Social Justice Toxicity Exposed - AD on FLF Network

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight Laugh Feast. Right, well, before we begin today, I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who has become a member of the Fight Laugh Feast Network Club.

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The Woke Church and Social Justice as Synonyms

Now, let's jump into the episode today. Today's episode is going to be a little bit personal, and I want to use as a jumping off point sort of the the controversy and how it kind of plays out in the woke church social justice movement.

In fact, I use those terms woke church and social justice pretty much interchangeably. Obviously, they don't mean exactly the same thing, but they're so related that I use them as essentially synonyms.

And there's a certain way that people fight this fight, this woke church fight, on the opponent's side. So not so much on our side of this issue, who I think is the right side, but if you look at how our opponents typically engage in this fight, there's some really underhanded things that typically get done, and it's really kind of pathetic and sad to see.

And so I see one brother in particular, there's a couple brothers that I have in mind right now, but I see one brother in particular that's being abused and used and spoken to very similarly to the way I remember being talked to when I first entered the fray for the social justice controversy in the church.

And so I remember a very, very specific event. There's a couple of things in my mind that come to my mind when I think about when I first got into this fight. When did I first realize that I was in a fight?

You know what I mean? That's always an interesting moment when you realize that you're kind of engaged in a battle that you didn't know you were engaged in. And I remember very specifically one of those instances for me.

I was very early on in my YouTube career. I used to do videos like once a week at most, maybe once every two weeks, very irregular. I had no plans on becoming a YouTuber, nothing like that. I just was doing a few videos just because I thought it was important.

And I got some pushback here and there. I got some, you know, attaboys and things like that, but very few people watch those initial videos. And I'll never forget that the first video that kind of not didn't go viral, but it got a lot of traction was a video that I did about Matt Chandler.

Why He Criticized Matt Chandler and the Response He Received

And it was a video about Matt Chandler. I believe it was either his white privilege video or his presentation at the MLK 50 conference. It was, I mean, I got the same pushback on both of those, but I'm trying to think of which was the first one that I really got pushed back.

And I remember in those videos, if they're still online, you can go back and watch them right now if you wanted to, to see if I'm telling the truth about them. But those videos were, were so calm. You know, they were very, they were very measured, very reasonable.

I would argue quite humble as well. And I know it's kind of weird to brag, hear someone brag about being humble, but go back and watch the videos. You'll see what I mean. I want to, what I mean is that I bent over backwards to be gracious to Matt Chandler.

So I was obviously, the reason I was doing my video is because I did not agree with the main points that he was making, but I started off both videos, very in a, in a, in a posture of humility. I said things like, you know, I, I've gotten so much value from Matt Chandler.

I love Matt Chandler. I've recommended his books in the past. I still recommend his books. I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but let me tell you about why I disagree with X, Y, Z or whatever it was. And that was the posture.

That was the tone of those videos. I believe it was the white privilege episode of his village church, you know, podcast or whatever. And, and I'll never forget this because I, because again, I, I was bending over backwards to say that this is a good guy.

He's one of the, he's one of the good guys, you know, stuff like that. And I'll never forget this one Southern Baptist leader who, who has since disowned me. I mean, this, this man has told me that I'm like a tax collector to him.

He wishes he never knew me. Like, this is the kind of things that he says to me. He told me how horrible what I had done was. How inappropriate it was, how evil it was and how, how dare he, how do, who do I think I am?

Like that kind of stuff, right? Who do I think I am criticizing Matt Chandler and this SBC person is friends with Matt Chandler. So, so to him, it was a personal attack, even though if you go back and watch that video again, very respectful, like it could not be more kind of a, I don't want to say timid because that kind of has like a, a bad impression, but there could not be a more agreeable way to disagree, right?

If you look at, look at those videos, I challenge you, go watch it. And you'll see what I mean. Tell me if what I'm saying is true. And I, that, that response confused me very much. I just couldn't understand why that person was saying that about me.

And sadly, he wouldn't explain himself. Like, like I, I, I begged practically for a phone call with this guy, how I'm having trouble understanding what you, where you're coming from here. Like I, I thought about it.

I've rewatched the video and, and I just, I think that my tone was like so humble and you're telling me that it was like evil. And so I'd like to understand, please help me. And I, and there was no conversation, none, no conversation at all.

I couldn't really understand what was going on there, but I do understand it now. I definitely understand it now. You see the social justice side of this, of this controversy is wrong. You know, that I believe that I think I've proven it many, many times over the woke church movement is introducing an error into the church.

I think I've demonstrated that again and again and again. And so when you're, when you're introducing error into the church, it's very difficult to do that in a legitimate way. Like it's, it's hard to introduce a lie in a way that's honorable, right?

Like you can't do it in a straightforward, direct kind of way. Like if I was going to teach you that the Trinity was not real, right? That that wasn't a real thing. You know, if I was going to teach you that the Trinity was false, I would have to do it by abusing passages of scripture.

I would have to do it by appealing to emotions. I would have to do it by insults and underhanded tactics. Like I couldn't just take you to the passages of the Bible and say, here's what it is. Like you couldn't just do that.

You'd have to actually abuse the text of scripture because it's not true, right? It's, it's, it's hard to introduce a lie in an honorable way. And so this, the woke church movement, their tactics and their strategies, they're all dishonorable ways.

They're all underhanded. They're all weaselly. That's why you get people saying stuff like this. Well, I can't believe that you're against people that are against racism. Like, this is so stupid. It's like, are you really that stupid?

Or is that just a tactic? Because I'm obviously against racism too. What I'm saying though, is the way you're defining racism is incorrect. Like it doesn't take too, like you don't have to be too mature to understand the difference there, but it's almost like the other side is committed to not understanding.

And that's exactly right. Because if they were to admit that the nuances that you're, you're bringing to the conversation, then they would have to admit that their project has failed, right? You have to admit that your project has failed.

I saw one guy on Twitter say, I can't believe we're in the stage of evangelicalism where to be against, or to be for holiness and personal character makes you a Nazi. And he was talking, of course, about Tom Askell's, his, his, his conversation where he said that, you know, the people that are like supporting Biden are the same, the same kind of people that supported all kinds of evil parties in the past.

So Nazi party, stuff like that. And it's just like, you obviously understand what he's talking about. So let's not pretend that what he's, what he means is, yeah, if you care about personal holiness, then you're like a Nazi.

That's really stupid. It's really stupid. But the thing is, they understand that, but they have to use those kinds of stupid, childish, evil tactics in order to push their lies. And so for me, they told me that my tone was wrong and people will constantly comment about how aggressive my tone is.

And really my, the big problem I have with you, Adam, is your tone. It's the fact that you mock people. It's the fact that you joke. In fact, I had one, it was the same SBC guy. This SBC guy has said a lot of things about me, a lot of them in private too.

And I, but here's the thing that this guy said, the problem with you, AD, the big problem I have with you is that you're enjoying it too much. You laugh too much. It's, it's, it's a sport to you, you know, and he's trying to make me feel bad for having a good time, for having joy.

And I, I, I reject that of course. No, I mean, it doesn't work on me. You know what I mean? I know that I'm supposed to be joyful. I know that there's a place for laughing and mockery and joking and all that stuff.

Listen, I'm on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. That's that tactic's not going to work on me, right? But they said that is, that's the real problem. It's not what you say. It's how you say it. Have you heard that before?

I've heard that before, but that's, that's false. That's a lie. And you know how I know it's a lie because look at how they're treating Neil Shenvey right now. Have you seen this? I've seen what these beasts, beasts are saying about Neil Shenvey right now.

It's October 29th. The last few days, Neil Shenvey has been drug through the mud. Neil is a controversial figure even on my side, right? But I've, I've come to his defense again and again and again, and I've come to his defense, not without my criticisms.

Neil knows that I've criticized him, you know, pretty aggressively for his unwillingness to name names, his unwillingness to bring it to the practical level. I've said, I love the fact that you're doing this on the, from a, from an academic theological point.

We need that. We absolutely need that. We need our Ezra's, right? Ezra, the scribe, he studied the law of God. He got his doctrine down. That was crucial. That was necessary, but we need Nehemiah's too, to crack some skulls, beat some people and pull out their beards.

We need both of those things. We need both of them. I've told Neil this before, but if you think about Neil, you guys, even the guys that criticize Neil, right? And don't, don't think he's doing the right thing.

I ask you a question. I ask you a question. Is there a nicer guy in the world than Neil? I don't mean this as an insult guys. I'm not saying like a nice guy, like in an insulting way, like he's one of the most agreeable, just like, like, like, I don't mean this as an insult.

I know it's going to come across and winsome just, and I, these terms, I don't mean this as an insult, Neil. I don't mean that you're just like, you're non-threatening, like you're very disarming. That's what it is.

It's not non-threatening. It's disarming. Your tone is about as nice as I could imagine. You know what I mean? Like who, who, who is more reasonable than Neil Shenvey? I mean, seriously, the, from a tone perspective, right?

I'm not saying you have to agree with everything he's saying. I'm saying from a tone perspective, who would be a nicer guy to talk to? And you know what they're saying about Neil? Nah, he doesn't know anything.

He, hard pass. I heard Thabiti Anyabwili, somebody, I think it might've been Neil himself. He said, Thabiti, I'd love to have a conversation with you about some of this stuff. You know, I've, I've put a lot of time into studying this and I've put a lot of effort into understanding this race stuff.

And Thabiti, I would love to have a conversation with you. Thabiti, hard pass, hard pass. Do you know what hard pass means? Maybe some of you in my audience don't know. Hard pass is saying no with extreme prejudice.

It's an insult. It's like, no, thank you. You're beneath me. I can't even give you the time of day to even consider it. Hard pass. Now there are some people that I wouldn't talk to if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, what's the guy's name?

Harding. If he said, I want to have a conversation with you, I'd be like, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I get it. But he, he, he's incorrigible. He, he's, he's, he's ornery. He's not someone that I think I would enjoy speaking to.

He's not someone that I think I'd like to have a beer with. You know what I mean? Like Neil is the nicest guy in the book. I don't have a problem. People don't want to talk to me. I say it all the time.

I recognize that I've got, I can be aggressive, right? And so you don't want to talk to me. I get it, man. I get it. I say this all the time. You don't want to talk to me fine, but you're going to have to talk to someone.

And these people are like, no, if it's, if it's, if it's not your tone, then it's the fact that, you know, you're not a scholar. Oh, if you are a scholar, well, you're not a scholar in the right things.

Oh, if you are a scholar in the right things, well, you still don't get it because you don't agree with me. Basically. Have you heard this? Basically, if you're against critical theory at this point, then basically you don't understand it.

So the only way to be, to understand critical theory is to agree with it to these people. Do you see the tactics, the scam that they're pulling? They will say anything. It doesn't matter. Whatever they perceive as your weakness, that'll be their excuse to not talk to you and call you a sinner.

That'll be their excuse to say hard pass. No way. They never want to talk. They never want to talk because it's always something with them because all of this is just a tactic. They don't, they don't, they're not bringing the truth.

And so they can't bring it in a straight forward way. They have to undermine your character. They have to, they have to insult you. They have to do all kinds of this kind of stuff. They can't just directly say, here's what you said.

Here's why I don't agree. And here's the alternative. They don't do it that way. No, they, they try every tactic, anything they perceive as your weakness. That's what they attack. And so I'm me, I'm not a nice guy.

So I'm not going to talk to you. You have nothing to offer Neil. He is a nice guy, but he's not a scholar. Oh, actually he is a scholar, but he's not a scholar in the right things. Oh, he's partnered with a scholar.

That's a scholar in the right things. Yeah, but he doesn't agree. And so therefore here's an article about someone who agrees with me. And so you see this tactic, it's just a game to them. These guys are playing a game.

They're not interested in the truth. They're only interested in bludgeoning people over the head with whatever their perceived weakness is. There's nothing straightforward about them. There's nothing above board about them.

Everything is a scam. Everything is a sneaky Weasley tactic, right? That's what it is. That's what it is. You don't get that on the fight, laugh, feast network. You don't get that kind of stuff on the fight, laugh, feast network.

Kirk Kennedy, Church Discipline, and Why He Resigned

So that brings me to my personal story, right? So last week I was in a bit of a conflict with Kirk Kennedy and he did a podcast episode, which I've drawn a lot of attention to. I'll link to it in the description of this video and podcast and all that kind of stuff.

So you can hear him out and all that kind of stuff. And in the video, he said a lot of things, right? One of the things he decided to do towards the end, I personally see this as what he thought was the knockout blow for me.

He brought up my controversy in the church that I used to pastor, right? And at the time when this controversy happened, I did a video or two, maybe a couple videos about some of the details about why I resigned from my pastorate.

Because at the end of the day, I had some people on Patreon supporting me. And I wanted to make sure that people had enough information to know that I wasn't excommunicated. So I wasn't like in open sin or open rebellion or anything like that.

But I didn't give a lot of information because I didn't want people, I didn't want to bring personal stuff out for everyone to seek because there was well-known personalities involved in this controversy.

And there were people that weren't well-known that I didn't want to give the details out because it would make them look bad. So I gave enough information to make it clear that I wasn't in the wrong, like I wasn't in open sin or disqualified from the ministry.

But not enough information to let you think poorly about certain people, right? Whether known quantities or not. And so what he chose to do, Kurt chose to do is take the information that I did provide and then extrapolate a lot from it.

And ultimately what he said was that I basically chose to do a YouTube channel over pastoring my flock. So he made it seem as though I was presented a choice, continue to do YouTube videos or pastor my flock and that I chose to continue to do YouTube videos.

Obviously, you can see why he thought that that made me look bad. Because if that's really what I did, that makes you look horrible. That would be a horrible choice, right? Obviously. But of course that's not what happened.

And so I'll provide a few more details here so that you know, you can understand what really went down there. So what had happened there was that it was me and another elder in the church and we were both friends with a Southern Baptist leader, right, at the time.

And so I did my channel and all that kind of stuff. And I was, you know, I was making the videos that I told you about before. Some of them were more aggressive, some of them were less aggressive, but I was criticizing the woke church movement.

And eventually my co-elder came to me and he said, look, it's a sin what you're doing. I think you're sinning. And so, and I'm still leaving details out here, obviously, because it's just not important.

But I took him seriously. So we talked it out, and he told me what he thought was a sin in all of this, and I told him I didn't agree, and so we couldn't figure it out. So that was stage one of church discipline, right?

That was stage one. You have a conversation, you confront someone with what you think their sin is, and then the next step is that you bring it, you know, with other people so we can all kind of weigh it out.

So you can do it in a way that people aren't as emotionally invested in their own positions, and hopefully you can figure it out from there. And so what we did was we brought two brothers from the church and a pastor from the outside who knew us both, right?

It was actually his idea to do, I think it was my idea to bring a pastor in, and it was his idea that the particular pastor we chose. I might be misremembering that, but that's kind of how I remember it.

But I was happy with it because I like this guy as well. And I knew he was the kind of guy that if I was in the wrong, he would have no problem taking me to the woodshed. You know what I mean? That's the kind of guy that we brought in to kind of mediate.

And so we did that, and we had a long conversation about it. And the result of that conversation was that every single person there said, you know what? A .D., I don't think you're sinning. I don't think you're sinning.

I think that I disagree with some of your tone, but that's debatable. And so, you know, you're not in sin here. This is not the issue. During the course of that conversation, it became revealed that the other brother involved in the controversy, the one who brought the charges against me, so to speak, it's his opinion that no matter how dangerous I think the woke church movement is, even if I think it's the most dangerous threat to the gospel of all time, like John MacArthur thinks, I still would not be able to criticize the words of a brother regarding the woke church movement.

And it didn't matter if it was on a YouTube video or from the pulpit. He said it is just off-limits to criticize the words of another brother in Christ. And I said that's preposterous, because it is preposterous.

That's ridiculous. And so, here's what happened. I've said this before. I was unwilling to pastor the church on my own. He was unwilling to pastor with me because he thought it was sinful to criticize the words of another brother in Christ.

No matter how dangerous you think their words are, you cannot do it, is what he said. And so, in order to preserve the unity of the church, I decided to resign so that the church could continue, because I was unwilling to pastor alone.

He was willing to pastor alone. And so, that was the only solution that I could see. I have since come to regret that decision. I think that was a bad decision. But I made the best decision that I could at the time.

I was wrong. I made the bad decision. And so, that's what happened. That's what happened. I left the church because I was trying to preserve the unity of the church in a situation that I felt like had no win to it.

It had no way to win, right? And so, I did the best I could with the information that I had. It was not to continue the YouTube channel. But what I felt like was that if you're telling me I can't criticize the theology of another brother in Christ, then I cannot do my job as a pastor, because correcting errant doctrine and presenting correct teaching and shepherding the flock into truth, that's part and parcel of being a pastor.

And so, if there's a well-known brother in Christ who's teaching something dangerous, I have to be able to criticize that. I have to be able to criticize that. Otherwise, I cannot be a shepherd. I mean, this is obvious to me, right?

And it was obvious to everyone else at the meeting that we had. So, that's why I left. It had nothing to do with wanting to maintain a YouTube channel. That's preposterous. But you see, here's the problem.

When you're not bringing the truth to a debate, the only tactics you have are underhanded tactics. It's just that simple. And so, to demean my character using an untruth, using an untruth, extrapolating bad-sounding accusations from partial information that you got from me that you clearly don't know really what you're talking about, that's the only kind of stuff you have when you're not bringing truth to the discussion.

It's just that simple. It is just that simple. And so, Neil Shenvey, brother, I'm praying for you, man. I'm praying for you. I know you've got a thick skin, and I know that you're trying your best to maintain a certain sort of way to engage in this fight, and I know that you're committed to fighting fair even if your opponents fight dirty.

And I want you to understand something, brother. I'm committed to that as well. I'm committed to that as well. But I want to encourage you, man. Ezra needs Nehemiah sometimes. Ezra needs Nehemiah sometimes.

We definitely need each other. I need the person that's going to study the law of God, that's going to be super careful, that's going to be winsome in the way they teach, and they're going to be edifying the Church and building up and all that kind of stuff.

We need that in the body of Christ. There's no question about that. We need people to be focused on doctrine. We need people to dot their I's and cross their T's. We need people to keep it in the theoretical, because the theoretical affects reality.

But we also need people that show how it affects reality. We need people willing to go into the trenches. And sometimes when you go into the trenches a little bit, you get a little bit dirty, right? It's not clean work, it's dirty work.

You see, the best part about Ezra and Nehemiah, they're confronting the same issues, they're dealing with the same people. But Ezra is up here sort of thinking about things in the theoretical, but doing it in a very sort of like official capacity, and Nehemiah is bringing it to the trenches.

He got his hands dirty. He beat people. He pulled out their beards. He's applying it to the situation that was before them right now, and it's dirty work, baby. It's dirty work. But we need each other, brother.

And that's why I'm not going to beg to be on your team, but some people were criticizing me in my last video where I kind of praised Neal Shenve saying that it was pathetic that I was like begging to be on his team.

I'm not. I'm not. I don't need you to affirm me, Neal. But I do want you to know something, man. I got your back. I got your back. I can't affirm everything that you do. I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why you would support Resolution 9.

That makes no sense to me. I've talked to you about that. You know that, right? But I got your back, bro. I see what these people are doing to you. I see what they're doing to you, and they've done it to me as well.

And they will stop at nothing to destroy you. Know that. I got your back, bro. Anyway, I hope you find this video podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.