A Dividing Line Between Christians Against CRT

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are gonna talk today about a video that I saw online from Todd Friel, who's someone that I respect.

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I've gleaned a lot from Todd Friel over the years. I used to be involved in campus ministry years ago and I used to listen to, at that time it was

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Way the Master Radio and then it became Wretched Radio, but his interviews that he'd do on college campuses.

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And there was a while every day, I was listening to the full, whatever it was, three hours of Wretched Radio, two hours,

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I think. And so I have a lot of respect for Todd Friel. I've gleaned a lot from him, but I wanted to comment on this video.

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And at first I thought, I'm not gonna do this. I really liked

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Todd Friel. I don't wanna talk about this, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, this is a great example of something

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I've noticed for probably two or three years now. And that is that there's kind of a divide in the conservative evangelical world and those who are theologically conservative and politically conservative, who they don't particularly care for critical race theory or social justice or any of that stuff.

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The egalitarianism, they don't want the soft peddling of LGBTQ stuff. They just, they want the faith once delivered for all the saints.

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And Todd Friel's in that category. I'm with him there as far as I know. However, what

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I've noticed is, and I could, in my mind right now, I'm thinking of a whole bunch of names that I'm not gonna name all of them, but, cause this isn't, they're not false teachers for this, but what

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I, it is, in my opinion, a dangerous thing. It's in some ways, because I'll tell you what

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I'm talking about. Some people get hung up on whether or not some of these social justice teachers or those introducing social justice teaching are

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Christians. It's a major concern that they don't wanna call someone who's a brother, not a brother, or accuse them of introducing false teaching to the point that it sounds like they may not even be

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Christians. And they just really wanna stay away from that. They're very careful of that. And then there's, and I'll put myself into this category.

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There's those of us who see this as destructive heresy, a different religion. In fact, the book that is coming out soon that I wrote is called

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Christianity and Social Justice. And the subtitle is Religions in Conflict. And there's a very specific reason.

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And I'm riffing off of J. Gresham Machen's title for his book in the 1920s, Christianity and Liberalism.

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And Machen's point was that there's all these people that can sign your statement of faith, can be very nice, can, they'd be very offended if you said they weren't

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Christians, yet they are undermining the very faith that they say they believe with some of their assumptions and their beliefs in other areas that contradict the

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Christianity they say they believe. And so he says, there's two different religions. There's Christianity, there's liberalism. And I'm saying the same thing.

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There's two different religions. There's Christianity, there's social justice. And so what

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I see in the New Testament as an emphasis, even in like books like elations, I see an emphasis on warning about false teaching, warning about those who would promote false teaching.

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I don't see this argument about, well, you don't wanna call someone not a Christian.

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You don't wanna assinuate they're not a Christian if they are, and you gotta be careful of that. And I just, that whole thing isn't, it really just isn't there that I can see at least.

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The emphasis is much more on, it's not on if someone's saved, it's on if someone is promoting false teaching and it's irrelevant whether they're saved or not in some ways, it really is.

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I mean, Paul even confronted Peter who was saved but providing cover for the Judaizers by causing confusion.

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So I just, I really think that's where the emphasis needs to be. I think that's the New Testament emphasis. I think throughout church history, for the most part, that's been the emphasis.

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Are there times to call people false teachers? Yes, or I should say not Christians, yes.

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I think Matthew 18 gives you a process for that. I think though in this particular battle, the social justice battle, what's happened is in local churches, and I know because I get all the,

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I get so many letters or I should say emails and messages about this from people who are in this fight, what happens is the ministry leader or the pastor promotes these ideas, they're confronted on it.

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And generally the person that does the confronting, even if they're gentle and nice, they get ostracized. They get marginalized.

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They're told that they shouldn't have done what they did. They're causing division, that's their problem. And they end up being forced to leave.

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And usually there's a faction, there's a split. And so productive conversations generally aren't happening. The Matthew 18 process generally isn't happening.

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And often it's people like myself and others who are trying to warn about what's happening so that those who would follow some of these celebrity preachers, et cetera, will think twice about it.

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That's what I see happening right now in Christianity. So there's very much a breakdown of the process here.

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And so what I thought about doing was examining this because there's some things

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I agree with in this clip, but there's some things I disagree with. And I see Todd Freel is someone who really just wants to maintain maybe peace or just, he doesn't want to, he really is cautious, very cautious in my opinion about calling someone not a brother.

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And I just don't think that's the emphasis that we should have. And I think the reason I think it's, I don't know if I said, did

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I say dangerous? That might be strong, but I think it's accurate. The reason I think there's a danger here is because it ends up providing cover for some of these guys who are promoting false teachings in unrepentant ways.

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They know, they know better. A lot of these people, they've been confronted. There's been enough time, they should know.

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And yet there's this extreme caution with, well, we don't want to go so far as to call them not

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Christians. So we'll just kind of back away from that and not warn maybe as strong as they should be warned about.

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And I see the New Testament emphasis being, you warn, you warn about the false teachers, you warn about the false teaching and whether they're saved or not, that's not even a discussion really to have.

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It's irrelevant in some ways to the greater discussion, which is what are they doing to the church?

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What are these shepherds that are allowing wolves to come in and ravage their flock? Or they're allowing their flock to wander off to where the wolves are.

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What kind of a shepherd does that? That's really the main emphasis that I think I have.

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And I think I want to have at least. And I think the authors in the New Testament have. So I think Todd Friel's emphasis ends up being a little different.

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And I just want to go through this clip and I want to comment on it. So here we go. David Platt has introduced some views.

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I'm keeping this very broad and generic for a reason. He's introduced some views that are causing division in the church, specifically racial division and racial issues in the church.

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What is the correct way to understand critical race theory? Intersectionality, systemic racism, white privilege, white supremacy, anti -racism.

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That whole conversation David brought into his church and now I believe is seeing the effect of what

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CRT is. Not what it does, but what it is.

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It's a dividing device. It is a mechanism that is built for destruction.

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That's what critical race theory is. The effect of it is that it does cause division.

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And I fear that's exactly what they're seeing at McLean Bible Church, big division. So he's absolutely right about this.

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That's exactly right. That's, I would have no disagreement with this. David Platt brought in something that causes division.

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Now, the question that I want to ask right now is why? Why does critical race theory cause division? Well, it causes division because there's a very firm designation given to those who are the oppressors and a very firm designation given to the oppressed.

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There's really no wiggle room. You're either in one of these categories or there's some people that they would say have a mix of identities, et cetera.

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But for the most part, you're in one of these categories. And it doesn't really matter what you do or what your life experience has been, just based on external factors, like the color of your skin can place you in a category.

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So just that, and there's more that brings division, but I think that's the basic thing.

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When you're trying to guilt people for something that's not a sin. Now, trace this back, if you would, just this basic attitude that someone is guilty because they benefit from a system that allocates privilege to them because of the color of their skin or something like that, of that nature.

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That is completely antithetical to a biblical understanding of what sin actually is. It's not benefiting from a system.

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It's not having a certain social, being part of a certain social location.

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It's not because of what your grandparents might've done possibly, or people that looked like you and their grandparents might've done.

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None of these things are sinful. What's sinful is what you yourself have done to break

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God's law. And so if you are going out and committing crimes or saying horrible things that the

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Lord would not approve of against others because of something having to do with an external feature, like the color of their skin, that's your sin.

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That's your sin. And so the problem underlying all of this is a very inappropriate, unauthorized, illegitimate view of sin.

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This is not a biblical understanding of what sin is. This is an understanding coming from false teaching, coming from critical race theory.

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And so no matter how you slice it, and there's so many other things

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I could have pointed to that are causing division, but even at the most basic level, that specific teaching from critical race theory, people promoting critical race theory, that in and of itself is anti -Christian.

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It's against a fundamental core understanding of what sin is. So this is fundamental stuff.

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This isn't tertiary. This isn't secondary. This isn't like an eschatology disagreement.

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It's very fundamental stuff. And I really wanna overemphasize that because I think if Todd Friel, so he's saying it causes a major division.

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If you think through why, you're gonna wind up in, oh, it's because it's false teaching that's being introduced. And it's very clear to me.

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So let's keep going. Acrimony, lawsuits because of CRT.

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And David Platt, I have no doubt, brought, introduced these teachings with the best of intentions.

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But even with the best of intentions, and even if some of his understandings of the whole issue are right, let's say, congratulations, you've got your self -division.

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That's exactly what it is. Not just what it does, it's what it is. Therefore, my opinion about the whole shebang is that if you introduce any element of it or in these conversations that we are supposed to be having, use any of the terms that are currently associated with critical race theory, pastor, your church is going to be split.

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Lately, been reading some articles. Okay, so I wanted to say this as we continue on and watching this.

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This is about an 11 minute clip. But one of the things I was thinking is that division isn't always wrong.

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We all know this, right? Division is not always wrong. There's a time and a place for division. You could introduce truth, and truth can cause division if people don't like the truth.

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Men love darkness, right? Jesus introduced a lot of division. Paul introduced a lot of division. There's a time for division.

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The question is, what are you dividing over? And in this particular case, so division isn't bad for division's sake.

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It's not, oh, it's going to cause division, that's bad. No, division over the right things is good.

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We need to be divided over the right things. We need to have clear lines that say, this is truth and this is error. If you don't have those, you don't have truth.

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The issue in all this isn't the division. The issue in all this is what's causing the division.

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It's not truth. What's causing the division is false teaching. And we need to be able to say it, it's false teaching.

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So we just focus on the division, and we don't focus on the false teaching, then

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I think we're going to miss the boat on this. And so let's keep going with Todd Friel, and I'll let you hear what he has to say in greater detail here.

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Some presentations, some sermons even, from different individuals who are further to the left on the subject that I am.

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I want to see where they're at in their thinking. And I've noticed something that is so consistent, and these are smart guys that I'm studying.

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Their definitions are wildly different. For instance, when

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I say systemic racism, what do you think that is? Most likely, not everybody, but most likely, you would say, well, the systems are racist.

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And then you'd argue, well, systems can't be racist, but sure, there used to be some laws, but no more.

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Jim Crow, gone, slavery, abolished. So there are no systems that are intrinsically racist anymore, therefore, systemic racism doesn't exist.

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That's probably how you view it. But I've been reading some pretty smart people, who again, more to the left than I am, and not crazy libs, but just more to the left than I am, who would say systemic racism is actually just the effects of systems that used to be oppressive or racist.

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That's a big difference, isn't it? That's a huge chasm.

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Now, what happens if you, let's say David Platt came in and said, I believe in systemic racism.

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Depending on your understanding of it, you're either gonna cheer or jeer. Okay, so this was interesting to me, because I've always thought that when the left talks about systemic racism, even if you go back to the 1960s and the new left, and what they were saying, which is pretty much the same thing, they usually said institutional racism or structural racism, sometimes more than systemic.

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But when they talk about this kind of stuff, that is what they're talking about.

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They're talking about, and it's very clear in the literature. You can go read, Social Justice Goes to Church, the first book

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I wrote on this. It is very clear what they're talking about. They're saying that even though slavery is not around anymore, the effects, the inertia from what slavery caused is still around.

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And this is why people like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and others have spent such a great deal of time arguing that, in fact, the poor conditions that exist in some of these minority communities and urban communities are the results of things other than slavery or even segregation.

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That you can trace them back more so to things that happened in the 1960s.

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A lot of them, at least. There's a group that you see spikes in all kinds of things like the breakdown of the family happening then.

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And this was, they actually had more economic, or they were making more economic progress.

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They've had lower incarceration rates. They had families that were more together.

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Even at times when there were laws on the books, that discriminated against them in some way.

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And so what do you attribute that to today? Well, this is kind of the foolishness of critical race theory.

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So they say, they go back and they say, well, it's what happened in the past. But if you go to the past, you find out that, wait a minute, hold on.

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After slavery, they're making economic progress. Like what happened? And so I talk about this a little bit in the book that I've written now that's coming out soon,

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Christianity and Social Justice. There we go. And I've argued against Phil Vischer and against Jim Artispe and these guys because that makes no sense.

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It just chronologically makes no sense from a historical perspective. It's a myth that is used to try to explain current circumstances, just like, but it's so fundamental to, because it slips in all these assumptions about human nature in it as well.

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It's similar to how Christianity explains things. Christianity explains poverty and there's many different explanations for it, but it explains some of the causes that can bring about poverty.

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It explains what immoral lifestyles do and the negative consequences of them and warning against them and these kinds of things.

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And so if you bring, if Christianity is brought to bear on the present situations in the

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United States, the social situations, then you're gonna find a much more probably complicated and nuanced and fair understanding, full picture of what's going on.

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But you're also gonna start to attribute some of the problems to things like perhaps fatherlessness, having family breakdown, immorality.

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These things do contribute, whether they're the whole pie or not, they do contribute.

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And so I think that it's a foolish, it's an ignorant and foolish narrative that is playing, it is playing on our ignorance.

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And in the academic world is unfortunately full of this. So is the media. So I've always kind of,

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I think anyone who studied this has always understood this. This is where I think I start to depart with Todd Frill a little bit.

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Whether or not David Platt gets up there and talks about systemic racism and he means racist laws on the books or he means the legacy of racist laws, et cetera.

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It makes no difference. It's a foolish thing to say either way. And for him to kind of assume,

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I'm not sure where he's coming down on this, but it seems like he's assuming that, well, if you think that it's just kind of the inertia from past racist laws, then that's kind of okay or that's more acceptable.

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I don't get it. I don't see it. To me, that's even less understandable. That's even more offensive.

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Okay, we don't have these laws that discriminate against people of a certain color, et cetera, but we're supposed to now assume that because they existed in the past, this is what's presently holding people back.

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Even though conditions by many metrics are getting worse in the last 20, 25, 30 years.

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Since those laws came down, conditions are getting worse, but we're made to think it's because of those laws. So it's, and then to go the extra step, which

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David Platt does to blame white people or the uncaring Christians who just don't, who give more to charity than anyone else pretty much, but to look at them, conservative

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Christians as the problem in all this, it's very offensive. And so I don't see there's any way that David Platt can be using this language and it doesn't come across as offensive or divisive.

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So this is where I'm like, what is, what's his point? It sounds like he's, what he's trying to say is like, hey, look, this causes division, but you know what?

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Some people could be also misunderstanding David Platt. No, I don't think anyone has, and I've never heard that objection, not once.

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I've never heard one person who's on the conservative side of this say, you know what,

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I was misunderstanding David Platt or anyone who was talking about systemic racism. And now that I realize they're talking about implicit bias that's left over from past discrimination that was in the law,

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I'm totally like fine with him saying that, or no, I've never heard that once. So this is kind of, this is bringing up a possible explanation for why someone may be offended when they should not be.

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And I'm saying, no, I think they're going to be offended. They're even be more offended if it's this, what

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Todd Friel seems to treat as an innocuous understanding of systemic racism. All right, let us keep going here.

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What is the effect of it? It causes division, why? Because that's what it is.

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Not what it does, it's what it is. It's a divider. It's built that way for obfuscation, confusion, ongoing conversations that have no destination.

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That is what it is intended to be and do. And if you bring it into your church, any way, shape or form, it's going to do it to you too.

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There's another mega church, not going to mention its name because I don't have this confirmed yet, that I think is also seeing a big divide over this subject.

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And again, I actually know the people at that church, well -intentioned, and they're finding themselves with their house burning down.

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Whoa, whoa, we were just trying to have a conversation. Uh -oh, you said you were going to have a conversation.

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Congratulations. In a mild sense, you've just imported what CRT is and you're feeling the effect of it.

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What the thing is that we're dealing with, a destroyer, a divider.

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And no matter what the intentions are, and I'm sure David Platt's intentions were certainly noble and good.

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You're hearing a pause, or you're wondering why there's gaps. That's why I'm trying to skip through the ads.

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All right, so here's the point though. Here's Todd Friel is saying that he's bending over backwards over and over to say

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David Platt's intentions are good. He is positive David Platt's intentions are good.

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Now, maybe he knows him and maybe, I don't know David Platt personally, but if I didn't,

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I wouldn't be assuming that. Why assume that his intentions are good in this?

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They could be, they may not be though. And the more you listen to those who are coming out of McLean Bible Church and saying what's really happened over the last few years since David Platt took control, even leaders in the church, the more you start to wonder whether David Platt's intentions are good.

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They seem like they are bent on power. They seem from the perspective of those who are now whistleblowing on the church, that he doesn't want accountability, that doesn't really care what the constitution says, is willing to lie.

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And this is one that I've confirmed, this one. David Platt has lied and he's done it multiple times about whether the church is affiliated with the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So why just assume that, well, his motives are good?

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This is one of the things I think is a dividing line, again, between those who are against critical race theory in the church who think that we just got to tread so carefully here, got to make sure that we're not calling anyone unsaved when they're not.

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And then those who want to just target false teaching, false teachers, and warn the sheep against them.

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This is one of the other things I see is there's this really over, really wanting to be sure about someone's, we can't be sure, you can't be sure that they're not a

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Christian, right? But you can be sure that their motives are good. And that's why though, what merits that?

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What gives you justification for that? Now, again, maybe Todd Friel knows David Platt personally, and he's not saying that.

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But the thing is, I hear this a lot more, and it's not just Todd Friel, I hear this a lot more from people in the critical, anti -critical race theory, anti -social justice, pro -Orthodox

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Christianity camp. A lot of the leaders, I have to say, that want to lead

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Christians away from this stuff end up, I think, shooting themselves in the foot a little bit.

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Because they're, I mean, they'll get attacked in 0 .2 seconds for their motives. Their motives will be questioned from kingdom come.

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But they will always assume, even when they don't need to assume, they'll assume just about every time that whoever's pushing this, whoever is putting little millstones or big millstones around little children's necks.

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And I mean, I see it as that serious, I really do. They'll say that, well, they have a good intention in doing it.

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I don't think, we need to stay away from that. We really need to stay away from that. There might be people who do, and I've said that before, maybe this person has a good intention.

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They could, but we really got to be careful of just automatically giving them that benefit of the doubt for certain and telling people that there's a good intention here.

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With David Platt, the more I've looked into this McLean stuff, the less I think David Platt has good intentions.

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But that's where Todd Friel's landing. And again, I love Todd Friel. I'm not trying to say, never listen to Todd Friel.

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In fact, I would listen to him for a lot of his evangelism stuff. I just think this is not helpful when you start doing this.

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And people need to be warned about David Platt, not, well, he made a little error here and the problem was it caused division and he had good intentions.

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No, the problem isn't that it caused division. The problem isn't, and we don't know that he had good intentions. The problem is the false teaching he's introducing.

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All right, let's keep going. It's gonna wreck your church.

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It can't help it. Pour battery acid on a banana.

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Well, all I wanted to do was add some nutrients to the banana. It's going to destroy it.

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It's gonna melt it down because that's what it does. It's in its DNA, it's nature.

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And that is true with CRT. David Platt, I fear, is feeling the effects of what he has brought into his own church.

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And I mentioned the other day, because I read it on actually two different sources, that David Platt from the pulpit said, this is no longer

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McLean Bible Church, this is Melanin Bible Church. And while it is true that he did say that, context, context, context.

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This is an email sent in from Rebecca. I had earlier seen that quote attributed to him by someone on Twitter and wanted to find out if it was true.

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At any rate, I listened to the first part of the sermon from July 4th online. And while he did voice those words, he was actually reading an email that had circulated from people who were being critical of him, who said that.

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And he was grieved by it. And then Rebecca says, may I lovingly suggest that though we may have some issues with David Platt, we need to be careful not to accuse him of saying something he did not say.

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Therefore, Rebecca, I'm reading your letter because you're absolutely right. There's no reason to do that, especially to somebody who is a brother.

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Now, speaking of that, received some emails sent to idea at wretched .org, who, when we were having this conversation about David Platt and McLean Bible Church, I called him a brother and people went, uh -uh, no, he's not.

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And I think that there are two things that we need to think through really clearly.

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Number one, when an individual on paper is orthodox, it puts him into not a fortress where he cannot be accused of anything, but it sets off a different conversation.

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If you're dealing with somebody, they're in an apostate movement, it's like, well, this is pretty easy because if you're in the movement and you adhere to the movement's teachings, well, then you're apostate too.

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This is different. I'm gonna save some of my comments till the end of this, but this particular section, but I want you to ask yourself right now as you're listening to this, is

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David Platt part of a movement that is apostate? That's a question

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I think that should be in your mind right now because there's an assumption here. Todd Friel's assuming, no, he's not. He signed the statement of faith.

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He can't be, right? Now, this is the same thing Al Mohler said about Matthew Hall and Jarvis Williams, same thing

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Danny Akin said about Walter Strickland. Walter Strickland, Jarvis Williams, clearly false teachers.

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I mean, even to the point of contradicting the very statement of faiths that they have signed, whether they realize it or not.

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I've done a lot of work on this, showing this. And in the next book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I have a whole section on this.

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They are not, in my opinion, orthodox. They are in a separate movement, but they still sign the statement of faith.

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And this is one of the problems that even Machen talked about. How do you approach this? Someone who signs a statement of faith says they're orthodox and yet over here, they're contradicting what they just signed.

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And postmodernists are able to do this. Those who don't believe in objective truth are able to do this.

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Even those who say they are, but they have this bent that comes from postmodernism or liberation theology or any of the subjective teachings that they've adopted.

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They're able to do this very easily. It doesn't, Marxism is subversive. And so with David Platt, I haven't researched everything

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David Platt said. I did do a podcast a couple of weeks ago where I talked about what

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I think the issues are at McLean, but David Platt, from what

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I've seen, has embraced some core teachings from critical race theory. I'm not saying he's endorsed every single aspect of it, but his church is under his leadership has even introduced this whole, basically it's a critical race theory training program, which there was a whole letter written about by some of the people.

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And I think leaders were involved at the church of concern to the leadership. And David Platt is basically calling them the dividers, calling them the ones that have the problem.

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And so I wouldn't assume this off the top. Why are we, why is he a brother?

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Listen to Todd Friel's arguments here. He is a brother because why? Because he adheres to the same statement of faith.

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Now that's a good start. I'm not saying that that is meaningless. It's not meaningless, but that's not sufficient.

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That's not the only thing that we have to look at. If he's contradicting his statement of faith in other areas, for instance, a different understanding of what sin is, a different understanding of what repentance is.

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I mean, these things affect the gospel directly. And I do think David Platt, and you can go check out the episode

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I did on him. I do think he has introduced some of this stuff. So I wouldn't be, now, would

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I be so quick to say, well, he's definitely not a believer. If I knew some of the stuff that some of the people at McLean Bible Church know,

32:55

I may, I don't know. Some of them seem, they seem like they're going that direction, the people who know him much better than I do at the church.

33:03

But I would say at least this, from what I do know, either the man is very ignorant and arrogant, right?

33:12

That's best case scenario. Or he is, you have someone who doesn't actually believe the core teachings of Christianity, or some of them who has come in subversively, and he's spreading these false teachings.

33:29

Now that whole discussion though, everything I just said in the last 10 seconds, I don't even think that should be a discussion.

33:36

I don't even think it's relevant. I don't think it matters. I really don't. What matters is what teaching is he bringing, and what effect does it have on the congregation?

33:45

Is he bringing false teaching? That is the emphasis of the New Testament. Those who bring the division are those who bring the false teaching.

33:53

And it doesn't matter whether he's a Christian, whether he's not a Christian, what he's doing is causing destruction.

34:00

And he could be a very disobedient Christian right now, I suppose. I suppose that's possible. I don't know everything.

34:05

Maybe that's not possible if I knew some of the other things about him, but who cares? Who really cares?

34:12

The issue that should be the issue right now, and I'm not saying I don't care about David Platt. I do care about David Platt. I want him to spend eternity in heaven, but the issue that should be the issue for purposes of this discussion is, is he bringing false teaching?

34:25

That's it. That's it. Making somehow, you know, and I think those who would have stopped

34:33

Todd Freeland and say, why are you calling him a brother? They're probably, now maybe some of them are saying he's not a brother. I don't know. But I think my gut reaction when

34:41

I hear people say that, and I have heard other leaders say that about, who are against critical race theory, but they'll say that about Jarvis Williams or Matt Hall, or they're brothers.

34:48

Why would you call them brothers? They're false teachers. Do you see a habit in the New Testament of the apostles calling false teachers brothers?

34:57

Well, they're false teachers, but they're brothers. They're bringing false teaching, but they're brothers. I don't see that.

35:04

But we, for some reason, this exists in the Christian world, even the world that is against critical race theory and all this stuff.

35:13

Why is that? Maybe someone can leave in the comments their explanation for it, but it doesn't quite make sense to me. Would we ever do this?

35:20

And I'm speaking for people like Todd Friel who are reformed, evangelical, conservative.

35:26

Would they ever say this about a prosperity preacher, ever? Well, they're preaching that prosperity gospel, but I'm sure they have the best of intentions.

35:37

And I'm sure when I call them a brother, people are upset at me, but look, they sign the statement of faith.

35:44

It's an orthodox statement of faith. No, of course they don't. And a lot of those people do sign orthodox statements of faith, but we would never call them brothers.

35:53

But yet there's a double standard in my mind by some when the social justice teachers, they're brothers, but not the prosperity people.

36:03

Why is that? Why is that? All right, there's a little more commentary. I was going to save some of that, but I decided to give it now.

36:11

Let's keep going here. There's no question

36:17

David Platt is orthodox. In fact, you would probably be shocked that he probably aligns with you really, really closely.

36:25

And that means I'm going to be really, really, really slow to suggest that somebody is not a brother when just on paper, in the file cabinet, they're orthodox.

36:38

However, we - Let me just say this.

36:43

You don't have to suggest they're not a brother. You just don't have to say they are a brother. That's the issue here.

36:49

Why are you calling them a brother? I think is what people are reacting to. So it's like, you don't, just don't even enter that.

36:56

Just don't, don't. I think those who have listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I don't usually do that.

37:01

I don't usually talk about whether they're a brother or not a brother. I talk about whether they're bringing false teaching because that's the issue.

37:09

So, you know, you can talk about a prosperity preacher and say, oh, look, they are so close on so many things.

37:15

Look at all the things, go down the line, all the things they believe. They believe in marriage. They believe they're against abortion.

37:23

On the political stuff, they're with you. On theology, they're with you. They believe in Jesus.

37:28

They believe in the burial, death, resurrection for salvation. They can articulate the gospel to you. They believe in a future rewards and punishments for believers, unbelievers.

37:38

They believe in creation. They believe in the Bible. They believe all these things. They just think that if you come to God and you say the right things, or do the right things, he's going to bless your socks off with all kinds of prosperity and money.

37:51

Well, they're really close to you. They just have this one area that they depart from you in. We would never hear guys like Todd Freel say that about prosperity preachers.

38:00

So I wanted to make that point. You don't have to call them brothers or sisters or say that they're not brothers and sisters.

38:07

Just focus on the false teaching. That's just my, that's my suggestion. All right, let's see.

38:13

Maybe we'll finish this clip. Understand that just because that's what you say on paper, it doesn't mean that's what it's lived out, which brings us to consideration number two.

38:24

How are we going to be treating one another on this subject? This is, this has got to be worked through.

38:33

Otherwise, you are going to be a church of one. That's where we're headed with this.

38:39

If we don't have an understanding, now, I don't want a broad welcome mat for people who are importing.

38:46

We don't want CRT in, period. But you know somebody who maybe adheres to a component of it.

38:54

What do you do with them? And might I suggest that unless there is a direct bullseye to orthodoxy, to an essential doctrine, you may not like it, but it doesn't make them a heretic.

39:11

And this is where I think there's a big dividing line. Yeah, it does, actually. If they believe, if they're holding to the teachings of critical race theory, and these are teachings that undermine objective truth,

39:24

I mean, pick, which one do we want to pick? What specific, maybe you can try to find some element somewhere that maybe someone could use and say, well, that's not specifically directly related to a heresy or a false teaching.

39:39

I have a hard time with that a little bit. I think that someone can start to buy into some of these assumptions in ignorance and not realize they conflict with what they actually believe somewhere else.

39:50

I think that's definitely true. But when you look at critical race theory, the simplified version, right?

39:58

All the different people who have written on critical race theory, it really, it comes down to two primary things,

40:06

I think. The first one is the standpoint epistemology.

40:11

So this postmodern aspect undermines objective truth. And the second element is the

40:17

Marxist element, this firm designation of oppressed and oppressor. Those are really the two things.

40:22

Now, we could talk about interest convergence. We could talk about intersectionality. We could talk about memory studies.

40:28

We could talk about the suspicion about the idea that you can be racially neutral, colorblind theology, right?

40:40

All these things, but they all really flow out of those two things, right? This idea that there's truth that's, your perception of truth is connected to your social location and that you need these other social locations to understand truth because more oppressed or the specific type of oppression you have gives you certain insights.

41:01

And then the idea that there's an oppressor class and oppressed class or variations, multiple oppressor classes, oppressed classes.

41:12

And then sin, the sinful element is being part of one of these, being complicit with one of these, that kind of thing.

41:18

So if you're importing any of that, what I just said, you're going to be undermining things that really do our core theological things that we need for Orthodox theology.

41:28

You're gonna be undermining objective truth. You're gonna be undermining the fellowship believers have with one another, the identity we have in Christ.

41:35

You're gonna be undermining, even with just the way that it conceives of justice, you're gonna be going directly into the gospel because you have to have an understanding of justice and breaking

41:47

God's law. And this just overturns all that. It doesn't offer forgiveness. It has a warped understanding of metaphysics, of reality, narrows it all down to one narrow scope of evaluation.

41:59

That's ideology. It undermines our faith from the top to bottom, just like Marxism does, because it's an offshoot.

42:10

It's a derivative of Marxism. So this is where I think there's actually, there is a disagreement and maybe this is the disagreement that I think people like Todd Friel and others are having with people who are more, in their minds, probably aggressive against some of this stuff.

42:26

We do believe that this does undermine the faith once for all delivered. And this is a very, very important thing and this is very dangerous. And it seems like Todd Friel's main beef is that it causes division.

42:37

And that's not the main beef that I think a lot of us have. And that you gotta tread very carefully, you gotta be careful to not, make sure that you're not going to call someone a

42:49

Christian who's not, that seems to be where the concern is. And I think, I would just encourage people who wanna comment on this, your concern, make your concern the church, what's happening to the church, not just the division, but the false ideas being introduced.

43:06

It's not a matter of, oh, you're gonna be down to one person, you're gonna be a church of one. It's, are you going to be a church?

43:13

That's the real question. If you introduce this stuff, are you even a church anymore, right?

43:19

So it's, well, you know, we're gonna be a church of one because we're gonna, all the people that are mildly affected by critical race theory, but quote unquote, aren't heretic supposedly, we're gonna be a church of one if we reject them or something.

43:32

Well, the question should be, are you even a church if you let this stuff come in unhindered? I realize there's people who ignorantly,

43:39

I've said this from the beginning, there's people who ignorantly adopt some of these ideas who are Christians.

43:45

But one of the qualifications for being an elder is that you need to be able to refute those who contradict.

43:51

And if you can't even see it with something as basic as critical race theory, that is a big problem. That is a major problem.

43:58

And so that's where I come down on it. Let's keep going with this. For instance, you meet somebody, they say they're a

44:09

Christian, but they believe in big government. They believe in higher taxes. Would you call them a heretic?

44:15

No, you disagree with them politically, socially, and you can show them from the Bible why, you're right.

44:21

But you wouldn't say, therefore you're not a brother. Now, if somebody said I'm a Christian and I'm pro -abortion, hold on, big problem here.

44:29

We need to check out your education level and understand why it is you would say that you're a Christian who is in favor of the taking of an innocent human being's life.

44:38

That's a different issue. Okay, somebody that you know says that they believe in some aspect of CRT.

44:45

If it isn't hitting the essential of the faith connected to faith alone, grace alone,

44:52

Christ alone, revealed in scripture alone, the glory of God alone, the nature, the character of God, the nature of Jesus Christ, if it isn't hitting that, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you're gonna have to wait to slap the label of not a brother onto that.

45:09

You're just gonna have to wait. Maybe you can put him in a category of, we're concerned, we're concerned. And that's what

45:15

I would say about David Platt. I'm concerned for that brother. But he is a brother until he demonstrates otherwise.

45:25

By firing at an essential. Could that happen? I certainly hope not. Could, I hope not.

45:31

But until that day comes, we're gonna have to remember what is social, what is political, and what is theological.

45:43

This is Wretched Radio. Well, let's sum up then everything we've just heard and just kind of put a cap on it.

45:52

So Todd Friel, concerned about critical race theory, concerned about David Platt and his bringing in some of these ideas into McLean Bible Church, but doesn't want to say he's not a brother.

46:04

In fact, wants to say he's a brother, defends himself against those who would say he shouldn't say that. So wants to very much call this man definitely a brother, wants to very much defend him because of the fact that he signs a statement of faith.

46:17

That's the reason he gives at least, one of the major one in this video. We know that prosperity preachers can do that.

46:23

We know that many people can sign statements of faith. Wants to locate the problem with critical race theory in the fact that it causes division more than anything else.

46:32

Says that there's a lot of people who misunderstand systemic racism and what some people mean by it.

46:37

And there could be, I guess, somehow a legitimate or an innocuous way that people are using the term.

46:43

So most of this stuff I disagree with. And I think the effect of it is it puts people in a posture where they cannot actually approach it well, or they cannot clearly identify false teachers and false teaching.

46:59

They have to, I mean, the guy signed the statement of faith. What am I supposed to do, right? I gotta wait until I guess he directly contradicts something in that statement of faith.

47:08

The main thing, the main problem with all this, in my opinion, is if you bring in critical race theory, you are contradicting your statement of faith.

47:17

If you think that someone is sinful or in sin or complicit in sin or something like that because of systemic racism, you already have left a

47:29

New Testament understanding of sin. If you're not breaking God's law, but you're somehow in sin, you have a problem.

47:35

If it's something that you're not even forgiven of, you're not even, it's gotta continue for years and years.

47:42

You gotta be in this hamster wheel of repentance because you're just always complicit. You can't escape it. And Christ didn't just take that and make peace.

47:50

You have to keep going with some kind of penance or something that you gotta do to make everyone know how sorry you are.

47:57

That's not Christianity, guys. That's not New Testament Christianity. I don't think David Platt is, when it comes to these issues, this isn't

48:06

New Testament Christianity that he is practicing. And so Todd Friel seems very sure that David Platt's a

48:11

Christian, that David Platt has good intentions, that David Platt's not, he's a brother, he's not a false teacher, that kind of thing.

48:20

But he actually is a false teacher. And I don't have really a problem saying that.

48:28

I don't know why that's such a hangup for so many people. If you find a false teaching, then this person's a false teacher.

48:34

Now, do I wanna say that everyone who brings in a false teaching is not saved?

48:41

I don't even get into the discussion. I think there probably are people who say things, but here's the difference, guys.

48:47

Can I just communicate this to you very clearly? Here's the difference. And I wanna go back to Peter.

48:53

When you do, and Peter is not even introducing a false teaching. Peter is causing confusion by running cover for the

49:01

Judaizers. He apologizes, he repents. That's what Christians do. So if someone introduces something that's a false teaching, or it just causes confusion over a false teaching, and they are confronted about it, like David Platt has been over and over, and they don't repent of it, what are you supposed to do with that?

49:21

That's the question I have. If they're following a Matthew 18 process, you get to the point of, they're a

49:28

Gentile and tax gatherer. And so I would say, with this whole situation,

49:34

I wouldn't assume these things, that David Platt has the best of intention, he's just a good brother. I would treat him the way you would treat a prosperity preacher, who brings in that kind of teaching, and does not correct it, while being corrected over and over.

49:47

Does not repent of it. I would treat him the same way. And if you think there's a difference between prosperity and preaching, and critical race, to hear why.

49:56

Why? I mean, they can both sign these orthodox statements of faith, many of them. So what's the big difference?

50:03

All right, that's all I wanted to bring. And again, it's not as slight on Todd Friel, I hope

50:08

I'm not coming across too aggressive against him. I don't want to. I am concerned about this. I do see a danger.

50:14

I know Todd Friel was at the social justice and the gospel statement meeting. He was there.

50:19

There's a picture of him that was posted online recently. Todd Friel and Tim Challies, both there. They did not sign the statement, the

50:25

Dallas statement. Some of you know it by. So I don't know if Todd Friel has some hangups in this area, or what it is, why he was at the meeting, but he didn't sign it.

50:33

Not sure. I don't know his motives. But there's a lot of great things

50:39

I love about Todd Friel. This one area though, he has seemed to be slow on. And I don't have a clear explanation for all of that.

50:48

And this isn't really about Todd Friel though, per se. This is about just what

50:54

Todd Friel is representing here, because it's bigger than him. There's a lot of people that have this mentality. And I think it's part of the problem that churches are ill -prepared.

51:04

And when a pastor comes preaching, this stuff, they don't really know what to do. And so I think that's a problem, but I do love

51:11

Todd Friel. I'm not saying not to listen to Todd Friel. I think he's got some great stuff, especially on evangelism. I've benefited from him.

51:16

I met him before. It was brief. It was at a shepherd's conference years ago, and I was very honored to meet him.

51:22

I remember I went up to him. I said, thank you so much. You were so encouraging to me as I was doing campus ministry. He was very nice.

51:28

He is very tall, by the way. When they say freakishly tall, he's very tall. I'm kind of tall, but Todd Friel's really tall.

51:37

So I just remember looking up. I don't usually look up at people. I was looking up at him. I wanted to just, to bring this to you, though, because I do believe

51:45

Todd Friel's a brother. I do enjoy him. I do value him. And if he sees this, which he probably won't, but if he does, then

51:52

I want him to know that, that there's no problem I have as a personal issue or anything like that.

51:59

It is just, I have a disagreement in this area, and it's strong enough that I think people need to know that it's important for us to clearly identify this as a false teaching and those promoting it as false teachers.

52:14

And I think that's the New Testament way. It doesn't mean we can't accept apologies.

52:21

Those who have been impacted by that teaching doesn't mean that we can't give grace and approach someone and go through private channels if you wanna do that initially.

52:32

But David Platt for years has now publicly been promoting these things, corrected by people in his church over and over, and yet still doing it.

52:40

So that's where we're at. I hope that was helpful for you in navigating some of this and seeing these dividing lines, even in conservative

52:49

Christianity. God bless you. More coming later in the week, and hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.