Evangelism Prof. Assumes Some Soft CRT

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Gonna do a quick episode, super quick, because I got a busy week and I actually was not planning on doing one, but then

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I thought I can't not do one because this is the week that Social Justice Goes to Church comes out and I need to talk about that.

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Also, there's a conference on Monday I wanted to remind you all about. So I'm gonna do those two things, those two announcements first, and talk about that.

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And then I'm gonna do a very quick kind of, well, show you what a response would look like to what some may consider to be an innocuous statement made by a professor.

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This professor happens to be at Liberty University, which is social justice driven, in a sense at least.

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But I think a lot of people, you know, when they hear it, they wouldn't immediately think that.

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And they would, because we're so used to so many extreme statements, we would just let it pass by.

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And it's a good example of what we're hearing in common parlance everywhere around us.

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This is what we're hearing. And so I wanted to respond to something that you're gonna hear probably just in your everyday life.

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And so that won't take long, but first the announcements. Number one, yeah, Social Justice Goes to Church came out on, well, it's supposed to come out on the 6th.

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I guess people were getting it before then. I don't know how that works. Amazon sent it to some people that were getting it like on the 3rd.

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And then I haven't received my shipment yet as the author, which is interesting. The publisher just connected with me and said that COVID, I guess, has restricted the publishing company or the printer company that's printing it.

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And they can't get them out as quickly as they normally would which makes complete sense.

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But I guess if you order it on Amazon, for some reason you get it quicker that way. I don't know how that works. So if you want it, if you want the book, if you want it in your hand, you gotta go to Amazon.

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But if you want an autograph copy, what I would say is a very reasonable price. I think they're selling it for 16 bucks on Amazon.

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And I'm charging $15 for an autograph copy plus $5 shipping, so $20 total. The only catch is you're gonna probably have to wait about three weeks because I have to get my shipment in and then

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I can send it to you. So there's two ways to get it. And you can use both ways. I mean, preferably, get the

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Kindle version, get the Audible version. By the way, I don't know if the Audible version's out yet. There is an Audible version. Get the print version, you know, and get the autograph.

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Get all of them, you know, that's, of course, an author would say that about his own book. I wanna set the expectations for you a little bit.

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I know I've been announcing this, but I think a few people thought, oh, this is gonna be the answer to the whole social justice thing, like it's an apologetic.

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It's not an apologetic. This would appeal to someone on the left or the right who is just trying to understand what's happening.

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Really what it is is it's a history of how these ideas wound up in Christianity. And there's other ways that they did.

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My book is not the only way, the story that I tell. But it's a really important way, like crucial.

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And I haven't heard anyone else telling this story, to my knowledge. Phil Johnson might have been the closest to recognizing, hey, these guys sound like Jim Wallace.

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Well, yeah, there's a reason for that. Because Jim Wallace, but more than, it's not just Jim Wallace.

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Ron Sider and Richard Mao and John Perkins and Samuel Escobar, and those guys on.

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All these guys from the 60s and 70s influenced the current crop of evangelicals. So I examined them.

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I show you, here's how they synchronized the new left ideas, the Marxist ideas of their time with Christianity.

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And here's how the current crop is doing it by looking back to them. And they cite them. It's not a secret.

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I mean, it's all out there publicly. You just gotta look for it, which I did. And yeah, Russell Moore and David Platt and Tim Keller.

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And the list goes on of people who have been relying on these late 60s, early 70s originators of the first wave of social justice, at least new left -inspired social justice in the church.

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So that should be helpful for you in understanding the times we live in. Now, right now,

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I am working on an apologetic. And I am tracing the secular route. I just got finished. I'm almost done with a whole entire chapter going from French Revolution thinking and Rousseau up to the present.

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And how did this winding path make its way to us? And then I'm gonna be starting on some chapters where I explain how this synchronized and how to respond to it.

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And that should be very helpful. This is something that needs to get out there. I know there's been some other books that have been helpful that have tried to respond in this regard.

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I, in my personal opinion, I just, I wanted to come at it from a little bit of a different angle.

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And so that's what I'm doing right now. So we'll see how far we get. I'm hoping, I thought maybe

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I can get this second book out before the election. I don't think that's gonna happen. Realistically, probably before Christmas though.

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That's what I'm shooting for. So that's what's going on. Here's the announcement. Here's the big thing.

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If you have the book or read the book, like the book, please go to Amazon and leave a review of the book.

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The publisher contacted me this morning and asked me to ask you to do that. So if you, now if you don't like the book, don't leave a review.

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I guess that's how it works. I don't know how the algorithms treat books on Amazon, but I guess it's to the benefit of the author in the book and the publisher if people go and they leave positive reviews.

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So go ahead and go leave good reviews and if you liked it and I'd appreciate it.

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So that's the book. Second thing, what was this? Oh yes, conference.

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This weekend, well not this weekend, really this Monday, so Columbus Day, I'm gonna be doing three sessions on social justice.

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Some of it I haven't given before, so you're gonna want to, if you can, take part in some of that.

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There's an extended Zoom meeting with limited openings that you can register for or if you live in the upstate

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New York area, Poughkeepsie area you can come to hear me as well and the registration info is in the info section here of this video.

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So go to the info section and the websites are there. The websites for ordering the book are also there by the way. If you want an autographed copy, which would take you probably three weeks to get, gotta wait for my shipment, or if you want immediately to get the

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Amazon copy, you can go there. So those are the two announcements. Now, I wanted to do this.

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I thought about how to approach this because this is a very short video and I intended to do a short video, but I wanted to give you some content and I thought this is helpful.

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This is something that you just hear in modern parlance in your church or out in society.

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You're gonna hear people say these kinds of things and they don't seem too radical or extreme. They probably, for a lot of us, it just kind of goes right by us and if we disagree with it, we don't say anything, which sometimes is appropriate.

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But I thought, you know what, this is a good example of what people are hearing, what's trickling down to people in their normal everyday lives.

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And at first I was thinking, well, someone sent this to me. This is a professor at Liberty University and I was thinking, well,

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I'll sort of show the name of the professor and I'll expose, I don't, I'm not gonna do that and I have my reasons for that.

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I do name names. You know that, that I name names if you follow this podcast. One of the reasons,

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I think there's a few, but one of them is that this is so common, this thinking at this point.

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I don't wanna, I don't wanna be too hard on someone who's saying this.

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Now, granted, I think what they're, what you're about to hear is dangerous. I really think that, but it's, it's a danger that we're swimming in.

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It's just everywhere. And so people aren't necessarily always consciously thinking through what they're saying when they say these kinds of things.

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And so that's part of the reason I didn't wanna necessarily be too hard on this professor.

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But honestly, he and other professors at Christian institutions that are saying these kinds of things, they do deserve it in a way.

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They do deserve some, someone coming in and at least pointing out the errors of their ways because, well,

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I'll show you. I'll let you listen to the clip. But the effect that this has, it's just, disgusts me a bit.

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I'll be honest with you. So with that said, here, I'm gonna play it. And then

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I'm gonna show you, he's talking about a post that he made on Facebook. And he's talking about in classes, an evangelism class.

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Professor at Liberty University talking to young students coming in, wanna learn how to evangelize. So you can tell me what this has to do with evangelism.

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But here it is. The thing was, I said,

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I'm standing with my brothers and sisters, my black brothers and sisters that are hurting right now.

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Because I have a lot of friends that are really, we're having a hard time with this situation.

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I just put that on there. Standing with my brothers and sisters right now that are hurting.

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You would not believe what transpired on my social media after that.

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The first starts with a white dude who jumps on there and is like, you know, like, well, she shouldn't have been there.

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She wasn't in that drug house. She wasn't there in that drug house. She wouldn't have got shot. It was her fault. Sorry, wrong place at the wrong time.

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And then someone else comes on there and they're like, you know, you're a racist. Like, how dare you say something like that?

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And the next thing you know, it is like this explosion on my social media. And all

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I said was, hey, I'm just trying to get some empathy right now to some people that are hurting.

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But everyone has opinions. We're not listening. We're not talking. We're fighting. And it's about throwing your opinion.

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Listen, I don't care where you stand on the issue. All I'm asking that you do is listen more than you talk and show empathy to people and understand people's perspectives.

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You don't have to agree with their perspective, but you can try to understand it. Does that make sense?

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And this is a part of this cultural intelligence thing. We put things before Jesus and these things become a barrier to the cross.

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I don't wanna put anything between Jesus and between this person and the cross.

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I don't wanna put some opinion between this person and the cross. It's why I never talk about controversial things.

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I avoid them on social media as much as possible. The reason that I do that is I don't wanna put a barrier between someone and the cross.

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I want them to know that. I'm very cautious about that type of stuff. I don't wanna create this narrative that creates division and not unity.

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And let me tell you why. The reason why is because some of these things need conversations, they don't need conclusions.

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And when you just put a simple sentence or two on your social media saying this, it needs a conversation, not a conclusion.

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It needs a conversation, not a conclusion. And I would encourage you to think about this.

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If you wanna be a gospel witness to people, you are going to be witnessing the people who think differently than you, believe differently than you, process information differently than you.

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And if you can't approach them with empathy and a listening ear, it's gonna be really difficult to minister to those people.

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And you will find that you'll only be able to minister to people who are like you. And that will be a really disappointing reality to the impact of how

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God can use you for the gospel. Okay, so that's a professor of evangelism at Liberty University telling his -

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I talked to this a little bit, I'm gonna put this up and we'll close out with this song. I guess - Jesus said to the Samaritan woman. Okay, I'm gonna stop it right there.

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I don't know, that may be important stuff actually. Hold on, let me see. My main was, I said I'm standing with my brothers -

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Okay, no, that was it. So, how do we approach this?

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That may be confusing for some. You may think when you hear that, there's something off about that. I can't tell what it is though, because, well, we should listen.

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Yeah, that's respectful. And of course, we don't wanna create barriers for the gospel. And of course, we wanna minister to the gospel to everyone.

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So, but here's - Let me unwrap this for you a little bit. There's some assumptions behind this that, in my opinion, are dangerous.

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And here's the post, the original post I'll show you here that he's talking about. Standing with my black brothers and sisters that are hurting and confused right now,

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I am hurting with you. More needs to be done and praying for change. Hashtag Breonna Taylor.

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Okay, so what kind of change are we talking about? That's pretty vague, because the kind of change that Black Lives Matter is advocating is certainly not the kind of change that a professor at Liberty University should be advocating.

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So he doesn't say what kind of change. So that's super vague. Shouldn't clarity be part?

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I mean, if listening is part of a Christian response, should clarity also be a part of a Christian response?

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That's a question. I mean, if we're just gonna start taking attributes that we value, and where should this one stand?

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So there's vagueness there. Standing with my black brothers and sisters that are hurting and confused right now.

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So what he's doing is he's trying to say, I'm showing solidarity with them.

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And he assumes that they're an entire group, it's just black brothers and sisters. So Christians who happen to be black are in this group that are hurting and confused.

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He just lumps them all. They're all hurting. They're all confused. And I'm with them.

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I'm hurting with them too. Now, you have to wonder why would they be hurting and why would they be confused about the death of Breonna Taylor?

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What would be hurting or confusing about that for them? Well, it would be hurting for them, because obviously no police officers came to all the houses of every black

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Christian, right? So why would they be hurting from this? Well, because he's assuming that there's some kind of group thing going on, that they have some kind of an attachment to Breonna Taylor and the situation because of their social power status or their skin color or something of that nature, some external factor.

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And so he's assuming that, lumping them all into one category, validating what they believe, what he thinks they believe, which is that they're confused about this situation and hurting about it.

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So he's validating you have a right to basically be hurt and a right to be confused. In fact, I'm trying to join in with you to do that same thing, to hurt with you.

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And he's saying, he's basically validating that. And then of course saying more needs to be done to change.

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And the reason I say clarity is important here, and it's not given on the change thing is because we wanna avoid the appearance of evil.

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When you have in secular circles right now, the idea that whites need to be allies, which is showing solidarity, which is essentially means change in the sense of defunding the police or police reform of some kind, or taking down historical artifacts or completely redoing the way that history is taught or decolonizing your theology, or these are all the things that we hear coming from people influenced by critical race theory.

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That's the kind of change that they're advocating. So what kind of change is this professor at Liberty University advocating?

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He doesn't say. So that's why it's important. If you're gonna be clear about the kind of change that you want, you should probably separate yourself from things that would be not

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Christian at all, right? And we've gone over why those things aren't Christian on this podcast before. So those are the issues with such a short post, but so much is packed into that, so many assumptions.

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And I don't frankly think these are Christian assumptions to think that there's a group thing going on and that because Breonna Taylor was shot, that necessarily that means it must have been motivated by racism.

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That's really the underlying assumption. It must have been motivated by racism, and that's why all these other black brothers and sisters are hurting right now and have the right to be hurt is because they too could have been

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Breonna Taylor. They too have some attachment to this because it's a power relationship. It's categories of police against minority.

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And so if you're... And of course, that's what's being said everywhere else right now. So if he meant something different, which

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I don't know how he would not have meant that. He asked to assume that to make the statement, but if he did, he would have really had to specify it and be very careful.

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I mean, again, this is a guy who's teaching evangelism. He's a professor at the largest Christian university in the country. Now, here's some responses.

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So here's one, and he said a white guy just jumped on there, right? And created this whole thing.

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I'm assuming it's this guy. This person says, and why is it black brothers and sisters?

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We are all one. We all mourn with her unfortunate loss. Not just blacks as a youth pastor, you should be talking about unity among all, not just one race.

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But since my comment was deleted previously, so I don't know what the previous one was. Look at the facts, not what the media is forcing down your throat.

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He's exactly right. Yeah, she shouldn't have gotten killed. But when the police knocked on a no knock warrant and no response, and then the police entered her house forcefully and her boyfriend started shooting, cops are gonna return fire, and she was unfortunately caught.

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Now he's exactly right. He actually understands what happened. He looked into the case. There's no evidence that this was motivated by racism.

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None. Not that if you have it, you better show it now. But it's assumed that this was just, it was a racially motivated shooting.

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All right? And to assume that, to go down that path, which overturns due process, which overturns justice, because now you're charging someone with a hate crime essentially.

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You're saying this was the motivation when you don't have the proof. That is not a Christian thing to do. Right? And to make this kind of post assumes that in some way.

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It has to. Here's another, now maybe this was, I don't think this was the person, but here's another one.

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Here's a thorough, and I mean exhaustive timeline of events done by a pretty objective source. They've renewed thousands of documents. So he's saying, here's the facts.

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If you wanna know what happened in this case, here's the facts. Someone else, tragic. She would be alive if her boyfriend never shot at police.

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Well, he's right about that. She would have. So these are all facts. this professor at Liberty University takes people who are saying these kinds of things, and then he browbeats them.

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Says he accuses them of standing in the way of the gospel. And then he detaches himself from, because what he says is that it's politics.

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If you bring it, because they're the ones that are bringing in the politics, not him apparently. It's these other people who are trying to correct the record.

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Because they rightly, I think, assumed that or they noticed that this professor is making assumptions which actually guilt these police officers in ways that they should not be guilted.

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Now maybe there's ways they should be guilted, but not because of racism. And so they're assuming a narrative, which frankly has burned down cities and destroyed businesses and ripped down history.

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And the list is going on now and maybe even electing Biden. We'll see. But that's what's going on.

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So he's supporting that narrative to some degree. And people are saying, hey, wait a minute, that's not the right narrative. The assumptions you're building your post on, you're saying it's empathy and you're validating their fear and stuff, but there is no reason for them to be afraid based on Breonna Taylor.

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In fact, what you should be doing probably is telling people, because you're an evangelism teacher, you're someone who's supposed to be teaching the

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Bible, you should probably be telling them not to fear. Hey, the media is telling you this, don't fear. Number one, don't fear because this wasn't, we don't have any evidence this was motivated by racism.

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Number two, don't fear because Jesus Christ, because you have a hope, you have an eternal hope.

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And so ultimately, that would be the way I would think an evangelist in basic terms would approach this.

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But instead what you get, he enters politics. This post is a political post, okay? Make no bones about it.

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This is a political post that this professor is putting up there. But he's categorizing it as not political. No, this isn't political.

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This is just me trying to listen and show empathy. If you do those things, that's not political. But if you enter and show the correct record of chronological events that happen that led up to this that show that there really wasn't racism, if you do that, then you're entering politics.

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And if you enter politics, here's where the pietism comes in. He browbeats you. You're standing in the way of the gospel.

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And he's telling students this. He's teaching them how to think this way. And the scary part here is when he says, we need to have a conversation, not a conclusion about what due process, about what actually transpired.

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That sounds very postmodern, a conversation, but not a conclusion. What if there is a conclusion? And what if the conclusion is this wasn't racism?

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What if the conclusion is it happened because they went to the wrong house and the boyfriend shot at them?

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What if that's the conclusion? But as Christians, I guess you can't comment on the justice system.

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I mean, this is messed up. What do we do with our Old Testament? What do we do with all the due process that's there?

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Did God just give it to us so we don't have to ever apply or use it? It's an evangelism professor, guys, at Liberty University.

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Now, you probably thought when you listened to that, and I showed you the post, you probably thought initially, it's not horrible.

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But now when you start thinking through the assumptions that this professor is making, it is horrible.

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It really is. And he's not the only one making it. This is the kind of thinking that is overturning due process in this country.

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It is muzzling Christians who should be influential in the political realm and saying that if they do that, then they're involved in politics and they're somehow gonna offend someone so that they won't be able to share the gospel.

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They couldn't share the gospel with them. I mean, how about confronting someone for their sin? How about telling them, look, you're accusing these police officers falsely.

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That's a lie. That's wrong. That's false witness. That's, you know what, but Jesus died so he could be forgiven of that.

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Wouldn't that be what an evangelism professor would do? But instead he's saying, don't address that sin. And so you probably thought, man, this sounds innocuous, but it's not.

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It's not innocuous. It just sounds that way because they're so used to it. So I hope that was helpful in responding to the woke slash social justice movement from someone who

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I don't even know them, but they may not even be thinking of themselves as woke or social justice, but the narrative they're supporting is deadly and dangerous.

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And I really beg you to pray for our institutions, our Christian institutions. We are falling fast.

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I mean, this is the institution Jerry Falwell set up, and this is what we're getting now, at least in some quarters there.

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So I should probably note at the end here, Liberty University is a big place. Don't think this is just,

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Liberty University is what I just showed you. It's a big place. And I don't think it's fallen to social justice in every sense of the word at all, but you need to pray for these places.

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That's why I'm asking you to do that. So I appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed that little episode and go get the book.

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Go get Social Justice Goes to Church. Links are in the info section. Sign up for the conference if you want to. Link is in the info section, and hopefully we'll see you next week.