China guns, Piper on King David, Peterson on Academia, Walsh on Gender and questions on Race

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I hope everyone had a good

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Lord's Day yesterday. I certainly did, and I was out actually from the time

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I woke up, went to church, had some good fellowship in the afternoon, and came home late in the evening.

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So it was a good day, and the sermon was on the attributes of God, various attributes.

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Always a good reminder. That's something that we can never really forget about, but it's so easy to forget about during the course of life, who

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God is. And so I just want to encourage all of you that that's something that I've been thinking about a little bit, and something for you to think about too, even in the situations we're in now.

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Because I think that was very much a prevalent thought among the people of God as they were hearing this yesterday.

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There's trials going on. There's all kinds of things that we don't like. There's bad things.

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There's evil people. And well, what does this mean about God? Is he still in control?

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Is he still good? Are all the attributes that we talk about, the fact that he's unchanging, he's immutable, did these go anywhere?

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What's his plan? And when we remind ourselves about who he actually is, a lot of those questions tend to dissipate.

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It doesn't mean that they're gone completely. It just means that we understand that we are small,

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God's big. He understands a lot more than us. And we're just part of this very interconnected, interwoven plan that God has.

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And we can see our little thread, but we don't see how that connects to everything else.

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So we're part of a big tapestry. And so I just want to encourage you along those lines this morning.

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As I talk about some various news issues and answer some questions, that's one of the reasons

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I wanted to do this podcast is because there's a lot of questions and frankly some objections to my last podcast, which

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I expected to some extent. I tried to be as crystal clear as I could and let you know also that I was asking questions too in the last podcast.

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I don't have everything figured out. But there's a big aversion to even the term race.

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If someone says race in conservative Christian circles, even the use of that term, we immediately have,

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I think in our heads, either a Darwinist file or a critical race theory file. And there's just there's an aversion to it.

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So I want to talk about that a little bit, because when we interact with people in the world, especially, they are used to using this term and they mean something by it.

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And even if you don't think, some of you, I'm not saying for everyone, but even if you don't think this is a valid term, we shouldn't use it.

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I get that. And I don't even use the term. I use the word people. I think I said that in the last podcast. I don't say race.

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I say people generally, just because I try to avoid confusion. But the people in the world are using that term, and they mean something by it.

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And we need to know what they're talking about in order to interact with them sometimes on these issues.

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And I believe, preach the gospel, yes, but that's not the only interaction that we have with people in the world.

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They're going to have objections. One of them today, against even Christianity and the Bible and the history of the church, is that it gets the issue of race all wrong, and that it's been used to forward all kinds of oppression.

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And so we have to understand something about that in order to give an answer for those who ask us about the hope within us.

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So I'm going to get into those objections a little bit today. And again, I actually appreciate,

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I invited people to reach out to me, send me resources they think would help. I think one person did send me a book suggestion by Ken Ham, which

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I do appreciate. I am pretty familiar with Ken Ham. I grew up actually in a house where we had

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Creation Magazine every week, or every time it came out.

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I've been to the Creation Museum a number of times. I've actually spoken to Ken Ham personally. It was actually, it's an interesting story.

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I was at a conference. This was probably like 12 or 13 years ago now, I would guess, maybe, yeah, something like that.

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And it was a deeper conference. So I was in Covington, Kentucky, and Ken Ham's sitting there by the

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Answers in Genesis booth, and no one's talking to him. There's a whole room full of people, and I just thought that was interesting.

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So I went up and I talked to him, and we had a great conversation. I really appreciate what he does, his ministry.

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I encourage everyone to go out to the Creation Museum and the ARC. There's so much truth, and it's just amazing what they've done out there, too.

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I remember last time I was at the ARC encounter, we were in line, and the people behind us were not

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Christians at all. They just came out to see this big ARC. In the process, they were exposed to good teaching, and they were exposed to the gospel.

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That is, I think, the heart of what Ken Ham is trying to do, which I very much appreciate. But I'll talk about that a little bit, the way that he objects to the usage of the term race, or how he conceives of it, because he's very much responding to Darwinists, and it's not the same as responding to critical race theorists.

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And so I'll explain that a little bit. I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, because I talked about some of this in the last video, but I do want to talk about the objections and the questions.

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So let's get into some of the news items for today, some things in my inbox.

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I don't always share these on the podcast, but I thought today there's just a whole bunch of stories, and I thought, you know what, we'll just go through them.

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I know some of you like being updated on this stuff. So someone sent me today, this is January 24th, episode 1735 of Desiring God, John Piper's podcast,

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I guess. And the question is, did Bathsheba sin with David? So they have this whole podcast.

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Now the word rape comes up immediately. And was this a rape?

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And that seems to be the central question. And I did a whole podcast, by the way, on this called King David a

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Rapist, question mark. And then I go into some other stuff. I used to do a lot of, actually, I used to do podcasts very much like this one, where I would combine a bunch of topics into one.

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And I don't do that as much anymore. I try to keep it to one or two topics.

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But I did a whole thing on King David, was he a rapist? And this was in response to Rachel Denhollander.

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There was a whole thing on Twitter about it. And she was correcting someone. And I got into the original languages.

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I gave you as much as I possibly could, the biblical history. And the long and short of it is, no, it doesn't look like David raped

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Bathsheba. And the only reason someone would, I think, have to say that is, and this is what

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I said at the time is, you must be influenced by the Me Too movement in some way. Because the main argument used is, well, because there was a power disparity.

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Because there was a power disparity, that must mean that it was a rape.

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And the issue here, there's a few things. The Hebrew word used to refer to what we would think of today as rape.

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And by the way, today, we're going to find this later in our discussion. But words in English and concepts in English, we have to do a lot of hard work to go back to biblical languages.

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And then figure out, okay, what's the closest approximate in the biblical language? And the closest approximate, the

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Hebrew word that would be used for rape is not used here. You also find an example later on in the same book of an actual rape that takes place.

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And it's very clear. It's not clear in the story of David and Bathsheba. Now, does that mean that there wasn't a lot of pressure on Bathsheba?

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This is the king. This, you know, is something that you must do. No doubt about it.

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But we just don't, we simply don't have the evidence. And it seems actually the opposite. It seems that you really can't make the case based on the words used that that's what this was.

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There's no indication Bathsheba was making an outcry about any of this.

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Hebrew law is very clear on the difference between this kind of a situation happening in the city and in the country.

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And an audible objection is very important to what the Hebrew law and the

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Mosaic Code. So we're not going into the whole thing. But I just thought it was interesting that John Piper's taking this line more now and using essentially, you know, basically the same kind of,

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I mean, here's the quote that Desiring God chose to put in the foreground of their article. We are not exaggerating to use the word rape for David's abuse of his power in the way he took

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Bathsheba. And so it still seems to be based on there is a power disparity there.

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And because there was a power disparity there, that's the main reason to look at this in that way.

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So I just thought that's interesting. John Piper kind of, you know, what's causing him to think it's important to interpret the text this way?

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That's the real question. Why is it important that we see it as a rape situation?

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And I think we know the answer to that. Because of the cultural pressures that exist today and the way the

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Church Too movement has in the past tried to really use this passage. I mean, think about it this way.

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Does the Church Too, Me Too movement, do they ever use the story of Lot and his daughters as a rape situation passage?

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Look what his daughters did to him. No, no, there's no pressure there to use that.

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Of course that's not because it's women. But I mean, look, they took advantage of their dad when he was inebriated.

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So I just find it interesting the passages that are cherry -picked to forward this narrative that will event drive kind of this

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Church Too, Me Too, Caring Well type narrative. So that was this morning.

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And yeah, well, you know, at one time I would have thought that Pastor John Piper wouldn't go down that path.

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But there's been a number of things like this, unfortunately. And so if you want to know more about that, I'm not giving you everything on, you know, that whole biblical passage.

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But I do give a lot of information in King David a Rapist question mark from October 8th, 2019.

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You can go to that podcast. And then, of course, I saw this. And I was like, oh, wow, the

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Chinese military next wonder weapon, laser guns. All right, so this is from 2021. And then there's a story, though, that came out just recently that I saw on Facebook.

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I don't have the particular story that I saw this morning pulled up. But it's basically the same thing that shows the capabilities of these new laser guns that they have.

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They're pretty insane. From a half a mile away, they can, in silence, burn something up.

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It's amazing what they're capable of doing. And this is the future of warfare. I mean, we're getting sci -fi here, right?

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But it's being compared to the AK -47. It's, and again, silent and deadly and accurate.

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Scary stuff. And, you know, I think it was scary for all for the people who first saw, saw that pipes were using, were being used with gunpowder to project things.

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So, you know, there's always a development. There's always something scary. But the fact that it's the Chinese, the

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Chinese Communist Party is developing this weapon. And interesting, interesting.

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There's a lot I've learned about China in the last year that makes me really realize that we could be in, we are in serious trouble.

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And in the next decade, I think, I can't see how we don't have a war. We're already in a state of cyber war with them, an economic war.

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And I think Trump was one of the few who recognized this. But it could get to a real war.

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Either that or we just keep fading from the scene. They invade Taiwan, we retreat, we don't do anything. And we keep just fading.

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I don't know. And then we have, you know what, actually, in between this,

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I didn't have the tab pulled up, but I thought it was interesting. I'll talk about this for just a second, even though I don't have the tab.

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Pay attention to this. Evangelicals are starting to mimic the talking points of neoconservatives and progressives who are very concerned with Russia's threats against Ukraine.

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And there's a few reasons I feel like this is very interesting. But it's some of the same people who are very much on the social justice train in evangelicalism, what that means in evangelicalism, very much for kind of an open borders, evangelical immigration table stuff, that kind of thing.

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But they want to secure borders in Ukraine. And I just find that very interesting.

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Ukraine's borders cannot be violated. They are a distinct people. And the Russians shouldn't come in. But on the border of the

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United States, they think that that shouldn't be the same. We shouldn't have the same kind of...

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I realize, too, there's a war situation that's a little more pressing in some ways. In some ways, not in every way, but in some ways in Ukraine.

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But we have a very interesting situation, too, because we have thousands and thousands of unvetted people coming in our southern border.

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And who knows who these people are? They could be even spies from other countries and stuff.

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So I just find it just interesting to me to find out that borders mean something and popular sovereignty means something when it comes to other places, but not to the

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United States as much. So another story here. Let's talk about this.

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The Aquila Report put this out. Conservatives split from reform churches in America over LGBTQ issues.

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January 10th, 2022, this came out. So this is a little over a week old. But let's see here.

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It's actually two weeks old. 43 congregations of the Reform Church in America split from the national denomination, one of the oldest

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Protestant bodies in the United States, in part over theological differences regarding same -sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy.

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The departure of the theologically conservative congregations to the new group, the Alliance of Reform Churches, leaves some who remain in the

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Reform Church in America concerned for the denomination's survival. Before the split, the nearly 400 -year -old denomination had fewer than 200 ,000 members and 1 ,000 churches.

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At least 125 churches from various denominations are in conversations with the Alliance of Reform Churches leaders about joining.

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Realistically, it's a large group of conservative churches that are also providing a lot of income to the denomination.

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All right, so they're having... What's happening in all the denominations is pretty much the same.

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It's over some kind of a social justice fault line, to take Votie Bauckham's very helpful analogy.

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There's... In the Southern Baptist Convention, critical race theory seems to be the main fault line. I know a lot of conservatives really want to make it so badly, they want to make it about complementarianism.

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It's really about critical race theory, though, right now. In the PCA, it's revoiced theology, primarily in the

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Reform Church in America, the RCA, it's over LGBTQ issues. They're a little further down the path, it looks like.

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And so, yeah, just interesting. It goes on and explains more about the ins and outs of this.

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So, more fracturing. My prediction is you're gonna have more and more fracturing. Denominations are gonna get smaller and smaller and smaller, unfortunately.

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And even the conservative denominations are gonna keep splitting from each other.

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And I have a podcast coming later this week, trying to explain to the best of my ability why this might be happening.

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Why is it that political conservatives and Orthodox conservatives in churches,

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Christians, tend to build denominations and then they leave them, build another denomination, leave them, and they keep getting taken over by progressives.

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Why is that? We keep seeing it happening. And then you have this big story that you've probably already heard about from January 20th.

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Jordan Peterson resigned as tenured University of Toronto professor, Torpedoes Academia. I'm not reading this headline very well.

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Jordan Peterson resigns as tenured University of Toronto professor, Torpedoes Academia, a stunningly corrupt enterprise.

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And most of you have probably already seen this or heard this, heard commentary, so I'm not gonna wax long about it.

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It's very damning of the current state of academia. And I agree 100%.

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This is exactly what academia has become. It's a corrupt enterprise. He says they all lie.

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Yeah, it seems that way sometimes. Even in Christian academia, I can tell you that it's, it really, to me,

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Christian academia is also corrupt. And I've had the privilege of being in some places, like I would say the

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History Department of Liberty University, where it's a very much an exception to, I think, the general rule.

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But there's weakness almost everywhere I've seen. In my seminary experience, in, well, all the places

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I've been, all the four different evangelical institutions that I have, or three different that I have attended in person.

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So I'm not talking about the online stuff, but the three that I've actually been, brick and mortar, yes, the corruption is insane.

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I'll give, I don't wanna give you, go through a lot of examples right now. We're talking about Jordan Peterson. But let me just say that this rings so true to me, everything he says.

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There's a precondition, he says, to occupy a faculty position. You have to believe in the social justice stuff. That's what he's saying, in order to even be hired.

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And there's only one narrative. And if you don't accept it, then you can't be in academia.

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And the application to this, the thing that I want everyone to think about is the future of academia looks even more grim than it is now.

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The children that from elementary school all the way up to graduate school are being educated right now and indoctrinated.

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In 20 years, what's this country gonna look like? When you have people that are full fledged, they believe sex is a social construct.

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They think that boys can be girls, girls can be boys. What do we do with that? Where does that take you?

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And the corruption that resides at the top levels of all our institutions makes it so that the men who should be standing up and women are not standing up.

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They won't stand up against this. They're worried about their retirement. They don't wanna rock the boat too much.

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They're loyal to their institution. We shouldn't say anything negative about anyone. And the sense of proportion is so off, it's unbelievable.

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Even with godly men that I would consider godly, it's like they can't see the big picture and see what's happening at their institutions.

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And I've been disappointed in every place I've been. I've been disappointed to meet some people that I would say have the right theology, mostly they have, they understand basically what morality is and what

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God expects. And then when things are happening that they could do something about at their own institution, they're such an aversion to doing something.

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And I know part of it is the respect they have for the hierarchy that they're in. But the

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West is on fire. The country that we have now is going to look great compared to the country

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I think we're going to enter if these things are unchecked. And the only group of people that seem to be able to take somewhat of a stand are the people that don't have the platform to do it at the high levels.

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It's common people, blue collar, working class people mostly. And they're the people that will hang on to traditional

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Christian values and the country that we once knew. And so that's kind of what's going on.

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And I'm really grateful that Jordan Peterson decided to take a bold stand, to shine a light against this.

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And he, in some ways, he probably is more financially secure than a lot of professors. He has a big following.

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He has a platform to be able to get the word out there, but I'm glad he took it. There was a high school professor, by the way, high school teacher,

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I should say, a history teacher. I posted it on my Facebook page who did something similar recently, exposed his school district for teaching critical race theory.

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And he said in the video, he goes, I know this is gonna ruin my career. I know they'll come out and destroy me. They're calling me liar. Everything that's been said about me for whistleblowing on a

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Southern Baptist school is being said about him, that he's a liar, that he's a racist, all this kind of stuff.

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That's exactly what happens the first two seconds you come out and say anything. And he's like, I don't care.

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I'm doubling down. I'm gonna give you all the evidence that this school district is corrupt. And guess what that does? It's what it's doing right now.

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It's riling up the parents. The parents, and maybe this will create a situation where parents will take back the education of their children from, frankly, the people that amount to pagan perverts, most of them.

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They're pagan perverts. They don't think they live in the world that God created.

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They wanna create their own world. Everything is malleable according to what they want and what their preference is.

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And they are open to all kinds of perversions because of that. And they're the ones teaching your kids.

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And it just shouldn't be done anymore. I'm gonna show you at some point, I think. I had a friend actually.

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Actually, maybe I can show you now. Let me see if I can pull it up. A friend shared this with me. This is a local school district that is right near me.

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Let's see if I can pull it up. And you hear about these news stories sometimes and you think like, well, that's a ways away, right?

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That's not here. That's somewhere else. And someone sent me this, let's see if I can pull it up.

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This homework assignment from, here it is. I think this is it.

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Yeah, let me pull this up for you. Here it is.

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Noah Alvarenga on Facebook posted this. And it's public. It's a public post.

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And it's from Mrs. Omara who teaches social studies at Walco Senior High School.

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And he said, let this be a reminder to you, my fellow Hudson Valley residents, the wicked pagan religion sweeping the nation is not just out there in some fancy college, nor in the cities, nor on their

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TikToks. It's being fed into them five days a week, eight hours a day. So he's saying this stuff is not just on Fox News or whatever news channel you watch.

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Here's the homework assignment. For the interest of this survey, the word represented refers to how often you learn about the described groups and how many individuals from these groups you focus on in your current and past social studies classroom.

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On a scale of one to five, how well are people of color represented in the subjects of social studies?

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On a scale of one to five, how well are native peoples represented? On a scale of one to five, how well are women represented?

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On a scale of one to five, how, what about LGBTQ plus people? On a scale of one to five, how well are people of mixed ability level?

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How well are people of low socioeconomic status, religions beyond Christianity?

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There you go. This is a multicultural education survey given to the students.

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And then you have to put down your racial or ethnicity categories.

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Which ones do you identify with? And which of the following gender categories do you identify with?

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They put human, which is great. But are you cis female? Are you cis male? Are you non -binary?

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What, you know, are you trans female? This is what elementary school kids are being taught.

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Elementary school kids. This is in my backyard. This is, these are the kids that even, according to NOAA, Christian parents are sending their kids to this school.

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What are they learning? You gotta check what your kids are learning. So Jordan Peterson says, good for him.

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Academia is a corrupt enterprise, but it is from the highest levels to the lowest levels, unfortunately.

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And in that vein, we have Matt Walsh on the Dr. Phil show. Can I show you a clip from this?

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I'd like to, let's listen to this together and then I'll provide some commentary.

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But here's just a clip from the Dr. Phil show recently with Matt Walsh.

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I would like to throw out to other members of the panel, actually, because just like the four -year -old can't answer, what is a girl?

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Well, this is one of the problems with this left -wing gender ideology is that no one who espouses it can even tell you what these words mean.

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It's like, what is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is? No, I can't. Because it's not for me to say.

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Womanhood looks different for everybody. Okay, at this point, the debate's over. The debate's over. You can't tell me what a woman is.

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You're calling yourself a woman even though you're biologically a man. The debate's over. But in the eyes of our current society, it's not.

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What do you define a woman as? An adult human female. And what does a female mean? Well, that's someone with female reproductive organs.

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Someone who's, you know, here's the thing. When you're a female, it goes right down to your bones, your DNA. So that's why if someone dies, we could dig up their bones 100 years from now.

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We have no idea what they believed in their head, but we can tell what sex they were because it's down in, it's ingrained in every fiber of their being.

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Interesting. So I'm trying to understand. So you're either XX or you're XY. There's no spectrum beyond that.

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Your definition is that a woman is someone who is female. I should say you either have a

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Y chromosome or you don't because some people are going to point out there's XXY. But you either have a Y chromosome or you don't.

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Is that right? Correct. As a biological female. So what happens if we have maybe someone who is female, identifies as a woman, right?

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You know, cisgender woman, right? As you explained, as you just explained. But maybe doesn't have the ability to reproduce.

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Maybe it doesn't have those organs that you're talking about that are reproductive organs. I have answered the question. You stood up here and said trans women are women.

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Yes. Tell me what you mean. What is a woman? Womanhood is something that just as Ethan explained, I cannot define because I am not myself.

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But you used the word. So what did you mean when you said trans women are women if you don't know what it means? So here's the thing. So I do not define what a woman is because I do not identify as a woman.

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Womanhood is something that is an umbrella term. It includes people who... That describes what? People who identify as a woman.

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Identify as what? As a woman. What is that? What's to each their own. Each woman, each man, each person is going to have a different relation with their own gender identity and define it differently.

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And so trans women are women, too. Okay. And you want to...

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Hold on, hold on. You want to reduce... You won't even tell me what the word means, though. So that's the problem. You want to reduce women.

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You want to reduce men down to maybe just their genetics, our genitals, our chromosomes, right? That's what you're saying.

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What you want to do is appropriate women. You want to appropriate womanhood and turn it into basically a costume that can be worn.

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That's a question I would like to throw out. Okay. So this is fascinating to me because of the applause line, for one thing.

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Look who the audience is with. They're not with Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh won that, hands down.

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There's no doubt about it. Matt Walsh totally decimated the other side. They can't even define what a woman is.

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But the applause line is with them because a woman can be whatever you want it to be. The idea of sex is a social construct.

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And then did you watch the projection going on? They project onto Matt Walsh that he's the one that's engaging in reductionistic thinking.

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He's reducing what a woman is to just some biological factor. And the reality is

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Matt Walsh is saying, no, that's the determinative factor. It's not everything that encompasses being a woman.

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There's certain ways that women tend to think that are different from men and habits they have.

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And maybe a more of a nurturing tendency that they have. There's actually so many things we probably don't even think about that are part and parcel to the design that the template

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God used when he made women. And he made them different from men. And it comes out, a lot of the romantic comedies bring this out because it is funny.

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When men and women live together, they have different ways of living together and thinking.

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And so it's not that you're reducing it. It's that you're saying that this is the starting point that there's a different chromosome going on.

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There's something different in the DNA fundamentally that divides humans in half.

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And of course, as you read the Bible, as you understand why those differences are there, you realize there's a different role in general.

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That's for men and a different role for women. Different abilities, different skill sets, all of that.

30:36

So it's determinative, it's not reductionistic. And actually the ones who are reducing are the, in this case, transgender activists who are saying that the concept of sex is just a social construct.

30:49

They're the ones reducing it down to nothing. It's meaningless. They can't even define it. There is no such thing as a woman. It just erases, which is,

30:56

I think, how can you have feminists and trans activists work together? Like one saying that we need rights for women, the other saying we don't know what a woman is.

31:05

But the thing is, they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, as Romans one says, because they do know what a woman is, because they use the term and they mean something by it.

31:13

Even if they can't define it, because if they were to define it, it would undercut everything, their whole position. They know that there is something fundamentally they are trying to copy.

31:22

There's something in the created order called a woman that God has made that they want to, as Matt Walsh said, appropriate.

31:28

They wanna take that and they wanna say that that can be them, even though they're not that. They wanna say that anyone can be that.

31:35

I saw a video the other day of a church. I kid you not, it was a church, probably some mainline denomination, had a little kid come up, like probably eight years old, who was a boy biologically and said that his pronouns were she and her and they honored him.

31:49

They all clapped for him at the church and said how much they respect him and all this.

31:55

I mean, it's child abuse. You're just confusing the kid and that's because it's not a social construct.

32:01

It's real. God created it. Okay, let's move on. I think I had a few other stories here.

32:07

Let's see. Oh, okay. I gotta be careful with this one. How about I change the headline around Israel study?

32:16

The fourth treatment shows limited results with a certain

32:22

Greek letter that designates a certain malady affecting our culture today, our world.

32:31

So read between the lines and you get what I'm saying. And if you read the article, basically, here's the point.

32:37

Israel's a smaller country. It's easier to get results from Israel. Now, I know that there's a lot of fudging going on in the

32:44

United States. I know this for a fact. I don't know what's going on in Israel exactly with everything, how they're marking deaths and all that.

32:49

But I do know this. It's a smaller country and they're probably the most or one of the most treated places with the first initial and then all the booster treatments.

33:02

It's one of the places that has the most of that in the world. And it's a controlled situation because they've foisted it on everyone.

33:10

And you have people that have gone through this process four times. They've had a needle in them and they still get the malady that they're supposed to be prevented.

33:22

How in the world? I mean, the emperor has no clothes. How in the world are we supposed to think that this treatment with all the side effects that we're still finding out about is a good thing when it can't even after four times within the span of what, a year?

33:38

Within four times getting this and it still won't really protect you. You still gotta wear something over your face and all that.

33:47

All right. So let's get, I think those are all the new stories I wanted to talk about. Let me talk to you briefly.

33:54

Let me answer some objections. Shall we do that? By the way, I'm drinking coconut water this morning and this is something

34:01

I got into recently. For those who want really good natural fitness and natural electrolytes in their drink, coconut water is so good.

34:13

So there's, no one's paying me to say that. It's just, I just really like coconut water with pineapple, especially.

34:18

Straight coconut water. I don't know. Anyway, let's get into the objections though.

34:23

This is from the last episode that of Conversations That Matter, which

34:29

I encourage you to watch. I think some people commenting on some of my posts, I don't know that they watched the whole thing. Not sure. I don't wanna judge anyone, but some of the questions

34:36

I felt like were answered in that. But you may wanna go check that out. And the question that I posed was, should evangelicals use the definition of race that's the same definition of race that CRT advocates use, which is that race is a social construct.

34:54

And they go farther and say that it just designates power relationships, but it's a social construct.

35:01

So I talk about a lot of things and in that, it's very hard to talk about this because I think

35:06

I said, you're on a minefield when you even say the word race. But here's the thing. We are talking about critical race theory.

35:14

Okay? The word race is right in between critical and theory. They're using the term race.

35:20

You have to, if you're gonna interact with those people that believe that, you gotta at least understand what they're saying, when they, what they mean by race.

35:28

You have to understand what they mean by it. And so I think this is my opinion. I think it's helpful to go back into scripture like we did with the other things like rape, where do we see a parallel for the concept we have of rape?

35:44

And that's obviously existed for a long time. So where do you find it in the Bible? What word is the closest approximate?

35:51

We go back into scripture and we look for things in scripture. Okay? So what's the closest approximate?

35:56

What do we see in scripture? We see nations. We see the word ethnos is the one used a lot in the new Testament to talk about the

36:03

Gentiles or the nations. And we see tribe tongue a nation in revelation. We see the nation of Israel, the special things and the separations that God wanted to make between them and the alien and the sojourner and other nations.

36:15

We see them going into captivity and still maintaining some kind of a national identity when they didn't have a land or borders.

36:21

They had a promise that they would have a land, but they weren't in the land and they didn't have their own government and they were still a people.

36:28

So you have all of this. You have a preference that's given. Many of the prophets show a preference for their people, for Israel.

36:36

You see, Paul has this preference for his people. Is he bigoted? No, he just loves his people and there's nothing wrong with that.

36:43

And so, and he even says, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, there's a genetic component in this.

36:49

And I'm not prepared to say Paul's a bigot. I know a lot of people now. I mean, Paul says all kinds of things.

36:55

The apostle Paul that I think are, they're the things that are going to be used when they come for the

37:01

Bibles, that's what they're going to come for. It's going to be the apostle Paul. And it's funny, you know, in studying Nazi Germany, which by the way,

37:07

I gotta say, I've taken a class on the Holocaust on a graduate level. I've taken a class on World War II on the graduate level.

37:13

I've read Mein Kampf. I'm in the middle of reading a biography of Hitler right now by John Toland.

37:18

I'm not saying I know everything about the Nazis and what they thought of race and all of that. I know a little bit though.

37:24

And I'm very much against it. And it's very, I do think it's very evil. I think what

37:30

Hitler did, obviously, I mean, it should go without saying, but it's very evil. I'm noticing though an uptick and I don't know why.

37:38

I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know how it could be. I know

37:43

I predicted a while ago that the CRT stuff is gonna create a counter reaction. If you start pushing that white people are bad, white people are bad, white people are bad, there's gonna be some people that are gonna say, hold on,

37:54

I'm gonna push back on this and I'm gonna come from the opposite end. White people are good. White people are good.

38:00

And not only that, but they're superior or something like that. I'm getting a vibe out there.

38:07

Very, very small group. I don't know how small. It's very small. It's almost so insignificant in my mind that is it worth talking about?

38:13

But I'm reminded of something John Weaver had written in, I think it was Ideas Have Consequences, where he said, if things secularize and religion dies in the

38:25

United States, that we're gonna go to a European fascism versus communism. And I do think that we're heading down that road.

38:31

And I don't know what it's gonna look like. I have some thoughts, but they're not fully formed yet in my mind.

38:40

So I did see a comment on YouTube about basically there was no

38:46

Holocaust or something like that. And I don't know what to say to someone like that, by the way. Yes, there was.

38:51

We have the primary sources. We have a lot of primary sources on it. I've read a lot of them.

38:58

It's unquestioned that this did happen. And it's also something you can't honestly, at least question the fact that a large part of the motivation for that was this idea that they're genetically, remember

39:14

Darwinism. I talked about this in the last podcast. Darwinism makes race, takes that word, a very legitimate word that referred to lineage.

39:24

And it takes that word and it makes the fundamental characteristic, the determinative.

39:30

This is really the word you should remember. The determinative characteristic of race is all genetics. It determines everything else.

39:37

So your genetics are gonna determine even the ways in which your culture manifests itself, your religion, what kind of jobs you have.

39:48

All of that, it's all determinative based on genetics, which that's called ideology. That's called reducing everything to one thing.

39:56

Critical race theorists, of course, reduce everything to this abstract concept of power relationships. They're both reductionistic. Both of them do not conform to the world that God made.

40:03

And so because that term was abused by Darwinists and then used by people like the

40:10

Nazis, most famously, to that concept, to oppress a certain group of people, actually many groups of people, then it's rejected today by a lot of evangelicals, especially.

40:23

And they don't wanna even, I don't wanna use that word. It's a bad word. It's, you know, but the word's still used in the broader culture, okay?

40:30

The word is still used by critical race theorists. Literally, that's the word.

40:35

You gotta understand what they mean by it if you wanna interact with them. I'm not saying you have to use the word, but you at least have to understand what does

40:41

Christianity say? What are they saying? What's the difference between the two? And once you understand that, then you can start getting somewhere.

40:50

But if you avoid the conversation or you freak out if the term's used or if you want to just agree with them immediately, yes, race is a social construct.

41:02

You just go, you engage in the same reductionistic thinking, then you're kind of giving them, you're giving them justification for their solutions in their minds.

41:14

I know I said this in the last podcast. The battle is over the dictionary. If you buy into the definitions, you buy into the solutions.

41:20

If you buy into the definitions, you buy into the solutions. If race is just a social construct, that's all it is, nothing else.

41:26

And it designates power relationships. But even if you just say it's just a social construct, it's a malleable thing.

41:32

We can change it, right? That means that all the oppression that's gone on, we can just reverse course through some political action if it's just a social construct.

41:42

If the way that things are, and there's no providence involved, God's not doing anything.

41:49

Groups don't have certain tendencies. It's just literally the only thing that separates people groups is oppression, power being exerted over them, coercion.

41:59

That's the only thing. Then you just have to reverse the coercion and coerce the other side. The people that have been doing the coercing need to be coerced.

42:06

And that, bingo, that's where you get social justice. We need to redistribute. Take the money, take the platforming, take the power, take the privilege away from this group and give it to this group.

42:16

If you buy into the definitions, you buy into the solutions generally. So that's why I think this is an important discussion to have.

42:22

That's one of the reasons. So let me just go through this. I wrote a few notes down from the objections. One of the objections to me is that we shouldn't use the term race at all.

42:32

And I think I said this, but look, I don't use the term. I use the term people. In the last podcast,

42:37

I did use the term race because we have to, when we interact with critical race theorists, we have to understand what they mean by it.

42:44

And if you do that, you're inevitably gonna use the term. But no, in general, I try to avoid it because I wanna avoid confusion.

42:50

I use people. There's people groups, different peoples. Is that so controversial? We all believe that. No one denies that.

42:57

There's different kinds of people out there. What makes them different, people might quibble about, but we can't deny that there's different kinds of people.

43:05

There's different kinds of cuisines even that are associated with them. If I go to an Italian restaurant, I think

43:10

I'm gonna get food that came from a certain region, certain kinds of people, certain lineage that they're from.

43:17

They're Italian, right? And the more authentic it is, right? I live in New York right now. So the more authentic, you walk in and if it's an

43:24

Italian restaurant and everyone in there is Chinese, now maybe they still have good pizza.

43:32

It's very possible, but you wouldn't think it's as authentic. And if there's pictures on the wall that you would see in a

43:39

Chinese buffet or something, and it's a pizza restaurant, you get the point. We all understand that there's this authenticity.

43:45

There is something that's true about certain people groups that's different than other people groups.

43:51

Now, so I don't use the term race. I use the term people most often. But when we're engaging in apologetics with critical race theorists, we have to understand what they mean by that.

44:01

So we have to use the term at least. And I think it's helpful to open up your Bible, to open up history, to find out what does this term actually mean?

44:09

So we can find out how they're misusing it and how they're flattening it and all of that.

44:14

It's a legitimate term. It just means lineage. I went over the whole, I went over the etymology. I went over the history of it in the last episode.

44:19

I talked about the closest approximates that I find in the Bible. I do find, you know, a sense of that in Acts 17, in Revelation, throughout the whole pages of the

44:31

Old Testament. You do find that there's different people groups. God separates the peoples.

44:37

There's, you have nations, but the word ethnos is the one I focused on the most. And that's different than the way ethnic is used today.

44:44

Ethnicity today, most often people think of, when they think of that word, they're thinking of genetics, they're thinking of skin color, those kinds of things.

44:52

And there seems to be in the biblical sense and in also the way that race has even been used, but in the biblical sense of ethnos, you see more, there's culture with it too.

45:03

It's not just a genetic thing. The peoples are in particular locations.

45:08

They developed ways of traditions and all of that kind of thing. They have culture and there's a lineage there as well.

45:16

That's what you have with ethnos most of the time. It's the nations. So it's a general, it's more general.

45:23

And the word race is more general too. That's how it was used for hundreds of years before Darwinists ever even used the term.

45:30

That's how it was used. And it's been used that way even up until today. But yes, Darwinists corrupted the term by reducing it, by making one thing the determinative factor.

45:42

Critical race theorists have done the same thing. And this is what the left does all the time. You gotta understand this. They hijacked the language. What did we just see with Matt Walsh and with sex is just a social construct.

45:51

In 20 years, are Christians gonna be saying we don't use the word sex? We can't use it anymore because, well, it's been hijacked by the left.

45:57

It means something that we didn't never intended. I hope not. I hope we can try to hold onto the dictionary.

46:04

And that's one of my things. And you don't have to agree with me on this, but I think the left is always gonna take our terms, legitimate terms and corrupt them.

46:11

Try to fit them into categories that they want. And their goal, their objective is they don't like the creator.

46:17

They want to be the creators. They want to make the world in their image. So that's why they make so many things abstract and malleable and they can change them.

46:25

And you can identify as this or identify as that. Or they put it into a realm where they can manipulate it in the imaginary world of their heads.

46:36

It's really, the difference between realism and idealism comes out in this quite a bit.

46:42

The leftists are idealists most of the time. They're idealists. So that being said,

46:48

I don't tend to use the term, but we have to try to at least understand what the term means.

46:55

And I have no problem with someone who does use the term a lot. And when we engage with Google race theorists, we're gonna have to navigate that.

47:01

So I don't wanna see the dictionary to them. So in understanding what CRT proponents mean when they use it,

47:08

I think of the term whiteness and I think of the term white privilege. Whiteness, anything that comes from Western culture is whiteness, just is.

47:18

Your decorations in your house, that's whiteness. The colors you choose to put on your walls, whiteness.

47:27

It's everything and it's always linked to oppression somehow, always whiteness. And then of course, white privilege is just, that's the genetic component.

47:35

That's the color of your skin means you have a privilege others don't, even if you're in Appalachia and don't have running water. So when they use the term race, they're talking about something, they're actually denigrating something that's legitimate.

47:47

They're denigrating culture, they're denigrating lineage. And they're saying, they're making them bad.

47:55

It's really bad to have these things, to have any kind of Western European culture, to be

48:00

European in your ethnicity, really bad. And so that's what they mean.

48:06

Now, of course, they then kick it up to the realm of the imaginative, the abstract, it's just a social construct.

48:14

But then there is something tangible in the real world that they point to, to locate it. So you have the option of not being those things in some way of checking your privilege, redistributing things to get justice done and to stop forwarding your oppressive

48:30

European culture. You have the option to do this. And those are the steps you must make to bring about social justice.

48:41

So yes, is critical race theory inherently contradictory? Yeah, of course it is. Is evolutionary theory inherently contradictory?

48:47

Yes, of course they are. But they are, when they refer to race, there is something behind it.

48:55

There's something in the real world that they're using to forward their narrative somewhere.

49:01

And I don't care what term you use for it necessarily, but that there's a concept there. You gotta figure out what that is. And I submit to you that it's culture and it's lineage.

49:08

That's what they're talking about when they talk about these things. And religion is even part of this. That's part of the culture.

49:14

That's why you even see in some critical race theory books, Christianity is a problem. So imagine trying to discuss this issue with them without using the term race.

49:27

You know, you would just be so confusing. So I just think for practical purposes, even alone, you gotta figure out how you're gonna navigate that.

49:35

Use the term, use it correctly. And then just say, no, those things aren't bad. Lineage isn't bad. God made this world, okay?

49:42

And he made, it's one of the good things he made. And there's no lineage that's better than another lineage, but he made lineage.

49:50

That's something real. He made families, okay? Would we say family is just a social construct?

49:56

No. Would we say there's only one family, the human family? Well, no, we know what someone means when they say that, but there are different families.

50:04

There's different groups. There's different peoples. So that's one objection

50:09

I got. We shouldn't use the term race. The other objection, another objection is it's a pointless discussion. That it's just, it's stupid to have this conversation.

50:17

And I would submit to you, no, it's not. And I think I just gave some reasons for why it's not pointless. In order to interact with people that, one of their fundamental tenets in life is that race is a social construct.

50:33

You have to understand what they mean by that. They're building their worldview off of this. So it's not a pointless discussion. You can introduce them to the creator who didn't make this as a social construct, but actually made it something real, tangible in the real world.

50:46

And it's part of his plan to have all peoples come and worship him at the end of time.

50:52

It's part of his plan to have all people do I know all the ins and outs of why God wanted it that way? No, I just know that that's how God created it.

50:59

And I love the diversity of it, actually. I love the true diversity, not what they talk about. I love the fact that there's different peoples.

51:05

And when I've traveled and been around people that are different, it's such, it's an educational experience.

51:12

It's a refreshing experience for me. And there's something God likes about that.

51:19

There's something, part of his creation is that. And so I don't think it's pointless to talk about it.

51:25

When CRT advocates say race is a social construct, they're saying different people groups aren't objective realities in the world.

51:32

Instead, they're abstract designations that humans artificially produce. Let me repeat that.

51:39

When CRT advocates say race is a social construct, they're saying different people groups aren't objective realities in the world.

51:44

Instead, they're abstract designations human artificially produce. They're taking away the role of the creator. Okay, saying you didn't create these differences.

51:53

You didn't move people groups around. You didn't cause empires to rise and fall. That was human beings and their oppression that caused all of these differences that we see around us.

52:03

To them, to critical race theorists, Western civilization is whiteness. To them, race, the lineage of European lineage is white privilege.

52:16

And race traditionally has been a broad concept that includes things like genetics and culture.

52:22

And it does seem closer to ethnos. I'm not saying there's a parallel there in every way. I'm just saying it seems closer than even the word ethnicity is today.

52:29

So when you see people like Ken Ham argue against Darwinism, they're arguing against a different issue.

52:35

They're arguing against people who reduce everything to genetics. And they're saying we're one. We all have the genetics of Adam and Eve.

52:41

No one's better than anyone else. No one's of a different human worth. And that's 100 % true, 100%.

52:46

But that's what they're arguing against. They're not arguing against critical race theorists. And so if you use the same arguments employed against Darwinists, against critical race theorists, then you're gonna have a problem because they're not saying the same thing.

52:59

When people, when Christians deny that there are various races, especially in the minds of a critical race theorist hearing this, or really anyone who uses the term race in any traditional sense of the word, what it sounds like to them is that they're buying into a

53:14

Darwinist understanding of race that makes genetics determinative, right? Because if you're responding to Darwinists and you're saying, okay, the way you're using the word race, genetics are determinative.

53:22

No, there's one race, it's a human race and worth is conferred through the Imago Dei. If that's the argument you're making and it's a true argument, then it sounds like you're buying into the

53:32

Darwinist understanding of race. So that's, if you buy into the Darwinist understanding of race and then apply that understanding to critical race theory and you think critical race theorists are saying that, you're wrong.

53:41

That's not what critical race theorists are saying. They don't think genetics is determinative. They think it's power.

53:47

It's social power. So I don't like ceding the dictionary to them. Many ministries do actually say race is a social construct and I do have examples.

53:56

I don't wanna get people, it's not the point. I don't wanna talk about these ministries because they're doing some really good work in many ways, but I think it's not a pointless discussion.

54:06

It's not a pointless discussion. What if someone were to say sex is not a social construct either?

54:14

And we saw examples of that. There's a corrupted definition there. Would we say 30 years from now?

54:21

Well, it's a pointless discussion. I hope not. The definitions, like I said, drive the solutions. So there's also an objection

54:28

I got just in aversion to the word race. There's no such thing as race because, and a number of people told me this.

54:35

There's four different objections I got for there's no such thing as race because different races can have children.

54:42

Okay, short people and tall people can get together and have children. Is there no such thing as short and tall? People of different religions have gotten together and had children.

54:50

Does that mean those religions don't exist? We can go down a long list of things, of characteristics that are identifiable in the real world that don't prevent people from getting together and having kids.

55:05

And we wouldn't say they're not real distinctions. So it's a weird argument to me.

55:11

I think what someone's trying to say, this is an evolutionary thing. Again, they're still on the evolution track in their mind and they're thinking like, well, different kinds are able to have children together.

55:22

And so maybe favoring the word kind over the word race, I don't know. But someone

55:30

I think who's saying this is thinking that race means it's something so different. So one race to another race is so earth shatteringly different.

55:40

Like they evolve from different areas like early Darwinists believe or something that there is no commonality between them.

55:45

That's just not the case. That's just not the Bible teaches that we all came from Adam and Eve. We're all of equal worth.

55:51

We all have the Imago Dei. So there's, I don't know. But some of my, look, some of my best friends that I have so much in common with are probably very, a lot farther in their genetics than I am to me than I am with certain people that have closer genetics to me that I'm not close with.

56:11

A secularist, atheistic college professor who might be my cousin or something.

56:18

I have way less in common with them than I do some of my really good friends that are from places like Kenya or black

56:28

Americans or even some of the members of my family who are Hispanic. We share more in common mostly because of our

56:38

Christianity but also because of maybe we have similar values and similar cultures in a way.

56:45

Actually, my friend from Kenya who I'm very good friends with, in some ways he's, I mean, he likes drinking tea and stuff. There's a

56:50

British thing going on there. I don't know where that came in, but we have, there's certain things we have in common. We have shared interests and hobbies and human relationships are complex.

57:00

And anyone who would say like, the only thing that's determinative is genetics like a Darwinist is just an idiot or they're evil.

57:08

They're both possibly. And so, yeah, we reject that obviously but that's again, critical race theorists.

57:13

They're not saying that when they say race is a social construct. They're not saying genetics is determinative. So any objection we would,

57:19

I know I'm beating a dead horse with this but I think that we've had it beaten into us so much that I have to repeat it.

57:25

Any objection that we would give to Darwinism isn't gonna be sufficient for critical race theory. So of course, different peoples can have children.

57:35

Humans all worship God equally is another thing. So there's no such thing as race because humans all worship

57:41

God equally. So you, I mean, you could say there's no such thing as sex either because males and females worship

57:47

God equally. So they, sex just doesn't exist. That doesn't quite make sense to me.

57:53

All humans are of equal worth. So there's no such thing as race because all humans are equal worth. Agreed, yes, of course, of course they are.

58:00

But again, people, genders, different genders are also of equal worth before God. That doesn't mean that they don't exist that there's no such thing as a man or a woman.

58:10

Like if all these arguments could be used to push the transgender narrative you probably don't wanna use them. There's no such thing as race because it's been used to oppress people.

58:18

Now, this is an interesting one to me because I think this is the emotional thing. These are the images that come up and I think this is the main aversion people have to using the term.

58:26

They think the Holocaust, they might think segregation. They might, there's a whole long list of things in their minds when the term race comes up and they immediately like, can't go there.

58:34

We can't talk about that. But you have an ungodly ideology that's taking captive people, that's using the term.

58:40

So this creates a dilemma. So I think when it comes to this objection, first thing to note is a lot of things have been used to oppress people.

58:52

Borders have been used to oppress people. Differences on location where people live, right? Does that mean that we don't have a location we live in?

58:59

No. Differences in sex have been used to oppress people. Does that mean there's no such thing as sex? No. Differences in disability status and mental ability.

59:07

Those have been used to oppress people. Does that mean there are no people with different mental abilities or disabilities?

59:12

No. The unborn, right? Abortion, people taking advantage of humans because they're unborn.

59:21

Does that mean there's no such thing as a baby? Yikes, right? No, of course there is.

59:28

Vaccinated status, right? That's being used to oppress people. So should we just never talk about it or there's no such thing as a vaccinated person?

59:36

Differences in religion. Should we say there's no such thing as religion because it's been used to oppress people?

59:42

No, all these things exist in the real world. So it's a bad argument, but it's an understandably emotional one in my mind.

59:51

And so because these things I think are very, in the memories of our grandparents, especially thinking about Nazi Germany, because the term race and because differences and evolutionary

01:00:05

Darwinist understanding of that was used as a pretext to murder millions of people.

01:00:12

I think that that's part of the aversion people have. People also are starting to have a big aversion to just even national boundaries.

01:00:19

Apparently not when it comes to Ukraine, but in the United States and in Western countries, a lot of more

01:00:24

Western countries, I guess like England, there seems to be that aversion that these are things that are used to oppress.

01:00:30

Wars are started over borders, so we shouldn't have borders. That's the line of logic you're gonna go down.

01:00:35

No, we just, we recognize what's real in the real world. There are different kinds of people groups. There are different, there's borders, there's locations people live in.

01:00:43

There's all the things I just mentioned. Those things exist and we shouldn't use them for the sake of oppression.

01:00:49

We shouldn't use those realities to then say, well, my location is better than your location or my group's better than your group.

01:00:58

I've said this before, you can love your own family, your own group, your own location, your own whatever.

01:01:05

You can love that without hating others. It is possible. Paul, I think was able to do it. He was able to love his own kinsmen according to the flesh without hating everyone else.

01:01:12

He was a apostle to the Gentiles for crying out loud. He loved them, didn't hate them, but he also loved, he has special love for his kinsmen.

01:01:21

All right, there's only one human race and to say there's multiple human races makes you a racist. This is one of the objections that I just,

01:01:30

I don't know, it's a conversation ender. It's like, okay, yes, there is. It's true that there is one human race, absolutely.

01:01:36

In fact, even in the 19th century, the idea that there was a human race was used quite a bit.

01:01:43

It was used throughout the whole history of the term race, that there is one human race. And people also spoke of it as there are different human races as well, that both terms were used.

01:01:53

That's why I say race is, it's a looser term than the people who reduce it in Darwinism or in CRT wanna make it, it's a looser term.

01:02:01

And then of course, a big one, race is a term for skin color. I keep hearing that one. I asked someone for a definition of this.

01:02:07

I can't find any definition of this. I don't, I think this is just coming from a reductionistic evolutionary understanding again, that that's the biggest identifying mark of a determinative genetic condition that you can determine genetics by looking at things like skin tone or the way noses are shaped or whatever.

01:02:27

The Nazis used to have these charts or whatever. And so people are imposing their own definition of race, which seems to be more of an evolutionary corruption of the term saying that it's just skin color.

01:02:41

No, it's not. And I don't think, I haven't seen any definition that says it's just skin color. No, it's more than that.

01:02:48

And then, so those are the main objections. Overall, I guess what I wanna say to wrap this up is we are responding to critical race theory.

01:02:56

They think of genetics, they think of lineage, they think of culture when they're talking about Europeans.

01:03:03

And to engage with them, we have to understand what they mean by that. We're gonna have to use the term a little bit just to get their understanding and to be able to talk to them.

01:03:14

And then we have to do the hard work of going into scripture and seeing what parallels their understanding.

01:03:20

Where are they wrong? Where are, what's the reality in the real world?

01:03:26

Not what are the concepts in our head and the different terms we use. There's semantics come out here.

01:03:32

The goal of all of us should be reason scripture. Not in that order necessarily, but scripture reason.

01:03:39

That should be the goal. What does scripture say? What does scripture say about reality? And then let's reason through this false religion that's coming down the pike that makes an idol out of race, that makes an idol out of race as a social construct and then sees everything as some difference between oppression that we can as humans, all powerful human gods apparently, correct through some kind of a redistribution scheme.

01:04:07

Sorry, you're just not gonna do it and your solutions are gonna be bad if that's the way you think of it, if that's what you think race actually is.

01:04:12

So that's my thoughts. Those are my thoughts on some of the objections that I've received from this.

01:04:19

I don't plan to talk about this a lot. In fact, I may not talk about it much more, but I do think it's important at the very least to open up this discussion.

01:04:32

And again, if you have resources or whatever, I'm more than open to hearing even other objections or just resources.

01:04:39

I mean, that's really what I was more asking for in the last episode. I think one person sent me one book. Most people were just giving me their opinion of why

01:04:46

I shouldn't use the term race or something. But I think we have to at least breach this topic.

01:04:54

And for people to then come out and say you're a racist because you're even trying to engage with critical race theorists, you're trying to open your

01:05:00

Bible and faithfully figure out what things mean. There's no hatred in your heart for anyone else. You're not reducing everything to genetics.

01:05:08

You're not into genetic determinism. To say that someone who does that is a racist, which is the fear people have, is we just push back on it.

01:05:18

We just say, no, it's not. In fact, maybe you're the one that's being insensitive.

01:05:23

Maybe you're the one that's being a bully. Maybe you're, you know, if people are gonna just start throwing out name calls and slurs just because you're trying to understand and you're on a journey to understand what the scripture has to say, what exists in the real world, that shouldn't be, that's an enterprise.

01:05:40

And again, that used to be the academic enterprise. It used to be something that you're able to ask questions, explore things, have, you know, engage productively with different viewpoints.

01:05:51

And now I think we have, as Jordan Peterson said, there's an orthodoxy. You are not allowed to disagree on some things.

01:05:58

The definition of race belongs now to the critical race theorists, and you are not allowed to argue in any deviation from what they say makes you a racist.

01:06:06

If you think it's not a social construct, if you think that there was a previous definition or like the real definition that they've corrupted, then you're a racist.

01:06:15

If you open your Bible and you think that, and you see differences in the way that God interacts with people groups and his providence and redemption and everything that's going on, and that's a real world thing, and it's not something that exists in the abstract mind and is just a result of power disparities and stuff, you're not a racist.

01:06:35

And this is one of the big stumbling blocks we have got to get over in conservative evangelicalism is the fear of being called these words.

01:06:42

We've got to be unafraid to open our Bibles, okay, and talk about this stuff. And in my mind, look,

01:06:49

I was raised, I'll just tell you briefly in closing, this is how I was raised about all this stuff. I was raised, and I'll incorporate one question

01:06:56

I had about colorblindness into this. I was raised to judge people or assess people based on who they are as people, their character, right?

01:07:07

Not the color of their skin. To take a famous line from the MLK, my dad even had a bumper sticker that he,

01:07:15

I think after Obama was elected, he said, I voted on content of character. That was the way I was raised. I had friends from every kind of different lineage.

01:07:27

I didn't think about it. I mean, I grew up in an area too, the quote -unquote white people, according to critical race theorists that would have been there were mostly

01:07:36

Italians and some Irish people and stuff, which I am really neither. I have a little Irish in me, but we moved from a different area.

01:07:43

I mean, I know slightly, slightly, not to the extent others know, but I know slightly what it's like to kind of be in an area where people are different than your family in some ways.

01:07:55

I mean, I remember my parents really trying hard to make sure I didn't get that New York accent. They didn't want me to have that.

01:08:01

Was that bigoted of them? I don't think so. I think they just wanted to retain, they thought there was a correct pronunciation and they were from California.

01:08:09

So, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. And we had things that made us who we are.

01:08:16

We knew, I knew that there was something unique about me being a member of the family I was part of.

01:08:21

And that family had moved to the area. We weren't from that area. We had, you know, we liked a lot of Mexican food.

01:08:27

They didn't have it when we first moved there. And throughout the 90s, I mean, now they do more, but in this area, no, there weren't, there still aren't great

01:08:35

Mexican restaurants, just so everyone knows. You have good Italian food here, but you do not have good Mexican food. And, you know, Southern Californians like their

01:08:41

Mexican food. So anyway, I don't want to wax long about this, but my parents just, you know, they taught me not to, you know, some parents will say they're proud of their kids.

01:08:48

Their kids don't see color. And I know what they mean by that, that they're not looking at people and condemning them or treating them differently because of their skin color.

01:08:58

And that's exactly how I was raised. And that's exactly how I am today. I literally don't. I, at the same time,

01:09:05

I do believe that some of the things I even just described about my family, there are differences between people groups.

01:09:12

And those are, some of those are very precious differences. And they do have to do with traditions.

01:09:17

And when I was going, I know I told the story last time a little bit, but, you know, a black church in Virginia, I went to, historically black, they have a different way of even doing songs and preaching and all that.

01:09:28

And there's something precious about it. And I would never want to come in there and say, well, you need to conform to me. You need to make sure that, you know, you're doing it the way that I like,

01:09:37

I like it done or something, you know? And I, truth is, I like it done the way they like, they do it, but let's say

01:09:42

I didn't. And I wanted everyone to conform and you need to sing these hymns, you know? Come on, come on.

01:09:48

No, that's what gives life flavor. And so I can appreciate those things. And, but when it comes to assessing character, a person's worth, all that, of course, of course we're colorblind.

01:10:03

So when critical race theorists say that you can't be colorblind, you have to see color. The only reason they say that is because they want you to recognize someone's privilege.

01:10:14

And they want you, well, they want you to, it's the standpoint theory thing. They want you to recognize who you should listen to.

01:10:20

So if someone, let's say has darker skin complexion, then they, on the intersectionality chart, you need to listen to them because they're going to have insights you don't have, right?

01:10:28

That's why you have to, you can't be colorblind. The other thing is you gotta know who to redistribute resources to. So if you're trying to diversify your elder board or something at church, you need to redistribute positions.

01:10:39

You need to have people of color come in and have those positions just on the basis of, you know, they're people of color.

01:10:44

Well, that's judging someone based on their skin color, okay? That's the opposite of the way I was raised. And so it's not natural to me.

01:10:53

Interracial relationships, right? People marrying people that aren't part of their racial group necessarily.

01:10:59

Sometimes there's challenges with that. There's cultural challenges and things. But a lot of my best friends are part of, you know, marriages like that.

01:11:08

And they work hard for their children that their children know exactly who they are. And the main thing is, you know, you're part of whatever the last name, you're part of our family.

01:11:17

If you have a really good family identity and Christianity being part of that, that we follow

01:11:22

Jesus, these are Jesus's rules, then your kids, even if, you know, they're whatever you want to call it, mixed race or they'll, that's the important thing.

01:11:31

That's the primary thing to focus on. You can have, you know, as the

01:11:37

Darwinists and the, you know, the Nazis would have been like this more, you know, this trying to get a pure blood and stuff.

01:11:44

Yeah, sure, good, good, go for it, right? You're pure blood. And then, you know, watch your kids reject everything that you believe when they grow up and go down a horrible path.

01:11:54

You know, it's the thing that's always been important to me is how I was raised is what

01:11:59

I think today is are they Christians? That's the first question you ask. If you, let's say, if you're a

01:12:06

European person of some European descent, let's say you're Scottish descent, right? I have a lot of Scottish in me. And you get married to someone who's from Russia, grew up there,

01:12:16

English is their second language. Guess what? There's probably gonna be a lot of differences between you and them, a lot more differences than there would be between you and someone next door who happens to be

01:12:25

Hispanic. But they grew up in the same area you did, go to the same church, all that. So it's more complicated than the people who wanna reduce everything to one thing try to make it out to be.

01:12:37

And the question should always be what's gonna make a successful marriage, a godly marriage for our kids, for generations down the road?

01:12:47

I mean, Proverbs tells us, think about generations down the road. You know, think about the family that you're marrying into.

01:12:54

You know, think about, you know, and you can't say this now, because this term is bad, but there used to be a sense in which people would talk about breeding and they didn't mean, they didn't mean genetics, or at least they didn't solely mean genetics.

01:13:04

They meant a person was of good breeding or something, good stock, you know, good something like, you know, they had good manners.

01:13:11

They had good, you know, their families had really raised them well. And so you do wanna look at those things and you do wanna make sure your family, you're raising them well.

01:13:22

And it's perfectly, you know, I don't know, people, I just think people, when they try to interact with critical race theory, they're so afraid that they're gonna walk into some kind of mine where they are going to be pigeonholed into supporting segregation or supporting something that, you know, they know that they have an aversion to that's wrong.

01:13:45

You know, that kind of thing. They're in favor of the Holocaust or something like that. And it's like, no, no, that's just what bullies do.

01:13:52

That's what bullies do, that kind of thing. They try to make you to sound that way. You can recognize the world

01:13:57

God created. You can appreciate and love the world God created. And you can even love your own like Paul did.

01:14:03

And it doesn't make you a bigot or a hater, any of those things. And so those are just some of my thoughts on this topic.

01:14:10

I could probably go long, but I'm rambling at this point. And it already is a long podcast. I hope that answers some of the questions people had about this topic.

01:14:18

Cause I know, yeah, it's a complicated thing. I know it's hard. There's so many definitions and terms and all that.

01:14:24

But to simplify it and to bring it all together, we want to conform our thinking to the biblical categories.

01:14:31

We don't want to bring in categories from anti -biblical worldviews that seek to undermine what the

01:14:37

Bible says. And that should be the goal of all of us. He weighed from one man and one woman, all of us, all equal of human worth.

01:14:45

He separated the peoples, different traditions, habits, all of those things, lineage.

01:14:52

And one day he's going to bring them all together. And they're going to worship him with their distinctions. And that's important to him.

01:15:00

I don't know all the reasons why, but it is. And so we just, we praise God, the God that created this.

01:15:05

We praise the God, we worship the God that made this. And we operate by his ordained plan, by his providence.

01:15:16

That's the world we live in. We just, you know, and I think that's one of the things that was maybe an issue with the segregation stuff is, you know,

01:15:24

God has a plan. He's going to bring people groups together. He's going to create new people groups sometimes. That takes generations to do generally.

01:15:31

You know, Abraham, right? Father of many nations. But Abraham wasn't many nations.

01:15:36

He's just the father of many nations because it took time to develop to get these many nations. So, you know, God, that's his providence.

01:15:42

That's what he does. And he made a world that's not very boring. It's very interesting.

01:15:49

And that's the world I live in. I want to live in. And I don't want to live it in such a terrible way of just thinking about power relationships the whole time or genetics and reducing everything to these kind of thing.

01:15:58

No, there's a big, wide world out there. That's the world God created. That's where my God created.

01:16:05

And so that's my closing thought here.

01:16:11

And when we engage these false worldviews, we need to do it on their term.

01:16:16

We need to understand at least their terms. But we do it understanding what the

01:16:21

Bible teaches about what they're trying to say. Okay? All right. Well, God bless. More coming later this week. I think tomorrow there's a big thing

01:16:28

I have on Thibidien Abouyelle. This panel he was on where with basically an LGBTQ and a trans activist.

01:16:35

And well, let's just say his reaction to those things. Pretty disappointing. So stay tuned for that.

01:16:42

And more episodes. I would love to see you if you're coming out to Kentucky or coming out to Tennessee. Would love to see you there. God bless.