Gospel Coalition and ERLC - So Much Of What You Do Causes Division

AD Robles

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March 3, 2020

Here are two helpful suggestions for altering your course without abondoning your love for social justice.

00:00: This is me being as constructive as I possibly can be. Before we begin,
00:09: I just want to just apologize really quick. You might hear my kids playing in the background. For some reason, they've been really into rock and roll, which, you know,
00:16: I've played a few rock songs around them, but for some reason they want to hear Bruce Springsteen. I've never been into Bruce Springsteen, but I've been getting into it lately.
00:25: It's so funny to hear my three -year -old ask Alexa to play Born to Run or something like that. It's super interesting.
00:31: I don't know where they got this from. But anyway, I wanted to talk about the ERLC and the Gospel Coalition, you know,
00:37: Big Eva types. I've been very critical of the ERLC. I've been very critical of the Gospel Coalition.
00:42: Personally, I believe that the world would be a better place if both of those two organizations at this point didn't exist.
00:50: They've done a lot of good, but I think their time for being a positive influence on the world has passed, and now they're essentially a net negative.
00:58: They don't put out content that's very helpful. They don't put content that's very true or relevant or anything like that.
01:04: That's my opinion, but I do leave open the fact for reform.
01:09: I think the ERLC can be reformed. I think the Gospel Coalition can be reformed, and here are two ways that they can do this, because I think at the end of the day, there's really two big problems with these organizations in general.
01:23: The first one is relevancy. I think that in the effort to try to be relevant to, like, millennials and younger people, they've actually rendered themselves irrelevant to the actual issues.
01:36: This is a perfect example. This article was written by an intern at the ERLC, Grace Liu, and nothing against her.
01:43: I don't know anything about her, and, you know, I hope she takes this as constructive criticism, but this article is so dumb.
01:50: I mean, it's just not relevant to anything that really actually matters. We see the title here,
01:56: Christians Are Called to Love Those Affected by the Coronavirus. Now, my co -host on the
02:03: ReformJellicle show, when he saw this title, he said, well, I was thinking about, you know, kind of like the moral dilemma, like, let's say my neighbors get sick with the coronavirus.
02:14: I want to protect my family because my first ministry is to my family, but I also want to take care of my neighbor who's sick, so what do
02:20: I do? There's kind of a dilemma there, and that would be a very interesting question, in my opinion, to explore as the ethics, you know, experts of the
02:29: SBC. That would be a very good question to have answered. That'd be very helpful. It could be very relevant, but what you get here is essentially a plea to not be racist, and let's just be honest, like, this isn't really relevant to Christians.
02:44: You don't think there's a lot of Christians out there that are saying, well, because it started in China, then I guess Chinese people are infected.
02:51: Like, it's just so stupid, like, this article expects us to believe that there are lots of Christians out there, honest
02:57: Christians, that think that somehow coronavirus is, like, latent in every Asian, and so you got to avoid
03:03: Asians because every Asian has this dormant in their system, and for some reason, now, it's not, now it's coming out, and it's able to infect the world, and, like, this is just such a far -fetched, irrelevant thing.
03:14: Why even spend any amount of bandwidth writing any articles about this?
03:20: I can't even imagine that there's probably, like, two people on the planet Earth that think that coronavirus is just latent in every single
03:27: Asian, so therefore, you have to avoid them, and this article is just, like, nobody's really thinking about this.
03:33: Why write this? Well, they write it because it fits their social justice agenda. They're not actually thinking about what really is helpful.
03:41: Instead, they want to push this narrative of everyone's racist, and we got to stop being racist, and racist, racist, racist, viruses are racist.
03:48: It's just so dumb, and so that's my first piece of constructive criticism. The ERLC, the
03:53: Gospel Coalition, stop trying to appeal to millennials. Stop trying to appeal to social justice folks and all this stuff.
04:01: Why don't you actually produce something that is of value? I put out a video today about coronavirus, and it's got practical things that I've done regarding coronaviruses, but not just coronaviruses, any kind of worldwide pandemic, any kind of disruption of supply chains, any kind of way to prepare for things to not always be peaches and cream the way they've been for decades.
04:23: I mean, we've had it pretty good in the United States, but all of this is very tenuous. I mean, supply chain could get interrupted, and we could have shortages on certain products and things like that, and so you need to think about, as your family, one of the ways that you show your faith in God and you serve your family and you provide for your family is to prepare for the inevitable downturn in the economy, the inevitable downturn in the stock market, the inevitable downturn in your finances.
04:52: You could lose a job, and anything could happen, and that's part of your responsibility before God. A good man provides for his household, and so a
04:59: Christian should not laugh and joke about preppers, because, I mean, yeah, of course we all know people that go too far with it, but preparing for the future to be not as peaches and cream and rosy as the past, that's actually a very good thing.
05:13: We should plan our steps. We should plan for contingencies and things like that. That would be very helpful stuff to hear in this kind of a moment, but instead we get, don't be racist.
05:24: Pretty stupid. Anyway, that's my first piece of criticism. The second piece of criticism I think is a very ironic kind of thing, because if you notice, one of the things that Big Eva is notorious for,
05:36: Gospel Coalition, things like that, is they never name names. You know, we just did a video about the
05:43: Kevin DeYoung article, which I got some pushback on. Some people really like that article, and to be honest, we can still be friends if you like that Kevin DeYoung article.
05:51: We can definitely still be friends, but I can't imagine why anyone would have liked that article. That article is absolutely worthless in my opinion, and one of the reasons why it's worthless, by the way, is this idea that they don't name any names.
06:07: It just kind of puts out this nameless, faceless person for Kevin to critique, and one of the reasons they do that is because they think when you name names, that actually hurts unity.
06:19: That actually is divisive if they were to name so let's just say hypothetically Kevin DeYoung was thinking about me in particular.
06:26: I don't think he was. I don't think Kevin DeYoung knows who I am, but if he was and he named my name and he says
06:33: A .D. Robles' YouTube channel is an example of this and this and this, people would see that as divisive, but actually
06:39: I think it's the exact opposite. I think when you don't name names, that is detrimental to unity.
06:46: That is all about division and causing strife and suspicion, because hear me out for a second.
06:52: So when Kevin DeYoung writes an article like that, and you kind of know who he's talking about, but he's being kind of vague and stuff like that, you have to fill in the blanks with whoever you think he's talking about, and all of a sudden there's a lot of suspicion around, and maybe this is my favorite
07:11: PCA pastor Kevin DeYoung talking about the A .D. Robles channel, or maybe he's talking about Pulp and Pen, or maybe he's talking about James White, or maybe he's talking about Apology, or maybe he's talking about this or that or this or that, and all of a sudden there's suspicion all over the place.
07:24: And when you're not naming names, when you're not able to face your accuser, he can say anything.
07:30: He can put anything out there, and all of a sudden you're like, well, is that A .D. Robles that he's talking about?
07:35: He doesn't really research this stuff, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he doesn't really source anything, and it just creates suspicion and strife and anxiety where there shouldn't be any.
07:47: Personally, I think it's a sign of disrespect and a sign of disdain when someone refuses to name the kinds of people that they're talking about.
07:57: I think it's a sign of disrespect, because when I name names, you can go and check my work.
08:02: So I say, Kevin DeYoung has said XYZ, here's why I think XYZ is wrong.
08:08: You can go to the article and say, yeah, Kevin didn't actually say that, or, oh yeah, Kevin did say that, but I kind of agree with him because of this.
08:17: It's much more respectful. I'd rather have 10 people saying A .D. Robles is wrong, and he's wrong because of this, this, and this, than have one person write a vague article with me in mind but not really name me.
08:30: I just see that as such a sign of disrespect. Brothers, if you have a problem with what someone is saying, do them the courtesy of naming them.
08:41: Because when you don't do it, all you've got is suspicion. All you've got is, well, I think he's talking about me, but I'm not really sure.
08:48: And it's just the lowest form of argumentation, in my opinion.
08:53: Now, there are times when not naming names is appropriate. You're talking about a class of person that's very easily identifiable.
09:00: Maybe you're talking about Republicans in general, or you're talking about Calvinists in general. You see, that's a very easy group to identify.
09:08: Are you a Calvinist? Do you believe in the five points? You know what I mean? Are you a Presbyterian? Like, if you're talking about Presbyterian theology in general, that's an easy group to identify.
09:17: I'm a Presbyterian. I believe in the Westminster Confession. You know what I mean? Like, that kind of thing. But so often, these articles are written with this vague kind of squishy group in mind that, depending on who's reading it, they can fill the blanks in with whoever they want because you're not providing them any details.
09:35: And that is just, please, if you're in the Gospel Coalition, in the ERLC, stop writing articles like that.
09:42: All it does is create strife and suspicion and anxiety and division. That's the essence of division.
09:49: If you have a problem with me, or if you have a problem with Dr. James White, or if you have a problem with Doug Wilson, or if you have a problem with JD Hall, name them so people can check your work.
10:02: Check to make sure what you're saying is actually true. That's how you avoid division. You see, division doesn't mean we don't have disagreements.
10:10: We can have disagreements, but we should have them in a way where there's two or more witnesses. We could check out the details and making sure that no one's slandering.
10:17: See, slander has taken over in areas where people don't name names, where people can just stand up and say, well, white evangelicalism says this.
10:28: And it's like, dude, I'm white. I'm an evangelical. Is he talking about me? Like, that's why white people are so frustrated about this, because they don't know if they're being talked about or not.
10:39: When Thabiti rails against white evangelicalism or Jamar Tisby rails against white evangelicalism, nobody knows who they're talking about.
10:46: And it's very frustrating, and it just creates all kinds of strife. So let me beg you, if you're going to write these articles with nameless, faceless people as your target of criticism, make sure it's a group that's easily identifiable, where there's no questions.
11:02: Either that or start naming people. That's a sign of respect, man. If you really love me as a brother and you have a problem with what
11:08: I say, you can tell me. You can tell me publicly or privately, whatever you want to do, but just have the respect to allow me to answer for myself.
11:19: Don't criticize this nameless, faceless person that cannot defend themselves. It strikes me as very cowardly, and it is a tool of Satan.
11:28: A lot of you pastors know this. Have you pastors ever gotten the anonymous criticism in an email?
11:37: Or have you ever heard this one? This is another one. Well, pastor, there are some people that are concerned with XYZ going on in the church.
11:44: And you're like, well, who's the people? And they go to you, well, I don't want to betray any confidences.
11:50: And it's like, well, that's not helpful. That just creates suspicion. Why would you do that?
11:56: That's my point. A lot of you pastors out there are out there writing these articles with these vague groups that you're criticizing, and you don't understand that you're creating that same environment of suspicion and anxiety and all of that that somebody creates with you when they come and tell you that some people are concerned with this.
12:16: It's just not healthy. It's not healthy. We need to have the guts to be brothers, man.
12:21: When I have a problem with my biological brother, I go to him and I say, man, Matt, here's my issue with you.
12:29: Why won't we do that with our spiritual brothers? I just don't get it. If you're not going to name names, then you got two options, in my opinion, if you want to do the right thing.
12:38: Either keep your mouth shut, or make sure the category of people that you're talking about is so well defined that no reasonable person can misunderstand what you're saying.
12:48: Obviously someone's going to misunderstand, but we're talking about reasonable people here. Those are my two pieces of advice.
12:54: I mean, look, Gospel Coalition, I'm against a lot of what you do. ERLC, I'm against a lot of what you do.
13:00: But I'm not, I don't think you're beyond reformation. I think if you change these two things, and you start, honestly,
13:06: I think this would solve a lot of the social justice stuff too, because if people were forced to name names, right, or to be so specific that examples could be easily to identify, we wouldn't have a problem with this, because look, the reality is we're all against racism.
13:21: But what we hate, and what we cannot stand with you for, is when you start talking about racism in such a way that nobody can identify it.
13:28: And so you think, well, I mean, are they talking about me? I'm not racist. And that's where the strife and the anxiety and the division is rampant.