T4G's "Woke" Book

Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host John Harris. We're gonna talk a little bit today about the T4G conference.

The last one was just held last week and for those who don't know the T4G conferences have been around for around a decade.

They've, at least the way that they have been presented and known by those who attend, they've are portrayed as bastions of conservative, reformed theology across many different traditions, but the commonality is that the people that are attending are there for the gospel and for the most part

I think it's reformed. I don't know, off the top of my head I can't think of any self -professing

Arminians who have been speakers there, but maybe I'm wrong on that. But certainly the keynotes and those who have mostly been involved in this have been,

I think the term that even they use to apply to themselves at times is reformed -ish. And so this has been going on.

This is paralleling in some ways the Gospel Coalition. They're not the same organization, but you see many of the same people at their conferences and I think similar goals and purposes probably.

And the last one just happened and I've talked about this before. I talked about this last year when the announcement was made that this was going to be the last one and we analyzed it and there was this whole video that Mark Dever and Lincoln Duncan had made without Al Mohler present, which seemed kind of awkward because Al Mohler had been instrumental in T4G and he wasn't going to be there and so they made this episode without him and talked about how this is the end.

And they really put a, for lack of a better term, they really put a good face on it, on why they were ending, the motivations for ending.

And it mainly came down to that this was always in the plan.

We were always going to end T4G. It wasn't going to continue forever. It served its purpose. Connections and things have been made and we're so excited about all the young people that are up and coming, but it seemed weird.

It seemed really at tension with half of their video, which relayed concerns with how they were treated about social justice type issues and panels that Mark Dever talks about a panel that he was on on MLK 50 and recommending divided by faith and he he talks about how really he thinks he's been given a bad rap over those kinds of things.

And so it was a very disjointed video when they made this announcement that this was going to be the last conference.

And so the last conference just happened last week and I wasn't there, but the expectation was it wasn't going to, it was going to be light woke, soft woke.

It wasn't going to really challenge social justice, nor was it going to come out so hard pro -social justice, but just kind of kind of peter out in a very just mild kind of limp -wristed way,

I guess. And from, and I don't know everything that happened. I wasn't in attendance at this conference and I didn't see all the sessions, but what

I am going to do, and and I have had people ask me about this, whether I'm going to speak about T4G, what

I've decided to do is, because I I always think in terms of what's going to be helpful for you out there.

So there's two things I think that I'm going to do. One is I am going to go over this book that I've read that was given out for free at T4G by Isaac Adams about race, well racism, but it's, we'll get into it.

It's it's been described as a woke book. It's it's definitely more a softer woke book compared to what's out there, but it certainly advocates elements of critical race theory and I'll back that up and show you the quotes.

So this is helpful just because this is a book that T4G and all the people who attended, that they're trying to get into your church.

They're trying to get their pastors to think this way. They want to use this as a tool to help navigate quote -unquote discussions about race.

So we'll talk about the book and whether or not it's helpful to that end. The other thing that I'm gonna do, because I think this would be helpful, is there was a panel,

I think it's only 30 minutes, on social justice or CRT.

I think it was CRT, and they have a number, I think Mark Devers on it, I think,

I'm trying to think who else was on it. In fact, I think I have it pulled up here. Let me just check real quick if I do. Yeah, panel

Y, we should be critical of critical race theory, which sounds kind of like it's, hey, we're gonna take a shot at this.

And it looks like Kevin DeYoung, at least, and man, not a lot of people have actually viewed this, surprisingly, as more people may view my critique of it.

We'll see then. But it's not, it may not even just be a critique. You know, maybe there's some good things here.

Maybe there's some helpful things that they share. I'm open to that possibility, despite what they are handing out as a free book for all participants going to the conference.

But I'm likely going to probably be critiquing things. And it's gonna be kind of a cold, a cold read, or I'm gonna be listening to this panel with you.

And some people have told me that's helpful for them, just because I'm giving you the play -by -play as I'm hearing it, and I'm asking the questions that I would normally ask if I'm anywhere, if a pastor's preaching, or if I'm, if I'm suspecting that there's something wrong in the way that social justice is being advocated, or something like that.

You know, there's some compromise, something wrong in the message. Some of the questions I ask, some of the observations

I make, those can be helpful in the moment as I'm listening. So that's what

I've decided to do. And so I have prepared my thoughts on this particular book, and I'm gonna give that to you, but I will not have prepared my thoughts for the videos, the video panel discussion.

So we're gonna figure out that together, and that should be, I hope, informative, and maybe a little fun, but at the very least helpful.

So a few just personal things I wanted to mention. Over the weekend, I did have the privilege of traveling down to Maryland and met a number of you there.

We had a very intimate gathering, actually. I want to say there's probably only, I don't know, 30 people or so, but it was very, very fruitful, and was very encouraged myself, and hopefully was able to encourage some of you who came out for that event.

I'm very blessed. I'm blown away by the generosity of many Christians out there, and so just thank you for everyone who came out to that, and drove, and for Pastor Troy for hosting the event, and his wife,

Dina. They were very gracious hosts, and I wish I could have spent longer with them. This is one of the things that I have been doing this year, just to update everyone who is a supporter on Patreon, or whether just in prayer, or however,

I just really see a lot of fruit from going to churches, and sometimes even political events, mainly it's smaller churches, though, and talking about this issue.

And I think one of the things, and it came out to me this particular time as well as many others, is there's a lot of Christians out there that are solid, that know something's wrong, that feel somewhat alone because they're not hearing their particular concerns represented in any big evangelical platform, and there's a natural suspicion,

I think, that's arisen with people who even have platforms, to some extent, because of this. And to be able to encourage those people, let them know you're not alone.

You're not insane, you're not crazy, there's people that are out there that are just as devoted to Orthodox teaching, and can see this as a threat to that, as you are, and they're all over this country, to be quite frank with you.

They're all over the place, they're just not all connected with each other. And one of the tools, one of the things that we've tried to do in connecting churches is, a friend of mine and I, Craig is my friend, and you can actually contact him.

People have asked, what do I contact about this website? You can contact Craig, Craig at Protonmail .com.

But Craig is someone who had it on his heart, and we had a similar vision to create a church networking, or really more of a church finding application.

And DiscerningChristians .com is that church finding tool, that application. And we've seen so much fruit from that.

And one of the things is, even on this weekend, this past weekend, meeting some people who are attending a church simply because they found it on DiscerningChristians .com.

And so I want to just thank everyone personally who has supported what I'm doing, who have, go ahead on Facebook, I know that, and Gab, I know that the social media links for that, or I'll try to remember to put them in the description for this video, but if not, you can just search on those websites for Discerning Christians and it'll come up.

And go ahead and like those, and share it around. We do have a qualification for the churches and the individuals who do join that.

They need to agree to our statement of faith. There's very strong language against social justice. And if a church or an individual don't seem to meet that, then we have the right to go in and we'll remove them.

And in fact, I did that for the first time ever, this weekend. I did it yesterday. A friend of mine was visiting another state and looking for a church there.

And this church happened to be on DiscerningChristians .com. And it looked like I added it. So I think someone had asked me to add it because it's a solid church.

And there was some yellow flags. And he came back and he said, look, I think this church, it seems good for the most part, but there's just some questions

I have. And it was on your website. And so I checked it out. And within about 10 minutes, I knew I have to take this church off of Discerning Christians, because this is not a solid church when it comes to social justice.

At the very least, it is weak at best, and it is compromised at worst.

And so I took them off. So we take it seriously. And if you want to add your church, and if you want to join, go to DiscerningChristians .com.

So I wanted to say that, personally, even more personally speaking here, some of you saw my post on social media about my uncle.

The Harris family has, and really on both sides, my mom and my dad's side, we've been going through some rough times.

My grandfather, for those who have been listening, died in December. And we just had the funeral arrangements because of travel and all of that, and getting the family together.

It didn't take place until two weeks ago. And then an uncle of mine on my mom's side, my mom's sister's husband died unexpectedly a few days ago now.

And it just, and I won't get into the circumstances of all of it at this point, but it was an unexpected death, and just a devastating thing for his wife, who just lost her dad, and has undergone some other trials.

And then I found out that my uncle, two nights ago, was in critical condition in the hospital, and looked like he might not make it.

And I asked everyone to pray. My mom, who's a retired nurse, just didn't think he would possibly make it.

And by God's grace, he was doing better yesterday morning. And there may be some permanent heart damage.

He may have had a heart attack, but he is cognitive, he is improving, and we're grateful for that.

So I just want to thank everyone for their prayers and support through this. There are times that I choose not to be as involved in things, and I may not even put a podcast out.

I certainly try to when I can, but when there's heavy family issues like that,

I may not. And even in the coming weeks, I may not have as much material as I usually do, partially for that.

So it's just good knowing that there's support out there. So I just wanted to thank everyone for that.

Well, to start off this podcast, which is in some ways about T4G and that conference, the book we're gonna talk about is called

Talking About Race by Isaac Adams. And there's a picture of it right there. I'll blow it up so you can see.

In preparation for this, though, I wanted to give you an analogy I was thinking of this morning. And you have at this conference a panel.

The panel is supposedly against critical race theory, why we should be critical of it, but yet they're passing out this book.

And we'll watch the panel, but it creates questions. It creates confusion. People don't know what to think.

And one of the analogies that really makes a lot of sense to me is the left is a lot like the tide coming in, the way that they advance.

It's not like a ladder as much, where with the ladder, you go up one rung, you go up the next rung, you go up the next rung, and you eventually get there.

And sometimes you have to adjust your speed, but you're building off of what was previously built.

That doesn't seem to be the way that the left primarily has done what they've done to advance their agenda.

Normally, it seems what they do is it's more like the tide coming in. So you're at the beach, and you're looking out, and the tides coming in, because you notice that the line where it's wet, let's say you put out a lawn chair or something, and you thought you were fine, and then the tides coming in.

And all of a sudden, you see that the waves are coming closer and closer to you. And eventually, they're gonna overtake you.

Eventually, your feet are getting wet wherever you're sitting. And then, of course, your feet are getting more wet, and it's up to your knees.

But it's deceptive a little bit if you took that in the moment. If you're only focused on one wave coming in, it may not look as big as the last wave, even though the tide's coming in.

And then the wave goes out. And I see this over and over with conservatives, and I'm talking about political conservatives, they tend to rejoice and think they're winning when they're not.

And they've employed the wrong strategies. But because the wave is receding, just to prepare for the next one, which is gonna even be bigger and make it farther, conservatives think they're winning.

Look, the wave's going out. Look, we defeated critical race theory. We made it a byword, and we have all this legislation against it in various states.

And this is a good thing. I'm not saying it's not a good thing in every sense, but there's a premature declaration of victory until the next wave comes.

And that wave may not use the term CRT. That wave may use a new term, or it may focus on a different area and advance the agenda somewhere else, only to come back to the area that you were at.

And this has happened over and over. I think of the Tea Party stuff as well. This was supposed to be a declaration of victory.

Look, we won some midterms, we got some good people in there, and there's a lot of energy and momentum, only for Obama to come in and the

IRS to put an end to a lot of that. And this is, you can pick so many topics, so many things.

I was just reading something about the sort of anti -vax, if you want to call it that, movement in the 70s and 80s.

And there was real concern that children were getting sick from over -vaccination. And actually,

I wasn't reading this. I think I was talking to a nurse about this, and they were telling me. But there was this real concern, and it was the

Reagan administration, actually, that sort of gave a temporary pass.

I think it was a two -year, from what the nurse was telling me at least, that's what they said. It was a two -year time period to kind of get their act together, and they wouldn't be sued in that time period.

And that ended up creating a situation in which there has been perpetual protections for companies that produce vaccines from the national government, the general government.

And so there, you know, you have real pushback, and then what looks to be like maybe regulation becomes actually the two are in bed.

And we could, I don't know, there's just so many things we could point to that work this way, where conservatives think that they have the momentum because they see that wave kind of going back out.

You know, the Me Too movement has kind of lost some steam to some extent. It seems like the wave's going back out, but then the tide's actually coming in.

And with critical race theory, I said this before, unless there is actively a movement to unwind all the things that have been done since 2015, to put back all those statues, right?

I mean, that's, they're victims in a sense of the critical race theory stuff. To all the laws about police funding that changed, and reparations, like in places like Asheville where they passed a reparations bill, and it rolled back all that stuff.

Until these things are rolled back, and you get to that, at the very least, to sort of the status quo that was there in 2015, early 2015, and then start making headway against it even in where it existed at that point,

I wouldn't declare any victory. We've just, the storm has just subsided some.

It's not thundering and lightning as much. It's just, it's raining a little bit, and we think that's a victory.

This situation, and also something else I'm going to talk about in the next episode, seem to be indicators in my mind of that same kind of thing happening.

You have CRT as being, people don't use that term anymore. You don't hear about racial reconciliation quite as much.

You hear more about Christian nationalism, right? Now, if we are being shrewd,

I think we understand that that's really the same. We're talking about very similar issues, and it's the same basic strategy from the left, where they're using

Christian nationalism more to smear Christians who might be against critical race theory, and they've just changed tactics.

But it's easy if you're just looking at the terms critical race theory. Yeah, you know, you don't have like Jarvis Williams, a professor at Southern Seminary, going out there publicly and saying, we should learn from critical race theory.

That's because they know that we're on to them. So they shift.

They shift what they're doing. They shift how they do it. The strategies change, and it's easy to declare victory.

There's people in T4G, I guarantee, people who are going out there that think probably that this has been corrected, that this issue is, if there even was an issue there, that this has been addressed, and things are going in a better direction.

Yet, things like this book being given out for free to anyone who registers are evidence that that's not the case, that it's still there.

And so two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. This is now just common.

This is just baked in to it. This is just the way things are. This is the new status quo, the

Hegelian dialectic. It's we're gonna push, push, push, push, push. We get some pushback, so we fall back to a defensible position.

But we already have ground that we've taken because of that. This is some ground that's been taken. And we're gonna talk about that.

We're gonna talk about that ground. So let's talk about it.

The book is Talking About Race. Isaac Adams is the author. And this is,

I think, the closest thing to a purpose statement we have. I'm writing to a wide swath of those Christians. To white

Christians who aren't sure how to pursue racial reconciliation, or whether that's even the right term to use. To black

Christians who are tired of receiving white Christians indifference, ignorance, or scorn. To Hispanic and Asian Christians who'd like to talk about more than the black -white dynamic.

To pastors trying to navigate all these waters. Christians, if you're frustrated with the racial status quo,

I'm writing to you. If you're considering leaving your church for another because of disagreements about race, I'm writing to you.

If you feel like you can't honestly talk about race with others, I have news for you. You're not alone. Now, this is admitting something.

Just like Mark Dever and Lincoln Duncan admitted in their video about T4G coming to an end, this is admitting the same thing.

This is saying that, guess what? People are leaving their churches. People are having difficulty discussing topics.

And it's really topics related to social justice and critical theory. I remember one time

I was at a Walmart and someone came up to me and said, you're John Harris. And I said, yeah, how do we know each other?

And, oh, I've interacted with you on social media. And I said, jog my memory.

You know, I can't remember every interaction. I've had a lot. And he said, well, we disagree over racism. And I was kind of like trying to think, and I can't remember our discussion.

I'm so sorry. And that was it. But later on, I was thinking about it. And I'm like, you know, I doubt we disagreed over racism.

I doubt that was the case. I bet it was we disagreed over social justice. And in his mind, though, that became a disagreement over racism.

Well, that's the kind of thing that I see at play even here.

We're trying to navigate these waters. And we're frustrated with the racial status quo.

I don't think I don't is it the racial status quo? Or is it that there's a frustration with the agitation that's come from social justice activists?

What prompted this whole thing in the last few years? Where has has this friction come from?

Is it the racial status quo that's been sitting there? Or is it a new agitation from the left?

And so the way that this is framed from the beginning, is framed in a way that I think is, and I'm not saying

Isaac Adamson tends to be dishonest, but it's framed in a way that's not accurate. That this is not the source, or even sequentially the source of the issues that are taking place right now.

But that's the purpose. It's to navigate these discussions, according to the author. And so it's helping different people understand this issue and discuss it.

Now, there's a lot of praise for the book. I didn't put it all here. In fact, Jarvis Williams even praises it.

Who's blatantly pro -critical race theory. He praises it. So it tells you a little bit about where this is coming from.

But let me read you a few quotes that I thought were interesting. Mark Dever, making progress and racial reconciliation is one of the most oppressing needs of the church today.

Michael Horton, Isaac Adams knows how these conversations go well and where they go wrong.

Julius Kim, for anyone wishing to learn how to better navigate the challenging conversations regarding racial reconciliation, this book is a must read.

Michael O. Emerson, author of Divided by Faith, which has caused all kinds of issues. I almost wept thinking about the thousands of churches that could have used this book in the summer of 2020, the summer of George Floyd.

J .D. Greer, former president of the SBC, says making progress and racial reconciliation is one of the most pressing needs of the church today.

Laura Wilfer, Isaac Adams calls us to navigate the race conversation as Christians in America.

And finally, George Yancey, Adams provides guidance to help us navigate the minefields that confront our racial conversations.

So here's some of the praise. Now, what do you see in everything I just read? The whole idea behind all of this is that these are difficult subjects to navigate, and Isaac Adams is going to help us do that.

We're going to navigate. You see that word come out quite a bit. We're going to navigate the race conversation. We're going to navigate the minefields that confront our racial conversations.

That's what this is all about. Navigating a conversation that has produced people leaving churches, tension between people, friends that are no longer friends, broken friendships.

All kinds of issues have been caused, and the solutions here. We're going to rise above this and transcend it now.

So we're going to talk about how that happens. Because before we get to these solutions, we're going to have to, well, before we are able to remedy the damage that's been done, we have to get under the hood.

We have to understand what assumptions led to this. Now, I've been trying to do this.

Frankly, I mean, a lot of this, what's described, are things that I've been doing, and others that are on the more conservative side of this.

We've been very troubled. We've seen what's happened with churches being divided. And we've tried to put material out there to say, this is what's going on.

Here's the problem. Here's why this is unbiblical. Here's the false teaching that's been injected. And locate that false teaching.

Get rid of that false teaching. And that's got to at least be part of the equation here. And yeah, tone can be an issue, but there's, it's, the source of this isn't tone.

The source of this is fundamental, diametrically opposed positions, fundamental disagreements. And we don't get that.

At least, there are fundamental things brought up, but this book tends to err on, it's a tone issue.

We're not treating each other right, and the positions we hold might be okay, although he does take shots way more at more conservatives, but the positions we hold aren't the issues so much as the way we treat each other.

And if you locate the problem in the wrong area, you won't have a solution. If that's not the reason people are,

I mean, look, there's people I know of who are very nice, who didn't have shouting matches, who just, they disagreed with the theology and they left.

That's just almost every person I know who's had to leave a church because of critical race theory. They leave, but not because they're just bent out of shape and angry.

They're sad usually, and sometimes they have a righteous indignation, but it's not, it's not, and I'm not saying every situation is like this, but in the majority of the ones

I know about, it's not because there was a shouting match or someone was insensitive in the way they communicated, and their people are just too sensitive.

It's because we have a fundamental disagreement. So, if you miss that,

I think you miss the big picture here. Well, let's talk about some of this, get into some quotes for you.

Here's the function that this book serves. Isaac Adams writes, rather the philosophy of unity outlined above means believers will place different priorities on different issues on level three.

He's got this diagram which shows basically the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary issues, and level three would be more tertiary issues.

And he says, which is to say you may be in a church with people who think things that you find repulsive in that tertiary realm, that secondary realm maybe even, but this philosophy also allows the church to remain focused on Jesus rather than on Jesus and a particular view of racism, for example.

With this in view, this view of unity, we may disagree about the merits of this or that philosophy, but neither of us can get excommunicated for our view, and that's the exact opposite of what we see in the larger conversations about race.

So this is, I think, the appeal. This is a function that this kind of a thing serves, that we can have our cake and eat it.

We can have people from different political persuasions, if this is just a tertiary, political, or even secondary matter, it's not primary to the church, then we can have people who have different solutions and different views, and we don't have to divide our church up.

And this appeals to a lot of pastors, especially, who are going to T4G, like, I don't want my church divided over this. I've seen the division.

People are leaving, and I got people on both sides leaving. How do I keep them? Well, maybe get them to understand that these are secondary or tertiary issues, and they shouldn't be disagreeing with each other.

These aren't as important, and maybe they're not even that important. So that's one of the things that's communicated, yet I gotta point this out.

So that was page 106 I just read. Page 142. So not very long after this,

Isaac Adams says this, Which is it?

So, on the one hand, these are tertiary issues. What we think about race, our view of racism, that's the term he uses, a particular view of racism, you know, that's, we got to focus on Jesus.

We shouldn't be at each other's throats over this. And yet, then he incorporates race, and what does he say here?

Yeah, just the concept. He said, matters of race. So racism would be in that. Then he takes racism, and he says, well, actually, this is a matter of discipleship.

Well, that means it's kind of important. Does it really belong in that outer third rung, if that's what it is, if it's a matter of discipleship?

So this is the difficulty of this. It encourages, it moves people towards, you've got to talk about this, and yet at the same time, yeah, but it's not really that important.

There's a lot of tension in this, and I find with the

Gospel Coalition in particular, I know this is a T4G conference, but with that group, Gospel Coalition, I find that vagueness, lack of clarity, seemingly contradictory things, it's common.

You find quotes that seem to line up in either direction.

Someone who thinks that the critical race theory stuff has gone too far could take this first quote, and yeah, that's exactly what we need, and then someone who's like, no, we need to push harder could take the second one.

There's a lack of clarity, and I found other examples of it, but to me, this is one of the biggest ones, and it just, because it's fundamental to the purpose of this book and the function it serves.

So what's this book going to help us do? And the reality is, this book actually does delve into critical race theory assumptions.

It does give you tools intended to help you navigate race and racism in discipleship, and we'll get into it.

So what are the problems? What are the issues in the church right now? Well, here's what Isaac Adams says, the polarization of the day is so bad that while many of us may have already talked about talking, fresh attention to this dysfunctional communication across ethnic lines is more than warranted.

We are living in two different countries, each falling further into our echo chambers, believing we are the only ones with access to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

So that is a bad thing. This is a negative thing. We shouldn't be just falling in echo chambers, thinking where our view is the right one.

The polarization that's out there has gotten into the church, and that's what's causing this. It's this external threat that's gotten into our churches, and that's what's the source of dividing them.

He also says if we don't find the right tone, racial damage results. So that's the other villain, right tone. So we got this external threat dividing us from the political realm, and then we got these tone, this tone challenge.

And then we have this one. He says, friends, here's a simple test to know whether our zeal in confronting racial blind spots is from Satan or from God.

When considering your zeal, answer these three questions. Does it have more wrath than love? Does it disgrace your brother more than cure him, and does it divide more than heal?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your zeal is from Satan. It's pretty harsh. It's pretty, well, it's pretty direct.

It's definitely, I mean, so if there's something that's from Satan, it's not critical race theory in this book.

I'm just telling you, because I've read the whole book. It's not, he doesn't identify social justice as the thing from Satan or some bad false teachings.

The thing that's from Satan is it's a tone issue. It's a motivation issue. It's, so this is about questioning motivations.

It's about checking your tone. It's about not letting oneself be co -opted from the political realms.

That's what this is about. So don't get into your Fox News, or for that matter, we'll just be fair here, your

CNN echo chamber. Don't say things that you'll regret later. Don't, and certainly check your motives.

And if your motives are, you know, things like you want to divide more than heal, then you're the bad guy.

And I don't think these are bad issues to bring up. I think that there's some, actually, some validity to all three of these, to some extent.

But none of these are the main issue. None of these are the source of the problems, primarily. They might be icing on the cake.

I mean, the first one is the one he gets closest to, where there's, yeah, that's true. There's at least two major categories here, but there's more than that, of people who have a completely different view of reality.

But if you trace that back farther, why is that? It's because of a postmodern assumption. It's because of standpoint epistemology.

It's because some people are saying that we can discount all of the facts out there, simply because we have an oppressed experience to draw from here.

And we have the academic world, then, reinforcing these, quote -unquote, oppressed experiences, and cherry -picking the historical record and the journalist record from current events.

And I mean, this is where this stuff started, at least attention in recent years. But he doesn't go back that far.

And so it's kind of this moral equivalency of like, well, you got your Fox News and you got your CNN folks, and they're kind of, you know, the problem with them is they're just too political, rather than, actually, maybe the problem, primarily and more fundamentally, is that you have two different conceptions of what truth is and what constitutes validation.

So that's, those are some of the actual problems, as opposed to what

Isaiah Adams says are the problems. His problems are more surface level here. Here are some of my general observations, and then we're gonna get into the

CRT stuff. Here's some general observations about this book I want to make, for anyone who might read it or is reading it.

Number one, Adams makes some good points that aren't made in other books, such as the idea that anyone can be racist. He says that.

You can be racist if you're black, if you're Asian, and that's good. I'm glad he does that. I really am, because it's a human issue.

That's, I've said before when I speak, sin comes from the heart. That's what Jesus said. Sin comes from inside the man.

It's not an external thing. It's an internal thing. And of course, you can, it can have external effects, and it does.

But sin, the corrupting influence, is from the heart. You don't train people into it.

They're already well -equipped, and you can certainly make that equipping, you can take what's there and make it worse, but it's, the corruption is from a mechanism within man.

And so he admits this in one section, and I'm really glad he does. Yet, and I'll say this other, and I don't know if this is good or bad, but he

I said that it strikes a generally positive tone in contrast to other books on the subject as well. And that's true.

Isaac Adams writes in a very positive tone. It's, so it's kind of like, I thought it was interesting, because some of these critical race theory books have just, like,

Jamar Tisby, you read Jamar Tisby, it's like he's just got an axe to grind. What an angry guy, right? But if you read like a self -help book, you're gonna be so encouraged.

It's all about encouragement. So this book kind of like, it almost feels like it's someone who's writing a pop

Christian self -help book, but also kind of like, we're gonna pepper a little Jamar Tisby in here.

So he kind of keeps this positive tone, which I thought was interesting, and maybe a good thing. Now here's where some of the critiques come in.

The book is from a pastoral perspective and proposes a solution to the problem of churches divided over social justice.

So the, that's the argument, or the, the, on the front end, that's what you're supposed to think about this book.

You got a pastor, or at least the perspective here is very pastoral, and a lot of the examples given, these hypothetical examples, are for church counseling situations.

And a proposed solution is going to be presented to you in this book. And so the solutions end up, though, they're not really solutions.

But that's the intent behind it. And it's gonna sidestep all the unimportant things.

Some of those political things that aren't important, we're gonna get right to the heart of it. That's kind of what you think when you start reading this.

It does not, however, interact with or solve the root issue so much as it focuses on how ideas are communicated on the surface.

So you're not gonna find answers, even a definition of race, or racism.

He goes into racism a little bit, but you don't find really great, clear discussions of these things.

It's just kind of left up to, well you should already know, don't be mean to each other.

When it does focus on root issues, it assumes social justice views, and I'll get into some of those. One of the main problems, obvious from the hypothetical scenarios that Isaac Adam gives, he gives all these scenarios of hypothetical people, and what, maybe these are some of them drawn from his own experience, but they're people who are disagreeing over social justice stuff, over critical race theory stuff, really.

And then he tries to show kind of what the problems are. How both sides are really responsible.

And generally speaking, though, you read these stories, and it's kind of like, well, if you're someone who's, let's say, black, and you're hurt about what's happened, there's a police shooting or something, it's insensitive for a white person to speak first, or it's insensitive for a white person to give you the impression that this was a deserved situation, like the police was justified in perhaps shooting this individual because they were committing a crime, or something like that.

But at the same time, it'll say, well, you know, if you're black, and you're offended, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't take it out unnecessarily on white people.

You shouldn't be like too angry. And so the critiques are a little lopsided in my mind, when you read this.

It's definitely written from the perspective of someone who is influenced by social justice.

So if you're more on the social justice side, your issues tend to be more unrelated to that social justice.

It's your attitude, it's how you're not being patient with your family when you realize that they are complicit in racism, it's stuff like that.

Whereas the critiques of those who are against social justice seem to be, well, you're just fundamentally wrong about something you believe, which is a very, a much stronger critique.

So you notice that in these hypothetical scenarios, there is an overly sensitive posture that Isaac Adams takes.

And I'll give you one example. Like, there's a situation in there where a young, I think it's a young person, but it's a couple, actually, a young couple,

I guess. And the husband is angry because someone in the church, the church janitor, comes to him and says, hey,

I saw you the other day, and I've been having a hard time because, or two months ago, I guess it was, I had a hard time two months ago,

I saw you or two weeks ago, whatever it was, and I saw that you were messing something up, you're making my job harder.

And then he said, well, that wasn't me. And it happened to be that there was another couple at the church that was an interracial couple, a black husband, white wife.

And so this guy, in a hypothetical scenario, gets angry at the janitor because it's like, well, you know, how could you confuse me with the other couple that looks similar to us in the as if that's racism.

And I remember, like, I read that, and I'm like, well, that's just being overly sensitive. Like, yeah,

I mean, I don't know, I've had people confuse me with my brother, I've had people confuse me with other people who look like me, and I don't, and certainly,

I think, if I was attending, or in a scenario in which there was only a few people who look like me, or who had even a similar cultural background and sounded like me and other things, then, like, that seems like just a inevitable scenario that would unfold eventually, someone's going to confuse me with someone else.

And that doesn't mean racism is at play or some hatred for some other ethnicity, it just means that you have, you have more in common with a particular person than other people do.

And because of that, from a distance, it's hard to tell you apart. And so for someone to get bent out of shape about that, and then for Isaac Adams to use that as an example of like, you know, you got to be so sensitive about these things.

It's like, well, yeah, but maybe the person who's really been out of shape needs to kind of grow up.

Maybe instead of addressing hypersensitivity, and maybe instead, we should address hypersensitivity and self focus.

Instead of targeting insensitive people, we should also at the very least talk about the hypersensitivity and the self focus some of these people have like, man, it's not all about you.

It's not not everything's motivated by by those kinds of things. Just so that's just one example.

But I noticed that throughout the book that there were situations in which, as a counselor, if I was in the situation,

I probably try to be persuading people to just grow up a bit here, have some grace, prioritize the right things, and you're not going to be mulling over and stewing over how someone said something that was could have been maybe mistaken to be somehow hatred or something.

And to me, this plays into something bigger, which is the fact that adults are vanishing in our society.

And we have a nation, we have a country of petulant children, irrespective of race. This is just everyone that seems like of just the younger demographics, or they just have everything's about them, they expect way too much, they're overly sensitive and offended by the smallest things, and then they handle it wrong.

And it's better just to kind of, you know, have some grace with people realize people are sinners, they say dumb things sometimes.

And sometimes, you know, what they even say is not meant to offend.

And, and so I'm not saying offense doesn't happen, it does. But we certainly we have veered more towards being overly offended over things that we shouldn't be that concerned about, it shouldn't affect us.

So that was one of the things I noticed that could have been helpful, a book on this subject could have could really be helpful if that was part of it of, hey, mature communication, and not taking offense unnecessarily.

But it wasn't there. Instead, it caves into, we just got to like avoid offense, offense, avoiding offense is such an important thing.

And you know what, you're not going to always be able to avoid offense. And honestly, you probably shouldn't be living your life with the object of your communication, just be avoiding offense, we want to try to avoid offending people unnecessarily, but it's going to be necessary.

And sometimes, people's irrational standards about what offends them have to be challenged.

Isaac's view on experience could be used to threaten his own objectivity. That's another observation I made, because he constantly talks about experience and how, if you're especially if you're a racial minority, your experience is going to be a certain way.

And it's important for people to listen to that experience. And we all have our experiences. But if that's true,

Isaac Adams also has his experience. And so I think that's important, as well in this whole thing to just realize that Isaac has his own experience.

And so is can he transcend that box? Or not? And if he can transcend that box, on what basis?

Can he do that? And why can't we? Or can we? So I just thought that's a potential issue

I can see someone bringing up about him. Now, I want to talk get into the meat about this.

I want to talk about CRT. In Richard Delgado's book, this is just a review, and Jean Stefansik's book,

Critical Race Theory and Introduction, the author identifies the authors identify seven basic teachings which characterize the ideology.

So those who have listened for a while, you know this, but let me just go through it. Racism is normative. Number one, racism is normative.

It's out there. It's not a question of where it is. Or, you know, is it in the room?

It's where is it in the room? Really? That's the question. So it's not is, it's where. Number two, race is a social construct created in order to allocate privilege.

That's the social construction thesis. So white privilege. Number three, white privilege maintains white dominance.

So if there's white privilege that exists, that means there's a racial hierarchy that exists and whites are on the top. Number four, colorblindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions.

So colorblindness is not an option. You can't look at someone and judge them by the content of their character. You gotta at least factor in the color of their skin, and actually you got to make that one of the more fundamental things.

Number five, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice only when it benefits them. That's called interest convergence.

So, you know, these people who got rid of segregation, you know, they're not necessarily anti -racist.

They could just be doing it because it benefits them, but they're still just as racist, and these aren't really advances.

That's a mirage. Number six, voices of color have access to special knowledge standpoint epistemology.

So we talked about that a little bit, but if you're someone who has an oppressed experience and you match a social location that the sociologists have said is oppressed, and you're politically motivated, then we got to listen to you.

You have something to say, but if you're from majority culture quote -unquote, or you have privilege, you really should just shut up and listen.

And then number seven, history should be reinterpreted according to minorities' experiences. This is now called memory studies.

So we look back at the past, what do offended people today think about it, and then let's tell the story from their perspective, because that's just fair.

It's been told from the other side, so we need to tell it from their perspective. Now, not all of these are...

I could stretch things, and I'm not going to. Not all of these are represented, but five of them are. Five out of the seven. Number one, racism is normative.

Well, here's what Isaac Adams has to say. Underlying all references to the police... well, sorry, this is what I said about a number of things

Isaac Adams says. Underlying all references to the police is the view that they are, at the very least, associated with racially motivated injustice, yet this view is not challenged.

You go through the book, if you just type in, like, police on a search in a book or something, go to all the places

Isaac Adams talks about the police, notice there is this implicit assumption that they're at the...

that the police... policemen are associated with racial injustice. All right?

And this is somehow... this is a valid assumption, and this isn't a challenged assumption in the book. It's just kind of...

that's the police. And you see it in the examples he gives. You see it even outside of that.

I mean, he makes... he draws a contrast at the end between... I think it was two siblings. One who went into the police force, and then one who's more motivated,

I guess, for social justice. It was something along those lines, and how that was like a contrast. It's like, well... so the police are on the other side of this divide.

And then you see this. How... the hunters, and this is... the hunters were a family in an example he gives in the book, but they're white.

How could the hunters of the world embrace a humble tone and so improve their conversations about race? They can enter conversations with a posture of lament.

So that's the thing you have to do. You have to just enter into conversations about, like, police shootings, or you just have to have a lament immediately.

And in so doing... and this is all in the context of race, of racism. So I would...

there's part of me that wants to say, yeah, like, you should have lament as far as, like, evil's been done, and there should be, like, at least a regret of some kind, or a hope that that wouldn't happen,

I guess. That we don't want that, because we want Christ's kingdom to be set up, and in Christ's kingdom this isn't gonna happen.

But to enter... to frame it that way, that in... we need to improve conversations about race, therefore enter these conversations with lament, that is signaling that, well, racism's at play here.

We need to have lament because there's racism. So that's an admission of a certain... that's buying into a certain type of analysis about shootings already.

Before you even discuss them, you have to have this posture, which implies, though, that it's motivated in part by racism, or racism is connected to it.

So that really does fall under this idea that racism is normative, that there's... that... that when this kind of thing happens, racism's at play somehow.

Police shootings specifically. Now, colorblindness. He talks about this, actually. He gets into more detail. He's... it's mentioned over 30 times in the book, and presented as a contributing factor to racism.

This is a quote. He says, don't want to steal... deal with race issues, just refuse to see them. The trouble is, ignoring our neighbor's racial suffering may mean that we don't have to deal with it, but it does not mean that our neighbor doesn't have to deal with it.

Yet, to be completely colorblind is to blind our eyes to the issues that may affect our neighbor. Biblical love seeks to open its eyes and see as much as it can as it strives to serve its neighbor and live with them in an understanding way.

Page 62 of the book. So colorblindness is not an option in the mind of Isaac Adams, and I think he has a term he uses, color awareness, that we should be...

or I forget, color consciousness, something like that. So we don't want to be too aware of color, but we don't want to be colorblind.

We should have this sort of color consciousness. And, you know, most people who say that they're colorblind, if anyone still says that, but years ago when you could say that, what they mean by that is they judge people primarily on the content of their character.

And when they say, I don't see color, you know, they were never saying, like, my eyes are colorblind, like, physically

I don't see color. There's... what they're saying is that, like, I'm not judging you based on the color of your skin.

I'm not looking at you and then just categorizing you according to the group you're part of.

I look at you as an individual. And so there's no prejudgment here.

That's what they're saying. Well, critical race theorists say, well, there's got to be prejudgment. You have to prejudge. That's how you know how to adjust, how you talk about these issues, and how you allocate resources to people is based on these external factors.

You have to prejudge. So Isaac Adams buys into that to some extent. He doesn't like the colorblindness thing.

So, and I've said, I think one of the issues with critical race theory is this idea that race is just a social construct.

And he doesn't really get into that. He probably assumes it to some extent. There's little clues here and there, but he doesn't...

There wasn't enough for me to, like, put that in the review. But I do think that it's not...

I don't think it's a social construct. I do think that it's... there's something more organic, but real, when it comes to this.

And, you know, I don't deny the obvious. And I don't think most conservatives do deny the obvious.

Political conservatives and just Orthodox Christians, they're not looking at things and saying, well, there's just no such thing as race in this.

Or let's use a different term, because some people get uncomfortable with that, because they think race is evolutionary. Which, that's not the origin of the word, but they heard a lot about it.

So let's use a different word to just... for the sake of people groups. Let's just say people. I use people a lot. There's different peoples.

No one would come along and say, well, like, no, there's not distinctions between people. Everyone knows there's distinctions between people.

So I'm totally fine with seeing people the way that...

externally, the way that, you know, they are physically, their physical features. I think that plays into who they are, not as a necessarily a primary component of their identity, but certainly a component of their identity.

Certainly. You look into the mirror and you see all your ancestors, right, are right there.

A lot of people who loved each other over the years and sacrificed and raised up children to the next generation, so forth,

I mean, that story is in your face when you look in the mirror. You can't tell me that there's not an identity connected with that to some extent.

There is. And that's not a bad thing. That's actually a good thing, and it shouldn't be a cause for hating anyone, because everyone has their own story that God has graciously allowed and has ordained.

And so that, though, isn't really getting at what colorblindness has been, at least the way

I've heard it used. Colorblindness has been about judging a man based on the content of his character, as opposed to judging him about the color of his skin.

And so it's hard, in a way, because the way Isaac Adams presents this is he tries to present this position, which seems kind of reasonable, like, hey, we should take into effect, into account people's race, but also don't make that the main thing, or the only thing,

I should say. And that seems kind of reasonable, but he's using the same language

CRT advocates would use. Just, you can't be colorblind. If you're colorblind, man, you're done messed up.

If you use that language, if you talk about being colorblind, if you just say you don't see race, then, man, that's what actually promotes racism.

And so that adds the same thing as critical race theorists would say. When it comes to white privilege, there's actually quite a bit here.

He says, now the term is not mentioned, but the concept is advocated. Let me give you some examples. He says, it seems to me that evangelicals can often see animal behavior, but not the cages that may be the factor in causing it.

Talking about inner cities. And, well, they see the behavior and the crime, but what's the cause?

What's promoting this kind of thing? Well, it's the fact that they've been shoved into ghettos, that they're poverty, and racism has something to do with this.

And so there's, what's the thing, if you peel back the onion layers, what's behind that?

What's behind a statement like that? Well, behind a statement like that is really a concept of white privilege.

That there are certain people that get to live in certain places because their social location is different.

They're higher up on some kind of a racial hierarchy, and that's why they live where they live, and that's why they don't participate in some of the crime that is common in inner city areas.

And it's, you know, you got to look at this structural, this systemic thing going on over here. And the whites would be the same way if they were in similar predicaments and had that kind of poverty.

And what I would say to that is, it's very brief, but it's very simple. Number one, Jesus said evil comes from within.

Number two, though, there really isn't an excuse for crime, for those kinds of things.

You can, Proverbs talks about how someone who steals bread, there's more compassion on that person because people kind of understand a little more why that happens, but it's still not excused that that was like a right thing to do.

So there's really not an excuse. There may be more of a tendency when you're hungry to steal, but, you know, how does that, you know, taking big screen

TVs from Best Buy, I mean, it's not, people are, people are fed. There's government programs, they're feeding people.

It's, it's not, it's not, it doesn't even fall into that category

I just mentioned from Proverbs, really. The other thing is, there are sections of this country which do not have the same kinds of crime rates, and yet, they're just as impoverished.

Even certain sections of Appalachia, and there may be, there may be some drug crimes and stuff in some of those areas, but,

I mean, you look at, look at violent crime, look at, there's a lot of different things you can look at, and, and it doesn't mean there is no correlation between the two, because even immoral behavior can also lead to poverty, and like I said from Proverbs, poverty can certainly incentivize certain kinds of immoral behavior, but there's plenty of places that you can look at that are poor, that are, that have, don't have access to health care like other places, have diseases in greater quantities, and they don't have the problems with crime, not even close to the kinds of murders that go on, and so it's not, that's not as simplistic, as simple as some people want to make it, and to try to connect this is,

I think behind all of this is this sort of assumption that it's, that white privilege is blinding people.

They, they just, they have benefits and wealth and things that they get to enjoy, and they just can't conceive of someone who doesn't have those kinds of things, and, and, and this one's more telling, though.

This one's really, I probably wouldn't even talk about white privilege or put that quote there if it wasn't for this quote.

You'll recall that Samantha Lee's definition of racism is limited to feelings of animus or prejudices that we consciously hold.

This is another of his fictional characters, but the character's not important. The important thing is there's a definition of racism, he's saying, and it's limited to these feelings, prejudices.

He's saying, I do think that Scripture testifies that we are more sinful than we care to admit, though.

So this is a contrast. He's like, here's a definition of racism. It's feelings of animus or prejudice that we consciously hold.

He said, hold on, Scripture says we can be more sinful than we care to admit, which is true.

He says, if this lack of overt racism means that I'm not a racist and you're not a racist, then why is there still so much racial inequality and conflict today?

Well, it's not the only answer. Structural racism can help us understand a big part of the answer. When I say structural racism, which many people call systemic or corporate racism,

I mean an unjust system, i .e. written or unwritten laws, traditions, procedures, formal or informal habits, cultural practices.

That wrongly favor an ethnic or racial group. Structural racism is so insidious because it operates regardless of one's individual intentions.

So there you have it, right there. That's where the white privilege stuff comes in.

You don't use the term, but the concept is here. So racism isn't hatred for someone else because of the color of their skin or whatever, their ethnic makeup.

It's racism is actually. So beyond that, well, what is it? Well, there's a structural, systemic, corporate racism, an unjust system, and it seems to be happening all around us.

We have these, and what is that? That's disparities, lack of access to certain things, disparities in the prison system, these kinds of things.

That must mean there's racism going on, which means someone's guilty for it.

Someone's got to be the one that promoted this kind of thing, which must mean that it's not feelings of animus or prejudice.

It's also something else. It's benefiting. What is it?

What's not being said here, but what's being implied? Well, it's benefiting from a structure that allocates certain benefits to you if you're white and then not to others.

That's what he's saying. That's white privilege. That's exactly what that is. So you see these critical race theory concepts kind of come up in the book.

Here's another one. CRT. Voices of color have access to special knowledge, standpoint epistemology.

CRT teaches this. I should say critical race theorists teach this. What does

Isaac Adams say? He says, why then should Darius, another fictional character in the book, and people like him generally speak first on matters of race?

So Darius is a black guy. He says, why should he speak first? They should speak first not because they know everything, spoiler alert, they don't, but because black voices have been marginalized for so long.

Okay, so there's a police shooting. Who gets to talk about it first? Who gets to frame the discussion?

Well, it's you got to have a black person do it. Why do you have to have a black person do it? Well, because they, black voices, have been marginalized.

Hunter would be helped, Hunter's a white guy, to understand that there is asymmetry historically, not inherently, between whites and blacks.

Otherwise, he'll continue scratching his head, wondering things like, why do we have Black History Month? Yet could it be that we have

Black History Month because in many textbooks and curricula, the other 11 months are more centered on the history of whites?

Could it be that's that what's white has often been assumed, unspoken, standardized as what's normal, hence historical asymmetry?

This is a total critical race theory objection here, that hey, all of American history is just about white people.

It's in Western Civ, of course, we're talking about white people here, therefore you gotta have a special month. I mean, where's this gonna end?

We're gonna have to have a month for every, every group's gonna have to have their month, but we need, we have a Black History Month now, and that's about it,

I guess, but on an official month, and I think different areas have, and different school districts probably have different other months.

I know that I've heard of Hispanic Heritage Month, probably called Latino Heritage at this point.

I've heard of Asian Heritage, if there's a group, an area maybe where there's more Asians, like San Francisco.

I mean, I've heard of these things, but the one that really exists for everyone, the one he references here in the

United States, is Black History Month, and so the assumption is that you have to have it, because if you don't have it, it'll never be talked about, and people need to know this, because it's a part of, for black people, it's part of their heritage.

Now, there, the thing is, I've talked about Black History Month before, and I don't want to get into all the weeds on this right now.

I think there's a good and a bad aspect to this, but I think that the people who are implementing it, for certain, had nefarious motives in wanting a

Black History Month, because it has now just become an opportunity to foment. It, when it is about the achievements of black individuals in this country,

I think you can possibly have a positive impact for everyone, and when it's something that is open to everyone, it's not necessarily guilting people who aren't black, but it's saying this is part of our heritage, all of our heritage, as Americans.

You have some social stability that you can, you can maintain, but if it's not that, if it's here's how terrible it is for black people, and we're gonna point out maybe some people who broke some barriers, and that's, they're important because of how terrible it is, and they overcame the odds, you, maybe you get a little bit of character, you know, hey, that person endured some things, we can learn from that character, but overall the effect is gonna be guilt for the groups that aren't black, or especially white people, really, they're gonna have guilt that, and they're not gonna be part of the story, it's not their story, it's not for them, and it's gonna end up being fomenting, this is what you did to us, and then maybe what you're still doing to us, which is why we need to have the

Black History Month. I'm more of an advocate, if you're going to teach American history, or any nation's history, really, any country's history, just teach the history of that country, and highlight the significant achievements, the significant individuals, that put, you know, presidents, and, and, you know, this is, of course,

Howard Zinn says, we can't do that, you got to teach history from below, yeah, you're gonna have to talk about the conditions on the ground for people who weren't rich and famous,

I'm not saying just talk about rich and famous, but talk about significant individuals, significant occurrences, talk about the things that everyone can share in common, that led to the state of affairs that exists today, and guess what?

Included in that are gonna be black people. How in the world do you tell the history of the United States without talking about George Washington Carver?

How do you do it? Revolutionize farming in the South. You can't, that's the answer.

Of course, Carver's not usually a major figure in Black History Month, because you don't really fit their agenda too well. I mean,

George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, both very prominent and very important figures in American history, and obviously they were black, and you talk about that, but it doesn't have to be off -segregate, that's the thing, you segregate history when you do this, and it's like they don't, like, segregation was bad, segregation was bad, let's segregate off a month for the black people.

Like, I don't know if anyone else is seeing this, but that's why I've always thought that about it, I'm like, so we're segregating in other areas?

Like, if we want to be one country, and we're united, then we shouldn't probably be doing that.

That's just, that's my opinion about it. I probably give you way more than I needed to on that particular topic, but we see the critical race theory coming out here, though, because the assumption is that there needs to be a protection.

You have to protect these marginalized voices, or else they'll be drowned out. You won't hear from them, so we need to protect them, and they're needed, we have, where they're necessary to hear these views, because they have access into a realm that white people just don't have access into.

When it comes to matters of race, and specifically in the book, it's a police shooting, then, well, you got to hear from the black people first.

That's just the way it is. So, that definitely fits in with the standpoint epistemology stuff. He literally says, on 167,

Isaac Adam says, when a minority tells you about their experience, believe them. Okay.

I mean, does that go for everyone? How about if a white person tells you about their experience? You just believe them?

Like, why? On what basis? Well, we know. So, number two, or I'm starting to say number two, this is actually number five.

History should be reinterpreted according to minorities' experiences, memory studies, and he definitely has a dose of that here. Let me give you some examples.

He said, yet we also understand that racism against Hunter likely does not carry the same weight as racism against Darius. If Darius is called the n -word, it's different than Hunter being called a cracker.

History compounds the insult to Darius, but not as much to Hunter. Injustice compounds the insult to Darius, but not as much to Hunter.

Masses of people have been lynched, mobbed, and discriminated against for being the n -word, but not for being white people.

I don't even want to say the term he's using for white people, or the term he's using for black folks here. Derogatory terms that are, at least today, they're viewed that way.

You go back a hundred years, maybe not as much, but, you know,

I remember going through American literature in school and having to read Tom, I think it was Tom Sawyer, and the n -words all throughout that, and my professor at the time, you know, we're going back what, 12 years,

I don't know, 13 years, my professor was a white lady who was completely liberal, and she would just say the n -word in class.

She would just say it, because we're reading Tom Sawyer, and the words in there, and, you know, and this wasn't meant, this wasn't thought of as racist, it wasn't even in Tom, and at the time it was, to some extent, to say it, but,

I mean, this was the time, though, that all the white kids, it seemed like, at the community college

I went to, who were into, like, hip -hop and stuff, they would all call each other the n -word. It was very confusing, but we, things have changed, things have changed a whole bunch since then, and, anyway,

I, so, he's drawing a, he's saying these things aren't morally equivalent, to call someone these things.

He says, you understand this principle, it's why we focus more care and attention on men abusing women than women abusing men.

It's not that the women hitting a man is better than the opposite, but that the opposite is far more prevalent, and the opposite reflects an abuse of a power dynamic.

Power abuses are especially heinous because of the perpetuator's use, authority, and strength to serve themselves rather than to bless others, so as we seek to love one another across racial lines, it is useful to remember that there is such a thing as asymmetry in history, and if we don't remember this,

I fear that many white brothers and sisters will continue to engage in ideological debates and polemics on race as conversations and are largely intellectual, individual exercises free from the freight,

I think it's supposed to be the weight, I don't know, free from the freight of history. So, let me read for you the two other quotes and then

I'll weigh in on this. Here's the other one. When it comes to police shootings, in contrast, this is my comment, but this is what he says, quote, because someone has done something wrong in the past does not necessarily mean they have done something wrong in the present.

Christians of all people should believe that people can change. So, listen to this. When it comes to police shootings, right, what do we have to do?

We just read about it. Basically, you have to let the black person talk. If it's a black person who's been shot by the police and you know someone who's black, they have to be the one to talk first.

When a minority tells you their experience, you got to believe them. You got to realize what's happened in history, which leads us to put more weight on someone being called the n -word.

That's more wrong. That's a greater offense. There's more weight of racism in that because of what's happened historically, which means things you can't,

I guess, believe things have really changed. And then, when it comes to, though, a criminal, let's say, someone with a criminal history who is shot by the police in the course of a crime, then you can't bring that criminal history into your analysis of it.

That's what he's saying. Just because someone has done something wrong in the past does not mean that they can't, that they have done something wrong in the present.

Christians, of all people, should believe that people can change. So listen to this. If people can change on an individual level, if they have a whole history of crime and then, you know, there's a crime and they're shot, then you can't bring any of that analysis into it, even though that's them personally.

But you have to bring in into an analysis of conversations about racism the entire history of people groups that might look like you.

Does that, does this make any sense? Does this, this seems like so contradictory to me. It's either one or the other.

And if anything, what's more fundamental to someone? What their ancestors might have done? Or what they themselves have done in their own life?

Obviously it's what they've done. So this is just super,

I don't even know what to say. It amazes me all the smart people who recommend this book and you have things like this. And literally two pages later, two pages after the quote

I just read you on bringing in the weight of history to bear on a conversation about this, and then two pages later where you can't bring in someone's personal history when discussing an incident.

It's like what? All right, so then the last thing is, a group of protesters have violently stormed the Capitol in attempts to stop the steal.

That is, the protesters are seeking to invalidate what they understand to be a fraudulent presidential election. I see a protester brazenly waving the

Confederate flag in the Capitol. I think how much this insurrection encapsulates the racial division and animosity of the present day.

I feel disoriented and yet unsurprised by the sixth day of January 2021.

It doesn't even call it January 6th, it's the sixth day of January. This monumental thing happened. So why do

I say that this is part of Critical Race Theory's, you know, interpreting history in the light of minority experiences?

Because that's what he does. That's what he does. He's looking at history and he's saying, well this is, it's offensive today because of what's happened in history, but also we need to look back at history and interpret it in terms of my offense or how it's offending people today.

We'll take the example from the Stop the Steal, all right? The Stop the Steal rally on January 6th was about one thing.

Stopping, and you could say maybe it's about more than that in the sense of all the implications, what would happen if Biden was president, right?

But the primary major issue connecting various groups of people who are very different, including a lot of racial minorities,

I was there, I saw it, I wasn't inside the Capitol, I was at the rally. They were there because they thought an election had been essentially stolen, fraud, but more than that.

And so he takes this one guy in the Capitol who happens to have a

Confederate battle flag and says, basically this whole event is just this insurrection.

He even calls it that. It wasn't an insurrection, I've talked about this before, but it encapsulates the racial division and animosity.

That's what that was about. Somehow that's connected to racism because there was a guy walking around the Capitol with a Confederate flag. Well, he's imposing upon the

Confederate flag his own interpretation. You know, what does that guy mean by carrying it?

I know what most people mean by it. I know what I think of. I think it stood for the people who fought and died under it.

That's the reason. You use it to decorate graves. When you fly it, it's in memory to them.

I mean, that's how I've always thought of that. And for a guy to come to the Stop the Steal rally with a

Confederate... and by the way, there were a lot of flags there. There was... I mean, I saw flags of even other countries there, but a lot of Trump flags, a lot of various American flags,

Don't Tread on Me flags, and yeah, there were some Confederate flags. And why do you think people would bring that to an event like that?

Well, it's probably people from southern areas, primarily, who in their minds know about a history of being invaded and, in their minds, oppressed by the national government.

And in their minds, that was something that was wrong. And their ancestors tried to fight against it, under that flag, in some cases.

And they failed. But those issues never went away. And we're still dealing with those issues.

We're still dealing with issues of corruption in the central...

in Washington. We're still dealing with big government and lying and unjustified unconstitutional policies, and culminating now in an election that's been compromised.

And so, in their minds, it would be perfectly appropriate to bring a flag like that, because it would make sense.

It would be what their ancestors fought against they think has come to fruition.

I can understand it pretty easily from a perspective of someone bringing a flag, and it doesn't have to do anything with race or racism.

But it has to. You must impose the idea that this has to be racist.

There is no other option. You're not even allowed to entertain that there could have been an other option in the minds of the people who would have brought a flag like that.

There can't be. It must be this. You have to impose that meaning, because that's what we think.

That's what I think in 2021. That's what I think of it. It's taking...

And then, of course, the whole event's characterized by it, which is completely ridiculous. You know, one guy with a flag, now the whole event is apparently that guy with a flag.

It's ridiculous. So, he does this with history.

He looks at something in the present time that would be just as wrong either way, calling someone a name that they would consider to be unnecessarily offensive and morally equivalent, you would think.

But it can't be, because, well, all this history. And we're gonna go back through the historical record, and we're gonna pick out all the things that were negative.

We might even... And some of these things very legitimate. Some of these things, I think, exaggerated. But we're gonna take all those things, and we're gonna use those to claim that, no, it's actually much worse to do the same kind of sin or the same kind of offensive thing against this particular social class, because, in the past, they've endured more.

You could cut this cake a lot of different ways. I've said this before. I mean, let's... Since we're talking about, you know, a guy with the

Confederate flag at the Capitol, what about the people in Appalachia? I talk about this in my book some. What about people in Appalachia who were invaded by the general government, when they didn't even own slaves or anything, in those regions?

They were, you know, a lot of them displaced by the...

When the National Park went in, in the Blue Ridge Parkway, displaced from their homes that they've lived in forever.

They were told that they'd have a better economy, because you will build prisons in your areas. And that didn't...

That actually created worse problems. They're impoverished. They have seven of the ten deadly diseases are afflict people in Appalachia more than anywhere else.

You know, they have less access to medical care because of distances and things like that.

They don't have good bottom land to farm. I mean, do they get any special treatment because of what's happened historically to them?

I mean, do Jewish people, I guess, really? I mean, they should have some... I mean, some of the things they've endured in Europe, including the

Holocaust, you know, do they get an upper hand? If you call someone a Jewish slur or something, is that...

You know, let's run the test. Does that mean that they have more of a right to be offended than someone who's

Black? Because maybe their family's endured more. Or we take this on an individual family basis, and we just start tracing things out.

And we take into effect into account religious persecution as well. And regional disparities between people groups.

You know, and maybe we take into effect, I don't know, you know, mental illnesses. Or, I mean, what...

How far does this go? Because you start playing the intersectional train here. I think it's very simple. You don't get in...

You don't have to get into all of this. It's actually very simple. Unnecessarily offending someone by calling them something that's derogatory is wrong.

How's that? Or, if it's not derogatory, then someone needs to just grow up and kind of get over it to some extent.

Or maybe both can work together and say, I didn't realize you were offended. I won't say that. And someone can say, you know what?

I took too much offense to that. Whatever. But we don't have to bring in all this historical baggage.

You could just say, in the present, in the here and now, when I'm interacting with my neighbor, I don't want to unnecessarily offend them.

I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to devalue them. I don't want to say anything that would cause them to think that I think less of them because of something external about them.

It's pretty simple. Sin is sin, right? Whether it's done from one party to another, or that party to the other party.

Whether it's a Hispanic person and an Asian person, or an Asian person doing a Hispanic person, or a man to a woman, or...

It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter. It's wrong.

And that's the way we should be viewing this kind of thing. Instead of, well, let's run the calculation now. What did his ancestors have to experience?

Oh, wait. You're Black, but you're not from the United States? Your parents came here when you were a baby?

Oh, I guess you don't have any of that baggage. Therefore, we don't... Like, come on. Come on. So this plays right into the memory study stuff and really the standpoint theory stuff to some extent.

And it just has the potential to create more problems, which Isaac Adam is supposed to be arguing against creating more problems.

I think the end of this book is really this. This is the note it strikes and why people are recommending this book.

And I'm going to read for you this quote. And I just put the head in. Can't we all just get along? Here's the quote. In other words, our neighbors are not mere conversation points.

They're people to love. You might think a local impoverished community looks the way it does for one reason, and a fellow church member might think it looks that way for a different reason.

But if you both could agree that it needs help, could you find a common solution and work to implement it?

The answer is yes, unless you both spend most of your time arguing with one another. Racial discussants shouldn't become distractions from helping our neighbors.

They should be means for us to learn how to better love them. We could ask the following three questions about any given issue to produce more fruitful conversations.

Number one, the historic question, what happened? Number two, the judicial questions, what is right? And number three, the ethical question, what should be done about it, if anything?

So here we have the can't we just all get along statement. You know, hey, we have differences, different solutions, but can't we just approach this problem?

And I've said many times in this podcast, if you assume the if you assume the solutions, if you buy into the analysis of the problems that leads into the analysis of the of the solutions and what the solutions are going to be.

And so Isaac Adams has some fundamental things he believes that someone like myself and other

I would think people attempting to be more orthodox in their theology, that's really what this all boils down to.

It's not just a political thing. We don't believe we think that this is dangerous. This would destroy inerrancy if we give we have to give more weight to someone's opinion.

If they are a specific from some specific social location, a really bad idea there.

You start doing that. I mean, do we just have Bible studies and go, you know, should we should we do it there too? And say, well, this verse is about oppression.

Let's ask the person whose people have been the most oppressed, according to the sociologist or something that seems ridiculous, but that's where the logic would end up leading.

So I look at this stuff and I see a soft critical race theory popping right out.

Five elements of it seem to be present, at least to some extent in this work, five out of the seven.

And so I would say that, yeah, T4G is recommending a book that certainly advocates in some form a soft critical race theory while having sessions supposedly against critical race theory.

And yeah, of course, the book doesn't use the term critical race theory. And you're going to see this more and more. You're not going to see the term white privilege used.

You're not going to see even maybe systemic racism used. You're not going to. There's going to be a lot of things you're going to see fade away.

You're not going to see them used because people know we're onto them, but they're going to try to introduce it in other ways.

And a book like this seems to me at the end of the day, however good the motives were for writing it, it's deceptive. So you kind of pick it up thinking like this is going to help me navigate conversations about race when it doesn't even really do that.

It doesn't give you needed information. It's it really just it condemns the people that it condemns are the people who are too aggressive in their approach.

And then it kind of underneath the surface pedals this soft CRT as if that's that's somehow a given that's neutral.

That's not really up for discussion. But our solutions are up for discussion. But these things aren't up for discussion, which happened to lead to the solution.

So it's inherently contradictory, unhelpful. I wouldn't recommend it.

But it's written in such a way that especially for the first half of the book, as you're reading it, it seems like this is going to get off to a good start.

And it's going to produce in our church peace. We can have people of different political persuasions here.

And I think that's just an illusion. It's not you can't do it that way. It's not going to happen. And the next event that dredges up all this stuff, this book is not going to be the helpful thing.

There may be a few things in there that are helpful. You know, people should be nicer to each other. Yeah, I agree. People should be nicer to each other.

But we have to get back down to the fundamental issues at play here. Issues like what is justice?

What is race? Did God ordain it? What is truth?

And how do we find truth? And what's the best avenue for finding truth? The gospel, you know,

I didn't get into that as much. There really isn't a lot here. Some of the recommendations in the book talk about how he brings in gospel solutions.

I think J .D. Greer and Mark Devers' statements about the book, their endorsements said, you know, the gospel focused or something like that.

And I read it. I didn't really see that, honestly. There's little hints of it here and there, references.

It doesn't primarily focus on that, though. So this book isn't even that. It's a way, though,

I think, for pastors especially to feel like they are to justify in their mind the route that they've taken to try to kind of go soft woke, but primarily draw moral equivalencies here and be like, well, anti -woke is bad, and woke is also bad.

And we're kind of in this middle, neutral ground. And Isaac Adams seems to try to be that, like I'm the neutral kind of guy here.

It's not, though. It definitely leans towards the CRT end of stuff. And that's all there is to it. So I hope that was helpful for some of you.

Links in the info section. I'm going to put the slideshow link for patrons in the info section as well.

If you're in a study that might want to use this, all the page numbers are there and everything.

So you can go back and you can take a look at it. And God bless. More coming. We're going to—next episode,