Why Responses to Social Justice Were Inadequate by Jon Harris

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Wonderful to sing with you so I'm going to be introducing here our first speaker and our first speaker is
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John Harris and I was asking people as they were coming in how'd you find about about this conference and the number one response?
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I got was I heard it on John Harris's podcast so So most of you in this room probably know who
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John is and you probably know him like I said for his podcast conversations that matter
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This podcast started during the height of the woke invasion in right around the time of 2018 and 2019 and like many of you
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I Found John on YouTube when pretty much nobody else was explaining the dangers of the social justice movement
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At first I didn't know who John was but as I listened I Found him to be a trustworthy voice a biblical voice
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He was willing to reveal hard things and that came with a cost Now John loves,
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Wisconsin he actually told me that this morning He especially loves at this time of year
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I don't know if he John notices this but two years ago in June we hosted him and Last year he spoke at a conference in the lesser part of our state the southern,
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Wisconsin near Madison And now he's back in Polk County again
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God's country Two years ago when John visited I got to spend two days with him, so I really got to know him pretty well
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One of our elders Mark Brooks, and I took John on a tour of the sites We took him to the cheese factory in Grantsburg where he mailed cheese back to New York we also showed him the famous sites like Ulysses S.
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Grant's cousin's home in Grantsburg, Wisconsin and And John will tell you this is easily his top ten favorite historical sites
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But I but I first got to know John on his podcast, but now I know him as a friend He's a very down -to -earth guy who has been a great help
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To many Christians especially ordinary Christians. I would say who just want answers
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So we're going to hear from John twice in this conference tomorrow morning and right now His first presentation is titled why
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Christian responses to social justice were inadequate, so let's give him a round of applause Thank you,
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Seth. You stole my introduction with all the great things about your state, and so I'll just skip through that Wisconsin's great
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Thanks for coming I want to especially thank Keith and Julie for hosting me and of course
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Seth and Brianna and the family for their Kindness and Eureka Baptist Church, I'm amazed at how many volunteers this morning.
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We're just helping with everything That's a unique thing to be honest with you and the different places I speak It's good to see the
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Christian participation the love you have for one another you have something special here, and I can sense it so I do want to do this because I try to do this wherever I speak before I start and I realize now these books have
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Been out for a few years So maybe the person who wins them already has them in which case you can give them to your neighbor if they don't but I try to find out who drove the farthest or came the far should say came the farthest because some of you might have flown
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So I I think I might know who that is, but we'll we'll find out did someone come Farther than 500 miles raise your hand if it's farther than 500 miles
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Hey, oh, there's two where do you anyone up there, okay, where did you come from? You mean
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Albany right did I hear all Albania, but but not for this
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Really Welcome to America All right well with that said
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I was gonna have to talk after this because I'm so curious We do have some serious things though to consider this morning
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And I think of what I'm going to talk to you about is really a post -mortem on the woke movement on 2020 especially and what we saw it's still going on Seth real quick though.
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How much time do I have? I should probably set that straight 45. Okay, and You know when 2020 comes up the other day
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I jokes that someone brought up 2020 and I just kind of did this you know you're not it's like the year You're not supposed to mention because it was just a horrible experience for many of us depending on where we were and the job but some people lost their jobs and people many people passed away that year and of course you have the
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People's businesses ruined by the social justice stuff, and I mean there's so much and I think the questions.
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I mean we're can you believe it's four years since then I mean I can't it's amazing It's been four years, but that still stung us that still sticks with us
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What happened and what is continuing to happen? I think we're in what I would call the institutional phase of social justice where You see the
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DEI Principles now being applied at the place of your employment perhaps or the place where you go to school or other institutions
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So that this isn't going away. This is very much present. I know dr. Fuller will probably talk a little bit later about how this is even very much present in the current
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Left -wing kind of protests on college campuses, and we still see you know so much of this kind of controlling the narrative in our society and so I want to do a bit of a post -mortem on it though because we know there was some significant battles leading up to 2020 and The church or I should say
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Christian leaders in Christian institutions prominent pastors. We didn't do so well I don't know if you noticed that many of you are here probably because of that We didn't do so well, and I want to answer the question why that might be why is it that we didn't do that great?
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Why is it that there was so much compromise and of course you have your your simple explanations that I think are totally valid People just don't care enough about the
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Word of God people are compromised because they love the approval of man, right? These are simple explanations that I think that they're true but I want to dive deeper into it because I think there are some things that played into this that even some technological or structural things that Put us in a bad position and unfortunately
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I wish I was here to tell you that hey that we cleaned up our mess Christians and institutional
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Christianity the United States they've learned from 2020 and it's not going to happen again I wish
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I could tell you that's the truth. I don't think that's the truth I think we're in a worse spot than we were in many ways now
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There's some silver linings which I'll talk about at the end of this But I think the benefit of hearing some of the negativity that I'm going to share though And the reasons why there was compromises that we can learn from this and I'm reminded of a proverb in proverbs a few problems in Proverbs chapter 9 verses 6 through 9 says this forsake your folly and live and Proceed in the way of understanding
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He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself and he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself
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Do not reprove a scoffer. He will hate you or prove a wise man though And he will love you give instruction to a wise man
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And he will still be wiser teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning and you know to boil all that down Wise people learn from their mistakes they learn from them
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If you're really wise you learn from the mistakes of others so you don't actually repeat them and And that's what
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I want to do is I want to learn from some of the failures and the flaws So we can do better because this situation is not going away.
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It may change forms It may look different, but we still have a real social justice challenge
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And so I'm not going to spend a lot of time defining social justice or I think last time
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I was here I talked about that quite a bit I'm just going to kind of assume that everyone here is on the same page with that that you know social justice not so good and Led to a bunch of Christian heresies and other problems
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And so if you want more information on that you can pick up the red book in the back Christianity and social Justice and I should also say about those books
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Because people I know some of you might want to get a copy for yourself or your pastor If money's a problem just take one.
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I think there might there might be a little sign suggested donation 15 bucks Just go ahead and take one because this is an important topic, and I want you to be equipped
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And for the the red book there's also on if you go to John Harris podcast calm you can download a
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PDF That's for small groups, so you can actually my brother put that together So you can go through I think it's like six or seven weeks and talk about the chapters and and really dive into it
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So if that's something that you know you're not up to speed with there's some resources now here's my thesis for this particular talk though and And and so I phrased this as carefully as I could it's a little it's lengthy.
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It's a paragraph, but this is my thesis Within the old positive world paradigm and what
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I mean by that is when Christianity was viewed as a positive in society within that old positive world paradigm political courage was not essential to building successful Christian institutions a preference for leaders and systems which produced successful stable institutions and brands within Liberalism which is kind of the baseline political environment were in those took priority over internal virtue and doctrinal conformity this rendered
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Christian leaders incapable of responding to negative world treatment, which is what we're in now Christianity is a negative and Illiberal challenges because they by and large were not shepherds, and they still operated on a liberal mindset
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Thank you, John. It's all clear now, so Let me let me give you that's my carefully worded thesis really the the shorthand of that is we're in a situation where Christians are viewed very negatively by the institutions in our society and our
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Seminaries our institutions. They're not equipped for this. They're not they weren't designed for this.
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They're not ready for this There it's like if you if you try to load new software onto an old operating system
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It's not going to work, and and that's kind of the situation I think that we're in in some ways And so there's two facets of this that I want to focus on first is we have a problem with a lack of shepherds pastors in the church like true
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Shepherds, that's that's number one And I'm gonna get into why that might be the case and then number two is
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I think we have still a very liberal mindset in the church Notice I didn't say woke mindset necessarily, but a liberal mindset that paved the way
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For wokeness in some ways, and I'll get to that But let me just just so you know what I'm talking about before we get there
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You know when I was growing up, and I'm sure this is still the case there were a lot of like mottos and taglines and you know messages in media even children's shows that I absorbed things like You can be anything that you want to be right never heard that or Diversity is our strength
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You know or no one should tell you what you can do with your body Right, so all of these things carry assumptions with them bodily autonomy diversity of Religion and ethnicity and all these things these are all good and And a positive good that should be defended and expanded perhaps
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This idea that That we have where the masters of our fate we can sort of individualism where we can kind of choose what we want to be
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And now people are choosing not to be their gender soon Maybe you know this is transhumanism, but people might choose not to be human in their minds
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And so so we're getting to this this place that has been Let's see the wheels have been very greased by a liberalism
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And we've all kind of lived under liberalism and the way that I think liberalism worked in our society was we had
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We thought it worked at least because we had a Christian kind of default setting Because you still had in God we trust and the chapel bells were still ringing and we still had
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Christmas celebrations and and Thanksgiving and other Social occasions that bound us together we could tolerate certain minorities that weren't
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Christians They just they weren't allowed to be in charge of everything in our society, but we could tolerate them well now
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We're getting to a point I've just heard even recently in Minneapolis where I guess there's whole regions that aren't they're not Christian at all they're entirely
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Muslim and now we're reaping the consequences of The ideas the ideology really that we use to To justify the the previous order that we the liberal order the liberal order is breaking down It's not working because it never really actually worked.
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There was no such thing as a neutral society for a deracinated individuals There's always going to be a religious component
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There's always going to be groups and group interests and culture and these kinds of things So so that's what I mean by liberalism.
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We'll get into that a little more later But I want to start with lack of shepherds Lack of shepherds I'd say if I was going to focus on one problem above the others
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It would be this in 2020 it became painfully obvious to me that most of my heroes or who
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I thought were my heroes Really were not worthy of the respect that I gave them in Christian institutions
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Some of them were brilliant theologians. Some of them have written books that helped me some of them I and I don't want to you know,
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I don't want to poopoo any of that some of that was good, but I I realized That many of these men lacked something very basic to leadership.
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It's called courage. It's called virtue It's called being willing to stand up for things that are true
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We're willing to stand up for the people that you represent and their well -being and we did not see that We saw a lot of self -serving.
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We see a lot of fear a lot of willingness to carry government messaging and The messaging of the social justice movement and I could name names.
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I'm not going to do all of that here I'll name a few but I Said that's what
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I do. I guess I'm not gonna be able to get through it without naming some names. Come on I have to do that.
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I think though that's you can lay a lot of this at the feet of seminaries at least in the church and the way that seminaries are
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Are set up and I know dr. Fuller's gonna talk I think more about this later but I sat through many seminary classes from 2011 to my career seminary crew was a bit sporadic.
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So 2011 2014 2017 2018 I sat through a bunch of in you know major seminaries in their classes in evangelicalism
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Hearing what was being taught talking to the students who are around me to figure out You know, what's what was driving them why they were in seminary
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What what were what kind of a person were they going to be when they graduated and were sent back to their churches?
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I talked about I think in the in the red book Russell Fuller wrote the introduction to that one and and we have many stories like this
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But there's a story that I share. I believe at the beginning of that where I'm sitting in class.
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This is in Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and the professor this is a
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Christian I think leadership Class. Yeah, they have classes on that. I'm not sure exactly why but Because it's kind of I don't know my opinion a lot of these classes it should be assumed that you're already there to be a leader that we had like a devotional class and a discipleship class and all these things that so so this was one of those those what
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I considered at least for seminary level to be kind of a fluff class and so I'm not I didn't always pay maybe the best attention in those classes, but this really
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This got me like parsing Hebrew words, you know as I'm listening to you know, you should pray and I'm like I should pray and The the professor turns on this video and shows it to the class and it is
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Dr. Al Mohler on I think it was Larry King live So you might remember this was like back in 2010 or something.
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He was on Larry King live with rabbi schmooly rabbi schmooly Had a big problem with Christians and one of his problems was
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Christians are responsible for like everything Including the Holocaust, okay, so Christians what they need to do is they need to apologize for the
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Holocaust and Al Mohler to his credit at that time in 2010. He defended
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Christians a bit I don't I don't think that was us. You got the wrong guy. We're not it's not like Christianity that's at fault for that well,
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I Remember the professor stopped playing the clip and he turned to the class and he he asked what would you do in this situation?
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If you as a pastor if you were in dr. Moeller's position, what would you do? Student raises his hand.
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I would apologize because you know, the world needs to see that we're willing to own our mistakes and My heart sank and I thought well, you know
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The professor's gonna give it to him because obviously that's wrong and to my surprise the professor looked at him and said, you know
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I think if dr. Moeller had done that interview today. That's what he would have done. And that's what we should do
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And I couldn't believe what I was hearing and so I raised my hand I tried to object I didn't really get any traction so we should probably like, you know get the story of the
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Holocaust straight and Understand that this wasn't it certainly this wasn't Orthodox Christians driving this kind of thing but you know, you can't pin this on Christianity and It was pretty much ignored and that that was one of one of the moments
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There's a few moments in seminars one of the moments. I thought something's wrong Something's really wrong if this is what we're being told to do in our interaction with the world that we should just cower that we should just accept the labels that they want to pin on us and Just say yeah, you're right.
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We're terrible and it's because it's our Christianity, I guess I mean, that's the assumption you have to walk away with And it's no surprise that many of the people that I went to seminary with aren't walking with the
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Lord anymore They deconstructed they've it was the off -ramp from Christianity Because think about it if you're gonna tell everyone
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You're you belong to one of the worst racist misogynistic homophobic institutions in the history of the world
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We've perpetrated all this evil, but we get it. We got it right now in 2 ,000 years of error, but you know, it's you know, it's like It's like going to a
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Klan meeting that's doing diversity training now. It's like no that was our past where we're different now Well, you know, no one's gonna no one's gonna buy that As soon as you start looking into the history and you start believing these things you're just gonna say
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You know what? I can do activism a lot better in the Democratic Party. I can find a secular institution where I can
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Express my concerns for justice. I don't have to do it in the church And and so this is what's happened is there's been the result of this has been deconstruction it's been it's been the off -ramp from Christianity and And I have many other stories that are very similar to that I bring this story up for one purpose though And that's to show you something that I think many of us probably
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We're not aware of at that time. Some of us are now Many of the pastors coming out of these seminaries are activists their community organizers
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They're not pastors and that's part of the problem and they and they they're corrupt because they're corrupted by this ideology and they think that social justice is
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Part of the gospel. It's an it's synonymous with with the gospel. It's a foundational Orthodox belief
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It is it is the gospel part of the gospel necessary for the gospel a good example This would be
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Eric Mason who wrote a broke church and in the book Eric Mason argues that Christians can learn how to work for gospel change quote -unquote from secular social justice initiatives
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Now you think about that We're gonna learn how to we're gonna learn about the gospel the gospel change
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From people who aren't saved who aren't Christians who aren't believers Who the scripture says their father's the devil?
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That's where we're gonna learn our you know, I'm not saying you can't learn from unbelievers things But but gospel change that's you're gonna learn that from unbelievers.
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That's the argument. He makes in woke Church And there's many more examples of this Russell Moore I think does this kind of stick all the time
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Jarvis Williams at Southern Seminary where Ross dr Fuller was he does this kind of thing where they merge social justice categories with The gospel and they create a heresy when they do that It's it's a conflation of long grace essentially and it's almost worse than that because it's not even
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Christian law It's just secular these categories that aren't even in so we were talking at lunch about a lot of these these terms are so elastic and vague you can just you can call someone something like An anti -semite or a misogynist or so and you don't know exactly what that means you don't find it in your
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Bible, but it's something that that can be weaponized and destroy your career or your life and And this is what they do and they call that the gospel they call that gospel change if you're not on board with it
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You're compromised So these are activists they're they're going into your churches and they want to convert your churches to and or Christian ministries to arms of Social justice so you can then be the change in your community and that change means an egalitarian kind of change
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It means all mostly Democrat Party initiatives to be quite frank with you That's one kind of group and I saw these people at my own seminary
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I saw them and I'm saying everyone was that but that was there was certainly there was that Undercurrent there and they were being encouraged in this they were some of them were being radicalized by their seminary experience
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Now that's one group now, they're not shepherds in my opinion That's not you that you're not coming You're not bringing someone into your church who is a shepherd who is there because they meet the biblical qualifications
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They're gonna refute those who contradict they love their sheep their sheep know their voice That's not what you're getting when you hire one of these people
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The second group that I see coming out of seminary training are the managers and they they're not as corrupt
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But there are compromised because they participated in social justice stuff, but they they were a little more shrewd about it
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They're driven more by tactics than theology. And I think this is the majority of seminarians probably Whatever they believed could be endorsed while still maintaining orthodoxy was so is risk calculation.
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So If they could, you know get away with marching with BLM for example while their churches were closed and They could still point to the statement of faith.
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They signed that's what they would do, right? they would go as far as they could with what essentially the world was
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Was telling them they needed to do while maintaining whatever orthodoxy they could so they're holding these things in tension as much as possible
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Example would be JD Greer He said the Bible appears more to whisper on sexual sin compared to when it shouts about materialism and religious pride
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So you see in that there's a prioritization so sins that These are all sins according to Scripture but there's a new way of organizing them and making really a hierarchy of sin in such a way that Sexual sin is now downgraded and religious pride and not materialism is kind of like upgraded to be the more
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Concerning thing This was part of this man He was trying to manage his congregation to get them to go along as far as they were willing to go
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While maintaining their Christianity Rick Warren Ed Stetzer Phil Vischer They would complain about conservative
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Christians being discipled by cable news Frustrating their plans for social harmony in their church You know churches were split up because of the kovat stuff as well and this and this was their thing
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They just wanted to manage the situation. They just wanted everyone to get along as much as possible So their churches could remain together.
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We're just gonna go a little woke over here. We're just gonna we're just gonna It's not gonna affect your life that much the danger of this of course is a lobotomized
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Christianity and I think this has encouraged the deconstruction trends. There's a good example of this
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Kirsten Powers CNN political analyst and I was gonna ask to see if anyone heard of Kirsten Powers, but none of you watch
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CNN so Silly question, isn't it? Kirsten Powers though if you happen to watch CNN ever if you're flipping through the channels and Accidentally the remote breaks or something and you're stuck on CNN you might see
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Kirsten Powers Well Kirsten Powers. This was maybe a year or two ago. She she came out and said that essentially
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Tim Keller had been such a monumental figure in her life and Had convinced her to come back to church and convinced her that Christianity was a good thing
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You know Tim Keller Tim Keller was great But then she found out when she got into Christianity more what
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Christians actually believed She was really fine with the messages about helping the poor and the more philosophical
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TED talks that Tim Keller would give That made her feel good. But once she got into realizing that actually and specifically it was
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Christianity teaches patriarchy That there's male headship She rejected the whole thing and She realized and she felt duped by Tim Keller She felt like she had been given kind of a bait -and -switch
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Like and she she said she wrote a column on this and on her it was on her personal blog But she said that she said
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Tim Keller never talked about that stuff I didn't know that I was I would have to buy into male headship And once she found that out she left the whole thing and this is what the the effect of this manager kind of disposition does
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The whole intent is to look outside see what's popular what you think is popular perceptions everything because the it's what's popular
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Usually in blue cities and the media drives that narrative and you look at that and you think I want to reach those people
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So I got a bunch of conservative Christians in my church, though How do I bend them as far and stretch them as far as they're willing to go so that we can try to reach those?
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People by speaking the language that will appeal to them and that's what happened with Kirsten Powers She she was the the language that she wanted to hear was spoken to her and then when she realized
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That wasn't actually the full picture of what true Christianity was. She rejected it and And this is what seminaries also crank out managers.
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You're a manager You're you know, I had classes where they would tell us how to get our church more diverse You know, these are all management techniques
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Even the leadership stuff most of it's a joke to be quite honest It's like leaders are just the ones who lead they're willing to stand up and they love their people
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It's not much more complicated than that but we have these, you know 10 stuff here's how to be a leader and here's all these tools and tricks and And and and sports analogies and things and it's like some of that might be helpful
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But you know, it's a lot of this is about management And here's the third category that I think is a problem before I get to the silver lining
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Because I'm you know, people know me as such a positive guy So I'm I'm gonna try to give you you know get past this negative stuff
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And that's the academics, okay and the academics they weren't corrupt they weren't compromised as much they were they were compromised
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But they were cowards. They were cowards And they didn't practice social justice.
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They didn't participate in social justice, but they did permit social justice I'm gonna give you some I'm gonna name some names on this one and I and this is called the punch right nuance left strategy, right so Someone to the little bit to the right of you who might be off or maybe they're not even off But they're just outside the
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Overton window of what's acceptable. You punch them hard. Do you point everyone to them? And you say that they're a heretic.
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They're horrible. They're bad. Some people kind of treat me sometimes they're the worst thing they're Christian nationalists and And and then what you do is when someone to the left of you who you know, maybe they could be even to the far left
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You know, they're they don't even know what gender they are you nuance that and so we have to understand their upbringing
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You have to understand where they're coming. It's so complicated. It's called the punch right nuance left. That's what I call it
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Let me give you a few examples of this Carl Truman publicly spoke against critical race theory in the abstract
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He's very courageous against critical race theory Yet he defended Grove City College when parents and students exposed it for promoting teachings consistent with critical race theory
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Right. So this is the kind of thing. I'm talking. He's very academic. He's very smart He's some good things to say about some things but when the rubber meets the road, it's in your own backyard blind eye
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Actually, not even a blind eye wanting to Castigate the people and impose that propose the people who are bringing the topic up Kevin DeYoung Also, it's critical been critical of critical race theory for grace.
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They're not good And Kevin DeYoung, I'm sorry if some of you don't know these names. He's he's kind of big in the
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PCA gospel coalition board member He signaled agreement.
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I remember watching this. There's a thing he had with a guy named Bobby Scott It was at the last e4g conference
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They had this panel on critical race theory and Bobby Scott suggested that Christians at the together for the gospel conference failed to fully accomplish
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Quote the Ministry of Reconciliation unquote because they're too white conference looks too white
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We're clearly not and this is this is a gospel thing Really? We're we're the Ministry of Reconciliation in Scripture, which is reconciliation of God and man
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We're not accomplishing this here because it's too white Kevin DeYoung just nodded along in agreement with this or at least signaled his agreement he'd have a problem with it and and and and and so this is the rubber meets the road and Then it's not as big of a problem
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John Payne another guy in the PCA Presbyterian Church in America condemned the revoice theology, which is gay celibate theology.
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You can be gay You just can't practice it He condemns this and yet he referred to key PCA leaders who promoted that theology and corrupted the gospel as friends from different perspectives and brothers in Christ These guys are academics these guys are smart they write books and there's many more like them
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They they're all over our seminaries what they seem to lack was courage Courage when it would cost them because their institutions were corrupted and if they were to say something they might lose their job
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They might lose their clout. They might lose their respect and And that's what I think that's the only explanation.
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I know of that must have kept them silent There's a fourth category though, and this is
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I think the legitimate biblical category of shepherds Shepherds did not show cowardice.
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They did not compromise. They did they were not corrupt They did not permit social justice.
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They didn't participate in it. They didn't practice it They showed courage and they prevented it. They prevented social justice from coming into their churches
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There's many examples of this but I'm going to tell you of something true here And and I'll just tell it to you straight most of the examples if not all the examples that I know of There might be a few exceptions, but they come from pastors such as your own pastor
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Seth They come from pastors in smaller churches across the country it is very hard to find people with this kind of courage in institutions and and this is one of my clues that we had a problem with the seminaries and a problem with The very technology or the mechanisms that are you providing pastors to us the patty the pastor factory, right?
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there's a problem there and It shows up in this way. I know of I know of a guy in outside of Trying to think what's the liberal city in the state of Oregon Portland, thank you
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Portland no guy outside of Portland a contractor his shirt church was shut down during kovat for indefinitely and People wanted to meet
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Christians wanted to me and he just started his own church and people started coming. He wasn't expecting that now It's a church
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Just a contractor, right? I know a church in southern, Indiana where? this was a very hard decision for them, but they they had to leave the church that they were at and they had you know 20 people in a living room and It was over these compromises social justice kovat stuff.
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Well now, you know, I went there a year after they had started they had 200 people and I mean courage is infectious just like You know discouragement or cowardice can be infectious.
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So can courage you see a courageous person you say maybe I can stand too and I see this kind of thing all over the country and I speak at places where you have courageous pastors
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But it is rarely shows up in the institutions. Dr. Fuller is an example of this
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Gregory Scholes at Concordia University is an example of this These are men who did take a stand and they suffered the consequences for it and So these are men worthy of respect, but the institutions are designed to punish that kind of that kind of that opposition so what we need is
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More shepherds. That's the that's what I want to suggest to you That is the solution to much of this is
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Just we need more shepherds and I'll come back to this at the end and share with you perhaps in what ways we can
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We can inspire that and where we should look for for leaders in the future because I think things are changing very quickly in academics in the church everywhere and It's going to be courage.
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That's the thing people look for now more than well. I have my credentials I have a piece of paper. I have you know,
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I know this person It's going to be more did are you willing to suffer for what you believe? so The second thing this
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I'll just briefly say this because I'm running out of time and I need to get to the liberal mindset but I think that There's also this preferred leader in many churches at the seminaries can cater to this a tendency to prefer pastors with a meek voice good bedside manner maternal instincts
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Sometimes a more fundamentalist circles a pastor who rages about a narrow range of topics outside the buildings of the church but there's there's kind of like a preference for a
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Certain type of pastor who's not a shepherd you think of a shepherd you think of someone who's got a staff
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And the staff is used for a purpose It is to bring sheep back to when they're gonna damage themselves or going towards a cliff you bring them back
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That's a hard conversation the pastors out with their congregants. Sometimes sure you've had some of those conversations tough
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It's a disciplinary staff do it's to whack a wolf in the head Wolves that are going after your sheep
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That's that's kind of Essential fundamental to who a pastor is they should
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I mean this I'm not even getting them the pastoral qualifications I'm just looking at the image of a shepherd. They love their sheep.
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They protect their sheep they When their sheep are threatened they meet that threat
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We're that's not Incentivized in many quarters of Christianity. They're not looking necessarily for that kind of person
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So we need to look for that kind of person and then we also realize that many of people coming from these institutions these seminaries
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They're they're not training people for that. That's not exactly what they're what you're gonna get necessarily
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All right, I'm gonna circle back to that and and try to solve this problem a little bit I want to just talk about the liberal mindset since I only have 15 minutes.
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I go a little quickly here, but when I talk about the liberal mindset I already gave you a bit of an introduction to what that is with some of the things that we've heard growing up these
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Taglines, but really what it is is it's individualism egalitarian instincts in a neutral public square individualism egalitarian instincts in a neutral public square so And I don't mean that there's a sort of a good kind of individualism out there that I'm not talking about where You know, we talk about like individual rights as Americans and of course even that's now
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I don't even like to use that language now because so much of that has been co -opted and transformed and you know what our rights but But I think there is a good sense in which we are made in God's image.
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God has given us responsibilities and those responsibilities those obligations Come with an assumption that we should have the freedom to exercise those things.
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So if God gave you the Obligation he commanded all of us. I should say it's a general command.
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It's a general command That we should be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth There should be a freedom for doing that kind of thing
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We should be allowed to be fruitful multiply and fill the earth, right? So so that's what I'm talking about And much of this come, you know life liberty the pursuit of happiness tends to be shorthand for that kind of thing
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But I'm not when I talk about individualism, I'm not exactly talking about that I'm talking about this
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Deracinated individual this this person who's separated from he's born into a society without any obligations
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For the people that came before him and what he's inherited and you know The fire department that made sure his house wasn't gonna burn down all the things that he's in here
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He's born into a society without any of those obligations and now he lives life without any attachment
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I think I'm like Ralph Waddle Waldo Emerson or you know Some of the like like Walden Pond Henry David Thoreau think of those guys look when you think of what
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I'm talking about here and this is this is kind of person part and partial to libertarian and Classical liberal thinking today or what calls itself that and so there's this mindset that exists out there that I've run into this
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Even in my own life. I've kind of run into wow I have some of these assumptions and I think some of these assumptions weakened our response to social justice
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And so tomorrow morning in Sunday school, I'm gonna question some of these assumptions more right now Though what I want to do is just give you some concrete examples.
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So, you know what I'm talking about The the let's talk about spiritual identity first in relation to critical race theory so there's this kind of Response that I saw a lot of Christians engage in when critical race theory was a big topic and it still is some some quarters where they would say like the only identity that matters is your identity in Christ and there's only one race or sometimes it like I think even the
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Dallas statement said something like that race is a social construct. They agreed with critical race theory so that's the one point we have an agreement and I Think this is fundamentally at in conflict with God's created order and and I know there's there's so many questions probably rising in your minds
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Please write them down for the Q &A session I'd be happy to talk about any of them, but I got to move kind of quickly here so the the
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Roman historian Livy said that true patriotism was founded upon respect for family and love of the soil and I think there's
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Livy's not a Christian But I think this has been kind of like an obvious truth that everyone throughout time has believed like oh, yeah
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Like you have a preference for your own people It starts in the family your own family your own siblings your own parents
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You you know them you have shared experience with them. You're willing to give your life for them And it's what's the reason for that?
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Well, it's because they're they're part of something bigger. It's not just a me. It's an R It's an us and this is part of God's ordering.
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He made the world this way So there's these things called natural relationships and the
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Universal Church exists on a spiritual level It does not destroy these temporal associations that we have we belong to but you know
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We're we have a gender. We're part of we're part of a set of other people that also have that gender We're part of the family.
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We're part of a nation. We're part of community citizenship labor Relationships voluntary associations. We have all these things that we're part of these groups and And that is part of being a human we naturally tend to fall into these things
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Galatians 3 28 says though that there is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free man there's neither male nor female for you're all one in Jesus Christ and This was
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I think abused during the woke stuff by some pastors who I think with legitimate Concerns about the woke movement they wanted to stop it
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But they ended up just kind of like a racing earthly identity in the process by saying spiritual identity is the only thing that matters
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All those connections don't seem to matter Augustine said about this verse Galatians 3 28
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Difference of race or condition of sex is indeed taken away by the unity of faith But it remains embedded in our mortal interactions and in the journey of this life
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So race is not a social construct or nationality if you want to use that word use it more You know ethnos the biblical
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Greek word. That's not a social construct it exists in the real world There is this thing and and it's it's interesting to me this becomes controversial to bring up but this was the assumption that the
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New Testament writers all had and And there is a natural kind of in -group preference that people tend to have if you just observe people the
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Israelites They were to provide for the destitute members of their Nationality that they were commanded to do this
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Isaiah 58 They were to seek spiritual mediation instead of court adjudication concerning challenging personal disagreements
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Deuteronomy 17 They were to give preference to one another in tangible ways and Christians are called to do the same thing in the church, right?
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For Israel this included laws concerning slavery worship and land rights that favored their countrymen over others
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So we have this debate now with the border situation where we're saying hey, we want
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Americans preferred here We're not against anyone else, but we want a border policy that benefits us
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We don't want it. We we don't want to be the bank for the whole world to come, right? Well, and that's getting into this that there's this sort of natural
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Preference that we have and it's really the way that love is ordered Augustine called it the order of Morris It's a love that we have for our own
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Now there's examples of this in Scripture Jesus wept over Jerusalem Paul Wished he were a curse for the sake of his kinsmen according to the flesh
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But Christian leaders during 2020 seemed incapable of standing up to challenges at that time to white ethnicities and to the
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American identity on the basis of natural relationships And they could not even appeal to intrinsic worth or national identity unless they that identity was based upon commonly shared propositions
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So Americans were people who just believed in freedom, and that's what makes an America They couldn't appeal to like Americans live in a particular place.
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This is what Trump does He said you're a particular people you live in a particular place and that's true and So by joining the attack on group identities by saying we all identity should be erased away for our spiritual identity
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Or claiming that such identities were not rooted in God's orders what happened is many Christian leaders effectively disregarded
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What should have been one of their major critiques of critical race theory? So they missed the boat.
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This is one of the things that even the most conservative Christians in my estimation and it's
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I'm not saying any of these guys are bad, but They missed the boat on this they could have been a little more aggressive against critical race theory
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But they were kind of hampered because they had this they spiritualized natural relationships
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Another thing that I noticed was the complementarianism Debate came out with the me too movement, and I'm going to be brief on this but the me too movement challenged
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Christian patriarchy by claiming it produced abuse and The response from many Christians was we agree with you
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It is abusive, and we hate it. We shouldn't have that we're complementarian And it was often not emphasized that the complementary roles that husbands and wives and men and women have
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We're actually based in there, and it's assumed in Scripture that they're based in God's created order.
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It's not something arbitrary God didn't just say one day You know what would be a good rule wives should submit to husbands.
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I have a great rule God didn't just say that that was rooted in In in who wives are to be who he designed them to be their function and who husbands are said to be to love their wives as Christ loved the church and What happened was
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I think with the complementarian? Kind of rebuttal to trying to protect Christianity from this accusation of patriarchy what we ended up doing was we?
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We did the same thing that we did with natural relationships We decided to undercut ourselves in the foundation for why we believe what we believe and this played out
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Most strongly in the gay celibate theology, and I think this is where it became more this is where people started to pick this up, and it became obvious because The gay celibate theology is this idea that you can be homosexual in The way that you talk the way you walk the way your desires
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But you just can't act on it because the Bible says no to that, but you can do everything else And you can even have an identity.
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That's homosexual perhaps and This has become very popular in Christianity as a way to deal with The challenge from the
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LGBT lobby in fact the crew training which has become controversial now And I I have access to a lot of those documents and videos
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That's pretty much what it is it is trying to train college people administering college campuses
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Here's how you deal with the LGBT issue that challenges Christianity You just say it's fine to be
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LGBT you can be that that you're just choosing That's your choice your individual autonomous choice to be
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LGBT You just can't do this one little thing this practice. You can't have intercourse.
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That's the one thing as if that's what God was getting at and so they you know the managers really in the church really have used this and The problem with it is that It is not
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I have a bunch of biblical things here only four minutes Let me I'm trying to think do I run through all these verses the problem is that in Scripture and Colossians?
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3 5 and First Thessalonians 4 5 Romans 1 26 they refer to sexual passion underlying those actions
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There's there's a passion. There's a lust there's a driving force. There's an epithemia and a pathos
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There are both sinful according to Scripture and so the sin starts before that those actions
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Again, though Christian leaders could not fully stand on this issue because once you give into any aspects of the LGBTQ plus identity
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There is no reason to oppose things like drag queen story hour or gay pride celebration so long as they preclude intercourse
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So this was all you know this was all kind of a liberal tendency that existed in the church that kind of eschewed natural relationships and these kinds of things and Neglected the created order and tried to spiritual eyes and in so doing
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I think we've opened up ourselves To more wokeness to be quite honest with you Because if we don't have a foundation by which to oppose wokeness if it's just arbitrary things
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God has said then there's no foundational reason Now I said that I would come back to the problem that we have
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With I was going to talk about kovat and stuff maybe we'll talk about that later But let me give you a solution here and end with the silver lining so There's there's a few things
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I think we can do and as believers one is we need to abandon certain institutions and this is a hard decision to make especially when it's a denomination you grew up in or an instant a seminary that you're connected to This is emotionally very difficult, and I understand that because sometimes you have an identity that's related to these things
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But I think in Scripture we see that God allows as a manifestation of his judgment the hardening of certain hearts like Pharaoh's heart
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We see that he uses parables to keep the proud from understanding We see that he gives true suppressors over to a depraved mind.
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There are certain situations where God says It's too far gone. I'm judging them now.
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How do you tell if your organization is judged? Well It's a little more subjective or dicier there, but let me give you an idea
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Christians serving organizations they believe are under judgment should ask whether it is better to redirect their limited resources towards more fruitful ends and in weighing this decision
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What they can do is ask whether or not that reform attempts have been met with open arms or neutralized
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So if someone in the organization has tried to reform the organization, and it didn't work. That's a good clue
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You see the Apostle Paul abandoned synagogues that did not receive his teaching you see Martin Luther and the
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Protestant Reformation Abandoning the Catholic Church when it did not respond to the reform efforts that were being brought
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So I'm not saying you just abandoned an institution or a church. You just leave your church saying you start with an attempt to But here's the truth
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We want to reform this institution if they're not responsive to that if they don't heed the warning and and it's blatant
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That's your clue. Okay, this this is under judgment now, and if I stay in this sinking ship
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I'm gonna be catching the judgment with them and my family's gonna suffer for it So that's what you have to think through so start new ministries right is one of the things you can do true scripts
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Russell Fuller's got his theology classroom. I mean these are things you start new ministries that aren't compromised
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The other thing we can do is focus on the local focus on the local So I give you some examples of churches that didn't compromise during the the 2020
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I think the advantage to the local is that there's more accountability and a familiarity, you know, your pastors, you know your leaders
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You know, you don't a lot of you, you know me from the podcast, but you don't know me You don't know what I'm doing with the rest of my time, but you would know a local pastor in your church
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Jesus said his sheep knew his name So this is this familiarity. I think is important for accountability
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The second advantage is it's harder to control a decentralized movement The government can go tell the head of the
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Southern Baptist Convention conform and the Southern Baptist Convention will make a resolution and get the word out that you need to conform when you have independent churches all over the place as they're a lot harder to keep track of and Even if the government has technology to keep track of all of us, which apparently they do
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They're probably If you're listening I'm looking at my phone suspiciously.
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I do this a lot I'm gonna have an ad for like something related to this talk after we finish, you know, the phone's always listening
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The thing is though they don't have the manpower to keep track of everything. Even if they have the information they can't process at all
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So I think that's another advantage In a decentralized kind of church and then thirdly and most importantly and I'm ending with this we need to return to virtue
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We need to return to virtue qualifications for leaders We need to refute those who contradict
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Titus 1 9 means pastors who use their staff This means for false teachers.
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They come to you in sheep's clothing They mislead if possible the elect they cause dissension.
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They disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. They advocate a different doctrine They introduce destructive heresies. They creep in unnoticed
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We need to take Scripture Seriously when it says to beware of them to keep our eye on them to cut off their opportunity to test the spirits to contend earnestly for the faith
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It does not actually take that much effort to say no to false teaching It really doesn't but it does take courage and that's what we have to prize
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That's what we have to get back to and it may look like in your church in your institution It's not the guy with the degree.
51:26
You need to be looking at hiring or even in your business It's the guy, you know And that you know has courage because you've seen it and he's faithful in the small things
51:34
And so it's time for him to be faithful and much. That's how I think we move forward and We purify or the
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Lord purifies the church. I think that's one of the mechanisms he can use We don't just trust the institution because it's from this institution.
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Those institutions have compromised We look at what we actually do know in our local tangible everyday life the people that are around us
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So I think that's the solution and tomorrow morning. I will talk more about liberalism and You know why that kind of weakened us in our response to social justice and hopefully answer some of the questions that maybe you have about that but But that's my encouragement is that this is actually happening in an organic process on the local level already
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And I've seen this around the country people are starting to wake up to these realities and we are seeing
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New leaders who do have courage start to rise and I have names I can give you if you're curious later
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But there are people that I think to keep an eye on in the future. So that's my encouragement