Defeat the Social Justice Controversy in Evangelicalism With 1 Question

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

In this video, I'm going to tell you the one question to ask any social justice warrior to dominate that conversation.

00:13

Now I know, I know, the goal of having a conversation with your Christian friends or even if they're non -Christians, it's not necessarily to dominate the conversations.

00:21

I mean, we are supposed to destroy strongholds and every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of God.

00:28

However, when you're talking to someone, you know, you're not necessarily trying to, you know, destroy them all the time.

00:34

But there is one question. It's a very simple question that if you think about and really consider from a deeply biblical perspective, it destroys every one of the errors of social justice in the

00:48

Christian, you know, community. The social justice controversy is a serious controversy in Christianity, but it's overall not that difficult to figure out.

00:58

And it's a very simple question. I'm going to tell you what it is in just a second. But what do you do? What do you do if somebody says something like this to you?

01:05

He says, you know what? We ought to have diverse leadership in the church.

01:11

We need to make sure that when we establish leaders, we establish pastors, we hire people for our denomination positions and things like that, that it reflects the kingdom of God in all its diversity and all of its, you know, ethnic, you know, whatever they want to say.

01:28

You know what I mean? Kingdom diversity, gospel diversity, whatever brand of diversity they want. How do you respond to it?

01:33

Let's just say you agree with that for a second. Because, you know, I've put forward the argument that that's not necessarily an imperative from the

01:40

Bible. Like there's nothing in the Bible that says that we ought to have diverse leadership that reflects the diversity of our town or our nation or whatever it is.

01:49

I don't really think that that's actually an imperative. However, let's just say you agree with that because it sounds pretty good, right?

01:55

Let's just be honest. It sounds good when somebody says we should have diverse leadership and why not? I mean,

02:00

I'm not against diversity. And so how do you respond to that? What do you say to that?

02:06

Because oftentimes when they say that, they're also kind of packaging it together with some kind of affirmative action or some kind of, let's just face it, partiality in hiring practices and in decision making and stuff like that.

02:19

Matt Chandler famously said that he would prefer a less qualified black than a higher qualified white, which raises all kinds of questions about what he thinks the capabilities of black people are.

02:31

But let's not go there for a second. How do you respond to it? Let's say you agree. What's the way?

02:37

What's the one question that'll get you to where you want to be? The one question is, at what cost?

02:46

Very simple. Three words. At what cost? So somebody comes to you and says, we ought to have diverse leadership in the church.

02:54

Your response should be, at what cost? Because that's the real rub, right?

03:01

Like, let's say we do agree that we should have diverse leadership. Is it at any cost? Diverse leadership at any cost?

03:08

Well, no, obviously it's not at any cost because there are things that we could do to have diverse leadership that we probably shouldn't do.

03:16

It's not worth the cost. And so if somebody comes to you and you say, well, I want diverse leadership, and you say, okay, at what cost?

03:23

And they say, at all costs, at any cost. We just need that diverse leadership. You know right off the bat that you're dealing with an ideologue, someone who really hasn't thought this through very much, because at what cost is not an option for a

03:37

Christian, because there's always a limit to what a Christian can do or should do,

03:42

I guess I should say. Because here's the reality. However you answer the at what cost question, the answer to it can never be a sin.

03:53

So if you say, we need to have diverse leadership, someone responds, at what cost?

03:58

And they say, at any cost. Well, that's not true because we cannot sin in order to obtain diverse leadership.

04:05

Here's an example. Let's say somebody said, we need to grow our church, right? We really need to grow our church. Who would argue with that?

04:11

I'd love to grow my church. Every church would love to grow. And then you say to that person, okay, great.

04:16

I'd love to grow our church, too. At what cost, though? And they say, well, here's what we'll do.

04:22

We'll grow our church. What we'll do is we'll get all kinds of programs, and we'll install a state -of -the -art daycare facility, and we'll also, you know, we'll be flexible about some of the homosexuality things and stuff like that.

04:34

We just want to grow our church. And all of a sudden you can say, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes here, pump the brakes. It's not grow the church at all costs.

04:41

It's grow the church, but we got to do it according to God's means. God has provided us very simple means of grace that we are supposed to do.

04:51

We're supposed to baptize people. We're supposed to preach the word. We're supposed to administer communion to the believers and things like that, sing songs to the

05:00

Lord, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all that stuff. Like, it's very simple marching orders for the church.

05:06

Like, all this extra stuff, I mean, again, how do you answer the question at what cost?

05:13

And this is where social justice always falls apart. It just always falls apart here. Because if you say we need diverse leadership, at what cost?

05:20

Well, we need to start hiring more blacks in particular, and like Matt Chandler said, lowering the bar for the blacks because I guess they can't reach the level of whites.

05:29

Like, again, that raises all kinds of questions about Matt Chandler's beliefs about minorities. But it's like, no, no, no, hold on a second.

05:36

The Bible says you shall not be partial because I am not partial. That's what God says.

05:41

There is no partiality with God. Therefore, there cannot be partiality with us. So whatever you want to do to solve your diversity desires, it can't be sinful.

05:51

However you answer the question at what cost, it can't be sinful. And so the minute you start to talk about things that essentially amount to demonstrating partiality in your church, in your hiring practices, in your elder qualifications, things like that, we know that that is off limits.

06:10

We know that you're not thinking biblically. You're thinking according to an ideology that's external, that's unchristian.

06:18

Because you are replacing, when we ask you at what cost, you're putting sinful things in that answer.

06:24

It's like, no, diversity is not an imperative at any cost. It's an imperative, maybe, if you agree that it's an imperative, but we have to do it according to God's commands,

06:34

God's ordinary means. We can't sin to sort of solve a problem. It's the same thing with reparations, right?

06:40

Okay, we should pay reparations at what cost? Well, whatever you replace in that what cost, it can't be sinful.

06:46

So if you say, well, at any cost, we need to just pay them back for what they got taken from them. Well, hold on a second there,

06:52

Sparky. I didn't take anything from them. And so to take from me and give to them, that's actually a nuisance.

06:58

So now you're trying to solve sin with more sin. It doesn't work that way. All of these nice sounding programs, social security, all of these kind of welfare programs, things like that, they all sound nice.

07:13

But when you answer the question at what cost, if you put sin in the answer there, then it's off limits for a

07:20

Christian. We can't support it. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. The at what cost question can work on any social justice aberration.

07:29

It doesn't just work on diverse leadership, kingdom diversity, gospel diversity. I hope you found this helpful.

07:35

This is the kind of video that if you have a friend that's kind of dabbling in social justice or things like that, this is a very good video to share with them.

07:42

I'm trying to be helpful here because all these ideas might sound nice in theory, but the devil really is in the details.

07:50

And so when you say, okay, we want to do these things that you're talking about, racial reconciliation, all this stuff, it sounds so great.

07:56

At what cost though? That's a question you need to answer. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful.