Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth: A Critical Review

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January 21, 2022

Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth is a book a number of supporters asked me to analyze. I go over the strengths, weaknesses, and unhelpful elements. Slideshow: https://www.patreon.com/posts/powerpoint-for-61393157?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare

00:12: Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We have today a listener generated episode.
00:19: That's right. A podcast I wouldn't normally do, but I've had a number of requests to do it.
00:24: So we are going to do it and it's a book review. The book is called Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth by Thaddeus Williams.
00:33: There's a number of other contributors to the book, but their sections are mostly small, a few paragraphs and testimonials, and they fit into the greater narrative that Thaddeus Williams has composed.
00:44: And so Thaddeus Williams is the main author for all effective and intensive purposes.
00:51: So we're going to talk about that book. Before we get to it, I just want to acknowledge first a sponsor for this particular episode.
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02:24: I'm going to be, but very soon, I'm going to be in Kentucky and Tennessee. You're going to want to go to the website January 29th through February 1st and you can check out all the places that I'm going to be.
02:36: That's what it looks like and this is going to be changing, but not the January 29th to February 1st, unless there's a big emergency of some kind.
02:44: That stuff's all solid, it's set, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in Kentucky and in Tennessee as well.
02:54: Let's get to the review now of Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth.
03:01: There's a lot of thoughts that I had on this book. Like any book, it's not unique in that sense,
03:08: I have to narrow it down to the ones that I think are relevant, the most relevant, because there's certain thoughts
03:15: I had that I think are relevant, but I need to narrow it to the most relevant thoughts for this particular audience.
03:22: The situation that I think most of the requests have come from are people in churches where this book is being used as a way for small groups,
03:36: Sunday schools, Bible studies, a way to engage social justice thinking and do so in kind of, this is the suspicion,
03:48: I think a lot of the people who have reached out to me, this is the suspicion they have, do it in a way where they can kind of have the best of both worlds.
03:56: We can be against social justice, but also kind of see the good points of social justice. Now I'm not saying the book says that, that's the impression
04:05: I think a lot of people have. And they walk away feeling like something's not quite right, and maybe they can't even wrap their minds around what's not right.
04:13: Why do they feel a little disconcerted about this particular book? There's so many good things it says, what's off?
04:21: And that's mainly the questions that I've gotten I think arise from that.
04:27: People who have tried to approach their church leaders about it and talk through it and they're still confused or they feel like it's this kind of third way that doesn't really address the root issues.
04:39: And that's the most maybe they've thought is this isn't getting at the root problems associated with the social justice movement today.
04:50: It's kind of, it's a little more surface level or it's creating a way in which organizations like the
04:58: Gospel Coalition can kind of still be free to operate. And they're not going, because they're not on the fringe or the extreme end of the social justice movement.
05:09: And so they're kind of, they're okay. It's more the extreme end we got to be careful of. All right. So these are the things that I've heard.
05:16: And so I read it for myself just to see, you know, is there any merit to this? What is it that people, some people think is off about this?
05:23: Now, I'm assuming many of you in this audience may not agree with that general assessment. You may think, man, this is a great book and perhaps it helped you.
05:31: And that is very legitimate. It perhaps has helped a number of people. I don't want to take away from that.
05:37: One of the thoughts that I had as I was reading this was, you know, which way does this move the needle?
05:43: Is this moving the needle to the left or to the right on a, you know, political, in a political way?
05:51: Theologically, I have some other thoughts we'll get into, but is it people from the left, from the social justice movement who are that, that mindset, who are picking up this book and then they're being kind of moved gradually to, to the right?
06:06: Or is it people from the right who are picking up this book, who are being kind of moved to the left a little, or they think that they can at least accept some of the more quote unquote moderate, but really it's more left leaning assumptions that are out there.
06:22: That's, that's a question that I had. And I don't know the answer. My suspicion is this book is probably more popular with evangelicals who would normally be more conservative in their thinking, in their political thinking.
06:34: And they're picking it up. And they're probably that the ones that are at least reaching out to me, they're probably disturbed because they feel there's a pressure to accept the, that not maybe the far left, but at least the, the, the not so far left, except, except them as, as legitimate in some way or not that bad, or, you know, there, there's some things we can learn, right?
06:58: I think that's probably what's going on, but I don't know. I could see this. If this book is marketed to the people who read, who are some really progressive
07:07: Christians out there, people who read relevant magazine, I don't know, this may move the needle to the right so that that's very possible.
07:15: I don't know the answer to that. But let, let's get into the nitty gritty here. Let's get into the actual quotes and what the book has to say.
07:23: Let the book speak for itself as much as possible. Obviously I'm, I'm, I'm putting this in my own paradigm and my own thinking,
07:31: I'm emphasizing the things that I think stood out and the major themes. And so I would encourage you go read the book for yourself if you really want to know what it says, but, but, but hopefully this will help some of you, especially those who are of my same theological and political persuasions or, or close to it.
07:49: Maybe this will be something that will help you think through it as you read it if you choose to do so.
07:55: So let's start off with some positive things, right? There's some strengths in this book and there's some real strength. I just want to say that because I, I'm going to get into some things that I disagree with, but there, there's some good positive things to mention about this.
08:06: The book clearly articulates the universal sinfulness of mankind very clearly over and over mankind is sinful.
08:13: It's not unique to white people. It's not unique to any particular gender. It's just, it's humans.
08:19: And I really appreciate that about the book. Not every book on social justice from even
08:25: Christian persuasions, quote unquote, does this. Many of, obviously the more quote unquote woke books tend to emphasize the sinfulness of one particular demographic, right?
08:38: And this book tries to go out of its way to say, no, that it's a human problem, sin is. And I appreciate that. Number two, the book clearly articulates the importance of viewing people first and foremost as made in the image of God and shows how social justice activists as well as conservatives can reduce people to political abstractions.
08:55: And that's so true. Here's a quote along those lines, Thaddeus Williams says, as we seek a more just world, if we see those who disagree with us as Republicans or Democrats, progressives or conservatives, radical leftists or right -wing fundamentalists first and as image bearers second, or not at all, then we aren't on the road to justice.
09:15: We're on history's wide and bloody road to dehumanization. And I think he's a hundred percent right about this, that, you know, and, and I know he's, some of you might bristle at, he's including conservatives in this, in a sense, you know,
09:29: Republicans are capable of this, but you know, the honest truth is yes, obviously the left, they're the experts on this.
09:38: They do this far more. I mean, there's no comparison really, but the, the right is starting to catch up a little bit more and, and it's not the whole right, the right's not characterized by this.
09:51: So I shouldn't probably say it that way, but there's certainly elements within the right that are going more in this direction, secular quote unquote conservatives, or at least they take that label and they can start to go down this path.
10:04: Yes, they're nothing like the left, but viewing people or minimizing who they are based on some kind of a political abstraction, this is what
10:13: I'm seeing in this quote and the terms I'm using. And instead of as a human, first and foremost, that's, that's a very, that's a very dangerous thing once you start doing that.
10:25: And so we need to be able to describe people groups. We need to be able to even say very negative things at times to characterize people groups that are embarking on, you know, evil things, but we need to make sure that we keep in mind that they are people groups, they're actual people.
10:44: And so, so I'm just going to say, that's, that's a great point that Thaddeus Williams makes. He also says, let's see, I also say about it, the book accurately depicts social justice thinking as pervasive.
10:53: That's one of the pet peeves of mine is, well, you know, at our seminary or at the
10:59: Gospel Coalition, you know, we are not really, we're not pushing this stuff. We are, social justice is not a pervasive thing at all.
11:08: Maybe a few things here or there, but you know, is it even a pervasive thing in the broader society?
11:15: I mean, you have BLM, but you know, it's not, you know, but here's the thing, it's it is, it's a religion.
11:22: It's, it's the official religion, pretty much of our country at this point. It's like living in Mormon country, surrounded by Mormons everywhere and saying, well, there's really,
11:31: I mean, there's a Mormon church down the road, but there's not really a lot of Mormons. Well, yeah, there are. And every time
11:36: I turn on my television or turn on my radio or listen to a streaming or look at a magazine or look at a billboard or list goes on, there's, there's a social justice message.
11:49: Almost every time it seems like waiting to, to, to advertise even a product or something.
11:55: So anyway, I wanted to say that it's really good that Thaddeus Williams recognizes that social justice thinking is pervasive.
12:04: And then the book also teaches against holding onto resentment for past oppression. Really good point.
12:09: A lot of the woke books, obviously they're holding on to resentment. And then he says that the book opposes, this is probably the best point, right?
12:16: The most unique like thing that I'm like, yes, he said this, the book opposes James Cone and admits that today's racial reconciliation is inspired by Cone's thinking a hundred percent.
12:25: Yes, much of it is. And James Cone was not a good guy and he had a false gospel and it doesn't really go into depth on him, but it, it, it clearly does admit at least that, yeah,
12:37: James Cone, not, not such a great influence. So with all that said, with these strengths, now, now the part everyone's been waiting for, right?
12:48: What are some of the things that are not helpful about the book? Okay. Two things I've outlined that I think are not helpful, broadly speaking.
12:56: One is that there is what I would consider to be third -way thinking and the impression, an impression that's given of moral equivalency between the political right and the political left.
13:08: Let me read you some quotes along these lines. First an observation,
13:14: Thaddeus Williams frequently vilifies tribalism, yet implicitly exempts Christianity from this in a, in a way, you know, and again, it's a, it's hard to take this book, like honestly, a lot of books that evangelicals write is really hard to take them and kind of break them down because you're going to find things that seem to be vague.
13:37: You're going to find things that seem to almost contradict other things. And this book was no exception in my mind. So later on, you're going to find,
13:45: I'm going to read a quote where there's a vilification of Christians kind of going on, not, not, well,
13:51: I'll, we'll talk about it when I get to it, but there's, there's a sense in which though, the version of Christianity that Thaddeus Williams is advocating though, right, is, is kind of like, that's what we, that's the rallying call.
14:05: We should all be kind of attracted to this kind of Christianity that somehow is not tribalistic.
14:12: That they're, being a Christian doesn't mean in Thaddeus Williams version of it, it doesn't mean being part of a tribe necessarily, but tribalism is a, this pernicious problem and it's not really defined.
14:26: It's just, it's kind of vague. It's, it's you know, what is tribalism? And, and so as you go through the book and you read the content, you start figuring out it's, and I'll actually read for you some of those quotes.
14:39: He says, we find ourselves in a situation full of irony in which the far right and far left sides of the political spectrum are playing exactly the same game they think the other side is so deplorable for playing.
14:50: I mean, and there's examples of that, hypocrisy, sure. I don't,
14:58: I mean, the political right is really nothing though, can't really hold a candle to the political left when it comes to all kinds of evils.
15:05: And we could start with abortion, but we don't have to even, without even appealing to abortion, the worst kind of evil we can think of, we can talk about the levels of fraudulent behavior and corruption and the dismantling of the biblical understandings of gender hierarchy, the consolidation of power, the way in which the environment is often worshiped.
15:37: I mean, we can go on and on with, we just rip out the Democrat agenda and start reading their party platform and we could just go on and on and compare it to the
15:46: Republican party platform. There's just no contest here. So there's a technical truth in this that, yeah, you know, the far right and the far left sides of the political spectrum can, they can.
15:57: They are capable of playing the same game, but is it really like this moral equivalency? I'm very skeptical of this.
16:05: And if what he's trying to say is like the far right, so, you know, we're talking about the Klansmen and neo -Nazis, right?
16:11: That's usually what the far right, and of course, now being incorporated into that is, if you're part of the
16:19: Oath Keepers or if you're part of, I don't know, any of the groups that were there on January 6th or something, you're part of this.
16:27: And so I don't really accept that, but again, it's a vague term.
16:33: That's why it's very hard. It's hard to really talk about some of these quotes because you're like, well, what does he really mean by that?
16:39: Social justice A, I'm reading a new quote here. Social justice A, the kind of justice that flows from scripture is not synonymous with the
16:45: Republican party or its policies. And again, yeah, true. I mean, it's not, they're not the same thing.
16:51: There is no political party. There never has been no group of people that can claim that their positions are exactly in line perfectly with scripture.
17:02: It won't happen. The nation of Israel at any state in their nationhood could not, you couldn't freeze frame it and say like, right there, that's it.
17:11: That's what scripture looks like when it's being applied. You couldn't say that because they never perfectly applied it.
17:16: But it's not a very interesting observation. It's like, yeah, duh. But what kind of question should be the one that's asked, you know, which political party or which political platform fairly or more closely represents biblical morality?
17:32: That's the question that should be asked. Not creating some standard of perfection or a standard of it must meet this biblical kind of this benchmark that is not possible to be met and well, therefore it fails.
17:54: And that's kind of, and you know what, Thaddeus Williams may even say like, oh, that's not really what I'm saying. I don't know.
17:59: But that's the impression you definitely get when you read this. You're like, okay, well, you got the Republicans, you got the Democrats and they both fall short of the standard, therefore, they're not the correct paths or they're not the right way to go, or they're equally wrong in some way, and they're just not, it's just not the case.
18:21: Hermit crab theology, Thaddeus Williams says, takes Jesus and jams him inside the preexisting shell of some extra biblical ideology.
18:28: This book offers reasons we should never cram Jesus into leftist ideology. And I would say the same thing about the right, why?
18:35: Because Jesus is too big to fit into the gnarled crack shells of any manmade political party. Again, like, why are we trying to do that?
18:44: Is that the goal? Like, should we be taking Jesus and doing that? I don't think so. No. I don't think
18:50: Thaddeus Williams probably even thinks so. So why bring this up? These are the kinds of things that I've talked about over the course of years now that you often hear from this kind of third way strain within evangelicalism, the gospel coalition being a very obviously identifiable organization that promotes this kind of thing.
19:10: And you'll find all kinds of quotes like this. Tim Keller, I think, is one of the main thinkers that I would look to as that guy talks in these terms, uses these terms all the time, talks in these ways.
19:25: You know, David Platt. I mean, a lot of them do this where it's just like, well, there's Jesus, there's
19:30: Jesus and his law, there's scripture, right? And then there's these political parties that just fall short and are hypocrites.
19:36: And it gives the impression they're like equally bad. Thaddeus Williams also says the political right has its own idols.
19:43: These include, but aren't limited to, stuff, solitude, sky, and the status quo. So here we get to, and the gospel coalition does this a lot, idolatry, right?
19:52: Everything is like possible, potential candidate for idolatry. Loving your family too much, right?
19:59: It could be a potential candidate for idolatry. We've seen this kind of thinking, and it's often applied to the
20:06: Republican party. In fact, when the Democrat party is actually literally taking
20:11: Romans 1 and inserting that into their party platform, actual evil, scripture identifies, the way that you can try to make a moral equivalency between the
20:18: Republicans and Democrats is by saying, well, the Republicans can value money too much or something, you know, look what scripture says about money or something, you know, it's like, yeah, but show me where this is in their party platform.
20:30: Show me where this, where candidates, I mean, I'm sure there's individual candidates who are greedy, but to assume that this is this celebrated evil idol is just like when the
20:44: Democrats are literally saying, yeah, yeah, we celebrate, you know, men aren't men and women aren't women, and let's completely get rid of the concept of biblical sex and gender.
20:55: And like, it just, it's amazing to me, it's amazing to me that that kind of thing happens, but the idols of the political right, by stuff,
21:04: Thaddeus Williams says, I simply mean material prosperity for its own sake, hoarding wealth and celebrating reckless consumption without regard for the corrosive effects that too much stuff can have on our souls and our society.
21:14: Okay, where are you going to like, is the Republican party supposed to like make a statement about like, hey, watch out for materialism or like what?
21:22: It's not the function really. Um, you know, I, there, I, there's a part of me that wants to like, kind of agree with like, yeah, like if you're unbridled capitalism and you're functioning within that and buying things to your heart's content, not good for you.
21:40: But that's kind of like, that's more of a personal choice there. You know, that's, that's not really within, uh, well, we're going outside of what the political realm, uh, the purpose of the political realm would be at that point, uh, by solitude, he says,
21:58: I mean, the kind of rugged individualism by which we think every man is an Island unto himself instead of seeing ourselves and our actions as inevitable, inevitably impacting those around us.
22:08: Uh, okay, I, I mean, I guess, I mean, I, maybe this is more of a libertarianism he's talking about here.
22:17: Uh, this is the right though, in his mind. By sky, I referred to the versions of Christianity in which the whole point is to simply float off into the clouds after we die.
22:27: Okay. Uh, that's, I mean, now we're talking about Christians though. So the political right, apparently this is, maybe this is the moral majority, the religious right.
22:37: Uh, the whole point though, is to float off into the clouds after we die and that's somehow bad.
22:43: I get, maybe we shouldn't sing, I'll fly away. I don't know. It's, but these are idols, apparently this is an idol is something you, you bow down, you worship instead of God, you you're instead of worshiping
22:53: God, you're worshiping the notion that you're going to go to heaven one day. And that's the point. Uh, and I guess maybe that you don't have a social responsibility.
23:01: That would be the implication. So, um, there's an essay I probably, uh, okay,
23:08: I already opened the door. There's an essay by Richard Weaver called two kinds of America, two types, I think it's called of American individuals, uh, two, no, two kinds of American individualism.
23:17: There we go. Where he talks about this kind of emancipated self, uh, really more represented in the
23:27: Northeastern transcendentalists and stuff that, you know, we're going to emancipate ourselves from society.
23:34: We're just autonomous individuals. And then he talks about an individualism mostly arising in the South that, uh, valued community and they saw, you know, you were born with certain kinds of social obligations and, um, and it was very local though, very organic, certainly not compatible with a deified state like you would have in communism at all.
23:55: Um, but the, that these two kind of notions of individualism has been around for awhile. And um, and so the only reason
24:03: I'm bringing that up is because some of the things he's saying here, it almost reminds me of that kind of very,
24:09: I guess libertarian would be the word, but this, you know, I'm just an individual and that's, you know, with no responsibilities or attachments or obligations to anything else.
24:18: And, and this is kind of a smear, I think that the left kind of uses against the right. Sometimes it's a stereotype of the right that that's just how the right is.
24:27: Uh, and I think behind it though, is this, um, this, and I'm not saying when
24:35: Thaddeus Williams says it, but in general, when I hear this critique, it's this kind of, uh, distaste for individual rights.
24:44: Uh, the negative rights found in our bill of rights. It's, it's, we want positive rights.
24:50: We want, uh, we want utopia really. And it's going to take a group effort to get there.
24:55: And so individual rights kind of stand in the way of that. Uh, localized communities stand in the way of that.
25:02: Um, honestly, uh, hope in an afterlife stands in the way of that. Cause if you think you're getting utopia when you die, you're not going to be as motivated to build utopia here.
25:11: Uh, so, so I think that's probably more where it's coming from, but often it's couched and it's phrased, it's represented in this kind of straw man of, well, you just don't believe you have any attachment to society.
25:23: And there is a political conservative tradition going back in this country that does see obligations.
25:29: In fact, I don't think you're really conservative unless you have to see that there are obligations you have. Uh, the obligations certainly that are even, um, woven into the created order.
25:39: Uh, but, um, but there's limitations on those and that's the point there's limitations and there are individual rights.
25:48: There are things that the government should not be, um, regulating or, uh, they shouldn't, they shouldn't tell you what to do in such a way that it interferes with your obligations to your, your family, your local community, and most especially
26:04: God. So I probably waxed too long on that. We've got a number of sides to get to. And I said, I wanted to keep this short and I don't think that's happening now, but, uh, let me move along a little faster.
26:13: So that's number one. There's third way thinking, I think, in the impression of moral equivalency. Number two, there is an implication, um, of a skewed sense of proportion.
26:25: I'll read for you some quotes, show you what I mean. Um, aren't you lumping Dr. Williams, individuals in the media and tons of people in higher education into one big evil group.
26:33: Whether you brand them lefties, snowflakes, social justice, be advocates or whatever. No, Thaddeus Williams says
26:40: I am not doing the same thing as those I'm critiquing. We should never call for hatred or unfriending or use a morally charged word like cowards to generalize any particular people group.
26:49: I thought, I thought about this. I mean, I started thinking of all these Bible verses, right? Where Jesus is going to war with the Pharisees and he's, he's really broad brushing them, you know, uh, saying all kinds of things about them.
27:02: Whitewash tombs. We have John the Baptist calling here to Fox. We have, uh, Paul and man look at his, his letter to the
27:09: Corinthians. Look what he says about them. Um, look what he says even in Galatians, you know,
27:15: I wish that what a group of people, Judaizers, that they'd go all the way that they'd cut everything off. Uh, we have, uh, you know,
27:22: Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, a lot, lots of really not so winsome things in scripture by people who are frankly the founders and examples of our faith.
27:35: So I started just thinking about that, but then I realized I started reading more that, um,
27:42: I don't, I don't know that, uh, Thaddeus Williams is, is consistent necessarily with this.
27:48: Uh, we, you know, we should never call her, uh, for hatred. Okay. Or in friending or using morally charged word, a morally charged word like cowards to generalize a particular people group.
27:56: But then he says in the same book, the alt -right, which is anti -gospel to its rotten core.
28:02: Okay. Well, he didn't use a name, but I don't know. Anti -gospel to its rotten core, use the adjective rotten, uh, about a group made in God's image.
28:10: Right. We don't hear this usually from TGC about, uh, you know, people on, on the right that they're made in God's image.
28:17: Right. Well, the alt -right people are made in God's image. So, you know, it's the alt -right, which is anti -gospel to its rotten core.
28:26: Uh, he says, and maybe, you know, it's not talking about the individuals in the alt -right. I'm just talking about their ideas or something, you know, but come on.
28:33: That's really, um, there. He also says this, and this is what's fascinating to me.
28:39: And I mentioned earlier, I was going to get to this. He says there is no shortage of real world examples of Christians taking political power to dangerous extremes.
28:48: People being dehumanized for their skin color, moderate Muslims being treated like bloodthirsty jihadists, gays, and lesbians being ousted from their homes and treated like subhumans, capitalists who have valued profits over people.
29:00: And then who have trampled women. We must say with tears, all of this is true.
29:06: Now, three things. One, I didn't really want to bring it in because it would just take too long, but in a previous book by Thaddeus Williams, he actually kind of takes the
29:17: Tim Keller line about power. And it's, it's, it's interesting to me the way that he conceives of power.
29:24: And so I think some of that is, I I'm looking at this with kind of that understanding that, uh, you know, power is kind of looked at in, in kind of a negative way.
29:36: It's, uh, that real power comes from, you know, the example of Jesus serving the disciples.
29:42: So, you know, that's, it's a different conception of power that Christianity offers and that there's this version of power though, of coercion and stuff that, that is, that's the bad kind of power and what he's using the bad kind of power here that there's
29:54: Christians who are involved in, in coercive things. Second thing I want to just say is what, where are the examples of people who are
30:04: Christians, right? Who are maybe who aren't even Europeans, but they do things in the name of Christ, but they're coming at it from the political left.
30:15: Okay. There's actually plenty. You might be surprised. There's plenty of examples today. And you know, this is the untouchable thing perhaps, but there's a lot of black churches that support abortion candidates who promote abortion and they do so in the name of Christ that this is, uh, and I, if you really want examples,
30:37: I can give you examples of it. And it's not unique to black churches. There's plenty of mainline denominations.
30:42: Uh, and I mean, historically black churches, but it's, there's mainline denominations out there that will do the same exact thing.
30:49: Well, that's not included in this. This is definitely a critique from the left that he's offering that, you know,
30:55: Christians have done these, these horrible things that the list laundry list of sins, the left accuses Christianity of yes.
31:01: Let's just cry uncle with that. True. You know, um, all of this is true.
31:06: Well, no, there's, there's some truth to some of it, but people have been conditioned to think of Christians in a particular way, that's just not accurate.
31:15: Um, taking political power to dangerous extremes, people being dehumanized for their skin color, uh, actually, yeah, there, okay.
31:25: There were Christians, people who call themselves Christians who did this kind of thing, who believed in evolutionary
31:32: Darwinistic, uh, phrenology, right. These things though, were in conflict with their
31:37: Christianity. That's kind of the point. And guess who were the ones who were making the arguments against that kind of thinking.
31:45: It was Orthodox Christians. And so, you know, this is the kind of thing that you have to tell that whole story or else it just becomes, let's just let the left have that impression in their minds and let's just give that to them.
31:58: And then somehow we're going to now convince them that Christianity is a positive force and they should convert to Christianity after giving that up.
32:05: I mean, this leads to, and I've said this before, that Christianity was this horrible, terrible thing up until about five minutes ago when we finally got it right.
32:13: And, and so this is where I, why I said earlier that there's this Christianity, this, this, um,
32:19: Thaddeus Williams is version of Christianity, which is kind of not tribalism, right? And then there's historically what
32:26: Christians have done. It's, there's almost an impression. And I, and I see it all over the place, especially in social justice writings.
32:33: There's, there's the authentic true Christianity that we all should want, but then there's the Christianity in practice that's been in Western civilization for thousands of years.
32:42: And that's the Christianity that's, uh, that we need to be very suspicious of. So, um, uh, and then, so yeah, that's, those are ways in which the book is unhelpful, implying a skewed sense of proportion, uh, that there's, um, what we, and what
33:01: I mean by proportion is that there's this horrible thing that we should avoid, this tendency that is so evil and wrong, and that would be, uh, you know, using morally charged words, right?
33:14: That, that this is a problem, uh, condemning others, right? It's a very judgmental attitude.
33:20: These, these are very big problems out there. And, and we can kind of rage against that in a way, but, uh, there's, uh, the social justice movement itself, which is what the book's about.
33:36: I don't know, um, that I see as like the words that are used are maybe not quite as harsh.
33:43: Uh, and, and so you have the condemnation of the alt -right. You don't, I don't see the same kind of, yeah, there's condemnation, but it's not the level, the proportion isn't quite the same is my point.
33:56: Uh, you know, really being sensitive to individuals who would use a word like coward of others, uh, really being sensitive to like the alt -right really being sensitive to Christians and what they've historically done.
34:09: But, but I don't see the same sensitivity in the book about like what's happening right now.
34:15: Uh, there's there, the condemnation doesn't reach in my opinion, the same level quite.
34:22: Uh, and, and frequency is a big part of this. There's a frequency to how often, uh, the, the, the author talks about what he calls the
34:34: Newman effect and people misunderstanding others and misrepresenting others.
34:39: There's, there's a really big fear of that. And we're going to get to that, uh, right now. Uh, and so this is the slide
34:46: I have. That's just outlining the weaknesses of the book. So, um, so we've gone over the strengths.
34:51: We've gone over the ways in which the book is unhelpful. And then I want to talk about some of the weaknesses.
34:58: So these, these are more things that are, uh, they're, they, they detract from the main point.
35:06: They, they undercut what I think, uh, most would probably pick up the book thinking it's trying to do, trying to take a shot at the social justice movement, critique it.
35:15: But these, these things kind of erode that critique. So it's distracting. Number one, there's a self -focus.
35:21: And, and here's what I mean by, uh, this flows right in from what we were talking about before. This is what
35:26: I mean by broken sense of proportion to there's a regular use of the pronouns we, and are throughout the book, it actually got a little annoying to me.
35:35: Like we do this, we're bad. We do this. We do that. It was like, I'm like, I don't do that. Like, why, why do you keep saying like, including me in this?
35:42: Uh, and it's, you know, I don't, what is it? I don't know. Maybe it's a way to kind of, Hey, we're all, we all have sin.
35:50: I don't know, to, to, to downplay stuff, but there's this, there's a self -focus there. We, and are.
35:56: So the purpose doesn't seem as much descriptive as this is what the social justice movement does.
36:02: Here's how, you know, we can identify the problems with it. It's very much like we're in it with him.
36:08: We're looking at this problem and we are critiquing ourselves along the way.
36:14: And so you identify this as a tendency. And then it's like, well, you know what? We are guilty of this. And here's another thing that's wrong.
36:20: You know what though? We're guilty of this. It kind of takes the sting out of the critique. He has a repeated fear of the
36:26: Newman effect. And the Newman effect is from a video of Jordan Peterson, where he's talking to this reporter and she misunderstands everything he's saying, and she tries to kind of corner him and get him to say something or mean something that he didn't mean or say.
36:41: And so he's afraid in this whole book, like someone's going to do that to me. Maybe, maybe, maybe I doubt he'll ever listen to this, but let's say he did.
36:49: Maybe he'll think that a micro critique. I don't know. I'm trying to be as fair as I possibly can, but that's the
36:54: Newman effect. And so there's a fear of this very self -focused. The major villain seems to me that this quote exemplifies it.
37:03: As with chameleons taking on the colors of the culture, our default mode is becoming not righteous indignation, but self -righteous indignation.
37:09: Assuming we are on the side of the angels and drawing damning conclusions about anyone who disagrees. Again, you look at those personal pronouns.
37:16: Uh, you know, we, this is what we do. Our default is, um, self -righteous indignation.
37:24: Assuming we are on the side of angels. It's this tribal thinking. It's this assuming we're in the right.
37:30: That's, that's the worst thing. That's the bad thing is assuming we're correct. Everyone else is wrong.
37:35: And then maybe calling them names. You know, that's like you get, we walk away with the impression like that's the worst thing you can do.
37:42: And, and that it's just takes the sting out of the book. It's, it's, uh, it, whatever ammunition was there to fight against the social justice movement.
37:54: You kind of feel just beaten up at the end. Like actually, you know, you were the one that was kind of being, uh, targeted in this, uh, it integrates and justifies, uh, using leftist terms as well.
38:07: This is another weakness. Um, the problem is not with the quest for social justice.
38:13: Williams writes, the problem is what happens when the quest is undertaken from a framework that is not compatible with the Bible. Okay. Uh, well, you know, again, social justice, he doesn't really define it.
38:23: That's part of the problem. He has a social justice, a social justice, be social justice. B is the leftist social justice.
38:30: Now, of course, I think, as I remember correctly, he also includes like, you know, conservatives can get in on this, but it's the social justice movement.
38:36: Social justice. A is this like biblical alternative, the Christian alternative, uh, the right kind of social justice.
38:43: And, um, I've talked about this in Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict. If you want to look at, take a historical approach to this topic and really define what social justice means by how it's been used over time, you want to track it, then you're going to find that.
38:57: Yeah. The, the term social justice, and especially in the modern sense, which is what people think they're getting when they pick up a book like this.
39:05: The term social justice is definitely a loaded term that really does mean a type of socialism, a redistribution scheme, a quest for redistribution, uh, to get rid of disparities and inequities and abusive institutions and to use maybe an all powerful government or, or something though, some top down way of, uh, you know, promoting equality, taking out the organizations that are keeping equality from happening and then promoting equality.
39:39: That's social justice. Uh, and it's taken on different iterations over time, but this attempt to like, well, we can like, you know, that what they're doing, what social justice warriors, you know, want, you know, it's their quest is a valid one, but you know, it's, they're just not doing it in the right way.
39:54: They need a different framework. This is exactly what I wrote about in social justice goes to church. This is the leftists of that time.
40:01: The new left people like Jim Wallace and Ron Sider and West Granberg, Michaelson and Richard and Mao and Sharon Gallagher.
40:08: And the list goes on what they were doing. John Alexander, they were saying that all this new left stuff, you know, we can do that.
40:16: We, it's, it's valid to pursue that. In fact, if we don't do it, then Christianity is going to die because that's what the kids are into. We need to do it.
40:22: And, and so we need to go down that track, but we need to build it on a better foundation. The foundation is the word of God.
40:28: Foundation is the Bible. So yeah, keep doing your social justice thing, but Hey, make sure that you're doing it biblically.
40:35: That was the whole idea. Problem is you got to critique it ethically.
40:40: What did biblical ethics teach? It's not enough to just say, well, you can build your faulty house on this foundation and then it won't fall apart.
40:50: No, it's a bad house. It's a bad design. It's going to fall apart. So, I mean,
40:55: I could see someone kind of walking away with that impression. He says, instead of saying that social justice is the gospel or in the gospel, it is more helpful to say social justice is from the gospel.
41:04: And I actually think that's, that's a good thing that he's trying to make that distinction. Very good of him to see that, like the overuse of gospel issue and trying to strap social justice, the gospel bat.
41:16: I wish he was a little stronger with it, but he at least sees it as negative. I mean, couching it in is more helpful.
41:22: Well, it's not a matter of being helpful. It's, it's just not, it's not false teaching. The other stuff you say, social justice is the gospel.
41:29: That's false teaching or in the gospel. That's false teaching. So saying social justice is from the gospel. That's just confusing because we're still using the word social justice.
41:38: You could say, I mean, even if you said justice is from the gospel, that's even confusing to me, to be honest with you.
41:46: You could say living a holy life is the result of someone who's been impacted by the gospel.
41:53: They want to please the person who say, like, it's just too short to try to get all that nuance in there.
42:01: Black Lives Matter, he says, it's true. From a Christian worldview perspective, we can plumb even deeper into a three word catchphrase or hashtag.
42:09: He also says, how does a biblical worldview enable us as Christians to say Black Lives Matter in a manner more profound and expansive than the doctrines of today's secular movements that bear the
42:19: Black Lives Matter label? So how does a biblical worldview enable us as Christians to say
42:26: Black Lives Matter? You know, this is the kind of thing
42:34: I saw this with Al Moeller. We saw this. In fact, I just saw it the other day. Again, the tweet, I'm going to like this tweet where someone was saying you can use
42:42: Black Lives Matter. Just don't endorse the organization, right? J .D. Greer tried to. It's confusing.
42:48: It's really confusing. Authorial intent means something. The people who came up with this term and what they actually mean by it, the insinuation is that there's a big group of people out there.
43:01: It's a big problem that they don't think Black Lives Matter. That's the big insinuation. As soon as you start saying that, you're buying into that assumption and that's the problem.
43:13: But if the motivation is, well, let's see if there's a way we can use this terminology like social justice and Black Lives Matter without meaning exactly what they mean, then you're just going to cause confusion.
43:24: The motive in my mind should be understand the religion we're dealing with, the social justice religion, the terms they use.
43:30: All right. Understand those things. And then once you understand them and are able to critique them, then if you want to explain how the
43:43: Imago Dei means all kinds of people, all lives matter and Black people matter in particular as well, so Black lives do matter.
43:53: But in that context, then okay, I wouldn't use the catch phrase though, right at the time that everyone's using it to mean that there's this big systemic racism problem.
44:04: If you don't believe that, then why in the world would you use the term? And then, of course, another weakness of the book is this is very vague.
44:11: It's more abstract and concrete. He says, let me be clear. This book takes aim at ideas, not people.
44:16: It takes aim only at certain ideas because they hurt people. We are called to love. And I noticed that Williams, however, does name
44:23: Ekamini Uwan in the footnotes, so he is not totally against naming names. That's probably one of the big weaknesses.
44:29: He doesn't really name names. You don't see concrete examples of a lot of the things he's talking about.
44:37: He has to rely on very vague examples if he uses examples or historical examples. The present situation is especially in evangelicalism.
44:44: He just doesn't really go there, and I think that's a big weakness. That's why when
44:49: I was writing Christianity and Social Justice, I made sure to try to name as many names as I possibly could to put them in there, to give you examples, concrete.
44:57: Here's the problem with this thinking. Here's someone who's thinking it. This also kind of irks me a little.
45:05: He talks about, so I put this on a separate slide, systemic injustice. He says, I also found a tweet that he said this, or maybe someone sent it to me.
45:13: Either way, he says that he believes that there is, so here's, this is the confusing part.
45:22: He says, I do believe sin, and specifically the sin of racism can be and has been and is systemic.
45:29: Okay, so let me kind of separate two things here. Systemic sin being in one category, and then in another category, systemic injustice or inequity or something.
45:43: You might say, what's the difference, John? There could be potentially a difference. There doesn't have to be, but there could be potentially a difference, and here's why.
45:53: It's systemic injustice. I can kind of abide that, even though I know the terms, it's very usage starts in Marxist circles.
46:02: I know. I get that. But if what you're saying is there's a law that's been passed that is unjust, and it's affecting this whole system, the criminal justice system or something, and we need to end it, and you want to say this is a systemic injustice,
46:17: I'd prefer to just say it's an injustice, but okay, it's a systemic injustice. It's pernicious. Okay, I can kind of see there being a place maybe for that.
46:28: I would never use the term. I really wouldn't, but if someone wants to use it, and that's what they mean by it. Of course, today it's being used as if there's systemic injustice without even an unjust law.
46:40: It's just the inertia of past unjust laws. The momentum that's still there is somehow there's a system that's fundamentally flawed and systemically unjust.
46:51: Okay, that's not the same thing as what I just described. So that's systemic injustice.
46:58: You could institutional injustice. Some people say institutional racism, which is more specific to certain institutions, but it's a very similar concept.
47:08: Then you have systemic sin, right? When this gets Christianized, and to be honest,
47:14: I want to make the separation because it makes more sense for Christians when they're considering this, but when the world talks about systemic injustice,
47:20: I do think they mean sin, and they don't have the same vocabulary, but that's what they're talking about. This is an affront.
47:26: This is a sin, and the people, because they treat it that way, right? The people who are like a police officer who's in this horrible systemically unjust system is part of the problem.
47:36: They are guilty, so they treat it like sin. But when Christians start saying there's systemic sin or something like that, systems can't be sinful.
47:45: This is the problem that I had with Richard Mao, and the Gospel Coalition has kind of picked up the same thing, this Kuyperian thing that he took, and he took
47:55: Kuyper's common grace, and then tried to, from that, create political evangelism, and evangelizing the structures, and the systems, and the institutions, and in that way, you get these co -belligerents.
48:10: You get these people that can work with you against sin, but they're not even Christians because they're working for criminal justice reform or something like that.
48:16: Do you see how wacky this gets? And if you put the Gospel in there, too, that gets really wacky, but what takes away sin?
48:24: It's the Gospel. So you're creating all kinds of categorical problems when you start saying this.
48:31: And so I think for Thaddeus Williams, when he does this, he talks about the sin of racism can be systemic.
48:38: You just have to be so clear. You're on eggshells. You're on a minefield. Better not even to use this kind of language because of how the vast majority of people use it.
48:49: Here's some quotes from his book. He says, Putting the word systemic and injustice together is a lot like putting the word social injustice together. There are biblical and unbiblical meanings we can pour onto those word combinations.
49:00: Yeah, sort of. You see, I don't even want to go there. I want to say, no, the people who created these terms had authorial intent.
49:09: They had reasons for why these terms and the reason they're popular today isn't because people are like, well, you know, there's a biblical understanding of this.
49:16: No, it'd be far less confusing if we just didn't use the world's terminology on this.
49:24: So you'd have to then create this biblical meaning and then impose it on the term and we can pour.
49:31: Look, we can pour onto those. We can just pour meaning onto those word combinations. Well, where does the meaning come from? Us? We just pour meaning onto word combinations?
49:39: Or is there a fixed meaning of some kind? Meaning that, you know, maybe it can change over time with the way that social convention works and how people use it.
49:49: But that, you know, there is an author somewhere. There is the meaning is in the text. There's a communication going on.
49:56: There's an intention behind using these terms. And people are supposed to get the signal and understand what it means.
50:01: That's how communication works. We shouldn't just take these terms and then, well, let's try to pour a biblical reading onto this.
50:08: That's kind of what's going on here. The caste system, he says, of India was branded most citizens untouchable, was an injustice baked into the very systems by which
50:17: Hindu society functions. Apartheid in South Africa. China's one child policy. The list of systemic injustices could go on ad nauseum.
50:24: The Bible had it right thousands of years ago. We indeed frame injustice by statute. Okay. So this is what
50:30: I was talking about earlier. If you want to say that there's unjust systems because there's laws that are unjust and they those laws have created like Planned Parenthood, for instance, then sure.
50:41: Okay. If you want to do that, let's not use systemic just so we can be clear.
50:47: But if you want to use it, I got what you mean. I get it. But this is where he says on page 96, we also find evidence of enduring discrimination in America's housing and criminal justice systems.
50:58: And that's where I'm like, okay, like this, it gets vague.
51:04: It gets murky. It gets it's very hard to prove these things. It's just if something evil happened in the past, some kind of an injustice.
51:18: And it hasn't really been rectified or it's had an effect on people back then that had children and it had an effect on them.
51:28: And that comes into the present. Is that a current injustice that is still taking place?
51:36: It must be rectified, right? This was a social justice where you're saying must be rectified by some kind of a law that discriminates and redistributes.
51:44: That's the real question here. And that's what systemic injustice is really all about.
51:52: That there's this momentum that's been created by past injustices that are echoing in the present.
51:59: And perhaps they're not even echoing or they're just getting worse maybe in some cases. And we can't identify the law necessarily, but we can see how it's abused.
52:09: We can see how the sinful people in these systems will abuse things. We're seeing that with the criminal, not criminal, but the voter laws.
52:16: That debate right now, it's a systemic injustice that the way that some states want their voting laws to be.
52:25: Showing ID is a systemic injustice, right? And by what standard?
52:31: That's the question at the end of the day. By what standard? Where does justice come from? Justice comes from the Bible. Lord abhors unequal weights and measures.
52:39: There needs to be a fairness by which everyone is treated with equality according to the law.
52:48: You don't get special treatment because you're the son of a senator, right?
52:53: If you broke the law, you broke the law, you get the penalty. That's true justice. And where there was rigging going on or special treatment given that was unmerited or unjustified in some way, um, then, uh, those things can be rectified.
53:14: But when those things have been rectified and were downstream years later to still call whatever it is, a voting system unjust or something that you're just destroying what justice actually is.
53:27: You're, you're destroying the term. You're, you're just, you're poisoning the well. And so, um, to wrap it up with the systemic injustice thing,
53:35: Thaddeus Williams, I think, um, could be a much more clear. You could put this in the vague category, perhaps, or you could just say that this is, uh, playing, playing way too close, if not overlapping a bit in the, in the same ways that the left uses these terms.
53:51: And, uh, especially, especially, uh, attributing sin to a system or something very dangerous stuff there, theologically.
54:02: Uh, so, so I do have kind of an issue with that. I just don't think it's helpful and, and it's, it takes away.
54:07: So, um, here's the last thing, uh, helpful yet confusing. Um, he says, this is helpful what he says, and then he gets really confusing.
54:15: He says on social justice B view, uh, which is social justice, uh, working for a socially just world follows three steps.
54:22: Step one, spot an unequal outcome, right? A disparity. Step two, interpret that unequal outcome as damning evidence of a racist or sexist system.
54:29: Step three, overthrow that system. When we import this view into Christianity, there is often a fourth step, step four, identify overthrowing that system as a gospel issue and indict fellow believers for white supremacy or patriarchal oppression.
54:41: If they do not join in the fight. Excellent observation from Thaddeus Williams. That is exactly what happens on step four.
54:49: They social justice advocates say, Hey, you're not going along with the gospel here. All right. Here's the thing that confuses me though.
54:56: Williams endorses John Perkins's book. Let justice roll down in the book. He says, go read John Perkins's book.
55:02: Let justice roll down. Page 66. And John Perkins in that book says that the evangelical church, because they sat out too much, they weren't involved in the civil rights movement enough.
55:13: The evangelical church had not gone on to preach the whole gospel. That's the exact thing that, that he is critiquing.
55:24: Thaddeus Williams is critiquing that mindset that, you know, you're, let's shame someone because, well, they're not following the gospel by participating in political activism.
55:36: And then he endorses a book that claims that it's confusing. I don't get it.
55:41: Why, if you're against it, why endorse a book that says that? And that brings us to some things that I think start to make sense of maybe the political, the way that this book can be used politically in evangelicalism.
56:00: There's a broad appeal here. John Perkins says, don't get swept along into false answers that lead only to more injustice.
56:08: Love one another, confront injustice without compromising truth, healing, unifying biblical truth. May this book be a guide to do exactly that for God's glory and the good of every tongue, tribe, and nation.
56:18: Okay. John Perkins said this in the foreword. He wrote the foreword to the book, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth by Thaddeus J.
56:25: Williams. All right. Let's be clear on this. John Perkins is the one who wrote the foreword to this book that we're talking about.
56:32: Guess what other book John Perkins wrote the foreword to? Woke Church by Eric Mason. Okay.
56:39: I'll show you again. Here's the cover of Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, foreword by John Perkins.
56:45: Here's Eric Mason, Woke Church, An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice, forewords by John Perkins and Lincoln Duncan.
56:54: And John Perkins says there in that book, there's a tendency to want to gloss over injustices for the sake of unity.
57:00: However, an authentic attempt to pursue unity and reconciliation must start with truth. The journey toward healing begins with an awakening.
57:07: That's why I'm grateful for Woke Church. In this important book, Eric Mason sounds a clarion call for the church. No longer can we remain asleep to the injustice in our past and present.
57:15: No longer can we afford to see justice issues as separated from the gospel. Interesting.
57:20: Again, that's exactly what Thaddeus Williams says shouldn't be done, but that's what John Perkins believes. No longer can we wait for someone else to do the hard work of reconciliation.
57:29: Okay, John Perkins apparently doesn't see the big difference between confronting injustice without compromising truth and Woke Church.
57:38: He endorses both of them. He says even similar things about both of them. That's very interesting to me.
57:48: In the book, first book I wrote on social justice, Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism.
57:53: I have a whole section on John Perkins, and I've included some of that section in this slideshow.
58:00: If you are a Patreon supporter, you can get this slideshow and you can look up the quote.
58:06: If not, just freeze frame it. You can read this from the book or just go get the book. Social Justice Goes to Church. You can buy it at worldviewconversation .com.
58:12: Go to Amazon. Anyway, John Perkins promotes false teaching.
58:19: Not only does he believe in the three R's, which includes redistribution, okay, and wants to find this kind of third way between socialism and Christianity, but he advocates, he infuses his political ideas, his activism into the gospel message.
58:42: And it basically says it's the gospel itself. This is what the gospel is. That's a big problem. The gospel, a big part of the gospel is all of this, this political activism, relocation, reconciliation, redistribution.
58:55: I've talked about John Perkins before, but I understand there's a lot of great things
59:00: John Perkins did. I'm not taken away from that, but I'm saying there's false teaching here. We can't minimize it.
59:06: More recently, Perkins signed the 2017 World Relief Statement, urging President Trump to reconsider reduction and refugee resettlement and supported the pro -life evangelicals for Biden.
59:15: That's John Perkins politics for those wondering. So he wrote the forward to this book.
59:22: Another thing, broad appeal. And there's a number of people like this. I'm just including a few because I don't want it to get too long.
59:28: But Beckett Cook recommends in the book, he says this in the book that we are talking about confronting injustice without compromising truth.
59:39: Beckett Cook says, I recommend some of the best resources from those who have found a true,
59:45: I'm sorry. This is, I guess, is what Thaddeus Williams says. He recommends some of the best resources from those who have found a true freedom and identity in Christ from the false sexual freedom and identity promised by social justice be.
59:56: He says, I recommend a change of affection, a gay man's incredible story of redemption by Beckett Cook. So this is a book that Thaddeus Williams recommends in the book we're critiquing here.
01:00:07: I went and I looked at Beckett Cook's book. Okay. Oh, and also
01:00:13: I should mention Beckett Cook is a co -author. He has a number of paragraphs where he shares his story in confronting injustice without compromising truth.
01:00:23: So I went to, I just wanted to see what's Beckett Cook about. And here's a quote.
01:00:29: This is from the book that Thaddeus Williams recommends a change of affection, a gay man's incredible story of redemption.
01:00:34: Can you be gay and Christian? This one is complex. No, it's not. But it's what he says. It's complex. So let's break it down.
01:00:40: First, we must define what we mean by gay. If you mean continuously and unrepentantly engaging in homosexual behavior, then no, you can't be a gay
01:00:47: Christian. But if you mean having a same -sex orientation, but not acting on that impulse, then yes, you can be a gay
01:00:53: Christian. This, this stuff would fit in with Revoice. And interestingly enough, Beckett Cook retweeting
01:00:59: Greg Johnson. Incredibly thankful for this kind word from Beckett Cook about my upcoming book.
01:01:05: Yes, Beckett Cook endorsed Greg Johnson's book, which he even says hashtag
01:01:10: LGBT in Christ. Not a good book, guys. This is, this is
01:01:16: Revoice. Okay. This is Revoice Theology here. And Thaddeus Williams is recommending this book,
01:01:22: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption, A Change of Affection. Okay.
01:01:31: Another one I just wanted to mention, broad appeal. Al Mohler. Okay. A lot of the examples, if you want to see chapter and verse on some of the things
01:01:38: I'm about to read, you can get my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions in Conflict. I go through most of this in detail and you can get all the citations you want.
01:01:49: Here's the thing about Al Mohler. We need to understand. He changed his positions on homosexual orientation and conversion therapy.
01:01:55: He believes Southern Baptists are guilty of a sinful absence of historical curiosity by ignoring racism and that the stain of racism on the denomination will never go away until Christ comes.
01:02:05: He characterized the United States as conceived in racism and that it affected every structure in the United States. He connected the shootings of Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor to police racism.
01:02:13: He signed the SBC statement connecting George Floyd's death to systemic injustice and past oppression.
01:02:19: He insinuated the phrase Black Lives Matter is acceptable. He did not sign the Dallas statement because it approved of white supremacy, he believed.
01:02:26: He opposed critical race theory in the abstract after Resolution 9, yet defended the motives of the
01:02:31: Resolutions Committee. He hired and defended Curtis Woods, Jarvis Williams, and Matthew Hall, all taught critical race theory.
01:02:37: He defended Danny Akin and Adam Greenway, presidents of Southwestern and Southeastern, on social justice issues, yet not founders, conservative
01:02:45: Baptist networker, John MacArthur, on the same kinds of issues. He approved of condemning the Southern Cross and retiring the
01:02:51: Brodus gavel. He approved of Russell Moore's performance while Moore was pushing the needle left in the
01:02:57: SBC. That was 2018, saying he hoped for many more years that Russell Moore would be head of the
01:03:02: URLC. He was exposed by Russell Fuller and Tom Rush. Not exactly the guy you want to go to, to be like, he knows about social justice, right?
01:03:13: Yet here's what he says about Thaddeus Williams' book. New at World Opinions, Thaddeus Williams on social justice and the church.
01:03:21: And there's an article there. And Thaddeus Williams says, thanks for the support, brother. So I'm like, if these are the people that are endorsing the book, these are the people
01:03:31: Thaddeus Williams is endorsing, I'm like, how can I trust this? I mean, these are people that are importing
01:03:36: I'm not saying they're full fledged in every way. They're just characterized by social justice thinking. They've certainly pushed the needle left though.
01:03:43: They certainly are very greatly impacted by social justice thinking, even if they're not completely, you know, saturated with it.
01:03:53: These are not people who I would consider the conservatives. I know that, you know,
01:03:59: Al Moore still has this reputation with a lot of people that he is, but I don't see how you can think that after you actually read,
01:04:06: I mean, he's a political guy, in my opinion, he's an opportunist. So you can read things that he says that are, you know, on the right, you can read things on the left, but for, you know, if we're talking about evangelicalism, conservative evangelicalism, they're, you know, to believe what
01:04:20: Al Moeller believes, even, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that would have been like, oh, that guy's more on the left.
01:04:27: Right. But now, you know, the Overton window's shifting. So I just think it's interesting.
01:04:33: Also, the Gospel Coalition, I thought there is, I'm like, who's done reviews on this? The Gospel Coalition did a review on the book, very positive review.
01:04:41: And I'm like, well, the Gospel Coalition is like one of the main organizations in evangelicalism pushing the social justice envelope left.
01:04:48: And then I realized, okay, Thaddeus Williams actually writes for the Gospel Coalition. So the author of the book,
01:04:54: Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, writes for the Gospel Coalition. So then I was like, okay, that might make sense of a lot of this.
01:05:00: Um, so to wrap things up, the impression that I got, the purpose of the book in my mind, uh, it was kind of hard because the title also serves as the thesis.
01:05:12: The whole point is to try to confront injustice without giving up truth, right? Um, but this is what
01:05:20: I thought, this is what I wrote. And this is just my unfiltered personal impression. Okay. I wouldn't normally put this, but I just wanted people to see, this is what
01:05:26: I thought after, you know, I was read, read it. I said, the fear, um, of the book or the, and I said, purpose of the book is to throw cold water on both sides who condemn each other.
01:05:36: That's what I thought. I'm like, well, it seems like there's a lot of, that is a big theme in the book that both sides need to just kind of like get along.
01:05:44: And I said, and this is what I wrote. Um, after that, there is an aftertaste one has after reading that suggested people stop misrepresenting each other and shed the
01:05:52: Newman effect and tribal thinking these issues would be significantly minimized. And I think that's what it is.
01:05:58: That's what people, I think are uncomfortable with. They feel like, well, are you going after the bad guys? Are you, are you talking about these are the guys pushing this?
01:06:05: This is why it's wrong. Or is like, I feel beat up. I feel condemned. I feel like the problem is people condemning one another.
01:06:14: Um, even though that is Williams is kind of condemning the people that condemning, but that, that that's the impression you, you get at least, uh, but the, the social justice advocates aren't, they're really not the ones that are at the end of the day.
01:06:27: You know, they're not like the bad guys. They're not, um, and not that you need a white hat, black hat perfectly, you know, but you, but like, okay, so I'll just compare like the book
01:06:38: I wrote, Christianity and social justice, religions and conflicts. Like I wrote that book with the purpose of, I want people to understand social justice.
01:06:44: I want people to understand what's happening in Christianity. I want people to understand how this, uh, directly, um, contradicts
01:06:50: Christian theology in the Bible. I want people to be equipped to handle it, right? These are my motives. And this book, it just seemed like the motive wasn't as much to, to inform and to take a whack at this stuff as it was to, uh, like sit down squabbling kids who have been fighting and put them in the corner and then, uh, you know, make them a bit ashamed for the way that they've been treating each other.
01:07:17: And, uh, and that's, that's the sense you get. Now I'm, I'm obviously broad brushing.
01:07:22: I'm obviously, I'm describing more of feeling you have after reading the book, but I would challenge anyone reading this book.
01:07:30: It's difficult in my mind to figure out like, what's the impression, like what's the purpose behind this?
01:07:36: Where is he trying to move people? Um, what's he trying to get them to do exactly.
01:07:42: And I think there was more light shed on this when I read some articles by Thaddeus Williams. And, and so I, I just put it in a question mark, but what's the goal?
01:07:49: Is it a synthesis? And the reason I do that is because, um, there was an article that he wrote, uh, it's called a new theocracy politics and law as an irresponsible religiosity in fall, 2017.
01:08:02: Let me read for you some of this. And by the way, Thaddeus Williams, isn't like a, he's not a dumb guy. Like, you know, you read some of his academic stuff and you see, you know, he, he, he writes a little differently.
01:08:11: He can write more academically, but this is what he says in this above are some of what may be called the deep dogmas of contemporary
01:08:18: Western creation worship. Now, this is, I think this is a term he must have come up with. I'm not sure, but contemporary Western creation worship in the article is, is like, it's the zeitgeist it's, it's the spirit of the age we live in now.
01:08:28: It's the secular religion that we're all under. There are also what we might call cosmetic dogmas, the attractive doctrines on the public face of the religion that draw converts.
01:08:38: So he's saying, let me just translate people are drawn to secularism and particular what he's really talking about is social justice advocacy.
01:08:47: That's part of that. And, and so he says, you know, that's people are leaving
01:08:53: Christianity. They're, you know, being attracted to this new faith, secular faith. And interestingly, he says, these cosmetic dogmas sound uncannily like the
01:09:01: Shalom, the Bible envisions and the kingdom Jesus inaugurated. So he's saying, Hey, there's a commonality here. They want, they want this great utopia and look,
01:09:09: Jesus is going to bring a utopia. We actually, he says the kingdom Jesus inaugurated.
01:09:14: So, you know, we're in the utopia it's, it's already, but not yet. He says, we want to help the poor and end oppression.
01:09:22: Hmm. We want to live wins. We want to winsomely engage contemporary creation worshipers.
01:09:28: We must. So, so if we want to winsomely engage it, that's not gospel coalition language.
01:09:33: I don't know what it is. Winsomely engage contemporary creation worshipers. If we want to talk to people, let me translate.
01:09:41: We must make it abundantly clear that the Bible is anti -oppression to its core. This is interesting.
01:09:49: That's the theme. That's the big thing in the Bible. We got to, we want to attract people. We got to make sure they got to know the
01:09:55: Bible is against oppression. They want to fight oppression while the Bible is against it. It has inspired the
01:10:01: Wilberforces, Bonhoeffers, Martin Luther King juniors, and Lee Jean Racks of history to bring about justice.
01:10:07: Notice the figures he uses, by the way, here. It's interesting to me. These are figures that, you know, both, both the left and the right now.
01:10:15: Not quite the right. Like Martin Luther King is still, there's this question mark.
01:10:20: Bonhoeffer, to some extent, actually with his theology, there's, there's sort of a question, but like in general, broadly speaking, with the political things that they all did in the things they're known for,
01:10:31: I should say, politically, the right and left can kind of get together on these guys, right? And they were inspired by the
01:10:36: Bible to bring about justice, right? Now you could also talk about people inspired by the
01:10:42: Bible to forward things that are very much considered not justice today.
01:10:48: This is a holding strategy that will not work. It's already not working because the wheels just totally come off.
01:10:55: You have to, well, I don't want to explain in this, we're already long. I wanted this to be short. This is a long podcast though.
01:11:02: Let's get to the main point. To mute the Bible's clarion calls against oppression would be a travesty, particularly in this cultural moment.
01:11:08: It would be, it would perpetuate a false dichotomy and drive anyone who cares about ending oppression into the arms of contemporary
01:11:14: Western creation worship rather than towards the God of the Bible. Let's see here. Let's skip ahead.
01:11:23: To see what genuine creator worship offers the justice seeker consider
01:11:28: Martin Luther King Jr. Like all creator worshipers, King was an abnormalist. He believed in the reality of human fallenness and therefore our need for supernatural grace.
01:11:37: So again, holding up Dr. King is this, you know, he's the example, which
01:11:44: I'm, yeah. I've done some episodes on Martin Luther King Jr. Don't agree with this one bit, but you know, he's, he's the guy we got to rally to him.
01:11:54: And so again, it, you see an echo of this in his book that we need to appeal to the supreme source and standard of righteousness, but build this kind of social justice foundation on top of it.
01:12:08: As long as we do that, then we can kind of merge these two. And I thought, you know what? That's kind of what's going on. I think in the book there, there's this, there there's a vagueness, but there's this, like this attitude of like, well, you know, as long as we, we, we can like take
01:12:23: Christianity and we can pursue social justice. And, and I think that's kind of what's going on.
01:12:29: He says we, in the end, let's see, we preach the good news of his bodily resurrection by which he is inaugurated in the age to come with all of its shalom and justice that the
01:12:37: West has tried to realize was such an antithetical and oppressive effects. So again, the West, you know, bad, the
01:12:43: West has done these bad things. We preach the same gospel that was able to bring real racial reconciliation to first century
01:12:49: Jews and Gentiles and real liberation of the slaves of American and British history. We preach the only gospel that offers a real meaning to our generation of image bearers created to know and enjoy
01:12:57: God. Now that's not all quite true historically, but that's, that's the story. I think we tell ourselves today to try to make the
01:13:06: Bible and Christianity appealing to modern, the modern generation. And we don't need to do this.
01:13:18: We, we have to start off actually, in my opinion, with the recognition that we don't live in a perfect world. There is no utopia.
01:13:24: Stop kicking against the goads. You're not going to get there. We, the best we can do is recognize this fact that humans are fallen and live in such a way that we arrange our society to, to try to withstand that evil.
01:13:43: So separation of powers and a police system of some kind, and we need a military and we need to process and we, you know, there's all kinds of things that we need because sin is ever present.
01:13:55: We need a market, a free market of some kind so that you can even, even people's selfishness is harnessed for the good of the community.
01:14:06: And people aren't freeloading. And, you know, so that's, when we're looking at arranging a society,
01:14:14: I don't want to just say, well, you want this perfect society, this equality. You're never going to have equality, guys. You're never going to have it.
01:14:20: So we need to start creating separations. What is biblical equality?
01:14:26: What do we see in the Bible? We see equality before the law. What kinds of distinctions do we see between people groups, between nations?
01:14:33: Is there a difference if someone's in the nation or if they're outside the nation? Are there certain rights or privileges that go along with that?
01:14:39: What about the responsibilities of men and women? If you root rights with responsibilities, you start getting a clear picture of how a society should operate.
01:14:50: But that's not really the work that seems to be being done right now. It's more, we're in this cultural moment and people are on this egalitarian crusade.
01:14:57: And how can we persuade them to take a second look at the Bible? And maybe that fits in with what they already believed.
01:15:03: Now, how about who are you to judge God? Oh man, he's got his justice.
01:15:10: And guess what? There's going to be a judgment day. That's ultimate justice. And the justice you're seeking, oh, it'll happen, but not maybe in the way that you're seeking it.
01:15:20: It might not be your justice. It will be a justice. And so anyway, the whole way that this is just approached, it kind of sickens me a bit.
01:15:30: And then there was another article, Social Justice in the Gospel, 12 Things About Which I Hope and Pray We Can All Agree from 2018.
01:15:37: He says, with the recent release of the statement on social justice in the gospel, that's the John MacArthur one he signed and had over 7 ,000 signatures, a firestorm has erupted in the
01:15:47: Christian blogosphere. And while some important differences are coming to light, there is far more unity than the current online scuffle that's on.
01:15:54: Okay, so he's talking about the Dallas statement here. And what he's saying is that, you know, there's just, there's unity.
01:16:01: There's peace. Look, peace, peace when there's no peace. There's so much more unity between the authors and signers of the
01:16:08: Dallas statement and the people that are forwarding social justice and evangelicalism. And this is what I heard all throughout 2018 and even 2019 is, you know, what are you talking about,
01:16:18: John, when you say the SBC is gonna split up? Of course it's not. No, there's more. There's unity. There's unity. Yeah, there wasn't.
01:16:24: And we're seeing now there totally wasn't. There was a split. And it was already happening.
01:16:29: So I see reading those put the book in my mind, like it made more sense of the book, reading these quotes, because I thought, okay, if the goal is kind of this synthesis that you're not really kind of on one side or the other, but you're still, you kind of can position yourself as, or position
01:16:47: Christianity as it's kind of against a certain kind of social justice, but it also is for a certain kind of social justice.
01:16:55: And we can, you know, have our John Perkins, and we can also have, you know, there's some really good people that contributed.
01:17:00: Like he had Edwin Ramirez share his story in the book. Edwin's a great guy. Like, I would encourage you go check out his podcast.
01:17:07: I mean, I think he gets it. But, you know, it's this kind of like, it's trying to build this bridge between the two sides in my mind.
01:17:17: And I just don't think it's gonna, there's no way it can happen. But people are concerned because this seems to be more of an acceptable, way of approaching this issue because congregations are saying like, they want their pastors to talk about this.
01:17:33: They want Bible studies on this. This is what's going on out there. What does the Bible say? And so people look for resources.
01:17:39: And this is one of the popular resources. And I think it, well, I don't know how popular, but popular enough, people are asking me to do a review on it.
01:17:46: And it may be part of the reason it's popular is because of this, because it doesn't take like a hard side really.
01:17:53: It's kind of this middle way almost. So those are my thoughts on the book. And obviously it's not a book that I'm recommending,
01:18:03: Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, which is fine. I don't know Thaddeus Williams. I'm totally fine with the idea that he's a great guy and had good intentions.
01:18:14: And he wanted to put something out there, which as I said, could be moving the needle.
01:18:21: If really hardcore leftists are getting hold of it, it could be even moving the needle right with them. I don't know. So I'm not trying to like rain on the whole parade here, but would it be my first choice?
01:18:32: No, I wouldn't choose this book to do a study on. I think there's far better books out there that can be used.
01:18:39: So those are my thoughts and hope that was helpful for those who asked. And now we have a super long podcast when
01:18:45: I said it would be short at the beginning, but what else is new, right? Hey, God bless, more coming maybe later in the week.
01:18:51: We'll see, I'll be traveling. And when I travel, it's always difficult to get a podcast out there, but we're gonna see what we can do.