Black Lives Matter and the New Religion

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. A special welcome to those who are new subscribers within the past two weeks.

I don't think I've ever seen so many new subscriptions on iTunes and YouTube since I started, actually, that I have now.

And so I appreciate the support. Those of you who have been listening from the beginning and those of you who are new, here's what you can expect if you're new.

Because I know many of you watched the last video I put out, Why Are All My Friends Marxists? And I'm going to focus on issues that really pertain to working class

Americans especially. Things that, especially Christians, those of you who are trying to feed your family and honor the

Lord, I want you to be prepared to answer objections that you're going to get and you are getting right now from the social justice religion.

Because it is a religion. I pointed that out in my last video. It might be good to go watch that first if you haven't. But this is not a political movement strictly.

This is at the core a religious movement masking as a political movement. And so we are seeing the formation of something very new in a sense.

But it's been around for a while. It's a repackaged deal. It's Marxism at the core. But it's been in academia, alive and well, for quite some time.

And it's been on seminary campuses now for at least a few years. I encountered it when

I was a student a few years ago. And so I've been trying to sound the alarm on this.

But sadly, there have not been many pastors, parachurch organizations, institutions that are

Christian that have produced resources to help working class people identify and respond to this new religion.

And so I have a lot of sympathy, especially for parents who your son or your daughter went to school.

They're coming back and they've bought into this new religion. They've sat in class for hours a day being trained in a new religion.

And they've memorized their arguments. And you're probably caught off guard. You're probably caught off guard now.

Your son or your daughter might have called you a racist. I also have a lot of sympathy for those of you who just spend a lot of your time trying to do the right thing.

You want to worship the Lord. And you want to feed your family. And you work hard. And now there's this new religion.

And there really aren't resources. Your favorite pastors haven't been talking about this stuff. And you don't have time maybe to even go and research critical race theory and figure out what it is.

So my aim is to help you as much as I possibly can. And it may be that further on down the line, there will be other things that we need to respond to.

But my hunch and my hunch for a long time has been that this is the new paradigm. And we saw it with the response to COVID.

And now we're seeing it with the Black Lives Matter protests. And I mark my words, we're going to see a reemergence of the

Me Too movement with a vengeance. We're going to see the climate change initiatives come right back into public discourse.

We're going to see a lot of things. And social justice, that paradigm is going to be applied to them. And so let me give you a quick review of what

I'm talking about, why I call this a religion and not just a political movement. And then let's get into some really, really important understandings that we need to have if we're going to interact and respond to this.

So a little review here. This is the formation of a new religion. And I pointed this out.

I actually added one thing to this chart since last time. But social justice parallels the

Christian gospel in so many ways. White male straight privilege is like original sin. You don't have to do anything.

You're just born with it and you're in sin. You're a racist, even though you may have never thought or done anything racist.

Political correctness is the new law, the do's and the don'ts, what you can and can't say. Being woke is like being born again.

Liberal politics are the sacraments. So taking down historical monuments, redistributing wealth in some way, disbanding the police now.

I don't know if you saw Minneapolis has disbanded their police force or they've defunded it. I mean, these are sacraments now.

There's woke leaders that are priests, sociologists, and woke pastors. If you're in the evangelical movement, sociology is the new canon.

Sociological books you have to read, usually by critical race theorists like Kimberly Crenshaw Williams or Derrick Bell or D 'Angelo.

There's many different books now out there that people are probably shoving in your face saying you must read this.

Heaven is on this earth. It's equality. It's pursuing. It's the hope that the eschatological hope that we're going to achieve some kind of equity or equality here on this earth.

And then the victims is what I added are our saints. So you have now victims of shootings or police brutality, and they are the new saints of this new religion.

So how does social justice contradict the gospel? Well, the focus is on external behavior instead of heart condition. Systemic solutions, not individual hearts.

The oppressor classes are the ones focused on, so groups instead of individuals.

And then you have a problem with the ordering. So this is how it contradicts

Christianity. In Christianity, justification and then sanctification. You're justified before the Lord because Christ has taken your sin, given you his righteousness, and now you are in a process of sanctification, becoming more like the

Lord. Well, in the social justice gospel, this is completely reversed. You have got to be sanctified in some way before you can be accepted and justified.

And of course, culture and really the social groups that you're even voluntary associations that you're part of, they will accept you if you're properly woke enough.

And then there's perpetual repentance instead of justification. And so I put this chart up there just to show you, and I explained a little more in the last video, how this is a religion.

But this is the process. This is sort of the conversion experience. You get woke, so that's like salvation.

Come to an understanding of systemic oppression. Realize you are complicit in the system as a result of your privilege.

If you are in fact, I mean, and really everyone has some level of privilege. There's always going to be someone that has less privilege than you.

And so you have to somehow check that privilege, be aware of it, redistribute it.

Then you're supposed to repent. Which is owning your privilege, is acknowledging it.

Stop supporting whiteness or maleness or heterosexuality.

Participate in lamenting and raising awareness. These are new ordinances. Find forgiveness from oppressed people.

Those are the new priests. They're going to absolve you in some way, at least temporarily. And then your goal is to do evangelism.

You're going to shame others. You're going to promote oppressed perspectives in these new holy books. And you're going to make some ultimatums.

You're going to force people into the mold. And that's the new catechism. And so this is really what we're seeing happen around us.

And it's interesting. This was a tweet from a secular person on Twitter, but it's not a

Christian, right? And this is Michael Tracy. And he says, I'm telling you, every protest

I've been to so far perfectly mirrors an outdoor evangelical Christian worship service.

And you can see if you're watching, they're outside of a police headquarters and there's all these protesters kneeling, putting their arms up.

A lot of them are descendants of Europeans, you can tell. And it looks exactly like a prayer vigil of some kind.

Looks like an evangelical worship service. And he's not far off. And I want to just give you a few more examples.

I gave some examples in the last video, let me just show you a few things that I noticed this week that look exactly like secular worship.

Here's the Democrats in Congress kneeling with these

African pattern scarves. And so the first picture is them kneeling, taking this almost nine minute moment of silence for the

Floyd situation. And then there they are angry, very angry about systemic oppression in the

United States of America. And you have people now, this is a new movement, shaving their heads in solidarity.

And of course there is some historical basis for this.

People, I mean, you even read in the Old Testament about people shaving their heads when they're in mourning.

And so this is the emotional reaction. It's to change your appearance.

Here's some examples of policemen. Here's one story about policemen.

And it says white policemen specifically and civilians washing the feet of black organizers and asking for forgiveness at a rally.

Here's another one. This is in Webster, I believe, Massachusetts. And I want you to just watch this very short video.

Now for some of you, you probably want to hide.

You can't believe that a sheriff would prostrate himself to a crowd like that. And maybe you're thinking too,

I can't believe Minneapolis would defund their police department and New York and LA want to take some of that funding and give it to the quote unquote black community.

And you got historical artifacts being destroyed and coming down and damaged property.

And it's just too crazy. And you probably just want to go and go fishing or something and just forget about it.

The world's crazy right now. And I get that tendency. But here's the reality. Your friends are getting caught up in this.

If you live in the United States, I can almost guarantee you have at least one friend who's getting caught up in this new religion. And I want you to think about that police officer, that sheriff.

If he was against what's going on, what is he going to do? He's got a huge portion of his town coming out to demand to see him prostrate himself, to pay homage, to kneel.

I'm thinking proscuneo, the Greek word in the New Testament for paying homage and kneeling. Don't tell me this isn't a religion, but it's a religion that's not just coming from the top down.

Because it is. You probably are getting emails from every subscription you've ever had telling you that they care about racism, their organization stands in solidarity.

And it's the same thing that you saw during the COVID crisis. Every organization did the same thing.

So there's a top -down element. But what about from the bottom up? Who are all those people in that audience demanding to see, or at least desiring to see, a police officer prostrate himself?

We have to be ready to share the gospel and to combat a false gospel with our friends.

And that's why I've prepared what I'm about to show to you. You may need to watch it a few times because it's a little heady, but I've tried to use diagrams and to break it down as simply as I possibly can.

Now, if you're a regular listener, you may want to watch this episode just because I do have these visuals. And of course, you can see

I put so much hard work into these stick figures. But they get the job done. But if you're listening and you can't watch it,

I will explain to the best of my ability what I'm looking at. And I may use some big words. I'll try to avoid that as much as possible.

But I have to explain to you. The social justice movement that we're seeing, the religion that your friends are being taken in by, is a combination of postmodernism and Marxism.

Now, there's different kinds of postmodernists. There's different kinds of Marxists. So I realize these aren't like monolithic movements.

But what I've seen from those who have sent me info on what their friends are posting, what I've seen in the media, there is a certain kind of epistemology and a certain kind of metaphysics that are driving this.

Now, those are big words. I understand that. But epistemology is just concerned with questions like, how do you know what's true?

And metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions like, what is the nature of reality?

And so broadly speaking, social justice warriors tend to look at things through a

Marxist metaphysic. So they're asking questions Marxists would ask.

They're giving solutions Marxists would give. They see reality the way a Marxist would see it, with oppressors and oppressed and the solutions, the ethical, so ethics plays into this, the ethical solutions that Marxists offer.

Now, from the epistemological end, the how do you know end, social justice warriors believe that certain perspectives have a greater truth value than other perspectives.

So an oppressed group of people understands more what is really going on in reality than a majority culture or an oppressor culture and the perspective that they would hold.

Now, I'm going to flesh this all out for you, but I needed to say that up front, just so you kind of know what I'm getting at and where I'm going here.

So this is, again, this is about your friends. This isn't about big heady philosophy stuff.

This is about just your friends because they're adopting this without, they don't know all these terms. They're just, you know, worldviews are more caught than taught.

They're catching this. So post -modernism, let's start. Experience.

Experience. Here's a red stick figure I made with red glasses in a red box.

And this red stick figure is actually a member. I created the stick figure so I get to determine this, but this red stick figure is a member of a community of red stick figures.

Even though you can't see them, I'm just saying there could be more in the box with this person. And they all have similar experiences because they're red and they have red glasses.

And so they have a certain reality. We'll call it red's reality. And to them, the world looks red.

Now, let me ask you this before I go further. Is there some truth to that? Yeah, there is. Our experiences do color the way that we look at things, right?

No one argues against this that I know of. That's not a uniquely post -modern idea.

Post -modernists don't have a corner on experience. The real question though is, is there a way to adjudicate between different perspectives?

Meaning are there tools that someone in the Himalayan mountains and someone in the

Bahamas, so two different completely cultures, different geographic areas, different socioeconomic, let's say, categories, are there tools that either of those groups can use by which to determine truth?

Has God spoken in such a way that he has given us natural revelation by which we can determine as best in our finite capabilities as possible what is true?

That's the question, right? And the post -modernists, the kind that I'm talking about, they want to say that we're essentially in a box.

You're in your cultural box. So if you're, let's say, I'm using red, but if you're part of, let's say, the female experience or the sexual minority experience or the, in this case, right, the black experience, you have a certain set of experiences that members of your community share which colors the reality that you live in, okay?

It's, you see the world through this lens, but it also kind of, it determines the truthiness, the truth claim, the reality that you live in, all right?

So now that we understand that, let's keep going here. There's another group of people. So we have the red people, and now we have the blue people.

Blue people have their own experience, their own set of shared values, their own traditions, and they live in these boxes, and we'll call them blue's reality.

Now, blue can't see outside of this box, okay, just like red couldn't. And everything to blue looks blue in the box that blue lives in, in the community of blue.

Now, think with me for a moment. We have the Smurfs and the Communists, I guess, red and blue.

How do you know if the Smurfs, the blue people, if they say something is the case, right, they say 2 plus 2 is 4, and the red people say, no, 2 plus 2 is not 4, it's 3.

How would you be able to determine what the truth of the situation is? Well, if all we have is these boxes that we live in, that we're trapped by, and sets of experiences, and traditions, and all the rest that go into a culture, if that's all we have, then there really isn't much you can do if you are in one of these categories.

If you're blue, you can't go to red and convince them. If you're red, you can't go to blue and convince them. Now, here's where the critical race theory, the social justice, what you're seeing your friends buy into, this is where it starts to make sense and get real.

This branch of postmodernism assigns to a group, we're going to use red in this case, a superiority.

So, red actually has something closer to the truth in their reality.

Their reality is more truthful than blue's reality. And in fact, blue should just listen to red, because red has, there's something about red that makes red's reality more truthful.

So, red is superior, red's voice needs to be platformed, red needs to be listened to, and blue just needs to listen and not talk and listen to what red has to say.

Blue is inferior. And so, blue stays in their reality, but somehow they got to try to listen to red's reality.

Now, the contradiction you're probably already seeing is, if they both have their own realities, how in the world do they break out of that?

And that is the Achilles heel. But the postmodernists that you're watching on Facebook right now, this is what they're saying.

This is the whole understanding that they have when they say, you need to just listen if you're white, right?

Because you have an inferior experience. Your set of experiences can't give truth. But if you're someone who's in a oppressed category, those experiences have a greater truth value to them.

Okay? So, here's the next obvious question. Who is determining that red's experience is better or superior than blue's experience?

Because it can't be red and it can't be blue. They're both in the boxes. Well, there's a

God view. There is something that transcends these experiences. There's something at a bird's eye view that can look down on both these experiences and say, red is superior.

And who are those people? Well, those are the sociologists. Those are the priests, the new group of priests who are academics, who are historians, who are journalists.

And that's why right now you're being told you got to go read these books. Let me tell you.

Because they're going to give you the quote unquote God view. The bird's eye perspective that can adjudicate between blue and red, between black and white, between different communities and tell you which one has the legitimate right experience.

Okay? So, they have a special privilege. You want to talk about, you know, white privilege. There is a group, there's a class of priests that have a special privilege, a special access to a

God view. And they can help you communicate with the divinity through their holy books.

So, all the critical race theory books you're supposed to read. Okay? See the religion coming out in this?

Now, to the sociologists, everything is actually red.

Even blue's experience, it's really red. So, blue is in a deception. Blue doesn't see reality for what it really is because blue's got blue glasses.

And you got to have the red glasses in order to see everything through the lens of red.

And so, the sociologists are actually assigning reality to red.

They're saying red is actually, even though on the front end they'll say red's in their box, blue's in their box, they have different experiences.

What they really are saying when it gets down to it is that actually no, red's not in a box.

They contradict themselves. Red actually has access to reality. And blue is the one trapped in a box.

So, red sees things as they are. Blue sees things as they are not.

And it's up to blue now to try to get out of the box. This is the salvation.

Okay? Getting out of your perspective. And in order to do that, blue needs the holy spirit.

I'm sorry, did I say holy spirit? No, it's not the holy spirit. In the social justice religion, it's not the holy spirit that gives you truth and helps you transcend the box that you're in.

It's the experience of red. So, in this case, it would be, to apply it to the current situation, it would be like the black experience, whatever that is.

Blue must listen by putting on the glasses of the black experience and seeing the world through the lens of oppression.

Then, maybe then, blue will be able to see reality for what it really is.

Then, white people will be able to see reality for what it really is. Problem is, white people, just like the blue people in this diagram, are still in the box.

And they can't get out. No matter what you do, no matter what holy books you buy in this new religion and read, no matter what friends of yours who are minorities you listen to and you hear their stories and you try to lament with them, no matter what you do, you will always be in that oppressor box.

And you will always be in constant need of grabbing the glasses again, grabbing another holy book.

So, this time, maybe this time, you'll really understand, but you never will. And that is the sad part of all of this.

Your friends, many of them who are buying into this, are buying into a completely hopeless religion.

There is no escape from the box that they, that the chains that they have put around themselves.

So, this is, this is the situation. Here's what

Christianity says, all right, to just give it a little contrast here. There's God's view, which is reality.

And then you got the red people, you got the blue people, and God has revealed aspects of his character.

You can read Romans 1, you can talk and look at this, but God has revealed through special and natural revelation, a understanding to both, and this applies not just to Christians, as non -Christians also, even those who don't have special revelation still have access to natural revelation, which is part of God's revelation, right?

So, you have humanity having access in part to God's view, so they can see reality.

So, in Christianity, the important part is, are we viewing it through the lens of revelation?

Special revelation, natural revelation, are we putting on the glasses God has given us?

Not, are we putting on someone else's glasses? No, we all have access to these glasses. And so, that is, that's

Christianity, and that's how it differs. That's how it's a complete contradiction to say that social justice is just part of Christianity.

No, it's not. No, it's not. They are antithetical belief systems in total.

Unfortunately, many so -called evangelicals are buying into this, and here's a good example and answer, really, to the question, where is this going?

Where does this train end? What's the end goal here of all of this? And the reason for evangelicals, who have said they're evangelical, at least getting involved.

This is a post from the Jude 3 Project, which ironically, Sean McDowell, who's an apologist, his father's famous, he posted about this yesterday, this

Jude 3 Project, and recommended them, said, yeah, they're great. Well, here's something they're selling, listen, lament, legislate.

Listen, lament, legislate. Guys, that's salvific. This is a program, and the ultimate end goal of this, the redemption of some kind, what we ought to do in our listening and our lamentation, right?

It's not listen to the word of God. Listening's fine, but it's not listen to the word of God, repent of your sin, and come to Christ.

It's listen, lament, legislate. It comes back to a government solution of some kind, and I'm convinced.

I mean, people have been saying, who are in the social justice movement, no, we're just saying we want to change things at our churches.

Yeah, that may be, and that may not be good, but ultimately, I think it's going this way. It's going to be a government solution, and let me show you something that related to this.

Here are three evangelical leaders, Thabiti Anabwile, Ed Stetzer, and David Platt, and of course, all involved at high levels with different organizations.

David Platt has been very involved with the SBC, Ed Stetzer as well, but Ed Stetzer's at the

Billy Graham Center at Wheaton, and then Thabiti Anabwile, of course, very involved with Nine Marks Ministries, and all three of them, in some way, showing solidarity by marching with Black Lives Matter.

And, you know, this is very interesting to me, especially David Platt's tweet here. David Platt says, march and pray and sing with other followers of Christ from churches across the district tomorrow at 2 p .m.

in DC. He posted this last Saturday. He's talking about an event on Sunday.

Now, it was pointed out to me that David Platt's church is not meeting right now because of COVID, COVID restrictions, but somehow, he's going to encourage his congregation on the

Lord's Day, on Sunday, to go and participate in a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

That's incredible to me. I mean, talk about priorities being off, but this is the world we're living in.

When politics become more important than even what happens as far as the church is meeting, you know you're in another religion.

You know it. It's not a question anymore. Let's talk about Black Lives Matter.

I want to give you some things to think about and to help you navigate conversations with friends of yours. So, we're going to start out with the organization, and then we're going to talk about just the hashtag because most of your friends don't, they don't know details about the organization, but they probably should if they're going to use that hashtag and go to these marches and so forth and so on, right?

So, here's, first of all, this is Black Lives Matter in Schools Week of Action, right?

This was this year, February 3rd through 7th. Here's what they were recommending, and I'm not going to read all of it, but restorative justice, diversity, empathy, loving engagement, queer affirming, transgender affirming, unapology black, black women, black families, black villages, globalism, intergenerational, and collective virtue.

Now, there's problems with just about every single one of those in the way they're applied, but I wanted you to, you're intended to go off when

I said queer affirming and transgender affirming. How, what does that have to do with Black Lives Matter?

Well, let me read for you. This is from the organization itself in their about section. This is what they say, we make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.

We are self -reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift black trans folk, especially black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans antagonistic violence.

We build a safe, a space that affirms black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.

We practice empathy. We engage comrades. Comrades. Yes. They use that word.

Don't tell me this isn't Marxist. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.

We make our spaces family -friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work double shifts so that they can mother in private, even as they participate in public justice work.

Now, they just talked about being family -friendly. Listen to this next paragraph directly following it. We disrupt the

Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families in villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or rather the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s slash he or they are disclosed otherwise.

We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to lead and learn.

We embody the practice of justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.

These are Marxist revolutionaries and a Christian ought to be ashamed if they would dare to even set foot on the same street in support of a

Black Lives Matter protest of some kind. This is an actual organization and you might be asking yourself, with all the junk

I just read, what do Black Lives Matter have to do with any of that? It's so unrelated, you would think, but it's not in their minds because they're practicing a different religion.

If you think what you just saw in regards to police brutality and racism and so forth isn't going to to spin the wheel and become about vilifying men or heterosexuals or families or churches, you're living in a fantasy.

You're just living in a fantasy. The church is churches that I should say are engaging in this in a positive way.

Churches that are doing that are tying their own hangman's noose. It's going to come after them the same machine that they are.

In one case, I remember someone, I mean, I've gotten so many of these stories. Someone told me that their local fundamentalist church bought pizza for Black Lives Matter protesters.

These organizations aren't on your side, guys. They're not. They're going to put the sights on you next and maybe it'll be 10 years from now.

I don't know. I happen to feel like it's going to be closer than that. It won't take as long. Here's the question

I would ask. These are some good questions for those who support the organization Black Lives Matter and think there's no problem, right?

There's a lot you could ask, but what about abortion, gang violence, and I like to use specific examples because they do, and David Dorn.

Do those Black Lives Matter or just the ones that you can use for your political agenda?

Let me give you some stats. Let's talk about abortion. Abortion giant Planned Parenthood, which kills an estimated 247

Black Americans every day. This is from LifeSite News. A startling 2016 study exposed that in New York City, more

Black babies are aborted than there are born. Similarly, in 2010, Planned Parenthood fell under scrutiny after a census suggested that abortion giant was preying on Black communities as at 79 % of their surgical abortion facilities were within walking distance of African American or Hispanic communities.

Abortion induced deaths of the unborn in the Black community are 69 times higher than HIV deaths, 31 times higher than all other homicides, 3 .6

times higher than cancer related deaths, and 3 .5 times higher than deaths caused by heart disease. You know what

I don't really want to hear about anymore? If I could avoid it, that COVID -19 is exposing systemic racism because minority communities are getting it worse because of systemic oppression and poverty and nutrition and etc.

Even though men tend to get it or were dying at rates higher than women, no one seemed to want to talk about that in the media because that didn't play into the narrative.

But they could show that, hey, they're in minority communities, I guess, and I haven't verified this, higher rate of deaths from COVID.

That's a drop in the bucket, guys. And the same crowd does not want to talk about abortion at all.

Why is that? What about these guys? This is actually dated now because this is from two days ago.

I don't know if the number remains or not. 17 people have died in protests rioting following George Floyd's death.

17. Death. Died. That we verify. Probably there might be more. I don't know. Look at the picture if you're watching.

Hmm. I don't see any white people. Maybe the person bottom left is more a descendant of Europeans.

Maybe. Other than that, these are all minorities of some kind. And there's David Dorn. David Dorn.

The police officer, retired police officer, who was trying to prevent looters from,

I believe it was taking a television or televisions, and he was killed. Why aren't they marching for him?

In honor of him? Or does he not fit the narrative because he wore blue? I'm just asking.

These are the kinds of things that need to be pointed out. Let's look at some statistics, shall we?

If you believe Black Lives Matter, which I do, I believe all lives matter and black people are included in that, then we should not just be concerned about abortion, but we should be concerned about crime that would kill them, right?

They're made in God's image and just like all people are. And so here's a chart. This is from 2018, pretty recently, peer -reviewed chart, and it shows the percentage of violent incidences according to race and ethnicity.

So you have all the violence against white people were perpetuated by, 62 % were perpetuated by white people and 15 % were perpetuated by black people.

Of all the incidences where black people were the victims, so violence committed against them, 10 .6

% were from white people, 70 .3 % were from black people.

Now, what does this mean? There's a disparity, right? Of some kind. We all know that disparities are so wrong.

Well, the disparity is that there's more black people killing black people in the

United States for some reason. Now, I suspect this is probably in urban areas where there's fatherlessness and gang activity, but hey, that's problematic.

How come we don't have marches in the street every time someone dies from gang violence who happens to be black?

Or is it just that if the perpetrator is white or a police officer, then it counts, then their lives matter, but then they can become a martyr even if they were a criminal, but not if it's someone who's black who kills them.

Why is that? Good questions, right? If black lives truly matter. How about these charts?

Unarmed police shootings. So, you have 2017 to 2020, and you can see they're going down quite a bit, which ironically, this is under Trump's America.

Police shootings are going down. Even for black people, police shootings are going down. Do you think Trump will get credit for that?

Probably not, but here's the thing. You can see based on this chart, quite handily, that white people are killed.

There's a lot more white people killed, I should say, in unarmed police shootings than black people.

Now, you might say, John, hold on though. You'd expect that.

There's a lot more white people in the United States, and I would say that's very true, but I found this as well.

In 2013, the FBI has black criminals carrying out 38 % of murders compared to 31 .1

% for whites. The offender's race was unknown in 29 .1 % of cases.

If this is true, if it's true that there are more black people committing violent crimes, if that is true, then you would expect these statistics to show more police shootings against black people.

Would you not? But that's not what you see on the chart. If these things are true, then you could actually make the case, and I'm not making it,

I'm not making this case, just so you know, but someone could make the case that there's actually racism against whites because they don't contribute to the percentage of violent crime at the same rate, but they are shot more and killed more in unarmed police shootings.

Why is that? Here's another chart for you to look at.

Black on white homicides versus white on black homicides. In other words, black people killing white people, how many incidences per year from 2005 to 2015, and then how many white people killing black people.

I'm not going to tell you what the numbers are, you can see the chart though. There's a whole lot more black on white homicides than white on black homicides.

This is pretty indisputable stuff. The source for this was local and local state and federal statistics, crime statistics.

It was someone who had taken all of those and put them into an understandable graph.

If that's true, then why isn't the racism against white people? Why isn't that the systemic racism?

Why is it black people? These are questions that I think are worth asking, but it's heresy to ask them now.

You're not allowed to challenge the narrative. Here's what

I'm not trying to do. I'm not trying to create a situation in which you'll think, oh, there's racism against whites, we need to go protest. I'm against all that stuff.

In fact, you want to hear my opinion on this? Here's my opinion. I hate the way that this pie is cut up.

Look, my family's from California. We grew up in upstate New York. There's a lot of white people there that are

Italians. It's not the same culture as the culture that I'm from. I don't have any Italian blood in me.

I do like my pizza. I do like my spaghetti. It's part of the culture I grew up in, so I have an affinity for it. But it's not my family's culture.

They're different. And you know what? There's black people I've met that I have more in common with than some

Italians. And the thing that shocks me about all this a little bit is that if you look at a regional level, if you just get a map out and you say, we're going to look at inner city, we're going to look at Appalachia, we're going to look at areas afflicted by more poverty, we're going to look at suburbs versus urban, we're going to look at country versus suburb, you'll come out with way different numbers.

I guarantee you a black person, someone who is descendant from Africans, but is an

American who lives in the suburbs, is a whole lot more safer than someone who's living in the inner city ghetto.

And it also would stand to reason that someone who is white, descendant of some

Europeans of some kind, and lives in a suburb probably is going to have better health care than someone who lives in rural

Appalachia, and also happens to be quote unquote white, according to these statistics. These statistics are not the only way to look at it.

But we're so race obsessed and identity politics obsessed that it's almost like we have to.

There's no other way to look at these things. So I buck that in my own mind. Here's an incident

I want to show to you, I think it's important to at least see a few clips from it. This is Tony Timpa. And Tony Timpa died.

Well, you watch the video. You got any name on him?

You're gonna kill me. You're gonna kill me. Hey, you're okay.

You're okay. You're okay. Hey, Tony.

I'm trying to help you out, man. Just relax. Tony. Tony.

I don't want to go to school. First day, you can't be late.

Tony. We bought you new shoes for the first day of school. Come on. I made breakfast, scrambled eggs, your favorite.

I went waffles. Waffles. He's not breathing? Nope. I've got his mom on the phone and she knows all this stuff.

He's what? He's dead. Tony Timpa died in 2016 in Dallas, Texas.

I didn't show you the full video. You can go look for the longer version if you want. And it was a similar situation to the

Floyd situation. Both Floyd and Timpa were on drugs. And he had a police officer putting his knee, in this case, on Timpa's back in 2017.

So it took longer than this Floyd situation has taken. 2017, charges of misdemeanor, deadly conduct were filed, but the district attorney dismissed the charges.

And you can hear the police laughing and joking in the video for a longer period of time than they were on George Floyd in Minneapolis.

They were on top of this guy. And you haven't heard about him. You don't know who he is.

And you need to ask yourself, why is that? How come that incident didn't make the news? Is there a bias of some kind maybe?

And if there is a bias, why is there a bias? Here's another incident that I wanted to bring up.

This happened just last year in Minneapolis. So this is the same exact place that the

Floyd situation just happened, right? So this is last April. This is almost,

I mean, it's just a little over a year ago. And here's from The Federalist.

There was a five -year -old boy thrown off a third floor balcony at Minnesota's Mall of America by a stranger.

And the boy survived, fortunately, but he was just thrown off. I mean, that's a long fall.

His attacker, Emmanuel DeSean Aranda, is a black man. And the child who was critically injured and fighting for his life is white.

But interestingly, the news media has not reported on the race of the attacker, and the victim has not labeled it a hate crime.

And this is Carmine Sabia says, a five -year -old white kid, Landon, was flung from a balcony at the

Mall of America by a black man. Where is CNN, media, etc., and others calling it a hate crime?

Where is the media? Now, I don't know that this is a hate crime, but you can't say that about the

George Floyd situation either. How do you know what was in the heart of the police officer? You would be in your rights just as much if you wanted to paint

Emmanuel DeSean Aranda as a racist. Why not? Why, if we're just accusing people of thoughts in their minds for motivating them to do things?

And, of course, this is, I mean, taking a child and throwing them off the third floor balcony?

How do you justify that? And you didn't hear about it, did you, in the news? Not a peep.

You know how I heard about it? Because I knew someone who lived close to the area. And it, like the

Dallas situation with Tony Timpa, it made local news. That's all it ever made.

I want to know why those lives don't matter. It pokes a hole in the systemic oppression narrative.

That's why you didn't hear about it. In fact, when local media was there for the situation in Minneapolis last year, this is what they said.

Authorities are calling the incident isolated and say there is no threat to the public.

So the message then was, if you have a child that's in a certain demographic, don't worry about it.

This is just an isolated incident. But after what happened with George Floyd, the message is, policemen are out hunting minorities.

White people in the Arbery situation. They're out hunting minorities. Not isolated. Why is that?

Could it be that there's a faith commitment involved in this? Maybe it's a religion and facts aren't driving these narratives.

Could it be that if black lives really matter, it would be smarter to focus on the areas in which it's actually proven that there's a real problem where black people are actually dying because of real threats?

Why are we focused on this stuff? If you want to say it's a threat, it is certainly very low on the list of threats of things that are killing black people.

If black lives matter to you, why not focus on that? I'll tell you possibly why.

What happened? What happened? Here's a quote from Thomas Sowell. Murder rates among black males were going down, repeat down during the much lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before.

Most black children were raised in two parent families prior to the 1960s, but today the great majority of black families are raised in one parent families.

And Thomas Sowell can get away with this because he has a better tan than I do.

So this is what he's saying. I'm just going to tell you what he's saying. Thomas Sowell is saying that even during times of segregation, no one's justifying that, just so you know, but during those times there was a stronger family unit in black communities.

That's what Thomas Sowell is saying. And he's saying that the murder rates were down.

If black lives truly matter, and you want to actually focus on the areas where black people are dying, then you might want to consider restoring the family.

Maybe that could be the correlation. Maybe, and correlation doesn't equal causation, but maybe that would make sense of the phenomena.

Could be. Could be. It could make sense. I mean, are children who grow up in two parent homes more likely to succeed as far as their educational experience is concerned and their level of income?

And yeah, they are. Maybe, maybe that's where the focus should be. Instead of promoting an organization that is committed to disrupting traditional family, literally black lives matter, the organization is against black lives because they want to disrupt the family unit.

If you care about black lives, then you have to strengthen the family union. I hope you see what's happening.

Now, naturally, when something like this is brought to light, statistics that show that, hey, black families tend to have single mother households and there's more crime in those areas, in ghetto areas, etc.

What will naturally happen is people will say, number one, the statistics are racist. Now for that one, you just have to ask for proof.

How is the information gathering racist? Is science racist? And see what their argument is.

I've never heard an argument, just a claim. The other thing, and this is probably more important because I've seen actually PhDs, Southern Baptist people

I used to know that were PhDs, buy into this, which I can't believe, but they'll say that, well, there's only two options for explaining this data.

Option one is that whites caused all this mess.

That the reason there's high levels of out -of -wedlock births is whites. Whites are the ones that caused it. Option number two is that blacks are just inferior.

And you got to pick one. Well, that's what's called a false dichotomy. They're trying to get you on the horns of what they think is a dilemma so that you, because you don't want to say that blacks are inferior because they're not.

And that's the complete racist option, right? So you're going to run into the arms of the other option, which is whites caused it.

And you'll say, yes, whites caused it. It's whites are the ones that caused this problem. And there could be a third option and it could be more complicated.

Like I said, there's geographic considerations. I said, you know, look at black people in the suburbs compared to black people in the inner city ghetto.

Maybe there's considerations. Look at, here's another one, people who arrive, newly arrived immigrants from African countries tend to do very well.

Why is that? Educational level of income, all of that. Why is that? If it certainly isn't a racial thing, it's just not an ethnic thing, clearly.

All right. So we can cross that one out very easily. So do whites then cause it?

Well, if whites caused it, then whites should still be causing it, right? So that you'd have a hard time with immigrants who have come over from Africa doing well.

How does that happen? But furthermore, immigrants from Africa are not the only groups of people who have suffered discrimination in the past in the

United States or other countries. You have the Chinese. They were treated very, very bad in California.

And look at them now. Look, look how prosperous they are. You don't usually see this argument deployed for Chinese people or the

Irish people that came over, discriminated against at first. Jewish people, every group that's come over has had barriers that they've had to overcome in some way.

But Jewish people, I mean, they're at the top of Hollywood and financial industry and all sorts of politics, the lawyers.

So clearly it's not as simple as those who want to put that dilemma out there want to make it.

They're trying to bully you. It's a bully tactic. That's all it is. You know, trying to force you into being a racist.

And you just say, look, you don't even have to give an answer. You can say, this is the state of affairs. This is the reality. I'm just going to tell you this, fatherlessness is a big deal.

And I guarantee you, you go to some communities in poor white areas, you're going to find some of the same issues.

And I think if you go to Great Britain, you're going to find some of the same issues as well in white communities.

And, and it really does come back down to often family units and how together they are, how stable they are.

And so it doesn't all have to trace back to some injustice in the past that's causing this and is presently also, you know, at work somehow.

I mean, 1950s, I mean, this is during segregation, right? What Thomas Sowell is talking about.

This is, this is many years after slavery and you see a plummet. What could maybe correspond with that plummet?

Well, conservatives have said, Thomas Sowell says this, LBJ's great society had something to do with it.

And maybe that wasn't the only thing. Maybe there were other factors, but you think the government may be being the mom and the dad and paying someone to have children out of wedlock.

You think maybe that could contribute? Yeah, I think so. And I don't think quote unquote, black communities are the only places.

It just so happens that in, especially in many cities and Northern cities in particular, there, there are a lot of Southerners in general moved to different places, but black people moved during the first part of the 20th century to find work.

And they congregated in these communities and inner cities is a lot of the time where you see a lot of these problems, uh, regarding family, um, units being dismantled.

So, so don't, don't fall for that false dichotomy stuff. That's, uh, that's my little warning.

If you happen to come across that now, I want to talk about the slogan, black lives matter because it's a genius slogan that this organization, you have an organization, but most of your friends, they don't know about the organization.

They're looking at the slogan, just black lives matter because it's true. Black lives do matter. Right. But, but it's kind of like the equality act, right?

It's not about equality. It's about discrimination or the Patriot act, right? Um, you're not a Patriot unless you go for this.

It's, it's a carefully worded slogan that sounds good, but it is hiding something, uh, beneath the surface that is very dangerous.

And here's just the, the sloganeering, the, the, the, the buying into the whole narrative that there's systemic oppression and that white people need to lament and all the, what

I've talked about now for two episodes, here's the damage I think this does to the black community. If you really care about black lives matter, we like the actual words, black lives matter.

If you care about that, then the slogan and the philosophy behind the slogan does this kind of damage.

It caters to low expectations by overlooking the destruction that's happened with the looting just overlooks it.

And the murders that have taken place, uh, platforms criminals as virtuous. You know, I'm amazed that Floyd has become this, this saint.

Look at his criminal record. Um, it blames the system for individual transgressions. And so you're, you're chained, you're, you're, you're putting out bad role models.

You're overlooking bad activity that should not be encouraged. And you're blaming it all on a system when actually people have it in their power to have self -control and to not loot and to not do crime and to not have out of wedlock births.

People can actually do that. Poverty doesn't force them to do those things necessarily. Um, so, you know, this is, this caters to low expectations because it rewards that kind of thing.

It also perpetuates racism. Now listen to me on this by promoting the myth that whites have special power. So if a white person laments or redistributes their privilege, or that's like, that's that you're actually saying that white people have some special power because black,

I remember once the guy told me, uh, I was in DC and it was like, a guy told me that I had to do something to stand against racism.

And I said, well, what do you want me to do? I mean, if I see a racist, I contradict them and I have, I've corrected them.

What else would you want me to do? If they were doing something violent, I've never seen that, but I would certainly stop them. And he says, well, it's systemic and you need to speak against the system.

And I'm like, well, which, which law, you know, well, there, there wasn't anything, but, but his main point was he was incapable of doing anything.

I got him off the hook because he was, he was a minority. So he had no power, but he said, I have the power because I'm white.

Well, that is a myth. And you know, you're actually perpetuating a myth. You're saying that I am in, in a superior position of some kind.

I have a special power about me. How does that make little, little black babies being born and raised in this world feel when you're telling them that, you know, they're limited in some way they can't, even though the laws of this land, you know, don't, don't discriminate against them specifically.

There used to be laws like that. They're gone, but they, they, you're telling them that there's certain things they just can't control and they should be fixated on that.

And they should somehow persuade, I guess, white people to go and do something extra for them.

There's no personal responsibility, any of that, that doesn't breed success. You know what that breeds?

Breeds laziness. That breeds passivity. That breeds envy. And these are the kinds of things we're seeing.

Black Lives Matter disparages law and order. Because what you're saying is that all policemen are just like, you know, a policeman who's allegedly part of a hate crime of some kind.

And you say, well, it's a problem. All policemen really, it's, it's right there in America, just waiting to come out and the police are going to bring it out.

And it disparages cohesive identity. So basically this is, this is the

America identity. You know, we can all gather around certain shared values, a shared history, good, bad, and the ugly, but it's our story.

We can't say that anymore. We don't have our story. It's not our story. It's, you know, that figure, that event, that month doesn't belong to you.

It belongs to them. And so it fractures the, the unity that should be within a nation.

And so you're, you're, you're completely ripping apart what could be unity.

So what do you do to respond to someone who's taken in by like the hashtag Black Lives Matter movement?

Maybe they don't know the details about the organization, but they're just thinking they're emotionally wrapped up in this.

What kind of good questions can you ask? Here's a few suggestions. Who doesn't think Black Lives Matter? Get them to identify who these racists are.

Because the insinuation is that there's just so many of them out there. Who are they? Why do they matter? If you don't think that black babies matter, let's say if you're a secularist, then why do grownup

Black Lives Matter? That's a good witnessing opportunity. There has to be a standard. What is racism?

They don't define their terms often. They, they, they play fast and loose. They'll say, you know, they'll talk about white supremacy and then they're talking about systemic racism and connecting the two and they don't really connect exactly in the way that I think these people think.

So what is racism? Define it. Where do you see systemic racism? What geographic area? Show me the numbers.

What police department? Um, you know, what, what, give me evidence for this. What kinds of things are possible to do to fix the problem?

All right. So what, what things can we actually do? Here's the problem you're identifying, but what, give me some solutions here.

Because oftentimes people haven't even thought that deeply into it. Um, is it socialism? What other problems might these solutions create?

If you disband a police department, like in Minneapolis, a lot of black lives aren't going to matter because they're going to be killed.

What kind of problems does your solution create? How do your solutions solve the problems you're trying to fix? Here's a good example of that.

Why graffiti up and rip down and, you know, go after these monuments, French monarchs, union soldiers, lots of Confederate stuff.

Uh, I mean, even the, they graffitied up the Armenian genocide monument. And then there's a, there's a kid there, uh, middle left in England, um, that was graffitying on the anniversary of D -Day,

Winston Churchill's, the base of Winston Churchill statue. I mean, really this is,

I mean, I've heard of even figures in Brazil, historical figures and monuments being canceled. I mean, or wanting to be, this is insanity in my opinion, in some ways.

But, and one of the reasons is, what does it have to do with the solving the problem that you're alleging is out there?

Are these statues inspiring it? Where's the connection? Show it. Um, what about other disparities?

Here's a really good question you can ask. And I could bring more in, but here's one suicide rate.

The overall suicide rate rose by 24 % from 99 to 2014. And, um, let's see, it's, it's especially 43 % among white men and 63 % for women in the 45 to 64 age range in 2014, more than 14 ,000 middle -aged white men killed themselves.

And that the figure is double the combined suicide totals for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and et cetera, other minority groups.

Listen to this. The figure is double the combined suicide totals for all the others, white men, suicide rate declined for only two groups, black men and other people over 75.

So think about it this way. You actually have a situation in which black men are the trajectory is they're not committing suicide as much.

And white men are committing suicide at astounding rates. Is that racism?

What is that systemic racism? And why not? If we can just look at a disparity of some kind and then say racism, you need to think more carefully about these things and bringing up some of those things, they might be able to help someone think,

Oh, wait, maybe there is more at play here. And, and so, you know, you can pick other disparities if you want, but that's the one that, that I pick.

And so these are just some good questions, I think, in responding to black lives matter. And of course we want to get to the gospel.

If it's, you know, if it's someone that's really taken in by this, you know, um, and it really buys, buys into the whole thing.

And I think Southern Baptists and Christians in general are really making it hard for themselves. And I'll show you why, because they're parroting everything the world's saying.

They're buying into this false religion. Here's some, here's a, here's a really good example. In my opinion, the

Democrat socialists of America communist group puts out a statement right after the Floyd incident.

And they talk about this country, um, having oppression because of policing, uh, it's white supremacy that killed

Floyd. There's a pattern of this. We need to eradicate it. It's a capitalist system, uh, that allocates power and privilege to a narrow group of people.

Um, and it's all very systemic. Uh, we need to have justice and, um, we call on the mayor to stop all state sanctioned violence and call off the

SWAT and state patrol and national guard. Yeah. You know, to let the, those who were committing violence do it apparently.

Um, so that's part of the solution. And after years of being suffocated by policing and poverty, after years of being looted by corporations, landlords, and billionaires, this is what happens.

And so this, this is the socialists, right? They have a goal. That's to create socialism in this country. And here's the

Southern Baptist convention. And many seminaries issued similar statements. Um, is incidents like these connect to a long history of unequal justice in our country, racial inequity, the distribution of justice.

We lament those things. We got to protect the vulnerable, which apparently has something to do with murder.

I mean, I got rich people could be murdered too, but, um, injustice and misuse of authority and force are going on.

And this is a matter of Christian obedience and devotion. Followers of Jesus cannot remain silent with our brothers and sisters as they're abused.

And we need to ensure that these situations are brought to an end. They're saying you're not a true Christian. If you remain silent, you're not a true disciple of a follower of Jesus.

That's literally what they're saying. There's no dispute there. And here are the commonalities between the two statements, both of them, socialist

Marxist organization, and the Southern Baptist convention say the reality of systemic oppression on the basis of race, or that is a reality systemic oppression on the basis of race.

They also say the fact that racial oppression is enshrined in the American cultural and legal system is true.

So it's not just that there's systemic oppression. It's that it's actually enshrined the boys in blue, enshrine this justice does not exist for certain people.

It just doesn't. It's not there. If you're in a certain demographics and oppression must be eradicated. So there's a call to action.

All four of these elements make up both of these statements that should scare you that you hear Southern Baptist saying the same thing socialist organization is saying that should scare you.

It's a different gospel. So, so the goal, in my opinion, in all of this is to glorify the

Lord Jesus Christ. We uphold his law, but we want to, we want to get to the gospel somehow and say, look, there's another message out there.

There's actually there there's hope for real sin. If your concern is sin, that's, there's sinful things that are killing black people.

Well, there's a solution for that. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was abused by,

I mean, systemic oppression. You want to talk about that? Let's talk about some Roman soldiers and what they did to our

Lord and how he responded with father, forgive them. And the example that he said, and, and let's talk about not lamenting your white privilege, but lamenting the actual things that you've done against God, because I guarantee you, your sins are far beyond white.

The white privilege thing is not actually repenting of sin or lamenting sin. It's actually superiority.

It's, it's the same dynamic. You see it in Ephesians chapter two, when it, um, our salvation is not by work so that no man can boast.

Men love to boast and you can boast if you are lamenting sufficiently more than those around you who are white that they don't, they don't lament their privilege, but I do.

I'm, I am holy because of that. Um, it gives you some earned righteousness that you did something, even though you did nothing, all you did was post something on social media or go for a march.

It did. You physically did not do anything. Um, so, so, so it gives you an earned righteousness, a superiority complex that that's, that's kind of, that's the key.

That's the, the, the draw card, I think for a lot of this, but you're to have no righteousness.

You're incapable of lamenting enough your actual sin, but there was someone who actually lived the perfect life and died a horrific death, but did so, so that his sheep, those who repent and put their trust in him could be in a right relationship with God.

I mean, you can always bring this back to the gospel somehow. The standpoint of epistemology, the postmodernism

I was talking about in the beginning of this, you can offer the alternative and say, look, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're trying to somehow get grace, somehow listen enough, lament enough, put on these glasses from oppressed perspectives, and you're never able to do it.

Aren't you exhausted? Christ gives us a better way. He actually says, you're actually, you're not, you're not in a box because of your skin color or anything else.

You're, you're actually have the same access to truth and to obedience and to things that really matter because it's not material stuff.

The things that really matter are immaterial. You have the same access to those things that everyone has.

And, and so to stop focusing on the material so much, let's just time out for a minute.

Let's get back to that. Let's talk about your spiritual condition here. And, and you think maybe that would make a difference in these inner city areas as well.

Maybe if, if men took the responsibility to raise their children because they love the Lord and they want to obey his law, do you think that might make a difference?

Yeah, I think it would, but you got people out there right now, like this person, Beth Moore liked this tweet by the way, this morning,

Beth Moore, yes, liked this tweet, agreed with it. Christians do not treat the protest as a new mission field.

Do not go to love on people or to lead people in prayer. Do not go to be a Christian voice in the crowd or to share

God's love or to witness to people. Go to fight systemic injustice, systemic racism and racial violence.

The end. Don't go witness. That's the gag order that Beth Moore supports. Don't witness. Don't share the gospel.

Just go fight systemic oppression. It's a new gospel. It's a new religion and it is being formed and enshrined as we speak.

And it has its own canon and its own priests and its own way of salvation, but it can't save.

And so as, as believers, as those who know Jesus Christ, you can articulate very clearly the gospel, the true message of Christ, who

Jesus was, what he did, and the hope that it brings to real sinners in real places who want to really fight real oppression, because I'll tell you what, spiritual oppression is the worst form of oppression.

Well, I hope this was helpful to you. And, you know, these, these last two episodes, I think have been hopefully eyeopening and special in regard to just understanding what this new religion is.

And I look forward to next week to explaining in greater detail, the relationship of the law and the gospel and hope that'll help you.