I Was Wrong About "SJWs" - Post Conversation Thoughts

So, last night I had a conversation with the brothers at Native Speaks, the

YouTube channel, so go check out their channel. I don't know when they're going to post it, but that's cool. But anyway, the conversation went really well.

I thought that a lot of the key differences were put out there, which is good.

I mean, that's what the whole point of these kinds of conversations are. But also there were some agreements, which I was completely expecting, given their presentations.

And actually, they did get me to sort of want to reconsider two things about what

I say regarding social justice. Don't worry, I'm not going soft or anything. But there were two areas that I thought

I should reconsider, and then there was one area that I walked away from the conversation feeling more resolved than ever.

Anyway, so the first thing that I wanted to sort of reconsider about my videos is at one point,

KB, this is the brother that was talking about reparations, and he said it four times in a row.

He said, I'm not in favor of reparations the way that most people understand them, you know, like black people getting a payment from the government or whatever.

And then he would make the, every time he said that, he would then make the case for biblical restitution and why we shouldn't be afraid of reparations.

And so I thought that was kind of funny. I thought it was kind of a confusing part of his presentation. And so I was making a joke about it.

And so I think at one point, KB even brought up the joke that I said, I know you're not making the case for reparations, but you kind of are though.

And that was intended to be a joke. I believe, KB, and I said this numerous times in my video,

I believe you that you don't believe in reparations the way most people understand them, but you have to understand that it's confusing.

And so that was a joke, and it was intended to be a joke sort of like in the scriptures where God says, answer a fool according to his folly.

And then in the next verse, he says, don't answer the fool according to his folly. And you know, that's supposed to teach something and it's true.

And they don't contradict, even though they seem like they might contradict, but it's supposed to be funny.

It's like, well, what are you talking about? You know? And so that's, that's kind of what I was saying. I was intending to teach why reparations as we understand them is not biblical restitution.

And so even though I didn't understand what KB was actually looking for, or I'm sorry, arguing for, but I did believe him.

I want that to be totally clear. I do believe KB is not interested and not supporting reparations as they're typically understood.

I believe him, but at the same time, and I think they admitted this on this, there are people out there that do advocate for it.

They seem to think that it's not that many. I think it's quite a bit of people who do advocate for reparations.

In fact, there are some Christians who support what's going on in South Africa right now. Unbelievably.

But anyway, so, so that, that's, I want to clear that up. And so my, my point is though, that I'm going to try to consider more about sort of the jokes that I tell, and I'm not going to stop joking, obviously, but, but I want to make sure to be,

I want to be understood, right? And so if something is confusing, I'll do my best to sort of edit that kind of stuff out or edit it in such a way that it's clear what

I'm saying. Because if, if, if they were confused about what I was saying regarding KB, if they didn't think that I believed him about his position of reparations, that's probably other people didn't, didn't understand that either.

And so that's something I'm going to reconsider. And there are definitely things that I have in my videos that I'm like, eh,

I could have said that a little bit clearer and I don't edit it out just because of lack of time. You know what I mean? Um, but, but I'll, I'll reconsider that stuff.

And I think I should, because if I'm confusing, I want to make, I don't want to be confusing. I want to, I want to be understood, put it that way.

Anyway, the second thing that I, I'm reconsidering after this is also kind of related to that being understood, but I think it's a little more serious.

Um, the, the brothers took some serious issue with my use of the term social justice warrior.

In fact, uh, in the video, you'll, you'll see this, they, they spent a lot of time trying to get me to define what a social justice warrior is.

And I wasn't really interested in doing that because to me, uh, it's not really a, uh, it's not like a, it's not like a scientific term, right?

Like there's not a clear cut definition. It's very kind of, uh, it's, it's, it's kind of a, there's a feel to the word, not really a clear definition in my opinion.

I'm sure some people have clear definitions, but, but I don't have one myself. And so it's, for me, it's like calling somebody a liberal, right?

Because everyone to the left of me is a liberal. Uh, everyone to the right of me is, is a conservative.

Um, but to someone who's on the right of me, I might be a liberal. So these are squishy terms in some ways.

I think they're still useful. I'm not saying they're not useful, um, but they're, they can be squishy terms.

And so, uh, I can, I can understand that and, and, and you know, they obviously take offense to it or some people take offense to it and it's intended to be a bit of a pejorative term.

Um, and so here's what I'm thinking, right? I'm not, if you want to use the word SJW going forward, social justice warrior, uh, go right ahead.

I don't think it's a sin, uh, necessarily. Um, and you might have a much more clear idea about what, what you're saying when you say it.

Um, but because of my personal unwillingness to really make a, make a clear definition for it,

I'm not so sure I'll be using that term anymore. And, and again, I don't think I'm holier than you if you use it, I listen,

I'll still share your stuff. Um, I don't think that's a problem at all because I think most of us kind of know what we mean when we say the term social justice warrior, most of us kind of just understand.

Um, but I, I, I, I do think it's a fair criticism that again, if I want to be understood by both the people that are on my side of this issue and the people that are on the other side of this issue,

I should try to be understood as best as I can. And um, if social justice warrior is a roadblock to being understood, then

I won't use the term anymore because there are people who use that term in an inappropriate way. I get that. I get that.

And I'm not accountable for that, obviously. Um, but I do want to be understood. And so, um, yeah,

I don't know if I'll use the term as much anymore or at all. Um, we'll see, we'll see what happens. But, uh, but those are two things that I, that I have reconsidered because I do want to be understood.

Um, now all that aside, all the, all the squishy, uh, you know, feel stuff aside, cause it was a good conversation, right?

So you'll see it eventually. Um, here's where I, here's what I walked away from the conversation with KB and Amin more convinced than ever.

And I think they might be surprised by, by, by what I'm about to say, but, but here's what I think. This is very clearly, very, very clearly a political movement more than anything.

And they might be surprised to hear me say that because they didn't really talk about politics and I'm not accusing them of being

Democrats or, uh, socialists or whatever it is, right? I'm not accusing them of that.

So if you, let's just make that perfectly clear. Um, however, there is absolutely a political focus to this whole thing.

And, and, and actually at one point towards the end, uh, KB said that, you know, we're not, you and I are not, are not, uh, legislators, we're not governors.

So we're not really, you know, most of the work that we're talking about, most of the stuff that we're talking about is on the ground level, grassroots, it's not really involved with the state and the politics of it.

And I don't think that that's actually true at all. I think that the ground level is where politics derives from, right?

So the grassroots, that's, I mean, we're vote, we're not only do we vote, I mean, I don't vote, but, uh, you might be surprised about that, but not only do people vote, but they're also advocating policies and, and really the, the, the, the politicians just do whatever they think is going to get them elected.

And so if the people are calling for this social justice stuff, all this proportional representation, blah, blah, blah, um, they're going to go with it too.

I mean, that's what we see going on in Europe. That's what we see going on all over the place. And so, uh, it's not true that this is not political and there's nothing wrong with that.

Right? So, so here's, this is the thing, this is the thing. Um, the gospel of Jesus Christ should affect your politics.

There's no question about that. That's why people get all uppity when, when, when, when, when, when Christians advocate voting for a pro abortion, it's like, what are you talking about?

How dare you do that? That goes against the scripture. And it does. You see, here's the thing saying that the, that Jesus Christ is the

King of Kings and Lord of Lord. He's the King of all the Kings. That is a political statement and it should affect how you engage in politics.

So there's nothing wrong with that. But what we're seeing though is, um, is, is the social justice movement as a whole.

They want to change how Christians vote. And the question is, are they doing it with biblical warrant or not?

And that's something that came out at the, towards the end of our conversation as well. I mean, at one point, um, it seemed to, it seemed to me that they, that the two brothers were advocating that look, any kind of sin, any kind of sin in the

Bible that we have the power to regulate, we should regulate. And I fundamentally disagree with that because God is very clear about which sins are crimes and which sins aren't.

So for example, racism shouldn't be a crime. Racism shouldn't be a crime. It's not a crime in the scripture.

So how could we say it should be a crime today? And they made some arguments about the trajectory of the scripture and stuff like that.

And I think that stuff is super dangerous because you can make all kinds of arguments based on the trajectory of stuff.

I mean, I've got, I've got friends that don't eat meat because they think that God is putting death under his feet. And so therefore, should we make eating meat illegal?

Some people would say yes. And, but, but the thing is we can't, we don't do it that way. We don't make up our own law and call it

God's. What we do is we apply the general equity of the law of God and we don't get creative with it.

We don't, we don't add things to it. We don't take away from it. We apply the general equity of God's law as best we can today.

And that's what justice is. That's the only way to understand what justice is. And so this is a political movement.

There is no question about that. All of the gospel centered people from the gospel coalition that say they're, they're, they're, they're not really political.

They're all not telling you the truth and they might not even know it, but, but think of the things that they are advocating are absolutely politically motivated things.

And so we need to be on guard because you know, politics is an important part of our lives.

It's a, it's a main way that we engage with society and we do not want to derive our politics or our ideas of justice for any other source besides the general equity of God's law.

That is the only way that we can be just. And that is the only way that we will thrive, you know, and, and, and here's the thing,

United States has not done that perfectly, but it's done that pretty well in some areas.

And so we need to keep those areas going like the free market and things like that. Uh, and we need to fix the things that we're not doing well, such as abortion, such as slavery back in the past.

We've, we've, we are, we're, we are fixing some of these things. And so hopefully God will put all this under his feet and we'd have a glorious future ahead.