Winsome Conviction?

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. For those of you waiting, I need to say this up front, for a copy of Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, an autographed copy,

I did get word this afternoon that I'm supposed to be receiving a shipment of about 500 tonight and another 500 later in the week.

So I should be shipping those out this week. In fact, if you're a patron, I said, if you're a patron, $10 a month or more, you're gonna get a signed copy of this or you'll have the opportunity to get one.

And so if you see an update from me tomorrow, it's because I got the shipment in and the update will have the coupon code for you to enter in so you can get your free copy.

But I was supposed to get this shipment about 8 p .m. It is after 9 p .m. right now.

And I know just from the last few months especially, but even really the last year, but the last few months especially, shipments have been a little bit late.

So we'll see, we'll see if it comes in. I thought I was supposed to get my first shipment on the 10th, so this was a pleasant surprise when

I found out that it's supposed to be today. But all that to say, hopefully you'll be getting your copy if you ordered an autograph copy from me sooner than you would have otherwise.

So just wanted to put that out there for those of you who are waiting for that, give you a little update. And for patrons who have had a number of questions about, hey, where do

I go to get my free book? You will have a place to go. I just have to actually receive the books and then

I will post a coupon code for you to enter on the website at ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com.

So now that that's out of the way, I'll just, I'll give you a little update about myself before we get into the topic, which is a book called

Winsome Conviction. I've been working a lot at the house. It's been a lot more than I thought that it was gonna be, the house that we're moving into.

And I thought it would take me a few weeks and that's turned into now over a month and just finding out all kinds of problems

I didn't know I had. But it's good because now I feel like I'm moving into a house that I can really have some confidence in.

Nothing's gonna break on me. I've already replaced everything that could break. So I'm trying to do my best to put podcasts out there, but something has to give between getting the books out there and working on my house and getting ready for traveling and conferences and things like that.

And there's a whole bunch of other stuff. I'm scaling down just a little bit this week, maybe next week on the podcast.

So there will still be podcasts coming out. There just might not be as many. I usually put about five or six out there a week.

So it might be three or four. I'm gonna try for five. We'll do our best. We'll see what we can do. But just wanna let everyone know that.

Thank you, by the way, for those who are praying for me and just a lot of busyness right now. So I appreciate that very much.

And so wanted to say that upfront before we get to the topic, which is a book called Winsome Conviction.

I should preface this with just a little bit of the reason I'm doing this because this is related somewhat to crew.

So I'm gonna blow this up so everyone can see here what we're all looking at. So those of you who know about what's going on in crew, formerly

Campus Crusade, the board of directors, well,

I should say not just the board of directors, but those at the top, I'll just put it, I'll leave it a little bit vague, but those at the top who are controlling crew don't seem to wanna take a firm stand on the social justice movement, critical race theory.

They don't want to apologize for anything that's happened in the past, maybe at multiple conferences, student and staff conferences for crew, which have been chocked full of CRT.

They don't want to, they really want to please both sides. And this is a point I've been making for a while.

And so those of you who've been paying attention to everything going on, the concern group, the reaction to that concern group, issues they had with some of the stuff going on, and just really the failure in leadership, you know that crew is probably not the best place to park your money.

I was, however, someone did reach out to me from, and I should probably look it up as I'm doing this, cause

I don't wanna get this wrong if I can find it. Someone did reach out to me from a crew entity or ministry.

There's multiple ministries within crew for those who don't know. And it's called the Think Institute.

And it seems like it's a very small part of crew. I had never heard of the Think Institute, but I think it was the director who reached out to me and just said, hey, by the way, wanna let you know there is one part of crew, even if it's a small little ministry that isn't on the woke train.

So I wanna let you all know that. I don't know exactly what that, for me it doesn't change much as far as what

I'm telling you, which is I would really urge you to contact the crew missionaries you support if you do support crew missionaries, talk to them about what they're seeing, maybe encourage them to find another ministry that they can get involved with if possible.

If not, then you make the decision whether you wanna give to them or not or how you wanna give to them.

I would not give to crew in general. I wouldn't just give to crew because so much of that money is being managed by people who are at the very least are not willing to take a stand.

And at the worst are totally woke. So, and in fact, I just got some more horror stories.

I get them honestly, very regularly. Last few days,

I got an email from someone that just horrible things, horrible things, just like as woke as you can get kind of stuff.

And that's certainly, I'm no stranger to that. I've had so many people reach out to me with horror stories from different organizations or ministries within crew.

I would urge you to do this. If you haven't done it, and if you have the time, if you're able to do it, give them, shoot them an email.

You can go to give .crew .org and find the email address there. You can call them at their customer service number.

It's 1 -888 -278 -7233 and push option one.

It's 1 -888 -278 -7233. You can call that number and you can, you basically encourage them like, look,

I'm not going to give to this ministry unless you take a stand on the social justice movement.

And that would include retracting or apologizing for some of the things that have happened at staff conferences, at least admitting that the organization was going down a bad path.

So this is what I think these ministries understand. They understand the dollar. Sometimes they don't understand a whole lot else.

So I want to encourage you, maybe reach out to them through email or through the phone, or if you want a mail letter, 100

Lake Heart Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32832. So that's all up on the screen.

You can contact crew that way. If you want to voice your concern and encourage them to do the right thing, that would be the way to do it.

And so I wanted to, there was a crew missionary. I'll just be honest. A crew missionary reached out and said that this may help. So I thought, you know what?

I will, I'll pass it on. If the crew missionary thinks it'll help, maybe it will.

But in my opinion, crew has been going down a very bad path. Now here is a post, and this is part of the reason

I'm doing a review of Winsome Conviction, from Mark Rutter to the U .S. Director's Forum of Crew.

And Mark Rutter is the Director of Leadership Development and HR at Crew. And he recommends this book,

Winsome Conviction. So I want to let you know about this because what we've seen, not just in Crew, but other ministries is this tendency to want to play both sides.

We're against critical race theory. Of course we're against it. Why would you even ask? Of course we are. But we also believe in some version of white privilege and systemic racism and making amends for it in some kind of a redistributive scheme, whether that's privilege or money or something.

And so they start bringing in all the social justice stuff, critical race theory stuff, even though they're saying they're against critical race theory.

This is what we've seen over and over and over for the past now, really two years we've been seeing this. And Crew, I think this is their modus operandi at this point for the leaders in the movement, the strategy has gone out there.

They're all deciding basically that what they're gonna do is they're going to try to make both sides happy.

And this is one of the ways I think that some of them are trying to do that. So Mark Rutter posts this,

I wanted to give you an update on a developmental opportunity that our US field team, along with the campus ministry executive team engaged in yesterday.

We attended a one day seminar with Tim Mulhoff and Richard Langer, authors of the book,

Winsome Conviction, Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church. We spent the morning interacting on key principles from their work that will help us grow in our ability to have effective communication and conversations.

In the afternoon, we processed as a team and practiced having our own significant conversation.

There were lots of takeaways, but several that stood out to me were the importance of differentiating between core biblical convictions and secondary issues, the practice of devotionally preparing our hearts for the conversation, cultivating several new skills, the posture necessary to better understand and have compassion for those to whom we may disagree.

Overall, I was challenged to avoid the dangers of groupthink and grow my ability to pursue unity as I navigate differences by speaking with both truth and love.

It was a powerful day that gave me hope for our future. Okay, and that sounds very nice. In fact, a lot of those things aren't really that bad.

I mean, being able to differentiate between core biblical convictions and secondary issues,

I mean, it's very important. This is Romans 14, the whole Adiaphora stuff.

I mean, this is important stuff. Now, what does Winsome Conviction say though? What's this book about?

This is what he's putting out there. This is what he's saying, go get this book. This will help you. Listen up crew, people who work for crew in the

U .S. Director's Forum. I want you to know, this is a book you can go to. It'll encourage you and it'll help you navigate some things that are going on today.

Now, what are some of the things going on? Well, like what's the number one thing dividing crew? Well, it's the critical race theory stuff.

It's the social justice stuff. So this is one of the things that is being used.

So I want to review it for you a little bit. This isn't gonna be comprehensive in every way. I mean, there's things that I left out that probably

I could add. But I want it to be as engaging and useful to you. So what I've done is

I have prepared a slideshow of just quotes from the book. I've organized them and I'm gonna have, in general,

I'm gonna have the page numbers and everything there. And patrons will be able to download this PowerPoint. So if you want to use it, you don't have to cite me.

You just go through the PowerPoint. You have the page numbers and you're able to pick out what you want to pick out and what you want to talk about if someone brings up this book to you.

So here is the screenshot from Amazon. Winsome Conviction, Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church. This is a popular book.

This is a number one bestseller in Christian institutions and organizations right now. And interesting, this just tickled me a little bit.

If you look at the paragraphs describing the book, it says, how do we discern between core biblical convictions and secondary issues?

How do we cultivate better understanding and compassion for those who disagree with? Mulhoff and Langer provide lessons from conflict theory and church history on how to avoid the dangers of groupthink.

And it goes on. Conflict theory. Now I'm just thinking, look, look, if you got, you're already kind of, that stigma of being woke is about you.

You don't wanna be using the word conflict theory. You don't wanna be saying, we're gonna give you lessons from conflict theory.

I mean, I'll just put it this way. Go Google conflict theory. And you probably don't even have to Google anything else.

You just put conflict theory and Marxism is gonna come up. But if you really wanna, put in Marxism conflict theory and Google that or DuckDuckGo it, better yet, go to a good search engine like DuckDuckGo and see what comes up.

Not exactly what you wanna be associating yourself with, but I do digress. And I think conflict theory, perhaps it can be used maybe to apply,

I mean, conflict theory has developed over time. So it's not just Marx, but Marx did, kind of is attributed to Marx, just saying.

But so here's, let's get into the actual book though. Here's the thesis, okay? Or the, this is the point of the book.

We do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility. We will dispute the claim that convictions are about absolutes.

And then the third part of this is we do not believe that all Christians will agree on matters of conviction.

Let me repeat this for you. This is the core of the book. We do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility.

Okay, in other words, you can still be civil and have strong convictions. Okay, and I would agree with that to an extent.

We will dispute the claim that convictions are about absolutes. Now this is a little, I mean,

I don't know. I mean, some convictions, convictions in my mind should be based off of an absolute principle somewhere.

That's how I've always thought of a conviction. I mean, it's a very deeply held belief, but they're saying they're not about absolutes.

Okay, so they're putting it more in the realm of when I first was reading this, I thought, okay, preferences. So preferences, all right.

We do not believe that all Christians will agree on matters of conviction. Okay, well, that's true. Obviously Romans 14 talks about this.

So yeah, there's people who have faith to do certain things and people who let, I mean, but this doesn't touch actual sins that the

Bible says are sins. So, you know, kind of a mixed bag here. And this is what greets you at the beginning of the book.

So I wanted to give you a definition. This is the Webster's Dictionary definition of conviction.

Essential meaning of conviction. The act of proving that a person is guilty of a crime in a court of law. A strong belief or opinion.

The feeling of being sure that what you believe or say is true. So there's a groundedness in the idea of conviction.

There's a certainty about it. There, it's, I mean, it's kind of like a very important thing.

Your convictions really define you to some extent. So it's not just something, it's not a light thing.

And here's the definition, further definition of convictions, if you will, from the book,

Winsome Conviction. Convictions are firmly held religious or moral beliefs. And of course,

I guess, okay, this is a book on ministry. So I don't, that's okay. If you want to keep it within the boundaries of religion, but, or moral beliefs, but they could be even more than that.

Anyway, like I, you know, you could have a conviction that gravity is going to work. And, you know,

I don't know. I mean, you could have convictions that aren't in those categories, but let's just accept this. So these break up into two categories, confessional beliefs, and then guidelines.

I give you the page numbers for finding all of this. There's two, so convictions are firmly held religious or moral beliefs, according to these authors.

And there are two categories, confessional beliefs and guidelines. So confessional beliefs would be more like absolutes, right, where that's what we'd be talking about, more like absolutes, things that you can't negotiate.

Guidelines, you know, that sounds, that's pretty, I don't know, flimsy in my mind.

Guidelines are just, you know, maybe there's a principle somewhere, but it's more like, you know, helpful tips.

That's what I think of when I think of a guideline. What's that line even from Pirates of the Caribbean, where Jack Sparrow, the pirate, right, says, you know, it's not a law, it's more like a guideline.

You know, it's kind of, that's how we think of guidelines. So I really, when I see the word guideline, I think, okay, this is optional.

So you have confessional beliefs, not optional, guidelines, optional. So that's, it's kind of loose definitions in my mind, but okay, let's go with it.

So I'm not sure if this is the next slide I wanted. Let's see here. Let's go to this side first. Convictions, so there's certain convictions that are not absolutes.

Here are some examples of them. There are many possible ways to help the poor. That's a good example they give of a conviction that's not an absolute.

We might weigh values differently in the case of Syrian refugees and Central Americans crossing our Southern border. So, and you'll see in a second, what they're saying is that, look, socialism, yeah, that's not really an absolute.

Capitalism, socialism, free market, government controlling things. I mean, that's fine.

You can disagree with, about that, and it's not an absolute. That's more in the realm of guidelines. Syrian refugees and Central Americans crossing the

Southern border. You know, that's really just more of a preference thing. It's more of a, that's a guideline thing. That's not an absolute thing.

So Christians should be able to just kind of disagree with that and be part of the same church and be, you know, and be at peace with one another.

And there shouldn't be cause for dividing over things like this. So I'm just giving you, these are some of the examples.

There's more examples, but I'm giving you some of them. And especially as they pertain to social justice and relate specifically to maybe some of the things

Cruz is dealing with right now. Speaking of social justice. Okay, so here's what everyone's, this is what people are listening to this podcast probably wanna know about more than anything else.

Let me give you some quotes about social justice. And you're gonna find out that this book,

I'll just give you kind of my basic analysis here before we get into it. So you kind of have categories for understanding what

I'm about to say. The book is, you could title it,

Let's Just Get Along. It's really the intent behind this book. And there are some good things in it, but I think the overall intent is to navigate especially the social justice issue.

There's other issues talked about, but I think it's especially about navigating that issue. You look at the time in which it's published and what's going on and many of the examples given and trying to really soft pedal, especially if you read the book, especially left -leaning tendencies that Christians have.

That these aren't really that important. These aren't, and if you make, you're the problem if you're gonna make a big deal about these things.

That's really where I'm seeing this whole thing go. Now, let me give you examples of it now.

Whether or not social justice should be used in evangelism is something determined by the group to which you belong. And in the book, things that are determined by the group to which you belong, kind of a group think mentality, that you're supposed to be aware of that if you're in group think.

That's something to kind of try to transcend. That's something that's not really necessarily legitimate if you're thinking something just because the group you're in thinks it.

So whether or not social justice should be used in evangelism, that's something that's more determined by the group to which you belong.

So it's not something that necessarily touches a core conviction.

It's not something, it's really putting it into, and they don't use this language, but the sense you get is into sort of more secondary.

It's a secondary thing, whether or not social justice should be used in evangelism. You can come together with Christians who use social justice in evangelism.

That's just the group they're part of. That's just kind of how they think. It doesn't really mean that there's like an absolute thing going on here that they might be contradicting, like a confessional belief.

As long as they're within confessional belief, that's just part of the group they're in. And you might be in a different group.

So these are group preferences. Page 92 says this. There are such people as conservative

Southern Baptist feminists. Right, so you can be conservative and a feminist at the same time, and a

Southern Baptist, apparently. Well, this just causes confusion. That's all this does.

Would secular feminists, would they receive someone who says they're a conservative Southern Baptist feminist?

I mean, this is someone who's labeling themself, but this is someone who wants to play around with categories and isn't really being honest with what these categories mean or the originators of these categories and what they meant.

Even if you want to go back to 1848 in the Seneca Falls, go read that. People usually say, oh, third wave, second wave, maybe second wave, but third wave feminism, that's the bad one.

Yeah, I don't know. First, second, third, they're all kind of anti -Christian. You don't really have conservative

Southern Baptist feminists. It's kind of an oxymoron, but there's a tendency in this to kind of just let people label themselves.

It's a little man -centered. I'm gonna explain that a little bit more later, but I'm just trying to show you that the authors have a really soft side when it comes to social justice.

Trayvon Martin, and it should be Martin, not Mart, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, the

Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman situation was used as an example of group think on both sides.

So this is not exactly true though. Those who were trying to look at the facts of the case and judge it legally and correctly, who did not believe

George Zimmerman was guilty, many of them, it wasn't just because they're part of a group think thing. They're not just, oh, well, we're pro -white or we're pro -Hispanic or something.

And that's why we think the way we think. That situation was very much, there were facts involved.

There was a timeline involved. And to just basically say that, well, both sides just had group think going on.

Not necessarily. No, not, that's not exactly accurate. John MacArthur failed to take a respectful stance toward another public figure.

This is the Beth Moore go home situation. So they criticized John MacArthur for saying Beth Moore go home. That just was failing to be respectful.

The powers in the New Testament are compared to a social justice conception of power. And there's a whole section on this where power and social justice and the way that really

Foucault's conception of power, they don't say Foucault, but kind of the same thing. That's really what we're looking at here.

This power that is kind of like the hegemony. It affects everything, these power structures.

And then they use that to say power inequities, they can cause disagreement. And isn't that a bad thing?

We gotta watch out for those power inequities. But they never really discuss what about hierarchy? What about actually hierarchies that are creation norms or things instituted by God?

What do you do with that? That's a power inequity. Here's a quote. And by the way, I put location 1888 here.

And so halfway through, I had to switch from page numbers to Kindle location. And the reason for that was

I was online using Google Books and then after so long, they don't let you preview a book anymore.

So I had to get the Kindle version. So that's why that's there for those who are curious. Anyway, the leaders of your church, the book says, or organization are largely responsible for creating ideology.

Now, this isn't true either. They're creating ideology. That's their responsibility. Your pastor, they're just, our responsibility is creating, no.

How about, I mean, I don't even like to use the term ideology, but let's say this. Their responsibility is to rightly divide the word of God, to understand what

God has said and to disseminate that to a congregation, to teach everything that Jesus commanded, to make disciples.

You're not creating anything. God's already created things. You're discovering truth, perhaps.

You're not creating it though. You're not creating ideology. Maybe this is just sloppy, but this would be the kind of thing a social justice advocate would say though, because they're postmodern and they would look at it that way, that you're manufacturing or creating ideology or ideas that are meant to reinforce, perhaps a power structure or something like that.

In cases of extreme power inequity, civility can be best be understood as a tool of the powerful to silence the disenfranchised.

I mean, this sounds straight out of a social justice, secular social justice, critical theory, textbook or something.

A good illustration of the heavenly wisdom that is open to reason is found in the AND campaign.

That's right, the AND campaign, Christianity and social justice, started by Democrat activists, and Michael Ware, Justin Giboney, or Giboney, I'm not sure how you pronounce his name.

I think they both blocked me a while ago when I used to be on Twitter, I think they blocked me, but which they're very open to reason.

Racism and neo -Marxism are both flamethrower words. So you really should stay away from using these things.

Now, interesting because racism is a word that social justice advocates like to use. So they're saying, yeah, that's a flame thrower word too.

But I've heard this many times, that basically like stop calling us Marxists, is what I hear from a lot of social justice advocates.

They don't like it, they bristle at it. The thing is, when social justice advocates call someone a racist, and they're operating under this idea that, well, it's power and privilege, and benefiting from systems that allocate privilege and power.

That's what a racist is. And you have power because of your white skin or something like that. Then they are playing with definitions there.

You think they're meaning one thing, they're meaning something else. And they're just, it's a subversive tactic meant to smear.

Racism doesn't really mean much anymore. It's just a subversive meant to smear. Neo -Marxism has an actual meaning and definition.

And those who use it generally, I mean, in my experience at least, I mean, the people who use it, myself included, are trying to be faithful to what it actually means.

I'm thinking about the Frankfurt School. I'm thinking about Gramsci. I'm thinking about what's come from them, which is the critical theories of today.

It's neo -Marxism. So when I say someone's a neo -Marxist or is using neo -Marxism or has some neo -Marxist ideas or whatever,

I'm not looking at them and saying that, well, they embody everything about Marxism.

I'm saying that you're consistent with, just like I'd call someone a Christian or a Muslim or something like that,

I'm saying you have an ideology. We have to use labels somewhere along the line. We have to be able to communicate with one another and understand categories and how to understand what someone's beliefs are.

So one of the issues that we've had is that people who actually are neo -Marxists don't want to be labeled as neo -Marxists.

So it's one of these situations where it's not a flamethrower word. It's really not.

It is a very, it's a useful word that's meant to actually categorize an actual thing that you find in the wild, neo -Marxists.

They believe in categories of oppressor and oppressed, but not running along necessarily economic lines as much as cultural lines, social lines.

So anyway, I just, I see a bent here. There's a social justice bent. Here's another one. When people who were more involved in the social justice movement said social justice just is the gospel, things got equally murky.

They were using language that is not uncommon within their in -group. However, conservatives who are less attached to the social justice movement would never speak that way.

There's a whole section here where basically the authors say, you know what, someone who says social justice just is the gospel, it's not like they're a heretic or false teacher.

They're just using the language of their in -group. No, that's false teaching. Social justice is not the gospel.

Like words have meanings. I don't understand how you can, well, they're just using the language of their in -group. So there's kind of a defense.

While they're saying, well, you probably shouldn't use that language or maybe don't use it around conservatives or something, they're also basically trying to tell conservatives, like, look, they're just using the language of their in -group.

That's all that is. No, I'm sorry, that's false teaching. This is something that this would...

Take this to the New Testament. Can you see the apostles ever writing a book called

Winsome Conviction? I can't. Winsome Conviction. If someone said something as heretical as social justice just is the gospel, it would constitute a rebuke from the apostle

Paul or Peter, whoever. That's the effect of it. They wouldn't be, well, let me examine the language of their in -group and really just try to understand what the groupthink dynamics going on here.

No, they would say, okay, there's a language. This is what you're saying. And people who speak the language is what they're hearing.

This is wrong. And I don't know how else you... Social justice is the gospel. How in the world, how else can you understand that in a non -heretical way?

The gospel is about social justice somehow because people are getting saved. And it's the same thing as anti -racism and all the other things.

No, as soon as you're doing that, you're watering down the entire gospel. There's really, and that's the best case scenario.

There's no way to say that sentence without it being false teaching. There's just no option. So they give the benefit of the doubt to social justice advocates quite a bit in this book.

And there are other examples I could probably give as well. So, so far we've...

Just to review before we go on, because there's a lot of moving parts in this. So far, we have a definition of convictions.

Convictions are firmly held religious from our beliefs. They could be confessional beliefs or they could be guidelines. We've so far found that a lot of the social justice stuff, really it falls more into the guideline category.

Even the stuff that we would consider false teaching. Now, certain convictions aren't absolutes.

And some of these are very, they're political things. And the goal seems to be to accept people who might be on the political left.

Because really the vein of the book runs in that direction. Accept Christians who are leftward in their thinking.

In fact, I don't think I included it, but there is an entire story in the book about this whole, during Bill Clinton, when he first won,

I guess, there was a lament session, or it really wasn't even a lament session. It was just like a, let's pray for the

United States kind of thing. And in a way that was kind of, it was lamenting.

It was just like, this is bad, what just happened. And the author brings it up twice in the book to basically rebuke people who would do that.

Because don't you understand that there are Democrats who voted for Bill Clinton in your church?

Like it's disrespectful to them. So that's the sense you get from this book.

Let me read for you some more illustrating this. Here's a big chunk. It's, and I'm probably gonna just summarize this.

We have heard entire discussions of the Christian faith and modern economics swept away by quoting the verse, thou shalt not steal. The implication drawn from the verse is that the government should not tax and redistribute money within an economy.

So it talks about basically socialism is wrong. And then it says this, okay,

American free market capitalism is biblical and Western European market systems are socialist and contrary to scripture.

But using the silver bullet blinds us to biblical passages that point in the opposite direction.

So it's saying, hold on there. Socialism isn't necessarily wrong. There's Bible verses that could support it.

What Bible verses are they? Well, glad you asked. Deuteronomy 14 is the only section they quote.

But they talk about the obligation to leave corners of one's own field uncut so that the poor can harvest them.

By the way, I don't think there's ever an example in scripture of this being actually enforced or a penalty for it.

This is more of an act of charity that was commanded or the canceling of debt in the year of Jubilee or the mandatory tithe collected every third year to distribute to the poor and the disenfranchised.

Jubilee is not an example of socialism either. That's a little more complicated, but it's not, this isn't a big, actually,

Jubilee really favors more the idea of private property and that property staying private.

It's actually interesting. If you get into that, you could probably have some very interesting discussions about what this means for corporations today and that kind of thing that are overstepping so many of the things that we wish they, or so many of the liberties that we have, especially

I'm thinking of like big tech companies. They are, they're just doing some very scary things. You know, you wonder if that could apply to it.

I'm not saying it does and I'm not giving you any application. I'm just saying that, specific application. I'm just saying that the year of Jubilee was more intended to keep private property private, keep it in one's own family, one's own region, that kind of thing.

So that's actually a mark against them, not for them. But the other example given, or the mandatory tithe collected every third year to distribute to the poor and disenfranchise.

Well, listen, here's the thing. There is, when you, you have to be very careful.

When you're looking at the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, there are things that are civil laws that you could look at principles and say they apply today.

There's also things that, because you have the Ecclesia as well represented. So there are things that you have to think through what's the

New Testament teaching on this and is it appropriate for the church to be doing this or is this something that the government is responsible for?

And you are not gonna find that there is this, that that is the church that is responsible for, or I should say the government that is responsible for redistributing income to give to the poor.

That is something that the church would be responsible for to some extent, but not civil government.

You're not gonna find that in the New Testament. And so this is confusing categories.

And this is my whole issue with this whole thing. You have to start to draw some lines. You have to figure out what, is it a central authority forcing things, forcing everyone to do something?

Is it a religious duty for people who are Christians? Is it something that is a voluntary charitable thing that someone does?

If you get those right, then you're not gonna have this problem. Socialism is only about one thing. It's not about charitably giving.

It's not about your church doing something. It is about the state and a modern state at that forcibly taking from one person and giving to another on the basis of an alleged need that exists there.

And in doing so with ever more, with ever more high, with percentages that are very high and in a totally communist state, obviously getting rid of private property.

This author would not see that as a problem necessarily. There's nothing in here that would indicate that the author would think that, well, that's something that Christians should divide over.

Yeah, if you have a communist in your church, then you can't use the thou shalt not steal against them because hold on, there's examples.

This is just poor biblical interpretation right here. And the author goes on. There are so many passages of scripture that address the use and distribution of money, particularly in relation to poverty.

That silver bulleting and argument by using any single passage, no matter which way it points is bound to oversimplify.

Well, the issue is private property. Thou shalt not steal is one of the verses on this, but the issue is private property.

Was it not yours? Remember in the book of Acts, Ananias and Sapphira. Was it not yours before you sold it?

It belonged to you. This is at the height of the church having everything in common. So private property is a principle you find in scripture.

You find it in Jesus's parables. You find it from really the beginning. So there is a softened approach to socialism here.

This isn't something we should divide over. This is something that's kind of secondary, right? This is, and this is so palatable to crew right now.

We can accept these people, right? They can be in crew. There's no problem with that. So here's my critique.

Let me give you a couple of things to think about. Instead of confessional beliefs and guidelines, talk about preferences, principles, and absolutes.

Talk about words that have a lot more definition to them.

Words that we know more of what they mean. We know what a preference is, and they're more firm, firm designations.

It just helps communicate better. I think there's a lot of wiggle room in this. Either it's a confessional belief or it's a guideline.

Typically, we think of preferences, things that are unique to us, things that we like, color blue, things like that.

Principles, there are principles that, and by the way, principles, you can have convictions based off of principles, and people can have different convictions based off of them.

We see that, and that's the whole Romans 13. Romans 14, rather. By the way, I wanted to say, a great sermon on Romans 14 by R .C.

Sproul called The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother. If you go to YouTube and type it in, The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother by R .C.

Sproul, and it really gets into that, and it's a great sermon. And then absolutes, and some principles, principles are really based off of absolutes.

So absolutes, it's always wrong to murder someone. It's always wrong to steal from someone. There's certain things that are absolute, and you can't do anything to change those.

So these are the categories that we should be using. The category confessional belief, or it's a guideline, really just, it makes the net so wide, and you don't have valuable discussions about principles.

Because downstream from a principle can be a very bad belief. You could have someone who says, oh,

I don't believe in stealing, but I'm a socialist. Well, clearly there's something wrong with that.

So where is it? Well, you have to go back to what actually socialism is, why they advocate it.

They have to think through the implications of their belief. And that's gonna bring you right back to principles of private property, and what it means, why

God implemented that, why God allows for that, ordains it, really. What about a strong conviction?

Here's where this thing undercuts itself. It must be my question. What about a strong conviction? What if someone has a strong conviction, right?

Let's go back to the definition real quick, so you can see this, if I can find it. Okay, we do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility.

We will dispute the claim that convictions are about absolutes. We do not believe all Christians will agree on matters of conviction.

So here's my question. What about a strong conviction to divide over strong convictions? What do you do then?

What if that is their conviction, is that we should divide over strong convictions? Or that convictions are about absolutes?

What if someone has that conviction, that convictions are about absolutes? Or what if they believe that Christians should agree on matters of conviction?

What do you do then? It really undercuts the entire premise of the book at that point, because it's all based off of what?

Someone's convictions. So if someone's conviction is to care about conviction and to divide over conviction, then you have a problem.

And also, there's a false dichotomy in this, and this is a false dichotomy I hear all the time.

Here's a quote from the book. The goal was to consider ways, it's about why they wrote the book. The goal was to consider ways we could share the

Christian perspective, seen by many as argumentative and harsh, in a way that balanced truth -telling with love.

Okay, balanced truth -telling with love. What does that mean? You don't, so we should speak the truth in love, but these are both factors that should be there when we speak.

It's not like there's a scale, and on one side is love, on the other side is truth, and you gotta balance it. This is a problem, and I hear this.

Either they're being very sloppy in the way they're communicating, or they believe what a lot of Christians believe, which is like, yeah, let's turn the love up a little and turn the truth down some more.

Turn that truth up a lot, turn that love down, depending on the situation. No, they're both there. They're not on a scale together.

They're different things, and so I just, oftentimes this is used to soften a message, to soften truth, by saying, well,

I'm just trying to be loving. All right, here's another one. Overall, I believe it's man -centered, and it's because of their guiding limitation, and what

I mean by that is the thing that guides people as to whether or not they should divide with someone is really based on people themselves, especially preference.

Let me give you some examples. Here's a quote from page 46. Joining together for a season of lament assumes an agreement on political issues that is probably not in reality.

This is what I was talking about earlier. Let's lament in our Bible study that Bill Clinton just got elected, or you could use, that's the example he uses.

So joining together for a season of lament assumes an agreement on political issues that is probably not reality. Don't do this in a

Bible study. That's what he's saying, the authors are saying. Instead, seek to identify beliefs and mandates that would be affirmed by all.

Now, what's something that would be affirmed by all? They give the example of opposition to racism.

So we should be able to oppose racism in Bible study, right, because everyone agrees with that, but you know what, lamenting over Bill Clinton getting elected, no, don't use that because there's some people who would probably disagree with it, and you're making them feel uncomfortable.

What's the guiding limitation? It's how people feel. This puts unanimous preference in the privileged position instead of principle.

So you're not making your decisions based on principles. You're making them based off of, well, what does everyone think?

And that's my main issue with why not use the word principle? Preference, principle, absolutes instead of confessional beliefs and guidelines.

Principles, so much of wisdom is based off of how do you make decisions in the real world by applying principles correctly?

That's how we should be thinking. How do we apply the principles we've learned? We gotta use our brain. We gotta rightly divide the word of truth.

We gotta be, we have to be the Bereans. We have to put some work into it, right? There's nothing wrong with that.

That's what's expected of us. Dig in deep. Be men and women of understanding.

Understand what does God want? Can we look at one situation that's a parallel and then apply it to a situation we have today?

We have what we need to understand how the church should operate.

It's in the word. We have it. It's there. So there's, we can navigate these things and we can find the principles we need to navigate them.

But that category isn't really present in the book. And that's part of the problem with this book because then you start thinking, well,

I guess I can't really, you know, oppose that evil necessarily that I see in front of me because that's not really a confessional belief.

So racism, so you see, here's the thing. What if you have a racist in the group? Well, what then?

Maybe you shouldn't lament racism in your group because you might have someone who's a racist. I mean, that's, you're just assuming, well, everyone agrees on that one.

So this is just, it's kind of dumb to be honest with you to make your decision based off of that.

In fact, if there's people, this would be a good opportunity in my mind. If you're a Bible study leader, right?

And I've been in this position and you want to pray and you want to say,

Lord, someone who is evil was elected or someone who is gonna push some bad things was just elected or that, you know, this means something bad for our country.

You have the opportunity in that situation to explain what you mean by it. And someone who might be ignorant of that, they get to hear your explanation.

If they don't like it enough and they wanna leave and divide over it, that's up to them. But if you're faithfully working off of principles in the word of God, and you're doing your best to apply those, you have to be able to identify, to apply these things in the real world.

You have to be able to judge character and all of these things. In fact,

I mean, look, oh, John, well, you like Trump. Well, no, I think there's plenty of reason to lament, if you would, over some of Trump's character issues that someone like this made it to the

White House and he was one of the, he was between the two, the better option. I mean, that's really, really sad.

If you're thinking of the two major candidates, that's a really sad thing. I don't see that there's a problem there.

So no, this isn't a pro -Trump or it has nothing to do with that. I'm just saying that the direction of our concern should be towards what does the

Bible say? What are the principles there? What's right and wrong? What does God think? Instead of asking the question, well, what are the people in this room?

What do they all think? Are they all in agreement on me, with me on this? See, it's putting the people in the driver's seat here.

Here's another quote. Until we can state each other's opinions in a matter recognizable to our opponents, we have not accurately confirmed whether we have a real conflict or a misunderstanding.

Okay, this isn't true in all circumstances, guys. It may be true in some circumstances and it's not a bad thing to try to figure out what someone actually believes.

It's actually very respectful often. All right, you said this. Am I understanding you correctly? Let me repeat back what you said.

Perfectly good, perfectly legitimate, perfectly fine. However, we don't see this being done in the Bible all the time at all.

In fact, we don't see it that often. I'm trying to even think of an example of it. I'm sure there probably is one, but oftentimes what you find is false teaching goes out there in the case of false teaching and the apostles see the false teaching for what it is and they condemn it and they go after the person propagating it right there on the spot.

Jesus did it in front of the Pharisees even at times. So this is something that he's not going back and forth.

Hey, when you said that, what did you mean? No, when you understand what the person meant, when the people around you, when you get it, then you don't mince words, you condemn, you protect the sheep against these things.

What the game I often see played is, okay, when you said systemic racism or that you believe in white privilege and all that,

I'll show you the quote here for those who are watching. When you said all that and are you saying you agree with critical race theory and then you get into this whole thing?

No, and oftentimes subversive Marxists will never allow you to think that you've accurately portrayed them or understand what they believe.

I've just seen this a lot. You can never quite, it's like nailing Jell -O to a wall. I remember

I had a phone call, I remember, and it was, this is an example of the kind of thing

I'm talking about. It was with Danny Akin, it was a few years ago, 45 minute phone call or so.

And I remember the whole conversation was just circle after circle after circle. You know, I have in front of me, okay, this is what your professor

Matt Mullen said. He said this about adopting kids who aren't white and that white people shouldn't do that.

Well, he didn't really, and the whole conversation, it wasn't just about that, there were a number of situations. The whole conversation just went in circles.

There was no way. And no matter what I said, I was always misunderstanding. I was always misrepresenting.

I was always lying somehow, but I never knew how. They could not accurately explain to me what

I had done. Dr. Akin couldn't, no one else there seemed to be able to tell me what I had misrepresented.

I'm literally quoting people, quoting Walter Strickland and what he believes. This is the kind of thing

I've seen. And this kind of quote that, well, until you can state another person's opinions in a matter recognizable to the opponent, then you haven't confirmed whether they have, you have a real conflict or a misunderstanding.

That's the kind of thing they would love to hide behind. You know, we're not granting you the ability to think that you've understood us.

And this, for any kind of Gnostic, for any kind of someone who thinks they have knowledge that's so far beyond you, this won't work.

So you need to be able to just say, you know what? This is what you said. I've tried to confirm it perhaps, but I heard the words that I heard.

And I'm going to, you know, if you wanna correct me, correct me, but it's gotta be an actual correction.

It can't be just, you don't understand. I don't give you the power to correct me because you are beneath me or something like that.

It's, that's not gonna work. And so I just see that as a potential problem with this thinking.

And then this does not work for postmodernists. Oh, I wrote my critique, or subversive Marxists. And it is not modeled in the

New Testament when pertaining to false teaching. We do not make a false teacher the arbiter of whether his teaching is false.

So here, those are some of my critiques. Also, here's another one, muddy definition. Here's one, and I'm actually not even gonna read this.

Let me just tell you that basically the author, the authors argue this. Everyone's got different ministries they're a part of.

Some people like disability ministry. Some people like youth ministry. There's all sorts of different ministries. Therefore, these ministries are all convictions.

They're different convictions. All these minute preferences for certain ministries and involving oneself in them.

So we're better together if we all work towards our ministries in the church.

So spiritual gifts or ministries that you're involved with, if you just stay in your lane, you're doing that ministry, those ministries to the glory of God, we can all work together and do the best for God and be a team that's powerful.

And that's why we can all work together and have different convictions. Except for this, let me ask you this.

Remember the definition of conviction. Confessional beliefs, guidelines. Those are the two categories.

How does this fit into that? Is a ministry preference a confessional belief? No. Is a ministry preference a guideline?

Not really. It's just a preference that one has.

It's not a guideline that stands over a group of people or everyone.

It's not absolute. It's not a piece of wisdom that everyone needs to take to heart necessarily.

It's just a preference. It's just the way God's equipped or gifted someone. So this is outside of the definition given in the book for what a conviction is.

And yet this is the main argument at the end for why different convictions are good within the church.

So this is just really muddy. This is not a well -written book. And that's my last slide,

I guess. So that's the end of the critique. So my thoughts on winsome conviction. There are some good things in there that are helpful,

I think, where you can kind of... I mean, they're just so basic in my mind that I don't think the book is worth it, getting it.

It's just like trying to separate preferences from things that are actual, and what they say is confessional beliefs.

That's a helpful thing. But it would be more helpful probably if you just honestly read Romans 14, listen to the

R .C. Sproul sermon on the tyranny of the weaker brother, and then just try to be nice to people as much as you possibly can, but be absolutely unmoved and aggressive even when you need to be when it comes to false teaching, if you need to be.

Stand against it the way... Take as your example, the scriptures that we have on false teaching.

I mean, Paul's pretty harsh sometimes. I don't know if you realize it, but look, Paul said, look,

I hope that some of these Judaizers go all the way in their circumcision. He wasn't playing around.

Elijah on Mount Carmel wasn't playing around. Jesus with the Pharisees. I mean, woe to you, and all the woes that he gives them.

I mean, he really beats them up. Are they being winsome? I mean, that wasn't winsome conviction,

I guess. I don't know. I mean, it certainly seems out of step with this book. So I'd go with Jesus.

I'd go with the apostles. I would ignore this book if I were you, and I'm not saying there's nothing to glean, but just in general, not worth your time.

This is not gonna work in Crew, by the way, and this is my main point, and then I'll end the episode because we're over 50 minutes.

Crew has a diametrically opposed positions, and people lining up on both sides, and until they ask the question, is critical race theory and social justice and all of that, until they ask the question, are those things in conflict with Christianity, and in conflict in such a way that they overturn the convictions of Christianity, the principles of Christianity, the core teachings, these kinds of things, until they actually ask that question and answer that question and come to grips with it, there's gonna be no peace.

It'll be people shouting peace, peace, when there is no peace. You cannot categorize this fight as a secondary issue.

It's not gonna happen. You're talking about absolute truth versus subjectivity. You're talking about Marxism and egalitarian equality versus equality before the law.

You're talking about playing fast and loose with the definition of justice and forgiveness and things that are really core to the gospel.

You're talking about adding laws to the gospel, social justice teachings, by creating a new gospel based off of those.

You're talking about thinking ideologically and pushing everything through a narrow scope of power relationships or oppression or something like that and not viewing the world through the full spectrum of everything that God has made it to be.

There's so many things that you're, you can't just like wipe that away with, well, that's just a secondary issue.

It's not gonna happen. So that's my prediction. And I know a lot of people are invested in making that happen, and they want the money to keep flowing.

But honestly, guys, the money can't keep flowing if that's the situation. And I would encourage you again, if you're involved in any way, shape or form with Cru, giving them money, especially,

I would give them a call. Here it is again, the email, where to find the email addresses, the phone number, and the letter that, or the address you can write a letter to right here.

And for those in Cru who might be confused about this and wanna answer that question, how do we figure out whether Christianity and social justice are in conflict or not?

You can go to ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com that's

ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com. And I'm very pleased by the way, I was just noticing, maybe I can pull it up right now as I'm doing this, that it's doing pretty well.

For a guy, I was thinking about this. Some of the other books that are on this topic are, they have big names behind them.

I have not paid one penny for advertising, not one. And I'm not paying Facebook.

I've seen some of these other, by the way, it's the most ironic thing to me. People have written books against social justice in Christianity, paying

Facebook to advertise it for them. It's not a sin. I'm not saying it's wrong necessarily. I'm just saying, it just seems out of step with what you're, like, isn't

Facebook like one of the biggest advocates of social justice? And I have a

Facebook account. I'm not saying it's wrong to be on Facebook, it's a tool, but to give them money,

I just, I can't in my own, this is my conscience, okay? It's just my conscience. So I'm saying I couldn't do it. So I haven't paid anything.

I did reach out to, I think it was Gab or one of these alternative social media websites and said, hey,

I'm interested in maybe working a deal here. I haven't heard anything, but all that to say,

Christianity, Social Justice, Religions and Conflict on Amazon, it is number one on the new releases in Religious Studies, Church and State.

Number one, that's the Kindle edition. And then if I, let's see, if I look at number 10 in, let's see, no, it says number one in Religious Studies, Church and State.

It is number 15 in Social Issues and Christianity. And then the paperback version is, if it'll come up here, it came up on my phone.

It doesn't seem to wanna come up for some reason on my browser, I don't know why, but it was doing fairly decent.

And so I would just encourage you, please, if you have the book, if you like the book, please review the book on Amazon, even if you didn't purchase it from Amazon.

If you purchase it from me, go to Amazon, review the book, even if it's just like, hey, I like this book. It does help from what

I understand, the algorithms and all that. So thank you for your support. God bless all of you and more coming

Lord willing later this week and looking forward to it. Bye now. Bye.