I Feel Like a Failure - AD on FLF Network

There this is AD Robles and you're listening to AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network. All right well let's jump right into it today but before we do let me just ask you to consider becoming a Fight Laugh Feast Network club member.

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Use the show code Robles, R-O-B-L-E-S. Now what I've just said about the disproportionately large impact of the Fight Laugh Feast Network you might think that it's going to contradict what I'm about to say in just a moment but that's okay.

Why a Tweet About “Systemic Injustice” Felt Like a Failure

Listen I'm all about being a little weird at times but I've got to say that this morning I woke up and something seemed a little bit off you know what I mean? Something seemed a little bit off. It felt a little bit like a failure because you know last night I saw a tweet from somebody named Luke Stamps.

I didn't know who Luke Stamps was. I was not following him but what I saw was it was actually quote tweeted by someone that I like very much and the person that had quote tweeted it said hey this is a very balanced take and this and that and so I read it and I instantly felt like a little bit of a failure and so I'll tell you why I did and I'm going to tell you how to how I responded to this kind of a tweet but let me just read it at first and then you can kind of get the whole thing.

It's only a two tweet thread so it's pretty short and I'm wondering how you would respond to this. Let me know in the comment section if you're watching on YouTube you know what you think about this tweet because this was framed to me as a very reasonable tweet and so I'm just interested to see if you know if I'm the only one who kind of felt this way as I thought about it.

Here's what Luke Stamps said. Oh before I do, he's an associate professor of theology at Anderson University, South Carolina. He's also the executive director of Baptist Renewal so I don't know how connected he is but he's on the Big Eva track in some regard.

You're a professor, you're on the Big Eva track in some regard most likely. Anyway so Luke Stamps says this. The problem with the vehement anti-woke diatribes isn't that there aren't obvious dangers to warn against.

It's that they tend to overstate their influence within evangelicalism and to conflate all concern about abiding systemic racism with the worst caricatures of wokeness. It makes me wonder if what's underneath the warnings isn't just a denial that such systemic injustices still exist.

So anyone raising the alarm about those injustices gets tarred with all of the quote godless ideologies mind can imagine. The mind the mind can imagine I think probably a missing word there but you know it's Twitter.

And so when I read this I kind of felt like a failure. I'm not gonna lie because I've said many many words over the last three years or so. I've tried to figure out how many words have I said over the last three years on YouTube.

I mean it's it's got to be millions at this point. I don't know how to figure that kind of stuff out but I've said a lot of words and I feel like my message has been very consistent. Now my style and maybe some of the specifics of how I dealt with certain people and stuff like that of course there's going to be some change over time with that kind of stuff but I feel like my message in like the core of my message has been very very consistent.

I haven't really changed too much. Every time I do change something big I always draw attention to it. I'll do a video where I said I was wrong about x y z whatever it is. It doesn't happen very often but it has happened and so I feel like I've done a lot of talking about this exact thing and I feel like and look Luke Stamps probably hasn't seen any of my videos and that's okay.

I'm not saying he has seen my videos but I think about the people that I see criticizing the woke church and criticizing the social justice movement and honestly I feel like most of their message has been fairly consistent about this exact issue and so it's very interesting to see that that message has not been received at least by some people and so the first place that you look when somebody misrepresents you know your position the first place you got to look is at yourself.

You got to take the blame for yourself. If somebody is not understanding what I'm saying I'm going to look at what I'm actually saying and try to be clear. Try to see well is there is there a reason why they're misunderstanding.

This is this is one of the biggest problems in my opinion about Big Eva. Sorry about that. I was having to get my kids. I'm in my kids normally where they play kind of thing so they're watching Blippi back there.

That's how it's going to have to be because we're actually doing some construction. My recording room, my office is going to be hopefully somewhat complete very soon. Anyway let's jump right into it. So I guess what I was saying was that I feel like we've been very consistent on this and so it's very disheartening to see that we've been so misunderstood but you got to look at yourself and so when Gospel Coalition people claim to be misrepresented they blame everybody but themselves.

It can't possibly be them. It must be people that are trying to misrepresent me and that's you know yes people do try to misrepresent other people from time to time. It's usually not the first place you ought to look though.

You should definitely look at your own words first and so that's what I'm going to try to do here and I'm going to try to be abundantly clear and so I'm going to speak to Luke but really I'm speaking to everybody and so hopefully this will help clear things up and so here's the reality.

Luke you don't have to wonder if something's underneath the warnings that it's like you don't have to like try to put two and two together because I have said pretty consistently and I think a lot of people say this as well that we don't believe the claims of current systemic injustice when it comes to the issue of race.

We simply don't believe it and it's not like we just decided you know what black people are untrustworthy and so we're not going to believe them. That's not how it happened. That's the caricature of what happened but that's not what happened.

What happened was is that we have asked for evidence of these systemic injustices oftentimes over the course of many many months or years and things like that and we never actually get evidence of current systemic injustices according to race.

What we do we do get answers though Luke and this is this is the issue because the answers that we get don't comport with a proper biblical you know real world view of reality like the actual world view.

You know sometimes people call this the biblical world view but but it's better to just call it reality because God created the world right? He created reality to be what it is and so when you operate in reality you're using the biblical world view.

So according to the biblical world view if somebody says there's some kind of an injustice there's a couple things that you need to do. Number one you need to look into it and find out if it is actually an injustice because all kinds of people will say all kinds of things are unjust and only a portion of them are actually unjust.

You know my five-year-old thinks it's unjust if his little brother gets a bigger cookie than him and that's not necessarily unjust unless I'm systematically saying well my my three-year-old son is going to always get a bigger cookie because I like him more.

That's not usually what happens but usually what happens is you know cookies aren't all the same size unless you're getting them from a from a box kind of thing and sometimes you don't get the same size cookie.

That's not an injustice but you know children are wired to think everything's against them and everything's the end of the world and stuff like that and you know you discipline and you disciple them out of that mindset but the thing is the woke church never gets out of that mindset.

They see that so and so has more money than me that's an injustice and it's like well not quite not quite and so so it's not that we deny the possibility of systemic injustices at all Luke it's just that over time we've asked a lot many many times for evidence of systemic injustice and what we get are well whites have more income than blacks, whites have more wealth than blacks, whites own more houses than blacks, whites have better jobs than blacks, whites have this and that and blacks don't have it and that might sound like it's unfair to some people but actually it doesn't say anything about the justness of the situation.

There are all kinds of completely justified reasons for people to have different things and and I think that that you know we need to go under the hood a little bit more and we need a little bit more than just the raw statistical disparity because I've spent an entire YouTube career at this point talking about all the reasons why there might be a legitimate disparity in income and wealth and things like that.

In fact the scriptures never do say that a disparity in income or wealth is in and of itself just an injustice. In fact the scriptures seem to affirm the goodness of disparities in income and inheritances and things of that nature so it's like you know when you put all this together with the actual world view of reality then what you start to see is that well I've asked for months about evidence for systemic racial injustices in our culture.

I never get it and so eventually over time if you ask enough and you just keep getting dodged and sidetracked and keep getting non-sequiturs thrown your way eventually you're going to say something's going on here something's going on here and I need to get to the bottom of what that is and when you look at what at the bottom of what that is what happens is you start to realize that people that are in the woke church are operating under a different world view.

It's not really so much that they're that they're intentionally trying to lie or sidestep to you it's actually that they think that inequalities in income and wealth and stuff like that they actually believe that the inequality in and of itself is an injustice.

If they don't have as much as their neighbor has that's unjust. If black people don't have as much as white people or Puerto Ricans or Asians or whatever in and of itself that difference in stuff that material difference is an injustice.

And so you got to ask yourself well well if that's what they believe because again I'm not saying that they're purposely trying to dodge the question they think they've answered the question. Luke so when you ask somebody there's a systemic injustice.

Okay show me what that's someone show me the evidence of that systemic injustice and they give you an income or a wealth disparity. They're not. They don't think they're dodging the question they think they're answering the question.

And so you got to ask yourself okay so when I read my bible and I come up with the the biblical principles of how the world works I don't get this idea that a statistical disparity in wealth or income is an injustice.

I don't get that from the scripture. Furthermore I can look at natural law as well and realize that oh well there's there could be myriad of reasons why people have differences in income and wealth and things of that nature.

And so you start to think to yourself well in reality what the way that this person has answered my question as far as evidence for systemic racism or systemic injustice doesn't comport with reality. So what are they doing.

Are are they just lying. Are they just sidestepping. No they're not. No they're not. They definitely are sidestepping but but they're doing it because they believe and I think they believe you know with conviction that any kind of an income inequality or wealth inequality or material inequality is an injustice.

And so you have to ask yourself where are they getting that. And if you know enough about economics and you know enough about philosophy social philosophies and things of that nature then you you can figure out where they're getting that from.

It's from Karl Marx. It's it's a it's a form of Marxism. If there's a disparity there well that's an injustice. And it's the it's the evil oppressors that are oppressing the poor people and the workers and stuff like that the workers should have just as much as each other.

The workers should have just as much as the as the owners and stuff like that because their work is just as valuable. And so you start to think to yourself. Well if they're believing what Karl Marx's worldview is instead of the the the Christian worldview.

Well we need to address that. Right. We need to address that now you've characterized this Luke in the most ridiculous of ways they get tarred with the godless ideologies that any mind can imagine. And I can understand why you do that.

Because this is this is propaganda this is this is rhetoric. Right. But the thing is we're not tarring people with this. What we're doing is we're saying you're believing something that is not true. You're believing something that actually turns the bible on its head because God affirms those kinds of inequalities.

In fact God proudly declares that he causes those he gives certain people more he gives certain people less. And it's all part of his sovereignty. And so we can look at the scripture and say well those inequalities like maybe it could be an injustice like if somebody steals from me and all of a sudden they have more money than me.

Well that inequality was caused by an injustice. But the injustice wasn't the inequality in and of itself. It was the stealing. You know what I mean the injustice wasn't that this guy had more money than me.

The injustice was he stole it from me. Right. That was mine and he stole it. That see that's very different. That's very different. And so when we do that we're not tarring someone with uh with the godless ideologies.

No we're just recognizing that you're actually using a counterfeit worldview. You're using a godless worldview. Karl Marx's worldview was a godless worldview. Now you're probably trying to import it into God's worldview.

So you still believe in God. You're not an atheist like Karl Marx. Right. So you're like oh I still believe in Christ and God. But then you're taking the economic ethics. You're taking some of the morality from a godless worldview and trying to import it into a Christian worldview.

And what we're saying is you can't do that because that that whole system of ethics and morality that's godless. Like it doesn't work that way because then it makes God a moral monster. Because then it turns God's law into something that's null and void.

We can't allow that to happen. And so that's we're saying so so so no you don't have to wonder if if that's what's underneath all of these warnings that no that's definitely the warning. I do not believe that these racial systemic injustices that are talked about in the woke church are actually real.

I don't believe that. I believe that they are created by importing a godless worldview that says that they're an injustice when in reality they are not an injustice. So Luke like I'm pretty sure that many people on my side are saying exactly that.

Abortion and Wealth Redistribution as Real Systemic Injustices

Now one more thing before I end this this video is that there are systemic injustices in our culture. There definitely are some right. And I and I responded to this thread with two examples and there are other examples as well.

But but you know as you might imagine for a big large systemic injustice that's throughout the entire system. They're very easy to prove. Right. So one one such example is abortion. Abortion is a systemic injustice because people in our culture can kill babies and get away with it.

People can kill babies and get the taxpayer to pay for it. People can kill babies and nothing happens to them. They're not marked from society. They're not executed. Nothing happens to them. In fact people shout their abortions because they're so proud of them.

That's an injustice. We need to make abortion illegal immediately and we need to make it punishable by death. And until that happens this will be a systemic injustice. We have plentiful evidence of it.

We've got statistics. People keep statistics on how many abortions are accomplished. We know where they happen. Right. We don't need to have two or more witnesses here like we have to like search and hunt for them.

No no there we could find two or more people that work at each place where babies are killed. Right. So like we know where it happens we know that it happens. We know how many of them happen. We know who's doing it.

Right. So we have all the evidence we need. Plus furthermore we can look at the biblical worldview and we can understand that murder is wrong. It's an injustice. Murder is something that needs to be punished.

So we can not only do we have ample evidence but we also have very straightforward application of the bible to know that it's an injustice. Right. So that's an easy one. Systemic injustice. Wealth redistribution is another one.

Wealth redistribution is another one. We can see it happening. We've got the statistics on it. We can see exactly how in fact we're forced to file our taxes to determine exactly how much money can be stolen from us and given to others like they force us to do that.

It's like we're going to take money from you. And by the way you need to figure out how much money you got to give us. It's pretty twisted guys. So we have the for days of the evidence of my my wealth being stolen.

And then i can also look at the other side of it and where is it given. Right. So we've got ample evidence of that as well. And we can also look to the scripture in a very straightforward way and understand that that kind of a distribution scheme where you take from some people and give to the others even if they're not working we can see that that's against the scripture as well.

So that's very easy to demonstrate that that is an injustice a systemic injustice it's part of the system. Right. And so you see when it's a systemic injustice like that's the kind of evidence that we're looking for.

We're not just looking for the fact of an inequality. That's not that's not biblical. That's that's not doesn't comport with reality. And so luke you don't have to wonder. No no that's exactly the issue.

I do not believe and many of us do not believe of the claims about racial injustice in our country. We don't believe it now. That's very different than saying there's no racism in our country. Of course there is some racism in our country.

But you're talking about a system-wide sort of baked into the law injustice. And i'm saying this there is no evidence of that. And if there is show me because i'll take a look at it. I have nothing in this.

I have no reason to deny it because luke you might not know this about me considering the way the lighting has gone here. But i've got everything to gain from being a victim of this systemic injustice.

I'm going to be one of the guys that collects reparations. I'm going to be one of the guys that ends up on the bigger end of the stick here. So i've got nothing to lose and everything to gain if you can demonstrate to me that there actually is systemic racism that's set up the world against me.

I don't believe it. And i don't think you're going to have evidence luke because at this point i've asked long enough that i feel like i would have seen the evidence at this point. But you're willing to try.

And so i just wanted to clear that up luke in case it wasn't clear before because i'm going to blame myself for not being able to put this message forward. I do not believe that such systemic racism still exists.

So if you want to raise the alarm about them i'm going to tar you as a person who's using comporting who's trying to syncretize a godless ideology with biblical ideology unless you start giving us some evidence that demonstrates the reality of the systemic injustice.

Closing Appeal and Sign-Off

Anyway i hope you found this podcast helpful helpful helpful helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on thursday for ad on the fight laugh feast network.