May 17, 2018 Show with Phil Johnson on “Racialism Gone Wild: When Hyper-Sensitivity & Preoccupation Over Skin Color & Ethnic Differences Eclipses the Gospel that Unites All in Christ”

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on the 17th day of May 2018.

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I'm delighted to have back as a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today my old friend

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Phil Johnson who I believe could very well be the most frequently interviewed guest in the history of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and we are going to be discussing something that we're not comfortable about discussing but we believe it needs to be discussed.

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Phil Johnson is the executive director of Grace to You, the radio, television, and literary ministry of John MacArthur and today we are speaking on racialism going wild when hypersensitivity and preoccupation over skin color and ethnic differences eclipses the gospel that unites us all in Christ and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Phil Johnson.

02:09

Thank you Chris, good to be with you. And let me immediately give our listeners our email address it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com

02:17

chrisarnsen at gmail .com and I think that you would agree with me, excuse me, at the outset of the program if we make it clear that when we use terms like races and things like that we both believe that there is only one race, the human race.

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We're using just the common vernacular when it comes to words like race and racism and so on.

02:46

This has really helped to confuse the issue on...

02:51

Yeah absolutely, absolutely, and that's a very important point I think right at the outset because scripture repeatedly makes this point that God has made all men of one blood, one race, and that no one is to be called unclean.

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It's just a theme through scripture, particularly in the church with those who are united with Christ.

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We are part of the same body. To fragment the church into little groups of any kind is a dangerous thing.

03:27

Well I was interviewing during the second hour of my program yesterday a wonderful brother, a

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Reformed Baptist in Indianapolis, a pastor and director of global missions, excuse me,

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Dr. Erskine Dodson, and he was completely out of the loop and unaware about the current media, what's the best word of putting this, the wars going on, the infighting and the slandering and all kinds of things going on in the name of race, in the name of social justice, and basically what is going on, and perhaps you could add to this, that there are a number of people who happen to have dark skin, who happen to be black individuals who are professedly

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Reformed and probably most known for their participation in the blogosphere, being popular bloggers, some even authors and conference speakers, who are basically saying that many

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Christians, predominantly white Christians but even some of our black brethren who are saying the same things as James White and you and others on this issue, they're saying that we are either consciously or unconsciously guilty of spreading racism and racial bigotry, etc.,

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etc., and the thing that amazes me is that some of it is in a reaction and an anger and a response to things like we as Christians should be colorblind, which is something that all people who opposed racism decades ago would firmly believe, and it seems that that in and of itself is now deemed as being racist and it's the thing that's kind of spooky and eerie to me is that some of the rhetoric that I'm hearing from black brethren on this issue sounds eerily familiar in connection with white segregationists, you know what

05:52

I'm saying? But if you could comment on and add to what I just said. Yeah, no, that's true, and yet I think the biggest problem actually comes from sort of privileged white people who want to jump on what's a politically correct bandwagon at the moment, identity politics, and in my view, identity politics is simply a different form of racism.

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As you say, it's like the mirror compliment, or it's not really the opposite of white racism, it's just the same thing looked at backwards, and it just seems to me identity politics has revived racism in America when it seems like at the very moment when racial strife was finally beginning to sort of fade into the background of our culture and we're beginning to get beyond that, now there's more racial strife and more tension between various ethnic groups than there was even five or ten years ago.

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It's a sad thing to see. The fact that evangelicals have suddenly decided that this is a cause they want to make central really concerns me.

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So we've recently had two groups together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition, both groups about a decade old.

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Both groups started ostensibly because wanting to bring together diverse people around our common commitment to the

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Gospel, so the idea was to unite the Church around what's most important, the Gospel, recognizing that there are doctrinal issues and maybe even cultural issues that we would disagree on, political issues, things like that, but we're in solid agreement on the

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Gospel and that's what's most important, and I was more than willing to lend my support to that idea.

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I think it's really what we're taught in Scripture, but now both of those groups this year have held conventions where racial reconciliation is what they refer to it as, has been the subject, and yet rather than any kind of reconciliation, what both groups have managed to do is stir controversy and strife over an issue that's not the

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Gospel. And I just think that's ironic that a group that was founded, that any the

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Gospel is actually sowing division over something that's not the

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Gospel, a political issue or a cultural issue. Well, let's hear how you personally got dragged into this controversy, and I know because you have been, at least in some measure, under attack or criticism or even have been slandered in the midst of all of this blogosphere war going on in regard to race, where many people are being falsely accused, tragically and sinfully and wickedly accused of racism.

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And let's be clear, I hate racism. I'm 65 years old, so I lived through, although I was a child and an adolescent at the peak of the civil rights movement and all that, but I lived through that.

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I went to schools, an elementary school that were segregated, not the hardcore enforced -by -law segregation, but there just weren't any black students in the schools

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I went to until junior high, and then they began to desegregate the schools, and I was one of those who was excited about that, enthusiastic about it, wanting to see harmony between various ethnicities, and worked hard for that.

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My mom was a remedial reading teacher who was hired to teach students who had difficulty reading in an inner -city school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she passed up opportunities for more lucrative teaching jobs because her question was, who's going to teach these urban children to read if I don't?

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And she devoted her life to, you know, teaching disadvantaged students how to read.

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Praise God. What? I said, praise God. Yeah, and there was no one who hated racism or even the hint of racism more than my mom, and so, you know, when a leading evangelical publishes an article in one of the major evangelical websites saying that everybody who's white needs to confess the complicity of their parents and grandparents in the murder of Martin Luther King, which is the claim that was made,

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I take that as an insult at my mom and what she devoted her life to. And I'm not about to pretend that I need to confess my personal complicity or my parents' complicity in the murder of Martin Luther King.

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It's just an absurd notion, and it's racist at its heart. I can't think of a more blatantly racist accusation to make.

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Yeah, it's really, for lack of a better term, I think it's insane, really.

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Yeah, the claim is you're guilty because of the color of your skin, and you need to repent of that, and that's just a ridiculous assumption, and it is the moral equivalent of the kind of racism that brought about the

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Jim Crow era. Yeah, my mother, for instance, she viewed the n -word, if it was uttered in my household, by myself or my friends as kids because kids will repeat all kinds of horrible things.

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My mother treated that as a curse word. My mother would, you know, would punish me or my siblings for saying those kinds of things.

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Now, of course, we can't go overboard and say that we are sinless people.

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I'm not saying that I had never had a racist thought or never told a racist joke in my life, but there is a difference between having as a part of your sin nature, especially before Christ, or even a part of the sin that we carry with you, something that may be a sin in our mind and heart.

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There's a difference between that and something that controls your life and heavily influences your decisions and the way you behave.

12:55

Wouldn't you say that that's also a difference in the way that racism affects the human race?

13:05

Yeah, and again, racism is definitely a sin, and like any other sin of the heart or sin of the mind, it's an easy one to commit, even unthinkingly.

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And so, you know, let's be honest about that. But it's too much of a temptation to turn an issue like that into a political cause that just further divides people into classes and ethnic groups and creates strife between them, and of all places where that should not be happening, the

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Church is the primary one, because Christ has broken down all those walls of partition that divided peoples and ethnic groups and all of that.

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We're all one in Christ, those of us who believe in Christ, and to be telling, you know, an entire ethnic group, because of the color of your skin, you need to repent of this sin that basically was committed by an angry southern white guy, as if everybody who's white is somehow complicit in that.

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It's just such an egregious smearing of people's intentions and their hearts.

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It makes me sad and unbelievable to me that this is going on, even among the leadership of organizations that were founded less than 15 years ago, ostensibly to bring people together in unity around the gospel, which was a great goal, and now

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I don't see how these organizations can ultimately recover their original reason for being from what they've done.

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You can't back away from this issue once you've become embroiled in it.

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Yes, and to repeat, you and I believe that this is a wicked, evil, satanic sin, the sin of racism.

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I mean, we have in 1 John chapter 4, 20, for example, if someone says,

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I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love

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God whom he has not seen. And there is a blemish on the Church that there has been a history of racism, but the thing is, the racism has existed and still exists no matter what people's skin color is.

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My friend who's now in heaven with the Lord for eternity, Dr. Robert J. Cameron, he was a black pastor, first in the

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Reformed Episcopal denomination, then in the PCA, then finally in the OPC, where he was when he was called home to the

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Lord. He wrote a book attacking the sin of racism called The Last Pew on the

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Left, a major publisher, a publisher, if I mentioned the name you would say, oh yeah, I know that publisher.

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It's one of the most well -known and lucrative publishing houses that publishes

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Christian works, although I don't think it's owned by Christians anymore. But they sent Dr. Cameron, when he sent them his manuscript, they sent him a rejection letter and they told him that this is the finest unsolicited manuscript we have ever seen, but we do not feel comfortable publishing a book that criticizes the black church for racism.

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He was being even -handed in his approach and one of the reasons he was compelled to write the book is he recognized, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice, that Sunday morning at 11 a .m.,

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as much as we have accomplished in the area of integration in the body of Christ, there are still thousands of churches that are all white or all black that don't need to be, and Dr.

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Cameron, recognizing that and responding to that, wrote this book, but he knows that the black church at large, for lack of a better term, had the same exact problem as the white church.

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So anyway. Yeah, you can't, it's not politically correct to say that these days, because the theory is if you are part of an oppressed people group, then you cannot possibly be guilty of racism.

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And that's just a patently, and to my mind, obviously, unclear, untrue claim.

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The idea that if you're part of an oppressed people group, you can't be guilty of racism. I know lots of people who are members of minority themselves who are racists against other minorities.

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Right, and of course, we have the biblical example that racism is exposed as an evil, wicked sin, most in the

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New Testament, in regard to the sin that was committed by Jews. The Jewish Christians, who were demonstrating bigotry against their

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Gentile brethren, including the Apostle Peter initially, had to be rebuked by the Apostle Paul for it, and yet the

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Jews were a persecuted minority, an enslaved minority, who had been treated horribly and brutally and cruelly and wickedly for centuries, ever since they came from the loins of Abraham.

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Right. So, I mean, it's ridiculous to say that just because you are a persecuted minority, you can't have this sin.

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Yeah, well, and in fact, in the time of my great grandparents, my ancestors were part of a persecuted minority, too.

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Well, one branch of my family had immigrated from Germany and lived in poverty in Arkansas and southern

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Oklahoma, basically earning a living picking cotton and being subsistence farmers.

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They weren't, I don't come from a privilege stock, you know, but there are people who will judge you just by the color of your skin and say, you know, you enjoy certain privileges.

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And it's true that I do enjoy certain privileges, but privilege isn't, where did we get the idea that privilege is a sin?

19:16

Right. And as you were saying before, minorities and those of all skin colors have been clearly seen throughout history as being guilty of the sin of bigotry towards not only people of different colors, like you have hatred of, hatred by black individuals, of Asian individuals that take over supermarkets and stores in their communities in the inner city.

19:44

You have, in fact, even as somebody as liberal as Maya Angelou, the late

19:50

Maya Angelou, I can still vividly remember an interview with her when she was talking about the hatred and the bigotry demonstrated between light -skinned blacks towards darker -skinned blacks.

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She even remembers an all -black church having a hairbrush tied to a string nailed to the door of a church that, and the sign that said, if you can't run this through your hair, don't bother entering, or something like that.

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So this is just a, as Dr. Cameron, the brother I just mentioned, who's now with the

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Lord, he said racism is a sin problem, not a skin problem, and that's just blatantly true, undeniably.

20:36

Yeah. Well, how did you get dragged into this, personally? I don't even remember.

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I honestly don't remember how far back it goes, but last year or two years ago, thereabout,

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I read something by Thabiti. Right.

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I can't remember what it was that piqued my concern, but I remembered a message he gave at one of the original

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T4G sessions, and in fact, actually at both the 2008 and 2010,

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I think, in both of those T4G meetings, Thabiti gave a couple of really good messages about mission drift,

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I think was the term he used, but the idea was, look, if you become obsessed with issues like social justice and culture and all of that, and move away from the gospel, you've gone off message, and you're losing it.

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And then in the wake of one of the controversial police shootings, I think it was the Ferguson, Missouri thing,

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Michael, what was his name, Michael Brown, was that black man who was shot after he had robbed a convenience store and I think tried to take a gun from the police, but originally the reports on that were sketchy, and it sounded like maybe he was the victim, another victim of overzealous police or injustice or whatever, and that sparked a whole bunch of protests and across the country riots and complaints against the police and that sort of thing.

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And Thabiti wrote a couple of articles critiquing the police and claiming that there was institutional racism across the board amongst policemen in America, and I just thought, you know, he's doing what he said we shouldn't do.

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Not only do I think Thabiti totally misunderstood what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and misrepresented it, and even after the facts came out

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I don't feel like he ever really corrected his stance on that. It shifted his message so that from that time until now, pretty much everything notable that he has said, everything that has stirred any kind of response or the people have noticed, has had to do with the issue of racism and accusations against white people in particular and the police.

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And so I wrote a tweet basically highlighting what he had said in 2008 and 2010 and saying, you know,

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I think he's gone off message just like he said you shouldn't. And that's kind of how I got dragged into it.

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People began to treat me as if I were the foil of Thabiti and you'll be late.

23:49

Weren't you even accused of denying the gospel or something like that? Yeah, but that wasn't the biggest thing.

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That wasn't the biggest thing? It seemed to me that that would be the biggest thing.

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Well, it was the biggest, I don't mean it wasn't the biggest thing. I mean, that wasn't the most common complaint. The most common accusation against me was that I was just a flat out racist, that to disagree with Thabiti on that issue was to be a racist.

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And suddenly, I'm having to defend myself for the first time in my life to say, look, I'm not a racist. But yeah, but by the way,

24:27

I want to let everybody listening know that if you want MP3s of two excellent interviews that I conducted with Thabiti Anyabwile in 2009 on his book,

24:41

The Decline of African American Theology. That's a great book, by the way. Yes, I will email you those

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MP3s. They're not on my current website yet, because that is from the old Iron Sharpens Iron radio that was broadcasted out of New York and my webmaster,

24:58

Eric Nielsen, who has a full time job, just has not gotten around to incorporating all of my old interviews onto the new site, at least visibly, where you could look them up by guest name and so on.

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But two excellent interviews. I can't even remember thinking for one second that I disagreed with anything that Thabiti was saying.

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And he even agreed with a caller because I had a call -in show at that time, as you remember.

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He even agreed with a caller that if Barack Obama was a member of his church, this caller said that because of his beliefs on certain moral and social issues, that person would be under church discipline.

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Barack Obama would be under church discipline. And Thabiti agreed with that and then said, but the one thing

25:52

I'm very happy about Barack Obama is that during his presidential candidacy, he never pulled the race card.

25:58

Now, how can you be happy about not pulling the race card when that seems to be going on very frequently every day now amongst people in this controversy?

26:10

Yeah. In fact, I would say the surprising irony to me was that when

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Obama was elected as the first black president of the United States, I think

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I thought, although I disagreed with his politics and all that, I thought, having a black president might actually do something to quell the remnants of racial strife in America.

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And it actually had the opposite effect. It seemed to me that he fanned the flames of racism more than anybody else who's held that office prior to him, you know, maybe going back prior to the 1960s.

26:54

Yeah, but Thabiti was speaking while he was candidating the first time, I believe.

27:00

Whether he was right or wrong about that assessment, he was applauding somebody, namely

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Barack Obama, for not pulling the race card. And in fact, one of the things that's troubling about this whole discussion is you have the thought police going around publicly accusing people who are really innocent of the sin of racism.

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They're publicly slandering them of being racist by trying to dissect phrases and words and catch people in saying something that is conceived as racist.

27:38

I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of things that we say today that will be perceived as racism.

27:45

Well, one of the difficulties right now is no matter which side of the divide you're on and no matter what you say, somebody's going to accuse you of racism.

27:55

I mean, we've accused the proponents of identity politics of racism already.

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It's a volatile situation. And there's no question that there's a lot of racism floating around, at least racial tensions.

28:16

Whether you could honestly say that's racism in the sense of hatred for another person because of his race,

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I don't know if that's fair or not. But yeah, we have reached this dangerous point where no matter what you say, somebody's going to call you a racist.

28:36

Yes. And one of the things that I loved that Thabiti said in my 2009 interview, one of my 2009 interviews with him, is in his being critical of the thought police, people who immediately attack you if you disagree with them on their approach to specific issues, especially in this case, race or color.

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He said, you really can't have fertile discussion if you don't have honest discussion.

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And he brought that up in context of being critical of leaders in the civil rights movement in the 60s and even the secularization of the abolitionist movement centuries prior.

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When it changed, it transformed from a Christian movement to a more secular one.

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He laid the blame at the foot or at the feet of the abolitionists who became secular and many of the civil rights heroes of the 60s for the shift in the black church at large from teaching and proclaiming and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ and substituting it with a social gospel.

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And so he said, you really can't have fertile discussion if you don't have honest discussion. You have to bring up these things if they are true, historically.

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You can't sweep them under the rug. But if you have any comment on that. No, I think that's right.

30:09

I agree. And we have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air, whether you agree or disagree with us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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This is Chris Zarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You, the radio, television, and literary ministry of John MacArthur.

35:20

We are discussing racialism gone wild when hypersensitivity and preoccupation over skin color and ethnic differences eclipses the gospel that unites us all in Christ.

35:30

And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

35:36

And by the way, another interesting, a very interesting phrase that Thabiti Anyabwile used in one of my 2009 interviews with him over the decline of African -American theology is that he referred to the tyranny of modern -day

35:54

African -American social and political activism in regard to their attempts to controlling how racial tension and division is or are addressed.

36:04

He actually used the term tyranny because of the way people were being totally shut out if they had some kind of a different idea than was being presented by those who were constantly using the accusation of racism against white brothers in Christ for believing, basically, that we should not have collective guilt over sins of anyone just because of our skin color.

36:37

In fact, I'm sure you know, you and I were basically raised not that far apart in the decades that we were born and so on.

36:50

But that was always the position of the person who radically opposed racism is that you do not judge a whole group by what some who belong to that group do.

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Like, for instance, if you happen to be a white person that is living in some inner city neighborhood and the majority of the crime taking place around you happens to be being performed by black neighbors, you should not.

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And it's evil and wicked to say, well, that means that all black people are prone to be thieves and murderers and violent criminals.

37:33

I mean, that's what a lot of white racists have said and continue to say. Why is it any different if someone were to say that we, because we have less melanin content in our skin, that we are more prone to be racist or, in fact, are by nature racist?

37:52

What's the difference? Yeah, well, I don't see a difference. And I mean, admittedly, that is a tendency, a sinful tendency,

38:00

I think, of all humans that we have to resist. And that is the tendency to judge all people by, according to the worst members of their group, you know.

38:13

I do that with Cardinal fans. I'm a Cubs fan. And when

38:18

I meet a Cardinal fan, I tend to think, oh, he's going to be just as obnoxious as this guy who needles me all the time.

38:25

And it's not the case. And that's a frivolous example. But it is true that you can't, you can't impute the worst characteristics of even a degraded culture to every individual.

38:40

We're supposed to love our neighbor. And that holds true on both sides.

38:47

By the way, we have a listener, anonymous listener, who says, and I have to enlarge the font here.

38:58

For what it's worth, Thabiti was a part on the

39:03

Reformed Forum podcast, and he chastised the hosts for being too sensitive and beholden to political correctness when they suggested that they might not have the standing to speak on racial issues because they were white.

39:22

Oh, well, actually, the listener is saying this was circa 2009.

39:29

So yeah, well, that's not surprising, judging from what we've just been saying about my interviews with him.

39:36

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there was a there was a definite shift in Thabiti's perspective when he moved back to the mainland

39:45

America. You know, he was pastoring in the Caribbean for several years. Yeah, Grand Cayman. Right.

39:52

And actually, that's where I was interviewing him from. He was on the phone from that church.

39:59

Yeah. And so, you know, I think perhaps the environment in which he's ministering has colored his views to some degree.

40:11

I don't know. I don't know what's going on in his mind and heart. He insisted when

40:17

I provoked him on that, that he had not changed his views at all since he gave that message in 2008, 2010.

40:27

Those two messages. I don't know how he can say that. It seems to me that what he's saying now is not only a different message from what he said then, he's doing the very thing he seemed to be warning against.

40:46

Now, we have heard lately that our mutual friend, Dr. James R.

40:51

White of Alpha Omega Ministries, has been severely rebuked and criticized and called racist because he basically says that Christianity should be colorblind and that we are not to be focusing on, in any significant way, on the skin color of our brethren in Christ when we come together and gather for worship, when we come together at the

41:21

Lord's table. This is another startling, bizarre twist of things where that seems to be a line right out of the handbook of white segregationists.

41:34

I don't even understand the root of that view that we are not to be colorblind.

41:42

It's as if we are to always be keeping in the forefront the different things that accompany, very often, those of a certain skin color and the way that they worship, or the churches they're members of, and all that.

42:00

As if this has to be some kind of a primary aspect, this divide, this multi -ethnic, multi -racial, multi -cultural thing has to be something of primary importance in the way we behave and interact.

42:16

Otherwise, we are a racist. It seems, again, like racism itself.

42:23

Yeah, well, I've read a few articles, actually, that essentially impute the sin of racism to everyone.

42:32

So you can't—don't deny that you're a racist, because that's the proof you are. So not everyone, regardless of how dark their skin may be?

42:43

Well, it's generally leveled, mostly, at those that are perceived to be coming from, you know, privileged groups, white privilege and all that.

42:55

But yeah, it's true. I think, you know, even if you're a black person and conservative, you'll be written off as either, you know, an

43:06

Uncle Tom cow -cowing trying to get the approval of the white man or whatever.

43:14

So yeah, I think no matter what race you are, if you don't buy into the identity politics, you're going to be either branded a racist or otherwise excluded from the conversation.

43:29

Right. That, I think, is what's so difficult about the current thing. You hear people talking about, we need dialogue, we need to talk to each other and all that, but they really don't want to talk.

43:38

They want acquiescence to their views, because you can't even propose an alternative idea without getting blocked or written off or labeled a racist or whatever.

43:51

And the racist label is such a dangerous one, because once your reputation is smeared with that, you can't get rid of it no matter what you do, no matter what you've done.

44:02

It's a way of tarring the reputation of anybody who disagrees with you.

44:09

And that's why it's so common that pretty much any perspective, and this is true,

44:15

I think, especially on the political left, any position that's near and dear to the political left, if you disagree with it, someone at that end of the political spectrum is going to attribute your disagreement to simple racism.

44:35

Yeah, and the reason why this is so serious, it goes back to one of our original statements right at the beginning of the program, you and I, and every

44:44

Christian worth his salt, believes that racism is an evil, satanic sin.

44:50

Right. And it's really a moronic sin. It's a sin that is, if it weren't so serious and disgusting and deplorable, would be laughable.

45:03

The thought that someone would think that they are in any way superior to someone else just because of their skin color is pretty bizarre.

45:12

And especially when you are a Christian, you have absolutely no excuse for it. Right. Yeah, let me say, too, that I think a lot of the evidence that's cited to prove that the evangelical church is infected with racism is bogus evidence.

45:29

You know, the fact that there are churches that are predominantly white and churches that are predominantly black in and of itself doesn't prove racism.

45:37

It just proves that there are disparate cultures, that people who belong to those cultures like to congregate with people in their own cultures.

45:47

You see that and nobody generally complains about it when the issue is language rather than the color of your skin.

45:56

Nobody complains that there are Russian churches that exclude people who speak only English because it just makes a certain amount of sense, you know.

46:05

Obviously, obviously, you're not speaking of people who are actually making it a policy not to invite somebody from the outside into their church.

46:14

See, that's the thing. That would be the proof of racism. If you said, you know, you can't come here because you're not a member of our ethnic group, that's pure racism.

46:26

And honestly, I've been a Christian for 35 years. I don't see racism now.

46:32

I think this was true back in, you know, up to probably and including part of my lifetime, that there would have been churches, particularly in the

46:43

American South, that would have purposely excluded members of ethnic groups that, you know, weren't in the majority.

46:53

But that's not true today. And in my 35 years, or 40 years, wait, I was born again in 71.

47:00

How many years have I been a Christian? Almost 50 years. I think in that entire time,

47:07

I could probably count on one hand the number of authentic racists that I've met, people who really are just seething with hatred for, you know, members of other ethnic groups, people who profess to be

47:23

Christians, and I'm talking about people I've personally met. I know there are nests of kinists and other racists on the internet, and I've corresponded with them.

47:34

So I'm not saying it doesn't exist. Yeah, for those of our listeners who don't know what a kinist is, that's someone who believes that you can't even be saved unless you're white.

47:43

At least the ones that I've interacted with have that view. Yeah, I don't think they all necessarily even go that far, but they teach that there are inferior races, and it's a white supremacist perspective applied to, sadly, frequently, to Reformed theology.

48:03

A lot of the kinists I've met are Calvinists and Presbyterians, mostly from the

48:11

South. And in fact, there used to be a large kinist website called

48:17

Little Geneva, run by a guy who was just—this is what we're talking about—15 years ago, when

48:26

I started blogging, the very first widespread conflict that I had, and the first time

48:32

I ever had to block anybody from commenting on my blog, was when a nest of kinists came after me because they thought

48:40

I was not white enough or something. And so,

48:46

I know they exist, but that's not a widespread problem in the evangelical churches that most of your listeners would be attending.

48:56

Well, I may disagree with you in one aspect. Maybe I'm more in agreement than I think with you on this.

49:06

Let me run this by you. I was saved in the 1980s in a church,

49:12

Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, that was predominantly white, had maybe one or two black families.

49:19

I think, actually, when I first became a member there, there was only one who was the husband of the family, was a deacon.

49:30

And I remember having a conversation with our pastor that because of the fact that our congregation was lily -white, basically, and it was in the heart of an interracial area that was and still is predominantly black, we said to ourselves, my pastor and I, this just isn't right.

49:50

It's not a right reflection of where we are. And we were the only sovereign grace -believing church in that town.

49:58

And so, I suggested that we have my friend who I mentioned earlier, Dr. Robert J.

50:04

Cameron, who's now with the Lord. I said, why don't we have a Bible conference with him, since we believe nearly identically as he does, except for the fact that he's a paedo -baptist, and why don't we have a conference with him and plaster photographs on flyers all over the community.

50:22

And we did that, and we had quite a number of black neighbors to the church visit, and I think close to 10 families wound up staying there for quite a long time, for years.

50:36

In fact, some are still there. The church later merged with First Baptist Church of Merrick and became

50:41

Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island. But do you think that there was something inappropriate about my pastor and I saying that, hey, this is not right.

50:49

It's not a right reflection. I'm not saying that the people in the church were racists, but they weren't acting responsibly in bringing the gospel and in an invitation to those in the local community, especially those that were black, because it was a predominantly black community.

51:08

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And in fact, we have a situation like that at Grace Church right now.

51:14

Grace Church, of course, one of the larger churches in California, and there must be 35 or 40 different ethnic groups represented in our membership.

51:26

It's an amazing mix of cultures and even languages and people, and I love it.

51:37

But we are situated two blocks from, I think, the largest

51:42

Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere, or at least it was at one time. And so most of the community are

51:49

Thai Buddhists from Thailand. And similarly here, we have made a concerted effort to reach people who are literally our neighbors living in that neighborhood, and most of them are

52:04

Thai, and a lot of them only speak—they don't speak English as their first language, let's say.

52:11

So it poses quite a challenge to reach out to them, but we're committed to do it because that's our neighborhood.

52:19

That's the community we live and minister in, and if we're not reaching those people who are geographically closest to us, then you're right, something's wrong.

52:29

I think a church should reflect, to some degree, the ethnic mix of its own community.

52:37

But this is not an issue I would obsess over the way people lately have begun to do, almost as if you feel you have to—in fact, the suggestion has been made that, you know, you have to get rid of your hymn book and do rap music if you want to reach the urban culture.

52:57

And there are a lot of Black Christians who would be horrified by that notion. Yeah. Well, I always think of the

53:05

Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, Spurgeon's Church, which has done a remarkable—the people there are remarkably evangelistic.

53:15

And they've done a remarkable job of reaching their immediate neighborhood, which consists, to a very large degree, of African immigrants.

53:25

So they have, you know, a couple of African elders and large African population in every

53:32

Sunday service, and yet that church is as strict and conservative on worship style as I've ever known.

53:40

I mean, they don't even encourage their people to sing in harmony. They want everybody in unison. And I think if Peter Masters, the pastor there, had his way, he'd probably do away with the organ as well.

53:51

He's pretty strict with the regulative principle, and they sing hymns out of a hymn book and no contemporary music.

53:58

And that hasn't hindered them from reaching their neighborhood. I just think those sorts of cultural things are sometimes emphasized far too much, and the content of the gospel message is emphasized far too little.

54:14

And that's my big complaint with this whole new thrust about social justice and identity politics and all that.

54:21

It's moved us away from the gospel. And we have to go to a break right now. We'll pick up right where you left off. This is our longer break than normal because of Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

54:30

FM in Lake City, Florida, requiring a 12 -minute break between our two major segments. So please be patient.

54:36

Take this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers so you can patronize them. But also write questions for our guest

54:43

Phil Johnson at chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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So please remember to mention Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Before we return to our discussion with Phil Johnson, I just have a couple of more announcements to make.

01:06:16

The Banner of Truth U .S. Ministers Conference is coming up right around the corner, May 29th through the 31st.

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It's being held right here in my own backyard, well, not far from it anyway, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at Elizabethtown College.

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I intend to be there myself. I have registered and I'm looking forward to being there. The speakers include

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The theme is Ministers of Christ, and once again, it's May 29th through the 31st in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

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01:10:19

Today, if you've just tuned us in, we are talking about the racial hysteria that is going on right now, and we've specifically titled this program,

01:10:30

Racialism Gone Wild, when hypersensitivity and preoccupation over skin color and ethnic differences eclipses the gospel that unites us in Christ.

01:10:39

We have a listener in New Jersey, we have

01:10:44

Joey in New Jersey, Clifton, New Jersey, who says, Dear Phil and Chris, I want to thank you for addressing this controversial subject.

01:10:53

Like you, I also detest racism in all its forms. So the problem at hand is the centralizing and fueling of the issue.

01:11:04

Back to one thing Phil mentioned, a huge cause of this problem in the Christian church and educational institutions comes from white leaders.

01:11:13

They mistakenly think that taking regular stands against racism as a principle is a means of progress.

01:11:20

It is now fashionable for them to attack the issue of racism and to speak negatively or at least apologetically of their own white people as a category.

01:11:32

But when such white leaders approach the subject in this way, they raise deep suspicions and create disunity rather than promoting harmony.

01:11:42

One cause of the problem is moving away from the bible's simple formula of dealing with people as individuals and carefully establishing facts on the basis of two or three witnesses.

01:11:53

Even more important, we are forgetting the gospel which unifies all people in Christ and breaks down all dividing walls.

01:12:01

Regardless, or should I say regarding Christians not being perfect and possibly having some racist thought, we can have sinful, biased, or evil thoughts against any person regardless of race.

01:12:12

These must all be repented of. If using such a standard, we must label ourselves as many other things as well.

01:12:18

Phil, going back to the colorblind issue, to what degree should we as Christians embrace or celebrate differences in people or cultures in a positive sense?

01:12:28

Is there any place for this in the New Testament Christianity, or is it a dangerous thing for this very reason?

01:12:37

That's a great question, and by the way, I agree with Joey's assessment of pretty much everything he said.

01:12:42

He said it very well. Are cultural differences something we should celebrate, or are they dangerous?

01:12:51

And my answer is both. I think both things are true. I love to travel and experience cross -culturally.

01:13:01

I always have, and everything from the music to the food to the smells of other cultures absolutely fascinate me, and it's one of the things

01:13:13

I love about the body of Christ is that it is so rich with elements of various cultures.

01:13:21

No matter where you go in the world, you find Bible -believing Christians, there's going to be a common commitment that ties you together, and yet there will be cultural issues, things about your culture that are different, and as believers, we just have to be able to separate those two things and realize that in the sense that our cultural differences don't impinge on our doctrine, on anything biblical, there's no biblical principle that says what spices are allowed in your food or what rhythms are allowed in your music, that sort of thing.

01:14:06

It's fine, I think, to enjoy the various elements of other cultures and learn from them, even if I don't necessarily embrace that and make it part of my own regular experience,

01:14:20

I can enjoy that and embrace it and celebrate it, but recognize, too, that cultural differences,

01:14:27

I think, are the number one thing that tends to make different people groups, different ethnicities, different nationalities seem abrasive to one another, and you see that even in the early

01:14:41

Church in the New Testament. That's what Acts 15 is all about, settling those differences between the

01:14:47

Jewish believers and Gentile believers and coming to some agreement on what we can tolerate and what we don't, and all that.

01:14:56

There does need to be some discussion about all of that, but once you institutionalize the resentment or the hostility that exists between this group and that group,

01:15:08

I think you've actually corrupted the whole point of the Gospel. Yeah, I have been in churches, even members of churches that have had, during fellowship meals, they've purposely identified the specific meal as an international day where they have people who are in the congregation from all over the world, from India and other places, where they bring the native dishes known to be connected with that country of origin where their ancestors are from or where they themselves are from, and that kind of thing,

01:15:42

I think, can be beautiful. I happen to love it because I love to eat, and I have a very eclectic culinary palate, but I'm the same way even with music.

01:15:53

I love international styles of music. I just love the richness of human culture worldwide, and that's great, but what

01:16:06

I think is dangerous about the current trends is that there is this attempt to institutionalize the resentment of one group against the other, to demand that this group apologize to that group or repent of the sins of their ancestors and whatnot.

01:16:26

All of that is, I think, a sinful demand that has absolutely no precedent in Scripture.

01:16:33

There are places in Scripture, and I know somebody's going to argue with that because they'll point out places in Scripture where people confess the sins of their fathers.

01:16:42

They only do that when they themselves are guilty of that, and Scripture says, you know, the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation, but that's not where the verse ends.

01:16:54

It's to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, so the reason the sins of the fathers are visited on the children is because the children are guilty of those same sins, and so if I were repenting of racism that I'm guilty of, and it was something that had been sort of a staple in my family for generations, it would be right for me to repent not only of my own guilt, but to acknowledge that this is a sin that was entrenched in my family and my ancestors, and I regret that.

01:17:28

But how many times do, say, Southern Baptists need to pass resolutions confessing the sin of racism that actually gave birth to that group?

01:17:41

You know, the Southern Baptists split off because they were pro -slavery, and so I understand that there's a certain shame attached to that reality, but they've already done, you know, resolution after resolution acknowledging that their doctrinal forefathers were wrong to take that position.

01:18:03

How many times and for how long do they need to do that before finally we can say, look, that's an issue we've dealt with, and it shouldn't continue to drag us into conflict.

01:18:14

Can we move on and build community together, rather than constantly berating one another about sins that our forefathers were guilty of?

01:18:27

Amen. We have a question from RJ in White Plains, New York, who says,

01:18:37

Dear Chris, I know that one of the things about your friend who is now with the

01:18:43

Lord, Dr. Robert J. Cameron, that is very controversial is that he has stated that one of the reasons he departed from the

01:18:53

PCA denomination and joined the OPC was that he was very dismayed that a fellow

01:19:02

PCA congregation celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and since Dr.

01:19:10

Cameron viewed Dr. King as someone, although someone deserving of some accolades and respect and honor in our country, as an

01:19:22

American hero, he was not a Christian, and therefore a church should not be celebrating as a gathered body the person who denied the pillars of the

01:19:35

Christian faith. And yet, Dr. Cameron was, as you know, a black man.

01:19:42

I was wondering what Phil thought about that. Yeah, I agree with Dr.

01:19:48

Cameron. I think it's fine to acknowledge some of the good things, all of the good things that Martin Luther King accomplished, and from a social perspective, there were indeed some good things.

01:20:02

You could say the same thing about, say, Gandhi, who taught an entire nation how to protest nonviolently.

01:20:12

That's a good thing, not a bad thing. But neither of those two were saints in the sense of being believers in Christ who should be held up as spiritual models in the church.

01:20:25

And one of the things that distresses me the most about some of the recent rhetoric is the attempt to sort of salvage

01:20:35

Martin Luther King and turn him into an evangelical so that evangelicals can make him a hero.

01:20:43

And in the process, even, you've heard people say, well, I'm more confident that Martin Luther King was a true believer because look how loving he was, than I am that Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were believers because they were apparently pro -slavery, or they tolerated slavery, or argued for it, or whatever.

01:21:08

Therefore, they couldn't possibly be Christians. In my mind, that's a really dangerous way to assess the influence of any historical character.

01:21:20

Every hero of the faith you could name has flaws because they're all sinners.

01:21:26

I mean, people often ask me, how can you honor Martin Luther, who was notoriously anti -Semitic towards the end of his life?

01:21:38

He had these massive moral flaws. He had a vicious mouth when it came to arguing with his adversaries, and he was definitely a flawed man.

01:21:49

My answer always is, well, look at Hebrews 11 and the heroes of faith in Scripture and see how many of them did things that you would expect from rogues and villains rather than saints and heroes of the faith.

01:22:03

What bound them all together was their faith, and they believed the gospel.

01:22:09

They believed the Old Testament saints, believed in the promise of the gospel, believed in Christ by promise.

01:22:17

They held to that which they couldn't see, is what Hebrews says. So it was their faith that made them heroic, not the works they did.

01:22:27

The same thing is true with Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and it's what sets them apart from Martin Luther King.

01:22:37

They believed the gospel. They proclaimed the gospel. They taught the gospel. Yes, they did things that we would be critical of and even denounce, and they were guilty,

01:22:48

I'm sure, of sins that aren't even recorded, because they're human. But it's their faith that makes them heroic in the evangelical sense, the fact that they believed and proclaimed the gospel.

01:23:00

You can't honestly say that about Martin Luther King. I know there are people who try to make that argument, and they believe because he said in one of his

01:23:08

Easter messages that he wanted to return to the faith of his fathers, and therefore he must have embraced the true gospel.

01:23:15

But he said things after that that made it clear he didn't believe the Bible, he didn't believe the supernatural claims of Scripture, he didn't believe in the deity of Christ.

01:23:26

The bottom line is, he never once published or proclaimed a solid and believable, credible profession of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.

01:23:40

And therefore, I think while we can recognize what he did that was good, it's a serious mistake to try to make him into a hero of the faith.

01:23:50

And it's not just in racial matters that people try to do this. Anytime some celebrity makes any statement that sounds remotely spiritual or religious, people want to turn that person into a genuine believer.

01:24:07

And one of the points of the Gospel Coalition and Together for the

01:24:13

Gospel in their founding principles was to clarify and defend the gospel as the one thing that binds us together.

01:24:21

And so to lionize a man who not only never gave a hint that he believed the gospel, but actually at points attacked critical gospel truths,

01:24:31

I think it's a serious mistake. And particularly to do that in the name of racial reconciliation, it sacrifices too much for really nothing in return, because it hasn't promoted racial reconciliation.

01:24:44

And lots of believers from the black community are just as upset about that Yeah. And I did interview

01:24:53

Micah Edmondson, who wrote a recent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he even said that he could not with complete confidence say that Dr.

01:25:05

King will be in heaven, that he believed the gospel because we have no written record of it.

01:25:10

The greatest hope that he had in that regard was that Dr. King's father was a fundamentalist and invited his son back to the church to teach, and he did not believe his father, who apparently was very strict about his doctrine, he didn't believe his father would allow him to teach there just because he was his son.

01:25:34

But he even admitted though, Micah Edmondson, that there was no absolute proof of his conversion.

01:25:41

And you know, you would think that if someone did really, because that would be an example of somebody being born again, that would be somebody repenting of some things that they believed that were damnable, and horrific, and antichrist, and so on.

01:26:00

So you would think that he would have said something publicly, that we could have a writing or a recording or something.

01:26:06

Yeah, look, I don't take any glee in the fact that to say that I don't see any evidence that he or anybody else was not saved.

01:26:15

I wouldn't rejoice in the damnation of anyone. I hope he was saved.

01:26:21

I hope there was something that wasn't recorded, and we'll see him when we get to heaven.

01:26:28

But I think it's a mistake to treat that as if that's a likelihood or a certainty, because even doing that seems to cloud the clarity of the gospel in my mind.

01:26:40

Yes, and by the way, the listener, RJ in White Plains, was absolutely correct.

01:26:46

Dr. Robert J. Cameron was a very close friend of mine. I had many private conversations with him, and he did affirm that one of the reasons that he viewed as the last straw that broke the camel's back as to why he left the

01:27:02

PCA, and I'm not besmirching my PCA brethren. I have many of them that I interview, in fact, on a regular basis.

01:27:09

But in his mind, for the fact that the denomination or the presbytery did not chastise or discipline this church for doing what they did in celebrating

01:27:18

MLK Jr. Day, he withdrew. He said that was the final reason. And to repeat, he was a black man.

01:27:26

Yeah, in fact, let me say something here. I think some of the best analyses of the current trends on social justice and identity politics and all that have come from the pens of black conservative -believing men.

01:27:43

Daryl Bernard Harrison is one of them. Yeah, Daryl Harrison. If you don't follow him on Twitter, you should.

01:27:50

Samuel Say, S -E -A -Y, I think is how he spells his last name, Samuel Say, has written some amazingly insightful analyses of what's going on.

01:28:02

And if you really want to have a well -rounded, thoughtful analysis of some of these things, read what those men have to say.

01:28:12

I mean, they live with this all the time, maybe even more than, certainly more than I do, and they've given it a great deal of thought.

01:28:21

And what they've written, I think, deserves to be heard far more widely than it is. And sadly, just because they're conservative, they're written off,

01:28:31

I think, by many of their black brethren. Yeah, and I thank the Lord for my new friend,

01:28:38

Dwayne Atkinson, who I interviewed at the last G3 conference, who was very dismayed about what was going on in the name of social justice and the slander of white brethren who are innocent of the sin of racism for being guilty of that sin.

01:29:00

And so it was just nice to interview Dwayne Atkinson, who has the

01:29:06

BAR podcast, B -A -R, which stands for Biblical and Reformed. Yeah, I've met some of those guys.

01:29:12

In fact, I've been on their podcast. Great guys, great men. In fact, he always has to correct people.

01:29:18

It's not Black and Reformed, it's Biblical and Reformed. But, and also

01:29:25

Christopher Harris of unhyphenated America, who is a black

01:29:31

Christian who is very opposed to what's going on as well, has a lot of interesting things to say.

01:29:37

You know, it seemed to me, four or five years ago, there was a very encouraging resurgence of Biblical and Reformed theology among Black churches, people tired of hearing political diatribes all the time and wanting

01:29:55

Biblical teaching and sound doctrine, and very encouraged by that.

01:30:00

But I fear that some of the leadership from sort of old -school white evangelical groups are actually going to undermine what could have been a very encouraging movement among our

01:30:14

Black brethren. Yeah, and we have to go to our final break right now. It's going to be brief. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:30:24

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

01:30:30

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Phil Johnson.

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01:35:34

Iron Sharpens Iron Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, this is the last 24 minutes or so of our interview today with Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You, the radio, television, and literary ministry of John MacArthur.

01:35:47

We're speaking on racialism gone wild, when hypersensitivity and preoccupation over skin color and ethnic differences eclipses the gospel that unites the soul in Christ.

01:35:57

If you want to join us on the air with a question of your own, do so now at chrisarnzen at gmail .com before we run out of time, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:36:04

One thing I wanted to say about the celebrating of Martin Luther King Jr.

01:36:11

Day as a church, I think that you would agree with me Phil, I would be equally upset by a church, in fact

01:36:21

I brought this up with Micah Edmondson when I interviewed him, he was the one I mentioned before who wrote a recent biography of Martin Luther King Jr.,

01:36:29

I would be upset and am upset because this has happened where white Christians have adopted as Christian heroes people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and I can even recall a very well -known

01:36:48

Christian television program, an evangelical program that was in many ways a good program but I remember being stunned when the host was describing men like Thomas Jefferson as born -again believers in Christ and I thought that that was absurd and so this is not a race issue, this is just somebody, this is an issue of adopting as a

01:37:10

Christian hero somebody who clearly historically wasn't a Christian and I think that we should as Americans honor the memory of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and many of the founding fathers that were not truly regenerate individuals but there's a difference between having somebody upheld as an

01:37:31

American hero in contrast to a Christian hero so what do you say about that?

01:37:37

Yeah I mean that's exactly what I meant when I said earlier that we tend to do that even with living celebrities, anytime there's any hint of some kind of religious or spiritual idea that comes from the mouth of a celebrity, there's no shortage of evangelicals who want to canonize that person and make them a spiritual hero and you're right, it's probably the most long -standing and pernicious tendency has been to do that with American patriots, you know,

01:38:11

Jefferson and so on and I'll go even further than you, I don't like putting the American flag on the platform in the church.

01:38:19

Right, a lot of reformed churches do not do that, I'm not saying that they all don't do that but a lot of them don't.

01:38:24

Right and frankly I'm a little uncomfortable with the way some churches tend to try to make these greeting card holidays like Mother's Day into a religious sacrament, you know,

01:38:38

I don't mind honoring mothers in church on Mother's Day or whatever but to make that the theme of the whole service and make a big deal out of Mother's Day as if this is some kind of, you know, religious holiday.

01:38:53

Right, I remember Richard Barcellos, I think that you're familiar with Richard. Yeah he's a good friend. Yeah he recently posted on Facebook, it was the day before Mother's Day, tomorrow

01:39:02

I preach Christ, it is the Lord's Day. Yeah, well it's a good way to get yourself in trouble with sentimental people but honestly that's

01:39:15

I think something we have to really be careful about because all of these things, I mean this is my core complaint even about the identity politics and all of that is that things like this detract from the gospel.

01:39:31

Amen, that's the most important thing. We do have, let's see, we have

01:39:37

Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, New York who says, isn't it ironic that some of those people who are accusing the white church of racism are suggesting that we incorporate rap music into the worship in order to draw blacks into the fellowship?

01:39:56

That to me even sounds like a racist statement as if all black people like rap music.

01:40:02

I think that's absolutely true what he just said, what he just wrote. It is true and it illustrates why ultimately no matter what you do or say you're probably going to be subjected to some accusation of racism because it becomes impossible to treat people groups as groups without offending the people within those groups who are maybe exceptions to the rule you're trying to make.

01:40:30

It's why it absolutely disturbs me that there's this widespread attitude that if you're too conservative, if you're a black person and you have conservative ideas, then you're acting white.

01:40:43

That's the common complaint. That's a racist notion. Right, in fact, well

01:40:50

I was just going to say I don't think many people would hurl the accusation of Uncle Tom against Calvin Butts, the celebrated pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem known for social justice activism and so on, very often tending to lean liberal in many things.

01:41:11

But if you remember this, I don't know if you remember Phil because you're not from New York as I was, but in the early 1990s

01:41:19

Reverend Calvin Butts was going to have a public demonstration of his hatred of rap music by having a steamroller go over a mountain of rap music

01:41:33

CDs. And the only thing that stopped him from doing it was that there was protest that it appeared as if he was against freedom of speech.

01:41:44

So instead of doing what was more of a spectacle, he had a meeting with people who were involved in the rap music recording industry,

01:41:53

I believe, and those who were proponents of rap, because he was protesting the hateful, misogynist, violent nature of a lot of the rap music.

01:42:05

And it's of course promoting of drug use and so on. And of course not all of it is, but Reverend Butts was making a stand against what he viewed as a negative influence on the black community.

01:42:18

Yeah, now I'm by no means the first person to point this out, but it's absolutely true that it's the people who talk the most about diversity and the importance of fostering diversity are the least tolerant of intellectual diversity.

01:42:38

They think if you're black you have to think a certain way. And it seems to me that that mentality, what concerns me about the evangelical movement right now is that mentality is creeping in to the evangelical movement, where there are people who are excited about racial reconciliation and making this the central core subject, social justice, for the evangelical church.

01:43:05

Lots of them think if you disagree with them, then they'll write you off completely. They don't really want to have a conversation about it, and they don't want to hear any diverse opinions.

01:43:16

So whatever diversity they're talking about looks to me an awful lot like, you know, enforced lockstep ideology.

01:43:27

Yeah, just like I said earlier, Thabiti Anyawiwe in 2009 referred to that as tyranny.

01:43:37

Yeah, well it is. And we have Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia.

01:43:43

Correct me if I'm wrong, did I hear recently either through Iron Sharpens Iron radio or elsewhere that Martin Luther King Jr.

01:43:51

was a serial adulterer? If so, was there any evidence of biblical repentance?

01:43:58

That's interesting. And yeah, that's been common knowledge for decades, because even the recent films, it's interesting, that have been created to celebrate

01:44:12

Dr. King as a hero. They recently, the more recent things that are being promoted and produced don't shy away from that being an element of his life.

01:44:21

But anyway, if you could comment. Yeah, no, that's right. I think that's a fairly well -established fact, and it's his friends and fellow civil rights leaders who have made these and published these accusations.

01:44:38

I don't know of anyone that actually disputes it. Well, obviously we don't know if prior to his death he repented of it, though.

01:44:48

I mean, he could have repented of it, but he didn't, to my knowledge, make any public written admission of guilt or recorded admission of guilt and repentance.

01:45:00

Let's see. Oh, we have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, how do you respond to those who will no doubt say that what you two are doing today is by nature racist, since you're both white?

01:45:19

I can't help but chuckle about that. I'm sorry. So how would you? I know somebody's going to say it somewhere,

01:45:25

I'm sure. Yeah, no, I mean, it's not the first time in the past two years that I've been labeled

01:45:34

Nazi or racist or whatever. As I said, there's a kind of totalitarian thought police who insists that anybody who deviates from the received wisdom, the standard sort of critical race theory, is racist.

01:45:58

And there's no shortage of people who believe, look, if you're white, you're racist. That's a given. So the problem with that is, once everything becomes racist, if everybody's a racist and everything is racist, that sin sort of loses its shame.

01:46:19

Right. Exactly. The old boy who cried wolf syndrome.

01:46:26

I think that a lot of Americans and perhaps people globally, it's almost like white noise, pardon the pun, in the background when they constantly hear racism, racism, racism, racism, and they start to say, oh, come on already.

01:46:42

I mean, you're going because it actually does an injustice to people who have been brutalized and tortured and murdered by actual racists.

01:46:57

When everything becomes racism, it really is a horrible thing.

01:47:03

It trivializes what is actually a horrible sin. By calling everything racist, you trivialize that sin and you make people inured to the accusation.

01:47:12

It's like calling people Nazis. From the earliest days of the internet, I remember that there was this canard that went around that whoever calls his opponent

01:47:23

Nazi first is basically admitting that he's lost the argument because that's like the last refuge of the scoundrel, you know, to call your opponent a

01:47:34

Nazi. Yet it's so common that we don't really take it that seriously anymore.

01:47:40

People call you a Nazi for, I don't know, not liking rap music or whatever.

01:47:48

So the gravity of Nazi crimes has been trivialized by the fact that if you just look cross -eyed at somebody, they'll call you a

01:47:57

Nazi. So we don't take that accusation seriously anymore. That's unfortunate.

01:48:03

But that's the level to which discourse in America has sunk. People don't, although we talk about having a dialogue or whatever, nobody really seems to want to dialogue.

01:48:16

That's, I think, the poison of these postmodern times, that the idea of dialoguing about our differences is very popular, but nobody really wants to do it.

01:48:27

And so they demonize their opponents. And no discussion, no real discussion ever takes place.

01:48:32

If that doesn't get corrected soon, it spells the downfall of our whole culture.

01:48:42

And to see it happening in the church is, to me, very, very sad.

01:48:47

Now one thing that occurred to me to say during the course of this interview, when it comes to colorblindness,

01:48:57

I think that there is a very appropriate way where people should have, perhaps in the forefront of their minds, the color of certain individual skin, when it regards and involves some kind of an actual thing happening socially in our country.

01:49:18

Like, for instance, let's say a church elects to raise some kind of a fund because they know that black young men have such a high rate of being murdered and not living to a ripe old age in their community, or perhaps fatherlessness, or something like that, that the church or the person, a benevolent person, says,

01:49:46

I want to raise money to put a certain number of black children in my community through college, or something like that.

01:49:55

I don't think that there's anything unbalanced or wrong with that kind of thing.

01:50:00

No, I agree. We do that kind of thing all the time. In fact, Grace, the minister

01:50:05

I work for, has always had a close relationship with French Canadians. Our office in Canada is in Montreal, and it was founded and run by French Canadians.

01:50:17

So we have a scholarship fund for Canadians who come to the Master's Seminary, and we put money into it every year to support

01:50:26

Canadian students at the Master's Seminary. That scholarship wouldn't be available to, say, somebody from Florida.

01:50:37

It's not discrimination. It's not the sort of wicked discrimination that's designed to hurt a whole people group.

01:50:46

It's our effort to help our Canadian brethren get advanced education in an institution that's not cheap to attend.

01:50:59

If we set up a fund like that for any other ethnic group or nationality,

01:51:04

I wouldn't have a problem with that. I sort of referred to this earlier.

01:51:12

One of the wrongheaded ideas of this generation is that there's something oppressive about privilege.

01:51:21

If you give someone a privilege, the idea is you've somehow hurt everybody else.

01:51:26

Yeah, it sounds like anti -Calvinism. Well, that's right.

01:51:33

That's the spirit that's at the heart of a lot of opposition to Calvinism. You know, it's like the parable

01:51:41

Jesus told about the workers who were hired at various points of the day. At the end of the day, everybody got the same pay, and so the people who were hired late actually enjoyed a privilege that the others didn't get.

01:51:53

There is something in the human mind that says, no, no, no, that's not fair. But what Christ was teaching is, look, you don't want what's fair.

01:52:01

You want what's gracious. If the Master decides to be gracious to these people who were hired late, that's not a slight against the people who were hired earlier.

01:52:12

They're not hurt in any way. They get just what they earned and what they agreed to. But to think that privilege somehow is oppressive eliminates all privilege, and that hurts everybody.

01:52:28

Right. Well, I want you to have about three minutes now just to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today, before we go off the air.

01:52:38

Yeah, one of the lessons of the Gospel is that we should call no man unclean. That contempt for our brethren, for any reason, whether it's racially motivated or culturally motivated or economically motivated, whatever, to look on our fellow human beings with contempt, it's a sin.

01:53:03

It's a violation of what Jesus called the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself.

01:53:09

And if my self -love, which comes naturally to all of us, even though some people deny that, if my self -love is the standard of how

01:53:17

I should love others, if I owe to my neighbor all of the preferences that I wish for myself, then that sets a very high standard.

01:53:27

And there's just no room for any kind of racism or class warfare or any of that in that.

01:53:34

And I just think it's dangerous for the Church, dangerous and even sinful for leaders in the

01:53:42

Church, to foment the kind of resentment and antagonism that exacerbates those sorts of ethnic and social hostilities.

01:53:57

I hate to see that in the Church. We are all one in Christ, and though it's not always easy to act that way or keep that at the forefront of our dealings with people, that's what we're called to do, that's what we're commanded to do, and that's what

01:54:12

I'd like to see us as a Church get back to. Well, we have time for one more question, at least one more.

01:54:20

Let's see here. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, what practical advice do you have in regard to breaking the ice and having positive, constructive, beneficial interaction with some people that we know who may be joining the charge against white

01:54:44

Christians and others with the false claims of racism during this entire intense situation that is brewing on the internet and elsewhere?

01:54:56

Yeah, it's not easy, but my advice is continue to pursue the dialogue. Talk to them about it.

01:55:02

They're not going to want to talk about it, even though they might say that, well, we need to dialogue about this.

01:55:08

You're going to find them reluctant to actually hear your thoughts. They're going to want you to embrace what they believe uncritically, and they won't be as swift to listen as they are to speak.

01:55:25

But my advice is don't be that way yourself. Have civil dialogue and show them love.

01:55:32

And it's pretty hard for someone who actually knows you to impugn you as a racist if they see the way you deal with people and the way you treat people who are truly your neighbors, and you do that in a

01:55:49

Christlike way. The charge of racism may come, but it won't stick. And I think in the end, it just requires a sort of patient persistence, like all the liberal canards, all the lies that liberal theology teaches.

01:56:09

I'm talking about liberal theology, not necessarily liberal political views, but the two intersect at times.

01:56:16

And liberalism has a way of just lying to people and refusing to see the truth, but given enough time, the truth emerges.

01:56:25

John MacArthur always says, truth and time go hand in hand. And so be patient and realize that, and I think we're seeing it to a large degree even in secular society right now, people who have bought the liberal lies for a long time, people who have been indoctrinated by schools that just stuff their heads full of liberal ideas are beginning to see the unworkability and the untruth behind a lot of those ideas.

01:56:54

So be patient and be kind, and don't avoid discussion of the issue just because someone's going to fiercely disagree with you.

01:57:04

It's okay to disagree strongly and powerfully. It's not unloving to do that.

01:57:10

That's a battle I've faced for years. People say, well, it's unloving to say that this guy's views are wrong.

01:57:18

That's not unloving, especially if you can support your views biblically. You have an obligation to refute those who contradict.

01:57:26

And just do it in a loving way and be patient with it and be persistent. And it's not going to be an easy road because we aren't wrestling against flesh and blood.

01:57:38

Right. We have time for one more. Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania says, isn't it ironic that this view of consciously understanding different people of different skin color as different people groups, and that being a primary thing, is actually something that would lend itself to the forbidding of interracial marriage as many white segregationists also thought we should do in perpetuating the understanding that white and black are totally different people?

01:58:10

Yeah. Yeah. And that is happening. The loudest voices right now that are calling for various kinds of segregation or opposing interracial marriage, that sort of thing, tend to come from the oppressed communities themselves.

01:58:31

Today, in our day and age. Yeah, in our day and age, you hear more people, I think, who have been victimized by racism talking about racial purity and criticizing people who marry outside their race.

01:58:44

I think that's more common from the left side of the spectrum now than it ever has been.

01:58:50

Well, I know that Grace To You's website is gty .org. Any other contact information? No, if you want to get in touch with me directly, my website is romans45 .org.

01:59:03

Great, romans45 .org. I want to thank everybody who listened. Phil, if you could stay on the line for a second,

01:59:09

I need to talk to you about a speaking engagement. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater