Warning for Black and Brown and White Social "Justice" Christians

Witnesses and Evidence for Accusations

Hi, my name is Adam Robles and today I wanted to do a video as a warning to my black and brown brothers and sisters in Christ. Really it applies to anybody who is on the side of sort of social justice and all this kind of thing in the Christian community.

And it's an important warning so I hope you hear my heart. I worry sometimes about some of the attitudes and some of the perspectives that I see on that side. But I really wanted to give this warning because I think it applies very greatly.

What I see a lot of is articles in various magazines and blogs that make a lot of accusations against white people, essentially. And usually they're not specific. Usually it's not like, hey, this pastor is doing this.

Usually it's very vague in general. It says something about the white church. It'll say the white church is racist or the white church is prejudiced in some way. And it's very squishy definitions and things like that.

But it's still an accusation. And I wanted to talk about that because the Bible sets a standard in the law about having witnesses and evidence for an accusation. So no accusation is proven until it has two or three witnesses.

And that was the Old Testament standard. But Paul the Apostle applies that standard to the church. And I want to switch the screen here and show you this. This is 1 Timothy, actually I meant to stay in 1 Timothy 5.

So let's go back to 1 Timothy 5. And here's what it says about elders. In verse 19 it says, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. So that's important.

So if you're going to charge an elder with something, you need to have evidence. You need to have proof that the elder's actually done it. Or Paul the Apostle says, don't even entertain such an accusation.

And that's very important. That's the exact opposite of listen and believe. And so biblically speaking, listen and believe is a very bad way to determine if an accusation has merit or if it has value.

And so all these accusations, all these articles I see written that says the white church did this, the white church did that, that might not be an accusation against a specific elder, but it's still an accusation against a class of elders.

And so you need to have evidence. You need to have two or three witnesses to demonstrate what you've said is actually true. It has to be more than just storytelling. And this is the thing. A lot of what I see in the social justice community, it really elevates storytelling above everything else.

So as long as my perspective is that you're racist, then you need to listen to me. And that's not enough. You need to prove it. You can't just say, well, it looks racist to me. And it appears like it might be racist to me.

That's just not enough. And I want to, this is my warning. I want to take you to a different passage. This is Deuteronomy chapter 19. And this is talking about the civil law. This is talking about criminal law.

And here's what it says about this, right? So again, first of all, here in verse 15, it says a single witness shall not suffice against a person. So again, you need two or three witnesses that you need corroborating evidence to establish a charge.

And here's what it says. It says in verse 18, it says, the judges shall inquire diligently. And if the witness is a false witness and is accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as you meant to do to his brother.

And again, this is something else that, that really proves that listen and believe is bad because the witnesses need to be examined by the judges. And so if you make an accusation against a brother and it turns out you're a false witness, that the accusation is unfounded.

Then what the law says is that whatever penalty would have happened to the person you were accusing, that penalty should happen to you. And so that really de-incentivizes false accusations because it's not like you get Scott free when there's, when there's a false accusation, a lot of times in our culture, nothing happens to the accuser, right?

In God's law and God's justice, that's not how it works. Instead, the accuser, the person who accused falsely gets the penalty that would have happened to the accusee. And so, um, in this case, you know, all these articles, all of these people that are making these accusations against the white church, well, you know, here's the thing.

If you prove that the white church or a specific pastor or a class of pastors was asked, acting in a racist way or a discriminatory way, what I would say is, well, those pastors should be removed. They shouldn't be pastors anymore because, um, being discriminatory, showing partiality is unacceptable for a Christian.

And so if they don't repent, if they continue to do it, they should be removed from the office of pastor. Well, according to the biblical standard, if you're going to make accusations and you have no evidence for it, you cannot establish it.

In fact, you have, if there's evidence contrary to it, that shows that what you said is false, it's a false witness. Well, what I would say is you should be removed from your pastorate. So here's the thing.

This is a warning. I have no power to remove anyone from a pastorate, obviously, but if you're going around making false accusations, accusations that you have no idea whether they're true or not, you have no evidence for it.

In fact, you know, it's just, it's just something you feel. You just think it's true, but you don't have any evidence for it. If that's you, you need to step down. You need to step down. That's the biblical standard.

We can't just go around making accusations all this way, all this, you know, this way and that without any evidence. It's just our feelings that that's not acceptable for a Christian. That is unacceptable for a pastor to do.

And so I would caution you if this is, if this is what you're doing. I mean, I've seen a lot of articles and I see very little evidence and I, I'm not going to say you don't have evidence because I don't know that.

But I would imagine if you did, you would provide it in these articles. And I just barely ever see anything even close to that. So I would caution you if you're writing blog articles, if you're producing videos about how discriminatory the white church is and how racist the white church is, and you're not providing evidence and you don't really have any, I would, I would probably stop doing that.

And I would really consider, am I called to be a pastor? That's my warning. I hope you take it seriously. God bless.