Sean DeMars, of American Gospel, Looking For That Middle Ground - Woke Debate Part 4

Winsomeness, Convictions, and the Debate Topic

Bank is run with precision. A British home requires nothing less. And then the discipline and rules must be the tools. Without them, disorder, chaos, anarchy. In short, you've got a ghastly mess. This lady's a little too much Mary Poppins and a little too little Mr. Banks.

This is weird, you know, he worked at a bank and his name was Mr. Banks. I don't know. I am in a good mood today. Actually, I had a tough morning fishing. The bite was not on. And that's just a fishing way to say that I wasn't finding the fish.

So I went downstream a little bit and it was a little bit like of a rocky, you know, fast moving water. The kind of place where you have to, you know, really be careful or you'll snag a bunch of rocks.

Anyway, I caught like three brook trout when I did that. And I've, you know, I've always had a hard time around rocks and fast, fast moving water. So it was awesome to catch them. So I'm in a good mood.

I'm in a good mood and I'm gonna be nice today. One thing I do wanna say, so what we're about to see is we're about to see the Brit respond to all of the nervousness expressed by Sean DeMars. Yeah, I think that definition of winsomeness was a winner.

I think that's exactly what winsomeness is. If you didn't see that part of the video yesterday, I actually did a short one on YouTube that I posted. So watch the, it's like a minute or long or two minutes or something like that.

I think that nails the definition of winsome. You can't be winsome unless you act like you don't have convictions. You're not sure of what the Bible says. So there's that. The other thing I noticed is, you know, is the woke church a stepping stone to theological compromise?

That was the debate topic. And Rebecca McLaughlin, Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin essentially ignored that topic in her opening statement. And what she did instead is just, you know, scold white people, which is the wokest thing of all time.

You're supposed to be debating and instead of debating, you just scold white people. I mean, hey, she's part of your tribe, so I can't take ownership. In any case, let's get started. Okay, I'm starting off in a good mood.

I got Mary Poppins on the mind. I'm ready to go. Let's see how quick my mood changes.

Corporate Repentance, Corporate Celebration, and Lament

To react to that. And I hear, I think it's Daniel 9, where Daniel's repenting of the sin of his forefathers. I'm not sure, I think that's the chapter, that you were talking about the discontinuity.

There's a couple of places, yeah, in the Old Testament.

So he talks about the discontinuity and how that plays out in the New Testament church.

In the 21st century West, but I'm just gonna let it go.

I grew up in the UK and we frequently celebrate our victory over the Nazis in World War II. And what I've learned since moving to America is that you guys sort of see it as your victory. And there's a lot of celebration that goes on here.

You know why we see it as our victory? Do you know why?

I think I know. A British bank is run with precision. Appropriately so.

We praise God for the victory of the Allies over the Nazis in World War II. But at the same time, I think we're all actually quite happy to say, you know, those were our people. Like, this is our glory.

That was our fight. You're identifying with that victory. Identifying with that. We then get a very different reaction.

McLaughlin sounds like a bit of a nationalist, if I'm not mistaken. That's, I don't know, man, she better be careful or she might get canceled.

When it comes to saying, do you know what? The sin of segregation, that's our sin. So I guess what I would want to say, a couple of thoughts. One is, if we're not going to go the route of corporate repentance, then let's also not go the route of corporate celebration of our past glories.

And number two, I think what I would have loved to have heard more in what you said, Sean, connecting up to this, at minimum, lament. You know, we can argue all day long. About whether, you know, I as an individual can repent of the sins of my tribe, writ large.

Minimally, I can lament.

It's taken about 30 seconds. No way, nobody's going to rain on my parade today. I could have gotten really angry there, but I'm refusing to do it. This is a big scam too. I think we've all noticed this over the years.

It's like, we've got, that's our sin too. And it's like, yeah, yeah, I recognize that. It was Americans who, you know, engaged in segregation. But the thing is, what she's importing there is that, and we still haven't repented of the fact that we were involved in slavery or segregation or redlining or whatever it is.

You could just put in any unjust law in there. We still haven't repented of it. And that is the scam. It's not true. We've reversed all of that. We don't segregate anymore. We don't redline anymore. We don't, what was the third one?

Slavery. We don't have black slaves anymore, right? In fact, it's banned. It's illegal. You can't do it. And it's like, so explain to me why we haven't owned that. We haven't repented of that. Because we don't have enough lament.

I mean, guys, again, you don't have to live your life in this sad, you know, got your hat in your hands and forever, because this is the scam. It's like, until we've properly repented, it's like, well, when is that gonna happen?

You can always say you haven't lamented enough, right? That's the scam. It's like, so when is it enough lamenting? Do I have to lament 10 times, 20 times? How many times? It's not, there's no number. What they're saying is you haven't properly lamented unless you do everything we say exactly when we say it, exactly how we say it.

This is a call to complete surrender in every way. And if you do not, then you haven't properly lamented. And it's like, that's a scam. Why would you agree to that, Sean? Oh yeah, I don't see enough lament either.

There's just not, I'm right there with you. And it's like, Sean, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know that this is nonsense. You're too smart for this, Sean. You know that what she means by lament is do everything the socialists want you to do.

And so why would you, oh yeah, right there with you. What are you talking about? How many things at the Southern Baptist Convention do we need before we've properly lamented? Like what are they called?

The resolutions. How many resolutions condemning the past do we need? How many statements do we need? How many times do we have to do it? It's like, I'm right there with you. We haven't done it enough.

What are you talking about? What is enough? Tell me what's enough and then we can talk about it because you'll never do it because you always want, this is the scam of this. They always want to hold something over your head.

This is the opposite of love keeps no record of wrongs. According to the woke church, always keep a record of wrongs, never forgive so you can always bring back that record and say, well, you haven't lamented enough.

That's not British at all. A British bank is run with precision.

And as I've got to know more about history and this has been a progression for me and as I've talked with more brothers and sisters, black brothers and sisters in this country, the more I felt their grief about the refusal to either repent or lament, actually, that they see in it.

See, this is the thing. It's like, well, black people don't think we've repented or lamented enough. They aren't the judge. I did a video a long time ago that said, Big Eva worships black people. They worship black people.

And it was about that time when you had all those black people kneeling in front of the, white people kneeling in front of the black people saying, oh, oh, forgive us. And it's like, it's so clear. But what I really meant was, it was about that sort of, but what I really meant was, they put black people in the driver's seat for all of these definitions.

How do you know you haven't lamented enough? Well, black people aren't happy, according to Rebecca McLaughlin. That's, this is not my, this is not my words. This is her words. How do you know you haven't repented enough?

Because black people aren't satisfied with it, according to Rebecca McLaughlin. Guys, that's not the standard. Black people have a problem with forgiving in this country. Woke black people, I'll be specific, because there's plenty of black people and plenty of minorities that have no problem forgiving of anything.

I've told this story many times of the racist guy at my church. My dad, you know, and him, if they solved it, he came to him, he said, you know, man, I don't know where that came from. That was so racist.

Can you forgive me? You know what my dad said? Sure. Sure, I forgive you. You know, I know we get carried away sometimes. Sure. But you see, and there's plenty of Puerto Ricans and blacks and other kinds of minorities that are exactly like my dad.

Yes, sure, I forgive you. No problem. The wrong, it's as if it never happened. No need to even bring it up again. But there's plenty of woke black people that have a serious problem with forgiveness and what the scripture says, if you don't forgive, you're not forgiven.

But you see, the thing is, these cowardly white people, all three of them, will never tell a black person that because they're too busy groveling and worshiping black people. You see, I actually care about black people.

So when I see someone who's black, who has an obvious forgiveness problem, who just holds onto their anger, holds onto it, and no matter how many times somebody laments or is sad or repents or says, I'm sorry, they don't care, they're still scared of black white people, I'm sorry.

I see that person and I know they're not a believer because obviously the scripture says, if you don't forgive, you're not forgiven. They're not forgiven and I need to tell them that because I care about their soul.

Rebecca McLaughlin does not care about the souls of black people. She cares about appearing like she cares about the souls of black people because it's easy to appear like you love black people by never calling them out on anything.

But to actually love them, you have to risk them hating your guts. And here's the problem, woke black people. Most of you aren't forgiven because you haven't forgiven others. You keep a record of wrongs.

It's the opposite of love. And you need to repent of your lack of forgiveness because if you don't forgive white people who didn't ever do anything to you even, this is how twisted this is. God has not forgiven you.

You don't know the first thing about forgiveness. It's the unforgiving servant writ large. Rebecca won't tell you that because she doesn't care about anything except looking good. I will tell you that because I don't care about looking good, but I want to do good.

If you're not forgiving your white brothers and sisters in Christ who have repented, and even if they didn't repent because they didn't do anything to you, then you've got the problem. The problem is you, your soul is in jeopardy.

A British bank is run with precision.

Sean DeMars, Middle Ground, and the Problem of False Balance

Many viewers who look like me. I'm going to get in a good mood again. That was too serious. I think we're missing an awful lot. If our first move is to say, here's how these conversations about racial justice are happening poorly in the sort of secular world, rather than modeling something better here now.

So she just attacked Sean directly. His whole presentation was like, oh, look at that. It's in the world, it's in the secular. I almost did the British accent for him. It's in the secular world, look at all this stuff.

And so she just directly attacked Sean's entire opening statement right there. I think that you've got a problem, Sean, if your first reaction is to say, all this stuff in the secular world instead of actually modeling a good conversation.

That's what she just said. She just attacked Sean directly. She has the guts. I almost said something else, but she's a woman. She has the guts to do it. Now let's see if Sean defends himself because I know for a fact that Sean's first reaction was not that.

I know for a fact because I've seen some of Sean's content and Sean has bent over backwards, in my opinion. Look, I have no affections for Sean DeMars, none, but I got to get his back here because I've seen his content and that's not his first reaction.

His first reaction was a lot of listening, a lot of like trying to agree and find places to agree, trying to be totally fair with the opposition. I've seen some of Sean's content on this particular topic.

I've seen it. And so she's just now attacked Sean completely below the belt. And let's see if Sean actually corrects the record here. You don't have to defend yourself, Sean, but correct her because that's actually not how you started and that's how none of us started.

None of us started with like, oh yeah, you know, the secular culture's just woke. That's why I can't listen to you. No, no, we did listen and we listened and we listened and we listened and we listened and we kept saying, yeah, this sounds pretty socialist.

It sounds pretty Marxist. You know, this disparity thing, you know, this and that. And it reminds me of, you know, black liberation theology as well. Here's some quotations from black liberation theology.

It seems like this is where you're drawing from. In fact, you say this is where you're drawing from. In fact, you say that you're drawing from black liberation theology, but you don't say that you are because you don't want to raise red flags with people.

That's pretty suspicious. And we just continue to get shut down, shut down, shut down. Now we're at the point where it's like, yeah, you guys are taking your cues from the pagans, clearly. Clearly. And that was long suffering, all of us.

She just denied that. She just attacked Sean's opening statement. Let's see what Sean does.

Lament, Repentance, and the Middle Ground

So what is, she mentioned lamenting. You agreed with that. What does lamenting and repent, lamenting

Against all logic, he agreed with that. It makes no sense because we've obviously done that. But of course, Sean thinks, and maybe they told him, this is about agree, you gotta agree with what she says.

As opposed to repenting look like today for church leaders.

Yeah, so I appreciate her point because I'm not saying that I found the perfect middle, right, but the position that I often find myself in, a pastor in Alabama, a student of history. See, this is his goal.

He's trying to find the middle.

Why? Why? Why do so many pastors think their job Hold on. A British home requires nothing less. Why do so many pastors think that their job is to find the middle ground when it comes to immorality and morality?

When it comes to pagan ideologies and Christian ideologies? Why do so many pastors buy the scam that Tim Keller sold them a long time ago that the goal is to find the middle ground? You don't wanna be too radical.

In other words, you don't wanna be too Christian, right? You don't wanna be too hot. You gotta be lukewarm. Because when somebody says to you, oh, we haven't lamented and you know we have, there's no middle ground there.

They're lying and you need to call them on it. When somebody says we need to include skin color in our qualifications for pastor to make up for the sins of the past, you know biblically that that is completely ridiculous.

There's no middle ground there. Why look for it? When somebody says that it's okay to have a lack of forgiveness because of the sins of the past, because after all, the love, I guess, sometimes does keep a record of wrongs, at least when it comes to identity groups, you know that's not correct.

Why are you looking for a middle? There's no middle ground with the woke church. There's none. They're teaching the doctrines of demons and pretending Christ taught them. And you know that.

There's no middle ground there. Victim of racism in various ways. I feel like I'm having conversations with some Christians to the left of me where I'm like, that's not helpful. Don't say that. You don't know where that comes from.

And then I'm having conversations with people who are conservative to the right of me who they're just entirely ignorant of so many different things. And they're kind of cold and calloused and they just kind of repeat the Fox News bylines.

And I'm like, well, hey, you should actually read this book. And like, you should be really sad about this.

I don't mean that in an insulting way, man. Sean got used, man. He got used. I can't believe he, he seems like he's too smart for this. I don't know what they offered him. I don't know. Like maybe it was just exposure here.

I don't know. I mean, he got used, man, big time. Bad things have happened in our backyard.

It's a real shame how this went. Yeah, I want our people to lament more. We pray prayers of lament in our church. I highly recommend. So what does it look like? That's what he said. What is enough? In Mark Vergop's book on lament, particularly as it's related to racial injustices.

So I'm on the same page. He said, what does it lament look like?

And he says, yeah, we haven't. I'm totally on the same page. You're right. You're not on the same page with her. Sean, can't you see you're not on the same page with her because she thinks lament is to eliminate economic disparities, eliminate, you know, criminal justice disparities, whatever it is, whatever all the socialist stuff that I know you've criticized before.

The stuff that I know you know is nonsense. She's saying that's how you lament by doing all the nonsense. You're not on the same page with her and you know it. So why did you say it? I could imagine it being tough.

And this is what I said in the beginning. It's like, you know, would I debate a woman like this? And I could imagine it being tough to want to like hit back, you know, verbally to what she just did to him, you know, but if you're gonna debate a woman, you just have to set that aside.

You've got to call her on that. Hold on a second, Rebecca. You said the first thing I did was start to talk about the woke church and stuff like that. Have you heard any of my other content? Do you know how long suffering we've been?

Do you understand that you just slandered tons of people as if they haven't really considered this? No, instead of doing that, he said, oh yeah, you know, there's totally a lot of like cold people on the right.

Like, and I'm right there in the middle. I mean, maybe I'm not perfect, but I'm like right there in the middle. Like I get it, I get it. Man, it did not take me very long to get angry.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I gotta go fishing again. Rebecca, Sean made the case that the backwaters, the ivory towers, they are trickling down into the local church the way Milan fashion into the gap. I wanna ask kind of twofold again, do you agree with that statement?

Is that a thing that happens? And do you agree that it's happening specifically in the areas of the things that he seems to be most concerned about in areas of gender identities,.

Same-sex marriage, things like that? So before I let her respond, my brother actually made a really good point about something Sean had said. And it was when he said that, exactly that, that it goes into the Sunday school rooms, right?

The stuff that they learned at university goes into the Sunday school rooms. My brother made a point, he said that that was a very subtle turn of phrase, but again, it deflects what's actually really going on because what it makes it seem like is that, it's just like these kids that go to university and they come back to Sunday school and they think they're know-it-alls and they're trying to teach this stuff in the class and they're pushing back according to cortical race theory.

But it doesn't admit that it's actually the Sunday school leaders that are being influenced by this. It's actually the pastors, it's the pulpit. They're doing this in God's name. They're saying critical race theory and socialist Marxist, and they're saying it's God who's saying it.

So he kind of like tried to, again, distance that from the church because he's, again, I guess he thinks that's his mission. And that's just not, that's not it, man, that's not it. Let's hear what Rebecca has to say.

Yes, I do think it's happening, but I think it is happening while we are failing to do what we should have already been doing. Let me explain a little bit what I mean there because that was the least clear answer.

In the history of arts. Yeah, I'd love for you to flesh that out. Oh, just flesh that out, man. Just totally, like me, could you unpack it too while you're at it? Flesh it out, unpack it, you know, let's lead into it a little bit.

By the way, she's about to release an epic scam. There's error in the church, and it's your fault that the wolves are in the church. Now, she's kind of right,.

But I don't think she's gonna be right for the right reasons. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, that slogan and that very specific organization is mixing together all sorts of things. And, you know, one of the claims of that organization is that if you want to affirm that Black Lives Matter, you must also affirm same-sex marriage and transgender identities.

This is all grouped up together. And you'll see that coming from a number of different sort of academic angles. What breaks my heart is that that should have been our call. We should have been the people saying that Black Lives Matter.

And what I fear in majority white churches today is that, you know, we hear people talking about racial justice, and we think, oh, that's what liberal progressive folks say. And I'm thinking, yeah, and then that's a tragedy, actually.

We should have been shouting that the loudest. And instead, it's our sin, and I'm sorry to go back to, well, I'm not sorry to go back to this because I think it's true. It's actually the history of the church's sin that has got us here in the first place.

You know, we all look at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and think, you know, what an amazing guy. We all want to, you know, celebrate. We would have all been on his side. We all want to celebrate what he was saying.

And I think as Christians, we want to recognize that the civil rights movement was at heart like a Christian movement. He was no secular critical race theorist. He was a pastor calling America

They would pray in a church before they marched.

Right, calling America to believe what the scriptures teach. And yet, if majority white churches had believed what scriptures taught in the first place, there would have been no need for a civil rights movement.

And this is, so I think there are helpful and unhelpful ways in which ivory tower conversations can trickle down, for sure. And I think we see some particularly unhelpful ways in which they're trickling down when it comes to transgender identities right now.

But what I fear is that our knee-jerk reaction, our first response is to say, we've got to keep all of this out of the church, when in fact, we should have been leading these conversations within the church.

And I think instead, we're often ending up using our critiques of what's happening outside the church instead of maybe trickling into the church to sort of justify not having those conversations in a proper way within the church.

So, you know, let's do this, because there's so many things I could have rejected completely with this, but we'll end here as well. Let's just accept everything she said, right? It's our fault that now the church is being, because this is how it's all framed.

The church is being influenced by these ivory tower pagans with bad ideas according to race and whatever, transgenderism, whatever. And it's our fault because we, you know, we just, we didn't read the scripture, we were all bigots, whatever, okay?

So just accept her whole narrative, right? So it's our fault that now these pagan ideologies are infecting the church, the pulpits, the Sunday school room, and all of that, okay? It's our fault. Okay, so what do we do now?

You can't change the past, so what do we do now? These pagan ideas are now in the church, they've trickled downstream from the pagans into the church. It's our fault, we know it, we own it, it's our fault.

What do we do now? You can't change the past. I think her point is shut up and let it happen. Incorporate it into your ideas, chew the meat and spit out the bones. The problem is that it's not, there's no meat, it's all poison, it's all poison.

And it's infected so much of the church that you can't even identify. Like if I asked Rebecca, okay, so you said there's helpful and unhelpful things, let's talk about some of those unhelpful things, let's talk about them, the racial unhelpful things.

I think she might make an attempt, I think she might talk about some of the more extreme stuff, but the problem is it's all poison, so she can't talk about all of the things that are wrong with it. She can't decipher it anymore because she's even imbibed the poison.

And so this kind of stuff is attempted to almost shame you into silence. It's your fault, so just let it happen and keep your mouth shut, you don't know what you're doing, you can't fix this, it's just gonna run its course.

That's not true. We made mistakes in the past, let's own it, that's fine, you can own any mistakes. Now you've gotta fight the issue today because here's the issue. We didn't fight the error yesterday and now you're telling us not to fight the error today.

We made a mistake yesterday and you're attempting to get us to make the same mistake today. We didn't do it yesterday, we were derelict of duty and now you're trying to get us to be derelict of duty today.

No, eventually it has to stop. Eventually we can't be derelict of duty. Eventually we have to say this far, no further and that time is now, that time is now. We can't go along to get along. You see, that's what they were doing in the past.

The Christians were just going along with the culture, being pulled along by the streams of culture and now you're doing it again and we're trying to stop you and you're saying, no, no, no, no, you made a mistake in the past, go with the flow.

There's so much in woke church that's like this. It's like, oh yeah, we gotta do wealth redistribution even though it's a sin because we have to make up for the sins of the past. You see, if you didn't own me as a slave, I would have more money now, my ancestors anyway, so then now you gotta give me your money, we gotta take it from the rich or whatever it is and make up for the fact that, see, it's always sin your way out of sin.

That's the whole woke movement, sin your way out of sin. It's not that you stop sinning, it's just that you sin in reverse to make up for that past sin and so you fix the sin, you sin your way out of sin.

And that's always the temptation of the devil. That's the reality of the situation. Well, we'll continue this tomorrow, I think. Yeah, why not? I'm having a good time, I'm having a good time. By the way, I don't know if you guys have got this vibe too but I remember the very first episode that I did on this debate, I just got a creepy vibe, just the aesthetics and the way it was filmed.

It's obviously high quality filming. I'm not saying the quality is bad, the quality is great but just the aesthetics were just ultra creepy. I got this creepy vibe and so I couldn't put my finger on why it was, there was like, anyway, so I asked the one person that I knew, understood lighting and video and stuff like that and that's Marcus Pittman.

I said, Marcus, can you help me out? Why am I getting such a creepy vibe watching this thing? And he said, yes, of course he can. He says, because it's lit with the same dystopian style as the Hunger Games.

The lights in the back are brighter than the lights in the face. It's villain lighting. And here's his example. Like, this is how you light a villain and it's the same thing. It's like brighter in the back than the front and they do look like villains.

Look, here's another villain shot from the Hunger Games and he's right. Like, it's just, the way they've lit this, it's like a creepy, ominous, dystopian villain. She looks like a villain here and I know she doesn't look like this in normal life.

It's so weird. The other thing though, too, I was talking to Marcus on the side and the other thing, and we both agree with this, I think I hinted at this in my first video. It's like, both sides are not saying what they really want to say because they're trying to be winsome.

They've been told they need to agree. I think she's saying a lot more of what she wants to say than Sean is over here. But it comes off, when you're faking it, when it's like contrived, like you don't really, you're not really like this.

You don't really believe this kind of stuff. You're just kind of like trying to be fake nice. It comes across as soulless. And I think that's really what I was picking up on, more so than the light. Although the light actually makes it even more soulless.

It's like, the way they're communicating, it's not normal communication. There's no authenticity to it. Like, when you hear me talking, and those of you who have met me in real life, you know, maybe I'm not quite as boisterous in person, but I'm the same guy.

Like, I talk this way. This is how I talk. I don't try to contrive anything. I don't try to change my personality for the camera. Like, there is, whether you hate me or love me, like, there's soul in my voice.

Like, you can tell I'm telling you what I think. You know what I mean? And when Sean got up here, it was just like, it was uncomfortable. It was creepy. When she got up there, she kind of like walked up so silently and she turns around.

It's all contrived, the whole thing. And she's got her hands like tight. And this is all presentation. This is all what she's decided to do. And she's just like, so like, like, it's soulless is what it is.

It's soulless. And the lighting, like, either the Gospel Coalition lighting people are idiots or they're geniuses. Because if they're secret geniuses, maybe they're kind of on our side because they saw what was going on here.

And they're like, man, this is like, this is soulless. Let's light it that way. You know what I mean? Marcus said, maybe they're actually secretly crying for help. Maybe they are. Gospel Coalition video guys, if you're crying for help, look, on our side, we have a lot more fun, man.

You can do what you need to do. You can be artistic and you can actually say and present what you want to say over on our side because we're not trying to fake it to get, just to pretend like we're all getting along and all that kind of thing.

In any case, before I say, do you guys know what liminal spaces are? Liminal spaces, like this can't be a liminal space because there's people there, but it kind of has the same feel of as a liminal space.

And it's kind of funny because the way I'm describing it is soulless, which is kind of like a liminal space. In any case, I hope you found this video helpful.