TGC Slanders Kyle Rittenhouse and The Loss of Harmony in Music & Life

Conversations That Matter

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00:01

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We got a good but short show for you today.

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I'm gonna do a few episodes this week, hopefully. I wanna do three. Three this week and we'll see if I can do three next week.

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I don't know. I'm gonna try to put out three. One of the reasons for that is I'm traveling and I'm gonna be doing some family and business traveling this weekend.

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And then next weekend, I'm gonna be heading out to Iowa for a top secret mission. So, and it does have to do with this whole social justice debate.

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And so I appreciate all your support and those who do support me. It definitely helps me cover those expenses and do what

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I need to do. So I will talk more about that after it happens. Got some exciting things coming up and some projects

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I'm involved with. I wanted to start out this program though by putting some resources in your hands. We need resources and I've told you before,

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I'm coming up with a resource list. Part of the reason I've been stalling on that is because there's at least two books

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I know of that next month are coming out. Well, there's three. There's mine as well. There's three books that are coming out that I wanna put on that resource list.

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And so I'm waiting for those to be available. But one of the, in the meantime, one of the books you can pick up is a really thin book.

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I mean, that's how thin it is. It's only like 34 pages and then at the end, there's the statement on social justice, the

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Dallas statement. But it's called Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice, How Good Intentions Undermine Justice in the

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Gospel by E. Calvin Beisner. And this was given to me by a friend. Kind of washed out because it's so white, the cover.

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If I put it on an angle, you can kind of see the cover. It's got Lady Justice blindfolded there. I love it.

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This was given to me by a friend a while ago. Actually, it was last year, I think. And I'd never read it and I pulled it out the other day.

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I was showing someone some of my books and I remembered that I had it.

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So I started to read it and I thought, this is actually really good. And one of the things that really stood out to me, one of the things

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I thought was that, we really have some amateur exegetes out there pushing the social justice movement in Christian circles.

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And that's why when people say to me things like, well, you know, Al Mohler or fill in the blank with whatever Bible teacher you wanna put in there, they're just not aware.

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Or you're trying to justify somehow why they haven't come out swinging against this stuff in their own backyard.

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I don't think it's cause of ignorance. I really don't. And one of the reasons is because as I was reading this book, it just struck me how simple it is to understand these things.

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It's really ignorance that social justice, quote unquote,

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Christians are playing upon when they try to sell you this stuff, this garbage. They give you very rudimentary interpretations and they expect you to just kind of, they cherry pick from everywhere.

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And they expect you to just kind of go along with their interpretation until they can get to the next link in their chain.

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And, you know, Beisner takes, I think it was like the five or six most commonly used verses to justify equality of outcome.

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And he just shows none of them actually justify equality of outcome. Things like the

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Jubilee year and the church in Acts and their model and et cetera.

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So I just recommend it. It's biblical, it's very simple. You're not gonna learn intersectionality or critical race theory or any of those things, but you will just understand better what does the

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Bible say about some of the basic assumptions, ethical assumptions that are being pushed on us. Equality of outcome, equity is what they're calling it now.

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What does the Bible say about that? And so negative and positive rights are talked about in this by Beisner.

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He does a great job, I think, with just giving you a really powerful little book here, little treatment of the subject.

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So you're gonna wanna get that. You're gonna wanna get that for people who don't wanna put a lot of time into this.

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And they just wanna know what the Bible says. Social justice versus biblical justice, how good intentions undermine justice in the gospel by E.

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Calvin Beisner. And one last thing I'll say about it. It does have a, it's like half a page, but it just talks about how if you get justice wrong, then you're gonna get the gospel wrong if you're consistent.

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If you apply your warped understanding of justice to the gospel because justice is a necessary, you need to understand justice to understand the good news, then you're gonna get a lot of things wrong.

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So another book that I started to actually read today a little bit of, and we'll see how long it takes me to finish it, is called

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Cynical Theories. Just came out by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.

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And the subtitle is How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity and Why This Harms Everybody.

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I'm very grateful that there's some books like this. I'm grateful this book came out because it gives us some definition.

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As far as I know, Pluckrose and Lindsay are both, I think they're atheists. I don't wanna talk out of turn there. They're either agnostics or atheists, or I think

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Lindsay's an atheist. But so they're not Christians, just so you know. But they're helping define what's going on around us because they understand.

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They were in that world. They were in the academic setting. And so they helped bring some definition to it.

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I've started taking some notes on it in the margins. And I could tell within maybe two or three pages that okay, this is not coming from a

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Christian perspective. And ultimately, whatever solution they have at the end, which I haven't gotten there yet, they kind of teased it, it ultimately is gonna have to fail if they don't have it on a

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Christian foundation, if they don't have it on the God who actually created this place, who is immaterial, absolute, unchanging.

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His rules apply to everyone. You're just not gonna be able to get back to the kind of liberalism that they wanna get back to, which was running off of the momentum of a

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Christian understanding of life, Christian philosophy. And that understanding is hitting a brick wall now.

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And so it's very good though, as far as describing what has taken place since,

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I think they start out kind of like in 1950 and they bring it up through the present. So I'm already in the chapter on postmodernism, which is the first chapter.

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I read the introduction. And I can already say that I would recommend it as long as you're realizing where it's coming from.

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This isn't a Christian response. This is just to understand in more detail the advancement of how postmodernism has interacted with Marxism to produce what we have now.

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So I wanted to throw those things out there for you. Hopefully that's helpful. I know one of the biggest questions

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I get is, John, what are some resources? And so there you go. There's two more resources for you to look at. This is interesting to me.

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Speaking of James Lindsay, I had heard that James Lindsay also got a similar email, but I got this the other day, about a week ago,

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I guess now. And I wasn't gonna show you guys, but when I heard James Lindsay had gotten the same kind of message,

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I just chuckled to myself. So this is from someone named D. Sean Williams. Never heard of this guy.

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And the subject line is racism complaint. And so, of course, I heard that and I thought, okay, well, they probably found something that I said, whoever this is, that was somewhat controversial.

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Maybe something I said in defense of Civil War monuments or something, and he's gonna say

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I'm racist. And obviously I'm not. I denounced that.

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There's so much evidence that I can give you, but none of that matters. You gotta understand, none of that matters.

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This is not about the classical understanding of racism that most of us have in our mind. This is a new definition.

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It's power relationships and microaggressions. And you just, by definition, are a racist if you're a member of the majority or oppressor class, right?

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So here's the complaint. Jonathan, I need to address some racism. I thought about addressing it on social media, but I think sometimes it's better to handle things like this privately.

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So you already get the shame coming your way, right? Oh no, what did I do? It's so bad that you couldn't even publicly address it?

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So I am emailing you. Someone brought to our attention a tweet by you. Oh no, you may not know it, but this is digital blackface, and it's racist.

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You may think it innocent, but digital blackface can be very hurtful to people of color.

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If you are against racism and an ally of people of color, then I ask that you stop with the digital blackface.

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I don't wanna discuss it. I don't wanna argue it. I just want it to stop. It's disrespectful, it's hurtful.

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And his name is Deshawn, and he describes himself as a Black Lives Matter and racial reconciliation specialist.

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That's his title. And so anyway, so I clicked on the link, and it takes you, maybe

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I should just click on this while I have it. I didn't think about doing that, but I'll do it. Let's see if I can find it right now for you to show you.

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Yep, I have it here. Okay, so I'm gonna click on it. So it's gonna take us to a tweet that I put out there, and I'll show you, it's a

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GIF that he's complaining about here. Let's see here if I can, here we go.

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So this is the GIF. And so it's a disco club in the 1970s.

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And I think most of the people in this video, if not all of them, I guess, the people dancing certainly, they have some

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African lineage in them, and they're doing the disco moves, right? So here's the original tweet.

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I put this out there in February. I said, you wanna know how blessed I am? I can bring junk like this home.

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It's for my thesis, and I don't have to worry about my wife going all feminist on me because she's already got me whipped into shape so much.

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And so it's a joke that my wife, she's already got me under control.

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It was just tongue -in -cheek kind of thing. It wasn't a joke, it was a self -deprecating joke on me, really, is what it was, not my wife.

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And so anyway, here's the book, All Were Meant to Be, A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation, and it's trash.

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It's a terrible book, but I needed to look at it for some research I was doing. And so someone comments, everything about this book screams 1970s.

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And so I just posted a GIF there. I just typed in 1970s disco or something like that.

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And this is what came up. Not even thinking about, you see, this is what they would say would be racist.

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Not even thinking about whether it's Asian, white, black, Martian, just people in a disco club.

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That's all I was conveying there. That's the 70s to me. And you can see the artwork on the book is quite the 1970s feel to it.

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So this was the issue. This was the complaint. This is what got me and is getting me in trouble with the

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Black Lives Matter and racial reconciliation specialists there. So I thought that was kind of interesting.

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But we have bigger things here to talk about. We're gonna be talking about a

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Gospel Coalition article, and we're also gonna be talking about a post that some people asked me to explain more on music and intersectionality, music and intersectionality, which may sound kind of unusual.

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How do those things relate? And frankly, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know, how do they relate? They seem,

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I mean, it's just, it was one of these weird connections that just kind of took place in my mind as I was thinking. And so I started writing this little mini blog about it, and then people thought, well, that's really profound.

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Can you expand on that? So I'll try to expand a little bit, explain kind of what I meant by it, and hopefully you'll benefit by that.

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But I have noticed a cultural shift, and I think I've lived through some of it.

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I think many of you, if you're my age or older, you've certainly lived through it. And you can see it playing out in different aspects of our culture.

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So I see it playing out in music, but I also see it playing out in the rise of intersectionality. And so I'm gonna explain all that.

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What am I talking about there? Let's start, though, with this Gospel Coalition article.

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I confess, I have not read this whole thing in detail. The article is called

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Why I Hate August by K. Edward Copeland. And this was featured on August 29th last

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Saturday on the Gospel Coalition website. I'm gonna read it to you. It's fairly short.

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And I just want to give you some of my thoughts. I confess, I haven't really done anything more than skim this.

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So you're gonna get some of my reactions for the first time here. But this is a problem, in my opinion.

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This is why, if you wanna take an article, a recent one, and say, why do people not care for Gospel Coalition so much?

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It's because of articles like this. So you can already see, here's the picture. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 -year -old in Kenosha who ended up killing someone in what looks to be self -defense, is featured here.

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And the person, I think this is the person that he shot, or one of them, because I think he shot two people.

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But let's go over this. I love hot weather and family celebrations, and yet I hate the month of August.

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My sister and I were born in August. As a child, I confessed Christ in August. As an adult,

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I vowed fidelity to my bride in August. Okay, stop right there. Those are the three biggest celebrations, blessings, things that mark time in one's life.

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I mean, you're talking about your birthday, your spiritual birthday, life and internal life, and then your wife, your anniversary.

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They're all in August. So if that's the case, you would think, right, and I think this is the contrast he wants to make, but you'd think

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August would be, it would just be flavored with all kind of celebration. I mean, in my mind, you could be in the gulag.

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You could be in a horrible situation, and yet August would still be a better month than most every other month because of the things that you, the reminders.

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That's what those events should be, reminders that, wow, okay, God, I'm still alive. Look what God's done. Look at the eternal life that's guaranteed for me.

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Look, I have a wife and a family. Like, look at what God's done. So you'd think even under the worst circumstances, this would be a great month or better than other months, but not for Mr.

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Copeland here. So he says that despite the annual celebrations of these significant events, my heart always hurts literally and profoundly toward the end of the month.

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Over these last few trips around the sun, I've attempted to self -diagnose my perennial pain. I've come to some conclusions

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I would prefer not to face. My heart, however, won't allow me to avoid them. I hate August because it reminds me that some view bodies like mine as disposable.

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So he's saying that despite the three biggest things, biggest blessings in his life

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God has given them, they somehow pale in comparison to these horrible events that he's going to go over and how they affect him personally.

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And he's trying to self, this guy's in his own head. He's in his, he's looking, in my mind, this is a guy who's turning inward instead of looking outward at the blessings that God has given him in this month.

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But that's my gut reaction, reading this more in detail for the first time. So he says, headlining, you're still haunted.

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I don't mourn my mortality theologically. All fleshes like grass and our bodies are destined for dust.

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Those of us who are in Christ are awaiting new bodies. What hurts my heart is that in the country where I live, my body is disposable existentially.

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This was tattooed onto my heart around my 13th birthday. So it's interesting he chose to get married in the worst month in his mind, because I'm assuming he didn't get married before he was 13.

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So, I don't know, there's that. That summer, I saw the image of Emmett Till's bloated, beaten -beyond -recognition body in a magazine.

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As I saw it, I reflected on the fact that I was almost the same age as Till had been when he boarded a train on August 20th, 1955 to go from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives.

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He had to have passed by Kankin Key, hope I'm pronouncing that right,

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Illinois, where 20 years later, I sat horrified at the image of his remains.

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At school, I read in history books that 20 and odd, I'm not gonna say the name just because people like to take my words out of context sometimes, but black people from the

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White Lion, an English ship, were brought to Virginia Colony at Point Comfort on the James River on August 20th, 1619 and sold for food.

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Yet when I saw the relatively recent magazine images, I began to suspect August was still a dangerous month for bodies like mine, even hundreds of years later.

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So yeah, it's interesting to me a little bit, just because he doesn't have any direct experience.

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He's actually saying things that he has direct experience with, his birthday, salvation, marriage.

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Those are not as profound and deep in his consciousness. They don't make as big of an impact.

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He uses the word tattoo as events which he wasn't even at.

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But he has a stronger connection to those events that tells you something, that really does tell you something.

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And I think social justicians would try to say, well, you're just an individualist. But that's actually part of the problem is that your identity within this group and the oppression to that group is so strong, it can trump even your salvation experience and the celebration that should be.

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It can trump your wedding and the celebration that should be. That's a problem, guys. For, in my mind, like for the

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Gospel Coalition, that's the name of this website. It's all about the gospel and how the gospel brings light into the world, world loves darkness, but this is what

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Christ brought. It's a good news, it's for celebration. And this guy's down in the dumps, despite the fact that this is the very month when he should be celebrating that he has been saved by Christ, that the gospel has come into his life.

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And yet they're giving this guy a platform on the Gospel Coalition to write. He continues, this suspicion is reinforced annually.

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Every year I actually read Dr. Martin Luther King's speech from the August 28th, 1963 March on Washington.

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I'm always struck by the same line, we can never be satisfied as long as the black person is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

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The fact that 57 years later, we're still saying the same thing, albeit in different ways, is maddening.

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I wouldn't have room to finish this article were I to list all the hashtags of unarmed black and brown bodies who've been killed by law enforcement without the benefit of due process or trial.

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Can I just say something that's a pet peeve of mine? When people say bodies and they reduce, it just seems so reductionistic to take a color and then black, brown, white, whatever, and say bodies.

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You kill people. I realize their souls continue, but this is new language when we go back to this bodies language and it seems almost dehumanizing.

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These are the same people that complain about dehumanization, but that's just my personal pet peeve when people use that language.

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Let's keep going here though. They've been killed by law enforcement without the benefit of due process or trial as Hurricane Laura decimates the

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South. I'm also haunted by the black and brown bodies that were stranded on rooftops during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

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He's just tying a bunch of things together here that he wasn't part of. He didn't have any firsthand contact with any of this stuff, and yet a hurricane indentured servants from Africa and Emmett Till, those incidences, and he just kind of vaguely mentions police shootings, et cetera, these all just sort of play into the same narrative for him.

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And it's kind of curious because is it about injustice? I mean, is Hurricane Katrina then part of that?

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I mean, people said at the time, even Kanye West said at that time, a different Kanye West, that President Bush hated black people and Bush was in trouble because he was racist.

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And I mean, is that what he's getting at? That Bush didn't care and so he didn't send FEMA, which by the way, it seems like it's after Katrina that FEMA now is responsible for all disaster relief.

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It wasn't like that. There was a time it wasn't like that. That wasn't the job of the federal government.

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I'm just telling you. So after the past few months of horrible racial atrocities, when this

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August comes around and I watch a video of a police officer pumping seven bullets into an unarmed black body, my heart hurts all over again.

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Until an hour before I wrote these words, Jacob Blake's paralyzed body was handcuffed to a hospital bed clinging to life.

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By the grace of God, I once again reminded of something August won't let me forget.

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So his identity is so immersed in this physical similarity he has to other people with a skin that is the same shade as his.

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That's the language he's using. You may say it's cultural, okay, but the language he's using is black brown bodies.

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And so Jacob Blake's incident, without going into all the detail on it, because usually you start going into the detail on these incidences and you find out it's not the cartoon the media wants you to believe, it's not motivated by racism.

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Most of the time, most every incident that's coming to my mind right now, there was no evidence that racism played a part in it.

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And usually, there was a justification of some kind. There was a self -defense or a thought that even if they weren't being attacked, they thought they were, or there was some problem somewhere.

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And the Jacob Blake situation's no exception to this. Just go read in detail about the incident.

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Don't listen to the little clips that you see on CNN or even Fox, don't listen to those things.

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Go and read a good article on sequentially what happened. And when I mean clips, I'm talking about that, what was it, 20 -second video that doesn't show you what took place beforehand.

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There was a lot going on in that. And so I'm not defending to the teeth everything the officer did, but I'm saying there's another story you are not hearing.

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And it does, when you hear that story, because I have heard that story, it's not the point of my video today, you don't come away thinking that this is a racist police officer or a police officer that is brutal, necessarily.

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You come away thinking that this police officer was very scared because of criminal conduct, because of an altercation that took place before the video started, because of what

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Jacob Blake was reaching for in his car. These are the kinds of things that fill in the gaps of the story.

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But this author, he wants to weave a narrative here. And Jacob Blake is the next link in his chain for weaving this narrative that there's this war on black -brown bodies, and he's linked to these things in such a strong fashion that it makes him depressed.

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It ruins the month of August. It is a stronger link than his identity in Christ. I mean, if I was his wife,

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I'd be offended. His identity as a married man, his identity as even just a human being who has been given life by God.

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This is stronger than all that. That's what I'm getting reading this. That's what it sounds like he's saying in so many words.

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Egregious contrast, he says, that's the heading. This August, however, the hurt is amplified by an egregious contrast.

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Kyle, so here's where we're getting to the meat of this. Kyle Rittenhouse killed people in the middle of the street on camera and in front of witnesses.

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And then smoking rifle at his side casually strolled past law enforcement. This is so, this is such a botched job.

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This is already wrong, this is already wrong. He didn't casually stroll. The police officers passed him, right?

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He was trying to surrender. He had his hands up. He wanted to be taken in by the police officers because he was being chased by a mob.

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And this is how this author at TGC is twisting this.

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Smoking rifle at his side casually strolled past law enforcement. That's a lie. He didn't run away. He didn't hide.

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Yes, he did. He did both those things. He showed no fear. Running away, putting your hands up, trying to surrender to the police.

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What is that? He assumed there was something about his person that would allow him to approach law enforcement with a visible automatic weapon that had just taken lives and live to tell about it.

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Or maybe there was a bigger threat, the fact that he had things being thrown at him, the fact that he was being attacked.

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I mean, this, I mean, the New York Times has done invest, I mean, a lot of the media outlets, but New York Times is what

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I'm thinking of, have really tried to investigate him for racism. Where was he that night?

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What motivated all this? And they can't find stuff. He supported the police. He supported like a

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Blue Lives Matter thing. That doesn't mean he's a white supremacist. That doesn't mean any racism played any part in any of this.

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Earlier in the night, he was even giving water out. He was assisting people who were protesters.

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So don't tell me this guy is out there because he's just a racist who wants to kill black and brown quote unquote bodies, which is the insinuation that you're being given here.

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And that he's just on the side of the police because look, he is not afraid of anything because the police are gonna come.

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If you understand the situation, which many accounts now have come out about what's going on in Kenosha, then it's unsafe to go outside without being armed.

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It's a war zone there. Who was the, there was a Christian rock artist,

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I can't remember his name now, who came and did an interview the other day about it. And he was saying, look, at night, like I was by my window with my

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AR -15 just waiting to defend my family. And I mean, that's how it was.

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People from outside the city are coming in and creating all kinds of problems. And there have been many deaths now.

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There have been many injuries. There's been a lot of property destruction. And when you don't have a police force that's capable,

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I mean, these guys just pass by Kyle. When you don't have a police force that's strong or capable enough of dealing with this situation, then what are you gonna do?

27:43

Well, you're gonna be armed. And if you're gonna try to go out there and you're gonna try to defend your city, I mean, to be honest with you, the men who are out in Kenosha defending their city and trying to bring some semblance of law and order of some kind, some deterrent against the mob, they're to be commended.

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But instead, what we're told is that they're just a bunch of vigilantes. They're white supremacists. There's all sorts of slander going around about them.

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But is there any evidence for any of this? Or are these just regular guys who when there is nothing to protect them, they're gonna go out and they're gonna stand against the mob that wants to destroy their businesses and their homes and maybe kill them?

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Kyle Rittenhouse reacted when a mob chased him and he heard a gunshot. If you watch the video, the evidence isn't that he just is out there trying to kill people and he thinks the police are cool with it.

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No. He's being chased. He's trying to get away.

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And he has people all over him, people trying to beat him with a skateboard, throwing things at him.

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He hears a gunshot. He doesn't know what direction everything's coming in. And some people have commented, he's 17.

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What's he doing out there? I agree, I don't know. I don't know what he's doing out there, but consider this. You can go in the military with your parents' consent at 16.

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The next year, you don't need your parents' consent at 18. You go in the military and actually go break things and kill people for the

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United States. You can vote at 18. There's a lot of things you can do at 18. That should be an adult.

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For him to be 17 and out there is not necessarily inappropriate. If he's immature enough,

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I know some of you are thinking probably about your 17 -year -olds or 17 -year -olds you know, and you're thinking they wouldn't be ready for that.

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Yeah, but how do you think we got this country in the first place? There's a lot of men around that age.

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Even in World War II, you had men around that age going off to war. And some of them lying about their age to do it.

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But you know, this is not, this is not, I think, what the media is trying to paint this to be.

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That this little kid was radicalized by some white supremacist and so he's out there going around the streets and the police are supporting him and he's just gonna kill black people.

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No, it's not what you see at all. And it just disturbs me to see this.

30:15

There's an article, if you're gonna read any take on this, and there's a lot of takes that you can read on this, this article by Leon Wolfe in The Blaze, I think is actually, it just goes through and picks apart the media narrative and so I would just recommend that to you if you're trying to figure out kind of what happened.

30:34

It's got some embedded video and stuff. But all that to say, TGC didn't vet this.

30:40

They're letting this guy, this author, just say, repeat the lies and he's gonna string this along, slander this

30:49

Kyle Rittenhouse, his name, and string him along with all the other evidences of people trying to kill black and brown bodies in his mind or neglecting them.

31:01

And so he says, when armed mass shooters are, like Kyle Rittenhouse or Dylan Roof, which those two do not belong in the same category, are apprehended without incident and aren't on black people are killed out of fear that they might be armed, we have a more insidious problem than a few bad apples.

31:17

This thing is cultural, pervasive, and abominable. So that's the conclusion.

31:23

This culture stinks. It's the new left critique. We're terrible. This is all of America.

31:30

We're just all like this. And all the logical jumps and contorting you have to do to get there is shameful for someone who claims to be about truth and for a website that claims to be about the gospel.

31:41

If your default impulse is to try to justify the seven or eight bullet holes in Jacob Blake's body, he's no angel.

31:47

What was in his system? He was probably reaching for a weapon. He should have complied. We don't have all the facts.

31:53

Just consider the facts we actually do know about Kyle. He took lives in front of physical and digital witnesses.

32:01

He's alive. No bullet holes in his body. He will be charged and tried in court, not on the streets, and it should be in a just, as it should be in a just society.

32:12

Yes, there should be due process. Exactly. That's what should happen.

32:19

We should, until all the facts are presented, we shouldn't hasten to condemn someone. And the facts that we do know contradict the narrative that's being brought up here.

32:29

That's part of the problem here. The inconsistency between how these two bodies were treated in Kenosha reinforces my childhood suspicions.

32:39

So he's just, he's viewing the world through this lens of physical race.

32:46

I'm saying physical because he keeps saying bodies. I know that CRT is, it's not physical, it's not genetic, it's power structures, it's not,

32:53

I know that's what he's getting at here, but he keeps using the word bodies. So this is what he's using.

32:59

He's viewing the world. This is sad. This is so sad to me that he views the world this way. It distorts reality.

33:06

And he can't even enjoy the things God has given him, including the gospel in his life on the

33:12

Gospel Coalition blog. Those who claim my same convictions about Christ will be the first and loudest to castigate me for these observations.

33:20

They'll be the most proficient at finding some excuse for Rittenhouse. It's not an excuse. It's not an excuse when you're neglecting what actually took place and the facts don't suggest what the narrative you're weaving.

33:35

That's not an excuse. The most cavalier in discounting my trauma, the most eager to somehow find a

33:43

Marxist or critical race theory connection in my reflections. And that hurts my heart, literally and profoundly. Here's the thing.

33:49

This is the message he wants to send. This is to neutralize people who would complain about Marxism or critical race theory because they're insensitive somehow to the pain.

33:59

And so it's playing on compassion, it's plucking on your heartstrings to try to say, hey, if you correctly identify that someone is using categories of critical race theory and that hurts them, well, you just shouldn't do that.

34:14

Now, some people have called this Marxist fragility, right? A playoff of white fragility because white and critical race theory thinking, right?

34:22

And D 'Angelo's book, White Fragility. Then if you're white and you have power, then you're racist, right?

34:29

That's just all there is to it. And if someone calls you that and you get defensive, well, that's white fragility. Well, this is

34:34

Marxist fragility, like the real kind. Not a fake kind of white fragility because of a new definition of racism.

34:43

If someone actually is using categories of critical race theory and someone points out, hey, those are categories of critical race theory and you get all bent out of shape about it, maybe you're a little sensitive.

34:54

Maybe you should listen to that wisdom. Maybe you're the one that's making excuses, not for Rittenhouse, but for the mob that was charging him.

35:02

Maybe there's another way to look at this. But he is the one that's actually being aggressive.

35:09

Edward Copeland, the author here, K. Edward Copeland. He is going after anyone who would try to correctly identify why he's thinking the way he's thinking about this, where he got those concepts and categories from, those who would try to bring just about a factual understanding and support due process.

35:30

He's going after them. He is attacking them in this and accusing them of being insensitive, essentially.

35:36

He's actually, in some ways, he's almost insinuating that they're racist for doing that. So here's how he concludes it.

35:45

I hate August because I have a growing suspicion that no video evidence, no panel discussion, no theological argument will convince some to live out what we know to be true.

35:54

God did not color code human dignity and worth. I wish he understood that and applied what he just said.

36:02

Black and brown bodies are made in his image, like all others, and should not be desecrated or treated as disposable.

36:07

God help us to see one another as you see this. Yeah, absolutely. They're not disposable. And so this is what we call a straw man.

36:20

You could almost say he's weaving a false dichotomy here as well, but this is not the issue at question.

36:29

This is not something that's controversial. The difference between the people who disagree with him and himself isn't that they just don't care about black and brown bodies, which is what he is insinuating here.

36:40

So again, he's insinuating that you're racist if you disagree with him. That's what

36:46

I think he wants you to take away from this. There's a guilt that he's laying on you.

36:52

There's your responsibility for his pain that he's laying on you. If all you support is due process and you just want the facts to come out and you don't weave this contorted narrative that he's trying to weave here.

37:08

Gospel Coalition articles, I've seen a couple of them that do this. A lot of the neo -reform guys that are social justice led, they love to go back to like, hey, we're all made in God's image.

37:19

Yep, that was never a controversy. That's not the issue in question. Of course we're all made in God's image.

37:25

The issue in question here is, number one, is there actual systemic racism that motivated the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse?

37:36

And is he part of that narrative? And is he motivated by this? Is that what's actually going on here?

37:41

Or is there something else going on? Let's have a discussion about the incident. That's the issue in question.

37:48

And so this is a moral posturing to produce guilt in people who don't go along with the narrative.

37:56

And it's acting as a club, really. So this is totally disingenuous in my mind.

38:03

This is a terrible article by the Gospel Coalition. And not to say that they never have anything good, once in a while they do, but I'll be honest, guys, this ruins it for me.

38:13

And this is one of the reasons that, I mean, I've done a few articles, or sorry, videos on the

38:20

Gospel Coalition and some of the things that they've put out there. But this kind of stuff, when it comes up, and it comes up semi -regularly now, it ruins the whole thing for me.

38:32

The fact that this could get past the editorial process for a website that's supposed to be about the gospel.

38:41

So yeah, that's on a down note a little bit there. But I just wanted to point that out to you.

38:48

This is something that can be corrected. The Gospel Coalition can apologize for this kind of slander. That's what it is, it's slandering this young man.

38:55

The Gospel Coalition can apologize for slandering the whole country if they want to, especially for running an article from a guy who can't seem to celebrate, see that celebrating his own salvation in Christ and his wedding anniversary and his birthday, of God giving him life, is somehow more important and it's better, it makes things better than his down -in -the -dumps attitude about all these horrible things he says takes place in August.

39:31

The gospel should really be something that trumps all of that, that no matter, if you're

39:38

Paul in jail, you wanna talk about some systemic oppression in Rome, let's do it, but if you're

39:44

Paul sitting in jail, you can rejoice, you can sing. Doesn't seem to be an attitude that K.

39:52

Edward Copeland can relate to. And that's a problem for a website calling themselves Gospel Coalition.

39:58

Okay, I'm beating a dead horse at this point. So, like I said, I didn't really read it in detail, I kinda skimmed it.

40:03

Now that I'm reading it in detail, I'm more irritated about it. Let's go to the final topic

40:09

I wanna talk about here, which is, let's see here, the music and intersectionality.

40:16

Wasn't expecting to do this, I just had a thought and wanted to get it out there and I developed it as I was writing it and so here's the deal.

40:25

I'm gonna actually put my headphones on and we're gonna look at some music, some really old music.

40:32

Some of you may not like it, some of you might. Most of you probably haven't heard this, so a little bio information about me.

40:40

When I was young, I still remember this, I was probably eight years old or so,

40:45

I don't know, my father was going to a pastor's meeting and he took me along with him and so I was really young.

40:56

He usually, we would usually get like meatball subs when he'd take me out some place.

41:02

These are my old childhood memories and I think we were going to Binghamton, New York. It was a long drive and we're going through the

41:08

Catskill Mountains and he had this old tape of this group called the Sons of the Pioneers, old group.

41:15

If I'm not mistaken, there's still, that group actually might be in existence still. They do like chuck wagon performances out west somewhere but at one time, this was a really popular group and so I posted this,

41:29

I played an excerpt from it and I just want you to listen. I won't play the whole song, but listen to this. This is Roy Rogers and the

41:34

Sons of the Pioneers singing a song called Blue Prairie in 1942. Listen to the harmonies. This is 1942 and this was a popular song at the time in what would have been known as country and western music.

42:08

Can you see this being sung at all in today's country music, this kind of harmonization?

42:15

No, that's the answer. You will never hear it. ♪ Every beating heart beats a rhythm ♪

42:26

So I know in the country genre, since that's a lot of what

42:32

I listened to when I was a teenager and still tend to listen to, although I don't like a lot of the modern country.

42:39

We'll stop playing it there. There've always been vocal groups but less so as we approach the present time.

42:47

So I think the Zac Brown Band might be one of the last more vocally driven groups in country music, but even they weren't like what you just heard.

42:56

In the Zac Brown Band, I mean, even listen to the name of it, it's about Zac Brown. And in pop music, this is even more pronounced.

43:03

It's about the individual being platformed and their unique sound. And if there is any harmony, the volume's turned down and the whole band is trying to promote this one individual.

43:15

So a lot of hero worship. I mean, everything plays into not just sound, style, all sorts of things. And so what does this say about us is the question.

43:23

I did a music, I was a minister of music at a church for a while and I had to think about some of this.

43:31

I actually sort of started fulfilling that role after, in some ways after,

43:38

I mean, the transition was still going on between hymns and contemporary. And so I had to think through that whole issue.

43:46

And one of the things, there's many things that I thought about, but one of the things I was thinking about was that there's a reason.

43:53

I think of Chesterton's fence, right? You don't move a fence unless you ask, why was the fence there in the first place?

43:58

Well, there's a reason that there were hymnals in the first place. Now, obviously they didn't have the technology we have.

44:03

They couldn't just put words on a screen, right? But they had notes. Obviously they could have just given you hymnal with words, but there was notes in there.

44:10

There were four part harmonies. You were expected to know your place in a vocal arrangement. And so back in 1942, from the clip that I just played for you, people would have known where they fit by and large in a vocal arrangement, even if they couldn't read music.

44:28

And reading music was actually something that you would have learned in school. And if you didn't learn it in school, you learned it in church.

44:35

It was something that was part of the fabric of the culture itself. And I would like to suggest we've lost something in not knowing our part, not knowing where we fit into a vocal harmony or an arrangement.

44:50

And it takes away an element of complementarity because what that does, that teaches you that if you're not a, if you don't have the melody line, if you're a bass, let's say,

45:01

I'm a baritone. So I'd usually get stuck trying to sing bass lines in choirs when

45:07

I couldn't quite reach it. But if you're a bass, then you gotta understand, okay, you're not gonna probably be a soloist with the limelight, but you're really gonna add to it.

45:17

You're going to be, cause you're part of something bigger. And that's the point. So there's a complementarity that you learn.

45:23

And it's not a complementarity that's rooted in something you chose necessarily. This is just the way it was.

45:29

You were born with the voice you were given. God is the one who ordained that. So you have actually a gift.

45:34

There's something positive you contribute, even if it's not being the star on the stage.

45:41

And everyone for a long time, people who knew how to read music, knew where they fit in a vocal arrangement.

45:47

They knew that. You go to church and you sing and you can pick up the hymn book and it sounds beautiful.

45:52

I was actually at a Mennonite church a few weeks ago. It was absolutely beautiful because everyone knew this skill still.

45:59

They still taught it at their Mennonite school. And so when they sang, they didn't have any instrument and they immediately all fell into line.

46:09

And it was, I was very impressed. And I probably shouldn't have been because that was the way that things used to just be.

46:14

But because I'm not used to it, I think we've lost something. Now, how is this gonna connect to intersectionality?

46:21

I'm gonna bridge that gap. I'm gonna show you. Because it's not a direct connection.

46:26

It's just, there's been a shift towards individualism. Now, I know leftists love to knock individualism, but as a philosophy teacher once told me, leftists, progressives, is

46:38

I think what he said. He said they love to, they accuse people of what they're guilty of.

46:45

So it's projection. They love to engage in projection, whether they know it or not. And progressives tend to be very individualistic people.

46:53

They have their lens of their social group and their oppression and all these things. But they always want to be the ones with the experience, the ones that are, if it's to their benefit, the ones who are oppressed, they always have something like that.

47:07

And it's all based on their individual experience and the individual lens that they look at the world through.

47:14

And they override cultural mores, norms, customs, traditions, because of abstract concepts in their mind about equality and inclusion and all these things.

47:27

But these are abstract things that exist in their mind, so individual minds, and they want to then implement that across the whole entire culture to control the world of things, the world of objects.

47:39

So this is individualism, actually, like on steroids. But the progressives, it's individualism of a sort.

47:48

Progressives don't view it that way. They like to say that conservatives are the individualists. So without getting all into that,

47:55

I just wanted to kind of tip you off to where I'm going here. Progressives have been, in my opinion, pushing culture towards individualism for a long time, or at least they've been, they've endeared themselves to that push.

48:14

Whether they were pushing it or whether it was just being pushed by another force, they've embraced it. And intersectionality is one of the areas in which they've embraced this, because intersectionality says that you have a unique, you score on this scale in a unique way.

48:32

And the scale is based on a standard of egalitarianism. It is this standard that we should all meet, right?

48:39

If there were to be true equality, we would all measure up to this standard, but the problem is we don't. And why don't we? Well, because we're oppressed.

48:45

There's certain differences that we have, and they could be cultural, they could be physical, they could be environmental, the list goes on.

48:54

You gender, you have these differences and you don't stack up on the power dynamic chart.

49:02

And so the goal should be to try to get everyone to stack up, to try to get political representation for those who don't stack up.

49:08

That's identity politics. But you're unique because you have interacting different strands of identity that make up where you fit on this chart.

49:22

So for example, if you are a left -handed person, well, there's a bit of oppression perhaps against you, because we live in a right -handed world.

49:30

But if you're also a minority, racial minority or something like that, well, then you're more oppressed.

49:36

You have a different perspective too than someone who's just left -handed.

49:41

And if you're gluten -free, perhaps you have, if you have asthma, there's all sorts of things that you could put into that generator to find out where you stack up.

49:54

Well, what that does is it actually neglects something that God has given you.

50:03

And not just God has given you, but it's in the sense of him physically designing you, but also the context in which

50:09

God has placed you, socially, et cetera, in history. It neglects the fact that God has put you in a certain spot in a certain time for a certain purpose.

50:21

And you're supposed to live in that time being thankful to God for what he's given you life and he's given you purpose.

50:29

And so there's actually joy that can come from that, because the goal isn't just to attain this standard that you will never attain and to be jealous of all those who have attained it.

50:40

But actually the goal is to fit in to the plan that God has, it's a tapestry.

50:45

And so God has sown you in, you're one thread in this tapestry, but you have unique abilities. Even if you have things that are detriments, you also have abilities.

50:53

And sometimes detriments can be abilities. Detriment in one area can be an ability in another area.

51:00

Just like someone who doesn't sing the melody, but they can sing the bass line.

51:06

It complements the melody, it makes the sound fuller, just like the sound you just heard.

51:11

And so I live in a world, this is the world I wanna live in, and I do live this way, I think. I live in a world where we're all different.

51:18

And like liberals say they wanna embrace diversity, but here's another projection for you, they don't. They don't believe in real diversity.

51:25

They want everyone to be the same. And real diversity means that you actually do embrace those differences and you focus on what you can do within different contexts and within different abilities and how those things can actually, how people can live together, who have those differences and become stronger.

51:46

I mean, that's what E Pluribus Unum was supposed to be. And out of the many, one.

51:52

But right now what we have is we have out of the many, many. We're in our little ghettos, and we, in the

52:02

United States at least, and I think throughout the Western world, and we're being shoved into those ghettos, those intellectual ghettos, those epistemological islands, as one person

52:14

I know says, because of critical theories and intersectionality is certainly part of that.

52:20

So you're isolated more. And people want to be isolated. They wanna be isolated, but they want to be the star of the show.

52:28

Whether that means that they're the most oppressed, so they have the most knowledge because of their oppression gives them knowledge, or whether they want to be the soloist.

52:36

They wanna be the rock star who's on stage, and everyone just looks to that one person. And instead,

52:42

I suggest that there's a better way. There's a better way to live. There's a better way to view reality.

52:48

And that's in looking at the design that God has put there, right in front of you, right in the context that he's put you.

52:55

How do you obey the commands he's given you? How do you fulfill the desires and purposes he's given you within the context that you have?

53:03

And some desires might have to die because they're not possible in that. That's a good way of knowing that's not God's will.

53:10

If you're a man and you wanna be a female, well, God didn't make you that way. It's a good chance, not even a chance.

53:16

It's just a good way of knowing that, well, that's not God's will. So what can you do as a man?

53:22

What can you do? And that's an extreme example, but it can apply to all sorts of other things. If you wanna be an artist, I mean,

53:27

I wanted to be an artist when I was really little. I can draw stick figures okay. Not gonna happen.

53:33

It's just, that's not who I am, but God gave me some other abilities. And so I wanna invest those to the best of my ability while complimenting others.

53:40

That's the idea of a church. It's a body of believers. The hand can't say to the eye. Every body part is important.

53:50

And so that's really all I was getting at was that we have shifted from thinking of ourselves in a unified fashion, in terms of particulars and universals, right?

54:03

And I'm drawing on platonic thought, the world of forms, but you have universals, you have the mold for what things ought to be, and then you have the actual things.

54:13

And they don't always measure up, but that's the world that we live in. You have universals, you have particulars, principles, and then the objects.

54:22

And we used to live in a world that was, I think because of Christianity, especially that held those things together.

54:30

And so really, a lot of this is based in the Trinity, but you have particulars, you have universals, and we've lost universals.

54:40

We don't have universals anymore. We have particulars, we have individual things, and we have no way of relating them together.

54:51

And if you wonder why social, even just people, not just social groups, but people have a hard time talking to one another,

54:57

I think that's one of the reasons. We've lost the ability to do that, partially because of this philosophical turn.

55:03

A lot more I could say about that, but some people were curious about that mini blog that I wrote, and so there you go.

55:11

Now, either you're gonna hate old Western music or you're gonna be looking it up. So there's, hopefully

55:18

I did a service by enriching your lives with that little clip. One last thing, a question.

55:25

I got some questions from some patrons, and I wanna answer these over the course of a few videos. So here's the question today.

55:31

As we've seen with church closures and state restrictions, we have a lot of church thought leaders who have been silent or even critical of churches like Grace Community Meeting.

55:39

That's John MacArthur's church, for those who don't know. Is this rooted in that same pandering we've seen on Never Trump or Revoice to be accepted by the world, or is something else going on in Big Eva?

55:51

So the question is, basically, is the COVID -19 thing related to the political liberal shift?

56:01

Revoice is sort of the same -sex Christianity, normalization of homosexuality within Christianity conference.

56:09

So that's really the question. And yeah, I think they are connected. I do hear some people like to say it's all just pragmatism.

56:17

It's not just all pragmatism. That's not what this is. Yes, pragmatism does play into things, but this is not just all pragmatism.

56:23

It's not all about what works. It's to grow your church. I mean, a lot of people are making very stupid decisions.

56:30

A lot of pastors, it's foolish from the standpoint of you're trying to keep members. Why in the world would you go full -blown

56:36

Black Lives Matter? You're losing your conservatives. But they want to do that. Churches that are being destroyed right now over this, this is happening.

56:44

And so I think there actually are some principled operatives. There's a mixture though.

56:50

You have some people that just think, this is where things are going. I'm just going to go along with it. But make no mistake about it.

56:56

When you remove God, nature reports a vacuum. Something's going to fill that place. And if you have all these moral scruples of wanting equity and inclusion and diversity, et cetera, then you're going to need some kind of force to bring those things about.

57:12

There's got to be some kind of collective action in some way to organize that collective action. Well, it's going to be the government, right?

57:19

For all those who want to say, well, we can do this within the church. Just listen to me. It's going to end up being the government that ends up doing these things.

57:27

And so you kick God out of the equation and you're looking for justice and you're, you know, the social justice kind of justice.

57:36

You're looking for really a version of a utopia that you want to implement on this world. Who are you going to look to to try to get that done?

57:43

You're going to look towards government. And so I think these things are intrinsically connected because it's, number one, it's the same group of people by and large who are pushing the never

57:55

Trump stuff, the revoiced stuff, politically liberal stuff, and are also against Grace Community Church for meeting.

58:03

It's, they want to be in the good graces of the liberals. They're not, there's a half the country that they don't care if that half of the country, the

58:12

Republicans, accept them. They just don't seem to care. They want to be in the halls of power.

58:18

As much as they think power is a problem, they would like to have the media, which is owned by the liberals,

58:24

Hollywood, the education establishment, the Democratic Party.

58:30

I mean, they want these people to like them in some way, shape, or form. And so this bone in their body that they have for the common good along a secular vein, not even a common good as defined biblically, but just a common good, love your neighbor, put on a mask, these kinds of things.

58:50

The common good is gonna be addressing, we're gonna have to address global warming for the common good.

58:56

We're gonna have to address COVID -19 for the common good. We're gonna have to address systemic oppression for the common good.

59:02

All these external threats that liberals, I keep saying liberals, I'm saying revolutionaries, progressive, revolutionaries, they want to tackle, you're seeing an echo in the church, in certain quarters.

59:14

You're seeing in the elite, in evangelicalism, they're echoing that. They want to be part of those responses as well.

59:22

And they want to try to build them on a Christian foundation.

59:28

The common good is rooted in some Christian principle of some kind. So they distort biblical passages to get there.

59:34

But it's definitely all related. It's all coming down to control, authoritarianism, and it's kicking

59:43

God out of the picture. It's going to be a cooperative effort of mankind. It's the babble instinct that you see happening.

59:50

We're gonna overcome all these problems together. And if we trample over the constitution to do it, that's fine.

59:56

If we have to really do contorted understandings of the Bible and trample the Bible in the process, that's fine.

01:00:03

If we have to trample over local and regional identities and symbols and whatever, that's fine too.

01:00:11

But we're going to enter this brave new world, this technocracy. I think they know where this is going.

01:00:17

I think there's some people on the top that really know where this is going in evangelicalism.

01:00:24

And they're paying attention to what the World Economic Forum says. They probably know people there.

01:00:30

And where's the church gonna fit into all of this when global elites have the reins of power and they wanna be in their good graces?

01:00:38

That's my gut feeling on this. That's my way of answering that question. I think they're related.

01:00:43

Doesn't mean that everyone's consistent. Not everyone is, but a lot of the same actors are taking the same sides in all these debates.

01:00:56

I do wanna put out some more stuff just to remind you guys later this week.

01:01:02

Some more, in fact, I wrote down a few things to talk about. Maybe I'll just give you a little bit of a preview real quick. Let's see, we're gonna talk a little bit later this week about the

01:01:11

Democratic Party and evangelicals supporting the Democratic Party. We might talk a little bit about the

01:01:17

North American Mission Board. And people have asked me to do QAnon, to talk about QAnon and conspiracies.

01:01:24

So I will try to do that. I will try to talk about some of that unless the world implodes before then, which is perfectly possible.

01:01:32

But don't forget these resources, Social Justice vs.

01:01:38

Biblical Justice by E. Calvin Beisner and Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.