AD Responds to TGC's Big Night on Social Justice!

AD Robles

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Well, what you're about to watch is a couple of responses to some of Dr. Carl Ellis's question and answer session.

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These are two that I thought were particularly interesting. I've commented on the first two -thirds of this presentation.

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If you want to see all of it, please give this video a like or comment and let me know that you want to see the rest of it.

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Some of it was not as interesting as this, but it's all worthwhile,

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I think. Anyway, enjoy this video and, again, if you like it and you want to see more of it, give me a thumbs up, give me a comment in the comments below, let me know what you want to see, and we'll go from there.

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All right. Questions, I'm going to answer them first, and we're going to see how Carl answers them.

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Let's do this. Good question.

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That is a very critical question, so I hope we get a robust answer. Now, how I would answer this question is that inequities, inequalities, disparities, these things are not injustices in and of themselves.

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There's no way to prove that. Just because the average Latino family makes 50K and the average white family makes 70K,

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I don't know if those numbers are right, but let's just say they are. There's a $20 ,000 inequity there.

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That doesn't mean there's any injustice at all. The Bible very often talks about private property and who has the right over his money.

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The person who owns a business has the right to pay anyone whatever he wants, as long as there's agreement there.

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The rules of economics are set by God. God establishes the law of economics.

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He establishes the laws of supply and demand and things like that. These aren't just things that just so happen to be.

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God made things work that way. That's how God did things. That is not an inequality in and of itself.

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There could be something that wouldn't be a legal problem, but there could be a partiality at play.

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Here's the thing. Partiality is not a civil crime. There was no crime of partiality in the civil code in ancient

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Israel, and so therefore, we cannot extrapolate the general equity of a law for today.

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Partiality, discrimination should not be a crime in today's culture. However, it is wrong. It is a sin.

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If you're a business owner and you decide that you're going to pay all white people less than you're going to pay

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Latinos, like let's say I owned a business and I just said, well, I'm going to hire both Latinos and whites, and that's fine, but I'm going to pay all the whites less than I pay the

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Latinos. If I were to do that, there would be no crime. It would be unjust to accuse me of a crime to punish me for that.

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That would be injustice, but before God, I would be sinning and God would judge that sin and I should be put under church discipline if it was found out, and I should be disciplined that way according to the church, right?

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Because there is no general equity civil law that we can apply today that would say that should be illegal. It's totally legal.

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In fact, even when it comes to like things like the gleaning laws, like God commanded Israel to leave a portion of their field for the poor could go and harvest and eat, right?

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But if they didn't do it, there was no penalty for it. Like there was no civil penalty. They didn't, there was no crime involved if they didn't do it.

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However, if they did do it, God would see that, hear the cries of the poor and judge them for it.

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It was a sin against God, but it was not a crime. And so we need to make sure that if it's a matter of justice, okay, maybe a matter of personal piety, maybe it's a matter of social piety even.

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But it's not a matter of civil justice. We should not have laws that demand anything as far as income inequality.

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But a Christian should do things fairly. Now, if a Christian pays people unequally,

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I think it's debatable whether that's a sin. If he shows partiality, that is definitely a sin because Christ says that the owner can pay whatever he wants to pay.

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It's up to him. Well, and the person who agrees to it. But if they're showing partiality in a sinful way, that's definitely a sin.

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Let's see what Carl Ellis has to say. There's going to be disparities in the new world as well, in the new creation, in the new

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Jerusalem. Now, did you notice what he just said there? There's going to be disparities and injustice. So he seems to be saying disparities are injustice.

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I don't think that's the case at all. You need to demonstrate that. Why not?

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I mean, honestly, why not? Why? Why is it a problem that I make more than another person at my at my church?

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Another person makes more than me at the church. Why is that an injustice? Why is that a disparity? Why should that not be the case among Christians?

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There is no biblical data that says that that should not be the case. There is no biblical data that shows that that should not be the case.

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I did. I mean, look, I'm not a PhD, right? With respect, I know you cannot show me any kind of biblical data that says that'll be the case.

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In fact, I can show you data that says that there are actually inequalities and inequities in the in the new creation, in the new heavens, in the new earth, like not everyone's going to have the same and there's nothing wrong with that.

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There's nothing unjust about that. And so that is a crucial issue in this debate.

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I hope we're about to get some biblical warrant because I could be wrong about this, right? I'm not so I'm not so arrogant to say that it can't be done.

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I haven't seen it. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. But let's see. Let's hear him out. We have as human beings is that we are sinners and we have a tendency to take advantage.

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You know, like I recall a passage in Isaiah 42 where God says,

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I do not play favorite. I don't take I do.

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You know, I have no respect for presence. I do not play favorites and then he says, but I'm concerned about the widow, the orphan and the immigrant, etc.

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There are these, I call them the unfortunate quartet, the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, or the immigrant, and the poor.

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And God has a special... The sojourner, the immigrant. ...compassionate heart for them. James says he is called the boy of the rich in faith and all the rest of that.

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So we must then imitate God in terms of his compassion about those things.

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We're talking about justice. We want to interrupt you for a moment. There's a negative side to the positive application of justice, and that's mercy.

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Mercy would be something like compassion and restoration.

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See? And so the Bible then, it talks about that. That's what we should practice among ourselves, among and within the body of Christ, with the hope that it will spill over into the rest of the world.

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It will attract people in the world. I'm going to stop him.

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I have to stop him. I said I wouldn't interrupt him, but I'm going to. No. Not at all.

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He says that we're supposed to imitate God in how we treat the widow and the orphan, and I completely agree, but he seems to be connecting this with this idea of equity, this idea of equality.

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And the reality is that's not how God operates. God gives different people different things. I mean, how could you even deny this?

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Right? I mean, God created us all, and everything that we have comes from him, right? But yet somehow he creates some to have a lot.

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Abraham was a very rich man. We're talking Bill Gates style. Abraham was a rich man, and then some people are poor.

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But yet God is the maker of them both. It's that the rich and the poor meet together, but God creates them both. God's the maker of them all.

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So God does not distribute financial stuff equally. His image is distributed equally, so the image of God is on all of us, rich or poor, but the resources that he gives us, the gifts that he gives us, there's no equality in that.

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You even said this in this thing. You said that each person has a different gift. I might have a better idea of justice.

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You might have a better idea of piety, this and that. The gifts are different, and so if we're going to imitate him, there's no reason to expect that there would be income inequality or there wouldn't be disparities.

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Of course there's going to be disparities. Disparities and inequalities are not injustice.

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They're just not. And even in your example, we should imitate God. Yes, we should. We should care about the poor, the widow, the immigrant, all this stuff.

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I'm fine with all of that. It's all true. It's all true. But inequality and disparity has nothing to do with it.

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I'm going to let him finish. I promise I will not interrupt him this time. I will hold my tongue until the end.

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Let's see what he has to say. I shared this with you over dinner, Philip. I became a

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Catholic when I was 10 years old. And you know why? It was because my mom,

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I was with my mom in Chicago. She had a medical emergency, and she was running away.

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She was circling the dream of death. And in those days, as you can see by my gray hair on the baby arm, and in those days, if you were rushed to the nearest hospital with a medical emergency, there was a good chance the hospital would say,

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Something's going on. Your kind of people are going to let you die right there. I know of cases like that.

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But they rushed you to the nearest hospital, not only did they save your life, but they treated it like it was royalty.

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It was a Catholic hospital. And I thought, hmm, there must be something about these

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Catholics. Because, you know, I'd never seen that before. And it had nothing to do with doctrine or theology or anything like that.

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It was an ethical thing that I saw. And it was because they did justice.

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They did right by my mom. And, of course, yeah. I think there's category mistakes, though.

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Because I understand how he's defining justice, and I'm going to let him define his own terms. Ah, I just interrupted him.

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I said I wouldn't. Ah, whatever. I'm going to let him define his own terms. But I think that's more like, that's compassion.

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That's mercy. I don't think it's the same thing as justice. Because when most people think of justice, they think of the law.

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And that's what they should think of, because that's what it is. Those kind of things have a lot,

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I mean, they really, for us it must probably be a permission. We speak the gospel.

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We do the gospel. We demonstrate the gospel. All of those, all of the above. And that's what we should, anyway,

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I'm not Catholic anymore, but I am a Catholic in a sense. There's probably about a hundred

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Twitter trolls right there that we're about to pounce on them. My wife is vacuuming it.

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My three -year -old is bossing around my one -year -old. That's what's going on up there. All right, let's just jump back in.

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So Lindsay has this question. She says, how do you approach the systemic? Okay, so let's just stop for a second there.

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My goodness. I just, I cannot see how we address the question.

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I just, that is so frustrating. Because inequalities and disparities are not injustice.

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They might be a sign of injustice, but they might not be. Because like I said, inequalities and disparities are going to continue into the future, into the new heavens and new earth.

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I just don't understand how we cannot address that and how we can make it seem like disparities are evil in themselves.

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They're just not. There's no reason to expect that the church of God will be this uniform thing where everyone has equal.

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It's just not the case. It's never been that way. God has never done it that way. Why would we expect him to do it this way now?

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Anyway, and that's why people call these people cultural Marxists, because these are ideas that sound pretty socialistic, pretty

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Marxist. I'm not calling these guys Marxists. I'm not saying that. But these ideas are derived from unbiblical ways.

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Carl Ellis just went through a whole thing about we cannot derive our ideas of justice from unbiblical sources. Well, what you just said,

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I don't think can be derived from the Bible. Maybe you'll do it in part two. I don't know, but you haven't done it yet. And I think it comes from somewhere else.

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Anyway, let's continue later. Thanks for watching. And don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe, most of all.

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When I get to 1 ,000 subs, I will have some plans for that. Anyway, hope this is helpful.

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God bless. All right, they're talking about systemic racism here.

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That's the next question. Let's go back and just make sure we get it so I can answer it.

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How do you approach the systemic racism in America? That's a very vague question, a very broad question.

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But systemic racism. I mean, the very first thing that we have to do if we're gonna approach systemic racism is we're gonna have to prove it because the

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Bible has standards of evidence. And so we can't just look at inequalities and say, oh, there's obviously systemic racism because that would be cultural

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Marxism. We can't just listen and believe to people because that's actually, that's also critical theory.

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I mean, storytelling is part of critical theory. But the Bible says we can't do that.

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We actually have to prove things are happening. And so if someone's sinning, if someone in a position of authority is sinning and setting things up to mess with minorities, things like that, if that's the case, if that's actually happening, we need to demonstrate it to more witnesses and then we act according to biblical justice, biblical standards of justice.

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That's how we rectify it. And so we have to take the steps biblically. If it's a church that's doing it, if a church is showing partiality, if someone in the church is showing partiality, this is how you approach it.

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Ready? Ready? It's very, very complicated, I know. If somebody has sinned against you racially, the

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Bible commands that you go to that person directly and you say, hey, brother, you sinned against me racially. Hopefully it's squashed there.

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If it's not, then you take somebody else with you. You take another brother with you and say, brother, you sinned against me. You didn't listen to me the first time.

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I'm bringing somebody with me. Please repent. Hopefully it's squashed there. If it's not, then you go to the elders of the church and then you go with the elders.

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You say, brother, you sinned against me. This is the third time I'm coming to you. Please repent. And hopefully it's squashed there and then that's reconciled.

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But if it's not, then you have nothing more to do with him. You treat him like a Gentile. You kick him out of the church.

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That's what you do. That's how you approach systemic racism. Let's see what Dr. Carl Ellis says. Well, for me personally,

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I hate it. I don't think I'm in good company, but I hate sin, doesn't he? I'm not going to interrupt.

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I'm not going to interrupt. What systemic racism in this country is that, remember, we talk about systemic.

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In any society, in any society, you have a dominant culture and at least one non -dominant or sub -dominant culture.

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There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. The problem is that the system, we talk about systemic, the system or systems in any society always give their best to the dominant culture.

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False. That's just the way it is. No matter how you define this dominant culture, it doesn't have to be raised to be something else.

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Like in Kenya, it's tribal. You know what I'm saying? But it's the same dynamic.

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The problem is that people who are the dominant culture, the system works so well for them or it gives them their best that they just don't think in terms of the shortcomings of the system.

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Like the Jewish widows did not complain in the book of Acts because the system was fine for them.

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So, the first thing that we ought to do is we ought to understand, well, I say the first in terms of priority, but one of the things we ought to do is we ought to help the people in the dominant culture understand that the system has flaws.

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It doesn't work for others as well as it does for them. The second thing you have to do then, or the other thing you have to do, is help those who are in the sub -dominant culture for whom the system does not work or sometimes the system works against them.

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Help them to understand that getting the system to work for you is not the ultimate goal, though it is a legitimate goal.

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Does that make sense? Because the ultimate goal is to be right with God. We understand that. But, and the third thing

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I think we have to do is to create alternative systems within the body of Christ that don't reflect that.

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And that's where we get into trouble because people think that if we're trying to do alternative systems within the church, then we're getting into the social gospel and all the rest of that.

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And that has something to do with the misunderstanding of the gospel. The gospel is comprehensive.

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It is not just, there is more to the gospel than my passport from hell to heaven. Yes. Do I have my passport from hell to heaven?

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Yes. I thank God for it. Oh, I ought to have done that. But if I reduce the gospel only to my passport from hell to heaven, then

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I become an idol worshiper. But I have to let the Bible explore the horizons and make sure that I understand the comprehensive nature of the gospel.

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So, yeah, that's how we do it. And we should, it should not be so among us in the body of Christ.

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So, Dr. Carl Ellis, in that answer, has assumed the existence of systemic oppression, systemic racism, whatever have you.

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And I don't think you can do that. You actually have to start a step back. He's starting too far ahead. He's got to start a step back and prove it.

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So here's the thing. First of all, there's no problem with having a dominant culture and a subculture.

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There's nothing wrong with that. That's just the reality of the situation. And that's always going to be the case, by the way. And number two, just because the subculture, the system doesn't work so well for them, doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this system.

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Because here's the thing. Like, let's just imagine, this is just a thought experiment for just a moment.

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Let's just imagine that we had a country that was a Christian nation, a solidly Christian nation. Their law was

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Christian. It wasn't perfect, but it was based on the general equity of God's law. Everything that they've done, even in the, let's just say in the constitution, it said that we are in covenant with Yahweh.

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We acknowledge Christ as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. That's what we acknowledge as a country. And let's say you had a

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Muslim population in that country. Well, I can guarantee you the system wouldn't work so well for them, according to their standards, right?

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It wouldn't work so well for them because it's based on Christian law, not Islamic law.

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Is there anything wrong with that? I think some people would say, yeah.

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I think some people would say, yeah. I think a guy like Russell Moore would say, yeah, there's a problem with that. And that's just not the case at all.

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So you have to show that there's something broken with the system and what it is by holding it up against God's standard.

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Just the fact that it doesn't work so well for some people, some people don't like it or they're not doing as well, has nothing to do with whether or not it's just, how you know it's just is if it holds up to the standard of God's word.

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That's why God's word is central in this whole conversation. That's why, you know, if there's everything good about listening to your brothers and sisters in Christ who feel like the system is broken, but that's not the standard.

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That's not how we know if it's broken or not. How we know if it's broken or not is if you compare it to Scripture and it doesn't hold up to Scripture.

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That's how we know. This is a, this is this conversation about what the Bible teaches. It's not about results because if the

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Bible teaches that it's unjust for the, for the, for the government to take from some and give to others, then no matter how well you think that might work for black and Brown people in the

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United States, it's unjust. Do you see what I'm saying? Because like, like a lot of people think welfare helps black and Brown people in the

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United States. I don't think it does, but, and I think the data demonstrates that, but a lot of people think it does. And so do we do that?

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No, we don't do that because it actually works against the biblical standards of justice. We don't even do it in the church because that actually works against biblical standards of justice because a lot of people would say, well, giving poor people money and food, that's the way to do it.

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That's, that helps them. And the Bible says, well, that might be true, but remember if they don't work, they don't eat.

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That's what Paul says. And so to a lot of people that sounds harsh, but if you were to implement that in the church, that would be perfectly just, perfectly just.

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And so that's the problem with this whole thing. Dr. Carl Ellis is not correct here. That's not how you engage with systemic injustice.

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First you have to establish the fact that it's actually unjust and you do it not by storytelling, not by listening to your black and Brown brothers and sisters in Christ, although that's one of the steps you take, but you do it by comparing the system to the word of God.

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That's how you do it. And that's where the conversation needs to be. And unfortunately, gospel coalition,

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I say this with respect, this kind of a presentation, isn't going to cut it. This has to be a biblical debate.

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This has to be focused laser focus on applying the general equity of God's law in the church, the general equity of God's law in a, in the, in the

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United States. And so unfortunately, again, this is just not, it's not a complete answer, unfortunately.

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Anyway, we'll move on to the next question later. Well, I hope that was helpful. That was a couple of questions and answers that were from last night's gospel coalition thing on biblical justice.

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I don't think it's going to cut it. We're not talking about the scripture enough. We're not talking enough about the specificity of the law of God and how it applies to justice today.

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This kind of presentation is okay, but it just doesn't go far enough. And it assumes a lot of things.

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Anyway, I hope it was helpful. Again, if you like this and you want to see more of my commentary on this presentation, please give me a like, and let me know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel.