The Brothers at CROSSPOLITIC Try to Understand Liberal-ese

AD Robles

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Well, I was having a bit of a tough day today, and so I needed a little bit of a pick -me -up, and so what

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I decided to do was watch the boys over at CrossPolitik talk to Jonathan Merritt, which was predictably a disaster.

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But anyway, I wanted to just show this quick part because I think it has some application to the stuff that I talk about.

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So this is just a really good example about how liberals think and how they talk.

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It's interesting. I'll just play it. It seems like your order is to first understand the word as it's historically meant, right?

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Yeah, I think that what you have to do is understand the way you mean it, the way that it has been. They're talking about defining words before you can have an effective conversation and speak

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God, whatever that's supposed to mean. Used, particularly in the sacred text, and then out of that to sort of do the work of reimagining, to do the work of what

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I call in the book wordplay or transformation. I'm tracking with you. No, you're not. No, he isn't.

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So that word, you can see, has at least three shifts in the biblical literature, right? So one great example is the big shift from the way sin is used in Temple Judaism, where sin is a weight.

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It's not individual. It's communal, right? So when you say things like ...

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Look at these guys searching this book to try to find some answers. There's no answers in there, brother. Donald Trump, and he's a person and he has sin.

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You're using it in an individualistic way. That would be almost unrecognizable in Temple Judaism when that word's applied.

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Okay, so that's what I wanted to talk about. So he says that sin as an individualized concept, like when you say that you've sinned, or Donald Trump has sinned, or I have sinned.

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He said that that individualized concept would be ... You wouldn't understand it if you were coming from a

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Temple Judaism, kind of Old Testament type of understanding. And you can see that the men here, the brothers here, they have very confused looks on their face.

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Toby's over here looking down, just, I don't know, he doesn't even know what to say.

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Chocolate Knox over here is extremely confused, furrowed brow and everything. And he's just like, pass me that liquor, because I don't know what to do here.

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But I just ... You see how confident that Jonathan Merritt is right now?

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He's speaking like he knows what he's talking about, like a true scholar. And he's done his homework, and he wants you to know that.

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He's footnoted his book. He mentioned that a number of times during this interview. And he wants you to know that he's really thought about this, and he's confident that that sin was not something that was individualized in Old Testament, kind of Temple Judaism.

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And that's completely false. He's very confident, but he's confidently just face -planted. And all

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I did, it took two seconds, there was three passages that I thought of just off the top of my head that completely refute what he's talking about.

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Here's Deuteronomy, the law of God. This is Temple Judaism as it's defined by the

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Lord. And he says, That's an individualized sin.

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So it's wrong to say that Temple Judaism did not have this idea of individualized sin.

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Now, people might have misunderstood it, and maybe misapplied it, or maybe had a kind of an imbalance.

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But the idea was there. God's standard doesn't change. So each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

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Here's a prophecy from Ezekiel. The soul who sins shall die. The soul who sins shall die.

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The soul, the one person. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor shall the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.

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The righteous of the righteous shall be upon himself. The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Individualized, yet again.

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So again, you might not understand this, Jonathan Merritt, but it's there. And other people that you've studied might not understand that there is an individualized way to look at sin in the

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Old Testament, in Temple Judaism. But there is. And of course, there's this famous one that I thought of instantly when

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I heard this. Psalm 51, Blot out my transgressions.

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It's not blot out our transgressions, at least in this case. David has sinned. David is the one who had gone in to Bathsheba.

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Nathan the prophet went to him because it was his sin. And David understands this.

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He's not some kind of just, you know, I guess it's a group sin. It's a group wait. No. David is like,

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I've sinned. I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have

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I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And it's all the first person here. So you know, these guys are very confused.

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And I'm sure that they're thinking these kinds of verses are going through their heads right now because like, well, Jonathan, that's not actually true.

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Now, we don't want to be completely imbalanced. It's not that sin is like this is individualized thing and there's no kind of group sense to it.

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Of course, there's a group sense to it. But you just see how how liberals can just play with the text and say things that are patently false, easily provably false, as if that they're obviously true.

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And liberals do this all the time. And you need to watch out for this because people are doing this in the social justice debate as well.

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They'll say, let justice roll down like waters, therefore socialism. Obviously, they're not really saying that.

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But but but that's the kind of stuff that you'll hear. Well, justice is obviously in the Bible. Yeah, obviously, justice is in the

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Bible. We need to do the hard work of exegesis. We can't just say these things as if they're obviously true when there's more work to be done.

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Anyway, I thought this is a particularly hilarious example. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed that. Hope this is helpful.