Critical Race Theory and The Church with Pastor Larry Ball

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Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast once again, I'm your host John Harris. We're going to talk a little bit today about a book called

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Critical Race Theory and the Church, which actually just came out. I got one of my copies, I have two copies now, but I got one of them today and I noticed it was just released on Kindle by Larry Ball, who is a

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Presbyterian pastor in Kingsport, Tennessee at Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church.

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Before we get to that, though, I just wanted to make one quick announcement this weekend. If you live in the

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Austin, Texas area, you're going to want to come out to the conference that I'm going to be at.

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Actually it's myself, it's AD Robles, it's Pastor Joel Webbin, and the easiest way probably to find it, because there is a sign up for it, it's free, you don't have to pay anything, but they do want to get somewhat of a headcount.

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Probably the easiest way to do that is just to go to my website, worldviewconversation .com, and then you can go to the tab that says speaking.

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That'll take you to the list of all places I'll be in the next two weeks. There is a website right there, rightresponseministries .com,

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and then it has the link, events, free mini -conference. That's right outside of Austin in Taylor, Texas, March 12th, and it's in the afternoon.

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Look forward to seeing you there. I will be preaching the next day in Georgetown, Texas, right outside of Austin at Covenant Bible Church.

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Some of you might come out for both, or if you can't make Saturday, then love to see you Sunday. Then for those in the

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Nampa, Idaho area, right outside of Boise, March 18th and 19th, I'll be at the Rocky Mountain Biblical Worldview Conference, and March 20th,

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I'll be at the Truth Family Bible Church. I just wanted to make everyone aware of that. If you live in Idaho, if you live in Texas, it's not like I get to those places very often.

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In fact, I just added April 8th, San Diego. You might want to check that out. I'm going to a lot of different places, and some of these places do require an email or signing up.

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I just wanted to get through that order of business for everyone. With that, let's get into this book, because as you can see, it's pretty thin.

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It's very basic, but it's, I think, really informative, and there's some things

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I really like about it. We have the author with us, Pastor Larry Ball. Pastor, thank you so much for joining me.

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Thank you for having me. I'm just going to say real quick the things that I really like about this.

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Number one, it is short, and people's attention spans, as you pointed out in the introduction, are very short today. Most people don't want to go read

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Robin DiAngelo or, for that matter, more academic works like Derrick Bell to try to figure out what critical race theory is.

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They just want to know, just give me the in a nutshell concept, and that's kind of what you do.

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You don't go into all the scholarly stuff. It's not an academic work, necessarily. It's very much from the heart of a pastor, and you just give kind of in a nutshell.

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You break down the complex, make it simple. Here's the definition, and then here's what the Bible says, so I appreciate that about it.

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The other thing I appreciate is that you don't shy away from taking to task really all the aspects of critical race theory that are concerning, or at least most of them,

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I'd say, and ones that specifically, I'm saying, are left unmentioned or those who are against critical race theory seem to want to agree with, like race being a social construct.

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You have a whole section kind of tearing that idea apart, so I appreciate that as well, and on an up note, so I just want to ask you first, what inspired you with all the other books out there on this, right, that are being written?

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Why did you feel compelled to write this? Well, there's several good books out there, and I've read probably three, four, five different ones.

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I read your book. I read Bodie Bachman on fault lines, and I read a little book called, this has been at least a year ago,

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Social Justice and its Dangers by Doug Enoch, very, very small, much smaller than my book, and they're all very good.

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I think they're detailed, and they give a background on what's happening with different people in the movement and how they're shifting, and I felt like that there was, number two things, there was something that was needed for the man in the pew, which as a pastor,

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I feel like that's where my strength is, is taking, reading the books that other people don't read, and then taking that information to them, and also coming from a conservative

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Presbyterian background, you might say Calvinist before and so forth, being raised in the, after, well, sitting under men like Dr.

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Van Teel at Westminster Seminary and being a follower, a reader of R .J.

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Rushdooney, I just felt like there were some missing links, some things that should be said that weren't being said, and so those are two reasons, but, and I would really mention a third, which might seem unusual, is that I have nine grandchildren, and I really believe that one of the most important things

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I can do in terms of what I believe is the covenant responsibility is leave a legacy for my children and my grandchildren, that when

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I'm gone, they can pick up these books and read them and say, that was my dad, or that was my grandfather, or that was my great -grandfather, and so I'm really writing as much to my children and my grandchildren, and hopefully my great -grandchildren, as much as I am simply trying to have an impact in the church.

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I don't know if I misheard what you just said, that's great. Did you say you sat under Cornelius Van Teel?

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Yes, I was at Westminster Seminary, 1969. I was doing the math in my head, and I was like that, because John MacArthur, I think, had talked about that he had seen, you know, him lecture, and, but that's pretty amazing, to be honest with you.

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Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I sat under Dr. Van Teel, and, of course, we had, actually,

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John Murray was retired, but he came back to the seminary while I was there and gave some lectures, and I was able to meet him and to listen to him speak.

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I was a freshman that year, and someone asked me what I thought after his lecture, and my response was, well, to be honest,

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I didn't understand a word he said. At that point in my life, I was just a beginner, and Dr.

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Van Teel used to divide his classes into two types he called the bunnies and the giraffes.

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There were giraffes who had studied theology at places like Harvard and Oxford and Yale and so forth, and then there were men like me coming from Appalachia who really knew very little.

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He considered a bunny, and, but after sitting under him for a year, having majored in mathematics in college,

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I was very drawn to his presuppositional type of apologetics, and so, yes,

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I did have the privilege of sitting under him, and also,

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Jay Adams was there when I was there as a teacher, and later on,

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I was too. Greg Bonson was a student there when I was there, so it was quite an unusual time.

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Yeah, I wonder if they were around today, I wonder what they would think of everything that's happening,

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I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, maybe they'd say I told you so on some things.

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Well, I marked down a few things in the book that I thought would be just fun and just informative to ask you about.

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So, let's see, you talk about, you really spend some time talking about inequity and equality.

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I think you do a pretty good job explaining equality before the law versus egalitarian equality, but you don't,

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I don't even know if you use the word egalitarian, you're, you really, this is written for the common man, and so you really just explain the bad kind of equality, and the first thing you cite, and I've thought this before,

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I've never seen anyone write it down, but I've had this thought so many times when Satan tries to tempt you and say you'll be like God, and I've thought before,

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I'm like, was that the first, like, is that where this all really traces back to, ultimately, this egalitarian, let's flatline everything, and it's just a way to bring man up to the, because now we're choosing our own genders, right, we're tampering with creation, we think,

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I mean, what do you think, is that the first social justice warrior, Satan, or? Definitely so,

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I really believe that, I think that was, as I say in the book, that was an attempt to be equal with God, and so that, and equality, as I explain in the book, is not always sinful, because in the

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Trinity, there is equality, and, but I think the, in the garden, there was the attempt to to be equal with God, and I think that's basically where it all began, and there's a such a thing that I mentioned in the book as inequality, which is a good thing, diversity, in the

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Trinity, there is diversity in the jobs or the functions that they have, and so you, in the

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Trinity, you have both equality and inequality, and they're both a good thing in that context, and I think probably that kind of thinking, and I felt like I needed to go back to the

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Trinity, and creation, but that kind of thinking probably comes out of Dr.

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Van Teel, and also probably out of Dr. Rush Kooning, who wrote a book on the one and the many,

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I think, and tried to show how there is diversity, and there's unity, and that's kind of the most theological part of the book, in a way, right, that I'm trying to go back to the very source of the whole equality movement, and show how it finds its origins, in a good sense, in the

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Trinity, but in a bad sense, in the fall, in the Garden of Eden.

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Yeah, it's very much against design, the created order, even natural relationships, wants to remake things, and often go now, especially to forbidden territory that God has not ordained.

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On that note, you kind of...you do something that's actually forbidden in today's...you

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couldn't, like, have an academic press ever publish something like this, but you try to redeem white privilege, in a way, or maybe better put, you ground white privilege in something different.

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Would you explain that to everyone? Because that perked...my ears perked up when I saw that, because I was like, oh, wow, you know, usually you hear people, they're arguing against there is no white privilege, or something, but you're like, yeah, there is, but it's not attributed to what critical race theorists are attributing it to.

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Right. I think that may be a little unique with my book, because usually every time you hear white privilege in the anti -critical race theory camp, usually it's understood in a negative way, but I think just looking at history, and there is such a thing as white privilege.

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I have no problem with that, and again, studying history, we go back to the founding of our country, was basically founded by Englishmen, and who spoke

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English, who had been very educated in England, and it even goes back before the foundation of the country, and I say that in the book, it goes back to Europe, and I ask the question, why was

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Europe so much more advanced than other continents, for example,

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Africa, or even Asia, and I explain that in the book,

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I always have to get to the root of issues. I get that from my mathematics training in college, always asking why, you know, where does this come from, and when you study history, or study western history, or history since the fall,

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I guess, that you see that God providentially blessed

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Europe, even from early times,

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I would say from the dark ages on, and then the question is why, and as a

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Presbyterian, I have to go back to the old explanation of why is predestination something we believe in, and it's

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God's predestination, and providentially brings things about, not because he sees some people are better than other people, we're all equally sinners before God, and that includes nations,

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I would make that, trying to make that point in the book, and so God had grace on Europe, and for no other reason, because he chose to do so, that's the old reformed answer to why did

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God choose some and not others, and the answer is, well, he shouldn't have chosen anybody, but that he did choose to follow through Europe, and give them the blessing that they had in education, and culture, and eventually in all the other areas, it can only be seen as something by the grace of God, and not because any people is any better than anybody else, and so that history brings about white privilege, which whites as they, the white nations, as they came to America, came as very educated, and very often very godly people, and that did not happen with other continents, and so there is white privilege, in my opinion.

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It's an interesting concept, because number one, it'll get you canceled. Did probably say that, but there's some truth.

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I think it's just an obvious truth to most people that Europe was technologically more advanced during the age of exploration.

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They had, in many ways, a higher civilization as far as, you know, their developments in music, and in manners, and you know, propriety, just there's a lot of other probably things that could be pointed to architecture, just they had a civilization that was more advanced, right, and so if you follow what happened from the

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Roman Empire forward as Christianity, you know, Paul's missionary journeys were in Europe, right? Christianity's dominating, it dominated in Europe, that you identify that as the relevant fact that contributed to this, and so you're not, this is the thing that people need to hear loud and clear, is that you're not saying that there's some kind of genetic determinism, something about white people that's superior, not even close.

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What you're saying is that blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and for centuries,

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Europeans, in general, followed principles that would be more in keeping with the Book of Proverbs. They had a respect for God in some way, and that may be changing now, and it is changing quite a bit, but that this did bless the people who were, who inherited that tradition, and the wealth that was stored up, and all the rest of it, so I mean,

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I don't know how you really argue with that, but I know that the way that critical race hears, when they talk about white privilege, they talk about it as something that is uniquely given to white people.

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It can't, it's not like what you're saying, where this could be, anyone could, you know, become a

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Christian and practice biblical principles. You know, they think this is like unique to only people who are white, and they, of course, see it as the result of thievery, and stealing, manipulation, oppression, and so I just, you know,

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I have to still think about that a little bit, you know, like how rhetorically effective is that, but I can see that being in a debate or something, where someone, you have white privilege saying, yeah, but you know, it's only the grace of God that, you know, or, you know, my,

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I was raised in a family that, you know, honored Christ, and we have a heritage going back, you know, and not all white people have that, obviously, but right, right, it's an interesting concept, yeah, yeah, so, so that's one of the things

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I thought was kind of unique about your take on this. One of the things that, it really makes your book unique is, and I'll just quote from you, you say,

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I've become convinced that sometimes good men get it wrong, and you're talking about other books you've written on, or read on this topic, and you're, you say that, it seems rather contradictory to me to assert that the concept of race is not real, but then to turn around and use the term race to describe all of the descendants of Adam.

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Could you parse that out for us? What do you mean by, you know, when you say that, when you argue that race is real, you know, what, what, what is a race?

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Why is that important to challenge critical race theory when they say race is just a social construct?

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Yeah, well, I'm making an attempt in the book to define race as the

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Bible defines it, at least as far as I can understand, and the Old Testament is full of promises to the races, or to the nations, and I'm pretty much, you can't always identify a nation with a race, but typically in history, you could fairly well do that, and so I just decided one day, in a sense, just go through the scriptures and trace the word nation.

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Of course, the word race does not appear in any English translation, and so it's not even a

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Biblical term. It's a term we've kind of created, evidently, through some, maybe

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Darwinism or something like that, but I decided just to go through the scriptures and look at the concept of nation itself, and I, as I say in my book, there are basically three identities to a nation.

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One is a common language, a common border, and what

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I would call common religion, or a common god, which determines the culture of that nation, its beliefs in regard to right and wrong, and so there are nations in the scriptures, and the idea of race, in a sense,

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I've just developed that as from Genesis chapter 11, where God created the different nations, and all

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I can, and I don't know that anybody understands the origin of the physical characteristics that differ nations, all

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I can conclude is that there's some word genetic changes over time, but it's fairly easy to equate nation and race to a great degree.

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I think America is not used to that kind of a concept. We use the word ethnicity now, and I think that's kind of an invented word, but typically in the past, when you speak of the

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French, or the Japanese, or even the Russians, you can't talk about them right now, not the

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Russians. I'm just kidding. You tended to think of a particular race as well as a nation, and that's not always true, but very often, they're very similar, at least, and that's where I talk about the

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Ethiopian unique in the Bible, and he was identified by the color of his skin, and also by his, the place of his origin, you might say, which was

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Cush, which had a border, and had a language, and had a God, and so if there is no such thing as nations, then much of the prophecy of the

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Old Testament, and even Gentiles being brought into the gospel, loses its power and its greatness, because God calls all the nations, in a sense, to himself, or will.

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Being a post -millennialist, I believe that that will happen before the second coming of Christ, that all the nations, not that everybody in the nation will be

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Christian, but the nations will have an identity, and there's another word we use today, but we'll have a connection with the lordship of Christ, and we'll see to implement the laws of God in society, so those promises are just so deep, as you read the

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Psalms, especially, you just continually see God talking about how he was going to bring the gospel to all the nations, and so that, to me, would include races as well as nations.

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You know, in Revelation, when it talks about all the tribes tongue nations before the throne worshiping, and they're all, they have unique characteristics that would, you know, be able, you'd be able to identify them according to those categories.

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Oftentimes, a social justice crowd uses that. Some, you know, weird to me, but they use that verse as if it's a point in their corner, like this is, you know, why we ought to diversify our churches somehow or have some kind of a social justice program to diversify elder boards or theological libraries, whatever, and what

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I see, though, in that passage is more along the lines of what you're saying, that there's going to be some acknowledgement.

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It's, for whatever reason, to God, this is something that seems to be important or distinct.

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He wants to categorize people out according to this, and then it gives him glory that the diversity of the people that are before his throne, so it's not a matter of, on this, in this temporal world, trying to achieve some kind of a quota at your church or your denomination so that you can reflect what the church in heaven looks like, and then turn around and say race is just a social construct.

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It doesn't matter. Minimize it so much, but actually, this would make it, as you said, identity.

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I think this makes that identity important to people, and it's one of the things that defines who we are, and so with that, and I'm getting to the question, but I was, last

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Sunday, right, I go to a very diverse church, ethnically speaking, and it's not because they tried to do it that way.

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It's just they preached the gospel. The people in the area showed up. It's a diverse area, and I went out to lunch with some folks after church.

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We had some folks that, Japanese, Japanese, German, myself and my wife, so you have your

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Scottish, your German, your Eastern European represented in that. We had a guy who was half black, half white, a guy who was black.

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That's the church I go to. Those are the people I'm with, and it's not like that's something that's a barrier to any kind of fellowship.

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It's not, but it's also something that I'm like, I don't think we have to pretend like my friend who's

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Japanese is not Japanese. It's just like he is, and he has a culture that's important to him.

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Things that are important to him aren't as important to me, and vice versa, and that makes us who we are, and it makes it fun. It makes it unique, and I like that.

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I think there's some diversity that we can appreciate in that. Why do you think, though, the way that I think

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I feel and probably the way you feel about this, why do you think that becomes such a hot button issue?

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To even say that there's more than one race, the human race, which there is, in one sense, one race, human race, but to even say that God has separated people through the

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Tower of People, I don't know. There's just this sense that I get that people really want to shoot for this.

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None of that stuff exists. It's minimizing it so much, and they're afraid if they say it, it's almost like they're racist or something.

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I don't get why that is the case, but it seems like it is. Yeah, that's a good question.

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I think that part of that is because individualism has become more important than corporateness, and maybe that's a

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Baptist, Presbyterian balance there, but I think in America, individualism has become kind of the idol, and the idea of corporate, which includes family, nations, and race, has become kind of secondary.

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It's like baptism, for example. Generally, when a

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Baptist looks at baptism, they see individuals who make a public profession of faith, but a

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Presbyterian will see not only the individual, but he will see the family of the individual.

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He will look at the corporate group, maybe as much or before he looks at the individual himself, so it's kind of an

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American individualistic spirit has conquered this nation, and we think in terms of pieces instead of groups.

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We're the melting pot, and so we try to deny the existence of of groups.

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Groups somehow become rather an unspiritual thing, and so theologically,

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I would see it as an individualism versus a corporate perspective, and America is the great experiment in individualism.

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Historically, though, in history, nations and corporate groups were as important, if not more important, than individuals.

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We want to conquer Britain for Christ, for example. Well, that's not something we talk about much anymore, or we want to conquer

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Africa for Christ. I remember hearing that as a kid. When I go to even a youth rally, they would say a country, and they would say exactly what you're saying.

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I don't hear it anymore. You're right. I never thought of that. Yeah, and America is, as I said, pretty much an individualistic nation.

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We're all independent, separate entities, and we've lost the concept of community.

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As I mentioned, that's one reason I was drawn into the reform

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Presbyterian position was because in my own experience with my own family, for example, all my children are in church.

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All my grandchildren are in good Bible -believing churches, and I see not only my own conversion, but I see the impact

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I have on generations to come. I see the group. I see the family.

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I think we're so overwhelmed by this individualism that we have to almost negate anything that speaks of a corporate nature, which includes race and which it would include nation.

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America is proud of its being a melting pot of all nations, and so we become a multitude of individuals that's held together by democracy, for example, and not by our heritage or our genetics.

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I think it was a theological issue at root. It's individualism versus corporate perspective.

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I think America, as one man wrote, and I'm not degrading

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Baptists. I have many friends who are good Baptists, but we live in the American Baptist culture where we view even evangelism as individualistic, and it is individualistic, but our goal was to capture whole families, and that's strange to modern evangelists.

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Even the way we think about evangelism is determined by individual versus corporate nature, and I think that's theologically, that's the background of why we think that all nations should be together in one church building, and I've been in churches too where we had

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Hispanics and Blacks and Whites, and we all got along just fine. There was no problem whatsoever.

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There was no tension. This was before critical race theory, and I have no problem with that, but I just think theologically, it's almost become sinful to move outside of the realm or the format of the form of individualism.

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Do you understand what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, we have a Korean church down the street, and I think they have a service that is in Korean, and then another one,

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I think, might be in English, but there's a cultural and a family connection that people have that go there, and I'm not thinking like, oh, they probably would welcome me if I showed up, but I don't have a problem with that happening at all.

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I don't think there's a sinful. It's just people who tend to share a lot of things in common, similarities as far as their culture and manners, habits, language, all of that.

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They tend to associate with one another. It's always been that way, but what you said, it just made me think of, we've gone from a neighborhood, someone who lives in the neighborhood to community to now development, someone in the development, and it seems like that, even those terms show that there is a lack of that corporate nature, and the woke have, in my mind, they have seen an opportunity here, because humans are naturally, we're not made to be lone rangers.

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We need support, emotional support, spiritual support.

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We need to be part of a group and have a place of belonging, and so they've kind of crafted this critical race theory being one of these things, the identity politics, and the idea that race is a social construct, though, it destroys the cultural elements, really.

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It's not like you're not saying that your race is attached or there's a connection to a culture that is rich, that confers identity.

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It's more of you have a power, like a level at which you sit in a spectrum, and other people who are just as oppressed as you share something in common with you, so it's really one of the most flimsy glues to make a community, if you're trying to build that, to make it stick together and be cohesive, in my mind, but they're actually trying to build something along those lines for political purposes, whereas on the right,

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I think the critics of critical race theory, unlike you, have tried to just kind of downplay any kind of corporate nature, that it doesn't matter at all, that we're all just people, and that's the thing, and it's like, well, you know, we are, but there's more, there is more than that, that makes us unique.

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Maybe the breakdown of a family has necessitated this union of various backgrounds in one place.

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It used to be the family supplied the strength, and the aid, and the help, and the identity, and you know, that's why we do ancestral studies.

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We use our DNA to find out where our great -great -great -grandfathers came from.

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I have an ancestor who was in the, well, several who was in the

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American Revolution, who came here in America in the late 1600s. I have ancestors who, you know, fought in the

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Civil War, and my wife is pretty much an amateur genealogist, but it's just her thrill to make connections with the past, and with groups, with where did they come from, what nation did they come from, you know, not that it's going to change much for me today, but there is an identity there that gives me some comfort to know where I came from.

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It does confer, I think, like when you know you're a man, it confers a sense of duty, obligation.

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There are things attached to that, that you know how to act because of that, and I think that it's this, it's similar in a way, like if you knew, so I have ancestors that go back to, you know, my last name's

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Harris, the founding of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I have ancestors that go back to the Pilgrims. They migrated south, but they, when

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I know that, when I, because I have an uncle who's big into genealogy, and he's told us a lot of these stories, it does create in me a sense of stewardship for, you know, hey, this is the country we've been in for a while.

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We're pretty invested here, and it doesn't mean someone else who's just arrived can't also have a sense of stewardship, but there is a deepness to it that I have, and wanting to pass that down to my kids too.

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I really, I want them to know where their grandfather came from, and how hard life was during the depression, and you know, those things really help a family stick together.

37:19

If all we watch is Marvel movies, you know, and we don't know the stories of our families or our country or our local area or any of that, then we're just not going to have a very, we're gonna have a shaky foundation by which to relate to one another.

37:35

Yeah, one of the blessings I had was I was able to talk to my grandfather who was born in the 1890s, and now

37:44

I have grandchildren who will be living, you know, into the 2000s, 50s, and 60s, and there's what, a hundred, 200 years span there that I can connect the previous generations with the future generations, and I just feel like that's an obligation that I have as a man to show the connection, and what we have inherited.

38:16

The providence of God, yeah. Yeah, the providence of God, and I was born into the family that I, you don't choose the family you're born into, and so I mean,

38:26

I was born in Appalachia, which in some ways was a minority group, rather poor coal miners, and I'm proud of that in a way.

38:40

It's my heritage, and so I just think it's important to see the connections with family and the past, and it's important for identity purposes.

38:58

Let me ask you a question along these lines, and I know, just so people understand, this is not, you only spend a section on this.

39:05

You talk about a lot of other things. The reason we're spending more time is because I think you have something unique to say about this.

39:11

Let me ask you this question. What about this idea that in the church is found everything as far as your identity?

39:20

You don't need anything really outside the fact that you're a Christian. That should be the only identity that is of any importance to you, and your connection to other people should be either along the lines of they're my brothers and sisters, or they need to be my brothers and sisters, and I should evangelize them, because that's what

39:38

I see a lot more of today, and I will be honest. I do see it with some people who they don't seem as interested in passing down any kind of culture to their children.

39:50

They seem, not all of them, some of them perhaps, but I have seen examples of this where it's just the only identity is the church, and then when you have a kid who doesn't receive

39:59

Christ, it's almost like they're alienated from the family, and it's sad to me, but what do you think of that objection to what you're saying?

40:12

Well, again, biblically, I think that we don't lose our identity in the family as we come into the church.

40:24

I mean, just looking at the family itself, my children come into the church with me, and so I'm a man.

40:36

I'm not a woman. There's one diversity right there. I'm a father. I'm not a child.

40:42

That's two diversity situations right there. I'm white.

40:48

I'm not black. That's another diversity that we can't change. It can't be changed, and I think the whole concept of spirituality we have to re -look at again.

41:05

Spirituality does not deny the physical in this world. The problem of the world is not spiritual versus physical, but the problem of the world is sin, and in a sense,

41:24

God's law. The physical is not bad.

41:30

It's not a bad thing. God created us physical, and the resurrection, we're going to be physical, and so there's a physical element that's a good element.

41:39

God created the creation, which is physical, and so even from the

41:46

Old Testament, you find Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You find the covenant. You find the importance of the family, and again, as a

41:57

Presbyterian, I believe that when adults came into the church, they came in as families, and so one does not deny the other.

42:09

I mean, both are important. I think we do have identity in Christ. I have an identity with a certain church, but I live six days a week maybe as a

42:23

CPA and as a father and as somebody is a hunter or a fisherman, and so as a sportsman,

42:33

I have many identities. Unity does not nullify diversity.

42:42

It doesn't in the Trinity. That was the whole point of my writing on the chapter on the

42:48

Trinity and equality. Unity does not nullify diversity. We should celebrate unity in Christ, but we should all celebrate diversity as God made us differently.

43:03

Yeah, and He put us where He wanted us for such a time as this in the locations, in the families, with the skills and abilities.

43:12

Not everyone can play instruments. Not everyone can speak other language. Yeah, so even in my own,

43:18

I have two brothers, and they can do things I can't do. One can pull apart an engine. I can't do that. One can speak multiple languages.

43:26

I'm decent at English. We should celebrate what they can do and not be jealous because God gave us different qualities and abilities.

43:40

So, I mean, I've encouraged people. In fact, I was just recently doing this with a family, and I was trying to encourage them, like, you know, look into your family history.

43:50

Get the stories from your parents. Try to let your children know kind of who they are, and it was beyond Christianity.

43:57

I know their parents weren't Christians, but it was a way of just, you know, seeing what God had done to bring them to the point that they were at.

44:04

Part of the, you know, history is His story, and so when

44:09

I look into the mirror, even, you know, I'm seeing generations. I'm seeing really thousands of years of God making decisions or in His providences, in His decree, moving like a feather down the river, you know, things along to the point of where I am now, and He's done that with everyone, and it's an amazing thing to think about,

44:32

I think, it really gives Him credit, and so I'm actually glad that you put something about this in here, and I'm sure more could be said, and I'm sure others, but the thing is, you're the only one that I know of who has actually said this in one of these books, and I've read a bunch of them myself too.

44:49

So, yeah, I do appreciate you acknowledging that that stuff is also important, and just because you, you know, love your family and stuff doesn't mean you hate others.

45:00

I think, you know, people assume that sometimes. It's kind of ridiculous. In fact, if you don't love your family,

45:06

I don't know how you know how to love others. It kind of starts at home. Other things you say, you have a good section here,

45:13

I think, on the Apostle Paul being, you know, would he be identified today as a racist or a Jewish nationalist?

45:18

I got a kick out of that, and yeah, with in Titus 1, you talk about the way he kind of stereotypes the

45:27

Cretans, and yeah, to our ears today.

45:33

He uses very strong language there, a language that we would probably never use today. Right, yeah.

45:39

We would not say those things, I don't think. Yeah, it just reminded me the

45:46

Bible is up for cancellation, really. Like, this is so out of step with the way we think today, and if we're going to be

45:54

Christians of the word with coming persecution, then we have to just stick with what it says. We have to be able to say, you know what,

46:01

I'm with Paul on this, and that's going to be harder and harder, I think, as time goes on, but very necessary.

46:09

What's your favorite thing in this book? I mean, look, it's short. People can get through this, probably in an hour or two.

46:15

Yeah. What would you want them to take away as the one or two big points?

46:24

Oh, well, it's a different perspective than you get in most books, and your book was very good.

46:34

I recommended your book in the very first paragraph. I saw that. I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah, I saw it.

46:39

Well, you said you put me in the same sentence as Votie Bauckham and R .J.

46:45

Rush Dooney, and I was like, my name don't belong there, but thank you. No, I thought it was an excellent book.

46:52

I read one book that, and I mentioned this on a Facebook group that I'm with, that he started talking about the social construct that we created, that race doesn't exist, and I said, well, as soon as I read that,

47:11

I put it down, and I quit reading it, and I'm sure there was a lot of other good things in the book, but I thought, if he's going there,

47:18

I don't need to spend my time with the rest of his book. So, you know, the book is written to, as I say, to the man in the pew who doesn't have the time to read the larger books, maybe to help them to go to other books and get more detail.

47:40

I don't really mention anything about any individuals, what's going on in the Southern Baptist Church or the

47:46

PCA. I don't mention any names or movements or anything like that.

47:52

I'm just simply trying to, I try to work from a little bit of a theological, biblical perspective.

47:58

For example, in the chapter on race, I quote several passages from Paul in the

48:06

New Testament when he used the term nation and to define what a nation is, and a nation is not just a group of individuals, but a nation has a common boundary, a common language, and a common religion, typically, and I mentioned in the early part of the book,

48:27

I think that America has adopted democracy as basically its religion, and democracy is a fairly neutral idea.

48:39

It's like a knife that somebody, a surgeon will use a knife in a different way than a murderer will use a knife.

48:47

It depends on the context, and I think that democracy worked well in America as long as it was a

48:53

Christian nation, and it wasn't a perfect nation, but you can go to any town and look at the steeples that are, especially here in the

49:02

South, and in our downtown, we have Church Circle, which has four steeples in one circle.

49:11

You can see the impact of Christianity on our nation, and democracy works well when there is a

49:21

Christian culture, but if the Christian culture dies, democracy becomes a hijack and becomes a weapon, actually, to use against the

49:33

Christian. I really believe that democracy today, the bottom line is being used in essence as an attack on Christ, and that's a strong statement, but I'll stand behind it.

49:47

It's an attack on Christian values today, and an attack on Christian values is an attack on the

49:55

Bible, and it is an attack on Christ himself, and in the book,

50:01

I try to define religion in terms of ideals or ideology like Marxism, democracy, and Christianity.

50:14

I could define it as three different religions, and that's different. People don't think in those terms today.

50:21

Marxism believes in the God of equality. Democracy, apart from the

50:27

Christian faith, believes that 51 % of the people determine what is right and wrong, in essence, but Christianity believes that the

50:37

Bible determines what is right and wrong, and so what we have is there we have three conflicting religions, and we've come to worship democracy, which is really a republic in the

50:50

United States, but the idea of participation by the people, and it's worked well until the church began to decline, and so now we have a democracy is being used as a weapon to attack

51:08

Christ by attacking his church, and again, that's a strong statement, but I would preach, and I have preached on those things.

51:19

I have several years ago. I preached on critical race theory before it was even, people didn't even know what it was, but I believe that it is ultimately, we have to start seeing it that way, that it's an attack.

51:35

It's a weapon that is being used to attack the Christian faith, and the sad thing is that the critical race theory is a subset of Marxism, Neo -Marxism, and it's being adopted by the church, many in the conservative church, and so they don't see the results.

51:55

They don't see what it's going to mean in a generation or two. I've just preached global sermon there, so that was good.

52:04

That was good stuff, and I think you're right. The impact has yet to be seen.

52:11

It's popular to talk about it right now, but it's the kids in school in 20 years that are going to start running the show that will actually bring about what the changes that the

52:23

Marxists have implemented in the school. It is a scary thought.

52:29

We have to trust God through that, but I feel as though, for me personally, it's been the last,

52:36

I don't know, four years, or I don't know, maybe a little longer than that, last five years or so, I've been on my own,

52:44

I don't know, I don't want to say journey. It sounds so esoteric, but I've been figuring out some things.

52:51

Things have been dawning on me that I took for granted or didn't think about and how unique those are, and one of them is that, yeah,

53:00

I care about my family. I'm proud of who I am in a good way. There's an identity conferred in that.

53:08

I see there's a natural order to things. I've always just assumed that, as a Christian, that God works through his providence, but he has certain boundaries and ways he set things up, and there's a created order.

53:20

That is just unacceptable in today's world. It is so out of step with a culture that wants to see people as individuals who can just reinvent themselves all over the place.

53:34

The only constant is that there's power. Power seems like it's the only thing that really changes from person to person, maybe, is where they fall on a spectrum.

53:47

If you're going to believe what Christianity teaches in a God of order, then you are going to be a rebel.

53:55

That's how you're going to be viewed, at least, in today's culture. You just have to accept that. You have to be okay with that.

54:03

It's been enriching, though, to realize that the depth, how amazing

54:12

God has actually made this world. It's not flattened into just oppression or power or one commodity like that.

54:22

There's so much more to it. God has put so many things out there, even things to enjoy. True diversity, not as the social justice warriors advocate, but true diversity is a beautiful thing.

54:33

That's got to be an answer. I think you hinted that. That's got to be part of the answer Christians have to this, that you're robbing humans of something.

54:41

You're not looking at humans as being made in the image of God. In fact, you're stealing something that belongs to them.

54:50

If you embrace God and His plan and the way He created us, then there's something rich about it.

55:00

Anyway, yeah, I appreciate you putting that out there. Where can people find it if they want to read

55:06

Critical Race Theory in the church? It's on Amazon. You can go to Ken Gentry .com.

55:14

Ken Gentry is pretty well known. He's a friend of mine and he publishes all my books.

55:21

I've just written three, but yeah, that's where you can get them. I would say for people, if you know someone who doesn't really like reading or who's just not very academic, perhaps, just wants to know the basics, this is a good book for that.

55:35

You write in a style that just sounds like you're having a conversation with someone. You don't have citations everywhere.

55:41

It's just a personal conversation. Anyway, thank you for being willing to talk about it. You're welcome.