AD Robles on Social Justice Pharisees

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We got a special guest with us today,

00:18

A .D. Robles. A .D., how you doing? I'm well, I'm well. I'm excited to be here. This is like the third time, I think.

00:24

Yeah, you're a frequent flyer. I think you've been, yeah, third, fourth, so I don't even know anymore. We've done some like video chats for other stuff too at certain points, but I got your book with me here.

00:34

One of the few who has the book, I think. And I know some people have it. They can go to adrobles .com and get it, but it's called

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Social Justice Pharisees, Woke Church Tactics and How to Engage Them.

00:45

And I really appreciated it. I thought it was really like layman level. Like if you're someone who's looking for like, just give me like the basics.

00:54

I'm a Christian. I don't wanna do the social justice thing. Like, well, why is that wrong? And how do

00:59

I engage people? This is the book for you. So I wanna talk about that with you and just a little bit about what got you into this to the point of even like going to all the work to publish a book, because that is a lot of work.

01:10

I'm sure as you're finding out now. Yeah, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. Yeah, yeah. Well, I remember thinking the same thing when

01:16

I first wrote a book. I was like, oh, that you just, I got all these thoughts. I just write them down. And then all this, you know, magically just, no, it's a lot of work.

01:25

So thank you for putting in this labor of love. What got you in sort of backtrack before the book even originated?

01:35

What got you into this in the first place? Because I'm not even clear on that story. Yeah, yeah.

01:40

So, you know, there's obviously, there's kind of a range of things that happened all at once, but the story as I typically tell it, basically right around Trump's election,

01:50

I started noticing a lot of the social justice stuff just in the culture in general. And so I started watching a bunch of, you know,

01:58

YouTube content from the social justice perspective just to try to figure this out. And I also at the same time started seeing it in Christian circles as well.

02:07

You know, people like Matt Chandler, who I used to listen to a lot and all of that. And I just started thinking, this is strange.

02:13

And so I started, you know, posting things on Facebook from the non -social justice perspective, because I never was,

02:20

I never bought into it at all. And I started getting some ridiculous pushback from people, including people who knew me and knew

02:28

I was a good guy and knew I was Puerto Rican, but all of a sudden were calling me white privileged and white supremacist and all this stuff.

02:37

And I, at that point, I knew I was onto something. Like, this is really bizarre. And so I started making a few videos, you know, just nothing consistent, nothing, you know,

02:48

I didn't intend to become a YouTuber, but I started making a few videos and the reaction was so strong both ways.

02:55

So either people really loved it or people were furious. And so I knew I had,

03:00

I knew I was onto something at that point. When you get reactions like that, you know that there's something to it. And so that's kind of how it all began.

03:08

So you just started as a layman, someone who, I know this isn't your day job, but you just wanted to make a few videos to just,

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I guess, help people think through the issue. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was a pastor at the time. So it wasn't a layman in that regard, but yeah,

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I hadn't like studied this extensively. I just, you know, I knew that there were some basic errors that were being promoted by all these people that I respected.

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And if you look at my old content, it's all still up. It starts off with like, it's always these sort of like,

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I'm sorry, I'm making this video. I love Matt Chandler. I love these guys. They're so helpful because I wasn't lying.

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I felt like they were really helpful to me in the past and now they're saying these wrong things. And so I just wanted to just kind of set the record straight and all that.

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And so, yeah, that's how I approached it. I wasn't like, you know, I wasn't intending this to be a job.

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I just was like, you know, I like Matt Chandler. So I want to just like gently correct some of the things he was saying about white people.

04:10

Yeah. I think I did sort of the same story, I guess, with me, but so things have progressed now.

04:17

You don't make videos like that as much anymore, a little more direct. Most of the basic things that social justice advocates are going to try to trap you into, you have like an answer for them.

04:29

Is this just from experience, like dealing with this in the Christian world, or is there a political background?

04:35

I know your dad was in politics. Like, where did you get the knowledge to write this? Yeah, definitely. So most of the stuff in the book came from, you know, right when

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I first started getting interested in this topic, I just consumed as much social justice content as I could.

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So it started off with a lot of pagan stuff, but then I quickly transitioned to stuff coming from Christians.

04:57

And so all of the arguments that I address or whatever, this is just comes from, you know, watching so much of this content and noticing all of the similarities and all of the just consistent approaches that these people take to present their arguments and stuff like that.

05:14

So that's really where it kind of came from. My father, I have a great father, and, you know, he never instilled in me any kind of this victim mentality kind of thing.

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It was just never a part of our lives. And that's not to say that, you know, he didn't experience racism himself.

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I think I've told the story on the channel. When he ran for Congress in Connecticut, he ran against an incumbent named

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Barbara Connelly, and she was a Democrat, he was a Republican. And someone at our church wrote my father a vicious message.

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How dare you run against Barbara Connelly? You need to go back to where you came from, like a totally racist letter, you know?

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And it got solved pretty quickly. I mean, the guy was like, yeah, I don't know where it came from, I'm sorry. You know, they squashed it.

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But I never heard about that story when I was a kid. I heard about it later, you know what I mean? Like my father didn't want me to grow up in this thing where it's like, you know, like that's the worst thing ever.

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You know what I mean? It happens, but it's not the worst thing ever. Wow. So my father just kind of did instill in me a lot of critical thinking and, you know, he's a very smart guy and he taught me how to think.

06:20

So I definitely credit some of his background there. But all the stuff in the book comes from just watching tons of the content.

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And I don't know why I'm able to watch it without puking sometimes, but me, you, and like woke preacher clips are the ones that do it, you know?

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I was gonna say, we thank God for woke preacher clips because you don't have to like go through an hour of a video to find that little special spot.

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They've already kind of given it to you, so. Yeah, I've actually talked to him about that and he just, this is what he does all day.

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He listens to this stuff in the background while he's working and it's like, he'll clip it out and it's just amazing.

06:56

A special person to do that. Well, this brings us to an obvious question that you just kind of led us into in a way.

07:02

Your dad experienced actual old fashioned, I don't know what word to use, but like, I guess the old fashioned racism that in the early 2000s, 90s, when

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I heard the word racism, that's what I would have expected. And certainly, everyone

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I know of, thinks on the conservative side, if you wanna call it that, knows that racism exists and it probably always will exist until, you know,

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Jesus comes back. Like actual real racism, where people hate other people, show partiality because of some pride within them or some benefit they think they'll receive from that.

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Social justice advocates seem to think often, we just don't see that. We're denying that it exists.

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We're saying that there is no racism because we don't believe in systemic racism according to them.

07:51

So therefore, we just don't have any credibility. And you write this a little bit in your book, what's the answer to that?

07:58

What do you have to say when someone brings that up to you? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, this is the kind of thing that this comes up in the book a lot.

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It's like, you can answer these things, but you can't stop them from making the claim, right?

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This is the kind of claim that is made regularly, and there's never any real evidence of it besides the fact that you're not woke like them.

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So if you're not pushing social justice, then by definition, often you're denying that racism exists.

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And so you can up and down. Listen, I've told people, look, I've experienced racism myself.

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You know, people have been prejudiced against me because I wasn't white or European, well, at least not all the way

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European. And so I don't deny it, but still they'll say you deny that this is a problem.

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I've heard many black people who have experienced racism that aren't social justice advocates that they're told you're denying racism.

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So, you know, in the book, I talk about the two definitions of racism, the phony baloney definition where like everything's racist, like birds and stuff like that.

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And then the real definition of racism. And, you know, the truth is like when somebody makes a claim like this, you need to ask them, what do you mean by this?

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Like, what are you referring to? And then, you know, if you're racist and you have to admit it, if you're not, you deny it, but you can't expect them to stop making the claim because it's crucial to their whole system that everything and their mother is racist.

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So it's just like, it's just one of those things you can't really fight against it, but you can deny it, reject it.

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I saw a video of one guy, I mean, he ripped your book apart. Like, this is what

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I'm talking about. Like, this is that like crazy separatist kind of mindset where like, this is of the devil,

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I guess, like according to the hardcore advocates. Have you ever reached any of those guys?

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Like, have you ever been able to get through and be like, hey, like, do you see yourself? Well, I'll tell you what, you know, and I'll say this about that guy who destroyed my book.

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We actually solved our differences and we're, I don't know if we consider each other friends now, but we've been texting and stuff like that.

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And, you know, we're chatting a bit. Anyway, so that's good. But yeah, no,

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I definitely have. I think sometimes people watch my content and they say that, you know, they say, well, you're never gonna reach anyone with that.

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You're just preaching to the choir. And I am, I'm intending, I'm not trying to convince social justice advocates.

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I'm just, you know, my channel, just to kind of let everybody know, my

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YouTube channel, a lot of what I'm doing is I just want every Christian out there to know that it's okay to just believe what

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God says. You don't have to apologize for it. You can laugh about it and have a good time. When somebody calls you racist because, you know, you don't have any

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Juneteenth shirts or you don't put a little black sticker on your

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Facebook page or something like that, it's okay to laugh at them because that's nonsense. Like, so that's, my channel is designed to just, you know, really speak to Christians and really just say, look, there's some simple

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Bible verses in this book that you could just believe them. And you're now, if you do believe them, you're immune to all this social justice stuff because God rejects it completely.

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Now, that being said, even though that's my target audience, absolutely, I've reached out to social justice advocates and some have been very affected by my content.

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In fact, at the end of this book, I talk about a man named Edwin Ramirez. And Edwin Ramirez, you might know him,

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John. Yeah. I didn't know this, but he was suggested to follow my content because he was a social justice warrior.

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He was totally woke. And, you know, you should definitely get him on this channel one day.

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I don't know if you have already, but he talks about how he was woke and how my content did reach him.

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You know what I mean? Did reach him. We're both Puerto Rican. You know, we both have a similar style.

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He's a little more calm than I am. But, you know, yeah, I definitely have.

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And I think when you're dealing with Christians who will hear the voice of God, the content will reach them.

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There's just no question about it. They will hear that it's not okay to hate your brother in your heart, no matter what they did to your ancestors or didn't do.

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You know what I mean? They will hear that stuff, man. The word of God is powerful in that way. Yeah, I do know

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Edwin and you're right. I don't think I actually have him on the channel. So I am gonna do that at some point.

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Yeah. And that is a good example of someone who did come out of the social justice mindset.

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They do exist. I know sometimes people think, because around them, that's all they hear. And that side is very emboldened, but there are people who see the truth and realize, wait a minute, this isn't right.

12:51

You made a video a while back where you talked about social justice conversations being an interfaith dialogue.

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Yeah. Between, you know, this is no longer an in -house kind of like, hey, we're all Christians. We just disagree ethically on this or that.

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Like this is actually a different religion. Can you explain that a little bit? Definitely, yeah. And, you know, I know a lot of your content, you've broken it down, you know, pretty carefully, you know, what the elements of this new religion are.

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I haven't done that quite as carefully. But the point is that social justice and the woke church stuff, they simply have different like foundational assumptions about how the world is.

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And these are taken by faith. These are matters of faith. So they assume that, you know, the

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United States is a racist country and it's never not been a racist country. And it pretty much always will be a racist country.

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You know, even Jim Artisby will say, you know, racism never goes away. It just never goes away.

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It just changes how it is. And lots of these people believe that. Russell Moore believes that. All these guys believe that it's even more dangerous now because you can't see it.

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That it's even more dangerous than it used to be. So they have, my assumptions are,

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I try to base my assumptions on the scripture. So I think that people can change. I think that everyone is accountable for their own sins.

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You know what I mean? I mean, I think that God holds nations accountable. Yes, for national sins, but he also specifically commands that we must hold only individuals accountable for their sins.

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So all of my assumptions are based on what God has said the world is like. And when you're talking with a social justice advocate, they're assuming a whole bunch of stuff that God never told them.

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And so that's what I mean by it's an interfaith dialogue because when somebody has a different set of presuppositions than you do, even if they're calling themselves a

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Christian, you need to approach that as you would approach a conversation with a Muslim or a

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Mormon because they have different assumptions about how the world is. And so that's why

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I don't even try to convince them. You know what I mean? I just give them scriptures that hopefully if they're regenerate, they're gonna hear those.

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That's interesting you said you don't try to convince them. What I would add, and I know,

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I think you would agree with this is, but you try to convert them. Oh, absolutely. So in the book in chapter eight,

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I quote Thabiti Anyabwele, it's two pages of texts. It's a long, long quotation.

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And I remember the reason I used all of it is because I didn't think that if I summarized it, people would believe me of what he said.

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And in this quotation, I'm not gonna read it all, but he says that what he really needs in this moment in history is for you to not identify with him as a

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Christian, like not in Christ. Unity in Christ is not what he needs. What he needs is for you to unify and show unity and solidarity with him in his black skin, right?

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And that's one of the most pagan things I've ever heard a social justice warrior say.

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I mean, he's telling you to regard him according to the flesh. You know what I mean? And that's not what a

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Christian should say. I can understand a pagan saying that, but the BD claims to be a Christian. So that's such a fundamentally different way of seeing the world that I have to assume that he needs to be regenerated.

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He needs to be converted to the gospel, right? And the way that you should do this is you can give him the gospel, you can quote scriptures to him that I think address the exact sin that he needs to turn from.

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And what I decided to do is use that in my chapter on Luke 14, which says, if any man comes to me and hates not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and even his own life, he can't be my disciple.

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So I'm saying to the BD here, look, like I know you say you need me to regard you according to the flesh, have unity with you according to your flesh, but the answer is no.

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And you can't be Christ's disciple unless you reject your flesh also.

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So compared to your identity in Christ, your identity with your own family, even your own self has to be hatred in comparison.

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You need to reject that. And that's a high bar. Nobody that's not regenerated can do that.

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It doesn't make sense. Why would I hate my mother? Why would I hate myself, my children?

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For goodness sake, John, I know you don't have any children. I have three. Like that hits me hard and it's intended to.

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It's intended to hit you hard. A pagan cannot do this. Only a Christian can.

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And so I'm hoping that the word of God will hit its mark, whether that's to further condemn the BD in his rebellion or to convert him.

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And that's kind of what I mean. Like, I'm not trying to convince him that, this statement you've made is wrong theologically.

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No, I'm just saying, here's what God says and you need to turn. Otherwise you can't be his disciple. Yeah, and I think that a very direct approach is the only approach at this point, especially after 2020, things are so obvious.

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The only approach we can really take. This is a practical question. And maybe this is a way that people can use this book for their own, in their own church, in their own lives.

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Scenario here, church, pastor retires. Let's find another pastor.

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Let's bring someone else in to feed this flock. And unfortunately the way that it happens in most churches is it's some seminary graduate who no one's ever met before.

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We can talk about whether that's right or wrong, but that's the way it's still done mostly. And they say, you know, a pastor search committee led by mostly women, like, you know, that kind of thing.

18:48

Yeah. Right, right. You know, you're not gonna change the carpets. Are you a pastor? We like the ones we have. So you have a pastor come in and I've gotten this question.

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I'm sure you've gotten it before. And I'd like to hear, you know, maybe how this book can help. Cause I think it will. Yeah. How do you vet this guy?

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How do you make sure, okay, is this one of those social justice guys, or is this like someone who's gonna be

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Orthodox, authentic Christianity, you know, coming from the pulpit? Yeah, no, that's a very important question because, you know, it certainly seems to me that the seminaries are churning out social justice advocates like crazy.

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So you wanna make sure that you can do it. My approach with all this kind of stuff, and people ask me questions like this all the time, is to be as direct as possible.

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You know what I mean? Direct questions. And to me, like, I wouldn't even try to hide it.

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Just like, hey, so, you know, we see all of this critical race theory stuff happening.

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We see all of this, you know, racial reconciliation stuff happening, which is really another name for some of the critical race theory stuff.

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What's your beliefs on this? And then when he answers, because, you know, we all understand that people can sign statements of critical race theory being bad and still teach it, then you need to break down the specific part.

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So you reject it. Okay, great. So let's talk about this, white privilege, or whatever it is, you know, and I would have ready, maybe even clips or quotations that you have trouble with from leaders, some people that they would respect,

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Matt Chandler, Thabiti, Russell Moore, you know, Al Mueller, whatever it is, you know, because then they're gonna have to take an actual stand,

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I think, because they're gonna have to, if it's someone they respect, they're gonna have to disagree with someone they respect in order to actually be, you know, showing themselves faithful.

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And I think that's the key here, because often what we get are a bunch of yes men that aren't going to defend you from error if it's taught by someone that has a big name, you know what

20:53

I mean? Well, a lot of those quotes are in here too. A lot of, you can mine this for all sorts of quotes from big

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EVA leaders who have gone off the rails a bit and use that. And that's,

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I think that's really good advice, because Christians today in this era, as people in general, not just Christians, we don't like, if we're conservative, especially being direct, it seems rude, like, but you have to be.

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This is such a fundamental thing. Here's a question for you.

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Just generally, what are you hoping to accomplish with this? When people read this book, how do you think it'll help them?

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And what ways will it change maybe their approach? I think I just wanted to, with the book,

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I just wanted you to know that you're not crazy, right?

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You're not crazy, and you're not too stupid to understand this. One of the pieces of feedback that I got from the

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Southern Baptist Convention, a bunch of Southern Baptists had reached out to me, and I've seen some emails that were sent out about how it went and stuff like that.

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And again, and again, and again, I hear these conservatives that don't do anything types say, the founders, guys, they're just not nuanced enough to understand the deep -seated issues that play with critical race theory.

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And this is this thing that I think evangelical leaders typically do is they try to dazzle you with complex arguments and nuance and theological terms and stuff so that they make it seem like it's more complicated than it is.

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And really, they're just waving their hands, like, ooh, they're dazzling you with their knowledge. And this book, the intention here is for you to walk away from after reading this book and understand that, no, no, no, no, this is actually very, very simple.

22:39

There are some simple things that I could memorize probably in a weekend. There's like five verses that if I memorize these verses, they're not hard to understand.

22:47

They're not difficult. They're not one of those, some Bible passages are more difficult than others. These aren't, they're easy.

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And I want you to know that like, yes, that a lot of leaders are now believing things that are weird and foreign, but that does not change the simplicity of what you already know about how

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God is, how God interacts with people, how we're supposed to interact with each other and stuff like that. I think oftentimes people intentionally confuse you to protect their heroes.

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And it's really not like that. I want you to understand that this is super simple. And I'm not trying to insult anybody if you don't get it, because I think it's very discombobulating to have your leaders all say something else different than you've ever been taught before.

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So I questioned my own self. I was like, well, maybe I'm wrong. But it really is very simple.

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That's what I want you to walk away from this with, just armed with the knowledge that you don't have to have a seminary degree to know that this is not correct.

23:45

Yeah, no, that's really good. And I think it's hitting its mark. I think that's what's happening with people.

23:50

There's so much scripture in this. And you quote it. You don't actually just like reference it at the bottom. You actually like quote the full passage, which

23:57

I like, because how often do we read a book and it says, in parentheses, Ephesians 2 .8,

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and you never actually go to Ephesians 2 .8. You just keep reading. It's here though. It's all the scriptures here. All the quotes are here.

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So it just, it's simple. You can understand it. To your point about making this overly complex, it seems to me, like when

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I think about that, like it would be like the Pharisees or those who are Christians, I guess, in the early

24:27

Christian church who wanted to kind of break bread with the Judaizers saying, oh, like, have you heard of, have you even read

24:34

Rabbi Gamaliel's teaching on Corbin? Like, how do you even have a right to speak about this?

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It's that kind of stuff that like we're getting today. And it's just as simple today as it was back then.

24:49

You either, it's either the gospel or it's the gospel in something else. It's not, you can't have both.

24:55

So I appreciate you putting this labor in, writing this book, putting it out there.

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I think it's one of the most accessible books for people on this topic, if they're evangelical, especially.

25:07

Anything else, anything that people can do to support you and what you're doing on the podcast?

25:13

Cause I know that's a big part of your ministry as well. Yeah, definitely. So, of course you can buy the book.

25:20

So that's adroblez .com and you can get that book. It links to eBay right now because the book actually isn't officially out yet.

25:27

I'm selling it, but it doesn't officially come out until the end of the year.

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And then you can get it at Amazon and whatever communist company you want. But anyway, so then there's that.

25:39

And then of course they can support me on Patreon as well. And I do videos just about every day. I'll do at least one video, which is a lot, but luckily

25:47

I don't do like you do, John. Luckily I don't do a whole lot of prep.

25:53

It's a lot of it is extemporaneous. You know what I mean? I couldn't imagine doing a video per day with also a presentation like you do.

26:00

God bless you, man. That's hard. Well, PowerPoint has, there's a feature that kind of allows you to make it look like you put a lot of time into it when you're just like, yeah, let me four things that I want to, you know?

26:12

And then it's like, you press a button and it's like, woo, you know? I'm gonna have to look into that. Cause what

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I'm actually doing too, is I'm doing a small group Sunday school thing at my church on the topics in the book.

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So I'm gonna probably hit you up on how to do that. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's pretty easy. When I figured it out, I was like, wow, this will save me time.

26:31

So yeah, I'll talk to you about that. But yeah, you can hit me up on Patreon too. Definitely appreciate all that support because I don't put a ton of time into each episode, but the time

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I do put into it, definitely there's an opportunity cost there for my normal job that I do.

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So the support I get there makes it so much easier to just do it consistently. So if you do that, appreciate that as well.

26:55

I'll put the links in the info section for those watching or listening. You can go scroll down. Usually there will be a link to AD's Patreon, and then we'll have a link to the website where you can get the book if you wanna purchase it.

27:07

How much is it going for right now? So on eBay, it's 20 bucks. If you email me and I can bill you via PayPal, I'll give it to you for 18.

27:16

Okay. Well, that's not a bad price. I'm also doing a promo with my patrons as well.

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And you can go to the link. There's gonna be, so there'll be three links. There'll be your Patreon where you can get it at adriobliss .com,

27:29

and then I'll have my Patreon link. And if you're in a certain tier, you will, I'm like Oprah today.

27:35

I'm just giving out books. So you can do it, man. I mean, and people have said, John, you're so much like Oprah. I mean, you resemble her.

27:41

You act like her. No, you're nice like her. No, I'm actually nothing like Oprah.

27:47

But I - The business skills that she does. I do. I know I'm as rich as her, but you, in fact, now that we're talking about it, maybe

27:55

Oprah will get an interview with me. So I'm white and privileged, you know, but she seems to like to interview people that are white and privileged and make them look to be victims.

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But yeah, you will get a copy of Social Justice Pharisees, Woke Church Tactics, and How to Engage Them by A .D.

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Robles. And I think it'll bless you. So, A .D., thank you so much for giving me some of your time this morning.