Re: John Piper on Critical Race Theory

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and it looks like my cat wants to join me today. Hey, Josie, do you wanna be part of the program? For those who are watching, this is the little kitten I've showed on the program a few times we rescued just a few years ago, few years ago, few months ago.

It feels like a few years in 2020, doesn't it? And as you can see, she's gotten a lot bigger. I think she was the runt of the litter. This was totally unplanned, though. This is not how we were gonna start off the show today.

She somehow got in here. All right, bye, Josie. We'll see you later. Yeah. This is a completely fan-driven episode, if you wanna call it that. Not something I was planning on talking about, wanted to talk about, really, but the more I thought about it, I thought, you know what, I was on the fence.

I jumped to one side of the fence and said, maybe this'll help a few people, because there's some folks who really want me to speak out about or analyze what John Piper just said about critical race theory.

He did a two-part article, it's a two-article, two-part series, I guess, on Desiring God, and I've kind of said my piece about Piper. I did three videos. I talk about his Christian hedonism and how I think it's an Achilles' heel that's helped import some of the social justice stuff into his church and into his ministry, and Piper right now, I mean, he kind of has to guard his left flank, or at least a few weeks ago, he did, and without getting into details, there was some stuff going on at the seminary there and some accusations that the seminary is racist and these kinds of things, and so, and I'm not saying, I don't know why John Piper decided to put that article out where he basically made a moral equivalency between Trump's arrogance and Biden's pro-abortion stance, but that's the first thing I thought when I saw that article.

I thought, well, this is kind of, this'll definitely ensure that he's more guarded on his left flank, and it was to the glee, really, of Christians who, well, I think, they call themselves Christians, I believe.

I believe it was a very leftist, progressive, quote-unquote Christian organization who took out an ad, I think it was in the Washington Post, it was in a secular newspaper, basically thanking people like John Piper.

I mean, this went out, it first went out over Twitter, and then Piper had to distance himself, and it was this whole thing, and it's like, you know, the secular, the progressive leftist Christians, I almost said secular because they behave that way, they really like John Piper, they really like what he's doing, and it shouldn't be a shock to anyone.

He's moving the needle in that direction. You don't have to, you know, dot every I, cross every T for the evangelical left or for progressives in general. They're pushing the revolution, and if, in your lane, you're moving the needle, they'll help you, and that's what's been going on in evangelical Christianity now for a few years, unfortunately, and it's just, you know, on a practical level, it's just a strategy to be eaten last because they're gonna come for you eventually.

The question is when, and if you're, you know, ingratiating yourselves to them, and then you'll live for a little while longer. You'll be platformed more than, you know, someone like a John MacArthur, maybe, who's excoriated by the left wing, so this is where we live, and, you know, I wanna just, I wanna be in realville with you to borrow a phrase from Rush Limbaugh.

Yes, I said Rush Limbaugh. I have listened to his show a few times. He uses that phrase realville, and I love that phrase, and so I gotta, I was in academia, and I don't like plagiarizing, so I'm gonna just tell you where I got it from, but to be in realville means that you're, it's not just, it's not being a pragmatist, but it means you are practical.

You realize kind of where you are, what the situation's like, and you're not being esoteric and vague, and like most evangelical elites, unfortunately, you're actually thinking about the people that need help, that need to think through issues, and you're going to give them resources to help them in their real lives, not a fake life, not an issue that mattered 200 years ago that doesn't matter now.

That's what the ivory tower's technically, that's what I've witnessed in the ivory tower often, so I wanna live in realville with you, and I just want you, before we even get into any of this, just think with me for a moment.

Do we live in a world right now, in the United States especially, that's most of my listeners are in the United States, do you guys live in a place where there's just all kinds of false accusations being leveled against Christians for teaching ideas consistent with critical race theory, or any form of cultural Marxism, et cetera?

Do you live in that? That's a real question. At your church, or I don't know, wherever you get information, do you notice a lot of unsubstantiated, just false accusations, witch hunt level stuff, against people claiming that they're Marxists or critical race theorists when they're not?

Now one of the things on this program that I have endeavored to do, and I've been pretty painstaking about it, if I make a mistake, I will admit it, and you know that, I've done it, I can count it on one hand, but there have been a few times when I've said hey, I jumped to a conclusion on something, and I didn't have all the information, and I was wrong, and there's been a few times that's happened, but it's very rare, because I really believe that I wanna do the research, I wanna make sure that I know exactly what I'm saying, and I can reference it if I need to.

So this is the way I feel, I know that's the way A .D. Robles feels, I know a lot of the guys that I know in this fight who are saying hey, there's a problem with critical race theory in the church, they have, if you wanna call it receipts, I kinda hate that terminology, but that's the Twitter terminology, they have evidence for backing up their claims, at least raising the concern, and if that concern exists, in real bill, does it cause you to examine those individuals, or yourself if you're accused of this, does it cause you to think through maybe I'm being influenced by ideas that, from the media, from academia, from the government, from wherever, does it cause you to think I should think through whether or not I'm being influenced by those things, maybe I am promoting critical race theory ideas without knowing it by name, just because it percolates in the world around us, it's just part of the warp and woof, it comes to us in so many avenues that we just start thinking that way, do you examine that, do you think through that, or do you just dismiss anyone who says that by saying, I've never read Karl Marx, I've never read Kimberley, you know, Williams Crenshaw, I never, I didn't do any of those things, because that is the reaction of the evangelical left, and I don't have a problem calling them that at this point, the evangelical left's reaction is always to put a shield up, to ignore the problem, it doesn't exist here, what are you talking about, delete those videos while you're at it, hey, this person, this professor signed this statement of faith, they can't believe what you're accusing them of, you know, that's the kind of thing we get, and then the counter accusations, well, you're just a liar, you're just a racist, you're just, you're the problem, right, there's no humility in thinking through, well, maybe this person's done some research, and maybe they're onto something here, maybe I should at least look at it, and so that's, we've been at this for now a few years, and the shields have gone up all over the place, right, and John Piper, with his track record now, that people are now more aware of, with promoting some of these ideas, and I'll show you some of that in a minute, and then what he did before the election, after the election, he, I don't know why he's doing everything he's doing, I don't, I mean, we'll take him, you know, we wanna assume the best, that he's really just trying to help people here, but his first article in this two-part series is just, it's a shield, that's all it is, basically, it's all about how slander is so bad, and you shouldn't accuse someone of teaching critical race theory if they're not.

Let me ask you, in realville, do we know who John Piper's talking about? This isn't abstract stuff, yeah, yeah, of course we do, we know their names, we know who they are, this isn't slander, there's actual problems that need to be addressed, and they haven't been properly.

To lash out and then just say, in realville, that there's this big problem with slander going on, and that's your first article in the two, I think it's a two-part series, I went through two articles, that just seems to be out of touch with realville.

You know, unless you're willing to come out, and you're gonna say, you know what, I'm willing to go through all the Curtis Woods, Jarvis Williams, I'm just naming Southern Baptists, you know, Walter Strickland, you know, all the speakers that were at Crew, the James Whites, the Sandra Van Opstels, the, you know, Caitlin Curtis, the list just is infinite at this point, there's so many, I can't even think of all of them, but names keep flooding to my head, of people that we've even talked about on this program, who are promoting these ideas, aspects of them at least.

And to not come out and defend them, say, look, here's where you're lying about this person, let me show you A, B, and C, right? This is the accusation, here's why the accusation is false, it never happens, I've never seen it once happen, I mean, the closest you might have gotten is the Southern Seminary response videos to Dr. Fuller, and they didn't even respond to the accusations Dr. Fuller was bringing, none of them did, it was shadowboxing, it was, here's a straw man, let's knock it down.

And so, Piper doesn't do that, I haven't really seen anyone do that yet, but it's just accusations, you're a slanderer, that kind of thing. And John Piper then, but he exerts his energy into talking about this horrible problem of slander.

So I think it's out of touch, I think it's just used, I'm seeing it used as another shield, to prop up, to basically let critical race theorists keep doing what they do by a different name, let's not call it critical race theory, I guess unless they go by that name and believe whatever the seven tenets of critical race theory, they're not pushing bad ideas that are consistent with CRT, I mean, this is ridiculous stuff, we wouldn't apply this logic to any other field.

We wouldn't say like, oh, Mormonism, well, are you sure they believe every tenet of Mormonism? Do they call themselves Mormons? Do they, if someone came to you and said, hey, Joseph Smith is a prophet, and the Church of Latter-day Saints is the true church or something, I mean, you don't need to know much more, you're like, okay, that's a very bad idea right there.

They're promoting Mormon ideas, right? We wouldn't have to then be like, well, how deep into this Mormonism really are they? But for some reason with this issue, that's the response. So John Piper puts out these two articles, and my first thought when I saw this was like, really, are we gonna take this guy seriously?

Like, this is kind of a joke in my mind. I mean, and to put things in perspective for you, let me go over a few things. This is, by the way, not exhaustive at all, but let me just show you a few things from John Piper.

And we'll talk about critical race theory as well, what it is in general, basically. And then let's go back to this article, and I'm gonna read for you, really, the only significant paragraph in the two articles, in my opinion, where he gives some meat to why he disagrees with critical race theory.

So give you some background here. Here's John Piper. And I played the longer clip, I think, in a video about John Piper, what happened to John Piper, I think was the name of it. But here you go again.

I gotta work at this. I gotta work at how my culture and my faith might be at odds, my commitments to certain things in America, certain aspects of nationalism, certain ideology, certain priorities have to be thought through more carefully than many of us have.

That's why this pilgrim indigenous tension has proved to be so helpful to me. The more dominant the culture is, the more invisible it seems to us. And I think it's true that there is more cultural captivity in our churches and in our lives than most of us realize.

So that's the first thing I wanted to say to us who are white. Now there's a lot more to this clip.

I played more of it in the video. Like I said, what happened to John Piper, and I'll put the link in the info section if you wanna go check out. Woke Preacher Clips put a bunch of these out. And here's the thing, I mean, this is the guy that's gonna tell us now about critical race theory.

And that whole talk, if you watch the whole thing, Piper basically endorses aspects of standpoint epistemology, talks about black, or I don't even know if he says black, but minorities have these certain insights which white people don't have, because we're basically blinded because of what he just said.

We are in the quote unquote dominant culture. White people apparently have a culture. And this is something that I've never really bought. There's Western civilization, right, I guess, but within that there are different cultures.

And German culture is very different than Irish culture, is very different than Italian culture, is different than Russian culture. There isn't this white culture, but in critical race theory there is, because the whites, that is a designation of dominance.

And you heard Piper say it right there. The more dominant the culture. And so white people need to realize they have a culture, and its intention, nationalism is apparently part of this. And that's intention with the kingdom of God, loving your nation, I guess.

And so this is the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from sojourners, right? But you're hearing it from John Piper. This is his message to white people. And like I said, there's more, and you can go check out the Wicked Preacher clips.

Now, this is just a sampling. I wanna show you, here's some articles. Actually, first let's go over critical race theory, and then some articles. This is my analysis of critical race theory, all right?

And I'm quoting from a chapter in a book that I've been writing. The theory's basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society, and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience, all right?

Now, is there more to it? Yeah, but basically, within that nutshell, you have all the principles I'm about to show to you. They're pretty much all based in this. They all come out of this. If you start with this, you get the rest of critical race theory.

And I'm doing that based on Richard Delgado, based on Kimberly Williams Crenshaw, based on Derrick Bell. And really, it all boils down to this. You got the standpoint epistemology, and this idea that racism is just depressing everyone because it's systemically embedded.

It's in the fabric of everything. So here are the, you know, you could break this down different ways, but the seven principles, if you want, about the elements of critical race theory. Racism is normative.

White privilege maintains white dominance. So this is why there's a hierarchy that can be invisible. It's just maintained by this thing called white privilege. Voices of color are needed to help whites understand minority oppression, which if you watch the rest of that clip I just showed you from Piper, he basically, that's what he's saying, that there's this special knowledge that minorities have, and it helps white understand that kind of oppression and the domination of white people, because they don't understand it.

Apparently, they're dominating people without realizing it. Whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest. It's called interest convergence. Derrick Bell came up with it.

This is kind of the idea that whites will go along with the civil rights movement or electing the first black president, et cetera, but really they're just still racist anyway. Still that racism is in them.

History should be interpreted through minority experience. This is the memory studies, this is the revisionism. This is the stuff, honestly, this is the stuff killing the country right now. This is redefining everything about the past.

It's totally dominating the universities and theological institutions are included in that, and now it is being spread to the Bible as a historical book. It's being spread to that. I mean, Jarvis Williams talks about how critical race theory helped him understand race relations in the New Testament.

Race is socially constructed for the purpose of racism. So the whole point of race and dividing people up is so one can dominate the other, and colorblindness subordinates minorities. So you can't be colorblind.

You can't just view people, take people as people. You must view them in their racial categories because it's so essential to their identity. So this is, and look, does John Piper believe every aspect of this?

I don't think so. Do most evangelicals? There might be a few who call themselves evangelicals who do, but mostly, I'd be hard-pressed to give you one that is gonna say, I agree with every single thing that a critical race theorist says.

But here's the point, guys. I'd be hard-pressed to give you a critical race theorist who agrees with another critical race theorist on every point of theology, and I'll call it that. And it's the same way with evangelical Christians, guys.

You'd be very hard-pressed, probably, to find other evangelical leaders who agree with your theology exactly, have the same eschatology, same view of baptism, same everything. Most people have differences.

You might say, well, hey, I'm really close to John MacArthur, but okay, do you believe that the Nephilim are essentially the sons of God or angels who procreated with men? No, you don't believe that? I guess you disagree with John MacArthur.

Do you believe that the children of elders must be saved? No, you don't believe? Well, I guess you don't believe with John MacArthur. So here's the point, guys. There's things that people disagree with.

That doesn't mean you guys aren't Christians. And Marxism's like that. Marxism's like a faith with different denominations, and there's little differences here. Are those differences that significant?

That's the issue. How significant are they? Like I said, go back to this. The theory's basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience.

In a nutshell, that's what every critical race theorist believes. So here's some things from John Piper. Now, I'm just gonna, think about this with me. I'm just gonna read for you different quotes. This is not exhaustive, guys.

It's not exhaustive at all. This is me looking on the Desiring God website for 25 minutes and pulling this stuff out, basically. How and why Bethlehem pursues ethnic diversity January 24th, 2007. Quote from John Piper, and I quote, I want to solicit the help of any friend of Bethlehem or Desiring God in helping us know about African-American, Asian, Latino, Native, or any other ethnic persons who might be part of the pastoral staff at Bethlehem.

Every culture benefits from the insights into reality that other cultures bring. Okay. Sounds kind of standpoint epistemology-ish. Also sounds kind of like quotas-ish. We want to hire people based on their ethnicity because they're gonna, somehow that ethnicity is gonna be bringing insights.

You don't find this in scripture. I mean, and I've explained this before. There's obviously barriers when you go to another culture to share the gospel, and there's people that are aware of the language differences, some of the cultural differences here and there, and if you want to minister to someone, you just want to be aware of those things.

Got it. We're sending a missionary to China. We'd like someone who understands that. It really shouldn't even be someone who's Chinese necessarily. That shouldn't be the requirement. It should be someone who understands that culture and is able to minister.

Now, most of the people that are like that are probably gonna be Chinese, thus why we're sending a Chinese missionary to China. But the issue is getting over those barriers to communicate the gospel and the biblical teaching.

That's not what John Piper's saying here. He's locating some kind of a special knowledge in ethnic persons. January 24th, 2007. Here's November 15th, 2016. In Structural Racism, The Child of Structural Pride.

Here's what Piper says. My strategy is to show that if your mind is Bible-saturated, you would consider it absolutely astonishing if structural racism were not pervasive wherever sin is pervasive. In other words, Bible-shaped people should expect to see structural racism almost everywhere in a fallen world.

Really? What about structural sexism and homophobia? And I mean, what sins get to be, have the level of structural added to them? Here's how we define structural racism. Are you ready? I'm quoting from John Piper.

Quote, structural racism is the cumulative effect of racist feelings, beliefs, and practices that become embodied and expressed in the policies, rules, regulations, procedures, expectations, norms, assumptions, guidelines, plans, strategies, objectives, practices, values, standards, narratives, histories, records, and the like, which accordingly disadvantage the devalued race and privilege the valued race.

I mean, this could be straight out of a book on critical race theory, and that's John Piper. Implicit in this definition is the important fact, he says, that structural racism, therefore, may have its racist effects, even if non-racist people now inhabit the institutions where the racist structure still holds sway.

What he's saying, you could be not a racist, you don't have any feelings of ethnic superiority whatsoever, but you are carrying the torch for structural racism because you live in an institution, you work for an institution, which has leftover residual effects of racism.

This is where the Matt Hall, I'm a racist, I live in a culture that allocates privilege to white people, comes from. John Piper's saying the same thing Matt Hall's saying, essentially, it's not quite as overt, but just by logic, it leads you there.

So racism is embedded, it's there, even if you can't point to it, even if you're not a racist, it's there. Talk about a conspiracy theory. Power, police, and another shooting. August 21st, 2014, John Piper, again, and I quote, history, the Bible, and increasing evidences in our day remind us of the danger endemic to human power.

The more power a fallen human has, the more vulnerable he is to be corrupted by the power. This is true of pastors and police. When I look at this video of the shooting in St. Louis on Tuesday, it looks like an overuse of firepower.

In the explosive milieu of the police shooting of Michael Brown on August 9th, a few miles away, this video constitutes a powerful call for serious reassessment of how our police are trained and empowered to use their guns.

So he's tying the shooting of, and I'm trying to remember the name of this individual now. I closed the tab, unfortunately, and I forgot the name. It was a shooting from 2014, and the Associated Press, this is what they said about this particular shooting that Piper's referring to.

To St. Louis police, officers acted in self-defense and won't be charged in the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old man who was armed with a steak knife as he approached the officers and urged them to shoot him, the city's prosecutor said Tuesday.

And I saw the video, and it's a man coming at them with a knife, and the knife is, you know, I guess over his head, and the police officers are shouting, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. He keeps getting closer, and they shoot him.

And Piper comes out, and before, there's been a verdict. I mean, but you can even see on the video, he's just saying, hey, he's telling them it's excessive force, so he's able to judge that. And he's not a gun guy, he said that in other things, so he's able to judge that, and he ties it.

Here's the significant part, he ties it to Michael Brown. He ties it to Michael Brown. So two instances where the police were, it doesn't appear that they're in the wrong, and it's innocent until proven guilty in this country, and it should be, even biblically.

We go through a due process course of action. Piper is implicitly condemning, and saying, he's basically, this is a way of accusing these police officers of using too much force, that they're in the wrong, they were corrupted by power.

That almost sounds Foucaultian. John Piper, August 21st, 2014. And of course, both racialized, right, shootings. So again, it's the systemic racism in policing. John Piper seems to be on board with that on some level.

Here's another one, what the church offers for race relations, February 12th, 2015. John Piper says, does the church bear responsibility to address police brutality, and spearhead broader social changes?

Given what I have said, my answer is yes. Responsible to address, no. Not responsible, not responsible to spearhead. So he's saying, yes, they are responsible to address, not to spearhead. The Old Testament prophets were relentless in calling attention to the collapsing condition in Israel.

It is, let's see here, I'm gonna just keep reading here. His conviction is that the church will have its greatest influence for the glory of Christ, socially and eternally, if it stays riveted on giving biblical shape to the people of God by his spirit, through his word, as a witness to the world.

Piper, remember, he has a pietistic kind of strain about him and we've talked about this, but he kind of makes this, except he kind of does this thing where he's like, well, Christians should be responsible to address this issue.

And let's see, of police brutality. Now, look, I don't, in theory, I actually don't disagree with him here, but again, this is February 12th, 2015. What's the context of this? And in keeping with some of the things that I've just read from John Piper, what is he talking about?

Is he talking about a systemic problem in this country with policing? Because that's what it sure sounds like. And if you read this, I mean, that's exactly, if you read the article, that's exactly what it sounds like.

And so the implication is that there is this problem in this country, that this is something worthy of addressing, it's just this huge problem. Not an isolated thing, not certain departments might have an issue, there's a bad cop here and there.

No, this is something big enough for him to write this article about and universally say the church, this is an issue that they need to address. And I will note, I haven't found anything. You can send it to me if you want about John Piper addressing, the church needs to be the one that in his own city of Minneapolis goes out and addresses the fake narrative from BLM that is causing people to burn down buildings and businesses, commit violence, that kind of thing.

Or the lockdown nonsense. I'm not seeing Piper go after these things. So, interesting. Here's another one from August 30th, 2017, Charlottesville, Confederate memorials and Southern culture, four recommendations.

It's very long. And it's pretty bad, I'm not gonna lie. Here's just a clip from it, I'll read to you. Of course, the president, President Trump, the president's words, both in spirit and content, fan the flames of conflict among those whose passion was white supremacy.

Those aiming at counter-demonstration and the wider population concerned about Southern cultural heritage. Mr. Trump especially touched the nerves of the concerned Southerners when he lamented the removal of Lee's statue by drawing attention to memorials of Washington and Jefferson, saying, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

So, this is perfectly legitimate for Trump to say, well, if you're gonna remove Robert E. Lee, who was against slavery, wanted slavery to end, didn't see the war as that being the issue that he was fighting for, model of Christian citizenship and gentlemanly behavior, if you're gonna get rid of that guy, well, when do you go after George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

I mean, Jefferson's even accused of having this immoral relationship. I mean, where do you end? Perfectly legitimate question. Well, what does John Piper say? This is what he says. Quote, my interpretation of that last question from the president is this, if you don't know where to stop, don't start, which means this, the president is opposed to the removal of Confederate memorials.

He did not say this in so many words, but that was the implication as I heard it. For the president to offer in passing a facile judgment about such a weighty and far-reaching issue of our nation was deplorable.

His job is to help point the way to conflict resolution, not to cynically sweep the issue aside as foolish. This is ultimately, I'm trying to bite my tongue because I don't even know what to say. It's stupid of John Piper to say that.

It's stupid. It's a naivete on a level that I just don't even understand. Really? You don't understand what that was about? You don't understand why Trump would have said that? How about now? That was 2017.

How about now in 2020? Do you get it now? Do you understand why Trump might've said that? Maybe Trump understands the thugs in the Antifa mob better than John Piper does. And they understand force. They don't seem to understand argument or anything else.

John Piper thinks there's a way to conflict, have a conflict resolution between these two groups. And there's barely any white nationalists around, but you're gonna have a conflict resolution between the white nationalists and then the group that is funded basically by globalist money and an entire political party behind them, the Antifa Black Lives Matter crowd.

You're gonna somehow create some kind of a reconciliation here? No. The truth is what needs to reconcile people. And if they're not on board with that, then there's not much you can do. I mean, with John Piper, I've asked this question before, but the Christians, because I did some study on Holocaust and kind of how the Christian church, how they kowtowed to the Nazis, even the confessing church to some extent as World War II started and even before that.

And there was this kind of accommodating strain within them. There was a pietist strain too, which weakened them quite a bit, a neo-Orthodox strain. But they kowtowed to the government. They wanted to make sure, and then the thugs, the brown shirts, which there's a parallel there with Antifa.

They wanted to make sure that they were the peacemakers, et cetera, et cetera. You can't make peace with people that are in a violent counter-religion that want to see you destroyed. It doesn't work.

And you think they're, Trump's right. You think they're gonna stop with Lee? You think they're gonna stop with Jefferson? You think they're gonna stop with the American church? That's the question that Piper should be asking.

And he's not. He's calling the president, what did he say, deplorable? That what he did, his words were deplorable. Same word Hillary Clinton used, John Piper uses here. You know, again, this is, I mean, this is all, critical race theory is kind of gave birth to this.

And it's not just critical race theory. It's the new left stuff. It's the memory studies. It's all of that. But this idea that we can interpret a historical artifact based upon a, basically how people feel in a community in the modern age and what they feel about it.

We're not gonna go to the primary sources. We're not going to the, we're not going to acknowledge what memorials are actually there for, the purpose of them. Obviously a statue to Robert E. Lee isn't there because it's a celebration of racism.

Especially since Robert E. Lee was probably one of the more progressive Americans, if you wanna use that word, which is probably not the right word, but he's against slavery in so many ways. He inherited slaves from his wife.

They were actually his wife. They weren't even really his. He freed them. He didn't want slavery. Neither did Stonewall Jackson, which is really what that incident, was part of that incident. I think the Jefferson statue, Thomas Jefferson at Virginia Tech may have been part of that as well.

But look at the monument plaques. Look at what they say. They're not talking about racism. They're not talking about white supremacy. And so, and Piper has got to make this big stretch to try to get them to mean that, to then say the president is deplorable.

That stretch is brought to you by, and it predates the CRT as a formula. It goes back to the New Left stuff, but then it's been, it's developed to the point of postmodern ideas being injected into it, and now it's CRT.

So Piper's going along with some of this narrative, guys. Here's another one. Ben Real Lecrae, White Evangelicalism and Hope, October 6, 2017. Here's what Piper says. This phrase, identity work, as an allusion to the term racial identity development work has many younger blacks, that many younger blacks are forced, they're forced, guys, forced apparently to undertake.

Lecrae's interviewers said, it may be required by events like a presidential election or being called the N-word at school. You thought you had a pretty good handle on your racial identity, and suddenly you realize it's not as simple as it once seemed, and there is work to do, racial identity development work.

So Lecrae is leaving White Evangelicalism in this article, and he's doing racial identity development work, and Piper's saying, well, you know what? Black people are just forced into this because they're called the N-word, so they have to do this work.

And then he says this, do you see yet why I respond to Lecrae's identity development work with thankfulness? Oh, he's thankful for Lecrae doing this, for leaving quote-unquote White Evangelicalism. I know young men whose disillusionment with White Evangelicalism was not as painful as Lecrae's, and yet they threw the brown baby of Bethlehem out with the white bathwater.

John Piper is a wordsmith, the brown baby of Bethlehem. You've heard Beth Moore talk about this. Jesus was brown, so significant that Jesus was Jewish, so he's brown, he's not white. You'll find actually differences though.

The BLM narrative is the Jews are white, so Piper goes on, he says, they're done with Christianity, done with the Bible, done with Jesus, except the one that they create to fit their present political mood.

That could have been Lecrae, it could be you. So he's saying what Lecrae's doing here basically serves the greater needs of the body of Christ because black people are forced to reckon with this, and they may leave Christianity, white Christianity, and then leave Christianity altogether because they're offended by the racism in white Christianity.

He is implying that white Christians are racist. He's not giving evidence for it, he's just implying it. John Piper, 2017. Now, that is not exhaustive. It's not exhaustive one bit. Like I said, I've spent like 25 minutes on Desiring God website and just came out with this stuff.

Now, here's the significant part from the article that Piper just put out on critical race theory. Now, again, I told you, first article, it's just all about you shouldn't call people critical race theorists and slander them.

Second article is what he says. My deepest problem with critical race theory, they arrive at this conclusion because at root, they believe a person's essential identity is self-chosen, self-constructed, not God-designed or God-given.

Or another way to say it would be that when it comes to our own identity, we are our own God. We do not acknowledge or submit to any divine truth or morality as above us, constraining or limiting our own self-definition, self-construction.

That's really all that he has of substance against critical race theory, not talking about the core. Remember, let's go back to the core that I told you before of critical race theory here. So here's what I want you to remember.

The theory's basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience. Piper doesn't challenge any of that, none of it.