How Social Justice Parrots the Gospel

Hi, I'm John Harris, and this is the Conversations That Matter podcast. I want to start off by thanking everyone who saw the video that I put out last week or listened to the audio of the downgrade of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I think we're approaching almost 6 ,000 views on YouTube alone, and that's not including all the other places that it was posted, so thank you for that. I've received a lot of emails, and I've seen comments and messages from people, mostly overwhelmingly, who support what I said, people even from inside Southeastern, staff members, students, alumni, who really appreciate the video, and I just can't thank you enough for that.

There's been, I think, a few negative comments, but to be quite honest, I have not been able to even read through everything, and I won't. I just don't have the time. So if you message me, and I don't get back to you, or don't get back to you right away, I've been very busy, especially this week, and I'm going to update you on that, and so please excuse me for that.

Social Justice and the Gospel Conference Announcements

The reason I've been busy is because on Wednesday, I went down to the pre-conference for G3, which was the Social Justice and the Gospel Conference, which was sponsored by Sovereign Nations, and if you don't like them on Facebook, you need to go like them.

They're going to be posting these videos, and they're going to be excellent videos critiquing social justice next week, or at least within the next week. It should come soon, so go check that out. I was able to meet with a lot of theological heroes of mine, James White, Votie Bauckham.

A lot of the signers of the Dallas Statement had seen my video or knew who I was, which was shocking to me. I just didn't think the video was going to be that big of a deal, but apparently it has been, and I didn't even know about this conference, to be quite frank, until I put that video out last week, and I was contacted by a film, or a producer of a film called Enemies Within the Church.

You can go to Enemies Within the Church and check it out, .com and check it out, and I sat down with this producer for an interview at the conference. He invited me down, and I did that. James White sat down with them yesterday, so I hung out with them most of the day.

I trust them. They get it, and if you have any extra money lying around, they could really use it, because there's a lot of donors who like what they're doing, but because of the politics of this, because it's seen as divisive in some way to call out mainstream Christian evangelical leaders and organizations, there's a hesitancy to give, so they could really use a chump of change.

Why Social Justice Is a Gospel Competitor

So if you have any extra money lying around, and you really want to defend the gospel from social justice, which is the number one threat right now. John MacArthur, I'm going to give an example here. If you know John MacArthur, he's been through so many battles.

Lordship Salvation was the first battle. He hosted even Strange Fire, which some thought was way too narrowly focused, but he's willing to fight. Everyone agrees on that. John MacArthur is willing to fight for the gospel.

He says, this woke church movement, social justice movement, this is the biggest threat he's ever seen, and I would agree with him. This is the biggest threat in my lifetime for the gospel. I'm Reformed, so please don't hold that against me, my Arminian brothers out there.

But yes, I'm Reformed, and I think Arminianism, when taken to its logical conclusion, is dangerous and has implications for the gospel. This is way worse, and I want to talk about that today. One of my friends who commented on the video on my personal social media account, he said it would be helpful, I think, to compare the true gospel to the false gospel of social justice.

So that's what I'm going to do in this video. But I wanted to get these announcements out there. Two final announcements before I do that. Regarding the movie, first of all, if you have a story that is similar to mine, you have a church, let's say, and because of your views on social justice, you were not welcome there, or you suffered some kind of discrimination, or you were intimidated, or whatever the case may be, if you want to get that story out there, you're not afraid to talk about it, I think this movie, the producers would really like to talk to you, and it might be a place for you to go and share your story.

It might be helpful for the rest of the church once the movie is put out. So I want to let you know that. I'm going to put the link in the info for the video. If you're listening on an audio podcast, then I'll put it in the info area there, so you can go check that out.

Second and last announcement I want to make is that in the coming weeks, we're going to be doing a couple more things on social justice. I have an interview already lined up. I just got to find out the date, figure out the date when I'm going to be sitting down with a professor of history, and we're going to be walking through how we got here as a church, so you're going to want to stay tuned for that.

I also have someone who's going to be on talking about a cult that really has not been exposed a whole lot, so most of you are not going to believe your ears, but there's a cult out there. Well, maybe you will.

There's a cult that believes that God is essentially a woman, and I always call them the Mother God cult, but their headquarters in the United States is in Newburgh, New York, and I know someone from that area, and we're going to be talking about this particular cult.

Social Justice as a False Gospel of Wokeness

So that's it for now. I want to now jump into the social justice gospel and how it differs from the true gospel. I know I said last week that I didn't want to talk about this anymore, and I don't. Frankly, I didn't want to make the video I made last week, but I had a conviction that I needed to say something, and because of the response and how overwhelming it's been, I think I need to continue that.

So how long we'll go on this topic of social justice, I don't know, but let's talk about how it compares to the true gospel. Social justice, at least the message of social justice in the church, is presented as a gospel accessory.

So people will say, this is a gospel issue. I said that in my video last week. You want to feed the poor? That's a gospel issue. And we'd say, okay, yeah. I mean, I guess if you're true, yeah, if you love the Lord, you're going to love people.

You're going to want to give. All right, sure. So we'll accept that, but after that comes other things. What else is a gospel issue? Somehow open borders becomes a gospel issue, because we need to help people.

We need to love people. That's now a gospel issue. Now, of course, there's a conflation going on between the responsibilities God's given government to protect, ministry of justice, and the church, ministry of grace, right?

So that's not good, but is that part of the gospel, to support this political movement? How about this? It is a gospel issue to support reparations. No. Why? How is that a gospel issue? That's a political issue that, I mean, we can have a debate on it, but fundamentally, I think I can argue that that actually is not in keeping with biblical justice.

But now that's part of social justice. So this is a gospel issue. So this is an accessory. If you're truly saved, you're going to get woke on these things, is the implication. In reality, the gospel of social justice is a gospel competitor.

So let me say this again. It's not a gospel accessory. It is a gospel competitor, social justice. I'm going to give you some examples of this at the conference that I was just at, Social Justice and the Gospel.

Just excellent, excellent videos. Go check that out. One of the things they did in the last session was they had the Dallas signers. So the signers of the Dallas statement, they answered questions about social justice, and there was a word association game.

They kind of did at the end. And I didn't, unfortunately, take notes, so I didn't write down everything that they were saying. But I've actually done this in the past. I wrote an article for my blog at worldviewconversation .com, I want to say two, three years ago.

And I did something similar in regard to racial reconciliation. And I showed how there's a gospel competitor within that movement, within the seminary that I was at. Because it apes the gospel at every turn.

The Gospel Counterfeit of Privilege, Original Sin, and Wokeness

And I'm going to go into that right now. So you have white privilege, right? Or pick your oppressor category. You have male privilege. You're rich. You have privilege because you just have money. Pick whatever category you want.

But if you're in an oppressor category, you have some kind of privilege. Now, the first boxcar, using the analogy that was given by, I think, Tom Buck at the conference, the first boxcar is labeled race.

The second one is gender and sex. And the third one is going to be all the sexual deviancies behind it. So in Southern Baptist life, we're on the first car and we're starting to see the second car, right?

So when I was at Southeastern, there was a woman appointed to the board. And this board oversees even curriculum that will train men for the ministry. Now, of course, she's not a female pastor, but she has influence over the curriculum that male pastors are going to be using.

What in the world? Empowering women. I think I talked about that. I might have talked about it, at least in the video. If you go to Southeastern's website, their college website, you're going to see a woman holding a sign that says, I'm going to empower women.

And so terms that were used in the feminist movement are now being used in evangelical circles. And so we're seeing the start, at least, of the second boxcar. But if you're in one of these oppressors categories, then you have original sin.

That's all there is to it. You could be born into the least racist household in the entire world. You could have adopted kids from Africa or from Asia that you grew up with that were your brothers and sisters.

But because your skin color is white, you have privilege because there's systematic racism out there and the deck is stacked against other minorities, supposedly. And so you are somehow guilty for taking advantage of all these benefits.

Now, of course, biblically, by God's grace in his sovereignty, when there are benefits given, like if you have an economic incentive to have a raise at a job, you thank God for that. Right. But now we're made to feel guilty for these things because we'll look at the people that didn't get it.

And oh, man, if their skin color is different, if they're a different gender, I'm in sin somehow. I have white privilege. I have male privilege. So there is an original sin component to this and you need to get you need to make that right.

And the way you make that right is by getting woke. So this is it's I want I don't want to say justification, but this is the moment when the Holy Spirit supposedly comes on you. Right. That's the parallel.

Because when you're a Christian and when you become a Christian and you see all your sin, you repent of it and the Holy Spirit enters you and you're a new person. But in this social justice gospel, it's when your eyes are open to supposedly the inequities around you and you think, oh, man, I'm I'm guilty for this.

I need to do something about it. Now you're woke. So there is a parallel. What happens in justification within the true gospel happens when you're woke in the social justice gospel. Of course, you find out you've broken the law and that's what leads you to this.

You've broken political correctness. So it's not the law of God. It's not the Ten Commandments. It's political correctness that you violated. So let's use the open borders example again. It's not politically correct to support the wall.

Right. Or to think that we should deport people who came here illegally. Not politically correct at all. In fact, not in keeping with Christianity, supposedly, because, you know, it's funny to me, aside here, that the people who support that in evangelical circles are very quick to talk about the Old Testament and how the strangers were treated.

But they don't want to apply anything else in the Old Testament. They very cherry pick a lot. Of course, that's out of context. But but, you know, you think the government needs to vet people coming in here and somehow this is making you a racist or whatever.

Well, you violated not a biblical standard. When you do that, you violated a standard that actually is coming from the world, a politically correct standard. If you think this is the thing that I got in trouble for.

Right. I thought, you know, we ought to leave monuments alone. And now, of course, there's a Christian university that just they painted over or they changed a Shakespeare mural that they had because Shakespeare's got white privilege.

We got it. We can't have that. And so if I went to that school, the big school in California, I would have gotten in trouble because I probably would have made a stink about that and say, look, no, this is part of Western civilization.

The reasons that you're saying that this is wrong are off base. You're not interpreting history right. In fact, if you use the principles to interpret the Bible the way you interpret what you shouldn't be interpreting the Bible, the way that you interpret that you should be interpreting history, you're not going to come to these conclusions.

Right. If you're consistent. But because I supported monuments staying where they were, Confederate monuments specifically, I'm a social justice heretic. Right. I've broken a law of political correctness.

And we can pick any number of issues. You know, you don't support environmentalism. Well, this isn't coming from scripture. Of course, they'll prove text to scripture. But these are far and away from the Ten Commandments.

We're not talking directly about laws that God has written down. We're talking about alleged implications from laws. And once you get down into the nitty gritty, you can't use scripture to support many of these things.

Reparations is in the form of affirmative action. Right. That's another one. If you go against that, you are a heretic and, you know, you need to support those things. That's part of the law. That's part of political correctness.

So we have a new law. We have new priests or pastors, and those are the woke leaders. So I said this in the video, but when I was at Southeastern, I couldn't figure out why we had so many African-American speakers in chapel, at least one of the semesters that I was there that I talked about.

And I didn't have a problem with this in the least. I absolutely love the teaching. I mean, Voddie Bauckham is one of my favorites. I love this guy. And I don't care if you're green. If you can exegete the scripture and explain it, you got my ear.

The issue that I had or the suspicion that I had was that they were given platforms just because of their color. Because sometimes they weren't Southern Baptists. And sometimes they weren't even preaching.

So what's going on here? And I think what's going on is there's a new priesthood. There is emerging a class of leaders who get to tell you whether or not you are truly woke, i .e., forgiven. And for Southeastern to do this, it's signaling to everyone that, look, our institution isn't racist.

We haven't broken any of these politically correct laws. Why just look? Look at who puts their stamp of approval on us. Look at all these leaders that are coming in who are minority leaders, and they seem to like what we're doing here.

So we're justified. So there's a new priesthood emerging, people that you need to go to or get their approval to feel that you've been forgiven in some way. There's also a new canon. So we have the Bible in Christianity.

Well, there's a new canon emerging because you can't substantiate social justice from the scripture. These guys are not, they'll cherry pick scriptures to support the framework that they have, take them out of context.

But they're not, these aren't scripture driven arguments that they're giving. They're going to books like Divided by Race. They're going to books that smuggle in concepts that are outside of Christianity from psychology and sociology.

And they're taking that to Christianity and then trying to put a veneer of verses over it to make it Christian. And so there's a new canon of scripture. If you challenge these ideas of social justice, you're going to be told you got to read these books.

And Vodibacham actually talked about that more extensively at the Social Justice and the Gospel Conference. And I found that very interesting because I knew what he was talking about. Equality is the ultimate goal.

That is utopia. That is heaven. When we have equality, and it's really here on this earth, because when we die and go to heaven, right? We're going to be equally forgiven before God. But the goal of social justice is an earthly goal.

It is finding this. It's more of an egalitarian equality on this earth. Everyone equal, equal outcomes even. That's the goal. And so it apes the gospel, social justice. Now, a few differences between the gospel and social justice, the things I've already pointed out are descriptions.

Social Justice vs. the True Gospel: Heart, Individuality, and Sanctification

But I'm going to talk about the focus of social justice. They're focused on external behaviors. So you may not know you're racist. Like the blog I talked about in my video, you may not know. But look, you actually are.

Because look at the actions. Look at the sins of omission. You don't do these things. You're not giving money to this organization. Oh, my goodness. You know, you have a sin problem. You have a social justice problem.

You are not enlightened. So it's looking at these behaviors and saying, well, that's the problem. Fix these behaviors. Now, the true gospel looks at, it does look at behaviors, right? But it's looking more for a heart condition.

And it's getting at that. And of course, there's so many verses, right? But Matthew 15, I think, is Jesus when he clearly talks about this. It's not what comes out of man. It's what, or rather, it's not what goes into man.

It's what comes out of a man that shows that he's impure and sinful because it's the heart that determines these things. And so with social justice, it's not so much a heart issue as it is external behavior modification.

It's changing the way you live. So there's a focus here that is different than the true gospel. Also, there's a group focus. So we divide people up into these groups and we include even dead people, previous generations in these groups.

So white people means white people going back hundreds of years, thousands of years. And all the sins of white people. And we today, you know, I'm a child. Obviously, if you look at me, I'm sure if I did a DNA test with Ancestry .com, I'd probably get a cracker back in the mail.

I don't think they'd even probably give me the test results. It just said, here's your saltine cracker, you know? So I'm white, okay? Right? According to those categories. Now, just because I'm white, it doesn't mean that I'm one nationality.

I mean, I have British in me, I have Irish in me, Scottish. I got a little bit of German in me. And since I haven't done the test, I'd be curious to see what else I have. But at least I know I have those things in me.

Now, because I have those things, I am left with the overwhelming burden of having to make atonement for everything that my ancestors did in regards to bad behavior against oppressed people. Right? That's how this gospel works, a social justice gospel.

So I'm part of a group with them. I can't separate myself from them. I'm part of their group. The true gospel focuses on individuals, right? Now, you may say, okay, but how come, like, let's say Peter on the day of Pentecost, he's talking to this big group of people and he's speaking to them as a group.

Yeah, he is. Yeah, sure. He is talking to them as a group. Christianity does have groups, but salvation itself is an individual issue. So you can talk to a group and they all have this individual issue.

And that's the focus of the true gospel. Okay, this group of people, they need to be saved, right? So we're going to talk to them all, but it's an individual issue that they have. The social justice gospel doesn't see it that way.

Of course, Ezekiel 1820 talks about sins of fathers and how the sons are not responsible for those things. Of course, sons can, because they are passed down habits from their fathers, they can certainly act in some horrible ways, but they're not ultimately responsible for what they didn't do.

And that's the true gospel. Social justice cuts people up into these groups and says, yeah, you guys are all responsible. I mean, that's how Thabiti got away with at the MLK 50, essentially blaming white people in general for what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.

Right. You guys are all this one group. Of course, that is antithetical to the gospel. So social justice also puts sanctification first and justification last. You got to prove you're woke before you can really be accepted in their circles.

You got to do some things first. And of course, I'm going to reference Thabiti again. I hate to hate to keep ragging on him, but the examples, the more extreme examples that come to mind are him. But when he was speaking at Southeastern, he said, hey, it's not enough to go on Twitter and quote MLK or say that you're for social justice.

That that doesn't make the cut. You got to go do justice. You got to prove you're woke. What's the true gospel say? You don't have to prove you're woke. You're justified first, then sanctification. You have to prove anything before being saved.

There comes a time and it could be a process or it could be a moment when you repent of your sins and the Holy Spirit enters you and you have new desires. You don't want to do the things you used to do that were sinful.

And you're going to prove that over time because if you have a heart change, your actions will change. Social justice gospel has the car before the horse, says that your actions have to change first, then we'll see if you really mean this stuff.

The Endless Woke Indulgence System

Another difference towards the focus here, the emphasis, social justice is a hamster wheel. That's the term I use. It never ends. You keep having to prove yourself that you're woke. So you have to continue in the grace that is dispensed from those who dispense grace, the woke movement.

The tetzels of the movement have to keep giving you indulgences. You have to keep purchasing them with your donations to liberal organizations or whatever the case may be. It's an everlasting process.

It never ends. If you make one statement today, five years down the road, you're going to have to make another statement that says, I don't agree with, you know, I'm going to pick racism because the Southern Baptists have been tripping over themselves in the last 20 years trying to put out statements that say they're not racist.

There's been so many of them, different Southern Baptist groups and individuals in Southern Baptist circles. So trying to prove that and it once wasn't enough. You just got to keep doing it. The true gospel obviously is it's a one-time deal, once for all.

And I want to give a great example of this. The IFCA, which is a, I think it's called IFC International now. So they're a kind of a fundamentalist group, but I grew up in a circle where my dad was involved in that organization.

So I knew people in that organization. Well, long story short, in the 1930s, it was a fundamental group. Some African-American colleges, seminaries wanted to join and be affiliated with the IFCA and the leaders at the time said, no, no, this is, I think you should join a different organization.

We agree with you, but, you know, that's not the direction we're going. We're white, you're black, join your own group. Wrong, right? Absolutely wrong. So what did they do to correct this? Did they have 15 different statements over 20 years where they said in no uncertain terms, we denounce our founders.

They were a bunch of bigots. We can't believe that those in the 1930s were this way and we're not this way. And this organization, did they do what the Southern Baptist did? No, they didn't. Can I tell you what they did?

They reached out to those colleges and the seminaries and they said, you know what? I'm so sorry that those who came before us didn't give you a place at the table. You know, you believe the same things we believe.

Come on in. We're sorry about that. Please forgive us. That was it. They reached out to the people specifically that they had wronged and they apologized and repented. They didn't broadcast to the entire world that they were now finally woke.

And we're going to keep broadcasting this and keep reminding people of how good we are because that's self-righteousness. And that's what the SBC is doing right now. No, instead they did what Jesus commands you to do.

They went to those who they had grieved. That is the model. That is how you're supposed to do this. So if you are a reformed individual, a Calvinist, I'm not afraid to use the word, so I will use it. If you are someone like that, you cannot support social justice.

It's been said that it's the young reformed guys who are behind this. And I would agree. It's a lot of young reformed guys in evangelical circles, but you are being completely inconsistent if you're reformed and you support this.

Because in a reformed understanding of the gospel, the gospel is a once for all, God inspired, God motivated move of the Holy Spirit that took you when you were in your sin and brought you to grace. Sometimes kicking in, well, I shouldn't say sometimes, there, see, look at that Arminianism that creeped in, always kicking and screaming, not wanting to go towards God.

But God, because of his irresistible grace, he took you into his kingdom and you love him for it because he changed your desires, right? That's what we believe as, quote unquote, Calvinist, reformed individuals within the church.

The gospel, the woke gospel of racial reconciliation, of social justice does not believe that. You are not cleansed because of the work of Christ on your behalf. You're cleansed because of the things you do.

You have to do something to continue in that grace because otherwise you lose it. And we do not believe that you can lose your salvation, but social justice advocates believe you can lose your wokeness.

Somehow you can, because you have to everlastingly gain forgiveness for it. So that's my contrast briefly between social justice and the gospel and how they are completely different, antithetical to one another.

Couldn't be more different. It's a gospel competitor. It's not a gospel accessory. It needs to be rejected by the church, full-fledged rejected. Now coming up, as I said, we're going to be talking about history.

We're gonna be talking about a cult. One thing I think I might do this next week, there's boxcar number two I mentioned earlier, which is feminism and so forth. And then boxcar number three of the social justice movement, which is sexual deviancies, homosexuality.

I have been planning to do something on homosexuality, specifically Christian homosexuality. And there's a book called Single Gay Christian and a couple other sources that I was thinking of drawing on to exemplify this.

But either next week or within the next coming weeks, I am going to do a review and I am going to show how dangerous this movement is. And this is, you know, we're going to talk about the racial stuff and the gender stuff.

This is far more destructive if we accept the categories of the sexual revolution. So stay tuned for that. I hope you enjoyed that. Be encouraged, OK, because I don't want to end on how awful social justice is.

Yeah, it is awful, just like every other heresy. They're awful. But the grace of God is still saving souls. And as a reformed guy, especially right as a Christian, even, I don't have to be reformed, but I think especially as a reformed guy, I believe that God's going to accomplish his purposes.

He doesn't need seminaries to do it. He doesn't need the gospel coalition to do it or desiring God to do it. He just needs people who are going to be faithful to his word, share the gospel and then teach others to be disciples of Christ.

And that's it. That's what we're looking for. The power of the spirit is enough. So go with God and look forward to those episodes coming out. And don't forget to check out Sovereign Nations and their videos on the social justice and the gospel conference.

Have a good day.