The NXR Podcast - October 14, 2020


THEOLOGY APPLIED - A Primer on Critical Race Theory： When Good Intentions Go Bad


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

171.07

Word count

7,458

Sentence count

343

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

50

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jared Longshore with Founders Ministries joins Pastor Joel Webin to discuss critical race theory and identity politics. Critical race theory posits that racism is a universal, universal problem and that white people benefit the most from being racist.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.440 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
00:00:04.080 This is Theology Applied.
00:00:11.520 Welcome, this is Pastor Joel Webin
00:00:13.560 with Right Response Ministries.
00:00:15.040 We've got another episode of Theology Applied.
00:00:17.620 And today I am very privileged to welcome a guest
00:00:20.660 whose ministry I've been following for quite some time.
00:00:23.820 I have just learned so much,
00:00:25.640 been so well-equipped to pastor my local flock,
00:00:29.860 my congregation here in San Diego, California, by all the wonderful resources and teaching that
00:00:35.620 this individual has put out. And so without further ado, my guest for today's episode is
00:00:42.680 Jared Longshore with Founders Ministries. Jared, could you take a moment and tell our
00:00:47.980 viewers a little bit about yourself and the ministry you're a part of?
00:00:51.700 Yeah, I'm happy to, Joel. My name's Jared Longshore, married to my wife, Heather Longshore.
00:00:57.220 We have seven kids.
00:00:59.380 I'm an associate pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, which is in southwest Florida.
00:01:05.020 And I'm the vice president of Founders Ministries.
00:01:08.380 It's a ministry committed to the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of churches.
00:01:13.340 So, yeah, it's about my happenings.
00:01:17.120 That's great.
00:01:17.720 And are you, in your church life, are you associate pastor?
00:01:22.780 What is your role there?
00:01:24.320 Yeah, I'm associate pastor with Tom.
00:01:27.220 And so we serve here together.
00:01:30.060 And Tom Askel, is he the senior pastor there?
00:01:33.180 He is, yeah.
00:01:34.320 Great.
00:01:34.940 All right.
00:01:35.320 Well, thanks for joining us, Jared.
00:01:36.800 We'll go ahead and hop right in.
00:01:38.640 Our title for our episode today is Critical Race Theory, When Good Intentions Go Back.
00:01:45.140 Critical Race Theory, When Good Intentions Go Back.
00:01:49.320 Founders Ministry, both Tom and Jared have done a lot of great work on this,
00:01:53.200 as well as other wonderful men of God like Bodie Bauckham, John MacArthur, James White.
00:01:58.640 And so I wanted to just take some time to ask some specific questions with Jared on the top of critical race theory,
00:02:06.440 but especially in regards to, although both of us believe that it is a demonic ideology
00:02:13.800 that really is forged and nothing less than the pit of hell,
00:02:18.020 We do believe that there are many genuine, regenerate brothers and sisters in Christ who are well-meaning and that have been played.
00:02:26.680 And so I want to really be able to address that and pick Jared's brain on this topic.
00:02:31.920 So first question, just diving right in.
00:02:34.980 Jared, could you just define for our listeners what is critical race theory and what makes it so dangerous?
00:02:40.960 Yeah, critical race theory is a hard thing to define, even when you start to poke into the scholars a bit. It seems like they're reworking things and changing things. I was introduced to it through Richard Delgado, who's got a brief PDF online. It's helpful. Delgado's not a Christian. Delgado's a leading critical race theorist.
00:03:02.080 But it basically holds that racism is a universal, it's just a universal reality.
00:03:08.540 That's one of the core tenets and perhaps one of the central tenets that exist.
00:03:13.460 And then there's an experiential knowledge that is central to critical race theory.
00:03:19.180 And so they want to labor for this black voice that has a greater reliability or greater credibility based on the fact that it is black and has experienced racism and therefore can be better positioned to speak to the issues of racism.
00:03:44.560 So those are a few of the tenets, but it's going to be rooted in critical theory.
00:03:48.420 So you've got to go back and understand critical theory.
00:03:50.460 You're going to spend some time in the Frankfurt School to understand that.
00:03:52.700 And then you're going to end up at a foundation of a metaphysic, an understanding of reality that is materialistic.
00:04:02.440 And by having that kind of worldview, you can go from that and begin to use all sorts of words like justice and like equality.
00:04:11.720 but you actually mean something different than the supernatural Christian understanding of God's world.
00:04:20.260 I've heard that with that, you know, that it's just a given, a universal racism.
00:04:25.660 I've heard people say that it's not just white people are racist.
00:04:28.860 Everybody's racist under the lens of critical race theory. 0.89
00:04:32.400 The problem is that white people, because they're the dominant demographic, 0.52
00:04:36.640 because of the majority, um, they have power and therefore their racism, uh, it, everyone's racist, 0.97
00:04:43.780 but, but white people benefit the most from being racist and therefore they are extra complicit,
00:04:50.460 extra, you know, they, they bear an extra degree of moral guilt, um, for that universal racism. 0.84
00:04:58.380 Is that true? Well, if it's, well, not true. Is that true to, to the worldview? Yeah. So
00:05:06.500 So what's happening with somebody saying that is you're getting to the fundamental problem with critical race theory and with critical theory and identity politics is another way of saying the same thing or intersectionality, which is really another way of saying the same thing.
00:05:20.520 It's a worldview where there is the oppressor and the oppressed, but where Marx, it was strictly financial in the way that he was understanding this.
00:05:30.960 You now have it developed where you have an oppressor and oppressed categories that begin to be divided up along different lines with intersectionality and critical race theories focusing on race.
00:05:40.840 And so you just walk around with the presupposition that, well, if you're white, well, then you're in the oppressor category, and if you're black, you're in the oppressed category.
00:05:50.100 And so you get confused about all sorts of things like hegemony. 0.57
00:05:54.680 So they talk about hegemony.
00:05:56.400 Can you define hegemony?
00:05:58.860 Yeah, well, again, according to theory, it's going to be that the oppressor class is the one who sets the customs,
00:06:08.500 who sets the patterns or the values of that given society. 0.93
00:06:14.600 And the problem is Christians come in and they say, well, isn't it true?
00:06:17.600 Some Christians come in and say, isn't it true that those who are in positions of power do indeed set the norms of a given organization or a given institution or a given society?
00:06:29.400 And I have no problem saying, of course it's true, people that are in power.
00:06:33.240 But the problem is that's not what theory is teaching.
00:06:35.760 Theory locks in those categories of oppressor and oppressed along the lines of intersectionality. 0.54
00:06:43.160 Critical race theory is going to do that with white and black. 0.58
00:06:45.560 And therefore, it doesn't matter who's in a particular organization that really has the power and therefore is setting the customs or traditions of that given entity. 0.88
00:06:55.300 It's just, well, you're white, so you categorically are, you are the hegemony. 0.80
00:07:01.580 You are the straight white male. 0.67
00:07:03.600 You are the one who is going to set the customs, which is really not the case. 0.72
00:07:10.080 And that's the problem with, so people want to come in and kind of harmonize it and say,
00:07:15.060 well, don't we do know that people with power do indeed set custom?
00:07:18.520 Well, yes, but at that point, you're not talking critical theory or critical race theory anymore.
00:07:25.020 Yeah, I've noticed that one consistent theme with many liberal ideologies is a disintegration of the individual,
00:07:33.860 whether it's the individual's right to own property or whatever it is.
00:07:38.060 But with this group dynamic, the identity politics, it's just that there's no such thing as individual moral responsibility or individual, you know, there's just no individual entirely.
00:07:50.320 You're just immediately categorized with a group based on some kind of exterior characteristic.
00:07:59.060 In the case of critical race theory, it would be your ethnicity.
00:08:03.220 And there's just no individual.
00:08:04.940 Why do you think it is that liberal ideologies or really any ideology that's just in contradiction
00:08:11.640 to a Christian worldview, why is it so dead set on erasing the individual?
00:08:19.100 Yeah, well, I imagine if you're talking to different people, you're going to get different
00:08:23.000 responses about why it is that they want to classify people in their groups and have that
00:08:28.140 group identity trump a sense of individual identity but my main suspicion when i see that
00:08:37.080 and you ask okay what's the cause of it is the the will to power idea that you reduce you know
00:08:44.020 for so many christians i'm assuming a lot of your listeners are christians you have to back out of
00:08:49.640 this whole christian understanding of of the world and say okay well imagine that there is no god and
00:08:55.200 imagine that all exists is all of the wealth that this world has to offer, all of the resources
00:09:00.880 that exist, this materialistic understanding of the world, and there you are. And, you know,
00:09:06.100 there's some people that have stuff, and you want that stuff. And so how are you going to get it
00:09:11.660 from? Well, I mean, you could go like, try to mug them, you know, you could do that. Or you could
00:09:16.780 find a way to classify all those people and say, well, I'm going to mark all of them as
00:09:25.820 one particular thing. And so all white people, therefore, are now oppressors. They're in 0.96
00:09:32.200 the category of oppressor. And so we need to now elevate the voice of those who are
00:09:38.500 not white. And by doing that, you're finding a way for you to advance in the world. And
00:09:43.660 And so it's a great system for trying to get people stuff.
00:09:51.200 It's a great way to go about that.
00:09:53.000 If you're someone who doesn't have as much stuff as another person, well, begin to classify people that way.
00:10:00.020 And so where the Marxist system didn't work as well, because you only have two classifications,
00:10:05.200 you have basically the have and the have-nots, where you can advance the idea with intersectionality.
00:10:11.660 You can divide the world up into male and female, into white, into non-white, into straight, into all the different versions of non-straight, so that you can mobilize all of those lower categories and begin to get more from the people that have stuff.
00:10:30.160 And again, you might just think, well, why in the world would you even do that?
00:10:32.800 Well, part of the materialistic concept of the world is that it's a zero-sum game.
00:10:35.820 You know, we don't, Christians believe that, you know, you get one banana tree and stick it in the ground and you get all sorts of bananas from just that one.
00:10:47.680 You can even cut off one of the pups from it and give it to somebody else and they can have bananas.
00:10:53.760 It's a rich world that continues to produce, but not according to this other system.
00:10:59.340 In this other system, if you're going to get anything, well, you have to get it from the people who have it.
00:11:03.460 And they're not just going to give it to you.
00:11:05.720 And so you need to find ways to either guilt them or to shame them or to politically maneuver them.
00:11:12.280 And to do that with every single individual, well, that's going to take a really long time. 0.74
00:11:16.660 But if we can categorize them as white and male and have that become the primary way that they're thinking about themselves and the way that society is, well, now we can see that, you know, you men, you have certain privileges that women don't have. 0.58
00:11:31.220 And so it's time for all of you to kind of pay up and to make sure that all the ladies get the same stuff that you do. 0.57
00:11:38.700 And then Christian says, well, why would you do that?
00:11:40.720 Because, you know, we don't want all the women to have all the same stuff that men do. 0.97
00:11:45.320 You know, men have to be conscripted into the army to go fight battles. 1.00
00:11:49.140 Why would we want women to do that? 0.99
00:11:50.720 Well, that's because you're thinking like a Christian and you're thinking about what God's revealed in the word. 0.98
00:11:55.520 But no, that's not the way this one works. 0.99
00:11:57.340 This one says if we're going to have equality, it's got to be a feminist equality. 1.00
00:12:01.220 These women have to have all the same kind of things that men do, and therefore we have to peg them for their oppression, have them think about themselves and their group identity so that we can raise up the oppressed category and get at some state of perfect equality. 0.57
00:12:15.500 So that's a very long way of saying, I really believe the identity politics is a tool used by those who are committed to this materialistic understanding of the world and want this will to power.
00:12:30.480 They want things, and the way you get it is through power maneuvers.
00:12:33.800 That's so helpful.
00:12:34.760 So it's a tool to redistribute wealth.
00:12:36.500 wealth. And I love what you said, Jared, about just the antithetical view from a Christian 0.97
00:12:44.220 worldview that wealth is this zero-sum game. And I think that even plays into abortion in the sense
00:12:50.600 that like, well, overpopulation, which whatever, but let's just roll with it for a second,
00:12:56.900 that idea that the world is overpopulated. Well, what do you fundamentally view people as? Do you
00:13:02.800 view them as lowercase c creators you know not x in a helo but like but that we produce that we 0.92
00:13:09.100 multiply that we build or do you just view them as leeches consumers and and the the worldly you
00:13:16.500 know the worldly view of people it's so funny it's i've noticed it's so reverse so for the christian
00:13:21.380 we believe in total depravity but also the imago dei uh whereas it's completely opposite for for
00:13:26.880 the unbeliever they would say that you know so we would say like in your heart of hearts you're 0.90
00:13:30.960 depraved. You need to be converted. But because you're made in the image of God, even the 1.00
00:13:35.960 unbeliever can produce and multiply wealth and create and all these kinds of things. Whereas 1.00
00:13:40.580 the non-Christian would do the exact opposite. They would say in your heart of hearts, kind of 0.99
00:13:44.080 a Disney worldview, you're really good. And on the outside, you just, you make some mistakes and
00:13:48.860 you're a consumer and you're not going to. So it's like the unbeliever is going to say that people 0.97
00:13:52.800 are a leech with good intentions and a good heart. Where the believer says people are not consumers,
00:14:00.000 but creators, lowercase c, creators with, at the inside, a depraved heart need Jesus.
00:14:06.680 Did you have any thoughts on that?
00:14:08.240 Yeah, well, the Imago Dei is a glorious Christian doctrine that we have assumed for a really long time.
00:14:17.020 And even in our society, have treated people with respect because that doctrine has been underneath.
00:14:22.480 We might not have maintained it in a civil way over the last 50 years or so.
00:14:29.160 but it is still been bearing fruit and now you see the erosion of that that you can have people
00:14:36.780 that get terribly confused about what a human being is that's what seeing with all of the 0.97
00:14:43.840 transgender realities that are now upon us where people are saying I can I can manipulate my own 1.00
00:14:51.660 existence and become kind of whatever I want to be and if that's the case if you're not if you
00:14:58.100 really are able to do that kind of thing. And there's nothing that marks you. You are not
00:15:05.240 created in the image of God. Well, why in the world should we respect you? Why in the world
00:15:09.920 should we not take your stuff and just do whatever we want to with you? So there absolutely has to be
00:15:17.340 a recovery of that doctrine, a clear teaching on it and the church so that people can live
00:15:23.720 recording. Yeah, that's super helpful. Uh, let me go on. I got some more questions here. Um,
00:15:30.000 so you, you talked about, you know, critical race theory is just one specific, um, one specific
00:15:35.100 subset of critical theory. So we could almost, in some sense we could, you know, we've, we've heard
00:15:39.740 a lot of guys talking about the Trojan horse of social justice and, or the Trojan horse of, you
00:15:44.080 know, um, racial reconciliation, uh, the just thinking guys, Daryl and Virgil. I know you guys
00:15:49.400 have had, you and Tom have had him, those guys before, that Trojan horse of race reconciliation,
00:15:56.560 social justice, from that, you know, we get critical race theory, but even from critical
00:16:00.820 race theory, we get, you know, we just get critical theory. And so one of my questions is this,
00:16:06.160 as churches and Christians, many of them unknowingly, as they begin to adopt critical
00:16:12.260 theory, what are some of the things that we can expect to see, or some of the things that maybe
00:16:16.880 you and Tom have already seen in churches that have come about from critical theory that aren't
00:16:23.860 related, something separate from race. So not just critical theory, critical race theory, but
00:16:28.420 as critical theory in general is being adopted by local churches, have you noticed any,
00:16:34.680 the way that they do conflict resolution or a dynamic of power between pastor and congregant,
00:16:41.180 What are some other ways that critical theory in general is destructive for churches?
00:16:47.980 And do you have some predictions or even some observations that you've already seen occurring?
00:16:54.400 Yeah. Well, one of my fundamental concerns with critical theory is that you basically set up society and you look at it and without any divine revelation or without any of God's law, the claim is, well, we can just tell what's wrong with society.
00:17:14.800 We can tell that something is not equal or something is not right, and we want to critique it.
00:17:20.740 We want to critique it, again, without God, without his word.
00:17:25.600 But we know, hey, you know, if women have been held back in the workforce, what we need to do is to put our finger on the scale so that women can be elevated in the workforce.
00:17:37.620 And they will need to be elevated for about the same amount of time that they were not held to that equal standard, at which point we'll let our finger off of the scale and we'll get this, you know, beautiful notion of equality.
00:17:52.780 We'll reach that utopia somewhere out there in the future.
00:17:56.620 So what we need to do is critique it.
00:17:58.320 So, you know, you might even say, somebody would say, well, use reason.
00:18:01.880 Just look at the world, see what's wrong with it.
00:18:04.360 Try to critique it.
00:18:05.140 Try your best to fix it.
00:18:06.300 And that's my, in plain terms, my central concern with critical theory.
00:18:13.020 And the problem is when you look at the church, you can see all sorts of ways where that kind of mindset has impacted what we're doing.
00:18:20.060 And so, you know, hey, we don't have a lot of youth around here.
00:18:23.720 What do we need?
00:18:24.400 Well, we need a cool youth pastor.
00:18:26.340 That's what we need.
00:18:26.800 If we get that guy, then we're going to do this kind of thing, you know, or music.
00:18:32.660 You know, we need this modern kind of music thing.
00:18:34.760 That's going to be able to bring it in.
00:18:36.300 And so we'll do that kind of thing or we'll never have any kind of ability to minister to the LGBTQ community until they recognize us as friends.
00:18:49.560 And once they recognize us as friends, well, then we'll be able to to engage it.
00:18:54.780 So there can be all sorts of specifics.
00:18:56.760 The central problem is trying to critique and improve and enhance things,
00:19:03.340 whether it be in your church or your community, without God.
00:19:07.180 It's basically a paganism in the sense that there's no transcendent God in that world.
00:19:15.220 And so prayer is out the door.
00:19:17.180 We're not worried about prayer because what we need to do is actually critique something.
00:19:22.340 We need to do something. 0.99
00:19:24.460 Well, it is true that there's things for us to do in the Christian faith.
00:19:27.720 We gather, we worship, and we preach the gospel, we do evangelism, we do discipleship, all of that.
00:19:32.960 But we do all of that depending upon the spirit of God.
00:19:36.360 We do all of that praying and asking God to bless his word and to bless his work and to establish the work of our hands.
00:19:43.960 So as these ideas infiltrate the church, the tendency is to basically go about the work that God has given us to do, but to do it without him.
00:19:56.500 Wow, that's really well said.
00:19:58.240 It makes me think of kind of like just a giant game of whack-a-mole.
00:20:01.720 it sounds like we according to human wisdom we we identify that something over here seems to be
00:20:09.360 missing or or less and then something over here seems to be maybe according to human wisdom out
00:20:16.400 of proportion there's more of it and so then through critiquing through the critical piece
00:20:23.140 we're just going to whack this mole and knock it down long enough for this one to grow up until
00:20:28.060 until we, like you said, think that they're equal.
00:20:30.900 And so we're just, we're gonna criticize this and just,
00:20:33.800 but not according, well, first it's human wisdom
00:20:36.980 in the sense that maybe this is supposed to be lesser, right?
00:20:40.760 Maybe God has something
00:20:42.680 that's supposed to be emphasized in his church. 0.59
00:20:45.120 Maybe it's not just this androgynized equality
00:20:49.280 over everything, steamrolling, you know, everything. 0.59
00:20:52.820 So first, according to human wisdom,
00:20:54.220 we notice that something's lesser
00:20:55.620 and we just assume that everything's meant to be equal.
00:20:58.400 And then the hammer that we use is the criticism,
00:21:02.080 that critical piece.
00:21:03.180 And we just hammer this down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
00:21:05.960 So if we're in a church that we feel like
00:21:08.160 the pastor's got too much authority,
00:21:10.420 we're just gonna really, really be critical about that
00:21:14.400 until we feel like the congregation has more of it. 0.76
00:21:16.240 Or if we feel like there's too many old people,
00:21:17.720 not enough young people, 0.98
00:21:18.480 we're gonna criticize an older generation
00:21:20.780 and really emphasize a younger generation
00:21:25.120 and how much God cares about the youth and those kind of things.
00:21:28.000 Is that kind of what you're getting at?
00:21:29.800 Is that a fair assessment?
00:21:31.800 Yeah, it's a huge deal.
00:21:33.920 It's hard to articulate how bad critical theory and critical race theory are.
00:21:39.680 You know, I mean, Paul tells us in Colossians,
00:21:41.740 he took it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.
00:21:45.000 And so the idea of these various isms that kind of set in upon us,
00:21:52.380 and it's like a fog.
00:21:54.000 You know, it's not like a clear-cut, here's the error.
00:21:57.760 I see they're coming for the deity of Christ.
00:21:59.680 I see they're coming for the humanity of Christ.
00:22:01.320 Rather, what we're dealing with is like epistemology or how we know the truth
00:22:05.880 and then even the nature of reality, so ontology, what is.
00:22:11.180 And so, as you were saying, there's so many directions where it goes wrong
00:22:20.280 and so many places where it goes wrong,
00:22:22.240 one of which is what is what is equality what is it and right we we know according to the christian
00:22:28.800 system that it's not just everybody having the exact same stuff and looking at exactly the same
00:22:34.480 i remember being at a uh ted trip conference uh right when my wife and i were having our first
00:22:40.480 child and it was a parenting conference and he had this line where he said you know if you if
00:22:46.080 you have the egalitarian system and the way you think about the world and he wasn't just meaning
00:22:50.880 like manhood and womanhood, but just your egalitarian worldview.
00:22:54.620 So the only way that you can have, the only way you can think about authority is you'll
00:22:58.680 say, well, you can have authority over me if I let you have authority over me, or you
00:23:03.820 can have authority over me if you're stronger than me.
00:23:07.360 And he says, but there's no other, there's no other way for you to like be okay with
00:23:12.540 authority in the world.
00:23:14.400 He says, but if you buy into the hierarchical system, which is the system God has made,
00:23:18.980 there's hierarchy in the world, well, then you can understand the goodness of hierarchy and
00:23:24.960 authority and submission. And then again, it's going to have nuance. It depends on,
00:23:30.920 are you talking about the family? Are you talking about the church? Are you talking about civil
00:23:33.880 society? Are you talking about just employment at Carrabba's where there's a manager and then
00:23:39.040 there's waiters and waitresses? But seeing that that is the structure of the world helps you to
00:23:45.100 think, okay, yes, so there's equality. There is justice. Someone's doing something and receiving
00:23:54.460 the appropriate thing for what was done. That very foundational idea is just ripped out,
00:24:04.280 torn away, thrown away. People aren't even thinking like that. And that's where you have
00:24:08.160 biblical justice, which is trying to do what God would have us do. And then you have social
00:24:15.000 justice, which is based on this materialistic understanding of the world where equality is
00:24:21.040 simply everybody having the same stuff. Yep. Yep. Really helpful. So again, the topic today
00:24:27.580 is critical race theory, when good intentions go bad. So I want to get to that second piece,
00:24:32.120 that second half, when good intentions go bad. So the question I have for you is why are so many
00:24:37.080 Christians and even pastors falling for this ideology, falling for critical race theory?
00:24:44.260 What's the appeal?
00:24:45.880 Because it seems like a lot of them are well-meaning.
00:24:47.880 So what is it about critical theory?
00:24:49.520 What is it about critical race theory in particular that tugs on the heartstrings of so many Christians and even pastors in the church today?
00:25:01.060 Yeah, it's a real threat for a number of reasons.
00:25:07.220 It is a worldview.
00:25:09.700 By that, I mean, it's a system.
00:25:10.960 it's a way of thinking that answers a lot of questions you know i mean so if you buy into it
00:25:17.400 you say okay quality is it's all having the same stuff that you know and that can make sense if you
00:25:24.100 just throw the bible in the garbage can like well we're all human beings aren't we we should all have
00:25:28.560 the same stuff and uh that so that fits and then you've got an eschatology going on too because
00:25:35.820 we don't all yet have that same stuff we are not all yet living as one as john lennon uh saying
00:25:42.900 about you know and imagine and so we need to pursue it and so you've got something you're
00:25:47.900 moving toward you know we're going to progress toward this state of equality and it's got a
00:25:52.840 sense of moral uh rightness to it i mean it doesn't don't aren't you for equality aren't
00:25:59.480 you for everybody having the same things and if you're not it sounds like you want to hold on to
00:26:04.380 your stuff and uh that means you're the bad guy and therefore you know now we have conflict and
00:26:10.860 so it's going to take me courage to stand up to you and tell them tell you why you need to stop
00:26:15.460 holding on to all of your stuff and begin to hand it over so you've got this whole system
00:26:22.100 you've got morality you've got eschatology and uh something that has some teeth to it
00:26:29.780 So as a system, it can be very appealing to people. 0.86
00:26:34.020 And then Christians, particularly, getting caught up in it, are just, we've just become too worldly.
00:26:42.660 We haven't paid enough attention to Scripture and what God has told us to do.
00:26:46.760 And so we see people talking about justice, and we're too quick to say, hey, that sounds good.
00:26:53.300 I'm all for justice, too, rather than stop and say, hey, what do you mean?
00:26:57.600 And let me tell you what I mean.
00:26:58.860 Yeah, that's good. One of the things I've been so blessed by with your ministry is just
00:27:03.700 the sufficiency of scripture. I think, you know, we, we've fought that battle. I say the proverbial
00:27:09.700 we, I wasn't around for that battle, but for the inerrancy of scripture and everybody's willing
00:27:15.680 to kind of salute, you know, like that is a sword. It's double edged. It's really sharp and it looks
00:27:21.300 really nice in that glass case on my mantle, you know, but like I, that is a sword. It's an
00:27:26.120 authoritative sword, an effective sword. But there's a difference in acknowledging the sword
00:27:30.060 and saluting the sword versus what you guys often talk about, wielding the sword. The inerrancy of
00:27:35.840 Scripture is one thing, and it's necessary. It's paramount. But the sufficiency of Scripture, 1.00
00:27:40.760 I think so many Christians who would profess to be Bible-believing Christians, they would say the
00:27:45.520 Word of God is inerrant. But they just, I don't even think they mean to. They just haven't been
00:27:51.820 taught, they haven't been educated, the Bible has something to say. That's why I love, I mean,
00:27:56.360 you talked about this offline a little bit, but I'm so grateful for Doug Wilson and his ministry.
00:28:01.260 And I just, I love their little mission statement, all of Christ for all of life. And I think for
00:28:06.780 too long, we've, we've regulated Christ and his lordship through the agency of scripture
00:28:13.860 to the home in the church, as though the Bible has nothing to say of politics, vocation,
00:28:20.940 entertainment, media, like Schaeffer, you know, his seven mountains.
00:28:26.000 And so that's really a lot of that's the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish with this podcast, Theology Applied.
00:28:32.000 And it turns out the Bible applies to more than just your marriage, your parenting, and an hour and a half on Sunday morning.
00:28:39.780 So you guys have done that really, really well, the sufficiency of Scripture.
00:28:44.220 Yeah, it's a big deal.
00:28:45.520 Well, we actually have a project coming out called Wield the Sword, kind of a follow-up to our film By What Standard.
00:28:51.860 And the thought process behind it was just that, that we have a lot of Christians, even conservative Christians right now,
00:29:00.820 that are saying we really do believe the Bible, we believe it's inerrant,
00:29:04.020 but we have not thought about how to actually take that word and apply it to the situations in which we live, to our lives.
00:29:12.820 So C.S. Lewis calls this resistance thinking.
00:29:17.100 And he's got a great little quote where he says something along the lines of, you know, if you emphasize the parts of Scripture that are acceptable to the spirit of the age, well, then there's not going to be any conflict, but neither are you going to be relevant.
00:29:30.560 But if you emphasize the parts of Scripture and the parts of the Christian gospel that are contrary to the spirit of the age, then you will be relevant in your day and in the time to come.
00:29:43.760 And so you've got this idea like the battle is over in the East, and a lot of conservative Christians want to wield the sword over in the West where there's actually no battle.
00:29:54.680 They're not going to where the problem is.
00:29:58.500 And there's a lot of texts that you can go to and you think, well, I'm preaching exegetical sermons.
00:30:02.920 It's just I never turn to the texts that are actually under assault right there.
00:30:08.220 And therefore, I'm not actually discipling my people to face the challenges that they're facing, thinking biblically about what is going on.
00:30:15.820 And so you alluded to kind of this Kuyperian notion of all of Christ for all of life.
00:30:23.120 And we do need to recover that, and we're being forced to recover that.
00:30:26.400 We're being forced to recover that along the lines of complementarian issues, so narrow complementarianism versus broad complementarianism.
00:30:34.380 Narrow complementarianism was more of a tenable position until recently, and we start to see that we know there are implications in the world for manhood and womanhood.
00:30:45.240 And so we want to be wise in those applications.
00:30:47.460 But when they start considering drafting women into the military, the idea that biblical man or the woman only matters in the church and the home and doesn't have any impact upon vocation or government or the way that we go about our lives day to day in the world is untenable.
00:31:06.860 Men and womenhood, I think of. 0.80
00:31:09.040 Sorry, go ahead.
00:31:11.160 No, no, no.
00:31:11.580 I was just going to say with biblical masculinity.
00:31:15.240 masculinity, manhood and womanhood. I always think of, I preached through 1 Timothy recently
00:31:20.480 with our church, and that was a difficult book of the Bible when we were going through 1 Timothy
00:31:24.820 chapter 2, verse 9 through 15. One of my big, as a preacher, it rhymes, so it must be good.
00:31:32.600 But I said, Genesis 1 and 2, it's not male and female roles He assigned them. It's male and 0.94
00:31:41.200 female. He designed them. And so biblical manhood and biblical womanhood is not just something we
00:31:48.280 do. It's who we are. And if it is who we are, I think with that soft, narrow complementarianism,
00:31:55.480 we just, it's as though we acted as though manhood and womanhood is strictly has to do
00:32:04.480 with roles. But what we unhitched is the reality that God, our God who has a design and who is a
00:32:10.480 God of order. He assigns roles based on the way that he creates his creatures. So the role of a
00:32:17.040 bird to fly, it stems from the design that he gives a bird wings and the fish has fins and gills,
00:32:23.400 the roles to swim, but it has the nature, the design that accommodates that role. And so if
00:32:30.520 men and women have these roles in the home and the church, it's not just the role, the role
00:32:36.580 stems from the design. And if we really are designed all the way down, not just, you know,
00:32:42.280 on the outside, but on the inside, men and women actually dynamically different in the way that
00:32:47.000 we're designed, then to think that that difference, that distinction in our design would have no
00:32:53.320 application in any realm other than the home of the church just is illogical, just makes no sense.
00:33:00.220 You know? Yeah. You know, if your listeners are saying, you know, I thought this thing was on
00:33:03.200 critical race theory, why are they talking about manhood and womanhood? Well, if you open up
00:33:06.540 Delgado's introduction, I mean, he talks about the kind of precursors to critical race theory,
00:33:13.980 and right there is not only the post-modern thought, but also radical feminism. So these
00:33:20.500 categories, they all flow together. Intersectionality is a helpful term to know if
00:33:27.180 People aren't up to speed on that because it's a broader concept, and that involves critical race theory.
00:33:35.560 So intersectionality with the presser and oppressed, and as soon as you start buying into this,
00:33:40.000 you really can't talk about the way critical race theory operates with white and black 0.55
00:33:45.300 and not talk about the way the radical feminist mindset operates with male and female. 0.97
00:33:50.460 Yep, I completely agree.
00:33:52.060 One more thought, I didn't have this prepared, but you just got me thinking, because you're right,
00:33:56.160 we did get into the male and female, but it all has the same root. But along those lines,
00:34:01.720 I was just wondering, do you have any assessment or thought, Jared, in regards to the fact that
00:34:07.820 when I look biblically, I feel as though my assessment of the scripture, God places little
00:34:14.780 emphasis. I don't want to say no emphasis, but he places little emphasis or less emphasis on
00:34:21.320 distinctions with ethnicity, but a lot of emphasis on the distinction of gender, male, female. So
00:34:29.000 it's like God draws a real big line, real bold line with male and female, but not as big or bold
00:34:36.360 of lines, black and white. And then what I see happening in our culture is, right, it's almost,
00:34:42.040 it's like the play is, because it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like that the goal
00:34:47.000 is not to go from two genders to 37.
00:34:50.680 It seems like the goal is to go from two to one, 0.95
00:34:52.600 but the easiest, that's a big shift.
00:34:54.680 That's a big change.
00:34:55.420 So the way you get a society 1.00
00:34:56.860 to go from two genders to one, 1.00
00:34:59.400 because I think that is the goal, 1.00
00:35:00.820 is you go up first and then you come back down, right?
00:35:03.040 So first you just confuse the heck out of everybody 0.79
00:35:05.600 and you go from two genders to three and four and five
00:35:08.340 and all the way up to a hundred different types of gender.
00:35:10.820 And then it's just, you know,
00:35:11.640 the whole thing gets steamrolled to this androgyny.
00:35:14.580 And so I guess my question is, 0.54
00:35:15.780 god seems to make big distinction male female smaller distinction ethnicity black white but 0.64
00:35:22.380 what we see happening in our culture is the exact reversal of of black and white is everything
00:35:27.640 that distinction male and female that distinction doesn't matter at all what what what's the
00:35:32.580 incentive do you think it's just because people just want to go directly directly reverse like
00:35:38.300 like the serpent just wanting to reverse god's good created order is it just that that hostility
00:35:44.440 and the mind of the fleshly man that's hostile towards God?
00:35:48.760 Or is there a clear goal in wanting to make a big deal
00:35:52.320 out of the distinction in race, or we would say ethnicity,
00:35:56.180 and make no deal of the distinction with gender?
00:36:00.660 Why is that so opposite?
00:36:02.600 What are they trying to achieve?
00:36:05.540 Yeah, well, I think you're right about
00:36:07.440 what Scripture teaches on those issues.
00:36:12.000 And that's first and foremost, just to underscore what you said, Paul says in Corinthians that man is the image and glory of God and woman is the glory of man.
00:36:21.980 And that's a text that nobody wants to go to the side or talk about these days.
00:36:26.160 And yet that is a distinction between male and female.
00:36:29.800 And you don't see that same kind of thing when you're dealing with ethnicity.
00:36:34.360 Now, ethnicity is a there are distinctions there and every tribe, nation and time will be around the throne.
00:36:39.620 But when it comes to the binary of male and female, there is something foundational there.
00:36:49.100 The way God has created the world, the way that he has created mankind.
00:36:54.200 So what, you know, why in our current moment, I think some of the race issues that we're experiencing right now in America,
00:37:04.580 you know there have always been you know tensions along these lines not only in our history but it's
00:37:10.380 something that you experience universally in the world but um those are exacerbated right now
00:37:17.200 primarily for political purposes as i see it the ways that your agendas that are trying to be
00:37:22.580 advanced what you see going on in the with the um transgenderism stuff and the tendency to basically
00:37:30.240 have a world in which you can be whatever sex you want to be and even creating new sexes and all 0.77
00:37:37.980 kinds of crazy ideas you're watching a romans one situation right there you're watching the
00:37:44.400 a deep depravity set in and an unwillingness for many who know better to say that's not true
00:37:53.080 that's not that's not who you are what you are so you do have different dynamics going on there
00:37:58.780 Both of our manipulations on that are certainly driven by sin.
00:38:04.660 And it's interesting to watch them kind of operating in different ways as you detail.
00:38:10.100 Yeah.
00:38:11.020 Last question I'd like to ask you, and I really appreciate the time that you're giving to us.
00:38:16.520 The last question for our interview, and then we'll have a couple bonus questions for our club members.
00:38:21.620 But is this issue of critical race theory and just more broadly critical theory?
00:38:27.700 because I know that you and Tom both would agree
00:38:31.020 that it's not just a tool, it is a worldview.
00:38:35.260 It can't be separated from the worldview that it comes from.
00:38:38.820 And because it is another worldview,
00:38:41.660 there's a sense in which it's another gospel
00:38:43.520 and antithetical to the gospel of Christ. 1.00
00:38:47.640 If all that's true, and I feel like you and Tom
00:38:49.740 have said that made those kinds of statements, 0.98
00:38:51.920 is this issue worth a Christian
00:38:56.760 leaving their local church over?
00:38:59.500 If their pastors are, is this something,
00:39:02.500 and how would you know if your pastor, right?
00:39:04.960 Because maybe he's just,
00:39:06.780 maybe he's still learning, right?
00:39:08.520 He's doing racial reconciliation nights
00:39:10.420 with good intentions,
00:39:11.940 and he's using a lot of pretty biblical language,
00:39:15.320 but then every now and then, you know,
00:39:16.560 he recommends white fragility
00:39:18.660 as a reading assignment or something,
00:39:20.640 but he just doesn't know.
00:39:21.820 At what point do you say, when do you pull the plug?
00:39:25.080 When is it worth leaving a church over?
00:39:28.660 Yeah, well, it certainly is worth leaving a church over.
00:39:33.020 And with that statement comes the qualification of enduring
00:39:37.260 and making sure that you're clear that there really is an influence
00:39:42.520 of critical race theory or intersectionality upon this church.
00:39:46.520 Because you're right, you can hold your racial reconciliation.
00:39:49.500 night, Bodie Bauckham was here at our church and one of our conferences preached a racial
00:39:53.760 reconciliation sermon. And it was the farthest thing from critical race theory that you've ever
00:39:57.980 heard. So, um, and then people, it's right for us to talk about justice is right for us to talk
00:40:03.400 about equality. So when you hear somebody saying those terms, uh, you don't, if a person came to
00:40:07.620 me and said, you know, my pastor used the word, um, equality. And so I know that critical race
00:40:11.980 theory is there. I'm getting out of here. I'd say, well, hold on, let's talk about what it is.
00:40:16.020 And you really do have to come up with definitions. 0.76
00:40:19.900 So if you're recommending white fragility, you've got serious problems.
00:40:22.860 So head on and you get out of there.
00:40:26.120 But I still think the statement on social justice and the gospel is a great resource for this question.
00:40:34.060 When Tom went to that meeting in Dallas, and then he was tasked with writing up the affirmations and denials. 0.78
00:40:40.680 So I remember he sat down here and he said, well, I've got to come up with these statement of affirmations to the Niles and put it before the crew. 0.92
00:40:47.960 And we had no idea at that time how big it would be.
00:40:51.220 But I remember categories being formed, and then as they were worked up, I thought these are very, very helpful definitions because there's a lot of talk about racism.
00:41:02.120 Well, what is it and what is it not?
00:41:03.420 There's a lot of talk about culture and ethnicity.
00:41:05.760 What is it?
00:41:06.340 What is it not?
00:41:07.160 What is it not?
00:41:08.400 And you could put that before people in your congregation.
00:41:12.900 You could ask to meet with your elders if things are coming up and say,
00:41:16.560 hey, where do you agree with this statement on social justice and the gospel?
00:41:19.800 Where do you disagree with this statement on social justice and the gospel?
00:41:22.920 And I think you can come out of that meeting with a lot more information
00:41:27.600 and hopefully enough to help you make a wise decision.
00:41:31.140 Really helpful.
00:41:32.300 All right, Jared, real quick, I'll read the bonus questions
00:41:35.760 just to whet our listeners' appetite for joining us for our kind of behind-the-scenes conversation.
00:41:41.300 But before I do, thank you so much for coming on.
00:41:43.520 And could you tell our listeners how they could keep up with you, follow your ministry?
00:41:47.860 Yeah, go to founders.org.
00:41:51.140 That's our website.
00:41:53.100 There you'll find access to all sorts of things, articles.
00:41:55.960 We have a podcast called The Sword in the Trowel.
00:41:58.560 Founders Ministries is on all the platforms, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of that.
00:42:03.940 We have a conference coming up in January.
00:42:05.760 And so, man, if anybody wants to be a part of that, it's going to be on the Doctrine of God.
00:42:11.420 We've got a number of good guys coming.
00:42:13.660 We've actually got a guy from California named Chad Big is out here.
00:42:17.520 He's going to be joining us.
00:42:19.080 Votie Bauckham is going to be joining us down here for that conference.
00:42:23.860 And so we've got a lot of good stuff there.
00:42:25.880 We'd love for you to come enjoy Florida in January.
00:42:28.300 Great, great.
00:42:29.260 Okay, well, thanks so much for your time, Jared.
00:42:31.020 And we'll hop back on here for our club members, our responders here in just a moment.
00:42:35.760 As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.
00:42:42.080 To access this offer, visit RightResponseMinistries.com slash offer.
00:42:46.860 We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
00:42:50.560 If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
00:42:56.320 As a reminder, to get this offer, go to RightResponseMinistries.com slash offer.
00:43:00.620 And thank you for your generous support.
00:43:05.760 Thank you.