Owen Strachan Back Up To His Old Tricks

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Alright, well, welcome back to the channel. It is May 2nd, Year of Our Lord 2023.

00:08

I want to get back into this controversy that's currently going on. You know, I'm not intending on turning this into a channel all about Christian nationalism and G3.

00:19

I just don't really want to do that. You know, we'll see what happens, obviously, but if you're kind of sick of this topic, well, it's not going to be forever.

00:26

We'll go back to some good faith debates and some racism stuff. Although, this is all connected, I think, in my opinion.

00:33

So, today I want to talk about Owen Strawn. Owen Strawn, last week, you know, he kind of lost his mind a little bit.

00:38

And you can tell, I think, from the kinds of tweets that he sends, there's a lot of emotion here.

00:46

He's emoting primarily. Owen Strawn is not necessarily a bad thinker. In fact,

00:51

I think he can think through things fairly well. He's a pretty smart guy. Obviously, I don't agree with him on everything.

00:56

And there are some of you, of course, that have pointed out various things that you consider problems in his theology. This is not a theology channel proper, so I'm not going to really go into some of that stuff.

01:06

But I'll tell you what, the way he kind of performs on Twitter, a lot of this is very performative.

01:13

It's very clearly emoting. Here he is with a tweet about one of the...

01:18

There's a handful of Stephen Wolf tweets out there that people use to show that he's some kind of a racist and things like that.

01:25

And usually it involves, you know, comments on interracial marriage and all that kind of thing. And, you know, by the way, just kind of a sidetrack, these are like the gotcha quotes that everybody uses.

01:37

And a lot of people are asking me about them. And my standard kind of response is, you know, you should really watch...

01:43

There's a CrossPolitik episode where he explains some of this in a little bit more detail. I think that'll help.

01:48

I also put out a couple of Twitter videos yesterday. If you want to check them out, go ahead and check them out.

01:54

And it's about, you know, why is it that commercials... All these woke companies like Bud Light, you know, they put

02:01

Dylan, that transsexual, on their can. And they're promoting all of the evil stuff.

02:07

Abortion, trannies, all that stuff. They also heavily promote interethnic marriages.

02:13

And you know they're promoting it because it's a way higher percentage in the commercials that are displayed as interethnic marriages than what happened in real life.

02:21

Most of the time people of the same ethnicity or at least similar will marry each other.

02:28

You know, Puerto Ricans will marry other Puerto Ricans or maybe a Dominican. Although maybe not so much.

02:33

But anyway, you know, Japanese people tend to marry other Japanese people. This is just the way of the world.

02:39

This is what, you know, naturally people do. And so they're pushing it for some reason. So you've got to ask yourself, what do they think they're getting out of that, right?

02:46

Because it's clear they're promoting transsexualism for a reason. It's clear they're promoting abortion for a reason.

02:52

What do they get out of promoting interracial marriages? I think you should think through that in a calm way, right?

03:00

Not like Owen Strawn does here. Because here's what Owen Strawn does. You can see the performance. Kinism.

03:06

Unblushing. Unhidden. Anti -gospel. Dead wrong.

03:14

And even—this is the thing. Like, even if you disagree with the Stephen Wolfe tweet, which, you know,

03:20

I'm sure many of you do. Like, you can very easily see the performance here. This is him, and he's getting his holy robes on.

03:27

And he probably imagines himself like a Martin Luther. Here I stand. I can do no other.

03:34

And it's just nonsense. So he's accusing Stephen Wolfe of being a kinist. Now, Stephen Wolfe has a number of times, to my knowledge, said, no,

03:43

I'm not a kinist. In fact, I disagree with kinists on these points or whatever. Right? So this is not true.

03:49

This is obviously incorrect. Now, does it mean you still have to like his tweets? It doesn't mean that at all.

03:54

But to call him a kinist is not correct. People pointed that out instantly.

04:01

And so Owen Strawn decides to host a struggle session. That's his decision.

04:08

And, you know, last week we all were in agreement these struggle sessions were a leftist tactic.

04:14

It's a woke strategy to do this kind of a thing. And that was last week.

04:19

But this is this week, and now G3 and friends are all hosting struggle sessions.

04:25

That's what they're doing now. So here's what Owen Strawn says upon hearing that he's actually wrong.

04:30

By the way, he didn't just hear that he was wrong. He got the evidence, the screenshots. And people sent him screenshots where he denies being a kinist and says he disagrees with kinists.

04:39

People also pointed him, oh, there's a cross -politic episode where they talk about this particular issue. You should go watch it.

04:45

Of course, he didn't know it existed. So, you know, what does a Christian do when they're proven wrong?

04:50

Yeah, you know, he's really not a kinist. Does he say, oh, you know, I was sorry. Let me delete that tweet.

04:55

Let me apologize. Let me repent. I still don't like what Stephen has to say here, but it was wrong of me to put that black

05:03

K on him, that red K of kinism. The worst thing in the world, the literal worst thing in the world is kinism.

05:10

It was unfair of me to do that. So that's what a Christian does, right? No, no, no.

05:16

What a Christian does is they start listing demands. This is right out of the

05:21

Gospel Coalition playbook. He says this. I'm told Wolf disavows this. No idea of that.

05:27

If he has, given the sinfulness of kinism, we need fulsome repentance and confession here.

05:33

Wolf should write this up in a post so we can read it. If you've written falsehood, write your retraction and repentance and edit the book.

05:43

So he's got a list of demands. Now he's got to write an article. Now he's got to repudiate his own work and his own words and his own book.

05:49

None of that is biblical in any way, but that's how Owen's decided to go.

05:56

He's decided to do the Gospel Coalition thing, the Big Eva thing. We've seen this strategy before.

06:03

I pointed this out. I pointed this out, and I actually ended up getting blocked by Owen for pointing it out.

06:09

I understand why. I mean, when you're a liar and you want to continue lying, you don't want to repent, that's the kind of thing you do.

06:17

So anyway, I posted a meme about it. And here's the meme. I said,

06:23

Owen Strawn trying to suppress his wokeness the last five years. And it's the meme of the kid, you know, simmering under the surface, trying to suppress something.

06:34

It's a good meme. It's a good meme. Now, here's the thing, though.

06:40

I didn't know this wasn't common knowledge, but apparently it isn't because I've gotten numerous messages.

06:48

How dare you call Owen Strawn woke? How dare you say that? He was never woke.

06:55

And listen, a lot of you guys haven't been in this discussion as long as I have. There is no question that prior to 2018,

07:04

Owen Strawn was definitively woke. Like, as woke as any woke person's ever woke.

07:11

He was woke, full -fledged, no -holds -barred, definitively anti -gospel, the whole thing.

07:18

You can get your robes on if you want. And I said this, and people were like, where's the evidence?

07:25

Where's the evidence, AD? And people were saying I made it up, I was just mudslinging and things like that.

07:32

And, you know, I'm going to tell you the evidence, obviously. And I'm not going to go into everything.

07:37

Obviously, this is a small smattering of things that I could show you. But this is the reality.

07:44

Like, Owen was woke. And in my opinion, this is my opinion. A lot of people disagree with me about this, by the way.

07:51

In my opinion, he changed his ways. Like, he saw the problems with wokeness, and he changed his ways.

07:59

And, in fact, he came out very strongly against wokeness. Now, a lot of people that I know think that he has been faking it this whole time.

08:08

They think that this is just he was opportunistic. He saw an opportunity, and he took it.

08:13

I disagree with that. I think he did it for real. Like, he actually realized that some of the stuff that he was promoting, he shouldn't have been promoting.

08:25

And at the time, I remember very often retweeting him and saying, hey, we're going to give credit where credit is due.

08:31

This guy's changed. This is good stuff. Good job, Owen. In fact, I've reached out to Owen a number of times privately to encourage him in the stuff that he was saying because it was really good.

08:42

And I know how much at the time that kind of encouragement meant to me because I was out there, and I wasn't alone.

08:48

But, you know, there wasn't that many voices out there when I was, you know, talking about the problems with wokeness and things like that.

08:57

There weren't that many of us. But I do remember very particular people reaching out and encouraging me.

09:02

I remember Marcus Pittman was one of the earliest ones. I remember Chuck Knox was one of the earliest ones.

09:07

I remember John Harris, again, one of the earliest ones. He was right there around the same time talking about the same things

09:13

I was. I remember Michael O 'Fallon reached out to me encouraging me and things like that. These were all very meaningful to me.

09:20

So at the time, I saw Owen, who I knew was woke a couple of minutes ago, changing his message.

09:27

And I, for one, was very, very happy about that. I was very happy about that because he's a talented communicator and all of this kind of thing.

09:36

And he was kind of in some of those Big Evers circles. In fact, I remember—I'll never forget this. I did either a video or a long post about how

09:45

Owen Strawn, he was coming out of wokeness and coming out against it.

09:51

Meanwhile, he had a lot to lose. And so I respected that. And I still do respect that because he was kind of an up -and -coming, you know, up -and -comer

09:59

Big Eva guy. He could easily have a huge platform. That's the kind of guy

10:05

Owen was. He could easily rise those ranks and all of that kind of stuff. And he decided to not go that route and to come out against wokeness.

10:14

Because once you come out against wokeness, Big Eva doesn't really like you anymore. I know that all too well, right?

10:20

So I was very much in support of that. I reached out to him numerous times and all of that kind of stuff.

10:28

But the reality is that this whole thing here, this kind of performative, you know,

10:35

I'm not a racist tweet, and then this kind of struggle session thing here, this is a woke strategy.

10:41

And so here's my meme saying, listen, I have a theory that pretty much all white people that are not aggressively against this kind of stuff, they've got this pressure cooker constantly inside of them.

10:57

And it's this pressure cooker to disavow racism. And they've been taught this their whole lives.

11:03

And it's just boiling underneath. And they can suppress it. And you have to really try hard to suppress it.

11:08

Because what ends up happening is something will happen. There'll be a new police shooting. And that pressure cooker is about to boil over.

11:15

And sometimes you blow a gasket. And you just reach out and you go, I cannot abide. I normally am the one to support police.

11:23

But this is too far. The racialized shootings must stop. And it's just like this need that white people have to do this.

11:31

I'm not one of those racists. And here's Owen for the last five years suppressing that need.

11:37

And it boiled over against Stephen Wolfe here. And so he blew a gasket last week.

11:42

That's what happened. So am I saying that he's woke now? I'm not saying he's woke now.

11:48

But he's certainly acting like it. And I think that that pressure cooker, the gasket's still blown.

11:54

And it's still releasing the energy. And right now he's acting just like he used to act.

12:00

Go away, D. Where's the evidence? What are you talking about? Well, there's a bunch of stuff. John was nice enough to send me a bunch of stuff.

12:08

Now, this is the article I wanted to go into. This is one of the main ones. It really kind of lays it out.

12:16

But here's a few tweets. Again, this is just a smattering of tweets, right? I've heard Owen speak in real life.

12:22

You know what I mean? I heard Owen speak here in New England. Guys, he was woke.

12:28

He was woke. And now he's not. But he's acting like it.

12:33

I guess old habits die hard. And so this is like, look, this is not a knock on him. Look, people change their opinions.

12:39

That's all true. But a lot of people are like, how dare you call him? This is the anti -woke guy.

12:44

And I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, that's how he is now. But that's not how he always used to be. And now he's acting like he used to act.

12:51

So we should call it out. We should call it out. Here he is in 2017. Loving the racism, gospel -driven racism resolution from the

13:01

SBC. I don't know which resolution that was. I mean, was it the 30th, 31st?

13:06

I mean, which resolution was it condemning racism that Owen Strawn was swooning over? Who knows?

13:13

Hold on. Hold on. This is John stuff. I can't do that. Here's one in 2016.

13:19

Except for racism, civilization has witnessed no stronger challenge to core reality than the non -binary gender.

13:29

Racism is the strongest challenge to core reality from Owen Strawn.

13:36

There are open wounds in the body. This is from 2012. There are open wounds in the body about past racism.

13:41

We could really use a conference session on how to indict, heal, and forgive. Yes, that's what we really needed.

13:48

We really needed a conference about how to indict racism from the past.

13:54

That's what we needed in 2012 according to Owen. Well, when you're woke, you need those all the time. Like you need a conference every year when you're woke.

14:01

I think that's what Black History Month is. Here's another one from 2012.

14:08

I think Evangelical mega -conference should host a plenary session in which leaders discuss how to handle racism in the

14:14

Christian past. Maybe Owen Strawn was one of the architects of MLK50. I mean, who knows? He's calling for it here.

14:21

He was all in favor of it. Here's the article, guys. You should check it out. It's called

14:26

With Tears on Racism and the Gospel. This article is a treasure trove of wokeness.

14:35

It's got everything. It's about the racialized shootings, which, of course, nobody has any clue if they were racialized or not.

14:42

It just involved a white guy and a black guy, so I guess it must be racist. We've got the racialized shootings.

14:48

That's how it starts. He's got, oh, the most segregated hour in America. That must be the most evil thing in America.

14:54

We must reckon with our past because we've never done that before. It's not like we had an entire month dedicated to learning about the history of how racist white people are.

15:03

It's not like that we've ever talked about this before, so, of course, we've got to reckon with the past. Oh, and racism is a gospel issue.

15:10

There it is. Racism is a gospel. We've got to mourn with those who mourn, people.

15:16

Mourn with those who mourn. Racism is a gospel -centered issue. Official TGC position, gospel issue.

15:26

Here's a nice paragraph. I am struck by how small, incremental, and insufficient such efforts may seem.

15:33

I want to learn more about bigger projects to address sin in our country and world.

15:38

I want to learn more and listen more to African -American brothers and sisters on these matters.

15:46

I want to hear more and learn more. It does seem, in addition to broader initiatives that may emerge in coming days, that the small things matter.

15:55

Mentoring just one young boy or one young girl matters. Telling the truth about John Edwards, slaveholder, matters.

16:04

Getting rid of Confederate flags matter. Calling out racist classmates matter.

16:10

Befriending your seatmate at church, whom you have nothing in common with, matters. A biracial marriage in a region that is outwardly accepting but inwardly resistant matters.

16:22

Listen, like, is any of this stuff the worst thing in the world? No, none of this stuff is the worst thing in the world.

16:28

Hold on one second here. Let me just get rid of this call. None of this stuff is the worst thing in the world.

16:36

No, this is standard, fair, woke stuff that we've been seeing for a long time. But this is Owen Strachan.

16:42

He was woke then. And it certainly seems like this is a pretty apt meme.

16:47

Because it just all boiled over last week. Now he's back to his old tricks. And he boldly takes a stand against the racists.

16:56

And it's like, listen, listen. People have been asking me, be serious, AD. You don't really think that G3 is

17:03

Gospel Coalition, right? You don't really think that Virgil Walker is woke, right? And I've got to be honest with you,

17:09

I have no idea. I have no idea if these guys are woke or not. I don't think so.

17:15

But I'll tell you right now, they're doing their best woke impression that they've ever done.

17:21

And they're using all the same strategies, the entire playbook. They're pretending that they're the only ones standing on the truth.

17:27

They're the only ones and this and that. And they're doing the same thing. They're gatekeeping way more intensely than Gospel Coalition ever did.

17:36

They've actually, what they've done here is they've taken the entire playbook that Gospel Coalition was using over the course of five years or more even.

17:44

And they've condensed it into a week. Into a week they've used the entire playbook. And so it looks a lot worse than what

17:51

Gospel Coalition has done. I don't think it actually is worse. But they're doing everything

17:56

Gospel Coalition did. Here's what's going on in my opinion. This is a turf war.

18:01

This is a turf war. They're trying to control the anti -woke agenda.

18:08

The anti -woke narrative. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to control it. And they're trying to control it from a position in the center.

18:17

It's a turf war. Just like it was with Big Eva and Gospel Coalition. It's a turf war.

18:24

And I think G3 has kind of forgotten how that turf war went down because the reason why

18:30

G3 has been effective in that turf war is not because of their podcast and their conferences.

18:36

It's because in that turf war they had on their side a legion of people that actually don't really have an institution or don't really have a turf to defend.

18:49

We're decentralized. It was us. It was us, guys. It was us. We're the reason that you've gotten so much traction.

18:57

All the meme lords out there, they were the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting. And you guys reaped the benefits.

19:03

And I'm not upset about that. I'm not in this to build a platform. That's the thing. Virgil Walker, using the official

19:10

Gospel Coalition strategy, thinks that we're in this to build a platform. We're used to that.

19:15

That's what Gospel Coalition used to say to us. That's what Gospel Coalition used to say to us.

19:21

It's not a big deal. I know it's not true. But now you're going to have a turf war with us.

19:28

And I'm going to tell you it's not going to go the way you think. It's going to go the exact way the Gospel Coalition one did.

19:34

You can't win a turf war with a decentralized opponent. You just can't do it.

19:41

Let's just say you're successful and you manage. Because I think this is the strategy. I told you this last week. Actually, it's so funny.

19:47

I told you this literally like an hour before they implemented the strategy.

19:52

Listen. I'm not a prophet. I'm not a prophet. I just know the score. I know the score.

19:59

I said the strategy would be to isolate Steven Wolf. And they were going to try to split us up and therefore divide us and try to get us to fight each other.

20:09

And therefore control the narrative about this issue. That's not going to work, guys, because we're totally decentralized.

20:17

First of all, I don't think we're going to splinter from Steven Wolf. Number one, I don't think that's going to happen.

20:23

You can try, and you're going to continue to try. And even Owen yesterday was talking about the watershed moment of us.

20:29

Oh, we're finally repudiating Steven Wolf. I don't think he said Steven's name particularly because I'm blocked.

20:35

I don't really remember. But that's what he was trying to insinuate, that this statement was a repudiation of Steven Wolf.

20:41

I don't think it was, man. I don't think it was. I mean, I think you might read it that way, but I don't think it was.

20:49

But even if you were successful, that's the thing. Even if you were successful at defeating Steven Wolf, you won't be.

20:55

But even if you were, we're decentralized, guys. Like, you can't beat us. You just can't beat us in this.

21:02

Number one, you don't have the truth. Therefore, you're not going to beat us. Number two, we're completely decentralized.

21:08

We have no institutions to protect. So we're not going to end up looking like freaking fools the way you have because you're desperately trying to protect your institution.

21:17

You look like fools, guys. You look like fools. Scott O 'Neill, he posted his commentary of the

21:27

Christian nationalist statement that was produced or released yesterday. And here's what he said.

21:33

Again, this is not an idiot. He's not an idiot. He knows exactly what he's doing, but he's acting like a fool, and everybody can see how foolish you're being.

21:42

This is his response to a lot of work by some well -known brothers who mean well, and they're trying to push the conversation forward.

21:52

Just like everyone from your side has been calling for, we want to push this forward. We don't want to talk past each other.

21:58

They said, here, here's something. Let's not talk past each other anymore. Listen, I'm not a Baptist. I wasn't involved in this statement.

22:04

So, you know, there's some good parts in that statement. There's some parts that I might not agree with and things like that.

22:09

That's fine. That's totally okay. Here's what Scott's response is because he's got an institution to protect, and so he ends up face -planting and looking like a fool.

22:20

Here's what Scott says. No, we can't be expected to respond to every Tom, Dick, and Harry statement on what they mean by Christian nationalism.

22:28

We're interacting with the published books and the key influential players like Stephen Wolf and Douglas Wilson.

22:35

There are obviously a lot of guys jumping on the Christian nationals bandwagon, and there may be some guys being loud on Twitter, but Twitter is not the real world.

22:43

I don't even know the two guys who wrote the statement. Not only is this a demonstration that they're not operating in good faith, they're operating like fools trying to defend their foolish little kingdom.

23:00

That's what it looks like. I'm not saying your kingdom is foolish, but that's what it looks like. But it's also,

23:07

Scott, a flat -out lie because if it were true, I would not have heard anything about a

23:15

Protestant pope because Doug Wilson doesn't mention one and neither does Stephen Wolf.

23:21

If it were true, I would never have heard of anything about how you must be saved by the government instead of faith in Christ because Doug Wilson doesn't say that and neither does

23:34

Stephen Wolf. If it were true, Scott, Tom Buck wouldn't have hosted a struggle session with me talking about Corey Mailer's little

23:42

Lutheran psychotic tweet because, I don't know, last time I checked, Corey Mailer isn't

23:48

Stephen Wolf or Doug Wilson. This isn't true, Scott. There's so much more

23:55

I could say about the things that you've been refuting lately or talking about that have nothing to do with Stephen Wolf or Douglas Wilson, but you already know that.

24:04

You already know that. You've got an institution to protect, and so you're acting like a fool and looking like a fool.

24:13

You can't do this institutional game against this completely decentralized movement.

24:20

You can't do it. It's not going to work. You're going to end up looking dumb again and again and again.

24:27

And let me tell you, Scott, you look really dumb right now. I don't think you're dumb.

24:33

I think you're a smart guy. I think Owen's a smart guy. I think Virgil's a smart guy. I think all of you guys are smart, good men, people that I would want to work with in good faith.

24:44

Very clear, though, that you are not willing to do so. And so I guess the game is on, isn't it?

24:51

You want to be Gospel Coalition 2 .0? We can make it happen, and we're doing it right now.

24:58

I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. God bless.