Most Dishonest Evangelical Article Ever Written - SBC Voices

The Rise of 2020 Stupidity and the Search for the Most Dishonest Article

2020 has been a year of superlatives. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking with someone and saying, wow, did you hear so-and-so say this? That was the stupidest thing said in 2020. And then it's topped like a couple of days later by someone who manages to find a new way to be stupid.

Sometimes it's the same person. Sometimes it's somebody new, but it's like a race to the bottom when it comes to stupidity, dishonesty, and just all kinds of negative things that, you know, it's just been quite a scene.

It's been quite a thing to watch. I think, though, I found perhaps the most dishonest article written in 2020, and I don't see how this could possibly be topped. I mean, I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will.

2020 is continuing to surprise me. It's like God put a little pressure on people, just a little bit. Like the COVID pandemic is like the minimal amount of pandemic pressure that could be applied, and people have lost their minds.

The social justice controversy is the same kind of thing. This is an article by a guy named Dave Miller. He's a pastor in the SBC, and it's on a website called SBC Voices. I don't know what this website's supposed to be, but it's, they must let anyone write on this thing.

Maybe that's exactly what they do, but this is an article called Is Being Woke So Bad? And I'm just gonna read this to you, and I'm gonna start and stop because I think there's so much dishonesty in the rhetoric of this article.

It's just, it really beggars belief. It really does. So let's just read it, and we'll talk about it. Here's what he says. He says, quote, "'Woke' is a common insult thrown around by those who oppose the pursuit of justice as a Christian mandate.".

I feel like Luke Skywalker when he says, amazing, everything that you just said is wrong. Every word in this sentence is wrong. This is not correct. First of all, woke is not an insult. At least it didn't start that way because woke is a self-descriptive word.

It's like myself calling myself a Calvinist. You can't insult me by calling me a Calvinist because that's how I describe myself. So I obviously don't take it as an insult, but the thing is that people have written entire books about what being woke is, and it's in a positive sense.

So there's a book called Woke Church by Pastor Eric Mason, and it describes what it is to be woke in a positive light. This is how they describe themselves. I think it's a stupid word. I think you should probably be embarrassed to be woke because what being woke describes is so unbiblical, it is evil.

It's actually not good in any way. So it'd be like somebody calling themselves a Satanist and as if it's a positive thing. No, no, it's actually not a positive thing. You're a Satanist. And like, you should feel shame for being described as a Satanist.

And I think likewise, you should feel shame for being described as woke. So woke isn't really an insult. It's a self-descriptor. You guys call yourself woke. The people have written books about this.

This is a proud badge that people wear. And so if you take it as an insult, you should probably look under the hood because we're not just throwing a pejorative around. We actually use the word woke to describe an entire system of evil, and it's an evil system, and we take the time to break it down.

Why is it that what we call woke is so bad? You know, he's saying, is being woke so bad? Yes, it is. I mean, people have spilled tons of ink. People have spent tons of podcast hours, tons of video hours, describing why it is that what woke describes is actually evil and non-biblical.

And so it's not an insult, it's a descripting word, and it's a descripting word that so many of your buddies wear as a badge of honor, which is actually what you're gonna be making the case that you should do in this article.

So it's pretty weird to say that those who oppose the pursuit of justice as a Christian mandate insult you by calling you woke because that's not even what we're doing. We oppose the fake view of justice, the fake woke view of justice, the social justice view of justice, the critical theory view of justice, the pagan view of justice, and we take the time to describe why that is.

And so every word of this sentence, every word, is wrong. It's not a common insult, it's a self-descriptor, and it's not about opposing the pursuit of justice. It's actually opposing fake phony baloney bunco justice.

There it is. But let's continue, because that's just the first sentence of this horrible article. He says this, he says, when they are upset at the stands that other conservative Christians take on racial issues, on sexual abuse issues, on political matters, when some refuse to acquiesce to the GOP conservative orthodoxy, they resort to dismissive name-calling.

Again, this is not a name-calling. This is how you describe yourself. Woke Church is a book recommended by all of you woke cultists. And so we are describing you the way you are describing you. What sane person would want to say that being called a Calvinist is an insult if they themselves call themselves a Calvinist?

That would make absolutely no sense at all, but whatever. This is the worst article written in 2020. Now, maybe not the worst, but the most dishonest. Anyway, continue. Derogations such as liberal, social justice warriors, or the ubiquitous woke are common.

Yes, they are common. You also describe yourselves as promoting social justice. And so why would you take offense? If somebody was calling me a Bible warrior, I wouldn't take, I would think it was silly, but I wouldn't take offense to it because yes, I am intending to be a warrior and I promote the Bible.

That's true, I promote Christ's words. But if you're promoting social justice, why would you take offense to being called a social justice warrior? In fact, social justice warrior is another one of these terms that started off as a self-descriptor.

People described themselves as social justice warriors. They were proud of it and all of that kind of stuff. Now, liberal, okay, I can see being insulted for being called a liberal, but the thing is people don't typically just call you a liberal.

They take the time to explain why they're calling you a liberal. And usually they call you a liberal on a specific subject because I can say Al Mohler, he's quite conservative on the doctrine of scripture, but he's very liberal about the doctrine of whatever it is.

And people have enough brain power to kind of hold those two together. You might say that I'm too liberal on, I don't know, the Sabbath or something like that, but obviously I'm more conservative on other things.

And so, listen, I would suggest this, like if you're always walking around feeling insulted, like I would suggest perhaps maybe taking a good look in the mirror because people try to insult me all the time, but it doesn't really bother me if it's not accurate.

I think that there's probably a little bit too much protesting going on here, if you know what I mean. Anyway, in certain circles, woke is synonymous with liberal, denying the scriptures, or at least ignoring the primacy of the gospel.

I've objected to the insult because it is both offensive and inaccurate. And its intent is not to be descriptive, but insulting. This is false. This is absolutely false because the thing is it's very easy to call someone woke that believes the things that Eric Mason put forward in the book, Woke Church, which he titled.

We didn't give the book that title. He himself titled it, and you yourselves share that book. I'm not saying, Dave, that you do, but your buddies do. And so when somebody shares the book called Woke Church and says, oh, this is so helpful, I think that if you're described as woke, that's completely fair.

Plus it also describes exactly the kinds of things that you believe. When somebody says, hey, so-and-so is woke, typically we know generally what that means. You believe in some kind of a social justice theory regarding race, regarding sex and gender.

You're probably a little bit more egalitarian than you should be. It's not a perfect descriptor, but no descriptor is. When you call someone a Calvinist, does that mean they believe everything that Calvin said?

No, but it's a fair descriptor. It's a shorthand. We don't have to go through every single belief that you have to know generally what you believe when you call someone a Calvinist. And it's the same with woke.

And so this whole paragraph is just so dishonest. Almost every word of it is false. It's not about acquiescence to goth orthodoxy. I don't even know what the goth platform says these days anymore. People always say this about me.

I always find this very interesting. It's like, oh, you're just going with the Tucker Carlson talking point. You're just saying what Rush Limbaugh would say. And I always laugh about that because I've probably listened to, total, in my entire life, maybe 30 minutes of Rush Limbaugh content.

I could probably not pick him out if you told me here's his voice and here's another voice. Pick which one's the real Rush Limbaugh. I probably couldn't pick it out. That's how little Rush Limbaugh I've listened to.

Tucker Carlson, I've seen some clips online. I've never watched a complete Tucker Carlson show ever. I've probably seen probably likewise, maybe another half hour of Tucker Carlson. And so I always find that interesting.

It's like, it's really not about, when was the last time I talked about GOP or conservative orthodoxy? I haven't. I talk about the Bible. But so this whole paragraph is nonsense. And it's all a big lie, really, is what it is.

It's trying to describe people that oppose Dave Miller and his woke buddies as they don't care about race. They don't care about sexual abuse. They don't care about this stuff. And so they're like the evil ones.

It's like this whole paragraph is a big lie. And you know, let's go and see if it's even consistent with itself because he's claiming that woke is an insult and he's opposed it. But here's his next sentence, ready?

I wonder if the proper response to being called woke should be a hearty thank you. Yeah, we know that because you're woke. I mean, we understand that. This is how many of your buddies have described themselves.

This is not, we didn't invent this insult. This is something that they've used to describe themselves. And so it's totally fair to describe them in this way. Again, I've called myself a Calvinist. And so I can't get mad at someone if they say, hey, you're a Calvinist.

And I'm like, how dare you? That's an insult. It's like, what are you talking about? Like you've described yourself this way. Let's continue. A friend told me something recently, which I tried to research and found plausible if not verified beyond question.

I can't believe this. Oh no. Sorry. Okay. A friend told me something recently, which I tried to research and found plausible if not verified beyond question. He said that the term was originally a compliment given within the black community to those who got it.

Those in the white community whose eyes had been open to the evils of racism, of segregation, and of the cruelty inflicted on black people in America. When the blinders of racism were removed and a person began to see things clearly, he or she was woke.

Yeah. That's why we're calling you woke. It's because it's not an insult. You're describing yourself in this way.

Like this is just so preposterous. Like, oh my goodness gracious.

But you see, the thing is, this is the trick of rhetoric here, because what he's trying to say is, well, in the old days, people that were segregationists and slaveholders and people who hated blacks, they were the unwoke ones, but the ones who loved blacks were the woke ones.

And so he's saying, well, it's the same today. So if you call someone woke, then you must be an evil white supremacist racist bigot. And what's amazing about this is, he's at the beginning, he starts off this article with saying, you're using woke as an insult.

And that's like the main thrust. Like all these evil people are trying to insult me by calling me woke. And then he says, basically, wokes are the righteous and the non-woke are the evil bigots. And so what he does is he decries name-calling, and then the rest of the article is a big name-calling.

Beth Moore did this the other day, where she said, like, you know, the only ones who would call you this or that are the white supremacists, this and that. And it's like, but you're decrying name-calling and then doing it.

It's just so amazing how they have such little self-awareness that most people, when they're projecting, you kind of have to like look into it a little bit to see if they're projecting. But these people will do it within the same article or within the same tweet.

I mean, Beth Moore is very talented, so she can do the projection and be very unaware of what she's up to in the same tweet. That's super talent. And the thing is like, this is a very good article because it's very ham-fisted.

This person is not very skilled at propaganda, but every piece of social justice warrior propaganda follows this same formula. Just some are more talented than Dave Miller here. Dave Miller seems to be new to it is really what it is.

Maybe it's not his fault. This is probably his first propaganda piece. And it's just very ham-fisted and obvious what he's up to, but listen to every social justice presentation and it follows a very similar pattern than this one.

Dave Miller's Testimony of Waking Up to Racial Issues

So he says, okay, it's a privilege to be called woke. It is in fact an apt description of my journey in racial issues. I want to share my testimony on these issues. That's the Baptist version of my story and explain how a hardcore conservative Baptist preacher like me ended up getting regularly called woke, a liberal, a Democrat, though I've only voted for one Democrat in my life.

And he switched parties within a few months after the election and several other names. I share this because if people are going to call me woke, I might as well tell the story of my awakening. So he's woke.

He's absolutely woke here. It's not, he's realizing it's actually not an insult, which means it's never been an insult, which means this whole worldview has shifted very recently. And this is just a suggestion to anyone, right?

This is, I've noticed this very often in my life, where you just recently changed on a major issue and then you go on the attack like an aggressive bulldog on everyone who holds the position that you held like yesterday.

And that's just not a good look. Like I shifted on baptism. This is an example I've used, right? I've shifted on baptism and within the last 10 years, I shifted on baptism. I used to be a credo Baptist and now I'm an infant Baptist guy.

And I don't get aggressive with credo Baptist. I never do because I know exactly the way I used to think. And I knew, you know, I wasn't like dishonoring, I wasn't intending to dishonor God. I wasn't trying to confuse people or anything like that.

I get it. And I'm like, that was like almost 10 years ago when I shifted. And I still don't feel like I'm ready to go like full bore aggressive on Baptist. Like I don't, that's just not my thing. I would suggest if you should make a huge colossal shift in the way you view scripture, the way you view the Bible, like this guy is describing, like maybe cool it on the rhetoric a little bit.

I'm not saying you don't fight for the truth, but what I'm saying is have a little grace for the position you held yesterday because like it's just a weird look. It's a very weird look to get so aggressive on things.

I'm not, it's just a piece of advice. I'm not saying it's biblical that you have to do that. I'm just saying, this is so strange. Look, there's this one guy who used to support my YouTube channel. And recently he changed his mind on some of these issues.

And now he's calling me evil, some kind of demon and stuff like that. And it's like, dude, you believed this yesterday. Anyway, here's some things that have not changed. This is interesting. Since his first sermon in 1977, here's what's not changed.

I subscribed to the Baptist faith message then and I do today. Thanks. That's pretty much how every Baptist starts off their bonafides. I subscribed to the Baptist faith message. I believe in salvation by grace alone or faith alone, the blood atonement, the Trinity, the exclusivity of Christ, the sovereignty of God and a long list of other key doctrines.

I may have refined my understanding on some of these, but I hold them as passionately today as I did then. Great. I believe in inerrancy then, I do today. Great. I was committed Baptist then, I am today.

Great. I was a complimentary then and I am now. I'm willing to bet that there's a little squish factor there. I don't know Dave Miller, but I'm willing to bet there's a little squish factor there. How I woke.

When I began my ministry, I had one view on racial issues and today my views are very different and what happened to me feels an awful lot like waking up. Let me share some of the steps in that process.

My experience, my story. This is a little too long, I can't. I'll finish, I'll finish. Okay, I read a book called Blinded by Might that Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson. I'd been a loyal Republican all my life, moral majority adherent, a reliable right-wing vote.

When I read that book, it opened my eyes to some things. The thesis of that book to oversimplify is that there is a natural conflict between politics and Christianity. We are about truth, the truth. We proclaim Christ, whether people respond or not.

Politics is about gaining and maintaining power and doing whatever you have to have to toward that end. When the church engages too deeply in politics, there will be a constant danger that it will compromise truth to gain and maintain power.

I began to see the involvement of the church in politics differently as I worked through that concept. So the first part of his awakening was that politics, you can't get too involved. Okay, don't think that's what your woke friends are advocating for, but hey, you know, they have to neuter their opposition first.

And so part of his awakening has been, he's been neutered politically. Number two, I got involved in blogging and in the world of SBC politics. And at the end of the 2010 convention, I met a man named Dwight McKissick and I had a great conversation.

I heard him preach and I loved it. He'd read some of my posts at the now defunct SBC Impact and was very kind. Later that day, he argued for a resolution or motion relating to race issues. I can't remember specifics and it went down to defeat.

I decided to go talk to him and offer up some encouragement and that was the moment I woke up. So Dwight McKissick is one of the most hardcore social justice warrior, liberal, woke church advocates in the SBC.

So he got, okay, so the step one, he got neutered politically. Step two, a very strong personality, Dwight McKissick. He's a very well-spoken man. I guess brainwashed him a little bit and that's the moment he woke up.

I offered some tepid support to Dwight. The fight isn't over. We'll continue advocating for it on the blogs. And after all these things take time, changing the SBC is slow. And that's when my new friend blew my mind.

He said, Dave, do you realize that this entire conversation there's been nothing but white men at the microphone? I felt those words like a dagger. We were, I believe, unintentionally excluding people of color from the convention's leadership and I didn't even notice.

I was blind. Yes, I was asleep. And Dwight McKissick slapped me across the face and woke me up with soft, gentle words. See Dwight, this is, but this is, this is, so you can't just say I don't see any white people, therefore blacks are being excluded.

You see, that's actually an assumption that you can't make. That's actually assuming something that you don't know is true. That's why we call you social justice warriors. That's why we call you liberals because liberals and social justice warriors and woke church cultists and things like that think they know lots of stuff that they don't know.

Because here's the reality, like nobody would say, hey AD, I don't see any white people at your house, therefore you're excluding white people. No, it's just because I'm freaking Puerto Rican and my family's Puerto Rican as well.

Like that would be stupid. And so the fact that there are no whites at the microphone doesn't mean blacks were excluded. It just simply doesn't, unless you find out that they were saying, let's exclude black people from this conversation.

This is white time. That's not what happens, but that actually does happen on the diversity side. People all the time will have events and stuff like that where it's only blacks allowed or only POCs allowed, no whites allowed.

And so that actually is also projection. Like social justice advocates do that. Woke church cultists do that. I wanna start a black church. I wanna start a diverse church. And like, that's not how Christians ought to do things.

Like, I don't know, just it stands to reason that you shouldn't do things like that. And so you might've felt these words like a dagger, but if you believe that you were unintentionally excluding people of color, you need to show how that happened.

You can't just assume that. It just doesn't make any sense at all. And I don't understand why you would say that unless you had evidence. And if you did have evidence, I'm pretty sure you would provide it.

But it certainly seems to me that the only evidence is that there was only white people at the microphone. That doesn't make any sense. By the way, this is something that I've thought a little bit about because like, you remember that music video where there was an open casting for anyone who wanted to come sing this song with this artist or whatever, and only white people showed up and then people got pissed at him because he was excluding people of color, even though it was a completely open call, but no blacks or browns came.

Like, that's the kind of thing that could easily be happening in this situation here where it's not excluding people of color. And so, look, blacks don't need extra help. Blacks don't need extra credit.

Blacks don't need any extra ability or extra privilege that we get from white people. Like, we're more than capable. Blacks and browns are more than capable of doing things on our own. We can go and insist on things and do things and stuff like that.

We don't need our white saviors to come and help us. I know that's very difficult to believe, but it's true. So I don't know, it just certainly seems to be one of those things. Anyway, let me just kind of continue here because this video has gone on long enough.

This article is, it's special. Every word is, I could make a number of comments on, but let's just kind of finish it and we'll go from there. He says, I told Dwight that day that I would spend the rest of my ministry using whatever influence I have as a pastor and a blogger and in any other way I could promote to promote the cause of racial harmony.

This is why you're called a social justice warrior. This is why you're called a woke cultist because you just said, instead of promoting the gospel, spending every moment of your life promoting the gospel, you're instead going to promote the cause of racial harmony.

This is the problem. This is why people question your dedication to the gospel of Christ, because you just say stuff like this. Well, every day of my life, every piece of pizza I have, every blog post, I will promote racial harmony.

And it's like, dude, like that's not the emphasis though. So I don't know, I mean, that's just, I mean, you could do whatever you want, but you're a pastor, right? So you've got actually other things that you have to do.

I'm not a pastor, so I could spend my YouTube channel doing whatever I want because it's my YouTube channel. It's my business, but you're a pastor. So you actually can't just decide what to do with every waking moment of your life.

Anyway, I promised I wouldn't comment, but I had to. I've tried to do that. That day in Orlando was a day I became woke. My sleeping eyes were open to the fact that my friend Dwight saw the SBC with very different eyes than I did.

Back in Soyou City, I spent some time with an elderly black man, a former deacon in our church who told me stories about what he'd been through during his life. Grady was a true man of God, a man who held the doctorate who had never been unkind or cruel to anyone.

He told me stories that made me want to cry. This wasn't happening in Birmingham or Macon, but in Soyou City, Iowa. It broke my heart. Racism is real and it is evil. It is not just a past sin. As I began to write on the topic of race here, I encountered troubling attitudes and words.

When a pastor was fired for inviting black children to our VBS, our comment streams was filled with people defending the church and attacking the pastor. No matter what has been suggested in the SBC to promote racial inclusion and reconciliation, people have opposed it.

Every single time, confederate flag, greater representation of minorities on nominations and appointments, advocacy of a minority entity president, every single effort in the SBC has been opposed. It becomes clear every day that the SBC's problem with race are not just ancient history.

Maybe I'll do a follow-up with my opinions on some of these issues, but for now, I have a simple point. You guys use the term woke as an insult. I get it, but that is exactly what it felt like to me when I spoke to Dwight and to my deacon friend, when I have, I have black friends.

I have black friends. Absolutely classic. I have black friends. I have a deacon. He was a deacon in my church. He was black. That's how good I am. That's what it felt like to me. When I spoke to Dwight and to my deacon friend, when I began to see that my lifelong party did not have the corner on truth, it was like waking up.

That was my experience. I woke up. So yeah, call me woke if you want. It's better than being asleep, isn't it? This is the most dishonest article in 2020. It's unbelievable because it's like he describes that he got woke, and even though he didn't describe himself as woke, he started being woke, like he got woke on racial reconciliation and other things.

So he got woke, and woke is a self-descriptor. Now, Dave, I believe you that you didn't know that that was a self-description of the woke cultists. I understand that, but you didn't know that, fine.

But you admit that you got woke the entire time, and then you're like, well, people are calling me woke. I can't believe it. It's like in the article itself, you describe that you were woke this entire time, you know, as soon as you became friends with Dwight McKissick, I guess.

And so when we described you as woke, it was a very apt description. You admit that.

But then you say up here,.

It's intent is not to be descriptive, but rather insulting. Dude, you're a liar. This article is so dishonest. We described you correctly with a word that your buddies use as a descriptor, a positive descriptor, for themselves.

But you have the audacity, you have this mind-reading power, this brain power that you can read my mind and know even though it's an apt description, even though it's a self-description for your buddies, people have written books about the woke church.

Even though all of that is true, you know that I'm not trying to describe you. Instead, I'm trying to insult you. My friend, you are a liar. This is nonsense. This is nonsense, Dave. And so I would suggest that you stop lying.

Stop decrying name-calling all while you're name-calling. Stop lying about people. This is very common for the woke cult. Very common for the woke cult. And so I would suggest stop doing it. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful.

God bless.