Kline, Josh: Shining Lights and the False Gospel ~ John 1 New

So, uh, just one verse. We talked a little bit about the Gospel of John last night, and, uh, I just want to read first, uh, just the Gospel of John, chapter one verse five. It says, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Uh, this morning I'd like to talk about the false gospel of social justice, and, uh, if I get everything working here. Why this talk? So, uh, if you are alive today in the United States, you've run into so- social justice, critical theory, all this sort of stuff. Uh, and so I think it's as we try to shine a light in this dark world, uh, oftentimes the light that we shine is perceived by the world as darkness. They get things mixed up, and they don't comprehend the light, and they actually use the light to try to denigrate the light, which I'll try to explain as we go. So the, the two verses that come to mind here are Ephesians five, six, eleven says, let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the world. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. And then Colossians two eight says, see to it that there is no one who takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, in accordance with human tradition, in accordance with the elementary principles of the world, rather than in accordance with Christ. I want to show you just a, a part of this video, uh, and then I'll try to explain why I'm watching this. By the way, I'm gonna, we have till quarter of, I'm gonna go real fast through a lot of stuff. If you want my slides, just see me. I'll tell you how to get those, so if you're trying to take notes and stuff, don't worry about it. Just watch. Jake. Jake. Okay, we get some volume. Between Judaism and Christianity is not that the who is Jesus. The biggest difference between Judaism and Christianity is not that the who is Jesus. Obviously, it's a difference, but that's not the biggest difference. The biggest difference, I think, is with regard to attaining salvation, if that, if that means the afterlife, heaven, whatever term you wish to use. For, for Christians, although Catholics and Protestants don't fully agree on this matter, because Catholics do not believe faith alone can save you, whereas Protestantism does. Luther said that. Catholics believe that the sacraments are also, uh, necessary. So there's faith and works in Catholicism, and there's faith alone since Luther, who founded Protestantism. For Judaism, it- it is works. You, uh, which I'll use the term that really blows my Christian friend's mind, you earn salvation. Period, end of issue. How you act determines whether you go to heaven, or yes, Jews do believe, Jew, excuse me, Jews don't, Judaism does. Jews and Judaism differ a lot. The the one of the thirteen principles of the Jewish faith as compiled by Maimonides, the greatest Jewish thinker who ever lived, according to nearly all Jews. One of them, one of the thirteen principles, is that God rewards the good and punishes the bad. And the exact same faith is for good Jews and good n- non-Jews and bad Jews and bad non-Jews. Judaism holds that God judges people by their behavior, not by their theology, their beliefs, their faith. So, when I had this discussion with a, with four Christians just this past week, a long dinner, one of them was a pastor, and I, when I mentioned that we have to strive to be good and that God rewards the good and punishes the bad, so he said, well, what is the definition of good? So I asked the pastor, what do you mean by what is good? You know what good is. Everybody knows what good is. D- did you, if somebody said someone's a good lawyer, or a good pitcher, or a, a good violinist, would you ask, what does good mean? No, you would know exactly what it means. Same with the human being. Now, is it good enough? I think that's what he meant to attain salvation, to use a Christian term, or go to heaven or get rewarded in the afterlife, that's for God to determine. The biggest difference between Judaism. All right, so I showed that because of the question at the, at the end there, like, what is good? I think the pastor who asked that question was thinking of the comment or the conversation between Jesus and the rich young ruler, where he comes up to Jesus and says, good teacher, what do I have to do to inherit the kingdom of heaven? And then Jesus says, why do you call me good? No one is good but God. And so when you get into goodness and all that, and and interestingly, he said, we all know what good is, and what's a good doctor, what's a good tennis player. Well, that's not morally good, is it? To be a good chess player isn't a moral standard that we're comparing it to, right? That means you're good at chess, and you're comparing it to some standard, right? If I'm a good pitcher in baseball, what's my standard? That I throw the ball over the plate, that I throw strikes, that I get batters out. That's the standard that I'm being measured, but it has nothing to do with morality. So when we talk about the moral question of what is good, now we're into a worldview issue, aren't we? Because all these things, and so Judaism ha- is a worldview. In fact, Judaism, we would agree on origin in terms of, like, how did everything get here? Well, God created everything. We would agree with what Dennis Prager believes. Meaning, why are we here? Eh, maybe to glorify God. Okay, that's, that's okay. But then morality, where does morality come from? Morality comes from God. If there is no God, there is no such thing as objective morality. Here's the moral law argument. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. By objective, I mean it's true regardless of what I think or feel about it. My beliefs or opinions about it are irrelevant. I could think that there is no such thing as morality, but that doesn't mean that there, that my beliefs are correct, right? Just like I could, I could not believe in gravity, but it's objectively true that gravity exists. If I jump off the roof, I'm going to fall, right? So my belief in it doesn't create the reality of the situation. So if there are objective moral values and duties, if there is anything that is just good or just bad, regardless of what I think about it, then objective values and duties do exist. By the way, a value is good or bad, a duty is a right or wrong. If I talk about it, something being good or bad, that that's like, let's say I get into my car and I, I run over Mr. Bull in the parking lot. That would be bad, right? That's just bad. We would say that's terrible. But maybe it's not wrong, right? Maybe my brakes failed or something happened, I didn't see him, he ran out. But if I throw it in reverse and back over him, that would be wrong, right? That, that, so that's why in, in crime, intent matters. You can't just, you know, decide I, I'm declaring war on somebody and kill them. That's not, you can't do that, right? So we have objective moral values and duties. They do exist, therefore God exists, because you have to have some kind of standard, don't you? Just like we talked about, like how, what determines whether you're a good baseball pitcher is compared to what standard. There's a moral standard, but the, the top, the best you can be is morally perfect. So where do you get a transcendent, morally perfect standard from? You need a, a transcendent, morally perfect lawgiver. It can't come from me or you, because then it's subjective, and we don't all agree on maybe what we should do or how we should do it. But there has to be some standard if these things really exist, and that standard is God. Now, the problem for us is God's minimum standard for us is moral perfection. If we want to have a right relationship with God, if we want to be with God, we have to be morally perfect. Who in here has ever known something to be wrong but did it anyway? Raise your hand. Everybody, you can all raise your hand. Everybody all the time. No matter where you're at, everybody all the time does that. That's strange, isn't it? We all ha- and and the and the the hard thing about morality is it's built into us. We read that in Romans two, that we have the law in our conscience. And so we all have this moral understanding, but a lot of people think, well, I know what's good and bad, right or wrong. I don't need anybody to tell me. But if we if we try to all be the the moral law giver, we all come up with different moral laws, and usually it's good for me, but not for thee. We want a cop to go, like, if somebody runs a red light, we're like, I wish there was a cop there and saw that, boy, they'd get it. But when we run the red light, we're like, oh, there's no cop there, right? We don't want it for ourselves, but we want justice for everybody else. The problem is, if we had a perfect moral, if we have a perfect moral law and a perfect moral lawgiver and a perfectly just judge, we're all in trouble, aren't we? So the problem is, what do we do with that? The Bible says to sin is literally, the Hebrew word for sin is to fall short. It's like shooting an arrow at a target, and it doesn't make the target hits the ground. We all fall short, the Bible says, and the consequence of sin is death, and death is separation. When someone dies or your pet dies, you're separated from them. You don't see them anymore. And so ultimately, the Bible says the second death is separation eternally from God. We're going to be separated from God because the Bible says that we are all sinners. Now, the problem is God is, if we say, like, what is good, the definition of good is God. God is good. So to be good is to be like God. God, the Bible also says that God is love. So we know love by this, that he sent his son to die on the cross for our sins. So God is perfectly loving, but he's also perfectly just. So we can't not punish the sin because we all recognize if we went, if let's say somebody did some terrible, heinous wrong to us, and we knew that they did it, and we go before the judge, and somehow the judge is related to the person who did it, and he's like, ah, I'm just gonna let them go. Who's guilty now? The judge is guilty. So God cannot not punish sin. He has to punish sin, but if he punishes sin, then we're all doomed and we're all eternally separated from him. But he loves everyone. So the solution to this, as there's a, a a medieval theologian named Anselm of Canterbury, and he said that the debt was so great that while none but man must pay the debt, none but God could do it, so that he who does it must be both God and man. And so he sent down his son, who lived the perfect life. He fulfilled the law. He did everything that God required. And then he offered himself as the payment for our sin, so that the, the justice and the wrath of God that I have incurred, that the wages of sin is death, the wages that I've earned were paid out on Jesus. And so now, by faith, I can accept his free offer of salvation and have my guilt imputed onto him, and I get his righteousness instead. That's a pretty good deal. That's a fantastic deal. That's the best deal that there is, right? Now, the problem is, like Dennis Prager was saying, eh, like, people think that they can kind of come up with their own moral standard, that somehow I think that I can be okay with God, that when he sees me, he's going to judge me versus everybody else, and as long as Josh is on, like, the fifty one percent, then somehow God's like, you're good, come on in. But that's not how it works. And so, uh, that's what we see in our society. We see that, like, everybody has this concept of good, and they think that they're going to do their concept of good, and that their way is the right way. And when you come to the, the idea of social justice and critical theory and all this sort of stuff, it really comes out of the ideas of Karl Marx. And interestingly, Karl Marx said that communism begins where atheism begins. So think about that. Let's go back to the, the whole worldview thing. From an atheist perspective, how did we get here? Time plus chance plus matter. Who knows, right? We're all stardust somehow. But where did the stardust come from? It just did. The universe just created itself from nothing, out of nothing. That makes perfect sense. Okay? Right. Meaning, why are we here? There really is no meaning. You can make up a meaning if you want to, but there is no meaning. Ultimately, the universe is going to end in the heat death, and we're like everything that we've ever done as human beings is going to amount to nothing. Morality, how should I be? Well, from a naturalistic point of view, in other words, a godless point of view, the only way that you can operate is, like Charles Darwin said, survival of the fittest. Might makes right. And so, really, when we we talk about all these ideas that I'm going to talk about, like equality and justice and equity, do you see these things in the natural world? In the in the you watch, like, Animal Planet or something like that, do you see, like, the lions, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's be equitable. I am not seeing justice here. I'm not seeing justice. Everybody, let's come over here. We're going to have a group talk, this is a counseling session, because I'm traumatized at the lack of justice. Like, is there a, do do animals have rights? Are there chickens protesting the Holocaust taking place at Chick-fil-A today? No, they're not, right? See, all these things only apply to people, but they only apply if God exists. Okay? So, morality, how should I be? We can't deny that there is a morality, but in order for there to be an objective morality, there's got to be a God, and God's got to be morally perfect. And now we're in this bind because what happens when I die, if there is an objective morality and there is a God, then somewhere in there I'm going to have to interact with that God, and I'm going to have to stand for that God, and that God is going to judge me. But from the atheist perspective, there really is no such thing as morality. It's a useful fiction. It's like numbers, right? They don't really exist. We just, they're an idea, we just make them up. So morality is just a made up idea that we organize society by. If you ever read Friedrich Nietzsche, he talks about this, right? He says that society is the scaffolding by which the people who understand what's really going on are able to control the people who don't. So we just make up the rules so we can make everybody think that there's a morality, and they just do what they're supposed to do, right? So like Hitler made up a new morality that the best thing that we could do is to get rid of all the people who aren't fit to reproduce so we could drive evolution forward, and that's what will promote human flourishing, to get rid of all these undesirable people, and that way we'll create this better world for everybody. See how it works? You just make it up, but it's really all dependent on this idea of survival of the fittest, which you don't need a God for that, according to Darwin. And so when you die, you feed the worms. That's it. That's atheism. So Karl Marx says that communism begins where atheism begins. And he, and the whole point of, I'm going to kind of skip through some of this, the whole idea of communism from Karl Marx. Karl Marx lived during the Industrial Revolution, and what he saw was he saw capitalism as the big great enemy, because he saw that in capitalism, what happens oftentimes is there's a, an unequal distribution of the wealth, that the people who own the factories had more than the people who didn't, that worked in the factories. And he thought that the people who owned the factories got all their money by not paying the workers their fair share of the labor, the true market value of their labor. And he said that he, the reason why this situation occurs is because these working people in England and all throughout Europe are dumbed down into stupefaction by their religion. He called religion the opiate of the masses. It's like a drug that stupefies people into servitude, because the Bible says stuff like, servants obey your masters, and you should honor those people who God has put in authority over you. And so he thought, well, that's what the problem is. These people, these people think that they should obey their master because that's the way God has ordered society. But at some point, he thought that things are going to get so bad that they're going to wake up from their stupor, and they're going to look around, they're going to look, there's way more of us than there are of them, and they would take over the factories and kill the factory owners, and then the people would collectively own the means of production, and that would be the first step into ushering in a, uh, utopia. Utopia in the Greek actually means no place, like it doesn't really exist. It's kind of a, a kind of play on words, but it would usher in this utopia where everybody doesn't, like we d- like because the problem in our society is because some people have more than they should. Have you heard this? They have more than they should. We need to take it from them and give it to somebody else. And that way, in fact, in in Karl Marx's opinion, if nobody owned anything, that would solve all of our problems. There wouldn't be crime and all this sort of stuff because we'd all just collectively own everything, and that that would solve all the problems. And so what you see in Marx's ideology is there's always an oppressor and an oppressed group. There's, it's this dialectic. There's a oppressed and oppressor, okay? So the, the good on Karl Marx's view would be the oppressed, and the bad would be the oppressor, okay? Now, when you try to set up societal, uh, organizations or institutions or way to set up the society, the house that you build is built on your understanding of what human nature is. And this now, see, we come back to the problem of, of sin again. Because for the non, the non-Bible believing person, they always think, and this is true for Karl Marx, it's true for, uh, there's a guy in the Enlightenment period, if you remember your history class, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, uh, was a big guy. Th- there's been a lot of people in history that have said this, but they think that, that we are all born good. In fact, the reason why we have so many problems in society is that society is corrupt, but if we could just fix the soci- because then the people who are born good get corrupted by the society, right? So if you could just fix the society, then you could fix the people, and once we fix the people, then the society wouldn't be corrupted anymore. That makes perfect sense, right? It's like the chicken and the egg. What came first, the corrupt society or the corrupt people? And how did the society get corrupt if we're all good? That doesn't make any sense. But that's what they think, that we're all good. But the biblical view of human nature is that since Adam and Eve disobeyed God, we are all tainted. We're corrupted. Do you have, like, and maybe it's just me, but it's not. Do you have to try to do bad things? Do you have to practice it? Like, man, I gotta get better at being bad. It comes naturally, right? You don't have to teach when you get to be the age where you have kids, you don't have to teach your kids to be bad. You have to teach them to be good. Like, no, don't hit her. Share your stuff, right? You like, you don't have to teach them to be selfish. You don't have to teach them to be mean. That's built into us, okay? So I would argue that the, the, the primary motivator of all human behavior is self. And ironically, that's how you sell all this stuff. Hey, we're gonna take their stuff and give it to you. Who is with me? Like, like John, like, uh, Lenin and Stalin in, in the Soviet Union. We'll give you bread, we'll give you bread and farms and land and all this stuff. Who's gonna vote for me? Right? In fact, I use this illustration in, in school. Imagine if, uh, we take a test. I had a professor at one time that did this. I loved it. He wrote all the grades on the board, like from highest to lowest, so you can always see, like, how everybody did and where you fit in there. But imagine we did that, and imagine that I said to you, okay, you can either take the grade that you got, or I'll give you the class average, and, and we'll vote on it. We'll make it democratic socialism. We'll vote on it, right? Now, imagine that more people got below the average than got above the average. What's everybody, everybody gonna vote for? Take your grade that you got or take the average grade? The average grade because it benefits you, self-interest. So you, you sell this whole thing by appealing to self-interest. And then I say, okay, from now on, that's what we'll do. Every test, we'll take the average score. Now, what's gonna happen on the next test score if we're going to take the class average? Will the, will the average grade stay the same? Will it go up, or will it go down? Why will it go down? Because the people who studied and got a ninety five and ended up with an eighty two, they're going to be like, I'm not studying anymore. I got an eighty two. I could get an eighty two if I don't study. Like, who's going to be like, hey, you want to go out to the movies? Like, I would, but my class is depending on me studying so I could bring the class average up, so I have to stay home and study. Who says that? And I, every once in a while, I ask this, and there's a kid that'll be like, that would be me. Like, okay, you're rare, but most people won't, right? And so if you build it on this idea that of altruism, that I'm going to do things for the benefit of other people, you're going to be sadly disappointed. And what happens if you follow that model is you end up at the lowest common denominator, and that's what happens every time they've tried to institute this, and then it, it ends up with lots of people dying, and they're like, well, they just didn't do it right, we're going to try it again, right? It always ends up the same way, okay? So if you ever read The Communist Manifesto, it's not a super big book, but Karl Marx talks about five things that he thinks should be abolished in our society. Now, does this line up with the Bible? He wants to get rid of private property. Where do we get the idea of private property from? Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not steal. And then there's another commandment that says, thou shalt not covet. Okay? This whole idea is based on covetousness. I want their stuff because I'm motivated by selfishness. The family. Who organized the family? Whose idea was the family? The two shall become one flesh. God. How about individuality? Does God care about you as an individual, or does he just lump you into some group? Individuality. Individuality, right? There's ra- there's rejoicing in heaven when one sinner comes to know the Lord Jesus in, uh, as a savior. How about nationalism? Does, does God promote nationalism? Think of the nation of Israel, right? Those are his chosen people, right? That's nationalism. History. Does God care about history? Yes, right? I mean, we set up these stones as a remembrance. Write the words on your door, on your heart, and all these things. Remember these things. This do in remembrance of me. History is important. And eternal truths, semi-important, right? I am the way and the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. This is clearly not in line with the Bible. The problem is that the, the communist revolution that Karl Marx envisioned, that he thought was inevitable, it didn't happen. It happened in some places, but it didn't happen all over the world. And so the Marxists were like, what went wrong? Where did we get this wrong? And so there was a, a, a Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci, and he said, you know what? Instead of the, the, this dialectic, the oppressed and oppressor being economic, we should make it cultural, because that's the reason why the, the, the Marxist revolution didn't spread to the United States, for example, is these, these cultural institutions that kept it from spreading. So we need to change our tactic. And so his whole idea is that we need to get rid of the hegemony. The hegemony means the, the ruling elite, the, the kind of the man, right? You know what I mean by the man? Being held down by the man, right? You got to get rid of the man. Whoever is in that oppressed or oppressor category, we need to get rid of them. And so in our system, it's usually people say it's a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, native-born, capitalist Christian. If you check the enough of those boxes, you're a man, right? So we need to get rid of the man. So how is he going to do this? He said, look, we need to invade organizations like churches, charities, and we need to get these socialist thinkers in there, right? And then once they get in there, they'll, they're going to persuade everybody that this is a good thing. So they don't, they're not upfront with their, uh, end game. They use good words like social justice. That sounds good, right? Who's, who's against social justice? You know, as a Christian, you're like, I'm for social justice, but what they mean by social justice is not what you mean by social justice, right? It's a, it's a game, right? So you get there, and the goal is that you're going to shape a new collective will, because if you told them what you want in the end, they wouldn't agree to it. But over time, you institute this and you change the way people think about it, so in the end, they'll ask you for it. They'll be like, we want you to do this for us. Okay, you take over the top of the organization. Now, you only need to think about the way organizations are formed. You don't need a lot of people. You just need the people at the top to change the rules. And then most of the people in the organization, they don't, they don't want to make waves, right? Nobody wants to be called a racist or whatever. So you're like, so you go sit through your training sessions and you learn about how terrible everything is and how you're just like, okay, let's get through this. I'm not going to open my mouth because I don't want to lose my job or I don't want to get in trouble. I disagree with it, but I'm just going to go, right? But then eventually, this, there's a study out, and they said, all you need to do is you get, you need to get five percent of the people who think this way, five percent of an organization who agree with it, and then you need some precipitating event, and then you can change the whole organization. And once you change the whole organization, he see, he talked about it in sort of like a, like a, uh, the, uh, what do they call those things? The trenches, trench warfare. You, you trench up, you don't attack the enemy directly, you trench up to them, and then once you get close enough, then you would launch the attack. Okay. Huh? Yeah. All right. Now, there were other people. This is called the Frankfurt School. There's a whole bunch of these people in Germany who came up with this idea of critical theory. It's the same sort of thing. They get kicked out, well, they leave Germany because of Hitler. They end up, a lot of them, over in Columbia University, so they get into our university system. They start talking about critical theory. The interesting thing about critical theory and the way they did it is they saw people as passive receptors, and they said, if we can get into the media and and keep hitting people with these ideas, eventually they'll believe it and they'll want this stuff, all right? So the way this whole thing works is we have the ideas of Karl Marx, and then we have critical theory. I'm going to come back to critical theory in a minute, but first I want to talk about postmodernism, right? And postmodernism, uh, is an idea that came kind of after World War One and World War Two, and the people are like, look, we were thinking like this, but look what it led to. World War One, World War Two was terrible. Maybe we need to reevaluate everything. And so they came up with this idea of, of, uh, postmodernism, and the idea of postmodernism is really that there really is no such thing as objective truth. There's no such thing as reason and logic. You can kind of just make the world whatever you want it to be, right? It's, we're moving beyond modern. Modern man thought that reason and all logic and stuff were valid, but that's just Western ways of thinking, right? There is no such thing as truth. You can have your truth and my truth, and everybody has their own truth. Have you heard this sort of thing? Right? In fact, if you go to some cultures, they would think that the whole world is an illusion. And so it's like, yeah, if the whole world's an illusion, I can just make it be whatever I want it to be, right? So if I want to say that I'm a certain thing, then for me, that's true, okay? Now, you take that and you combine it with these ideas of critical theory. Here's the four premises of criti- critical theory. Human relationships should fundamentally be in terms of power dynamics. That's how you understand it. So are you in the oppressed group or the oppressor group? That's the most important thing. Not your individual identity, but which group are you in? Okay? Second, uh, or that's kind of one and two combined. I'm going quickly, right? Fine. Third is that you can identify your common experience with other oppressed people. So if you ever, like, read the news and wonder why there's homosexual advocates marching with Muslim advocates, that's strange, right? Because in Islam, if you lived in an Islamic country, you wouldn't be flying the gay pride flag. That would get you killed. Like, that's just the way it is, right? But you're like, well, how are they allied? Because they both view themselves as oppressed somehow in, in our system, and so they're united in their oppression. And the fundamental project, this is the key thing, the fundamental human project is liberation from all forms of oppression. Subsequently, uh, consequently, the fundamental virtue is standing in solidarity, solidarity against the oppressor. Who is the ultimate oppressor? Like, we have, you have layers of oppression. You're all being oppressed, right? Your parents are oppressors because you can't do whatever you want to do, right? They're like, you need to get to bed right now or you're grounded. Like, why are you oppressing me? Teachers, schools oppressive, right? The government's oppressive because I can't drive on the left side of the road, right? I can't go through the, the red light. That's oppressing me. It's limiting my freedom. But who's the ultimate oppressor? God. God. God's the ultimate oppressor. So if we could get rid of God, we're back to the Garden of Eden, right? I get rid of God, I can do whatever I want. I'll be the one who decides good, bad, right, and wrong. All right? So again, this idea is all getting rid of things, okay? So once we have, we marry the idea that I can make the world the way that I want to be, and that I need to get out from under oppression, that leads to all these other things that we, we see popping up in our society, like post-colonial theory, queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory. They're all part of this same construct, but all these are leading to this, this kind of idea of social justice. Okay, you hear a lot about critical race theory, right? Critical race theory is the most important thing about you is your race, and and groups everyone into oppressor or oppress. See, the the interesting thing about this, and we're all aware of this stuff, right? I'm I'm you all live in the same world as I do, right? Like, it's your race or you id- think about how sad it is that people just say they identify themselves based on their gender or their sexuality. And so this is all that they care that people know about them. I'm this, I'm that. Instead of seeing them as an individual, right? So everybody is, is seen as who they are in their group, which group you are, and then based on your group, you're either an oppressor or you're oppressed, right? See the Marxism there? And the same idea is to get rid of the oppressor group. You have to, to get rid of the, the man, get rid of the hegemony, right? All human interactions and government policies are infused with race. In fact, you might be sit- sitting here thinking right now, this is how this has infiltrated our thought process, like, there's a white guy who's giving this presentation right now. How is he in any position to be giving this presentation? Because he doesn't know what it's like to be oppressed. That's this, that's this whole theory, right? That's what they're saying, okay? Uh, and that racism in America is just as prevalent as any time in the past, rejects the whole ideas of the civil rights movement, the whole I have a dream that the people will be judged by the- the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. This movement's totally opposed to that, right? So they'll still hold up Martin Luther King, but, uh, Junior, but they don't really like his, his whole main point of that speech, right? That we should judge people on who they are, not what they look like. All right? Uh, the four main ideas of critical race theory, that racism's normal, uh, that, uh, both the whites and the working class whites, like, they all kind of come together because it benefits them, and and so, uh, I'm gonna kind of skip through some of this stuff. This is the last point that I just said, storytelling, the narrative. That's more important than truth. I want to tell you my story, my truth, my related experience, and if you're not in that category, then you can't speak to that because you haven't lived it. You don't know what it's like. So, like, you need to just sit down and listen, okay? Have you seen this guy? Like, I teach high school at Easton, right over here. Like, my school is officially an anti-racist school. That's part of our school improvement plan, is to be an anti-racist school. All this stuff comes from this guy, right? Ibram Kendi. If you ever read his books, it's, it's very interesting. Uh, he says the way we eliminate racism is by eliminating racial inequality and injustice. We can change policies just like we can change people, just like we can change people in positions of power, right? So how do you get rid of racism? Not by dealing with the, the hearts of people, you just change the system, right? Interestingly, he also said that Jesus was a radical revolutionary, and he was dedicated to the destruction of the American empire, right? Uh, he, he talks about, uh, liberation theology. Do you know what black liberation theology is? He says that Jesus was, uh, didn't come to save these poor sinners and stuff, he came to set us free. As a matter of fact, uh, I'm gonna cut, cut through some of this stuff quickly. Let me just show you this. Do- will that work? Does that play? No. No? That's all right. He- here, I'll just read this. He says, there's no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of racist isn't not racist, it's anti-racist. What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as racist or racial e- racial equality as anti-racist. Either, one either believes the problems are rooted in groups of people as a racist or locates the roots of problems in power and policies as anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to preserve, persevere as a racist, or confronts the racial inequalities as an anti-racist. There is no in between safe space of not racist. The claim of not racist neutrality is a mask for racism. He says the common idea of claiming colorblindness is akin to the notion of being not racist. As with the not racist, the colorblind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into the racist passivity. The language of colorblindness, like the language of not racist, is a mask to hide racism. It says the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. You get that? So you can't be not racist. There's no way out of this for Kendi. It's either you're, you're racist or you're an anti-racist. So either you're a racist or you agree with him. Those are the two options. You're like, wait, I don't like either of those two options. Too bad, right? And, and so the only way to deal with racism is to be prejudiced against other people because of their race. Isn't that the definition of racism? Yeah, well, you're like, wait, what? All right. Uh, Black Lives Matter, okay, I'll just go through this, but I mean, if you look into the blacklivesmatter.org, there's all kinds of problems. The, the The three ladies that started it are all, like, they all said that they're trained Marxists. You can find this on YouTube. Uh, they're all, uh, lesbians. They, they said we disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure required by supporting each other. As a matter of Car- Karl Marx said that the family is, is set up by capitalism because it's all about collecting wealth. Interestingly, you want to know the best way to not be poor? Don't have kids before you get married, and when you're married, stay married. That's the best way to not be poor in our country. Finish school too, that helps, right? Right? But don't, like, stay married to your spouse, okay? But there here, it's like it takes a village. We don't need families. They've, we foster a queer affirming network. So again, when someone says Black Lives Matter as a Christian, you're like, yeah, like, I agree with that, but you don't mean what they mean. It's a, it's a different thing, okay? Also, they, they talk about practicing witchcraft, calling that say her name, remember that whole thing? Breonna Taylor, say her name, say her name. They're, they're conjuring up. They talk about, like, interacting with dead people and stuff like that. You're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, what? And they, they say, like, look, this is, this is a spiritual movement, right? At its core, it's a spiritual movement because we're literally standing on spilled blood. That's, that's their words. You can find all this stuff up if you look it, look it up. All right. Gender, all this, you all know that stuff, right? The, the idea of intersectionality, the more oppressed groups you can check the box for, the better you are, and then the more, uh, you should be compensated for that, okay? Uh, social justice is, is defining j- in fact, let me tell you a quick story. I had a class at Lehigh right over here, and the professor I knew was a lesbian, and so we read all these articles about, like, we were reading about social justice, and so she's like, does anybody have any comments? And when you take these college classes, you're just like, should I? And then I think of like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not to speak is to speak. So I'm like, all right. So she's like, what? I'm like, social justice is a moral term, isn't it? Because justice is a moral term. I said, but then we have to ask, where are we getting our morality from? She's like, what do you mean? I said, well, is there objective morality? And I'm, I went through the whole thing. She's like, maybe you'd like to go up to the board and explain it to us. I was like, are you serious? She's like, yeah, like, kind of like a child, like, yeah, go ahead. So I was like, you're serious? Like, yeah, okay. Thank you. So I took the board and talked. I went up to the board, right, and I explained the whole thing about objective and subjective and how it has to be God and all that stuff. And I finished, and she's like, let's take a break. Let's take a break. Right? Because from their point of view, it's not retributive justice. It's not, because that's what God's going to do. We're going to get rewarded or punished based on, like, as a believer, based on how we serve him, we're, we're not going to get punished, but we can lose rewards. But as a non-believer, you're going to, the books are going to be open, and they'll be judged according to what they've done and whether their name's in the Lamb's Book of Life. But they're talking about distributive justice. They want everything to be the same. That's where you get into this issue of equality versus equity. Equality means that everybody, like, I tell this to my kids, like, it's equal. You're all in my class, you all have to deal with me for the whole semester. I apologize for that, right? But, like, we're all here together, so it's all equal. Do I expect everybody to get the same grade at the end of the class? That's equity. Do I expect that? No. Is it fair? Yes. What determines how you, what you do in my class? Your choices. And so the only way to get rid of inequity is to get rid of the freedom. Think about that. The only way that I can guarantee everybody's going to end up at the same is if I make all the decisions for you. But that's what they want. They don't want any inequality. They want everybody to be the same. Does that sound like a great, great world? Thomas Sowell, if you've ever heard Thomas Sowell, I recommend reading him. He's a very interesting guy, but he talks about, like, even people raised in the same household don't end up the same. Right? Think about that. All right, so kind of the, the core point, I'm sorry I'm going a little over time, but the core point is that this has become an alternate religion for people. They don't have God, so their whole mission in life is fighting for social justice. They're social justice warriors, okay? Uh, it says for many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning for life, because without God there is no meaning for life. So they discover a new meaning for life, and it's thrilling. Social justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole, that human life and society must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures in which various groups have spent all human existence oppressing other groups, and it provides a set of principles to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression. Okay? I, I saw this on the internet just two days ago. This is somebody, it was a state representative in Oklahoma. Listen to what she says. If this works. That's, uh, very, uh, disturbing, to say the least, when we have, again, a state superintendent who does not want to have anything to do with diversity, equity, inclusion. DEI is a deity. Diversity, equity, inclusion is God. Thank you for your debate. She said out loud what you're not supposed to say out loud. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is God. Did you hear that? It's a, it's a new religion, but if we look at the fruit of diversity, equity, quality, or equity and all that stuff, uh, all the social justice stuff, what do we see? By your, by the fruit you'll know them. Do we see good fruit? Or do we see discrimination? Because remember, to get rid of discrimination, you have to discriminate. Intolerance. Get your Christian narrow-minded bigotedness out of here. We're not gonna, in fact, there was an article by one of the guys in the Frankfurt School in the sixties called Repressive Tolerance, and the whole point of the argument, of the article, was that we don't even let these people have a, a place at the table of the conversation, right? Your whole system is, is bigoted and judgmental, but here's, here's the, the kind of the takeaway from all this stuff. Where do they get their standard of justice from? Like, where do they get this idea that we should treat people equally? From nature? From the Bible! They're taking their ideas from the Bible, right? The light's in the world, but they didn't perceive the light, and they're using the Bible ideas to go after people who believe in the Bible. You're not being equitable. You're not being tolerant. You're not being just. Where do you get equity and tolerance and justice and all these things, treating people as you would like to be treated? That's, where did you get that from? The Bible! So they're taking the ideas of the Bible and flipping it around and saying that we're not going to even let these Bible-believing people be in our schools, be in our universities, have a job at my place of employment because of your intolerance. There was just a pastor over in England that got thrown in jail because he said that this transgender person was a gentleman wearing women's clothing. They they referred him to the the terrorist watch group in England. He's a terrorist because he said what's factually true, this is a gentleman wearing women's clothing. Because that's that's insensitive. It's not tolerant. You're not like... What? So again, we go back to this thing, like, what are you building the societal structure on? And if you build it on secular humanism, that's where you're going to end up. The end point here is this. For us as believers, first of all, therefore there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus. Like, in, in the social justice thing, if you are in the oppressor category, you must spend the rest of your life trying to make up for the sins of not only you, but your whole group. I'm going to spend my whole life as an anti-racist, anti-everything else, because I am in in one of these privileged positions, and therefore I need to dedicate my life to equity and to to kind of do my penance for all the things that the people who look like me have done in the past, even though I didn't choose to be born where and when I was born to look like I, like I had no part in that at all, but I'm guilty because I am, so I need to do everything I can to make that right. But the Bible says there is forgiveness. There's no forgiveness in social justice. And, and second of all, it says that when we go to be with the Lord Jesus and Father in heaven, there's going to be people from all tribes and all tongues, and we will be united in Christ. That's, if you want unity in the world, the only way you're going to get unity is in Christ Jesus. That's it. And so as believers, that's the thing that unites us, that we could go anywhere in the world, and I meet another believer, and I say, hey brother, hey sister, and we're part of the same family. That's, that's all that there is. And social justice is a false gospel because there is no end of the, of the, of the oppression. There is no culminating moment. There is no redemption, only in Christ Jesus, right? Sorry, that was super fast. Again, if you want the notes, you can get them. If you go to the breakout thing, you can talk more about all the stuff, but I'm ten minutes over, so let's pray. God Father, again, we just thank you that there's forgiveness in Christ Jesus. We thank you that you are the way and the truth, the life. We thank you that you love us so much that you sent your son to die for us, even though, uh, we were enemies of you, far from God, that you brought us back near to you, and that you care for us and love us each as individuals, and that you want us to be unified in Christ Jesus. We pray that that would be true for all of us, that we would, we would be known by our love that we have for one another and for those who we interact with. We thank you for this group and this time today. Pray you bless the rest of the activities today, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.