Kevin DeYoung, They're Coming For You, It's Partially Your Own Fault, but I Got Your Back

All right. Well, it is Friday, which means we've made it through another week.

God willing, we will make it through another one next week. I want to talk about Kevin DeYoung today.

He wrote an article, and well, it's... I don't like the article, but there is definitely some good there, and I'm going to decide right now whether or not to blast it completely or to be as constructive as possible.

I'm going to let fate decide. I almost dropped it. All right.

Well, here we go. I don't remember how I even saw this tweet. I don't have a Twitter account, but I saw this tweet, and I think

I was looking up Kevin DeYoung, and this is what came up on my search. So, very interesting that this was something that was being promoted by the algorithm.

Here's what it says. It's from Kevin DeYoung. It says, If I have something hard to say to my people,

I can do it in the context of preaching 70 sermons a year to them, doing funerals with them, milling around after church with them.

My church is filled with white evangelicals, and they don't deserve to be castigated every week.

And I have to say, I really like this tweet. This is a very good tweet, and I even posted it on Gab because I liked it so much.

And I said, Look, if the good reverend can follow through with this swing, this could be a game changer.

And what I meant by that was, you know, when you're when you're playing baseball, or I think this is true in golf as well, though I'm not a big golfer, you know, your swing is when it makes contact is only half the battle.

You got to keep swinging. The temptation is to make contact and stop right there, but you won't get a lot of power if you do that.

So you got to keep swinging, you got to follow through. And so Kevin DeYoung has a real good swing here. But he's got to follow through with this in order to make this work.

And right now, guys, I don't know if you've noticed, but I am just looking for someone in Big Eva to break ranks and to lead the charge.

It's not like I, I need this to happen. You know, obviously, I'm going to do what I have to do, regardless of what anyone in Big Eva does.

And the people that view this channel, I think you all agree, you know, we're going to do what we have to do before God, regardless of any, what any, you know, evangelical leader does.

So if they want to deny Christ, if they want to, you know, just just just shirk their responsibilities, then they can do whatever they need to do.

We're going to do what we need to do. We're way beyond that point. But I recognize that it would be very, very helpful for a known name, somebody that we know, and we used to trust to say, you know, guys, like enough of this.

And so I've kind of been looking for that. And I'm compiling a list of evangelical leaders that have shown some kind of, you know, propensity to sort of stand up to this zeitgeist.

And it's a small list. And it's a sad list, because even those who do stand up to the zeitgeist typically do so in a very timid, sort of taken small steps kind of a way.

And it's really not much. But like, honestly, it's like, it's like you're trying to make a fire. It's a cold night.

And you've got one spark. And it's it's not much, it's probably not going to lead to anything. But you got a baby. And it's like, you know, you ever see those, those survival shows when they start a fire, and it's like, they've got a little coal.

And they're just like, there's like, it is amazing how they start a fire that way. That's kind of how I feel. It's like,

Oh, great. Kevin Young is saying something. It's not much, but it's something and I'm over there trying to blow the little coal so it can burn into a fire.

Anyway, I just thought of that analogy in my head just now. In any case, so I knew that there must have been some kind of a controversy.

And then one of my one of my Gav followers conjunction, he sent me this tweet.

And he said, Hey, AD, I don't know if you're aware, but Kevin Young and David French are in the midst of a major fight on the bird app.

In fact, it's turning into a battle royale with Kristen Dumez and Sarah Pulliam Bailey getting in on the action.

And he has that meme of that guy just hysterical laughing with some popcorn. And I, you know,

I, this is my reaction to when I see these kinds of squabbles, because they don't usually lead to much, but it's, it is funny to see the hysterical women come after you.

That's how you know, they're not kidding. When, when you say something that's true and they send the hysterical women after you like David French and Kristen Dumez and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, that's how you know, they're not kidding.

Cause they use hysterical women to, to, to get you to shut up. Right? Because the thing is like, like men, and I have this temptation to guys.

So like, I'm not saying I'm better than Kevin DeYoung. I'm not men have this thing where if a woman comes to them crying and upset that they just want to do anything to calm them down.

And so if it, if it takes me shutting up, then maybe I'll shut up. I think women are often used in these kinds of debates in that way.

So it's like, it almost, it almost wants to disarm you because you don't want to make a hysterical woman more hysterical.

But we got to get over that because we understand that's a weapon that's often used in this. So when they want you to shut up, they'll send

David French clutching his bros. And it's like, you know, you gotta be ready for it and you gotta be ready to disregard it.

You gotta be ready to be stone face in the, in the, in, in, in the face of a hysterical woman. In any case,

I did not follow the whole debate here. It's hard to follow Twitter stuff now because I don't have an account and like, it doesn't let you see the whole back and forth.

And so I just, it's just very difficult for me to do, but, but I did find the article that got everybody in a tizzy.

And from what I understand, there's a few other things that got everybody in a tizzy that Kevin DeYoung allegedly did, but this is the article.

And I read the article and it's good, but it's not that good.

I mean, it's like, I don't know. I disagree with a lot of it. And so what I want to do here, Kevin, and I hope you don't mind if I speak to you directly.

Maybe you'll see this video. I don't know. I've never interacted with Kevin DeYoung. I have a feeling that one day

I will. And Kevin, if you do hear this, I'd like to talk to you. You can email me at ad at adrobles .com.

Despite what you may have heard from the rumor mill, which is sinful anyway, I'm not a bad guy.

I'm a trustworthy guy and it's all that. We can keep it all private. That's just the bottom line. But in any case,

I want to read this article and offer you some unsolicited advice, because I think that there's a lot of mistakes you've made in this article and you don't have to make them because you're better than that, man.

And I think you know better. Here we go. The temptations of the germ, the temptation of the germ.

Why, why, why do you do this? Why do you do this to a guy like me? I'm an educated guy.

I mean, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but why do you use these words? Jeremiad.

Jeremiad. I had to look it up. Jeremiad, a long, mournful complaint or lamentation, a list of woes.

The Jeremiads of Puritan preachers, warning of moral decay. So it's a list of woes, the temptation of the

Jeremiad. The subject is critiques of white evangelicals express annoyance rather than a desire to persuade.

Now, I normally will start and stop the article as I read it. But what I'm going to do is

I'm going to read this article all as a unit, and then give you some advice after. So that's what

I'm going to do starting right now. All right. Over the last five years, a specific type of political and sociological complaint has emerged.

We might call it here the here's what's wrong with white evangelicalism Jeremiad.

If a typical Jeremiad denounces a community for its wickedness and laments the moral morality of that society in a serious tone of sustained invective, then scarcely a week goes by in which white evangelicalism is not the subject to a sustained

Jeremiad, often by those who count or once counted themselves part of white evangelicalism.

A case in point is David French's recent article, Deconstructing White Evangelical Politics. Before I register some disagreements with French's article, let me gladly acknowledge that David, if I may, is a fellow believer and a fellow

Presbyterian who has served bravely this country and the cause of Christian liberty at many times and in many ways.

David is a brother, not an enemy. Let me also acknowledge that I agree with many of French's complaints.

I too am grieved by those who beclown themselves in minimizing Trump's sins and following him with messianic fervor.

I too am concerned that conspiracy theories can easily take hold of good churchgoing people.

I too lament that many Christians are more deeply catechized by their preferred political pundits than they are by their own church's confessions.

And yet, there are serious problems with the white evangelicals are ruining everything Jeremiad that I've seen often from French and several other writers.

For starters, the genre often assumes conclusions instead of reaching them. French, for example, decries the fact that white evangelicals are less likely than any other group to think that poverty, inequality, and racism are serious threats to the country.

This is not the result, French writes, you'd expect from a community whose politics is centered around biblical justice.

French's conclusion begs the question, maybe evangelicals don't care about biblical justice or maybe they just have a different assessment of how bad each problem is and what biblical justice entails.

The Jeremiads are also vexing because they are so broad as to be non -falsifiable. In tweeting his article,

French argued that the politics of evangelicals are often a destructive artifact of culture that is not always just and sometimes rejects the truth of the scriptures they seek to protect.

The qualifiers in that sentence do a lot of heavy lifting. By the time you get past often and not always and sometimes, the statement cannot be gainsayed.

It's like when Peter Wenner wrote about the nefarious effects of Southern culture while also admitting that these cultural attitudes are hardly shared by every

Southerner or dominant throughout the South. So is the problem Southern culture and white evangelicalism or is the problem that Southerners and white evangelicals, like everyone else, are sinners?

If the Jeremiads simply lamented bad behavior and bad ideas, that would be one thing. There are plenty of both in the church, but the complaints go a big step further and mean to indict an entire ism and deconstruct an entire movement.

The arguments are less about what white evangelicals have gotten wrong, that is assumed, and more about why they believe such bad things.

This is where theories of Southern culture or political partisanship or, from other writers, patriarchy, toxic masculinity come into play.

Of course, the why questions are not entirely off limits, but they are much harder to prove and degenerate quickly into markers of outgroup and in -group identity.

White evangelical functions for one side in the way that cultural

Marxists or blue checkmark or evangelical elites function for the other side. It's a way of communicating, these people are like that because they are those kind of people.

And this is my biggest complaint with the white evangelical Jeremiad. It has the same head -shaking you -people vibe that prompted the deplorables to embrace

Trump in the first place. It's one thing to object to an idea or a set of propositions.

It's another to object to a class of people. Even if French is right and evangelicals should not have supported

Trump and evangelicals should not be skeptical about the many COVID protocols, there is little sympathy for trying to understand why evangelicals might have behaved in these ways.

There is no persuasion, only pique and annoyance.

At the risk of seeming biased towards my own profession, I can't help but notice that the leading voices decrying the moral bankruptcy of white evangelicalism are not but professional writers, academics, and full -time commentators.

Given the nature of these vocations, valuable, honorable vocations, it is easier to produce frequent

Jeremiads against the church than to provide a positive vision for the church. If your natural rhythm is not the whole counsel of God Sunday after Sunday, but another critique of the church in your inbox on Sunday morning, that should tell you something.

The Lord knows there is much to criticize in the church, but I doubt that relentless, unsympathetic, exasperated censure of one specific people is the best way to convince them of your criticisms, let alone build them up in Christ.

So there's the article. And okay, so just to get us started here, the thrust of this article is good.

Because at this point, like I said with the little coal, you know, that you're trying to blow into a fire, it's like, at this point, any pushback is welcome.

And there's definitely some pushback that Kevin DeYoung gives here regarding all of the ridiculous, deconstructing evangelicalism, you know, white evangelicals, all that stuff is just so ridiculous that anyone that would name the name of Christ would engage in that kind of behavior.

It's preposterous. It's sinful. It's evil. It's hatred and all of that. And so any kind of pushback against that temptation is a big deal, and so I want to commend

Kevin DeYoung for it. But the details of this article, to be perfectly honest with you, they're not helpful,

Kevin. And I think that you know better, which is why it's so perplexing. I want to encourage you to say what needs to be said, to do what needs to be done.

Because I think that if you just for one moment, just reflect on your self, on your own soul, and your own personality, and stuff like that.

If you could just reflect and say, how would you be acting right now? What would you be saying?

How would you be communicating right now? If this was an article about a group of people, a popular group of people, people that wrote for The Atlantic, people that wrote for, you know, major news organizations, stuff like that, respected people that you considered friends.

If they were writing all of these jeremiads, whatever that word is, which is, we'll get to that in a minute.

If they were writing these jeremiads about blacks, black Christians, oh, it's that black theology, that blacks are the problem for everything.

How would you be responding? How would you be behaving? What kind of rhetoric would you be using? Because I find it very difficult to believe that you would be writing in this way, if these people were saying the same things about them blacks, or them

Latinos, or something like that. And so I really do think you need to take a good look in the mirror, because you know what's right here, and yet, we'll talk about it.

So the first thing is, I want to, we'll look at this backwards, right? So you end the article talking about that, you know, these exasperated critiques of white evangelicals, it's not the best way to convince people, let alone build them up in Christ.

Kevin, come on. You know, they're not trying to build anyone up in Christ.

You know that David French is not trying to convince people. He's trying to browbeat white people.

That's what he's trying to do. And that's another thing, too. You soften your language so much here, Kevin, in ways that are inappropriate.

I want to help you. I'm not mad at you. I'm grateful for this article. But it's just not enough,

Kevin. And I think you know better. Because you say, oh, you know, they're just frustrated with white people.

They're just, they're just, they're annoyed. It's people are annoyed with white people. No, Kevin, that's not it.

That's not it. You don't have to be emotional to get to get what's going on here, right? Biblically, David French, Christian Dumas, all of these people, they hate white people.

They're demonstrating partiality against white people. Biblically, that's what's going on.

See, that's something in my throat here. And so again, like, there's no need to soften this language,

Kevin. Because if they were saying the same things against black people, you and I both know that you would not have soft words for people like that.

You would not have, you know, just kind of like, oh, you know, it's just kind of, it's not right to do this. You're just kind of annoyed with black people.

No, no, no. You would say what it is. You hate black people. You're showing partiality against black people.

You would say it. You wouldn't soften it at all. But you seek to soften this abject hatred that people in the mainstream media and your friends,

I guess, the people you consider brothers in Christ have towards white people. It's just, it's not acceptable,

Kevin. And the thing is, like, listen, I love white people. I do. I grew up with white people.

I grew up with other kinds of people, you know what I mean? But I've always had white friends, and I continue to have white friends, and there's white people in my family, and all of that kind of thing.

And I can see it for what it is. I'm not white, but I can see it for what it is. It's hatred towards white people.

Whiteness is wicked. That's what they think. They really do think that. And so, Kevin, like, these kinds of softening of the issues, it's not helping, man.

It's not. And here's the other thing, too. Let me say this as well. You know, you start this article, and, you know, this is how all these articles start.

And I understand the temptation, but I think you need to come up with the courage to understand there's a certain category that I think is missing in your mind, in a lot of your friends' mind as well.

Here's how you start this article. You say, a case in point is David French's recent article. Before I register disagreements with French's article, let me gladly acknowledge that he's a fellow believer.

He's a fellow Presbyterian. He served his country. He defends Christian liberty. He's a brother, not an enemy.

Guys, I just, here's what we need to understand, right? You're trying to affirm this guy, oh, he's definitely on our side, even as he's hating white people publicly for a living.

He hates white people publicly for a living, especially white Christians. He hates them for a living.

That's how he earns his money. And so there's this thing, there's a category, Kevin, that I think you need to accept.

And I understand it's hard to accept, right? Here's the category. It's people that have done faithful -looking things in the past, but have since become an enemy.

It is people that used to do good things, but have since become compromised. See, this is a legitimate category of people biblically.

They used to walk with us. They used to look like one of us. They used to act like one of us, but it turns out they never were one of us.

And you can find that based on their, we're judging by their fruits, right? It's not, you know, because later in here you say, oh, it's just like, it's like when those people say blue checkmark or evangelical elite or cultural

Marxists. It's coming out of nowhere. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But it's like, no, no, we're not judging them because they have a blue checkmark,

Kevin. You have a blue checkmark. I don't judge you according to that. We joke around about blue checkmarks and stuff like that.

But no, no, no. There is a, there is a judging by the fruit of typical evangelical blue checkmarks that there's a consistency to how they act.

There's a consistency to it. And so it's not like we're judging David French because we don't like his face.

It's not like we're judging David French because of the color of his skin. It's not like we're judging David French because he sounds like a moron.

No, no. We're judging him by his words and his actions by his fruit. And so you need to get this category in your mind of people that seem to be walking with the

Lord and now are against his church. That's the category. You know, Carl Truman had this same thing where he's defending, you know, you know,

Tim Keller and, and, and grow. Oh, he's a faithful man of God. Yeah. Well, maybe that's how it used to be, but you have to understand he's also causing much damage.

You do acknowledge that these are, this is a category that exists. And I, and I understand Kevin and, and some of you guys, like it's easier for me because I didn't grow up in the fight with these guys, right?

Like I wasn't in the foxhole with them ever. You were. And so it's hard to accept. I was just talking to my, my biological brother, like we're thinking this through, like what would it be his temptation if him and I, you know, we've obviously been foxholes together.

And then I started saying things about, you know, you know, the black people and whites and evangelicals.

And I started saying a lot of the same kind of stuff that David French is saying right now, would he have a temptation to defend me?

I think he would because he knows me. He thinks, oh, but the thing is, you know, people that you know, that are obviously a brother right now, they can walk away from the faith.

We understand that. And so, so this temptation of, oh, he's totally a brother. You look, you might think so, but listen, we've got good reason to think he might not be.

You judge by the fruit and David French's fruit is completely rotten. Here's the other thing too.

You have this temptation also here to agree with basically everything French says. Oh yeah.

You know, everyone's just clowning themselves because they supported Trump. They minimize the sins. They think he's the

Messiah. Like you're believing everything. You believe the whole thing here, but actually I don't think you actually do. I think you understand that some people maybe thought that Trump was the

Messiah, but very few, not that many. Sometimes fake conspiracy theories can take hold of good church going people, but not very often.

And also many of the things that are called conspiracy theories are actually pretty accurate when you think about them in reverse, right?

When you look back, a lot of those conspiracy theories are true. You know, I think you know that some people are sure they're catechized by their political pundits, but that's the minority when you really think about it.

And I think, so, so, so here's the thing, like there's no reason to agree with his criticisms if they're not true.

I mean, if they're true, I guess the thing is, like of course there's exceptions to every rule, but what's this temptation to want to agree with him on things that are obviously not true.

And you later, you say they're pretty much indefensible, they're non -falsifiable, but yet you're agreeing with them,

Kevin. That's not good enough. That's not good enough. So anyway, you know, that was, that was the other thing

I wanted to talk about. Now there's one, there's one more that I wanted to mention here. You say, and this is, this is where I think this is the low point of the article, in my opinion,

Kevin, because I just don't think you're actually thinking this through. And I think that an example will very easily show you this.

You say this, you say the term white evangelical functions for one side in the way that cultural

Marxist or blue check mark or evangelical elites functions for the other side. It's a way of communicating.

Those people are like that because they are those kinds of people, Kevin, even if you were kind of right, which

I don't think you are, because again, we're judging by the fruit. It's not like one day we woke up and said,

Oh, everybody's a Marxist. No, what happened is over time, we started seeing fruit that was highly suspicious and highly similar to Marxist fruit.

Right? So, so we're judging by the, that's what the Bible says to do. You will know them by their fruit, judge them with right judgment.

So it's not like that. So that's, I don't think it's quite right, but even if it was right, people were saying,

Oh yeah, all those blue check marks, all of them, they're just all the same. They just, because they're blue check marks, they always act the same.

Even if that was true, you don't see Kevin, the fundamental difference between all of the examples you tried to use that were bad.

They're very bad on the, on the right side and white evangelicals, Kevin, cultural

Marxist, blue check mark, evangelical elite. These are not things that are fundamental to a, to a human's, you know, you know, existence here.

Like, like it's not part of their, it's not part of their, their ethnicity or something like that. Like you don't see the between judging someone because they say

Marxist sounding things or because they act like an evangelical elite, you know, like where they're, where they're just called you circle the wagon and stuff like that.

And then say, Oh, this is evangelical elitism. You don't see the difference between that and white people,

Kevin, they're totally, they're fundamentally different.

I was born Puerto Rican. I can't do anything about that. I wasn't born an evangelical elite. I wasn't born a

Christian. I wasn't born a cultural Marxist. I was born Puerto Rican, just like white people who are being blamed right now for every problem in society, in every area of society, including your friend,

David French, they were born white. God made them white.

I just, I like you again, you would see it instantly if people were blaming blacks for all of life's problems, you would never compare that to someone saying,

Oh yeah, those blue check mark it because it's fundamentally different, Kevin. I think you know that. I think you know that.

And so it's like, I see you trying to curry a little favor, a little understanding, you know, cross the aisle and stuff like that.

Kevin, you're firmly in our aisle. That's what I believe in my, in my head, right? That's what I believe.

I don't know that to be true, but that's what I believe. You're firmly on our side of this. You get it. You understand the dangers of the social justice movement.

You understand the dangers of this me too feminism. You understand the weaponization of these ideologies within the church.

You know it all too well, Kevin. So these kinds of articles, they're really not that helpful man, because you're capitulating so much of the argument to these people and you're betraying a partiality that you have in your heart.

You're willing to tolerate a hatred of white people that you would never tolerate.

If someone was saying that about my Puerto Rican heritage, you would never tolerate it, but you're tolerating people, hating white people, softening it.

So maybe they're not quite hating white. They're just a little bit annoyed with white people. It's, it betrays that you've got, you've got some soul searching to do

Kevin. You've got some soul searching to do, because I might,

I might believe that you're on the right side of this, but to be perfectly honest, like your actions and the way you're talking about this, that's evidence for the other side.

You're not acting the way a Christian ought to act without partiality in this issue,

Kevin. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you would, maybe you would tolerate black haters.

Maybe you would tolerate Puerto Rican haters, right? Maybe you would, I don't know. I doubt it though. I highly doubt it.

And, and so, you know, this is the thing guys, like when it comes to, you know, the blue check marks and the evangelical elite and stuff like that, the pushback that we're starting to see, we're starting to see little embers of a fire pushing back, right?

Like we're going to need to see a whole lot more than just embers. Because the thing is,

I was talking to my brother about this too. Like, like for every, for every

Christian who knows better, who doesn't push back with the fervor that they need to, that the assault on the gospel that's happening in the church deserves an assault in return, right?

We need to get strong words in return, strong pushback. We need strong resistance because this is a threat.

This is a threat to your congregations that are being influenced, right? But for every one person who does that and does not push back the way they ought, that's worth like a hundred of the enemies, right?

Because, you know, Jamar Tisby, you know, he's a, he's a, he's a major player in this. He's, he's subverting the church.

Kristen Dumez is a major player in this. She's subverting the church, but, but those people are interchangeable.

Like, honestly, like if, if Kristen Dumez, you know, just stopped writing, she'd be replaced instantly by another feminist trying to cause problems.

If Jamar Tisby were to stop writing, he'd be replaced instantly, but they're interchangeable. There's like, you know, for every one of those guys, there's like 50 waiting in the wings.

And by the way, this is why they get more radical. By the way, Kristen Dumez will get more radical over time. Jamar Tisby will get more radical because they know they're interchangeable, right?

They know that they can be replaced instantly. So they have to constantly step it up because otherwise they're going to be out radicalized by someone else.

So that's why they get worse and worse and worse over time because they're trying to maintain their position of subversion in the church.

But those guys are interchangeable. They don't matter. They don't matter. What matters is the small amount of people.

I'm compiling a list here of people that I think are standing up to this nonsense. And there's not that many of them.

But the thing is when you don't do what you ought to do, it's devastating. It's devastating because you're not interchangeable.

There's not that many people in positions like you, Kevin, you're in a great position to actually make a huge difference here, man.

And I'm pulling for you and I'm praying for you. And I want to help you in any way I can, because the thing is, even with this minor pushback, they're coming for you.

And they want to destroy your life. And they want to come. They want to get you. I got your back, Kevin. I got your back because I think you're worth defending.

But the thing is, we need more. We need more. I've heard some things about some underground stuff that's happening within Big Eva.

And it's so encouraging what I've heard. I can't tell you what I've heard, but I've heard that there's stuff afoot to push back against some of this stuff.

And man, that makes me so happy. And I want to help. I know you probably don't trust me. That's okay. I'll get your back even without you asking.

You see what I'm saying? But you're going to have to start saying what must be said about this.

David French, maybe he wasn't an enemy now, but he's certainly acting like an enemy now. Maybe he wasn't an enemy before, but he's certainly acting like an enemy now.

And to be honest, his serving of the country, that's great. I'm glad he did that.

That has nothing to do with what he's doing now. He's subverting the country now. That's what he's doing. In any case,

Kevin, I hope that didn't come across too harsh. I wasn't intending it to. But thanks for the pushback.

To be honest, it's not a great article. I just, I can't lie. It's not. It's not a great article. I'm grateful for the thrust of it though.

And I'd like to see more. And I'm pretty sure you know better. So please, we need some help, man.

I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. I'm just kidding, but hey, you do you, you do what you gotta do.

I'm just saying that it's not the funnest thing in the world to have to go consult the dictionary every paragraph.