AD Responds to Gospel Coalition Panel on SocJus

AD Robles iconAD Robles

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I used to lots of these longform response videos. Here is part one of this TGC panel discussion on Social Justice

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All right, well, I wanted to do a kind of a blast from the past type of video. I used to do a lot of these video responses, so I'd play a presentation or a speech or something like that.
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That's kind of how I got my start. I started doing the MLK50 stuff, and so obviously this is something that does work and you guys like it.
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I know some of you guys like the smooth AD thing from last week. Some of you guys didn't. I assure you it's not intended to be a replacement for what
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I normally do, although I think I'll probably resurrect it from time to time because I had a good time doing it.
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One of the things I try to make as a rule is I like to produce videos that I would like to watch myself.
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Actually, I often do watch my own videos. Anyway, so let's do this. This is a panel discussion called
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Jesus and Justice, Why We Must Love Our Neighbor in Word and Deed. This is a panel discussion between Jason Cooke, Kevin DeYoung, Phillip Holmes, and Daryl Williamson about the topic of social justice, and it is very, very interesting.
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I don't know if you've watched this yet. Probably you haven't because not too many people have, but this is super interesting.
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My brother turned me on to this. I won't tell you what he said because it'll kind of spoil it if you haven't watched this, but he thinks this is such an interesting video.
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Actually, I've only watched 15 minutes of it so far. I'm going to watch the rest of it. We'll see what happens, but I agree.
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I think that the audio is interesting enough, but watching it on video to see sort of people's body language and that kind of thing, it's so interesting.
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It's so interesting. Anyway, let's watch it as if we're there. Like I said, I've watched 15 minutes of it, and I'm not sure if I'll do sort of a live reaction type video or if I'll watch it first in its entirety and then do a video of it.
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We'll see. We'll see how I do this. Anyway, thanks for watching. I hope you find this helpful. Let's get started.
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Hey, man. Man, we are excited to be here, and it's been a lot of talk about ... Oh, the reason
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I'm laughing. I was working out when I first watched this video. I was on the elliptical, just trying to get my cardio on, you know what
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I mean? When he said, we are so excited to be here, I looked at the screen, and I got to be honest, nobody really looks excited to be here.
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Oh, man. Take a look. We got the two black brothers. They're on their cell phones. They're tweeting, answering emails.
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Who knows what they're doing? You know what I mean? Then we got Jerry Seinfeld in the middle here, otherwise known as Kevin DeYoung.
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Jerry Seinfeld in the middle here, and he's looking down like, oh, can this be over?
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Nobody looks excited to be here. I also noticed this as well. We've got the two black brothers.
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Here's what I think they're doing on their cell phones. I think they're pulling up their Bibles. That's what I think that they're doing. We've got the two black brothers with mobile phones with their
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Bibles on it, and then we've got the nerd in the middle with the nerd glasses with his
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Bible, his paper copy Bible. Listen, brother, I'll tell you what,
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Kevin. I'm right there with you. This is my nerd Bible that I bring with me. I don't even have a smartphone. I got rid of my smartphone years ago because I just got sick of always playing with it and stuff like that.
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I don't even have a smartphone, so nerd power, buddy. Nerd power. Nerd power. Justice, recently, really over the past, it's always been the conversation in the church.
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Just to be clear, going back to the 19th century, this is not a nouveau conversation, even in the
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American church, but it certainly has taken on some new flavors, and so if you think about, for example -
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He's talking about flavors. Chocolate? Is that what he's talking about? Let's fast forward here because this introduction,
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I didn't find it very interesting. ...today is not to share our thoughts, to wax about what ...
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lives, so we have a very distinguished panel of Reformed theologians ...
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gives this profile of what it means to love your neighbor ... All right, so here's where they start. They start with the
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Good Samaritan, which is a good place to start, I think. There's nothing wrong with that. I think this is appropriate. They start with the
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Good Samaritan, and what's so interesting about the Good Samaritan passage is that it is a very important passage to those in the social justice movement, and I think it's so instructive to see how they use this passage, or I would say misuse it, to apply to all kinds of things that it doesn't actually apply to.
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Before we start this, let me just say this really briefly. Let me just tell you how much
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I appreciate Kevin DeYoung. I appreciate Kevin DeYoung very, very much.
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Now, Kevin DeYoung and I do not see eye to eye on lots of things. In fact, one of his weakest articles that I've ever read from him was ...
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I would classify it as an attack on God's law. He doesn't ... I forget, it wasn't even on God's law, this article, but in the article he calls ...
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I think it was Two Kingdom Theology. I don't think he's a Two Kingdom guy. I might be getting the details wrong here, but he was critiquing some kind of theology.
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It was either Radical Two Kingdom or Two Kingdom, I forget which one. He says, one of the advantages of it is that it's a bulwark against God's law, theonomy is what he said.
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I remember thinking, that's an advantage? That's very confusing to me.
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Anyway, so Kevin DeYoung and I, I think that he's not helpful in some ways, but overall
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I appreciate him. Here's the thing. I was thinking about Kevin DeYoung because it's very clear from this video and from other writings as well that Kevin DeYoung is not woke.
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He isn't woke, right? Not at all. But Kevin has a certain style about him where he kind of wants you to see, well, you know, we can see both views and he's very winsome, he's winsome.
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And so that's kind of his style and so some people criticize him for that because it's like he's kind of wanted to have his cake and eat it too, but I don't see it that way.
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And I appreciate, I forget what the topic was, but Doug Wilson was asked about people who are kind of standing against this
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LGBT type stuff in the church and he was saying how like he appreciates any pushback whatsoever, whether it's a little pushback or a lot of pushback.
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He thinks obviously a certain amount of pushback is appropriate and so do I, but he was saying how even if you push back a little, he's glad that you're doing it because any bit is helpful.
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And that's kind of how I see Kevin DeYoung. He's definitely not woke and he's pushing back, but in a way that I wouldn't do it, but I bet you that this is kind of how there's different, you know, members of the body and there's different advantages and disadvantages and things like that.
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It's how I always talk about Ezra's and Nehemiah's, right? It's not that, look, I think that some people would classify me as a
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Nehemiah, in some ways I'm an Ezra, but we need both. We need both. We need that forceful, I'm going to rip your beard out and beat you kind of ideological, you know, pushback, but we also need the more gentle one.
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And I think that, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. The only, so, so, so I appreciate Kevin DeYoung here, but this is why
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I think that in this issue, this video will show you why in this issue, I don't think this is a good approach at all.
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Anyway. So we'll talk about it. In response to the question that was given to him, who is my neighbor?
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So we want to kind of understand, is this kind of love optional for the
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Christian? That's kind of our concern. So Kevin. I got to be honest, he kind of looks excited now. The other two guys don't.
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So at first we had nobody looking excited. Now we've got one guy looking excited and attentive, we'll go from there.
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Oh, by the way, when this, when this video loaded, you know how sometimes YouTube, you know, it gets you at like a lower quality.
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I thought this was Daryl Harrison for a second, cause it was like fuzzy, you know, didn't have the definition. I was like, that's
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Daryl Harrison. And I was like, well, of course it's not Daryl Harrison. He would never be invited to gospel coalition. If we could brother, let's begin with you.
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Well, I have a, I have a simple answer and then I'm going to complexify it. So is it optional for the
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Christian? No. Jesus says at the end, no, good answer.
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Which one of these three, you know the story, do you think proved to be a neighbor to the one who fell among the robbers?
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He said the one who showed him mercy and Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise. So clearly the story was given to the lawyer to stand him up short a little bit, his pretensions wanting to justify himself, but it's also an example for us.
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So that's, that's the simple answer. We know that we get that. Here's the complexification, which
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I don't know if we'll figure out or these brothers I'm excited to learn from all of them.
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But how does this then, how does the ought land on us?
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This is the exact right question. He's a hundred percent correct. So, so I just criticized him a little bit for, for, for, for liking something that was against, you know, a more serious application of God's law.
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But, but, but this is the exact question to ask because the reality is that every single person in this debate, the social justice debate, every person believes that a
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Christian ought to be concerned with justice. God cares about justice. God is a
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God of perfect justice. So we all agree with that. The question that is up for debate, and this is the area that we need to have discussions.
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We need to have debates about is how does God's requirements, how does it fall onto me?
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What, what are, what are my obligations? Now in the, the great thing about the Good Samaritan is because it gives us a really clear example about a circumstance that we can apply in other, in other areas that we would have a very clear obligation to our brother.
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Because what is the obligation? So here's another way. And, and, and, and before I let him continue, this is why
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I love God's law so much because it actually gives us a framework for which we know what our obligations are, what we need to be doing when it comes to law, when it comes to justice, when it comes to our personal lives and things like that.
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It gives us a framework of what to apply, where it gives us case laws, how to do, how to love your neighbor, which is the second six commandments.
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It gives us case laws of how to love your neighbor in certain circumstances. And we can apply those circumstances to today's modern context and things like that.
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So there is a lot of good stuff in the law of God, which is why we need to talk about it, which is why it's so important that we're not against the law of God.
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We don't disregard the law of God when we're talking about this issue. And so that's, that, that's the thing.
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This is the exact question. Okay. So we all know, I mean, if we read the Good Samaritan, we all know that if we see a beat up guy on the side of the street, we should probably try to take care of him because that's a direct application of God's, of God's parable here.
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But the question remains is when, what are, what about things that are very different? He's about to go into that. Let's listen to this for a second.
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Ask the question, Jesus is talking about your neighbor, which one is a neighbor? Well, clearly he was the neighbor because he cared for the needs that were right in front of him.
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To ask it a different way, when is the same obligation laid upon us?
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And we're talking about justice and that's good. This can fall in that category broadly conceived.
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Although here it says the one who showed him mercy, the one. Do you hear what I mean about Kevin DeYoung?
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Cause this is a very important point to know what's mercy and what's justice. It's a very important point.
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And he kind of just kind of, kind of casually puts it in there and said, yeah, just this broadly defined, we can include this in justice.
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And I kind of see where he's coming with that, but this is also a very important issue, but he's not going to go too, too much into that because that's just not his personality.
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He's too winsome. Who gave to him care in his time of need.
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The reason why I say it's complicated is because we all love the good Samaritan and we all know that there's something here pushing against our natural tendency to only help people like us.
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That that's why it was so scandalous. We get that it's a Samaritan who did it. But we also know instinctively that the obligations that fall on us to help people are not always equal.
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If I went on a run this morning down the trail across the river and if I came across somebody who was panting on the ground, grabbing their neck and choking,
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I would have a moral obligation to help that person, whatever they looked like, whoever they were,
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I would have an obligation to help them. Now, notice here that these men who didn't help, they didn't have to go find the help, they had to decide not to help because it says clearly, they saw him.
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He was right there. They had to cross the road. So, what is our obligation then?
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And this is, I don't fully have the answer. What's our obligation where we're not just talking about going down the Jericho road and there's a man, he's dying right now, you have to go across the road and he dies, do you help?
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Well, obviously, you have a moral obligation to help. What about when the obligation is a tsunami in the
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Philippines and we can see it come through on our Twitter feed? Or what if it's something in another city or another part of the city?
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If one of you came up to me and said, I just got a phone call that your wife just had a terrible heart attack and is in the hospital, we'd probably stop and pray for you and if I told
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Don Carson, I just met this person for the first time and I feel like I need to fly to Dallas to go be with he and his wife, he might say, well, that's kind of nice but you sort of have an obligation here.
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Well, if I got a phone call and it was the chairman of my elder board, his wife, then you might say, hmm, that's...
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What do you think, Kevin? Are you going to stay or go? If it's my wife, now you feel like if you don't get on a plane and go home, whatever you have, you've not done the right thing.
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So, we all have... Well, then what if someone comes up and says, I feel like people all throughout our city are dying of heart attacks and I think you ought to do something to help prevent it.
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Well, then what's the obligation? These are all great questions. These are all fantastic questions and I think that when it comes to our obligations, we have a clear word from God about what's required of us.
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Now, are there areas where it might be up for debate or gray areas or things like that? Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, this is something that I don't think any of us can fully answer but there are some clear answers in Scripture that we can point to and we can look to.
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Kevin DeYoung is asking the right questions. There's just no question about it. He is in tune with what the question is.
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You can use the Good Samaritan to talk about being a neighbor, how to love your neighbor and things like that, but it doesn't answer every question.
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It's just not that simple. Good point, Kevin DeYoung. So, yes, the
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Good Samaritan is certainly a text that we ignore at our peril. Jesus is meaning to confront us with our own human tendency to say, that person is not like me,
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I don't have to help them. And yet, when you come to the specifics, because here it's a human person in front of you, you must go the other way and they die.
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The moral obligation is strong and immediate. A lot of our disagreements, and we just have to be honest that sometimes we disagree because it's just not clear, is when that same level of obligation falls upon us for the needs of others.
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I think that's very helpful. So I agree with a lot of what Kevin DeYoung said, basically all of it.
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But the thing is, because he doesn't take God's law as seriously as he should, he's going to say that there's areas and gray areas and areas for disagreement and things like that in areas where I wouldn't, because there's a very clear word from God in many instances, like I feel like he might say,
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I don't know if this is true. So, so look, if this is not true, let's just, let's just use a hypothetical example of a different person who says,
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Hey, you know, God says we ought to care for the poor, therefore you should vote for this candidate for, for, for, for president that wants to give welfare to the poor.
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Right. So let's say somebody said that I have a feeling that some people might say, well, that's a, that's an area of disagreement.
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That's a, that's up for debate. That's a gray area. And the answer is no, that is not a gray area because we have a word from the
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Lord. We have a word from the Lord on what justice is. We have a word from the Lord of what it is. And, and what you're suggesting here, this little scheme that you're suggesting is literally stealing.
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It breaks God's law. And so, no, that is not one of the options for on the table. That is not a gray area in the scripture.
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So, so that's the thing. So, you know, that's why I love God's law so much because it informs us so much. There are so many case laws.
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There are so many examples that we see in scripture that we can follow. And so that's why it's so important to this conversation.
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But that being said, Kevin DeYoung is exactly right. These are the important questions. These are the important questions.
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Okay. We all agree we should be a neighbor. What does that look like in every situation? Let's talk about it. I can complexify it as well and throw it back out to you and others who want to respond to this before we push on to the next statement from Jesus.
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I think it's very helpful. I think if I, if I could throw this out to just, just very quickly to your brothers.
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I think the challenge that we often have as a church is not so much our proximity to the situation or our capability for the situation, but the more obligation in the situation.
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And so, so I think like, so with our brother that kind of fell to thieves on this, on the road,
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I think it is Jesus not saying to us that this circumstance morally stipulates a response.
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Now maybe I can or cannot respond to it, but inherently. And so, so I guess if I can rephrase the question, setting aside kind of my own locale and my ability either through resources or through proximity to do something about it as Christians, ought we to, to always love either literally ourselves or through heart conviction, those who are victimized similarly.
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So let me just start it out for you guys to consider. So, so this is, so this is an interesting question as well.
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What he's saying is that, look, you know, you're exactly right, Kevin, that, you know, obviously if you're not next to the person, it's not someone right in front of you, there might not be much you can do about it.
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So if somebody dies in a tsunami in Sri Lanka or something like that, you don't live in Sri Lanka, right? There's not really much you can do.
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But what he's saying is that, shouldn't it be a kind of a, the way your heart is inclined, your heart should be inclined to help in that way.
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And it's an interesting question. I, I, I think it's an interesting question to ask. How practical is that question?
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I don't really know. I mean, I don't really think it's really that important of a question to answer.
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What, what I think we should answer though, is what can we do? What should we do in our different vocations, in our different areas?
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When we're in, you know, when, when, when we're at home, what should we do? When we're sitting on a, on a, on a jury, what should we do?
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When we're sitting, we're running for office and we're voting for someone, what should we do? You know, what should we do in our work? Like that's, those are more helpful,
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I think, but Hey, it's, it's interesting. You know, sometimes it's okay to, to, to think about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
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One of the interesting things about the phrase, both in Leviticus 19 and there in Luke 10, and what does it mean to love your neighbor?
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See, this is important too, because he's going to the right place. Leviticus 19, that's where love your neighbor as yourself comes from.
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Right. And I think it would stand to reason. I mean, it does to me that maybe you should look at the context of where that is quoted.
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It's in the book of the law. It's in the midst of a bunch of case laws. And it has, and reform people have for years understood that the last six commandments of God are the summary statement of how to love your neighbor.
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And then we have the case laws that put some flesh and blood on that. That that's what we should look. That's where we need to be talking about the case laws, how they apply to the modern context.
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Other places. What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? And it doesn't mean love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
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That would be quite literally impossible for most of us love ourselves more than we love anyone else. But it means to love your neighbor in the way in which you would love yourself.
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I think the contemporary application is incredibly difficult when you consider those crying for justice have never been considered a neighbor and have never been loved in the manner in which those in power have used their power in grotesque ways.
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So, so, so this is interesting, but it's not true. I mean, it's a good point.
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We need to consider how to love people who haven't been loved. They haven't been considered a neighbor. Sometimes haven't even been considered human, but this is not new in our modern context.
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God's law speaks into this. This was what it was like back in the old days. You know what
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I mean? This is why the good Samaritan was such an amazing parable because people looked at Samaritans as less than, do you see what
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I'm saying? So this is interesting to think about it this way. I mean, how should we love someone that hasn't been historically loved and has been oppressed systematically?
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And how do we love people that we don't, that aren't lovable? You know what I mean? But the thing is, this is not new.
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God's law speaks to all of this. When he gave the law to the people of Israel, they were used to this kind of thing.
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You know, there were slaves in Israel, like, like this is not new. And so God's law, it's not,
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I mean, look, there are some things that are difficult to apply in God's law. There are some things that are difficult to understand in God's law.
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We all agree, but sometimes it's very easy to apply and it applies directly.
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And it does to this issue very much. And so that's interesting. We should think about that, but let's not pretend like this is brand new.
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God's law speaks to this. So in order to ask to not to answer your question, because it is very complex, but I understand your illustration about heart attacks.
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My problem is what do you do when the government is the one causing people heart attacks, right?
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What do you do when it's the government causing people heart attacks? Well, does the law of God apply to this?
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This, see, this is the important question that I, look, I haven't watched this whole thing. So I don't know if it will get addressed, but I highly, highly doubt it because it's never addressed.
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What does the law of God say to do when the government is causing people to have heart attacks?
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What does the law of God say? It applies directly. Believe it or not, there is absolutely a governmental system that is endorsed and, and put forward and it is required by the scriptures.
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It's not as specific as many would like it to be, but there are rules for government. There's a, there's a, there's a role for government and they shouldn't do certain things and they should do other things.
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And there is a way to adjudicate injustices. Okay. And it's all there. It's all in the law of God.
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This is why it's a central to this conversation, but it almost never gets discussed. And so from an individual standpoint, um, yes, those we come into contact with,
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I think the harder thing is the heart level motivation, Daryl, that you point to in what drives us to action.
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And the difficulty is the goalposts for justice continues to get moved. But it shouldn't because it's the law of God is the standard.
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Now here's the thing. So he's trying to make this case where it's like, it's really about your heart motivation. Okay, fine. I granted, granted, but it's not more complex when it's a systemic injustice where the government is doing it.
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It's not more complex. The standard is the same. The government can't steal just like I can't steal and see what he wants to pull that apart, right?
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He wants to make it different. And I have some theories as to why social justice advocates want to pull that apart, but it can't be pulled apart.
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I am not allowed to steal and neither is the government. There's nothing that magic that happens to me when I put on my, uh, my, my civil magistrate cape and I become a civil magistrate.
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Now I still, I still can't steal. And, and just because people vote for it, they can't steal. You can't pull this apart.
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It's the same standard. It's the same law. The postmodern idea of truth now necessitates that, uh,
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I'm right and everyone else is out there wrong. And it's a contest to see who's been offended the most. Um, instead of Christians having the obligation to the point that you make in, um, loving those around us, like you mentioned,
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I think the more difficult question is what is a Christian's responsibility to remedy the systemic injustices where you've got an entire group of people who've never seen the other as their neighbor?
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Um, and the Samaritan, who is this group of people? This is another important question. Who's this group that's never seen the other?
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Let's let's just be honest. We're talking about white and black people here, right? That's what we're talking about. There's a group that has never seen black people as human, as, as their neighbor in 2019, who is this group and how large is it?
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An important question to answer. I'm highly suspicious that it will be answered. And there is not an accident that he's the hero of the story.
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The one who worships on a different mountain, the one who comes from a different cultural heritage, a different cultural background, the one who looks different.
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Um, and it's the power seeking Jews there who are the ones who are the quote unquote villains or those who have done that.
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But I still had to say the thing that I love and I'm about to be done. I love Jesus's response there when he says, uh, go and do likewise.
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So there's no condemnation. He wants the lawyer to recognize the humanity in his neighbor and then treat that man in the same manner that he wants to be treated.
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So from an individualized level, I think that is the way forward. And I think the harder question is the church's role, uh, from a systemic level to enter into the, the
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Samaritan conversation, um, at a much higher and broader level. See, this is the thing.
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We overcomplicate this because he wants to pull apart the individual responsibility and then there's systemic, you know, kind of governmental responsibility and things like that.
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What does the church have to do with government? Well, it's actually very simple. We apply that same law. We apply that same law.
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We look at the case laws. We, we look at the law of God. We take it seriously for once. We take it seriously as if it's not an accident that God put a big book of law in his word to us.
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It's not an accident that he did that. You know what I mean? And so, so, um, there are some nuances between our individual responsibilities and, and spheres of influence and the church's responsibility and fear sphere of influence and the civil governing authorities responsibility in the sphere of influence as differences there.
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But it's all held accountable to the same law of God. It's the same standard of justice.
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God's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And he's certainly the same between family church and, uh, and civil governing authorities and self.
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It's the same standard. And so we overcomplicate this question. And I think that there's, there's some, there's some reasons why this is done, but it's really not that complicated.
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I want you to good. That's good. Yeah. We're moving. Okay. So, so let's, this is, this is where I stopped partially because my workout was over, but partially because I just needed to think about this for a second.
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And so I'm going to play his words and then stop it where I stopped it and tell you what my thoughts are.
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Um, even the, the conversation about proximity, because as soon as, as soon as we go there,
28:16
I feel like we're, we're, it's a very, um, I guess intelligent way of, of saying who is my neighbor all over again, right?
28:27
Um, so removing the conversation about proximity, because it's a very high minded, like intelligent way to say, who is my neighbor?
28:40
We look at the camera and say this because I do not let the social justice people tell you that your tone is not quite right.
28:48
It's not about the tone. It's never going to be about the tone. It never will be about the tone. It's the same thing going to be a will be.
28:55
Um, it's never been about the tone. It's not about the tone now and it never will be about the tone. It's about what your content is, because this man just in a very smooth kind of way, because let's just be honest, he's not getting up at he, he's not getting emotional.
29:08
That's, that's very simple. He just slapped down. Kevin DeYoung just slapped him down because he's saying, look, what you just said about proximity, all that, all those questions that you were asking and his complications, that's just another smart man's way of saying who is my neighbor.
29:27
That's an insult. I mean, let's just be honest. He's insulting Kevin DeYoung there. He's saying you are the person in the story.
29:33
You're, you're the lawyer that you're, you're, you're the antagonist of the story. You're the lawyer who's trying to justify yourself by asking those complicated questions.
29:44
I mean, look, I'm not, I'm not against polemics and look, we should be polemical more sometimes, but you see, here's the thing.
29:51
We cannot lay our weapons down while they're speaking war with nice, smooth buttery words because he said it in a nice way and you could miss it because there's no emotion there.
30:03
There's, there's not that much emotion there, but he said it in a nice way. But he said to Kevin DeYoung, you need to know your role.
30:09
You're just like the antagonist of the story trying to justify yourself saying who is my neighbor in a smart sounding way.
30:16
Look, I'm not saying that's unacceptable. I'm just saying I noticed it and I know that it's not my tone that you don't like.
30:24
It's the actual content of it. You're at war with the content and that's fine, but let's just be honest with ourselves and those of you who are on my side of this, and I think
30:33
Kevin DeYoung is one of those people, I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Hear this and know that you're, look, if you, this is your strategy, that's fine because it's okay to absorb an insult.
30:44
It's okay to absorb an insult. In fact, we should do that sometimes, but it's also okay to spar with your opponent.
30:54
It's also okay to spar with your opponent. You don't have to insult him back, but you have to make sure that your rhetoric and your ideology is unaffected by those who say, well,
31:04
I don't like your tone because I've never done what this guy's done. I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe I have. So if you can show me an example,
31:10
I'd like to see it, but I've never impugned the character of somebody the way that this man just did.
31:17
I've never done it. I'll tell you why I think you're wrong. I'll tell you, you know, detail why
31:23
I think it's against scripture. And I'll say, oftentimes I'll say it. I'll say, I don't know why you're doing this, but this is what you're doing.