TheWitnessBCC.Com - Definitely Not Cultural Marxists

All right, time for another video. It has been about a week since I last did a video and I'm ready to go. Today is a very snowy, amazing day in Vermont. It's been snowing for two days, actually, and it's the kind of snow that like sticks to all the trees.

So every tree looks white. Maybe I'll show you. I don't know if you can see that if you can't, no, I'll edit it out. But I love this kind of snow. It's amazing. I also like it when like the snow gets a little too heavy for the branches and then it falls down.

It's just totally cool. Anyway, before I get started, I wanted to make a few points here. It looks like Crown and Covenant sent me a catalog for fall. Hold on a second. All right, sorry about that. I got a phone call.

Anyway, Crown and Covenant sent me a catalog. And if you don't know, Crown and Covenant is, I believe, the publication company that's in the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I could be wrong about that, but Reformed Presbyterians, at the very least, use their materials a lot.

A lot of cool stuff. If you're interested in psalm singing, there's a lot of books in here about that, devotionals, things like that. I highly recommend basically anything that comes out of Crown and Covenant.

I use one of their Psalters at church. We're not a psalms only church, but we do sing psalms every week and it is a blessing. By the way, if you don't sing psalms, do it. Do it. Honestly, this whole social justice nonsense, the misunderstanding of the Old Testament, misunderstanding of the law of God, the downplaying of the Old Testament, things like that, a lot of it would be solved if people just knew their psalms and sung them together.

Another thing I wanted to say is I also got a new book, another white author. I'm reading another white author, everybody. I know it's going to trigger you. Douglas Wilson. It's not just any white author either.

It's Doug Wilson. But I am looking forward to this book, Federal Husband. I've been recommended this book by a number of people. I'm honestly surprised I haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to this one.

Responding to Amin Hudson on Biblical Justice and Cultural Marxism

Anyway, what I wanted to do today was talk about this article. This is an article called Biblical Justice and the Specter of Cultural Marxism by Amin Hudson. Now, if you don't remember, Amin Hudson was one of the two brothers that I spoke with from Native Speaks.

I did a conversation with them, 90 minute conversation. If you haven't seen it, I'll put a link in the description of this video so you can watch it. It was a good conversation in general. It started off very contentious.

It got better as we went. Obviously, we didn't agree on things at the end, but it was a good conversation. Anyway, he is definitely on the social justice side of this issue. What I considered doing with this article is just applying a little Tim Keller speech act theory to it and not talking about what the words say, instead what the words do.

But that would be very hypocritical of me because that is a ridiculous way to argue. I could easily just say, oh yeah, well, you see, I know what the words say, but what I'm concerned with is that he's a socialist.

You know what I mean? Anyway, so let's read this article and do a quick response. Here it is. Amin Hudson published on November 19th. He says, for Christians engaged in the struggle for racial equality, the term cultural Marxist may be familiar.

Our detractors have applied this term to many of us. It's used pejoratively, not only by those on the political right, but also by Christians who criticize others, even fellow Christians for their fight for equal justice.

Full stop. No, no, that's not why this term is used. And here's the thing, this article is going to make the argument that a lot of people use the term just as an insult and they're not really talking about the specific issues and they're just using it as like a boogeyman word to sort of mark people that they disagree with.

Oh, you're a cultural Marxist. And I'll be honest. I think that there are some people who do this. I do not think it's the majority. It seems like Amin thinks it's the majority, but some people do do this.

So if you do this, if you just kind of throw around the term cultural Marxist for anyone who says something that you don't agree with, then stop doing it. It's just that simple. But I don't think that there's a ton of people out there doing that.

I think they're actually, the people who do use this term are actually using it in a careful way. And anyway, but the reality is that people who use this term aren't just saying, if you fight for equal justice and you're a cultural Marxist, see, this is the problem with this article.

We're going to talk about this in a minute. Well, actually, well, yeah, let's just talk about it now. It's going to talk about bearing false witness and how you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you know, try to like confuse the issue or try to make people seem like they are something that they're not.

And what's amazing about this article, I mean, if you watch this video, what's amazing about your article is that you do in the article, the very thing you say we should not do. You do in the article and mean the very thing you say we should not do.

Because when you say that people use the term cultural Marxists to criticize other believers because of their rights, their fight for equal justice, that is bearing false witness. That is not the case.

That is not the case. Every one of your detractors, I mean, that you, that you're talking about here believes in equal justice. They define justice differently. They define quality differently. And they have some questions about the supposed claims of discrimination and partiality.

That's the difference. So it's not that you're fighting for equal justice and so we are cultural Marxist. No, it's because they think in their opinion, some of the categories you use and some of the methodologies that you use to come to your beliefs have their roots in Marxism or cultural Marxism.

So you are actually doing the thing you say we shouldn't do. Let's continue. The term is derived from the social and economic philosophy of Karl Marx. William Lind, a conservative writer and one of the biggest promulgators of the term said that cultural Marxism is quote Marxism translated from economic terms into cultural terms.

Cultural Marxism divides society into the oppressed and the oppressors and seeks to destroy Western traditions, values, individualism, nuclear family, law and order Christianity in order to eliminate oppression.

That's what I mean says. And that's all true. Cultural Marxism has been applied in all of those areas. Now in order for someone that, and this is, this is again for you, I mean, in order for someone to call an idea of yours, a cultural Marxist influenced idea or cultural Marxism, you don't need to have all of those things.

So in other words, you don't need to want to destroy the nuclear family to have some ideas influenced by cultural Marxism. Does that make sense to you? Like we can have some nuance here. You don't have to want to destroy Christianity in order to have ideas that are influenced by cultural Marxism.

See, this is the same thing that, that, um, that Carl Truman said about Tim Keller. Well, Tim Keller can't be a Marxist because he's not an atheist. Like this is, this is ridiculous. That's not how we argue.

That's not how you don't have to believe everything about it in order to, uh, have ideas influenced by it. That's obvious. Anyway, let's go. Let's continue. Go back to the article because rarely is the term used to actually discuss or analyze Marxist theory.

Instead, some use it to dismiss anyone who points out systemic oppression. According to their understanding, anyone who acknowledges institutional racism, privilege, or misogyny is complicit in perpetuating a culturally liberal zeitgeist to destroy Western values.

They can only be cultural Marxism, Marxists, apparently failing to see that people can agree on the existence of a problem without agreeing on the appropriate solution. These critics paint Christians concerned about oppression as embracing an atheistic or cultural Marxist program, which is not true.

And you see, this is the thing that's so, so fascinating about this, because here's the thing. A lot of Amin's buddies, and I, what I mean by that are associates of his, are looking at the recent elections and saying, hmm, this white person beat this black person.

Therefore racism is still a thing. And it's like, well, you know, that's what you're talking about here, brother. Why, why aren't you calling them out? He actually does kind of call them out in this article, which I found quite interesting, but, but that's the, that's the point, right?

So, so no, like when somebody says your ideas are influenced by cultural Marxism, that's not the same thing as saying that you are complicit in the liberal zeitgeist and you're trying to undermine Christianity and you're only a cultural Marxist.

No, it's possible for your ideas to be influenced by something that you're not. You believe that, right, Amin? You believe that? You think people are influenced by white, white supremacy and white privilege and all these things.

And there's necessarily mean that they're a racist or a white supremacist, but they're I influenced by it. You believe that, right, Amin? So let's, let's continue. Bearing false witness. He says, by using the term cultural Marxist, some conservatives falsely conflate Christians who fight for justice with others whom these Christians don't agree with and indeed openly reject.

I can't tell you how many sound Bible believing leaders, especially in the reform tradition, have received critiques, even from members of their own churches, accusing them of being politically liberal or Marxist simply because they speak about racial justice and equality from the pulpit.

Now here's the thing, Amin, I'm going to step out of the article for a second again, again, it is possible to have liberal ideas and not be a total liberal, right? It's possible to have ideas that the same kind of ideas that the democratic party has and not be a Democrat, right?

So here's the thing. When somebody calls you a cultural Marxist or says you have liberal ideas, it could mean that you have liberal ideas. I mean, it's just that simple. He continues. The truth is that political liberals and Christians concerned with racial justice don't agree with each other across the board, especially on the gender binary, the new sexual revolution, abortion, homosexuality, and many biblical principles.

That's not really a true statement though, because lots of liberal Christians do agree with political liberals on all of those things. And I'm not saying you do, Amin, but you have to understand that a lot of people that would be co-belligerents with you on racial justice have bought the sexual revolution, have bought into the abortion lies, have bought into homosexuality, and have compromised on almost all biblical principles.

There's a good chunk of people that have done that. And so you have to acknowledge that though, Amin, because the reality is a lot of the people who say the same things you do about race believe all of that stuff too.

And it makes a lot of sense to people like me because they're all connected. They're all connected. When you divide the world into oppressors and oppressed, you can do that in race. You can do that in economics.

You can do that in sexuality. You can do that for gender. You can do it for everyone. Some people just go further than you. That's the reality. And I'm sitting here thinking, I understand Amin Hudson doesn't do that with homosexuality and gender.

I understand that. But the question is why? What logical reasons does he have for that? And is it just inconsistency? And we're just grateful to God that you're inconsistent in that way? I am grateful to God that you're inconsistent in that way, that you don't apply these ideas, these categories, just homosexuality and things like that.

But the reality is, is it just inconsistency or is there a good reason for it? That's the question. And that's what people are asking on my side, but you don't seem to really see the nuance there. He says this, he says, we Christians reject their stances on these issues and the political left vehemently rejects ours.

Not as vehement as you think, I don't think. But many cultural conservatives who bear the name of Christ continue to put us in the same category, not realizing that they're refusing to acknowledge the differences along with our rejection of such a conflations bears false witness against their spiritual family.

OK, but I don't think a lot of people are doing that. They're not saying you're the same as the Democrats. They're not saying you agree with the Democrats on everything. They're not saying that. They're just saying there's a lot of similarities in certain areas.

Not to mention the fact that many of you guys vote for Democrats. So again, it's just like, I'm not, I'm not a Democrat, but I've all, I only vote for Democrats and I'm not a, I'm not a liberal, but I have a lot of these liberal ideas.

OK, fine. You're not as liberal as you could be, but you're more liberal than some of us. You see, that's the thing. Liberal conservative. These are just spectrums, right? Everyone to the left of me is a liberal and everyone to the right of me is, is, is a conservative demagogue.

Right. But, but that's the thing. Like, like you can be more liberal than somebody else. You, Amin, are more liberal than I am. It's just that simple. You're more politically liberal, Amin, than I am.

And that's the reality. And so what we need to do is compare it to the Bible, not compare it to each other. Right. I think your ideas in certain areas are flat out wrong. I think they're sinful. And what we'll do is we can go to the Bible and talk about that.

And that's how you do it. So I think you're, let's, let's, let's just, let's just read this. Here's the next paragraph. He just got done saying that cultural conservatives who bear the name of Christ continue to put us in the same category, not realizing that they're refusing to acknowledge the differences along with our rejection of such a conflation bears false witness against their spiritual family, which has massive spiritual implications.

Now we already get this. It's important to note that this tendency to lump people into broad dismissive categories goes both ways in our polarized, nuanced, averse culture. Can you believe that sentence?

Those two sentences, one after another. Can you believe it? He just did what he's saying we shouldn't do. He says, this goes both ways and it's something we shouldn't do, but you just did it. You just did it.

I mean, this is the point that I find so amazing. He's talking about, uh, you know, cultural conservatives as a group and they say, well, all of them are, uh, lumping us in this category. There's no nuance there.

And they're just saying that we're just like liberals is that bears false witness, dude, you just bear, you just bore bore false witness against those people because not everybody's doing that. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty sure you would count me in this cultural conservative category.

I don't think I necessarily fit in that category, but I think you would put me there and that's fine. I don't do this. Lots of my friends don't do this. You see what I'm saying? So it's just, it's just so funny because he talks about how liberals are guilty of doing the same thing.

Yeah. You're one of them. You just did the same thing. Oh my goodness. Let's uh, let's move on a little bit. We are not the same. He's saying we're not the same as Marxist. Nobody says you are, but there are similarities and we can talk about that and we have talked about that.

So it's just the thing like that, like this article gives the impression that everyone who says, uses the word cultural Marxism, they just don't, they don't even really know what it means. It just throw it out there to me.

It's a boogeyman. It's just like in the civil, he says this, he says to me, it's eerily reminiscent of how anyone who fought for civil rights was labeled a communist, right? But some of them were communists though.

You know what I mean? Like that's the problem. You make it seem like nobody knows what they're talking about with this. But the reality is even if you're not a liberal, even if you're not a cultural Marxist, I've never called you that myself.

The reality is even if you're not, some of your methodologies and categories are very similar to what cultural Marxists use. Okay. So even if you're not, some of it's very similar. And so that's the thing.

So we understand you're not the same. You're not, you don't believe everything Karl Marx believed. You don't believe everything a communist believes. I get it. You don't believe everything a critical race theorist believes.

I get it. Everybody gets it. I'm not the only one who gets that. Everybody gets it. But there's a lot of similarities and the foundations are extremely troublesome. That's the point. They're unbiblical foundations.

So if you start from an unbiblical foundation, whether it's completely Marxist or just a little bit Marxist, or maybe it's not Marxist at all, and it's just wrong, that's the problem. We're talking about that.

That's the issue. Okay. Cultural Marxism or biblical justice is the end of the article. Now remember, we don't want to paint these broad categories. We don't want to not have nuance. We have a nuance of verse culture.

We don't want to do that stuff. And people do it on both sides, conservatives and liberals. Ready for this? I believe many Christians don't fight against injustice because they simply don't care. I'd ask for the receipts, but I know there aren't any.

But again, this is an amazing article. It's very uncommon to see someone do the very thing that they say you shouldn't do in the article in the article itself. It's just amazing. Actually, it's not that uncommon.

People do it all the time. Their hearts are not as moved as they should be, which has its own set of fearful implications. But I think some also fear that they'll align themselves with the specter of liberalism or cultural Marxism.

It's what political commentators have told them, and they've come to believe it. This sadly prevents them from honest self-examination and humble listening. You got to be humble. You just got to believe that, that them, but the point is like, like, you know, you guys out there who use cultural, you're just fearful.

You just don't know. You're just listening to the talking heads again. No nuance here, but my goodness gracious, not, I mean, the reality is if you keep thinking of people on my side in this way, it's never going to, we're never going to have the conversations because I don't think of you like this.

I don't think that you don't have, you don't think you have good reasons for what you believe and you're just listening to Don Lemon on TV. You're just an NPC, just this commenting. I don't, I don't think that about you think you think you have good reasons for what you believe.

I think you're probably wrong. We haven't really had a conversation about this. I think you're probably wrong and I, all your, your, a lot of your colleagues are wrong about some of what they believe and we can go to the scripture and talk about it, but the reality is people on my side, we actually have reasons for why we think we believe we don't, we're not just listening to Bill O 'Reilly.

You know what I mean? I don't watch, I don't watch cable news, bro. I don't watch cable news. I don't have that, that kind of influence in my life. I do watch some people that have probably influenced me, but the reality is like, let's, let's just stop thinking our opponents are fearful, stupid idiots.

You know what I mean? I just don't get that. He says, if that's you. So guys, all you guys out there who are just fearful, listening to the political commentators, you don't know what you're talking about.

You just use cultural Marxist as a pejorative because you're a racist. If that's you ask yourself, this is concerned for my neighbor and the unique challenges they may face due to skin color, gender, and so on Marxist or biblical is fighting for justice for immigrants and people of color, Marxist, or is it loving my neighbor as myself and is treating others the way I'd want to be treated Marxist or loving my neighbor as myself.

Look, I mean, come on, man, this is not how we argue. It could be both, right? There are Marxists who think that they're loving their neighbor as themselves, right? All of them do. Every Marxist thinks that every Marxist thinks they're helping people.

Every Marxist thinks that they're having concern for poor people or disenfranchised people. Every Marxist thinks that it could be both, but the reality and the way we decide this is we go to the Bible and say, what does the Bible say?

What does the scripture say about how to help the poor? How does the Bible talk about charity versus justice? How does the Bible talk about government's role in all of this? How does the scripture talk about it?

That's how you tell the difference. How does the scripture tell you to do it? And then how does cultural Marxism and critical theory tell you to do it? And let's see which one looks more like my beliefs and your beliefs.

That's how you do it. Anyway, that's all I really want to say about this article. That got a little more heated than I was thinking it would. But I mean, if you did watch this, I'd like to have an actual conversation about the Bible with you.

I would actually like to focus on the Bible because this is the key here, brother. This is the key. Cultural Marxism or biblical justice. I'm willing to be corrected by the Bible. And I'm willing to say, you know what, maybe your categories are correct if we could find them in the Bible.

Oppressor, oppressed, things like that. We can find that kind of stuff in the Bible. We can find your solutions in the scripture. I'll be an advocate for you. I will change my mind today and I will go full woke.

I'll go full woke and I'll do whatever I can to undo the damage that I've done. But until you can show me from the scripture how it is that we can solve discrimination with affirmative action, how it is we can solve these issues with restitution, reparations, whatever it is you want to talk about, biblical restitution, how we apply that today.

Because I believe in that stuff, right? I believe in that stuff, but I don't see it your way. And so let's talk about that. Let's have a conversation about the scriptures. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

God bless. I've been seeing a lot of talk about the skin color of authors that you read. And the implication is that if you only read authors of a certain skin color, normally white, let's not mince words here.

If you only read white authors that you're somehow deficient in your understanding of the world. And on the one hand, it makes kind of like logical sense. It's like, yeah, well, you know, if you only read from one, you know, ethnicity, then, you know, you're really not sure how other ethnicities live and how they, how they see the world.

And so you, you are, you would be deficient, but then when you think about it for a second, you think, listen, listen, I know it makes logical sense when you, when you, when you, you just first hear it, it's like, oh, wow, I need to diversify my, my, I'm going to broaden my horizons.

But, but the hidden assumption there is a racist one. You're a racist. If you think that way, look, if you think that way and you hear me calling you racist, just consider this for a second. Why does skin color have anything to do with how you see the world?

It doesn't. It doesn't. Now here's the reality. If you're talking like, well, nobody knows how to live, how it is to live in Egypt, but an Egyptian, well, I guess that's true, but what does skin color have to do with that?

You know, I've been to Egypt. There's, there's Egypt, Egyptians of various skin shades and skin tones that has nothing to do with it. By the way, if you're an Egyptian and you have the same skin color as the next person, but you're a, one of them, you, one of, one of you is a Christian, one of you is a Muslim, one of you is an atheist.

You think you might have different perspectives? Look, diversity when it comes to skin color is the most basic, dumb kind of diversity I can imagine because to think that all black people or all Latinos think the same because they've got the same skin, uh, have the same perspective.

That is a racist assumption. That's not true. We're not monoliths. Every Puerto Rican doesn't think like me. That's obvious, right? To a lot of you, every Puerto Rican doesn't think in a Puerto Rican mindset.

It just doesn't work that way. Well, actually, maybe that's not true. I, uh, was thinking about how Puerto Rican Thanksgiving is superior to white Thanksgiving because we have pork at our Thanksgiving.

Now, I don't have pork at my Thanksgiving because I don't know how to make it, but man, I went on Twitter to see if anyone else was talking about pork and it's better than me. If you know, if you don't know, but me, uh, but, uh, everyone was talking to all kinds of Puerto Ricans are talking about the pork that they were going to have at Thanksgiving.

In fact, I saw one tweet that said, uh, the whole Bronx smells like Berlin right now. But anyway, um, look, that's a funny joke, but the reality is not every Puerto Rican is the same. Not every black person is the same.

If you think that way that you say, Oh, well, you got to get the black perspective when you're reading less. That's a racist belief. Look, I love reading black authors, but the reality is if you're, if you don't read black authors right now, you might, you'd be deficient in certain people's viewpoints.

Yeah, but don't feel like you're a racist if you don't have any black people in your reading collection. Now, I've got a bunch of black people that I could recommend that you read some that I don't even agree with.

But the reality is that this idea that you're somehow a secret racist, if your book collection is mostly white authors, that's crazy. That's crazy and racist. That's not how we should think. That's how kids think.

Kids think, well, if you look different, you must be different. That's how children think. It's not the same thing. Adults shouldn't be thinking in these terms. Anyway, that's all I got.