There is Nothing New Under the Sun and my Support for the Council of Philly

A Book on Theft, Social Justice, and the Need for Biblical Definitions

I just started reading a book by David Chilton called Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. This is a response to a Christian named Ron Sider, who wrote a book called Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

And so the title is sort of a play on his title. And many looked at that book as a kind of a Marxist type of book, although at the time Ron was not saying that he was a Marxist. Doesn't that sound familiar?

But anyway, I just started, I mean, I'm only a few pages in, and it's one of those books that you basically want to underline and take a note on every sentence. It's just, so far, it's just chock full of interesting stuff.

But I wanted to talk about it really briefly because in the very beginning there's an important concept that I want to sort of address. And it's going to, by the way, you can get this book for free on PDF, and I'll put the link to it in the description of this video, but I wanted to read part of this paragraph here.

It says, The mark of a Christian movement is its willingness to submit to the demands of Scripture. Not, mind you, merely the principles abstracted from their context and loaded with new content, but rather the actual, concrete, explicit statements of God's word.

You shall not steal, for instance. That must not be relativized on the mere excuse that the thief has no bread. It must not be violated just because someone has found a principle that God would like everyone to have bread.

It must not be transgressed with the spurious rationale that the thief should have been given the bread in the first place. If you want principles, here's one. Theft is theft. Easy to remember, uncomplicated, and biblical.

The Christian who advocates theft in the name of social justice is in truth calling for the revolution whether or not he fully realizes what he's doing. We must not allow the lovely sounds of the words to disguise their meaning.

There Is Nothing New Under the Sun

I don't know why I'm shocked, but I'm always shocked that there's nothing new under the sun. I'm always shocked. And maybe it's just, you know, me being naive or me thinking that, you know, we're going through things that I don't know what it is, but I'm always shocked that there's nothing new under the sun.

This book could have been written today about the MLK conference. It could have been written today about social justice Christians because social justice, it sounds lovely. It sounds great. And when you, especially when you quote Bible verses, you quote Amos, let justice roll down like waters.

It sounds like, wow, how could any Christian disagree with this? This is why I think we're having calls for setting up councils of Philadelphia, you know, because it's like, well, look how biblical this is.

Let justice roll down like waters. And the reality is that using biblical language doesn't make it biblical. You have to actually demonstrate it with very clear biblical commands. Like for example, theft is theft.

Just because somebody says they have a right to your money because they don't have bread or they don't have basic, you know, human, you know, rights, that doesn't mean they actually have the right to your money.

Do you see what I'm saying? So when you hear social justice warriors talk about justice and they quote scriptures, that's all well and good, but we have to actually demonstrate what the words mean, biblically speaking.

It's the same thing with love. It's the same thing with love. You'll hear all kinds of activists saying, well, how can you deny love to the homosexual who wants to get married to his partner? And it's like, well, you have to actually define love.

You can't just have that word. You can't just have that word and expect that we're on the same page. We have to define what love is, biblically speaking. And when you do that, of course, it's a lot clearer what the reality is, biblically speaking.

And so this is important. I mean, again, there's nothing new under the sun. This is a book that was written in the eighties before I was born. Anyway, the one other thing I wanted to talk about here is the next page.

The Bible Defines Its Own Terms

I thought this was so interesting too. He says a man or a movement may claim to be Christian and yet not be a man or a movement may be Christian and yet have unbiblical ideas. The test is scripture and scripture alone, not wishes, not rights, not wants, not needs.

Every word a man speaks at the bar of God's inerrant word. Try every word, I'm sorry, against, try every word a man speaks at the bar of God's inerrant word. It's so important. That's so important because when someone quotes a Bible verse, it sounds like what they're saying is biblical.

But the thing is their ideas and their sort of overarching principles, they may not be just because a social justice warrior quotes Amos and says, let justice roll down like waters does not mean that he's defining justice according to the scriptures.

The test is always the scriptures. That's why we need to have open Bibles. That's why we need to be Bereans about this because if how Amos does define justice is different than how David Platt defines it now, if how Amos defines justice is different than Matt Chandler defines it now, then you need to reject what Matt Chandler says when he uses that verse.

Amos wasn't talking about income inequalities. Okay. Amos wasn't talking about that kind of thing. It's just, it's just not you. He just wasn't because he defines his own words. You see what I'm saying?

The Bible defines its own words. And so just because someone is a Christian and I believe Matt Chandler and I believe David Platt are Christians, not saying they're not Christians. Even, you know, Kyle Howard, who says some outrageous things.

I believe he's a Christian, but I don't think his ideas are Christian. I simply don't. Dr. Eric Mason, when he, when he's calling for this council, I don't think his ideas are Christian, even though I believe that he's a Christian.

It's just that simple. And so we got to be careful not to accept language that sounds great. It sounds lovely. Like, like David Chilton says, we got to make sure we're, we're defining these things biblically.

And oftentimes the biblical definition is very simple. It's not complicated. Theft is theft. Doesn't matter if you're hungry. Doesn't matter if you think you need it. Doesn't matter if you think you're owed it.

Theft is still theft. It's pretty simple. So anyway, I'm looking forward to this book. I recommend, I mean, just the first, you know, 10 pages have been unbelievable. I recommend you get it. It's free.

So you have no excuse. Or you can find a used copy for pretty cheap as well. Also I wanted to say a couple things about the, the, the council of Philadelphia, the, the recommended Dr. Eric Mason council on race and social justice.

My Support for the Council of Philadelphia

I actually am a supporter of it. I hope they do it. I really do hope they do it. I think there's, there's three outcomes that could happen from such a council. What I hope is, this is what I hope the outcome is, that they're very specific in their positions.

They're very specific and that they define these words very carefully so that they apply to certain people and not other people. And I have a feeling that if they do that, that we, you know, the, the biblical bankruptcy of their positions will be exposed, you know?

So I, I hope that they do this because the more specific they get, the easier it will be to refute unless it's, of course they do it in a biblical way, which I can't imagine that they would based on what I've seen.

But anyway, I hope that it would be a council that would lead to specificity in what they're saying. I don't think that that's what would happen though. What I think is likely to happen is the second alternative.

And what's likely to happen is there will be a ton of very vague accusations made, a ton of very vague definitions that could apply to almost anybody at any time, as long as they're not in lockstep with the ideology of this woke movement.

If you're okay, if you're not a woke Christian, then you will potentially be whatever it is that they say you are racist, a color blindest, colorist, whatever these, whatever the words they're using today.

That's what you'll, I think that's what's likely going to happen. It'll be very vague. I see nothing about their blogs or their tweets or their sermons or their speeches that leads that that makes me believe that there'll be specific in any way.

I think the social justice way, the secular way, which again, a lot of these guys are taking their cues from that is to be as vague as possible. They want to be able to be so vague that you can't really ever pin them down.

They like to say things without quite saying them. So that's what I think would happen. I think it'd be very vague. And so that again, would likewise, it would just show the bankruptcy of their position.

So again, I still hope they have the council of Philadelphia. The other thing that I would say is that they would be strictly biblical and that's would be the best alternative. If they actually have very biblical, you know, canons that come from this council and all of that kind of thing.

I still think that it would probably be vague enough to be misinterpreted because they would say things like, well, justice is an imperative of the Bible. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, obviously God is concerned with justice.

Nobody's denying that. So in that way, it would be almost like kind of pointless to even have the council because nobody is denying that, that God is concerned with justice. God is concerned for the downtrodden.

Nobody's denying that kind of stuff. So it could be that it would just be thoroughly biblical and also useless because it doesn't really address anything that we would need to address. But who knows? Maybe there's another alternative.

Maybe it would be really helpful and actually good. I can't imagine it would be based on the people that are calling for its track record. Hey, maybe they'll invite me. That would be awesome. If I could get a large enough following on YouTube, I'd be glad to go to that conference or that council and represent sort of the opposition party, so to speak.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.