Roasting the Social Justice Inquisitors at the #MLK50 Conference ERLC (Part 2)

All right, let's continue this amazing panel discussion from the MLK50 Conference, brought to you by the ERLC and the Gospel Coalition. Let's jump right back into it. Oh, actually, before I do, this is the guy who's the Director of Hispanic Leadership and Development.

Identity Politics and the “Hispanic” vs. “Latino” Debate

And what I found out was that there is a real crisis. I remember in the last video, I said, well, I think the correct term is Latino. Well, apparently, there's a huge debate about whether you should use Hispanic or Latino, and there's no one word that fits all.

And so, really, the question that I have for, this CNN article calls it an identity crisis, as if the word itself is your identity. This is all crazy nonsense anyway, but what I found out is that if you are a Latino and you go to Southeastern Seminary, that you are actually oppressed because they don't have a dean or a director of Latino leadership and development.

They only have one for Hispanics. And so, Southeastern, it's time to step your game up. I mean, you don't wanna be racist, do you? Let's just, let's stop being crazy for a second and jump into, well, I guess we're not gonna get to stop being crazy.

Begins to see their sinful thoughts, and again, the layers on their thinking begin to kind of.

This is, remember, he's talking about the sinful microaggression thoughts that people have when they say, oh, you speak really good English, or, oh, you're really educated. Those two things that aren't insults, but he's decided to take them as insults.

That's what he's talking about.

Begin to be peeled away. What we do is we engage those people. We really do them no favors by not saying anything, but a kind, gentle, Christian way. You now begin to ask questions to expose their thoughts about other people of other races.

And it's great because I think what we're beginning to see is that there's people who deliver unintended blows to other people, but it's, you know, obviously it's not intentional. So drawing some attention to that in a way that is redemptive is so important.

You know, just before this, we were talking about the difference between a cut and a blow. I've had several, well, I've had two knee surgeries, unfortunately, and someone I would consider a friend literally knocked me out and then cut me a couple times in order to heal me, in order to fix me.

And so there was a cut that he was delivering, but it actually brought healing. And so I think oftentimes we think about a cut as being

His friend knocked him out and then cut him? What kind of a friend is that? I guess he might be talking about a surgeon.

Had the surgeon knock him out? A negative thing, but it can actually be a very redemptive thing. But by contrast, a blow is saying these, perhaps, same things with a different tone, with a different intention, which is primarily to condemn.

And not to be restored as. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Didn't he just say that these were unintentional blows? And then didn't he just say, he just said there that it was a different intention.

It was a condemning intention. I might be mishearing that. Let's just see if I'm right.

So drawing some attention to that in a way that is redemptive is so important. I don't know if I'll be able to find it. There's people who deliver unintended blows to other people. Yeah, unintended blows.

Obviously, it's not intentional. It's a microaggression. So drawing some attention to that in a way that is redemptive is so important. You know, just before this, we're talking about the difference between a cut and a blow.

Okay, cut and blow. I've had several, well, I've had two knee surgeries, unfortunately, and someone I would consider a friend literally knocked me out and then cut me a couple times in order to heal me, in order to fix me.

And so there was a cut that he was delivering, but it actually brought healing. And so I think oftentimes we think about a cut as being a negative thing, but it can actually be a very redemptive thing.

But by contrast, a blow is saying these perhaps same things with a different tone, with a different intention, which is primarily to condemn and not to be restorative. So anybody else as far as?

There's like a confusion there. I think he might've misspoke. I don't think he meant what he said, because he said on the one hand that these microaggressions are like these unintentional blows that hurt.

So they're unintentional, but they're blows. They still, you still hurt them. But then he said that these blows are actually, they're different intentions. They're intended to condemn. Those two examples that that director of Hispanic leadership or whatever, those weren't intended to condemn.

That's not the, in fact, he made a point to say that they weren't intentional, but he still decided to take offense to it. It's this weird confusion there. I don't really understand.

Urgency, Patience, and Remaining in Relationship

Balancing this urgency, but also this patience.

Yeah, I think we could definitely have an urgency to want to engage in these conversations and issues, but have the patience to remain in the relationships after that initial engagement. I think often when we first engage, we feel like the issues should be, just be fixed by this eloquent panel discussion or conference, but like, or even Twitter feed.

But I think often we fail to remain and be patient with one another in reality that people are going to make mistakes in the things that they say. And are you willing to remain with them even beyond those mistakes, which takes actual relationships and not just kind of shooting off at the cuff to people you don't know on Twitter about these issues and the things that are going on.

But who do you actually know in your real life that you can actually walk these things out with so that you can have a changed perspective? And that takes patience, but I think we do because we love the gospel.

The gospel speaks to these issues. We should have the urgency to engage.

Well said, well said, brother. Yeah, I think it's difficult to balance the two because you want to tell the truth, right? You don't want to let that thing go that you heard or that comment or that remark.

But at the same Are we still talking about these comments? What? Those comments were offensive. They don't need to be repented of. They don't need to be criticized or whatever. You could just let that kind of stuff go.

Oh man, we're living in a world where saying something nice about someone can be actually an insult, even if you didn't mean it, even if you were completely genuine, even if you were completely being nice about it, but you could take it as an insult.

Yeah. You know, there was this, in the Matt Chandler speech at this conference, one of the things I noticed about Matt Chandler is that very often he would describe black or brown people as beautiful.

So he would say something like, he would say, I know so many beautiful African-American people who are planting churches and this and that. And he would always say it like that. And according to this standard in this panel, that could be a microaggression because what are you saying, Matt Chandler, that you don't think that African-Americans are supposed to be beautiful?

That's actually not a compliment according to this standard. It's a little creepy to me, to be perfectly honest with you. Like, imagine if he was talking about white people, he's like, I know so many beautiful white pastors.

Like, ooh, that's a little weird, dude. Like, what are you actually saying? But you see, we shouldn't use those standards to judge him. He didn't mean it like that. He didn't mean it to sound very paternalistic, like the way your mom would say you're attractive.

He didn't mean it like that. So why would we call him out on that? I mean, I think it's a little creepy and weird, but you don't have to go after the fact and be like, Pastor Matt, you need to really repent of that sin.

That's not a sin. It's creepy. It's weird. I wouldn't say it, but that doesn't mean it's a sin. You could interpret that as a microaggression. And then here we are having a real life discussion in a Christian setting about microaggression, the stupidest concept in the history of mankind.

Grow up, man. In time, I have students come to me all the time and say, Dr. Mullins, we learned about all these things in your American Lit class, and we talked about this history of racial strife in the United States, and I was talking about these things with my friends back home or with my parents even.

You see how this infects everything?

There's not a single subject that's not going to be completely taken over by cultural Marxism. He's in his American Lit class and they are going to talk about racial issues. You go into a math class, you are going to talk about racial issues.

You go to a science class, you are going to talk about this kind of stuff. This is infecting everything. You won't be able to do anything without thinking through these racial lenses. That's their goal.

That's the whole point of this.

Storytelling as the Main Strategy in Social Justice Conversations

Over the break, and they said, this is just because you're young. It's just because you're generation. You don't really need to think about these issues. You just need to focus on the gospel. And they come to me and they tell me this, and they say, so what do I say?

I got into this argument with my mother or with my friend, and it did not go well. And the couple of things that I always say to them are first, stop trying to win. In other words, in every conversation, stop trying to hit a home run in that conversation.

Yeah, you should also stop trying to use logic. Just use emotions. That's the way to go. It's not about reason. It's not about logic. It's not about evidence. It's not about what's really happening. All it's really about is using your story to tell them about how awful that things are and how sad it makes you.

And that's how you do it. That's how you win.

Right, but that doesn't mean that you don't tell the truth, that you don't address the issue. It means you take what they give. So an example of this is I have a friend going way back, and we kind of argue about these issues all of the time.

And so one day, he randomly says to me, hey, I was thinking about, you're a literature professor. I was looking for some new books to read. What should I read? And I was like, all right, man. All right, well, you should read Invisible Man, right?

You should read Ralph Ellison. So in that moment, I knew I wasn't gonna change his whole world by anything that I could say. But he gave me something, and so I took it and gave him this suggestion.

And then the last thing that I would say in terms of balancing. Yeah, we don't choose books based on how good they are. We don't choose books based on anything except for this issue.

Why Testimony Is Not the Same as Preaching the Gospel

Urgency with patience is really similar to evangelism. If you're not sure how to talk to another person about the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is one thing that we're typically taught that we have, and that is our story.

Oh, I called it, bro. I knew it, I knew it.

That's how you do it. You don't have to know anything about it. You don't have to know if it's true or not. You don't have to know the logic, the reasons, the evidence. You don't need any of that. Just tell your story.

Did I not just call that? This is why we call this kind of stuff cultural Marxism. Because that is how you do it. I've never seen this video before. So this is my live reaction. But here's the thing. This is part of it.

In cultural Marxism, it's not about logic. It's not about reason. It's not about evidence. You don't have to do any of that. All you do is tell your story. And it's supposed to start to get the emotions flowing.

It's supposed to rob people of their thinking. That's what it's supposed to do. Look, I believe if you've experienced racism, so have I. I could tell you stories. You wanna hear stories? I could tell you stories about racism that I've personally experienced, okay?

Now, does that mean that I could just say, okay, because I have this story of racism, that means that America is systemically unjust. There's institutional racism. There's systemic racism. And you need to change.

You need to watch how you speak. And you need to change your whole life because I have a story. No. No. Look, if you don't know how to preach the gospel, your story isn't gonna do much. You have to actually know what the gospel is.

You have to actually preach. You have to actually know how to... Look, this is the thing. A lot of people will tell their testimony, right? And their testimony doesn't even mention Christ. What it'll say is something like, well, I used to be an alcoholic and then I found Jesus.

And then now I'm not an alcoholic anymore. That doesn't give them any information. That's actually not preaching the gospel. The gospel is a very specific, explicit thing. And it's something you do have to understand and know in order to tell somebody else.

Now, that might get them interested in it. That might get them interested in the gospel. Well, I was a drunk and now I'm not a drunk anymore. Yeah, that's compelling, but it's not the gospel, okay? It doesn't prove anything.

You haven't shown anyone the actual explicit real gospel when you tell a story like that. And in a similar situation, just because you have an experience of racism, someone said something to you or did something to you or treated you a certain way, that doesn't prove that everyone's racist.

And we are in these racist systems and these institutions that are just completely racist. It doesn't prove that at all.

And when people are asking you or you're having a contentious conversation about issues related to race, that is one thing that you can always come back to. You can narrate your own experiences and say, well, I don't have the answers to everything, but so-and-so asked me this question and I never thought about that before.

Or I read this book for a class and now all of a sudden I'm questioning some things. And I once had a student say to me, but I'm afraid that they're gonna ask me a question that I don't know the answer to.

And I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's definitely going to happen. You don't know the answer to everything. And he was like, well, what do I do? I said, well, you say, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that.

And I need to think about that some more. Let's both think about it. So in those moments, you don't wanna let it go, but you also can overreach and do more damage by kind of trying to hit a home run. Just take what they give you and tell your story.

Social Justice Strategy Is Borrowed, Not Biblical

That'll be where we'll end today. You know, look, if you're watching these videos and you're like guessing, well, how does he know what they're gonna say before they say it? Look, this is just the typical strategy.

And I'm not talking just about Christian circles. Most of the SJWs and the social justice, you know, champions that I've listened to are not Christians. But what I'm seeing is that the Christians are using the exact same strategy as the most radical leftist that you could imagine, the most crazy liberal YouTuber that you could imagine.

They're using the same strategies. You think that's accidental? That's not accidental. That's how this methodology works. That's how this strategy works. This social justice thing, it's not from the Bible.

It's deriving from somewhere else. And everyone is using these same strategies. And that's just how it is. Anyway, hope this was fun. It was fun for me and I'll see you next time.