Woke Church Chapter 8 - Desperately Needing a Standard

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Woke Church Chapter 9 and Final Thoughts

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Alright, Woke Church, Chapter 8. This is actually the chapter I was looking forward to the most when

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I looked at the table of contents. And actually, this is why I bought the book. Obviously I did want to provide a review on the channel for this book, so that's one reason.

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But really, I wanted to see sort of what the solutions were that Dr. Eric Mason was proposing.

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I think that we so often hear about all the problems, we never hear about the solutions. And so, this is what

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I was looking forward to, and I read the chapter, and it's okay. It's not anything profound that the

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Christian church hasn't been doing for years and years and years, but he wants to apply it specifically to the black church.

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And so, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. I really don't. Which is interesting because so much of this movement is talking about how, again,

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I'm using their terms. I don't believe in any of these terms, but the quote -unquote white church is only catering to white issues.

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And I'm like, okay, let's just for a second say that that's a problem, right? That is actually something that the church shouldn't be doing, catering to white issues.

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The solutions that Dr. Eric Mason is talking about here is saying that black churches, or churches in general, should specifically cater to black issues.

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And I'm thinking to myself, well, if it's wrong for one, it should be wrong for the other, right?

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I mean, again, I don't really even think in these terms, and in fact, I don't agree with his assessment here that the white church isn't providing these kind of services, but whatever.

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So, here's how the chapter starts. This is the woke church in action, chapter eight, page 145.

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He says, as I've been privileged to share this message of the woke church across the country, I've been encouraged by the request to know how we can move forward and what should we do.

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Which is interesting because I think I'm more woke than Dr. Eric Mason because I've heard that when you ask a black person what we should do, that's actually another form of white supremacy and white privilege because you're putting the pressure for the solutions on them, and really, the pressure for the solutions should be on the white folks that cause problems in the first place.

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So, I'm actually more woke than Dr. Eric Mason here, but I'm glad to see that he actually is taking some responsibility.

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If he's going to complain about the problems, he should probably be a part of the solution. I agree with that. And then he starts off, the very first thing he says is the

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Imago Dei. He wants the Imago Dei to be a foundational biblical doctrine. Here's what he says.

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Listen to this. From the lack of diverse racial representation in superhero stories to Christian movies to homeschooling curriculum, there is a pressing gospel need to demonstrate the dignity of each individual.

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That's not an Imago Dei problem. He wants the Imago Dei to be a foundational biblical doctrine.

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By the way, I think it already is. I knew of the image of God, about the image of God, from very early in my conversion and I understood how to apply it and things like that.

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So I don't think this is actually a problem. However, his lack of racial diversity in superhero stories,

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Christian movies, homeschooling curriculum, like that's the Imago Dei problem that you're talking about.

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Because here's the thing. We live in a majority culture, right? Why wouldn't the movies, the art, the books, why wouldn't they reflect the majority culture?

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Like again, like I've said this from the very first video I ever made. If you went to Ethiopia or Korea, you'd probably see images with Ethiopians and Koreans.

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Is that a problem that we need to confront? I don't think so, but I guess supposedly it is.

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Here's this is another thing. This is very interesting. Hold on. I wanted to show you this.

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OK, he quotes Tony Evans here and it says this is what Tony Evans says.

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On one side, I was being told that I was created in the image of God and therefore had value. So Tony Evans, I was told this.

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So this is a foundational doctrine, clearly. On a pragmatic basis, however, it appeared to me that the benefits of possessing that divine image were reserved for white people because it seemed that they're the real benefactors of God's kingdom on Earth.

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That's what it seemed like to Tony Evans. The reality is if it seems that way, that's one thing. But if it is that way, that's something completely different.

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Because here's the reality. I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding and really just flat out just not understanding how economics works in America that leads black people to think that they're not even benefactors of of American of American values or Christian values.

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But that's just not the case. I did a video where I said, you know, if you total up the wealth of all black people in the

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United States, it's big. It's more than the GDP of many countries. Like there is tremendous wealth and power that is that that not as given, but but is is is wielded by blacks in America.

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This makes it seem like blacks are all destitute. And that's just not the reality of the United States. And so it might seem that way to you.

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But the question is, is it that way? We need proof of that. And I've been told many times that proof is just another form of white privilege.

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Here's another form of white privilege, by the way. Here's what Eric Mason says on page 149. He says graduates.

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He's talking about theological education and how, again, this is a claim that's made very often, but I don't think it's actually true.

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The contributions of people of color are ignored or whatever. He says this. He says graduates who have this base of knowledge.

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He's talking about graduates who know about black theology, Latino theology, all that kind of stuff.

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He says graduates have this base of knowledge will be well equipped to serve the Lord in practical ways in urban ministry. Now, I've been told that equating urban ministry with Latino or black ministry is also a form of white supremacy.

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So, again, Dr. Eric Mason, it's time to get a little more woke. Anyway, you know, again, he he he talks about a lot of things as if they're just automatic, like they're obviously true about justice and things like that that I don't think are actually true.

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And this is the big problem with this chapter. He he will actually before I get to that, let me let me just let me just talk to you about something that he says here.

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He refers to different things that different countries around the world have done that to make reconciliation happen.

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And he says that the church needs to use these as a model. So the

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Church of Jesus Christ, the 2000 year old church of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, needs to use these countries as a model for what to do with racial reconciliation.

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And he points to Rwanda's Gakaka court, which I don't know what that is. I'll just be honest.

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He talks about South Africa's reconciliation committee and Germany's denazification program.

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And he says the church needs to follow those examples about how to do racial reconciliation.

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And again, this should sound to you just as preposterous as him saying that hip hop culture has done a better job with racial reconciliation than the church because it is just as preposterous.

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Again, I don't know about the Rwanda Gakaka court. I don't know what that is. I'm not going to comment on it.

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But the South Africa reconciliation committee, that's the model for racial reconciliation.

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Are you serious? Now, this book was this book was published and written this year, I think. I'm not sure if that chapter was written this year, but it was published in 2018.

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I don't even know why I had to look that up. Of course it was. But it was written this year. In fact, there are things that happened this year that this book references.

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So it was written this year. South Africa's reconciliation committee, that's the model.

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That's been a failure. That's been a failure. Ethnic reconciliation is not doing good in South Africa.

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In fact, there are things going on in South Africa right now that are absolutely abhorrent. So no,

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Dr. Eric Mason, South Africa's racial reconciliation committee or whatever it is, whatever it's actually called.

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I think it's just Africa's reconciliation, not racial. That's not a good model for the church. That's not a good model for the church.

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Germany's denazification program. You think Germany, the way it stands right now, that's the model?

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That's a failure as well. Yeah, there are not a lot of Nazis in Germany anymore. Okay, that's good. That's that's all fine and dandy.

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But that's not a good model for us either. He talks about how people were forced to to tour, to tour.

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What's it called? The concentration camps and things like that. And that was a good model. That's not a good model for the church.

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Okay, here's the reality. Here's what the Bible presents. We don't need. The Bible says that the saints will judge the world.

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The saints will judge the world. We have the scripture. We have a holy standard of what justice is.

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We don't need to be taking cues from Starbucks. He also mentioned Starbucks in here and how that was an example for the church as well, because when they when when those two people got kicked out of Starbucks for not buying anything, that was racism, by the way, against any evidence.

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There's no evidence of that at all. But but of course, it's just assumed that that's racism. And so what we need to do is if it's assumed to be racism, then we have to say it is racism and then follow

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Starbucks and doing what Starbucks does. You know, Kyle Howard said that, too. He said the church. Where are you at, church? And I'm just looking at this tweet.

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I'm just like, what do you mean? What's the church supposed to do? The church isn't going to close down to do a racial reconciliation seminar just because somebody says something is racist and we don't have any evidence of it.

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That's how the church operates. Two or more witnesses. That's the standard. Two or more witnesses. So, no, the

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Holy Spirit empowering the church of God to understand the scriptures and apply the scriptures is not going to learn anything from South Africa's reconciliation committee.

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It's just not going to happen. South Africa has failed at racial reconciliation or ethnic reconciliation.

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It has abjectly failed. There's just no question about that. All right.

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I think that's pretty much it. Oh, oh, right. He talks about the church as a family training center, and he correctly bemoans that the family, the breakdown of the family has caused a lot of the problems in black communities.

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That's actually correct. But here's the problem, though. Lots of research has been done at why the family has broken down in black communities, and it's not because they're more immoral than whites.

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I know that that sounds crazy to some of you, but black families aren't more immoral than white families.

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But here's the problem. Welfare programs, which incentivized people to have children out of wedlock financially has, what do you know, created a situation where lots more people are being born out of wedlock.

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Not just black people, by the way, white people as well, white people as well. If you want to have the church as a family training center, then you should probably support the end of welfare as we have it in the

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United States. Do you, Dr. Eric Mason? Because I think you're just saying you're against this.

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I'm not so sure that you are, because if you were, you'd campaign to end welfare. Not even Republicans campaign to end welfare anymore.

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They should, but they don't. And it's not just we should, because the result would be good. That's the other thing about this chapter.

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He talks about the prison pipeline and the disproportionate amounts of blacks and Latinos in prison for certain crimes.

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And I actually would probably agree with him about the crimes that should be decriminalized. I probably agree with him on that.

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I think some of the drugs, drug charges should be decriminalized. Um, but not because the result would be disproportionate based on ethnicity.

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It's not that it's not that it's because what is right, according to scripture, welfare programs are evil, according to scripture, and because God is smart.

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And because God is not a ridiculous, it just so happens that welfare programs cause all kinds of problems.

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We can prove this. We can demonstrably prove that welfare has caused many of the problems in the black communities.

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And as long as it continues to ramp up, the problems will continue to ramp up as well. Um, so I say we get rid of welfare, not because of the problems, not because of the pragmatic reasons that it'll help the black family, but rather, um, because it's against God's law.

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And it just so happens that it would also help the black family as well, the Latino and the white family as well.

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Same thing with the drug laws. I think we should get rid of drug laws, not because black people are being incarcerated a lot.

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That's not the reason. That's a pragmatic reason. And it actually would help in that situation, but that's not why I want to do it.

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I want to do it because God's law is the standard, not our own made up law. You see, do you see what

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I'm saying? All right. Last thing I wanted to talk about. I think this is the last thing I wanted to talk about.

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Let's see here. Biblical womanhood training. This was a great chapter.

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And again, this book has a very common problem. It just says things. It doesn't really prove it and things like that.

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Let me read to you this and see if you can catch the buzzword that he's, he's signaling here.

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He says this black women who received seminary training have an uphill battle because many churches don't have a vision for how to use their extraordinary talent.

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My wife and I have female friends who have seminary degrees and found it difficult to find work because many churches lack a vision to see women beyond traditional roles.

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It is incumbent on leadership to reevaluate areas where women have been relegated to serve that are not based on biblical prohibitions, but rather on cultural practices.

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That may be extensions of sexism and misogyny. Black women should be affirmed to serve in greater capacities than the traditional roles of children's ministry, choir, and hospitality.

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The goal is to release women for expanded great commission mandates. Women can serve communion.

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Women can serve communion. Listen up reform. This is, this is what's being taught here. Okay.

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Women can serve communion, teach in appropriate setting, lead ministries in small groups, be theologians, professors, apologists, deacons, evangelists, missionaries, read scripture and pray in public, be involved in social justice, develop curriculum, provide counseling, be trained for leadership, work on church staff and speak in various platforms where they should be compensated like male speakers.

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There is no end to the social justice machine. It will, it will take over everything.

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Here it is talking about essentially egalitarianism. Let's just call it what it is. I'm sure

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Dr. Eric Mason thinks they can't be lead pastors or pastors specifically, but they can do everything a pastor does serve communion, the, the, the, the sacraments they can teach, uh, they can do all these things lead.

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They can do everything a pastor does, except they don't have the title as a pastor. That's an egalitarian position.

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Dr. Eric Mason has just come out as an egalitarian. It's not going to stop there, by the way. You might think, oh, that's not a big deal.

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Oh yeah. Yeah. Women can serve communion. Yeah, no problem. It's going to, it's going to go into the sexual ethics thing.

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The sexual minorities are oppressed in the church as well. Don't you know? It's already happening. I mean, the ERLC is already supporting these kinds of events.

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Um, gospel coalition is already supporting these kinds of movements where there's, uh, where sexual minorities need to be affirmed and this and that, and just, this is, this is evil stuff.

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There's no brakes on this train. There's no brakes on the woke train. You won't, you go woke. You're going to go all the way woke with Dr.

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Eric Mason. Now he's not saying that in this book yet, but let's mark my words. There's nothing logically to stop it.

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He might never go down that road. Uh, and that's not going to be because of any logical or biblical reasons.

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It's going to be because there's still an ick factor to some of this stuff. Here we go. Let's see what else we have here.

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Criminal justice system. We talked about that. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Okay. Yeah, I don't know.

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This might be, he talks about a bunch of stuff that, that, you know, you can either agree with or not, but the point is this chapter is lacking one thing in particular, and this is what this book is lacking in particular.

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It's lacking a coherent standard because on the one hand, he talks about fixing the education system so that blacks can be more educated.

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That sounds like a noble cause. It sounds like a worthy goal. But really what's the standard? The standard is the scripture.

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What does the scripture say about education? I shouldn't be paying for your kid's education unless I want to.

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Other people shouldn't be paying for your, uh, your kid's education unless they want to. The church and the church members should be providing for the education of their own kids.

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So if you want to fix the school to prison pipeline, take responsibility for your own kids.

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Don't rely on the government to do it. Don't rely on the government to do it. I find it amazing. I always talk to people and they say how evil the, the, the schools are because they're teaching white supremacy.

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And then my, my solution. Okay. Take them out of the schools. You know, you have the right to do that. Right. And it's like, well, whoa, whoa, let's not be illegal.

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Let's, let's not be a legalistic here. I'm like, wait a minute. You just said it's T the school teaches white supremacy.

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Put your money where your mouth is. Take your kids out of that school. Nah, nah, nah, that's, that's, that's too extreme.

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Oh, okay. That's too extreme. But, but ripping the church apart from the inside out, calling everybody racist that votes for Donald Trump, calling everyone white supremacist that disagrees with you.

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That's not too extreme though. What's missing from the book is biblical standard.

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That's that's what's missing. I could write on every page and the notes by what standard Dr. Eric Mason, some of your ideas are good because they comply with the

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Bible. Some of your ideas are terrible because they go against the scripture. And we're going to talk about that in the next, in the video tomorrow for election day, because lots of people from this social justice movement will say that there's really no direct biblical command for some of these political positions.

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And it's really just a trying to be wise about applying God's law. No, there are clear biblical commands for every political position, every political position.

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That's the reality. This book, what it desperately needs is a coherent standard. It doesn't have one.

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It doesn't have one. He quotes a few scriptures here and there, but none of them actually apply the way he thinks they do.

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Um, there is no standard for this book. Dr. Eric Mason is making it up as he goes along. And that's the reality.

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Some of his ideas are good. Some of his ideas are bad, but the reason I know, and I can judge which ones are good and which ones are bad is because I know the law of God pretty well.

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I know how to apply the law of God pretty well. Not perfectly, not perfectly, but, um, anyway, that's, that's what we need in this debate, a standard, an actual standard that we can look to and say here in the scriptures where I'm getting this, this is why

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I think you should do X and here we, here we go for it. That's the debate that needs to happen. Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

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God bless. By the way, before, before we finish, the videos might be a little more sporadic in the coming weeks. My wife is about to give birth.

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God willing to our third son any day now. So we're talking within two weeks, probably. So pray for that.

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Um, and so the videos might be a little sparser because the appointments are kind of wrapping up and everything. So, uh, anyway,