"Good Faith" Debate on Woke Church in a Nutshell - Part 3

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June 6, 2022

Sean DeMars, of American Gospel, Looking For That Middle Ground - Woke Debate Part 4

00:00: All right, well, welcome to another week. I hope you're excited to get started. I sure am. I hope you had a good
00:05: Lord's Day yesterday. I did. I was actually tapped to preach for my pastor. He was out of town,
00:12: I guess. I was gonna say out of the office, but that doesn't make any sense. He was out of the pulpit yesterday. But I think
00:17: God was glorified. I think it went really well. So that'll be up, actually, on YouTube soon if you're interested.
00:24: But let's jump right into this debate. I was told by many people on Saturday that I gotta continue reviewing or responding or whatever to this debate.
00:33: I heard it gets a lot better, which I'm assuming means it gets worse. It's all about perspective.
00:41: It's all about perspective. But I was thinking about the video I did for Saturday, and this tactic from Dr.
00:49: Rebecca McLaughlin, it's so slippery. And it's not new.
00:56: She didn't come up with this, but this is something that a lot of these kind of liberally type Christians do, where she defines wokeness so broadly that number one, she's lying about what wokeness is.
01:08: We all know what we're talking about when we're talking about wokeness. I don't have to go back into that again. But she defines it as, well, let me go back to the original definition.
01:17: The original definition is to have an understanding of racial injustice of the past.
01:24: And by that definition, I'm woke, right? So if your definition, doctor, includes me, who's obviously not woke, but I would be woke by your definition, it is totally worthless.
01:38: I'm against all of your woke scams. I am vociferously against it, to use a big evil word.
01:46: I think it's vociferously. I don't even know what that means. I'm very against it. Obviously, nobody would consider me woke, but I am keenly aware of the racial injustices of the past.
01:57: And so your whole presentation has started with a huge bait and switch. It's a huge scam.
02:04: It's nonsense. It's irrelevant. Why even do this? Well, I know why you're doing this, Dr. McLaughlin.
02:10: It's because you're trying to trick people. And we don't like it. You know what I mean?
02:15: We're seeing through it now. A lot of us started off getting somewhat fooled by your nonsense.
02:22: And I don't mean you in particular, although you're included, but just big, even nonsense. But now we know you're lying to us and trying to scam us and manipulate us.
02:31: By the way, this is what my sermon was about, about how people manipulate you using your emotions and they mean different things by love than what the
02:39: Bible means and all that. In any case, we don't like it. So stop doing it. But you know, obviously you're not gonna stop because I'm not even sure you play for the right team,
02:48: Rebecca. So let's continue. It was that they weren't half Christian enough.
02:55: It was not that they were reading their Bibles too carefully. Oh, what happened there? It was that they were utterly failing to read their
03:02: Bibles. When we look at the scriptures, we find that as clearly and firmly as the
03:07: Bible calls us toward racial justice, integration, and equality, so it calls us away from same -sex sexuality and transgender identity.
03:16: This conclusion is not one I've come to easily. I've been a Christian for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember,
03:23: I've been attracted to other women. Right, somebody mentioned to me that she's a lesbian or at least she's same -sex attracted, but she's married now and has kids.
03:32: Well, praise God for that. I'm glad that she has a regular family and she's got regular relationships and stuff like that.
03:39: But someone told me, I don't know if this is true, but someone told me that she allegedly is still attracted to women and all of that.
03:45: And that's a real shame. It's a real shame. In times of my life where I would have been more than happy to look in the
03:51: Bible and to find that the Bible affirmed same -sex relationships and marriage for Christians.
03:58: But you have to do the same level of exegetical hermeneutics to conclude that same -sex marriage is a valid option for Christians, as you have to do to conclude that racial segregation is a valid option for Christians.
04:14: Why even go into this? Because this is so obviously accepted by almost everybody.
04:21: I mean, obviously there's a few wackadoodles out there and all of that, but why even go into any of this, right?
04:27: Why do this? Well, the irony is that woke people are the ones that get involved in segregating and they've got segregated fellowship events.
04:37: In fact, Gospel Coalition itself, as I said in my first video, is involved in that. That's the woke side of this debate.
04:43: And she's not rebuking the woke side of this debate. So it's like, why even bring this up?
04:49: I don't know. I don't know. So in our cultural moment today, we must believe what the Bible says.
04:57: That will lead us to define what we mean carefully. That will lead us to repent of the history of injustice of which we are feeling the effects today.
05:08: And it will lead us to believe what the Bible says. It will not fit us into any neat political categories.
05:16: It will not lead us to feel comfortable around folks who have traditionally defined themselves as conservative or as progressive.
05:22: But it will bring us into a place where we can actually learn from what the scriptures are telling us. How did this get into politics?
05:29: This is very interesting. And where we can, in the right ways, repent. It should be second nature to us as Christians.
05:38: This is about the woke church. She's bringing politics in. It's very, very interesting how she intimately connects those two, but without really saying anything.
05:46: She's, well, you can't be on the right. You can't be on the left. And it's like, well, okay, okay.
05:52: So what does this, again, what does this have to do with the woke church and the fact that you're woke and the fact that you're thinking that, you're trying to scam us into thinking that being woke is okay.
06:02: It's not okay. Whether you're woke on the right and woke on the left, and there are woke people on the right, don't get me wrong.
06:09: Whether you're woke on the right or left is irrelevant. We're talking about the woke church. To repent and to believe.
06:16: Repent and believe. That is how we come to Jesus in the first place. And yet we find it so hard to do when it comes to the history of our tribe, when it comes to our heroes, when it comes to our forebears.
06:30: This is a lie. This is a scam. This is a complete degenerate lie. She's no, listen, people in the past may have found this difficult to repent of the sin of racial segregation.
06:40: But the reality is that by and large, your tribe, if we're going to go by tribes according to skin color, like barbarians, if that's what we're going to do, fine.
06:51: Let's just go with her. Let's just do it. I've met thousands of white people in my lifetime.
06:59: I grew up with hundreds of white people. I met hundreds of white people in my jobs over the years.
07:05: I've met hundreds of white people in various churches of different denominations and things like that.
07:11: I can count on one hand the number of people that I felt like were treating me differently because I wasn't white like them.
07:20: I can count on one hand, right? And so, and even if you can count more than that, let's just say
07:26: I grew up in an area that didn't have a lot of racist whatever, right? Let's just say you can count more than that.
07:31: The reality is that according to every statistic, according to every way that we know how to measure, unless you're a socialist and you're counting economic disparities or something stupid like that, racism, of course, it's almost extinct at this point.
07:48: Racial prejudice, it's almost extinct at this point, right? People don't accept it, it's not tolerated.
07:58: The idea that white people in our tribe have a hard time repenting of the sins of the past is completely false, it's completely slanderous, and it can only be uttered by someone who is completely woke, not in the good way, in the bad way, because the woke people see, oh, well, black people don't have as much money as white people, therefore we need to repent.
08:20: Repent of what? Repent of the disparity. Oh man, there's more black murderers than there are white murderers, or the percentage of black murderers is whatever of white murderers.
08:29: We need to repent. Repent of what? The disparity. What are you talking about, Kami? It's a lie.
08:37: We find it so hard to repent. It's a degenerate lie, and we need to call it such. She's very nice.
08:43: She looks nice. She sounds nice. She sounds like a nice lady. She'd probably be great to have a nice cup of tea with, but she's a liar, and she's doing it at the worst possible time, when everything is going topsy -turvy.
08:56: I mean, there's riots in the streets. There's people that are being killed for this kind of thing.
09:02: At the worst possible time, she's lying, increasing the rhetoric, increasing the nonsense, which is just, it's bad for everybody involved.
09:11: Christians ought not to be engaged in this kind of behavior. We ought to be peacemakers. Instead, with buttery -sounding, smooth,
09:19: British -sounding words, she's got war in her heart. Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin, as nice as she might be to have a cup of tea with, has war in her heart, and Christians ought not to have that.
09:33: We find it so hard to believe in our cultural moment today what the Bible says about Christian sexual ethics.
09:40: No, we don't. Not Christians. But if we are followers of Jesus today, we must do those two things.
09:47: As I look back at the history - This whole line of thought is so interesting.
09:55: I'm reminded of Jesus's words to the church on Laodicea. See, because you might not want to have a cup of tea with me, and that's okay, because I don't even like tea.
10:03: And you might think, oh, you're a jerk, and stuff like that. I'm the one who's a peacemaker here, though, right?
10:09: I don't have war in my heart. I've told many stories of my fond memories of my interactions with people of various ethnicities and genders and, well,
10:19: I guess just one gender, because there's only two, and all that. And I've told stories about racial injustice that I've experienced and how it was resolved.
10:30: I'm a peacemaker, despite the fact that I might have a little bit of an edge to my voice. But in the church, we need to watch out for this.
10:37: In fact, this is what the scripture warns about again and again when it comes to false teachers, when it comes to wolves in sheep's clothing.
10:45: It doesn't warn about the people that have a little edge in their voice. It simply doesn't.
10:51: If you search the scriptures, the ones that it warns you about are the ones that flatter you, the ones that have smooth -sounding, buttery -sounding words, the ones that'll smile in your face as they're stabbing you in the stomach.
11:05: That's the ones that it warns you about, right? And it's because they're shifty, they're sneaky.
11:14: And I would argue that this presentation, I don't know anything about Rebecca McLaughlin except this presentation and a few things that some people have told me.
11:23: I'm not making a determination on Rebecca being a wolf or whatever. I have no idea. But what
11:28: I'm saying is that this presentation is so sneaky, it's so deceptive, and it's just, it's weaselly, obviously, that's my favorite word, but it's just a perfect example of someone who disarms you while they're beating you down.
11:45: It's unacceptable for a Christian. You gotta watch out for people like this. You say,
11:51: I am rich. I've acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
12:00: And what is the prescription that Jesus, the great physician, gives to those people in Laodicea and gives to us today?
12:08: To be earnest and repent. For the message of the gospel to go out today, we don't need to defend our record.
12:19: We need to hold out the beauty of our Savior. And if we don't define work carefully.
12:26: I'm sorry I'm interrupting you so much, but do you see just the massive assumptions that are packed into this?
12:32: We're not showing people the Savior. We're not pointing to the beauty of our Savior. We're not doing that.
12:38: How do you know? Well, there's racial disparities. She hasn't said that yet, but that's pretty much what the woke church thinks.
12:44: There's racial disparities and black people are angry with the white church. That's how you know. And it's like, no, that's not how you know.
12:50: That's actually not how you know. If we close down conversations about race, if we act like there was a once upon a time when this was a
13:01: Christian country living according to Christian ethics and everything has gone horribly wrong since then, we're going to be making the same level of life -threatening mistakes as if we failed to distinguish between heart medication and cocaine.
13:16: It's like, well, we closed down the conversation about race. No, we haven't. We haven't closed it down. Let's talk about race.
13:22: In fact, I remember when I first started my content, I was desperate and this was a bad look in my opinion.
13:29: I don't do this anymore, but I was desperate to find some woke people to come on my channel and to talk about it, right?
13:34: And I found like two or three, maybe four at the most total in like two years because nobody's shutting down the conversation on our side.
13:44: That's your side that shuts down that conversation. And this conversation doesn't count.
13:50: This is nonsense. This is controlled opposition. I had somebody say that in the comments in my first video that this is textbook controlled opposition.
13:59: 100 % it is. 100 % it is. This is Gospel Coalition taking cues from CNN on how to do controlled opposition.
14:14: Yeah, so we're gonna continue a little bit. I've only been at this for 15 minutes. You gotta watch out for this kind of presentation.
14:21: And I don't think it's an accident that they chose a woman to do this part of it. I think it's disarming.
14:28: I think you're not ready to be just lied to and slandered. Like you hear her voice and she sounds so proper and you don't expect her to just lie to you for 10 minutes straight.
14:39: And that's what she did. She lied again and again. There were some truths in there, especially that last part where you've got this fantasy where things went wrong since back then when we used to be perfectly
14:50: Christian. That's a lie. I could totally agree with that, right? That's a lie. I don't think that's how it went down.
14:56: I think things are worse now than they used to be. However, that doesn't mean that we had this like idyllic sort of situation back then.
15:04: And I've talked about that many times and all of that. But either way though, you gotta be careful.
15:10: This is exactly what the scripture is talking about, about a smooth sounding liar. A smooth sounding, and I don't know she's a wolf, but this presentation is the kind of presentation a wolf in sheep's clothing would give.
15:22: You can see her sheep's clothing and it's radiant. But there's war in her words.
15:28: This is brutal. I mean, it's absolutely degenerate lying the entire time. So now comes the debate,
15:35: I guess. There's gonna be some cross -examination. Well, I want to thank both of you for two very heartfelt - That's this guy.
15:43: All right, that doesn't say. Oh well, let's continue.
15:49: Arguments. And I really wanna thank you both for the ways that you defined your terms, you used your terms.
15:57: We're gonna come back to the definition of terms in a little bit because both of you, it seemed to be at the heart of both of your arguments.
16:03: And I think it is so for a really good reason. I wanna start - Yeah, I disagree though. I disagree because if you come to a debate about the woke church and you act as if nobody knows what the woke church is, it's totally worthless.
16:17: Well, you've got different debates and different things. And her definition was totally worthless. It was so general.
16:24: His definition, it was okay, but he just didn't get to where he needed to get.
16:30: He didn't get to the point where it's like, no, no, this is something that the church is engaged in, not that maybe one day it could be engaged in.
16:37: No, it's engaged in it now. So I appreciated a lot of what Sean said, but he just didn't go for the jugular.
16:44: And you have to in a debate like this. You just have to, because people don't wake up unless you tell them that it's actually dangerous, which it 100 % is.
16:51: And I think that Sean Demers thinks it is. So I don't know why he didn't do that. I think I do know why. I think he's desperate to be winsome.
16:59: Though, by asking you, Sean, Rebecca makes the case that before we can use our
17:04: Bibles to oppose what I think you called liberal agendas, she referenced transgender identity, same -sex marriages.
17:14: Before we can address any of those things, we have to, as a church, repent of the way that we used our
17:19: Bibles when it came to race relations in the United States. So my question is a little twofold. Do you agree with that statement?
17:27: And what does it look like, if you do, to do that without you being called woke? All right, stop.
17:33: So I don't agree with that because Rebecca's question, or Rebecca's position, if that's her position, assumes that we haven't done that already.
17:41: And unfortunately, that is a false assumption. That is a lie that only a woke person could ever utter.
17:47: That's not true. But that's a primary woke lie. The church has definitely acknowledged this again and again and again and again and again and again.
17:58: How many times do we have to acknowledge that the way they were reading the Scripture was incorrect at the time?
18:03: They did not use their Bibles appropriately. So we don't have to earn anything in order to be able to use our
18:11: Bibles today. See, this is the thing. Rebecca and Gospel Coalition as a whole, they're only comfortable using the
18:19: Bible for yesterday's issues. They're not gonna confront today's issues head on the way they ought to.
18:24: It's yesterday's battles. It's yesterday's fights. It's yesterday's theological disagreements. That's what we focus on instead of what's right in front of us today.
18:33: Because if you do that, if you focus on what's right in front of you today, you're gonna get two responses. One, why do you gotta be so mean?
18:38: You're a fundamentalist. What do you think? You're a legalist or stuff like that. And two, we gotta repent of yesterday's stuff before you have the right to criticize today.
18:47: And both of those are false. And so number one, the church has already repented. Number two, this is nonsense anyway.
18:53: That's my response. You can say it in a more winsome way. Hopefully he gets around to saying something like that because you gotta fight the premise of this position.
19:02: It's not true that the church hasn't repented of their sins of the past because we don't segregate anymore. We don't enslave anymore.
19:08: We don't promote this kind of stuff anymore. We don't do it. Yeah, so first of all, can
19:15: I just start by not answering your question? I just wanna start, Rebecca, by saying I'm so thankful for you.
19:22: I'm so thankful for your ministry, for your writing. I agree so much with what you said up there. And I know that that's the heart of this whole dialogue is to show that we're really on the same team and there's just a variation of difference, but I felt it as I was listening to you.
19:35: So I just love you and I'm so thankful for you. The heart of this whole dialogue is to show that we're on the same team and there's not that much difference or there's only a shade of difference.
20:15: So you're in a debate on whether the woke church is, what was the topic again?
20:22: A stepping stone to theological compromise. And Sean is under the impression, which I'm assuming he's not lying.
20:29: He was probably told this, that the debate, that's canceled. We're on the same team.
20:35: There is no theological compromise. You're gonna agree on everything. That's what this is about.
20:42: So in order to have a good faith debate, you basically essentially have to agree on 90 % of things.
20:49: And that's what the point of this is. She just got done.
20:55: I'm so thankful for your presentation. She just got done lying for 10 minutes.
21:02: And Sean knows that. Sean is a smart guy. Oh, woke is just acknowledging the race of the past and we've never done that.
21:13: And it's like, oh yeah, totally. Yeah, we've never done that. That's all woke is. It's just acknowledging the racism of the past.
21:28: I don't know how much longer I'm gonna last, guys. I don't know how much longer
21:36: I'm gonna last. I'm just gonna be honest with you. Now to my disagreement.
21:42: Let's go, let's see it. I'm nervous about the language of corporate confession as applied to identity groups.
21:50: I'm nervous about identity politics in general. I'm nervous about corporate confession language. This is what it is to be winsome.
21:57: I think I finally have a definition. Winsomeness is engaging the culture with fear, nervousness, anxiety, being troubled, being worried, concerned, but no conviction.
22:20: That's how you're winsome with the culture. You can say what the Bible says so long as it deeply is concerning, troubling, fearful, whatever, and all those kinds of words.
22:33: You can disagree with a woke person, but you can only do it from a concerned standpoint.
22:41: You can't actually have conviction. Oh man,
22:52: I'll let him finish. Just applied to identity groups like white evangelicals.
22:58: I believe in corporate confession, but anytime you kind of extrapolate out from Old Testament Israel, which was a theonomy, so they were an ethnic people, a legal people, and a spiritual people.
23:13: Extrapolate out of that, I get a little nervous, but I can even see it in the context of a local church, which is why I very much appreciate your example from Laodicea.
23:21: I think a local church could have some corporate guilt that they need to come together and confess, which is why in my church every other
23:31: Sunday, sometimes more often, we have prayers and confession. We just assume that our people are sinning in various and sundry ways.
23:39: And so we come together and we're honest with God and we're honest with each other and we believe in corporate confession. But corporate confession about what white evangelicals have been complicit in, it's all kind of hazy.
23:52: You start getting into intersectional things and the lines are blurred. And on top of that, when
23:59: I read the Bible, I don't see a lot of language, especially in the New Testament, which maybe this is a biblical theological question that we can come back to, the discontinuity between the
24:08: Old Covenant and the New Covenant. But I don't see that same kind of language there and I don't think we see it there for a reason.
24:15: So all of that to say, I think there's a sense in which I could agree with Rebecca, and then there's a sense in which
24:20: I would very much want to push back and disagree with Rebecca. Well, let me - Of course you can.
24:26: That's allowable. Yeah, I gotta go. I gotta charge my son's Luigi Mario cart.
24:33: That's all for the better. I honestly cannot believe he just said, like he just did what he did.
24:41: It's just, it's unreal. It's unreal. But honestly, he probably really was told that. It's like, you're not allowed to disagree too much.
24:48: You have to agree with nothing. That's the whole point of this. And textbook -controlled opposition, because the differences and the issues are way more fundamental.
25:00: They're way deeper than Gospel Coalition wants you to admit. And so they're gonna sit here and put on this fake show of, you know, this is a hard -hitting but good faith debate.
25:11: This is not, it's not hard -hitting and it's not good faith. That's the point.
25:17: When you pretend that this difference is just a minor, you know, snibbling around the edges kind of difference, but we're all on the same team.
25:24: When there's fundamental disagreements here, this is anything but good faith debates.
25:30: This is a lie. This is a trick. This is a scam. And it's so, I don't know why
25:36: I'm so upset about it. You know what? I think I know why. I think I expected more from Sean. I really think
25:41: I did. It's disappointing. It's disappointing. I knew he was big evil light, but you know, maybe it's just because I've heard so many good things about him.
25:49: It's pathetic, Sean. This is pathetic, man. Why did you participate in this? Why did you do this?
25:57: Well, in any case, at least it makes my job security shoot through the roof. I hope you found this video helpful.