#WokeChurch Chapter 3 Thoughts

So I just finished chapter 3 of Woke Church, which is the end of the first section of the book, which was called

Be Aware. So it's about the awareness of the gospel and justice and things like that.

And I have to say that, you know, though there are obviously going to be specific things that I disagree with, in general it's not terrible.

I mean, it's basically an argument for justice being an issue that Christians should care about, which

I agree with. I think that if you're a Christian out there and you don't see that the Bible addresses justice, then the first section of this book, which

I just completed, it's not the whole book, but the first section of this book is a good section for you to read in general.

But I would urge you to read with a discerning heart because he says a lot of things about justice without defending it.

And that's, that's unfortunately very disappointing. I was hoping to get some specifics on how he draws from the scripture these claims that he makes, you know, regarding gentrification, regarding fatherlessness, regarding access to food for the poor.

And he just doesn't. He just kind of says things and doesn't really tell you where it comes from.

It just kind of assumes that you get it, which we don't. I also would have to say that I think that there are very few people out there that say the

Bible doesn't address justice. I think that if you read the Bible, uh, for any amount of time, um, you'll see that justice is a common theme.

So it's not, so, so, so in many ways, the, the, the audience for this book is just such a small fraction of the people that I just don't really see what the point of the first, the first section of this book was.

Um, I do think though that he's making it seem like guys like me would say that the Bible doesn't address justice and that's just not the case at all.

That's a straw man. That's, that's an inaccurate representation of the people on the other side of this debate.

Um, most of us do agree that the Bible talks about justice. We just very much disagree with the content of that, how we interpret that.

Anyway, getting into chapter three, just a quick review. He starts off with a, in my opinion, a very questionable, uh, analysis of the book of Philemon.

And when I say questionable, I think his points are all valid. Like everything he says is basically

Christian. Um, but I don't think Philemon makes the points that he's making. So I don't know if you've ever talked to a

Christian who makes a good point. Like he takes a verse and says, well, this is the lesson from this verse.

And you know, it's not the lesson from that verse. It's not what the verse is talking about, even though what they said is actually true.

Uh, people do this all the time. They, they, they, they talk about verses as if they're talking about, um, a certain point, a true point, but it's really not talking about that.

And so it's a misuse of the verse. And maybe I'll get into that more. I, I, I'm not, I don't really think I want to do that, but, but here's what

I wanted to, here's what I wanted to talk about because I'm having a hard time with this chapter squaring what he says here with how he acts.

And I want to see, I want to see here what, what he's, well, let me just try to find if I can, he talks about how we're family and how we're holy.

And I just have a hard time squaring this with how he's acted and what the things he said elsewhere.

Here, here's an example. He says, this is on page 66. He says, this is important. It grieves my heart to see that we so often treat each other like we're from different bloodlines.

We have the same gen and we have the same eternal genetic code, yet too often we act like Hatfields and McCoys, the families that carried out the famous feud.

God is calling us to be uniquely distinct. Actually, he has already given us what we need.

We're fighting from it, not for it. So God has already given, given us the holiness. We don't try to be holy.

We're already holy. We just have to live and reflect that reality and how we respond to one another in the world.

And this is true. I mean, I agree with this completely. This is, this is very true where we have unity in Christ.

That's what he's talking about. I think when he talked with the eternal genetic code that we have the same and he talks about how too often we're fighting like Hatfields and McCoys, too often we're bringing our, our, our distinctions to bear on each other instead of our unity in Christ.

And I agree with all of that. There was actually another thing I wanted to mention too. Let me see if I can find it.

There's another paragraph that I was just like, well, let's see. Hold on. Let me see if I can find it.

He says at the end is page 71. He says, I dream of the day when we will wake up and realize that we really are family and we have the best soul food table on the planet.

We are believers in Jesus Christ and we have all eaten and drunk from him. Now we need to sit together at the table and remember that we're all family.

We need to recognize that around that common table are believers from every nation and tribe, black, white, red, yellow, all family.

Let's begin by talking about our family history. So he's going to talk about history in the next section. Those two paragraphs

I just have a hard time with because this is the man that, that, that he stood in front of hundreds of evangelicals and said that black people who think white are actually angloid on the inside.

Multi ethnicity isn't happening at your church. It's because you have a person that's black on the outside, but angloid on the inside.

I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a racial slur. He's insulting white people and black people who don't think like him.

Um, like if, if we're family and you're identifying that and you're lamenting how we're fighting like Hatfields and McCoys, how does that fit into this?

How does saying that, you know, they're black on the outside, white on the inside. I'm sorry. I softened that.

It's not what he said. He said angloid on the inside. Um, how do you, how do you square that with his words there about us being family?

How do you, that last paragraph that I just read, that was a beautiful paragraph. Yeah, we do have the best soul food table on the planet, the

Lord's supper. But then this is the doctor. This is the same Dr. Eric Mason who we set up.

He said he wanted to set up a ecumenical council to talk about the heretics that believe that ethnicity has no place at the

Lord's table, that our unity is in Christ. Do you remember that? Dr. James White posted that meme and that elicited the response of Dr.

Eric Mason saying, we need to brand these people heretics in a, in an official ecumenical council.

He wanted to call it the council of Philadelphia. Um, how do you square that with what he just said about how no matter if we're red, black, yellow, or white, we have unity at the table.

We have the same table. That's exactly what Dr. James White was saying. But yet I guess if a white man says it, it's heresy.

I just, I just, I just have a hard time squaring. I mean, the chapter wasn't terrible. The chapter was actually pretty good. I disagreed with some of the things he said.

Like he has a, he has a little paragraph about oppression and uh,

I don't, I mean, in general, I agree, but there's some things I could quibble with about what oppression is.

He says that oppression is when you, um, when you, when, when you're in the, in the privileged class, you know, the class that has it all easy and you want to keep people away from everything that God has for them.

I would say that that's kind of true, but, but really it's, it's when you do it in an ungodly way. So in other words, if I was a business owner and I wanted to get as much business as I could, and I wanted my competitors to have as little business as possible, as long as I'm not breaking the law of God, that's totally fine.

That's a good competition. That's economics, that's business. But if I was to break the law and to say, petition the government to treat my competitors differently, kind of like Amazon does, that would be ungodly.

It's not, oppression has to do with the law of God. You have to define it in terms of God's law. It's not just keeping people away from your privileges.

No, it's, it's actually breaking God's law that to do it. Uh, that's, that's what oppression is. But, but the point is I could quibble with that, but the chapter is actually pretty good.

It's just, I'm wondering how does it square with all of his rhetoric? How does it square? When he says, if you're talking at me from a white space,

I can't hear you at all. Like that's not recognizing our oneness in Christ, our family -ness, how we're all family.

No, that's actually dividing based on race. Dr. Eric Mason divides based on race all while saying in his book that he wants us to have our unity in Christ and not based on ethnicity.

It's all like, you know, if you, if you say you want this unity, you say you want these things, like you have to actually do them.

It starts with you. The Bible says, as long as it depends on you to live in harmony with other people, this is the thing.

Like, like you can't say you want racial unity, but at the same time talk about cooning and talk about angloids as if it's an insult to be an

Anglo. Um, you can't do that. It just doesn't, it doesn't work that way. This, this all remind the tweet, the tweet that he said, where if you're talking at him from a white space, he doesn't hear you.

He won't hear you like that. That's not how this works. It reminds me of that gospel coalition, a segregated fellowship event.

Like you say you want to be together, you have to actually do it. You can't wait for somebody else to do it. You can't have segregated fellowship events.

If you're claiming to want racial unity, it doesn't work that there's, there's a disconnect here somewhere.

And I don't know where it is now. I'm only on chapter three, so maybe I'll find it. But what I've noticed in the first three chapters is, you know, he has very few notes, very few notes.

I mean, I think his notes is, you can find them on like six pages. And, um,

I heard James White yesterday say that there are some sources here that he's not being upfront with and how he's interpreting things and things like that.

And I would agree with that. There's, it seems to me that there should be much more notes here that I could find out where are you getting these ideas?

Um, in any case, I hope this was helpful. Actually, if you could pray for me,

I'm about to go run to talk to a friend of Dr. Eric Mason, the guy from X 29, I'm about to go meet him in about 20 minutes.