Karate Culture, Kennedy vs. Fauci, and Nichols on Social Justice

Weekend Edition: Karate Culture, Fauci, and Stephen Nichols on Social Justice

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter weekend edition. I don't usually do a podcast on Saturday, but there's been a lot of things sent to me this week that people have asked me to talk about and I can't get to all of them.

And I thought I would just add an extra episode so I could talk about a few more of them and I'll save some of them for next week. But there was a few things. One of the things I wanna show you is something I really just got a kick out of and wanted to show on the podcast.

And with the schedule next week, I wasn't sure where I was gonna fit it in as well. So we're gonna talk about three things. I'm gonna show you three actually videos and I'll give some commentary on them.

Karate Culture, Hierarchy, and Social Justice Rhetoric

First is on karate culture. This was sent to me actually a while ago, but just showing that this social justice narrative is not unique now to even Western countries necessarily. And I think it's a Western influence that's brought this in to other places.

But I'm gonna show you a video about karate culture. And now karate culture can be oppressive. So this is, again, it's not just individuals within karate culture, quote unquote. It's not just, I mean, even think of the term karate culture.

It's not just this, it's not karate. It's not an art. It's not a means of self-defense training. It's a whole culture. That's kind of the way to broaden it to be able to then criticize it, that there's this culture that is so abusive or there's a flaw in it at a basic level, at a defining level, intrinsic to it.

And so it's not just that there's a person here or there or a group of people who are abusive, which is human nature, is to abuse other humans. That's sin. That's what, I mean, this is, Christianity has had an answer for this and an explanation for this for a long time.

But it's actually, the real flaw is in the culture itself. And so we're gonna talk about that a little bit. Just a video, and I don't know whether this will get bigger or not, but there's at least some people now applying some of the social justice rhetoric to other areas that you probably wouldn't have expected it.

And then I gotta play this. This is what I wanna really play because I thought it was just, it was funny to me. I might, I don't know if it'll tickle your funny bone or not, but a senator from, I think it's Louisiana, questioning Dr. Fauci.

And I just, it's just, I'll show you, I'll show you. I'm not sure even what to say about it right now. It's just, how to even describe it quite. But it's funny to me. It's like if you were being cross-examined by your grandpa and your grandpa's just like completely destroying you.

But it's just, anyway. And then a video by Stephen Nichol, or sorry, not by him, but an interview that Stephen Nichols from Ligonier Ministries was on. And he talks about social justice. He's asked directly a question.

And the answer he gives, and I was asked to comment on this directly. The answer he gives is quite interesting because it's so representative in my mind of the way many on our side, meaning our as in the people who generally listen to this broadcast in this audience, our side of the social justice debate, we're against it.

We think it's a false religion coming in. We think that it's not just, it doesn't just have a bad ethic, but it also has a wrong understanding of truth. It's got, you know, so bad metaphysics, bad epistemology.

We think that it's actually, has a false salvation story in it as well. There's a false gospel attached to it. So we're very serious about it. And I think there are people that are critical in some way, or at least popular in the circles that would be critical of social justice, critical of critical theory.

But they kind of keep Christians from really opposing it full bore or opposing it at all. There's a sizable group like this. And I've run across it many, many times. I've sometimes thrown out the word pietism to explain it.

I don't know if all those who are in this group would think of themselves as pietist, but I think it's worth discussing this and kind of just giving a little bit of an answer to it. This is what I was asked to talk about.

So we'll do those three. Let's start with karate culture.

I love karate. I love the skills, the philosophy, the atmosphere, the people, the environment around this beautiful martial art. However, any culture has its positive and negative sides. So today's video is going to be about the problems of the karate culture in Japan from my own perspective.

Karate in Japan is not so perfect. Hi guys, I'm Yusuke, a karate coach in Japan, and thank you so much for checking out today's video. So when you talk about any culture in general, you have to understand that your opinions are relative and not absolute.

You're only able to evaluate the culture by reflecting and comparing with your own standards.

There's already a postmodern element creeping into this video, but let's continue though and see what he says about karate culture.

So before I give you my opinion on the problems of this Japanese karate culture, let me first introduce a little bit about myself. So as for myself, I was born and raised in Japan until nine years old.

I was born in the prefecture called Kanagawa, which is right underneath Tokyo. My parents are both Japanese. They were born and raised in Japan, never went abroad, but they're on the liberal side of the Japanese society, I believe.

And yeah, so my foundation of all my core ethics and morals are based around what it is in Japan. From there, I moved to the United States to the state of New Jersey when I was around nine or 10, I forgot.

I was third grade. And the state or the town I lived in, there were a lot of people from all over the world. There were immigrants, people from the states, white, black, Asians, Latinos. So I was able to immerse myself in this international community.

And through my five, six years living there, my understanding of the American culture or the Western culture is that they actually look at you as an individual, meaning they try not to judge you by the race, gender, social status, and et cetera.

Some might claim that people are becoming too sensitive about these issues, but I still believe that looking at the person as themselves are very important. So after spending my teenage years there, I came back to Japan, joined the local high school here, went to the college here, and here I am.

So the number one problem that I think the karate culture in Japan has is the hierarchical relationship based on age.

You see, so here you already have, let's rip down the hierarchy. This is the problem with karate culture is that there's this hierarchy. And that's really, this egalitarian kind of bent is the root of the ethic in all, and the goal, honestly, to tell us in pretty much all social justice thinking.

That's what defines it as social justice thinking is we need to have an equality of some kind, or equity is the term they're using now. And the problem standing in the way of that is some hierarchy somewhere.

It's some division between peoples or groups. Maybe it's a natural division. Maybe it's an artificial division. Maybe it's a traditional division. Could even be something stemming directly from the Bible, but it's standing in the way of equality.

And so here we already have it's, age is a sign of respect if you're older in quote unquote karate culture. And I mean, this is many cultures, not just in Japan, but many cultures obviously have an element of that.

Western culture used to have that more so, not as much now, but let's continue here.

All around the world, depending on the culture, hierarchy are based on other aspects, such as maybe money or the place you live in and et cetera. But in Japan, age plays a pretty huge role. And when we talk about it in the context of karate, that's usually the kohai, the younger one to the senpai or the student to the sensei.

There are always this absolute wall between those two sides. And I believe that some karate organizations and some teachers are taking this to the extreme. I understand that in order for society to function, everyone has to be respecting one another or else you're not gonna be respected, which leads to corruption and division.

The way Japan was able to realize this kind of ideology was to make a title representing the status of the individual. So that would be the kohai, the title kohai or the title senpai. So having these titles such as sensei to the student or the senpai to the kohai, it became easier for people to form this respect kind of society.

However, the downside of this is that people are now just taking the title itself and not thinking about the core concept of respect. Sadly, there are still this kind of culture where the kohai has to do anything that the senpai says, which I believe is just ridiculous.

Unfortunately, five hours ago, I saw this.

You know, it's funny, he kind of contradicts the postmodern view he said at the beginning where it's just all a point of perspective. It's all, but now he wants to bring to bear some kind of a standard by which to morally judge others who might have a different perspective than him.

So I mean, and this is just intrinsic to postmodernists, but the idea here seems to be that there's these artificial boundaries that were created through the use of language and terms. And this is more, I think there's more postmodernism probably behind that, but the language is what is determining this.

And then people, abusers get into these spots. The thing is, abusers will always, people who are sinful and want control and want to use others for their own gain are gonna get into these places of authority.

That's just human nature to desire that. So anyway, is it a problem with the language, with the quote-unquote karate culture, or is this just a problem of humanity? I think of something even here in the United States, Western world type of academia settings that I've been in where there's a very set distinction between the professor and the student or the learner.

And I've seen, of course, I mean, it's very common for professors to be very arrogant or there's stories that come out now and then about abuse situations. But I wouldn't say that, the problem really here is that you have these titles.

The problem is you gotta get rid of authority. Authority is the issue here. No, it's someone abusing that authority, taking advantage of that authority. And I think there is a distinction there.

TV, but the very famous Shotokan Sensei, who's known all over the world, I'm not gonna mention the name, but Mr. M .K. has been accused of harassment by a very famous Japanese female national athlete, Kumite athlete, A .Yu.

She says that she's been verbally harassed over the years and that she just couldn't take the stress anymore. So she accused of the Sensei. I'm not gonna go too into the details of this, but if you just Google it, it should come up in a few hours in English.

But the point I wanna mention is that when you see these things happening at the top level, you can imagine that things like this happen usually in schools as well.

Another tactic of social justice is to take the exception and make it the rule, to take something that happens or happened and then say, well, that's just everywhere. Certainly, I wouldn't be surprised if there is quite a bit of abuse.

I mean, again, evil humans, corrupt societies, sexual perversion, I mean, it leads to these kinds of things, but that will happen whether there's hierarchy there or not. Perhaps the hierarchy puts someone in a spot of authority where they can more easily enact their abusive thought patterns.

That's true in some situations, certainly. But what's the alternative to that? Is it just to get rid of that relationship? Well then, everyone's, there is no karate at that point. There is no training.

There is no respect for authority or age or experience. You live, that's the egalitarian society that so many hope for where there is no hierarchy at all, but there will always be hierarchy. It's inevitable.

Whether it's between an individual and an all-powerful state, in which case you're really in trouble, or whether there's mediating institutions in society that also form hierarchies and supply needs and so forth.

So instead of making a video about, hey, there's a problem in the karate world that there's, look at these, this pattern of abuse that exists. What do you think's causing that? What do you, what would we do?

He, it doesn't seem like he spent a lot of time thinking about that. Instead, it's immediately to, it's a cultural problem. It's a systemic issue. It's just, it's because we've attached these labels to student and teacher that you're getting this.

Instead of maybe looking deeper into, maybe there's a corruption problem in society itself. Maybe there's a sin problem. Maybe there's a tolerance of evil problem that exists. Maybe there's other significant factors that are leading to this.

It's not gonna all rest on there's this hierarchy.

Personally, I've never encountered a situation where I was treated that way from a sensei or my senpai, but I've seen it happening in other schools, other universities, and hearing this kind of news makes me very sad.

So what is it like in your country? Do these problems regarding hierarchy happen in your country? Please let me know in the comment section below. And the reason I love this channel is because you guys are not like that.

Everybody is fair here. When I read the comment section, everybody's engaging, and we're able to have a flat, very fair conversation. So thank you guys so much for staying that way. I love you guys all, and

Yeah, flat, flat, fair.

It's because they're just commenters. I mean, there's actually a hierarchy going on here. We have this person who is lecturing everyone else about the problems of hierarchy, but he's the one in the captain's chair.

He's the one that's actually giving us the information. And then we go to his, the commenters get to go to his website and comment. So, I mean, is that not, I mean, what do you think of that? Like, it's just, hierarchy is inevitable.

The problem with the world is not hierarchy. It's ultimately sin and evil that resides inside people and causes them to want to abuse things that are good. And hierarchy is good. Now, are there artificial hierarchies created by men that are not good sometimes, or are more, you know, abuse is more common in those hierarchies?

Sure. But it's, and certainly there's hierarchies even that people try to set up that go against the natural order. But that doesn't mean there's an intrinsic issue with hierarchy. Hierarchy is inevitable.

It's something that God has set up even himself. And so an attack on that is an attack on the order of society itself. This is what's happening, though, not, it's, I'm just showing you how broad this attack on hierarchy and push for, quote unquote, egalitarian equality is.

I want to talk about some other things here as well, if I can exit out of this. Let's see here, yep. We are gonna see if I can bring this up here. Yes, I can. We'll get to this last, this conversation with Stephen Nichols.

Senator Kennedy’s Cross-Examination of Fauci on Gain-of-Function Research

Let's first go to this. I found this hysterical. I just, just, this is Senator Kennedy from, I believe, Louisiana grilling Dr. Fauci on gain-of-function research. I had done a video on a year of contradictions and I showed Dr. Fauci versus Martin Luther.

It was, some of you saw that. Anyway, afterward, I wish I had known about this because I think it happened right after I recorded the video. This happened and I just find it hysterical for some reason.

It's just like, Senator Kennedy is like, it's like your grandpa, like, it's like you stole cookies or something from the cookie jar when you were a kid and your grandpa is like, now junior, did you steal those cookies?

You know, just asking you the most obvious direct question, but in such a way that it's so like, you just want to be like, you're so guilty. You don't, you can't hold it back. You don't know what to say.

You're just, no, I didn't. And then he's like, no, are you sure that you didn't? And then, just watch.

Chairman, chairwoman, Dr. Fauci, I believe you have testified that you didn't give any money to the Wuhan lab to conduct gain of function research. Is that right?

It's, it's so slow too. It's so, he takes his time and you're just like kind of waiting for it, but it like builds the suspense of the question. Like, it's like, you think, oh, grandpa knows. He knows that I took the cookie from the cookie jar already.

So if I tell him that I didn't, he knows I'm lying and it's embarrassing. So the way that, I don't know what it is, but you see Rand Paul grill Dr. Fauci and it's like, it's two, it's two people like on equal plane kind of, they're both doctors, but they're just disagreeing.

But when you see Senator Kennedy do it, even though he's not an expert in medicine, there is like a respect for him for some reason. He just seems like he's kind of transcends everything else. And he, he sees, he's got eyes in the back of his head and he saw Dr. Fauci do something wrong.

And so here, here's Dr. Fauci's answer. That is correct.

How do you know they didn't lie to you? Excuse me, sir? How do you know they didn't lie to you and use the money for gain of function research anyway?

This is so good. See, so what he's doing is, Dr. Fauci is like stunned, deer in the headlights, not expecting that question because he lives in a world where anyone who questions him, it's like, you gotta, you gotta have the facts first.

You gotta like, you, I don't know. You're just not supposed to ask obvious questions like this. How do you know they didn't lie to you? I mean, this is not obvious question based on human nature.

Well, we've seen the results of the experiments that were done and that were published and that the viruses that they studied are on public databases now. So none of that was gain of function, so.

How do you know they didn't do the research and not put it on their website?

There's no way of guaranteeing that, but in our experience with grantees, including Chinese grantees, which we've had interactions with for a very long period of time, they're very competent, trustworthy scientists.

I'm not talking about anything else in China, I'm talking about the scientists, that you would expect that they would abide by the conditions of the grant, which they've done for the years that we've had interactions.

So you don't think the Chinese would lie to you?

Well, this goes on for five minutes. And it's the same question every single time, just about. And Dr. Fauci just struggles with it the whole entire time. It's rich.

But when you say the Chinese, the Chinese are a rather broad group. I know the scientists that we've dealt with have been trustworthy.

You think all the scientists have told the truth in terms of the origin of the Wuhan virus and not been influenced by the Communist Party of China, do you?

The way he's scratching his face, he's so relaxed. He's not the one in the hot seat. He's not nervous one bit. And just asking, yeah, so you believe the Communists, Dr. Fauci? Like, it's just, I don't have time to play the whole thing, but you should look this up.

It's, if you just type in Kennedy versus Fauci on YouTube, it'll come right up. And it just gets better from here. It's just, Dr. Fauci is just kind of swimming, trying to find something to grab. And Senator Kennedy just keeps coming back to, he just cross-examines him in such a way that he comes across as kind of an aw shucks, kind of ignorant, doesn't know science or medicine, but it's grandpa.

It's grandpa, and he saw you steal the cookies from the cookie jar. So wanted to make you aware of that because I thought it was hysterical. Now, this is something I wanted to answer a question from, I got a question from someone about this.

Stephen Nichols, Jim Wallis, and the Limits of “Just Preach the Gospel”

And I remembered that in the book I wrote, Social Justice Goes to Church, the first book. I'm reading a second one right now on this, but this was a history of the social justice movement, how it got into evangelicalism.

There's a section on Jim Wallace, Jim Wallace from Sojourners, radical leftist. I don't know how else to put it. He was part of Students for a Democratic Society. He was investigated, I believe it was by the CIA.

And he has an organization, quote-unquote ministry. He's Obama's faith advisor, one of them. But this ministry is about social justice and Christianity and evangelicalism and these kinds of things. Most evangelicals stay far away from Jim Wallace.

Ed Stetzer's written for Sojourners. Karen Swallow Pryor's written for Sojourners. Jim Martisby's written for Sojourners. I mean, there's certain people that have done things for Sojourners. But as far as being seen with Jim Wallace, they'll be seen with Ron Sider, even though Ron Sider and Jim Wallace are pretty similar.

They'll be seen with Richard Mao, even though Richard Mao was part of SDS as well. But Jim Wallace is just, he's too radical left, the way he comes across. He's too much of an activist. Whereas Ron Sider's more of a pastor, Richard Mao is more of a theologian.

Jim Wallace just has that activist bone. And most evangelicals, even if they agree with him, do not wanna be seen with him because they know he's a leftist, works with the Democratic Party, et cetera.

Well, there was an exception to that. And I wrote about it in my book, and I'll just read you a section. It was Stephen Nichols. Stephen Nichols is an evangelical, and he's popular in sort of evangelical reform circles.

I believe, I don't know if he's the president. He has a high role at Reformation Bible College, I believe. And he's, if I'm not mistaken on that, I think he does. But he's definitely with Ligonier Ministries.

But I had to read him when I was at Master Seminary. I remember we had to read Stephen Nichols' stuff. He's, that's the kind of circles that he would run in and people would be familiar with him. But this is just facts.

These aren't, I'm not giving just my opinion on this. This is just what Stephen Nichols himself has written. He praised Jim Wallace in his 2008 book, Jesus Made in America. From Nichols' perspective, Jim Wallace made a fairly good case that there are issues on the right that would be difficult to connect to Jesus, which I would say, this is my opinion here, but I would say you shouldn't, why would you have to connect all your issues to Jesus?

Jesus' mission was to seek and save the lost. We have a whole canon of scripture about ethics and politics. We have everything we need, principle-wise. Connecting it to Jesus as a person, why is that the goalpost?

Why is that? And this is, I think, part of what drives the left in progressive evangelicalism, is they have this kind of version of Jesus. And, I mean, it's the gentle Jesus, meek and mild. I'm not saying Nichols has that, but there is this idea that you have to, everything must come back to Jesus directly.

You must be able to connect. And this is, I'll give you an example. This is why they say things like homosexuality isn't wrong because Jesus never, you know, he never talked about it directly. Well, there's a lot of things Jesus never talked about directly, ethically.

His goal wasn't to reinvent the wheel. There was already a law. And so, anyways, this is just kind of irrelevant to me, but Nichols found it significant that Jim Wallace had made this fairly good case that there are issues on the right that would be difficult to connect to Jesus.

Wallace, he said, made a profound, quote, profound observation, unquote, concerning conservatives who attribute poverty to immorality by calling them, quote, mean and, quote, stupid. That was a profound insight on Wallace's part to call people mean and stupid.

In warning about the negative impact of, quote, consumer culture and its dehumanizing and oppressive effects on both people and ecology, unquote, Nichols lauded Wallace's, quote, community economics, which cut against Western capitalism and market economics.

So this is from the book, Jesus Made in America. That little paragraph is from Social Justice Goes to Church, where I catalog some of this stuff. So I knew a little bit about Stephen Nichols. I don't know if he still has all those positions that he held in Jesus Made in America, but certainly from the research I've done on Jim Wallace and then finding out that there was an evangelical who was positive towards Wallace, I would place Nichols somewhere in the more progressive politically kind of evangelical camp, somewhere in there.

Now, maybe he's changed his view, but he certainly runs in circles, though, that are more conservative, that are more against social justice or tend to be. So I thought this was, and again, I was asked to comment on this, so I'm going to comment on it.

And I thought this was a significant clip. So we're gonna go to, let's see here, about 50 minutes into this interview.

He's asked about social justice, so we'll just play it right here. It's in June, and one thing that they will discuss is all about the critical race theory and also the social justice movement. So there's a question here.

What do you think about, or what is your view on social justice and the critical race theory?

I think these things can very quickly eclipse the gospel.

Now, it sounds like you're going in a good direction here. It's a good answer, eclipse the gospel. But instead of contradict the gospel, instead of undermine the gospel, instead of, you know, it's a false religion coming in, that's an alternative gospel, instead of really whacking the thing for what it is, well, it's a mission shift.

It's a priority, it's a bad priority to be involved in that. And that's much more benign than saying, this is, you know, sound the alarm bells. This is a false gospel coming in, which is what I've been doing.

So I can already sense a shift, even though it sounds good, because he's being negative about it. The reason for his negativity is some kind of a mission drift, some kind of a prioritization issue.

Let's keep going here. These are, justice is a good thing. We need to be talking about justice. The Bible is full of references to justice, but it's very easy for us to get confused when we hear our culture talk about social justice.

I don't think that's the same thing, that is biblical justice.

100%, 100%, they're not the same thing. One's retributive, it's egalitarian in its focus, and goal, it's not blind. Biblical justice is equality before the law, if we're talking on a social political level here.

So 100%, he doesn't go into the details of why they're different, but he just says they're different. And he's right about this, but I want you to keep hearing what he says, because it gets interesting, and it almost seems like sort of contradictory, because he says, remember what he said, we should be talking about justice.

Okay, because the Bible talks about justice. Okay, and social justice contradicts what the Bible says. Okay, good. So we should be, you'd think that would mean we bring what the Bible says to bear on this topic.

We refute it, we take down these lofty things raised against God. We take every thought captive to Christ. This is the example we're given in scripture. If he was asked the question about Mormonism, what do you think about Mormonism?

We live in Utah, right? I mean, that's like social justice, it's everywhere. You know, what do you think about it? Well, it's evil, it's bringing people to hell. It's contradicts the Bible. You know, you can go through all the reasons, and you could really whack it.

But Stephen Nichols kind of gets to the edge, and then he backs off.

Here, listen. And what is meant by biblical justice. And so we hear social justice, we think, oh, that's a good thing. So as Christians, let's make sure we're there and promoting it. I'm not so sure it's that simple.

I think it's much more complex. And let's remember that ultimately, our charge as a church is to proclaim the gospel.

Okay, two things, two things here. Okay, complex, well, why insert the complexity? It's actually, it's not that complex. I mean, social justice, if the Bible talks about it so much, right? Social justice is evil, it's wrong.

It's, you know, define it and then refute it. We shouldn't have any business in this because it's a false gospel, because it's false ethics, because it undermines the very concept of revelation by advocating a postmodern idea.

I mean, in the background, I can't help but notice, I think that's Jonathan Edwards in the background. I mean, he's been subject to cancellation because of the social justice movement, even evangelicalism.

Edwards is a bad guy now. So, I mean, this is, I'm just saying this touches on where the reformed evangelicals are right now. They're heroes, the people they look to. Calvin and Luther had a lot to say about justice too.

It wasn't just the, it's not even just scripture. I mean, because scripture talks about it, they also had to grapple with these ideas in a social context. And I think reformed theology should have some of the best, they should be able to deal with this topic almost better than any other, I'm gonna get in trouble if I say that because people who aren't reformed are gonna be upset at me.

But I'll just tell you, this is what I believe. I really believe reformed theology. If you look at the reformers, they had to think about society and issues pertaining to how Christians should live in society.

Were they perfect men? No, but there should be a robust understanding coming from reformed people on this. And not, it just seems weird to me to say, well, it's just very complex. As if, okay, is that, is it irrelevant because it's complex?

Is it just not where we shouldn't focus on this? We shouldn't, this is just so, the priority is so low on the list because it's such a deviation from what we're supposed to be doing, which is preaching the gospel that we shouldn't talk about it at all.

I mean, is that the issue here? Because that's the impression that's being given here. He's saying the charge is to preach the gospel, preach the gospel, not focus on this. Well, just remember what he said before.

He said before that justice was talked about all over the Bible. We need to be talking about justice. And now, well, we just need to be preaching the gospel. Well, which is it? If social justice is different than biblical justice or, and if it contradicts it, which he doesn't really say, just says it's different, then shouldn't we be understanding it?

Shouldn't we be going after it? Not, well, it's just, it's too complex and we should just preach the gospel. You wouldn't say this about any other false religion, but if it's a political religion, it seems to be different.

You wouldn't say this about Mormonism or Islam. If you live in a culture that's, Islam is everywhere. It's like, what do you think about Sharia? Well, it's just very complex and we should preach the gospel.

You wouldn't say that. It's very different, I think, than biblical law, but it's very complex. We should preach the gospel.

So let's finish the clip here. There were racial issues in the first century. There were justice issues in the first century. I don't think any historian would make a case that Rome was a perfectly just empire.

But what was the church doing in the first century? Preaching the gospel. What was Paul's charge to Timothy? Preach the gospel. And so as churches, as denominations, as Christians, we have to be very careful of these social pressures, social movements, that we don't see them as, these are good things, let's bring them in and let's talk about them.

They can very quickly put us off mission and eclipse what our focus should be, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So here's the thing, I wanna say this. Paul talked about ethics. Paul wasn't just preaching the gospel. Paul did address ethics. Paul even brought in Old Testament principles from the Old Testament, from the law, and he applied them to situations.

It is true that the New Testament is not a book about civil policy. In fact, it would be kind of redundant in some ways since you already have examples in the Old Testament about what ideal principles for civil government should be.

So there's not a whole lot of reinventing the wheel, but there is affirming the wheel that's already been invented by God. And the issues in the first century did, there were issues, if you look in the book of Galatians, that came in, ethical issues, that did affect the gospel directly, just like the social justice movement is.

And we see Paul dealing directly with that. It is the charge for an elder not just to preach the gospel. That's not the only thing. They have qualifications to meet. One of them is to refute those who contradict.

So if it's just, well, we shouldn't bring this in, but it's so complex and we should just preach the gospel and that's it, you're not able to refute those who contradict if that's the case. You are unable to deal with the world you live in if this is the answer and this is all the answer.

This is an important issue. It's compromising the gospel. The alarm needs to be sounded on it. It is undermining the very fabric of the faith that is proclaimed, the immunity that should exist at the communion table, from that to the very concept of revelation, that there's actually truth that regardless of your social location, you can ascertain and understand.

So this is, in my opinion, this is a very unhelpful answer. And it's also kind of a contradictory answer because on the one hand, he's saying it's important to understand justice and social justice isn't part of that.

But on the other hand, well, it's just basically, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that stuff. Just don't bring it in, but don't worry about it. We should be worried about it. And I think this is what a lot of people who are kind of against social justice in principle in Christianity, in reformed Christianity especially, in some of these circles, I think, I've caught this before, this attitude that, well, if it doesn't affect the church directly, which it does, that's the mistake.

That's one of the mistakes. But in their minds, if it's just a political thing, if it doesn't come into the church, then it's just not the job of the church to address it at all, really. It's a waste of time.

It's a waste of resources. Just focus on the gospel. And it's kind of like the full counsel of God is more than just the gospel. And the gospel itself is, again, being compromised here. It's coming into the church.