How to Put Your White Fragility to GOOD Use.

Thoroughly Equipped

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So, how do we fight this teaching? Well, let's go to scripture. First, I believe we always need to be self -aware of our own tendency.

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Even as Christians, to want to scoop to this level and become biased against people who teach this,

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I lock myself in here. If we remember that it's only by God's grace that we have faith and it is by no power of ours that we are sanctified, but by the power of the

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Holy Spirit working through us that made us a new man, then our desire and prayer should be for our own battle against the flesh first.

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Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

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I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of this spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

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Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

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We are called to live by the Spirit, to keep in step with the Spirit, and to not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

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Galatians 5, 19 -26. And then for love's sake, we not only pray for our own growth in discernment and maturity, but the salvation, discernment, and maturity of all those who have fallen prey to false teachings like these.

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For our battle is not against flesh and blood, right? But against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

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So first and foremost, I think we let scripture assess our own hearts and call us to repent of a lack of truth and a lack of love where we may identify it.

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In this, we truly become humble, but it's a humility that subjects itself to the

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Word of God. But then we are not left to ourselves, right? We are also instructed to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the

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Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4, 1 -3. True unity within the church does not come by getting all races on the same page of our historical past, or to root out white supremacy or white fragility together, or to call one group to fight their white fragility so that other groups may express their truth, but it comes through the teachings of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers of God's Word.

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It is these who God has gifted to equip the saints for the work of ministry and building up the body of Christ in unity.

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The Word of God, as given to us by the apostles and prophets and preached and exposited by faithful evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, are how we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

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Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

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Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way unto Him who is the head unto

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Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

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Ephesians 4, 13 -16. With first our addressing of our own hearts and then coming to scripture as not just our authority for faith, but as the tool

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God has given us to equip us for not only good works, but for the fight against the principalities, philosophies, and ideologies of this world.

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We who are spiritual are to restore any brother or sister caught in a transgression.

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Galatians 6, 1 -2. Call out the transgressions, these teachings produced in people, addressing the works of the flesh that is often the fruit of false teachings.

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Remember what Paul says these are in Galatians 5? Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

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So, let's think about a couple. I mean, think about sensuality. Sensuality is a broad term referred to a kind of shameless, open lifestyle that flaunts indulgence in doing anything that feels good in spite of consequences or morals.

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The original great term, and I'm again going to butcher, asalgia, carries a sense of being out of control.

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It suggests a person lacking discipline or any capacity for self -restraint.

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And we see sensuality at play when Be the Bridge, or at least Be the Bridge gives them license to have sensuality, to people of color to act out however they feel, to even allow bad behavior because of perceived oppression.

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Other sins that we see in this list include idolatry, enmity or hatred, and we see that obviously with racism that is explicit in white fragility, strife, this causing of strife within the church, jealousy for wanting privileges and advantages and resources that other people might have, fits of anger, again, the sensuality, the license to have these fits of anger and be justified in them without correction, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy.

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In all of this, these sins that we see, we see them clearly displayed within the social justice community.

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And in love, we are to call them to repent and trust in the gospel because just like Virgil Walker and Daryl Harrison state, so clearly the gospel is the solution.

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Jesus would instruct that his kingdom would not be a kingdom that he would establish through change from the outside, but rather that the kingdom would be a part of the heart transformation necessitating the complete change from the inside out.

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What we're witnessing are men who desire to see this transformation, this utopia, if you will, take place from the outside in.

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They're trying to use their own powers of persuasion, their own ideological framework, their own economic empowerment, their own political strategy in an effort to change society into what they believe it needs to be.

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Well, the gospel of the kingdom works absolutely the reverse way. What happened in the first century after Jesus ascends, right?

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Those men whose hearts were transformed began to have a massive impact on the culture, but they did so not by trying to change the government structure.

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They did so because of the heart transformation that was in on the inside of them, and they began to proclaim that gospel message person to person, house to house, and the society and the culture transformed as a result.

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So that by the time we read about Paul and the church in Ephesus and Acts 17 and 18, and you've unpacked what

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Paul is doing, there's a riot that breaks out. Why? Because the silversmith there is upset because everybody in the world seems to be turning over their hearts and giving them to Christ, and it's having a large economic impact on Ephesus.

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He's saying, if all of these folks become believers, we're going to be out of business soon. Nobody's going to want to worship the goddess

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Artemis. What's going to happen to us? He didn't do that based upon the marching on Rome.

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No one did that as a result of them deciding they were going to change the political structure during that time.

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They did so person to person, heart to heart, as a result of gospel proclamations.