For the SJWs Political Ideology Trumps the Bible

Propaganda, Political Pulpits, and the Problem of Dishonest Messaging

I wanted to take a little bit of a trip around the Christian Twitterverse and all of this stuff, blogosphere, and talk a little bit about propaganda. Now, I don't really have a problem with propaganda.

Propaganda is a useful tool to get across a message, but there is a good kind of propaganda and then there's a very dishonest, evil kind of propaganda, and that's the kind I want to talk about today, because it's very subtle and it's very manipulative, and I just think that what we're seeing today in the social justice movement is a bunch of people that would claim that they're not political.

We've talked about pastors who say, I'm not a political man, I'm a gospel man, and things like that, but they very much are. They're very active politically and they're wrong politically, so again, I don't have a problem with political pastors.

I'm political from the pulpit, absolutely. I think whenever you say that Christ is king and that we need to obey all of Christ's commands and things like that, which you should be saying from the pulpit because it's in the Bible, whenever you say statements like that, these are political statements, so acknowledging Christ as Lord and King of Kings is a political perspective.

I don't have a problem with people being political from the pulpit, but I do have a problem with people being dishonest about it and people misunderstanding the Bible as far as it pertains to politics.

Ray Ortlund, Christ Crucified, and Manipulative Propaganda

Here's a tweet from Ray Ortlund. Now, Ray Ortlund is a gospel-centered movement kind of guy, but he's totally fully woke, and he is unfortunately here being extremely manipulative. Let's read what this tweet says, right?

Just preach Christ crucified, they say. I don't know who they is, but that's a quote from Scripture. And I agree with all my heart, but the message that Jesus the crucified saves has inescapable implications for all of us, and deflecting those implications betrays the gospel itself.

Galatians 2 demands this conviction. And then he has a, look at this picture that he has here. This is what is so manipulative about this. Ray Ortlund should be ashamed of himself for tweeting this. This is absolutely a shame.

And then look at this, and he's got 192 retweets, 639 likes. People are eating this stuff up. And so let's just pull this apart for a second, right? He has a picture here of a bunch of Klansmen in a church with a sign that says, Jesus saves.

And then his tweet says, just preach Christ crucified, they say. Now, he doesn't, it's just a tweet, right? Which makes this even more egregious. It's just a tweet, so he can't really explain who he's talking about.

Again, as I said, that's a quote directly from scripture. He's saying, just preach Christ crucified, they say. And then he has this picture of these Klansmen. Now, what are we supposed to take away from this?

Ray Ortlund, for whatever reason, wants you to associate, just preach Christ crucified with the KKK. Now, I don't know why he wants to do that. I'm not sure what his actual goal is. I don't know Ray personally, so I can't call him up.

He doesn't respond on social media. That's one of his MOs. But he wants you to associate, at the very outset, just preach Christ crucified with the KKK. Then he says that the gospel, Christ crucified, has implications for us all.

And he says it as if there are significant people out there disagreeing with him on that. And that is completely false. That is completely made up. That's a lie. Ray Ortlund should be ashamed of himself here.

There's nobody out there that says that Christ crucified has no implications for us at all. And then he says deflecting those implications betrays the gospel itself. I would dare him to point to one person publicly who's speaking on these issues that would say that we deflect any implications for the gospel.

All we want to do is preach Christ crucified, but there's no implications. It means nothing. There's no one like that. And so what he's trying to do here, this is propaganda. This is why I say this is dishonest, ungodly, evil propaganda that Ray should repent of.

He should be ashamed of himself, but he has no shame in this area. He's fully woke and he thinks that that's biblical. He says just preach Christ crucified. Anyone who's saying that, he wants you to associate with the Klan.

Anyone who's saying that they don't agree with Ray Ortlund's implications and applications is like the Klan. That's the association that he's making here with this tweet. It's absolutely shameful. It's absolutely shameful.

And so there's nobody out here like this. I mean, people do say preach Christ crucified because it's biblical and everyone agrees that it has applications. What we disagree on are what those applications are.

And so, you know, there is nothing valuable or meaty about this tweet. This is just a propaganda piece to rile up his base and to virtue signal how woke Ray Ortlund. This is supposed to make Ray Ortlund look good.

I think this is, in my opinion, this is analogous to the Pharisees praying in the public square. Look at me. Look at how good I am. Look at how amazing I am. That's what this tweet is because this doesn't speak to anybody that opposes his perspective on this.

It just doesn't because we are smart. We know that we also agree that preaching Christ crucified has implications, has applications, and none of us are in the Klan. So anyway, this is just a perfect example of Christian propaganda.

Here's another thing I want to talk about. This is Thabiti. Thabiti yesterday, I saw this. He was going back and forth with Tom Buck about this. Oh, by the way, Thabiti loved this tweet. What a shocker.

He absolutely loves this bogus propaganda that makes the church look bad. I would not want to be them on Judgment Day. I'll tell you that right now. Here we go. So this is a story that made the rounds yesterday.

Some students at UNC Chapel Hill tore down this statue of a Confederate soldier or whatever. Now, you know, I don't really care about statues at all. I think statues are kind of weird in the first place.

So I don't care about statues. In fact, if there were no statues of political leaders, I would be totally happy with that. I don't care especially about Confederate statues. I don't have the same animosity towards everything Southern and everything Confederate that a lot of people do.

I don't think that they're just pure evil in the South and pure good in the North. You know, I don't have that opinion. But I don't care if all the Confederate statues disappeared today. I would have no problem with it.

I don't care at all. In fact, I think that in some ways, maybe they should go. I don't know. I'm not saying that I support any of this stuff. But what I will say is I don't care about these statues. I have no emotional attachment to these things.

What I will say, though, is that here we have this is how, you know, political ideology and political propaganda and optics have taken over men like Thabiti's complete minds. It's about theology. It's about ideology first, not theology.

Here he is praising as good someone who is breaking not only the law of the country, but also the law of God, because this was not their property. And they destroyed it. And it wasn't their property. And they completely broke the law of God, private property laws, and things like that to completely vandalize and destroy this object.

Right now, this is this is literally a famous pastor calling evil good. That's that's what he's doing. This is evil, and he's calling it good. Now, let's just say I agree with the message that this statue should come down.

Does it make someone violently tearing it down and vandalizing and destroying property that's not theirs? Right? No, it does not. You can be we don't have we don't have the we don't have the ability to sort of use ungodly means to do something godly doesn't work that way.

That's, you know, that's what that's what they have been about who were trying to do. They were trying to worship God, but they were doing it in an ungodly way. That was that's what Uzzah did. He was trying to protect the ark and because he cared about the Lord, but he was doing it in an ungodly way.

And God struck him dead. Okay, God struck him dead. That's not we don't have that option, right? And I saw people comparing this. Oh, this is like this is like when they tore down the prophets of Baal and the idols of Baal.

And I'm thinking to myself, like, guys, I'm supposed to be the theonomist here, right? I'm supposed to be the evil Old Testament guy out here. What are you guys talking about? Why is it that you love the Old Testament when you think it fits your progressive agenda, which it actually doesn't, by the way, you misunderstand it.

You don't know what you're talking about. Why did why is it the Old Testament applies then but it doesn't apply when you don't like it? Like, why aren't we stoning homosexuals, right? It's the Old Testament.

Isn't that just like, isn't this like the Old Testament? We should do it now, right? You guys are completely inconsistent. So if you if you want to go all the way, theonomy, by the way, again, you're misunderstanding it.

You don't know what you're talking about. But if you want to go all the way, let's do it. Let's get nuts, right? Let's just go all the way. This is just absolutely insane. You can't break the law of God in order to do something good.

Tom Buck. I saw Tom Buck talking to Fabitti about this, and he said, well, this is the same logic that some people would use to to bomb an abortion clinic, right? Because an abortion clinic is a is a temple of Baal.

And so why would you be against that? But not against this. Both break private property laws. Both are vandalism. The same kind of thing. Maybe a statue is worth less than an abortion clinic. So maybe there's a problem of degree there.

But what would be the difference? And Fabitti was deflecting like no, like there's no tomorrow. It's not the same thing. Well, of course, it's not the same thing, but it's the same crime, right? It's the same idea.

It's the same principle. I'm going to do a good thing by doing a bad thing. And so and by the way, I don't support bombing abortion clinics. You know what I mean? But but but how could Fabitti stand against it?

Well, the way he stands against it is because he just doesn't answer the question. He says, oh, it's a bad question. It's bad logic. Well, sorry, Fabitti. It isn't. And you have not shown how it is. And so this is just an example of you having your ideology, your politics, and you put it ahead of the law of God itself.

That is shameful. And people should call you out on this, Fabitti. But they won't because they, you know, they don't want to lose their vote card, that kind of thing. This is absolutely completely shameful.

I saw this this person here. This is a real zealot for the social justice warriors. Allie Henry. Christians really out here decrying the discretion of Silent Sam as if God cared about personal property when he said destroy the idols.

Are you kidding me? God doesn't care about personal property. And watch this. Watch this one. Confederate monuments are our idols, beloved, which should be obvious given how y 'all's demons get stirred when we take them down.

This is Allie Henry, not a pastor, not someone that you really should take seriously. But this is a perspective that lots of people like, for example, and people take her seriously. She thinks that if you don't want these Confederate statues taken out, not only are you an idol worshiper, but you are probably demon possessed because your demons are getting stirred when you take them down.

Now, I don't again, I don't care about Confederate monuments, right? What I do care about is a pitchfork waving social justice buzzsaw mob like you guys getting to control what kind of history that we talk about.

That's what I do care about. That's a dangerous, evil mindset. And I'm not going to stand for because it's not history is not black and white. You know what I mean? As much as you want to make it black and white, it just isn't.

There are it is when it comes to God's people and not God's people. But there are some of God's people that were on the Confederate side. I dare you to demonstrate otherwise. It's just not possible to do that.

This is all about politics. This is all about politics. I saw this one from Phil Johnson. This is an organization that thinks they're Christian online Christian community that is just basically a mob that, you know, tries to bully Christians.

These are their successes. They fought back against Hobby Lobby. We we demand that you cover contraception. They think that's a Christian thing. That's insane. We convince Google to drop World Vision.

Unbelievable. They were discriminated against gays and lesbians. We we can force MSNBC to drop the Family Research Council. We're so heroic. These people, honestly, they think of themselves as reformers.

They think of themselves as heroes, like in a movie. And they're actually just crazy. I mean, these people are crazy. Um, this is their list of accomplishments. It's ridiculous. None of these are Christian things that they're doing here.

None of them have anything to do with the Bible, anything to do with justice. They say, love thy neighbor. No exceptions. Well, you know, it might be nice to think so. But anyway, yeah, this is this is what I'm talking about.

This is politics first. This is not theology first. And, you know, again, I don't have a problem with Christians being political, but you need to derive it from the scripture. If you don't understand that the Bible supports private property rights, then you just don't understand your Bible.

It's just that simple. If you think that it's OK to vandalize things, if it's for a good cause, you just don't know your Bible at all. It's just that simple when it comes to justice anyway. And so, you know, honestly, I hope that there are people with bigger platforms than me, with more respect than me and more clout than me that can stand against what Ray Ortlund said there.

It's absolutely horrendous what Thabiti said there. I see I see you brothers that are doing that, and I appreciate you. But this kind of stuff, we have to call this stuff out. This is absolutely antithetical to what the scripture says.

And it's just evil. You can't call evil good and get away with it before God. I mean, your fans might adore you. Your fans might applaud you and retweet you. None of that's going to mean anything when you stand there on judgment and you have to explain why you thought, oh, it's cool.

It's cool. Yeah, I'm going to call destruction of private property good. Yeah. You know, one more thing I wanted to talk about this. I want I want you to make no mistake what men like Ray Ortlund and Thabiti and William and all of these people on the social justice woke side, what they are promoting is nothing less than revolution.

They want revolution. And you can see that, especially with the tweet about the Confederate monument. They want revolution. And if it's violent and it has to be violent, well, that's just, you know, you got to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

And that's what vandalism is. It's a violent act. And so Thabiti was praising that violent act of revolution in the South at UNC Chapel. And I want to read this. If you don't know this book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, it's out of print, but it's available on PDF for free online.

You could search the title of this book and you can find it for free on a PDF. But I highly recommend this is the kind of book that you're going to want to highlight every chapter, and it directly applies to what is happening in our, in our country today.

And this is the introduction to this book. This is a, it's titled Religion and Revolution. Let me read this for you. Chilton says, Revolution is a religious faith. All men created in the image of God are fundamentally religious.

All cultural activity is essentially an outgrowth of man's religious position. Our life and thought are exercised either in obedience to or rebellion against God. All men, says St. Paul, are conscious of their rebellion, self-conscious to a degree, which leaves them inexcusable, according to Romans 1.

But the avowed revolutionary is self-conscious to a greater degree, hence often more obviously religious than as many of his fellow men. Throughout history, revolutionaries have demonstrated an almost limitless facility for appropriating as their own religious terminology of the surrounding culture.

Their works abound with references to infallibility, regeneration, faith. Revolutionaries in France were offered a new vision of, version of holy communion in which the priest would proclaim, this is the body of the bread which the rich owe to the poor.

Some spoke of the holy communist church and of the egalitarian church, outside of which there can be no salvation. Does this stuff sound familiar? We haven't gotten to the point where it's that overt yet, but it's getting there.

He says in Germany, revolutionaries publish family devotional literature, responsive readings, and even a communist lord's prayer. So be it in the, this is a quote from the prayer, so be it in the holy name will overturn the old rubbish, no masters and no servants, amen, money and property shall be abolished.

This tendency to fuse Christian language with the revolutionary concepts manifests itself again and again. The radical James Naylor rode into Bristol in 1656, seated on a donkey with his disciples turning palm branches before him.

The terrorist John Brown claimed to be God's angel of death. Adolf Hitler represented himself as a defender of Christianity. One explanation for all of this is the revolutionary desire to be as God, to center all devotion in his own messianic programs.

But another reason may be just as important insofar as the cultural acceptance of the revolution is concerned. James H. Billington writes, indeed communism probably would not have attracted such instant attention without this initial admixture of Christian ideas.

This is a very serious charge that I'm making, and I want it to be perfectly clear. When you are promoting revolution for your political ideology over the scriptures, you are in extremely dangerous waters, and you really need to take a good look in the mirror.

I hope that you guys continue to do this. Anyway, hope this was helpful. God bless.