Understanding Tim Keller's "Social Justice"

Cancel Culture, Reparations, and the Logic of Social Justice

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and as my grandfather likes to say, things are getting crazier out there, are they not? Cancel culture is on the move. I know a lake near me was renamed because it was named after, I guess, a Southern soldier in the Civil War.

I didn't even know. Hardly anyone probably did. There was a bird I noticed, a mccowns or mcgowns, I think pigeon or something, maybe it was a finch, but anyway, the guy who discovered it was also a soldier in the Civil War from the South.

Of course, they had to rename that. People are just depressed looking at this bird, I guess. I don't know. I mean, he's the one that discovered it, so I mean, that's why it was named after him, not because he fought in the war or something.

It's getting silly, guys. It's really, really, really getting silly out there. I don't know if you noticed that Jim Wallace now is in the crosshairs because he had deleted an article at Sojourner's written by a younger guy against the Catholic Church, saying the Catholic Church is racist and Jim Wallace has allies in the Catholic Church, so he deleted it, and the young guy who wrote it called Jim Wallace this insult.

He's an old white man. Yeah. So Jim Wallace, who's gone along with pretty much every liberal agenda, he's the quintessential evangelical progressive. I mean, I don't know why I would call him evangelical.

He's called himself that, that's why. But he's being eaten by the very thing he created. His own monster is now coming and eating him, and I think he's stepped down from being editor-in-chief or something.

He's still president. I don't know, but Jim Wallace, the acid's eating him, and the question is how many other things will the acid eat that we care about before it gets to more progressives, and that has always been the question.

John Muir, the Sierra Club chief, environmentalist guy, right? I mean, he's presented that way in California and a lot of the national parks. He's now in the crosshairs. The Audubon Society is searching into the racial views, I guess, or there's, I don't even remember, sexist views, probably racial views of the founder of their organization.

It never ends, and I've seen some liberals try to mock conservatives. Whenever conservatives lift a finger to criticize something, they'll say, oh, that's cancel culture. Well, not exactly. Cancel culture is really part of the social justice religion and it's a form of judgment.

It's their equivalent to judgment. It's social ostracism. There's no forgiveness in it. You will always be marked. There's no leniency. There's no asking for what is it that you actually meant in this.

There's no trying to give any kind of grace whatsoever. It is an immediate, even if there's just an insinuation, it's an immediate cancel. That's cancel culture, and so it is quite different than conservatives who are looking at a big, a canon of literature or the positions that someone has held over time and then saying, hey, there might be a problem with this person.

Much different, and so I wanted to explain that real quick, but we're seeing reparations now, and I mean, the real kind being advocated, and what I mean by the real kind, I mean like people that are going out into the suburbs of Portland, protesters wanting to take it from people that are middle class in the suburbs because they stole it.

It doesn't, their property doesn't really belong to them, and so I don't know how much longer this can continue. This is threatening some violence, and one of the things I thought of as I was looking at some videos, you can go online and see these horrible videos of people intimidating people in their homes at night, in some cases, shouting outside, shouting at them at their, they're putting lights on their windows.

I mean, it's horrible, horrible things. You wonder where the police are in all this, this harassment, and so I'm watching this, and I'm thinking to myself, evangelicals who have tried to take this third way approach, who have tried to say, yes, the money that you have doesn't belong to you.

Obviously, it belongs to God. We all know this. We're stewards of it, but the money that God has given you to steward, it's not really your money because of systemic and historic injustice. You're benefiting from systems of white privilege, et cetera, so you're just getting this money unfairly, and really, if you don't give it away, it's robbery.

It's stealing because it doesn't really belong to you. It belongs to someone else, and it was stolen from them. Now, in the normal course of affairs, if something's stolen from you, like your phone, then immediately, you want it back, or you want compensation for it.

That is restitution. That's biblical, right? You, so you pursue actual justice in that situation. Now, if you're gonna say that the wealth that you've gotten from the sweat of your brow, hard work, inheriting from your parents, whatever, that wealth is all, or in part, at least, stolen from other people, minorities to whom it really does belong.

How do you keep back something like what's happening in Portland from happening? How do you keep that from happening? That's just the logic. You're gonna want your phone back if your phone's stolen. So if someone stole property that belongs to you, and you're told that in this narrative, this complicated narrative of systemic injustice, then aren't you gonna wanna go and steal it?

You see, this is where it doesn't make sense to me, and for evangelicals to go down this path, for social justice evangelicals who say, well, yes, it's not yours. It belongs to these other people, but you should voluntarily give it.

The government shouldn't force you, and it shouldn't be stolen from you, or however they phrase that. The government, it's not the government's job to take it from you. You should just voluntarily give it because it belongs to these other oppressed people.

If you go down that path, something's gotta give because you can't have it both ways. You don't treat normal thievery that way, and so this is, it's part of the logic of the social justice movement when you see people out in the suburbs demanding reparations in the form of give us your property.

That's just the logic of it. What did you expect to happen if you tell them a story about how they've been stolen from and disenfranchised by those people in the suburbs? So anyway, that's also happening.

Democrat Evangelicals and the Abortion Priority

Democrat evangelicals, that's another crazy thing, but something that we expected, those of us who are paying attention to this stuff. I don't have all the screenshots, but several people this last week during the DNC convention have come out either in favor of Democrats, evangelicals, or just stepping up to the line as close as they can get without endorsing the Democratic Party, but telling you it's okay to vote for a Democrat.

And I've compared this to Nazi Germany. If you were in Nazi Germany, would you say, well, hey, the Nazi Party, they have a really good green movement, which they did. They had a green movement. They have, you know, Hitler's a vegetarian.

They care about the environment. They really do, and yeah, I understand the whole ethnic or biological determinism. I understand what they're doing to the Jews, but they also got this other good point.

You'd say that's crazy. And I don't understand how someone reading the Democratic platform, understanding the positions of Democrats can get past their abortion stance. And we get accused often of saying it's all about abortion.

No, it's not. I think every single belief that the Democrat Party has just about is wrong. Most of them are blatantly anti-biblical. I think they're wrong on the economy. I think they're wrong on the environment.

I think they're wrong on just about everything. But all that aside, I think it is a much bigger priority that there is a current Holocaust going on in the United States of America. And I don't see evangelical social justice warriors wanting to talk about it or phrase it in those terms.

They really want to talk about things that play to a Democrat narrative. They want to talk about Black Lives Matter stuff. They don't want to talk about what's right in front of them, the actual injustice.

If you're going to create a hierarchy of the injustices in this country, abortion would be at the top of that list. Would it not? It's murder. And I don't know. I just don't know how these guys can justify voting for a Democrat.

But more on that later. I'm going to try to keep gathering some of these screenshots and maybe I'll bring some of that information to you. We'll talk about it in more depth. But yes, Democrat evangelicals are taking the masks off here in 2020.

Tim Keller’s Twitter Exchange on Marxism and Justice

I want to talk today, though. This is the main thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about Tim Keller because Tim Keller, to his credit, did something that I have not hardly ever seen from evangelicals that are blue check mark on Twitter.

This is actually the reason I still have Twitter. I've thought about getting rid of Twitter so many times. The only reason I think I still have it is because sometimes you get interactions like this. And I know I won't have Twitter forever.

By the way, guys, just side tangent here. The reason I do what I do in these videos is I really want you to think for yourself. I want to equip you to do that as much as possible and to just critically engage what you're listening to.

I don't think I'll be doing this forever. I never intended to do this forever. I made a video about Southeastern and things kind of skyrocketed from there. But my intention has always been for you guys to engage this stuff yourself.

I'm taking a break from other things in my life in some ways to, well, I still do have a side business and things like that, I have to pay the bills. But because of your support, because of the patrons and just all of you guys who pray for me too, I've been able to do some of this.

But my intention is for you guys to think and you guys to recognize these errors when they come in. And so that's why I'm committed right now to trying to put out resources, not just the videos, but writing resources for understanding this.

And so today, I wanna fairly, as much as we possibly can, fairly understand Tim Keller's point of view, represent it accurately and do so with grace. And I think Tim Keller, to his credit, when he interacted with me on Twitter, he was a gentleman, he did so with grace.

I told him I was praying for him as far as his cancer is concerned. And I have a lot of respect for him for doing this, I'll be honest with you. Now, it doesn't mean I agree with him, but he was very gracious, in my opinion, in this interaction at least.

And so I do wanna be very fair-minded about this and present to you, at least from my perspective, what I believe is actually taking place. And Tim Keller was not a nasty guy at all or anything like that.

And so I'm gonna take you through the Twitter conversation. And then, which to me, I kind of thought it was incoherent, it didn't make sense to me. So I'm gonna give you my thoughts on it. And then I'm going to play for you and a segment from a, well, it should be, we'll see if it makes it in or not.

But an addendum, so at the end of a book, for the book, Social Justice Goes to Church, which should be coming out here in the next few weeks. And I'm excited about that. And if you like this, if you like this addendum, then you'll like the book because it's a lot of research just like this.

And so I'm going to play for you, kind of, I'm gonna get my audio book voice on, we're gonna do an audio book, and I'm gonna play for you just a, my reading of this addendum on Tim Keller. And it's gonna give you kind of a biographical sketch of Tim Keller as it pertains to his views on social justice.

So you can understand more where he's coming from. And so we'll do that at the end, but I wanna go over this first. This is a Twitter conversation, which I had with Dr. Keller. I think it's Dr. Keller, right?

And so it starts out with this. I said, I quoted him because I've been reading his sermons. I've been reading his articles and his books. And I came across this quote. I came across a bunch of quotes, but this is one of them that was just interesting to me.

He says, the people who read, who I read, sorry, let me start over. The people I read who were the disciples of Marx were not villains. They were not fools. They cared about people. There are vast populations where there's no upward mobility.

See, the people who read Marx said, we have to do something about this. Tim Keller in 1997 said this. And so I just posted that as kind of like an interesting, like, wow, look at what I uncovered. This is, I wasn't expecting language quite that radical coming from Tim Keller.

And of course there, I mean, I was called all sorts of names and I'm sure Tim Keller probably got called names too. I didn't see that really, but I'm sure on his wall he did. But I got called all sorts of names and said that I'm making an argument, which I mean, I really wasn't making an argument.

I was just quoting him. Said I was quoting him out of context. I'm like, I can show you the context. I mean, it's, I don't think it changed. I mean, I admitted later on, or I made sure to say that, you know, Tim Keller does critique Marxism.

He's not a Marxist. I don't think anyone, and I don't know if there's anyone who seriously thinks Tim Keller is a classical Marxist. I think when people say he's a Marxist, they're saying that he uses Marxist ideas.

They're not saying he is just like Karl Marx, obviously. Karl Marx wasn't a theist. Tim Keller is a theist. So there's that big gulf. And Tim Keller critiques Marxism by critiquing atheism and materialism.

So obviously that is not, what I was trying to communicate was that he's a Marxist in every way. But here's what happens. And I'm gonna see if I can, I don't know if I can do this. Let's see. I'm probably not gonna find his tweet.

He basically responded and said that Marx is a problem, that he doesn't agree with Marx, which yeah, clearly we knew that he doesn't agree with Marx and everything. But then this is, so here's the curious thing.

This is what he says here. If I can find it. He goes, talking about oppression, justice, et cetera, doesn't make one a Marxist. It makes one a student of the Bible. Okay, but that's not the issue here, right?

So it's not like, no one, in my opinion, I can't find anyone at least in my experience here. No one I know of thinks talking about oppression makes someone a Marxist. It's not the talking about oppression.

It's the way in which someone talks about oppression. Conservatives talk about oppression, right? Capitalists talk about oppression. Capitalists talk about it all the time. The oppressive national government and what the government does to businesses.

That's oppression, right? So there's oppressions talked about. That's not the issue. So to me, this just muddies the waters. It's not clear at all. It's not the nature of the conversation. It's the assumptions brought to the conversation that are the issue.

I quoted Tim Keller later on, and part of this was to clarify kind of where he comes down on Marx, but also to just point out like, he's got a soft spot here somewhere for Marx. This is what he said in 2000.

The only person who has had this high view of work except for God was Karl Marx. Karl Marx held up the common worker, but Marx didn't ground his high view of God of work in a God who loves to get his hands dirty and a God who with his hands in the dirt.

And let's just give Tim Keller the benefit of the doubt. He's probably overstating his case in this sermon. He's saying that, because I mean, to say that Karl Marx has the highest view of work equivalent to or comparative to somehow the view God has of work, and he's the only one.

I mean, that's pretty, I mean, look, if you talk a lot, here's the thing, if you talk a lot, you're gonna make mistakes. I'm gonna make them, we're all gonna make them. And maybe Tim Keller made one here, but this is not an easy mistake in my mind to make.

Like, to say that Karl Marx had the same kind of view of work that God has, or the same priority of work, he views it in this high way that God views it, that, I mean, that's a real oops. And so when something like this comes out, what I'd expect, if I said something crazy, I'd expect to go back and say, okay, if someone brought this up, like, you know what?

That wasn't a good moment for me, and I'm sorry I said that. I was trying to overstate my case, and it went bad. I don't really agree with this. I recant that, or whatever. I mean, but there's no distancing himself from these kinds of statements when these statements come up, as far as I know, as far as I can tell.

So I quoted Tim Keller again. And then Tim Keller kind of gets back, Tim Keller and I kind of start going back and forth, right? And I said to him, so I retweeted where he said, talking about oppression and justice doesn't make one a Marxist, it makes one a student of the Bible.

I retweeted him, and I said, how about assuming economics is a zero-sum game, have-nots have a right to the resources of the haves, and it's Christians' job to do redistributive justice for the purpose of reducing disparities?

It's not classical Marxism, but what would you call it? So I'm trying to ask him, how do you represent your view? What do you call your view? Because this, it sounds an awful lot like you're getting some of these principles from Marxism.

So what do we call this then? And I know it's not classical Marxism, because you're not an atheist, I get that. Now, all of these views are things that I found in Tim Keller's writings. I'm summarizing some of them, but these are all things that I have primary sources for.

They're not things that I'm just thrown out there. I'm trying to represent his view as accurately as I possibly can. And so then, so he gives a Calvin quote from the Institutes, and in my opinion, so I read this quote, and maybe I'll just read it for you here real quick.

So he says, I don't believe in zero-sum economics or redistributive economics. Those are secular abstractions that understand obligation only in secular terms. Now, notice what he's doing here. He keeps saying secularism.

That's the difference between his view and these other views is he's not a secularist, which I already get that. I think a lot of us get that. We know you're not a secularist. I believe, like John Calvin, that when you see your neighbor in need, you have more goods than they.

You have some obligation to give to them because of your relationship to God and to others as fellow image bearers. Okay, now, where's the obligation coming from? This is the important part. Is the obligation coming from God?

Is it something that you do voluntarily without the coercion of any humans, but it's just out of obedience to God, you wanna share what you have? And those commands in scripture, the ones that he usually uses are commands that are given to believers, that if you see your brother in need, it's believers specifically.

But Keller, I think, he expands that. And there's nothing wrong with giving. I mean, we should give. We should be giving people to people who aren't even believers, but the commands usually are about believers.

Anyway, so Keller says you have this obligation. So I'm with him if he means that God requires us to engage in charity. I'm with him on that, right? But that's an obligation to God and it's a personal obligation that we have to God.

And you can't really set the parameters of that. It's like we have an obligation to tithe to the church, right? It's not something that really should be coerced, right? And so I can sort of go with him on this, but here's what he says.

Calvin says, each Christian will so consider himself a debtor to his neighbors that he ought in exercising kindness towards them to set no other limit than the end of his resources. Why? Calvin says, say about the neighbor that you owe nothing for any service of his, but God, as it were, has put him in his own place in order that you may recognize toward him the many and great benefits which God has bound you to himself.

You will say he has deserved something far different from me. Yet, what has the Lord deserved? Remember not to consider men's evil intention, but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions.

And with its beauty and dignity, allures us to love and embrace them. Okay, and this is, that's friendly, right? I can take a little friendly jousting here. He says, you may think Calvin is wrong too, but now make an argument that he was a Marxist.

So again, I'm quoting Keller. I didn't ever make an argument that he was a Marxist in this thread, but Keller's sensitive to this. That's, I guess, what he and a bunch of other people interpreted me as doing.

And so here's how I responded. I said, yeah, regarding that Calvin quote, that's an excellent description of charity based on voluntary obedience to God and according to circumstances set by his sovereign plan, right?

So this is, someone comes into your path. This is in your daily life. You see someone, you're, right? So this is God. God is the one bringing these people into your path. Much different than saying that have-nots on the basis of their need, have a right to resources not distributed to them belonging to the haves.

And it's true. Those two things are very different. They may not seem on the surface like they are, but you really start thinking about it, they do. And it really comes back to the whole like stealing analogy.

Like if you are stealing from someone, if you have resources that belong to them, then they have a right to those resources, right? Remember the, you should go back. If the rights language doesn't make sense, go back to the episode I did a week ago, week and a half ago on rights and responsibilities, right?

A right and a responsibility are two sides of the same coin, right? So this, when you start using this language to insinuate that people who have certain needs, however those are defined by the way, I mean, in America, most people, even the poorest among us are rich by world standards, but however you define that, if you think that somehow they have a right to things that are not in their possession, that belong to other people in a sense, then essentially what you're saying is they have a positive right.

They have, this is the kind of right the Soviet Union granted. This is kind of right the Democratic Party's trying to grant. You have a right to free healthcare, right? This isn't a right to engage in the responsibilities God has set for you.

So to raise your family, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, right? And I went over what those mean. It's not happiness in the sense that we think of happiness today. It's pursuing the creation of your own wealth in an economy, arranging things in your own property the way you want them arranged.

I mean, that's what Jefferson was meaning by that. And so these are rights that the government cannot infringe on, all right? So the difference between positive and negative rights, if you go down the path of people have a right to stuff belonging to other people, then now you're in the positive rights language and you don't have responsibilities to ground these rights anymore.

And so I do believe this is antithetical to not just the founding, but this is antithetical to the understanding that I think we're given in scripture of what rights are. And so, and you go back and watch my video on rights and responsibilities according to the founding fathers and you'll see more of my discussion on that.

But that's very different than saying that for the sake of charity and responsibility before God as a Christian, you should give away the resources that God has allowed you to steward, right? It's not that people in need that you owe it to them because somehow they have a claim on your stuff.

It's because out of worship for God and love for them, you're giving, you're acting in a merciful manner, in a grace-filled manner. Justice and mercy are two different things. If we don't get those things right, we have a different gospel if we conflate these.

You very easily, if we apply them to the gospel, have a different gospel. And so that's my concern is when we start using this kind of language that Tim Keller uses often, it sounds like mercy and justice get conflated.

And so I'm all for the mercy. I think Calvin was all for the mercy, but that's not social justice. And so that's why I made that distinction. So Tim Keller comes back and he says, no, no, you are still leaving God out of the picture.

I have to do for my neighbor, whatever God says I need to do, which I say, amen. That includes voluntary charity, amen again, but it also requires advocacy for the poor. Okay, what does that mean? He says, see my articles.

And I've read a lot of his articles. I still don't quite know what he means. My assumption is this is challenging systemic oppressions, that kind of thing. So that's what he's talking about. Does that open the door for socialism?

I mean, I don't know. What do you mean by advocacy for the poor? I mean, we should advocate for the rights of the poor. Remember, rights attached to responsibilities. If they are not, if something is barring them unjustly from working because of who they are for some external reason, they're not allowed to work.

And so the government is telling them that, they can't provide for their family because we'll take care of you, we're the government. Well, then I'm gonna advocate for the right of the poor to provide for their family, right?

That's what that would mean in my mind. I don't know that Keller is talking about that. He says Marxism is as, so here's where he goes. This is where like when he, the first part of this sort of interacts with what I was saying.

Not, I mean, not completely. I'm just largely in agreement with it. Obviously we both believe in God. We both believe in responsibility. I never left God out of the picture. I'm certainly not advocating some kind of secular economic system, but now he, listen to what he does here.

See my articles. Marxism is as secular as libertarianism. It reduces how you help the poor to one thing, either a socialistic or voluntaristic economics, both are reductionistic. It seems you're saying that I'm not a Marxist.

I'm on the libertarian's voluntaristic side as Treebird says, I'm not on anyone's side in this debate as you set it up. Now, number one, I didn't set up the debate. I'm not a libertarian. So I didn't set it up that way.

I believe when you're born into this world, you have a definition given to you from God. And that includes responsibilities to, because of the gender that you have. You have responsibilities because of the community that you're born in.

You have responsibilities because of the family that you're part of. You have responsibilities because of the church that you're part of. You have responsibilities. And I don't know that that my understanding of responsibilities is compatible, at least with the forms of libertarianism I'm acquainted with, which seem to just go back to the non-aggression principle and free market.

So I don't believe in autonomous individuals. I don't believe you're a blank slate. I think you have responsibilities when you're born here. So I'm a little mystified. What do you mean? I'm not a libertarian.

I'm not saying that you have to be a libertarian. So why is he bringing this up? So he's assuming something here, which, and I didn't correct him on it, but this is confusing. And so he's trying, what he's trying to do, it looks like, is he's trying to say that Marxism and libertarianism are both secular.

They're not rooted in responsibility to God. Now, that is true. I think that is true. Now, there are Christian libertarians who I think don't think that way. And there are Marxist Christians who will like, well, you know, like some evangelicals who are trying to root Marxist ideas in God.

But that's not fundamentally what we're talking about. We're talking about, you can't just put God at the foundation for it and then say, well, these are all morally wrong things. But if we put God at the foundation, now all of a sudden they're morally right.

It doesn't work that way. Marxism is wrong, not just because it's based on dialectic materialism. Marxism is wrong because stealing is wrong, right? And you can't build a foundation and say, well, God says stealing is okay, right?

Which no one says, obviously. But I'm taking my example to the extreme to show you what I mean by that. You don't just add God to the equation and now, oh, it's morally right. And so I don't think we're getting at the crux of the matter here.

Because the crux of the matter here is, where is the obligation? Where is it coming from? And why is there an obligation to give to people who are quote unquote poor? Why is there an obligation? If you wanna say that because God wants us to be merciful to others, then absolutely, I'm with you all day on that.

If you're saying because they have a moral right to your stuff because it's somehow been stolen from them or it's not fair that you worked harder and have more or somehow there were barriers that they had that you didn't have and therefore, it belongs to them.

As soon as you start using that kind of language, not with you anymore on that. And I don't know how you escape that kind of thing being coerced. Because if it's stealing, then someone's, I mean, in the normal course of events, something's stolen, the police come, they rectify the situation.

That's bringing true justice. If you start using that language, then what's to keep you from sliding into, well, yeah, the government should impose some kind of a redistribution. I just don't think you have an answer for it anymore.

So anyway, let's see. I think that was the last thing. Let's see. So I said, oh, so I'm, this is what I said to Tim Keller. You've compared failing to share with the poor to robbery, injustice and failing to meet an obligation owed because they have a right to those things, they need not granted to them due to inequitable distribution.

I'm not sure how adding God makes this morally better. Now, I thought my point was clear. I'm saying these are the moral things that you're, and I'm taking all from primary sources that I have of Keller.

These are all things you've said. And so you're basically saying, you're saying robbery. You're saying that the haves have taken from the have-nots in some way, or there's some kind of immoral, it's immoral that they have more than other people.

I'm not with you on that. That's not immoral. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm saying, you know, this parallels Marxist theory. I don't see how it doesn't. Not saying you're a Marxist, but there's some shared ideas here somehow, or maybe there's a coincidence, right?

But I don't know how adding God and our responsibility to God to give to the poor makes this morally any better. And so here's, I'm gonna have to go to Tim Keller's response here. So he says, I gotta thumb through his Twitter now to find it.

He says, respectfully, I'm not adding God to some existing secular system or account of human behavior. Here we go. Account of human behavior or of morality. I hope to be building a way of doing justice around what God commands and requires.

So his defense is, I'm not starting with a secular system. It's not my starting point. I'm just trying to look at what the Bible says and grapple with that. To which I would, if I kept this going, which I didn't, I would say, okay, where do you get this idea that it's somehow immoral to have more?

That's robbery to the poor. That's what I would ask of you. Give me the Bible verses on this and let's have a Bible study. But I, you know, I didn't wanna keep going back and forth. It was gracious enough of him to give me my time.

Well, I'll show you how he ends it. And it was kind of a way out. He says, my last article is coming out, right, goes into further depth on this. Many of the things I'm saying assume a number of background theological beliefs that obviously many don't share with me.

But in the footnotes, I will speak to these background issues, at least to make them more visible. And he tells what that's gonna be. So basically he's saying, I got an article coming out. I'm gonna address this further.

And so my response was just that I look forward to it. And he liked it. He liked my comment when I said I look forward to it. And so I think that was a very pleasant exchange, but honestly, like, I don't think I, we're talking past each other.

I don't think Keller was going to the root issues of what I was bringing up. Now, interestingly, this is, he tweets later. This is last night. This is actually like this morning. It was after midnight.

He tweeted, where is it? Maybe it wasn't after midnight. I'm looking at a different tweet here. Hold on. All right, so he does it again. This is after a lot of this, after much of our discussion. He tweets out, talking about oppression, justice, et cetera, doesn't make one a Marxist.

It makes one a student of the Bible. So he doubles down on that. To which, again, I've already given you my critique, but like, talk about like not engaging the actual issues here. And talk about not ever giving an explanation for the quote on Marx and on followers of Marx.

And today he's putting out more on, he says, if you're looking for longer treatment from tweets yesterday, I go into more detail here. And so, and I've read this article. I did a whole review on this article.

So he's been, this is clearly, this has been on his mind both yesterday and today. And again, I think he was respectful. I appreciate it. I think it was a good back and forth. Now, I'm just a dude. Like I'm, I am a guy making videos for my wife's laundry room and have my little side business I do.

And I just wanna be a faithful guy in the community I live in. And that's kind of, that's my shtick. I'm not looking to be in Tim Keller's circles. In fact, I was talking to someone about this yesterday.

I don't wanna be a celebrity. I don't wanna be a celebrity. I know, and I'll tell you guys this, unless the Lord does a real work on my heart, like I can't handle it. My pride, I don't think, I couldn't handle that level.

I would just, something, God would have to do a real work on me. But not only that, I just don't have a desire to be at that level. I like to analyze things. I like to write. I like to write music. That's my favorite thing, really.