Next Week: Episode 3: Racism and Charlottesville

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Welcome back everybody. Welcome back to Next Week. I am thrilled about this next guest.

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He's one of my favorite Christians in the world. Had a lot of influence on my own thinking. We have

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Douglas Wilson. He actually starred next to Christopher Hitchens in the famous movie Collision.

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I encourage you guys to check that out. He was also part of the Free Speech Apocalypse film. And he is the author of many delicious books.

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He is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Please welcome Douglas Wilson. Welcome Doug.

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How are things in Moscow? They're pretty good. They're not as raucous as they are there apparently. That's right. That's right.

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We have the best audiences. Doug, I wanted to have you on. We've had you on a bunch of times before on Apology of TV and Apology of Radio.

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But I wanted to have you on next week. And it's actually perfect timing. Just related to this past weekend in Charlottesville.

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I wanted to talk to you about sort of the collapse of culture in the

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United States of America. Talk to us a bit about where we've come from.

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Historically in the United States, the Christian worldview was sort of in the atmosphere. We had all these blessings of justice and righteousness because the biblical worldview was so infused in culture.

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And so we've come to where we are now. Talk to us about sort of the collapse of culture in the United States. Sure. The culture is collapsing in the

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United States because in order to stand, every culture has to have a center and it has to have a center that holds.

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And at the founding in the early years of America, the United States, that center was

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Christianity. The United States was in its founding a

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Christian republic. And it was that for a good century or more after the founding where there was an identifiable Christian center.

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That center was replaced by secular liberalism.

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And it didn't happen all at once. There wasn't a moment where someone hit the light switch and it went from this to that.

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But over time, the Christian center that held

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America together was replaced by secular liberalism. And unbelieving societies can have a center that holds them together temporarily.

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But as an idolatrous system, it's always got to fail or collapse at some point.

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And what we are doing, what's happening now is we're living in the middle of the collapse of secular liberalism's ability to hold everything together.

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Somebody let all the monkeys out of the cage and they don't have any way of putting it back together.

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Exactly. So speaking of sin, we see so much in our modern culture in terms of decay and collapse and depravity, ethical confusion, gender confusion, all those things are before us.

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And we used to, even fairly recently in our history, used to have a time where we used to have conversations.

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We used to engage in rational combat. We used to engage in sort of a rigorous intellectual dialogue.

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And that was the standard. And I believe, of course, that comes from a biblical worldview to have that kind of mindset.

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But I'm going to actually play a clip here. This is something that happened to you, actually,

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Doug, at Indiana University. You were giving some talks on sexuality.

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And in the middle of your time there, something happened. People stood up and they said something to you. Here it is.

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And I would like, as a speaker involved, I would like to personally extend my thanks to Indiana University for their commitment to free discussion.

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And this is not the first time I've run into the tolerance buzzsaw.

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Diversity has two fundamental tenets, as far as I've been able to glean from my interactions with the tolerance police.

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The diversity crowd has two fundamental tenets. The first is that they have an absolute commitment to free speech.

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The second tenet is shut up. And we have a witness.

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We have a witness. In a minute, Revive is going to break out. And we have a witness. You shut up. What it boils down to is this.

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You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways. If you want diversity, then show me how committed you are to it.

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Diversity is not the sort of thing you can get if you have signs and slogans that you cluster together with people who agree with you.

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And as we said back in the day, singing songs and carrying signs,

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Buffalo Springfield said, mostly say hooray for our side. That is a problem.

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That is a problem. And, if I may speak frankly, it's not mine. That's a powerful clip.

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You talk about the tolerance buzzsaw. You talk about diversity. Just give us your feelings about that moment.

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I mean, you're there at a college campus, university campus, and there's such a living, breathing contradiction before you, where people are demanding tolerance and demanding diversity, all the while shouting you down.

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And, by the way, that sign said, the queer shall inherit the earth. So, Doug, talk to us about that moment. Yeah, that was quite a striking moment.

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It was at Indiana University in Bloomington. And I was able to speak my piece. I was able to successfully get through my lectures by the end of the evening.

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But the only reason I was able to is there were about 20 cops involved. So, you don't see that clearly in the film, but there were cops all over the place.

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And my thanks to Indiana University for letting me speak. But the protesters most certainly would not have let me speak had

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I not had police protection. So, that tells me something. I had a particular point of view, which is the classical, scriptural, traditional view of human sexuality.

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I wanted to articulate that view, which has been held for centuries, over millennia, by thousands of teachers and expositors and so forth.

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I wanted to articulate that view in a classroom at a university. And I was only able to do it because I had police protection.

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So, you can't tell me that these people, the

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Antifa people, are committed to diversity. They are committed to what one writer called totalitolerance.

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Totalitolerance. Oh, Doug, that's why I love you, man. So, that brings us, of course, into this discussion.

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You mentioned Antifa. This past weekend in Charlottesville, it was a horrible scene where you had white nationalists, people who can rightly be defined as racist, and you had

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Antifa clashing. You had a person who was actually killed, many people injured. Talk to us, for a moment first, as we get into the

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Antifa discussion and socialism, talk to us about racism. It's something they accused you of,

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Doug, right there in Indiana University, oddly. They accused you of racism. Talk to us about this issue of racism from a biblical perspective.

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On the one hand, as I think I say in the movie, quoting someone else, is that racism is anybody who's winning an argument with a liberal.

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So, if you're pressing the point, if you're winning an argument with a liberal, their trump card is to call you a racist and dismiss you as a racist.

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So, of course, scripturally speaking, Christians know that Jesus came, bled, and died, rose again from the dead, in order to overcome, among other things, ethnic hostility between Jew and Gentile, as it says in Ephesians, to make one new man out of the two.

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So, we are all created, red and yellow, black and white, we are all created in the image of God, and Jesus came to recreate us according to the image of God, repairing the damage done by sin.

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And the people who will praise the Lord for the blood of Jesus cleansing them will be from, as Revelation says, from every tribe, every language, every nation, the church of Jesus Christ is cosmopolitan.

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And I want to argue that Christ is the only way that you can overcome ethnic divisions and hostilities, racial animosity.

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That's right. If you try to dispense with Christ, then people are always going to default to their own tribe.

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And what I said earlier, that secular liberalism, their center is giving way, and you can tell that because they've been inculcating identity politics for decades now, and what's happening, if you look at the

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Charlottesville white supremacists, white nationalists, white separatists, supremacists and separatists are not necessarily the same thing, but you've got this crowd there, that group was almost certainly not educated in white supremacist academies.

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They were educated in the government schools, and they were taught identity politics, and then they went and looked in the mirror to see what group they belong to.

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And if you don't have a transcendent reality overarching the whole thing, like the

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Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, you're going to give way to this sort of identity politics.

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And the kind of scrum in the streets that you're seeing now, you can only expect more of it.

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Apart from Jesus, that's our future. That's exactly right. Doug, why does socialism suck?

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Yeah, number one, it has the problem of wanting to defy the law of God.

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So if someone says, are you against socialism? I'd say, yes,

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I'm against socialism. My religion prohibits it. My faith, my Christian faith excludes socialism.

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And they say, how so? Well, we have this quaint little code of ethics that has this provision, thou shalt not steal.

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Socialism is driven by envy and malice. And the whole egalitarian impulse to level everything is an impulse that is scratching at difference and wants to eradicate every difference.

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And if they can't elevate themselves, they want to tear down the other. And they want to do it in economics.

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Feminism is this impulse in the relationship between the sexes. Socialism is this impulse when it comes to finances and so on.

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Egalitarianism is the central rot. And what you're wanting to do is you're wanting to rebel against the station that God assigned to you.

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So God gave me certain limitations. I'm in the box called my personal identity.

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I am me, and I can't be a bird on the wing. I can't be the moon. I can't be somebody else.

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I need to just receive what God has given me with gratitude and not try to level everything.

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Yeah. So, Doug, last thing here. This past weekend, we had a collision between a wicked group of people that have a belief system that is antithetical to the gospel in terms of their racism.

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I mean, I saw one person say, I thought something was so beautiful. They said, Heaven is going to be a white supremacist hell, considering all the tribes, tongues, and nations that will be there before, probably a very brown

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Jesus. So you've got this sinful belief system colliding with another sinful and broke down belief system with Antipha.

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So last word here, Pastor Doug, what's the answer from a Christian perspective? Is it engaging in, is it linking up with right -wing politics?

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Is it watching and devouring lots and lots of Fox News? Is it voting

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Republican? What's the answer out of this broken condition we find ourselves in? I believe the answer always has to be when situations like this explode, revealing the sinful heart of man, our impulse as gospel preachers ought to be always to drive straight to the cross.

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You have to go to the cross. And when you're preaching the cross, you can't be showing partiality when you're preaching repentance.

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The gospel message all through the book of Acts is repent and believe. If you're calling people to believe on the

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Lord Jesus, and you're telling the people in front of you to repent, you can't have your thumb on the scale when you're preaching the law of God.

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That means Black Lives Matter is just as bad as these white supremacist people.

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And it's bad for the same reason. We should preach against star -bellied snitches, hating the ones without stars, and the ones without stars hating the people, the snitches with stars.

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We are Christians, which means that we are opposed to identity politics, grievance politics, racism, racial preferences.

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No, we're all sinners. If I'm preaching the gospel to a black man, I'm preaching to a sinner.

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And I am a sinner who I'm preaching to him, and I'm preaching to him as a sinner who's been delivered.

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I'm preaching to a black man who's a sinner. I'm preaching to a white man who is a sinner. And they need the same solution, which is the blood of Christ, which is always red.

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Man, I love Douglas Wilson. Give him a round of applause, guys. Thank you, Douglas. Doug, your blessing.

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And I hope to talk to you guys all over there again very, very soon. We plan on coming to Moscow soon, actually. So we'll see you soon,

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Doug. Thank you, brother. God bless you. All right, guys, stay with us. We'll be right back with some final words right here on Next Week.

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Thank you guys so much. Welcome back. It's back to school season, guys.

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And let's face it, public school students are coming back to a secular society and a humanist education system.

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So you might be asking the question, what should my student expect? Well, we wanted to help out. So we managed to get a hold of a copy from the public schools of all the items that you need to bring with you to school for this new school year.

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You guys ready for this? Here we go. In the past years, the school has required that each student bring white out.

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But that's now considered racist. So no more white out. Now you must bring white privilege out.

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So you might be thinking, that's just a box of crayons, right?

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But notice there are no white crayons. Every color in here is called hands up, don't shoot.

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Also on the list are a list of acceptable shoes.

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Acceptable shoes. Now you might have noticed that these are two different types of shoes.

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But they actually identify as one pair. So you guys have heard of non -binary.

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These shoes are non -shinery, y 'all. And don't worry about it. Don't worry about it being difficult to run in gym class.

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Coach just needs to accept your body like the chubby beauty that it is. Let's see what else is in here, guys.

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You're also going to need a belt, right, for your pants. Hold up them pants. And so we have the newest stylish LGBT belt.

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It's a belt with the same ends. What else is in here, guys?

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Oh, look. It's a common core math calculator. Which is actually just a broken calculator.

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Let's see what else is in here. Oh, these are great. These are noise canceling headphones.

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Noise canceling headphones right here. This is in case a conservative or a Christian wants to talk to you.

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Oh, these are the best right here. And this right here. This right here is pajamas and a

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Bible. Oh, wait. That's for homeschoolers. Where your children should be.

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All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in this week. I want to share with you guys some amazing stories.

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Endabortionnow .com was started by Apologia Church months ago. And since that time, over 200 local churches from across the

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United States have gone to get training and resources. And have joined the mission to bring the gospel to abortion mills across the country.

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And since that time, so many children have been saved. And the gospel has been proclaimed over and over and over again.

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We mentioned last time that one group in Michigan saved 15 babies.

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That deserves a round of applause, guys. 15 babies. Just got word before the show that they saved another child.

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So praise God for that. And I just received word that a church in North Carolina saved two children on Saturday.

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So we can do this. As Christians, we can fight against the culture of death with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We can do it in a consistent and meaningful way. And you can partner with us as we are on that mission together to reach the culture with the good news of Jesus Christ.

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To offer help and support and life to these mothers and fathers and to these babies. And you can join us by going to endabortionnow .com,

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guys. Now, I want to encourage you guys to like and share the episode. Share the show with the unpopular opinion.

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We'll catch you guys next week right here on Next Week with Jeff Durbin. Thank you guys for joining us. See you next week, guys.