Woke Church 7 - What is Your Standard Anyway?

All right, Woke Church, chapter seven. We only have a few more chapters to go and I am excited to be done with this. This should be a pretty quick video. This was a very short chapter. They're all pretty short, but it's called A Vision for Change.

Meek Mill, Unfair Sentencing, and the Standard of Justice

It's just sort of Dr. Eric Mason's vision for change and how we can be more woke, I guess. And it starts with a description of Meek Hill. Meek Hill was a Philadelphia area rapper who was on probation and he decided to pop a wheelie, I guess, on his motorcycle or whatever, and he was put in jail, or I'm sorry, he was given a prison sentence for two to four years for popping a wheelie on the street.

Now, he says in the first paragraph that many in the hip hop community started speaking out against that. And they said that this was an unfair sentencing and this happens a lot to black people. There's unfair sentences.

And my question, so I actually happen to agree with that. I think that's an unfair sentence. I don't think popping a wheelie is actually a legitimate crime. I think that people have made that illegal.

And so you should, listen, you shouldn't pop a wheelie because if you do, you might get in trouble for it. I don't think that should be a crime because I think if you look at the biblical standards of what a crime is and what a crime isn't, I don't think popping a wheelie should be something that's illegal.

Now, if Meek Hill were to have popped a wheelie and then accidentally killed somebody or hurt somebody, that should be a crime and that should be punishable according to biblical standards of punishment.

But I think that most people in this argument, maybe not, maybe not. I mean, listen, put it this way. People who take God's law as you apply the general equity of the law and things like that, I think they would say, oh yeah, popping a wheelie and no one gets hurt.

Yeah, two to four years prison sentence is unjust for that. But here's the thing. In the book, he kind of says, well, the problem is really that it's an unfair sentencing. Unfair is a little bit different than unjust, I think.

And so here's the question. Let's just say that everyone who popped a wheelie while they were on probation got a two to four year prison sentence, white people, Latinos, blacks, or whatever. Would this be a problem?

See, here's the question. What standard are you using in order to say that something is unjust? Are you using the Bible? Because here's the thing. If you're not using the scripture to decide what should be a crime and what shouldn't, what the penalty for that crime should be and what it shouldn't be, then how dare you hold anyone else to your standard?

In other words, if you're saying this is unfair and we just kind of know that it's unfair, we're going by human standards of unfairness and fairness, how dare you put the church under the yoke of that?

Because that's just your opinion. That's what the Pharisees would do. The Pharisees made up their own law. They acknowledge, they tip their hat to the law of God, but then they made up their own laws and had ridiculous things.

Like you couldn't take up your bed on the Sabbath day or something like that. Or you couldn't snatch an ear of corn while you're passing by on the Sabbath. Or you couldn't walk 100 steps on the Sabbath or something like that.

These were ridiculous laws that they had made up on their own. And then they held everyone else accountable to their standard of righteousness and holiness. Woke church people, make sure you're not doing the same thing.

Because if you're saying the Meek Hill sentence was unfair and you're just using human standards of unfairness, how dare you hold anybody accountable to that? How dare you hold, especially white Christians, because this is what you do.

You hold white Christians accountable to your standards of fairness. And so I would challenge you woke church people that you better make sure that you're applying the general equity of the law of God when it comes to what you're saying is just and unjust, righteous and unrighteous.

Because if you're not, then you're doing exactly what the Pharisees did. You're holding other people accountable to your made up phony law. Now, as I went on in the chapter, he says this on page 131. This is a correct statement, by the way.

We've already established that justice is the proper execution of God's laws amongst God's people. Government officials based on Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are appointed by God as ministers, whether they're saved or not.

This means that God appointed them sovereignly no matter what happened in the voting booth. Ultimately, God appoints leaders for a particular reason, whether they're good or bad, they'll be held accountable for their actions.

And I say they're going to be held accountable according to the standard of God's law. So I say that Eric Mason's exactly right. Justice is the proper execution of God's law. That's what justice is. Completely agree with that.

And I think that Eric Mason understands that, but then he kind of pulls this bait and switch where all of a sudden he replaces his own standard of justice. And I'll show you what I mean by this. He says this, he talks about the systemic justice.

And the example that he uses is that, where is it here? It says, Jeremiah talks about seeking the welfare of the city that you're in exile in, seeking the welfare of essentially where you live. And so the question is, what standard was Jeremiah using?

He also brings up Micah about talking about justice. What standard was Micah using? Well, they were both using the law of God as their standard. That's what they were both using. So that must be the standard.

Public Education, the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and Ungodly Instruction

Now, I find this so interesting regarding Eric Mason's sort of plans here, because he seems to understand that God's law is central to this conversation, but he doesn't apply it. So here's what he says.

He talks about the prison, I'm sorry, the school to prison pipeline. And he talks, listen to what he says. This is kind of standard leftist type of language. I don't wanna challenge it too much, but I think I do wanna challenge it a little bit.

He says, I believe that our young people are the greatest treasure, our greatest treasure and responsibility. Every one of them should have a quality education regardless of race or ethnicity. Many young black boys never get the opportunity to stay in school and progress.

And I just have a quick note, like education isn't automatically a good thing. It depends on what the education is. And he puts forward this idea. He quotes Nelson Mandela here, I think. Yeah, he does.

Education is the, this is the quote, education is the great engine of personal development. It's through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor. And I'm just thinking to myself, yeah, but it depends on what the education is, right?

Because we've got legions of educated, college educated people out here that have no nothing of, they've learned nothing of value in their school. And so when you're talking about schooling, it really depends on what you're talking about.

Here's the thing. So he says that this is what his solution sort of is for this systemic injustice, this school to prison pipeline. He says, I love our church to be a place where trained paid professionals educate kids who fall through the cracks and then reintroduce them back into the school system.

That would require the judge to commit them here to stay and to submit to our policies. First, so he's saying the solution is he wants their church to have trained people to introduce black kids who got kicked out of school back into school.

I'm saying why? I'm saying why? If school has been so terrible and has been so racist and so whatever, why would you want them back in there? Why would you want them back in there? And here's the reality.

Public school is not a godly institution. It's not a godly institution. I'm not saying schools aren't a godly institution. I'm saying public schools aren't because the government took the money from other people to establish those schools and then they teach ungodly principles at those schools.

Education is not automatically a positive when it's ungodly, ridiculous education. What passes for education these days is very, very low bar. I mean, we saw in the news just recently that there was a cross-dresser that came to a middle school to talk about how cross-dressing is a legitimate option for a career day for these people.

We've seen schools that study anal sex for people as a legitimate human sexuality. Not all education is legitimate, is good. So I don't really see the, I'd like to see chapter and verse on that, how that's what we should do.

Also, he says, this would require a judge to commit them here to stay and to submit to our policies. Is that, according to what standard? Here's the thing, we just got done talking about God's law and how our government officials and how we are gonna be judged about how we execute God's law.

Is there anything in God's law that says the judge has the right to force a child who has been kicked out of public school or any child for that matter, to submit to the church's rules? Is there anything in the Bible about that?

Where that's a matter of criminal justice, a matter of civil justice? No, no, the church has its own government and the church can require submission or whatever. And there's a way to do that kind of thing for children.

But does the government have the right to do that? See, this is the thing, that's Eric Mason's idea for fixing this systemic injustice and it doesn't come from scripture. And so for you to hold people accountable to that and say, well, if you're not doing that as a church, then you're not executing justice.

See, that's the problem. It's just like the Pharisees. It's made up this very nice sounding law because here's the thing, the Pharisees, the laws that they came up with, they sure sounded nice. And people like the Pharisee because look how holy they were.

No, they don't even walk a hundred steps on the Sabbath day. They don't even dare pick up their bed on the Sabbath day. Sure, it sounds nice. It sounds like you're honoring the Sabbath, just like this.

Forcing kids who've been kicked out of school to come to your church school. It sounds really nice, right? But the thing is, it's an extra law that God didn't command and you're pretending as if he did.

That's the definition of what the Pharisees did wrong. He says this, he says, the woke church needs to interrupt the school to prison pipeline and speak the gospel into those children's lives. We want to begin to develop relationships and learn people's stories.

That's great, that's all great, but you can't do it. Like you can't love on kids by breaking God's law. This is the thing, this is basically, this is the response to every idea the social justice people have ever had.

You can't keep God's law by breaking God's law. You can't keep God's law by breaking God's law. So if your plan to establish justice involves welfare, like he actually does talk about welfare in this chapter.

And he says like, here's what he says. He says, we can't condemn someone who's on public assistance when we don't know the story on how they got on it. Okay, I'm fine with that, I'm fine with that. But we can be against public assistance as a principle, because God's law doesn't have anything like that in it.

There's no public assistance, there's no taking from some and giving to others in God's law that's allowable. You can't love poor people by breaking God's commandment. You can't do it, you just can't do it.

And so every idea that a social justice person has, ask yourself, does it break God's law? Because like for example, like affirmative action does the same thing. I see churches that are talking about setting up funds for black students or things like that, or trying to hire black people into positions.

And that breaks God's law, that breaks God's law against partiality. If you're purposely excluding someone based on ethnicity or skin color, that's breaking God's law. You can't love black people by breaking God's law against whites or Latinos or whatever.

It doesn't work that way, it doesn't work that way. We can't show partiality in that way. That's the question, when a social justice lawyer has a solution for racial reconciliation, whatever it is, ask yourself this question.

I know you're trying to love these people, but does your love for these people come at the expense of somebody else? Does it come at breaking God's law with somebody else? Because if the answer is yes, then that's not a godly way to solve it.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful, God bless.