Election Day Advice From a Random Latino Contra Tim Keller

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:07

Alright, well, a couple thoughts today. Today is Election Day in the United States. I woke up this morning and I was thinking about this idea of empowerment.

00:17

You know, there's so much talk in the woke church social justice reformed -ish movement about empowering people, empowering women, empowering, you know, minorities and things like that.

00:31

And even in the video I did yesterday about woke church chapter 8, you know, it's about empowering certain classes of people.

00:38

And what they mean by that typically is putting them in leadership positions or putting them in positions of authority or things like that.

00:47

And what I find so interesting about that is, look, I don't have a problem with minorities being an authority.

00:53

I'm a pastor of a church, so, you know, there are people under my authority as a pastor.

00:59

And so I don't have a problem with it, but this idea of, like, the way to elevate people is to empower them, it just doesn't really match up with what the

01:08

Bible says. The Bible talks about how if anyone would be great among you, let them serve, you know what

01:14

I mean? So, like, this is the thing, like, there's, I think about my, let me do this, let me show you this picture.

01:20

This has been back here for a bit. This is a picture of, well, it's a picture of me when

01:26

I was a kid. This was in the Bronx, New York. This is my father. That's my mother. And that's my grandmother.

01:31

My grandmother has since passed away. And my grandmother, I'll go ahead and show you her, my grandmother,

01:40

I remember very clearly when I was a little kid, I would go into her room sometimes and she would just be next to her bed praying.

01:49

And she'd just do that for hours. And I, you know, when I was older, I was very wayward.

01:54

I was, you know, not with the Lord at all. And I heard after my grandmother passed away that, you know, she prayed for hours every day and she prayed for all her grandchildren, but for some reason she prayed for me more than any of them.

02:13

And I really do believe that the Lord, through my grandmother's prayers and through a lot of other things, absolutely brought me back to the faith.

02:24

And so I have my grandmother to thank. Now, my grandmother wasn't in authority anywhere. My grandmother would not be the kind of person that the woke church would say was empowered.

02:33

But the reality is that she loved the Lord and she served the church. She wasn't a pastor.

02:41

She wasn't in authority, like this flashy position. She wasn't speaking at conferences, getting paid the same as men.

02:47

No, she was humble. She was serving. And that is the kind of thing that Christianity is all about.

02:54

It's not about empowering classes of people, but it's about giving people class. Everyone, everyone who comes to the

03:00

Lord has access to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. How much more power could you possibly need?

03:06

I just find that that idea so frustrating sometimes, because I know that there are humble people in the church.

03:12

My grandmother, my grandmother didn't know theology that well. She knew enough, but she didn't have all this.

03:18

She wasn't given teaching positions. You know, she she taught Sunday school, you know what I mean?

03:23

And Eric Mason kind of pooh poohs that as like sort of like, oh, that's not that's not real positions of authority.

03:30

That's not real empowerment for a woman to teach Sunday school. And I just I find that so disgusting to take, you know, something that's a gift for women to teach little kids.

03:40

This is a gift that God gave women to care about and love little kids. And for Eric Mason to be like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:46

But that's not real empowerment. We need to give them positions that are exactly like pastors, except they're not pastors. I find that so annoying and so ridiculous.

03:53

I also find it condescending when people talk about how we need to empower minorities.

03:59

The hidden assumption there that you might not have explored, if you're white and you're in the social justice movement and kind of think about this, it's as if minorities can't have power unless we grant it to them.

04:11

We white people have to empower minorities in order for them to have power.

04:16

No, that's not true. And if you're a minority listening to this, here's the reality. You have if you're a Christian, you have access to the king of kings and the lord of lords.

04:24

And so you should serve the church. You should serve the Lord with all your might in the spheres that he's given you because you have tremendous power.

04:33

You don't need the white person to empower you into positions of leadership or conference speaking gigs.

04:39

It's almost like if you don't it's almost like people think that if you don't have the same, everyone doesn't have the same,

04:46

I guess, prominence that they're not empowered. That's not true. That's not how the kingdom of God works. You can be like my grandmother and pray for hours every morning and hours every night and have just as much power as the conference speaker of an evangelical coffee soy latte drinking leader.

05:03

I just find that so annoying and so disgusting. Anyway, that's not really what I even want to do this video about.

05:09

Sorry for the preaching there. I wanted to do this video about this tweet from Tim Keller.

05:14

It is election day. And on Sunday, Tim Keller tweeted this out as a as his political wisdom for election day.

05:21

And like so many of Tim Keller's tweets and so much of the woke church movement in general, it has a kernel of truth in it.

05:29

But the application is not correct or the whole idea is not correct, I should say. Here's the tweet.

05:35

It says, reminder, as if anyone as if anyone forgot about this. Here's Tim Keller with his great wisdom. Reminder, Christians don't fit into a two party system, period.

05:46

Yeah. Oh, really? Thank you for telling me, Tim. Here's the thing. Yes, we all understand that every

05:54

Republican position isn't automatically Christian and every Democrat Christian position isn't automatically

06:00

Christian. Everybody agrees with that. Fantastic. So that's it's true. But who cares?

06:06

Here's how it goes on. He says most political positions are not matters of biblical command, but of practical wisdom in how to respond to those commands.

06:16

That's false. That is not true. When he says most political positions are not matters of biblical command, that is selling the

06:25

Bible short so much. And also, here's the other thing about this. Let's start here. If this is true and political positions, most of them aren't matters of biblical command, but rather practical applications and things like that.

06:39

Why are you acting like it is biblical command, social justice warriors? Because I spent two years or a whole year on YouTube two years after Trump's election hearing about how white people being browbeated for how immoral they were.

06:53

And you're here telling me that the positions that you're putting forward are not matters of biblical command. And yet you are holding half the country accountable for breaking the commands.

07:02

This is why antinomianism, this is political antinomianism. That's what Tim Keller is promoting here.

07:08

Political antinomianism. Antinomianism always turns into legalism.

07:13

It has to. There is no other choice. And when you say that the law of God doesn't apply in a certain area, you have to then implement some other law.

07:21

And that is legalism. That is what the Pharisees did. They had their own law that they made up. And social justice warriors have their own law as well.

07:30

Social justice warriors are very similar to Pharisees in that way. They replaced

07:36

God's clear law with their own phony baloney law and then hold you accountable for it. If most political positions are not matters of biblical command, then how dare you browbeat any

07:46

Christian for voting for Trump? How dare you do it? That's legalism. You're holding them to your standard, not the

07:53

Bible standard. Now, here's what the response could be. Well, it's practical wisdom. And so you have to apply the practical wisdom exactly the way

08:00

I do. And see, that's where the problem is. You're not willing to debate that and you're willing to hold people accountable.

08:05

You're putting a yoke on their neck and saying, if you don't apply biblical wisdom the way I do in this area, well, then you are an evil white supremacist, bigoted, racist xenophobe.

08:17

And that's ridiculous. But here's the reality. Tim Keller's wrong about this. Every political position is a matter of biblical command.

08:25

God has not left us in the dark to figure out what to do about politics. Imagine that.

08:31

Like, like God, he's told us exactly how sexual relations are supposed to work. He was very careful to tell us that.

08:38

He was very careful to talk to us about the specifics of the church and how it's supposed to be set up and all of that.

08:44

But for some reason, he just said politics. I know it's a big part of how man engages in the world.

08:49

Let them figure it out for themselves. Can you imagine? There's a big book of law.

08:55

And we're saying, well, it's not a matter of biblical command. Every political position is a matter of biblical command.

09:03

That's the reality. That's the reality. This is this is the kind of thing liberals say a lot. Well, it's not really a matter of biblical command.

09:10

It is a matter of biblical command. You just don't like what the Bible has to say about it. Welfare. Let's take welfare, for example, the political position, right?

09:18

Medicare. That's a political position. Universal health care. That's a political position. Are these matters of biblical command?

09:24

Every one of them is every one of them is because every one of them involves the government doing something biblically immoral, taking from people by force and giving to other people for political reasons or whatever.

09:38

That is immoral. That's breaking the commandment against stealing the government.

09:44

Excuse me. Believe it or not, the government can break any of the commands of God. It can break the command against murder.

09:49

It can break the command against covetousness. It can break the command against stealing. It's just that simple.

09:56

And so when the government does something immoral, according to scripture, when it comes to stealing, we have to call that what it is.

10:03

That's breaking the commandments of God. And so every one of these social programs, Tim Keller might say, it's not a matter of biblical command.

10:10

He's wrong. He's flat out wrong. The Bible has the Bible says the government has the right to something.

10:17

There are taxes that are legitimate. So all taxation is not theft. However, most of the taxation that we have is theft.

10:26

In fact, the Bible talks in the Old Testament about what's going to happen when unjust rulers take over and things like that.

10:32

And the oppression always involves unjust taxation. It did in Egypt. It did in the kings.

10:39

When Israel wanted a king, God says they're going to take this much of your of your stuff. And that's going to be your punishment for wanting a king instead of me.

10:46

And here's the thing, this much of the stuff that the kings were going to take. And the amount that Egypt took that was oppressive was way less than what the

10:56

United States takes. And so, yes, these are matters of biblical command. So when you go to the poll today, you better keep in mind the law of God.

11:03

And if you're voting for immorality, if you're voting for immorality, I say you will be held accountable for that.

11:09

You will be held accountable for that. If you're voting for the government to break the law of God in favor of your group, whether it's an ethnic group, your gender or whatever it is, then you are accountable for that.

11:22

That's the reality. So when you go to the polls, don't take Tim Keller's advice and say, well, the

11:27

Christians took Christianity doesn't fit into a two party system. And but it doesn't matter anyway, because politics, political positions are not a matter of biblical command.

11:35

No, they are a matter of biblical command. You probably just don't like what the command is. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

11:44

God bless. I was told by a leader in the

12:19

X -29 movement, a white guy, local guy. I was told that he believes that I make my videos because of a inner longing for significance.

12:30

And I just had to laugh at that because here's the guy that says

12:35

I don't have the approved opinion for a minority to have. And therefore, I'm not really

12:40

I don't really have this opinion. It's just because I want to be significant. And I just find that so preposterous, very similar to what

12:46

Matt Chandler said, how people who don't talk about social justice the way he does. Well, if they're black, they're just looking for power or for affirmation or things like that is so racist, absolutely racist.

12:58

This guy doesn't know me at all, but he thinks that he knows that I have this inner longing for significance. And therefore, that's why

13:04

I make my videos. That's ridiculous. And if it was true, I'd be one of the most inept people ever, because if you really want to be significant in the church and the reformed ish, evangelical intelligentsia, soy latte drinking church, you'd have the social justice position.

13:19

Because actually, I could be a celebrity probably overnight if I changed my mind on social justice, I'd gone

13:24

I would I would have been lost and then I've been found. That's that's how you do it. So if you ever see me switch and become a social justice warrior, know that I'm really just trying to feed my inner longing for significance.