What Happened to Paul David Tripp?

Goya Tasting, Announcements, and the Upcoming Book on Evangelical Social Justice

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I want to start off today by just forgiving all of you. That's right. Now, if you're a first-time listener, I have nothing to forgive you for.

We don't have an established relationship. You never had the opportunity to tell me how amazing Goya products are. But if you are a regular listener and you've enjoyed my content, especially if you're a patron, I mean, you're helping financially support this, you pray for me, and you knew about Goya products, like this amazing Cola Champagne, which I thought was just like Coca-Cola, right?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not like Coca-Cola. This is all the amazing goodness of cream soda, root beer, and Coca-Cola in one. It is so good. It is so good. I've never had it before.

This is my first time. But no, for those who think, oh, John, you're just trying out Goya stuff because it's controversial now because the CEO said he liked Trump and the free market, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, you're 100 right.

That is exactly why I was at the store and I thought, you know, I should check out some Goya products. Now, I'm not completely new to Goya because I have dumped globs, I mean, just tons of that Adobo stuff on my spaghetti for years.

I know, Italian food, but oh, that Adobo stuff, it is amazing. The other thing, Gordon Sanchez told me about this, but Tostones, Tostones, now, Gordon Sanchez, he knows Spanish, he has, he is, I mean, he may look white, some of you don't even know who I'm talking about, but, you know, just YouTube Gordon Sanchez, you'll see who I'm talking about.

He, you know, he knows a lot about Hispanic culture. I mean, you could say he basically is Hispanic. I mean, he's called that 80 Robles, if you don't know who that is, you can Google him as well, but, and he said, you know, 80 Robles, you're not even Hispanic.

I mean, I, Gordon Sanchez may be more Hispanic, I'm not sure, but, but he was the one who recommended Tostones to me. And so I did get some Tostones, this is not like a potato chip. This is, listen, a lot could be going wrong in the world, I'm chewing as I'm talking, this is so good.

I'm going to have to ignore that the rest of the episode because it's so tempting. There's a lot going wrong in the world, right? We have riots and I mean, the list is just, the list, it just goes on forever about what's going on.

But the Lord gave us taste buds and, and I have to say this, free markets, you know, this system by which economically there, there are companies, businesses that in order to get my money, cause they're so greedy, right?

They want my money. They have to get all the beautiful, wonderful flavors that God has put here and bottle them up and package them and give them to me. Like I'm fine with that. I am totally fine with that and I'm thankful for it.

So despite all the things going on in the world, there are things to be grateful for. And one of them, I guess I'm finding this out now for the first time is Goya. And I did not want to be guilty of oppressing any of you, of depriving you of the amazing goodness of Goya products.

So I had to tell you about how amazing they are. A few announcements and we'll get started with the topic I want to get to today. But number one, two main questions that come up. Question number one, how do we get here in evangelicalism?

I'm stunned. I have now written a book on this, a lot of primary sources, original research. You're going to want to get it when it comes out. I'm looking for publishing companies or all just self-publish.

I was told by someone, you need to find an academic publisher. I want to get it to you as quickly as I can. It explains what's happening. It's probably, I don't know, 150 pages or so, but I mean pages and pages and pages and pages of bibliography, primary sources, just because I wanted this to be airtight, steeped in research and it is.

It's groundbreaking in some ways, just because this has not been covered. And I show you how we went from the 1970 social justice movement in evangelicalism to what we have today and the thinking behind it and the main, well, I'm going to wait on that.

I was going to tell you the main thing to draw from that, but I'll probably do some episodes and talk a little more about it, but I'm not going to talk about all of it. So you're going to want to get the book.

If you have any connections to, or maybe you are a publisher, contact me. I've got a few irons in the fire. I'm going to be talking to some people this week, but hey, if you can do something fast, I want to get this thing on Kindle and print and maybe even Audible if we can, but I've been working on that.

Even if I don't come out with a video, I've been working on producing resources and that is one of them. The other question I get a lot is, what resources do you have for churches? And I have videos, honestly.

That's mainly what I have. I have some articles I've written, but some laymen are starting to write things in churches and they're sending my inboxes, actually, as a bunch of books and things from people who study guides, from people who want to fight this.

Not all of it is public yet. Once, probably in the next few weeks, when some of this starts going public, I will have links. I'll probably put together a link page, which I'll just build on, which will have resources.

In fact, I would like to write something, probably late summer, early fall, for churches that is basic and that will help you understand the problems with critical social justice and how it conflicts with biblical theology, etc.

So I've been working on that as well. I've been really busy. This week's a very busy week. Thankfully, though, we have Goya products to get us through, so I'm happy. All right, enough about Goya. We're going to talk today about Paul David Tripp.

Paul David Tripp’s Background and Why His New Video Matters

Here's the reason I want to do this. Paul David Tripp, I should probably just tell you, he's a Christian counselor, biblical counselor, I guess. I think he's probably the word he'd use. Speaker, author.

When I went to Master's Seminary, I had to read a bunch of his stuff. When I went to Southeastern, I had to read a bunch of his stuff. I'll be honest with you, I was never a huge fan of Paul David Tripp.

It's not that I disagreed with him. I'm like this with most Christian books. They just tend to be written at such a low level, so basic, I'm just like, it's obvious. I'd rather just read the Bible or older sermons or theology books or something if I was going to read biographies of great Christians.

Some of his books are good. I'm not saying they're not. I haven't read all of them. Maybe some of them have really helped you guys out. I'm not taking anything away from that, but just for me, some of the books I've read, I was just like, eh, it's just basic Christian stuff.

I just wasn't impressed. Paul David Tripp, though, has influenced a lot of people, a lot of conservative people, a lot of reformed people. I think it was a shock yesterday for some when he came out with basically his woke video.

I'm woke now. That's essentially, if you want to sum up the video, that's what he's saying. This is not a shock, I think, to me at least, because I knew about something that you may not have known about.

I'm going to show that to you. Paul David Tripp wrote an article called My Confession Toward a More Balanced Gospel on Thursday, April 15th, 2018. This was more than two years ago now. This is what he said.

I'm going to take you through a couple of these things and just comment, but here's some statements. For all of my passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been accurate and faithful to the best of my ability, the gospel that I have held so dear has been, in reality, a truncated and incomplete gospel.

He's saying, basically, I didn't know the gospel. Didn't know it before something happened to me. He's going to talk about understanding experiences of oppression, et cetera. He didn't understand the gospel completely.

He had an incomplete gospel. Now, this is scary. If that's true, if he's forwarding an incomplete gospel, what does that say about all his writings before 2018? They didn't really have the full gospel in them?

What is the gospel? Isn't it good news for sinners? That's what the gospel is. Well, Paul David Tripp, I'm going to just call it. I'm going to say he is, like a lot of the social justice advocates from the 70s till now, he's corrupting the gospel.

This is what he's doing. I have endeavor, he says, to hold the gospel as the lens through which we see and understand everything we are dealing with between already of our conversion and the not yet of our homegoing.

All right, this is problem number one. It sounds really good, but it is a problem. Using the gospel as a lens to see everything through. We hear this language in social justice a lot, like you need the lens of white privilege.

We need an oppressed lens to understand things, et cetera. This lens language is used an awful lot. Using the gospel as a lens. I probably even said that sometimes. There's nothing innately wrong with using the gospel, meaning using the assumptions behind the gospel.

The good news means that there's bad news, means that man's sinful, means that, oh, if man's sinful, that has implications. Okay, if that's what you're talking about, which he probably sort of is, then that's not necessarily wrong in every sense of the word.

Because yes, the gospel, the Christian worldview or the understandings that come from biblical truth, if we want to just say that, that's probably the best way to put it, these things have implications.

That's true. But we've got to be very specific on what the gospel is. And once you start using the gospel as a lens, instead of just the grace of God that is given to sinners, it's a lens by which you think about everything.

It's a lens by which you come to understanding sociological understandings, economic understandings, et cetera. You're in dangerous territory there. And maybe I'll do an episode on that sometime. But this was the lie.

Even in the 1970s, there were three streams. There was the liberation theology, the neo-Cyperian, and there was sort of an anabaptist stream, which wasn't the same as the other two. But people that were affected by socialist ideas, new left ideas, and came back to their Christian traditions found in liberation theologies and neo-Cyperian theology especially, this holistic understanding of the gospel.

And it was like they went through a second conversion. Jim Wallace even said, you know, hey, I had an actual, my real conversion was when I realized that the gospel of the kingdom and how that's liberating for the oppressed and Jesus identifies with the poor.

And so then it's like smuggling in all of his socialist ideas. That is dangerous stuff. That is adding to the gospel. And adding to the gospel is never a good thing. So you'll have to forgive me for not giving a more complete analysis of this, but I just want you to know that Paul Tripp has been influenced by people who have been telling him, yeah, you need something more than you've been advocating.

It's more than just the grace of God. The gospel is this lens through which you're expected to look through everything. And I don't find this language in scripture. All right, by God's grace, I have become deeply persuaded, he says, that we cannot celebrate the gospel of God's grace without being committed ambassador of the gospel of his justice as well.

The gospel of his justice, the gospel of his justice. So there's two gospels. This is the thing, this is like what Tom Skinner said in I think Urbana 1970. Yeah, you know, the fundamentalists, they have a gospel.

Mainline denominations who got tangled up in the social gospel, they had a gospel. We just got to combine them. No, the social gospel wasn't a gospel. The fundamentalists, for whatever failures you want to talk about with fundamentalism, they had the gospel.

It's good news that Jesus Christ has come into this world, lived the perfect life, paid for the sins of his people. And if you repent and put your trust in him, he promises that you will be in a right relationship with God.

You will go to be with him in heaven and dwell with him. It's not actually all that complicated. That's the gospel. The gospel is the good news. If it's not, if the gospel of his justice, that's not necessarily good news.

The grace is the good news, right? I don't even, I'm just not comfortable with this language. This language is, where do you find this in scripture? Do you find anything in the Bible talking about the gospel of his justice?

No. The cross forbids me to close my eyes to any form of injustice, whether personal, corporate, governmental, ecclesiastical, or systemic. Systemic. Remember, I've talked about that last episode. That's the invisible kind.

You can't find a law. It's not even necessarily about human hearts. It's just systemic. It's just there. And we got to overturn everything to get rid of it. So what Paul David Tripp is saying here is that because of the cross, because of Jesus dying on the cross, he can't close his eye to injustice.

He's connecting these things for Christians who care about the cross, care about the gospel, because what they're going to do is, you know, Christians can't be motivated to pursue the social justice stuff.

At least they weren't five, 10 years ago. Most of them still aren't. They can't just be activated to be political activists. If you attach it to the gospel, to the mission of the church, to go into all the world and preach the gospel, if you attach it to that, you can now start persuading people like Paul Tripp, who would never have done it otherwise.

But now they think it's part of their Christian duty because, well, it's part of the gospel. And this is dangerous thinking. He says, there should be no community that is more present, active, and vocal advocates for justice than the community that preaches the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ.

He's saying the church needs to be the most present, active, and vocal advocate for justice. The church, they need to be the activists. The Christians in the church, that's part of their job. That's connected to the gospel.

Do you see this in the New Testament? Is this New Testament Christianity? A lot of injustices in the Roman Empire. You want to talk about injustices in America? Oh my goodness. Not even close to the kind of thing that took place in the Roman Empire, especially in an occupied country in Jesus' day, in the time of the apostles.

Slavery. I mean, look, you don't talk about slavery in the United States. I mean, this kind of slavery had sex slavery that was accepted in the culture as normative. Gladiatorial rings. I don't remember those in Alabama.

I don't think there was. I mean, there's horrible things that happened. Like they had slaves in their system. They had people killing themselves. And if you're a Roman citizen, you couldn't be a slave.

I mean, a lot of the things that we complain about happen in the past in America. It was the present. It was the present and worse for those in the New Testament. What did Paul do about it? What did Jesus do about it?

And I mean, that and slavery is just the tip of the iceberg. You want to talk about the way that women were treated? You want to like, which, what metric do you want to use? And were those in the church, is that how they were known?

Were they the biggest just advocates, the activists for social justice? No, that's not how they were known. At the end of the article, remember this. Paul Tripp is a counselor. He knows about guilt. He says, what about you?

How balanced has your gospel been? Provoking question, right? Have you been an advocate for grace, but silent in the face of injustice? There's two things he's doing. He's taking the gospel, pairing it with silence in the face.

You're somehow not being faithful to the gospel if you were silent in the face of injustice. So the gospel is something you do apparently. But is this the kind of injustice that's like, oh, they broke God's law.

They stole a purse. They beat someone up. They said something vile. No, no. Have you been comfortable with the segregation of the Christian community or a subtle personal prejudice? Segregation of the Christian community.

So if you go to a church because you like the theology, you have friends there, you don't have any hatred towards people of different colors. But it is predominantly one ethnicity. And there's another church in town that is predominantly another ethnicity.

You should feel guilty for that. You should examine that. You should put that under the microscope. This is what the social justice warriors want you to do. They want you, this is where they want the focus right now.

Loving your neighbor by wearing a mask for the common good. So do what the government tells you to do, even if it's not lawful, even if it doesn't help. Don't question. You must do that. Number two, focus on the systemic, quote unquote, racism in this country in your own heart, if you're white.

And then be part of the solution, which means reforming the police or disbanding the police or taking down historical artifacts and monuments. In some cases, destroying property, I guess. But be part of that solution.

Don't question the violence associated with that. The many who have died in these protests. You haven't even heard about most of those names. I mean, that's because the narrative is controlled. You will all remember the name of George Floyd.

Every single one of you. You won't remember the names of the, there's so many others. There's at least like 30 or 40 who have died in these protests. And I stopped keeping track of all of it. I don't even remember all their names.

I remember David Dorn. But the other day I was even watching, there was a protest and there was a young black kid who died in the protest. The dad's at the funeral and he's just saying, Black Lives Matter, huh?

Basically, you hypocrites. And so, you know, there's things like that happening and you don't remember all those names and they don't want you to. Focus on only one thing. Focus on the systemic oppression.

Focus on racism in your own heart. Are you an enemy or are you an ally? Those are the only two questions. If you're an enemy, because you're passively white, you're racist because you're passively just letting the status quo continue.

Or are you an ally? Are you going to be part of the solution to completely take down the hegemony, forward reparations, whatever the solution is? Paul David Tripp in 2018, that's two years ago, I mean, he's playing right into this kind of stuff.

This is where the microscope is, all right? Now, it's not wrong to examine your heart, but examining it for things that aren't necessarily sinful and then pairing this with the gospel somehow, you're not being faithful to the gospel.

I mean, Paul David Tripp knows what he's doing. I'll just put it that way. Now, a few things I want you to look for as we're going to play this video. Watch for subjectivity, experience-driven things.

Paul Tripp would never apply these, I don't think at least, to principles, these principles in personal situations. He wouldn't start saying that, well, you need to just listen to a story, accept it, lament, believe it because your experience, you're not capable of examining that experience, you must just accept it.

He wouldn't do that with a husband and wife. He wouldn't say like, oh, husband and wife are in argument, they have disagreements. You know, wife, you just need to listen to your husband, or actually really probably would be the opposite.

Husband, you just need to listen to your wife, accept what she says, believe it because that's not your set of experiences. I don't think he would go that direction. I think he'd probably try to bring the word of God in, bring some objectivity to the situation, and say, yeah, we should listen, but we can also examine while we're listening, and we can make sure your heart attitude is right while you're listening so that you're not just critically examining, but you're also trying to see if there's anything legitimate.

I mean, look, this is just basic human interaction, like healthy human interaction, but it's also just biblical principles. You can make sure that you hear both sides of a story, make sure that you're getting counsel before making big decisions, two or three witnesses.

I mean, due process in our courts comes from biblical principles, essentially. I don't think he'd accept this, but this is what you're going to see in this video, I think a lot of it is just this subjectivity.

It's a given that there's these experiences that you should just listen to, promote, believe. Also, watch how he uses scripture throughout. He will use it, but watch where the priority it has, especially as compared to storytelling.

Now, I want to read this for you. This is from Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado, and it's in a section on counter storytelling, counter storytelling. Just a review here of postmodernism. Postmodern people do not like what they call meta-narratives.

These overarching narratives that explain, that are paradigms for understanding the world that you live in. I mean, that's really the hegemony. They are responsible. There's oppressor people for these narratives, and what critical theorists want to do is they want to bring in counter narratives, and this isn't just critical theory.

This is before the critical race theory that we think of even today. This is just the new left thinking. This is Marxist thinking. It's really what it is at the base, but it's postmodern. It's Marxist, and it's postmodern.

It's taking the established classes who control things, and their version of truth, and then ripping that down. This is what he says, Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado. He says that some of the critical storytellers believe that stories also have a valid destructive function.

Society constructs the social world through a series of tacit agreements mediated by pictures, images, pictures, tales, blog postings, and other scripts. Much of what we believe is ridiculous, self-serving or cruel, but it is not perceived to be so at the time.

Attacking embedded preconceptions that marginalize others or conceal their humanity is a legitimate function of all function. So this has gotten into legal theory and pedagogy, but this is the idea that we should, stories, instead of cross-examinations, we just need to listen to narratives.

Narratives are how critical race theory advances, and you see this so clearly in what's happening right now in this country. You must focus on the one story, the only story that matters. You must focus on what happened with George Floyd.

Focus on what happened with Ahmaud Arbery. There are certain stories, and whipping out statistics and facts and examining those things, I mean, things that Thomas Sowell does so well. That's not the point.

Don't focus on that. Focus on the story. And so critical race theory, those who have been behind that, I mean, this is part of their strategy. And this is a question in the book Critical Race Theory. If one wanted to change another person's mind about something, say the death penalty, what would be a more effective, an array of statistics or a good story or a movie?

You can answer that one for yourself. I know the answer, especially in our culture, a good story or a movie. It's not about facts. It's not about trying to take all the information you possibly can to create a paradigm to get a clear picture of what's happening so that you can even see if it's possible to amend a disparity or a situation.

No, focus on one story, two stories, three stories. Stories that you have emotional connections with. You don't have an emotional connection with a graph. But if the media and Hollywood and elites in education, if they're the ones responsible for crafting the stories, for platforming the stories, you know what kind of stories they're going to platform.

It's going to be stories that fit the narrative that they want, and the narrative will drive the change that they're looking for. All right. So that's just, I just want to mention that before we get to this video, because I think it's important to understand even Christians, persons who aren't reading necessarily Critical Race Theory, but Christians are being sucked into this like everyone else.

It's the narrative that matters. Not necessarily objective truth. All right. I'm going to play the video that Paul David Tripp put out yesterday. I'm going to do it at 1 .2 speed just to get through it a little faster.

Here we go.

Compassion, Information, and the Call to Justice

If change is going to take place, change takes action. Action requires compassion, and compassion requires information. All right. Let's stop right there.

Just one minor thing. I agree for the most part with what he's saying. Here's the minor thing, though, that I quibble with just a little bit. In a justice system, right, or even personally, if we're just applying the law of God, you should not be motivated to pick winners or losers, or treat people differently, or do anything different for one demographic or group because of compassion.

Compassion is good. I mean, Jesus was moved with compassion. He healed people, charity, et cetera. But when we look at actual justice, right, equity in the biblical sense, applying the law of God to everyone, the responsibilities that we all have, the duties that God has given us, that should be applied regardless of your relationship with that person, whether they're an enemy, whether they're a foreigner and you could take advantage of them, whether they're poor.

Scripture even says that. Don't favor a poor man in a dispute. If they're a relative of yours, no, no. Those groups, those external identities, you shouldn't look at those things when you're doing justice.

So if it's injustice we're talking about, justice specifically, that word, mishpat, if we're talking about that, then compassion shouldn't be the main driver. It shouldn't be. And I know that sounds terrible.

Compassion is good. God gave us compassion. But that's a lane, that is an issue that compassion shouldn't be the main driving force. Faithfully applying just laws, right laws to situations should be the right thing to do.

That should be what we ought to look at if there's a problem in any way. And we should be looking at problems that are actually problems. Sometimes the problems, you know, a disparity doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem that you can even do anything about.

Maybe other factors. So I just want to say that off the top. It's not wrong, especially in situations where, I mean, look, he's a biblical counselor. So if you're, you know, husbands are supposed to love their wives.

We're supposed to, you know, have responsibilities at home that we need to fulfill. But we also should be, we should practice a kind of compassion towards people who are oppressed, towards people who are hurt, towards even animals.

This is a Christian thing to do. And we exert ourselves. We go the extra mile. We participate in charity. We give of ourselves. I mean, this is, even if your enemy wants from you, you should give to your enemy.

I mean, these are very Christian understandings. But this is not in the same category as justice. You know, if you do that, it's not, you're not doing that kind of justice with them, to them. So there's a distinction here.

And I'm afraid that I think the waters get muddied on this because, look, once you bring up compassion, emotions get involved. Once emotions get involved, it's whoever can pull those heartstrings the hardest gets to win and, you know, create their situation or you support the situation they want to create.

And that's not how we should be thinking about issues related to justice specifically. All right, let's keep going with this.

A church that does not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood. A church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice, and to hold up righteousness is a church that has no right to be.

Not for yourself, O church, do you exist any more than Christ existed for himself.

Joe. All right, let's, this is Charles Spurgeon quote. Let's examine this real quick. So if you look at this from a social justice angle, a presentist lens, and you, you know, side of the poor, that must mean, you know, the people, we just got to always politically do something right for the poor, economically do something right for the poor.

No, no, no, no. Usually when scripture is talking about that, because scripture specifically says not to take the side of the poor, but when, when it, but it also talks about taking the side of the poor and whenever it does, it's because there are people, there are poor people that do not have the influence, do not have the power, do not have, they can be taken advantage of, you know, have the connections, right?

And so making sure that justice applies to them is taking the side of the poor, not subverting justice for the poor, right? But making sure the same equality before the law, the same laws that apply to someone who's rich ought to apply to someone who's poor.

If a rich person breaks the law, they got to, they ought to go to jail. If a poor person breaks the law, they ought to go to jail. If it's the same offense, same kind of penalty. That's the issue. Not, not, not what social justice advocates have made this to be, that you should just in general, kind of this feel, feely good, really ambiguous thing, just in general, be on the side of the poor.

They're protesting something, be with them. No, that is not at all what the scripture talks about. That's not what Charles Spurgeon's talking about. The word injustice, Spurgeon did not mean the kind of injustice social justice advocates are advocating for.

There's a disparity. Well, we got to create an equal outcome where we're going to make sure that historic, you know, oppression is taken into account. No, Spurgeon wasn't talking about that. And so this is, I think, a bad case of presentism trying to use Spurgeon to, to legitimize what he's about to say.

All Spurgeon.

Listening to Black Experience and the Move Toward Wokeness

I have been wanting to do a video addressing this moment that we're in culturally, and I sort of wanted for the, to let the dust settle a little bit. And I want to begin by saying that I really want to address my white brothers and sisters who love the word of God, who love the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I want to start by sharing two experiences with you. The first is my own personal experience of ministry. For decades, I have committed myself to this mission, connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.

Take that narrative of scripture with its chief character being the Lord Jesus Christ, the chief event being the cross of his sacrifice and apply that to daily life. I think of my ministry as putting on gospel glasses and trying to look at everything.

Now, here's my experience. When I have done that and applied that mission to marriage and parenting, to midlife, to sex, to money, to human communication, to a variety of issues, people are just so encouraging and tell me how thankful they are for my ministry.

But when I apply the very same mission, looking at the issue of racial injustice from the vantage point of the same message of scripture, the same gospel, people get mad at me. They accuse me of forsaking my calling.

They call me a socialist or a Marxist. All right, let's stop right there.

Here's what's happening. Number one, he starts off with, it sounds like a confrontation of white Christians specifically. So he wants to make his audience clear. They're white Christians. He's talking about the current cultural moments of the Black Lives Matter protests, et cetera.

And he's going to start off not with biblical truth. And here's where you send white Christians. But he's starting out with experiences he's had. Now, that's not necessarily a wrong thing to do. What matters is where does that measure in?

How authoritative is that? And you're going to see the emphasis, I think, in this video. It's more authoritative. His experiences seem to be the more authoritative thing he's appealing to. Now, his claim is that he preaches the gospel.

He has the gospel lenses. And by the way, I got to say this about him. He's got pretty spiffy glasses. But more spiffy than that, his mustache and his sideburns. I think my wife would kill me. But I wouldn't mind having his mustache and sideburns.

They're pretty nice. That's just me. Anyway, Squirrel, back to reality. He's saying, I just apply the gospel to all these relationships. I counsel. I talk about marriage and money and finances and family.

And then all for some reason, I just do the same thing when it comes to the social justice stuff. He's calling, what does he call it? He calls it racial discrimination or repression or whatever the term he used.

But he's saying, when I talk about that issue, then people say, yeah, you're a Marxist. What's going on here? And here's what I think is happening. I mentioned earlier, he approaches, from what I've seen at least, he approaches other relationships with, you have your story.

I have my story. Let's try. Let's listen to each other. Let's figure out, try to bring objective truth to bear, bring the scriptures to bear, principles, and then pave the way forward. Conflict resolution.

Is he doing that with this situation? Think about it this way, and I'm going to just give you a scenario to you. If a child said, or I'm going to try to pick someone with less power, a child, let's say a wife and a husband.

Let's say the wife has less, she's not as strong, whatever. She says, the child says, I'm oppressed. Or a friend says, I'm oppressed by that person. I'm oppressed by them. And then they don't really give evidence for why they're oppressed.

It's more so just, it's their experience. They say, well, he never, I'm not going to, I'm going to get in trouble if I start, because people are going to say, oh, you're paralleling something that's trivial with something very serious.

And I don't want to do that. But just, you can paint the scenario in your head, however you want to paint it. It's just, there's an accusation made against someone. How would a Christian counselor handle that?

And then especially if the accusation ends with, and we need to do something to remedy this. And it's not about changing laws. Um, Paul Tripp knows this. I was just watching another video of his where he said, he said this in the video that, yeah, you know, changing laws doesn't take away racism.

Racism's still there. You can change the laws, civil rights stuff should be axed, you know, change the laws, but it didn't change the racism. So especially when the solution to these things is we have to do something about it, but it's not, it's not changing laws that are in the sense of, um, you know, forcing people to treat all ethnicities equally.