October 16, 2020 Show with Jon Harris on “Social Justice Goes to Church: The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism”

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This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Friday on the 16th day of October 2020 and I'm excited to have for the very first time ever a guest who's going to be discussing one of the most controversial issues facing the church even dividing the church in the 21st century that is the subject of social justice and my guest

John Harris who has an MDiv from Southeastern Seminary and an MA in history from Liberty University is the author of Social Justice Goes to Church the

New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio John Harris.

Yeah thank you Chris I appreciate it very good to be here and definitely a privilege for me. Great well

I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away if in the event that they'd like to join us on the air with their own question for you the email address is

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please give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter let's say you disagree with your pastor over this issue or you're a pastor and you disagree with your fellow elders over this issue or it could be you know a wide variety of reasons why it is a personal and private matter and we understand that you would not want to draw identity to yourself in those cases but otherwise if it's just a question in general please give us at least your first name your city and state and your country of residence.

Well John we have a tradition here on Interprets On Radio whenever we have a first -time guest we have them give a summary of their salvation testimony including what kind of religious atmosphere if any you were raised in and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Yeah well I was very blessed my father is actually a pastor he moved out from Los Angeles to upstate

New York when I was about two years old he's a TMS grad and he took a church a small church in the country at the time now it's a suburb of New York City but I grew up in in that church and at a young age

I was around six years old I made a profession of faith I understood that I was a sinner that Christ had died and paid the penalty for my sin on the cross and I repented

I put my trust in him and I struggled a little bit in my teenage years my early teenage years with doubts about whether or not that was a real decision on my part but I realized that it wasn't my decision that saved me it was

Jesus Christ and since then I've just been trying my best to follow him and enjoying the benefits of his grace leading

Bible studies being involved in ministry I've lived in California and North Carolina now

I live in Virginia and I've been involved at different churches and ministries in each of those places and so an adventure following the

Lord so anyone listening doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ I encourage you repent trust in him and and it is life is so much better going through it with someone who loves you and cares for you great well uh tell us about first of all how you got interested in this whole subject of social justice well

I was in I guess to start at the beginning I was involved in politics in my teenage years minimally but my parents would take me to different political events we were very patriotic in my home and I was interested in the possibility of becoming a lawyer or working at that time in Albany and I remember

I went to Albany for an internship and the first day I got disillusioned I thought this was going to be such an amazing experience and I saw people playing on their cell phones in the

New York State Assembly and I thought well I guess they're just people just like any of us and and so that kind of made me realize took the scales out of my eyes and made me realize that politicians are people too and I think that experience coupled with a few other things made me realize that I should probably be more involved at least with the gifting

I have in ministry directly and ministering to people um including politicians and so I uh

I decided to go to seminary um to get involved with um with at that time

I was involved with college ministry and I was involved with apologetics and I did some several moderated debates on it on the campus that I was ministering at and I wanted better training so I got an education

Greek Hebrew those kinds of things and the politics never left me though I was always interested in it and because of that interest

I was able to recognize when I was in seminary the social justice movement making its way into our conservative seminary and things that I recognized as Marxist um were now being sugarcoated uh termed social justice and honestly crammed down the throats of many of the students who didn't know what it was they were learning and this greatly concerned me

I was about halfway through my experience and I started keeping track of things and eventually it got to the point that I knew

I needed to say something and I was shocked at the level of intimidation that the administration put on me and I've since then heard other stories that are very similar and so I decided

I need to come out in public and let Southern Baptists I was going to Southeastern at the time and I need to let

Southern Baptists know what they were funding and so I did and that became viral the video I made about my experience and since then

I've been here and there talking about this issue and exposing it trying to explain it to people who don't know what it is and the

Lord's blessed it and it's helped people in their ministries and organizations to take a firm stand for the gospel for true

Christian ethics and that's what I've been involved with right now I wrote social justice goes to church to show people the roots of this movement and how it got to the places it's in in evangelical

Christianity and we're just looking to the Lord to open eyes and help people recognize it and combat it well if you could uh lay out for us before we even go into the history uh lay out for us the main tenets of what has been called or what has be become to be known as social justice obviously for many people who are they maybe if they have if they own a television they must be familiar with a lot of what has been going on in the inner cities of our nation there have been protests that have also become or included riots and violent behavior and arson and there are uh things going on behind the scenes that we we find out that there are people who believe that they are social justice warriors who have either been involved in peaceful protests but some of them have also been involved in some of the violence we have to be very careful as much as we disagree adamantly with the intrusion of social justice onto the gospel we have to be careful we don't broad brush those that identify themselves as advocates of this movement we have to we have to be careful that we don't broad brush them with those that are violent uh just like christians uh have sometimes been given a bad name by those who have identified themselves as christians but who are involved in all kinds of uh evil racist organizations or violence or so on uh but uh so tell us what are the main tenants of of this which actually on its surface may sound like many to be hey that sounds like a very good and wonderful thing social justice sounds like something i should be backing yeah so there's uh two aspects to this first is the etymology uh of the term social justice and how it's been used um so there there were roman catholics in the mid -1800s to use the term social justice and they did not necessarily mean socialism but over time in the catholic church it has come to mean state redistribution so it's kind of adopted the meaning that everyone else uh when they use the term with what they're intending to communicate uh ultimately the kind of social justice we're talking about today is an egalitarianism which has been shaped in the past century by both marxism and post -modernism and i'll give you three on tenants here uh i trace this back to jean jacques rousseau who was kind of a political philosopher during the time of the french revolution but he envisioned a world uh he wanted to go back to the state of nature because he thought man was good but was corrupted by his environment and so uh he wanted an egalitarian meaning equality we use the term equity today to describe this but he wanted an egalitarian world where everyone was equal and there there weren't hierarchies except for really one um he he wanted to rip down the institutions in society which kept people from being equal and then he wanted a force so a centralized authority of some kind that would be able to um force people to be equal so those are the three elements um egalitarian utopia uh the second thing is ripping down those structures or institutions that keep us from getting that utopia and then a force capable of implementing that utopia and maintaining it and since the days of rousseau obviously there's been a lot of other political thinkers philosophers sociologists historians um that have come along and shaped uh the the ways in which we go about those three things so they they have different conceptions uh today about what that utopia might look like um maybe different understandings with critical race theory and intersectionality and all these different post -modern ideas that they're now problematizing even science and truth itself so much farther than rousseau would have gone um and then uh we we have uh really a marxism on steroids um that rousseau could not have conceived of but ultimately i trace everything back to those three elements in rousseau and so um obviously scripture gives us a a model for what justice should look like israel's laws were supposed to be a light a light to the nations uh we see the character of god manifested through his law and his law does not comport with social justice to say the least um it it shows us that men are actually the problem men are sinful um there is no utopia we have heaven but that's after death that's when christ comes back and sets up his uh rule and um and so we shouldn't try to achieve that but we should try to implement his law and his law includes things like hierarchies and hierarchies go against egalitarianism so we have a different religion and i call it the social justice religion on purpose because it answers the basic questions that religions are supposed to answer and we can see i think this year especially people who have gone out and protested and um really uh shown religious fervor in their commitment to social justice and uh so i identify it the way i would occult uh this is a new religion and it's syncretizing unfortunately in christian institutions and if we're not careful we're going to lose a big portion of evangelical christianity um because they're being duped into um taking this false religion and then importing it into christian categories well we'll have to obviously have some things clarified uh first of all the the term egalitarian is a term that i'm familiar with especially in light of uh feminism that has infiltrated the church i happen to be a believer in soul male headship in the church and in the family that does not mean that uh women are less in the eyes of god that does not mean women are less talented less gifted uh less and less intelligent um in fact they can be far far far superior in those categories to even anyone in the congregation where they're a member or they could be far more intelligent than their husbands they could even be physically stronger on occasions than their husbands but i believe that god has laid out obviously uh male headship uh and so how is this term egalitarianism and what i was about to say was that the feminists who have infiltrated the church and of course not everyone who believes in christian egalitarianism or egalitarianism in the church and home is a leftist or feminist i believe they're very wrong but some uh you know come from a wesleyan holiness background that believes that women have the uh freedom and liberty uh to become uh pastors and so on uh i disagree with that but it's not the same as the the liberalism uh that has uh infiltrated the church and sought to destroy the order that god has ordained in his word in regard to male headship but but uh how are you applying egalitarian to this issue because some might think and i'm assuming they'd be thinking wrongly that you are against equality in the sense that you believe that whites are superior to blacks or whites are superior to anyone of another skin color and i could go on and on and how the the liberals love to slander anyone who disagrees with them on anything it seems that they will bring up racism as an accusation even when the context of a discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the color of one's skin or their ethnic origin or whatever it's just bizarre uh but but they know that if they uh get away with labeling you even if it's just during a a temporary discussion if they get away with labeling you a racist people are going to immediately look at anything that you say with great suspicion so what exactly do you mean by egalitarianism when applied to this subject yeah so egalitarianism uh is often used in theological context of the roles of men and women and how they differ though men and women are equal in the sense that they have the same kind of worth they're made in god's image they have different roles and functions i think the trinity um you have uh jesus christ he's a holy god but yet he also says that i submit to the will of my father and the holy spirit of course uh glorifies christ and doesn't come to glorify himself and so there's different roles within the trinity itself though the godhead um we would certainly say uh each member of the godhead is 100 divine and co -equal and co -eternal that's that's exactly right and so um what what i mean when i'm talking about egalitarianism and and what uh the term that's often used today is not egalitarianism it's um it's either equity or sometimes you'll hear this kind of language uh inclusion uh diversity um and equality those three things kind of make up what modern egalitarianism is and it speaks to a race any kind of differences that we might have between each other so that would include uh the differences that god uh talks about that paul talks about in ephesians uh the relationship between parents and children um i mean you saw joe biden i think it was last night talk about how an eight -year -old should be allowed to do gender reassignment surgery well that's that's a usurpation of but um we don't respect parental authority anymore that's a hierarchy that we don't care for and so we're starting to see that come down but we see um god talks about obviously the role of husbands and wives uh we see the role um that shepherds have within the church pastors and laymen the government and citizens labor relationships um all kinds of things god has uh either ordained or at least regulated as far as the order of society itself and the institutions that function in society well modern egalitarians only want one big dog on the block that that's really what it comes down to they they want uh there to be a central authority usually that's the government and then the individuals and um and and between them no mediating structure or voluntary association to shield them uh the that central force this is what rousseau wanted uh is supposed to make sure that everyone gets an equal share so equality of outcome um no no real differences between people anymore um that's why we're even seeing in the nature of genders uh people don't know who they are their identity is all over the place because they think that one gender gender is as good as another gender there's no difference in the role that god has created or the responsibilities god has created and certainly they're not uh there's no relationship to biology and gender so um we're really just kicking against the created order and that's what i mean by egalitarianism and so um what you know rate you brought up racism uh you know true old -fashioned racism the kind that we're used to uh when we use the term racism which is when someone thinks that they're and this could be white black really any any race and racism is obviously wrong against christianity to think that your genetic characteristics are somehow superior to someone else's but what the left has done is they've changed the definition and so if you believe in borders for your nation or that uh the values of your country um are superior because they're more let's say influenced by christianity then you must be a racist and uh and so we're seeing different differences between nations now um be eliminated and that's part of the egalitarian march uh and uh it's like i said it's a new religion it's it's it's a dissatisfaction with the way that god has created and providentially um uh the way he set up his creation yes so uh you are a firm believer then that uh all people who uh all humans regardless of their melanin content they are equal in the sight of god there is no distinction that god has set up between those of different skin colors or ethnic origins that has anything to do with a hierarchy of superiority or anything like that uh and uh i'm assuming uh if you agree with that which you seem to be saying very clearly that that the history of this country uh has a stain on it known as slavery because we in this nation and not that all uh men who owned slaves were brutal and vicious and satanic there were many many uh in this country and other countries in europe uh who treated blacks as less than human and this is a great sin uh chattel slavery as it's sometimes called um i'm assuming you believe that as a blight on this nation and that was sin yeah yeah yeah so i think um a lot of the time social justice warriors today will go back to things from the past and look at the way uh injustices sometimes they're real injustices like what you're bringing up sometimes they're not but they'll they'll go back and they'll say you know it was so horrible uh the conditions that used to exist here and um and those conditions are still with us somehow they've they've affected us in the here and now and so we need to somehow rectify the situation through a redistribution effort um or uh you know some affirmative action of some kind and and so i think that's really what's uh fueling a lot of the social justice movement is um the emotional appeal that hey there were some bad things that happened in the past and then you know don't you want to do something about it and to a young idealistic person that's very attractive yeah of course um so what are we going to do about it and of course all the remedies are contrary to god's word and what the kinds of principles he's given us uh you know according as far as justice goes so um so that's kind of the labor that's the uh that's what we need to point out as christians is that um god has given us a law and that law is what regulates um the interactions of men and we need to try to get back to that and not go to sociologists uh critical race theorists etc to hear their remedies we need to hear what the word of god has to say and then so that's what i've been committed to yeah one of the things that's infuriating to me is that i am utterly amazed uh by how many people cannot clearly recognize that much of the verbiage the rhetoric of those who adhere to what is known as social justice uh that they are perpetuating racism and it's just a different target it's uh white heterosexual males predominantly that they are perpetuating uh hatred toward no matter what they would call it uh and it's just astonishing to me that we have even men that as as little as nine years ago uh i had a couple of men who are now involved in this movement uh who back then you would never have guessed in a million years that they would devolve into embracing something like this because they are uh brilliant and theologically right on the money very sound and in my camp of reformed christianity uh but for them especially to not be able to recognize the the racism and of course i only believe in one race the human race but because of the fact that that is a part of our vernacular so people can understand what i'm talking about they can't even see that it is racist for instance to view people with less melanin content in their skin known as white folks caucasians whatever to view them as somehow being innately more guilty of sinfully judging others as being less than they are that this is this is a trait within us as white men and women not them not black for they can't even see how this in and of itself is racism right right yeah they think they're adjusting for past inequities or something but what they've done is instead of genetic inferiority they're going they're they're appealing to a moral inferiority which is even in some ways it's more disgusting because what you're saying is you're inferior because you're just evil and you have uh original sin by nature of the fact of being a white heterosexual male and that's why i call this a religion um there is an original sin they have their own saint the victims of police brutality they will will elevate them to sainthood they have their own holy books which are sociology books they have their own way of being born again which is called getting woke i mean the list just goes on and on the parallels to the christian gospel but it's not a gospel that ever offers forgiveness because if you have the stain of being a white person or heterosexual or a male you can do all the penance you want you can vote for democrats you can read all the books you're supposed to read and do all the things you're supposed to do but you'll never get rid of the fact that you have some kind of an evil identity attached to you um and and that's just not right the lord is the one who has determined who we are he defines us he created us and we shouldn't call that evil um the evil is within us by nature of being in atom and our sin nature not uh by nature of the fact that we were born in a particular context or with particular genetics well we have to go to our first station break right now if anybody wants to join us with a question of your own again our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

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like the psalmist did may god bless you and give all of us wisdom to see greater things in his design thank you welcome back this is chris arnzen and our guest today if you just tuned us in is john harris he is discussing his new book social justice goes to church the new left in modern evangelicalism and i want to go to a couple of our listener questions before i continue with some of my own we have grady and ashborough north carolina who says greeting brothers what has shocked me the most about the social justice movement within the church has been a number of well -known pastors and church leadership that have brought in that have bought into this why do you think we see so many pastors and leaders deceived yeah there's probably a few explanations i think the biggest one that i would call people's attention to is the explanation paul gave in the book of galatians even peter who is someone that we would not have thought would ever go along with heresy certainly was trying to act like he was still a jew and go along with those laws and succumb to the judaizers demands and it was because of fear and so fear is a big driving force i think that we should not underestimate even people that we may respect can often succumb to fear and so i think that's part of it i think another part of it is ignorance and also the attempts perhaps to attract people who are different uh you know you see i remember at the school that i was at in the southern baptist convention they had this initiative called the kingdom diversity initiative and essentially what the provost said once was that because there's so many old white people dying off we need to replace them and so we need to get young people and minorities interested in joining the denomination and and so that's how they're going to do it is by adopting some social justice stuff and uh so a number of reasons that people buy into it um i do ask people as they're navigating this try to figure out hey is your pastor just ignorant is he a hypocrite kind of like peter was and that's correctable or is this an issue that they've actually thought through and bought into on a deeper level and if so then you need to find another church and i think that uh something that you just mentioned has a very key connection to this whole discussion uh and first of all i think that you may have misspoke uh a peter i don't believe ever stopped being a jew peter uh in the new covenant was no longer bound to jewish ceremonial law in fact uh certain things under that ceremonial law uh well actually all things under that ceremonial law would have been forbidden if they were viewed as required uh to become christians um so i don't know if i miss if you misspoke there but you said peter thought that he was still a jew i mean he no no no i well i did i did misspeak i meant that he was eating he wouldn't eat with the gender right the fear of the party of the circumcision so fear was driving his decision right well the uh one of the reasons i think this is so crucially connected to this whole discussion is because the jews uh were persecuted and enslaved and very often slaughtered throughout their history by the gentile nations and yet when we enter into the new covenant and the jews were the first to become followers of christ they were still forbidden to look upon the gentiles as being in any way uh different than them or under an obligation right uh to uh uh repent of an innate racism that the jews allegedly did not have i mean this kind of idea that that black folks and hispanic folks uh and native american folks uh somehow cannot be racists because they've never had the positions of authority and prestige and power that whites have had which is not even true to begin with but that they uh are somehow given this not only right but duty to now demand something of their white brethren in order to be made not only right with god but but in order to bring about reconciliation between the races this is something that was clearly forbidden this whole concept of of the judaizers where they really believed in their jewish superiority to the gentiles and and you know i don't know if i'm making sense here but uh yeah they had an extra requirement paul even says that you know he would not he refused uh to circumcise i believe it was uh titus and he enacts it says that he did circumcise timothy but he tighter and the reason was because it was basically it was made a gospel issue he says because of the purity of the gospel he didn't want to um to succumb to those who are making an extra requirement and that's what the social justice religion is doing and i'm seeing it do that in many areas i see the gospel coalition and the erlc and the southern baptist convention use the terms gospel issue quite a bit to describe certain you know racial reconciliation but a racial reconciliation that is motivated by critical race theory not christ finished work and they'll say well that's a gospel issue and so you have to do something you have to give up your positions of power if you're white or you have to have quotas to make sure that you're being fair or you have to do some kind of redistribution or in one case you have to apologize to those who might be uh have your last name because you must have owned them at some point you know your family is uh you're involved in generational sin and this all this does is it adds to the gospel and it rips apart the fabric of unity that should exist at the communion table which you're rightly pointing out and i've seen this destroy churches it's in the it's destroying churches now uh and so we need to wake up we need to realize jesus christ has put an end to the enmity that exists between peoples uh and and if you want true racial reconciliation biblical kind come to christ and um and then we all realize we're all sinners and he's the one that we're reconciled with and that means we're reconciled with each other yeah it's it's amazing that you have some prominent uh members of this movement and it's it's it's funny i i had um when somebody saw that i was promoting this interview somebody uh posted underneath my um advertisement on facebook that social justice is not a movement the idea that it's a movement was an invention of racist whites who don't want to lose their power but uh and yeah and and um and uh what's the other one uh antifa is just an idea it's not an organization or whatever but uh the um it's it's amazing to me that there are prominent figures in this social justice movement who are black who are advocating that hey you white folks got to understand if we black folks just got to be together by ourselves sometimes and we got to eat together alone sometimes without you being around and etc etc that's a very it's the very thing that paul was rebuking peter and the others who were buying into live the judyizers they were not eating with them right exactly right yeah we're and we're seeing that i mean southwestern baptist theological seminary hosted a blacks only job fair about a year and a half ago uh the gospel coalition just uh this was about a year ago they did a a conference just for black women um and we can understand a conference for women or for men because there's different responsibilities god has given genders but there is no different responsibilities god has given to ethnicities and so to segregate off like that i thought that's what we were trying to get away from and and bringing it back is startling and then i saw crew uh campus crusade formally they just did a training this year where they had um white people in one group and black and brown people in another group so if you were white you had to be segregated off in order to learn about uh it was in issues of racial justice you know so it's um it's concerning because it's exactly what we are saw in the book of galatians and uh it's like i said it's tearing apart the community and unification that we have in christ and have at the communion table and then by the way uh thank you grady uh for the excellent question and please give us your full mailing address in ashborough north carolina because you have won a free copy of social justice goes to church uh compliments of our friends at emerald house group and ambassador international who published this book and keep an eye in the mail for cvbbs .com's

delivery or shipment of that book and we thank you again for your participation in the show we have lou from sharpsburg georgia i believe so many christians are confused or can't discern between what's being touted as social justice compared to biblical justice can you please clarify the two yeah the quickest way i can do that is biblical justice is more concerned about treating people equally in the sense of equality before the law and so that means that i don't give preference you go to passages like exodus 32 you'll see those two people that are my relatives or my friends or even if i don't give preference to a poor person or to a rich person justice is blind you you look at people and treat them you give them what is what their due is whether that's punishment or reward not based on external factors social justice is the opposite social justice destroys biblical justice because it says we must look at external factors uh if someone let's say stole something we need those first look at are they from an oppressed group uh so how harsh should we really be and i'll give you an example um at the seminary that i graduated from recently they had a panel discussion on the riots that were happening um just a few months ago and one of the things that was said by one of the professors there is we have to really just we can't be too harsh on those who are rioting because we have to understand where they're coming from yeah it's wrong to riot but they've been oppressed for so long it's understandable i'm sorry i don't it doesn't matter whether you are um what color skin you have or what socioeconomic bracket you come from it's not understandable to break the law of god and there are punishments that god has required that the civil magistrate exercise and so um so social justice is opposite of biblical justice one is equality before the law the other is attempting to bring about an equality of outcome to try to rectify past injustices or the disparities in power relationships and that kind of thing well thank you lou give us your full mailing address in sharpsburg georgia because you have also won a free copy of social justice goes to church by our guest today john harris and that has been provided for us and you from the good folks at emerald house group and ambassadors international published the book and again we also thank cvbbs .com

cumberland valley bible book service for shipping out these books to those who win them by submitting questions today we're going to uh our midway break right now please be patient with us because it's the longer than normal break in our show because grace life radio uh 90 .1

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before we return to our guest john harris today we just have some important announcements to make uh monday and tuesday of next week the 19th and 20th of october we have jeff thomas returning to iron sharpens iron radio for two days in a row jeff thomas is one of my favorite guests he is very well known to banner of truth readers and supporters uh not only do does the banner of truth publish some books by jeff thomas but he also speaks at many of the banner of truth conferences and he was the pastor of alfred place baptist church in everest with wales for over 50 years that's a very rare thing not only in our day but it always has been a rare thing for a pastor to be at one church that long so please tune in monday and tuesday of next week to hear jeff thomas and i will keep you updated on the the topics uh also we have tim clary joining us for the first time on wednesday the 21st of october he's going to be joining us to discuss his book carved in stone geologic evidence of the worldwide flood this is a massive book nearly 500 pages hardback and we are going to be giving away a limited number of copies of this book uh so get your questions ready on all things related to geology and a young earth and on the creation versus evolution debate and so on uh but especially on the geologic evidence fossil record etc that's this wednesday the 21st of october right here on iron trap and zion radio then we have kurt smith kurt m smith returning to discuss part two of a discussion that we began uh yesterday uh thundering the word the awakening ministry of george whitfield we just scratched the surface yesterday so we will be joined by kurt smith once again next thursday the 22nd of october to continue that discussion and we have more books to give away uh as well and jeff waddington will be returning on the 23rd of october friday the 23rd to continue his series on romans jeff is the pastor of the faith orthodox presbyterian church in florin grove pennsylvania finally uh keep this uh whole week marked to listen every day uh to iron trap and sign radio that's october 26th through the 30th the last week of october every day that week we are paying tribute to the late greg bonson the father of modern apologetics and we are very excited we're going to be having at least five guests during that week one a day but i believe that on some of those days we're going to have two guests so we'll even be likely having more than five guests who all knew uh dr bonson or benefited greatly from his legacy and who have become uh relative authorities on his life and teaching so please keep that blocked out on your calendar to listen every day the 26th through the 30th of october a tribute to the late dr greg bonson finally folks if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves please i'm urging you go to iron trump and zion radio dot com click support then click click to donate now you can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion you can also mail in a check the old -fashioned way to the address that appears on the screen when you click support at iron trump and zion radio dot com you can also advertise with us as long as whatever it is you are promoting is compatible with what we believe you don't have to believe identically with me but you need to be promoting something that's at the very least compatible with what i believe send me an email to chris arms and at gmail .com

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and put i need a church in the subject line that's chris arnson at gmail .com that's also the email address to send in a question to our guest today john harris as we discuss his new book social justice goes to church the new left and modern american evangelicalism before we take any more listener questions john aka if you could please be very specific about how this social justice idea and social justice movement infringes upon and really dangerously dilutes or even perhaps changes the very gospel of jesus christ well there's a few ways the most obvious way is similar to the galatian heritage which is adding works to the gospel so uh taking social justice concerns and saying that this is part of the mission of the church i have a friend who was on evangelism team at a church that we both used to attend and they started doing what they called ebonics which is going out into these ghetto areas and then instead of sharing the gospel they try to relate to people on the basis of their discontent with the police and of course this is changing the very mission of the church when you do something like that another example would be using the word gospel issue for things like the black lives matter movement and saying this is part of our mission as a church well no it's not actually the gospel is good news and and the black lives matter message is not a message of good news or in the case of i'll give you a very specific example someone like jarvis williams at the southern baptist theological seminary who says racial reconciliation is part of the gospel which sounds good but then when you dig into what he means by that he says we need to rip down statues and paintings of white jesus we need to platform minority voices or else we won't be able to understand the full truth the list goes on there's about five or six things he says that must be done well that's works once you start saying that works as part of the gospel then you no longer have the gospel and so that's one way that the social justice movement has corrupted the gospel and the message of christianity the other way that undermines the idea of truth itself and the objectivity of truth and so this is a big word standpoint epistemology it's actually two words and standpoint epistemology um in basically the best way i can explain it is it's the idea that those who are oppressed know more and have a greater vantage point by which to talk about things like injustice than those who are oppressors so this is a gnostic idea really it's saying that certain groups of people have special knowledge and they can even read the bible through a certain lens and we must listen to them if we don't have that lens and so this actually destroys the objectivity of truth so no longer is it the man of god that loves the lord who can come to the scripture and be equipped but now it's you have to look at the bible through all these different lenses and voices you need to find out what the women say and what certain minorities say and and then read the bible that way and um and so those two things i would say there's there's more i could add to that but i don't want to get too long -winded here those are two major areas in which the social justice religion has destroyed orthodox christianity and what exactly are they expecting of not only the church to do but what are they expecting uh the civil government and your average ordinary citizens everywhere in this nation and obviously the world because this is not just exclusively an american phenomenon but probably predominantly but uh what are they exactly expecting us to do it ranges depending on who we're talking about i'm going to go back to one of the original fathers of the social justice movement in christianity who i talk about in my book who's influenced russell moore and david platt and his name is ron sider ron sider wrote a book in 1977 called rich christians in an age of hunger and what he argued was that we have a million a billion hungry neighbors across the world and it's time for christians to lead the way and have a year of jubilee in which they all redistribute their income among themselves and set an example for what ought to be public policy in the world uh he supports uh government initiatives that um ensure that wealth will be redistributed from places like the united states to less fortunate areas and with that by the way he wanted the united nations to make sure uh...

that uh... environmental concerns and policies concerning the birth rate were enacted with so strings attached in other words if you want to get that redistributed money um ron sider went on in the 80s to write another book about the pro -life uh movement uh and it was about being holistically pro -life we hear that term a lot today womb to tomb pro -life but he essentially took issues like poverty and smoking and the list goes on free health care and made those pro -life issues and so we're seeing a direct application of that today with evangelical pro -lifers for biden when they say that well we can vote for biden even as pro -life evangelical christians because we think that socialist redistribution schemes are also part of the pro -life agenda and so it's a flat lining of sin it's changing the priorities um in the law of god to be the priorities of the world and downplaying things like homosexuality and abortion and then um creating a big uh stir about things like um they're uh redefined racism and poverty and homophobia and of course the list goes on um there so uh a good example would be jd greer president of the southern baptist convention said last year that the bible only whispers about sexual sin but about uh wealth and those kinds of things um it uh it screams and so um we have a new repriorization uh due to the social justice uh movement that has essentially changed christian ethics and it's getting christians now to vote in ways that they wouldn't have voted before and um do things at their church they wouldn't have done yes it seems to me that this social justice movement in varying degrees depending upon who it is that you're speaking about because it it is not completely monolithic you know there seems to be varieties and flavors and levels within it but it seems that routinely the three commandments of god that are being violated by these folks who advocate this are bearing false witness when you are assuming that people just because they happen to be white are racist and it is required of them to repent of this racism no matter what kind of lives they've lived or what kind of thoughts they have had and and so on and uh you know blaming uh 21st century white folk for the sins of slavery and jim crow and so on when not only should we not be uh accused of bearing the guilt of sin of ancestors of ours but many of us don't have ancestors that were involved in slavery or the jim crow laws my mother's family uh immigrated from poland to the united states in the early 1900s my father's side of the family predominantly came from norway in the late 1800s and settled in brooklyn new york and rhode island and there were no slaves at that time in in those states so i mean the whole thing is just insane really the other two commandments that are routinely it seems being violated are coveting your neighbor's good goods and they are in fact advocating stealing not to mention those folks that are actually stealing right now during the the riots when they are pillaging local businesses and shops now i'm not saying that everybody who advocates social justice is in favor of that so please don't accuse me of broad brushing or bearing false witness myself but many of those that are doing that claim to be a part of this movement and they have been given a seal of approval by others for doing this because it is they're they're just do uh rewards uh because of the idea of reparations uh that uh that whites owe the especially it seems the black community a part of our income because of the sin of slavery and even as i said if our ancestors had nothing to do with that do you have anything to comment about what i uh just said yeah well i think you're right in the sense that there i mean that's one aspect of it i mean the social justice movement is so much bigger than just that one issue i think right now because of the black lives matter movement um that's uh on our minds more than the other issues but if you notice um it rotates so we had the me too and the church too movement uh just a few what two years ago now it's the black lives matter movement it'll change it'll be something else next year or the year after and um and so in each case though it's pretty much the same play uh it appeals to our emotional side um and sometimes bringing up legitimate issues that um have uh of injustice that perhaps were not rectified and then using that as a wedge to leverage support for essentially what amounts to a socialist scheme and so um what i've tried to call attention to is that strategy that uh you know this is not a think something for a thinking person this is something for someone who's emotionally enraged and has been oftentimes manipulated um conditioned to be enraged and then they go and they uh make choices to support policies that ultimately are going to hurt the very people that they purport to help so um yeah i mean i think you're absolutely spot on uh with diagnosing uh the problem right now as we see it is trying to label people as sinners uh for uh not not because they are in adam and they sin but because of their connection to something whether it's their biological skin color or their family ancestry they must have they must be guilty of something in the past and you trace back anyone's what their culture or their um uh their ethnicity and you're going to find abuse of some kind somewhere because we're all fallen sinners uh and and that's just the way it is we should not expect anything uh less than that so um so i think you're spot on with that um you know unfortunately this is working in many uh aspects of not just the church but american culture generally we've seen the destruction of a lot of history um over this and people aren't able to make separations they're they're unfortunately getting force -fed a very one -sided understanding cherry -picked understanding of the past and so they they aren't able to put things in context um they're they're only looking at things that are enraging them and then they're lashing out and um we know uh that christ did not come to inspire people to do that that's exactly what uh that that's what actually the shepherd is guarding against the person who comes in the night to steal and destroy and that's the fruit of the social justice movement we have let's see here ronald in eastern suffolk county long island who says although many marxists and communists and socialists hate christianity openly there are some that appeal to the compassion and sensitivity of christians by trying to dupe them into believing that marxism and communism and socialism really is rooted in true christianity an example that is regularly used is the citation of acts 245 and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all as anyone that might have need how do you differentiate that true historical act of the disciples in the first century from marxism yeah very simply i think it's the next chapter i don't have a bible right in front of me i believe it's the next chapter of the chapter after where um and the story of analysis the fire come up and um essentially when you know they lie to the holy spirit they're they're killed for it and what's said in the passage is that was was it not yours before you sold in other words was it was that not your private property before you said that you sold it to give it to the lord and so the the even in the book of acts the principle of private property is legitimized and this is something from uh from the hebrew law itself that we see we see uh thou shalt not steal is really the outworking of that but private property is a very important principle um you think of the parables of jesus even he talks about like the parable of the vineyard and it is up to uh the the manager essentially to decide what he wants to pay the laborers they don't get to set their own wage so um throughout scripture we see private property private stewardship perhaps a better term to use but this principle um being in place and it's what really created uh the laws that we have today is that understanding uh so act is not um a it's not a forced thing it's not something that people were compelled by a government of some kind to uh to do it's just simple charity and christians have been the most charitable um in in people really since for two thousand years they're the ones that started the hospital that they everyone's running away from the plague they're the ones that are running into it martin luther even opened up his house for those suffering from the bubonic plague uh we we are charitable people we give of ourselves we give of our finances but we don't advocate a system in which the government forces us um to to do that and then to be the middleman uh with you know to be the one that we just trust is going to make sure the money gets the right place no that's that's up to us right um so charity yeah the only time that it should be legally mandated that we give a part of our money to assist uh the needs of the poor uh is when we've actually stolen or defrauded them in some way ourselves not our ancestors but but uh right and of course that would even be uh something that a church uh church elders should do if they are being responsible and obedient to the scriptures if they have a member that's under discipline they should uh to to demonstrate repentance that person should be mandated uh to give a part uh whatever he he stole or defrauded from anyone uh he has to return that but uh at the same time we have to be careful that this uh right to private property and so on even the legitimacy of wealth which in fact i'm going to have a guest on the program uh defending wealth uh in the not so distant future um who's written a book on that subject uh we cannot allow ourselves to be deceived and to have our consciences salved into thinking that it is there's nothing wrong with greed there's nothing wrong with uh not having compassion and actually reaching out physically to the poor and those in need especially those amongst the congregation in which we are a member that doesn't rule out everybody else either especially in your community and so on but especially those in the the body of christ in your your own congregation in fact that is what james as you are fully aware uses as an example to show who has a dead faith a false faith is those that just say be warm and filled but aren't actually helping the brothers and sisters in need with with their physical needs yeah that's the first virtue signal right right uh well we have to go to our final break right now it's going to be a lot more brief than the last two if anybody wants to join us on the air send in a question as quickly as you can at chrisarnson at gmail .com

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that's l -e -e -s drugs rx .com don't forget to ask about their discount generic drug program welcome back this is chris arnson and we do have another question for our guest john harris from john in banger maine john says i hear sometimes those who oppose the social justice movement rightly say things that aren't true like for instance racism doesn't exist obviously they might be meaning that institutionalized systemic racism doesn't exist but obviously racism exists and is alive and well unfortunately even judging from what you two have been saying through this program that the social justice movement is perpetuating racism right now but i do want to ask your guest do you believe that racism is institutionalized and systemic in our day and age in this country and what are other things that those who are on our side as it were in opposing social justice that they do things wrong on occasion i guess what he means is more than likely saying things that but if you could what's the second part i missed the second part of the question the second part of the question is you know he well first of all he started by saying that he has heard people who rightly oppose social justice say that racism doesn't exist right which is obviously a falsehood i mean we're not going to be in a sinless world until we are uh the earth is restored and it's a new heaven a new earth and and that we are with the in with christ for eternity that's the only time that racism and sin is going to disappear but he was basically saying that that's one thing that people who rightly oppose social justice wrongly say but what are other things in your opinion that are being said wrong in other words by by people on our side if you lack of a better term i've never heard anyone say that that racism doesn't exist um i will take the word of the caller uh on that but uh i mean you know racism needs to be defined because you don't find racism in the bible as a term that's something that we um at least for me as a christian that i take from the sin of partiality that's how i just right well you have the concept like for instance you had moses's sister who was uh very upset that moses was married to an ethiopian and god struck her white with leprosy a very very ironic way of of chastising her yeah so you know i don't find um the kind of the the racism that's complained about today in social justice circles i don't find the bible talking about that a lot the bible teaches we're from we're one race uh at least ethnically we all trace back to adam um in acts we find you know uh paul says on marcell that god is the one that i think the word is ethnos that's used there that um created the boundaries for the nations the ethnos and so um so we do have different kinds of people but we all go back to the same person atlantica used to say we got off the same boat and uh there should be no reason to hate one another based on uh genetic differences but because we're sinners we'll find any kind of difference i mean little kids will find uh things like i don't like your ball cap to hate someone so um partiality is really the problem that's the sinful side of this uh thinking of yourself more highly than you ought and uh not loving your brother who you have seen uh so therefore how can you love god who you have not seen exactly yeah exactly right and so that's certainly a problem um but the i guess from our perspective the social justice um movement and the cure they have for that is not the correct cure they also misdiagnose it often because um critical race theory teaches a different definition of racism than where you steal which is the idea that you have to have power to be a racist and that's where you start getting into this idea that there's institutions that are structurally racist but there's no racism so you can have let's say a prison which uh you know the prison is is racist the whole thing the whole situation is a racist situation but there are no racists in the prison there are no racists in the courts there are no you have you could even have a whole society that's supposedly racist without any racist and that's kind of ridiculous um but their whole reason that they they set it up that way and they define it that way is because they are drawing on a kookoian the post -modern understanding of power relationships to justify accusing someone or some institution of racism so i um describe the difference i just recently to someone who asked about this uh the difference between something like the flu and like covet 19 covet 19 supposedly um you know you can have all the symptoms but or rather you don't have any symptoms but you have the disease right and that's what people are accusing um from the social justice crowd others of they're saying you're a racist but there's no symptoms you can't point to examples it you know ends up with well you love your country or you you know you're proud of your ancestors or something you know that's not racism that's uh so so um so if the question is is there institutional racism in the united states today um i mean i've always told people look it's either a law or it's an individual who's racist racism that's the sin of racism comes from a heart you got to trace it back to that so if you can show me a racist law i'll oppose that with you if you can show me an individual who is oppressing someone because of racism i'll oppose that with you but i'm not going to buy into this boogeyman mentality that just says well everyone just knows that it's racist when we don't have actually clear -cut examples of it so you need to like any other sin you have to flesh it out you have to point to examples of it you have to attack it um but we're not going to just go around with uh with a shotgun just shooting everything that we think might be racist i'm saying that figuratively of course um we don't just start ripping down things because you know maybe it's associated with something um so i i challenge social justice activists to get specific about their claims and oftentimes once they're specific you find out that what they're complaining about really isn't racism this is something else um some of the other mistakes i think with the second part of the question uh that are made um man i don't know mistakes by our side i mean we're human so i think anyone on any side of anything can make mistakes those who are opposing the social justice movement and sometimes come across in the minds of some that they lack sensitivity um that's unfortunate i think we are in a day and age where uh at this point whoever can outvictim the other person ends up usually winning the emotional side of the debate and um and i you know i lament that but you know i don't know what to say about it i mean i just going back to the truth of scripture preach it as clearly as i can apply it as rightly as i can and that's what i encourage other christians to do and john and banger main you have also won a free copy of social justice goes to church the new left and modern american evangelicalism so please make sure we have your full mailing address so that's cvbbs .com

cumberland valley bible book service can ship that out to you and once again we thank emerald house group and ambassadors international who published this book for providing us with these giveaway copies well i want to make sure that you have several minutes of uninterrupted time now john to make sure that that what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today will be heard uh uninterrupted so you can begin now well i appreciate you having me on chris i would just say that god is good that he has not promised us heaven on this earth but he has given us a way that we can be right with them and go to heaven and be right with god and live there eternally and that's through the lord jesus christ and um jesus christ is certainly not someone um who oppresses in the way the social justice warriors define oppression um but he does he will be coming back with a double -edged sword he will judge the quick and the dead and he um is to be worshipped and honored and there is a hierarchy god is the top of that hierarchy he defines who we are we don't define ourselves and so it is our job to submit to him and obey him but he is a loving master at the same time and so i would just encourage people who are getting caught up in this display to jesus christ to find in him their hope and their identity and once they are in christ and they're in a body of believers they will see i think a true body of believers where the word of god is preached in practice the peace that can exist on this earth even between ethnic groups so if you economic brackets genders um and all sorts of other external features we can be one in him and it's because of reconciliation to christ that we can truly reconcile to one another amen and i'd like to also voice a brotherly warning to my brothers and sisters who may actually truly be guilty of the sin of racism never allow all these things that are happening in our world the rioting and the uh arson and the crime and so on in the name of social justice never allow that to salve your own conscience to think that the racism that you're holding on to is inconsequential or deserved we can't overlook the fact that as even john our guest has agreed that racism has not disappeared there are people of all colors however they're not just white people there are there are people of all skin colors who are hating those that do not look like them and come from the same ethnic background as them that has been going on for as long nearly as long as this world has been in existence but please never think that you can justify those attitudes by the sin that you see going on under the name of social justice i want to thank you so much john for being an excellent guest today i want to let our listeners know that john has a website social justice goes to church .com

social justice goes to church .com you can find out more about this book there also the publishers of a website and that is ambassador -international .com

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