More John Piper on Race - It Gets Even Worse

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Alright, well let's jump right back into this today. Now, as expected, mixed reviews on yesterday's video.

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A lot of people are very defensive of John Piper. I understand. I totally get it. I don't have any ill will towards you at all for getting his back.

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Not at all. Because John Piper has been a hero in the evangelical movement. And I've said many times that he was one of my heroes as well.

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So I totally get it. I'm not going to hold it against anybody. However, I did get a criticism that I didn't quite understand.

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They were saying how, a couple people mentioned how I suspiciously left out the second half of the video where he cleared up everything that he said in the first half.

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And there's really nothing suspicious about it. I said in the very beginning that I had not watched this and I was just going to do this as a live reaction.

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If you don't like the live reaction, I understand. It's not for everybody. But that's what it is.

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There's nothing suspicious about it. I was very open about what I was doing. Now, a lot of people were saying how the beginning part is better once you hear the second part, like the second half of this video.

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And maybe they're right. I said this in the comments. I said, maybe you're right. I hope you're right. I have my doubts.

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And I still do. I have my doubts. But we'll see. Now, I'm going to jump right into it. I want everyone to know that I'm starting to play this at 1 .25

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speed because John Piper speaks entirely too slow. It's hard to get through.

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It's hard to... I just want him to say something already, right? We're seven minutes into this. He hasn't really said much.

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Let's jump right in because I want to hear more about how the term critical race theory is just a pejorative.

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Most of us did. He said he was born and raised in inner city Philadelphia, went to University of Pennsylvania, majored in Africana studies and sociology, became a

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Christian his freshman year, was formed by evangelicalism. And during his studies, during all that undergraduate work in Africana studies, he never heard about CRT at the

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University of Pennsylvania. Right. So this is where we ended up last time. And when I actually did the review of Razul's presentation,

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I mentioned that I did hear about critical race theory in school, but it was never presented to me as, okay,

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Adam, you are now going to learn critical race theory. It wasn't like that. It was like, here's our situation, right?

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This is the situation. And people would espouse critical race theory all the time. And they wouldn't actually tell me that that's what it was.

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Now, looking back, I can see, oh, okay, I see where that, where they got that. That's a Marxist thing. That teacher was probably a

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Marxist, you know, that kind of thing. And I explained that a lot further in the video that I did.

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In fact, there's a very specific teacher that I had. He was a, he was a black teacher. He was on loan from Howard University and the class was

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Afro Caribbean philosophy. And he taught, he taught me unadulterated critical race theory without telling me it was critical race theory.

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And that's very possible. We need to recognize that fact. I don't know why that's so difficult for some people to understand that you can, you could have ideas in your mind and really not know where they come from.

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This is obvious, but this is a big point of controversy. I don't really understand why.

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Quote him, quote, the brothers and I had not even heard of critical race theory until we were told that when we said something needs to change, when

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George Floyd was kneeled on, we were being held captive by critical race theory.

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What are you talking about? We said, I'm just trying to respond to the injustices all around me.

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All right. So that's a, that's an amazing example. I honestly cannot believe that he just said that because this is the reality, right?

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Like, like the George Floyd incident is actually a perfect example. I'm glad he brought this up, but I honestly can't believe he thinks this works in his favor.

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Like pastor John, like you have to understand that many pastors, and I don't know if you were one of them.

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It's very likely that you were, because this is what everybody did. The George Floyd incident happened and they said, wow, this, this, this is systemic racism.

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Look at what happened to George Floyd, racism, racism, racism. I cannot abide to look at any more of this racism in our police force.

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And the thing is like, like, I know you don't think you're doing this, but when you do that, you're employing critical race theory.

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You might not know that you're doing it. You might not agree that you're doing it, but you are, because this is a perfect example.

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So a black guy is killed by a white cop, allegedly, because we are actually not even sure that that's what killed him at this point.

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But let's just go with that narrative. Let's say that the white cop choked this guy out until he died, right?

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There is nothing about those sets of facts that leads me to believe that this is an example of systemic racism, unless you are employing critical race theory and the whole power dynamics thing and, and, and all of this kind of stuff, or you're buying into that narrative at least at some level that whites and blacks get together and something bad happens.

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Well, whites are the oppressors and blacks are the oppressed. Nevermind the fact that this man was high as a freaking kite.

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Nevermind the fact that he was resisting arrest or whatever he was doing, right? Because there's, there's a million examples like this, right?

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There was even an example shortly after that, where a black guy comes at a white cop, like a lunatic with a knife, it looked like one of those video games, like those, those shooting video games where the, you know, the hordes of enemies come at you with knives and it's like, and that white cop shoots the guy because he's defending his life.

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And there was marches over that. It's like, but the thing is, you can only say that that's racism if you're buying into critical race theory at some level, because in reality, in the real world, we're like, oh yeah, but that black dude was about to stab this black, this white guy.

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So of course he got shot. I would do the same thing if someone was about to kill me, like, you know what

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I mean? Like, and, and Pastor John, sorry, you're not really qualified to talk about this because you wouldn't even defend your wife if she was being attacked by a rapist or something like that.

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But like, in reality though, John, that's a perfect example because you're like, something needs to change.

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It's racism. Well, how do you know that the only way you could possibly know that is if you're employing critical race theory about the

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George Floyd incident. Now, listen, if you want to dispute some of the details that I've presented here, great, because the details actually matter in every case.

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So the George Floyd case, the Michael Brown case, whatever the case you want to bring up, I'm all about talking about the details.

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But you see, that's not what most pastors did. That's not what most people were doing. Most people were doing was just, see, racism.

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Well, show me how it's racism. Well, there's really no evidence. It's just employing the critical race theory narrative that it's, well, it's got to be racism.

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And that's, that's the problem. That's the problem. So it's like, Razul wasn't just looking at the facts and saying, oh, yeah, well,

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I saw that George Floyd incident. Yeah, the white cop right before he killed him. He says, I'm going to kill that black guy because I don't like black people or something like that.

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And then then I knew that something needed to change. It's like, well, yeah, you weren't doing that, though. That's not what happened.

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All you saw was what the media presented, which was a 10 second clip, whatever it was. And you're like, oh, racism.

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That's because you are captive to the ideology that allows you to do that. See, the scripture doesn't allow you to do that.

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The scripture doesn't allow you to just say things and just assume things without having the information. The scripture says you ought to reason frankly with your neighbor.

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You need to hear both sides of the case. Right. That's what the scripture demands. And so if you are captive to the scripture, you would say,

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OK, this looks bad. Every Christian said that this George Floyd incident, that looks pretty bad. But we need to hear this out.

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We need to actually figure out what happened here. We need to see what happened before that video and what happened after that video. And we need to figure out what the situation is.

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The toxicology results actually do matter. And all this kind of stuff like that's if you're held captive to a

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Christian worldview, that's what you'd have to do. But when you're held captive to another kind of worldview, and I would argue that it's obvious, very obviously critical race theory, then you don't have to do any of that stuff.

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You can just go march in the streets for the systemic racism that actually doesn't exist. But it does exist if you're a critical race theorist.

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That's the issue. And so that's a very appropriate use of the idea of being held captive to a critical race theory ideology because you're actually employing it.

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I can tell you your faith by your works. And so if your works are evil, in other words, if you join the lynch mob against systemic racism based on a 10 second clip of George Floyd, that's an evil work.

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And I can tell you what you serve based on that work. This is not like you just throw that out there.

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You're actually just what you're doing is you're interpreting what people are actually doing to demonstrate their faith. I mean, that's that's pretty standard.

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Let's see what John has to say about this, because obviously he thinks this example works in his favor somehow.

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I can't imagine why he would think that. And then he explains, I'm being given a label, he says, that I don't really want to be talking about.

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I will. That's tough luck, tough luck, because the reality is you're being given a label for a reason.

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You see, this is the thing, guys, you need to start owning some of this stuff. Like if somebody consistently called me a communist or something like that or consistently called me an antinomian and people were just content, they called me all this stuff.

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Right. And I'm like, let me evaluate myself to make sure that I'm not actually these things.

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That doesn't mean that I'm these things, but you need to start doing some self -evaluation. Like people call me a white supremacist all the time.

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Right. People call me a racist all the time. And you know what? Like in the beginning, I was like, I knew

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I wasn't a racist, but I was like, OK, well, let me think about what I'm saying here. Let me ask them, why are you saying that?

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What about what I said is white supremacy? And the reality is that I would hear somebody out very seriously if they had credible reasons why they were calling me that.

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Now, typically why they call me that is because I'm a capitalist or I'm a conservative, and that's not legitimate, obviously.

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But like I would hear people out. And so I don't know why Pastor Razul is like so shy. I don't I don't understand why

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I don't want to talk about this. Well, there's a reason why we need to talk about this, because whether you know it or not,

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Razul, and I think at the time I said, maybe you don't know, I believe you. But the thing is, whether you know it or not, the things you are espousing come from somewhere.

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And that place is not the Bible. And I can prove it. You should probably start taking us more seriously and owning your own words.

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And the thing is, if you don't, that's fine with me. I'm going to continue to call a spade a spade. But like you would probably improve your own position if you actually took us seriously and didn't just assume that we were throwing pejoratives out there.

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John Piper, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to just assume that we're just like, yeah, we're not thinking about it.

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We're just throwing it out there. We're going to tar you with it because we don't we don't care. It doesn't matter. No, no, no. We're actually saying it for a reason.

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John, that's the problem. Like there's no reason to assume that we're just using it as a pejorative and we haven't thought about it.

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That's preposterous. John, I'm sorry. I want to be talking about the death that is in the street and the disparities like COVID having a disproportionate impact on people of color.

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We see these disparities across education, health care, economics. I would rather talk about that.

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But any time you talk about that in Christian circles, you are given this title. No, that's absolutely not correct, because I talk about those things all day long.

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My channel is all about the disparities. Thomas Sowell wrote an entire book about discrimination and disparities.

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And yet he is never called a critical race theorist. John, you are bearing false witness again.

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I heard that this got better later on. People were commenting in the comment section this was going to get better. No, this is actually getting worse.

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You're bearing more false witness. No, it's not about talking regarding the disparities and the inequalities and trying to figure out why is

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COVID supposedly affecting black people more than white people? Right. Because I don't even understand any of the information regarding COVID because it's all controversial.

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It's all very suspicious. But let's just go with it. Nobody's being called a critical race theorist for saying let's get to the bottom of these disparities.

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Right. I do it all day long. And I can guarantee you, John, I've never been called the critical race theorist, at least as far as I know.

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It's about how you interpret the data, John, because I recognize there's a disparity between Puerto Rican income and wealth and white income and wealth.

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I recognize it. And you see, when I look at the data, I look at it and I hope I'm doing it in a fair way, but I don't do it in a way that's informed by critical race theory.

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So therefore, nobody calls me a critical race theorist. I don't say, oh, disparity, injustice, injustice.

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That's how a critical race theory does it. They say, oh, there's a disparity. Well, there must be an injustice. Let's go march in the street. That's not how

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I do it. I try to get to the bottom of it. And I think, was there any other reason why this might be? And I come to lots of different conclusions about why it might be that my family has less wealth than a white family.

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There's lots of reasons why that might be that have nothing to do with injustice. Now, might it be injustice?

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I'm open to it. Show me. That's my thing. This is the thing. Like, could it be an injustice?

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Sure. Show me. And that fact where I say, show me, that's why

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I'm not a critical race theorist. Because a critical race theorist is like, well, what do you mean, show me? Look at the disparity. No, John, that's not how it works.

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Biblically, that's not how it works. And again, I can't believe you think this stuff actually works in your favor.

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This actually works against you. Yes, people are given over to critical race theory. And I'll admit, some of them might not even know it.

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Some of them might know it. And some of them might not know it. And that's a problem. And that's why we cannot stop talking about critical race theory, because it's about time that you understood, if you're given over to critical race theory, and you think a disparity equals an injustice, let me bring you to the scripture to show you again and again and again, where God does not, actually teaches the opposite of that, where an income disparity is actually totally just, completely just.

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Right? I can take you to the scriptures to many, many, many places that teach that exact concept.

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And so it's like, you need to actually, you need to get a new mind, right? You need to renew your mind.

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You need to get rid of the critical race theory. And you need to put into it biblical law and biblical justice and things like that.

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So we will not stop talking about critical race theory, John, we won't. Even if you don't own it, you don't know where your ideas come from.

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That's why it's even more critical for us to identify where your ideas come from. They don't come from the Bible, John.

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That's why we need to tell these people this, John. I don't know why you would take that tool set away from us. You would never tell, you would never say, well, if a

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Muslim has a bad idea about God, you don't want to tell them that it's a Muslim. Of course you do. That's Islam.

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This is the scripture. We need to make a comparison, a contrast, John. There's no reason to start this conversation with, don't talk about critical race theory.

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They're just talking about the disparities that prove racism. So don't talk about critical race theory.

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They're just talking about critical race theory. Okay, John. And then he adds, more energy is being devoted to the tethering of critical race theory to what we are saying, then he's being devoted to the problem of racism itself.

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Yeah, because many of us don't think that the problem of racism itself is as big a deal as you think it is.

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And the reason why is because we are not critical race theorists, right? So, of course, we're going to say, listen, all of us would say, look, real racism, we are in.

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We want to fight it. Show it to us. Show it to us. I'm not going to spend one iota of energy trying to root out racism from the evangelical church if racism isn't defined properly.

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But where it is defined properly, I'll expend energy. So that's what I always say. It's like, well, we have a problem with racism in the

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Southern Baptist Convention and everyone always says, okay, great. Show us the racist pastors. We want to get them out of here. We want to kick them out.

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We want to kick them out. The problem is then you're like, well, look, there's Tom Askell, racist pastor. There's James White, racist pastor.

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He's not in the Southern Baptist Convention. But it's like, okay, so show us how he's racist. And it's usually just like, well, he doesn't agree with critical race theory.

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So, no, I'm not going to spend one iota of energy thinking about that. Show me and I'll fight it with you.

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I always say this and yet nobody seems to care to show me. I don't know, man.

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I mean, it doesn't make much sense to me, but you do you. Or more broadly, he expresses his concern this way.

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The church is being brought ethical concerns and is responding with epistemological critique.

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Like a man who tells you he's bleeding and you ask, how did you come to that conclusion?

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This is the whole problem again, like because the man who's coming out to me and says he's bleeding,

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I can see that he's not freaking bleeding. And so if I can see that he's not bleeding,

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I have to ask him, why are you saying you're bleeding? Maybe it's something I can't see. Maybe it's something that's underneath the clothes.

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Maybe it's internal bleeding. So maybe there's a good reason for it. So I'll ask, mister, you say you're bleeding.

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I see no blood. Where's the blood? How do you know you're bleeding? And then the person walks away and say, obviously,

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I'm bleeding. And I'm like, but no, you're not obviously bleeding. Because if you were obviously bleeding,

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I would see it. But I don't. So show me. And then they get all pissed off. Why are you asking me to show you?

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Okay, that's the end of that conversation, I guess. So it's just unbelievable to me.

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Because if somebody's obviously bleeding, you're right. I'm not going to ask you, how did you come to that conclusion?

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But that's just the point. Because we're not critical race theorists, this isn't obvious.

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We don't want to employ these lenses that make us see things in racial terms that we don't know are in racial terms.

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That's critical to this conversation. And so if someone comes out to me in his hand, I'm cut,

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I'm cut. And I can see the blood dripping down. Of course, I'm not going to ask him how he knows he's cut. I can see that he's cut.

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But if someone comes at me looking perfectly okay and say, I need help, man. I'm bleeding. I'm going to say,

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I can't see it. Where are you bleeding? And if he refuses to show me, he just says, I'm bleeding though.

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Help me. What can I do if he refuses to show me? I don't know, man.

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I just don't know. Maybe I'm missing something here, Pastor John. But to me, it seems that the epistemological concern is critical if we don't understand what the heck you're talking about.

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I mean, it seems critical to me. But for some reason, you're like, well, that's wrong. That's evil. That's mean. What is it actually,

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John? No. It's like, well, I want to see, I want evidence of two or more witnesses. That's all we're saying.

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We want evidence here. We want evidence. And you're telling me that's what is unloving? I said that my aim here is to get at biblical relational issues that are relevant quite apart from the definition of critical race theory.

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So in view of what we've just heard from Rasool Berry, let me state two of those biblical relational principles, then unpack them one at a time.

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Yeah, well, yeah, we'll hear him out here. But the thing is, though, that he wants to divorce this from the conversation on the definition of critical race theory.

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But the thing is, you actually can't do that, number one, because every example he's used here, in order for us to go with it, we have to embrace critical theory, at least at some level.

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And so we need to understand what we're talking about, right? Like, before you can do justice, you actually need to establish the facts of the matter.

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That's required for a Christian. So a Christian is required to love his neighbor. It says in the scripture, don't hate your neighbor, reason frankly with him.

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It connects those two ideas. So if you don't reason frankly with your neighbor, what the scripture says is that's actually an example of you hating your neighbor.

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And so relationally, we're supposed to love God and then love our neighbor. And that love is defined by the scripture.

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It's defined by the law of God. The moral law of God shows us what it is to love.

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Love is not just an ishy, squishy feeling deep inside your little tummy tum. It's actually an action.

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Love is primarily an action, how you behave towards a person. And so if a person comes to me,

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I need to reason frankly with them. I need to treat them according to the law of God. That's the relational priority.

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It has to be. And so you can't just hear someone, you know, espousing critical theory to you and not reason frankly with them.

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That's the opposite of love. We don't do that to any other religion. Why would we do it to critical race theory?

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Why would we do it to critical race theory? And that kind of reminds me, because this is something I missed in the very first video where he said, well, there's relations involved.

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It's not just an ideology. It's not just intellectual kind of thing. That's true,

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John. But nothing is just intellectual or just ideology. Every ideology is connected to a person.

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And so it's always personal relationships that we're talking about here. So there's really no reason for you to treat this differently,

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John, because of what's relational. No, no. Every ideology, there's no such thing as a disembodied ideology.

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It's always relational. Every belief system involves relationships. There's no reason to treat this one differently.

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It's very interesting to me, John, that you would treat this one differently and not others, because the reason that you use to do that, it's invalid.

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It's every ideology, every intellectual exercise involves interpersonal relationships and relationships in general within the church and without the church.

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And so I just find it very... I wonder what the real reason is that you're treating this one so differently. I have theories, but what you've presented actually doesn't work.

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It doesn't make any sense at all. Let's hear you out, and then we'll finish. Number one, Christians should be careful not to slander a

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Christian brother by the careless use of pejorative labels like critical race theory.

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That's principle number one. Principle number two, when a Christian brother is honestly analyzing and exposing false beliefs or unbiblical ways of thinking like critical race theory, we should not silence or denounce the brother by pointing to blood in the streets.

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Now, let me say... Right. So, okay, great. So he thinks critical race theory is unbiblical.

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Every Big Eva person is saying that now. That's the popular thing. But the problem is, like, they do that in one breath.

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And then the other breath, they're talking about critical race theory influenced ideas, like George Floyd was killed because of a racist system.

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He just did it. You know what I mean? It's unbiblical, but here's some things that I got from it that we're going to talk about.

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Like, that doesn't make any sense. Right? So this whole idea, and we're going to stop here, right?

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Because this video is long enough. We'll keep going. We'll keep going. So, but, you know, this whole idea that Christians should be careful not to slander, obviously.

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Obviously. But the impression being given here is that when this word is used about Pastor Razul, or an idea put forward by somebody, that that's just something...

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It's just careless. He even said care... That's the word he used. Careless. Yeah. Unthinking. Just this... It's a pejorative.

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It's just trying to hurt their reputation. It's like, no, no, it isn't. What it actually is, is saying, hey, what you just said, that's not something that a

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Christian is biblically allowed to say. That's unchristian to do that. It's unchristian to do

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X, Y, Z. And really, that's actually more in line with critical theory. In fact, that's probably where you got it.

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You might not know that you got it from there, but that's where that kind of an idea comes from. It comes from critical theory.

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This is the thing. You want to call it a pejorative? You can do that all day long, but that's just propaganda until I see some receipts.

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Show me someone who's doing it in an unthinking way. Who's doing it in an inappropriate way. Who's just throwing it out there.

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Doesn't care. Doesn't matter. Show me an example of that, and I'll condemn that with you. But the problem is, you probably can't do that, because most people actually use it appropriately.

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Say, yeah, that's an idea. That's influenced by critical theory. That's influenced by critical theory. I've been told I've slandered people as critical theorists that call themselves critical theorists.

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Like self -proclaimed critical theorists. They say, I'm a critical theorist. And then I say, that guy's a critical theorist.

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And they're like, what are you, slandering people? This is our problem, John. This is the impression that this video gives, and it's a lie.

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It's bearing false witness, and you're continuing to do it, and you bore more false witness in this section as well.

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And it's very disappointing, to be perfectly honest with you. Anyway, so far, this is not getting any better, guys.

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I'm sorry if you don't like my style. That's, actually, I'm not sorry. I shouldn't say that. That's a lie. I'm not sorry if you don't like my style.

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This is how I'm doing it. But I hope you found this video helpful. If you have any other pushback or questions, please, in the comment section.

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I will absolutely try my best to respond to you and to incorporate it into the next video. Thank you for watching.