“You would think we would have learned our lesson, but we didn’t,” says Reverend Dawn Check—known to fans of Dance Moms as Minister Dawn—who returns to the Dance Dad podcast to discuss the state of the world in the wake of the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. They discuss the fear, the anger, the exhaustion and how this will affect the country, particularly women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. They discuss what role they each had to play, where they failed and what the next four years threaten to look like.    They also discuss what we can learn from Jesus—as well as Moses, Esther and many other stories from the Bible—about strength, forgiveness, perseverance, and faith in the face of fear. They discuss hypocrisy and the way certain groups—namely Christian Nationalists—will exploit the teachings of the Bible to suit their own destructive ends and how people will vote in their own interests at the expense of other peoples’ rights—and even their own. John shares why the beatitudes are even greater scripture to live by than the Ten Commandments.    Join today’s discussion to learn the best way to move forward and how we can start to use our voices to take charge of our futures.    Quotes “You’re going to get folks who will go into the Bible and find scripture that [says] to ‘enjoy your wealth and God will bless you… but greed is sinful, and it becomes coveting. It becomes gluttony. We think of gluttony with food but there’s gluttony with money and items and power and prestige and certainly our President elect has all of those things.” (10:04 | Reverend Dawn) “So, the choice becomes, do you follow the law or do you follow God? What is your choice? I like that you say that…but what do you have to say to people who think the law is God?” (12:22 | Reverend Dawn and John Corella) “I think it’s OK to go to church angry. I certainly did.” (17:20 | Reverend Dawn) “Where was God in all of this? It comes back to looking in the mirror. Did we all do enough? Did we make assumptions? How did we participate?” (17:48 | Reverend Dawn) “You would think we would have learned our lesson, but we didn’t…we’ve allowed this narcissist to take over. God has given many, many examples of how God would see us through the wilderness. Moses wandered, for 40 years, he wandered. We’re wandering. We’re in a desert and we are lost but even in the desert, God remained constant. God didn’t leave. And I believe God is with us. I truly believe that.”  (25:33 | Reverend Dawn) “Ironically, when you get God and Jesus involved— God will not be mocked. No, but we have lost so many people, John, because we have used God as a weapon…and so now, nobody wants anything to do with God.” (36:00 | John Corella and Reverend Dawn) “How I handled it back then—and it didn’t feel good to me—is, I cut them out of my life. And when I cut them out of my life, I didn’t deal with everything that was going on inside of me. I cut off my emotion. My whole thing is, go into your internal spirit…I would say be very careful to cut people off when you’re feeling rage and anger.”  (50:53 | John Corella) “We can see through Jesus the strength, the peace, of being up there with nails in his hands, in his feet, bleeding, looking down at them, saying, ‘Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do,’ and really when he had all the power in the world to do whatever he wanted to do.” (1:06:00 | John Corella)   Links https://www.patreon.com/c/TheonlyDanceDadwithJohnCorella https://www.instagram.com/dawnlynncheck   Dance Dad with John Corella on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancedadwithjohncorella/ John on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_corella/ Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm