Session 3: Egalitarianism and Marxist Theory in Christianity

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I wanted to begin this session by heading off at the past a very common objection, which is sometimes somewhat of an emotional objection, but it's an objection nonetheless that deserves at least somewhat of an answer before we continue, and that is that there has been oppression throughout human history.

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You can open your Bible and read about the oppression that took place in the times of the

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Old Testament and New Testament. It's part of the human experience.

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It's part of the result of sin and how man treats his fellow man, and in the context of the

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United States, there has certainly been oppression to various groups. There are certain groups that are certainly used more,

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I should say, their experiences by the social justice advocates more than others, but we can certainly look at the history of our country, and we can see that there have been things like slavery, like the extermination or the putting

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Native Americans on reservations, things like that. There are things like really every immigrant group who has come to this country has faced barriers that they've had to overcome.

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That's not something unique to the United States, though. That's something that exists across the Western world.

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I remember my wife and I went to Turkey a few years ago, and Turkish people are very proud of their culture and their heritage, their history, and they do not like Armenians in Turkey.

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There's very much been historic oppression against Armenians, but that's not the kind of thing that when you're in Christ in the church worshiping together makes a difference as far as the way you treat each other because you're in Christ now, and those hostilities that may have existed at one point, historical wrongs, these kinds of things do not shape the way in which you treat each other because you recognize that you're a sinner.

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This other person's a sinner. You're both messed up. You both come from lines of sin. By nature of being in Christ, there is a certain sense of peace and unity, more than just peace, but a unity in that relationship and that bond.

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I wanted to mention that. The reason that I mention it is because oftentimes things that actually did happen in real history are overblown.

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They're used by the other side. They make that the narrative, the only narrative that existed. They reduce everything down to those stories of oppression, very often cherry -picking the historical record, trying to avoid talking about things that don't fit that narrative, and so they end up telling what amounts to a lie.

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They use things that are legitimate, and they overblow them, and they politicize them. When Christians get involved in this, it honestly rips apart the fabric that we should have at the communion table.

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I think of the IFCA, which is the organization that's sponsoring this conference as part of.

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There was a time in its history when they did not accept the membership of some churches, historically black churches.

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They came to a realization later that that was a wrong thing. Now, it doesn't matter what ethnicity you're part of, what church tradition.

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If you agree to the statement of faith and the beliefs of the organization, you can join. That's the right way to handle this kind of thing, not to do, let's say, what the

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Southern Baptist Convention has done, which is try to renew some kind of lamentation and repentance about sins of racism and abuse of now the sexual abuse, et cetera, every so often.

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Every year when they get together, they have to somehow renew the forgiveness that's already available in Christ, generally for things that they weren't even part of.

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It was things their ancestors were part of, and generally things that are very much overblown, very much not contextualized, not understood according to the context of the time.

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I wanted to just mention that up front to say I hear that objection a lot.

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I agree with everything you're saying, John, but don't you think there has been oppression?

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Don't you think that what about what happened to Native American tribes? I said, absolutely. Of course, there has.

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That's just part of the human condition. But we don't import Marxism to rectify that. That's not the way to do it.

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There is forgiveness in Christ. Forgiveness in Christ doesn't mean we steal from one person to give to another.

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It means you repent, you move on. It's perfectly fine to look back and to talk about, to celebrate even, to how far your particular group has come, cultural group.

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What this understanding of the social justice theory does is it doesn't just go back and let's say honor, we're going to have

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Hispanic Heritage Month. It has to rip down Christopher Columbus in order to do it.

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It has to rip down things that came before in order to do it. There's a lack of recognition that there's actually some good things that we're taking down.

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It's like going to the dumpster and just throwing out a whole bunch of junk without any discretion as what's in there.

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Maybe there's some junk in there, but maybe there's some things that we're throwing away which are actually good. Maybe there's some character in some of these men for exploration or military leadership, or maybe it's their ideas that had nothing to do with oppression that we honor them for, which is often the case.

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I want to just recognize that before we get into this, which is egalitarianism.

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I want to talk about the ways in which we are different and the ways in which we are the same as human beings because the differences are the wedges that Marxists use, social justice advocates use to tear apart the communion table unity.

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We need to understand from a biblical perspective what are the differences between us and what are the things we have in common.

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Let's start with the differences. Gender is a difference. There is no compromise on this from a biblical perspective.

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Matthew 19, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? This is something that God determined, and it's for a complementary reason.

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Men and women are different, but when they get together, they actually form something which complements itself and which reproduces the human race and brings up the human race and perpetuates and fulfills the duty that God gave to mankind, which was to have dominion.

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I know that's not politically correct, but have dominion over the earth and to fill the earth.

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Gender is a big difference we have. We can't erase that. We can't say that that's just not a difference.

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That is a difference. It's woven into the fabric of creation. Culture and geography.

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I put the word organic here for a reason. I'm going to read a verse and then explain that. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

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Acts 17. You see in that boundaries. You see borders. You see the word ethnos.

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You see nation. Nation being a sociolinguistic group.

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It's not necessarily primarily something that's ethnic, but ethnicity certainly plays into it.

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It's the extension, and this is why I put the word organic. It's the extension of a family. That's what a nation essentially is.

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It is a family that has reproduced, reproduced, reproduced, and pretty soon you have a nation.

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It's a big family in many ways. Families, as you know, have differences.

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They have different traditions, different mannerisms. Oftentimes when you're in a church or anywhere, really, and you see kids running around, you don't have to know who the parents are.

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If you know the parents well, you can figure it out because they act like the family that they come from. There are certain things that give them away as members of the family.

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So, culture forms organically. Families move into an area. They establish themselves.

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They have property. They live. They form traditions. Laws, a legal system emerges.

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This is way different than the way Marxists view culture. Marxists don't view culture as something that forms organically from the bottom up.

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Marxists view culture as something from the top down. It's something that categories oppressors make in order to subdue some and not others.

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So, power relationships are what culture is about. In fact, this whole engaging culture thing you hear in Christianity, the gospel coalition talks about this all the time, this comes from a view that culture is that can be artificially created.

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We just need to do something in order to create a culture. And we don't really create culture.

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I don't think that's actually a biblical understanding of what culture even is. Culture develops over time as people have children and as they experience life and they form traditions, et cetera.

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And so, we all come from different cultures because we come from different families, many cultures.

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And then you can extend that out into the nation you live in, the local area, the state, the nation, however you want to put that.

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We all have differences that come from the context in which we live. And in America, often, those differences aren't really ethnic differences.

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They can be. It can be that you're in an area that has an ethnic difference. But quite often, because we're such a melting pot, you have all sorts of people of all sorts of different genetic makeup living together.

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And they have much more in common with each other than, say, someone who looks like them from the other side of the world. For instance,

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I have much more in common with the people that I grew up with who are

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Italian. I'm not Italian. Irish. I don't have a lot of Irish in me. Black. I'm not black.

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People who are even Hispanic, I'm way more in common with them than I do a white guy from Eastern Europe.

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That's just a fact. So anyway, all that to say, despite the fact that Marxism would want to cut the pie that way and make us all kind of at each other's throats because we have different cultures, it doesn't have to be that way.

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It's not that way in Christ. And it's a difference that doesn't have to be. It's actually real diversity.

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That's what it is. God has created a place in which there's real diversity. He divided us all up at Babel. And then we have different abilities.

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The Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Or who made him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the

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Lord? Exodus 4 .11. So even disabilities, which, I mean, you talk about the ultimate lack of privilege.

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Even disabilities are from the Lord. There's a sovereignty behind this. And we have different abilities that we have.

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We have different spiritual gifts. There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are varieties of ministries in the same

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Lord. So just because someone's able to do a certain task in a church, implement a spiritual gift, preach, doesn't make them any better.

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The hand can't say to the eye. The church is a very complimentary organization. And I'd like to suggest that, in general,

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God has made humans that way. We all have differences that we can benefit each other with and we can bless each other with.

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And then there's different hierarchical positions. This is the most controversial of all, probably. Ephesians 5,

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Romans 13, you have relationships like wives and husbands, different responsibilities there.

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There's a submission. There's actually a hierarchy. There's a, for lack of a better term, and this,

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I could get in trouble for this, but there's a chain of command almost in that. And you think of the

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Trinity. Jesus said that he came to do the will of his

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Father. Now, was he God? Yeah, he was God. Did he submit to the will of his Father? Yes. So it has nothing to do with whether Jesus is equal to the

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Father as far as worth, but he had a different function. And it's the same in husband -wives relationships.

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I was talking to someone the other day about this, and I said, you know what, in our culture at this point, and I, since I'm a young man,

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I probably can't diagnose this as well as someone who's older, but we're all feminists. That's what

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I see around me. From the time, even in the most fundamentalist church, a little girl is told often, and I've seen this with my own eyes at least, they're the little princess, and they can be, grow up to be anything they want to be.

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And there is some truth. There's some truth to the fact that in the United States, we have the freedom to follow different vocations, but God has a plan woven into his created order for women, and he has a plan for men, and it's not anything you want to be, all right?

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That logic has now been taken itself into people that don't want to be a man or a woman.

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They can just be anything they want to be. No, you don't get to define yourself. God defines yourself. We have children and parents.

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Children are to submit to their parents. The Lord commands this, Ephesians 6 .1. So there's a blessing that comes with that, and you know what happens if children don't submit to their parents?

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They're going to have curses that come upon them, and we're watching that play out right now. So this is actually something that the

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Lord gives us to bless us. You're not going to have a properly functioning society if you don't recognize that these hierarchies are woven in to creation.

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Also, master -slave relationships, and of course, we apply this today in the area of labor relationships in the workforce.

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So you have employees, you have employers, but fundamentally, I mean, the command given to masters and slaves is the same command that applies to those in the labor force today and those that are managing the labor force, and there is a submission there, and it's politically incorrect to say that.

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In fact, businesses have gotten to the point of, I mean, HR just eats up all the businesses now, in my opinion.

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It's with diversity training and sometimes standing in the way between employees and their employers, and I'm not saying there's not a place for trying to alleviate certain kinds of discrimination, but in our culture where we've come to today, there's efforts to get in between that relationship, to somehow soften it so that management doesn't have the kind of power, so that it's in the name of keeping management from abusing their employees, but what often happens is a new kind of bully comes into town called the big labor, big unions, and so forth, and so you have that relationship.

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You also have rulers and subjects. You also have governing authorities and those who are under those governing authorities.

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Now, in all these relationships, there are elements that there are circumstances in which you cannot follow.

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You should not follow the commands that are given to you or the desires. A wife should not submit to her husband when her husband wants to beat her and abuse her.

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That would be actually participating in the sin of her husband, and that is not right to participate in someone's sin like that, so there are always circumstances, but that is when the boundaries are overstepped, the

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God -given boundaries, and so I think the Bible is actually, this is the foundation of Western society.

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This is a beautiful thing because this actually gives us boundaries to try to alleviate abuse.

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There's checks and balances within this. Rulers can intervene when laws are broken in these other hierarchical relationships, and it gives us a place to belong.

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It gives us an identity. It gives us a sense of purpose, and it tells us exactly what we're supposed to do so we're not left guessing like so many people are guessing today, so these are the ways in which we're different, and I'd like to suggest that these differences are beautiful differences, all of them.

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They're all complementary. They're all things to be that, you know, celebrate diversity. This is what it would look like if you're really going to truly take that statement seriously.

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We can celebrate cultural differences, and we do every time there's a potluck. We see all these different foods. It's a blessing to have those kinds of things.

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It's a blessing to have different abilities and gifts and positions. Now, there are certain things that make us equal to one another in the sense that we're the same.

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We're made in the image of God, Genesis 127. We are accountable to God, Acts 1730.

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We need to repent. All of us need to repent. It doesn't matter who you are. You have to repent of your sin. We're subject to the law.

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The law of our land applies to everyone living within the boundaries of the land.

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We're all sinful. We all fall short of the glory of God, so we have that in common with one another.

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We're all in need of salvation. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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This is a need that everyone has. I heard someone recently apply that to creation itself, that this wasn't just about humans.

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This is about the environment. No, it's actually in the context. It's about humans, and it's all humans over the course of the whole world.

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If redeemed, if we are truly in Christ, we're part of the body of Christ, and we have that in common with one another.

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There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither is there slave nor free man, neither is there male nor female, for you are all one in Christ.

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Galatians 3 .28. Now, this does not mean all those differences are now erased.

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It doesn't mean that men are no longer men. It means that we have something in common by nature of being in Christ.

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Those are the ways we're different. Those are the ways we're the same. Now, egalitarianism and how it's developed up to this point, and you hear these words, equity, diversity, and inclusion, gives us a false sense of equality.

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It plays around with our identities in ways that are just not biblical. There's a quote. I just inserted this because I thought of it when

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I was putting this together yesterday. J .D. Greer is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He recently was tweeting to Beth.

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Well, it's actually two years ago. He was tweeting to Beth Moore, and he said, it's time for complementarians to take all the word of God seriously, not just the parts about distinction of roles, but also the tearing down of all hierarchy and his gracious distribution of gifts to all his children.

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That's dangerous language, because as I just showed you, hierarchy, there are hierarchies that actually the

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Lord has given his blessing to. There are hierarchies that he has regulated.

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There are hierarchies that are part of the fabric of creation as well. Certainly, the hierarchies that are part of the fabric of creation, to rip those down would not be a just or merciful thing.

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It would be a cruel thing. It would be like having a bunch of children who are being watched by the babysitter and saying, well, that's a bad hierarchy.

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We shouldn't have a babysitter, so they play in the road. Hierarchies are here for a reason. Here are the victim categories, and this goes on ad infinitum.

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You have income, you have gender, race, sexual minorities. That's the word they're using now. Disabilities, et cetera.

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You have all these different victim categories who are the victims of hierarchies, so the victims of authority structures that have been used against them is the idea, and then still being used against them to this day.

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What needs to happen is these hierarchies need to be restructured. We have to rip them down. That's the deconstruction. Then, remember intersectionality, we build back up.

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We build it in a way in which those former hierarchies are not allowed to abuse their victims.

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What are some of the tools used to do this? These are some of the tools that I see in the church. This is the syncretism,

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I think, before us. Corporate apologies is one of those. This is when you see groups of Christians get together, and they will lament or apologize for how bad the church is, how bad the church has been in the past, especially, and all the horrible things the church has done.

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This is part of ripping down those hierarchies. This is part of saying that the church was this hierarchy that existed in society that had all this influence, and it abused that influence by hurting people who weren't part of it, or maybe who were part of it, and the leadership in the church abused them.

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Positive rights, so this idea, our constitution was built on negative rights.

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There are boundaries. Government can only go so far, because you have a responsibility before God to pursue life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

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That's your God -given responsibility. Rights are tethered to responsibilities. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the key ones, at least rhetorically, to change that, because now it's freedom from fear, freedom from want.

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That's not liberty. That's not freedom. That means you're owed something by a central authority, namely the government, and this will promote equality.

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This is an egalitarian equality, so it is the taking away. It is the ripping down of hierarchy.

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It is the idea that those who have abused the poor, those who abuse certain demographics, they need to have their resources taken from them or their positions and given to rectify that situation.

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Holistic pro -life, this is one you hear in the church all the time, and this is on steroids now. I mean, there is a website now for pro -life evangelicals who support

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Joe Biden, and there are some big names in that. Richard Mao is on that.

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Ron Sider's on that. Jim Wallace is on that, and there's some younger people too, and there's more joining, but this logic was first popularized in evangelicalism by Ron Sider, and it's the idea that every, basically even socialist programs, every issue just about seems to be a pro -life issue.

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So you have abortion, which is pro -life. He accepts that, right, but smoking is also a pro -life issue because that's killing people, and the environment, global warming, that's a pro -life issue because that'll kill people, and the list goes on.

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Black Lives Matter is a pro -life issue. He got an ovation from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the

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Southern Baptist Convention two years ago when he said that. These are not pro -life issues.

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Pro -life means, and this is historically what it's meant, is that we are against murder. The law of God says thou shall not murder, and being pro -life means you're against the taking of life, the unjustified taking of life.

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Well, what this does is it says quality of life issues are on the same level. So in other words, if you have free healthcare, let's say, maybe you can live longer if you're someone in a poor income bracket.

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Therefore, having free healthcare becomes a pro -life issue. So it's no longer about the law of God as it pertains to thou shall not murder.

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It's about making sure that we implement programs that will give people a better quality of life, and that's on the same moral plane.

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I often use the analogy, it would be like going to Nazi Germany and saying, well, we realize there's a lot of Jews in concentration camps and other groups as well, but we're not going to care about those.

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We will care about them, but not, no more than we care about the fact that Nazis also cared about the environment, and we should take that into consideration whether or not we would want to keep

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Nazism going, right, if there was a choice to vote for Nazism. Well, that's ridiculous, you'd say, but not if you're buying into the holistic pro -life approach.

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Of course, the environment would just be just as important as a pro -life issue. So the reason

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I put it in this category is because it is the weasel word, it's the logic that is being used to convince

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Christians that reallocating privileges and income, socialism essentially, is important, and that all goes back to the taking down of hierarchies, it comes back to egalitarianism, we must all have the same outcome, that's pro -life.

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Hate speech laws, right, this is also part of this. Anything, I mean, and these have gotten ridiculous now, anything that would offend a certain demographic, supposedly, must be, you must have a muzzle on that, it must be against the law, it must be, you must be fired if you said something.

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I mean, people have sometimes, recordings have popped up of people where they've said something maybe, you know, 30 years ago, and now their whole life is turned upside down because of something they may have said off -handed.

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Might have been a joke, there might be no context behind it, but it's all about you supported the hegemony, you supported the discourse, you're part of the problem, you must be canceled.

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This is why, and I've noticed this, there's certain words that you can hear maybe, you know, hundreds of times in certain genres of music, and those people will never be canceled for it.

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For instance, like an R &B artist, or a, you know, a rap artist or something, they can say some of the filthiest things, but they are not part of the hegemony, so it doesn't apply to them.

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So it's very one -sided, but that's another way to rip down hierarchy.

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So if you find a mode of thinking in someone that is oppressive, you locate it, and you rip them down, and make way for someone else who is not oppressive.

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What are the consequences of this? Well, mission drift, number one, in the church, because now the goal of the church is not just to do evangelism, it is to fight hierarchies, it is to fight oppression, and this becomes part of the problem when you try to have both together.

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Harvey Kahn was one of Tim Keller's mentors at Westminster Theological Seminary, and he wrote a book, I believe it was the early 90s, about evangelism, and it was about doing justice, in this sense, and spreading the gospel.

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You can do both. Well, I'd like to suggest one will eat up the other. You can't have both. You can't add to the

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Great Commission, and that's what that is. So it's certainly not wrong to engage in charity, we're commanded to give to one another, we're commanded to be generous people, but this is outside of the ethic

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God has given us, and it's also not to be confused or conflated with the

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Great Commission itself, but that's what we're seeing. It also creates a new order of sin. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are certain sins that are protected, or at least diminished, and other sins that are thought to be the worst things ever, which maybe they're not as bad.

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Now, I believe that all sin is sin, all sin is damnable, but there are different levels of sin.

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Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't have said to cities in his day that did not accept his teaching that it would have been better for them if they were

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Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment. We would not see different penalties, civil penalties, in the

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Old Testament law if it weren't for the fact that there are some sins which are more depraved, which show a greater falling away into depravity, and so what this does is it changes that order, and I'll give you some examples of that.

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Living Out put out this, Tim Keller, I think, was the one that announced this, I think it was two years ago, but Living Out is an organization that Sam Albury heads up, and they put out,

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I believe it's a 10 or 12 -part, essentially, trying to think of the word for it, it's 10 or 12 points of how a church can make themselves gay accepting.

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So, in other words, if someone comes in the church and they're homosexual, then those who are influenced by this

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Living Out church audit are to make sure that their church makes them feel as comfortable as possible in their church, all right?

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Because churches historically just haven't been very accepting to homosexuals, so this is a way to make them more accepting, right?

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Now, we have accountability groups for all sorts of things, right?

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Alcoholics Anonymous being a good example of that, and that's usually reduced to a disease.

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There aren't any accountability groups, let's say, for racism, right? As soon as someone's a racist, they're canceled, they're done, it's over, it's bad, but something like alcoholism is accepted, it's a disease, right?

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Homosexuality, like I said, that's just idolatry, and it's the same as heterosexual lust, those two things are equivocated.

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I went on the Gospel Coalition website about a year ago, and I just was curious to see,

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I put in idolatry. I said, what do they think idolatry is? Because everything that the left thinks is a sin,

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I've noticed progressive Christians use idolatry to categorize it, because if it's not in the Bible as a sin, for instance, loving your country, nationalism, you know, and patriotism, and sometimes other things are conflated,

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Gospel Coalition and progressive evangelicals will often say, well, that's just idolatry.

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Well, you don't find a sin in the Bible about loving your country, but if you love it too much, it could be idolatry, because if you love anything too much, it could be idolatry.

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And so, that becomes an evil sin. It's the same as nativism, it leads into white supremacy, which is the worst sin of all.

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But I looked up idolatry. You know what kinds of things you could have as an idol? Your family, your marriage.

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These kinds of things, according to Gospel Coalition, are idolatrous, because you could love them more than you love

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Christ. Now, these are good things God has given us, that God has created. But you see how that works?

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All of a sudden, good things that God has given us become danger zones. You're in danger of sin.

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You can't love that too much. And one of the problems with homosexuals not feeling welcomed, it's a church in which people have the idolatry of family.

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So, this easily creates a new hierarchy of sin, because homosexuality isn't as evil now as having an idolatry of family.

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Alcoholism isn't as evil now as being a racist. You see how this works? So, instead of going to the

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Word of God and seeing what does God say about sin, we're going to the world to get our cues. J .D. Greer, president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, last year, his sermon, I reviewed the sermon, it's called How the Fall Affects Us All, and he said in the sermon this, the

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Bible only whispers about sexual sin. Only whispers. But it doesn't whisper about greed.

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So, what's worse? Greed or sexual sin? You see how we're playing things against each other now to make ourselves more palatable to the world?

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So, you can say, hey world, look, we're not concerned about your homosexuality. We just, those capitalists though, those greedy capitalists, we want to get them.

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That's how this works. New order of sin. Subverting leadership qualifications.

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I gave some examples of this earlier, but this is the idea that now the qualifications given in scripture for what constitutes an elder aren't really enough.

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We also need to make sure that we're platforming minority voices. There was a,

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I believe it was a denomination. I'm trying to remember now. No, I'm conflating two things.

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There was a state, California, that made a rule recently that on your corporate board, you had to have a minority in order to diversify it, to have to make sure there's another perspective.

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Well, this has happened to denominations as well. I keep picking on the Southern Baptists. That's because I've probably done more research on them than anyone else.

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But every time they form a committee, they will, they brag about how diverse the committee was.

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As if that makes the committee better and more wise. There's nothing in scripture that says diversity of ethnicity or gender makes someone more wise.

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What makes them more wise is do they fear the Lord? Do they understand the scripture? So we're changing the qualifications for leadership.

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And I've seen this in churches where they're promoting elders. They're giving people the guitar so they can lead worship and so forth.

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Not because just based on the fact that they're qualified, but they're taking into very strong account whether they're a minority or not.

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And this just isn't right. This is discrimination, but they're doing it in the name of anti -discrimination, ripping down hierarchies.

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And of course, implementing unbiblical hierarchies. And there's a lot of ways I can go with this one.

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I showed you the caring well earlier. So pastors need to learn from oppressed perspectives. I think denominations and para -church organizations have gotten into this, where sometimes the local pastor isn't the one with the authority.

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And I've told my audience this on internet platforms. I don't have the authority that your pastor has.

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I'm a guy on the internet. Just because you like to listen to someone and they feel good or you agree with them, it doesn't mean that they aren't a source of authority.

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We've been given a source of authority in scripture, and it's elders. And they're the ones that watch over our souls.

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And then there are political consequences for this. Once we start making ripping down hierarchies part of the

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Christian message, then there's a certain political party in this country, I don't know if you've noticed, that really enjoys ripping down hierarchies and destroying organizations.

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They've done it to sports. We've seen that this year. They've done it to the Boy Scouts. They've done it to a number of historical organizations.

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Just about every organization that this country, that basically held this country together in voluntary association, has some kind of a problem with racism or sexism.

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I mean, the Audubon Institute has a problem. Now the Sierra Club has a problem. You think they're a progressive organization. Well, John Muir was a racist, apparently.

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So the Sierra Club is now on an apology tour. It's every organization, and the left loves this.

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The Democratic Party loves this in our country right now. And because they make their whole entire campaign about supporting the little guy against, it's an underdog campaign, because Americans love that kind of story.

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But it's a false underdog campaign, because behind it are the ones who want to bring in a new hierarchy.

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There's no such thing as a blank slate. There's no church. There's no organization. There's no government that does not have a hierarchy.

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That's inescapable. You cannot have an organization without a hierarchy. Even in just a culture, a small group of people, let's say, that moves to a place like the

35:59

Pilgrims, someone's going to emerge as the leader. You're going to have a hierarchy eventually. The question really isn't whether or not to have a hierarchy, but what does that hierarchy look like?

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Is it a biblical hierarchy? Socialism, communism, that is a hierarchy, and it's a very strong one.

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And there are no mediating institutions to shield you from the power of the all -powerful state.

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The state becomes God, and it's between the state and the individual. And it's the most cruel form of slavery imaginable, and that's the kind of hierarchy that will be implemented when we rip down all the other ones.

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So there are political consequences for this. Reparations is one of the things we're hearing about now.

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This is about taking the resources from those who are supposedly the oppressors, redistributing.

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It is socialism to those who are the have -nots. And we've seen some of this come into Christianity.

36:53

I have some quotes here. This is from Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary, a Christian. She's an

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Anglican, I believe, or what's the, Episcopalian in the United States.

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She's Episcopalian. But she, in her book I read recently, she talks about global capitalism and corporations and how abusive they are.

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And it's, their abuse is systemic injustice, exploitation, and environmental degradation. They treat their workers wrong.

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I mean, this is a book that has been endorsed by basically a who's who of evangelicalism, and it's blatantly anti -capitalistic.

37:30

We have John Perkins. I just wanted to throw out a few examples here for you. John Perkins is one of the bridges between the progressive evangelical movement of the 70s and the woke church movement today.

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And CRU, the Conformity Campus Crusade in Los Angeles, uses this curriculum from John Perkins for their missions.

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And I've, I can't, I'm not free to talk about all of it, but I've received some crazy stories from CRU, and one in particular from California, I believe it was

38:00

Los Angeles, of a girl who was told essentially to go to a gay arts exhibit and not to evangelize everyone, but just to learn what, how homosexuals think, who they are, and to get rid of her straight bias.

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And it was part of her work as a mission. And this is what people giving to CRU, to, because they think it's spreading the gospel, some of it's going to things like this.

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You need to go learn from the gay perspective. Well, John Perkins is who the

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LA, Urban LA uses in CRU. And here's some quotes from his book. Communism came along as an attempt to distribute the earth's resources more equitably.

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Communism sprang into being because apostate religion could not challenge man's greed. But atheistic communism has not brought justice either.

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So the atheism is always the problem. It's never the communism. I'm just telling you. Neither capitalism nor communism can bring justice to the poor.

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We as Christians must champion an alternative. Or really what's that? We must create a system that is based not on greed, not even on greed tempered by honesty, the idea of free enterprise.

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Free enterprise is not an alternative, but on justice and love. We must create a system that distributes wealth more equitably in response to human needs.

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This Christian economic system will, by its very existence, be a prophetic voice to the world system. Let me give a thought to you because I'm going to read some quotes from Tim Keller that are along this line as well.

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What's the greatest need according to Christianity in humanity? What's the greatest need? What? The Lord.

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Salvation in Christ. Repentance and forgiveness of sin. Forgiveness of sin is what people need because that's our problem.

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That's our need. Does God have the ability to grant that need?

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Yes, he does through Jesus Christ. Salvation in him. But if justice is distributing based on need, then

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God is the most unjust being in the entire universe according to this thinking because God does not save everyone.

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He does not. It's contingent upon repentance. God has the more privilege than any other being in the entire universe, and he does not meet the need.

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He has an obligation to fulfill the need if this is true. It's unjust not to fulfill the need. This is actually an attack on God.

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It's saying that God's actually not just. And the circumstances by which he arranged the world are not just either.

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Sounds good on the front end. Think through it. It's not. Perkins says, and we have charted a strategy for achieving this vision.

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A strategy of what? Relocation, reconciliation, and what's the third one?

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Redistribution. I know you can't read it from back there. That's why I'll read it to you. A depressed community striving to become self -sufficient needs outside technology and funds to get started.

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Government and other outside groups can provide these. Some social justice warriors want to say, well, the church should do this.

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I think that's bad in and of itself. The church is responsible for getting rid of hierarchies and getting rid of disparities.

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But this is the further step, and I suggest this is where it's going. It's the government. The government needs to step in and do something.

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Here's some more examples for you. Crew last year. Here's two quotes from their conference.

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Sandra Van Obstel said, God so loved the world, not just the people in the world. Jesus came to start a revolution against injustice.

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Grant Hartley quoting Rachel Gilson, there is no command in scripture to be straight. There is a command to be faithfully single or faithfully married, and you can do either of those without being straight.

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So political consequences. While I was a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Thabiti Anabwile came, and this is what he said, quote, if caring about justice makes you a liberal, then

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I'm here to say that God himself is a liberal, and you better become one. That was my moment of I'm done with this.

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I couldn't believe that that was said, and no pushback whatsoever from anyone. Eric Mason wrote a book entitled

42:42

The Woke Church. I've done a whole review on it on my channel on YouTube, and these are the three kinds of justice in his mind that exists.

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Intervening justice, charity. Okay, so not against charity, right? Charity is good. Preventative justice, which is curtailing.

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These are the, you know, thou shalt not murder type of laws, and then there's, and this is what his book's about, systemic justice.

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Changing the system. Developing programmatic approaches to address systems that have historically worked against the principles of justice.

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Page 35, Woke Church. Now you don't find this in scripture. In fact, in scripture,

43:28

I'll just take a little aside here. We're going to talk about it in a minute, but there are two main words in Hebrew that are translated as justice.

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Mishpat and tzaddik. Two words, and both of them confer the idea of treating people equally.

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Equality before the law. So in other words, looking at someone and not treating them differently because they're related to you, or they're a stranger, or they come from somewhere else, or you don't like their hat, right?

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Those things don't matter. You just apply the law. Did they break the law? Then there will be a penalty.

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Are they in need of something? This is where tzaddik comes in. A just person is someone who lives in a righteous manner, who honors the law of God.

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That's a just person, and they're going to give someone a drink of water in the way that Jesus did on the

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Sermon on the Mount, whether they're an enemy or not. They're going to treat people the way that they want to be treated, right?

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That's justice according to God, and overwhelmingly in the Old Testament, it's the word mishpat.

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It's the word that conveys, and you can go look it up, do a study of it. It conveys equality before the law.

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We're going to look in a passage where we see it a whole bunch. Tim Keller, just a few quotes from him.

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I did a whole write -up you can go find. It's in the appendix for the book that I just wrote,

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Social Justice Goes to Church. Here's just a few quotes. Redeemer Presbyterian Church's mission, and this is the church that Tim Keller pastored, just so you know.

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This is their mission, and they repeat this sometimes on Sunday at church, is to help build a great city for all people through a movement of the gospel that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice, and cultural renewal to New York City, and through it, the world.

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Does that sound like the Great Commission to you? Does that sound like something else? The mission of the church is cultural renewal.

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I guess that can happen, but that's not an end in and of itself. That's just a result of the Great Commission. Social justice, we've already talked about what that means.

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Community formation. The substitutionary atonement involved

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Jesus losing his power, which in turn inspired Christians to be radical agents for social change by giving up theirs.

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Keller is a very big fan of Mikhail Foucault. Quotes him all the time, many sermons.

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He quotes James Cone. In fact, I found a few sources where he quotes, where he talks about at least

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Marx in unfavorable ways, by the way, often. This is not

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Christianity. It's biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we can give away.

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That's a Christianity today in 2010. It's not just about giving away financial things.

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It's about making sure that you give up your power so other people can have a platform.

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He bases this on Jesus in Philippians chapter 2, coming to earth and submitting to the will of the

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Father, by not crushing all those Roman soldiers that he could have crushed in order to gain our salvation.

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Yes, Jesus was giving us an example, and the example was to serve one another, but it had nothing to do with power relationships in society.

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To be honest with you, sometimes loving other people requires us to hang on to those powerful positions we have, because we're in a position where we can actually have influence to protect people, to protect the vulnerable, and we should be protecting their rights.

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This is outside of biblical Christianity. I'm not going to go through all this, but I just wanted to put up a quick example from the

47:24

Gospel Coalition. I was comparing a Gospel Coalition article last year to Ron Sider's 1977 book,

47:31

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and I found out they're basically the same. It's the same exact narrative. There's a disparity in wealth distribution throughout the world.

47:40

There's structural injustice, and that's what's causing it. Certain people have unmerited privilege, so that's why you can have racists in a system.

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They're not racist, but they're racist by nature of benefiting from a system that allocates privileges to certain people.

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The haves are the evil ones, and ultimately the problem in the church is that the church is segregated, and we got to do something about this, and this has been going on now for years.

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I want to take you through Exodus 23, and if you want, this would be a time you could open your Bible. This is the word mishpat.

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We're going to talk about it because it's used throughout Exodus 23, the word for justice, which is translated justice. Let's look at what the

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Bible says about this issue of equality and justice, because they are related to one another, these concepts.

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Exodus 23 verse 1 says, you shall not bear a false report. Do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.

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You shall not follow the masses in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to revert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute.

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Just quote that to a social justice warrior, right? You shouldn't show any partiality to someone who's poor.

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If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.

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If you see the donkey or one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him.

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You shall surely release it with him. You shall not pervert the justice due to your needy brother in his dispute.

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It's against nepotism. Keep far from a false charge and do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty.

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You shall not take a bride, for a bride blinds the clear -sighted and subverts the cause of the just. You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.

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Now, we see different groups throughout this. We see that we should not have partiality to ourselves by joining with a wicked man, because we're going to benefit somehow from that.

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We shouldn't do that. That's wrong. We shouldn't have partiality to ourselves, because we're going to follow a multitude.

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So, that's letting peer pressure guide our decision. So, concern for reputation, right? We shouldn't have partiality to the poor.

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So, letting compassion for someone keep justice from taking its course. This is one of the, you ever seen

50:26

Les Miserables, the movie, right? In the beginning, or it's a book, I guess. The, what's the guy's name?

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John? I forget his name. Gene something. Anyway, the guy who steals the bread, right?

50:39

He says, well, I was feeding my family. I'm a poor man. And Proverbs tells us that people understand when a poor man steals in order to feed his family.

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There is something understandable about that. We get that. And the goal, you know, shouldn't be the kind of crazy, all the crazy stuff he went through.

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That should, that's doesn't, that's not the crime fitting the punishment. But you know what? He should have had a punishment because he broke the law.

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It does not matter if he was poor and he broke the law. We should not let that false, that compassion make us subvert justice.

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That's what this is saying. Should apply it equally. It doesn't matter if they were a millionaire or they had $2 to their name.

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If they stole the phone or whatever item it may be, they need to make recompense for that item.

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Partiality to oneself by failing to help someone because they are an enemy. So taking revenge. So let's say this is when people recuse themselves with their judges, but someone comes to you and you recognize that's my enemy.

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That's the guy who made fun of me when I was young. You know, he didn't like my hat, didn't like my t -shirt, beat me up for it.

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And now I'm in a position where, man, I could really put him away for a few years. Well, that's not just, you have to apply the law.

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And if there's no evidence against him, then you can't subvert justice by creating it to enact revenge.

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Partiality to a needy brother. So someone who's a family member, perhaps lying to protect someone who is personally close.

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Partiality to yourself by taking a bribe. It's going to benefit me if I take this bribe. Partiality to yourself by oppressing a stranger.

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So perhaps taking advantage of someone who is vulnerable because they have no connection or means of recourse in society.

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Oftentimes in scripture and social justice warriors in Christianity love to take advantage of this. They'll bring up all the scriptures that talk about fighting for the needs of the poor or the widow or the orphan and those kinds of things, the alien and the stranger.

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What's going on in those passages is you actually do have demographics which, in the case of a foreigner, is that they're at a disadvantage.

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They don't know the language. They didn't grow up in your culture. They don't know how to navigate the legal system.

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In the case of someone who's a widow, they're at a disadvantage. They don't have a man in their life to help them to navigate these things to the more aggressive gender.

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In the case of an orphan, they don't have parents. So there's been a breakdown somewhere as the result of the fall.

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And those people can easily be taken advantage of. Look how many people are in sex slavery because they were their orphans.

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They don't have anyone looking after them. And so that's why you see those passages in scripture is because oftentimes people who are at a disadvantage are the ones who are taken advantage of.

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They don't know how to steer their course through society. So there's some truth to that.

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But the goal is not to level the playing field for them. The goal is to make sure justice is practiced equitably for them.

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So if they are falsely accused, they get a lawyer, right? And it's a jury of their peers.

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And we have a due process that is supposed to protect those kinds of people, supposed to. So that's what justice is in the eyes of God.

54:03

And here's a picture of Lady Justice with a blindfold. You see these outside of courthouses. I was just on the steps of the

54:09

Supreme Court a few weeks ago, right after the decision to have

54:15

Trump's Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett, I think is her name. And we were there when it happened.

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And there's a statue right by the left side of the Supreme Court. You walk up the steps and there's a blindfold and there's

54:30

Lady Justice right there. And the reason for that is because Lady Justice does not take into account any external factors.

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She just applies the law. And she has a sword, if you notice, and then she has weights to measure to make sure that something is actually true.

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So justice from God's perspective is the faithful application of his law, irrespective of who the person is it's being applied to, or what group they belong to.

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It doesn't matter if they're poor or foreign or a family member. They deserve what's called equality before the law.

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This biblical thinking is what influenced our culture to include things like due process, trial by jury, and the idea that justice is blind.

55:08

While biblical justice is retributive, meaning it punishes those who break the law, meaning criminals, today's social justice is redistributive, meaning it seeks to reallocate influence, privilege, and resources to create a world with a more equitable outcome.

55:26

It destroys biblical understandings of personal responsibility, private property, and objective truth.

55:33

And it's not just economic. When we talk about power relationships and deplatforming people because of the fact that they're in majority culture of some kind, they're white, straight males, we're doing the same exact thing.

55:46

We're actually subverting justice. And that's the scary part of this. This is the part that is not is not compatible with the word of God.

55:56

Here's some questions to ask. Why assume that intrinsic worth equals egalitarianism?

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That's often the argument. Well, they're made in the image of God, therefore they deserve this. Christ submitted to his

56:07

Father's will, and the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ. They're part of the Trinity. Equal worth, different function.

56:15

The created order includes hierarchies, as we just talked about. Question number two, is

56:20

God's law fair? You really want to get someone mad at you who's a

56:25

Christian social justice activist. Ask them if it's fair in God's law for civil penalties against, let's say, different sexual deviancies.

56:34

They'll get right in the face. Of course, that's the Old Testament. That doesn't matter. Well, why? Did Jesus believe the

56:39

Old Testament? What about Paul? Is diversity, equity, and inclusion in the church part of the church's mission, or a result of being in Christ?

56:49

This is the multi -ethnic church model. The idea that we need to do something extra in the church to make sure that we attract minorities or other kinds of people.

57:00

That's not the goal of the church. That's not the purpose of the church. The church preaches the gospel, applies the word of God, and all kinds of people come because that's what they're there for.

57:08

In Revelation 6 -7, we see the heavenly state, and you see every tribe, tongue, and nation gathered around the throne of God worshiping.

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They're there because of something Christ did, not something the church did as a missional strategy. They're there because they all, and by the way, it says language too, so it's every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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This isn't something that was ever given as a strategy for a local church in a specific context where specific language is spoken to try to achieve.

57:39

I talked to a pastor in Iowa, and he said, you know, I keep hearing that we're racist because we don't have any minorities in our church.

57:48

He said, there's no minorities in my town. A lot of big parts of the Midwest, I mean, people grow up, they've never seen anyone that looked different from them.

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It's a lot different than it is here in a more multicultural area, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's the thing.

58:02

There's no evil in that. There's some towns in Iowa that are basically just German or just people from Sweden, you know, places like that, the northern

58:18

European, people from Holland, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's okay.

58:24

It's not like they're breaking some law, but this is the kind of thing that's used to try to guilt churches to make them feel like they're racist or something.

58:34

On what basis are humans entitled to social privileges? That's a good question to ask. Is it need?

58:40

Because if it's need, God is a big meanie, and you just made God out to be an enemy. So let's talk about this.

58:48

We have, what, 20 more minutes? I just want to make sure. Whenever I'm done.

58:54

I don't want to go too long. Let's read Galatians 1, verses 6 through 9, and I want to spend a little time on this, just because I think this is an important passage to understand when fighting this stuff.

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Paul says in Galatians 1, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.

59:19

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

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As we have said before, so I say now again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is also to be accursed.

59:40

We've talked about standpoint epistemology. We've talked about egalitarianism.

59:46

We'll talk about Marxism now, which is the ethics of this. Talked about the metaphysics. We've talked about some of the, you can't help but, when talking about egalitarianism, you have to talk about some of the ethics.

59:57

But we talked about the epistemology. I want to talk about the ethics, and I want to talk about how specifically social justice has created a new gospel in the church.

01:00:08

This is the heart. This should be the most important thing for all of us, I think, as we're navigating this, is it destroys the gospel itself.

01:00:18

Now, Paul was obviously reacting to a heresy going on.

01:00:23

The Judaizers were coming, and they were saying you needed to be circumcised to be saved. This was part of being saved was being circumcised, right?

01:00:31

And so he reacts to this. He says, you add something. You add works to this gospel, to this grace, and you don't have the gospel anymore.

01:00:38

And he confronts Peter about it. A few things before we get to the

01:00:45

Peter confrontation. There's some words used here. Heteros, meaning different.

01:00:50

And there's some examples that I gave. This is the first word used in Galatians chapter one when he says, you are called by the grace of Christ, what you're deserting him, who called you by the grace for a different gospel.

01:01:08

And what he's saying here is that it's different in the sense, I'll just read these passages.

01:01:15

Matthew 8, another of his disciples said to him, Lord, permit me to go and bury my father. Luke 14, another king.

01:01:22

Luke 20, another slave. It's different in the sense of there's another one, right? It's another one that is different in a sequence.

01:01:31

Another word that's used in this passage is a loss. And it's the word actually for similar. So it's

01:01:37

Matthew 12 talks about stretching out your hand to restore it to normal like the other.

01:01:43

So there is a sequence in which you like hands, there's two hands, there can be two hands.

01:01:49

You can have in the second verse here in Matthew 27, the other Mary, there's two Marys, they're similar.

01:01:55

In Mark four, you have other boats, there's other boats, right? The significance of this, if we go back here real quick, is he says heteros, different gospel, which is really not another, which he's saying it's impossible to have another gospel.

01:02:15

You can have two Marys, you can have two boats, you can have two hands, you can't have two gospels.

01:02:25

It's really not another gospel. He's saying it's impossible to have another gospel.

01:02:31

You can't do it. It defies reason. So what they're calling, what the

01:02:36

Judaizers are calling another gospel, the same, okay, heteros, it's not another gospel.

01:02:43

It's different. Does that make sense? So, and ESV gets this right, not that there is another one.

01:02:52

And the word used here to, if I can pronounce this, meta strepho, to change, alter, or distort, he says this is what they're doing to the gospel.

01:03:01

And the same word is used in Acts two, the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. The moon into blood, how is that possible?

01:03:08

Such a radical change, the metamorphosis. KJV says, but even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

01:03:23

Anathema, serious stuff Paul's talking about.

01:03:30

What was this different gospel? Let's go to Galatians two, three through five. Not even

01:03:36

Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised, but it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

01:03:48

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

01:03:55

Now, someone could have said, wait a minute, Paul, hold on. I remember back in Acts 16, chapter three, you actually had someone circumcised.

01:04:05

So what's your problem with it now? You're against circumcision all of a sudden? No, he's not against circumcision.

01:04:13

He's against circumcision as a requirement for the gospel. Look at the end of that.

01:04:19

So that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. That's why I prevented the circumcision of Titus.

01:04:25

Yeah, Timothy, we can circumcise him. If you're just trying to, you don't want to create an offense, sure, but if you're saying this is part of the gospel,

01:04:32

I'm not going to do it. So why circumcise

01:04:37

Timothy and not Titus? Because in Titus's case, circumcision was compelled as a gospel issue.

01:04:44

I use that language on purpose because that's what we hear today. Social justice is a gospel issue.

01:04:53

This is mixing categories of law and grace. Galatians 2, 11 through 14, but when

01:04:58

Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the

01:05:04

Gentiles. But when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

01:05:12

The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

01:05:18

But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, if you, being a

01:05:26

Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews? So he's saying, you're a hypocrite,

01:05:33

Peter. What you're doing right now, you don't even believe that. You're doing it because of fear.

01:05:39

That's why you're doing it. You fear that you're going to have a repercussion against you. We know what the

01:05:45

Jews did in certain areas, don't we? We know what happened to Paul later when he went to Jerusalem.

01:05:51

Of course there'd be fear about this. Now the word used here for guilty,

01:05:56

Cephas being guilty, is not the same word. So it's katagenosko, the word for guilty, is not the same word as anathema from chapter one, verse eight, which is the word for cursed.

01:06:10

So he's saying there's a group of people that are cursed, anathema, different gospel, and there's, and Peter is not in that group.

01:06:16

He's not cursed. He is guilty though of hypocrisy. So I think that's important to make a separation and show you.

01:06:26

I think today in the social justice debacle, there's two different categories, and we need to be clear about that.

01:06:32

There are those who are cursed, pushing a false gospel. There are those who are deceived, engaging in hypocrisy, and they can't engage in it for long or else they will be, it'll be shown that they are not saved either.

01:06:43

They must be confronted on it, and then Matthew 18 takes its course. Theological difference between someone who is temporarily inconsistent and someone whose life pattern affirms error related to the gospel, that would be the difference.

01:06:56

Philippians 3 .18, for many walk of whom I often told you and now tell you, even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

01:07:03

So when you see your favorite hero, preacher, go this direction, and they consistently go this direction, like a

01:07:09

Matt Chandler, let's say, Paul relates to this. Paul had the same thing. Paul knew people that he weeped over because he's now their enemies of the cross of Christ.

01:07:19

So what is the gospel? The gospel, Galatians 2 .16, nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law no flesh will be justified.

01:07:36

Romans 1 .16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the

01:07:41

Jew first, and also to the Greek. That's pretty politically incorrect, isn't it? For in the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.

01:07:52

First Corinthians 15 .1 -4, now I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold fast the word which

01:08:02

I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

01:08:15

That's the gospel. It's the good news of Jesus coming. Is there any law in that?

01:08:21

There is no law in that. This is not, these aren't burdens put on you.

01:08:27

This is freedom from the burden of the law. Let me give you a case study in this of how this has destroyed the gospel.

01:08:37

Jarvis Williams is a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and here's some things he tweeted out in 2015.

01:08:45

If we want to convince people that racism exists, we must help them to understand that race and what race and racism are.

01:08:51

Critical race theory can help us. My Christian brothers and sisters should become familiar with critical race theory.

01:08:58

I don't agree with everything in theory, but it offers insights. Critical race theory and social identity theory are helpful tools for, get this, understanding identity formation in the

01:09:09

New Testament. Great resources available. Well, how did this play out in Jarvis Williams' theology?

01:09:17

If you want a really good example of how critical race theory is just like the

01:09:22

Galatian heresy, this is what I want to show you. These are, I put together, and this is after some extensive research, all the elements of critical race theory.

01:09:34

If we had to line up this is what critical race theory is, it would be these elements.

01:09:41

Then I went through and I read Jarvis Williams. I read a book called Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Baptist Convention, and I read a lecture by his at the

01:09:48

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He believes every single element of critical race theory, and it ends up creating a false gospel.

01:09:57

I'm going to go over this. Racism is normative, assumption of critical race theory. It's systemic. Here's a quote from Jarvis Williams.

01:10:03

I applaud the many white Southern Baptists who responded without cries for justice after the controversial deaths of black men at the hands of predominantly white police officers in Ferguson, Staten Island, Baltimore, and elsewhere.

01:10:17

Assuming that this is just all the result of racism, that's what this is. White privilege maintains white dominance,

01:10:23

Jarvis Williams. The most significant instances of racial disparity in the Southern Baptist life is intellectual racism because black scholarship is dismissed and there are few black leaders.

01:10:34

So if you don't have black leaders, must mean you're racist. White privilege maintains white dominance.

01:10:41

So we say there's a barrier. People that aren't white can't be platformed. Whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self -interest.

01:10:50

It's called interest convergence. Here's what Jarvis Williams says. Certain predominantly white churches want a multi -ethnic church, but they don't want to leverage privilege and power with vetted, qualified black and brown people.

01:11:01

So he's saying, yeah, they'll go along with a multi -ethnic church, but you better not have minorities in charge.

01:11:09

I don't know any quote he could have gathered by someone who believes that, but he's assuming it because that's an assumption of critical race theory.

01:11:17

Colorblindness subordinates minorities. Southern Baptists, according to Jarvis Williams, should not claim they view all people in a colorblind fashion.

01:11:26

That's wrong. By the way, you can't say that. If you say you're colorblind, you just don't see race. You're racist. That's what they think because you should be looking through the lens of race all the time so that you can adjust the way that you treat people based on that because if there's someone who's oppressed, they deserve different kind of treatment.

01:11:43

They need the red carpet rolled out, so to speak. So colorblindness is wrong.

01:11:49

You need to take into account oppression, and colorblindness doesn't do that. Race is socially constructed for the purpose of racism.

01:11:57

Here's what Jarvis Williams says. Race, in our experience, is a construct that people created for the advancing a racist agenda flowing out of Europe into America.

01:12:07

So race doesn't even exist other than it's just something white people from Europe came up with to oppress. That's what he says.

01:12:15

Here's two more. Voices of color are needed to help whites understand minority oppression. That's standpoint epistemology, right? It's part of critical race theory.

01:12:22

Here's what Jarvis Williams says. White Southern Baptists with privilege and without personal experience of the challenges associated with being a black or brown person in the

01:12:29

U .S. should spend more time listening to their black and brown brothers and sisters instead of trying to speak to, at, about, or for them.

01:12:38

So shut up if you don't meet those categories. Last one, history should be interpreted through minority experience.

01:12:45

This is revisionism and memory studies. Now, I want you to realize something. This is the biggest destructive thing of this whole thing, in a way.

01:12:54

The Bible is not just a spiritual book. It is a historical book. So if you're going to reinterpret history, the

01:13:01

Bible is also history. Here's what Jarvis Williams says. Peter's problem in Galatians 2 was not a misunderstanding of justification by faith, but a

01:13:13

Gentile -exclusive gospel. If you go to Galatians 2 and just read it, it is obvious that has nothing to do with it.

01:13:22

It's all about justification by faith. Nothing to do with the Gentile -exclusive gospel.

01:13:27

But if you remember what I showed you earlier, critical race theory is a helpful tool for understanding identity formation in the

01:13:35

New Testament. I'm being told by some people that I'm crazy because I'm connecting these dots and that I'm lying about good, godly, faithful men.

01:13:45

I don't think so. And here's why I don't think so. Critical race theory infuses racial reconciliation with the law.

01:13:56

It infuses it with the law. So it becomes the law. This is how it works.

01:14:01

Jarvis Williams, professor teaching students at this seminary, conservative seminary, supposedly, takes critical race theory and what it recommends, its law, to alleviate these circumstances, and it adds it to the gospel.

01:14:15

And the word he uses is racial reconciliation. Now, there's a biblical racial reconciliation, if you want to call it that.

01:14:20

It's called being in Christ and you're reconciled and that's it. That's it. That's all it is. This is a bunch of works.

01:14:27

I'll read a few of these for you. These are all direct quotes. Be willing to die for racial reconciliation as you would for penal substitution.

01:14:39

According to Paul, racial reconciliation is not an implication of the gospel and certainly not a social issue instead of a gospel issue, but is a gospel issue.

01:14:48

Those exclamation points are his, not mine. Certain Southern Baptists view racial reconciliation as a social issue instead of a gospel issue because of an incomplete understanding of both the gospel and race.

01:15:00

So if you guys don't agree with him, you don't understand the gospel. Pretty serious.

01:15:08

I want to argue that the category of gospel should not be narrowly defined as entry language, i .e.,

01:15:13

justification by faith, but should be broadly defined to include maintenance language, i .e., walking in the

01:15:19

Spirit. The problem that Roman Catholics have, conflating sanctification and justification.

01:15:27

The gospel's maintenance language tells one how to live in the power of the Spirit, the reality of what

01:15:33

God has done for him in Christ. Gospel's maintenance language? Gospel is the good news that Jesus has come.

01:15:43

If you want to save their sanctification and under the umbrella of sanctification, or beneath that, you have salvation, that's part of it, okay, but he's saying the gospel here, okay?

01:15:56

The unification of all things in Christ includes our receiving the blessing of all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, which at least includes a bunch of things, including racial reconciliation.

01:16:10

Notice he's using the same passage I just read to you. He's trying to use Galatians to prove the opposite of what

01:16:15

Galatians means. I offer a few biblical reasons Southern Baptists from every racial stripe should continue to work towards removing the stain of racism from their churches, from their homes, from every aspect of SPC life.

01:16:29

Now let me ask you a question here. If the unification of all things in Christ includes racial reconciliation, then why do

01:16:37

Christians have to work towards racial reconciliation? If it's completed in Christ, if we're united in Christ, then why are there works added?

01:16:48

What do we have to do that Christ didn't already do? You see how this is the Galatian heresy all over?

01:16:55

All sinners experience justification before God by faith in Jesus Christ apart from the works of law, but without personal holiness, we will not experience final justification because our works will prove whether we trust in Jesus, and our works will either vindicate us or condemn us in the final judgment.

01:17:14

So there's justification, and there's final justification. Remember what we said over here in Galatians 2?

01:17:24

What was Paul's problem? They were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel. You think this is straightforward about the truth of the gospel?

01:17:32

Not at all. Here's the kicker, which you can't see probably, so I'll read it to you.

01:17:39

Racial reconciliation includes do's and don'ts. Let me give you some of them. See if this sounds familiar.

01:17:45

This was given in 2018, I believe. This is a book. Al Mohler wrote a chapter in it, endorsed it.

01:17:51

It's removing the stain of racism from the Southern Baptist Convention. Here are his recommendations for how to pursue racial reconciliation.

01:17:57

Ready? Get rid of art. Southern Baptist churches need to erase, take down, or paint over all images of a white disciples and all white children learning at the feet of Jesus.

01:18:08

These images perpetuate white supremacy and suggest the kingdom of God revolves around whiteness. We've seen the destruction in some

01:18:17

Catholic churches, especially this year, of statues because of that reason. Don't be colorblind.

01:18:25

Southern Baptists should not claim they view all people in a colorblind fashion. It's kind of disgusting to me, growing up that way.

01:18:31

I didn't even think of people according to their ethnic makeup, and he's forcing us to do that.

01:18:37

That's why I think this is racism. Do diversify your church. Southern Baptists need to enlarge their ethnic circles to include more black and brown believers.

01:18:45

If Southern Baptists live monoethnic lives, they will have a limited monoethnic perspective of the complexity of Southern Baptist life.

01:18:54

If you don't take their perspectives, you're missing out on something. This is the Gnosticism. Do support other multi -ethnic churches.

01:19:02

Southern Baptists must pray for and support multi -ethnic church plants in their cities and communities if their churches are not going to pursue reconciliation.

01:19:10

Do listen to experiences. White Southern Baptists with privilege and without personal experience of the challenges associated with being a black or brown person in the

01:19:17

U .S. should spend more time listening and less time talking. Do implement quotas.

01:19:23

If the stain of racism is going to become less apparent, white leaders responsible for organizing conferences must intentionally include black and brown people at the center of their conference, and the

01:19:34

SBC needs to have conferences that are predominantly led by black and brown individuals. That's affirmative action, essentially.

01:19:43

This is wrong. This is not about whether the person understands scripture or the field that they're in.

01:19:49

This is all about platform them because of some external quality. My question is, did

01:19:56

Jesus Christ really accomplish racial reconciliation? According to this, no.

01:20:02

He says it in one place that he did, and he contradicts it over here. It says, yes, but you have to do these works.

01:20:10

So if racial reconciliation is part of the gospel, and it's part of something that Christ accomplished, but yet we don't have it yet because we haven't worked hard enough, then that means that works are part of this, a part of the gospel.

01:20:25

That's the danger of all of this, this whole movement. That's the danger, in my opinion.

01:20:31

This is what it all comes down to for me, and it's what motivated me more than anything else to get involved as I saw what this would do to the gospel itself.

01:20:41

Someone who's involved in evangelism and college ministry, say, if you add this to the gospel and say, this is a gospel issue, this is part of the mission of the church, this is part of evangelism, then you're not sharing the gospel anymore.

01:20:51

You're sharing basically the social political agenda of the Democratic Party and calling that the gospel.

01:20:57

It's no wonder we have pro -lifers for Joe Biden. It's no wonder we have, Tim Keller just recently put on Twitter how, you know, there's different ways that Christians can think about their votes, and it's perfectly fine for them to want to help the poor people by voting for Joe Biden, essentially by voting for a

01:21:15

Democrat, because what's happened is we've decided that these issues are part of the gospel.

01:21:21

It's part of the message of Christianity. So I want to close by giving, talking about some, briefly, some emotional barriers to all this, and then

01:21:29

I'm going to recommend some resources. So some emotional barriers. You've listened to a lot today, which

01:21:34

I appreciate very much. I think oftentimes this religion is not something that's intellectually argued for.

01:21:43

I've given you some of the arguments. These arguments stink. It's not the arguments that are convincing people. It's emotional experience.

01:21:50

So here's some of the things you'll hear. It's loving your neighbor to just listen. If you don't accept that maybe, let's say, a police shooting or, let's say, you know, alleged rape or something, that the story that's being told to you, if you don't accept it, you're not being loving because you're not listening.

01:22:09

You want to bring in categories of due process. You shouldn't do that. You should just listen. How do you respond to that when someone says that?

01:22:18

Well, is it really loving your neighbor to let your neighbor believe a lie that could actually harm them, that would make them live in fear, that men are just raping women all over the place, or that white people or police,

01:22:32

I should say, are out? Is that kind to do to someone? No, it's not kind. That's not loving your neighbor.

01:22:38

Loving your neighbor means speaking the truth in love. Truth must accompany love.

01:22:44

So it's not loving your neighbor to engage in lies. Shouldn't we care, and I will also say it's kind of not very nice to your neighbor to steal their stuff either, so redistribution schemes, not really loving.

01:22:57

Shouldn't we care about the oppressed? Yes, we should care about the oppressed, but that does not mean that we buy into a

01:23:05

Marxist redistribution scheme, which robs the oppressed of their human dignity by telling them that they're just the victim of forces outside their control.

01:23:14

We help the oppressed by engaging in charity, as the Christian church has done for 2 ,000 years, and by giving them, helping anyone out there who needs help to provide for themselves.

01:23:26

If you don't work, you should not eat, and that is a biblical principle. So here's another one, but we're all equal in the eyes of God.

01:23:35

That's exactly right, and that's the same God, and I went over this earlier, that made us different in other ways, and hierarchies are part of that.

01:23:45

So we're equal in worth, we're equal in our need for salvation, we're equal as far as the fact that we're sinners, but we're not equal in the roles that we play in society itself, and here are some of the other objections.

01:23:58

These are fear -based objections. The church has been wrong before. We don't want to be wrong again. That's a fear -based objection.

01:24:06

Church was wrong on women's rights. Church was wrong on slavery. Church was wrong on the crusades.

01:24:12

Church was right. We have this whole, all this baggage of the church, the church, the church. I suggest that people mostly who say those things have not studied the issues themselves.

01:24:21

They don't understand what they're talking about. They don't understand the context itself, and I will get into those discussions sometimes, but you don't always have time to get into a discussion like that, and we're, you know, if you're working, you can't study the history of all these things, and so we're to the point now where most people assume an incorrect understanding of the church's role in history.

01:24:40

Honestly, the best answer to this is probably, so what? Really, that's the best answer.

01:24:47

The church has been wrong before. Okay. Really, the best thing you can probably say is, yeah, there's people who are

01:24:53

Christians who have done some messed up things in the past, people who claim to be Christians. What does the

01:25:00

Bible say? Let our theology be the answer to this. What does the Bible say about what a Christian is? If you love me, obey my commandments.

01:25:06

Were they obeying Christ's commandments in the incidences you're trying to bring up? Why don't we talk about this specific issue today and bring biblical truth to bear and not worry about whether or not we're going to make the mistakes that supposedly our ancestors made?

01:25:20

That's just living in fear. What, and you can turn this around by saying, what if being wrong about this is joining the social justice side?

01:25:29

What if, just like the Christians who were involved in the Crusades, if that's a bad thing to this individual you're talking to, what if joining the social justice warriors is the same thing?

01:25:40

What if they're the ones that are the Crusaders, right? So this isn't an emotionally, this isn't an intellectually deep objection.

01:25:47

It's an emotional reaction. What will my friends and family think of me? We know what Jesus said about that.

01:25:54

Hate father and mother in comparison to your love for me. Opposing this will make me lose ministry job and job opportunities, yeah?

01:26:03

And the Lord Jesus Christ made incredible sacrifices. So when we are persecuted, what did the

01:26:11

Lord say in Matthew chapter five? Blessed, blessed are you. So here's some resources for you.

01:26:19

A few books, Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice by E. Calvin Beisner. It's really short. It goes through a bunch of things that I have not talked about.

01:26:28

Verses, and this is mostly against socialism, but verses that are used by Christians who advocate socialism like in Acts, the early church in Acts, and some other verses as well.

01:26:40

Scott Allen wrote a book called Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice. I endorsed that book. It just came out recently.

01:26:47

It's pretty accessible, I would say. It doesn't go through everything I just went through, but it is a decent resource.

01:26:53

You can at least recommend to someone. Ronald Nash wrote a book in the 1980s called Social Justice in the

01:26:59

Christian Church, which is very good. Again, it doesn't get into the intersectionality and the critical race stuff, but it goes to the point of the

01:27:07

New Left movement and critiques that. My book as well, which is a history of the

01:27:13

New Left in modern American evangelicalism. I haven't gone over any of that, hardly really, in these lectures, but I show the whole history of how

01:27:23

Marxists from the 1960s got into evangelicalism in the 70s. Those are the guys that influenced the current crop.

01:27:30

I'll give you one example real quick. Tim Keller. If you understand three people, you'll understand Tim Keller.

01:27:35

You understand Tom Skinner was his political mentor in 1970 because he listened to this address by Tom Skinner from Urbana over and over and over again.

01:27:45

Then Elwood Ellis was his friend that he worked with at Gordon -Conwell

01:27:51

Theological Seminary. Then when he went to Westminster, he had a guy named Harvey Kahn teaching him. I go through in the book what all those three men believed and how they've influenced

01:28:00

Tim Keller. There's no doubt in my mind, Tim Keller has socialist background. It comes out in his theology.

01:28:07

I showed the connection there of how this stuff got into Christianity. Some non -Christian resources.

01:28:14

I think Thomas Sowell's book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice is good. It basically just shows you, you will never achieve social justice on this earth.

01:28:21

You can't do it. It's impossible. In fact, you'll just make more of a mess of it if you try. Then cynical theories, how activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, identity, why this harms everybody, just came out by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.

01:28:34

I've met James Lindsay. He is an atheist. I have talked to him a little bit about his views.

01:28:44

It comes out, I'll just put it that way. If you read the book, the secularism will come out. You'll see it.

01:28:49

The reason I'm recommending it is because he does correctly identify, because he was part of that world, what these theories are and how they work.

01:28:58

If you want to understand the mechanics of critical theories today, that's a good book to get. In closing, what does

01:29:04

Christianity offer that we can emphasize, that we can show as an alternative to social justice?

01:29:12

It offers forgiveness of sins and includes sins of injustice. Injustice is all around us.

01:29:18

It honors unity in Christ, gender, class, age, tribe, tongue, nation, all unified in Christ.

01:29:24

You want unity. You don't want people at each other's throats. They better become Christians. It gives a fulfilling identity, which is more than just power relationships, which is what social justice reduces everyone to.

01:29:37

We're more than just that. We are people that think in the abstract, that can comprehend things, that understand beauty, that were made by a creator to fulfill a purpose.

01:29:45

We can have spiritual gifts if we're in the church. We have functions in society which we fulfill that vary according to where we're born and what opportunities present themselves to us, but we have a role.

01:29:56

That's a comforting thought. Roles and responsibilities. We have social and political purpose in a way.

01:30:07

Especially in a republic like ours, we have the opportunity to vote and to be involved in politics.

01:30:13

Christianity gives us a moral foundation for understanding how to navigate that. We have a basis for rights and responsibilities.

01:30:20

Social justice advocates don't have any basis for human rights at all. Everything just comes down to power relationships.

01:30:28

I've said this before, but I don't understand why might just doesn't make right. You're very arbitrary. I'll say to a social justice lawyer, you're very arbitrary with what you're saying.

01:30:36

You're just saying, because you think it's wrong, other people should just assume that it's wrong, that men rape women or whatever.

01:30:44

Of course, that's wrong. I can tell you why. We have a basis for rights.

01:30:50

Then we have a theology of culture. We know where culture came from. We know God created Adam and Eve and from them all the nations of the world.

01:30:58

We know what happened at the Tower of Babel. We know what Paul said in Acts 17. We know how

01:31:04

God favored the nation of Israel and Israel became a light to the nations. We know what culture is. It's not this artificial thing that you can create or something that you're born into that just reduces down to some power relationship of some kind.

01:31:23

We know that there's beauty and real beauty in all cultures, even ones that aren't

01:31:28

Christian. There's the Imago Dei there. There's sometimes a sense of beauty in their food and their art.

01:31:36

You can be proud of those things. I say to people, there's no culture I can think of. Maybe there's one

01:31:41

I haven't thought of yet, but there's no culture I can think of which you can't find something in that culture to be proud of. There's something somewhere, even if it's just you remember the smell of a certain food that your mother made as a kid.

01:31:54

That's God's grace because we don't deserve that. We understand cultures.

01:32:00

I think if we emphasize those things more and if we taught them to children, they wouldn't be as susceptible to the social justice narrative.

01:32:11

I think if the children who grew up in a church in which the rich person is discipling them and the poor person is helping them with ministers to them through music and all sorts of different races and ethnicities and genders.

01:32:26

Well, the two genders are represented there and they're interacting with all these people. It's awfully hard for them to hate when the world comes and tells them you need to hate this particular demographic.

01:32:35

You say, that rich white man discipled me and gave me my first car. How dare you say that rich white people aren't all evil.