Is Cru’s “Lenses Institute” the Underdog?

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm John Harris. This is kind of weird for those watching.

00:18

I'll explain for those listening. Yeah, so there's some sparkly dust, kind of like a motion graphic in the background and I'm smaller because I'm moving and I packed up the, well actually no,

00:31

I got rid of the cabinet that my camera was sitting on. And so I was like, where am

00:37

I going to put my camera? I think there's a stand somewhere, but I couldn't, I don't have time to find it. So I had to put it on a shelf, which is farther back.

00:45

And anyway, this is the best motion graphic I could find with the time I had just so it wouldn't be a bunch of blank stuff in the background and completely boring.

00:53

But this isn't really my style. But we're going to get rid of it in a second because I'm going to show you a slideshow and I'm going to decrease my size even more and blow up the slideshow.

01:03

And we're going to talk about Crew and just what's going on, a little bit of an update with the organization.

01:12

I don't usually focus on Crew, I know it's been a while. I did do a video last week just where I said, hey, there's an announcement that Crew's Lenses Institute is shutting down in the

01:21

United States. Maybe this is a good thing, something to take hope in, I guess, that maybe some people are listening.

01:28

I feel, I had a slight suspicion, I know I mentioned it, that maybe this was like a political move and now

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I'm pretty sure it probably was. So I'm going to explain what I think is probably going on in Crew as an organization.

01:41

I think there's a tug of war, there's a real tug of war, it's been going on for a while and it's not slowing down. So we're going to talk about that.

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By the way, I should mention too, some people have made comments about the intro music and the outro music and it's

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Tim Bushong who's, I think he also does some stuff for James White. I think the intro for the

02:03

James White's Dividing Line is him, or maybe it was just Radio Free Geneva, I can't remember, but he does some of that stuff as well.

02:09

But he offered to do, to kind of soup my, if some of you remember, a few months ago it was just an acoustic version,

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I recorded it on my phone, that little riff, that rock and roll riff. And so that, actually

02:24

I should, since everyone now is talking about giving attribution, right, and no one wants to plagiarize, that's the worst thing right now, is plagiarizing.

02:35

I figured I should give credit where credit's due, right? So that riff, as far as I remember, now my memory could be slightly wrong because this is a while ago, and it's back to the band days, the garage band days, when two friends and I, we had our band, and some of you who are in this, you kind of know what it's like, you're sitting around goofing off, talking about how one day you're going to be a big band and you're going to be famous and that kind of stuff, and it doesn't really happen.

03:04

So we were doing that, and then one person comes up with a riff, or like, hey, check out this song

03:10

I wrote last night, and oh man, that's going to be a hit, that's an awesome song, that kind of thing. And so I'm pretty sure it wasn't me, that particular riff,

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I'm pretty sure it was a friend of mine who was, I don't know if he made it into a song or not, but I think that was his riff.

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He's like, guys, check this out, dun -nuh -nuh -nuh -nuh -nuh, so that whole thing that you hear as the intro.

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And so I think, no, I actually did put it into a song,

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I actually did write a song eventually, I use that riff, I think, I think this is going back a ways.

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I have it on my computer, I'm pretty sure. And I use that riff, but it got stuck in my head cause it's kind of catchy. And then what happened was when

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I started the podcast a few years ago, I was using this, I was doing this classical piece, this hymn.

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I don't know what the name of the tune is off the top of my head, but the hymn was Let All Things Now Living. And so I did like a finger picking version of that.

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And it's a hymn I like. It reminds me actually of Thanksgiving. And I made that kind of the intro and the outro. And I think some people were kind of like, you know, hey, could you like soup that up a little bit?

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Some people liked it, some people didn't. And I started to think like, I want to change it a little bit. And so I used that riff that my friend had come up with, pretty sure it was him.

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So all I have to say, it's not, that riff does not belong to me. And hopefully no one assumed that that riff was mine.

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It came from someone else and I might've modified it a little bit along the way. Tim Bushong really ramped it up.

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He gave it that swampy feel. And half of you just got some information that you don't care about.

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The other half of you find it interesting because I get the comments and some of you like when I talk about my personal life. But yes,

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I did have some garage band days. And yes, that riff came from that.

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And it's over time, it's somehow made its way into this podcast that I'm doing now.

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So there you go. That's some info on the riff. Other stuff, just quick announcements before we get to the crew stuff.

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I know I announced that you can go to worldviewconversation .com top right -hand corner and there's a,

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I forget the name of the tab. You'll see it when you go there though. And basically if you want to schedule me to speak or you have an idea for like a conference type of thing where I can maybe bring a few friends and whatever you're thinking, you can go there and you can submit on a form.

05:40

Here are the dates that you're looking at. Here's like, can you cover travel accommodations for people? Are you, what are you thinking?

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And for this fall, probably more like later fall and next spring,

05:53

I'm gonna schedule some things. And I already had a number of people fill out that form.

06:00

I just want to let you know, I haven't gotten back to you yet and it might be a few weeks. And the reason is I'm waiting to get a bunch of applications in and then

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I'm gonna look at them all and I'm gonna start working, doing the jigsaw puzzle on the calendar to see what would work, what wouldn't.

06:15

So you will get a response. It's just not right this second. So I wanted to say that also for those who right now,

06:24

I know this whole accusation against Votie Bauckham that he did plagiarism and the accusation against Owen Strand that he was a social justice warrior who's now, he's an opportunist because not a social justice warrior, but he was kind of woke and he's an opportunist because he's within a few years done a 180.

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I responded to both of those, or at least I tried to give some guidance on what

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I think is going on there in the previous podcast. And I didn't label it and I realized I didn't tag it or anything.

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So maybe some people don't know that, but I keep getting asked questions about it. So I figured

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I would just announce it again. If you go to the previous podcast that I did, I did talk about it.

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And what's the name of that? I'm gonna look it up real quick, just so you know the title if you're looking for that particular podcast.

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Let's see here. It is called My Reaction to the American Solidarity Party. My Reaction to the

07:21

American Solidarity Party. At the beginning, I give about 15 minutes of commentary on that whole issue.

07:28

Still offering the A .D. Robles book, by the way, Social Justice Pharisees. Got it right here.

07:38

Social Justice Pharisees. Link is in the info section. Still offering that. Like I said,

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I won't be able to ship it out. Like in the next couple of days after I move, it's gonna be like, I'm going on a vacation and it's gonna be like a week or two, at least, probably two weeks or more before I'll be able to ship it out.

07:56

So if you want this, now is the time. For patrons, it's only five bucks for shipping. Everyone else is 20 bucks.

08:02

So five bucks shipping, $15 for the book. And then, of course, also my book, Social Justice Goes to Church.

08:08

Just got today, I should say this, the concepts for the cover of the next book that I'm almost done with,

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Christianity and Social Justice Religions in Conflict. And it looks pretty cool, actually. I really,

08:22

I'm pleased with what we got so far. So things moving along there. Appreciate everyone's support and help and all that.

08:30

So let's go for, let's talk about this. So we're gonna talk about this and then I'm gonna read for you a passage from the

08:37

Book of Acts. So let's start with this. If I can pull it up.

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Let's see, can I pull it up? Is this possible? We can, we can. I have, okay.

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So I'm gonna minimize myself here. There, I'm really small now. I'm really small. So you're just, you're looking at the screen and seeing these tweets.

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So here's some tweets that are just reactions. And this is from more like, this is from the social justice side. If you,

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I think some of these guys are actually kind of hard left and some of them getting harder left by the day.

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Heavy social justice guys, influence guys. Jamar Tisby reacted to, well,

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I'll read what he says. He says, always fun to be called a liar for following the facts. The fact is Lenz's Institute is no more while so -called whistleblowers on the radical indoctrination from racial justice advocates bullied their way into maintaining the status quo.

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Which is like the cardinal sin of the woke guys. Like if you maintain the status quo,

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I mean, status quo is like the worst thing imaginable. What you need to do is forward the revolution.

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In fact, I think, is it Trevor Loudon? Someone said it once, it resonated with me. The issue is never the issue.

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The issue is always the revolution with these guys. They want their utopia. They want their equity, inclusion, diversity.

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They want it now. They want it immediately. Anyone standing in the way needs to be eliminated. And the more secular generally, it's by any means necessary.

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You know, if violence can even be justified as long as you're bringing in an egalitarian utopia type equality.

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And so Jamar Tisby, very much on the social justice side, and what he's doing is he's framing this.

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And this is part of the reason I'm making this video because I see this over and over. He's framing this as if he's the underdog or the progressives, the social justice advocates.

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They're the underdogs, right? Even though Lenz's Institute wasn't a thing. I don't know when it was created.

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It's pretty recent. Crew brought, created Lenz's Institute or brought them in. So I don't know how that worked, but it was a new, brand new thing.

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I mean, Crew goes back to, I think the 50s, right? When Bill Bright started Crew. And so Lenz's is fairly new in the last,

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I don't know, within the last decade. And so they come in, they bring this woke stuff that pretty much, it divides

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Crew up. It's created the problem. Not just Lenz's, Crew in general, and the people that they have speak at their conferences, but Lenz's is a big part of this.

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And the reaction is, oh, well, actually, we're not the ones causing the division.

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It's the people who are the quote unquote whistleblowers who are causing the division. The people who are concerned about the teaching that Lenz's Institute is bringing that's causing so much turmoil, they're the ones that are the whistleblowers, right?

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They always do it this way. Nine times out of 10, 9 .9 times out of 10, in any organization, the fingers are always pointing at those who would stand in the way of egalitarianism or the revolution or whatever they're trying, their objective is.

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And there's like one button to push, and that's the attack button. There's hardly ever reflection from the social justice side on, hey, are they being consistent?

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There's hardly ever an admission of wrong, it's just attack. You gotta understand this about these guys.

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They will twist things, they will, and in their mind, sometimes they're not even twisting it. They really genuinely,

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Jim Artisby may genuinely think that it's these whistleblowers who are in the position of power.

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It's not the Lenz's people. It's not the woke guys in crew. It's not even the crew upper echelon who's been advocating for social justice now for years, allowing it at least, and to some extent, advocating it.

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It's not them. It's this organic group that formed inside of crew that's not even part of crew, that's literally outside.

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It is, they do not have power in crew. The only power they have, really, is to notify donors of what's going on and apply pressure to the organization that way.

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That's about it. They don't have any real institutional power within crew compared to the people that they are opposing, but yet, the social justice advocates can always twist things, and then that's why it's probably confusing for some of you.

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You think, wait a minute, this whole speak truth to power, and there's all this racism and sexism and all this stuff going on, and yet, it's like on my iPhone that I'm getting updates from Amazon.

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Literally, some of the biggest corporations in the world are the ones that are saying that there's this huge problem with power disparities.

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It just makes you scratch your head. You're like, wait a minute, the most powerful people in the entire world are saying that the rich and powerful are such a problem.

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Like, wait, are they talking about, they're not talking about themselves, though. That's the thing. So, like, Jamar Tisby, right, he's an activist.

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He probably would admit that, but he fashions himself as a historian. He has a degree in that. So, I mean, his book is a history, but it's a history and activist book.

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It's a political, it's got a political bent to it, for sure. He's gonna get a lot of opportunities.

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I just guarantee it, he already has, that someone who has similar credentials will not get because they're not on the woke wagon and they're not on the social justice side.

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I'm just telling you, that's just how it is. The thing is, though, people that are conservative don't tend to complain about those things.

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They don't tend to gripe and whine and moan about it because they just have the mentality of like, well, we don't live in a perfect world anyway.

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Don't expect justice perfectly. And I pull myself up by my own bootstraps kind of thing.

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Like, God's given me abilities and I'm going to use those abilities as best

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I can and I can't control what I can't control. And so, there's no reason to get upset about it.

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I just need to work hard, that's kind of the mentality. But, so the social justice side's not like that as much.

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If there's ever any, if something like this happens where Lenz's Institute, which has been pushing critical race theory and social justice, if they shut down, they have to point the finger.

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It's the fault of someone. Someone's got to blame for this. It's not like Lenz's did a bad job. It can't be

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Lenz's fault. It can't be Lenz's did a bad job communicating. It can't be Lenz's didn't listen. It can't be

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Lenz's should have done better in some area. It's gotta be there's evil forces out there and they're powerful and they're the ones with institutional power.

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For those inside CREW, they know it's kind of a joke. If they're really thinking clearly, they know that that's not really true.

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I mean, this group, this organically formed of people who are concerned about the social justice direction of CREW, they were told by leadership to disband.

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They were, they did not gain the hearing that they wanted to gain. And yet they're somehow now treated as if they're in the position of controlling the whole thing.

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That's kind of a conspiracy, guys. I know you're not supposed to like go down that road. It's always, at least lately, it's been the fingers pointed at the right, that they're the conspiracy theorists.

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But like this kind of stuff is kind of conspiratorial thinking, right? So here's another reaction.

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I don't know who some of these people are, by the way. I just thought it was interesting, the framing of this.

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So someone asks, what do you think of the video of, I think this is the video of Hoyler, who

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I had played some of his video where he's kind of whistleblowing. He's saying, look, I was part of CREW. And you did a very good job, by the way.

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Here are some videos from the lenses training. This was bad stuff. And so this guy is asking, what do you think of it?

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And here's the reaction. What is remarkable is I could not figure for the life of me what was unbiblical,

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I guess about lenses. No case was made. No case was made.

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Then baiting the facilitators with particularly inflammatory counters at the end was extremely inappropriate.

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So for those who don't remember, this guy Hoyler, who was part of this lenses training, he posted some resources on critical race theory that were against critical race theory.

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And then he got kind of rebuked by Sylvester, I think was the guy's name, the guy who runs the

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Lenses Institute publicly in front of everyone. He got rebuked for doing that. And so this guy on Twitter is publicly saying, man,

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I can't figure out what's unbiblical about that whole lenses thing. And there's no case made. And then, man, he's baiting them.

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And I have to wonder sometimes, what would have happened? Reverse the clock 2 ,000 years.

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What would have happened if we were in the time of the apostles? Or even the Reformation, I mean, you pick. And what would they have said when error was confronted?

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This is erroneous. And Will Hoyler did do some of that. He did confront the error.

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He did focus on what was going on that he was uncomfortable with.

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But the reaction would have been like, just kind of whistling past the graveyard, pretending, yeah, there's nothing here.

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And then you're rude for pointing out error. You're so rude. Someone else asked, who is

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Hoyler? And then this guy, and I think this guy works for Crew. Josh Chen, I don't know any of these guys, but this is what's happening publicly.

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He said, he's evidenced that Crew needs to do a better job screening who they let on their staff. So because someone would take issue with what lenses was promoting, see, you're not allowed to disagree.

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You should not even be on Crew's staff, according to some of these people, if you disagree with the radical, critical race theory stuff lenses putting out there.

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And we've gone through it before. You know why this stuff, and I never get tired of repeating it because I know

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I need to. But standpoint epistemology undermines objective truth, undermines the clarity of scripture. You can't have revelation if you believe in that.

18:46

You can't have biblical justice if you think justice is this egalitarian thing that's supposed to eliminate disparities.

18:52

That's not the equality before the law that is presented in the Bible. It's not what mishpat is about. You can't have the harmony of a communion table when you're making these firm designations of oppressors and oppressed based on skin color or social class or some other external factor.

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And saying that you need to do some kind of penance to this person because of the class or the social location that you belong to, that totally anti -biblical.

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It's just that's, I mean, they're literally Bible verses like one in Ezekiel against that. You shouldn't have to pay for the sins of your social group, supposedly, or people who look like you.

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That's totally foreign to scripture. And they twist all kinds of scripture trying to make that case.

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Oh, look what Daniel prayed. Yeah, the children of Israel in a covenant relationship with God were participating in the same sins that their fathers did.

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By habit, those sins were carried down. That's not the same as apologizing for the sins of their fathers, okay?

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There's a difference there. So you have that, the communion table harmony completely broken down by this kind of teaching.

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You have the undermining of the biblical principles of private property when there's some kind of a redistribution scheme that's introduced.

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Reparations need to be paid, that kind of thing. So biblical ethics is undermined. And broadly speaking, you completely destroy a

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Christian metaphysic, an understanding of the wholeness of creation. And what, people are valuable because they're made in the image of God.

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And all the complicated things, all the, actually, the true diversity, all the things that are part of creation get reduced down to this one narrow channel of evaluation.

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And that's whether or not it either forwards or opposes oppression.

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And so you end up with like a, just this really narrow view of reality.

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And you're analyzing everything according to this very, very narrow set of principles. And you're not looking at the wholeness of what

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God's made. Anyway, those are just a few things that Lenz has promoted that has a damaging effect.

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And of course, the gospel itself, when you mess with justice, you end up messing with the gospel because you need to have a clear understanding of what justice is in order to understand what mercy is.

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The two have to be, they're different. Justice is giving someone their due, whether it's reward or punishment.

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We all deserve punishment because of the sin that we commit. And mercy is getting what we don't deserve.

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It's what God did for us. If you don't have those two things very clearly separated, you wind up in a real problem.

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You also wind up in a real problem if you start adding things to the gospel or saying, this is part of the gospel.

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In fact, I got into a discussion with a crew guy who was more on the woke side of like two weeks ago online, just in a little chat.

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I don't usually do this. It was a Facebook thread. And they were making that case.

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And literally the guy offered me, hey, John, like I'll share with you the truth of the full gospel. And I'm like, hold on,

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I have the gospel. This is the gospel. Went right to Galatians with him. And he wanted to argue that the gospel included social justice.

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And so you're adding an element of the law. You're adding an element of works. So how is this in keeping,

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Lenz's Institute, with the mission of crew? They wanna try to put it under discipleship, but it's foreign to any kind of Christian discipleship.

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It's an activist political strategy. And it's corrupting not just crew, but other organizations.

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And so I said, well, hey, when crew said, or when Lenz's said, hey, we've made the decision to shut down our organization in the

22:45

United States, I thought that, hey, that's a good thing. I'm just not so sure that's actually what's, I'm not sure the angle

22:52

I thought possibly at first was the reason for it is the angle that it actually is.

22:58

There may be a political play going on. And I'll show you that in a minute. Someone else on Twitter, my friend,

23:05

Jamar Tisby, I'm sorry this was written to you. So unfortunately, crew two, hashtag crew two.

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So like me too, but it's crew two, is a hostile, abusive, traumatizing movement. See, this is where this stuff leads.

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Six of us were all abused by the vice president and covered up by HR. And now look, I don't know,

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I don't know that, I can't verify, he said there was NDAs. He was a whistleblower. Lenz's Institute and all the precious staff, guest speakers, and in the dock on CRT are also heinous though.

23:37

This is amazing to me. So many crew staff, he says, have been crushed, abused, marginalized, and traumatized, plus crew last minute statement of Lenz's statement is demeaning to every, okay, all right, we're gonna stop there.

23:48

Here's the point. This guy is saying, hey, crew's abusive. Crew as an organization is abusive.

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It's those guys in leadership. And then it's exactly what I just said a minute ago. This group of people, this concern group that created the document against critical race theory, that traced it out in crew, that opposed it, that created this document of concern to submit to the leadership, even though they're in conflict with the leadership or were in conflict, they're in conflict, basically, with the leadership.

24:14

Leadership didn't like what they were doing. They are somehow now kind of like, they're one with the leadership.

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They're put in the same category. Like the people who created this document of concern about what was going on in crew, they're the abusive ones, just like the leadership is.

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See, this is like, it makes no sense. It makes no sense. The leadership is opposed to this.

24:40

They're opposed to it. The leadership doesn't like that this group formed and created this document. This document wasn't even supposed to be made public.

24:47

Remember that? So it was made public. Someone leaked it. And it wasn't a conservative person in that group.

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It was a mole, apparently, from the progressive side that leaked the document. It wasn't from the crew as an organization.

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But yet this gentleman thinks, oh yeah, the crew as an organization is abusive. This is like the anti -hierarchy.

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It's their control, their power, they're abusive. And somehow this group that has really no power in crew and is itself being marginalized is representative of that.

25:20

There's always a way to twist it to make the social justice guys, even they could be doing the most abusive things in the world, but if they're for the revolution, somehow they become the underdogs.

25:30

It's just weird. All right, so here's the main thing I wanted to share with you. Mark Gaith, I think it's

25:36

Gaithier, the U .S. National Director of Crew, wrote this. For the past couple of days,

25:42

I have been deeply saddened as I've considered the decision of the Lenses team and the realities that prompted it.

25:50

As I and our U .S. leadership team are engaging with many of our leaders, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

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As you can imagine, we are in a very complex place, both organizationally and relationally, but what has happened is reflective of the scale of the issue and the need for real and substantial progress organizationally and in our leadership culture.

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I, along with the U .S. leadership team, fully own and accept this reality. It grieves me deeply that deeds done and words spoken within our community would cause hurt, fear, and pain as expressed by the leadership of Lenses.

26:23

So look what he's doing. He's playing into the whole narrative I just described. Lenses is saying we're hurt, we're deeply just, we're so upset, we're just gonna shut down Lenses.

26:34

We're so upset about what this group without any actual power and crew said about us in their secret document that wasn't supposed to be revealed publicly, that was submitted to the leadership to express their concern.

26:47

We're just so hurt about it. And so the reaction from the U .S. national director is those mean bullies, those mean people, those deeds done and words spoken within our community that cause hurt, fear, and pain.

27:02

Who's the one with the problem here? It wasn't Lenses that created a problem by, oh, I don't know, accusing white people of racism because they're white and benefit from a system of privilege.

27:11

It wasn't because they segregated off minorities and white people to process injustice in different ways.

27:19

It wasn't any of that, no. It was this group that put a document together that just told the truth about Lenses and had itemized here's where they said it and here's what was said and here's the problem with it biblically.

27:34

They're the problem. And in scripture, I'm gonna repeat this because it's important. In scripture, the people who cause division are never the ones who are defending against error.

27:45

It's the ones who bring the error that caused division. I'll repeat it. In scripture, the ones who are responsible for causing division are the ones who bring the error, the false teaching.

27:55

Now you discerned, who is it? Is it this group that created a document outlining the false teaching or is it the

28:04

Lenses Institute and people that were in favor of the critical race theory stuff? Mark Gaither is siding in a sense with Lenses.

28:14

He's taking their perspective and he's saying, you know what, you're right. Like you are the one, you're the ones that are hurt.

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You're the ones that were targeted. So mean that that would have happened to you. So he says, this kind of relating neither reflects

28:26

God's heart nor is biblical. So God's heart wasn't, God's heart isn't for people to point out false teaching.

28:32

You know, that's just so mean to do that. In the days ahead, I'll be addressing this in greater detail.

28:38

We as a leadership team are on our knees in dependence on the Lord and wanna invite you to join us. I don't, so whatever hope

28:44

I had, cause the hope before, like last week, I was kind of like hopeful that like, oh, like it sounds like leadership really got on Lenses' case and Lenses is shutting down.

28:52

And now I find out Lenses is not shutting down in any other country, apparently, it's just the US. And this seems like it's a political move and it seems like they're getting what they wanted because the blame for the division is being placed on the theological conservatives in crew who lack organizational power, but the blame is being put on them.

29:16

And, you know, you saw this, this kind of this posturing during, on like a national level with the

29:22

Obama presidency. I remember, I remember years ago I was listening,

29:27

I was listening on the radio back when I did blue collar stuff. I was doing repair work and I remember hearing

29:34

Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I would occasionally listen to him. I listened to a lot of things. I listened to NPR.

29:40

I just, I would try to hear what the other side's saying, but I thought, I thought Rush Limbaugh was kind of funny.

29:45

I'll be honest with you, some of his bits. So I listened to him sometimes. And one of the things, I remember him saying, he was like, how in the world is

29:53

Obama? Who's the president of the United States, literally most powerful man in the country.

29:59

How does he get away with always blaming all the issues happening in the United States on these powerful forces that are somehow like more powerful than him?

30:08

And he never takes responsibility ever for the economy. It's never his fault. It's always these powerful forces and they're trying to stop him.

30:16

Like what, is there any ever a point where he takes responsibility for anything? Why is he always putting himself in this position of being the underdog?

30:26

And I see the same thing. This tactic is just used over and over. It's ingrained that if you're in favor of social justice, you're always in the underdog.

30:34

You have to be. You could be the richest person on planet earth. You're the underdog. That's why it's not really about actual poor people or people who are marginalized.

30:45

They use those people as kind of as human shields to enact their ideology, but it's not about them.

30:55

So this is what's going on. You have the national director, the most powerful person and Lenz's Institute, right?

31:01

These mean people without any power who got together and created a document about us. So here's some other reactions that happened within like the last day,

31:10

I think. So one of them involves me. So I thought this was kind of funny. The statement is something independently apart.

31:17

So the statement, let's see. Oh, this is so interesting. So this goes with what I was just talking about.

31:22

The statement about, this would be the document, the concerned, the group that came together to create this document about their concern with crew.

31:34

They're claiming that it's independently apart from crew leadership. And this person on Twitter says, well, that's entirely misleading,

31:40

Andy Garber. I'm not sure who he is. He's saying that's entirely misleading. Crew's leadership decisions put

31:45

Lenz's in a position to release the statement they did. I'm not sure I've ever been more embarrassed to work for this organization than I am now.

31:52

So trying to blame the leadership. And this is the tug of war that's going on. The leadership doesn't know what to do.

31:58

They really, that's obvious to me. They do not know how to handle this. They are in panic mode. And it's the ground is shifting underneath them and it's a fault line.

32:07

And they're, let's just say they're doing a split right now. How do we make the Lenz's people happy?

32:13

How do we make the theological conservatives happy? We can't do it. And you need to pick a side.

32:19

There's no way to not pick a side in this. You can't, I think that in that letter, they even, if anything, they actually adopted the framing that Lenz has put out there.

32:30

I would say they're leaning towards Lenz's interpretation of this whole thing. And yet that's not enough. It's never enough.

32:36

You can never, until you completely kowtow to the revolution, you are an enemy.

32:43

And that's just, that's how it is, guys. You have to learn this stuff. Anyone who studied communism in other countries, totalitarian regimes, and just the social justice movement, different iterations of it, you know how this works.

32:57

And it works the same everywhere it's tried. Here's a reaction from someone,

33:03

I think someone in crew, I think, that said, hey, well, so tried to oppose the statement I just read. Well, broadcast,

33:09

Shane Sebastian is the guy's name. He says, well, broadcasting that to the world behind your computer is going to be really effective.

33:15

So kind of some sarcasm. And then they just beat up on him. This guy named Josh Shen said, Shane, you're embarrassing yourself.

33:22

James Ward, I don't know who these people are, but he says, yeah, this ain't it. More so for someone at your level in art work.

33:29

So he's saying, hey, you're up there in the organization and you're saying, you know, this is terrible.

33:35

This is embarrassing yourself. You shouldn't be saying this. He's just jumping all over him. This guy named Matthew Jesse says, also authentically curious if you condemn or condone the concern group document and maybe speak that in conjunction about lenses.

33:50

So he's saying, basically, you have to. You have to take a side. You have to take our side.

33:55

You have to oppose the concern group. And here's where I come up. He says, and by the way, this is hysterical to me a little bit.

34:03

Let me know, he says, how you feel when you have a document that writes lies about you and your team?

34:10

So the document wrote lies. Now, I don't know what he's talking about. It seemed like it was pretty good primary source stuff, but he says, and that was influenced by John Harris.

34:21

Now, I don't know who John Harris is because it's spelled J -O -H and it's Jahan Harris. I don't, that's not my name, but obviously, despite the misspelling of my first name, he's referring to me and he says that the document was influenced by John Harris, who is a nationalistic, racist heretic.

34:40

When you experience that, then speak up. Now, the funny thing is here, he's so concerned about the lies, literally lies.

34:49

And here's the thing. This is a complete fabrication. This is a lie. There's absolutely, he doesn't, this guy has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.

34:58

I didn't even see the document until way after it was put out there.

35:05

I heard about this group. Someone had emailed me and said, has anyone from crew reached out to you?

35:12

And it was like a few people. And could you just put them in touch with me? And I did. That was it. That was the end of it. I didn't have any influence whatsoever on the document.

35:21

I was never called in. I was never in a meeting. I never had a phone call. I never submitted a paper, nothing.

35:29

In fact, if you, there's someone who told me, from the group, well after the fact, who told me kind of how the group functioned.

35:41

And it was, the document would have looked the same whether I existed or not. They were going to all the conferences, through the conference videos.

35:49

They were going through the lenses stuff. And they were, they had a whole team putting stuff together. Had nothing to do with me.

35:55

But this guy, look how this works. This is how the social justice guys work. They're bullies. You need to understand this. They're absolute bullies.

36:02

The tactic here is to get people to run for the hills. Oh no, it's associated with John Harris.

36:07

He's a nationalistic racist heretic. Oh no, look, we don't want to be associated with that. And so they play the conservatives against each other.

36:14

So they throw each other's under the bus. They distance themselves from one another. Really the only way to react to this is just not to care what they think.

36:21

And just to, these people are, they're bullies. And they don't have a problem lying.

36:27

This is a lie. But the whole, that's funny though. I think the funny part to me is how he characterized me.

36:33

I'm a nationalistic racist heretic. Which each of those words, nationalistic, like in modern sense, the way it's being used, it's like you love your country, right?

36:46

Racist, that word has absolutely no meaning anymore. When it's used by someone who's on the social justice side, it just, it doesn't mean anything.

36:52

Just means it, it actually, I was talking to someone the other day. It was a fascinating conversation about this. And I'm gonna totally botch.

36:58

They made it sound, they did such a better job. And luckily I got an interview with them. So that, this video will be coming out at some point.

37:04

But they talked about language. And how terms, and racist was one of the terms. It actually, it means really nothing anymore.

37:13

It's connected not with a description, but with an emotion. So when you call someone that, it's just negative emotions attached to it.

37:21

And you vilify the person. But there's actually really no real definition.

37:27

It doesn't like, it doesn't describe something in the actual real world. And they did such a good job explaining this.

37:34

They were using C .S. Lewis and stuff. I'm gonna put that out there at some point. But it's just an empty word.

37:39

And this word should not, it shouldn't do anything. It shouldn't phase us anymore. We shouldn't run from it. I see so many conservatives running from this.

37:46

Oh, they don't wanna be called that. Oh my goodness. If I get a picture in front of that, or if I am seen with that person, or if I go, guys, just cut it out.

37:56

Like the only reason that the word has any power is because conservatives give it power by being afraid of it.

38:02

It's just a fear tactic. It's just a bully tactic. That's all. At this point, that's what it's become.

38:08

I mean, I would say 10 years ago, if someone, 15 years ago, if someone said that, I would have been thinking about, okay, someone who really actually hates and wants to do harm to someone of a different ethnicity.

38:21

That's what I would have thought. It doesn't mean that anymore. And then heretic, right?

38:27

So I'm a heretic. I'm schismatic, right? That's the word, heretic means schismatic, except that it's the social justice guys who have brought in the new teaching that's schisming off people.

38:39

I just invented my own word, schisming off. So anyway, that's the tactic.

38:45

Those are the tactics that are being used right now. I don't have any communication with anyone from that group, except any of the leadership of that group.

38:56

I've talked to a few people who were on lower levels of that group, who haven't even told me that much within the last few months.

39:05

And just little stuff here and there, but I haven't influenced any of it. And this was done completely from within this concern group.

39:14

And so I just wanted to share that with you. And let's see, where was

39:21

I going with this? I think that was the last slide. Yeah, it is the last slide. Just a reminder, if you want the books, links are in the info section.

39:29

And I would appreciate your continued prayers. I know I announced it yesterday for a relative of mine who does have pneumonia, is in the hospital, and just in California in a place that's not the greatest to be in a hospital.

39:42

So thank you for that and God bless. So have a good one. Talk to you later.