Truth in Love's Q&A PANEL II

I'm thankful that you are joining us watching the video. This is a second edition edition of our question and answer panel.

I'm so thankful for these guys, their willingness to participate and join me as we talk about issues in our culture and our society and look at them from a biblical perspective.

I do apologize for the signal, the signal strength. If something happens, it should come right back.

And that's where my guys participating and that's for anybody that's watching. It says it says that it's having trouble streaming to Facebook.

And that concerns me. Let me see here.

Hmm. Anyway.

Sure, I apologize for what's going on. Yeah, I'm having a back signal.

I want to try to get on YouTube and share it, which. Hey, I don't look like I'm not going to be able to do it.

So it looks like it's on YouTube. And if all goes well, we'll share it later on Facebook.

So that'll be cool. All right. So tonight, I apologize for that issue.

We're going to be talking about a very hot topic in our society, in our culture right now.

And it's influencing its arms are reaching many places. And so we felt like it was an important topic for us to to talk about, to inform our community about.

And before we do that, just to remind everybody, this is truth and love. And we get that from Ephesians chapter four, verse 15, where Paul tells us, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him.

Who is the head? Even Christ. And that's that's been my goal is is to share truth and to do that in love.

And I'm trusting that these guys will participate in that with me.

We will share this truth and love. And so with the goal of growing up in Christ, let me share this paragraph with you that that I wrote as kind of an introduction.

It says there's a there's a never ending bombardment from culture with ideologies, worldviews and behaviors.

These are attempts to influence society for Christians. Specifically, it is an attempt to have us either denounce or compromise our biblical positions.

Tonight, we're going to discuss some of those ideologies of culture.

We feel we feel it is important to discuss these issues. His vision in news media and seen in our schools, colleges and famous talking heads, you'll see on tables in our community.

In our world, we we desire we desire people to come to know him as their savior, lord and king.

These ideologies have a history and definition. Often they are camouflaged to make persuasion easier.

In a recent interview, I listened to a well -known and influential Christian leader. And that could also be reach and understand our culture.

I hope you enjoy this panel. We're going to start.

Go ahead. Introduce yourself. I heard that one. Hey, my name is

Dan. Come from upstate New York. You see me tonight. I am battling seasonal allergies.

They have just started. We just got the flowers blooming in the trees and the grass and everything's just going full steam right now.

But up here, working with the church, trying to share the gospel and see the glory of the

Lord go out all over the place. Excited about tonight. Looking forward to talking about this topic with these brothers of ours.

Right. Top right. Yeah. Hey, I'm Brian. I'm down in on the south in Atlanta.

Vocationally, I'm a marketing director for a treasury consultancy, but I'm also a ruling elder at a

PCA church. And I'm very interested in the topic and the effect that it has, obviously, on the body of Christ in the way that it's infecting some of some people's understanding of of the gospel and of scripture and being bled in.

And then and also the world. I'm sure we'll get into it and look forward to meeting and discussing with these brothers from around the globe.

We'll start bottom right. Yeah. Yeah. My name is

John. I'm a outreach pastor at Iron Station, North Carolina. And currently,

I'm a licensed minister with the Church of God. And as everybody else has said,

I want to see the gospel. I want to see the gospel proclaimed in the culture that we live in right now.

We need Jesus more than we ever have. And I may be the only

Church of God guy on here, I assume. But I'm humbled to be humbled to be here and I hope

I can help in any capacity. Absolutely. Alex? I'm Alex.

I am currently a student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, but I live in western

North Carolina in Newland near Boone, Appalachian State University. I'm an intern at my

PCU church. And that's kind of I've had some preaching experience, but for the most part,

I'm still learning. So bear with me as I struggle through answering some of your questions. Thank you.

Jonathan? Hey, I'm Jonathan Foster. I'm the lead pastor at Vertical Life Church in Newton.

And so we're Baptist Apostles, just so everybody knows how we stand.

We've got Church of God, Presbyterians, everything else. I guess we're in the middle. We're Baptist, but, you know, excited about this conversation.

I appreciate the diversity and denominational culture. And so I think it's going to be a great discussion and just glad to be a part of it.

Thank you, guys. So let's go ahead and start in on it. And don't hesitate.

If you want to answer the question, just jump right in. We want to define what these terms are so that when

I know that my wife and I, we were watching a television series the other night. And boy, it was hot and heavy pushing this stuff in that television program.

They were even they weren't scared to even use this language, use the terminology, which surprised me.

They were they weren't trying to hide it at all. So I think. And so we just wanted to find these these terms, first and foremost.

So I'm not sure where you're going.

Robert, you fade it out. Close, close these screens.

That might help a lot. There we go. All right. Hopefully, you guys.

There we go. All right. The first one is I don't know what all was left out and what was put in there.

But the first question is, what is woke? Sure. You were first on the list.

So go ahead and start us off. I'll give you maybe some contextual response.

You know, woke is a term that it means something different or it certainly has a different tone depending on who it's coming from.

It it it was initially a champion term for those who were awakened to the realities of oppression and struggle from from those who would see the world that way.

And so just a version of the notion to be awakened to what would be considered systemic or systematic issues.

There's the black church in African -American experience by Mamia, I think is the name is some reference to some of the historical use of it.

But it's been adopted by maybe you could call it both sides of the of the perspective.

Those who see woke as a derogatory term and those who see woke as a rally cry. And so there's a book coming out later this year by Owen Strachan called

Christianity and Wokeness. And he goes through and starts by defining what woke is not.

But then he kind of mentions a couple of things, says more succinctly than I probably could off the top.

So I'll just read to you what he he says, what woke is. It's first and foremost, a mindset and a posture.

The term itself means that one is awake to the true nature of the world when so many are asleep.

In the most specific terms, this means one sees the comprehensive inequity of our social order and strives to highlight power structures in society that stem from racial privilege.

In intellectual terms, wokeness occurs when one embraces the system of thought mentioned above in the in the writing critical race theory.

And that teaches that all of societal life is structured along racial power dynamics. I think in in in common parlance, it would just be, you know, those who see the world through this critical perspective.

And there's I know we're going to get into some of the some of the other definitions and terms. And so maybe that'll help to flesh it out over time.

But there is a there's a good book. I know you guys had mentioned it early on,

Fault Lines. It was recently published and released, written by Vody Boncombe.

And he does a great job in in outlining some of the history in in terms that are easy to read without having to dive through a lot of historical academic text.

But short run, if I'm not going too long on this contribution here is many people are familiar with the notion of or the person of Karl Marx and some of his his writings and thinkings about how there was inequity in the haves and the have nots of society long ago.

And he talked about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and looked at them through the notion of oppressor and oppressed the haves and the have nots.

It was purely an economic perspective. And he prophesied, more or less, or predicted that there would be a great fallout because of that, that those who didn't have would rise up and and crush their oppressors.

That did not happen. And so his followers had to come up with a reason why that didn't happen.

And so one of his students, Antonio Gramsci, was the guy who first came up with the concept of cultural hegemony.

The the the idea that those those oppressors, those people who have everything, have power in the in the culture, set the tone.

And there's really no way of coming around that. Following on from that was this notion of Adorno and Marcuse and others that came to be known as the

Frankfurt School. A hundred years or so ago, the 1920s in Germany actually came over to the

States later with some of this ideology. But they they they came up with what would be critical theory, which was just seeing everything, not in terms of individual interaction or responsibility, but rather structural inequity.

So sin, if you were to think of it in that term, which they don't, but flaws or problems in society exist in structures of society rather than in the hearts of men.

And so when that was trying to be adopted in the States, it's such an entrepreneurial, you know, environment, pure to work ethic.

People were you could someone could could could jump social or economic strata in a generation if they worked hard.

And so that notion of let's tear everyone apart from the haves and the have nots didn't take.

And so a new lens was developed rather than looking at things from rich and poor or those who had wealth and controlled wealth and those who were working for them.

They started to look at other lines. And that's where we'll talk about next. I guess

Kimberly Crenshaw's intersectionality, those concepts, even before she turned it later on in the century.

How can we how can we look at oppressed versus oppressor across lenses beyond economics, race, gender, any type of victimhood concept, liberation theology played into this, even in the church.

But so a long form, long form overview of the kickoff. Can somebody give us a definition of intersectionality?

Brian just hinted at it. I pulled up the

Google definition from the Oxford languages. This is a source. As a noun, it is the interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class, gender, as they apply to a given individual or group regarded as creating overlapping or interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

To use in the sentence is through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the differences among us.

One of the things that I thought about when I saw that was a doubtably that it seems to be man's desire and a desire to separate out different classes of people to different different different looks of people.

Every time I think about that, I think about where as Christians, where we're all we're in Christ.

Right. There's neither Jew nor Greek. They're neither slave nor free man. There's either male or female for you're all one in Christ.

And I think about how the world so long to divide between between different skin tones, between different genders.

And the world's even confused right now as to there's only two or two genders.

They've got so confused in that they can't figure that much out. They've they've grown.

They've grown into a place where everything's got to be separated. You can't you can't know anything because I can't know anything about a woman at all because I'm a man.

I can't know anything at all about about a black man because I'm a white man. I have no reason to even speak to any of his problems.

I can't know anything about. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's almost as if, though, you can't speak to anybody about anything unless you've you have intimate knowledge of his or her plight.

It can't be and it can't be an innate truth. It can't be an absolute truth.

It has to be a relative relative to that situation. At least that's the way I understand it.

Am I am I speaking out of course here, fellas? Is that what the intersectionality means?

Oh, you know, as far as the nuts and bolts of it. Yeah, I think you're on the right track. And you made me think about there's a free episode, if anybody has seen it, heard of it or want to go check it out.

Douglas Wilson and his Man Rampage series. He has one free series. It's episode one of the first season and it's called

The Sin of Empathy. And that's similar to what you were talking about there. You have to be you have to have you have to step into their shoes to be able to to help in any way.

And so, you know, that's not necessarily we have scripture.

We have we have Christ, we have the Holy Spirit. You know, we can we can use those things. And and I guess just a layman's understanding of intersectionality from from what

I've understood in the past is you can have different.

Well, I can't even think of victimhood. Right. What's that? It's sort of like layers of victimhood.

So. So if you're rich and I'm poor, I'm a victim. Level one.

If you are white and I'm black, I'm and I am poor. Victim level two. If you're a man and I'm a woman, that's victim level three.

In terms of the more you have trans versus cisgender, able bodied versus disabled.

So this plays into that critical theory as well. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. So it's literally the term is where those where those intersecting lines.

Yep. That's intersectionality. So like across the spectrum, oppressive versus oppressed on what lens?

That's layer one. The next one, it intersects, you know. And so if you are a white, heterosexual, male, cisgendered

Christian, you are the worst of the worst. And pick whatever camp is in opposite that.

And there they would have what is the most social cred victim status.

And in this world, they actually get in this ideological world. They actually have.

It's a way of turning power on its head. Because what you just said a second ago was was spot on that.

Truth. Truth is a relative concept here. They don't even think about it in those terms, but it's all about the lived experience of a given victim.

And everyone is has a different level of intersectional victimhood. And so you, white man, could never know a black woman or you, you know, heterosexual can never know a transgendered, you know, experience.

Bodie Bauckham talks about that in the term. I think he coined the term cultural

Gnosticism. It's like a new Gnosticism, right? It's that secret knowledge from the Gnostic era of old.

Truth comes from from their secret perspective that you can only get if you live in that class of people.

OK, I see. So. So it's got to really go down real quick just to simplify all this.

All these things do like layer upon layer. Each one is is not independent of each other.

So like a woke person is supposedly aware of the social injustices and they're and they're operating through a thought process of critical race theory and intersectionality.

And so the real issue that comes with this as we define it is is it's defining an oppressor and it's defining in a victim.

And so that that's the real issue. And then it injustly points fingers at people just because of your skin color and your economic status and your work.

So so so we may be the most loving, non -racial, compassionate towards sexuality difference.

We can have the most compassionate of all those things. But because I am a conservative, white, middle class pastor,

I'm the oppressor. No matter what my actions is, no matter what, I carry that label immediately.

And so so that's that's the issue of this is it makes a blanket statement.

And so it doesn't really solve racism. It actually creates a racism. I was sitting here thinking. So it sounds to me like like since there isn't racism, we have to manufacture it to create a problem that we can therefore protest.

Does that sound fair? Sure. Does that come across at all?

Yeah, I mean, it's it's it is it is fair to a degree. I don't want to say that racism doesn't exist.

It does. I wanted to just to not I don't like the term devil's advocate because I'm not an advocate for the devil.

OK, but on the flip side of like the word woke, it's not necessarily always a negative term because we should be aware that that there are still racisms that exist.

Like I live in the south in North Carolina and Iron Station is just across the hill from me.

So we can't say there's not racism in my city. You know, there is one side of town versus another side of the town.

Sure. But the statement that you were making just now sounds sounds to me like that's that sounds like the definition of racism to me that you're right.

No, no, no. What I'm saying is just on the terminology of woke. But the problem is with the word woke, it carries a liberal agenda with it.

If it was like just an independent definition that, hey, we're aware of some things that are socially unjust.

Like, for example, I work with a lot of Hispanic people. OK, we plant Spanish churches. I speak Spanish.

I love I love Spanish people like our government will collect taxes from them, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

But they won't give them a visa. So that to me is an injustice. If you're not going to give them a visa, then don't take their money and go ahead and move them back to where they came from.

You know, it should be like real clear or like taxes. But that's what we had an

American Revolution over was taxation without representation. And so it's like a hypocrisy.

So all I'm saying is we should be aware. And sometimes people would call that, well,

I'm woke because I'm aware of things that may seem counter American even, you know.

But that's not that's not what we're talking about tonight. Just being aware the word woke and all this kind of stuff carries this liberal agenda.

And that's why this is a topic that is so highly debated. So so there can be like a neutral ground that just the definition of itself is not necessarily bad because it's just like I'm aware that there's social injustices.

Is there? Yeah, I could we could go to social services or anywhere and find injustices with kids or injustices with all kinds of stuff, you know, where the system has mishandled things.

But that's not what we're talking about. The issue with all this tonight is the liberal agenda that is permeating through our culture.

And that's that's why we're meeting tonight is because that's we've got to figure out as brothers in Christ and pastors and church leaders, how to be able to disciple our congregations through these systems, because they most of our congregations probably are very much unaware of this as well.

You know, I mean, even though they've heard it, they have no idea what it means. And so when

I'll say to you on that, no, no, that's great. There's you know, things happen on a spectrum.

So we can talk about trying to understand things from let's maybe the ideal or a caricature.

But the people that you're going to experience day to day in the church who have been infected by the propagandized, everything that you see on the

TV and, you know, schools and whatever. There are there are a few people who are whole hawk adherents who are priests in this in this new religion.

Most folks, it's it's it's been caught and and they just don't have a filter or a framework.

So like on an ideological basis and there's a there's a book.

Give it proper credit. We're mentioning it before we started here. Scott David Allen wrote a book called

Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice. And in it, he does a really good job of breaking around the ideology's core tenets and comparing those to what would be a biblical framework.

So just a starting point on that that helps in kind of seeing this is I'll read the first couple of them here.

You know, what is what is ultimately real for ideological social justice or the woke movement that sees the world through an intersectional lens?

You know, along the critical race theory paradigm. Ultimate reality is that the human mind defines what's ultimately real.

It's humanism. Biblical worldview says that the God of Jesus is one of the ultimate reality.

In the in the beginning, he created the heavens and the earth. Right. Who are we? Well, from an ideological social justice perspective, creatures whose identity is wholly like W -H -O -L -L -Y socially predetermined.

We're products of our race, sex and gender identities. But the biblical worldview would say we're, you know, creations and image bearers of a good, holy and loving

God with inherent dignity and immeasurable worth. What's our fundamental problem?

I'll stop on this one. As a human being from there. Well, from our perspective,

I'll start there. It's rebellion. All have sinned. Fall short of the glory of God. Right. Our rebellion against God has resulted in broken relationships between God and man, between man and his fellow man and between man and creation.

And the onus of that sin is in your heart and mind as individuals. The fundamental problem of ideological social justice is oppression.

White heteronormative males have established and maintain hegemonic power structures to oppress and subjugate women, people of color and sexual minorities,

LGBTQ plus community and others. And sin exists.

You may perpetuate that as an individual, but it exists corporately in your group.

And structurally in society. And so ultimately, the goal then is to blow up society and those structures and rebuild, build back better.

Like it's the notion that we have to tear down what's wrong and broken and put something else in its place so that we'll turn the oppressors into the oppressed and the oppressed into the oppressors.

It's it's or it's a it's a it's an ideology of revolution with no real absolute truth and no individual responsibility, but cumulative culpability.

I do apologize. The thing is, it's a worldview. Yes. This is a new worldview.

So it's it's a couple of you guys have glasses on. I'm not making fun of you, but it's the lens that people see the world through.

And I think that's important to quantify, you know, woke intersectionality, critical race theory.

This this is so it's not it's not something that people have. It is something that some people have just conjured up, but it's been around for a long time.

But it but it's become an agenda and it's become a worldview and it's become something that is being forced in our culture.

It's not something as if it's some kind of mutual platform that people are making decisions.

Hey, let me investigate this and decide for myself what I think. It's like if you don't believe this, then then you're a heretic.

You're an outcast. And so I think there's a lot of a lot to do with that. But, you know, but it is it is a worldview.

And I think we need to be aware of that. Yeah. That's OK. I wanted to apologize again.

For some reason, I'm having a horrible time with my signal strength and I'm going in and out. And I think that's messing with probably with the video quality as well.

So thank you guys for your patience and anybody who's watching. Thank you for your patience in that.

Yeah. I think you guys are right on because I was thinking about how

Christianity, Jesus followers used to be known at one point as the way.

And of course, you know, Jesus is the way to the father. He is the way to life, but he's also the way to living.

And we get we get our understanding, we get our command, we get our how we are to live from scripture.

And so Christianity is a way it speaks to our way of life and our way of living.

And so we're we're wanting to look at this movement, intersectionality, these ideologies, the

Christian way of life, because the Christianity already has. And so I think people get and systematic different have different meanings.

Can somebody tell us what the difference is between systemic and systematic? And where you mostly hear systemic right now is with systemic racism.

And it doesn't mean systematic. What do you guys that hadn't talked to it?

Jump in. Can you repeat the question?

Yeah. The difference between systemic and systematic. Could you hear me?

Yeah. One of my questions that was I was supposed to answer in the original thing before we did assignment.

So I'll give you just a quick definition. What I had you guys chime in, please. Yeah. Basically, systemic is system wide.

So in other words, there's there's a system wide problem that is creating racism or habits or processes.

And that are in the end, the systemic would infer that it's difficult to reverse because it is supposedly system wide.

Yep. So in other words, our system was created by what we already talked about.

The the oppressor is our system creators. So the white male heterosexual, he's the one that created the system.

So now there's automatically systemic problems with everything else versus systematic is would be very intentional, even on an individual basis, racism.

And so that's where I'm more or less reject systemic. But I understand there are people that are still very capable of systematic.

And and so systematic would be like if I have a personal bias toward race or any other culture without sharing the gospel with them, you know that I'm I'm refusing to do that or love them or that that would be systematic.

And if I intentionally create plans to hurt them, to create divisions against them or those kind of stuff.

So systematic is more of a nuclear issue with an individual.

Systemic is culture or systems throughout the whole whole nation.

I agree. I think systematic.

You could be a systematic racist, like you use the system that's in place to cause racism or in order to put your racism to work.

Sure. But a systemic or systemic racism would imply that the system itself is inherently racist.

That's right. And that's one of the big claims of the woke movement is that our institutions from their very foundations are built upon this, this racism that exalt one group of people and oppress another.

That's right. In the same light, going to the next question.

There's two words again that sound similar. And we get them and they're used in this on both sides.

And that's equality.

The way I understand equality versus equity is is really in the same light as this notion of systemic racism.

Just with time added into it. Does that sound right? Whereas somebody somebody has to be better off, whether it be financially or or physically or whatever, based purely on the people that's come before them.

And some people have because of that, one group has looked as having a leg up on somebody else.

So equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities where equity recognizes that the person has a different circumstance and allocates the exact same resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

To me, my Gaston County way of thinking is that's where you see.

Oh, there used to be a show called Pink's where they drag race where one person had a slower car. So they let him start closer to the finish line than than his faster opponent.

And, you know, to me, it's it's absolutely ridiculous.

And having been raised in a Western society that has taught me that if you do your best and you work hard, you can be anything you want to be.

And for the vast majority of my life, I've seen that to be true. I don't fully understand.

Where this where this this worldview I heard what you said would come from Marxism, the history behind it,

I understand what you what you said perfectly. I just don't see where it where it has ever really been a problem in America.

I didn't know that about the immigrants who work and have to pay taxes and don't get their visa.

I did not know that. And I don't claim to know everything about anything. But I do know this my whole life.

I've I've I've worked. I was raised and born into a we'll say a modest family.

We we had a lot more than we had had things. And one might say it was on the wrong side of town.

But on the other hand, as long as I've been alive and had an opportunity to to get a job and if I've worked hard in it, somebody has always helped me out.

I've never seen anybody on the work on the job, regardless of whether they were a man or a woman or whether they were black or white or Hispanic ever, ever be looked over if they were working hard.

Somebody always helped them out. That's all. That's been my experience in a way. I can say that firsthand experience working in factories, working on job sites.

You put in you put in the effort. People recognize it. And whenever you need you need a hand carrying a ladder, moving a bucket, whatever.

Somebody will help you out. Somebody open the door for you when you're walking through it and they don't care who you are, where you come from.

And that's what I've seen now. I understand that in other countries, you can't climb social chains or break break through those barriers.

Those are there. Those are set up. I just don't see where that exists in America. Not to the not to the degree that we ought to burn down CVS's over it.

I do think an important part of biblical justice would be to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities to achieve their goals.

I think one of the problems with woke ideology is that instead of looking to make sure that everyone has equal opportunities, it's it looks to make sure that everyone has an equal outcome.

And that's not a part of biblical justice. We ought to ensure that everyone has equal opportunity, not necessarily equal outcome.

And I think that's where the difference between inequity and inequality comes in. Inequality would be we have we don't have equal opportunities.

Inequity means we have different outcomes. And one of the things that you have to watch with with the language that's used is

I've actually been reading through some some articles that come from this woke ideology.

And they'll say that inequity is evidence of racism.

If we see unequal outcomes among races, that is in and of itself evidence of racism in our system, systemic racism.

But that's not the case. If if there is equal opportunity among the races, then racism doesn't exist within our systems.

There could be other factors involved that cause disparities among the races.

But that's not necessarily a racism within our systems themselves. It's a story people are trying to tell.

And there's a there's a book that came out years ago by Saul Alinsky called

Rules for Radicals, a pragmatic primer on realistic radicals. Hillary Clinton did her dissertation on it.

You know, the the the notion of community organizers fall under the vein of essentially, how do you infect change?

And if you're if your goal, if you're if you're a secular humanist who doesn't believe in God and does all that you can to suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because the

Bible says that all men are without excuse that he's made himself claims from his qualities from the creation of all mankind without excuse.

And so anyone who who claims that God doesn't exist or that they can't know doesn't exist from from the

Bible, if we trust it, we have to believe that that they're lying both to themselves and to us. And so even in even in the notion of equity and inequity and inequality outcome versus versus rights or opportunities, equal opportunities.

Yeah. Equal outcomes, equitable outcomes like, you know, the poor will always be with us.

God, you know, it's different bodies or the body has different parts. God bless in different ways. And and and so but we're coming at it from totally two different things that they're not proponents of this.

No, they're lying. They're not trying to find truth. In fact, one of the ways you can tell that is that they shut down the conversation.

Anyone who disagrees is they have categories to say why, even if they don't realize it, you know, you're it's impossible for you to know.

Even the notion of reason and logic is claimed to be racist. So when you're putting that syllogism together of, you know, if this then that, can't do that because that is a that is systemically racist.

That's a structural oppressive tool from the cultural hegemony. Those who are in power and are trying to oppress anyone from ever revealing the truth and becoming woke that that that that all these old white guys are just out there to push everybody down.

Or all these old Christians are down there just to push everybody down or anybody with money or power or whatever, whatever vein happens to suit the fancy.

The goal is not to seek nor find nor proclaim truth. They ignore the fact that truth even exists.

Truth is power. That's in this ideology. And the ultimate goal is to obtain it more and more of it and hold on to it for as long as you can.

And so, you know, blatantly lying to someone is a tactic.

And and that's that's what's being done. That's that's what that's one of the tactics here. You know, in sort of the playbook of, if you want to call it the woke movement.

And so it's difficult to even have a conversation. It's like it's like trying to reason with a relativist.

They don't think you can and or don't care to try. And so, you know, as we're as we're all here because we're trying to serve the

Lord in whatever way we think that we understand to do best. And because hopefully he's loved us and we have a desire to see the world bettered.

So even those people who hate us and who think that, you know, this is a little collective of the white supremacist patriarchy here.

You know, they were made in the image of God by God. And but for the grace of God, we'd be in that same spot trying to deny him and lying to ourselves and others.

But praise God, he's given us his Holy Spirit to open up our eyes and to awaken us in a biblical sense.

You know, so that so that we can see the truth and know that that God is real because he's revealed himself as such.

The Bible is true. It's the only authoritative source of truth in this world. And by that standard, that normative measure, we can say all this stuff is falsehood and you're chasing after the wind.

And so you can feel sorry for them rather than hate. And how do you change things?

Well, for those on the edges who they're trying to impact and in effect for the church itself, believers who are who are becoming corrupted by this ideology, becoming soft to their understanding of the word.

And so they're standing on sand and not on the rock. And so it's easy to get blown by every wind of doctrine or whatever is popular or whatever is the fad.

You know, there's this notion back in 1967, I think it was. I can't think of the guy's name,

Dunsky or something like that, who said, hey, you talked about systemic versus systematic and the notion of intentionality.

There are some people who have been from the Frankfurt School and beyond who are saying, let's tear down the system.

How do we do that? Well, Dunsky, I think is his name, 1967, a long march through the institutions.

How can we do that? Let's infect academia. Let's infect Hollywood and entertainment.

Let's infect news and media, journalism, the law school so that we can start to impact justice.

Always under the guise of trying to do a good thing, but really trying to tear down. Western culture because they want to build it up in a new, different way.

And so if revolution is ultimately the goal, I mean, in wartime, what do people do? Especially people that don't have

God as someone they feel like they're being accountable to. And the Bible is a standard moral rule.

Lie, cheat, steal, scratch, do whatever you can to accomplish your end. And so I guess

I'm rambling or whatever, but we're not dealing with someone across the table who wants to have an honest, rational discussion.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that. And one of the things I like that you said is how they want to shut down the conversation because they know that what they're working with is a lie.

What they're advocating is a lie. And it made me think that that is part of the reason for their reliance on a lived experience instead of reason.

And so if you try to use reason, well, you're denying my lived experience or you're denying the lived experience of thousands of people.

And so you can never disprove it. It's always something that's going to be there. And it's always something that if you deny, well, you're just the enemy.

You're just the oppressor and you're actively trying to impress to to oppress a certain group of people.

And that's that's part of the problem. One of the challenges that we have to overcome in trying to address this issue.

And it goes back to realizing who our true enemy is.

That's right. We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, invisible forces that that have always been against us, been against mankind, against God's image bearers.

And it's it's so funny. It's so interesting how this ideology has flipped from what it used to be.

You know, it used to be that we should not see color, that we should not see someone for their layer, the term that we used earlier.

But but now it's flipped and we should be seeing all these different layers. We should be seeing, you know, someone's color.

And then you are judged by this ideology, by your layers.

So it's interesting how things have flipped, how the strategy has has changed from the enemy and the enemy being, of course, you know,

Satan himself and the principalities, powers of the air that the Bible speaks of and not not, you know, we ourselves.

We're not the enemy against one another. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say a few weeks back,

I was I was teaching a class. That's like a Sunday school class on Psalm 109. It was an impregnatory psalm.

And so that was fun. And then it was particularly it's Derek Kidner and his commentary talks about that as a character assassination.

And we were trying to say, like, why is this such a big deal that that David would call down, you know, imprecations on the one assassinating his character?

And we talked about how there's really nothing new under the sun. And I mentioned this book, Rules for Radicals, because in it he talks about some tactics, the rules in terms of how you how you how you really try and zing it to your enemies.

Let me just read a paragraph here. Two things. So tactics from page 126.

And tactics means doing what you can with what you have. Tactics are those consciously deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them.

In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here, our concern is with the tactic of taking, how the have nots can take power from the haves.

We're talking about. So he goes in to spell out these 13 rules under this tactics chapter. And I'll just read to the fourth and the fifth.

The fourth rule is make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this for they can no more obey their own rules than the

Christian church can live up to Christianity. The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule, which is ridicule.

Ridicule is the man's most potent weapon. It's almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.

Also, it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage. So we talk about this idea of the goal being to break down structures because the claim is that oppression exists systemically within those structures.

So the goal is revolution, tear down so that you can build back better. How then do you do that?

You set off the Molotov cocktails that will literal and figurative in our sense now.

And this is one of the ways that happens, this notion of ridicule. We use the term cancel culture. I dare you to say anything that I find offensive or that I claim is offensive.

I dare you to say anything at all. I'm going to shut down the conversation because if you say anything that opposes my march to power,

I'll find a way to tear you down. I'll ridicule you. I'll shine a light up onto you in a way that puts standards on you that no one can live up to.

I'll lie directly about you into your face. I'll say crazy things about you, make a claim that you've done

X, Y, and Z. Now you have to live with the weight of that claim, whether it's true or not. You see that in the news every day.

So and so did whatever, and they make a claim. Some people are saying they just tweeted it to themselves just to throw an accusation out there.

And if ever there is a retraction, nobody sees it. Ten million retweets on the lie, 30 views on the retraction, and they've done their job.

And so it's not playing nice. And so that's from the radicals that are trying to tear things down.

But then all of the impact of that is really probably where we're going to deal with the most, and it's people in the pew.

It's brothers and sisters in Christ who just don't have the awareness to see what's happening to them.

It's the ripple effects. They're being impacted by all of that societal pressure. None of us are without susceptibility to influence from the culture, and so we have to be renewing our mind all the time in the word.

Otherwise, the waves, the winds, it will carry us along the current of culture, and we'll be impacted by that.

And we'll be afraid to say things like, homosexuality is wrong. How dare you say that?

Well, I'm quoting what God said, OK, like what you bigot.

You know, all you're trying to do is oppress those who, you know, how dare you? And I'm going to cancel your business and your family, and I hope you burn in the streets.

And so it's anyway, it's a war, but we don't get to throw bomb for bomb because we are held to a standard.

And their motives and our motives, I pray, are different. They're trying to hate us to death so that they can take over.

We're trying to love them to repentance so that God might be glorified. Absolutely. Critical theory and critical race theory.

Brian, you've already you give us some good definitions earlier.

Can anybody wrap that up, briefly talk about critical theory and the critical race theory?

It's just a derivation of the other particular vein. Right. And I think.

Critical race theory is just the application of critical theory to the race. And critical theory would argue things like.

The problems in our society regarding inequity are the results of the systems themselves.

And then the next question is, which goes along with more of the critical race theory and the racism and the

BLM movement is the reparations. What is reparations when someone says uses that term in our culture?

What are they talking about? Well, they talk about reparations.

They're they're speaking to a way to make right what they believe has been wrong.

And in their view, it's that there's been a sin committed against them. What?

How is it going to be made right? And so you look at the oppressor class to then give up something to the oppressed class in order to to make it right to undo the wrong that's been done.

Those reparations usually take the form of money. Sometimes it's power, giving up your seat at the table to talk somewhere or ahead of an institution.

They want people to leave just to leave spaces open for for other other folks to come in and do their thing on the basis of either skin color, sexuality, whatever the case may be.

This is a you know, the whole thing kind of runs to one brother called it the new religion.

Other one called it a competing worldview. Those are both really good descriptions for it, because what you have is you have a people who are looking at the world and seeing it in a broken state and wanting to fix it, but not having the proper categories in order to fix it.

So what they do is they take the truth of God in the world as they see it, knowing that something's wrong, and then they suppress the actual truth and substitute their own their own worldview.

So what they they see is a they see the sin of what they consider the sin of inequity.

Other people have stuff that I don't. We would call that covetousness. But the problem truly is that they see other people have stuff that I don't.

And why not? Well, because that group of people over there has done something. So what are we going to do about it?

We need to get into into those positions of power in order to right the wrong that was done.

Now, how are we going to do that? Well, we need to punish those who have done wrong. We'll cancel them. We'll seek reparations.

We'll put them to the side. We'll flip things on its head because, you know, and they're thinking when we're in charge, things will be better.

And the reason for that is that they have substituted the true God of the world for themselves.

They think of themselves. I mean, they may not think of it in those terms explicitly, but that's what they're doing.

They've substituted the truth of God and who he is, his ability and his right to make his order, his world and create it in such a way that it's ordered as he sees fit.

And they seek to reorder it after their own image, which is something that any racist could do, systemic or non, and seek in your world to undo the things of God.

So to speak to it, to reparations, it's what you have. It's kind of like if you look back, the law of Moses said, what do we do with the thief?

The thief is caught. My has to repay plus a fifth. It's a standard of righteousness, basically, is reparations.

Only it's not God's standard. It is a different standard. It's a whole different standard that even determines what is right or wrong and what should be the the reparation for it.

How is it going to be made right? They're determining they're stepping into the place of God to determine what is right and wrong.

How should those things be dealt with and how should society be reformed in order to make things right?

But they want to do it without God present. Yeah. Go ahead.

Well, I was I was going to say in terms of continuing the language of woke is a new religion.

Reparations would kind of be like the atonement for the sins of of of the privilege that that a certain group or a certain class of people gets from the the institutions that are inherently racist.

Gotcha. Now, the mechanism for for for salvation in the in the in the in the ideology or in the worldview, even though it can never fully be accomplished because your culpability and your sin, even though they don't use that term, it exists based off of your group identity, which you have no control over.

So you can never fully atone. But it's a it's a mechanism to move in that direction. You can you can do that alongside, you know, becoming an ally and cheerleading for them.

You'll always be in the oppressed class and there's nothing you can do to stop it because you did nothing to get in it.

But that's that's one way where you can at least avoid the the boot of the so -called oppressed who actually have the, you know, the modern hegemony or whatever, you know, the power voice.

But yeah. Good word atonement. That's what they're trying to make. I'm I'm still having a hard time following along with you because of my signal and everything going out.

So if I if I interject something that's already been said, I apologize. But then you made me think about something that I wanted.

I wanted you guys to address this because I think it's interesting. You brought about the idea of the thief and repaying and it made me think about Nicodemus.

So to clarify the difference between Christianity and the ideology of reparations when it comes to this, this movement that we're talking about today in our society, because you have

Nicodemus who come to Christ and that he wanted to make right.

He wanted to repay above and beyond what he had taken, which would make me think about reparations to some degree.

So distinguish the difference between this Christian thought and reparations from this ideology that we have today in our culture.

Yeah. But what you're getting at is what is the difference between biblical justice and social justice?

A biblical justice is a justice that seeks to address the sin head on and make right what was what was wrong in the first place.

A social justice will seek to find, as defined by those who believe that they're oppressed, some sort of wrong or inequity.

And then as a society, make that right. They can do that through all sorts of what we would consider sin.

It's a justice that is not truly just. It just seeks to write something in a way that it doesn't care who it steps on in order to do it.

For instance, there are people who will have to pay back something that they didn't owe.

How is that justice? In the biblical form of justice, what you see is a sin was committed.

A sin must be paid for. In social justice, you see a society has been wrong.

Society must pay for that wrong. So what you end up having is a

Christianity that can actually put right what was wrong.

And a society that doesn't even address actual wrongs that are being done, just perceived wrongs against a societal structure.

So it deals differently between societal structure and personal responsibility.

Biblical justice will take care of someone's personal responsibility towards a sin, whereas a social structure is what is being made right in social justice.

There are biblical categories. If our government is doing something wrong biblically, we don't force an issue.

We go to what does the scripture say. We should stop doing it. We should make right what was wrong before.

I feel like I'm dancing around it without hitting an actual answer. I think there's some point of what you said, which was right on, is that in the

Nicodemus example, he, as an individual, sinned against individual people.

And he sought to right the wrong over and against a nebulous or retroactive defining of,

I see inequity. There were some bad things that happened in the past, even though no one alive today was a part of it.

But let's just say that society, and because I think the people in power today must have benefited from it.

Now we're going to force this. It's kind of like the same way that we blanket, you know, the

Bible says, love your neighbor. You know, as yourself clothed and naked, take care of, like be generous. But those who like the flavor of the

Bible, but are really buddies with the religion of statism.

You know, they may not be secular humanists. They may actually love the concept of Christ. I don't know that they love the biblical

Christ if they're not really following his word. But it's like, well, how can

I force the government to do what the Bible tells individual Christians to do? So how can we move from individual responsibility to collectivism?

Hey, I don't want to sound like a smarty pants. Are we talking about Nicodemus or Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus. I'm so glad because while y 'all were saying that,

I said, wait a minute. I don't think Nicodemus ever went on file for saying he was going to pay it back.

I got to look and I apologize. You may have said this and I was,

I can't do two things at one time. You know, like I said, Gaston County born and bred. I've got a pile of things going against me.

I'm learning about them now. Anyway, according to the

Old Testament, whenever you do dishonestly, you're to repay four times what you took, right? Depends on the circumstances, yeah.

Well, I'm thinking that what Zacchaeus was saying was in accordance to what he had been raised according to the law, that he was recognizing his wrong.

But it was Zacchaeus who was paying back the things that he took. This wasn't

Zacchaeus repaying back, say his father was a tax collector. This wasn't Zacchaeus paying back the people that his father may have cheated in his dealings.

Zacchaeus is responsible for Zacchaeus. And I understand what you're saying about how this culture of trying to get the government to do what they feel the church should be doing and using

Jesus as an example of that. And, you know, to some ends,

I understand where they're coming from. To some ends, yeah, the church, the church has let the government do some things that the church could have been doing all along.

And we know that the government does a bad job at anything it tries to do. You know, had a monopoly on the mail system.

They can't make enough money at the mail. Amazon has beat the government at delivering mail. You know, the fact of the matter is,

I think the answer to the problem we have in this regard of things like this nonsense of reparations is to say, all right, you know, if if we want to see if we do want to see the needy in our culture helped correctly, we need the church needs to be the one that does it.

We don't we don't need to ask permission from the state if we can if we can preach the gospel and and homeless shelters, because the fact of the matter is they need the gospel and they need to eat.

But they need the gospel more than they need to eat. That makes sense. You know, if you let the government if we let the government do that or we push that off on the government, then we're subject to see them mess it up, just like what we're seeing now with this this kind of thing.

I've all this stuff to me seem like it's running together. It is. Am I alone in this?

It seems like it's just each each bullet point of these questions that I'm reading seems like it's just an exaggeration of the point before it or it's leading up to the point after it.

I assume it's supposed to in that way. Well, I think you're right in that in that observation.

And while my computer has unfrozen, I'm going to take this opportunity to accept that correction.

And I really appreciate that. I don't know. I thought maybe you're going to teach me something

I didn't know. So I'm I'm open to learning new things. But I was just wanting clarification.

And I'm open to correction. Absolutely. The very least Nicodemus cloud trees.

But but I think you're right in that observation that it all runs together. And I did want to make that comment tonight, too, on that note that I'm also hearing along with the bombardment from Hollywood, television, news media and everywhere else trying to push this ideology.

I'm also hearing kind of on the side. Some folks seeing the inconsistencies, some some celebrities calling out the inconsistency.

And I see that this ideology is just going to be like all the other ones, since it's in opposition to scripture.

It's going to fall. It's going to fall. But we need to be aware of it.

We need to be aware of where it's infiltrating, especially.

When we have children and it's and it's in our schools and they're being taught this kind of thing, we need to be know how to answer those questions.

When they're when they're coming home and that kind of leads me to the next question. I want to skip down a few because we already answered some of them.

But when they try to introduce this ideology. And they do it with camouflage or they do it deceitfully.

Maybe some of you guys have been aware of some of the other language that they may use to try to sneak this ideology in unawares.

Are you familiar with any any tactics that are used to try to get this ideology in that, you know, someone may say, my child's bringing this home.

And on the on the front page, it doesn't look like the woke movement or intersectionality.

But, you know, if you get into it, they may see it. Are any of you guys aware of any tactics or other types of language that they can be aware of or listen to our school system?

Recently, my kids are in public school. A lot of my folks in my church think I'm a heretic because probably 85 percent of our kids are homeschooled.

So I want to send mine to the mission field. But no, really.

And so our school system in the last month put out a mandate that each school had to address bullying in the school system.

Fair enough. You know, I mean, that's fine. So then because of the media propaganda and stuff, the school system then come back with a survey.

And one of the schools said race was one of the primary issues. And then after they said race was one of the primary issues, then they created a panel of students to speak on why the

N word was not supposed to be used. And they played this throughout the whole school.

And so at the end of the day, the panel was ended up only being

African -American kids. And that wasn't intentional. There was supposed to be a mixed panel, but the white kids didn't show up.

And so black kids only with a black moderator. And how the message come across, even after a post interview, the

African -American kids said it's OK for them to use the N word, but it's not OK for white people to use the

N word. And so it's a double standard kind of deal. And they play this through the school system.

Now, later, the African -American teacher confronted the student that said that. He goes, that's not what I meant, he said, but that's what you said.

And so they had a long conversation. So instead of like curtailing that and saying, hey, this is a bad presentation, this is not the message we want to send, they went ahead and played it and then forced race conversation.

So that was one one exact instances through the school system and through the education system.

And then and my son would probably be aggravated if he knew I used him as an illustration. But he's a freshman in high school.

He had 16 assignments that he had to write on this subject.

But it was in very Manila, indirect, indirect context.

So and so as a parent, we were very aware of it. And it was great for us to be able to engage in that.

OK, so some of the conversations we're having tonight, I'm having with my 15 year old son. And I'm thinking about parents who were were unengaged or unaware.

And these kids are writing. And it was a very liberal teacher that was then indoctrinating students into this culture over 16 assignments.

So I don't have a problem in the month of February and it's Black History Month or whatever.

And we want to study about Martin Luther King and civil rights movements or whatever. That's a part of American history. I have no problem with that, but it does get excessive.

And so so just keep in mind, I think. What do you guys said that earlier? It is through our education system and then it moves right on through the universities.

And that's the other primary method, I believe, is it's indoctrination in the universities.

And so, you know, it's a it's a common fact.

And so beyond that, even corporate HR, it's what you it's what you see.

It's the air that you fish don't know they're wet. And and I think the question that you asked, Robert, about, you know, what are some of the the subtle ways that it's taught or pushed today?

Probably the question you asked, Robert. Oh, I'm hearing myself.

Sorry, guys. Yes. So there's I think it's probably it was more subtle 20 years ago.

It's more direct today. I don't think the subtlety is is is as big of a.

I don't think it's as it's as neat. I mean, Coca -Cola, you have their HR teams pushing people to apologize for their whiteness, you know, like.

Sorry to laugh, guys. Yeah. So it's it's in your face. And it can be that way because for the last 50 years, it's been it has been subtly, you know, the disproportionate, let's say, impressions of minority intersectional victimhood in movies.

You know, think think about watch the Disney Channel. What grown white man on there is not portrayed as a fool or an absent father or a pathetic joke?

And it's all the young kids, particularly the young girls who are the the smart, competent leaders there.

You know, like it's it's not it's been subtle for decades. It can be blatant now because the field has been plowed and the seed is there and it's just watering what's.

Yeah. And speaking of reparations and stuff like that, it goes back to what you were saying. I think the subtlety has been it has been for decades, even if it's unforeseen.

For example, there's not the same opportunity for scholarships for white folks as there are for minority groups.

I mean, that's just the fact I had a young man that I grew up with. I was fourth in my class and had a four point four

GPA. And, you know, I'm still paying on student loans and I'm 42 years old. He was 80th in his class in our class and out of 120 and had a full ride.

See, to me, that sounds like that equity versus equality. They're trying to get an outcome that is similar.

You both have degrees, but it didn't actually work out equally, did it? Because you're paying on loans.

Well, no, he went to college and today he's in prison. So he had the he had the same opportunity.

I understand. OK, but the outcome was different because today he's in prison. So he went to a school and ended up in school, joined the gang and, you know, went sideways.

But anyways, guys, so there's there's a lot there's a lot of things for decades.

It's been happening, even the no child left behind things and stuff like that. The entitlement issues.

I mean, it's it's been a it's been an erosion for a long time. And I appreciate what you said.

I don't I don't think it is very subtle right now. I think it is like expected acceptance.

And if you don't if you don't accept it, then then. So the positive spin of that is that people don't sound like they think it's positive, but the positive spin of this is this is very much a part of what brings persecution back to the

American church. Yep. Yeah. You know, so this and the homosexual agenda are the two things that's going to,

I believe, really bring persecution back to conservative American Christianity. And so that's one of the things

I was going to speak to. I'm glad you brought that up is you asked, Robert, you asked about some things you need to be wary of that our children may may be getting information from school and bringing home how we can be on the lookout for that.

And that was started this section of the question panel. Or do we move past that?

I didn't catch on. Keep going. You're good. OK, so my kids are homeschooled now before they were homeschooled, which it was only a year ago when we did it.

The the health, the health class where they go over. It's supposed to be safe sex class or something.

I can't remember what they call it. There's some there's a fifteen dollar word they use for my children brought home the material for me to read because I had to sign it before they could.

They could sit through the class, which I was actually surprised. That was still that was something they still asked for parents to sign before they just dumped it in their lap.

But there was a section in that in that pamphlet that was talking about.

They used a term like alternative lifestyle. There was there was some very vague, broad strokes.

And I knew exactly what they were talking about. They were talking about teaching or at least explaining that there are some people who are homosexual out there.

And then I suppose the next step to that is to teach these kids this this lifestyle, this this sin nature.

I said, man, I called the I called the teacher and I had to talk with him before my kids were to go in this class.

I'm going to sign this paper until until you can explain to me what your intentions are about teaching from this from this from this pamphlet, because the way

I understood it from a previous conversation we've had, the state, the state mandates the curriculum.

But it is still up to the teacher's discretion to some portion of how much of it they teach. In other words, they may be walking in a certain level of rebellion by not teaching it, but it's still their classroom.

Does that make sense? So he could he could be pushed so far, but he doesn't have he doesn't have to take the next step.

And he's a he was a local local guy in town and I knew him. And and he said,

I can tell you this. He said, I'm a born again child of God that I will not.

I don't care whether they take my license from me. I don't care if they take my class from me.

If I have to go work in a different field. He said, I am not about to sit in a classroom and try to explain to children.

How to engage in a sexual relationship, let alone allow them to think that it's

OK for for them to live a homosexual lifestyle. I was actually surprised that he said it so pointedly, but based off of the conversation that I had with him,

I allowed it to continue. You understand? I don't know that every other person that is teaching this criteria, though, has his same convictions.

I don't know that any other teacher would be willing to walk off of the job. In other words, to ensure that they don't walk against what they know of to be true from Scripture.

Some may, some may not. So I would I would encourage you before when you see anything like that, to really comb through these handouts they send at home, because they do have a lot of they do have a lot of information and some broad strokes of opinion.

Fair point. Appreciate it, guys. Just to move right along.

Jonathan, you brought up Martin Luther King Jr. in one of your comments. I somewhat heard this conversation every now and then, but he he marched, he fought for racial justice.

And the question is, is was this his goal? Is this what he was looking for in his his march?

What he was looking for in America. Does this fit what he was marching for?

What he was preaching for. What do you guys think? I would say, of course, the folks who believe in this gender are saying it is because they're.

It goes back to worldview. OK, it goes back to worldview and from our perspective, from a modern day perspective.

So honestly, when we first got this question, I had to do a little research on it.

You know, I knew about the civil rights movement, but I never thought about viewing him marching and those kind of things in light of critical race theory.

And so what was very interesting in my research, though, Dr. Wyatt T. Walker. OK, that was like Dr.

Martin Luther King's right hand man. And they had that he was part of his organizer and those kind of things.

And as as they were, he came out later, which he survived and said that critical race theory is in total opposite of what they were trying to attempt in the civil rights movement.

So so it's counter. He says it's counterproductive to what they were trying to achieve.

So so so the central concept and vision that Dr. King stood for.

No, his goal was not to accomplish critical race theory for sure. I'll piggyback on that.

I would agree, especially from just the words that I have a dream one day.

You know, people will not be judged by the kind of the character, not the color of their skin. Right. Seems to fly in the face.

And yet there's some. I watched a three and a half hour presentation from an

ACLU attorney who was trying to make the case for reparations and would leverage a lot of Martin Luther King's less.

Popular popular writings and some of the reasons why the FBI and others were out to get him so forth is because they saw him as a threat of someone who was going to push for some of the kind of things.

But regardless of that, like the question itself, like I read this, I read the same things you do.

And I think I agree with that. And it makes most sense if anybody who condemns racism would not pick up CRT because it's just an opposite race.

Yeah, exactly. And so it's so. But the back to the question that you're asking,

Robert, I think as as Christians, I don't want to come across wrongly when

I say this, but who cares what Martin Luther King was trying to accomplish? He's not

Jesus Christ and he's not the normative standard of God's holy word. I get that there's social proof.

I mean, I'm a marketing director like I know. I know the notion of, well, you know, the celebrity said it.

And so buy my stuff. But but but if we're looking for actual justice, it's got to be defined by an authoritative standard.

And Martin Luther King, as great as what God was able to accomplish through him, that comported with his word is not his word.

And so it's I mean, so so as Christians, I guess my point is we need to be able to acknowledge it and talk about it. But then hopefully the the discipler in each of us will go forward and say, so so here's what

I think is the historic reality or here's some evidence for whatever, regardless of where it falls. Why would we look to him as the standard of our of our authority?

We wouldn't. What does the Bible say? That's an excellent point. I appreciate you bring that up, too.

That's fantastic. I think we lost two of our guys. It's getting late in the evening.

It must be. So let's wrap it up.

Ask a few more questions. I want to combine these two together because it has to do with white folks. Because we're glitch and because we're racist.

Are those things the polls?

How do we how do we counteract those arguments? I hate to ask this, but could you repeat that?

You faded out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Basically, you've got the two claims against white folks coming out of this ideology because you're white.

You're racist because you're white. You have the liberty.

Maybe you can type it in the chat. It takes a lot of unfreezing.

And it's yet to do this. Are you with me now? You're fading in at times.

Yeah. Are you are you getting at it? Does a white person have privilege or are you trying to ask about the validity of some of the claims?

Or are you moving on to stuff like what's an ethnic group and how does the Bible think about race and those things?

So that I can. Depending on your bent. This is either the devil trying to interfere or God not wanting us to talk about it.

By the way, while he's unfreezing, you guys look like tremendous scholars with all those books behind. I feel a little bit inferior right now.

You're the one that corrected my repeating of Robert's. Great wall.

I do have this book beside me. OK, that's one that matters. All this is a writing many books.

There is no end. Right. Much study where his body. That's right. Try again, Robert. Yeah, we'll try it again.

So squeezing the two questions together, because someone is white, they have privilege.

Because someone is right. White. They are racist. Is there any validity to those claims?

And how do we counteract that argument to try and take the culture's perspective to understand where they're coming from?

I think the way that they would explain that if there was a sober explanation is, you know, the characteristics that God gives us and assigns us necessarily provide certain opportunities.

I'm a, you know, average height, not a jumper, you know, not very fast.

Fight or flight, I better fight and win or I'm never going to get chased down, that kind of stuff. Like so it's

Providence limits certain things that I might be able to accomplish based on the way that I'm born.

And that's based off the physical characteristics and traits that I have. So it's not an impossible jump, logically, to say that those physical traits could manifest other influence.

I mean, you think about like, you know, if you've got a beautiful daughter or child or something like that, you know, they're going to have an easier path to popularity than than one who was born with a cleft lip or something like that, just because human nature is such that some people are more palatable or whatever.

And so so the the argument from from from Wokeland is,

I mean, it's easier for you to make money because you're white. It's easier for you to get that job because you're a man.

You know, you're going to get paid more or whatever. It's easier for you to to make a way in life.

All that hard work that you do. Well, you have to work a lot less hard than someone who was born with dark skin or, you know, who's born as a woman or who is born gay or whatever.

And so so so that's at least the the platform that they would come back to you with.

And so in terms of how how do you answer that? Can't can't acknowledge or can't fail to acknowledge the reality.

But the tact I would try to take, because the goal is to always get people back to the recognition of God as sovereign over all things.

And he is the arbiter of actual justice. He's the only standard. So the question

I would I would push the push the theory back. Well, where did my whiteness come from?

Who who decided that I would have it? And who decided you would have whatever? I didn't.

So, you know, is there is there a downstream ripple effect? Maybe. Yeah. No way of proving that out.

I can't be anything other than I am to walk into actual shoes in the time and place in history that I've been.

It's an end of one experiment that can't have a, you know, a standard group or whatever that you can't go back and repeat history and try it again in a different way and see if there's a different outcome.

So no way of knowing. And correlation does not equate to causation.

So I can't just say, well, on the aggregate, white people have X and yellow people have

X minus four. So, you know, there you go. It doesn't doesn't necessitate that that that was a call.

So anyway, all that to say is, I would say, let's get back to where those traits come from. God and he providently, you know, the sun falls on the on the just and the unjust and the range on the righteous and the unrighteous.

And he's the one that apportions what what would happen. It's our job to be faithful stewards of what we've been given.

There's the parable of the talents. Some have more, some have less. What do you do with what you have?

And so at the end of the day, if if the goal and not only does that, you know, put me back to look at God as the as the sovereign one who who apportioned whatever.

I'm limited in certain respects and maybe I'm privileged in others, but I didn't give those things to myself.

I just have to be faithful with what God, the sovereign one, did give me. And that also, then, if I'm looking at him as the source,

I've got to look at him as the one who defines the goal. Is the goal for me to have more money than everybody else in the world?

Then I might be angry if I if I have some perceived limitation.

And so I'm going to, you know, try and try and tear down, you know, whatever those kind of structures so that I can.

But that's not the goal of a Christian. The goal of a Christian is faithfulness to the end. Don't give up till you die.

And so I'm going to assume that I'm going to talk to brothers or sisters in the faith in a reasonable, sober, sober way like this.

And so that I would always try to pull back to what role did God have versus us? And what's the goal in his defining versus mine?

And let's let's get back to the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice. And then and then if I'm talking to somebody who's combative,

OK, like there's other ways. I mean, you can Greg Bonson's presuppositional. How do you even think that you can even talk?

You can't reason like, you know, like break down their worldview, you know, not to win the argument, but to shut the mouth of the unbeliever and let

God do the work. But I don't I don't know if that is helpful at all. Yeah, absolutely.

And just to add another example from Scripture to your list, it made me think about the clay pot and how they how

God decided to use make and use each one different up again.

So you're probably Jonathan, you're about to say something while he's unfreezing.

I'll catch back up with somebody else. I was just going to say, and I don't want to stretch the illustration or take anything out of context.

You know, the Galatians six, you know, tells us, you know, do not be deceived.

God is not mocked whatsoever. Man saw it there. Sir, he also shall reap. I think one thing that we have to be careful, though, guys, even though I'm not responsible for what my forefathers did,

I can't deny what my forefathers did. Does that make sense? And so I think we had to be real careful in this conversation that we just aren't insensitive to some of those rallies because there was extremely wicked and racist things that were done.

You know, and so so we can't ignore that. And I think that's that's really going all the way back.

So so what I said, I don't want to stretch the scripture whatsoever. Man sows, he also is going to reap.

Whatsoever a country sows, that country is also going to reap. And so what we sowed to the whirlwind during that season or sowed to the wind during that season.

And now a few generations later, we're reaping a whirlwind with this.

So so again, I don't want to sound like I'm trying to straddle the fence here.

I want to say I think there's some there's extremely wicked things about this. And I think it is

I think it's potentially part of the great deception of the last days and and those kind of things.

So not to try to get us on a tangent of eschatology, but but at the same time, we have to be sensitive guys.

We have to be sensitive that there has been some very wicked, racist things that have happened.

And the kids that are of minority groups have been indoctrinated about what happened during those times.

And then the media indoctrinates that. And the liberal media and the

BET and MTV and everything else, what what the kids are listening to, they're indoctrinated to that.

But there is some validity to that history, you know, so even if it is embellished, I think there's embellishment to that as well for for agenda.

But so that's where I just I just want to caution us that that's what

I said even earlier about using the term woke. A lot of guys that want to argue against wokeness or critical race theory or intersectionality, they want to deny even those parts of history.

And and you can't do that and be able to have an honest conversation.

I wish Jesse was here tonight because Jesse really kind of set me straight because I was really struggling with something that I've told several people.

Illustration or my grandfather was a World War II veteran. He was able to get a federal loan from the government.

And as a result, he had he got a several hundred acre farm, ended up getting a chicken house, chicken houses on that.

My family called the they got their the fosters in Murphy, North Carolina.

So in the far western part. So they got land and property and all this beautiful stuff and all that originated from what my grandfather was able to get through a federal loan.

Whereas the African -American soldiers, they gave them an apartment and gave them an apartment where they all live together.

And that ends up being what? Our modern day ghettos. So so I can't control what happened back then.

But generationally, there is a privilege to those decisions that was made way back then, because I'm going to have potentially a multimillion dollar inheritance for my kids and my kids, kids and all the way down the line in the years to come.

And those kids that their their grandfather was given an apartment, they don't have that same opportunity.

So that's all I'm trying to say is historically, we just have to be sensitive to the argument because there is there is generational curse that has come through through decisions that were made by past governments and past leaders.

And there's been generational blessing. Now, I think there's been a very genuine attempts to make reprobation, you know, as we talked about, or to try to align equality and equity and all those kind of things.

But the reason we're talking about this tonight is because of what did happen, not just during slavery, but even why there was a civil rights movement and why there was voting laws and why there was all these kind of things.

So that's all I'm saying. Just that's fair. I mean, you know what I'm saying? It's valid, and you shouldn't feel like you have to.

I hope you don't feel like you have to tap dance over that or walk on with white gloves or on eggshells or anything like that.

Christians should be let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Don't ignore history. I mean, God is sovereign over all of history, and there's evil that happens all the time.

The chattel slavery exists today. Absolutely. That's what I'm saying.

This is not just an American issue. Yeah. So it's absolutely right. And then the real question is, what is proper justice in light of that?

And what are the other injustices? I mean, in whose responsibility does that fall on?

And if we want to place that on the government rather than on individuals, then by what standard will they operate?

Because the government is Leviathan hates competition, and they deny God in any way that they can.

And so what standard will be pursued? You're hitting them on the head.

Is this a governmental issue or is this a soul, heart issue? And that's the different views, though, too.

Exactly. It's true. That's the secular worldview of the Christian. And what's interesting is the other thing is like your family, you may be able to have some type of financial inheritance.

And I pray that the Lord blesses that and you guys use it for good. There are many wealth gain hastily will dwindle and he who gathers little by little will increase it.

It can be as much of a curse and a condemnation as anything else. I'm not saying that I'm agreeing.

I'm kind of, again, throwing that scenario out there. It's good that you do. What some of the secular argument is, but not only secular argument is

I spent a lot of time talking with African -American pastors that are buying into this. Sure.

And are preaching this from their pulpits. Right. And I'm asking them why. I'm sitting down with them over coffees and you have explained to me from a biblical worldview why you're preaching a secular worldview.

And so it is. And these are some of those things. And it is jumping into another question, but it's it's why these ideologies.

You don't understand it, Robert. Why these ideologies are so dangerous is because it can sound so right to be an advocate for social justice issues.

Because God loves justice. Scripture tells us that God loves justice and he hates injustice.

And so. So that's why it sounds like, man, this is the most loving thing to do is to jump on this team and become an ally like you were talking about earlier and be repentant.

And because we do love people and and especially in the

South, we don't like being confrontational. So therefore, non -confrontational loving people are easily duped.

Sure. And that's why Jehovah's Witnesses love us down here because they go door to door and they can pour it on and they've pulled you in, you know, whatever.

So I'm just saying it's the same kind of drinking the Kool -Aid type stuff. But I'm glad you mentioned it because it's right to say, don't don't don't pretend on a hobby horse that life didn't exist.

And it's and I think like from the the African -American brothers that that I talked to, you know, church leaders and otherwise, you know, they their their message to me is always let's be the ones who are seeking actual, you know, faithful biblical restitution, restoration,

God's will in this world. When we say, God, may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth just as it is in heaven. May it be fully known and obeyed just like it is currently in heaven without the hindrance of sin.

Lord, let it be. And so but, you know, they'll say, let's have hard conversations because and just as an example, anyone hearing me say this right now will think that guy is a terrible person.

But how far back in history do you go on the conversation of reparations, for instance, to say.

Sure. Right. That grandpa and his black brother, who both fought side by side, had different.

But how are things on the Horn of Africa right now versus like like like Votie Bauckham says, hey, guess what?

I got to go to the best school in America and I wouldn't have done that if if if my my ancestors hadn't been brought over here and hell went through.

But then I was raised in the most fruitful, productive society in the world. So now I can go back to Africa and train up, you know, a church leader, you know, those kind of.

So so it's it's a it's a it's a slippery slope. And I think we got to go back to the Bible on it because it's the only non sinful, you know.

So I hope I didn't come across as if I'm for reparations. Not at all. You didn't at all. Yeah. Definitely not.

I'm totally opposed with it because there's no equitable way to do that. There's no there's no reasonable way to even consider it, you know.

And then then and and guys, don't forget, too. I just want to give us

I already mentioned one, you know, with with Hispanics and illegal immigrants and all those kind of things.

But we got a lot of other cultures here, too. Like I'm I'm Native American in my background. So if we want to start paying reparations.

Right. You know. And what about Chinese -Americans? And what about I mean,

I'm Scots -Irish, too. We were immigrants and we never owned a slave as Scots -Irish. So the Cherokee nor the

Scots -Irish ever owned slaves. And so we were made into slaves and we'd run out of land and all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, I feel like I'm owed something, too. Does that make sense? So that's where you you're right. You can't you you can't deal with that.

So the innovation that we're dealing with makes sure to the critical race theory and intersectionality.

Tonight we are talking about racism, but we've touched on it. Intersectionality covers so much more than just race.

Yeah. OK. Critical race theory is applying to race. But intersectionality covers everything that intersects with the standard white man, if you want to say.

You know what I mean? And so our that's right. I mean, and so it's we're the oppressors and everybody else is the victims.

And so which I already know that. But for anybody that watches this later, I just want to keep that in mind because it's that's not just a race conversation.

So that's very good. Robert, are you back?

I appreciate you guys carrying this video thus far. I appreciate you guys carrying this video thus far because this has been very odd.

The video is not going to Facebook like it normally does when Dan and I do videos. It's not done this before.

So this is very odd. I appreciate you guys carrying the video forward while my thing does what it's doing.

So I want to wrap it up because I've been up here a long time. But I want to I want to touch on something.

Brian said I want to touch on something. Jonathan, you said you were talking about the racism of the past.

And I want to try to get that question answered that I initially asked because it's I mean, it's out there because because I'm white.

Does that innately make me a racist? Because that's that's the claim.

How do you answer that question? So the answer is no. But here's what I would say, too. I think every culture has a level of racism.

I mean, I think we're naive because we have sinful natures. So to say

I just say that I have no racism whatsoever within me that I don't have to fight against would be a lie.

So you're saying this because of seeing my heart, not because it has nothing to do with you being white. You're a son of Adam.

Exactly. Everything to do with your center. Gotcha. Wicked. And I am wicked.

And so and it has it has nothing to do with me being white. It has a lot to do with where and how

I was raised. And so and we experienced racism on the other side. We've done a lot of mission work in Harlem and other places like that.

And and and it was called reverse racism at the time, but it's not really reverse racism.

It's just racism. You know, it's racism from a black man. He's racist toward a white guy. And a white guy is racist or black or Hispanic guy and Chinese guys, you know, whatever.

I mean, so and then racist even within culture. You know that, like I said, not to beat a dead horse, but I work with a lot of Hispanic guys and Mexicans and Hondurans and Cubans.

They don't like each other. They're all brown, same color skin, same color hair. Some talk a little faster than a lot of others.

But what you call that? They don't like each other. Why? Because they're from a different country, you know what

I mean? And so so anyways, it's seeing guys. And that's my opinion.

It has nothing to do with white. Let me pick up on what Brian was saying and try to wrap everything up and close this tonight.

Brown was about the sovereignty of God. He was talking about the different ways we can.

We're looking at ourselves and the situation that we're in, the lot in our life that we've been given by God.

And it made me think about the the idea of the clay pots and the vessels described in Scripture.

God made and uses how he sees fit. It made me think about that example as well. But then when you get drawing back from the equality versus equity idea that we were looking at earlier, you know, we can use that argument.

Well, it's it's got sovereignty. God, God put it puts you in that situation.

You make the best of it for for his glory, the situation that you're in.

But then you have those that want to look at someone else's lot in life, how how

God had made has made them. And this word was brought up earlier, covetousness.

The idea of covetousness comes up. Well, I don't have what they have. And then to me, spiritually speaking, we're looking at Scripture.

I want to think that that's going to lead to ultimately if you're just pulling back the layers, you're eventually going to get to the the center, which

I guess would be unbelief. We're we're

God creating us and using us how he sees fit. So we're covetousness, which really is unbelief.

We're not things.

Does that make sense? Does that make sense? What I was trying to say, if you heard some of it, you broke up the last little bit.

That was like kind of the big clincher point. OK, so covetousness is going to lead to unbelief, a lack of trusting in God and his goodness.

So that I think that's what it eventually boils down. All this boils down to. We're not trusting

God and his goodness and how he how he has made us and where he has put us.

And so that's kind of the conclusion that I would draw. And I appreciate the word that you gave

Jonathan about how it's not about our skin. It's about our heart and our sin nature.

And that stems from. So I'm going to wrap things up tonight.

It's it's been crazy. Like I said, it's. Unusual the way the

Internet's working tonight and maybe it's Satan. Maybe those principalities.

I don't know. But of course, God is in control. And I do want to take those,

Jonathan, your example that you were given. And hopefully we can get Jesse and Deontay back on here and we can address those issues that you are bringing up.

And issue, Brian, that you were talking about, biblical justice and whose responsibility. We just don't have time to answer all these questions that I have laid out for us.

But if we could tackle those kind of those two things and have maybe a shorter video next time,

I think that would be really good. Well, the reason I mentioned Jesse was because he set me really straight on that. And I shared with him that example.

And he was quick to answer with a very biblical, clear answer.

And so so that's the reason I brought it up so that we can come back to it, because Jesse just gave a really clear answer.

I think one other good question, too, that we need to follow up with is the one about how how we are to be involved in this in the community.

Is this something that we try to run for office or is this something that we try to put Christians in office or not?

Or how do we how do we address this in the in the culture from from from the public standpoint?

I can't remember exactly how you worded it. Let's see. Oh, can we be involved locally and nationally to fight against this?

How can we be involved locally and nationally to fight against this? And I think I think that's a very important practical answer thing to answer.

And I might add one thing to that. Do we fight against it?

You know, because I sometimes take Matthew 24 position that these things must come to pass, you know.

And so that's so it's kind of like, do we just do we?

I want to make sure we don't get preoccupied with non gospel centered things. But at the same time.

The word discipleship came up earlier, too, and that's so crucial. I think this is very much a great discipleship mechanism because worldviews are very much a part of discipleship, obviously.

So I think it's an interesting question. I guess I'm trying to say is, do we fight against this?

Do we make this an agenda of the church or not? Someone had given a question that that that piggybacks on what you were saying to maybe people that they're watching this can listen or think about it or whatever.

But the question was something along the lines of is the gospel only good news for our sin or does the Lord bring justice?

But before we got on and before you're able to sign on, it was the question of what is like, you know, we don't want to do anything that's not a gospel.

Don't want to get on a non gospel centered hobby horse. But how broad is the gospel in its application?

Certainly not just an ethereal, you know, one day in the future, we'll all have our harps and all those kind of things. No, like, you know, salt and light here in the world.

So maybe like talking a conversation on how how the gospel applied.

I mean, I think that's the nebulous line. Those in the social justice camp who have a Christian flavor versus those who are trying to be biblical versus those that are, you know, whatever.

So we can talk about that. I think and I think this is where we could pull in some eschatology into this.

Yeah. You know, I mean, like there is a place where, you know, what is going on in the world around us worldwide, you know, and it's interesting things that are happening.

And obviously, everybody should be watching what's going on in Israel and, you know, Palestine and Hamas and everything else going on there, you know.

So that's what I'm trying to say is. It's just a really interesting time.

And so so so by God, I like to use the word cause because the

Bible says that he causes calamities and all of these things. The Lord calls these things by him causing this in our culture.

What is God saying to. So fighting against what God has called for the best method of.

And then what is God saying in that. That's not.