BONUS EPISODE: How I was Equipped to Fight Social Justice and Francis Schaeffer on the Middle Class

A Christian Identity, Family Heritage, and Early Formation

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. It is incredibly late in the day or early in the morning, however you want to figure that out, where I am, and as you can tell, I'm in a different surrounding than I'm usually.

In.

I'm at a hotel room. I'm speaking at an engagement tomorrow, so I'm traveling, and I'm a little wired, though, so I thought I'll give a little dress rehearsal to some of the things that I wanted to share because I haven't shared them on my podcast, but I'm going to be sharing them in a little speech tomorrow, and I've been asked the question many times, John, where did you find out how to think about social justice the way you do?

What books did you read? What resources? And the question behind that is how can I bring discernment to bear on this issue, and I haven't really fully answered that. This might be one of the more fuller answers that I have to give, but my emphasis, my thrust is going to be there's no silver bullet.

I'm going to give you some pointers by sharing my story. It's going to be kind of autobiographical, but I think if you're a common person, I'm a big fan of the layman. I'm a big fan of guys, just middle class guys.

I think you can do this. You can handle this. The word of God is sufficient, and I think it's helpful to know some basic knowledge in some other outside fields, but I'm just going to walk through my story a little bit, and hopefully that encourages you.

So this is a bonus episode. I'm shooting from the hip here a little bit, but I think, you know, hopefully it's encouraging, and it'll help you get to know me more if you're interested in that kind of thing.

I was raised in a Christian home. Dad is a pastor and was, still is. My mother quit being a nurse to raise us kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and you know, I was raised in the Northeast where it's pretty secular, not very Christian friendly, but I had a lot of church friends, even though I had friends in the neighborhood as well and friends in sports.

I had some reinforcement from the church. I was homeschooled, which I think also helped. But more than anything, this is kind of, this is key. There were three basic identities that I had that my parents made sure that I had.

Number one, I'm a Christian. I have a Christian identity. This is, you know, the part of being a Harris, being in my home was we abide by scripture, but I'm also a Harris. I have a family history, a story that I fit into.

I mean, we had family reunions and Harris family rules and things we did as a family that were unique to our family. We sat at the kitchen table, looked at each other. We didn't, you know, watch television as we were eating.

We were, we tried to maintain that cohesion. And then we were proud of our heritage of being an American. And I probably, by the time I was 16, I had been in between 30 and 40 states. We had family in the South, the West, the Midwest, and of course we were in the Northeast, and we would just travel and stop at historical locations like battlefields and museums.

And so I learned a lot about this country just through traveling, through a lot of reading. My parents would read us Christian classics, historical fiction and nonfiction. And so, you know, this was the world that I came from.

And so I had a sure footing for the most part by the time I got to college. Now, I was saved when I was, you know, I made a profession when I was like six. I struggled with that when I was in my early teens.

But I came to the conclusion, I often joke that I, this is when I became a Calvinist, when I realized it wasn't my decision that saved me, it was Jesus. And I had even a more sure footing, an assurance of salvation.

College, Christian Apologetics, and Learning to Stand Alone

You know, but I walk into college, 16 years old, right, typical homeschooler, going early. And I'm kind of, I'm ready for the most part. I mean, I've been exposed to some of the ideas that are out there.

And I did not know to what extent leftism, anti-Christian leftism had taken over academic institutions. I mean, my first class was a speech class. And I think I was the, in the minority of minorities, like the only student who had some of the views that I had on different subjects.

I think my final, I did a speech on evolution and creation and Darwinism. And I know we had other panel discussions on like the use of marijuana and drugs and things like that. And I kept finding myself in the minority.

So I kind of had to sink or swim. I kind of had to learn how to stand up on my own two feet. And I asked myself questions. What I really believe, is it really true? Can I really trust it? These are questions that commonly go through someone's mind as their challenge.

I think it's good to be challenged. I think it's good to, you know, if you can, go to college even and get challenged in those ways. But boy, I think if you're going to go, unfortunately, it's Christian college now too, not just secular.

If you're just going to go to college period, you have to know kind of where you stand first. And it didn't, it may not have used to be that way in every sense. But now it is. And so, you know, my father, you know, the other thing I didn't mention, but he made sure that I knew hermeneutics, Old and New Testament survey, counseling, kind of early on in my college experience.

Because he wanted me to have that foundation. So I get there and the story of my life is I get involved in organizations where I am not the leader, but I end up somehow getting put in that position. And I end up being more or less the leader of the Christian group on campus.

And we had some issues with the administration discriminating against us. And so I end up essentially having to fight that battle. And I'm fighting this battle. And at the same time, I'll give you the details on that.

But at the same time, I am in class looking around and sometimes with Christian classmates, and they're not typically standing up for what they believe in. They're keeping their mouth shut. It's easier to do that, just get an A, repair it back what the teacher says.

And I'm looking at all these non-Christian students, you know, even kids from broken homes and things. And I'm thinking, they're never going to know the truth. They're going to just hear what their professors are saying.

And the professors were saying things like, I remember my sociology class, which was required, go experiment with homosexuality this weekend. Hey, Marx was a good guy. He said some really valuable things.

You know what? Class assignment, go vote for this democratic candidate. Environmentalism, you know, was part of the economics class that I was in. I mean, crazy stuff, really wacko environmentalism. Obviously, the evolutionary Darwinist kind of worldview was present in the sciences.

And so, this was just my education. I remember one class I had was a literature class. And it's like every single story was sexual. Like, it was all sexual symbolism, everything. I was like, man, you know, and I had actually two literature classes like that, an American and a British literature.

And they were both everything sexual. Just dirty minds, perverted minds. And in some ways, I wonder, you know, was some of this even an education? But it was just to get me, you know, in my mind to the next step.

And I wanted to go on to some higher education. But, you know, I don't consider myself that special. I'm just a middle class kid. And I had a strong identity. I just knew who I was. And when faced with challenges, I wanted to, I had a commitment to truth.

And I wanted to make sure that what I believed was really true. And if it was, I wanted to defend it. And so, I was listening to the William Lake Craig, Reasonable Faith Podcast, Robbie Zacharias, Just Thinking.

And, you know, I was trying to read like Milton Friedman and so, you know, political, Christian, all sorts of stuff that I was trying to learn so that I could, in class, sound intelligent and have a bigger stack of stuff, of pile of facts than my teacher.

Because I knew I could be embarrassed if my teacher knew something I didn't. And just think about this for a minute. Just in Darwinism itself, you have to know so much to talk to a Darwinist. You really want to have, like, if they know what they're talking about, you want to have an educated discussion.

I mean, you got to know about geology. You got to know something about cosmology. You got to know about biology. I mean, it's just, there's a lot. And I got to the point where I was like, I can't be an expert in like every field.

It's very difficult. And one of the things that helped me is I was introduced sort of late in my undergrad experience to Francis Schaeffer, to Nancy Piercy, to Greg Bonson, to a bunch of other guys in the sort of more presuppositional mode.

And I learned that men are, that they believe in God. They know that the God of Christianity exists. They suppress that truth and unrighteousness. And they become kind of like walking bundles of contradictions.

Because they say they believe one thing, but then they act as though the God of Christianity exists. And immaterial, absolute, unchanging laws and realities are what they construct their lives by. So that really helped me, understanding that.

And understanding how presuppositions, well, downstream from presuppositions are these beliefs. And rather than tangling about the Cambrian layer, it might be better to ask some more basic questions about the nature of reality.

And so this really helped me. And throughout my 20s, I got involved with different outreaches, like three or four different campuses. And I even did two formal debates that are on YouTube at one of the campuses.

And I loved apologetics. I mean, it just, it thrilled me. It was fun. And so not everyone has that love. But I don't, again, think I was anything special. I remember, you know, I got a book, a little bitty book called Discerning Truth by Jason Lyle.

It just goes over logical fallacies. And I would watch the news that evening, MSNBC and Fox. And I would pick out, okay, you know, what was a logical fallacy on the news tonight? And, you know, it was really, really helpful training.

But it was mostly learned outside the classroom. And I will freely say, most of what I've learned, the vast majority of it has been outside the classroom. Very little has been stuff that, and I'm not saying classrooms are bad or you can't learn anything at all.

I'm just saying it is possible to get an education with a library card. It depends what your goals are, whether or not you want a degree or need a degree. But that's kind of where I'm coming from. And the encouragement, I think, in all this is that you can be a common, middle class, simple person, a pew sitter, layman.

And I think you can go toe to toe with the academics. I really do on some of this stuff. Because, you know, you can know a lot about Lord of the Rings, right? You can know, like, the Elfish language. But that, none of it's true.

And there's whole entire fields dedicated to things that aren't even true. And if you know the truth, then you can go upstream, go to where the error occurred, and talk about that. So you do need to know, you need to have some tools for identifying that.

Hermeneutics, Logic, and Thinking Upstream from Error

So here are the tools. Hermeneutics is a really good tool to have. So knowing your Bible, knowing how to interpret your Bible. Hermeneutics and logic, kind of, you know, logic is important. They flow together.

And hermeneutics is going to help you, like a grammatical historical hermeneutic, in not just biblical interpretation, but even just historical interpretation. Coming up with a paradigm that all the facts fit into.

That you're not just, you know, okay, we'll ignore those facts because they don't fit our narrative. No, come up with a paradigm that makes all the facts. I'll give you an example here. You know, okay, the Founding Fathers, a bunch of white, racist, cruel, trying to protect their own property, self-interested people, right?

And that's why they did the American Revolution. And so, okay, we'll think about this for a minute.

What facts?

We're not interpreting yet, just observing, just collect what we have available to us. They were risking a lot, right? If Great Britain won, they would have viewed as treasonous and probably jailed and so forth.

Look at the fortunes that they put on the line. Look at George Washington and what he did to refuse even being a king. I mean, you start looking at these things and you realize, okay, that paradigm doesn't work.

And it's the same way with any, you know, historical discussion of any time period or event. You want to look for those kinds of things. So, it's a different way of thinking. I think once you understand hermeneutics, once you understand logical fallacies and how, just how to think.

You don't have to memorize all the fallacies. Just get into this mode where you're, where you just kind of know, like, how to reasonably approach something. It doesn't take much. And I did not learn it in college.

When I got to seminary, I was surprised that after being there a few years, I was starting to hear the same things that I heard when I was in my undergrad experience. You know, I heard about the disparities that existed in ethnic groups and how this is systemic racism, institutional racism, and we had, you know, class projects on these things.

And, you know, some of this stuff was Marxist. And they were a little more honest about it at the university I went to. The difference was in seminary, they weren't honest about it. It was like, where is this coming from?

And I remember before the MLK 50, before I heard anyone give any pushback to this stuff, I remember talking to a student about this. And I said, this sounds like Marxism to me. This is a form of it. And I explained the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy.

And it just, I felt very validated when people that I respected were finally coming out against it after MLK 50 and saying, whoa, what is this? And I thought, yeah, it's been going on in my seminary for years.

And, you know, but I noticed it because of the experiences I had, the challenges I had in my undergrad experience with non-Christians. And because of, I think, some maybe toughness that that gave me, I was prepared for it, ironically, in a Christian setting where I shouldn't have had to deal with it, but I did.

Francis Schaeffer, the Middle Class, and the Stability of Habit

So the encouragement here is that the Lord used, hopefully has used me. And I've gotten a lot of messages from even pastors saying how much some of my analysis has helped them. And I'm nothing special.

I want to encourage you with this. This is from Francis Schaeffer. He has a book called Escape from Reason. And I'm gonna tell you a little story. And then after I read this, but he's talking about existentialism, which is what we're dealing with now, by the way, this whole critical theory thing.

This is all based, this is the emergent church. It's all, it's postmodernism, it's existentialism, and it is now politicized. That's all it is. The emergent church has become politicized. And that is what the woke church is.

But Francis Schaeffer, I think it's in the 70s, he wrote this. He talks about, maybe 60s, the middle class. And he says, you know, the upper classes, the educated classes, right? They get affected by this.

But the middle class, he says, they were kind of bypassed. He says, it left alone the middle class. It was not touched by it. And often is still not touched by it, meaning existentialism. This middle class group is in many ways a product of the Reformation.

And I think he's talking about America mostly here. It is something to be thankful for as a source of stability. But now people in this group often do not understand the basis of its stability. They do not understand why they think in the old way.

They're continuing to act out of habit and memory after they have forgotten why the old form was valid. Often they still think in the right way to them.

Truth is truth. Right is right.

But they no longer know why. So how could they understand their 20th century children who think in the new way, who no longer think that truth is truth, nor that right is right? Almost prophetic. Now, here's the interesting thing.

I'm going to tell you a story, and then I'm going to explain that quote and why I quoted.

It.

I'll tell you two stories, actually.

Story number one.

Earlier, I think it was this year, there was an individual who had some education, and they were very upset that they were in ministry, they had seminary training, and they went to a church, and the people at the church didn't seem interested in going to seminary and or Bible school.

They didn't see the value in it necessarily. And, you know, maybe there's some problems there. I don't know. I don't know this particular group of people, but this person was like very upset about.

It.

I mean, like, very upset, almost seemed like offended that their education wasn't being valued the way it should be. And I thought, in the back of my head, I didn't say it. I thought, I'm very grateful for those people, those common people, because they were being described as, yeah, you know, they just do what their parents did, and they live in their ignorance.

And this academic person couldn't understand, you know, they were so upset. Now, I kind of consider myself in both worlds, in a sense. I have this strong family identity that, you know, look, my parents were both, I think, the first to go to college in their families.

And, you know, I'm very close with aunts and uncles, grandparents, great aunts, uncles. Not a lot of college educated folks in my family. In fact, a lot of my family in Mississippi, where we go for family reunions, I mean, they're just straight up rednecks.

And I thank God for them, and I see the value in their way of life. But I also have seen value in some education, and most of what I've learned has been outside.

The classroom.

But even the self-education, you know, I think it's good to read some of the things that I've been exposed to. So hopefully, I can sort of see from both perspectives. And I am very grateful for these middle class individuals who will not be persuaded.

They're a bit skeptical of someone who might come to them as a specialist. And they prefer to live by the habits that have been passed down to them. So go to church. Their parents went to church. They're going to, you know, if they're farmers or mailmen or whatever, they're going to work.

They're going to support their family. They're going to live by the same kind of code of conduct that their parents live by. And raise their kids the way that they were raised and so forth and so on. And there is a stability in this, like Schaefer says.

And this is the thing that's being ripped down and being mocked and being ridiculed. And it's, I think, one of the reasons our culture is becoming so unstable, it's not stable anymore. But these individuals are what keep conservative politics going.

Those who didn't go to college, they tend to retain that traditional Western culture value system. And the second story that I have is I went in January to the Social Justice and the Gospel Conference.

And I'm driving back and I stopped near Clemson University at a barbecue joint. And because it's a South, their waitress came to me and said, hey, there's not a lot of.

Room here.

There's three police officers. They're going to eat with you. So they ate with me. And within a couple minutes, we're laughing and having a good time. All three of them claim to be Christians. One of them hadn't been going to church, but he knew he should.

I mean, so there's a standard there. Even if you're not keeping it, there's a standard. And I was telling them a little bit about, they were asking me about where I was and what's going on at these Christian institutions and so forth.

And I was telling them, well, this is what's being said. And they were just shocked. How can that be? And it just made so much sense to them. I didn't have to explain anything. They just knew right away.

And that's been kind of my experience, is the common folks who just, they live day to.

Day.

They live by habit. Their concerns are their kids and their families. And they don't find this identity in this. And not every PhD is like this, by the way. Some lovely, wonderful men that I really respect who have PhDs.

Typically, your specialist, your PhD, they have so much pride in what they've accomplished. And if you take that away from them, if you challenge their one specialty, it's not a good thing. Don't try to do that.

It's like taking away a toy from a baby, right? They get very upset because that's their identity. It's wrapped up in what they've accomplished in this. And I just have such a respect for those guys who can go through that and it doesn't get to their head.

And they're still looking at themselves as, you know what? I'm a father, I'm a parent, I'm a churchman, I'm all these other things. My identity is my family, my country, my faith. And I started out that way.

And that's why I consider myself to be a layman. I'm just, I'm a common guy. Now, it was refreshing to be talking to those guys. It was, it's refreshing to know that there's folks out there like that.

Richard Weaver talks about this a bit in his book, Ideas of Consequences, I think at least. He talks about how in ancient Greece and up in Rome, the idea was being a philosopher king was, you know, knowing the principles, knowing, having a wide breadth of knowledge so you can know wisdom was important.

And we even see some of this in Jewish tradition, you know, like even in Proverbs. I mean, taking these simple kind of examples from the animal kingdom, from the natural world and finding wisdom and just being able to apply these principles in whatever field that was viewed as wisdom, not just being in this narrow field.

You know, and I want my heart surgeons to know how to do heart surgery. But, you know, wisdom is more than just specialized and having just knowledge in this one narrow little bitty field, having this dissertation that like no one's going to read because it's so narrow, no one really cares.

And you're an expert at something that won't really matter. That's, you know, good for you. But that's not necessarily wisdom if that's all you have. And Richard Weaver says, you know, after the philosopher king idea was kind of squelched, the idea was the gentleman without the philosophical and theological underpinnings.

But, you know, it was the ideal was it wasn't the priest or the monk or the philosopher. It was the gentleman, the chivalry operating on this code, but operating by habit. But, you know, you're doing it and it's respectable.

It's something that men were held to as a code of honor. And I mean, we make fun of this now that you get some things that, you know, in our culture, we consider, I guess, ridiculous, like dueling and so forth.

But there was this sense of honor. And then now the ideal is being the specialist. So this is kind of industrial revolution. We're going to be so narrow that everyone's got their little cog in their own little area.

And I mean, it's so specialized now that you don't really even have craftsmen as much. You have people that work at factories and these little, they specialize in this one little machine or something.

So things have become super specialized. And there's blessings and curses to that. But, you know, Richard Weaver makes the point that that's not where wisdom is found. And his argument is more drawn out than what I'm, I'm not doing it justice at all here.

But I bring this up and I bring Schaefer's point up to as an encouragement to say this. You do not have to be an expert 100 in all these fields. You do not have to know critical theory inside and out to be able to challenge it.

You know what you do need to know? Here's, here's my advice. You need to know the scripture. You need to know how to interpret it. Learn hermeneutics, grammatical historical hermeneutics, some good books out there on it.

Um, learn, uh, learn some basic logic. Jason Lyles, Discerning Truth is a good book for that. Learn, um, maybe just some basic American history. Know how to approach primary sources. And, uh, you know, I, if you go to my Goodreads account, I'll put that, you know, I'll put that in the info section.

Some of the books that, that I've gleaned from, you can see my top rated books. Go to my Goodreads account and check those out. Learn some basic economics. Learn, uh, you know, you just need to know the basic principles and a lot of these things.

And, and you can be fine. You can, you can answer, uh, someone who might have a lot of letters behind their name because you don't have to, if you don't know what they, they, they're talking about, just ask them,.

Right?

Just ask them, well, what do you mean by that? And ask good, learn to ask really good questions and try to get back to the assumptions that, uh, the ideas flow from so that you can talk about and challenge.

If you need to challenge, uh, those things that you are more comfortable with. Uh, so, so that's my advice. Um, the, the, I don't consider myself anything special. Like I've said now, like three or four times in this video, you're probably wondering, why am I watching this guy?

He doesn't even think he's special. Well, I, I think the, the fact that, you know, Jesus chose men that were very common and, uh, you know, not all of them, but you, you had some fishermen in there you had, and they had to be, they had to actually have some level of education to be a fisherman.

And, you know, the only one that he didn't have that he didn't train for three years was Paul who had Gamaliel as his teacher. So education's important, but, um, but, but the way Jesus taught was it was discipleship.

It was life, you know, in modern terms, they call it life on life. He, he wasn't looking for, um, men who were specialists in the modern sense, uh, with PhD.

Types.

He's looking for men who are just willing, able, uh, to put in the time necessary to just know the word of God and teach the word of God. And, and it's not that complicated. It really isn't. And so, uh, so that's a little bit about me and what I guess makes me someone who cares about this movement and is fighting it, uh, and, uh, maybe is positioned in somewhat of a unique way, um, because of some of the circumstances that I've had before in my life with challenges at secular institution and, um, and also being just politically minded to begin with.

I didn't mention this earlier. I mean, I'll just add this, I guess, tack this on at the end, but, you know, I wanted to join the military. I love this country. I was patriotic. I loved my veteran, uh, family members.

And, uh, I, I, for health reasons, I, I, I did not join the military. I couldn't really. And, uh, and that was hard a little bit, uh, that, that, that wasn't an option for me, but, um, but I still, you know, love this country and I've always wanted to see it, it prosper and, and do well.

And, uh, and I think the first part of that is, um, coming to faith in Christ. People need, we need a revival. We need people to wake up and repent and trust in Christ. And so, uh, some of the career choices that I had chosen, I, I looked at, uh, being involved in politics.

I was even offered a job and, and turned it down. I, I, um, looked at going to law school. I mean, some of these things, uh, that were competing interests of mine, I ended up instead opting to go to seminary and, um, and I figured, you know, the best way to restore this country is to teach the word of God.

That is, that is a primary thing. And, and so I think because of that political background, because I'm interested in those kinds of things, and because, um, I also was interested in, in the word of God and I experienced some of these challenges in undergrad, it puts me in this unique spot where, uh, I feel comfortable talking about neo-Marxism, critical theory and all the rest of it.

But, uh, but, but I don't think, um, that means that someone else who doesn't have those same interests and hasn't read the same books and had the same experience can't do it. It's easy to get a library card and you can go and, and you can brush up on some of this stuff and don't be intimidated just because someone's got some letters behind their name.

I guess that's the moral of the story. So, um, thanks for letting me shoot from the hip. This was a bonus episode. I got some, actually some really cool content, I think coming up later this week. You want to look out for that and God bless.

Have a good one.