A Social Justice Evangelical Vocabulary of Terms Part II

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September 6, 2021

The Left often redefines or invents terms with positive connotations to propel their movement. Social justice evangelicals do the same thing. Here are some more examples! worldviewconversation.com

00:12: Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, we are continuing a discussion of social justice evangelical words, terms, things that they will say, people who want to syncretize, import social justice ideology into Christianity.
00:32: We're talking about the terms they use to do it. How do you make that, how do you bridge that gap? Because they're two different religions, how do you bridge it?
00:38: Well, you use terms that mean something positive in Christianity, but then underneath them, under that veneer, you smuggle in all these social justice assumptions.
00:49: And last time we went over a number of them. We went over the image of God, human flourishing, racial reconciliation, justice, same sex attraction, servant leader, radical cultural intelligence, global church and the kingdom and love your neighbor.
01:05: And today we're going to go over the rest of them. So buckle up, we're going to get right into it after I just make this quick announcement.
01:13: I know I mentioned this in the last podcast. I just want to plug it one more time. This is a book by Matthew Joseph Tarpley called
01:20: The Sermon on the Mount. And I think it's important for us. And I'm saying this to myself as well. Yeah, we're experiencing the fall of Western civilization.
01:29: Yeah, it's really depressing to see what's happening in the United States. But we cannot ever lose sight of the fact that there are eternal things that we are living for.
01:39: In fact, I told someone the other day at a rally for against the mandate in New York State for health care workers to receive the treatment.
01:48: I told someone there that, look, I understand you're lamenting everything that's happened over the last year and a half.
01:54: It's very depressing. If I did not know Jesus, if I was not assured of eternal realities, that I would be one day with him in heaven, then
02:03: I would be super depressed. In fact, I mean, I'm going to be honest with you guys. I think most of us are probably to some extent depressed.
02:12: And I think that's actually appropriate. I think it is. I think there is a grief that you feel when something you love is destroyed or dies.
02:21: And we're seeing destruction before our eyes. And I think
02:26: I think it's important to be in the word, not just getting up and going to bed, looking at social media, right as you do those things, having that be the first thought of your day, the last thought of your day.
02:40: I think it's important to start off the day, to end the day. And I'm not being legalistic about this.
02:46: Just so you know, I'm not saying it's a sin to do it. I just think it's a wise thing, in my opinion, to put your mind on the things above, to in general, to do that throughout the course of your life.
02:57: But especially at those two times, you're especially vulnerable. You know, you're going to have dreams at night generally associated with what you went to bed thinking about.
03:04: Or when you wake up, it's going to kind of that's how you get your day started. And one of the resources I just want to commend to you is a book by Matthew Joseph Tarpley called
03:12: The Sermon on the Mount. And he goes through the greatest sermon ever preached by Jesus. And he does so, I think, in a very helpful way.
03:20: Devotionally, you can use it for family devotions. You could use it for church, small group study. He's a young man, and I want to encourage him as well, just because not a lot of people his age.
03:32: I think he's, you know, I don't know how old he is. I'm assuming he's in his late 20s, early 30s. But not a lot of people his age are putting out good material like this.
03:39: So I want to encourage him, but also just give you a chance to get a hold of a good product. So there's that.
03:46: But let's go into now the topic at hand. So now that the devotional stuff, now we're going to go into how to spot the tactics.
03:57: And one of them is using the dictionary in your church to promote social justice. And this could be your pastor, this could be
04:04: Sunday school teacher, this could be maybe you're looking at a church, you're wondering, should I go there? You start to hear some of these terms.
04:10: A yellow flag should should go off. A light should go off in your head that says, hmm, how is this person using this term?
04:17: So we're going to start where we left off. We talked about love your neighbor. Now we're going to talk about pro -life, pro -life.
04:26: When you hear pro -life, especially when it's coupled with from womb to tomb. Now, look,
04:32: I've heard some guys who meant, yeah, I'm against abortion, I'm against euthanasia, I'm against unjustified killing and murder of any kind.
04:39: That's all they meant by it. So not condemning you if that's what you mean by it. But often when I hear specifically from womb to tomb.
04:46: Danny Aiken's an example of this, Karen Swallow Pryor's an example of this. There's there's actually a number of them trying to think that the original, the guy who wrote the book on a holistic approach to the pro -life position in the 80s,
05:04: Ron Sider. Ron Sider is the one I think that sort of got the ball rolling in this direction.
05:09: But pro -life from womb to tomb means that we care about more than just the unborn.
05:15: We care about things like, are you ready for it? Smoking. Yeah, that's Ron Sider. Care about smoking.
05:22: We care about things like the disparities that exist between certain ethnic groups.
05:30: We care about police brutality. We care about you fill in the blank. I'm sorry, that's not the same as the legally sanctioned, justified in the minds of the legal experts, supposedly, but the legally sanctioned killing, systematic killing of unborn people.
05:50: It's different, guys. It's different. That's murder. Bible's clear about it. That's what the pro -life movement has always been about.
05:55: It's about it's anti -murder. OK, when you start saying, well, you know what? We're against police brutality, too.
06:01: It's like, OK, everyone's against technically police brutality. We know, though, the political baggage that comes with what is police brutality.
06:08: And we know that there aren't police stations out there who say as a matter of official policy, you can, if it's a person of a certain color, go and kill them.
06:17: Right, but with abortion, that is true. Police brutality is a whole nother nother it's a different category.
06:25: It doesn't belong in that category. Disparities between certain ethnic groups or between men and women.
06:31: You know, women are making only 75 percent of every dollar men make that kind of thing, a wage gap.
06:37: Right. They call it that's a pro -life issue as well, because their quality of life. That's bingo.
06:43: That's it. Quality of life. Quality of life is different than life. Life issues and quality of life issues.
06:50: Separate categories. But when you say pro -life from womb to tomb, when many evangelicals say this and they're social justice minded, they're smuggling in the left agenda.
07:01: It'll be like this. Look, there's like 12 pro -life issues. Immigration is a pro -life issue. Global warming is a pro -life issue.
07:08: Look, because they all affect life in some way. And one of them is abortion. And the Democrat Party, 11 of them they care about.
07:15: And the Republican Party only cares about abortion. So therefore, we got to vote for the Democrat. Right. This is where you get pro -life evangelicals for Biden, because, you know, they're more pro -life.
07:24: It's ridiculous. It's insane. It's insane. It's absurd. This is the kind of thinking we are told to adopt.
07:32: Notice the distinction and call someone out on it when they say it. Hey, hold on. Are you talking about a life issue, like murdering someone?
07:38: Or are you talking about a quality of life issue, like eating Big Macs at McDonald's and you might live a shorter life and get heart disease if you eat too many?
07:44: What are you talking about? Winsome, winsome, another term, winsome really means to be loved by the world.
07:52: Go to the Gospel Coalition website, type in winsome, read the articles or listen to the podcast. What does winsome, what does it actually mean?
07:58: It means the posture that you take towards the world, towards the secular world, especially.
08:04: How do you convince them? How do you achieve a hearing with them? Well, you're going to do it by being winsome.
08:10: You're going to do it by adopting some of their, by agreeing with them on certain things, by making your tone, when you talk about things you disagree with, super respectful, super humble sounding, super lowly, super almost like a whisper, like the
08:24: Bible whispers about sexual sin. This is how you be winsome and sophisticated, right?
08:30: Everything that the Bible says is simple, black and white. Let's make that nuanced and everything that is nuanced, let's make it simple.
08:39: I see that all the time. And so it's a strategy by which
08:46: Christians present themselves to the world as adjacent to them, as helping them achieve their end goals, but doing it in a way that's better.
08:58: That's, it's more, you know, if you just looked at our religion, you'll notice that you have a better basis for your belief system.
09:04: Or if you just looked at what we're doing, you'll notice you'll achieve some of the things you want to achieve, but you'll do it in a better way or faster.
09:12: If you, if you go with Christianity, that's how you'd be winsome. Winsome, winsome is to be loved by the world.
09:20: What does 1 John say about it? You might as well not even try to be loved by the world. How about this? Be respectful to people who are made in the image of God, because they're made in the image of God.
09:29: Show them some respect. Don't abuse them. How about you treat people the way you would want to be treated?
09:36: How about that? Right. The great commandment. How about we don't start with, let's be loved by the world.
09:44: The, the, the powers that are set up against God don't, you can't, it's going to have to be a repent type of message that gets through to them.
09:53: It's not going to start out with, with, you know, you should be attracted to us because we're just like you, but we're just a little better.
10:00: I mean, how arrogant can that even seem? Um, how about this? You're in living a lie.
10:05: I was living a lie, but then the truth came to me and God broke through the wall of my stony heart and he can do the same for you.
10:13: Give you a new heart, new desires, and you can love him and have joy. You can live with him forever. How's that? If you try to make friends with the world, you become an enemy of God.
10:21: That's what scripture teaches to be loved by the world is not something that you should wear on your arm sleeve as a badge of courage.
10:29: Um, being loved by the world is just the opposite. That's, that's actually a sign that you are compromising.
10:34: So being winsome in my mind, most of the time it's used and there's a good term. There's a good way to use the word winsome.
10:41: Try to be convincing to someone, but the way it's often used is, is terrible. It's, it's starting off in the wrong place.
10:52: Principal pluralism. It's another term. Um, principal pluralism, George Marsden reuses this term a lot.
10:57: Uh, I, I was taught this at Southeastern. It's secularism, basically. It means that there's a public square in which there's this reigning idea that, uh, everyone can disagree with each other and do so in a civil manner.
11:14: And it's a great concept. And for Americans, especially, I mean, this is something we've kind of lived in something like this for so long.
11:20: It's like, let's just maintain that status quo, but there's an ignorance of why that status quo ever existed in the first place.
11:29: And it only existed because at one time we were a strongly Christian country and we held to a belief in freedom of conscience and that, um, and there were certain exceptions to this, but in general, you couldn't coerce someone into Christianity that someone had to come to that on their own.
11:47: And, um, and, and of course, over time, multiculturalism has taken advantage of this and we've gained the crisis in our public square that we have today.
11:56: Do we have, uh, you know, transgender library readings? Uh, I mean, look,
12:02: David French argues like, thank God for transgender library readings. Cause that's the freedom that we want. Well, that's the principle pluralism position.
12:09: That's that there, there should, there really shouldn't be many rules in place for what happens in the public square.
12:14: It should just be kind of like a libertarian type freedom. It doesn't work long -term. It doesn't work. And it's not working right now, actually, we're already starting to have problems with it.
12:23: And it's because there, there has to be some kind of an authority structure. Some really it's a
12:28: God at the end of the day that determines boundaries. And there are certain things that are impermissible in the public square.
12:36: Uh, Christians should have access. They've, they've always had access just about until recently to the public square in the
12:41: United States. You know, who hasn't had access to the public square in the United States? Satanists, witches, right?
12:49: There are certain religions that up until very recently did not have access to the public square. And in fact, local towns, local, uh, and states, they, they could bar the practice of certain things or the display of certain things in the public square.
13:05: Uh, the, the, even freedom, right. This gets touted a lot, but wait, hold on. What about freedom of religion?
13:10: What about religious liberty? Yeah. Um, if you're going to talk about, uh, the constitution and the bill of rights.
13:17: And the, the first amendment, what you're actually talking about. Is Congress, Congress, national government,
13:25: Congress, Congress shall not favor a particular, and really back then it meant sect of Christianity, Congress shall not establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof doesn't say anything about the public square, doesn't say anything about, uh, the, uh, state or local rules that are placed on these things.
13:44: And I've lived in some, to some extent in some of this, because I remember when in the town that I grew up in, it used to have a nativity scene and that's all they had.
13:52: And then you saw they had, um, uh, menorah. And then now it's like,
13:57: I don't even know what really some, some religions are represented with displays every Christmas. And I'm like, I don't even know what that's supposed to represent, but it's, it's like, it's all sorts of things.
14:09: And it's, it's this idea that everyone can set up whatever they want. What, what about a big offensive pornographic symbol?
14:15: Should that be allowed? Right. This is where you start to get into these problems. And there are organizations that have tried to do this, to mock it, to the flying spaghetti monster, uh, statute of Satanism or something.
14:27: Uh, these are the kinds of things that are happening out there. LGBT lobby is taking advantage of all of this and principle pluralism does not actually work.
14:36: It's secularism. It's the idea that there's a secular, uh, kind of, um, neutral territory that we can all exist on.
14:44: And there's just not, there isn't. The only way you can have any element of freedom of conscience with boundaries in place, there are certain boundaries with that is if there's, there's some kind of a general idea, and this is what our country has had a general respect for Christianity.
14:58: Once that wanes enough, then you're not going to have it anymore. And so there there's going to, at the end of the day, what
15:05: I'm saying is what if, whether it's Christianity or at some other system, there's going to have to be something in place and it's going to be, have a religious element of some kind that determines these boundaries and where they are and what those values are.
15:20: Secularism becomes a state religion too. We're finding that out right now. Uh, do people who are skeptical about the treatment right now, uh, that is being used for the certain ailment, uh, are they allowed access to the public square like everyone else?
15:34: Yes or no? To some extent. Yes. To a large extent. No. And that is because we are living in a state religion now that is forming right before our eyes.
15:46: So that would be, that's what principle pluralism would give us. Right? So I've waxed on too long about that probably at this point, but when you hear principle pluralism, which is,
15:54: I will, I can have my principles, they can have their principles and we exist in peace. Um, okay.
16:00: Under, under what though, under, under what system, uh, can you both do that?
16:06: You're both going to have to assume something and value something that traces back to your ultimate authority that makes that possible.
16:12: Okay. What is that? What is that thing? Look, I'm all for living at peace and on an individual level, of course, you know, live at peace with all my neighbors and no matter what they believe, et cetera.
16:22: But we all have to have a commitment to doing that. And there's going to have to be an assumption somewhere that there's a right and a wrong and that there, and that right, we have to have enough of us have to believe that something is right.
16:34: And that rightness is going to come from a standard somewhere. And it's gotta be transcendent. We're getting into religion now automatically.
16:40: Automatically. And for so long in the United States, uh, there's been a Christian assumption.
16:46: Even people that aren't Christians, they sort of have these Christian assumptions about, uh, public mores and that's shattering right now.
16:52: And it's changing and it's changing in Europe at a faster rate. Um, so when you hear that, that's not a
16:59: Christian really concept. That's something that's, that is a, it's an attempt to save Christianity by saying we're not going to harm anyone else.
17:09: And as long as we're not harmed and stuff and, uh, it's smuggling in a secular assumption. Um, how about this?
17:16: Uh, this, this is just, I hear this a lot. It's complicated. What's complicated. Well, um, this is, this is to communicate uncertainty about popular anti -Christian ideas.
17:25: When you hear, uh, someone, let's say Joe Biden, right. Believes in the murder of the unborn.
17:32: Some progressive Christians will say, well, you know, it's complicated. That whole issue is, it's very complicated. Well, it's complicated. Bible says thou shall not murder.
17:38: He supports murder. Well, you know, we're trying to just reduce the rate of abortion. This is very complicated. What goes into that equation?
17:45: Uh, what you insert in order to, what policies to enact in order to get that number down. That's why it's complicated.
17:51: Right. Or, Hey, this person is, um, is practicing some kind of sexual deviancy.
17:57: Uh, the Bible says this is wrong. No, you know what? Actually though, it's complicated. It's complicated because the
18:02: Bible does say it's wrong here, but you know, also the Bible says to love one another. And how do we show love to that person?
18:09: It's like, that's, it's not complicated. It's so that's, that's one of the things I see overly new on saying things that are very simple in scripture.
18:15: You see this done all the time by progressive evangelicals, uh, social justice minded evangelicals.
18:20: I don't even know if I want to call them evangelicals, but that's, that's the designated term there. They're the, the inheritors of evangelicalism that are crashing into a ditch.
18:30: How about this one? Um, third way there's a third way, you know, they got the Republicans, you got the
18:35: Democrats, but then you got a third way. Tim Keller does this all the time. There's right -wing individualism. There's left -wing individualism.
18:41: And then there's Christianity. Um, really what they, what everyone who's used this term pushes though, is a politically progressive
18:48: Christianity. And it's incredibly arrogant because you think about it, we have inherited a Christianized tradition of law going back for centuries.
18:57: Uh, if you're in the United States, the British common law, which came over here, which we have now in, um, in our own law, uh, we have the, the
19:05: Birkins conservative tradition. We have the, the Christianity is very much in that it's, it's, it's an integration in many ways of Christianity and, um, and politics.
19:16: And to throw that out the window to say that doesn't exist or it's not
19:21: Christian. It doesn't, it's not, the church doesn't have anything to learn from that. Uh, today, cause the modern church is going to reinvent itself and they're going to pretend like conservatives, conservatism doesn't have any element of Christianity in it.
19:34: It's just is secular thing. Um, and, and it just, it's equivalent to progressivism.
19:40: It's the same thing. They're moral equivalents and Christianity transcends this divide. See, we have an answer that, and, and when, what's the answer?
19:47: When you look into the details, it's like, well, we're pro -life and kind of pro -family, but we're socialists. That's generally what you find out when you start delving into that.
19:55: That's the third way you think you should think. So when you hear third way, you should think, okay, Christianized socialism. That's what
20:01: I'm about to hear. Uh, another word, uh, creation care. This is a term that's used creation care.
20:07: Usually it means environmentalism. Uh, it's, it, you're, we're going to go along with, uh, the regulations of the
20:17: Paris accord. You were going to support that with the national government. Uh, we're going to take all these measures to fight global warming, uh,
20:24: Kyoto protocols, whatever. That's creation care generally. Uh, it doesn't necessarily have to be.
20:30: I mean, I'm okay with the word conservationism, but why not just use the word conservation or stewardship or something, but it's very purposeful.
20:39: The word creation, the term creation care, uh, who wants to be against that? Right? Well, I don't want to be against caring for creation.
20:47: Oh, you, you got to accept the Paris accords then. Uh, lament, lament, um, to feel guilty for others sin.
20:56: Gospel coalition. We're going to lament racism in the United States. You watch that whole video. What are they doing?
21:02: Feeling guilty for the sin of others. It's just so terrible. I live in this horrible place where people are so racist and I'm not, but other people are forgive us
21:10: Lord, right? The corporate us. Um, I'm good enough to recognize this, but others, you know, this environment we live in is so terrible.
21:18: It is, it is basically condemning everyone else, but you're using the word lament.
21:24: So it's, it's a weaponized apology in a way. It's just like, how do you, if you're just lamenting, that seems so good.
21:29: Or you, you're lamenting something bad, but what you're actually doing is condemning everyone else. Um, and that's why you feel guilty walking out of a church service where it was lamenting.
21:38: You're like, wait a minute. We lamented we're, you know, we're sorry for this state of affairs.
21:44: Why is it that I feel guilty all of a sudden? Like I'm the problem because that's what was going on. Corporate apology.
21:50: That's a virtue signal, corporate apology. We're going to have a corporate apology. We're all going to come together and, and we're going to lament, but we're going to apologize and take responsibility for segregation, you know, 60 years ago.
22:05: Now it's more than 60 years ago now, I guess, right? Uh, we're gonna take responsibility for slavery, uh, for the fact that women were treated in a certain way for the fact that, um, the
22:16: Puritans were, were burning witches for whatever the case is, we're, we're going to take responsibility for that.
22:22: And we're gonna have a corporate apology. We're all going to come together and apologize. Southern Baptist convention does this almost every time it meets in some form, it seems like.
22:30: And this is just one giant virtue signal. Generally, it doesn't actually move anything. It doesn't move the needle. You have to renew it again.
22:36: When you get together, what good does it do? It's it's, um, everyone's coming together and then no one's really actually taking responsibility because you're all in it together.
22:45: No one's guilty individually and can be, you know, to blame for it. It's maybe a certain class of people, but there's comfort in that knowing,
22:53: Hey, well, you know, all white people are guilty and I'm one of them. And so, you know, it doesn't really change the way
22:58: I live. It doesn't change my socioeconomic standing, uh, or anything. I can have a,
23:04: I can participate in this corporate apology and you're not actually repenting of really anything. Uh, that's it.
23:10: It's just one giant virtue signal and it's very loud. It's very public. And you're trying to show everyone how good you are, that you've taken responsibility.
23:17: A gospel issue, right? This is the social justice issue. That's what it is. When you hear the term gospel issue, be aware, you're about to hear some social justice concepts being smuggled into the gospel racism of the gospel issue.
23:31: Uh, no, it's, it's in, in, in the twist you're putting on it is it's a social justice issue that's meant to somehow eliminate disparities or, uh, join the black lives matter movement.
23:39: And that's now, I guess I'm failing to be adhering, failing to adhere to the gospel if I fail, fail to do this.
23:46: It's manipulative. Half gospel. Um, the half gospel is the gospel.
23:52: When you hear social justice activists say, well, you just have a half gospel because you just believe in individual repentance and salvation, uh, through Christ's sacrifice on the cross for you efficacious, uh, and, and you will spend eternity in heaven because you, uh, you have received this from Christ, a free gift that that's, that's the gospel, right?
24:12: But I say, that's a half gospel. You ignore the social justice, your responsibility to your church, to your fellow man.
24:18: No, I'm sorry. Once you start doing that, you're smuggling, you're smuggling law into the gospel. You're putting works into it.
24:24: You're injecting it right into the gospel. That's not the gospel anymore, but they'll call that the half, half gospel.
24:29: No, the half gospel is the gospel. The whole gospel, according to social justice advocates is the gospel plus social justice.
24:36: So keep your ears peeled for that. If they're saying, well, we have a whole gospel here. And I realized there's some Pentecostal churches that are full gospel, right?
24:44: That I'm talking, that's different. I'm not talking about that. That's they, they say they have, that's also got problems. We have all these spiritual gifts.
24:51: Therefore we have the gospel. But, um, what I'm talking about is the whole gospel that we, we don't want the half gospel of the fundamentalists.
24:57: We want the whole gospel that engages culture. Um, that is a false gospel.
25:03: It's adding works to it. Uh, the world, right? The world when, when, uh, social justice advocates in the church condemned the world, they're usually it's condemning
25:11: Donald Trump. It's condemning conservatives, the Republican party is condemning Western culture. You know, the world would want us to do this, but we should be true to Christ.
25:19: Uh, well, the world is generally, they're talking about Western culture. Generally, sometimes they'll, they'll talk about, uh, some, you know, sexual deviancy or something like, like the kind that's acceptable to critique, you know,
25:29: Hugh Hefner or something like that. But generally what they're talking about is, well, you know, Donald Trump represents the world.
25:37: Uh, and, and, and here's the thing. I want to make a quick point about this. Cause I think we, we don't want to be sloppy in our language about this.
25:42: The world and culture are two different things in scripture. They're not the same.
25:49: Um, the world, if we think of like first John, less of the flesh, less of the less of the eyes, boastful pride of life, this world system that incorporates these things that runs on these things, think about that and then compare it to, uh, just culture to people, to the, the, the
26:05: Lord setting up people, according to like access, according to the boundaries that he set up beforehand.
26:11: Um, the, the habits that people have, the traditions, they have the things that God commanded the Jews to pass on to their children.
26:17: That's a good thing. That's good, right? The world, bad culture can be good. There's cultures that incorporate bad things from the world, but the world and the culture are two different things.
26:26: And we, we want to keep them in separate containers. Okay. Uh, just to be clear, I hear often even conservatives say, well, you know, uh, the, the, the, the, um, church is just trying to go along with the culture.
26:39: Well, yeah. I mean, an aspect of the culture, certainly, but it's, it's, it's the world that the compromised church is going along with.
26:46: So, uh, the actual world as defined by scripture. So when social justice advocates talk about the world, they're talking about Western culture and ripping it down.
26:55: Generally fundamentalists, another word fundamentalists mean fake Christians, social justice advocates say fundamentalist fake
27:01: Christian. That's someone who thinks they're a Christian. Who's a Pharisee. That's basically what they mean by that.
27:06: And, um, it's, it's kind of unfair. Uh, yeah, there can be some legalism associated with, uh, fundamentalism, uh, as a tradition,
27:14: I guess, but, um, it is kind of like a slur now they'll just use it against anyone, even people who aren't funding from a fundamentalist tradition, they'll just call them fundamentalist because they're not on board with social justice and they have the true gospel and that's enough.
27:28: So you're a fake Christian. You don't have the full gospel. You're a fundamentalist Christian nationalism.
27:33: That means fascism. I'm just telling you when they call you a Christian nationalist, they're calling you a fascist, basically. They're saying that you've integrated, uh, your patriotism, your love of country with Christianity somehow.
27:45: And you've created this nationalistic idolatry that you're worshiping the state when in reality, they're the ones that read worship, this redistributive central authority.
27:52: Uh, but because you're proud of your country and you want to take proper stewardship of it and it's important to you, uh, that's a problem.
28:01: That's a, that's a big problem. You shouldn't have these allegiances to your country, uh, to your culture. And, and actually you should.
28:08: And I have a whole section of my book, uh, on that. It's one of the, it's the final chapter, I believe on Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict coming out next month,
28:16: I talk about this in detail and you be the judge. I quote church fathers. I, uh, quote scripture.
28:22: And I show that, look, there is a place for the nation and, um, and loving your country, loving your nation, loving your people, loving those in close proximity to you is very appropriate.
28:35: It's actually very Christian. It's about, it's loving your neighbor. And who is my neighbor? Well, it's, it's the people that are proximate to you, um, that you have a responsibility to, uh,
28:48: American dream, American dream. Um, that's oppression and greed.
28:53: Now I look at the American dream and I think that's a blessing from God. That, and it helps people look at all the contractors that have to build this nice house and the white picket fence and the whole nine yards, uh, they're feeding their families because they were,
29:05: I mean, it's a market economy. It's a beautiful thing. And the American dream is something that, um, it's, it's a dream because it hasn't been a reality for so many people.
29:14: And right now it's not a reality for most of the people on the earth. But for those who practice certain things that are wise, that even the
29:22: Bible says are wise and had a Christian foundation at one time, it became a reality and, and right now it's, it's actually, we're a nation of renters.
29:29: We're a country of renters. We are, uh, the American dream is fading and it's as God, I think
29:36: God is my opinion, God is judging us, he's withdrawing his hand, he's letting us go our way and we're seeing that fall.
29:42: But there's, there, there was a time of economic prosperity where a man's house was his castle. He took responsibility for it.
29:48: And look, not, and everything was perfect in that world, but that was a beautiful thing. And it was a blessing from God.
29:55: Uh, having a boat, being able to go out with your family. That's a blessing from God. There's nothing wrong innately with that.
30:02: Having, having things is not wrong. Worshiping things, the love of money. That's wrong. Having them, possessing them, using them, uh, helping other people feed their families by buying them.
30:13: Nothing wrong with that, but it's disparaged. It's disparaged. Like it's wrong.
30:18: Somehow it's oppression and greed. And I will point out a lot of the young people like millennials and younger saying this, they, they have a different value system.
30:26: And that's part of the reason. I think they value experience. They'll, they'll spend tons of money going out to eat, going around the world on trips or around the country on trips, having experiences, they'll put money into that, but, you know, their parents who had a house and had a boat and had a car and had, um, you know, a 401k, they'll disparage that that's wrong.
30:47: But meanwhile, they're, they're just orienting their money differently. A lot of hypocrisy in that, uh, the, uh, church to church to right.
30:55: Uh, Christians are characterized by abuse. That's, that's what that's sending the me to movement. Men are characterized by abuse.
31:01: The church to movement. Christians are characterized by abuse. Uh, and then engaging culture.
31:06: Um, that means softening convictions. Generally we're going to engage culture. Does that mean you're going to be the street preacher out on the corner?
31:14: Uh, telling them what the word of God says and that they need to repent. No, no. It means, uh, we're going to engage culture by kind of convincing people from the world that they're wrong without them knowing that that's what we're doing.
31:26: We're going to sort of softly approach it and they'll be winsomely convinced to come into the fold of the church because they'll see we got a better deal.
31:34: And so that's how we engage culture. We don't want to offend them. So engage them, preach
31:40: Christianity to them without offending them. That's generally how engaging culture works. And that doesn't have to, but I remember
31:45: Phil Johnson had said this. I love this. He said this years ago, I want to engage culture the way David engaged
31:51: Goliath, not the way, uh, Eve engaged the serpent. And I think that's a great way you can use that term, but just know a lot of people are using that term and they mean something different than what you mean.
32:05: So those are the social justice, evangelical vocabulary.
32:10: That is the social justice, evangelical vocabulary of terms. I hope that was helpful for you. If you didn't see part one, go back, watch part one.
32:17: I go into all the other ones and this will help you identify it in your church. I want to be practical. I want to give you tools to help you.