Social Justice and Matt Chandler | Rapp Report Weekly 0018 | Striving for Eternity

Hashtag Justin, I win. Welcome to the

Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another Rap Report, and this week, well, we're going to deal with this topic that I think everyone else has been talking about anyway.

So why are we, the Johnny -come -latelys, jumping on the bandwagon? Well, because it is an issue so important that it must be dealt with.

Actually, I think that this issue that we're going to talk about could possibly be far more dangerous than atheism or Islam has ever been to Christianity.

In fact, I think that the new apostolic reformation and things like that have been far more dangerous than Islam or atheism is to Christianity, and I think that this new topic that we're seeing, this new issue with the social justice warriors, is far more dangerous than even the new apostolic reformation.

This is extremely dangerous because, A, what it does is exactly what

Satan would love the church to do. Get off of Bible and get on to social.

Get off of dealing with theology and what the Bible says and start addressing things socially and being just moral like every other man -made religion.

Every single man -made religion, it's one of the ways you can tell the difference of a man -made religion and the one divine religion.

It is because every man -made religion has one thing in common. They always, always are focused on morality, on doing good works.

Now, Christians are concerned with doing good works, but not as a means of earning salvation. That's the key.

We do good works because the almighty God, the creator of the universe, the king of kings and lord of lords came to earth as a man to die on a cross as a payment of the eternal payment of sin, and he did that in my place.

I do good works not because I have to, not because I desire to try to earn something from God or anyone else.

It is because that sin that Christ paid for on the cross, that sin was what

I should have paid and he paid it for me. I love him and want to do good for one reason because my motivation is to please him for what he has already done for me.

That is why I would do things that are right, but what the church is doing is losing its focus on the gospel and it's starting to focus on man and trying to please men and trying to get along with a world that hates us.

The reality is this. Look, I understand this is an emotional issue for folks. I understand that the issues that we're discussing here on this podcast are very emotionally charged and there's many who will not take the time to apply critical thinking to what we are saying and they're just going to respond emotionally and want to tune us out, but the reality is this is too important for the church to ignore.

We have to be honest with what the bible says and we have to deal with ourselves in a right state before God, before our fellow man, and the reality that there is not going to be an ultimate justice here on this earth.

We must be concerned about the gospel of Jesus Christ and promoting that more than trying to promote some sort of justice for others, especially while misrepresenting the views of many.

I understand it's emotional, but we have to address it. Now, let me say

I understand that I'm white. Yes, that may surprise people.

I'm super white. I mean, I have a very little melanin in my skin, so much so that I burn very easily when in the sunlight.

I'm white does not make me guilty for anything that someone else that's white has done.

This is the reality of what is happening is all people are being judged by something that other people have done.

I am not responsible for what someone else has done. Now, let me be very clear. My ancestors had absolutely nothing to do with slavery of blacks in America or in Europe.

My ancestors were slaves just a generation ago.

My father's generation grew up with my people being slaves in the nation of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, many places where you'd end up having the

Jewish people being enslaved for no other reason than the fact that they were

Jewish. My forefathers, my generations go back to Russia.

There's nothing in there where they were involved in the African slave trade. So, the reality is that to blame me for something that you took for what my forefathers did when my forefathers didn't do it, okay, is insane.

But this is what we're being told and we're being told that this is for the whole church. If you are maybe having your head in the sand and you don't know what's been going on, let me bring you up to speed.

50 years ago, there was a man named Martin Luther King Jr. who marched and really had a big impact socially on trying to bring a discussion and a change in the voting, in the ability for blacks who had a legal right to vote but were not allowed into voting booths to be able to vote.

And he decided that he was going to use peaceful means to protest.

And 50 years later, at a conference, and you see this now together for the gospel coalition, all the ministries involved with these and the pastors involved with these are pushing and promoting when they had that MLK50 conference.

And they really put the nail in the ground, the stake in the ground to say we as the church are responsible for racism even if we think we're not racist.

We're just not aware that we're racist. In other words, the assumption is we are racist and if we say we're not, then we haven't woke to the fact that we're racist and we need to be aware of that.

Now we've done some different podcasts dealing with the black church.

We've dealt with the issue of racial issues and you can look in the past, the archives and see those.

But here's the thing. What we have is the church being told that we as the church need to change the message and change the way we go about doing church.

Because whether we realize it or not, somehow we are racist just because we're evangelical

Christians. Now there is nothing in the Bible that talks about Christianity tied to color of skin.

In fact, if you're going to be accurate to it, those in the Middle East where the

Bible would have been written and Christianity was born, would have had more melanin in their skin than I do and less than an

African would. So they'd be in the middle and they're not white, they're not black.

You don't see that with Christianity. It's not about a color of skin.

In fact, when you do see that being addressed and when you see it first with Moses and his wife and God judged

Moses's brother and sister for their viewing of Moses's wife being black and not being white.

So he gave them leprosy so they could be really white. So what we see throughout scripture is

God believes that racism is a sin.

Problem is we have a new definition of racism. I encourage folks to, this is totally off topic, but go get the book 1984.

You probably read it when you were in school. Reread it because we're living it. The whole idea of Newspeak where people can change words and a whole culture is accepting of a new definition of terms that every generation before didn't believe.

That's what's happening. We are living Newspeak. Andrew, are you saying we cannot anachronistically determine what race is on our modern terms?

It keeps changing. It keeps changing, Vincent. Did you mean 50 years ago?

Did it mean the same thing as today? Well, no. I mean, 50 years ago, racism would have been when you take someone, whether it be the color of their skin, the slant in their eyes, whatever structures in their genetics that make them different.

And because of that, you group all of them together and you view them as a whole because of the color of their skin or ethnicity or something like that.

And then you start treating them in a way that is because of maybe the color of their skin or the racism that you're doing that you treat them as less than you would people that look like you.

Now, here's the thing with that. Here's the thing with it. That classic definition that we would see is now being used against the church, even by white folks.

They are saying, and we're going to look at one. We're going to examine some, but people who are saying that the church is systemically racist because of the color of their skin.

Well, then you're grouping everyone. I mean, when people tell me that because I'm white, I am responsible for what my forefathers did in the

African slave trade because I'm white. My ancestors didn't do anything with that.

They weren't involved in it. And so the reality is it's a failed argument.

But what is it? It's a racist argument by the proper definition, the classical view.

Here's a way to know, Vincent, whether we're really talking about color of skin or not.

When men like Clarence Thomas are said that they are not black, why is it

Clarence Thomas not black? Because of his politics. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin.

How is it that Bill Clinton was called the first black president?

He looks white to me, but his politics. If you don't carry the line and you're black, you're an

Uncle Tom. Daryl Harris, we had him on a month or so ago when we dealt with some of this before.

And he said that. He said that when he as a black man, as an African -American man, if he comes out and says and speaks out against this, really, it's a socialism is really what's being told.

And this is the thing that people don't even realize the political underpinnings of all this. But when he comes out and speaks about it, people call him an

Uncle Tom. Why is he an Uncle Tom? Because of what? Because of the politics.

Instead of pointing out that these politicians would like to keep people that are black enslaved to voting for them.

That's all they really care about. But let's not get off on that baby. All right. So here's the thing.

The church is, there's an appeal to the church right now that the church needs to recognize their racism, even if they're not aware of it.

If they treat people equally and don't recognize color of skin, they have to recognize that they're responsible.

And even the Southern Baptist Convention, I mean, I think they're going to apologize for like the 15th time for their racism.

I mean, when is it enough? When is it that we can move on and say, okay, there were wrongs in the past and we need to move on from that?

Andrew, I'd like to point out, I just don't, when we say there's wrongs in the church,

I just don't want to associate that the biblical church with the church, maybe what we call the church in America.

And I think there should be a clear delineation. What is the actual church versus what we, what is perceived as the church sometimes?

Because I think a lot of that is putting, placing blame on the actual church when it's not so much the actual church of Christ that he died for.

I'm not saying that those persons are innocent and everything, but a lot of times the blame is placed on what the popular conception of what the church is in the culture versus what is the true church.

Well, okay, let's look at this. Has the church, let's start with the heretical church that claims to be the church.

That would be a good start. Let's start there. Has the Roman Catholic church done things that are wrong and sinful in the name of Christ?

Yes. Can we say the inquisitions? I mean, where Jews were being tortured and killed to convert or die.

That's not how conversion works, folks. Nope. But has the biblical church also done things wrong, trying to do good in the name of God?

Yes. And mind you, some of the people, we're going to play a video of somebody, and I think he is trying to do right in his mind.

He's trying to right wrongs, he sees. He's trying to get the church to help put an end to racism.

I see that. So here becomes my issue, is where do they determine what is right and wrong?

And I think we'll get into that in the discussion. Because my thing is, where's their foundation for what is right and wrong?

Because a lot of people view that as a societal issue and not an absolute subjective issue that we need to discuss.

Well, they're not going to get that from the Bible. Okay. And I'll tell you why. In the Bible, you had two races of people who, one that really were ethnicities that really didn't like the other.

You had Jews and Gentiles. Okay. A Jewish person was not even to enter a

Gentile home because that would make him unclean. Okay. There wasn't a love affair with them.

All right. So the reality is, when you look at this, you have to face the fact that here you have two groups of people that did not get along, did not, well, at least on the one side for sure, didn't like the other.

And yet when Christ comes, he rips that veil that separates man and God.

But Paul argues in Ephesians that that veil is to represent the distinction as well between Jew and Gentile.

It's ripped apart. There is no separation now. And so we are to be one people of God.

If that is the way God has it for the church, is it any different in the world? No. And identifying people even as being white or black and seeing them as in that way is racism because you're seeing color first.

If you're going to see them by ethnicity, that's still the same thing. You're putting that first. That's what the culture wants.

That's why they want to do a divide and conquer. Okay. And the reality is that we as the church should be saying we are one race, the human race.

Biology supports it and the Bible supports it. There's no reason we should be arguing for anything else.

And yet we're arguing in, we're people trying to argue in the church that we should recognize if we're white and white is no longer white.

Let me, you know, we were talking about this before we started recording. There is a new book coming out from InterVarsity Press Academic and it's marked at intermediate level, which means this is an intermediate academic work.

And the title of it is can quote white unquote people be saved?

Can white people be saved? A whole bunch of authors that worked on this book, people that contributed to it.

It's part of a series on, you know, missions.

And this one is called, or subtitled is triangulating race, theology and missions.

But here's how they sell this book. No one is born white. Wait, stop, hold it.

Stop the presses. You're not born white. I mean, so white has anything to do with the color skin.

So yeah, I guess not. No one is born white, but while there is no biological basis for a white race, whiteness is real.

See now right there, you see whiteness. This is now a way of thinking that they're addressing.

This has nothing to do with skin. It has to do with the thinking. And you're supposed to carry the party line.

I mean, this is exactly folks, I'm sorry, politically, this is how socialism works. Okay. This is how fascism worked is you have to recognize the party line and you can't question it.

If people question this talk of whiteness, you're immediately labeled as a racist, not as a critical thinker, which you would be.

Okay. So let's go on to what it says in this for the promotionist book. What's more whiteness as a way of being in the world has been parasitically joined to Christianity.

So being white is somehow a parasite to Christianity. Hmm. Interesting.

This is the view that they have. And they refer to this as the heresy of whiteness.

And so they're going to make the case, I guess that whiteness can't be saved.

Well, neither can blackness then, if you're going to argue for that. I can't say that.

This is a fundamental foundation issue that they don't, their starting point is absolutely incorrect.

Every single color person in this earth deserves damnation.

And I don't, if you don't start there, then you're at a faulty starting point. It doesn't matter anything physical.

If you're, if you talk of physicality, you're, you're no different than the atheists that start with their metaphysics of, uh, of, of, well,

I mean, really, yeah. Or the relative, the relativism, right.

That there is no absolutes. Oh yeah. Relativism post -modernism. You're starting at the same point that everyone else outside of the

Christian worldview starts. And this is the thing we start with the

Bible. That is the basis for our argumentation.

And when the church is going to use social ethics and views of, of agendas that are anti -Christian to promote and say that this is what the church should be promoting.

It's a real problem. Look, folks, it seems to make sense.

I understand we want to right the wrongs of the past. We want justice, but guess what? The church has done wrong in the name of Christ, but so have, but the atheists have done wrong and the

Muslims have done wrong and everyone has done wrong because we have a sinful nature. We're born sinful.

And this is the thing that they don't want to address. But the reality is, is

I am not responsible for what someone else does. This is just a core thing that I can't understand why people can't comprehend that.

And the fact that people want to blame others for what someone else does, where they had nothing to do with it, it's not from the

Bible. You, that's not a biblical way of seeking justice.

Now, let me give two ethnic groups that have been persecuted in more recent years than the

Africans that were taken as slaves. We have the Chinese in America that were slaves, even when slavery was outlawed in America.

In the West, they were treated as slaves. They were not paid and they overcame it.

Can I say this? Sure. Even Muslims in Muslim nations, certain versions of Muslims were probably treated way worse than what we would call skin tone slavery in our time.

I mean, they have different views of their own religious system that they will persecute far more than they will outsiders.

But see, well, here's the thing I want, why I want to bring up the Chinese and the

Jewish people, because there's something they did. They were treated based on racism.

They were treated differently. And because of that, they sought a different means of resolving the issue culturally than what we see here in America with the

Africans, the African Americans. Okay. Not as a whole with the

African Americans, but the agenda that's trying to be pushed. You see, what happened with the Chinese, they said, we need to educate our next generation.

We need to have educated people that can get into the positions that they would have more say and be able to provide for their next generation.

They saw themselves as sacrificing for the next generation. They were willing to suffer so that their kids could have a better life than them, be more educated than them.

Same with the Jewish people. The Jewish people, there's a reason so many of them are lawyers and doctors, because those are positions that make money.

Those are positions where they are going with the money. They're going to have the power. They recognize that the only way to prevent themselves from being constantly put aside and put into concentration camps and things like that is to have the power to prevent it from happening.

Now, what you're saying, let me, they understand the system they're in and they, instead of wholesale, just outright fighting it, they live within that system and thrive within it in order to make betterment for the future generations is what you're saying.

Yeah, it's exactly what it is. I mean, they're not looking for handouts. They're not looking for to play the victim.

They look to say, how do we overcome this? And they do it as a culture.

And this is what we see that's been different with what we see in America, because here we see people who have,

I'm sorry, but we have people who make money off of racism.

We have people who get power because of racism. Barack Obama, read his own book and his own words.

He says that he knew that as a, someone with black skin raised in a white society, he could get white votes.

And he, because of the color of his skin, that he could stay in office forever. Now he became president, which meant he couldn't stay in office forever.

But here's the reality. Here's someone that knew that he could use the color of his skin to get a political position for life.

And you have people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who use what anyone else would call thuggery.

They would, it's mob tactics. To be honest. It is.

I mean, to be honest, Barack Obama didn't get it for life because once you're president, you're set for life.

You are. Yeah. He doesn't have to work anymore. But the point being is that, you know, you have these people who make money based on the fact that they have to keep racism going.

And they're the ones running out and telling everyone how to deal with the racism. Well, you know, here, here's how you end racism.

It's really simple. You want to end racism, stop being racist on all sides.

You can't reverse racism. That's racist. It's, and I know there's many who say that just because I'm white,

I can't say these things. I'm sorry. This has nothing to do with the way

I treat other people. Some of my best friends in high school were black.

Why? Because I didn't see color. When I dated a black girl and all of a sudden all of my black friends couldn't be friends with me anymore because I was dating a black girl and that wasn't allowed.

The reality is I had friends that were told they couldn't hang out with me anymore. And I said, excuse me, like how is that just because I'm dating someone that is what racism is.

See, if you don't see color skin, you don't see racism. And that's really what the church needs to be saying.

The church needs to say, look, let's end racism by not seeing people as by just the color of their skin and assuming things of them.

You know, I'll be honest. If I was black, I would be insulted at what these folks are saying.

I'd be insulted. They say that I'm not smart enough or intelligent enough to learn and to get good jobs and be able to do things without handouts and without help.

The reality is that the handouts have been going for years, generations now.

If it was just what we need this handout, we need to get, you know, blacks in college. The number of blacks have gotten into college has been on the rise.

Why has the whole racism not changed yet? Because the people who are making the money and getting power off this are still needed to continue.

And, you know, I wish I had the quote that Daryl Harris had given to me.

He gave a quote when he was on the show and, you know, back when there was slavery, and I forget who it was that he got the quote from, but basically it was saying that there are, you know, slavery, that the racism wouldn't end because there's people that profit from it.

And that's what we're seeing, folks. We really are. And it's now affecting the church. My reason

I see this as being so dangerous to the church is it changes the message of the gospel. We're becoming more about social justice than we are the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God Almighty died in our place and he paid the punishment that we owe, that we could be set free from sin.

That's the message of the church. That's the issue. That's the very issue.

That is everything because if you, any gains in this world above what you gain in Christ, it's like, what is your end goal?

Because to die to self and to die to this world, that's the real gain.

I don't think a lot of people this day and this day and age really view that as the ultimate goal. Okay. So let me ask this question.

You know, John, let me ask you, will there be true justice in this life?

In this life? Yeah, exactly. No. No. And that's the whole thing.

As Christians, we don't live for the here and now. We live here and now.

We live in this world. But as Peter says, we're passing through. We're sojourners in this world.

Our citizenship is in heaven. That's where our focus should be, where there will be true justice.

You know, I remember, okay, I'm going to date myself and you guys are going to know this, but someone in the audience may not.

Okay. So I remember that that, you know, we all watched glued to a

TV, watching a white Bronco driving down the, see, you're laughing, you know, exactly what

I'm referring to. And we were all glued to a TV to watch this slow car chase of OJ Simpson.

And when that court trial went and basically he was found innocent and it was discovered that like all the jurors figured that if they called him innocent, they can make better money on book deals.

That's all they were concerned with, it seems. And they wanted to punish white people.

And so therefore they were going to let him go for what he did to someone. He killed two people as far as it seems from evidence, not whether he can make a glove look like it not fit.

But the reality is that the jurors even said afterwards that it wasn't about the evidence that convicted him.

It was about their views of the world and the book deals they could get. And the reality is this, my pastor had told me his wife sat there, they watched the verdict and he said, there is no justice.

And his wife turned and said, not yet. The reality for every wrong,

I mean, for, you know, OJ Simpson, if he murdered those two people, if he doesn't repent and believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, a justice will come for him. There will be justice.

Was there a justice for all the sins that I committed? Absolutely there was at the cross when an eternal being took the full weight of my sin upon himself.

Being an eternal being, he paid that for all of eternity in a way that I can never comprehend what that's like.

But he took the full weight of sin upon himself. There was a punishment.

There was a justice, even though I may not be the one that ends up paying it. God himself paid it on my behalf.

And the reality is that there is no justice in this world.

And we're trying to make everything just. There will be some levels of justice, but to shift from the only message that saves people, offers forgiveness of sin, and brings them to true justice with God, righteousness with God, to talk about what we should do for our culture.

Look, I am very much against short -term mission strips that go and hammer nails and dig wells.

That's not missions. I'm sorry. It's great to do. Go there and help other people.

That's good. But don't call that missions. The mission for the church should be to go and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's the mission of the church. That's what we should be doing. Now, we're going to take a break.

I want to play a commercial. And then after that, we're going to, we want to deal with someone that is arguing that the church should be actually focused on this sort of stuff.

Can you prove that God is a trinity? Can you prove that Jesus is God? Can you defend the

Christian faith? And what is it that Christians truly believe? The new book by Andrew Rappaport, What Do We Believe?,

will answer those questions and more. Some people just don't understand what church is today, but this book will go through the history and meaning of the church and what's more important than to understand man's sinfulness and God's salvation.

Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com or at the strivingforeternity .org store.

Looking for strategies that will help you engage in meaningful conversations with members of the Mormon church?

Well, if so, take a look at Sharing the Good News with Mormons, a new book produced by Harvest House Publishers and edited by Mormonism Research Ministries' Eric Johnson and Sean McDowell.

Sharing the Good News with Mormons includes 24 helpful essays from two dozen

Christian apologists, scholars, and pastors. Pick up your copy at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore or order directly from mrm .org.

And another place you can get that is strivingforeternity .org. I was one of the contributors for that book.

I wrote a chapter on open air evangelism. Even if you're not looking to share the gospel with Mormons, that is a good book to pick up.

24 different tactics, different styles of evangelizing specifically to Mormons, but a lot of those apply to everyone.

I mean, Matt Slick's chapter on reliability of scripture, well, that's going to be helpful when you deal with an atheist.

My tactic or style of doing open air evangelism, that works, well, anywhere where there's people, even where there's not so too many people.

But so, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, it's more than just dealing with Mormonism, but we are thankful for the many people who are buying it, especially those running reviews on Amazon, because it is number one in the category of Mormonism, which is what we want.

We would like to see people searching Mormonism and finding a book that tells the truth about both Mormonism and Jesus Christ.

So with that, what we're going to do, John, Vincent, I will play this, you guys just raise your hands when you want me to stop, and I'm going to just, we're going to see if, it's only seven minutes long, but I have a funny feeling it's going to take us some time to get through this.

I could be mistaken, but let's see. Okay, so the thing says, how to understand, let me just stop that for a second, because some people who are listening couldn't read that.

So the wording that was on the screen is, there was silence right here, and the thing says, how to understand and address white privilege.

So that's what this is going to be about, how to understand and address white privilege. Here's what that looked like.

And I should say, this is Matt Chandler who is speaking. When I sat in school growing up and learned about the history of the

United States of America, I opened up our books, I had to write reports, I saw in those books and read the stories of, and wrote reports on people who looked like me.

And then when I turned on the television, by and large, at any moment in time, when I turned on the television, what

I saw was people who looked like me. And then when I got magazines, or when

I got books, or when I played with toys, or what I saw repeatedly were people that looked like me.

At almost any given moment, I was surrounded by people who looked almost just like me.

And so the entire experience of my life has been one of,

I can easily find people that look like me. Almost all my understanding of what made America great is because of efforts and the work ethic of people like me.

So just because people look like him, and guess what,

Matt, they don't look like you. They look very different. I mean, there's some that are whiter than you, some that are darker than you, they'd still be considered white.

Some have blonde hair, some have black hair, they don't have the brown hair that you have. I mean, the reality is, he's arguing this.

And I think one of the things that I see frustrating is the presupposition that he has here is that you have to understand that because whites are teaching other whites, that somehow that's wrong.

That somehow they're not going to be able to see what it is that they're doing, believing, and saying.

Now, this last part he said of what makes America great, I don't know any of our founding documents,

I don't know any of the things within the founding of this country that said that whiteness is what made

America. I think what it was that started this country was religious freedom.

Freedom from England that was oppressing people, overforcing them to believe what the state said they had to believe, and not having the freedom to worship

God as the Bible would have, having a biblical view of Christianity and of God and of the

Bible. And that's what made America great. It was the

Christian values that were installed in the founding of this country by people who came here because they wanted to worship

God. And all the talk of rewriting history of how we wiped out the Native Americans and, you know, the

Native Americans, why were they not a huge population? Why were their tribes so small?

Because they were wiping each other out. I mean, face the facts that they, we ignore what was going on.

Did we do damage? Yeah, well, as we expanded and pushed

Native Americans out of their lands, we did exactly what

Native Americans did to one another, but in a greater way because there was a larger population. They civil, they weren't nomadic, they civilized in areas and that made changes.

But that doesn't mean it was wrong. In fact, we celebrate Thanksgiving where the original pilgrims, the

Christians, got along with the Native Americans and worked together because the

Christians were seeking to share the gospel with them. That's what made

America great, Mr. Chandler. What made America great was that we had

Christian values. I was going to throw in also the fact that he says that when he read his history, he saw a lot of people like him.

And my point is, just because they may look like him doesn't mean that they're like him.

There's a big difference. It's a fallacy of similarity, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It's like I can say, look, I grew up in an alcoholic home and I'm white. Does that mean that I compare every single white person that I come across as someone who actually went through an alcoholic home also?

No, I don't. The issue becomes what makes something the deciding factor of what is right and wrong.

And I don't think he's thinking that deeply on it. Well, look, the thing is that if he was to be raised in Africa, would that make the

Africans wrong? Because they're all teaching people that look like them, right?

I mean, look. What's your foundation for right and wrong? That's the issue. Yeah, see, and this is the thing.

It's a redefinition of terms. And, you know, look, let me say this.

What I think Matt Chandler's probably trying to do, I think he's got good intentions. I agree with Todd Friel when

Todd was saying a similar thing, not maybe about Matt Chandler, but others. They have good intentions, but they're unwittingly going about the wrong way.

And I think some of the motivation for some, I can't speak, you know, for Matt Chandler or people that I haven't spoken to that haven't shared it, but I think for some, it is this desire to get along with the culture.

It is a desire that the culture is becoming, starting to persecute Christianity more and more.

And it is a desire to get along in the hopes that that would stop. You know, this was no different than what happened in Germany with the

Jews. Many of the Jewish people thought if they joined the Nazi party, if they try to promote

Nazism, that maybe the Nazis would not see them as a threat and not do exactly what they did do.

And why did they do it? Because they didn't care that a handful of Jews will agree with them.

They got in power by arguing on, you know, a racist view of Judaism and Jews.

And they stay in power that way. We have people that are getting in power because of racism. They can't stop it because they'll lose their power.

And the power is more important to them than anything else because they don't have the gospel. And that's what we should be promoting.

All right. And so here's the thing. He's going to talk about America. You know, the world is bigger than America.

I mean, he doesn't even realize that as he sits here and says, well, we talk about people that look like us and everyone

I was taught by looked like me and all this stuff. And yet he's so American centric, which is this very thing.

He's trying to say, we have to not be, we have to not be white centric in his argument. That's white centric. You know, why is he not arguing?

And for the millions of people being murdered around the world, specifically in Muslim countries, because they're

Christians. I mean, we've, we've tens of thousands of people every year in Muslim countries.

Why is he not arguing for that? Why, why are these people that want to talk about racism of a hundred years ago?

Why are they not? Sorry, I should be more specific. They argue that the racism, because they talk about the slavery of a hundred years ago.

They argue that we have to make amends for slavery from a hundred years ago. And yet they don't want to talk about the slavery today.

Why are they not out there talking about the fact that there are women being kidnapped and forced as, as sex slaves in human trafficking across this land today?

They're not concerned about that slavery. Oh no, this is slavery long ago. Then you don't care about slavery.

It's not a slavery issue. We know it's not a color of skin issue.

Why? Because it has to do with the politics, not color of skin. So that's the whole thing.

When guys like Matt Chandler are going to be promoting this, here's what he's doing unwittingly,

I think. The same thing that the Jews were doing, promote in Nazi Germany, promoting the very thing that will seek to wipe them out.

They're not going to say, let's get along. They're going to say, let's get rid of you. And the promotion of it.

Now, note, I am not saying that we should promote racism in any level.

All racism is wrong and sinful. But when you start to make excuses for racism by trying to do a reverse racism, it's still racist.

That's the issue. I'm going to keep playing.

You guys just raise your hand in the chat and I'll know when to stop. I come from a lower class

Anglo family. And so my story is kind of the American dream, pulled myself up by my bootstraps.

I worked hard, learned to work hard from my daddy. That's a lot of work there.

That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. Well, yeah. But in that, okay. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps.

Can you only do that if you're white? Or can, can all people pick themselves up from the bootstraps?

I mean, the Chinese did it. The Jewish people did it even, even after being almost, you know, wiped out in Germany and Poland and all those areas.

Yeah. What is the foundation that allows you to pull yourself up from your bootstraps?

Well, it's the reality is it's ultimately the real thing we're going to say is the scriptures is going to be

God. But I mean, the Jewish people, the Chinese people, they didn't believe in God. They were able to do it. Why? Because they weren't looking for handouts.

They weren't looking to play a victim. They weren't looking for people to make up for, you know, the reality. There is no way that we can make up for the racism of the past.

Yeah. I remember I talking with, yeah, that's what, that was a question I was asking, asking him.

So yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I remember talking with uh, um,

Paul Kaiser once we, we, you know, and we discussed this issue and Paul said that, you know what?

His ancestors suffered. My ancestors suffered being, being

Jewish, but he is glad that he was here, that he's here in America.

So because of what his ancestors had to go through, he benefits from it.

I benefit from what my ancestors went through. Okay. They suffered, they were tortured, they were killed because they're

Jewish. I benefit from that. Now, Andrew, can God use means?

Exactly. I mean, this is the thing. Okay. Could God take a man like Joseph who is innocent of what his brothers had done to him, where they sold him as a slave.

He tries to do right by his, his master and not sleep with his master's wife.

And for that, she accuses him falsely and he's thrown in prison falsely. Falsely. That wasn't just he's, he's then able to, to, you know, get out.

His brothers come to him and what is it he says to them in Genesis at the end of Genesis when they say,

Oh, dad wanted you to forgive us. They were afraid that maybe he was just being nice to them or placating them because the father was alive.

Now that their father's dead, he's going to do something to them to get them back, to get justice.

And what is it that we see that Joseph ends up saying?

He doesn't say, that's right. I'm going to punish you. I'm going to get you back for the evils you did. No, that's not what he says.

He turns to them as they, as they make this case. And he ends up saying to them, this is in Genesis 50, but he ends up saying, am

I God? Right. I mean, that's the thing he, you know, do not fear.

Am I in the place of God for what you meant for evil?

God meant for good to keep these people even to today. This is what's known in theology as the doctrine of concurrence.

God can use evil sinful acts for his own glory. Now, it doesn't mean we go and seek to do evil sinful acts, but what it does mean is that we don't try to beat ourselves up over sinful acts.

Does Joseph have to apologize? No. Or his brothers have to apologize for the people that came before him for this?

Yeah. Okay. We're like one minute into a seven minute video. We may never even make it.

When have we ever finished a video? Yeah, we have. We have.

We usually always do. Just takes a while. Thank goodness we're not doing this

Deleting Flowers video. Wow. You just got to throw that out there.

Wow. 83 hours later. He's white. Just saying. Okay. Okay. Let's continue.

What happens in that kind of upbringing, which is fine, is that there were some lenses put over my eyes.

That's an assumption, right? Yeah. What lenses were put over his eyes? Chapter and verse.

I think he's taking chapter and verse out of context even if he... He's applying also self -guilt.

Well, but here's the thing. If there was a lens put over his eyes, why does that somehow have to be over my eye?

Okay. Let's take for granted that there was a lens over his eye, but what's he doing in this video? He's trying to say, well, whites are guilty of this.

Yeah. Because your skin color is similar. So obviously you are guilty of the same thing.

Okay. So here's this very simple question. Could the same lens be put over the

African American's eyes in America here, that they have a way of thinking that they're supposed to think a certain way or they're somehow not part of the tribe?

You know what? Go listen to Daryl Harris on Just Thinking Podcast. The answer's yes.

There is tribalism. And if you don't carry the party line, you're kicked out of the tribe.

You're called an Uncle Tom. So the reality is that what he's promoting is the very thing he's saying is wrong, but done in the

African American community. He's just carrying their covered lenses.

Yeah. You can apply that to every community out there, right? Yes. In which

I saw the world through those lenses, not knowing what those lenses are. And so if I could kind of just be straight at what

I'm talking about is that I have grown up with this invisible kind of bag of privilege.

Assumption. An invisible toolkit that I can reach in there at any given moment and have this type of privilege that a lot of other brothers and sisters don't have.

Hold on, hold on. Why don't they have that? Why don't they assume that? I mean, that very thinking is on his part for sure, but why does he think that other people don't have it?

And why is he not applying to everyone who else, every other white Christian out there? Why is he applying that same view of it?

Yeah. I mean, look, there are privileges to being black in America. You get scholarships for college that you can't get if you're white.

So much so that the head of the, who is a white person, or she's not head anymore, but she was white, but she wanted to identify as black because of the privileges she could get.

So here's the deal is those privileges aren't obviously as good a privilege as the white people get.

So they're, they're making a judgment call on the privilege at that point, which one's better has better privilege.

It's. But this assumes the whole underlying argument. This is, it assumes that the only reason they have privilege is because of the color of their skin.

Let me be really Frank, really clear on the reason. There are many whites in America that have a privilege.

It is not because they're white. Cause there's plenty of whites that don't have privilege. You know why there's a privilege for many whites in America.

There's two factors, one because of Christian ethics that were the foundation of the, of the

American experiment to, because they had a proper family, a father and a mother that cared for them and nurtured them and gave them the stability to grow up without being insecure.

That is not what you see in the majority of the African -American community. It's not what the, the liberals want to have happen.

They, they want to have you see us with the whole movement of transgender and everything else that they, they don't want the biblical family.

They want to destroy the biblical family. And that's where that privilege comes from.

You know what the reality is the African -Americans in America after slavery had strong family values.

They stuck together and they, they were starting to make moves to get out of the racism that they ended up suffering.

What changed? They became victims of the Democrats, basically. I mean, for folks who don't know, it was the

Republicans who freed them and gave civil liberties and tried to treat them as equal people.

And it was the Democrats that ended up realizing, wait a minute, we can get a whole voting block and they'll just vote us in office forever.

So we'll just keep giving them entitlements and tell them, and they'll be, they'll be forced to keep voting for us and they'll depend on us.

That's a socialist way of thinking. Exactly what happened. And, and, and for folks who don't know, it was, it was, you know, when

I think Reagan was president, may even have started under Carter, when they, when the US government started bringing drugs in from Mexico and bringing them into the black communities to help destroy the family structure, because that would keep them voting

Democrat. Okay. So the reality is that there's a lot more to this than just one issue.

This is so complex and people like Matt Chandler want to just deal with it as if it's just one issue, just the color of skin and ignore everything else and then take that and apply it to everybody.

That's just all. That, that shift in what is the actual issue. They want to, they want to change the ultimate goal of, unfortunately, sin and not sin to skin and not skin, you know?

Yeah. Well, let's, let's do this. Look, we're not going to get through this. John, John, you had, you had something you wanted us to play.

Let, let's go to, and what's his name again? Oh, Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson. Okay. So he's not accurate on a lot of things, but here this clip really nails it. So let's, let's see what he ends up saying about this.

You know, I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible and it's not because white people aren't privileged.

You know, we have all sorts of privileges and most people have privileges of all sorts and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them,

I would say. But the, the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group, there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that.

It's absolutely abhorrent. I can't. Okay. And there you have it. It is, it is racism to argue for racism.

And that's really what, what I tried to say earlier. If you think the human race is more than just one race, you're a racist.

Exactly. I mean, when you start looking at people by the color of their skin, by their ethnicity, by you, by whatever you want to say is the races, that is racism.

They're made in the image of God. That's it. The Imago Dei, the image of God.

If you think there's more than the Imago Dei within the people created, that's racism.

We're, we're, we're almost up on time here. I don't know if we're, you know, we, we, you picked up on one logical fallacy.

So we'll count that as our name, that fallacy clip. But we'll do a quick transition.

Let's play a commercial and then we'll switch over to our spiritual transition game. And I'll let one of you guys figure out which one has a better thing.

So here we go. The good news is striving for eternity. He would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

That's right. The art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life first. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. And actually,

I think maybe if more churches were hosting the Bible interpretation made easy seminars, maybe we'd have less of these problems.

Maybe people would understand how to interpret the Bible and see that as more important than interpreting culture.

Just saying. Amen. Don't you have a whole series on Bible interpretation?

Yeah, we've got a whole class at the Striving Fraternity Academy. I love the

Striving Fraternity Academy. It's good stuff. Yeah, people can go to strivingfraternity .org.

There's academy page. We have four classes courses out there right now, but we have a whole course, 20 lessons on how to interpret the

Bible and that will help with Bible studies and all that. So yeah, I do encourage that. I do too.

And you know, look, if folks, let us come to your church and teach people two things. Here's what the

Bible interpretation made easy seminar does. One thing, it teaches people how to interpret the Bible.

You know, second thing it does, if you have a godly pastor who's in the word of God preaching every week, it shows the people of the church how much work he does during the week.

If you were to come to a church, how long would it take you to go through that course?

Would you need like an entire weekend? Yeah, we typically like to do it in a weekend. We have adjusted it for different needs, but we typically will do it in like a

Friday, Saturday. So we do Friday night and Saturday. We do about six sessions, eight hours and we'll go through, we'll go through tools of Bible interpretation.

We'll teach you how to use the concordance properly. We'll teach you how to use some tools to get into original language, tools to help you understand the culture, the geography.

We'll show you how to use those tools because those are going to be essential to understanding then the interpretation.

But then we'll go into software, we'll go into websites that you could go to, find good materials.

We'll go into all of the principles of identifying the type of literature, why that's important, what rules apply when you have different types of literature.

We'll go into how to investigate the text. We're going to look at things like that and we're going to do it in a way that anybody at any level can understand.

Amen. And if y 'all don't think that's important, I mean that's, this is, we're talking eternity and this is the most valuable thing you can, you know, spend your time in.

What is it, a day or two for eternity? Absolutely.

Spend your time and effort in learning about the Word of God and how to properly interpret it.

You know, when we're sitting in heaven, we're going to be thinking about the scriptures that we knew and memorized that we understood and we're going to sit at the feet of Christ and talk about how much we love

Him and how much we knew of Him. We're not going to be thinking about who won the Super Bowl in any of the years.

Amen. I mean, who lost the Super Bowl? No one remembers. We're going to think of how little we knew.

Yeah. Praise God for how much He allowed us to know. Yeah. All right. So let's play a quick game here.

It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

All right. So one of you guys is going to give me something to transition. Why do we play this game? Because most people think that sharing the gospel is very easy once they get into a spiritual discussion.

And what we want to encourage you is with the fact that you can transition anything from the natural to the spiritual with practice.

That's what it takes. It takes doing this regularly. Why do I do this on the show every week? Well, for two reasons.

One, it helps us to share the gospel. But the other reason is I still need practice. And so it's good to practice at this.

So if one of you guys want to give me something, let's see how I might do. I know you'll be easier than the other week when we had

Matt Slick on who likes to draw big words. Hey, John, if you want to go by all means, go ahead.

I have something if you don't. Okay, well, I am looking right now across from my room, living room here, and I am seeing a glass jar.

Go. Well, I'm not seeing that glass jar in the reflection in the window behind you.

But you know, the reality is that when we think about, you know, look at the glass jars,

I don't know if you've ever actually watched people blow glass. It's really neat. Heating up,

I mean, it's basically sand that's heated up. And, you know, they blow it into, well, maybe not nowadays, but where they used to, right?

But you'd blow it up and you can make all these different shapes. And you can make some that look exquisite and be used for, you know, the king's palace and others that, you know, could get used as nothing more than, you know, holding your trash or your waste.

And the reality is that what we end up seeing is that in life, we tend to think that everything should be equal.

And it isn't always. I mean, sometimes there's glass jars that are made for, you know, display and others that are made to just hold trash.

And some would think that's just not right. It's not just. And yet the reality is that the maker of those created those and designed those to fulfill a purpose that he wanted.

He wanted some to be put on display and others to be used to hold trash.

And the reality is is that it depends on what the maker's purpose in that.

Have you ever thought about that? That whoever makes it actually has the right and the authority to decide how the piece that he makes is going to be used in just in how he makes that.

Well, the same is true for you and I. See, we, though we don't always want to admit it, have a creator and he created us with purpose.

That purpose is to glorify him. But you and I, we violate God's law.

We sin. We break his law. And because of that, we are all worthy of being those vessels of trash, of waste holders.

And yet he made some of us to be vessels of honor that display glory.

And he died in our place that we could be that sort of vessel, that he who knew no sin could become sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God.

And so it was this transaction that occurred. Now, the question for you is, which vessel are you?

Are you still a vessel that contains waste? Or have you turned to trust what

Jesus Christ did on that cross to be a vessel of glory and righteousness? That's the question we all have to face.

So that's how I would do that transition. Wow. Maybe it's because I was thinking justice.

We were talking about it much today. So folks, as you're listening to this, let me update you on some places if you want to know where Striving Fraternity is going to be.

We are traveling around July 20th and 21st, 2018. We're going to be at the

Equip Jersey Conference. That is going to be the last conference this year where you'll, actually

I think the only conference this year, where you get all of the Striving Fraternity speakers together. Dr.

Anthony Silvestro, Pastor Frank Mullis and myself will all be speaking there. Ray Comfort will be speaking via simulcast.

And then we are going to be doing some training, then going out.

I will be also in New York City for the Repent Witness Evangelism camp.

That is a four -day intensive evangelism. We'll be training people up and taking people out on the streets.

I want to encourage folks if on the West Coast, we're going to be coming West. September 14th to the 16th, we're going to have

Equip NorCal. Dr. Silvestro, myself and Mark Spence from Living Waters are going to be speaking in Redwood City, California.

The following weekend, we head up or at least I head up to Washington State, to Carnation, Washington and we'll be,

I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember exactly, it's the same church actually as we did last year,

John. But this year's topic is going to be on my new book, What Do We Believe?

So we're going to talk about theology. The end of September, September 28th and 29th, we will be privileged to be able to speak again or I will be speaking at the

South Jersey Apologetics Conference. They're going to change up the structure a little bit this year, but so I don't know what my topic is yet, but I'm sure that we'll be given that.

And then October 12th, 13th and 14th, I will be coming out to Jim Osmond's church in Northern Idaho, Sandpoint, Idaho, where my good friend and brother

Justin Peters attends church. I'll be at his church having the privilege of speaking at his church, teaching on evangelism.

And so if you're at any of those areas, those are some events that we have coming up.

We have some more that we're going to be probably adding throughout, looking to have some churches host a

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. So if you want us to come out, and folks, listen, if you say, well, we don't know, we're a small church, we don't know if we can afford it.

Great, we'll come anyway. The reality is we're more concerned with you getting the teaching.

We only ask that you try to cover our expenses in getting out there and the lodging.

We even try to do that cheaper if need be. We could stay with folks. We really don't want to be a burden on the local church.

And most people don't come out and do seminars to smaller local churches.

We want to be able to come out to them. And we have monthly supporters. And so for that, I'd say if you want to come alongside us, help us to train up those smaller churches, you can help us by being a monthly donor.

You can just go to strivingfortory .org. I think it's strivingfortory .org slash donate. But there'll be a page there where you could support us.

Think about doing that just so that we could go into some of these churches that can't even afford to have us travel out to them.

And we could still do it because of supporters that make that possible. So encourage you to consider helping us in that way.

That would be appreciated. And so with that, I want to just encourage you guys to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

John, you just love that voice of that guy, don't you? I do too. I will say that Justin Peters is a hundred times better than Jordan Peterson.

I would agree with that, but I pretty much think he's better than... I just love their similar sounding of like, it's not even, it's like a different class.

Justin Peters, really good. Really, really good.

And just saying, anyone that wants to donate to justinpeters .org, just put in the comments, hashtag