The Root Problem with T4G's CRT Panel

The T4G CRT Panel and the Problem of Ministry of Reconciliation

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We're gonna talk about the T4G panel one more time. I wasn't gonna do it, I decided I'm gonna do it because periodically throughout the day, and I'm recording this the day after I recorded the last podcast on that T4G Critical Race Theory panel, I've been thinking about one particular moment.

And it was the moment Pastor Bobby Scott, who is pro using Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool, talks about the Ministry of Reconciliation. And I didn't really address it. I went off on a history tangent, which is important.

Pastor Bobby Scott seems to really kind of flatline and simplify a lot of things. And then he wants to use Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool to explain current race relations because there was an end to segregation and yet there's still disparities that exist.

And so because there's disparities that exist, we have to figure out why that is. And CRT proposes a plausible explanation. And so Pastor Bobby Scott seems to be very sympathetic to that, that it's because racism never went away.

It's still around us. And that's exactly what Pastor Bobby Scott believes. It's not just that it's a possible explanation, it's actually the explanation that Pastor Bobby Scott has taken. He is using Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool in the panel, and he also fuses it with the gospel.

And, you know, the theological angle, I kind of, I touched on it, but I didn't really drive it home. I didn't really fully examine it, I think as much as I should have. And so it's gnawing at me, and I want to play the clip again and examine that.

Elon Musk, Twitter, and Free Speech

Since then though, as I'm recording this today, there was a few other things I wanted to just mention to you. One is some people have been asking me about Twitter and whether I'll go back on Twitter, and at least as I'm recording this a few days in advance, but from where I sit today, as I record this, I don't have any plans to at this point.

And one of the things that's been interesting to me is watching both Joe Rogan and Elon Musk become heroes of the right, politically speaking, when neither of them are conservative. And Elon Musk is an atheist, left-leaning libertarian.

He's an environmentalist, to some extent. I mean, I don't know all his views on everything, but he's certainly not a conservative. And he said something today about Twitter and how really he let us, he gave us a window into what his view of free speech is, because that's really the co-belligerency that I think conservatives and Christians also feel with Elon Musk, is he's pro-freedom of speech.

But he said today that, and I'm summarizing, that freedom of speech is whatever the will of the people is. And he said before that he thinks it's good if the most radicals on the right, and the 10 on the right, the 10 on the left, on the fringes, are unhappy.

The will of the people is very important. So the will of the people is manifested, according to Elon Musk, in laws that are passed by Congress. And that is what's going to determine free speech for Twitter.

So moving forward, I just don't even, I don't know what to think about that. I'm glad in some ways, and at least in the short term, I'm really glad that Elon Musk has kind of turned the clock back. Twitter is now where it was in like 2015 or 14, I guess.

And I'm glad for that, that it's not just another arm of propaganda for the government. But at the same time, I just don't know where it's heading, and I wanna watch that. I'm hopeful, but I just wanna see what happens.

I'm not confident at this point, at least, that if legislation is passed, and there is regulation on fake news and disinformation, just wait for it, it's coming, that Elon Musk will hold strong. I don't know.

I hope he will. But then there's also the whole component of what did Twitter do to me? And actually, that's not even a great way to put it, because it makes it sound like Twitter's the one responsible.

It's not Twitter. But what was the effect that Twitter had when I would go on Twitter? And for me, it was just unhealthy, I thought. I had a lot of wasted time in unproductive conversations, and it just made me change what I, the kinds of things that I put out there, because the incentive becomes getting the most tweets, and so you just, I don't know, it brings out, for me, at least, I thought it brought out a side of me I don't really wanna see again.

So there's some personal reasons there, too. I might not go back to Twitter, but we'll see. We'll see what happens, and I'm certainly open to it, and I think it's certainly a positive development. For those of you who have asked me about that, I figured I'd give you somewhat of an answer.

T4G, Critical Race Theory, and the Charge of Racism

So let's talk about, though, the serious subject here, which I thought was very telling. This is, again, we're revisiting the panel here, why we should be critical of critical race theory, from Together for the Gospel.

Now, I kind of set this up, but I didn't fully say everything I wanted to. Together for the Gospel has been an organization that, if anything, has moved the needle left, has promoted and soft-pedaled critical race theory to some extent.

You can look at the panel Mark Dever hosted on the MLK50 event. You can look at the sermon David Platt preached, Let Justice Roll Down, being two notable examples. I'm sure there's a lot more. But in general, T4G has somewhat of this reputation for moving the needle left.

And one of the things that I've noticed, it's in the Isaac Adams book. It's in actually other books, too. I caught a whiff of it, I think, in, in, oh, what was the name of the book now? Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth.

That's what I'm thinking of, okay. I caught a whiff of it in that particular book as well. And it's this idea that the problems are primarily related to the disagreements, the schisms, the people breaking friendships, leaving churches, that all of this is primarily related to a tone issue.

And so T4G has pushed the needle left. And what I see is an attempt to kind of blame the lack of unity on more issues related to tone. You even see that in the end of this panel, this Critical Race Theory panel, is Mark Devers kind of like, well, we did this because we really wanted you to see how godly men disagree with one another, which is an important thing we need.

But there's no admission that, hey, T4G has moved things in a bad direction, that actually some of the figures at T4G are responsible, including the guy who hosted this, Mark Dever. They're responsible for the schisms that are existing around us.

But they don't take any of that responsibility. But they are, at least in part, responsible. And so it gets blamed on something else. Well, it's the political stuff going on outside of Christianity that's being imported.

It's the polarization that exists out there. It's the tone that's coming from that into Christianity. And so we just wanna kind of show that it's fine to disagree with Critical Race Theory. It's also fine to view Critical Race Theory as a useful analytical tool.

And we'll just kind of have unity and sing kumbaya and appreciate each other when that is a fundamental disagreement. It's fundamental. And that's the big issue here. It's so fundamental that it's like, you can whisper and be as gentle as you possibly can think of being.

And you still won't be able to have the same kind of fellowship with that other person if that person buys into a false gospel. And it comes out in the clip I'm about to share with you. And I think that Kevin DeYoung just kind of missed this one.

And maybe it was because it was so quick, there was a lot going on, but I'm gonna play it for you and see what you think. So let's pull it up here if I can. All right, here we go.

Bobby Scott's Use of the Ministry of Reconciliation

In that sense, I was trying to figure out why are we still separated? And if I use my Christian voice, we have a calling to reconcile. We have a ministry of reconciliation and we can grade ourselves since 1964.

Have we done a good job with that? Have we really reconciled? Do our churches look like it? Do our communities look like it? Do our schools look like it? And there's a secular and a Christian answer to those.

And I think from the Christian side, I think we could say we could, I can just look out here and say, ah, we might be able to do better.

All right, that's it. That's it.

That's the clip. And that's been playing through my mind. Here's why that's so significant. So Bobby Scott goes on this whole story about what happened to his dad. And he really actually flatlines a bunch of eras into one.

He talks about laws against teaching slaves to read. And then he also includes in that the barriers that his dad faced, barriers in voting, all kinds of different things. And across a span of really 150 years or a hundred years.

And this was the situation. And then he says, and it ended, but nothing actually really changed because the disparities still exist. And he uses as an example, the fact that he went to a seminary that was all white except for him.

And so through race theory, he says answers this. It gives us a reason for understanding why. It's because racism's still around, okay? And that's how the world is looking at this. And he has friends, he says, that are scholars that look at critical race theory and you don't need it, but you just open your Bible, he says later on, but it's this tool.

He uses the word tool that helps you figure this stuff out, that diagnose this problem. Then he says what you just heard him say. And that was the key thing to me, the theological thing. He says, God has given us the ministry of reconciliation, right after talking about disparities.

The fact that black people aren't represented as much as they could be in white institutions, okay? And T4G, what he's saying is that T4G is a white institution that, let me, actually, this might be more helpful.

Let me go back. Let's play it slowly. Let's see here. And I'm gonna stop it frequently and I'll just give you the blow by, the play by play here.

Sunday morning, we're segregated all over, and that has, if separate is different, then it will have different outcomes. So critical race theory might be a helpful tool in that sense.

Okay, so critical race theory explains why there's black churches, white churches, Asian churches, Hispanic churches, et cetera. That's what he's saying. It's the disparities that exist, critical race theory can answer that question because critical race theory just assumes that there's this thing called white privilege and that there's, and it's racism on display, that the momentum from previous institutional racism is still operating and it's creating a barrier for black people.

So the fact is though that there aren't those kinds of things at colleges today or seminaries or churches, I mean, if there are, it's very rare. And you can, if there are barriers, it's actually usually the other way.

It's white people can't get the same scholarships. They can't apply at the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for a scholarship. There's all the other things being equal. They won't get the same kinds of benefits and funding and that kind of thing, generally speaking.

And I've told stories about this before. That's kind of, there's an attempt to correct that by overcompensating. And really what it's done is it hasn't helped. And you can, actually a good case study on this would be some of the Native American reservations.

I was just at the Navajo, in the Navajo Nation, there's abject poverty. And yet the amount of government aid that's been poured in is just incredible. The benefits that you can get if you're a Navajo or really a lot of Native American tribes are just incredible, but yet it hasn't done much.

And so there's something there we could explore, but that's not the point of this. The point of this is he's saying that critical race theory helps us figure out that, hey, you know why there's a reason that the church looks so white or this conference looks so white is, well, it's racism.

It's just like there was racism back in preventing black people from drinking at the same drinking fountain. It's the same thing, it's going on. It's just hidden more.

I'm trying to figure out why are we still separated? And if I use my Christian voice, we have a calling to reconcile.

Okay, right there. We have a calling to reconcile. So critical race theory makes an assessment. It's racism. It's a lack of reconciliation. We haven't actually gotten over mistrust that has been there for centuries or at least decades.

And we haven't gotten over it because the evidence is that we have, by default, segregation today in certain institutions. So that's what the evidence is. And so that's the analysis, that's the problem.

And so what ends up being the solution for it? The solution is, well, now we know what the solutions are in the world, right? The solutions are redistribution and that kind of thing. Well, what does he say the solution is?

He said, well, as Christians, God's given us a ministry of reconciliation. We're supposed to be about reconciliation. So what does that reconciliation look like?

We have a ministry of reconciliation and we can grade ourselves since 1964. Have we done a good job with that?

Okay, can we grade ourselves since 1964? Have we, he's saying Christians, have Christians done a good job with reconciling? Okay, what's the standard? How are we gonna figure that out? What is going to show us whether or not we've done a good job?

Have we really reconciled? Do our churches look like it? Do our communities look like it? Do our schools look like it? And there's a secular and a Christian answer to those.

Okay, so in other words, is there diversity, ethnically speaking, at schools, churches, institutions? Because if it looks mainly white, then it must not, that reconciliation hasn't happened. And that's a very serious charge if you think about it.

And tie this into everything else he's saying. That means racism is present. If there isn't diversity, racism is present, okay? Kevin DeYoung doesn't really pick up on this. Kevin DeYoung seems confused a little bit after the end of this.

And I can understand to some extent why he's got all this pressure on him and stuff. But this is the brute issue of this whole thing. There's an accusation being made here. And it's actually not just against Christians in general, it's against the Christians in the room there, that they are somehow conserving racism because they showed up for T4G and they happened to be white and the ratio of white to black, to Asian, to Hispanic, et cetera, is not an appropriate, it should be more, more black people should be represented there.

Now, it'd be interesting. I wasn't in the room. I'd be curious for people who were in the room, the percentage of the population that would, I guess, black people make up of the general population in the United States, somewhere around, I think, 15 or 16%, if I'm not mistaken.

That might be high, actually, it might be 14%. So if you look around the room, where was the percentage? Just ballpark, I'd be curious. Because I know there were people from all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds at T4G, but it's not good enough for Bobby Scott.

It's not good enough. And the status quo in the church isn't good enough because it's conserving racism and not, and the serious charge comes in with, that's against the ministry of reconciliation. The fact that we've conserved racism because of, as evidenced by these disparities that exist, is evidence that somehow the ministry of reconciliation in scripture is not being applied.

There's disobedience among Christians. They're not doing what God told them to do. This is very serious.

And I think from the Christian side, I think we could say we could, I could just look out here and say, ah, we might be able to do better.

All right, so I could just look out here. Maybe we could do better. He's looking at the room. This is what David Platt did in 2000, and I think it was 19 or 18, at T4G. You know, looked around and says, why are we so white in this room?

And that's what Bobby Scott's doing right here. Now, this is the key thing, okay? This is the main issue with this whole thing. I wanna show you a passage. This is 2 Corinthians chapter five. Let's read what, because you hear this all the time from critical race theorists that wanna merge critical race theory with Christianity.

This is what they say. We're supposed to be about the ministry of reconciliation. That means racial reconciliation, and that means that we have so far to go, and we gotta do all these quotas and diversify our libraries and elder boards and get involved with inner city urban ministry, even if we live out in the country somewhere.

And we need to give money to black churches, perhaps, and get rid of images on our philanthrographs of white Jesus. And right, there's this whole laundry list. So this is how it works. Now, if you go to the 2 Corinthians five, which is what they're always quoting, let me read it for you.

Let's start here with, let's get some context. Verse 10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest to God, and I hope that we are made manifest also in your consciences. Okay, we persuade men, all right? That's something we do as believers.

Verse 12, we are not again, commending ourselves to you, but are giving you an occasion to be proud of us so that you will have an answer for those who take pride in appearance and not in heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.

If we are of sound mind, it is for you, for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all. Therefore, all died, and he died for all so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

So we live for Jesus, that's what it's saying. And this is what Jesus did. He died for us. Therefore, verse 16, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh.

Yet now we know him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now, all these things are from God who reconciled us, listen up, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed us the word of reconciliation. Okay, verse 19 gives you, and for, of course, the broader context, but verse 19 in particular gives you what the ministry of reconciliation is.

Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. That's what the reconciliation is. God reconciling who? The world, not counting their trespasses against them, wiping out their sin.

It says in verse 14 that the one died for all, therefore all died. We're talking about the gospel. We're talking about the good news that Jesus has reconciled men and women, of course, but mankind to himself.

And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. In other words, he's given us this information. He's given us a message to proclaim. We persuade men, verse 11. We just read that. So what are we persuading men about?

Well, we have this message. We have a word of reconciliation. Now it goes on to verse 20. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. That means we represent him as though God were making an appeal through us.

We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. This is what the ministry of reconciliation looks like. You go and you talk to people. You give them the message that God has given us. That's the word of reconciliation.

And we beg, we plead with people to be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That's the gospel. That's the good news.

What is the ministry of reconciliation? Let's go back. Let's play this short clip again.

Reconciliation. And we can grade ourselves. Since 1964, have we done a good job with that? Have we really reconciled? Do our churches look like it? Do our communities look like it? Do our schools look like it?

And there's a secular and a Christian answer to those.

How can there be a secular answer? If it's the ministry of reconciliation, there's no secular anything. There's only a Christian answer because we're the only ones that have the gospel.

I think from the Christian side, I think we could say we could, I could just look out here and say, ah, we might be able to do better.

Okay.

He said, he used the term ministry of reconciliation. I'm telling you, that's a term that's used often to describe, to justify this. What in the world? There's a, first of all, there is no secular ministry.

The world, and I've said this so many times before, that one of the things you'll notice is the critical race theorists or social justice advocates in Christianity will take what groups are doing out in the world, on the left, usually, and they'll say that what they're doing is a gospel thing somehow, or they're part of some kind of initiative Christians need to be part of because that's ministry of some kind.

They try to synthesize it. And you see it right here. Oh, there's a secular answer to, there's a secular way to do reconciliation, but there's the Christian way. There's only the Christian way. And the Christian way, according to the actual passage, is reconciling men and women to God.

That's the ministry of reconciliation. It couldn't be more clear. It has nothing to do with inserting a quota into a church and evaluating whether or not we have, this church reflects the makeup of the community, or there's an equal amount of different ethnicities represented, or we gotta make sure that every cultural group feels comfortable coming to our church.

And if they don't, as somehow, and this is a logical jump, but somehow as evident by the fact that there's not enough of them attending, then we have failed to do the ministry of reconciliation. That's dangerous.

The ministry of reconciliation is the propagation of the gospel. It's evangelism. That's the ministry of reconciliation. It's not building trust and something the world can also participate in somehow.

It's not building trust with people across ethnic or racial lines, and then getting involved in the same institutions and activities as them so that you can all be there together and it's fully integrated.

That's not the ministry of reconciliation. According to scripture, it's not the same thing. And this is where there's confusion. And to be honest with you, you take this to its conclusion, this is just false teaching.

If this is really, if you take what was just said to its logical conclusion, that's where you have to end up. And well, he misspoke. Here's the thing. I haven't watched really, I haven't listened to or read stuff.

This is the first time by this particular gentleman, Bobby Scott. But I'm telling you, I hear this all the time. God gave us the ministry of reconciliation. I'm sure if I even go to my Kindle right now, and I did not pre-plan this.

I'm just thinking about it right now. Like, oh, my Kindle's updating itself. That's nice.

Hopefully.

Okay. If I went to my Kindle, which is starting to load, and I just pull up some woke books, and like Christian woke books, and just to see what they say about this, I guarantee they're gonna have something on it.

I wanna start here with woke church. This is what woke church says. But in the gospel, man is not just reconciled to God by faith. Man is also reconciled to man by faith. God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5, 18, which says, now all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. We just read this passage. Let's look at another one.

Let's look at Be the Bridge, Latasha Morrison. Ministry of reconciliation. Comes up three times in this book. The first time it says that Jesus' final prayer was around this vision of unity, commissioned his church to be healing agents and bring the ministry of reconciliation into a broken and fractured society.

And yet an honest assessment raises more questions than answers. Is the church at large, and we as individuals, currently making any contributions to healing the divisions? It's the same thing that you heard from Bobby Scott.

So this is prevalent. And it's unfortunate that it wasn't picked up on. And I think that's probably the thing that should have been discussed. Right there, that little clip, hold the show, stop everything.

Let's examine. What do you think the ministry of reconciliation is in 2 Corinthians 5? What is Paul talking about there? And is it something that people in the world that aren't even Christians can participate in in some way?

Or do something similar? Like what's the similarity between that ministry of reconciliation and then whatever the world's doing to rectify disparities? Why do you put them in a similar category and say, well, there's a secular way to respond and a Christian way to respond?

You don't see that in Paul. Where are you getting that? That's what should have been hammered. And so I'm bringing it up to you now. And I think this will be helpful moving forward. As you hear some of these woke preachers talk about the ministry of reconciliation, there should be a little bit of an alarm bell that goes off in your head.

What do they mean by that? Is it what 2 Corinthians 5 talks about, reconciling man to God by giving them the message of the gospel? Or is it something that can just as well be done by people in the world, diversifying a congregation somehow?

Is that what it means, diversifying a group of people? I mean, you can put in mechanisms to do that. That's what the Kingdom Diversity Initiative it is at Southeastern. That's what the, I don't wanna call it affirmative action.

I don't know what it is at Southern, but it's like a Southern seminary. There's, you know, you get money if you go and you're a minority student. And what it does is it makes the campus more diverse, supposedly, kind of barely, but it does.

And so is that what 2 Corinthians 5 is talking about though? So that's where I think the conversation needed to be. That's where it wasn't. And that's what we need to recognize when we hear this kind of thing.

Hope that was helpful for you and more coming. God bless.