church, the conversation looks no different. And this is an area where the church believers need to be set apart.
All: Yes. Yes.
Ben: We need to be holy. We need to be sanctified in that way. And that’s a continual process. Look, we’re not sitting here saying that we got all together. It’s a continual process because even though we’re not of the world, we’re in it right now. So, we’re influenced. But I’ll tell you this – our experience, my experience, Elizabeth, y’all’s experience, when you offer something that is different than what people hear, it’s amazing how the light from you influences them. And they think a little bit differently because it’s different than the narrative that they’ve heard. Like the narrative when it comes to abortion, as you mentioned, Elizabeth, is the left votes one way, the right votes one way. You care about the preborn child; you care about the people that are living. And then we come with scripture and say, you know what? No, that’s not what I read in my Bible. That’s not how we ought to be operating. And people sometimes have aha moments.
KB: I love that. I love the way you said too, that we want to offer something more beautiful. Which is another word for glory. We talk about glory a lot. It’s on our hats. But that is a part of what you’re bringing in. The difference is the beauty of our God being applied to the situation.
My father-in-law is like one of my, like, really, really good friends. And, so he and I, you know, we throw steaks on the grill together pretty much every weekend. He’s got one of the most beautiful patios I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m endorsing you right now, Mr. G. Shout out, Mr. G.
That’ll encourage him. He spent a lot of money on it. Anyways we were in the hot tub. We’ve been having these weekend hot tub conversations. And my father-in-law is a staunch Democrat. And we started talking about the pro-life issue. And in the about 45 minutes or an hour we talked, I don’t think he had ever heard anyone talk about the love for the child and love for the woman, as a gospel issue that is presenting a third way. He had only heard it from a polarized perspective. Anyways, I just wanted to underscore what the doctor is saying. That there is something beautiful, different, and appealing, to that distinction.
Elizabeth: I’m going to read a quote because… One theologian says, and by the way, I’m not prescribing his is the only one that has something good to say, I feel like I do need to say that. I feel like sometimes you’ve got to do that these days because people don’t think about nuance. But R.C. Sproul said, “I don’t have anything in me that would demand that God treat me with eternal significance. I have eternal significance and eternal worth because God gives it to me.”
Then when you think back in Genesis 1: 27, God makes both male and female with dignity and value. This is applied across the human person, speaking specifically of male and female, but the human person. Because the one that created us, the one that loves us, is the one that says we’re valuable and that we have dignity and worth. And so, when we’re talking about this issue, I don’t ever talk about it in terms of politics because, again, politics is divisive and I’m not going to get into that conversation. What I’m going to talk about is what the scriptures say about it and cast a vision for the church that I believe is more beautiful. And then we’re not automatically starting from some sort of political positioning. Like, are you, if you are a believer, are you going to argue with me about what the scripture says about those who are made in the image of God? Probably not because then that would actually show you’re not actually holistically valuing the dignity of every human person. So then you’re actually questioning God. You’re not, you’re not arguing with me.
All: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth: You’re arguing with the scripture. And so, when we talk about this issue with the church and we position it from a gospel perspective, when we talk about the image of God and we look in Genesis, we look in the Psalms, we look throughout Scripture, and we start unfolding that. When you give people just this more beautiful picture of what that looks like – that I don’t have to just care about one thing – I can care about the whole of the human person. And I love the AND Campaign’s Whole Life Project, by the way. I think they do some phenomenal stuff. So shout out to the women at the whole life project and the AND Campaign. Multiple of you have been leading the way doing an incredible job. So I’m going to talk about that for a second. But, I think in the church because of so much, and I know we’re probably going to talk about this, but so much of what’s happened in the last seven, eight years – 2016 and on…
KB: Yes.
Elizabeth: Has created this significant division in our culture and in the church.
All: Yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth: So believers who are in Christ together are now looking at one another as if they are their enemy. Yeah. Like in talking about politics. And I’m like, wait a second. This is actually un-Christlike, unbiblical. So, when we talk about Stand For Life, what we’re saying is like, hey, this is what we believe it means to be created in the image of God, to be holistically pro-life, and that has implications for the way in which I live out my life. So I care about mom. I care about what, for her, so a mom that may be considering abortion – I care about what brought her to the place that she feels like she had no other option.
All: Right, right.
Elizabeth: She may have bought the lie that she can’t flourish if she doesn’t take the life of her preborn child. She may also be affected by circumstances. I mean, Benjamin and I have talked a lot about this. Like, if she is not making an affordable wage, a livable wage. If she doesn’t have stable housing, if she can’t feed the children that she already has. These are issues that we should deeply care about as the church. Also, if the church would do the church’s responsibility, i.e. the mission of God, the hands and feet of Jesus – the government wouldn’t have to.
KB: Whoa!
Ameen: She said what she said.
KB: She said what she said. And if you didn’t hear what she said, play it back. That’s why we are in a digital age. You can listen to it several times. You know what I’m saying?
Ben: And also, when it comes to the church, I think it’s also important to realize how abortion has impacted the church.
Elizabeth: Yes, yes, yes.
Ben: Meaning how abortion has impacted people in the church. Four in ten women, some stats say 60 percent, of women within the church who say they go to church regularly have had abortions or are post abortive. And so, I always like to say, well, it’s probably about four in 10 or 60 percent are men as well. And so, this includes pastors. And so, when we’re talking about this issue, this is not just something that’s happening out there in the world and we need to show the world. No, this is something that’s happening within our own body.
KB: Yeah.
Ben: And we don’t have language for it. And, you know, scripture talks a lot about, you know, sexual sin in that sin that it impacts your own body. That is different. Anytime you’re talking about anything sexualized or in this case, life, where the image of God is on a preborn child just as a mother and father.
Ameen: Amen.
Ben: It’s going to hit differently. And so, there is a lot of hurt, and pain, and guilt, sorrow, and grief within the church, specifically on this issue, which makes it difficult for Pastors to preach about, even though they need to. It makes it difficult for small groups to talk about it. It makes it difficult when a pastor is speaking about it in a certain way. And there are people in the pews who are dealing with this grief and may feel separated.
God, so often we see even through scripture, how God uses our failures, our sorrow, our misery for our new mission. And there are a lot of people within church pews right now who feel ostracized, who feel sidelined because they don’t feel welcomed and they don’t feel forgiven and encouraged, and equipped on this issue because it’s simply not being talked about outside of you need to go vote for this person because they believe this, that, or the other.
Like we are walking wounded on this issue within the church body. And so, you know, even, with Stand For Life, it’s about equipping the church. It’s also about giving ministers within the church away to process their own pain on this, but also to minister to people within the body.
Elizabeth: That’s right.
Ben: Because we’re not immune as believers to the stuff that the world is doing. We have power to overcome. We have the Holy Spirit that in dwells us, but we still do things that we many times regret.
All: Yep. Yeah.
Elizabeth: Well, and statistically speaking, the numbers of abortions within the church are almost the exact same they are outside the church.
Ameen: Let that sink in.
Elizabeth: Okay, so, if it’s like 40%, we usually say like one in three women. It’s actually more than that. In the pew, like sitting beside you, listening on the podcast, that are believers… have been impacted by abortion. 45% are at risk of repeat abortion.
KB: Wow.
Elizabeth: And this is, by the way, this is evangelical Protestant denominations. Also, the number of minority women are disproportionately impacted by this issue. We could peel back the layers there and what’s happening in those communities being preyed upon…
Ameen: Right, right.
KB: Yes.
Elizabeth: But the Hispanic and African American communities make up more than 50%. Guttmacher just released a new research report. It’s like almost, what, was it 60%?
Ben: Sixty something, yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Sixty something percent of Hispanic and African American women make up those who’ve had abortions. Okay, so if you look at what’s happening in the church, you’ve got this high percentage of women who’ve been impacted by the issue of abortion. Then you have If there’s no dis- what we call disruption of the cycle- i. e. meeting her in her time of crisis and need. So, if the church is not being the church, there’s no intervention she’s at a 45 percent risk of repeat abortion. The church should be the most loving, compassionate, empathetic, safe, safest place for her ever.
Ameen: Right.
Elizabeth: That is who the church should be. If they are honoring Christ in the way that they treat those who are suffering and vulnerable. And I think this is also important and some, this also may be a little difficult or controversial as well, but like, look at the end of the day when a woman is in crisis and she’s like, suffering.
Ameen/KB: Yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth: And you’re working on intervention. She is in the emergency room. So, let’s take medical language, she’s in the emergency room, she’s literally hemorrhaging. We’re not going to talk to her about her long-term care in the emergency room.
Ameen: Exactly.
Ben: Or the reasons why she got there.
Elizabeth: Or the reasons why she got there.
Ameen: It’s really kind of irrelevant at that point. It’s not really the most important need.
Elizabeth: In that moment. We know her greatest need is the gospel.
All: Yep.
Elizabeth: First and foremost.
All: Yes. Yes.
Elizabeth: Then we need to understand what brought her to the place. But like, we do have a responsibility to intervene, stabilize her, get her into a continuum of care. Benjamin and the work that he’s been doing, with Human Coalition has talked a lot about continuum of care. This is super important. Mentorship, you walk alongside women. You want to provide a stable relationship for them. And so, we have a responsibility. To literally be the hands and feet of Jesus. To meet women in their moment of crisis. And we want them and need them to come to the church. But if you’re using language like murder – this is not bringing anyone closer.
KB: Sure, sure, sure.
Elizabeth: Or if you’re using language of condemnation. She’s just… she’s not going to think of you as the place that she should come.
KB: Not safety at all.
Elizabeth: No, not safe at all.
Ameen: Yeah.
Ben: But also, if you’re not using language at all. I mean there was a recent poll that talked about how less than 10 percent of people who are Protestant and in churches have even heard a sermon about the issue, period. And I got to evangelicals, and it said like 22 percent or something like that.
Elizabeth: Yeah, the last six months.
Ben: It’s not being talked about for a lot of the reasons that we’ve already said. And some of that is the politics of it.
KB: I think election cycles.
Ben: Yeah. They’re scared. Pastors are scared too. And I’m not saying, we’re not saying, that a church needs to have a two-month long series on the issue of abortion. But what we are saying is when we look at the totality of scripture, and when we preach Genesis to Revelation, there are several issues within that, that applied to the current context that we live in. And so, if we’re preaching through the Bible, um, there are things that we are going to touch on that have relevancy – and this has to be one of them. In order for a woman, a man, who was dealing with the issue of abortion to feel comfortable in coming to a church. We talk about what’s important to us.
Elizabeth: Well, I mean, even if you step outside the abortion issue. Let’s just say a mom has been impacted by the issue of abortion and now on the other side of that she’s received healing. Now she has, or, you know, she’s come through, she had an abortion. She’s now in the church. She’s had another child. Even then, there’s an immense amount of shame and guilt.
All: Yeah.
Elizabeth: And just hopelessness.
All: Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth: That she can ever be forgiven for what she’s done. And so, I think these are… these are complex issues. You know, and if we’re going to advocate for women to keep their children, which by the way, we are. We’re going to do that. We also have to be there for women so that those women are positioned to be able to parent if they want to choose to parent so that those children aren’t going into the foster care system. Because if we just talked about the foster care system.
Ameen: Oh my gosh.
Elizabeth: And what’s happening in the foster care system – it is so significant. There’s just so much like with orphans. Children who have been placed in the foster care system who have no parents to protect them, to keep them safe. And then what ends up happening when they age out of the foster care system, we can talk about statistics with incarceration. We can talk about education played into the fact that they didn’t receive proper education. They didn’t have a family wrapped around them. Safe, loving, forever family. So like the church has responsibilities in multiple levels and we believe the church is the answer.
KB: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it’s good. Amen. This is good. I got emotional while you were talking, sister, because I was reminded of this quote. Somebody was talking about how, if they on judgment day they want to ask God, like, God, where were you when children were hungry and people weren’t being defended, and resources weren’t being provided for vulnerable people. And he said, I want to ask God that question, but I’m afraid he’s going to ask me the same thing. “Where were you?” And I, in this moment, what really stirs my heart is how rich Christians are in America. That we can… I’m just saying what I’m saying.
Ameen: Say it.
KB: I love the church. I love every church I’ve served at. I have been in beautiful churches. With multimillion dollar projects on a screen that sits behind you while you preach, that you turn on for an hour a week. And I’ve seen that juxtaposed with other Christian ministries. There’s a ministry that we met with that shared a couple of weeks ago, a week ago actually, that had shared almost a billion dollars out of other Christian’s generosity to take care of medical needs inside the community of faith throughout the country.
Ameen: Yep. Yep.
KB: I said, hold on. Did you say a million? With a B. Yes. And have committed themselves, and these ain’t baller Christians. They’re not, like, these ain’t like the 1 percent Christians.
Ameen: They’re getting it out of the mud.
KB: These are folks that are taking from their nine to five and giving. And in a moment of sadness, I felt Judgment Day like what will God say to us and what we raised money to pour our resources into and what effects did it have on the thing that God cares more about than almost… Jesus says in Matthew, that the law has weightier matters.
All: Yeah. Yep. Yes.
KB: Not all of the law, we understand, is of equal ethical importance. But there’s a weightiness to certain aspect to what God is calling you to do. That you shouldn’t neglect the other things. But you ought to center other parts of what God has stated, namely issues of righteousness and justice.
All: Yep. Mm-Hmm. Yep.
KB: And I am thinking about that, but then I got hopeful as you were talking as well. Because it seems like what the Lord is doing, even with Stand For Life, is creating an organization that will grow. Cause Stand For Life…how long has Stand For Life actually been around?
Elizabeth: Well, Stand For Life, It’s been around. So there was a previous movement with Stand For Life.
Ben: Give a whole download.
KB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Help up.
Elizabeth: So there was a previous woman by the name Jess Barfield created this online storytelling brand that was meant to basically tell stories of human dignity and image of God. Stories from conception to natural death. It was like a storytelling brand. Just like, to help people to better understand. Cause you know, stories are compelling. And they help people to understand the issues. And so, it was birthed out of this desire to create a filter for people to put over their photos and then to tell these like stories of life all along the spectrum from conception to natural death. And so Jess created this amazing storytelling, and it grew and grew and had tens of thousands of followers. And it got to the point where it just becomes so significant and there was so much going on that she was like – it’s like outgrown what they ever thought or anticipated that it would be.
And so Jess, my understanding is because I wasn’t a part of the original, but Jess approached the ERLC. Which we talked about earlier where I served as their vice president of operations and life. Jess approached the ERLC and asked the ERLC; would you all consider taking on Stand For Life? And, again, at that point it is just storytelling. And the ERLC was like, okay, we do life, and we care deeply about it. Dr. Moore was the president at the time.
KB: Shout out Russell Moore.
Elizabeth: Yes. Dr. Moore. We love you.
Ameen: Love you.
KB: Yes.
Ameen: Yes sir.
Elizabeth: And so they decided to basically say, would the ERLC like to take Stand For Life? So, the ERLC acquired and dissolved Stand For Life’s like nonprofit status and rolled it up into their organization. And then because the same passion wasn’t there in terms of storytelling and not really knowing how to tell the stories in the same way, that really moved people the way that Stand For Life did, it sort of kind of slowed down a little bit. And over like the last two years, two years after they acquired the brand, they were like, well, what are we going to do with it?
Well, we were looking for with our Collective Impact Alliance work, which is organizations that work to see large scale social change on this issue of life, we believed we needed a public facing brand for the church. So, we went through all kinds of brand exercises to basically figure out, this was about four years ago, to figure out -what’s this going to look like? The Collective Impact Alliance has been meeting since 2018. So, then we have this conversation where we need to engage the church. The church is the answer. We need to be doing all this other work, but we’ve got to mobilize, educate and equip the church to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to make a real difference.
Um, because we don’t think it’s possible otherwise. So, we start having all these conversations. We hire a firm, we get all these brand ideas, we get all these different names. And we come back to. I think it’s Stand For Life because what we really want to see is the foundational underpinning, the image of God, and we want to speak holistically to life issues.
KB: Yeah.
Elizabeth: We may be focused more intentionally on abortion, abortion drivers, the church, healthcare, education, adoption, foster care. But we want to address the whole of the issue.
KB: I love it.
Elizabeth: And we think that’s what the church needs to hear. Because what we even saw as we were working on the brand is really just this division, even within the church.
Ameen: Yeah.
KB: Oh, come on.
Elizabeth: Like you either talk about life or you’re going to talk about justice. No, we’re not. We’re not caught in the binary. We’re going to talk about this middle that brings both together. And that’s the image of God and human dignity. And so that was the birth of Stand For Life. How can we mobilize the church? Because this issue is so foundational. Like, we care deeply about children who are in cages at our southern border, who are not being treated with dignity and inherent worth. This is not disconnected from this other issue. These are all the same issues. We care about children who are in poverty. We care about someone who’s enslaved. Can we just talk about slavery and an assault on one who bears the image of Christ. So, we were like, okay, Lord, give us wisdom in how we really think about the vision of Stand For Life, defending, affirming the dignity of the human person, which is rooted in the image of God and how that plays out.
KB: Yeah
Elizabeth: And so, when we do see these other assaults on image bearers we speak to those consistently.
All: Yes, right
Elizabeth: Across the spectrum – not just like one way for one particular population. So that was really like… And then we launched Stand For Life publicly really in the fall with a soft launch; and while we spent the last two years building church relationships and church partnerships. So we spent two years building relationships, talking about the brand, Stand For Life. We soft launched in the fall, formal launch January of 23 and then separated.
KB: That was the meeting y’all had in DC.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
KB: That was the meeting Joshua helped coordinate that. I love that. Yeah.
Elizabeth: Yes, he did. And he’s been amazing. So we did that and then completely separated Stand For Life from the ERLC. So, the ERLC gave the branding, if you will, and the brand was created by the Collective Impact Alliance. But gave that to…
Ben: Which is a group of ten Pro-life organizations, Human Coalition being one of them.
KB: Okay.
Ameen: Awesome.
Elizabeth: Yeah. So, so the Collective Impact Alliance that sits behind the work that we do is these 10 organizations that are working in women’s healthcare, education, um, i. e. public school education, church engagement, intervention. Upstream intervention that we call drivers to abortion. So, these seven drivers that are the primary reasons women choose abortion and then downstream – post abort abortion support, disruption of the cycle, but we see that over the life cycle of the person. So we’re addressing these issues.
KB: Oh, I love it. Makes me profoundly hopeful.
Elizabeth: And the collective impact alliance has been meeting since 2018, and there’s a core group and then there’s a large group of more than a hundred national organizations in the movement that are working together from adoption, foster care, housing, education, paid family leave, et cetera.
KB: I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Ben: And unfortunately, but fortunately, there is hope. And I think that it’s imperative, now that Roe has been overturned, that these organizations, that the church in general at large, be able to rethink what it means to Stand For Life.
KB: Come on.
Elizabeth: Yes.
Ben: It’s going to take a radical re-engineering of our thought process.
All: Yes.
Ben: Because the truth of the matter is in this country we have been conditioned to go to church on Sunday and treat certain people groups like they are less than the rest of the week. As a matter of fact, we’ve been conditioned to go to church on Sunday and have those people sit in the balcony while they’re there. Or we’ve been conditioned to rip out pages of the Bible and only present certain parts of it that lean to our proclivities and support our view of scripture and keep them subjugated. Like we’ve done that in this country for hundreds of years. And so, the fact to be able to address, like you said, the immigrant children in cages or the preborn child, or the family who doesn’t have generational wealth because of red lining, or listen to these things with an open ear and open hands and with the love of Christ. And perhaps not understand that first, but be open and willing to see things outside of your own American culture context is going to take some re-engineering, even for believers. Because again, we’re fallen from the image of God totally, and we need the spirit in order to open our eyes to certain things. And so, what’s powerful about this and hopeful about this is that you have a group of organizations, and people, and curriculum, and all these sorts of things that is standing in that gap, because now is the time to do things differently.
Ameen/KB: Right
Ben: And it’s not just going to happen.
Ameen/ KB: Right.
Ben: We’re not just going to wake up one day and be able to see the image of God in every person. We’ll say that. If you go into any church in America and you give them, you know, a piece of paper with a box like back when we were kids, like, do you like me? Do you like it? And you say, do you believe the image of God is in every person? They will all check yes.
All: Right
Ben: But when you go home and listen to the conversations in the living room. Or when you see the stuff that they listen to or something watch on TV. Or when you see how they talk at work around the cooler. Or you see the things that they stand for and they don’t stand for. And the way they talk about those people over there. What they’re doing is different than what they check the box at.
All: Yes.
Ben: And so the challenge for all of us as believers is to look introspectively. Do we have a said faith or are we actually doing the works?
KB: A said faith.
Ben: We’re actually doing the works that actually support the stuff that we say.
Ameen: It’s so easy to just intellectually assent to pro-life or check the box. And that’s why I love that you said that it’s going to take a radical re-engineering of how we view these things. I would love for you all, cause I think that we’ve touched it. Um, but I would love for you to talk about what it means to have a culture of life that goes beyond talking about pro-life just being about what is happening in the womb. Because people will say that. They’ll say, well, you all are talking about pro-life. You pro-life folks only care about what happens in the womb. What about all the other pro-life things? So, what does it mean for us to have a culture of life? That is holistic, rather than, as we’re talking about pro-life, we’re only just talking about abortion in the womb. Why is it important?
KB: And let me add to that question. Do you all also think that holistic conversation, which again, I’m referencing the conversation I had with my father-in-law just not even a couple weeks ago.
And how he hadn’t heard.
Ameen: Yes.
KB: Folks who would say that if you had to put me in a category I would certainly be pro-life. He hadn’t heard folks talk like that before. Do you think that that’s also a part of changing the way people who do not agree with us, changing the way they see the issue, is perhaps in the culture thing?
Ben: Yeah, a little while ago, I was in the airport in Atlanta. I’m 27 minutes away. No traffic. I’m like; I’m on the side of Atlanta. I call it Georgia. Like we live in Georgia. We don’t live in Atlanta. We live in Georgia. And while you live in Georgia, you don’t have traffic. In Atlanta you got traffic. So, I still use that airport. But anyway, I was there and I was talking to a woman who works for the airline, and this is like right in the middle of I think the last senate race so all the pro-life pro-choice stuff was going pretty heavy, and I was I was doing some editing and stuff I was writing and we started talking about this exact issue. When she realized what I was working on, you know, the conversation kind of lit up. She is pro-choice, woman’s autonomy, all those sorts of things that are vitally important to that side of the issue. We start talking, and the first part of the conversation was me listening to her. Listening to how she felt about being controlled. Validating some of her fears about the other side, the pro-life side. The legal side of it, the fact that you just care about pro birth. Her history, how she’d be impacted by abortion, how she’d been impacted by several other things, but I just listened for a little bit. I think the first step in creating this culture of life is listening.
Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s right.
Ben: And many times we don’t validate people. We don’t validate their image because we don’t listen to their concerns. And that can go on all sides, but specifically for us as, as believers and as people who are pro-life who care about the image of God in every person, as church people, so to speak. Part of creating the culture of life is people who don’t necessarily agree with us know that we value them.
All: Yeah.
Ben: And when we value them and we listen to them, we understand where they’re coming from. It is then that we understand how to address their biggest concerns. Her concern was being controlled. Her concern was not really that she didn’t care about preborn children, because she did, I only found that out later in the conversation.
All: Yes.
Ameen: And there’s data to back that up.
Ben: Exactly.
Ameen: Most people don’t see abortion as a universal good. Even those who are pro-choice.
Ben: Exactly. Exactly. But I only found that out because in this context, it wasn’t on Twitter, which we’re all guilty of sometimes. It was face to face and I spoke to her and that’s how you start to create this culture of life. When we say culture of life it’s the idea that all life is valuable. It’s Proverbs 31, you know, verse eight. We talk about the Proverbs 31 woman, but Proverbs 31 man is somebody who speaks up for those who can’t speak for themselves. He judges righteously. He stands in the gap. And so that trickles down to our families, to our children, to our curriculum in schools. There are so many tentacles where this is…. and this is something you may not address on this podcast or not, but the culture of quote unquote death.
Elizabeth: Yes.
Ben: Is, is in everything.
Elizabeth: Yes.
KB: Come on.
Elizabeth: And in a culture of death – The image of God…
KB: Y’all can talk about that. So you know, we got about 30,000 plus people and they like listening to that. Oh, they want to hear that.
Ben: And when you talk about, and Elizabeth you can touch on this too, but when you talk about curriculum in schools.
Elizabeth: Mm hmm.
Ben: You talk about the music industry.
All: Yes.
Ben: That you’re familiar with.
KB: I am. Yeah.
Ben: When you talk about sports and athletics, we sometimes talk about the seven-mountain strategy. We talk about government, media, education, all those sorts of things. A culture of life supports and honors life in all those areas. That’s why it’s important that wherever you are, whatever sphere God has placed you in, whatever occupation you have, you have a role in this. Too often we leave it up to the activist. That guy or that woman is a pro-life activist. She’s a speaker. She creates curriculum. This person – that’s what they do. And it’s like, no, you have a role in whatever you’re in, in the culture of life. It has to be everybody.
All: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah. It’s interesting because we see… I mean, Planned Parenthood has been doing what we call the re-engineering of the culture.
Ameen: Ooh, yeah.
Elizabeth: To accept this flawed view or flawed vision of the human person. We go all the way back to Planned Parenthood’s founding.
Ameen: Uh huh.
Elizabeth: In 1916, 1918.
Ben: It was before I got here.
Elizabeth: So, 1916 was the founding of the very first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. So, I don’t know how much you all know about like the founding of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, founded it upon eugenics, like the purpose of the very first birth control clinic was for population control. We want to remove populations of persons that we believe have less desirable traits than others. Okay, so I’m not talking about birth control as like a issue.
KB: Let me just say one thing. Please hold that thought. I heard somebody on CNN, in the conversation around Roe v. Wade, using similar language about when they were going through the list of reasons why we needed to have abortion.
Ameen: Oh yeah.
KB: They mentioned population control.
Ben: Oh yeah.
KB: And when I heard it, I was like, hold on, because I hadn’t watched the news in a long time. And I said, oh, they just saying this mug out loud now.
Elizabeth: Oh, it’s out loud. You want to talk about population control and see what we’re doing in African nations?
Ben: And it’s not new. And even back then, Sanger was bankrolled. By people like the Rockefellers.
All: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah, for sure. Oh, yes.
Ben: The big business people in, in our country and others.
Ben: Were behind Eugenics.
All: Yeah.
Ameen: Um, yep. Population.
Elizabeth: Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet. We have the Gates Foundation.
Ameen: I was gonna say Bill Gates.
Elizabeth: The two largest funders of Planned Parenthood. Which are also involved in all kinds of international population control.
All: Yes. Yeah. Yes.
Elizabeth: So we can’t also take our eye off what’s happening internationally. There’s this massive move at the U. N., and I know we’re specifically talking about abortion, but I’m talking about just like population control in general.
All: Yes.
Elizabeth: We’re seeing this move at the U.N. to make abortion an international human right. It’s also for the sake of population control.
Ameen: That’s crazy to think about.
Elizabeth: And what’s happening internationally is really important for us to look at here because what we see internationally typically affects the U.S. 10 years later.
All: Right, right.
Elizabeth: Especially like what’s going on in Europe.
All: Yeah.
Elizabeth: So then you go all the way back to the early 1900s, you’ve got the founding of the very first birth control clinic by Margaret Sanger, who herself is racist and was founded upon eugenics population control. Then you see the birth control clinic merge with Planned Parenthood, which becomes PPFA, Planned Parenthood Federation. So, it’s like what we know today as global Planned Parenthood.
All: Yeah.
Elizabeth: That’s like in 1918 to 1923. Okay, so we began to see this forming happening. Then you began to see in 1948 to 1952, you see Planned Parenthood decide, oh, hey, wait, we’re going to actually invest more money in birth control. So that it can become like this global acceptance and as a part of population control. So Planned Parenthood is the one that developed, continued to fund more money into the pill so that it’s utilized for way more purposes than it was originally. It’s the standard of care for women’s health.
KB: Wow.
Elizabeth: So I have a woman’s health issue. I’m a 13-year-old girl. I have acne on my face. Now I’m going to put you on birth control.
Ameen: Yep.
Elizabeth: Okay. So, we’re going to talk about how education plays into this. This is 1948 -1952. Planned Parenthood did this incredible job in paving the way both in terms of physicians, both in terms of legislation, both in terms of funding with Title 10. So basically, they developed the pill and they developed the public-school curriculums, the gender and sex education curriculums, which is the standard curriculum in the U.S. for for our children in the public school system. Planned Parenthood provides the only curriculum that meets state and federal standards for gender and sex education.
Ameen: Wow.
Elizabeth: So, contraception and gender and sex education. 88% funded by the government for Planned Parenthood.
Ameen: Yes. Wow.
Elizabeth: So when we talk about the reengineering of the culture, if that’s what our kids are receiving, is the gender and sex education curriculum in Planned Parenthood’s public school system. We just did a review of one of their curriculums that was a third-party curriculum in the most conservative, and one of the largest school districts in the state of Texas, was a Planned Parenthood curriculum. Telling a 13-year-old girl… look, I’m getting excited here.
Ben: I’m about to sweat.
Ameen: This is what we do.
Elizabeth: Here we go. We review this curriculum. It tells a 13-year-old girl how she can receive health care services without parental consent.
KB: Dang.
Ameen: Teaching them to go around.
Ben: Because it’s about trust.
Ameen: Now we have new laws.
Ben: Where do you turn when you have your first crisis? Not even your first crisis. But when you have that crisis, when you have that unplanned pregnancy, when you have an issue with birth control, who is a trusted partner? Because if you want to change culture, where do you start? You don’t start with the old folks that are over 40.
Elizabeth: No, you start with children and we’re re-engineering the culture to accept this flawed vision of the human person through public school education. Is a major driver and they knew that. So if you start, because the curriculum starts at kindergarten, the kids as young as five years old, they’re being educated through 12th grade. You’ve successfully, by the time they’re graduating, re-engineered their hearts and minds and attitudes and behaviors, and this is just one way that we’re doing this. But so we’ve set up… and Planned Parenthood, and by the way there is like, we should give credit where credit is due because the reality is Planned Parenthood is working in communities that other providers are not.
All: Right. Right.
Elizabeth: So who are women going to go to if Planned Parenthood is the quote trusted provider?
KB: Yes.
Elizabeth: Maybe they don’t have private health insurance.
All: Right, right.
Elizabeth: They could be on like Medicaid.
Ameen: Yes.
Elizabeth: Okay. Planned Parenthood is the provider in their community. They’ve worked to build her trust. They’re here for her in her time of need. They’ve educated her children and his children in the public school system. They are seen as the trusted provider.
KB: Wow, that’s good.
Elizabeth: So we began to see this reengineering of the culture, and I think Benjamin talked about it earlier, like as a part of the church based curriculum, we basically saw this reengineering of the culture, and we’re like, huh, if it’s doing it through public school education, what’s happening in private school education, we need an alternative.
Ameen: Right.
All: Yes.
Elizabeth: We’ve got to work to un-engineer the culture.
All: Right.
Elizabeth: From accepting this flawed view of the human person. We’ve got to start with the church, i. e. the image of God curriculum, answering the question “What does it mean to be a person?”
KB: Yes. Which we have here. Yes, we’ll have all the information on how you can get this in your hands. Tell us a little bit about the curriculum. And I’m not making this up because they are here. No, I held this in my hand. I got goosebumps. Now to be fair. I’ve been getting a lot of goosebumps through this whole conversation. Maybe I’m feeling goosey today. But this is, what is a person, is such a powerful question that speaks to so many different things in culture right now. Please help us with why this is available, how we can get this in our hands, and what this is about.
Elizabeth: Well, my amazing friend over here, Benjamin, and by the way, he’s been such a good, trusted friend for several years. And I consider it a deep, deep privilege, and he knows this, to walk alongside this journey of advocating for life with him. I think he’s been so helpful in helping me understand the complexity of these issues. I constantly feel emotional when we talk about the weightedness of that responsibility.
Ameen: Yeah, come on.
KB: Yep, yep.
Elizabeth: I do this like every time because I can’t get it together.
Ben: Yep. And we always say take your time. It’s okay.
Ameen/KB: Yep.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Ben: Seriously. Because it is emotional. You’re talking about life.
Ameen: Right.
Ben: And it’s the same reason why we get up in arms when we see a mass shooting.
All: That’s right.
Ben: The same reason why our heart strings tug when we see someone on the side of the road.
All: Yes.
KB: So true.
Ben: That needs something. It’s because we can’t deny the fact that we are humans, and that God gave us life and that’s why we care about life.
KB: Yes.
Ben: Like you have to try harder to be calloused to life, then to care and have a warm heart towards it. And so when I see your tears, it means your heart is open and it’s warm.
KB: That’s powerful.
Ben: So keep that.
KB: I just got more goosebumps.
Elizabeth: And the tear fell.
Ben: But the curriculum is a six part, it’s a six-week curriculum, that is available. It’s coming up, its available May 15th. But it goes through six different parts, image of God in every person, image of God in preborn children, image of God in women, image of God in children, building a culture, which is what we talked about that reflects the image of God, and the image of God in every stage of life. And so, it’s those six sections, but there’s also an accompanying video to it that I helped teach that they…
Elizabeth: Benjamin taught.
Ben: They made it so easy that I taught just six 20-minute sessions.
Ameen: Oh, that’s good.
Ben: Really, again… it’s not just for pastors, not just for church people – but to equip the church and to challenge the church on everything that’s in that book to kind of teach it in a video setting. So that a church, an organization can take it, they can have the book, they can have the videos, they can have small groups, they can teach on Sundays from it. All those sorts of things to facilitate a conversation around what it means to not only stand for life, but what is the image of God? Like what, what is a person? That’s our foundation. We, we building this house in Georgia that’s finally gonna be done soon.
All: Yes. Yes.
Ben: So, when all y’all come.
Elizabeth: Praise, we can come visit.
Ben: We can do the podcast from there. We can do it site, man.
Ameen: We’ll do it.
Ben: We’ll set everything up.
Ameen/KB: All right. Now don’t… we gonna show up with microphones and pelican cases.
Ben: We can do it, but we built that house with the foundation.
Yeah, it was just grass out there. They took forever putting down the foundation. The reason why they did that is because you don’t have a good foundation, your house is going to fall. What we’re seeing is a lot of people don’t have a good foundation. A lot of parents don’t know how to talk to their kids about this issue because they don’t have a good foundation. And so, when you don’t have a solid foundation, then your house is on sand, and it waves and it moves back and forth with the trends of the culture.
All: Yes.
Ben: And so, when you hear something that sounds good, when you hear something that makes you feel good, when you hear something that sounds like love and affirmation, but it’s not rooted in truth, then you go that way. And so, this is foundation. There’s gonna be other curriculums after this.
Elizabeth: That’s right. Yeah.
Ben: But this is foundational to how we live our lives over there.
Elizabeth: So it’s over the life cycle of the church. So because we keep coming back to this re-engineering of the culture to accept this flawed view of the human person. It wasn’t just like kindergarten through twelfth grade that’s being re-engineered, it’s our entire culture, to accept this flawed vision of the human person. So we were like, how, where is at least a starting point? Like we have to put like a stake down. Where do we start? If you’re a believer. Have a relationship with Christ. Understand that we are starting with the image of God. So it’s over the life cycle of the church. This is the adult curriculum. There’s a leader guide that goes with that curriculum. Benjamin again, taught the six week video series. It’s going to be available May 15th on standforlife.com. You can purchase the physical curriculum; but one of the things that we felt was extremely important is the church. We do not want the curriculum to be inaccessible.
Ameen: Ooh.
KB: Come on.
Elizabeth: So we want small churches, urban churches, suburban churches, all churches, poor churches. All kinds of churches to be able to utilize the curriculum. So, if you don’t have the resources to be able to purchase physical versions of the curriculum, we have the entire curriculum downloadable for free on the website, along with a six-sermon series outline. We worked with multiple pastors to create six sermons that go along that’s just an outline you can download, that a pastor could teach from the pulpit if his church is going through the curriculum.
So once for every six weeks on the image of God. There’s a children’s version that we’re finishing, a student version that’ll be finished by this summer. And it will also be offered this summer in Spanish translation as well. But the adult version is available on the website.
KB: Powerful.
Ameen: Amazing.
KB: Yeah, this is good. Dr. Graham, Dr. Watson, thank you so much for coming on Southside Rabbi.
Elizabeth/Ben: It is an honor.
KB: We are better because of the work that you all are doing. This whole conversation has been a rollercoaster for me. From excitement, I felt sad at one point, I got angry at one point, and I have been overwhelmed by hope. That God is doing something and he’s funding it, and it is helpful. It is necessary. Understanding the times and doing what works, and what is changing the conversation. A culture of life. We are honored to be partners with Stand For Life and use any platform resource or any kind of awareness that we can, you know, provide to what God is doing in this advocacy work. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Southside Rabbi. I am KB. We are out of here.