A Review of The Very Good Gospel By Lisa Sharon Harper: Part I

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris, we're going to talk about a book today, it's a book review day by Lisa Sharon Harper called

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The Very Good Gospel and this is a listener generated episode meaning someone contacted me last year and said

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John would you please do this book and this is not an extremely popular book in more quote unquote conservative evangelical circles and I mostly focus on those circles but this is an important book

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I think to do and I'll give you some reasons for it as we proceed. This is a book that I think exemplifies where things are going and that's one reason, it is a book

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I think that clearly and consistently more than a lot of other books articulates the syncretization between Christianity and social justice and so even if you don't read this book or aren't familiar with Lisa Sharon Harper it is a book that is a good example of where social justice thinking leads and so I'm going to introduce you to Lisa Sharon Harper because I think actually she is kind of outside of that conservative evangelical circle, she does have

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I think more influence and she probably will have more influence as the years go by as conservative evangelicalism is less and less conservative, she'll probably have some influence there as well so we'll talk about all that.

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I wanted to let you know though about a sponsor for this podcast before we keep going and that is

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Now for some of you, you know, I think I announced it actually in my last podcast,

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I've been away for a little while and I have a lot of stuff to talk about, I know there's a lot of stuff going on right now and I want to acknowledge that,

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I know many have asked me to comment on various things, Southern Baptist related, just I think the big thing today is

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Elon Musk and this Twitter rejecting Elon Musk's offer to buy them and perhaps

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I will be able to get to talking about some of those things as the weeks progress, we'll see where things go but one of the unique things about conversations that matter and one of the things that I think is beneficial for people out there is book reviews and not just book reviews but speech reviews, blog reviews, sometimes we'll do biographical studies,

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I did a pretty in -depth one on Tim Keller and what I can do is share with you all the information that I'm looking at,

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I can distill it, I can give it to you and there'll be a link in the info section if you're a patron you'll be able to access the full

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PowerPoint for this but I can give you all the quotes, you'll see those on the screen, I'm going to give it to you clear as day, if you're watching, if you're listening,

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I'll quote everything to you and the goal of that is I want you to be able to think for yourself, to go to the source and I'm helping in that process,

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I'm doing some of the hard labor in getting all the information to you but I'm going to give you source information, primary source stuff and then you can make the determination.

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I'm going to give you my commentary but if you're talking to a friend, let's say you're in a Bible study or a small group and they want to use the very good gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper, you're about to listen to a podcast or two,

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I don't want to go past two but we may end up making this two podcasts, you're going to get some information about Lisa Sharon Harper, what do you do with that?

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You can go to your friend and say watch this, that usually doesn't go over as well in my opinion, from what

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I gather and this is just my hunch I guess, it's better when you are able to articulate reasons for objecting to something yourself or supporting something.

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If you can locate the source material, cite the source material, say this is what she says on this page and this is why

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I disagree or this is what she argues and this is why I don't think that's biblical, that is a much better way of approaching it because it really forces people to deal with the issue, deal with what the

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Bible teaches, deal with what Lisa Sharon Harper says and whether or not it's right or wrong or conforms to reason, that's what you want to focus on more than anything else.

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And so that's what I'm doing with this podcast and with so many others is I'm giving you the information that will help you in navigating something like this.

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And I have a number of other books that I do want to go over, in fact the next one might be the Jesus and John Wayne book,

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I've been putting that off for a while, I've read excerpts from it, I haven't actually read the whole thing and so I may do that and we may do something like that for Jesus and John Wayne, but for today we're going to do this book called

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The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper and here's what the front of the book looks like for those who are watching, it's called

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The Very Good Gospel, How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right, that's right, How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right and I'm on Lisa Sharon Harper's website right now, she introduces herself as a speaker, writer, activist and artist.

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And if you go to her about section on her website, lisasharonharper .com, I'm just going to give you the cliff notes here, but she's written a number of books including

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Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat, Left, Right and Christ, Evangelical Faith in Politics and Forgive Us, Confessions of a

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Compromised Faith and of course, The Very Good Gospel is her more popular work, it was recognized as the 2016

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Book of the Year by Inglewood Review of Books. So some of these titles sound almost like they could be

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Tim Keller books, right, there's no left or right, there's no Republican, Democrat, there's sort of this Christian position that transcends that, but guess what, this

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Christian position very much seems to be in favor of issues on the left.

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Lisa Sharon Harper is a columnist at Sojourners Magazine and Auburn Theological Seminary, Senior Fellow, she's appeared on, let me just give you a few of them,

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Fox News Online, NPR, Al Jazeera America, CNN Belief Blog, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, so now we're getting on into a really more emergent church in my mind, publications, but formerly

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Evangelical publications, supposedly relevant, and Essence Magazine, she writes extensively on Shalom and Governance, Immigration Reform, Healthcare Reform, Poverty, Racial, and all the rest of the stuff, mostly left leaning stuff.

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In fact, I think in The Very Good Gospel, you're not going to find even a reference to abortion, it's all stuff on the left she's concerned about, which was a little surprising,

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I thought at least she'd try to put something like that in there, but nope. She has a

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Master's Degree in Human Rights from Columbia in New York City and served as Sojourner's Chief Church Engagement Officer, and let's see, there's some of the relevant things here to know.

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So in 2014, she was involved in pushing for justice in Ferguson and in 2015, the healing process in Baltimore.

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She trained and catalyzed, and this is what it says, okay, let me just read this to you, she trained and catalyzed evangelicals in St.

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Louis and Baltimore to engage those issues. I think that, well,

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Ferguson would be the Michael Brown, I believe, right? And so she's on the ground and she's involved in community organization and all that kind of thing.

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If you remember from Barack Obama's run for the White House, what was he?

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He was a community organizer. Who was he close to? Pastor Jeremiah Wright. This was something that was, at the time, controversial.

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It's liberation theology. Well, what's liberation theology? And then we saw that clip of Jeremiah Wright over and over saying, basically, that God should curse

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America, and of course, not for the things that I think a lot of godly Christians today think, yeah,

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God's going to curse America for. So that was back then. Well, today, this is being mainstream.

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This kind of liberation theology has infiltrated, quote -unquote, conservative evangelical denominations and organizations, even though people are saying, oh, it's not happening.

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Yes, it is. It totally is. And I've seen it firsthand. It is definitely happening. And so I think

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Lisa Sharon Harper is a little bit further down the road than many in evangelical institutions. But look, she's trained.

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She's trained evangelicals to be activists. That's the whole point. I think what we've seen with Christian leaders, in particular pastors, is they've gone through a process in the last 100 years from, well, we're a pastor, to now we have to be a therapist or a psychologist, because people don't, in a secularized society, value pastors as much.

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They're going to their psychologists. So now pastors need to make sure that they know psychology so they can compete and try to maintain their authority and respect.

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And then there was the pastor as the manager. So the pastor runs the institution that everyone else in the

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Christian circle that goes to that church participates in. So whereas a century ago, even 50 years ago, even maybe 30 years ago, you would have voluntary associations you'd be part of.

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You go to church on Sunday, Wednesday perhaps. You would normally, you might have your bowling group or your

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Boy Scout group or whatever. And now, more and more, it's like all those needs must be met in the church.

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And so the pastor becomes the CEO of the company, of the social group that manages the

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Sunday school, and the Iwana, and the youth group, and the men's retreat, and the women's weekend, and just the list goes on for all the different organizations, ministries, social events.

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And so you have the pastor as a therapist, the pastor as the manager, and then the pastor or the

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Christian leader as the social justice activist or community organizer. That's all that is.

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And so I've seen this to some extent, even at the seminary I went to, there's a change in how a pastor is supposed to be.

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And now a pastor has to engage these topics, they have to become political activists.

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And it's just interesting to me to watch this transformation or to study it. In fact, I went over some of this,

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I don't have one with me, but in my book, Social Justice Goes to Church. I just trace out the history of neo -evangelicalism, and how in neo -evangelicalism, the idea was we're going to gain influence by this cultural engagement, which will show to the whole world that we're relevant because we know psychology too, and you can come to us.

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So the pastor became kind of this therapeutic figure and appealed more to women than to men.

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And so we've gone through this whole thing, and we're now, I think we're just starting. We've been in there for a few years, the

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Union Theological, some of these really out there seminaries have been on this for longer, but the evangelical schools are still in a process of transitioning,

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I think, in many ways. And they're still kind of holding on to, in some ways, a traditional pastor role.

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At the very least, they try to hold on to the exegetical preaching, at least in name. Whether they do it or not, that's another story, but at least they say they do.

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And they say they value that, right? But this whole new arena of activism is certainly becoming very popular.

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And I saw it when I was at Southeastern, in the chapel, especially. I saw that's where a lot of that stuff started to come in, and then it made its way into other areas of the seminary.

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So I think it's important to talk about something like this because, essentially, you have someone who's gone further down the road.

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They're further down the social justice road. And for those who want to know what's up ahead, well, someone like Elisa Sharon Harper is going to be able to show you.

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Because what was said by the left, the hard left, 5, 10 years ago, is now said by the more moderate left.

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And what was said by the moderate left, 5, 10 years ago, is said by the moderates. And what was said by the moderates is said by the conservatives.

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And you can see how this works. In fact, the last episode that I put out there was all about this whole

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Dave Rubin situation and what conservatives have said about it and how the winds have shifted so much. And we're seeing that with all sorts of different issues.

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And so I think looking at a book like this can help us see what's going to happen.

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Where Sojourners was, many even Southern Baptist leaders are today. Sojourners was radical in the 70s.

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Radical. And now it just would sound like a mainstream evangelical conference or something.

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So that's one of the reasons I want to focus on this. And I thought it was a good idea.

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Another reason that I thought it was a good idea to focus on this is just because of how consistent I think Lisa Sharon Harper is.

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This is where the woke stuff is going to take you. And I'm not saying she has her inconsistencies.

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But she's at least not pretending to believe. She's willing to give up some core doctrines in order to make the woke stuff work.

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And I've maintained for a while, one's going to eat the other. You can't maintain this unstable element of syncretized

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Christianity and social justice. So I think this will be beneficial. Now, this may take some time for us to go through it.

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But if I have to split it up into two or three episodes, then that's fine. We'll just do it. So let's start here.

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The goal of the book. So you know what The Very Good Gospel is about. This is from the end of the book. And this is what

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Lisa Sharon Harper says. The Very Good Gospel answers the heart cry of our age.

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Our ransacked world is crying out for the restoration of the governance of God and the shalom it brings. As the body of Christ lives out the very good gospel in pews in households and in the public square, it is partnering with God to restore the very good to the world.

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It is exercising God's kind of dominion within the church. And it calls our leaders to the same in society to exercise the kind of dominion that cultivates the image of God on earth while serving and protecting all of God's creation.

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Let it be so. There is a way back to shalom. It is the way of God demonstrated through the person of Jesus and made possible through his death and resurrection.

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This is the good news. This is The Very Good Gospel. So you can see here, this is the goal of the book, that what

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Lisa Sharon Harper wants to do is mobilize Christians to exercise dominion.

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And she's calling this dominion that changes society, that cultivates the image of God on earth, that does all of these things to create this beautiful new world.

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She's calling that the good gospel. This is what the gospel is. So you can see right away, the gospel is what she wants to motivate people to do.

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There's a works element here. People need to do something, and when they do that thing, they usher in this beautiful, wonderful paradise of sorts, and that is the good gospel.

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That's the good news. The good news is that we can go and do this. We can build this. And so the rest of the book is, how do we do this?

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What is it? Flesh out the description of what this utopian state we're striving for looks like.

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It's providing more Bible verses, supporting the arguments that she brings to motivate people to do this kind of thing.

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And once we go through all that, you will look at a paragraph like this very differently.

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Because what you'll see is that some of the words that she's using here, especially the word gospel, it's not what you think of as an

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Orthodox believer. When you think of the gospel. So let's start.

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In the description at the beginning of the book, Walter Brueggemann says that Harper proposes a thick reading of the gospel.

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Racism and gender violence arise from a thin rendering of the gospel.

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All right. So Harper says there's this thick gospel, and then there's all these bad things, racism and gender violence that arise from a thin gospel.

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The very good gospel is a welcome read that invites a rethinking of faith and life that is all too often dumbed down to thin.

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So you have a gospel that is incomplete.

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It's partial. It's not quite there. And that's the problem. And this is what we hear, by the way, from many evangelical leaders today, not just Lisa Sharon Harper.

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I have a whole section in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, where I just start quoting evangelical leaders over and over and over.

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And I show, yep, this is what Russell Moore said. This is what

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J .D. Greer said. I don't even know who all I quote in there. There's so many.

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This is what Dan Cathy said. And I just go through.

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Here's all these evangelical leaders. Here's what they say about the gospel. And they talk about it as if most evangelicals, if they believe in salvation by grace through faith, just have part of the gospel.

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They don't have the full gospel. And this is exactly Lisa Sharon Harper's point. Now, where does this take her?

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And of course, she's on the left. So that's what we're focusing on is social justice. Where does this take her?

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And that's what I want to give to you. Where does this theology of this thick gospel, this full -fledged gospel, that is so much more than salvation by grace through faith, where do you end up with this?

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And by the way, I should probably note, I was approached at one of the places

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I was speaking about this and challenged, and I was appreciative of it from a brother who was just wanting, in a way, from perhaps a position on more of a conservative side, really wanted to see a gospel that impacted the world.

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And that if the gospel is reduced, and I don't buy that this is a reduction, but if it's reduced, if it's only about salvation by grace through faith in Christ for souls, if that's what salvation is, then what about the millennial reign?

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What about the final state? What about all these other good things? Isn't that part of good news?

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And oftentimes what you'll hear is people bring up the term gospel of the kingdom to describe that.

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Jim Wallace did that all the time. The gospel of the kingdom is almost like this is a fuller view of the gospel than Paul's gospel or something.

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And so I started looking into that, and I may do an episode on it. This is not the time to do that episode, but I'm convinced the gospel of the kingdom and Paul's gospel, they're the same thing.

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Jesus's gospel and Paul's gospel are no different. Paul's communicating the same gospel. And there is a sense in which you can describe the gospel, the good news, as we look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right?

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The gospel is the story of Christ. It's the good story that Jesus came. But the good news, the kernel of truth in that story that is the thing that saves our souls is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, took our sins upon himself, gave us his righteousness, satisfied the wrath of God, rose again from the dead, defeating death, and has guaranteed a place for those who put their trust in him.

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And so it's by faith. I believe that's the good news. And I think the main thing that I, when

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I've traced this out throughout the New Testament, the main thing I notice about the gospel is it's always something God's doing. It's always this is what

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God is doing. And yes, I do believe we are going to do good works if we're saved.

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I believe that's going to impact society. I believe that beyond that, in the final state, in the eternal realm, there is a place for us as believers.

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I think that that's a wonderful thing. That's good news. That's part of the good news. But the good news is what it's not is the idea that we must, on this earth, exert some kind of good works.

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We must obey the law to such an extent that we'll usher in some kind of a utopia here. Right? That's not what the good news is about.

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And that's what you find Lisa Sharon Harper doing. That's what you find Jim Wallace doing. And that's what you're now finding a lot of evangelicals doing.

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They're saying, well, that's part of the gospel. And you get these weird situations that arise where like Eric Mason tries to say

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Christians should really learn how to apply the gospel or something from the anti -apartheid commission in South Africa.

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And the non -Christian groups that are doing it right. And they're somehow participating in the redemption of society.

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And they're part of the gospel. And you're not going to find that in the New Testament.

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That's just strange. You're getting to a point where non -Christians are now, they have part of the gospel too because maybe they're participating in something good.

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And the thing is, if you flip this, if you go to the right side of the aisle and you just say, we must have capitalism for the full gospel or the free market.

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Without the free market, we don't have the full gospel. And we have so far to go. We just need to get there.

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Or without every American owning a firearm to protect themselves, we don't have the gospel.

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Hopefully that sounds ridiculous to your ears. Like, wait, what are you talking about? And of course

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I can make a logical connection to all this. I could say, well, look, if you're going to be a follower of Christ, you're going to want to protect your family.

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And in our day and age, most of the time is going to mean you probably need to have a firearm. And therefore that's part of the gospel or something.

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Well, that's ridiculous. No, of course it's not. That's just maybe Christian ethics or obedience or being responsible before the

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Lord. And perhaps the motivation that you have to follow Christ, which started at the point in which you received

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Christ and understood the gospel, that's motivating you into these other areas to exert

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Christian ethics and be an influence, be salt and light. That's a wonderful thing, but we don't call that the gospel.

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The gospel is what Christ did. Gospel is something that is totally of God.

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And there is a specific way in which it's used. There is the narrow sense in which the gospel is the power of God to salvation for those who believe.

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And it's something we're not to be ashamed of. And like I said, in the broad sense, it's the story of Jesus. But it's because Jesus was sent on the mission that he was sent on, to seek and save that which is lost.

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And so I may do a whole episode on this at some point to help people understand this more.

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For me, this was made clear when I was doing my study for Social Justice Goes to Church, because I kept seeing this language.

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I kept seeing that the critique against conservative evangelicals was they just don't have the gospel.

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And that's exactly what Lisa Sharon Harper is trying to say. That there's a whole group of Christians, they just don't, they're lacking something.

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They don't have the gospel because they're not involved in this kind of political activism. And if they were involved in this political activism, then they would have the gospel.

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So what is it, like the gospel plus circumcision? The gospel plus these works? And then you're a true

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Christian or you're fully Christian? Or how does this work? And so if you think about it, it's one of the most potent attacks you can make on Christians, because that's the most important thing they believe.

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What's Christianity? Well, the gospel is central to that. The good news is it's the story.

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It's the good story about what God has done. People who were totally alienated from God and now are brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ.

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And if you can say that that central message actually includes some kind of activism for climate change initiatives or support for illegal migrants, you can get a whole bunch of Christians, you can actually manipulate them into the left, into doing what the left wants.

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Because of course, that's central to Christianity. And if they want to be true Christians, well, they're going to have to go and they're going to have to obey the gospel.

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And if that's what the gospel teaches, if it's soft peddling LGBT, if it's marching with BLM, if it's any of these issues that you're going to hear

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Lisa Sharon Harper talk about as I read her quotes, then you'll do it. Even if you aren't normally an activist, even if you're not someone who would do those things normally, you'll do it because now it's part of your

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Christian duty. Now it's part of your faith. It's a fundamental command that you have.

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And so that's really what's going on here. It's not enough for the left in Christianity to just say that what they're doing is part of consistent

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Christian ethics. They have to go that extra step and say, well, it's actually part of the central message of the gospel.

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It's not just a disagreement we have over Christian ethics. It's a disagreement we have over the core doctrine of Christianity, one of them, and certainly the major one that distinguishes

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Christians. And so that's a serious charge if you're telling people they don't have the gospel.

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I mean, normally, okay, if you don't have the gospel, you're saying someone doesn't have the gospel or they don't have the whole gospel or they're missing an element of the gospel.

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Where does that leave them? Where are they going? Are they going to heaven? Are they gonna be with God? Or did they miss out on redemption if that's the case?

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That's a serious question. And so this is where I think the manipulation comes in.

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And why? When you hear Lisa Sharon Harper say the gospel, don't think salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

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Don't think justification. Don't think salvation for souls.

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Don't think about just individuals or groups or people even.

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Think about the environment and what humans are doing to try to stop pollution.

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Think about trying to support, like I said, illegal migrants or BLM or any of these left -leaning causes, the

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Me Too movement, and trying to make sure that women aren't suffering from microaggressions.

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Like this is now part of the gospel. That's part of the good news. Apparently that's why Jesus came, right? That's what he accomplished on the cross.

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And I kid you not, we'll get into some quotes. That's what Jesus did in trying to, in rising from the dead and conquering death is he was trying to stop, he was sending a message to all those chauvinists out there that they better stop mistreating women and stuff.

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And it's like, God's law is there. God's law absolutely applies, but that's not the gospel.

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In fact, God's law would still apply whether there was a good news or not. And we would just all go to punishment, wouldn't we?

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God's law would still be there. The law actually is what leads us to the knowledge of our sin.

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And that leads us to the need, knowing the need that we have for the gospel.

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That's the function of the law. And of course, there's three functions of the law. I write about it in Christianity and Social Justice that Martin Luther gave us, but that is not for today's episode.

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Today's episode is about Lisa Sharon Harper. So Harper proposes a thick reading of the gospel instead of a thin reading of the gospel.

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So let's get into what this thick reading gospel is. Here's the thin gospel.

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Christians are taught to think of the good news of Jesus Christ in this way. God loves us, but we're sinful.

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As a result, we're separated from God. Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins. All we have to do is believe that his death was enough and we get to go to heaven.

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That's some good news. Seriously, who wants to languish in hell forever? But on this particular day, and this is

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Lisa Sharon Harper, there's a quote from her. She says, as I walked away from the King Center, the MLK Center in Atlanta, one thing

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I thought haunted me. The good news of my gospel doesn't feel good enough. The good news of my gospel doesn't feel good enough.

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There's something lacking in that gospel. The idea that Jesus Christ loves us,

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God loves us, we're sinful, we're separated. Jesus died to pay the penalty of our sins. And if we put our faith in him, the way she's writing this is very simplistic, but if we put our faith in him, if we believe that his death was enough, then we get to go to heaven, okay?

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So we get to be in the right relationship with God. That is lacking. There's a problem with that is what she's saying.

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That's not a gospel that's enough. We need a different gospel. We need a thicker gospel.

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We need a gospel that engages the issues that Lisa Sharon Harper wants engaged.

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And the thing is, if someone becomes saved, they truly are a child of God, they're, what does

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Jesus say? If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And we have ethics. We have principles we're supposed to keep. And one of the things

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I pointed out, which I'll expand on here, is that when the left in Christianity wants to manipulate

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Christians to pursue their leftward agenda, whether knowingly or unknowingly, what they do is instead of putting their issues in the realm of Christian ethics and just obedience to Christ, they have to smuggle it into the gospel itself.

32:29

So it would be very easy, I would think. Let's just say Lisa Sharon Harper is really wrong on her ethics, but she's sincere about it, right?

32:38

That's the only important thing today. She's sincere. She's really wrong about that, but she thinks she's right. And that's the gospel.

32:45

The gospel is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, to be in a right relationship with God.

32:54

The debt has been paid of sin. The curse of sin is broken. That is the gospel.

33:00

And then she says, okay, once you believe this though, you're going to wanna follow God's law and God's law supports my positions, right?

33:08

Now she could make that argument and I would disagree with her. And I would say, no, it doesn't. You're wrong. This is what the law teaches.

33:14

You're actually against the law, but that's not what she does. And that's not what so many social justice warriors do.

33:20

And it's so deceitful because it doesn't, in a way, it's not subject to the same kind of scrutiny.

33:29

If you're saying like, here's what the Bible teaches on ethics, and here's why I think that you should support

33:35

BLM. You could have a Bible study over it. But as soon as you say, well, the gospel is to, the good news is that we're gonna have a perfect world.

33:46

And by our own efforts, we're gonna get there. And that's part of this good news. And if you're not on board, then you just don't believe the gospel.

33:54

That's actually manipulation. That's accusing someone of not being a true

34:02

Christian, essentially. That's how it's heard. That's why it works. You're not opening your Bible and getting into a study about it.

34:08

You're just basically, you're throwing bombs unnecessarily. But, and then you're merging law with grace and a corrupted social justice law at that.

34:19

She says, so Shalom is the stuff of the kingdom. It's what the kingdom of God looks like in context.

34:25

It's what citizenship in the kingdom of God requires and what the kingdom promises to those who choose God and God's ways to peace.

34:33

To live in God's kingdom in the way of Shalom requires that we discard our thin understanding of the gospel.

34:39

I had to face a hard truth in my limited evangelical understanding of the gospel. Had nothing to say about 16 ,000

34:46

Cherokees and four other sovereign indigenous nations whose people were forcibly removed from their lands.

34:53

And it had nothing to say to my own ancestors who were enslaved in South Carolina. So what's she saying? Well, the gospel, if it's just about salvation from sin in Christ, then it says nothing about these social injustices.

35:11

So how can it be a good gospel? How can that be the gospel? How can just salvation in Christ for the forgiveness of sins?

35:18

How can that be the gospel if it doesn't actually produce real world change and require people to stop abusing other people?

35:26

Now, the answer to that is God's law requires that. God's law requires that. And we're guilty of violating

35:32

God's law which is why we need the gospel, okay? And then once you're a Christian and you receive the gospel and God's giving you a new heart, then you're going to want to follow

35:40

God's law. And that will prevent you, by and large, I mean, we're still sinful, but it will have an effect on the redeemed sinner in such a way that they no longer desire sin.

35:55

And so that's the answer. That's what Christianity provides. And of course, there's people who call themselves

36:01

Christians who have done wicked things. They are sinful. They are people still. But that doesn't negate the fact that Christians, by and large, throughout human history and running the comparison between Christians and other groups have been much more likely to help people, to follow

36:24

God's law, to value human worth. That's why they set up hospitals. That's why a lot of even the charities that we give to today, like the

36:33

Red Cross and others, our Salvation Army started by Christians.

36:39

Christians have been on the forefront of Western culture in general, very shaped by Christianity, has done more for the world as a whole than at least in modern times in any other society, or any other civilization.

37:00

And that's because, ultimately because of Christianity. In fact, there's a book

37:05

I was just reading on the plane, and I'm seeing if I have it in here.

37:10

I think, I don't think, I wasn't planning to talk about it, so I didn't. Well, it was about this topic.

37:15

The title was, If God is so good, why are Christians so bad? And so I read that, and it was an interesting book.

37:23

It was a good introduction to that very topic. But what she's saying here is, the solution is, well, we just need a different gospel.

37:31

Apparently, we've had a flawed gospel. And this is a question that I'd like to ask. For how long did the church have a bad gospel?

37:40

How long did the church have a bad understanding of the gospel, apparently? Was it 100 years?

37:46

Was it 200 years? Was it 2000 years? Was it just the early church had it, and now we're recovering it today? You know, what?

37:54

Because that's a problem. If you give the impression that this is, this has been ongoing for most of Christian civilization, and certainly she makes the case that Western civilization is corrupted.

38:09

And that's the main issue, is that we got to fight against Western civilization. That's the main villain out there.

38:14

Then tell me, what good is Christianity? I mean, the arguments that are being given by the social justice activists are the best arguments in my mind that can be used to undermine the church.

38:24

That's why social justice is just an off -ramp from Christianity. Social justice Christianity is an off -ramp, because no one wants to be part of an organization that's had it wrong since hundreds of years or thousands of years, and that just now supposedly got it right.

38:38

I mean, they could just go and join the Democratic Party, and they could, in a way, they could address the issues that Lisa Sharon Harper thinks the good gospel would address, and they can do it through political activism, secular political activism.

38:49

They don't have to be part of a church to do it. So I mean, it's the best argument. It's taking the thing that makes the church unique as an institution of heaven, an eternal institution that is a heavenly outpost on the earth and provides salvation, shows it was

39:10

Christ that provides salvation, but if you hear about it through the witness of the church, and the church is where the body of believers, those whom have believed this message and been changed by this message, gather together and worship

39:24

God, it's taking that element, and it's making that, that's no longer the unique or important or thing, it's being diminished.

39:35

And now the really cool, unique, important thing is that the church is this engine for egalitarian social change, and that's apparently what it's supposed to be.

39:46

And the left has done this with every institution. Every institution becomes about that. Hollywood has to make movies that support that agenda.

39:53

The books that are written and promoted in academia have to support that agenda. Politicians, of course, have to support this agenda.

40:02

Education and really, I mean, your public libraries, I mean, everything has to support this agenda.

40:08

Your knitting club has to support this agenda. And now it's the same with the church. And of course, you're taking away the thing that makes the church unique in the first place.

40:17

Why would someone go to church? And that's one of the things that I think we're seeing today is that people who go down this path, and I can speak even from personal experience, they end up outside the church before long.

40:26

And it's usually gradual. It's usually from more conservative churches to they might find more liberal churches who believe this kind of stuff to eventually,

40:35

I'm not going to church as much to why would I go to church to, you know, political activism is my church.

40:44

Okay, so here's, and she's talking this shalom. She makes this, basically, in the category of gospel, you have shalom.

40:54

Shalom is the stuff of the kingdom. So the kingdom, shalom, the gospel, all kind of like the same thing as we go through this.

41:06

And it's really this final state, which we can now build on earth somehow through our own efforts, which is the gospel.

41:18

So, and I don't know what makes this unique to human Christianity. I mean, it could be like Jewish people, atheists, couldn't anyone be part of this?

41:27

Like building this kingdom through, you know, stopping injustice or something. That's the thing that like, you know, you're saying, well, you don't have the full gospel.

41:36

What you've done is you've actually made the gospel so watered down that now it's lost its power.

41:46

So let's keep going here. Let's go to the next slide. This is more on the thick gospel.

41:52

So we just read about the thin gospel, right? The thin gospel is inadequate. Salvation by grace through faith.

41:59

The thick gospel is, here's some quotes on it from Lisa Sharon Harper.

42:05

She says, the team members found that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all cared about an individual reconciliation with God, self, and their communities.

42:13

But the gospel writers also focused on systemic justice, peace between people, groups, and freedom for the oppressed.

42:21

The good news was both about the coming of the kingdom of God and the character of that kingdom.

42:27

It was about what God's kingdom looked like. It was about what citizenship in God's kingdom requires.

42:36

The biblical gospel writers good news was about the restoration of shalom.

42:45

So this is the thick gospel saying that, hold on, this is way beyond salvation by grace through faith.

42:53

This is about restoring this kingdom, right? And so when Jesus talks about the gospel of the kingdom, what's he talking about?

42:59

He's talking about the domain of God, that the kingdom of God is actually is among us.

43:05

It's where God's domain is. It's where his control is. And where does he exert his control?

43:12

Well, it's with the believers. It's God, actually the

43:18

Holy Spirit comes upon us and dwells within us. I know this actually,

43:24

I mean, it's kind of, it's a concept. Think about what that is. I mean, this is what

43:29

Christians believe, what Christians have taught for since the inception of Christianity, but that's what they believe. The kingdom of God, it's a spiritual kingdom.

43:38

And the reality is one day God will reign on earth and he is coming again.

43:46

And we are part of that kingdom. We've already been transported into that. We've been categorized according to that.

43:52

If we are in Christ now, we are part of that coming kingdom. We're gonna rule with Christ, right?

44:00

And so you could look at all that and say, well, that's all good news. That's all good news that, but really what that is, is these are all the benefits of being in Christ.

44:11

These are all the benefits of being part of God's kingdom. The good news is that we are forgiven of our sins, that it's even possible to be transported into this kingdom, that we are part of this kingdom because of what

44:26

Christ has done. So it's all on God. It's what God has done to bring us out of the domain of darkness into his glorious light.

44:36

And so what she's trying to do here is she's trying, she's minimizing that.

44:44

And what she's doing is she's saying that actually it's about this systemic change that we can right here, right now, make these choices to, in a political way, to make the kingdom of God, to exert more of God's dominion outside of God's spiritual dominion on this earth to it's going to be

45:07

God's, really it's ushering in God's physical kingdom. And that's what the good gospel is.

45:13

That's the thick gospel. She says, Jesus' resurrection from the dead to reverse the fall here on earth and in the afterlife.

45:21

That's the thick gospel, reversing the fall here on earth and in the afterlife.

45:27

And what the kind of new world could we build if all of us on American soil, all of us, she says, replace race with our ethnic heritage, rooted in place, language, and community.

45:37

We would remember the history, study the way race broke our world and build the future that corrects its impacts.

45:45

We would refuse to be defined by a lie. Then perhaps we would experience more of the power of the resurrection as we brought our whole selves and the living power of the resurrection into a multi -ethnic community with our neighbors, in our schools, in our hospital, in our courts, and in the public square.

46:04

So that's the power of the resurrection when we make, replace race with our ethnic heritage apparently.

46:12

She says, Jesus' vocation is clarified, is so opt oppression and bring good news to the poor.

46:18

And of course, that's in context, we're talking about bringing good news to those who are spiritually poor, those who need salvation from their sin.

46:30

But those who advocate liberation theology always make this about putting money in people's pockets.

46:37

And in the same way, Jesus had broken gender and class barriers. This multi -ethnic multilingual group turned its back on misogyny and economic favoritism.

46:45

Peter explained to the crowd why women and slaves were prophesying along with free men. So the gospel becomes this egalitarian battle cry.

46:52

Get rid of the hierarchies, smooth everything out. And that's the gospel.

46:59

That's the good news that we can, that Jesus came to bring us equality, social equality.

47:05

And of course, that's ridiculous. That's, you can look at even Jesus' parables. The parable of the vineyard, for instance, it doesn't matter how long you work, guess who determines your wages?

47:14

Well, it's the landowner. Or even some of his parables, there's a few of them that reference slavery.

47:20

And Jesus isn't correcting it. Or I don't know, think about the group that Jesus brought forward, and that would include the apostles and their writings on various hierarchies and how they reacted to Roman rule.

47:34

And you're certainly not finding this in the New Testament. You will find that there are certain teachings in the

47:41

New Testament that are definitely out of step with the cultural norms of the time, even with how women were treated, because there had developed incorrect ways of relating between men and women that put women in, especially in the

47:59

Jewish culture, women in more of this subservient position that was not biblical.

48:07

And so you see a restoration or a repetition of really the view that had been there all along since the

48:15

Old Testament, that there is a hierarchy that exists. There is a relationship between men and women in which men do take the lead, but that women are certainly made in God's image and have worth.

48:27

And you can't just divorce a woman because you don't like her. And women's testimony is valid in court because it was certainly valid even in Jesus's resurrection.

48:37

And so anyway, you do have things like that, but what she's doing is she's trying to take those little glimpses of things and then make that, that's what it's all about.

48:46

That's what the gospel, in fact, is about. And you just don't find that. What you find is that, yes, in the gospel, on a spiritual level, there is no

48:53

Jew. There is no Greek. There is no slave. There is no free. There's no male. There's no female. But obviously those physical realities are still there.

49:00

And those are, I mean, male and female, that's a created reality. That's rooted in the design of creation itself.

49:08

So you don't get rid of those things because of the gospel. That doesn't, that's just a new identity that everyone who believes the gospel now has.

49:17

They're brothers and sisters with each other because they're part of the family of God. And it's a spiritual family.

49:24

So she's making, she's what she, some call this immunitizing the eschaton, right?

49:29

Trying to take these heavenly realities and then impose them upon the temporal world.

49:34

But in this case, she's going farther than that. She's taking just things that aren't even realities and trying to make those central to the

49:43

Christian message. And I think this is a good way of looking at it for those who are still confused as we're going through this.

49:51

A good way to look at this is, you know, looking at the gospel in the center. The gospel's right there in the center.

49:58

And then you have, as we move out from the center, you have other teachings, other, you have the results of being in Christ and believing the gospel, right?

50:12

You have the, what happens when one becomes a child of God.

50:18

And certainly that is going to change the world. Certainly that's gonna change your world. When you receive the gospel, then you're gonna start having a new relationship with sin.

50:27

And that will reform the organizations you're part of in a way because you've changed yourself.

50:32

You're not gonna want to do the things you used to do. And so that's how conservatives or traditional

50:39

Christians have looked at this. And how they see, how we see sanctification playing out and how that changes things.

50:46

What Lisa Sharon Harper though, is trying to do is she's, what she's doing is she's saying the gospel is all these things, even things on the periphery, like the way that male and females relate to one another.

51:02

Those hierarchy that exists between male and female and how that hierarchy is spiritualized in the new relationship we have as part of being part of the body of Christ.

51:15

She's taking that thing and then she's putting that in the center. She's saying, well, that actually, that's the central message right there.

51:22

That's what the gospel actually is. And at best taking the results of the gospel and then making them the gospel.

51:31

And that's, it seems so slight. It seems so nuanced. And so that's why

51:37

I think it's deceiving so many because you're taking something that, yeah, it's connected in some way, but then she's jumping a few steps.

51:45

That's not the central message. That's a result. And then even there, it doesn't change the created order that God has set up.

51:56

So it doesn't overturn God's creation. But that's where Lisa Sharon Harper wants to go with this.

52:04

And I'd like to suggest that's where a lot of these social justice evangelicals are going. So that's some quotes on what the thick gospel is.

52:15

So you have the thin gospel, you have thick gospel, and they're two different things.

52:21

And so she's trying to advocate for the thick gospel. And the quest ultimately in all of this is for utopia.

52:31

The institution of race broke America at its foundation. It will not be enough to tinker here and there.

52:38

We need to envision a new way of being together. Fundamentally, this will mean the interrogation of all our assumptions about how our society should be.

52:47

It will mean imagining a world where everyone, especially the least of these, has enough to thrive.

52:52

It will mean a world where all at least have good enough education, good enough housing, good enough healthcare, good enough access to justice in the justice system, good enough protection to have the right to vote, and the good enough welcome to feel the embrace of the nation in order to thrive here.

53:08

To find the folks working towards repair in your town, city, or state, do a Google search, which, you know, this is what

53:14

I was telling you earlier. Okay, so the gospel is we're gonna try to fix this broken world through activism.

53:22

And how do you partner with people to do that? Do a Google search, right? Just go find the local secular organizations that are doing these things and call that part of the gospel.

53:31

That's where you're going with this. That's why I think many have felt in their churches even, why in the world do

53:39

I feel like there's a willingness to find common cause with the Democrat Party?

53:44

What does that have to do with our Christianity? Well, here you're finding that kind of thing. Spell that more clearly.

53:52

It's because there's been a fundamental shift in what the gospel is. What it, instead of looking to the results of the gospel and what the gospel produces and how people that are affected by the gospel live, instead the whole effort now is to attempt to make that central and of course, a leftist

54:19

Marxist interpretation of ethics central to what the gospel is.

54:26

So that's why you're seeing that. That's why they're making that connection. And that's why the churches who go down this path, they may preach salvation by faith through Christ, but it's going to be diminished every year.

54:38

And you're gonna see it taking a backseat and it can't compete if there's another gospel that's being promoted at the same time, which really is what this is.

54:46

It's another gospel. It's not an addendum. It's not, it's a different gospel. It's a social gospel.

54:52

It's been known by that. Walter Rauschenbusch advocated much the same kind of thing. What would it look like?

54:59

Lisa Sharon Harper says, if current day empires, the United States, China, the United Kingdom, the European Union made their primary purpose the blossoming of the image of God within their borders and beyond, how would that goal alter public policy?

55:10

How would it alter the way we understand our national interests in light of other nations? What would it clarify about the principle of Shalom that we are connected?

55:19

How might Shalom after the ways, alter the ways we think about Iran, Mexico, China's growth,

55:24

ISIS, Syria, and the refugee crisis? How might Shalom impact the trajectory of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians?

55:33

How might Shalom upend current policies of government and that build their wealth on land, treasure, and dignity stolen from indigenous peoples around the globe?

55:42

Perhaps we wouldn't need to learn to learn war anymore. Imagine there's no heaven.

55:50

It's really not very hard to do. This is John Lennon. This is just a Christianized John Lennon.

55:57

It's gonna be the end of war, right? Where we can get rid of these, the distinctions that make, that conflicts among us and all our enemies, and maybe we would view them differently if we just embraced the true gospel, the thick gospel.

56:14

Maybe we could usher in this wonderful place where everyone had enough to eat and everyone had access to healthcare.

56:19

And it just, utopia is around the corner if we just believed the good gospel.

56:25

And this is the problem. This is the problem. Ultimately, this is a man -centered gospel.

56:32

It's all about trying to elevate the condition of man, make things better for man.

56:39

That's the whole situation. That's the whole motivation instead of the true gospel.

56:48

And yes, the true gospel does a great deal for man, but the real motive of the gospel is glorifying

56:55

God. It's actually God showing his own attributes off, showing how gracious he is, how good he is.

57:04

It's God redeeming a people for himself and being part of his plan.

57:10

And yes, his plan is going to include us coming back and reigning with him. His plan, those who are in Christ, his plan is a wonderful, beautiful plan.

57:19

And eventually, not in this temporal world that we are living in right now, but eventually, there is going to be an eternal state in which

57:31

Christ reigns in every single area. And in his perfect will is reigning in every single area.

57:40

He reigns now, but his perfect will, not just his sovereignty in the sense that he is for ordained things, but actually his moral will, what he thinks of as right and wrong, the right will will prevail.

57:58

And that's something to look forward to. Absolutely. But it's not something that we can usher in through voting for the

58:04

Democratic Party. And it's certainly not what we, when we look at the New Testament, it's not what we see when we are looking at the term gospel.

58:15

And we'll talk about this more, I think, in a future episode, because this is, one of the things I think that's helpful for people that struggle with this is read through just slowly and methodically, read through the book of Galatians.

58:26

And Paul's critique against the Judaizers is the same critique that I am giving against Lisa Sharon Harper, is that she is adding something to the perfect gospel.

58:38

She's putting something that best case scenario may be good.

58:44

But it's not the gospel. It's not the central message. At best, you might be looking at the results of a life changed by the gospel, but you're not looking at the gospel itself, the good news.

58:58

And what is that? The good news that Jesus Christ has penetrated this planet, that he's come to be the sacrifice for our sins.

59:06

And for those who put their faith in him, he rewards them with a righteousness that is not their own, that is from him, an alien righteousness.

59:17

And then he takes their sin upon himself in this great transfer. He is crushed for the sins of his people.

59:24

God, it says in Isaiah that it pleased God to crush him. And then he conquers death by rising from the dead, which is what we're going to be celebrating this

59:33

Sunday, Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday. It is the triumph of Jesus Christ and how death was defeated, how death is defeated.

59:42

And ultimately one day, all the fruit of that will be fully realized and known.

59:48

And we will have glorified bodies. We will reign on this earth. The things that Lisa Sharon Harper wants to strive for right now in this life through political activism and calling that the gospel is something that even in her best, most theologically astute definition to give her that benefit of the doubt is something that Christ has already obtained for us through his work, not something that we can usher in ourselves or do anything about.

01:00:23

And we are awaiting that time when Christ will do that. And we are just going to be faithful. We're going to, as a result of the good news that Christ has forgiven us of our sin, transported us into his kingdom.

01:00:36

And it's all the work he's done. It's all a transfer that he's made as a result of him satisfying

01:00:42

God's wrath. We now in the lives that we live with the influence that we have, we live for Christ.

01:00:50

We try to obey his law because if we love him, we keep his commandments. That's the second use of the law.

01:00:57

So we talked about how the law can bring you to the knowledge of sin, but the law also has an effect on us by being a guide.

01:01:03

And of course, the third use is the curb. It's a, we're actually, I think the second use is a curb. The third use is a guide, but the law is a barrier to those who want to do evil, showing them a moral standard by which they should not cross.

01:01:18

And then of course, it's a guide to believers of how to live. And it's not something that contributes to our salvation.

01:01:25

It's not something that's, it's not, the law isn't part of the gospel. The gospel is the good news that Jesus has satisfied the requirement of the law.

01:01:38

And in so doing, he changes us. And in changing us, we now glorify him by following his law.

01:01:46

So anytime I hear this law and gospel being basically fused together,

01:01:55

I think Galatian heresy, I think what Paul was reacting to when the

01:02:00

Galatians, the Judaizers were coming in deceiving the church. And this is what

01:02:06

I see the social justice activists doing. So this has been just the first episode in this short series

01:02:12

I'm gonna do on this book by Lisa Sharon Harper. I hope this was helpful. At the very least, I hope this caused you to think.

01:02:18

And I may not have a lot of time to respond to the theological questions

01:02:23

I'm sure I'm gonna get from this podcast, but feel free, please, to comment in the comment section.

01:02:29

And if I have the chance, I'll probably try to get to those. But like I said, I'll probably be doing more on the gospel.

01:02:36

I wasn't expecting to take this turn. Sometimes I turn on the camera and I don't know where I'm gonna go. But this is where I went today.

01:02:42

And I think it was beneficial. I think this was something I was supposed to talk about. So we'll talk more about the gospel of the kingdom and all of that.

01:02:50

But I wanna get into more specifics with Lisa Sharon Harper because where she goes may not surprise some of you, but it's scary.

01:02:59

It's scary to see where she goes with this logic. And so hopefully now you know how she can manipulate people into the leftist scheme by claiming it's all gospel.

01:03:08

Everything's a gospel issue, right? And the true gospel is this thick gospel.

01:03:14

But once you see that all the leftist causes that are totally contrary to a biblical ethic that she wants to smuggle into this,

01:03:23

I think it'll be somewhat of a wake -up call. And I think that's where we're going in evangelicalism. We're going towards where Lisa Sharon Harper is.

01:03:29

We're moving in that direction. It'll be good for everyone, I think, to see this.

01:03:35

Link's in the info section if you want more. And as far as the quotes and everything that I'm giving you, God bless.

01:03:41

And I hope everyone has a good, good Friday and a good Resurrection Sunday in case you don't see one of my podcasts before then.