BLM, Inc Compared to Christianity

Black Lives Matter as an Ideology Compared to Christianity

Okay. So I am Terry Camarazzo and I'm here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee, and this is part of our virtually their 2020 fellowships on Zoom. We're so happy tonight to have our friend Joe Gaona here as our speaker for the presentation of Black Lives Matters Inc. Compared to Christianity.

Joe is a devout Christian who has spent the last 30 years serving in many church ministry roles, including as assistant pastor, Sunday school director, and Bible study lead director. Joe has dedicated his life to being immersed in theology and apologetics.

He has spent the last seven years faithfully witnessing on college campuses, beaches, malls, and at special events, and has taught classes and spoken at churches, schools, conferences, and camps. Joe has been married to his wife Stacy since 1994.

They have three grown kids and they are founders of Throughout All Ages Ministries, which is a non-profit entity. Tonight, we are happy to have him present for us. So go ahead, Joe.

Defining Black Lives Matter, Social Justice, and Equity

Great. Well, how are you guys doing today? We are going to be talking about BLM, or Black Lives Matter, and what they believe in as an organization like Terry had said. Now, today we will start engaging our conversation looking at their fundamental belief system of Black Lives Matter, and what do they believe compared to Christianity.

Now, I remember the day that I seen my first poster up saying BLM, or Black Lives Matter, and my heart was taken. Yeah, it does matter. Look what's going on with Floyd. So my heart was out. But as time went on, and I'm talking about a couple of days, I began to go down to my foundation, what I've been taught as a Christian, to question all things and see if they have justifiable answers and what do they believe in as a group.

So when that began to take place, I began to now have to question myself as I'm holding up that sign, and I'm doing it for the good because black lives do matter. I began to ask the question as I'm holding up this sign, is it about individuals or am I taking a logo for an organization and what they believe?

So when people look at me as a Christian, because that's what I am first, Christ-like Christian, how are they going to respond? What are they going to see in me and is it true? Is it consistent, their values and their system of what they believe in?

This is where my starting point begin to be as I begin to think about Black Lives Matter. Now, Black Lives Matter is an ideology, although it's very close to a worldview. So we will treat it as a worldview mixed with many influential sects and groups and different ideologies.

But a worldview, when we're talking about worldview, we're asking the question, how did you get here? What are you doing here? How should you live your life? Who is your God? What is your salvation plan?

Where are you going when you die? These are the questions we ask for a worldview. But although it is not a religious institution, BLM, much of what they say has ramifications of religious qualities all through it.

So I want to define some words first before we begin to talk about Black Lives Matter. Let's define what they believe in social justice. Now, in BLM movement, it is equity, a redistribution to a minority oppressed group.

This could be race, color, gender, political, social, economic status. The question that needs to be answered by the individual is, is this redistribution, this equality of opportunity, or is it equality of outcome?

Opportunity suggests something of freedom, of free will to be able to get to where you want to, and it has this freedom added to liberty. On the other note, equality of outcome suggests that everyone is going to meet at the same quality.

Now we begin to get into socialism or even dictatorship. So a few points to consider in a framework of equity. This all plays a role when we respond to social justice, especially when it comes to the Black Lives Matter.

There's three points that I want you to consider as we look through the lenses of what they're telling us, who they are, and their worldview, really their ideology. So number one, are people looking at BLM and social justice as a fundamental belief system through the lens that all men are equal and working towards that goal?

In other words, at times, people might do things right and they might do things wrong. At times, politics might do good things or bad things. But the ideology is that all men are equal and that their rights come from God and not by men.

So that's the first point. When they're looking through their lens, do you see that? When we talk about redistribution, are they considering the social construct of subjectivism in the system that they live in?

What are they teaching the youth from generation to generation? You see, because ideals do have consequences. Are we animals? Is hitting a woman or overpowering her wrong? How about rape? Is murder always wrong?

Can we justify murdering a human being if they can't defend themselves? Number three, we look at when we're thinking about social justice, is how about the culture that we're living in? Because the culture I see now is running amok.

We see that there's our families are more than ever. And in the city streets, in the campuses, in the school, there is no right or wrong, and they have pushed God and chased them away from any standard or anything that they could think of.

So there is no wrong or right in the culture that we live in. And so we have to look at these three points. When we talk about social justice in the Imago Dei, now we're bringing a different reference here.

The Imago Dei is that you're made in the image of God. And we must take the whole counsel of God if we believe that we're made in the image of God. The Bible speaks of capital punishment, the protection of citizens against outside evildoers, a nation ruled by laws and authorities.

The social justice in the Bible recognizes that it's built on a standard of truth, that truth God made for his glory, and he made us for his glory. And with this truth became, or with this being made in the image of God for his glory, became this huge responsibility of wisdom and knowledge and fear and reverence of this Christian God.

Also, I want you to take note that the Bible speaks of actions contrary to the word of God and dismissing God as a final authority. So that needs to be the backdrop as we're looking at to see what's right and wrong in a standard when they're telling us who they are and what they want to accomplish, what are they talking about and how are they living their lives in these areas?

Now, when we talk about CRT, that's critical race, critical race theory says that America globally, that they are the oppressor. And CRT would divide it as the oppressed and the oppressor. And anyone that is a minority is being oppressed globally by America.

And when we dive into USA, when we dive into the United States, we found that as our founding fathers colonized America, that they were white. And so everything they ever did in America had racism attached to it.

So racism says it is an ideology that is within them, that this is their ideology and it comes from within them. Their whiteness. And because of their whiteness and the color of their skin, that systemic racism is embedded in all social institutions and is embedded in all structures and it permanence in every scenario that surrounds them.

This is critical race theory. Now, when we talk about intersectionality, intersectionality was something that was coined in 1989 by Kimberly Crenshaw. And intersectionality says this, that it is a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of life from persons with social and political identities.

Now, again, this could be gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, height, and they combine to create these unique modes of discrimination. And they live their lives and it intersect with the oppressor, the white man, right?

The white people. And for example, you need to see that when they see a white woman on a tantrum pole, that if you put a black woman on top of that tantrum pole, that they have increased the value, the black woman, that she has been victimized.

She's the minority that has been victimized by the white woman. But if you compare, for example, a gay white woman compared to a gay black woman, now that has a spectrum on the pole that they've been victimized, that black gay woman.

So if you have, for instance, a gay black woman and we take it up a notch and now you have a black trans woman, well, that black trans woman on that tantrum pole trumps the black gay woman. And then if you have a black Muslim trans woman, they will have more say and they have been deemed more victimized on this tantrum pole.

So ultimately, the white privilege or the white person is at the bottom of the pole and we're to recognize everyone else that is in these minority groups that this intersection takes place with the oppressed and the minority groups.

And when we think of white privilege, well, white privilege comes with this narrative that commands white people to sit, be obedient and listen, to understand that they are racist, that they might not know that they are racist, but they are.

And the white supremacists must sit in obedience, listen to the arguments of their unjust gains, as well as their obligation to redeem the remedy that has taken place, to redeem and bring a remedy, should I say, of what has taken place.

And while we're doing this, right, as a white racist group in America, the talk must be the realm of emotionalism. My story, says the BLM organization, not so much the facts or statistics, but more about who I am, my feelings, what I've been through as a victim.

And your stain for being white will not go away. It will never come off of you as a white person. That's pretty heavy when we're talking about white privilege. Now, I wanna talk about social justice, critical race theory, intersectionality in white privilege.

But before we do this, I wanna ask, does anyone have any questions just about the definitions that we're talking about? We are gonna get to what they believe, but I'm just talking about some of the definitions that we were talking about.

And if you have any questions, you can post them in the chat here on Zoom, or even in the chat on Facebook, although there's a little bit of a lag, so we might have a hard time catching up with your questions there, but feel free to post them in either chat, or also here, the people on Zoom, if you wanna raise your hand, I can call on you.

If you'd like me to unmute you, you can ask. Jeff is asking, what is systemic racism?

Yeah, so systemic racism has started since the beginning founding of our father. And it's actually innated, and we will talk more about this, but it is this innate in them, and their only response is, as a matter of fact, if I took, for instance, the Asian population, and we were to do the same thing we did in America, which they have done in the Asian population, they would become systemically racism because everything came innated from them.

And so Black Lives Matter says it's innate in them. They were born with this stain, and it's always a part of them. Whether they know it or not, they're putting them in first place in every decision they make, in everything they do, in every structure.

And so as time goes on, it becomes systemic that you begin to see this take place over generations and over generations.

Okay, it looks like that might be the only question at this point in time.

The Christian Starting Point: Inalienable Rights, Truth, and the One True God

Okay, sure. So our starting point as a Christian, I wanna talk about this. It's very important as an apologist, as a Christian, to have a starting point because your starting point can't be emotional.

Your starting point can't be just to listen. The starting point has to be where is truth, and this is what we have to ask. So the first question is, on our starting point,.

Well, let me say this.

I talked about five ways, five criteria that we can look at. Any religious group, any ideology, any secular institution, and see if it's consistent. The reason why I say we need to ask, who is your God?

Because their God could be someone, or something, or a group, or a society, and so they identify with something. That could be their God. So we need to ask the question, who is your God? Who do you put up on the top of your list as you talk about everything that you do in your life?

Who is your God? The other thing is, what is your salvation plan? You see, every group, doesn't matter who they are, has a salvation plan. In this salvation plan, they're either trying to redeem something or attain something.

So when you look at these groups, religious ideology and secular institutions, what are they trying to redeem? What are they trying to attain? That would be their salvation that you can begin to pin down and say, let's talk about salvation.

When we talk about, how did you get there? How did you get here? Should I say, not there, but how did you get here in this universe? How did you get here? We need to hear what they talk about, because this is gonna amplify how they believe, what they believe in, as they begin to talk.

It's a presupposition when they begin to say how they got here. So we need to ask that question and hear what they're saying. The other question is, what's their purpose in life? When we ask these groups in BLM, what is your purpose in life?

And what are you doing here? And sometimes all these groups will relate to one another. Soon as they say who their God is, it might relate to their purpose here in life. And so we need to listen carefully, because different people have different beliefs in what they think.

And so we shouldn't package it all tightly, but like any other group, we should look at, ask the question, well, what is your salvation plan? And what is your purpose here in life? And the next question is, how are you to live?

That's a huge question.

When they're living their life, when they're recommending how to respond to society, it's telling you how they live their lives. And you can begin to question that by your worldview and see if it weighs out, if it's consistent, and does it make sense?

And the other question is, is where are you going when you die? And that's a question. And if they say nowhere, and they say they just die and that's it, well, you can attach something to that, something of skepticism, something of atheism.

They might even tell you what they believe in if you ask them, and you can go from there. So these are five huge criterias that we need to look at. They're essential for looking at worldviews. Now, let's get to our starting point.

This is the question that you ask, who is your God? As a Christian, you have fundamental rights that were given by our creator. We call them inalienable rights. Why do we call them inalienable rights?

Because they're outside of our minds. It's out, he, God, is outside of our mind. He transcends. People seem to have the same type of talk that can only get from one to another. And we could examine each other, but how do I know I'm right?

Or how do I know I'm wrong? The only way to do this is to go to someone who knows everything. And this is why we look for inalienable rights, something that transcends us. So the Christian fundamental rights has this inalienable rights.

He told us, as we begin to hear from God speak to us through his letter, the manuscripts, the Bible, he said in Isaiah 43, 10, he says, understand and know that I am he, I am God. Before me, there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me.

So here, our Christian God is saying there's only one God, and there is no other God. Now, God does not lie, in Numbers 23, 19. Remember, this is our starting point. God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.

He has said, and will he not do? Or has he spoken? And will he not make good? So we know that everything that God tells us, not only verbally, but written in his manuscripts, that he does not lie, that's huge when we're talking about worldview.

We know that Jesus said in John 14, six, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father except through me. So we know that our starting point, that we can look at God's written word of what Jesus has told us, and that everything we do, and everything we think about life comes from the lens of the one who is faithful and true, and that would be our Christian God.

Jesus went on to say that you cannot serve two masters.

Think about that.

He tells us that you cannot serve two worldviews, or you cannot serve two ideologies. He tells us you will love one and you'll hate the other. Now, why is that? Why is it that you will love one and hate the other?

Because as you begin to have two worldviews, if you're going to be consistent, you will begin to find inconsistency. We call those contradictions. And as the contradictions begin to clash against one another, you're having to make a decision on which way you're going to go, and you will love one and you will hate the other.

This is so true. What God said, what Jesus told us 2 ,000 years ago. Now, what are we comparing here? What we are comparing is knowing, right? What we know. The epistemology of who God says he is,.

What he knows,.

And the epistemology of what Black Lives Matter has about who they are. Now, if God is saying something about who he is and his word is true, what that means is his word is absolute. His word is absolute.

So when we look at it with the lens of Christianity and we're weighing it out, right? The topic today is BLM compared to Christianity. Here, God says you are made in my image. And he tells us how we ought to live our lives.

And he gives us a prescription. Now, we will talk more about that later on, but I want you to know a prescription means that it's a goal, an end goal, that in every human being, God has put a goal, an end goal, on how a person ought to be.

Whereas most people today, especially the evolutionists, the atheists, the skeptics, they're living on a description, what it looks like. This is what it looks like. This is our description. And there is no end goal to it.

They don't know what the end goal or the end outcome is gonna be. Telos, the end goal, this is where we get the Greek word telos. When you talk about the Christian worldview, there are two points to talk about here.

And it's this, one worldview says that you are in the world. Now, if BLM will say that they're in the world, which I believe they are in the world from what I heard from their founding co-founders and their founders of the BLM movement, that they are of the world.

And what I mean of the world, that they are not Christian, right? And so we make this distinction and those who are of the world, and then you got the Christians. So once you say you're in the world, your ideal is the same way as this infamous atheist called Richard Dawkins.

And he said this, when we observe the universe, it has precisely the properties that we should expect, bottom up, no design, no purpose, no good, no evil, and just pitiless indifferences. So if there is no God to hold you accountable, then that is where you should be, bottom line, no purpose, no right, no wrong.

And so if there is no God in your worldview, especially the Christian God, what are we arguing about? There is no right, there is no wrong. You're just living your life as an animal, right? But if you believe, the second point, if you believe in God and God made you in his image, he has given you these inalienable rights.

That we talked about.

And one day God will judge the whole world on how they live their lives, because he is a just God. And because he is a just God, he has given us a standard for us to follow. And that's awesome, guys. No other worldview is like this, but the Christian worldview.

This is why we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with these unalienable rights. And among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of peace.

Some say happiness, but it's really peace.

The Bible talks about a peace.

Remember, we are talking about who is your God and how did you get here and what are you doing here? Now we know from the founding founders of BLM that they are Marxists, they have declared that. And as a Marxist, tearing down religion and God is necessary to build up their new society.

This is why statues have to come down. Even if the statue represents someone who has went all out on freeing slaves, that they would still, you would see them knocking down their statue, why? Because they realized that a white man has put that up and that we have to tear everything down to the ground in order to forget the history.

We see this a lot in the way Muslims react in the Middle East. Anytime they get a territory, and this happened a lot in the primitive days, that they would demolish an area, burn it down, bring it down to the ground.

Doesn't matter what it was because you're bringing up a new society and you don't want the people to remember the old history. This is what Marxists is doing. So when you see them doing that, this is what they're doing with the abolitionists.

They'll just tear down their statues. The BML founders have came out to say that they're spiritists, right? How many of you guys heard that when they were talking about that? These are some things that came out that they call on the dead and they like to talk to the spirits and they have made that clear.

Now, God has made some things clear too. As we're comparing, it tells us in Deuteronomy 18, there shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, right? Through the fire of Moloch.

They wanted to get rid of the baby, they would put it on the fire and boom, they would just murder him. And we see the same thing happening today. But here the passage, as we talk about spiritists, it's gonna go on and it says, there shall not be found one who practices witchcraft or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells or a medium or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.

For all you do these things, it's an abomination before God. And unless you think that maybe this was just Old Testament, we have Galatians 5 .19. Now the works of the flesh are evident, idolatry, sorcery, which sorcery would include all those, hatred, contentious, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, of which I tell you beforehand that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So the question is, who is your God? When we look at BLM movement, we see they have made a God in their own imagination. They have built them up to be their God. So by default, because they have made their own God, how they got here and what they're doing here are all under the guise of atheism, skepticism, and any other worldview that would have Christianity outside of it.

You see, it's not enough to say I believe in a higher power. Demonstrating who you believe in and showing it in your life demonstrates the very God you believe in. And so we can identify that as Christian.

Now, what makes Black Lives Matter religious in their connotations is that they're very close, similar to things of religion, even of Christianity. So we see that, of course, with the slight hint of a difference, right?

So when we look at Christianity, they have original sin. And so we all are running from God and we need someone to redeem us as we are sinful creatures. Whereas we see with the BLM movement that there is this innate that what we were talking about.

Innate in all white people is this stain of racism, which is an original sin to them. You cannot take that off of you. You need something or somehow or someone to redeem that. And we will talk more about that later.

But that is their original sin that white people are stained with white privilege.

Woke Epiphany, Sanctification, and the New Canon of Political Correctness

Now, the epiphany.

The epiphany is that we're born again as Christians. We are created as new people in Christ Jesus. For BLM movement, their epiphany would be woke. You're woke, you're awakened, and now you understand there is the oppressed and there is the oppressor.

And there's no middle ground. These are the two sides that you have when you're woke. Christians and sanctification. In sanctification, the Christian will say that he's set apart for God to be more like Jesus Christ and to set his life and he will begin to act like Jesus Christ, our savior.

Or sanctification to BLM movement is activism. You realize that you are stained with whiteness. And so your job, your sanctification, you're set apart for activism for the rest of your life and your virtual signaling.

Wherever you go, your job is to virtual signal to all people that you are active for Black Lives Matter. And this is why you'll see them bowing down and kissing their feet. This is virtual signaling that they understand who they are.

Now, God, the Bible, has been the Christian orthodoxy. We got this Bible that we can look at the doctrines that we hold to be true. Well, for BLM, they got another word. They got another Bible. It's political correctness, a new canon, a new Bible called psychology.

And they have books aglore with different nuances that begin to tell you who you are as a person. And as a white person, this is who you are and you are racist no matter what. And the end result, when we compare a religious attitude, Christianity has a redemption taking place that one day as God would change us, set us apart from the inside, that he did redeem us and he is redeeming us for the day that he will come and get us.

Whereas for Black Lives Matter, their religious attitude is a perpetual penance. You need to always ask for forgiveness for who you are. This is some heavy stuff when you start thinking about what they're trying to dictate to America right now.

And many young people are falling for it. So we got to show them why our justification is why we believe in what we believe in, in the Bible and our standard, our starting point is to look at them and identify who they are with their ideology and their religious attitude, who they are and who they are secularly, how are they acting and who are they trying to be?

And we can see a lot of this taking place. I wanna start talking about salvation. What is salvation? Now I told you that salvation is something redeemable or something that you can attain. Now the Bible tells us that man is depraved and desperately wicked, not because the basis of the color of their skin, but it is the action of the will that will run from God to become your own God, to become your own God as it were, right?

God gave us a verse for this, very simple verse in Romans 3, 23. It says, that's right, it says all have sinned and we've all fallen short of the glory of God. So you cannot take a race out, a minority group, a black colored group and say, hey, they are the ones that have not sinned.

They are the ones that have not fallen short. They are the ones that could never be racist. No, God is saying all have sinned and all have fallen short from the glory of God. And you begin to tell that to especially youth or students going to college and they believe in Christianity.

They say they believe in the Christian God. This is something that they need to see that there are contradictions to what BLM is trying to put out there. It tells us in Psalms 14, two, that the Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside. Together they have all become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Wow, what a manuscript. What a Bible verse, Psalms 14, two. Now, Black Lives Matter says explicitly or inexplicably that there is a race that is depraved with racism, white privilege.

And Black Lives Matter, we have this condition. They say we have this condition inherited in us, innate in us, inborn, that it's a hereditary, which is the sin of whiteness. This whiteness condemns us with a stain that cannot be washed away.

This whiteness cannot be get rid of. It's a curse. It is a cursed privilege. That is, it is a stain that you cannot and will not go away of salvation that is impossible. This is where they stand. Now, what is the cure for Christianity?

Well, we know, for as in Adam all died, so also in Christ all will be made alive. That's 1 Corinthians 15, 22. The Bible says you are a new creation in Christ Jesus. And he gives you a new way of thinking.

There's no reason for us to have systemic racism built in us as we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. And for the cure for Black Lives Matter ideology, there is no redemption. There is no power of regeneration.

This is why it's everlasting repentance that you do. You can never get it right as a white group, as a white person. There is no hope. There is no eternal life. On the contrary, it's a system that one places the crushing guilt on an individual that will ironically be built upon an ideology of partiality and prejudice.

And there is no salvation in the BLM movement. So even when we look at their movement in their ideology, guess what? It's built on partiality. It's built on prejudice, but they wanna tell us that it's not.

Creation, the Nuclear Family, and God’s Order for Marriage

So how are we to live our lives? Well, first of all, let's talk about where racism, I mean, where did the race come from? And I'm just gonna go through this with one verse because I think it clearly makes an understanding of what we believe, where we all came from.

And this is Acts 17, 22. I'm sure I'm singing to the choir here, those who are Christians, but it says this. It says that, so Paul stood in the midst of Aragapagus and he said, men of Athens, I observed that you are very religious in all respects.

The God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Here's the point guys. And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.

So we know from one man became all the races, all the nations. So how can there be built racism inherent if the gene pool goes out to every human being, starting with one man? And so we can see it flawed.

We can see the inconsistencies in it. When we talk about social justice, as far as the family, this is what it says in their website. Now you can go to their website right now and it won't say that. They actually took it out, even though they still believe in the same things because they were getting hit by it.

So many people were talking about what they wrote on their website. And this is what they said. It says that Black Lives Matter is opposed to the nuclear family structure. And it says this, we disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure.

This is an important confession that Black Lives Matter makes. You notice that they call it a prescribed nuclear family structure. They call it a prescribed because they're saying our forefathers prescribed this.

The ones who started the colonies, that it was in them, that they prescribed this nuclear family structure of Western society. The problem with this statement, we oppose Western prescribed nuclear family structure is according to God's word, the Bible.

This is the vital answer to this worldview or this ideology. And as a Christian, you need to stand on God's word. This is your starting point. And there is no room to change God's word. You see, because here they are opposing the nuclear family structure that God has ordained.

So let's lay this foundation framework that BLM intentionally uses the word, we oppose this prescribed nuclear structure. God's framework is not a theory based on assumption. Critical race theory is assumption.

That's one thing. But God has laid out a prescription. This is the prescription that they're talking about. They don't realize it, but God had laid out this prescription. And as a righteous God who created all people in his image to live and to act a certain way.

These are absolutes. They cannot be changed. It tells us in Genesis 1, 27, think about this.

Very primitive.

Here we are 6 ,000, we can go back 6 ,000 years, really 1500 years before Jesus came, when Moses began to write these manuscripts down. And it tells us in Genesis 1, right on the first chapter that God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him male and female.

And he created them and blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And then it tells us in Genesis 2, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So we see God prescribed an order that he made for his creatures, man and woman.

And he said that the two shall become one. But we find out in scripture that Jesus identifies with this as the rulers of the day, as the religious rulers of the day begin to ask Jesus a question about Moses and listen to what he says here as he talks in Mark 10, verse four.