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Allie Beth Stuckey is host of the Blaze Media podcast “Relatable,” where she tackles theological, cultural and political issues from a conservative, millennial perspective. Stuckey speaks to college students, Republican organizations, Christian ministries, and businesses across the country about the importance of biblical and conservative values. She also offers frequent commentary on Fox News. She and her husband welcomed their first baby in July 2019. This is her first book.

Connect with Allie:  Allie on Facebook | Allie on BlazeTV | Her website: The Conservative Milennial 

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Thanks for tuning in to Off The Bench with Heidi St. John today is Friday, August 7th. This is episode number 965. It’s Meet My Friend Friday. And you guys know, I love to have people on the show who are doing things for the Lord in the culture, who are brave enough to get off the bench and onto the battlefield. And you guys are going to be thrilled today because my guest is Allie Beth Stuckey, she is the host of the BlazeTV’s podcast, Relatable. And I told her a few minutes ago, I think she might be my favorite millennial, except for my own kids, of course. Stick around you guys, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So, thanks for tuning in today. Couple of things I want to let you guys know about. Thanks to everybody who came out to hear me last weekend in Washington, DC. Tonight, I’m going to be speaking for, Teach Them Diligently, live in Greenville. So if you’re anywhere in the area, you can find out more about that at teachthemdiligently.com. If you want more information on my speaking season, which frankly has been obliterated, you can go to heidistjohn.com/events.

MomStrong International is working on a retreat right now, we’re going to keep you guys posted on that. And my women’s conference, Faith That Speaks, is still scheduled to be happening in September. So if you guys don’t have that in your calendar, I just want to encourage you, Faith That Speaks coming to Indianapolis on September 11th through the 12th. And if you guys have ever been to any of my events, you know that what we’re going to want you to do is bring your Bible, bring your Bible, and you’re going to be encouraged. So check it out at heidistjohn.com/events.

All right, without further ado, I want to introduce to you Allie Beth Stuckey. She’s on the show with me today. She is the host of the Blaze Media podcast, Relatable, which is where I first heard about her. And the reason I liked her so much is because she’s not afraid. She’s talking about theology. She’s talking about the culture. She’s talking about politics from the perspective of a conservative millennial and more important, I think, than any of those things is the perspective of a Christian. And I’m so pleased that she’s here today. Allie Beth Stuckey, welcome to the show.

[ALLIE] Thank you so much for having me, Heidi. I’m excited to be here.

[HEIDI] So you’ve got an opinion on almost everything, which is one of the reasons I like you. And I’ve heard it said, and this is kind of the first thing I want to find out, because I think especially with millennials right now, and I’ve had lots of conversations, over the years here at the podcast, with young people who have taken positions of leadership and what I’m hearing consistently is kind of what I heard growing up is that Christians need to stay in their lane. If you’re a Christian, you got to talk about the church, but you don’t get to talk about politics. Or if you talk about politics, you can’t talk about the church and vice versa. And one of the things I have always believed is that Christians should be influencing every sphere of culture and this includes politics. So I’m just curious to hear how you’ve been able to straddle all of these lanes.

[ALLIE] Yeah, unfortunately, that is a comfortable myth that is believed, I would say, especially by a lot of young women who, if they’re honest, they’re a little bit scared about getting into the realm of culture and politics, because doing so from a biblical worldview and a conservative worldview ends up getting a lot of pushback, especially nowadays you are called a bigot, you’re called close-minded, you might even be called a racist, even if you’re not talking about race at all. You’re labeled with all of these kinds of unfortunate ad hominem categories and women are bullied into silence. And so they say, “Okay, I’m not going to talk about these controversial issues even though I do have an opinion, even though I do believe that God’s Word has something to say about them, and even though I do see some of my friends and people in my church, propagating ideas that I know are unbiblical, I’m still not going to say anything because, hey, I don’t want to be seen as a bigot, I don’t want to be seen as on the ‘wrong side of history’ or whatever it is.”

However, it is unfortunately for a lot of people, not everyone, for a lot of people, it’s an excuse made out of fear. And a lot of times, sometimes it’s a founded fear, but sometimes it’s an unfounded fear of the mob. The mob really doesn’t have that much power. If your friend pushes back on you, if a random person on the internet calls you a bigot that really doesn’t have any tangible effect on your life. What’s important is that not only do you have a biblical perspective personally, but also that you are building a worldview based on the truth of God’s Word that encompasses politics and social issues, and that you are willing to not necessarily state your opinion on the internet on every little thing that happens, but that you are willing to engage the culture, engage your friends, and engage your fellow church members— about some of the issues that are going on from a biblical perspective.

So whether that’s talking about race, whether that’s talking about policing, whether that’s talking about so-called social justice, marriage, sexuality, transgenderism, all of these things that unfortunately a lot of people are just going along with. I would say it is your responsibility as a Christian woman to speak the truth in love to your friends that you see going astray and making sure that they too are building a biblical worldview that encompasses all of these issues.

[HEIDI] Yeah, that’s right. And honestly, if we’re going to be brutally honest about it, a large part of the issues that we’re seeing in the church today, the rise of false teachers, and we see them all over the culture, I’ve repeatedly talked about several mainstream authors and bloggers, people who have been in ministry for a long time, who tens of thousands of followers, but they’re not sound theologically. And they’re pushing doctrines of transgenderism and social justice out into the culture, in the name of Christianity. And if we don’t know our Bible, if we don’t know what God says, then what happens is we’re swept along as the Bible says “by every whim of doctrine”.

And that’s really what’s happening. And it looks to me like you have been, in your book, you’ve got a new book coming out, it’s called You Are Not Enough And That’s Okay, and I super love it because you’re really tackling this issue of, we live in a massively selfish culture right now. I mean, can we just agree? We’re living in this crazy culture, this sort of upside down thing, and you are encouraging young people to really examine some myths that we have believed.

I mean, we could sit here and talk all day long about black lives matter. I’ve had several of my friends come on the show, who happened to be people of color, talk about the lie behind black lives matter and what they’re actually pushing and when you pull back the curtain, people start to go, “Oh my goodness. I had no idea, it just sounded good.” Right?

[ALLIE] Right.

[HEIDI] And all of these myths that you have in your book, they sound good, but they’re not right. So I want to go through some of the things that you wrote about in your book. I don’t know if I’ve got time to hit on all five of them, but I’d love to hear your perspective and why you decided to write them. The myth number one, is the myth of you are enough. Why, my friend, is that a myth?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So it’s something that sounds really good. And if we’re honest, it kind of feels like a balm for the weary heart. I would say, especially as women, we can struggle with insecurity. Of course, men do too. But just from my own personal female perspective, I know that women can struggle with insecurity. We struggle with inadequacy, feeling like we’re not measuring up. We’ve got a million responsibilities and roles that we’re supposed to fulfill in a 24 hour period. And many times we feel like we just don’t have what it takes to do all of these things well. And so we blame other people’s expectations. We blame societal standards. Some people outside of our ideological realm might blame the patriarchy, might blame capitalism. We blame all of these systems and external factors for our feelings of inadequacy.

And what we want to hear is that all of those pressures that are making us feel not enough are wrong and that we are actually enough, we are good enough, we’re talented enough or a good enough mom, good enough wife and all of these things. And it sounds and feels really good when we are struggling with those very real feelings of anxiety and not enoughness.

The problem is no matter how many times we try to convince ourselves, that’s true, no matter how often we tell ourselves that we are deficient, that we are enough for ourselves and for all the people around us at the end of the day, we still know that, that’s not true. Every time mess up, every time we come up short, every time we don’t handle something correctly, or we don’t actually have all the time, energy, resources, talent, to be all the things that we need, we realize, “Oh shoot. I told myself that I was enough. I tried to convince myself that I am enough. And now I realize that I’m still not. So I’m just left in the even more miserable and insecure place than I was before I started telling myself that I was enough.”

And so we get on this hamster wheel of what I call self-affirmation. And it’s really kind of a cult of self-affirmation that exists mostly on Instagram. But it’s this hamster wheel of self-affirmation where we’re telling ourselves that we’re good enough, that we’re awesome, that we’re perfect the way we are. But at the same time, we realize that we’re not those things just by nature of being full on human beings and constantly messing up throughout the day.

And so we go to the next self-love guru, we read the next book, we listened to the next podcast, we follow the next 10 step program that all promise to finally and fully convince ourselves that we are enough to give us the confidence and the self-love and the self-affirmation and the self fulfillment that we finally need to handle all the things in our life well, to be able to be confident enough to chase our dreams and do all the things that we need to do. That’s what we hear, that self-love, that feeling like you’re enough is going to unlock this treasure trove of possibility and opportunity and success and happiness and fulfillment for you.

But the paradox, the irony there, is that if we were enough already, as we were, we wouldn’t need all of these people to tell us that we are, we wouldn’t need these programs and books and podcasts and self-love gurus to tell us that we are enough, we would already know that. The fact that we’re relying on these voices to make us feel satisfied, shows us that we are not enough.

So my goal in this book, and especially when we tackle that first foundational myth that you are enough is to get us off that hamster wheel of trying to convince ourselves that we’re enough, realizing we’re not, going to the next source to give us our encouragement, to get us off that hamster wheel and realize that we were actually made insufficient, we were made inadequate, we were made finite, we were made fallible, God made us that way, he made us to depend on him, not just for strength to get through our day and to fulfill all the roles that he has called us to fulfill and to glorify him, but also just fundamentally for salvation. If we were enough as we are, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and reconcile us to a Holy God. But He did because He wanted to and because we needed Him to. And we depend on Gim for sanctification. We depend on Him for everything.

And so the realization that we’re not enough, that we’re never going to be enough for ourselves or the people around us is actually a very liberating reality, that we’re not enough and that’s okay because Jesus has become our enoughness. He has become that fulfillment that we are trying but failing to seek inside ourselves.

[HEIDI] Yeah and it really, I love that you said it creates freedom, because honestly as we continue to see this in the culture. So much of what you’re seeing out on the streets right now is, I was in a meeting this morning with leaders in Washington, DC. And we were talking about that what’s behind all these young people out in the streets and they’re writing and they’re burning and they’re looting and they’re tearing down monuments and they’re hurting each other because there is this vacuum inside of us. We’re looking for purpose. And the Bible teaches us that God created us in His image.

And the answer to this is Jesus. That the answer is Jesus. That he’s going to come in and say, “Listen, you’re not enough, but I died so that I could be your enoughness.” And I love that you started by talking about that because so much of what we see happening in the culture right now, which is so upside down stems from this idea that if we just try hard enough, if we just find the right cause, that we’re going to fulfill, we’re going to fix and fill that vacuum that’s inside of us that was designed to be filled by the one who loves us most, which is our Creator. And I love that you started there.

Next myth that you said, and I think this might be my favorite one, because anybody who’s listened to my podcast for any length of time knows I camp out on this, you determine your truth. So that’s moral relativism, right, your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. Why did you think this was important enough to put in five myths that the culture is falling for right now?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you believe that you are enough, you’re enough for yourself, you’re enough for your happiness, your fulfillment, your purpose, all the direction, and the wisdom that you need is found inside yourself because that’s what it would mean to be sufficient. Then you also believe that you are the determiner of your own truth. You’re actually the determiner of the truth. You are the determiner of what is right, what is wrong, based on what you think. Basically you believe if you are enough, that you are enough to be your own God, whether you realize you believe that or not, that is essentially what it would mean for you to be your own sufficiency, that you are your own God.

Well, a God is the arbiter of truth. The arbiter of what is right and wrong. We know that our God, the God of the Bible, is the arbiter of what’s right and wrong. But if you are your own, God, then you become your own personal arbiter of what’s right and wrong. And the problem, obviously, as you and I know, with that is that… I heard someone say and I thought that this was so good, is that you make a terrible God, because you can’t tell yourself anything that you don’t already know. You can’t give yourself wisdom that you don’t already have. You’re just basically creating this echo chamber and making decisions based on what feels good to you. And when make decisions based on what feels good rather than what the God of the universe says is good, then we justify every kind of immorality in the name of “doing me”.

So, that includes an abortion, for example, we can justify that by saying, well, this is my bodily autonomy. This is what I want to do. This is what is convenient for me. This is what is good for my life. I mean, that is literally the most extreme example of being your own God and determining your own truth. You are actually killing an unborn child in the name of living your truth.

But we also see this in, for example, the whole gender identity movement of living my own truth and determining what’s right and wrong and what definitions are based on my own feelings and my own subjective view of the world, biological sex doesn’t matter, all that matters is what I feel that I am. And this is also a very new age idea that in some ways has infected Christianity, that reality is based on, and the realest reality, is based on who we are or what we feel that we are or what we feel in general on the inside and that everything else, including biology, any kind of, even data extrality, or any kind of science, is subject to what we feel on the inside, which is the realest reality. And so you can kind of see how that mindset plays out in so many segments of our society.

Obviously the problem with that, which I think we’re seeing in a lot of ways right now with the chaos that’s waging outside of our window. When we have a bunch of little G Gods walking around determining their own truth, we can’t function together as a society when we don’t have any kind of fundamental agreement on what morality looks like, on what the rule of law can look like, on what right and wrong is, what objective truth is and the importance of objective truth. I mean, things just go to chaos, not just in your own personal life and your personal heart and soul, but in general, as a collective society, things also go to chaos.

So again, the liberating reality with which we replace this myth that you determine your own truth is that we don’t have that obligation, we don’t have that responsibility, we don’t have to bear that burden, like how gracious is God that he is the arbiter of truth. And he left us not only with his Holy Spirit, but also with his word so that we can know what objective truth looks like. We don’t want to have to wonder what morality is and if it’s some secret feeling, somewhere deep down inside, or somewhere out in the world, this kind of Gnostic special knowledge, we don’t have to be burdened with that pursuit. God has given us wisdom in Himself and in His Word, what a liberating reality that I don’t have to be my own God and determine my own truth.

[HEIDI] Yeah, it really is. Honestly, this idea of determining truth has really infected the church. It really has. So we’re seeing so many pastors who are basically preaching this from the pulpit. I want to read something to you and kind of get your feedback on it. So in 2017, I released the first of seven books that I’m writing for Tyndale, and this was called Becoming MomStrong, and I’m trying to educate and encourage mothers to say, “Listen, truth is not subjective. God defines truth. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.'” And about, I don’t know, halfway through the book, I was writing a little bit about what Christians today are doing. And I said, “Every day it seems that more and more church leaders are laying aside the truth of God’s Word and exchanging it for the lie that we can take God out of our everyday lives. In a misguided attempt to be loving, many Christians today, even pastors, sacrifice truth on the altar of a misguided mercy for the sake of a misguided love, but is it really loving to disregard the truth? Recently in a heartbreaking departure from biblical truth, former pastor Rob Bell teamed up with Oprah Winfrey to spread a message of equality and love. With her sights set squarely on the Christian community, Oprah interviewed Mr. Bell with the skill of a master marksman when pressed by Oprah to explain when the church was going to get gay marriage and embrace it, Bell replied, ‘We think it’s inevitable. We’re moments away from the church accepting gay marriage.’ He went on to say, “The church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2000 years ago as its best defense.” The response that I got to that quote in my book was it angered one Christian woman so much that she took a picture of the book, that page of the book, put it up on an Amazon review and said, “God is love”. How do you respond?

[ALLIE] Wow, I haven’t actually heard that quote, but it doesn’t surprise me knowing that just the trajectory of Rob Bell’s life and his faith, if you can even call it that.

But I think that that’s a great example of how this idea of moral relativism is seeping into the church. And that is a very overt example. Unfortunately, I think we see it in even more subtle ways of not what some pastors are saying, but even what they’re not willing to talk about.

[HEIDI] Yes.

[ALLIE] Pastors unwilling to talk about sin, unwilling to talk about sanctification and holiness and even the wrath of God and the important… the bad news that comes before the good news of salvation that we are all dead in our sin. And when we come into Christ, we become new creations. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, we try to sin less and less and become more and more like Christ. And they don’t want to talk about that. They want to present Jesus as almost like this hipster Jesus, in which He just exists to tell you how awesome you are and how pretty you are, how talented you are. He doesn’t want to bother you about sin. He doesn’t want to bother you about sanctification or holiness or anything like that.

And the reason why that makes me so sad is not at all because I’m some rule following legalist, and people just always accuse anyone who has a biblical perspective of life as being a legalist as or fundamentalists. But it’s because you’re missing out. If a pastor believes in the gospel, you believe that sin enslaves you, it burdens you. Anything outside of God’s commands and God’s definition of what is good and right and true as far as how we should conduct our lives, anything outside of those bounds is going to lead to that person’s harm. It’s going to be bad for them, not just eternally, but also here on Earth.

If we really believe that Christ came to free people from the oppression of the slavery of sin, then we would be preaching, deliberating the freeing good news of salvation from sin and also sanctification and holiness and being close to God and aligning ourselves with His word. But unfortunately I think a lot of pastors are just, they’re very worried about offending the mob, offending the cultural powers that be, and they’ve convinced themselves, like Rob Bell has, that the church is somehow called to be relevant. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. The church is not called to be relevant at all. Do you think the church in China, which is very, by the way, successful. If you look at the numbers and just the power and their bravery of Christians over there and sharing the gospel and continuing to meet together, do you think that they’re relevant in China?

No. They’re not relevant. That’s such a privileged in non-Christian, in a historical way to look at the church’s role, unfortunately. But anyway, yes, Christians aren’t called to be relevant, they’re not called to give in to what the world says is truth. We are called to base our definitions of truth on what God says is true no matter what the culture says, no matter how irrelevant it might make us.

[HEIDI] Yeah, and I think what we find if we stack a lot of these teachers up side by side, for Rob to come out and say that the church will become even more irrelevant, as long as it continues to quote letters from 2000 years ago as its best defense. I just wanted to stand up and say, “Those letters from 2000 years ago are your best defense. They’re your only defense.” We hold as Christians to the tenants of the gospel, what we find in God’s word. And whenever we stray to the right or to the left, we find ourselves at odds with the truth, with the objective truth that we find in God’s Word.

And this is kind of where the culture has gone. And I’ve been saying for a while now, and believe this with all my heart, we’re talking about the pandemic, right? We’ve been talking about the Rona. All the things are happening with the Rona. And I’ve been telling listeners here, “Listen, we don’t have”… I mean, we’ve had an epidemic, right? I’m not here. I’m a virus denier. But we have a spiritual pandemic in this nation. The root of the issues of the struggles that we are facing right now are spiritual in nature. And I see that as you’re writing and reaching out to people who are listening to you, that’s really what you’re saying. You’re trying to pull people back to say, “Listen, we got to get back to the basics here” because the myths that you’re talking about are really basic. Myth number three, you’re perfect the way that you are. This goes back, doesn’t it to that cult that called it self love that tells us that we’re born that way, that we’re perfect the way we are, and that we can do whatever we want to do on our own by ourselves, right?

[ALLIE] Exactly. And again, we all know that we’re not perfect the way that we are. We all are aware of our flaws and our mistakes and our shortcomings and where we lack. And I think the world of self love, the cult of self-affirmation, tells us that in order to be happy, in order to be confident, and therefore in order to achieve our dreams, we have to reimagine the flaws that we have as actually just these quirks and that are just all a part of our perfection. And what I’m suggesting is not that we should look in the mirror and obsess over our flaws and hate ourselves. What I am suggesting is that we don’t have to view ourselves as perfect or just as quirky or as flaw free in order to see ourselves rightly. In fact, seeing ourselves simply as God sees us as people who are made in His image, and if we are in Christ, children of God, fellow heirs with Christ, co laborers with Christ, we are new creations in Christ. Then we have the confidence that we need to glorify Him to fulfill the purposes that He has given us.

This idea that we are perfect the way that we are ironically, paradoxically kind of puts us on this path to pursuing some kind of perfection so we can finally rest in the fact that we finally are perfect the way that we are. But again, that’s a hamster wheel, that is exhausting, that is a lie that we know is not true. We all know that we’re not perfect the way we are. It’s not our perfection that gives us confidence, it’s actually Jesus’s perfection.

And if we need a reminder of what we’re worth and our value, we don’t have to look to ourselves. We don’t have to repeat motivational mantras. We don’t have to try to stand in the mirror and come to terms with our cellulite. We don’t have to do all of those things.

[HEIDI] Praise the Lord.

[ALLIE] All we have to do is look to the cross and that tells us what we’re worth, what God, the God of the universe thinks that we’re worth. That tells us what are our value is. I always want to be clear when I’m talking about this, that people don’t think that I am suggesting that we should be self-deprecating and self-loathing, that’s not the antidote to self adoration and narcissism. The antidote is actually self forgetfulness, self denial, and not focusing at all on what we think of ourselves, but on who God is who He says that we are. That is the shift in perspective that changes everything, not just our view of ourselves, but our view of our role here on Earth, our view of the truth, even our view of politics and justice and all of that. So that is the important shift that I’m trying to encourage.

[HEIDI] You guys just recently, about a year ago, you had your first child, so congratulations.

[ALLIE] Yeah. Thank you.

[HEIDI] That’s awesome. And a lot of the people that are listening to this are parents, and my husband and I have seven children. And I was just talking to our 15 year old the other day. And I think parents need to make sure that their kids understand this. We see ourselves and our worth comes from our Creator. And I was talking to my young daughter the other day. Only a few of our kids are still left at home. But I had gone back and reiterated to her, I said, “Sweetheart, if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. He loves you. You’re loved by Him.”

I think so much of what you were talking about earlier is so important. We take our cues from Instagram right now. I mean, how ridiculous is this? We’re taking our cues and our self worth from likes that we get on Instagram and followers on Facebook, and how many retweets are we going to get? And it’s killing us. And it’s killing a generation of young people who need to be turned, not inward, but outward to see their creator, looking back at them and saying, “You know what, God said, ‘I loved you so much that I sent my son for you so much. That’s how much you mean to me.’ God has incredible love for his creation.” And telling our children that and really making sure they understand it from a young age so that when they get into their teenage years and, particularly the now what we’re seeing spill out onto the streets of America.

So many of these kids, if you can get them alone and get them away from the propaganda that they’re listing new 24 seven, there is a hole inside of them. They don’t understand how loved they are. And we will never find that we’re looking at ourselves, trying to get that. Instagram just cracks me up. I actually have this love, hate relationship with Instagram. I’m too old to do it right, I have to wear reading glasses now. So you can’t take a good selfie when you have to wear reading glasses, glasses actually ruin it, right? So you don’t know if it’s a good picture or not. Everybody should have to do that in their 20s. If you guys all just got reading glasses in your 20s, the selfie thing would be over. I’m here to tell you right now. But to encourage young people especially, that their self worth comes from the one who created them and sent His son as a sacrifice for their sin.

It’s a powerful thing. Someone wrote to me the other day and said “Your answers are so trite. You always say Jesus is enough. What do I get if I become a Christian?” I was like, “You get Jesus.” You get Jesus. And this needs to be the thing that we’re telling our kids over and over. And Allie, you’re doing such a good job.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this today. It’s really encouraging for me to talk to young people who are thinking critically about things, but more important than that. They’re thinking about things from a biblical point of view and Allie Beth Stuckey is an incredible example of someone who’s doing that right now. I hope you guys will consider preordering her book. It’s available right now wherever books are sold, best place probably to preorder that book is on Amazon. Allie’s book, You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self Love is a book that every American needs to be reading right now. Hope you guys have enjoyed this. Have a great weekend. And I hope to hug your neck and meet you out on the road at some point as we leave Orlando, Florida, and we’ll keep you posted. Stay faithful, everybody. God is still at work.