What are the Dangers Critical Race Theory Poses to the Church?

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Bread Amplified. Welcome to The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport. Today's episode is going to be part two.

When I was on the Red Hot Mindset podcast with Gabe Cox, where we were talking critical racism theory, this is part two, where we're going to talk about what are the dangers of critical racism theory that pose to the church.

So this is going to be very helpful, educational, and well, maybe getting you worried about things that may be going on within the church.

I hope you enjoy this episode. Go check out Red Hot Mindset podcast, and here's today's

Rap Report. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Hey, friend, welcome to Red Hot Mindset. Thank you so much for tuning in with me today. We have a packed episode for you today as we embark on part two of my conversation with Andrew Rapaport.

The church is falling for the social justice gospel. When you add anything to the gospel, you are changing the gospel.

Today, we are discussing critical race theory and how it's affecting the church. Andrew Rapaport is the preaching pastor of Grace and Truth Bible Church in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and the founder and executive director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the

Christian Podcast Community. If you haven't listened to part one, make sure to go back and listen to that first so you can catch up and know what we're talking about.

We've been having a really great discussion so far, and I don't feel like I need to have a long introduction.

So let's finish this one up talking about the dangers of critical race theory in the church and what we can do about it.

Welcome to Red Hot Mindset. I'm your host, Gabe Cox. And through this podcast, I'm on a mission to help you step into the fire of refinement so God can mold and transform you into a woman ready to step into your calling and crush your goals

His way. I do this by helping you overcome your mental barriers through a faith -based approach of building inner strength and resilience.

Each episode, I will bring you thought process, productivity tips, and inspirational stories from everyday people, all so you can live intentionally and move forward confidently with the gifts

God has given you. As a running enthusiast, I believe that life is one massive marathon, and it's up to you to run your own race and to finish it well.

Step into the fire with me because I know you will come out stronger. Yeah, that's interesting.

And it's so true. And that is where we're headed if we don't do something about it.

And I think sometimes we're like, I'm who am I? I can't really do anything about it.

But if we all think that way, nothing's going to get done. Right. And we need to be able to be willing to stand up and say this isn't right and do something to affect that change.

I think this is a great way, a great place for us to segue into the dangers of CRT in the church, because like you were talking about the woke movement and the woke movement really is seeping into the church.

The church is falling for the social justice because Jesus was all about justice.

He fought for justice, for sure. But when you add anything like the social justice gospel or the prosperity gospel, when you add anything to the gospel, you're changing the gospel.

Right. And so there are definite dangers in the church. And what do you think that we need to be aware of?

Well, the idea of social justice as it creeps in to the church redefines the gospel.

And you say, Andrew, that is a huge step to make that claim. Yeah, but it's the reality.

The gospel is the fact that every one of us have broken God's law.

We are sinners. We are criminals in his sight. And as people who rightly deserve, because we're guilty, we rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire as a just punishment because we violated a holy, infinite

God. He's infinitely holy.

He's infinitely just. And because of that, there's an infinite consequence to breaking his law.

We rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire. That is, we have nothing to say what we deserve.

We deserve nothing. That's the gospel. We deserve nothing.

But Second Corinthians 521, he who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of Christ.

All of our sin was laid on Jesus Christ on the cross, that his righteousness is laid upon us.

It's what Martin Luther called the great transaction. That's the gospel, that we, though deserving eternity in a lake of fire, get eternal life because of what

Christ did, because of what someone else did, we benefit. What social justice says is the complete reverse of that.

It says, well, if I feel oppressed, even if you have never owned a slave, you're guilty of slavery.

Even if your forefathers fought for the ending of slavery, you're guilty of slavery.

You're guilty of sins that you didn't actually commit, but your forefathers did. Well, go far enough back and everybody can find that.

By the way, many blacks were the slave traders that were kidnapping the people and selling them to the white slavers.

So, you know, when we can't just go by color of skin and say, well, that makes you, you know, guilty of slavery or free of it.

And so the reality is, it takes sins of other people and applies it onto people that are alive today.

You're guilty of what your ancestors have done. And if you're the oppressed class, it's all about me getting my rights.

Well, the gospel is about you saying, I have no rights, complete opposite. So where the gospel is all about God and what he did, social justice is all about me and what you owe me.

It's an entitlement. I deserve better. I want if you have something, I deserve it.

That's a complete opposite. And so this is what it ends up doing to the gospel. You know, we ended up trying to think this is probably back in 2015.

This is, by the way, one of the times it's the rare times that the church was ahead of the culture.

The church was dealing with CRT before the culture was. CRT has been working its way in through our schools, into churches and through our entire society.

And it was the church that recognized it because the church is the one that they have the crosshairs on.

The church is the one that they have to silence and get out of the way for them to achieve their goals.

And so back, I think in 2000, I think it was 2015 that 75 of us got together and we wrote a letter to John MacArthur because we had the idea of putting a statement out on social justice and the gospel.

And we got together and we all signed this letter asking if he would if he would get behind it.

And when he saw the issues, he got behind this and 19 of the initial 75 got together and put together what is now called the

Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. You could go to statementonsocialjustice .com if you want to sign.

There are over 16 ,000 signatures on there now. And you'll see what we say we affirm and deny.

And we put that out because we see that there are issues that we see where there is an attack of social justice on the gospel.

It completely reverts it. It basically says culture becomes more important than scripture.

So we should use culture to interpret the Bible and our theology, not use the

Bible to interpret our theology. You end up having redefinition of all kinds of words because of this.

Instead of justice or equal justice or righteous justice, it's social justice.

Intersectionality is overlapping with classes. You have critical racism theory is, you know, you end up seeing that they just call it now critical theory.

You have all these things that end up changing. Things that we end up seeing that you're seeing churches that were scriptures clear.

Let me take a clear one. Homosexuality. Scripture is really clear on that. And you have a lot of churches that are trying to embrace those who practice homosexuality because this is what the culture is accepting.

It's a complete reverse. So what ends up happening in that is people end up going against what scripture says to fit in with the culture.

This does not help. I understand that some think that, well, what this is, is this is, you know, we're trying to be like the world so we can have an influence on the world.

But you have to understand something. Just like those Jewish people that thought if they work with the Nazis that they can get the

Nazis to not do what they were doing. The reality is no. Yeah, the Nazis went after some of the

Jewish people and left some others out. But eventually they all got caught up in it. And that's what you end up seeing here.

Those churches that are working with the social justice think that they're being

Christ -like. I was just on another podcast where they asked me to talk about the idea of being

Christ -like because there's a progressive Christian and she was saying we have to be Christ -like and not biblical.

And think about that and what do you have? You have a clear example of what's going on within what's called progressive

Christianity where they want to redefine things. You can be Christ -like, but we shouldn't be biblical.

Well, how do you know what it means to be Christ -like? From the Bible. Right. I mean, that's where you learn what it means to be like Christ.

So there's no way to be Christ -like without being biblical. But what they mean by it is Christ -like is we define it from our vantage point, from our culture informs us what we think

Christ would look like. And we redefine that. We don't look to the Bible. This is why it's very dangerous when you have people that are pushing, and some of them unbeknownst.

There's a lot of churches when the Black Lives Matter riots occurred. And by the way, if you want a real insurrection, that's what happened up in these areas where you have

CHOP and CHAZ where they took over city blocks and said they are their separate country. That's the very definition of an insurrection.

January 6th, where people were invited into the Capitol, we see the police officers waving them in.

What that was was a coup. Why do I say that? Very simple. What did they want to do?

The Republicans wanted to have a 10 or 15 -day across -the -states audit.

Yep. And just as they were about to propose that, they're stopped. And it's like, oh, there's a bomb scare.

We've got to get out of here. The bomb scare was in the RNC and DNC. It wasn't there. And then they had to move them around, and then they invite the people and say there was a riot.

And it was violent because a woman was shot. There wasn't a single gun found. Okay? The woman was shot by a police officer.

That's the only death that occurred. And they talk about it being violent. Well, they haven't released the officer's name, by the way, but she should have been shot.

What do you end up having? That whole thing is being defined as an insurrection. But there are churches that are splitting.

I spoke with pastors. I've been counseling pastor after pastor that are dealing with, as social justice is working their way, and they've had splits within their churches where a bunch of people said, well, you've got to support it.

Pastor, you've got to support Black Lives Matter. Well, the idea of Black Lives Matter sounds good because Black lives do matter.

Absolutely. The unfortunate thing is that Black lives won't matter until all lives matter.

I mean, Black babies that are in the womb, those lives have to start mattering. If we don't have a respect for all people, we are not going to have respect for any group of people.

And I did a podcast on this on The Rap Report about that, that Black lives won't matter until all lives matter.

You want to end racism? The only way to end racism is to end racism. Racism can never end by using racism to end it.

And that's what CRT is. It's an attempt to use racism to end racism. That will never happen.

What that will actually do is you're going to see, I predict, you're going to see a rise of white supremacists.

They're going to be upset with the way the Black supremacists are being allowed to get away with stuff. There's going to be a rise of that because people are going to get fed up.

And that's going to vindicate the Black supremacists to say, see, see, see. They're going to use that.

But what we end up seeing is that this whole thing, it is a different gospel message.

It is an attack and an affront to the church. And yes,

Black lives do matter. Every life matters. But the organization

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization that even though they've changed their goals on the website because they were losing a lot of Black support because of it.

And I did it on Apologetics Live. We did several series on Black Lives Matter to show this. And we went through that.

Their agenda was to end fathers in the home. They don't want fathers in the home.

You go, wait a minute. Isn't that one of the causes of the problems in the Black community is fatherlessness? Exactly.

They want it to continue. They don't want fathers in the home. They want to put an end to the nuclear family.

You know what they had in their goals is that single mothers shouldn't be having to work so that they can be out fighting for social justice.

And you go, wait a minute, not taking care of their children. No, that's not the agenda. It's the fight for social justice.

Wait a minute. I would think that a single mom, her focus, if you're not going to keep her home so she doesn't have to worry about working so she could care for her children, right?

But that's not their goal. Their goal, and you look at their 13 points, their 13 goals, none of it was really about Black lives.

It was about homosexuality was the major thing, pushing homosexuality, pushing an end of the nuclear family, doing everything they can that would hurt the

Black community. That's been the problem within the Black community. Why? Well, it keeps them getting money ultimately.

Yeah, so true. And so when it comes to the church and critical race theory and all the things we were talking about, what do you do if you find it in your own church?

What happens? How do we fight it in our own church? How do we identify it? Well, there's a lot there.

Okay. I know. Loaded question. Yeah, I mean, I've seen churches where,

I mean, I'm talking dozens and dozens of churches where people are up and leaving and they're having church splits because the pastor won't support

Black Lives Matter. They won't support wokeism. And that becomes very difficult.

This is where you have churches that one day before, everyone got along fine. Next day, everyone's an enemy.

Okay. I had a young lady who referred to me as her father.

She would call me pops. She was like an adopted daughter to us. She would travel with us everywhere we went. She worked for our ministry.

But now she won't even talk to me. She's blocked me or removed me on Facebook and everything else.

Why? Because I won't support Black Lives Matter. If you haven't figured out, she's

Black. And so these are the type of relationships that are being severed within churches.

And so what do we have to do with it? Well, one thing is if these things are happening, we have to first communicate that there is a difference between the organization, the

Marxist organization, and the, you know, not really the logo, but the line

Black Lives Matter. Because what people think is when you are against the organization, then you're against Black lives.

There's a difference there. So we have to be careful. One of the things I would say is within the church, people have to realize that for some people who have been raised to believe that they're being oppressed or there is a tribalism here, and I'm seeing people that are being forced within their own communities.

And what I mean by that is there are Black communities, homosexual communities, whichever it is, where they have to stay with the community.

And in these cases, if you don't accept what they're saying, then you're part of the problem.

You're the oppressor. That makes it really hard to work together in a church. And so one of the things to do is to define our terms.

And, you know, one thing to do is to understand why people feel the way they do. You know,

I have someone that the husband of someone that I went to church with, her husband is a

Black Lives Matter supporter. He's a social justice warrior. In fact, he's got a podcast on NPR on social justice.

Now, we get along and we talk. We have very different, differing views. One of the things he'll do is he'll say, you know,

I can't understand social justice and I can't understand this stuff because I'm white. I'm not oppressed.

And what he's learned is I quickly say, well, I'm sorry, but you don't understand what it's like growing up Jewish. You don't understand the impression that I had.

And he's had to back off of that and realize, well, no, I honestly, I don't know that. You see, all of us have an oppression.

We've all can find some way that we feel that we've been oppressed in our background. So what we need to do is to recognize that we all have that.

We can all sense that we have felt oppressed. Why? Because there's sin in this world.

That's where that oppression comes from. And so defining terms is very, very important.

Listening to one another is very, very important. Now, I'm not saying you have to agree with one another.

With this individual who I just referred to, he and I do not agree. We know very clearly we disagree.

We have long discussions that can sometimes get somewhat heated. A lot of emotion in them sometimes.

A lot of us wanting to understand each other, though. And that's the one thing I love about him, different than others.

He's not monolithic. He actually thinks through things. And he'll concede points. Like he conceded that the organization

Black Lives Matter is not helpful for the black community. Even though everything he wears says

Black Lives Matter on it. He's focused on that slogan,

Black Lives Matter, not the organization. But I say you can't separate those two because that's what is pushing it.

So we have to get people to understand that difference, though. There is a difference between the organization and the slogan.

There's a difference between fighting for biblical justice and social justice.

So we need to educate people. We need to train people so that they understand these things.

We need to properly interpret Scripture. One of the examples that is used the most when it comes to this is

Zacchaeus. And so here you have Zacchaeus. And what does he do? He recognizes that he oppressed people, took their money, and so he pays them back four times.

The argument people make is see, so white should have to pay back blacks four times as much.

Here's the difference. Zacchaeus did that voluntarily. Nobody made him do that.

He chose to do that out of a desire that he recognized that he could.

Now, obviously, he had enough money that he had invested or whatever from the money that he took from people that he could pay four times as much from what he took above and beyond what he should have from them.

So he must have had other resources, and he used that to pay back.

But he did that voluntarily. That's the difference. What we have is where they want the government to come in and take from the rich and give to the poor.

Okay? One of the things that we have to also recognize is I refer to Robin Hood.

Many people know the story of Robin Hood, and they know it incorrectly. They know the

Marxist view of Robin Hood and not the right, the true view of Robin Hood. So let me explain those because when we explain these things to people, it helps people.

We know of Robin Hood that he stole from the rich and gave to the poor because there were so many poor, and they were oppressed, and they couldn't take care of themselves.

So Robin Hood took from those mean, nasty, rich people and gave that to the poor, and then the poor lived happily ever after.

That's Marxism. The historical Robin Hood, basically what was going on was the government was so overtaxing people that people didn't have money.

That's why they were poor. He didn't steal from the rich. He stole from the government. He stole from those who were stealing from the people, who were taking too much taxes from the people and giving the people back their hard -earned money.

That's not Marxism. That's capitalism. Okay, and so Robin Hood becomes a great example of the two different dynamics that we end up seeing here.

We have them both. You have the redefinition of Robin Hood, and so we need to educate people.

We need to recognize that those who know Christ, we may disagree here on Earth. We're going to spend eternity together.

Get that view right now. Understand that this is your brother in Christ.

You disagree with him. There's a disagreement. You work together to solve it.

You don't run away. You don't keep quiet on it. You don't silence yourself because it's against the cultural view, and you don't let them oppress you by saying you have to accept their view.

But at the same time, you have to help educate the weaker brother to recognize what the issues are.

And so we need to work through churches. It's one of the reasons that Striving for Eternity, we do these weekend seminars.

We come into churches, and we have a lot of different weekend seminars on how to interpret the Bible or evangelism or apologetics, and one of the ones we've done recently that we've added is one on social justice, giving a history of social justice, explaining to the church how to combat this within the church, how to deal with these issues.

It's become one of the more popular ones because people are having to deal with it. So we come into churches and train. That's part of the thing.

And the one reason why we do this is because for the pastor to stand up and start training, when you have people on two sides and they're divided over this, the pastor is in a no -win situation.

One or both sides are going to hate him for being the bad guy. So we come in, and we're the bad guy.

We come in, we do the educating, we try to give people a groundwork, and it does cause a stir.

But what it does is it allows the pastor to now say, okay, let's think about what the

Striving for Eternity said in their seminar. What are the definitions we have here? And he's the guy that's now coming to support those two groups and bring them together.

And so that becomes one thing how we're trying to combat that for churches, to say here's how we'll come in and be the bad guy in explaining what these things are.

And for a lot of people, they've never heard this stuff. And so it's eye -opening for them. And so most pastors don't study this to the level where they can give this history.

And so that's why we go through this. We take the time, and instead of trying to change it just for every pastor and saying every pastor needs to do this, we come in and train the whole church.

So we take more of a grassroots view of it to get the churches from the grassroots coming up.

And we focus on the smaller churches, not the bigger churches, because quite frankly, most of the bigger churches have already gone woke, and they're too far gone.

Only sharing the truth. Yeah. If any of your listeners haven't figured out that I have some strong views,

I'm sorry. It's good. I think it's important. But, I mean, there's so much there that you said that was so good.

And one of the things that I appreciate is the fact that you have a friend that you completely don't really agree with, but you guys can have that civil conversation and the debate.

I love that. I miss that. I miss being able to say, hey, I want to listen to your point of view.

Maybe I'll take something from it, but I don't have to agree with you to get along, right? And that's so important.

And as Christians, actually, there was a message at church our pastor talked about was how to live in an ungodly world and how to be a light.

And you have essentially three options. You can condemn, which a lot of Christians do. A lot of Christians are judgmental.

You can condone and go the woke way and say, oh, it's okay. You do you. It's all good.

But there's another option, and that's compassionate confrontation, where essentially we stand, but you can't just stand.

We still got to share the gospel. We still got to share the good news. But the good news is that it's not – it's that we're all fallen.

And it's not a social justice gospel. It's a gospel of – it's a simple gospel. We are sinners.

It's not about us. It's what God did for us, and there is forgiveness. And if we are willing, he will forgive.

And I think we just forget that, or we get, how can I do that? How can I confront somebody on that?

Well, you're confronting with the gospel. You're sharing the gospel, the good news, and people want and need to hear it.

They don't need you to condemn them. They need you to bring them along and share Christ with them.

Yeah, that's – I mean, look, the gospel is offensive, isn't it? It is. It is. Because it's not about us.

Correct. But we don't have to be offensive. That's the thing I do in my events. I'm trying to say the gospel is offensive, but we got to do everything to be an ambassador for Christ so that we're not offensive.

So the church that I attend is Grace and Truth Bible Church. Why that name?

We ended up coming with that name because there's a lot of churches that teach grace and a lot of churches that teach truth, but there's not a lot of churches that teach grace and truth.

The Bible says we should have truth and love, right? Those go together, but a lot of people think it's one or the other, like they're mutually exclusive.

No. No, the most loving thing that I could do for someone that is getting caught up in social justice is to walk them through very slowly, hearing them out, understanding why they're so involved in it, to hear them out, to understand the issues and educate them on what the

Bible says about this. Now, I recognize there's some people because the way this movement is, there's some people that just won't even hear it.

Because once you disagree, you're immediately an enemy. Well, think about that.

I mean, read through 1 John and say, is that the way we are supposed to respond within the church?

If you don't agree with me, I'm not speaking to you, I hate you, I won't— No. If you don't have love for your brother, 1

John says, we got to call into question whether you're even a brother. Mm -hmm. I mean, a

Christian is marked by their love for one another, even those we disagree with.

I mean, I say this all the time, just go to your church and think about it. Sunday, each one of you listening, think about this.

Go to church on Sunday, look around the congregation and go, you know, if it wasn't for Christ, would I actually be friends with these people?

Would I want to do things with these people? What is it that brings us together from vast backgrounds?

In most churches, you're going to have some who have money and some who don't. You're going to have some who are educated and some who aren't.

You're going to have some that are black and some that are white. And everyone gets along because of Christ.

That's what brings us together in a church. It doesn't divide us.

Social justice wants to divide us all into our separate groups. And it's interesting to see how—just a sidebar, you know, it's interesting to see how

Asian Americans were—they were white. So you can see how quick, folks, think about this and just think about what happens in the news and watch how fast this changes.

But they were white. They had white privilege. Why did they have white privilege? Because they're educated. Why? Because generation after generation focuses on education to get ahead.

And so when it came to this idea of white privilege, Asians had white privilege. And so they didn't have intersectionality points that we talked about earlier.

And then all of a sudden, some guy who they tried making he's the ideal

Christian, you know, because he went to church. Okay. He, you know, really didn't go to church, wasn't really active, wasn't—he just—he sat in a pew because he grew up there.

And so—but he goes in and shoots up these Asians in the massage parlors, which we know were more than massage parlors because he said why he did.

He didn't shoot them because they were Asian. He shot them because he had a pornography addiction, and he was going to those massage parlors and obviously getting something more than a massage.

So his motivation wasn't about them being Asian. But five minutes before that shooting, all

Asians had white privilege. Five minutes after that shooting, all Asians had intersectionality.

Stop Asian hate started spreading. What changed? Well, what changed is that the group of people that are pushing this found a way that they could use something else to cause division and to get people to support their movement.

That's what means by useful idiots. Suddenly, everyone's like, yes, yes. I mean, do

I want to stop Asian hate? Yes. Because when COVID occurred, when COVID started, I would not allow my bride to go shopping on her own.

Why? Because people were taking it out on Asians, like just because they're Asian, somehow they caused the virus.

Go blame Fauci. He's the one that funded the research, OK? And by the way, he also benefits from it because he's an owner of Moderna, and he benefits from every vaccine.

That should be illegal. He's got a conflict of interest. But the thing that you end up seeing with it is, do

I want to see Asian hate stop? Yes. But I don't want to push Marxism as the goal.

But see, once they found, oh, now we could use this, then we're going to suddenly change gears, and now we'll use that.

Yes. Marxism is division. They'll use anything that pushes their agenda. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And they don't care who or what they hurt. That's the thing. It's the agenda that matters.

It's not people. And really, and for us, or as believers, we have compassion for people.

But because they need to drive their agenda, Christians are hateful. And they drive that message, and it's all about division.

And isn't it funny that division is the enemy's playground, right? He loves division.

He is looking at us and going, I can't believe they're falling for it. They are just biting into exactly what

I threw at them as bait. And this division, and the more divided we become, the harder it's going to be to come out.

And that's really what this is about. It's not about race. Well, yeah, look, the thing is that as Christians, the way we deal with this is with the gospel.

We have to first remind ourselves what the gospel is. Listening to you share earlier, as a

Christian, do you love hearing that? Do you love hearing the gospel? Do you love hearing what Christ did for us?

We have to remind ourselves in the church, this is what Christ did for us. The church is about Christ, what

God has done. God's glory. That is our focus. Our focus is on God, not self.

Social justice is on self and not God. It replaces God with the God of self. And so what we have to do in a church is remind ourselves the gospel.

One of the problems, one of the ways I think that this has snuck into the church is because not enough people in churches evangelize.

Not enough people are sharing the gospel with other people, hearing themselves tell the gospel story over and over and over.

I'm an evangelist. Every time I hear it, I get excited. Every time I hear someone sharing the gospel,

I get excited because this is what Christ did for me. Every time I share it, I get excited. This is what

Christ did for me. It reminds me where I came from. I was an enemy of God to becoming adopted as a child of God.

I don't deserve that. People will say Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

This is the gospel. We start with the gospel. Everything should be about the gospel message because that's what unites us as Christians.

And so we got to get to that. Look, you and I were talking.

You know that I run about a half marathon a day. I was very upset today. Someone came to my house early.

I only got 11 miles in. I had an appointment yesterday. So I have two days where I've only done 11 -mile runs, and I'm really not happy with that because I call it my daily dozen.

I have to do at least 12 miles a day. But I usually, with my cool down, I do about 13 .5

miles a day. But the reality is at any point that I just say, you know what?

This is hard. I'm just going to stop. I just don't feel like doing it. Trust me.

There's a lot of days I feel like not doing it. I train martial arts.

I do karate. I do jiu -jitsu. I always like in most of the dojos

I was at, there would be somewhere up. It would say a black belt is a white belt that never quit.

When you train for marathons, I've trained for four marathons and have done zero, by the way. How come?

The closest I've gotten was food poisoning the night before, and that was the worst because I had all the training done.

But I have gotten injured or food poisoning, but I have gotten the training in for all of them, which is just really a horrible feeling.

I had my shirt and everything, my number, and still, you know. But the reality is that, okay, there are some people,

I hate these people. I went to church with a guy that literally woke up one morning and ran the New Jersey marathon, having not run for any length for six months.

I'm like, I hate you. It's just that's wrong. You do hate those people. I used to run every day with a guy that he's a pacer for marathons.

He goes across the country. He does like four or five marathons a year. He literally was like, he goes, well,

I'm going to pace set for 444 times so I don't have to do any training. I'm like,

I'm hoping to do a 520. What do you mean you're not even going to train? It's like you're killing me.

But the reality is that you're not going to just pick up and do something like that generally. We're not going to find people in the church that just go, you know, this is hard.

I'm just going to quit. And they're going to be able to move on in the Christian life. The real battle is in the training.

If we give up, if we give up on our brother or sister that are struggling with these things and just go, well, you're just a

Marxist. That's it. I'm done with you. Then you've lost. Not your brother. You. If you're one that says, well, if you don't, if you don't accept, you know, this, this, you know, social justice and I'm done with you, then you've lost.

Not your brother. See, we as Christians need to work together. That's the key.

And what brings us together is the gospel because none of us deserve it. The whole idea of social justice is the entitlement mentality.

I'm entitled to something that you have. You have something I don't have. Therefore, I'm entitled to it.

The gospel message is I'm entitled to nothing. I deserve absolutely nothing.

And God gave me everything. That should humble us.

That should get us to realize that God, whatever you want to do, I will follow. Even if it goes against everything that my culture believes, everything that, that my upbringing is, or my tribe is saying, whatever it is.

When I became a Christian, I knew what was going to be, or I expected what was going to be at stake.

The reason I didn't share with my parents or anyone in my family that I became a Christian was because I knew my parents would disown me.

When they did find out, which was two years later, they went casket shopping. They told me that.

Now, something happened in the family. My father said because of that, they decided they weren't going to do that. My father decided he wasn't going to pay for my education, though, if I was going to continue with this

Christianity. And I told him, well, I understand that. That's why I was at ROTC. And my father did not want any of his boys being military because he nearly got killed by friendly fire in the military.

And so he was very much against having his boys in military. And so he didn't want me being

ROTC. So he agreed to fund my education. But I knew that my relationship with my family was going to,

I expected it would be cut off altogether. But it was, it was very tense. And we,

I really didn't have a relationship with my family very much. I had to force to, you know, I would call my parents every week.

But there was strain there. There was strain with my siblings. I don't have much in common. When we get together, there's not that commonality that I have with Christians in the church.

And it really took until, it took a fist fight with my father when I tried sharing the gospel with him a couple years ago.

So, you know, at 47, I guess you're still old enough to get punched by your dad. But if people ask me as an evangelist,

I'm a street evangelist. So I get up, whatever you think of street evangelist, I'm not that guy, folks. Okay. Whatever you're thinking, if you go up, you know, on YouTube and look for street evangelist or open air preacher, open air evangelist,

I'm not that guy. Okay. I like what my friend Kurt Cockel says. He says there's only two people in the world he knows that does it well.

Ray Comfort on the West Coast, Andrew Rapport on the East. I try to be a good ambassador when doing it.

But the thing is, is that people always ask me, have you ever been hit? And I say, no, only by my mother when

I was 18 and my father when I was 47. And, you know, that drew even greater strain because it took me that long to try to work up the nerve to really sit down with him.

And I want to give a clear gospel presentation to him. We'd try to drop seeds type of thing. And it was always shut down.

And so I pulled him aside and wanted to talk to him. And, yeah, obviously it didn't turn out well. But the interesting thing by God's providence, a couple of years later, my wife was talking with my dad.

And just talking about how we had met. And one of the things you have to understand is I come from a family of wealth,

OK? I didn't lack for much growing up. So the thing was, you know, here is my dad who gives away to philanthropy, you know, to charities and things like that.

More money than most people make in a year. And my wife's talking about how she bought me food.

But she didn't give all the context. And I just happened to be walking past. And I just turned to my bride.

And I'm like, oh, hey, you know, dad never knew that I was homeless. And she's like, oh, I wasn't going to share that.

And I just kept walking. I didn't think twice of it. My father couldn't sleep. It actually crushed him to realize that because I became a

Christian, he saw that the relationship we had was so severed that when

I was without money, living in my car, I had a friend who let me stay on their couch.

Where I had no place to live, I didn't go to him. And he had the resources. And that actually is what got him to break down where we finally,

I was, I guess, like 49, where we finally started to be able to talk.

Now, I share all that to say this. We can't give up. We can't sit there and just say, well, if you don't agree with me, whatever side you're on, we just quit on you.

We don't win marathons that way. We push ourselves through it as hard as it is.

I know your audience because I know you and I know that you guys, you talk about training. And so your audience understands this.

We don't win a race without the training. We just can't give up. We have to keep fighting through this together, even when it's hard, even when we don't want to.

That's the thing. The whole purpose for us as Christians is we represent

Jesus Christ. We represent God. We're his ambassador. We need to push through with one another to come to terms, not just those who within the church, but even within those that in our culture, we have to remember the people who are pushing social justice, they're not our enemy.

They're our mission field. If your heart doesn't break for them because they're blinded by this stuff, they don't see it.

If you see it, good, but they don't see it. You don't sit there and beat them up over it.

You lovingly share the gospel with them and let God do the work. Once the Holy Spirit indwells them, he's going to do the work.

And so we got to look at this in the long run. We got to look at the long game here.

Look at this like a marathon training and say, we got to keep running through this. You're not going to you're never going to do that marathon with all without all those long 10 mile, 15 mile, 20 mile runs.

You got to get those in and they're painful until you get used to doing them. They're painful.

You know, you I had someone today that asked me, how do you how do you run half a marathon a day?

My answer, one foot in front of the other. So how do we deal with these things within the church and within our culture?

One foot in front of the other. That's so good. And I think that's good news.

And it's good news for us to end on because really it's not about us. It's not about anything that we really can do outside of what

God tells us to do. And that's share the gospel with others. And that's sharing our story, just like you just shared your story with us.

And I so appreciate you coming on, Andrew, and sharing your story and being able to dive deep into this topic because it is so important for us.

It's important for us to get out there and stand and be compassionate and confrontational in a good, loving manner so that the good news can be shared because that's what people are looking for.

It's probably why CRT is so prevalent because people are just searching and they don't even know what they're searching for. So before we wrap up,

I'd love for you just to share. I'm going to link some of these things. I'm going to link the statement of social justice in the gospel for viewers in case they want to sign and your podcast.

But can you share best ways for listeners to connect with you? Yeah, and for folks to understand, there's a lot of pressure on me here today.

I'm the first male guest and the first guest talking about issues like this. I mean, folks, there's pressure here.

You did great. I typically, on my podcast, we have a lot more fun, more jovial, but we do have some serious topics that we do.

But if people want to get a hold of me, the best is go to strivingforeternity .org. If you want to learn about our podcasts, you can go to christianpodcastcommunity .org.

We have a lot of podcasts. I have several on there. I have Andrew Rapport's rap report and Paul Jack's live are my two main ones.

If people want to get into podcasting, I have So You Want to Be a Podcaster. I have a couple others that we don't do as often.

But the best way to get a hold of me is probably striving for eternity. If you want to get a hold of me, you want questions, the best thing to do there is come on to pauljackslive .com.

Any Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern Time. Those are my office hours, open to the public. I can answer any question people have about God and the

Bible because I think I don't know is a perfectly good answer. But people challenge me all the time.

But seriously, it's a live show that people can join, ask any questions. We usually have guests to talk about specific topics, and then second hour, we bring people in to ask any questions that pop up.

And so striving for eternity is a great way to find out about me, find out about my books

I've written, what do we believe and what do they believe. One is a Christian systematic theology. The other is a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

But if we could be helpful to you and your local church, you say, hey, but my church is small.

We can't afford to pay you guys to come out. Yep. That's the church we want. We have a weird model.

You know, most churches want to go or most ministries want to go to churches that can afford to pay them and have big audiences.

We would rather go to smaller audiences because that's what we think the battle really needs to be fought is in the small churches because they're being neglected.

And so if you'd want us to come out and speak, you can just contact us at info at striving for eternity .org.

We have several seminars we could come in and do. So we'd love to help your audience in any way that we can in their learning to disciple others or be discipled or get materials to disciple within their churches.

So thanks for having me. And I hope I pass the test of the first mail on the guest.

I love it. First of many. You pass the test. This was great. Thank you so much. At least we established that if I didn't do well,

I can run further than you may be so I can run away from you and hopefully faster than you. So you don't catch me because there you go.

Yes. A fellow runner. That's always good. And when he runs a half marathon a day, I love it.

That's more than I run. Thank you so much for joining me today.

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