Response to Jim Wallis Pt2

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace.
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The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who is no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along.
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Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today is August 25th, 2020 and if you are reading along in our daily Bible reading today, we're going to be reading from Acts chapter 24.
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If you'd like to get a copy of our daily Bible reading for 2020, you can do so by going to our website at sgfcjacks.org and we also want to invite you if you're in the Jacksonville area and you do not have a home church to come and visit us this coming Lord's Day this Sunday at 930 for Sunday School and 1030 for worship.
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That's Sovereign Grace Family Church, sgfcjacks.org.
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Now we're going to continue today with our response to Jim Wallace as I talked about yesterday.
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Jim is an evangelical theologian, writer, teacher, and political activist.
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He is known for being on the evangelical left and he was a spiritual advisor to Barack Obama.
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He has made a video with the group NowThis and NowThis Media puts out a lot of videos on social issues and he has made some statements in this video that I believe warranted a response.
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Now someone might say well who am I to give the response? Well I'm a minister as well and I want to provide a response to what he is saying because he says in this video that Christians essentially are putting too much emphasis on abortion and same-sex marriage and not enough emphasis on social justice issues and I want you to hear what he is saying.
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Now if you didn't hear yesterday's program I would encourage you to go back because I gave an introduction to this and today is Tuesday so if you go back to Monday's program and listen in you can hear what I had to say about that because I'm not going to play the whole thing every day and I just want to give you the opportunity to know that we are starting out in the middle of what he is saying.
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So we are going to pick up around the 27 second mark.
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Now this is something new for me.
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I'm working on this program so if I have a technical difficulty I would encourage you to please give me a little bit of grace.
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So I'm going to start this and I'm going to jump to the 27 second mark.
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To be a Christian is more than your stance on that very image of God.
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Alright so I had to jump ahead.
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You heard a little bit at the beginning.
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This is now at the 27 second mark and I'm going to press play.
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This is right where we left off yesterday and I'm going to let him talk for a little longer than I did yesterday because I know I made a lot of preliminary statements.
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I want you to hear what he is saying and kind of get his heart on this.
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As I said, I'm not necessarily trying to besmirch his character.
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I am simply responding to what he is saying.
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This is not an ad hominem attack.
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I think he genuinely believes what he is saying is true.
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So I want to make that clear.
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I'm not saying he is being disingenuous or dishonest.
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I just think he is incorrect.
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I want to make some comments on that as we go.
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So I'm going to let him continue to speak.
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Now we have a president who makes this degradation of the image of God routine.
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And yet this did not start with him.
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Trump is not the cause of all this.
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He is the consequence.
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Our country is embracing its very worst demons, showing how far and deep they really go.
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There is a better America, a better future, but this future involves choices, moral choices.
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Okay, right away, I just have to mention that some of what he is saying is true and I have to give credit where credit is due.
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I do think our nation is embracing a lot of demons and the worst of us, and we've seen the worst of us certainly over the last several months with government overreach of power.
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We've seen those who have risen up and destroyed whole cities and riots and burnings and murders.
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So I don't disagree with that, but I think he and I would disagree on the cause.
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And he's already mentioned Trump.
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He said Trump isn't the cause, but we're going to see that that's actually not.
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He's going to go on to say more about the president, and I certainly don't want anyone to think that I'm giving an open-handed, absolute endorsement to the president.
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I'm not.
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I think that our president has a lot of failures, but at the same time, I think that the statements that Mr.
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Wallace is making is he is ignoring the obvious issues on the other side while focusing in on the issues of Donald Trump and those who would support him.
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So let's continue to listen.
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None of us can avoid.
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Christians who say they're not political will still make a choice when November 2020 rolls around.
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This can be a choice of silence, which works as affirmation of the status quo.
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It can be a direct vote for an anti-truth, anti-immigrant, white nationalist administration.
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See right there, he said Christians who don't vote or Christians who vote for Trump are, and he's going to say in a moment that they're anti-Christ, that they're voting against Christ.
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And this is where I take the biggest issue with Wallace is because he is, he is clearly identifying Donald Trump as evil and his administration as evil and saying that Christians who support Donald Trump are supporting anti-Christ.
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So we're going to hear that as we go ahead.
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Or it can be a vote against those systems and prejudices, a choice proclaiming that the image of God still has value.
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I'm going to use a word.
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Real quick before he uses the word, and the word he's going to use is anti-Christ.
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He doesn't say that we should vote for the left.
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He doesn't say we should vote for Biden.
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He doesn't say we should.
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In fact, this video is older, so I don't know if this is even the Biden, Trump back and forth was even when this video was made.
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But the point that he is making is that if you go toward Donald Trump, if you vote for Donald Trump, then you are voting for anti-Christ.
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And so you should go the other direction.
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And obviously, because we have a two-party system, really, he could only be advocating, in my mind, he could only be advocating for a democratic vote.
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So let's hear what he has to say.
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It is controversial and may even sound irreverent, but it must be said when your policies and your words are antithetical to everything that Jesus said and did.
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Those policies are anti-Christ.
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The white nationalism in America is not just racism, it's anti-Christ.
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The dehumanization of immigrants is not just a lack of compassion, it is anti-Christ.
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The mistreatment of women through sexual harassment, abuse, and assault isn't just sexist, it's anti-Christ.
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And for churches not to name and say that clearly and boldly is evidence of their losing connection with Jesus Christ and his teachings.
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What you can't see, because this is an audio podcast, is there are pictures coming up as he's speaking.
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And when he talked about children and immigrants being mistreated, there were pictures of the border.
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When he talked about the various issues, there are pictures coming up that you can see.
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And it's creating a narrative.
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And the narrative is, of course, that these things, for instance, when he mentioned sexists and women, a picture of the woman who accused the now Supreme Court Justice, but who was just, I believe it was last year, being pursued as a Supreme Court Justice, being examined, the woman who came out against him and said that he had assaulted her many, many years ago.
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And, of course, that started what was known as the Me Too movement.
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And everybody said, oh, we have to believe everything that she says, even though there is no physical evidence.
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This is, we have to believe all women, you know, hashtag Me Too, hashtag BelieveAllWomen.
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And so they so they throw up a picture of that woman.
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But what they don't do is they don't throw up the picture of those who have made accusations against Joe Biden, because that doesn't fit the narrative.
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So we have the the accusations against the Supreme Court Justice nominee, but we do not have the accusations against the vice or against the presidential presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
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Why? Because he is on the left side.
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And so this only works when you're aimed in one direction.
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And again, Mr.
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Wallace sounds very genuine, but he is being disingenuous when he is focusing on saying one side is evil.
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One side is racist.
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One side is sexist.
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One side is nationalist.
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One side is white supremacist.
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And that's the Donald Trump side.
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He represents everything evil in this world.
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And Christians, churches that are not speaking out against it are doing evil.
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And again, I think this is very unfair.
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I don't think he is providing a genuine understanding of the situation, and I think he's being very one-sided, though he would probably consider himself to be very fair and balanced.
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But I'm hearing a lot of unfairness here, but I'm going to let him continue.
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When you listen to some white evangelicals praise Trump, watch for how little they talk about Jesus and his plan of radical discipleship.
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We forget the complexity of his message.
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Jesus was a deeply radical figure.
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He proclaimed a vision of love and a new analysis of power.
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I want to say something about this.
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I may have to back up the recording a little bit.
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I'm really getting tired of this, and I'm just going to say this out loud.
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I'm tired of people calling Jesus a radical in the way that a leftist radical is a radical.
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Or even a right-wing radical.
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The idea that Jesus was radical, certainly his message was radical, but to equate him with what is often the equation that is made is to diminish who Jesus was.
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You see, I don't know Mr.
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Wallace, and I don't know what his theology is, but I imagine that he has a low view of Christ.
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I don't know this, but I imagine his view of Jesus is not consistent with what we would call Trinitarian Orthodoxy, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.
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I don't know that Mr.
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Wallace believes in the virgin birth.
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I don't know that Mr.
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Wallace believes that Jesus Christ is God and man, and both fully God and fully man.
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And when you call Jesus a radical, I think that in a sense, is that true in a sense? Yes, I think it can be true in a sense, but I think it's equating him with a lot of the foolish radicals that we see.
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Because someone might say, and he's going to say in a moment that Jesus would have marched with Antifa, Jesus would have marched with Black Lives Matter, because you see, that's the type of radical he's equating Jesus to be, and that is not a proper biblical understanding of Jesus.
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I'm going to back up just about five seconds here, and I'm going to let him start the sentence again.
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I kind of cut him off.
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I want to let you hear exactly what he's saying.
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A deeply radical figure.
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He proclaimed a vision of love and a new analysis of power that turned the world on its head.
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This brown-skinned Jewish rabbi had quite a lot to say about politics, or at least how we should apply our moral values.
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Always has to focus on the fact that Jesus was brown-skinned, and which is, again, the focus here, the focus always has to be on race, always has to be on the distinguishing of the race, and again, has to make a point about Jesus being a Middle Eastern Jew.
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Nobody doubts that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew, but this point always has to be made, because they think they're saying something that's somehow going to be insightful.
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It's not insightful, it's historic, it's accurate, but it attempts to try to draw a line.
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All people on the right hate people who have brown skin or black skin.
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That's not the truth.
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And the broad brush that says that all people on the right are inherently racist and those on the left are as pure as the driven snow, this is untrue.
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And so I think that just pointing that out and making that, Jesus was radical, he was brown-skinned, there's an equation that's being made here.
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Jesus was like us, and by us I mean Jesus was like the leftist radicals of today.
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He spoke out against the powers.
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He was a radical leftist, he was all about love, and he spoke out against politicians who had too much power, all of this.
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It misses the point of Jesus.
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Jesus came to this earth to die for sinners and to become a propitiation to appease the wrath of God.
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Now, again, I don't know Mr.
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Wallace's theology.
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I have to believe he doesn't believe that.
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I know many people on the left of the evangelical aisle do not believe in penal substitutionary atonement because they don't believe God has wrath.
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And again, I can't speak for him, but I can only say based on experience, I'm not going to put words into his mouth, but when I think of the missing of the point, I think this really does miss the point.
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To public life.
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Today, Jesus would have been the one celebrating the Black Lives Matter movement shoulder to shoulder with his neighbors, especially those who are immigrants.
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I'm going to say right now, Jesus would not celebrate Black Lives Matter because Black Lives Matter is not about the value of black human beings.
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It is not about black people as image bearers of God.
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But Black Lives Matter is an admittedly Marxist organization and it is opposed to the biblical understanding of the family.
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It is a radical movement.
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I can say all day that black people matter.
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I can say all day that black people are made in the image of God and I love black people.
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But I will not say Black Lives Matter because that is part of a movement that is unbiblical.
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It is ungodly.
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It is something that when he says Jesus would have celebrated Black Lives Matter, I have to take great issue with that because that is certainly something that I would say is absolutely not true.
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Black Lives Matter celebrates homosexuality.
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It celebrates transgenderism and it enforces and encourages support for those groups.
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In fact, I have in front of me, I have the statement of what we believe from the blacklivesmatter.com.
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What we believe.
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This is from their own website.
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This is not something I wrote or made up.
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I just want to make, I want to read to you what this says toward the end here.
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It says, let's see, we are guided by the fact that all black lives matter regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status or location.
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We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.
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We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgendered privilege and uplift black trans folk, especially black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans antagonistic violence.
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This goes into the issue of intersectionality.
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The idea that when someone has a difficulty, you know, privilege versus a difficulty and when it has more than one, such as privilege is white and if you're black, that's a difficulty.
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And then if you're a woman, that's an additional difficulty.
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So if you're a black woman, you're even more, that intersects and that's where you have this intersectionality.
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And then, of course, to add on to that, the idea that there is a transgender black woman, therefore there's three roads of intersection and that person is the most, has the most difficulty and it goes on that it says we dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work double shifts so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
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We disrupt Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children to the degree that mother's parents and children are comfortable.
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We foster queer affirming network when we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of the heteronormative thinking or rather the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless he or she or they disclose otherwise.
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We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism.
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We believe that all people regardless of age show up with the capacity to lead and learn.
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We embody the practice of justice, liberation and peace in our engagements with one another.
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Again, the focus there is they want to get away from heteronormative thinking, meaning that they believe that the idea that people should be by nature heterosexual is wrong to think that way, that we should get away from thinking that that's normal.
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So again, Black Lives Matter is not just about the affirmation of the value of black people and to think that that's true is to miss the mark completely.
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And so I'm going to stop here because we're out of time for today's episode.
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We've got to the three minute mark of Mr.
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Wallace's statements.
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We'll pick it back up tomorrow and we'll see how far we can get with our continued look at what Mr.
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Wallace has to say and our response to him.
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So thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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Keep in mind we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 630 a.m.
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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening.
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May God bless you.