Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builder Show and it's Good News Friday, so we're going to be jumping into a lot of good news stories from across the nation and around the world. David and Tim Barton bringing that good news to you. I'm Rick Green. You can find out more about all three of us at our website, wallbuilders.com. That's wallbuilders.com, for our main website, with lots of great information and tools and a great place for you to give a contribution.

I'm asking for that because lives, fortune, sacred honor. That's what it's going to take to save this nation and restore our constitutional republic. And those dollars put fuel in the tank so we can reach more people with this program, get more truth in the hands of the American people, train more pastors, train more young people, legislators, teachers, all of it. Wallbuilders.com is the place to do that. And then wallbuilders.show. If you've missed some of the last few shows this week or last week, it's available there at wallbuilders.show. All right, David and Tim, looking forward to today, let's get some good news and we'll jump right in David with the first piece of good news.

David Barton

Well, with the Olympics winding down, I've got some reflections and observations on the Olympics and there were several things there I thought were really good news and I'm going to just jump right in. And one that was a big deal three, four, five years ago, but I was thrilled with the fact. Well, obviously, America won a whole bunch of medals. I mean we won the thing with a number of gold medals, a number of total medals. So America did really good in medals, which means the national anthem played a whole lot in France. And I was really pleased with how the athletes in America were so supportive of America, the American flag, so many of the black athletes, man. They wrapped themselves in the flag and ran around the track waving the flag. There was none of this stuff that we're seeing in pro football and that we've seen in pro basketball and others running away from America. I was so thrilled to see the Olympic guys, girls all jumping in and being so proud of being an American. So that was my first piece of good news. Maybe there's a change happening with the younger generation, maybe there's a change happening just in certain areas, but nonetheless, those Olympic athletes were very good at representing America.

Tim Barton

And Dad. I'd point out too that probably the majority of the ones that we saw or you were thinking of those are also probably many of the ones who had a pro-Christ message as well, which I know.

In my stack I have several different stories from different Olympians who talked about Jesus and maybe shared part of their testimony, their story. But I say that because I think one of the things we're also seeing is a lot of the anti-America movement we've seen from many athletes has been a very pro-me movement and it's been dishonest on some level with some of the attacks against America, but I think there's been a lot of selfishness involved, whereas when you look at people that are much more pro-Jesus, it's much less about them and it's much more about somebody else, and so I think then it's easier for it to be about something else as well, meaning even being part of a team, part of the nation, supporting the team, the nation, et cetera. But I think it's an interesting connection. This is the Olympics, certainly in the last couple of decades that we've seen some of the most not only pro-America but pro-Jesus behavior and speeches from Olympians.

David Barton

That was my second point was how much there was pro-God, pro-Jesus in this thing. But I was really pleased with how many other world Christian athletes were speaking out. The skateboarder from Canada, you know Canada is pretty progressive and she was really out front with her Jesus message and how that that's her priority in life is Christ. And even at the Olympic Village it was fun to see the Fiji team have worship services open at the village and people would come join in and so the Fiji team. It sounded like you were at church every night and that was just part of what they did. And there was so much good, wholesome stuff there and I'll just jump on here as well.

There's two verses that everybody ought to recall, and one is Matthew 10, 32, where Jesus says if you confess me before men, I'll confess you before the father. I'm assuming a whole lot of folks that listen to us are Christians. Just remember to confess Christ openly, be bold with that. Go out there and talk about Christ publicly. These athletes did on national and global TV and surely with less coverage than that we shouldn't be intimidated to talk about it. So hopefully all of us will do that. And then Romans 1: 16 says I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Well, if you're not ashamed about something, be proud of it and talk about it, and this is one of the things I think Christians really need to do a lot more of. I think we're letting people shove us back into the corner, telling us that we're Christian nationalists or whatever it is, or that public schools, you can't have Christ in public. Wherever you go, you need to bring Christ with you. You need to let other people know about that relationship with Christ. You should not be ashamed of the gospel and if you confess him before men, he'll confess you before the father. We saw a lot of athletes do that. But everybody, listen, just get bold about your faith.

So the third thing I thought was really interesting in the Olympics dealt with literally what they called the mixed relays. That happened in track and swimming. So you'd have four folks in the relay, but two were girls and two were guys, and so, like in the mixed swimming relays, you have four different kind of. You got the breaststroke and you got the backstroke and the butterfly and the freestyle and those four athletes. It wasn't that all the guys had to do the backstroke, it could be a girl that was doing the backstroke, and so those four, you just had to have two guys and two girls and so, as they were taking off at the very beginning and I watched this throughout all the legs there there's four legs in that relay it was real interesting when you had guys swimming against girls on the same type of stroke and in that first leg it was really apparent. The guys got out to like a 15 to 20 yard lead over the girls and even though they're all the top people in the world and their gender, in that event there was no comparison between the guys and the girls and it was really obvious there is a physical difference. These are the best females, the best males in the world, and there was no comparison in the pool when they were doing the same event, guys just blew them away. Now it was interesting because you know when you have two guys, two girls, eventually when you get to the end it was a really tight race at the end of the fourth different activity in that relay.

But it was really apparent in those mixed medley races and that was both on track and in swimming was that there is genuinely a difference between male and female. It is not just something psychological you can assign yourself. There is a physical difference and it's evident in the best athletes in the world in both genders. It actually verified what the Bible says that God made them male and female and there are distinct differences between the two and you can't flow back and forth between the two just because your mind says you can't. So it was great to see so many people loving America again and wrapping themselves in that. It was great to see so many Christians outspoken about their faith and bold about that, and it was great to see that even the best athletes in the world verify what the Bible teaches there are two genders. They are male and female and there are differences between those genders.

Rick Green

 All right, good stuff out of the Olympics, which got off to a really bad start, right, and people pushed back after that opening ceremony thing and I don't know if they got the message or not. It sounded like a no apology. Apology from the committee, but the athletes themselves, with the acknowledgments of God and giving you know, giving God credit, was was cool to watch. Tim?

Tim Barton

 and guys I heard a really good take on it too, where I really haven't watched almost any of the Olympics. I was so frustrated by that opening ceremony I thought, no, I'm not giving them my support. Commentator make a really good point that the American athletes who've worked their entire lives and careers to be here should not be penalized for something that they had nothing to do with, and I thought you know that's pretty valid, that there very well could have been many of those athletes who were absolutely against it and wouldn't have supported it and it doesn't represent them. And certainly hopefully there's lessons that are learned going forward and the Olympic Committee doesn't go as woke and maybe if viewership was down on some level, maybe at least in the US for those first couple of days, maybe they get the point. I don't know, but that is a valid argument that we want to make sure we're not penalizing the wrong people. However, I was very torn on wanting to give any viewership to any of the Olympics to make them think that they're still winners after they did something so ridiculous and by the way, the irony, rick, as you mentioned the non-apology apology they had.

David Barton

So this was not planned by America, Tim, as you pointed out, but it was planned by France. And remember, France went atheist way back at the French Revolution. I mean, they went so far atheist they said, hey, there's not seven days in a week, there's 10 days in a week, because if we have a seven day week, people think there is a God who rested on the seventh day. We're not doing that. So they have been a very secular, atheistic nation for a couple of hundred years, very secular, atheistic nation for a couple of hundred years.

And I thought the apology was interesting because they had planned the ceremonies at the opening and the apology was well, we wanted everything to be inclusive, we wanted everybody to be included, we wanted everybody to feel like it was part of it, and so we just thought that was part of the diversity. Okay, so there are 32% of the world that are Christians. Where was your shout out to Christians in that opening ceremony? If you're trying to include people and make them feel like they're part of it, how come you went to the 2% atheist and left out the 32% Christians? So it's an irony and that's the way progressives often do.

They say this is about inclusion and equity and equal treatment. Except you keep leaving the majorities and the large groups out and those that are different, those who think marriage is between a man and a woman. You leave them out in all the intersectionality stuff you do with the LGBTQIA plus or the fact that helpful professors now says there's 81 genders in America. You'll go after 80 of those 81 or 79 of those 81, but you won't go after the traditional ones. So, rick, I'm with you. I thought that not apology. Apology was really ridiculous, it was really silly. It's not even logical, it doesn't hold up to statistics, but nonetheless there were some great athletes involved in the thing and a lot of them really let their faith shine.

Rick Green

Well, and I have to admit I, I probably, you know, I tried to put a guilt trip on on the athletes and say you know, where are the Eric Liddell's of today? Right, he was willing to not compete just over the fact that he was scheduled on the Sabbath. I say just, I mean clear, command, right. And yet today that's minor, minor, minor compared to what happened. And I was hoping some athletes would say you know, this is so debauched, this is so bad, I'm not going to participate. But I get what you're saying, Tim.

It's like for that athlete that has trained their whole life for that moment, you know, is it selfish or is it? Hey, I'm going to miss out on the opportunity to honor God. I think something we kind of have always done is we can't, we don't know God's will for them, right, we can't say and I shouldn't say or put a guilt trip on them and say you should do it this way because every situation is different. It's no different than when we tell people hey, we don't know if you're supposed to move to a red state and help reinforce there, or stay in a blue state and help change things there. You know, we can say in these situations there's different decisions that can be made that can still honor God. It just depends on your particular situation.

Tim Barton

Well, and also we had a really good view of a lot of things with TV cameras, right and social media and who knows but that some of these athletes. They're off social media. While they're over there, they're focusing on their event and maybe they might not even have known what happened.

Right, they might come back to the US and be like, wait, what happened? We didn't see any of that. So there could be more to their story, their circumstance or situation than we are aware of. And it would be very different if we had the American athletes coming out and condoning the anti-Christian behavior, the anti-God kind of behavior, but we don't even know for sure that they're fully aware of what happened.

Now I think it's far-fetched that at least some of them aren't aware, and probably I'm sure in their community that there's a lot of conversations and information spread. But anyway, there can be more to the story and I don't want to digress too much on Good News Friday when there's plenty of other things to talk about. But certainly there can be more to that story. However, we do appreciate that there are so many incredible athletes. I mean, you know, dad, you mentioned what we've seen at this point. There's still many that are going. The Olympics is not over yet and we are even, as I'm recording this, I'm looking at some news stories that are coming out that I will add to my good news stack that we might get to next week of more athletes that are coming out. They've won events and they're still praising God for Him helping them and they're crediting him for their success. So still just more and more examples of this happening throughout the Olympics.

Rick Green

So we could probably do Olympics for the rest of the program. But whatever, you guys got good news from the Olympics, good news outside the Olympics. But let's take a quick break. We'll be right back, we're halfway through and it'll be Tim's first piece of specific good news today. Stay with us. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday.

So Tim up to you man, Staying in the Olympics or going somewhere else?

Tim Barton

 Well, I'm literally just taking the one on top of my stack and right now it is one coming out of New York. It's dealing with a court case. The title says after ADF Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit, New York college student government revises unconstitutional policy recognizing conservative groups. So the short of it is there was a turning point USA chapter that was trying to be at the University of New York Courtland campus and they were told they're not allowed to have a club on campus. In the article it goes through when it goes to the student government, student Senate, they withheld group's status to the Turning Point USA chapter because it disagreed. The student senate disagreed with the National Turning Point USA organization's views. Student senators questioned and demeaned Turning Point's views for approximately 100 minutes. When the students raised the issue with the Cortland president, Eric Bitterbaum, he warned that they would likely be denied if they reapplied. Telling them we silence voices all the time in this country. That's the tragedy and also the greatness of democracy. Well, that went to court and a judge decided that that's not the way this works in America. There should be equal access, equal opportunity and you cannot cancel someone because they have conservative views or views that are different than yours. In fact, the ADF legal counsel, Matthew Hoffman, said colleges are meant to be marketplace of ideas, where students learn to respect and defend diverse beliefs. Many college officials are no longer encouraging students in this. They're encouraging them rather to silence opposing views.

As a result of this lawsuit, Sonny Cortland ultimately decided to do the right thing and that's good for everyone. So the Turning Point USA chapter is now on campus and guys, all of us have done stuff with Turning Point USA, with Turning Point Faith, where they're encouraging and challenging pastors to be a part. This is part of Charlie Kirk's organization. Rob McCoy helps with Turning Point Faith. He's a pastor from Calvary chapel out in California and we know and do stuff with all these guys and they have done an incredible job reaching and connecting with the rising generation.

For for a long time there were not many organizations that had really good infiltration and market reach around the nation. There was things like Prager University, which their short videos were being very influential in a lot of places, but it did still have a limited reach. But now Turning Point is doing things all over the nation trying to reach out to churches, pastors getting on college campuses. They're doing incredible things, but we do definitely see there are times when there are universities that are saying we don't want conservative views here, we don't want Christian views here. Fortunately, the court was able to acknowledge that that's not the way that it works with discrimination. You can't discriminate against somebody because they're conservative or Christian. So that's really good news.

But, guys, in my mind it reiterates the reason that we would really caution people before they consider sending their kids to college, because colleges, by and large, are becoming a place that are very anti-Christian, that have very anti-traditional values, anti-conservative. It's becoming an indoctrination facility more than it ever has been before More pro-Marxist, pro-communist, pro-socialism, more anti-God, more secular than we've ever seen. And it's not that we're against college. You just need to be strategic about what college you're sending your kid to, if they even need to go to college. We also are a big fan of saying hey, pray and see where God is leading you, what God's called you to do, because not everybody needs to have a college degree.

College isn't right for everybody, and college is also not what validates someone. You are chosen by God and not everything God calls us to do we need a degree for, evidenced by the fact that it's 20 something percent of college students that actually get a job in the relative field of their degree, so not even the specific field of their degree. In the relative field of their degree, the vast majority of college students are not able to utilize their degree. Instead, they take on all kinds of debt. They have wasted years of their life, all kinds of money, and often come out with a woke, anti-God, anti-America ideology. That's not the thing we want for the majority. Actually, it's not the thing we want for any American student, but college is not what we would recommend at this point for the majority of American students.

There are still some good universities out there, but there's very few of them and this again is just evidence where you have a college campus saying that a Turning Point USA chapter is not allowed there because they don't agree with their Christian and conservative views. That is how most colleges are today. Now, again, the good news from this story is that they were able to have the college to reverse that position. There was actually a $42,000 compensation, acknowledgement and unjust challenges faced by the chapter, and so there was something good that came out of this. Ultimately. That is the good news. The courts are changing and there's a lot of good stories coming from the courts, but to me this again is another caution against universities, because we're seeing more and more of this happen at universities.

Rick Green

Well, that's rare to get good news out of the universities, but it's good to get some here on Good News Friday. That's why we surprise people with the types of good news stories that we share. David, what's your next piece of good news?

David Barton

That's when I've got deals with another court decision, and it's significant to me because we've talked in previous programs about how that really, since back when Trump was president and put three justices as a brief court, they've started overturning precedents that were not constitutional. They've been there for a while. One that we've talked about a lot is the Lemon Test. It goes back to a 1971 case where the court said hey, we don't really care what the First Amendment says about religion, we're going to use this Lemon Test, that Lemon Cursement, and this is how you can determine whether religion is constitutional or not in the public arena. So, rather than using the Constitution, they came up with the court test and we've seen them do that again and again and again and they just ignore the Constitution. Well, we've talked about how that the current judicial system with all the new appointees Trump had about 200 judges he put on total it's going back toward the Constitution again. And one of the areas we talked just a few weeks ago about the Chevron deference decision the Constitution did not intend for unelected bureaucrats to make laws. That has to go through the House of the Senate, signed by the president, and so that's a longstanding, decades-old decision by the activist Supreme Court that the current Supreme Court overturned. We're looking at another one of those that might be overturned and it goes back to what's called New York Times versus Sullivan.

This was a decision out of the 60s where the Supreme Court said you know what, if you're a public figure, or perceived to be a public figure, reporters don't have to tell the truth about you. They can say things that are wrong and misleading, and they can be things regarding the defamation, and that's okay because they're reporters and they can do that and they don't get held accountable. Well, we've had a number of justices of the Supreme Court Alito and Thomas and others saying, hey, we really need to relook at that. Just because you get elected to office, you're a public official, doesn't mean you get less constitutional protections. You get the same that every other individual gets. And so, with all the trial stuff that happened in New York here a few weeks ago with Trump, that long trial that went on there, the reporting by ABC News, George Stephanopoulos, really mischaracterized that trial in several important areas. They mischaracterized what Trump was being tried on, and so Trump attorneys actually filed defamation suits against ABC News and against George Stephanopoulos, saying, hey, that was not accurate reporting and, as a result, you have smeared Trump's reputation and tarnished his character because you were saying things about him that were not true.

And first step, the federal court said you know that's correct and you can't defame a person just because he's a public official. You have to tell the truth. If you know what the truth is or if you take due diligence to try to find out what the truth was. So this is a really good decision. Now it's going to go through the court of appeals and it may be appealed to the Supreme Court and all that's got to start.

But this is just something we haven't even seen at a lower court level in recent years, where they're willing to say public officials and non-public officials, you all have the same constitutional protected rights and the right not to be lied about publicly by the press is one of those rights. So this is a really big, in my mind, a really big first step. I hope it goes further. I know that ABC and those guys are going to appeal this. So to go to a court of appeals depends on who wins or loses there. The other side is going to appeal to the Supreme Court, so it may take two, three, four years to get this all done, but it's got to give the court I hope if they take it an opportunity to redo that New York Times versus Sullivan case out of the 60s and get back to. Everybody has the same equal constitutional protections and rights.

Rick Green

Well and guys, you know we've been on the receiving end of that right, we've both been involved in defamation suits and the whole public figure thing. It's a bad setup the way that we give the media and other individuals the ability to lie, literally lie about people and not have responsibility for it. All right, folks, we've got more good news at our website. Make sure you check that out today. Wallbuilders.show is where you can get any of the archives of the program over the last few weeks and months. There's a lot of good stuff in there, so go check it out right there at wallbuilders.show. And then any Friday program, or almost every Friday program, is a Good News Friday program. So there's a lot of good news in there. And then, of course, we got good news all through the week. I mean, even we have a guest on that's. You know, I don't know negative down whatever, just kind of highlighting something terrible that's happening in the country.

We have a Joshua and Caleb spin on it. Right, that's just our perspective, that's our, that's the way we see the world, because we're told by God to do it that way. Count it all joy when you experience various trials, knowing that God's using that to make us perfect and complete, create perseverance in us, all those things. So we know we're supposed to have joy as we face a lot of these tough times, but also we want to be like Joshua and Caleb. They saw the same thing that the 10 spies did. The 10 spies oh, it's too hard. The giants are too big, Cities are too fortified. We couldn't possibly win what happened? They depressed the people and an entire generation had to die in the wilderness. That's not what we do here at WallBuilders. We're like Joshua and Caleb. They saw the same giants. They saw the same fortified cities. They came back and acknowledged it. Yes, it's going to be hard, it's going to be difficult, but God has given us the land. Let's go take it.

That's the attitude we have here at WallBuilders and that's why we do Good News Friday. We want to make sure you know that we can win, that when you apply the principles of liberty, when you put biblical principles in place, you get good results. And so we give you all these victories because what they are is they're evidence of people living out the Great Commission, actually making disciples and living out everything that Jesus commanded. So if we're actually living out the whole gospel, then it benefits the culture, it benefits our neighbors, it benefits our communities. The salt and the light the salt keeps the meat, preserves it and also brings out the best flavor of it, and then the light dispels the darkness. So if we're doing our job as Christians, if we're actually living out the Great Commission, the entire culture benefits. And that might be in a small way at your local school board. It may be a particular legal battle that's happening or whatever it is.

But standing up and pushing back on evil, not just standing by and letting that evil spread when we do that we can win, and when we win we want to share the good news. We want to talk about those wins and that's why we do Good News Friday. It's been a great tradition around here at WallBuilders for almost two decades and we have so many people that tell us around the country man, that's the show I most look forward to, because I need that pick-me-up going into the weekend. So I hope you've enjoyed Good News Friday today.

Get more of it at our website wallbuilders.show that's the list of all the programs and all the links, and then wallbuilders.com for other materials, including getting the biblical citizenship in modern America, so that you can start creating some good news in your home, your community, your neighborhood, your church. If you haven't done that yet, do that Biblical citizenship in modern America. We're going to put 4 million more people through that in the next two years before the 250th birthday of the country, and you can be part of helping make that happen. Check it out today at wallbuilders.com. You've been listening to the WallBuilder Show.