A Reasonable Latino Addresses the Single Best Social Justice Argument

All right, well, if you can bear with me for the next 10 minutes or so, I think you're gonna find this information very helpful. If you're planning on engaging in any conversations regarding social justice, regarding racism in the church, and any of this kind of stuff, I think you'll find this helpful.

And if you do, please share this, because I wanna make sure that this reaches as many people as possible, because I think I can help clear up some of the thinking when it comes to this issue. Now, if I had to pick one of the arguments from the social justice side that is most effective in this conversation, it is an argument that essentially alleges an inconsistency when it comes to conservative Christians.

The Social Justice Argument from Inconsistency

They'll say something like this. In fact, Matt Chandler said something like this. They'll say, you don't just preach the gospel to the issue of sex trafficking. You don't just preach the gospel to the issue of abortion.

No, you recognize that you do have to preach the gospel, yes, but you need to also engage in matters of justice. You need to change the laws, change the systems, change the institutions to address sex trafficking or abortion or things of that nature.

And the reason why this is an effective argument is number one, it's true, strictly speaking, but number two, it alleges an inconsistency on the part of conservatives, and nobody wants to feel like they're being inconsistent.

And so they'll say, well, if I'm being inconsistent, maybe I need to change my opinions and maybe address race from a systemic and institutional level as well, the way I do these other things, the way I do sex trafficking and abortion and things of that nature.

And that's a very effective way to push people in the direction you want them to go, allege and try to prove some level of this inconsistency. But I think I can show you very briefly how this isn't an inconsistency.

Sin, Crime, and the Civil Government

In fact, this is the exact right approach we need to be taking when it comes to the issue of race and other things. See, the Bible has morality for individuals, but it also has morality for institutions and for the civil government.

So the Bible outlines what individuals, how they should behave, but it also outlines how the government should behave and how the civil authorities should behave. And they're not always in lockstep because the reality is that there are a lot of things that are sins, that are sinful for Christians or other people to do, but they shouldn't be crimes.

Do you see what I'm saying? Like there's a difference between a sin and a crime. Everyone kind of understands this, but we need to have a consistent approach for how we determine which is which. It can't just be our opinion because somebody might say it should be a sin, it is a sin to drink alcohol, for example, and it should also be a crime to drink alcohol.

In fact, people tried to do this back in the days of prohibition. They tried to make it a crime to purchase alcohol. And that was an unjust crime. That shouldn't be a crime, even if you thought it was a sin to drink alcohol.

Now, I don't think that either one is true, but even if you did think that, it would be clear that that shouldn't be a crime. And so when we think about issues of sex trafficking or abortion, both of those things should be crimes.

And the reason we know this is because in the scripture, there are, it says that that's a sin you shall not kill. Kidnapping was a sin in the Bible, but it also gives you a punishment if you're caught doing these things.

And that's a very kind of, it's overly simplistic, but it's a nice way to establish what should be a crime and what's just a sin. So if you kill a baby, then that is a crime. That should be a crime. You should be able to be punished for that by the government.

And likewise, if you kidnap somebody, in the case of sex trafficking, or even in the case of slavery back in the antebellum South, if you kidnap someone, that should be a punishable crime. It's not just a sin, but it's also a crime.

You see, every crime is a sin, but not every sin is a crime. And so a quick and easy, again, overly simplistic way to determine is if the Bible says that something's a sin, but it does not give a penalty attached to it, then it shouldn't be a crime.

Do you see what I'm saying? And so I'll give you an example of this. So lying, for example, if you say to someone, hey, you know, I'm like the best video game player in the world, and you're really not, you're not the best video game player in the world, well, that shouldn't be a crime to say that.

However, it is a sin, right? So we shouldn't make lying a crime necessarily. I think it depends on the context, of course, but we shouldn't make it a crime, but it's a sin, right? And so the reason we know that is because in the scripture, there isn't a penalty associated with lying or something like that.

And so that's a very kind of important distinction to understand because when you come to the issue of race, the idea here is that you shouldn't just preach the gospel to race. In fact, you should do what you do with abortion and preach the gospel, but also change the systems and change the laws and stuff like that.

Racism, Gluttony, and Why the Law Should Not Change the Heart

And I don't think that that is the same at all because if you look at the Bible, there isn't any hate crime legislation in the Bible. There isn't any, we need a social engineer thing so that everything's kind of even Stevens in the Bible.

You just don't find it. And so my argument is that racism should be a sin. It should be something that could get you excommunicated from the church. It should be something that you should mortify every single day.

It's a serious sin. You can go to hell for being a racist, but it shouldn't be a crime. And so we shouldn't treat it the same that we would treat crimes like murder, for example, abortion or sex trafficking or kidnapping or things of that nature.

It's not the same thing at all. And so when you say it's not enough to just preach the gospel to racism, that's actually incorrect. In fact, that's the only thing that will work with racism. We shouldn't actually try to use the law to change someone's heart.

In other words, that's not going to work. In fact, that doesn't even work with crimes. You see, the fact that murder is illegal doesn't stop murders, if you've noticed. Some people probably don't murder that would otherwise because it's illegal, but people will still risk being persecuted, I'm sorry, prosecuted as a criminal for murdering in order to accomplish a murder because you see the law doesn't change the heart.

In fact, the gospel is the only thing that can do that. So you can make murder illegal, you can make abortion illegal and you should, but people will still get abortions because people want to do their sin.

They're willing to risk being executed or being put in prison to do their deeds essentially. And so when you say just preach the gospel to the issue of racism, that is actually the only thing that a Christian should be advocating for.

Racism shouldn't be against the law. Because it's not a crime according to scripture. Let me give you an example that might help you with this. I mentioned this in a video previously earlier today, but I want to say it again and expand on this a little bit because think about this way.

So gluttony is a sin, right? Gluttony is a sin, but what would you say if somebody said, and we need to make gluttony, we need to change the institutions, we need to make gluttony a crime as well. What would you say to that?

I think most people would be like, yeah, we're not doing that. That sounds crazy. But the issue is, the question is why? Why does that sound crazy? Because if gluttony is a sin and Christians just can't, we just can't preach the gospel to gluttony.

We in fact have to act and change the institutions and all these things. If that's what we had to do, then okay, then let's start, let's make a mandate, a state mandated diet. Let's make sure that everybody follows the food pyramid or whatever it is.

Why shouldn't we do that? Why shouldn't we make junk food illegal? Because it's so unhealthy. I mean, it actually hurts people's health. It's a matter of health. In fact, we've been hearing for the last few months because of this COVID thing, health is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself.

So why not use the law to make everybody as healthy as possible? Why wouldn't we wanna do that? I'm not saying we should. What I'm saying is you need to have a consistent, biblical answer for why not gluttony, but why racism?

You see what I'm saying? Because racism is similar to gluttony. It's a heart issue. It's something that we need to understand that the gospel is actually the only thing that'll change a heart from being racist into a heart that loves their neighbor as themselves.

And it's the same thing with gluttony. The only thing that'll change a gluttonous heart is God, the Holy Spirit working in that person to change that gluttonous heart. And so we shouldn't even attempt to use the law to change that heart.

Number one, because it'll never work. And number two, because the law of God does not give us a standard that says we should make gluttony laws. We should make gluttony laws. The civil governing authority shouldn't force a diet on people.

It's not that way. It's not that way. That's just not what the general equity of God's law says. And so what I'm saying to you is we need to have a way of determining the difference between a crime and a sin, the difference between something that we should look at the institutions of society and change them to be more like God's and the things that we shouldn't.

And my argument is that when it comes to racism, if you think that we should have anti-racist laws and stuff like that, you're gonna need to show me from the scripture where you get that and what the proper punishment would be and what the moral standards would be that we would use to determine what's racism versus what isn't and how we should punish it and all these things.

The Law of God and the Limits of Anti-Racist Legislation

If you can't do that, you need to be aware that what you're advocating for is a different ideology being in charge of the civil governing authority. And I say that that is an unchristian viewpoint. That's paganism.

That's unbelief in the realm of civil government. On the contrary, what we should do is look to the law of God as a blueprint. It's not a one-to-one thing. We don't just replace the book of Deuteronomy for the constitution.

Instead, we look at the general principles of the book of Deuteronomy and we think about how do we apply that to our modern context today. And the thing is like abortion is a really bad example to use to prove an inconsistency.

Sex trafficking is another really bad example to use to prove an inconsistency because both of those things, I can look to the book of Deuteronomy and say, this is where we get that principle. This is how we know that these should be crimes and the civil governing authority should be involved in punishing these crimes.

I can easily do that with those two examples. I can't do that with racism, very similarly to the way I can't do that with gluttony. So you see, I know it makes you feel like there's an inconsistency there, but there really isn't an inconsistency there because we can look to the law of God and determine that gluttony shouldn't be something that the state should get itself involved in too much.

And the same thing with racism. The state shouldn't be getting involved in that kind of stuff, but the state definitely has purview to get involved with abortion and it definitely has purview to get involved with sex trafficking.

Those are very easy to understand from the law of God. But when it comes to racism, actually just preach the gospel is the best advice anybody can give you because the gospel is the only thing that can change a racist heart.

The law can't, nor should the law even try because God didn't give it the authority to try. Anyway, I hope you found this helpful. And if you want me to expand more on this, if you have questions about this, please reach out to me.

And if you found this video helpful, please share it. I hope you found this helpful. God bless.