A Social Justice Evangelical Vocabulary of Terms

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Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. For those watching and wondering, I am in a closet, basically.

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This is actually the room that I grew up in in my elementary school, early junior high, well, actually junior high and early high school,

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I think, days. And I was much smaller back then and it looked much larger. And now that I'm larger myself,

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I'm taller and everything, I'm looking around and I'm saying, you know what, this was a closet. But it was converted into a little sewing room for my mom.

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She doesn't have any projects now, so she said, go ahead, take that for the next, you know, one, two, three weeks, however long

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I'm here while we are doing renovations and repairs on my house, which has not been lived in by myself or my wife for about four years.

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So we're working on that and working hard just about every day. And this is a temporary situation.

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But hopefully you're happy and I'm happy, I know I am, that we can return to some of the quality podcasts in this sort of mini studio that we had just a few weeks ago.

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So today the topic is actually very important in my mind, very applicable, very practical.

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It's gonna help you as you're looking for churches or even sitting in your own church. Yellow flags will now go off as you hear some of the terms

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I'm gonna talk about. But the topic is, social justice evangelicals and their vocabulary of terms. Social justice evangelicals and their vocabulary of terms.

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I'm gonna start with this. The left for the last 100 years, more than that, 150 years, perhaps, the early days of it, they've been really taking the dictionary and redefining things, emphasizing things, creating categories for things that fit their conception of reality, there we go, eliminating categories that do not fit their conception of reality.

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And that's how they've been progressing by one of the major ways, by owning the language. And I'll give you some examples of that.

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One is the word honor, honor. How often do you hear the word honor or maybe duty? These used to be words that you'd hear all the time.

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In fact, in the recent past, people used to duel, they used to kill each other over defending honor.

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Wasn't that uncommon? Wasn't that long ago? Not saying, not defending dueling,

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I'm just saying it was very important. Today, you hardly ever hear about it. What do you hear though?

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What kind of words are important? Equality, inclusion, diversity, equity, to some extent tolerance, but tolerance is even kind of falling out of favor.

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You don't hear that word as much anymore because now the left is intolerant and they have gained the upper hand and they wanna push their conception of reality onto everyone else.

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So this is what we've been living in. And I wanna give you some more examples of how the left has twisted some concepts in words or how really words evolve over time.

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I'm not even saying there's a smoke -filled room and they're deciding what words to pick and to redefine.

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It doesn't necessarily work like that. It takes place over time.

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Sometimes it's even sometimes organic, not all the time. I think lately, especially, there's been very purposeful ways in which the dictionary is being abused and things are being redefined.

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But the examples I'm about to give to you just show a shift in society over time in how they view some of these terms.

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What comes to your mind? And this is an experiment here for yourself. What comes to your mind when you think of the terms life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the

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Declaration of Independence? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. A few years ago,

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I was at a church and the pastor there opened his sermon with that line and then proceeded in the rest of the sermon to denigrate the founding fathers and the

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United States for being a system in which rights are protected and preserved.

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And that this was a bad thing because Christians are supposed to be giving up their rights and privileges. And I did not disagree with the conclusion that Christians should be willing to give up certain things and make sacrifices.

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Here's the problem though. He did not understand what the founders meant by rights. He did not understand the

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American system, if you wanna call it even a system, or systems really is more accurate. The American systems, the extension of British common law that took root in the

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United States have attached to them a concept of negative rights, negative rights.

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Not what FDR gave us, positive rights. You have a right to all these privileges.

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You have a right to healthcare, right? No, you don't have a right to healthcare. You have a right to a living wage and you don't have a right to a living wage.

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I mean, it's not something that, there's not an obligation on the central authority, the government, the national government to provide a living wage for you.

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The issue is that, in the central issue here, the issue that gets misunderstood is that rights were tethered to responsibilities.

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In the minds of the founders, rights meant you had the duty, another word that's not used much today, to fulfill your responsibilities before God, for your family, for yourself.

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So when you read life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what's the pursuit of happiness? Is it just pleasure?

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That's what this pastor thought. It was just pursuit of happiness means LGBT stuff. It means sexual anarchy and it doesn't.

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That's not what they meant by it at all. It meant self -sufficiency. It meant self -government. It meant you have the ability to make something of yourself and to live.

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And yeah, there were hierarchies. This was written at a time. There were hierarchies in place that were pretty much, in large part, unquestioned.

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Women could not vote at that time. Slavery existed. But so what's the

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Declaration of Independence about then? What can it possibly be talking about? The pursuit of happiness. Doesn't that mean egalitarian equality of some kind?

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Is necessary for this? No, it doesn't. That's the assumption today when people read modern ideas of happiness back into the

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Declaration of Independence. It wasn't a pleasure -seeking happiness. It was a happiness of economic self -sufficiency without the imposition of the government.

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You have to think of the context in which it was written. You have to think of what the purpose of that document was.

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To complain, to show that the rights of British citizens were being violated.

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They were not able to pursue what? Their own happiness. What was their own happiness?

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The extension of their ability to pursue economic and in some cases,

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I mean, this went into, at least in the context of the time, there was a religious component to it.

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There was concern that there would be imposition of state church ideas or a state church of some kind into the

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United States. But freedom of conscience. I mean, you can look at what eventually the men who got behind this thing did when they formed the

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Constitution and the Bill of Rights to find out what they meant by that. It's not really a mystery.

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And it was a stop sign. It was saying that this is as far as the national government can go and no farther, right?

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It was limiting another central authority, an entity, saying you can't impose on these rights.

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Because you know why? Because these are things that we are responsible for. We have to fulfill our duty.

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It's not up to the national government. It's up to us. And if you're limiting us in fulfilling our duty, then this is wrong.

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So I explained this to someone a few days ago who reached out on Patreon. By the way, if you are a supporter on Patreon, it's guaranteed

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I get back to you. I can't say that on all the other formats. I try to get back to everyone. I try to return emails. But if you are a patron, your messages are prioritized.

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There's my little plug. But someone asked me this and I said, look, you have to understand the context of the time, what pursuit of happiness actually meant at that time.

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All right, I've waxed long enough about that. We are now going to get into the topic at hand.

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And I wanna start with, let's see if I can do this.

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I have this set up on Gab. I haven't pushed the post button yet. I just put it on the screen and I'll push post later on.

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So this will be, just for everyone to know, this will be available in written format on any of the social media links pretty much that you have to me and conversations that matter.

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Social justice evangelicals vocabulary of terms. First one, image of God.

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Image of God. What is the image of God? The Imago Dei. The Imago Dei is the worth that we all have before God.

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It is, and in some ways, I don't know if you can completely quantify this, honestly. It's an imprint that God has made on every single person.

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And it's what we derive value from. It's what separates us from the animal kingdom, from the plants, from other created things.

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There's a difference between human beings. We have a soul. We are eternal. We can think in the abstract.

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There are certain things that characterize us that also are shared attributes. They're communicable attributes with God that the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom do not have.

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Well, what does the image of God mean when social justice evangelicals use that term? Well, I'm reading a book right now by Lisa Sharon Harper.

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The Very Good Gospel, it's called. And she uses the term image of God all over the place. And I realized, you know what?

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She's not the only one. I've heard this many times. And what they mean by it is equal social status.

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Because any time that there's some kind of a disparity between people groups, whether it's ethnic or gender related, it means that the image of God is not being respected.

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There's an attack, she'll say, on the image of God. People are attacking it. How are they attacking it?

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Well, because look, this group of people doesn't have as much access to education as this group of people.

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Really, that's an attack on the image of God? Well, she's smuggling in her own assumption about what the image of God means.

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The image of God to her and to social justice evangelicals means equal social status.

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That's not what the image of God means. The image of God means individually, everyone has self -worth.

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And in that wherever they are at in a hierarchy, because they're made in God's image, because they have the imprint of the creator on them.

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And this would include the slave in Roman times. This would include women in Jesus's time who were treated much differently than women are today and did not have the same privileges.

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They still had the image of God. And it doesn't come in percentages.

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It's not like someone has a certain amount of the image of God because of the way society views them.

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And if society viewed them differently or eliminated a disparity, they'd have 100 % image of God. But that's often how you hear it used.

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That there's some lessening of the image of God in someone because of the way they're treated. No, it's always there.

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It's there. The image of God is there. Christians and non -Christians alike have the image of God. And that's why it is wrong to murder because man is made in God's image.

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That's what it says in Genesis. That's why it's wrong to take someone's life in an unjustified fashion.

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So this is the hijacking of a Christian term, biblical term, to further an egalitarian agenda.

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I want you to watch out for it when you hear it. And now when you, hopefully it doesn't cause as much confusion when you hear it used this way, but it's so subtle.

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We don't pick up on it, but there it is. And if you doubt me on this, ask yourself this question.

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In the New Testament, not even the Old Testament. You can go there, it really proves my point. But in the New Testament, Jesus, the apostles, living in the situation they did with Roman, and I'll use some current terms that kind of sort of describe what was happening.

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Roman colonialism, Roman slavery, the privileges that accompany being a

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Roman citizen, as opposed to not being a Roman citizen. We see Paul using that privilege, his Roman privilege, right? Go through all the other things.

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The way women were treated, the sexual norms of the day, depending on, in Corinth, let's say.

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All the things that we would look at today in the United States or the

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Western world and say, oh my goodness. And back then, how did Jesus react to it? How did the apostles react to it?

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Was their reaction, oh my goodness, you are not treating these people according to the image of God.

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You are taking away from their image of God, or they're lacking something. They're lacking part of the image of God in them.

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No, you don't hear that language at all. In fact, what you hear is a reaffirmation that wherever you are, you are made in the image of God somehow.

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You have even hierarchies. There is a way that masters are supposed to treat their slaves, right?

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Paul didn't say, children, parents. Parents, you just need to emancipate your children and let them do whatever they want.

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Husbands, you just need to make sure that your wives have equal social standing in everything.

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Or masters, you just need to let all your slaves go. I mean, that would have been a positive thing, but that wasn't the command that Paul gave.

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What did he say? What did he say? He gave commands for how to treat them. Why? Because they're made in the image of God. That's how our

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New Testament approaches this. And so when you hear someone abuse this, when you hear someone use the image of God to then forge some kind of an egalitarian social agenda, they're misusing it.

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And that's all I'm trying to say. I'm not saying even some of their conclusions that might be right. But the way they're getting there is wrong.

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Using that concept and claiming that there's a violation of it to motivate Christians to act in some certain fashion.

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One of the ways you hear this a lot is in immigration. Russell Moore uses this all the time. That if you deport people or if you fail to let people in, unvetted,

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I guess, that's the sense I usually get, across the border into the United States to receive all the taxpayer funded privileges that come with being a

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United States citizen. If you deny that at all, you're denying the image of God. That's manipulation.

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That's absolute manipulation. So that's one term, image of God.

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How about this one, human flourishing? What does human flourishing mean? I mean, I can give you examples of ways in which humans can flourish more if they take responsibility for themselves, right?

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If they take responsibility, they'll flourish more. If they look at the book of Proverbs and they apply the wisdom principles there, they're gonna flourish more.

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What do social justice warriors mean in evangelicalism when they use the term human flourishing? Socialism, generally, not all the time, but generally, that's what they mean.

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That there's an assumption that humans can't flourish unless there's some kind of a redistributive scheme going on.

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Unless there's some central authority taking from one group and giving it to another group, you can't have human flourishing.

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Unless there's some kind of way that people can receive free healthcare, you can't have human flourishing.

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That's the assumption. So human flourishing, everyone agrees with. That's a term, everyone wants humans to flourish, right?

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The Taliban has a very specific idea of what they think that means. It's called the Sharia. And that's their idea of what human flourishing would mean.

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So it's kind of a vacuous term. It's going to be defined according to the group of people who are, with assumptions of the group of people who are defining it, who are using it.

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And Tim Keller uses this term quite a bit. And I think he, in Every Good Endeavor, I know he uses that term quite a bit.

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I believe in Generous Justice, he does. And that's basically what it comes down to. Well, you know, we do want the free market, but you know what?

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We also want human flourishing. Well, what is that? Well, it's some hybrid.

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It's some kind of socialism has to come in somehow. Oh, here's another one, racial reconciliation.

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How many of you have heard racial reconciliation? This is a term that's used a lot. And today, most of the time this term is used, it's just Christianized critical race theory.

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That's all it is. Jarvis Williams is probably the best example I can give of someone who has syncretized critical race theory with Christianity in detail.

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He has gone through, I mean, this is a big section in my book on social justice and Christianity, which is coming out next month, early part of October.

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I mean, like a month from now, it's gonna be out there. I'm excited for it. Social justice and Christianity, religions and conflict.

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I have a whole section on Jarvis Williams showing that when he says racial reconciliation, he means critical race theory.

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The assumption is you can't have racial reconciliation unless there's some kind of a critical race thing going on.

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You gotta platform people that look like this. If you don't do that, then you're not serious about reconciliation.

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You're preventing reconciliation from happening. Or you have to redistribute these resources over here.

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You have to take down certain statues or else you're preventing reconciliation from happening.

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And that's a very serious charge because in his mind racial reconciliation is part of the gospel. So you are actually denying the gospel if you don't platform certain kinds of people.

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That's pretty serious. This is the term that I heard used at Southeastern when

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I was there years ago. I'd say starting in 2014, 15, 16, and then 17, it was on steroids.

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Racial reconciliation was the hot button word. And at first I was like, of course we want that, right?

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The first time I heard it, I was like, yeah. But I was like, something's off about this. You know, we are reconciled in Christ if we're

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Christians. So what's the big deal? And usually the push is, well, how come your church looks so white?

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If your church was truly about racial reconciliation, it would have everyone of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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We'll tell that to the guys in Iowa who have only Dutch people or only

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German people in their town. I mean, there are no way that they can do this. But even in some places, like the place

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I live right now in New York, there are churches that appeal to different people groups.

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I have, there's a Chinese church right down the road from here. And they have a service where they speak in Chinese. Or no, is it?

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Yeah, it is Chinese. I believe it is Chinese church. Then there's, in downtown, there is a church that is historically black.

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And it's very political. But there's also cultural things that come with that particular culture.

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It's not even an ethnicity thing. It's a cultural thing. And they are gonna feel more comfortable together, a lot of them.

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And there may be some people who aren't black who go there. But it's not like they're racist because they have a church that appeals to people who wanna sing a certain way or want a certain kind of preaching, which is more of a dialogue than a monologue and is very emotional and all these kinds of things.

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That the assumption is, well, the racial reconciliation can't be happening if that exists. But yet we are one in Christ.

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So the reconciliation has already happened if you're a Christian. Now the term did use, you'll look back, even

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Booker T. Washington used the term racial reconciliation, but he did not mean the kind of redistribution schemes and attempts to integrate churches or forced integration of churches with one another.

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That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about people getting along, people not hating each other because of external factors.

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That's not what they mean today by racial reconciliation. It means you have to accept pretty much everything the left is pushing.

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And so it's a hijacking of a term that used to mean something else. How about justice?

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Justice, I mean, this is the one that I think most of you probably are familiar with because social justice, but sometimes they won't put the word social on there.

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They'll just say justice. Justice means eliminating disparities. David Platt's sermon at T4G 2018.

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What did he say? Basically, the church is in sin. Everyone at this conference is sin and it's so white in here and America's in sin and everyone's in sin, it's horrible.

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And it's because there's racism still around. Well, where's the racism? What is it? Well, there's disparities.

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It's easier for white people to get jobs than it is for black people. That's it, that's what he's talking about?

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Yeah, that's what he was talking about. And the fact that Christians aren't doing enough to eliminate that disparity means they're in sin.

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And the term he used throughout the sermon was justice. There's injustice going on and Christians aren't standing for justice.

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It's manipulative, it's wrong. It's scripturally, I mean, honestly, McLean Bible Church should just fire the guy if these are the kinds of sermons he's preaching.

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He just isn't doing the work in the text. He's not even understanding what Mishpat meant and in applying that situation in the

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Old Testament and Amos to today, let justice roll down like waters and applying it to today, he smuggles in the assumptions of the new left.

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Justice is not about eliminating disparities, justice in society. It's not about redistribution, it's not about egalitarianism.

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It's about, it's actually distributive, not redistributive, distributive. It's meeting out punishment for those who have broken the law equally.

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That's where true equality comes in, not egalitarian equality, equality before the law. Doesn't matter if it's my cousin or someone who

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I disdain or someone who's poor that's pulling my heartstrings or someone who's rich and I would do myself a disservice if I condemn them,

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I need to apply the law equally to them. That's justice. That's not what they mean by justice.

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They mean egalitarian equality, eliminating disparities, redistribution. Same sex attraction, that's another term you'll hear a lot.

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Now this one doesn't really require a whole lot of, this isn't like a hijacked term, this is like an invented term to try to create a category in everyone's mind for homosexual desire that is permissible.

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That's what that is. It's not a biblical term. There is no category in the Bible for, hey, there's homosexuality and that's a sin, but then there's same sex attraction and that's not a sin.

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Marcus Hayes at First Baptist Church of Naples a few years ago, and he was in a

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Q &A there. Someone had asked, and I guess the moderator or whoever was conducting the interview asked him, what do you think of, is homosexuality a sin?

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And he said, listen, homosexuality is a sin, but same sex attraction, that is not a sin. That is not a sin.

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That's a direct quote from him. Why did he say that? Because there's a new category that's been created artificially and then imposed on Christianity.

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When you see that, realize that this is an artificial invention, that it is a category that is meant to, and I'm not saying there's no such,

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I'm not saying that people don't experience attraction, but I'm saying the category for same sex attraction, where it is, you are not allowed to question people who experience that as far as their, as having a sinful tendency.

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You can't probe that because they're protected because that's the assumption that's brought along with that term. That's what you need to realize.

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Here's one. Some of you, I gotta be careful this one, all right? Some of you are gonna be offended right away because you've used the term and I've used the term.

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So I need to express a caveat here. Servant leader, okay? It's not necessarily, we should all be servants.

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We should all be, well, to some extent, we're leading someone, right? We should all be leaders and followers, but servant leader, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

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I need to say that up front. Sometimes people use this, it's not bad. I've noticed a trend, a tendency that I wanna throw out there because I've seen hints of it over and over.

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And this is not just social justice minded people, although they're probably the ones who use it more this way.

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But this also flows into all kinds of other traditions within evangelicalism, other groups.

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Servant leader tends to be a pacified man. When I hear the term used, I tend to think of that.

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It's a pacified man. Not every time, look, please don't be offended. If you use that term and you didn't mean that,

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I'm not talking about you. But it is a fairly new term. It hasn't been used for that.

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You're not gonna go read in Charles Spurgeon. I hope I'm right about this. Someone's gonna Google it and find Charles Spurgeon said this,

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I'm pretty sure he didn't though. You're not gonna find in Charles Spurgeon the term servant leader. You might find where he talks about being a servant and being a leader, you're not gonna find the term servant leader, fusing these two.

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The fusion of these two with servant on the front has often been used to pacify men.

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So, I'll give you an example. You're experiencing a problem in your marriage, right?

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A husband doesn't get the wife, wife doesn't get the husband. They're mad at each other. And oftentimes, counselors can be very harsh on the man.

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It's more permissible in our society to be harsh on the man. And it's justified in many circumstances, but they'll say, you need to be a servant leader.

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What does that mean? Well, you need to serve your wife first as you're leading her.

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Well, what does that look like? What are the assumptions that you bring to serving your wife? Well, if there's a direction you wanna take the family, if there's something that you think is important that you say, this is what we're going to do, right?

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You gotta start by approaching it by taking sort of this very humble and kind of lowly posture first.

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It's the foot washing kind of example. And then, and before you get to the thing that you want to kind of hammer down.

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So, serve her, bring her flowers, do the dishes, the normal things that in a traditional kind of, traditional roles as we conceive of them in the

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United States, you know, 1950s, right? Do all the things that she would normally do and then approach her, all right?

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Now, I'm not saying across the board, everyone's used it that way, but I have heard it used that way more often than not.

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Or if a pastor is supposed to approach their congregation, you know, you gotta take this very gentle, gentle tone, be winsome with them before you lay it down, lay down the law with them.

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You just need to approach it really progressively. And there's some wisdom in doing that. But what happens is that term servant gets so softened, that it's this softness before the leader part, which is more, that's kind of harsh.

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The servant is put there to lessen the harshness of the term leader. That's my take on it.

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That's why. And I would just prefer, you know, use, the Bible talks about being a servant and talks about being a leader, just talk about both.

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But fusing the two together, I think there's a reason behind that. People want to soften the leadership part.

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And the leadership part is real. There's times to lay it down and you're not gonna be softening it. And that's what

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I see. That's the danger sign I see on that term. So again, not trying to berate anyone.

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Please don't be offended by this because, look, I wrote a whole paper, I remember years ago, on being a servant leader. And I think it was, if I do say so myself,

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I think it was a pretty good paper. But I don't think that the term itself was very helpful for getting across the points

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I wanted to get across. There's a lot that goes into being a leader. And it's more than just being a servant.

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It's, I mean, you could put caring leader, you could put all kinds of other words there before a leader, a tough leader, a resolute leader.

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But I think that's the agenda behind the servant part though. It's much more permissible in our more egalitarian -minded society for husbands and leaders in the church and leaders in business who are male to be servants.

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And politicians, they gotta be servants. Yeah, they do have to be servants. But if you can't say leader without having to put servant in front of it, then there's a problem.

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You should be able to just say leader as well. All right, let's go to the next one.

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Radical, radical. What does radical mean when you hear that term? It means uniquely virtuous.

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And this is my own, I'm putting my own construction on this because it is just something that I've imbibed over time by hearing the word used, uniquely virtuous.

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Radical is a really cool term to use right now. Think about the book

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Radical by David Platt. Or think about, there's, oh, I'm trying to remember the name of the author now.

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It's a book on hospitality. The gospel comes with a house key. And for some odd reason, the name of the author is escaping me right this second.

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Rosaria Butterfield, there we go. What does she talk about in that book? Radical, ordinary, hospitality.

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And the first time I heard that, I thought that's one of the, what? I can't really, how can it be radical and ordinary at the same time?

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Radical, ordinary, hospitality? What does that even mean? That's like kind of, it sounds almost like an oxymoron.

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Ordinary is not radical. Radical is not ordinary. But the term radical today, it means uniquely virtuous.

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So when you hear, hey, I'm, what is, Rosaria Butterfield says that when she wrote that book, this was the kind of book that Mary would have written, which is,

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I don't know if that's too ordinary, but Mary would have written this book. I believe it was

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Mary, she said. I don't think, I'm trying to remember, Mary or Martha, I think it was Mary. Would have written this book.

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And this is what, how to be hospitable. And when she says being radical, she's attributing it to herself.

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She's saying, I'm practicing this. Here's examples from my own life of me being radical.

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What's radical? Inviting people over for dinner, making an extra pot of something, beans or rice, so that people, when they come, if extra people show up for dinner, that you can feed them.

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Hosting a get -together to talk about something happening in society that's disturbing people.

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And what's not radical? What's not radical? Well, what's not radical? I guess Donald Trump refusing to let refugees from Muslim countries where there's jihadists that could get in and, if unvetted, that's not radical.

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That's horrible. A policeman hosing a guy off is an example in her book. Can't believe I'm remembering all this.

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This was years ago, I read it. But a policeman hosing a guy off, who's, I think he was into drugs and stuff.

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That's not radical. That's a horrible thing to do. That's not radical ordinary hospitality. Well, what's radical?

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Radical is the badge of honor you put on you. I'm radical. I'm a radical Christian because I'm virtuous.

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I'm doing the right thing. And I'm setting myself apart from everyone else who's doing the wrong thing.

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The church is bad, right? You hear that a lot. The church is bad. The church isn't doing radical ordinary hospitality.

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I am doing radical ordinary hospitality. The church isn't helping the poor and the people overseas.

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I'm David Platt and I'm radical. And even though David, well, without getting into David Platt, I mean, look at that.

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You can look up his house online. I'll just, you be the judge of whether he's radical. You can look up the kinds of, you know, when he goes on a flight, whether he flies first class or not.

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You be the judge of that. But I'm David Platt, I'm radical. We need to be radical. So that's a way of setting yourself apart.

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It can be a virtue signal. I'm radical. You all are not radical. And so it's a unique virtue that someone has when they say that they're being radical.

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So yeah, is there an arrogance about it? I think oftentimes there is. Yeah, it is used that way at least, but it's not the way that,

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I mean, the term radical itself. I mean, and of course we know the way it's used in the media, but I think of like, it's towards the extremes of things.

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You know, if you really like to go fishing and you're a radical fisherman, I mean, you're out there every day fishing, right?

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That's what I think of like radical. You know, you're gonna come up with all kinds of different ways to fish that are industrious and will help you get more fish.

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And you know, you're just really into it. It's to the max, right? But this is what they mean when they use the term radical.

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Okay, here's another one, cultural intelligence. This is an important one, guys. Cultural intelligence, what does that mean? Cultural intelligence.

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I first heard this actually, it was a course, I think it was evangelism, if I'm not mistaken, or theology,

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I think it was evangelism course at Liberty University that someone else was taking and they sent me the curriculum. And the curriculum was talking all about cultural intelligence and I'm reading this.

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And I'm like, this sounds an awful lot like standpoint epistemology. This sounds a lot like someone has to take this lowly posture and just give their brain over to someone who is from a certain social location and represents that social location.

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And the only way you're gonna know about their culture and be intelligent about their culture is if you listen to them and they will teach you.

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Now, there's a certain truth. There's a Mott & Bailey going on because there's a certain truth to, if you don't know something, you've got to learn something.

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That's an obvious truth, okay? Everyone knows that. You don't know, I mean, look,

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I'm doing work on my house and there's sometimes, I don't know how to do that. And thank goodness there's tools out there.

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There's YouTube, right? YouTube mechanics, they fix their car by looking at YouTube, you have to learn something.

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But there's an extra step when you say that someone from a certain social location is required to impart certain kind of knowledge that only they can understand.

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Now, it may be true. If someone, if you're trying to learn about India, someone from India, it would be very helpful because they've spent years in India.

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They know about India and they can probably tell you a lot about India. So there's a truth in that.

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It does not mean though that this is information that you cannot gain by living in India necessarily, or you have to learn it from that Indian person, or you're incapable of knowing unless an ambassador from that particular context comes and speaks to you about it.

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And usually speaking to you from a very leftward angle, usually how this works out generally.

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They're not just representatives of a certain social location, they're socialist representatives of a certain social location.

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They have their own spin on what they're gonna tell you. But it's not like you have to listen to that authoritative voice.

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What it is is you have to put in the work and the time. Let me make this a little more, make a little more sense of this for you.

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Studying scripture, you're in a Bible study, you're sitting around the room and Bible study leader, this is how it often worked out in the 90s and the early 2000s.

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What does that text mean to you? And everyone goes around and gives their thought. Well, today, if that happens, the person with a certain cultural background or social location, when they give, if they're oppressed, if they give their explanation, that's, no one can challenge it, right?

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You can't challenge that because that's, they're bringing in knowledge that only they have access to and you don't have the right to criticize it.

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This is a Gnostic stick idea. This is standpoint epistemology, how it works. And cultural intelligence often means that.

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Now, it doesn't, does it have to mean that all the time? No, if it means what I first said, if it just means, hey, we need to get to know a culture before we go in there and, you know, well, in fact,

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I don't even know, you have to know a language before giving the gospel. That's really all you have to know, but it'd be helpful to know a culture so that you don't unnecessarily offend.

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That's absolutely true. That would be really helpful to know. And if that's all you mean by cultural intelligence, okay. But I'm telling you, there are ministries going farther.

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There are ministries that are smuggling in standpoint epistemology under this term, cultural intelligence.

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Walter Strickland is one of them. I've seen him do it. I've seen him do it with his training that he does for teachers.

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He uses the term cultural intelligence. There was another organization, I can't remember the name, just the other day, I saw they're using the term cultural intelligence.

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And it's, I think what happens is oftentimes a term gets identified as related to social justice.

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Critical race theory is going through this right now. It's no one wants to use critical race theory anymore because they know as soon as they use it, they're gonna be labeled.

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It's been trashed. A few years ago, that wasn't the case. 2015, Jarvis Williams is posting all about critical race theory and how great it is.

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Can't do that anymore. And I'm sure he won't do that anymore. Maybe he will. I don't think he will. So what they do is they jump to other terms.

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Okay, how can we smuggle in all the things we wanna do and our whole agenda without using the term that sets everyone off?

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Hey, cultural intelligence. Sounds pretty good. Let's go through a few more.

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Let's see, we've been going, how long have we been going here? We've been going for about almost 40 minutes. So I'm gonna just do a few more and then we'll save the rest for the next episode.

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Global church, global church. When someone talks about the global church,

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Matthew Hall talks about, or has talked about the global church. We need a global curriculum. We need all the insights and experiences from all these different places in order to understand the

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Bible. Global church, it's needed perspectives.

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It's kind of communicating the same thing, standpoint epistemology. We need these other perspectives.

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We need Michael Byrd, right? Talking to Walter Strickland at Southeastern. He says, I was teaching a class on Romans and I realized we need the woman perspective on Romans.

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What do women think of Romans? So he got a commentary that was written by a female. Well, why do you need the, how about someone who just understands

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Romans? Knows the language, knows the culture, has done the work. Well, yeah, that's good, but you know what you really need?

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You need perspectives from oppressed social locations. We need a woman to talk about this because they're gonna have insights that men aren't gonna have.

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That's how you get a curriculum that's fully fleshed out and gives everyone the information they need.

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We need someone from Sri Lanka, Michael Byrd says, to talk about the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the

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New Testament. He says this kind of thing. Why do you need someone from Sri Lanka? Well, they're gonna have unique insights.

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They're gonna, how about someone who just understands the situation in the New Testament and has done the work? No, no, someone from Sri Lanka is gonna know it better.

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That's a global curriculum. Now, there's nothing wrong with if people have, someone from Sri Lanka has done their homework and they have a really good commentary on Romans, use it.

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But don't use it just because they're from Sri Lanka. That's the difference. The kingdom, the kingdom.

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When you hear Jim Wallace talk about the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, right?

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He doesn't always just say the gospel. He's gotta say the gospel of the kingdom. What does he mean by that? Kingdom diversity,

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Southeastern, right? Baptist Theological Seminary. What's the kingdom? It's an egalitarian utopia.

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That's what it is. It's the quote unquote just society according to social justice warriors. It's not what you think it is.

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You think when you hear the word the kingdom, the term the kingdom that they're referring to, well, that's

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Christ reigning. Whether it's through his church, whether it's his presence through believers as they interact through his church, or whether it's in the eternal state, that's probably those are the concepts you have.

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Probably more so the eternal state that Christ is coming back and he's gonna set up his kingdom. When egalitarian social justice warriors use it, they're talking about the utopia they want to force on everyone here on earth.

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Thy kingdom come means, all right, let's make sure that we've eliminated all the disparities, right?

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Even though Jesus said that you're always gonna have the poor with you. Well, we think we can probably come up with something that eliminates racism, eliminates poverty, eliminates, you name it.

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It's not the same kingdom, guys. It's different. So your yellow flag should go off in your mind.

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You should just, when someone says the kingdom, your pastor starts talking about that, listen very carefully. What's he saying? Is it something that's possible?

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Here's the question you ask yourself. Is it possible to have the kingdom without everyone being a Christian? Without Christ, or I should say this, without Christ reigning?

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Is that possible? In other words, if you forward an egalitarian social justice -minded political maneuver of some kind, some agenda they have, and you're partnering with unbelievers, and it's predominated by unbelievers, is that part of the kingdom?

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Is that the kingdom? If it is, if that's part of the kingdom, if you're doing something that's like part of the platform of the

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Democratic Party, the secular Democratic Party that booed God, if that's the kingdom, you got the wrong kingdom.

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It's not the kingdom of Christ. It's the kingdom of Satan. If you think that is the kingdom, or at best, if it's not the kingdom of Satan, at best, it's just not the kingdom of God.

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It's something else. So that's something that you want to consider very strongly if you hear a pastor use that term.

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One more, let's do one more. Love your neighbor. What's love your neighbor mean today? Love your neighbor does not mean protect the rights of your neighbor.

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Doesn't mean tell your neighbor the truth, speak the truth in love.

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Love your neighbor means submit to whatever the government tells you to do. And if it's locked down in your church, you gotta love your neighbor.

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If it's get this inoculation, it's love your neighbor. Even if there's other treatments that might work better, even if there's side effects you're concerned about, you gotta love your neighbor and just do what the government says.

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It's submit to tyranny. That's what love your neighbor means today. So I hope that was helpful for you.

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I'm gonna stop it right there for today because we've gone long. I wanted to plug something though, before we finish here.

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This is a book called The Sermon on the Mount by Matthew Joseph Tarpley. I wanna tell you just a little bit about Matthew Tarpley.

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I do consider him a friend and I've gotten to know him a little bit more over the last year.

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He's actually a graduate. I did not go to school with him, but he is a graduate of, I believe, I don't know if he's a graduate yet.

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He might be a graduate. He's graduating soon, I think, from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And I've just been really impressed with what he's doing.

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He's a pastor. He took a church out in the middle of the country. I actually visited it once. And he's a young guy.

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I think he's younger than me, if I'm not mistaken. And so he sent me this book, The Sermon on the Mount. And a lot of people have written books on The Sermon on the

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Mount. So I opened it up and I expected something. I'll be honest with you. I expected something that was like John Harris level stuff.

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Like if I were to write a book on The Sermon on the Mount, I'm like, you know, I'm 32. What would

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I say in that book? And then I started reading it and I'm like, man, this guy is pretty, this is pretty good.

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Like this is, and he's from Southeastern too. And sometimes I just know

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Southeastern's academic standards aren't that great. And so I was like, you know, and I'm not disparaging him at all.

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To the contrary, I'm doing the exact opposite. My expectations were low. Low because I know what

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I would put out. My expectations for a book I'd write on The Sermon on the Mount are low. I mean, I wanna read what

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Calvin says on The Sermon on the Mount. And I wanna read what R .C. Sproul says on The Sermon on the Mount. And I tend to ignore, if it's not like, you know, something that's written by a really big name who did a lot in church history.

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You know, even R .C. Sproul, to be honest with you, that, you can say that I'm way off on this. But even that,

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I'm like, you know what? I'd rather see what Augustine says. That's just, I don't know. Maybe it's a historian in me or something. And right now

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I'm actually reading through Augustine. I love it. Oh, I love it. But, so all that to say,

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I don't usually read new books by people. And Matthew Tarpley sent me the book and I started reading it.

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And I said, I'm gonna read this one. It's very good. It is just, it's packed with really good practical stuff, really good commentary on The Sermon on the

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Mount. And for a guy as young as he is, I mean, this is just wisdom beyond his years. The writing is excellent.

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The terms he's using. I mean, it's probably written on like a ninth or 10th grade, man, 10th or 11th grade level,

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I guess. But it's just, it's well -written.

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And I would recommend it for devotional reading or for your church. If you're gonna do a book study, think about doing this.

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Sermon on the Mount by Matthew Joseph Tarpley. And I think it'll benefit you quite a bit.

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So I'm going through it and you can go through it too. And it's the most important sermon, of course, ever preached and encourage a young man who is, and you think about it,

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Jesus, how old was Jesus? He was 30 when he started his ministry. How old was John Calvin when he wrote the Institutes? He was in his 20s when his first draft.

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I mean, it's incredible. David Brainerd died at 29 and look at what he wrote. I mean, young people can do some incredible things and we often forget that.

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And so I would just recommend, encourage this guy and get something that's good food for your soul.

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It's not really good, I think, to just imbibe. I was convicted a little bit about this myself.

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If you get up and the first thing you're doing is, hey, what's my Facebook feed say? What's the news say? What kind of bad news am

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I gonna get today? And then the last thing you do before you go to bed is what kind of bad news is out there? What does my

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Facebook feed say? I'm not saying you're in sin, but I'm just saying it's not healthy. You need to be in some more devotional reading at times.

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Every day, you should be in the word in some way. And there's books that can help you with that.

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This is one of them. So I encourage you, go to amazon .com. You can pick it up. Sermon on the Mountain, Matthew Joseph Tarpley.

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There's my endorsement of it. I think it'll bless you. So I wanted to say that and we will resume talking about these terms and I will explain what they mean in the next podcast.