Salt Mining with Thabiti Anyabwile - Are You Guys Even Christians?
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Thabiti posted a hot-take about the evangelicals who voted for Trump. At the end of the article he calls into question their salvation because:
1. They dont care about Russia collusion investigation
2. They disagree with him about immigration(travel ban and Dreamers)
3. They disagree with him about drug law penalties.
The price of salt has plummeted to historic lows. (shout out to sargon for the salt joke)
Want to learn how to "hot-take" like Thabiti? Here is a step by step guide:
https://youtu.be/5WmjzpbM6Bg
- 00:00
- Today is June 28th, the year of our Lord 2018, and the price of salt has plummeted because liberals have flooded the market with it.
- 00:17
- Hello, I'm having a good day today. I'm having a good week actually. I hope you're having a good week as well. But I logged on to Twitter and, well actually
- 00:25
- I logged on to Twitter because for some reason I'm not capable of posting on Facebook anymore. I don't know if I'm in trouble or if it's just a technical error, but I can't do anything on Facebook.
- 00:34
- So I'm logging into Twitter and I see Thabiti and Willie clutching his pearls harder than that lady from the
- 00:40
- Simpsons. Except not really because that lady from the
- 00:47
- Simpsons was very concerned with the children and for Thabiti that seems to be kind of a side issue here.
- 00:53
- He's very upset at the fact that so many Christians are pleased with their vote because they're going to get, hopefully, theoretically,
- 01:01
- Trump's going to get to appoint another Supreme Court justice that might overturn Roe versus Wade.
- 01:06
- Now I don't think that's actually going to happen, but I hope it does. I don't think it actually will though, but that's kind of beside the point because Thabiti wants you to see his hot take that why that's really just a side issue.
- 01:17
- Let's get to the article and see what it's all about. Well, here is the article. It's called,
- 01:23
- Overturning Roe v. Wade Isn't Worth Compromising With Trump, My Fellow Evangelicals. This is a hot take.
- 01:29
- This is one of the hottest takes I've ever seen. It was posted this morning by Pastor Thabiti at thewashingtonpost .com.
- 01:36
- And now I know some of you are behind a payroll wall here. For some reason, I can guarantee you I had not paid for a
- 01:42
- Washington Post subscription, but I can see this article, so sorry if you can't, but I'm not going to read it. There's really only one section that I wanted to really focus on.
- 01:49
- It's really the very end, the point that he makes, but basically you could probably guess what this is all about.
- 01:55
- He's pro -life, and he wants to make sure you know that he's pro -life, but really, he's basically saying you can't be pro -life unless you're totally pro -life, consistently pro -life.
- 02:05
- And in order to do that, you need to really care for all these other social issues as well. And he talks about the travel ban, where he's going to ban certain visitors from certain countries that are majority
- 02:19
- Muslim countries, not all of them, but just the ones that have ties to terrorism and stuff like that, and he's very upset about that.
- 02:26
- He also talks about the dreamers, and he says that Trump and Congress are stalling on a permanent solution for this class of immigrants.
- 02:35
- This word solution here, very carefully chosen. He wants you to think about that other final solution, of course.
- 02:42
- Anyway, and by the way, using words like that, he can always deny that that's what was in his mind, but he's a smart man.
- 02:48
- He uses this permanent solution. It's a similar sounding thing to the final solution, and that's on purpose.
- 02:55
- That's how you write a really good hot take. So by the way, if you're interested in learning how to read a hot take, I have a really great video about the hot take, and this is a perfect example.
- 03:04
- So I'll put that in the description of this video if you haven't seen it already. Anyway, here we go. He also talks about how
- 03:11
- Jeff Sessions reversed some Obama policies about minimum sentences for drug crimes and things like that, which policies about mass incarceration of blacks and browns and things like that.
- 03:22
- So he mentions a few different things, and then he also, this is a weird one, he mentions the Russia collusion investigation, and he sounds like he's very concerned about the legitimacy of the presidency itself.
- 03:33
- If there's one thing you know about Fabitti, he's very concerned about the legitimacy of the United States presidency.
- 03:39
- That's top of his mind. Anyway, so he talks about all these things, and he says, well, he grants abortion, more lives are ended by abortion, but how do you really calculate?
- 03:50
- I mean, is the abortion issue worth more than the Russia collusion investigation? Well, probably, but if you add on top of that drug laws and the travel ban, well,
- 04:00
- Fabitti's not so sure. And this is the point that I wanted to really talk about.
- 04:06
- This is standard social justice warrior rhetoric. It's shameful for a Christian, no less a
- 04:11
- Christian pastor. Here's what he says. He says, judgment begins at the household of God.
- 04:17
- That is very true. He says, judgment begins with Christians. Most evangelical Christians worry about God's judgment of people who are not
- 04:23
- Christians, but the Bible calls us to first judge ourselves in light of God's expectations for Christians.
- 04:29
- Let me stop there. He's exactly right. Let's continue. He says, indifference to other moral issues and forms of suffering call into question one's understanding of the faith and one's claim to be
- 04:41
- Christian. Now, here is the point of this. Let me shift the view here.
- 04:48
- Now, here's the point of this. You say in your article, you say the indifference of Christians to all these other issues, the indifference of Christians, that's calling into question their faith, calling into question even the fact, even if they are
- 05:02
- Christian, they're Christian witness. And I have to say that that's just not the case at all, Pastor Fabitti.
- 05:08
- Let's go through some of these things one by one. You talk about the Russia collusion investigation. Do you really think that people are running around indifferent to that?
- 05:16
- I think some are. I think some people really care about it a ton, and it's just all they think about is this Russia collusion investigation, and there's just Russians behind every rock.
- 05:24
- And then there's some people that are like, yeah, but even if it's all proven, it's really not that big a deal. What's being accused is not that big of a deal.
- 05:32
- And then there are people in the middle that just don't know what to make of anything. So I don't think that that's fair to say that people are indifferent.
- 05:38
- You mentioned the Muslim ban, the Muslim travel ban from countries that are connected to terrorism and things like that.
- 05:45
- Yeah, and you actually miss, you say it is something that it isn't.
- 05:51
- But anyway, you talk about that, and you say people are indifferent to that. No, they're not, Pastor Fabitti.
- 05:57
- No, they're not. People disagree with you on that. People disagree with your approach on that. Because here's the thing.
- 06:04
- I know you think that it's a very open and shut case, and the Bible says we need to let people from all of these countries that have terrorism problems, and you think that that's the biblical moral solution.
- 06:16
- Okay, fine. That's fine. But the thing is, there's a lot of people who disagree with you. And I think we'd have to admit that that's not an open and shut case.
- 06:22
- If we go to the scriptures, and we see the best arguments from both sides. You know, this is something that is debatable.
- 06:28
- There's nuance here. And to pretend like a disagreement on that issue, or to agree with Trump on that issue, is equivalent to indifference.
- 06:38
- That's morally culpable. That's morally objectionable. That goes against the scripture. That's just false.
- 06:44
- The same thing with the dreamers, right? I mean, the same thing with the dreamers, and even the drug laws and things like that.
- 06:51
- These are things that Christians need to debate, right? What does the Bible say about drug laws? Is it an easy answer,
- 06:57
- Pastor Thabiti? I think you'd have to admit that it isn't. I think also you'd have to admit that the same thing with the dreamers.
- 07:03
- It's just not an easy biblical answer that you could just point to scripture and verse. Oh, there is. There's the answer. Because you know, you have to know that there are brothers on the other side that honestly disagree with you about it.
- 07:14
- They think they have warrant. You think you have biblical warrant for your views. And it's just not as black and white as you're saying.
- 07:21
- So abortion is, and I'm glad that you see that abortion is a very black and white issue. God's against murder, and abortion kills an innocent child.
- 07:28
- And so that's good. But then you try to stack up these other issues as if they're not equivalent, but like they somehow measure into our calculus.
- 07:36
- But the thing is, honest Christians can disagree with you about all those. And you'd have to admit that there are biblical cases that can be made for the other viewpoint.
- 07:46
- Maybe you don't agree with them, but they can be made. And so to pretend like disagreement on those is just indifference.
- 07:53
- Indifference to the point where you would even say that you question their faith. You question even their salvation, their
- 08:00
- Christian witness. That's shameful. That kind of rhetoric is absolutely shameful.
- 08:05
- And here's the thing. You call it indifference. Maybe you just don't know the questions that people are asking you.
- 08:11
- I don't think you're the cut type that blocks people and mutes people, but you need to understand that your social justice friends, they do it all the time.
- 08:19
- People ask them honest questions. And I'm not talking about the angry trolls who use words like beta and cuck and stuff like that.
- 08:25
- I'm not talking about those. I'm talking to people who ask questions about the things that you say, your hot takes on Twitter. And I see people get blocked all the time.
- 08:34
- And then I see all these social justice leaders joke and yuck it up about how many people they blocked today and how
- 08:40
- I broke my button, my mute button muting people today on Twitter. So maybe you think people are indifferent because you're just not hearing it because you're blocking everyone who even asks you a question.
- 08:49
- I think if we're honest, what we need to do is have a conversation like this, because one side seems to not want to have this conversation.
- 08:55
- And I'm not accusing you of that, Thabiti. You seem to have interacted more than most people on the social justice side.
- 09:01
- So I commend you for that. But then you go and write an article like this and you pretend like, like indifference or difference of opinion on these issues, these political issues of Trump is tantamount to being almost not even a
- 09:15
- Christian, infidelity to Christianity or going against the Bible. It's just not the case at all.
- 09:20
- See, I think to question someone's salvation because they don't agree with you about immigration policy is a weird thing.
- 09:26
- I think that's very bizarre. And I don't know why you use a platform like the Washington Post to do that.
- 09:32
- I don't know why you would do that. I'm not going to do that to you, Pastor Thabiti. I know people who follow me, they question your salvation for the things that you say.
- 09:40
- I'm not going to do that. I'm going to assume that you have biblical, you know, warrant and foundations for saying the things that you say.
- 09:47
- But don't do that to us. I mean, that's just ridiculous. And look, your side needs to start debating these issues and confronting and interacting.
- 09:55
- I'm not saying that you have to do with me. I'm not on your level. I know that. But you need to start doing it because the church, the body of Christ is confused right now in the
- 10:04
- United States, is confused. And you have to admit that there's a good reason why they're confused.
- 10:10
- And so you need to start interacting. I'm not saying you, Thabiti. Your group needs to start interacting, answering questions and standing up to some basic scrutiny.
- 10:19
- And because, you know, if you refuse to do that and refuse to have this conversation and just pretend like this is all open and shut, if you just read your
- 10:26
- Bibles, you would agree with me on all these political issues. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.