Pastor Joel Weben and Jared Longshore of Founders Ministries dismantle Critical Race Theory as a demonic, materialistic ideology rooted in the Frankfurt School's "will to power." They argue CRT erases individual moral responsibility by prioritizing identity politics over Imago Dei, replacing biblical revelation with zero-sum wealth redistribution. The discussion warns that adopting this framework leads churches to pursue utopian equality through political maneuvering rather than prayer, urging believers to discern infiltration via materials like "White Fragility" and depart if leaders reject Scripture's sufficiency against such false eschatology. [Automatically generated summary]
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Welcome to Theology Applied00:01:37
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Welcome.
This is Pastor Joel Weben with Right Response Ministries.
We've got another episode of Theology Applied.
And today I am very privileged to welcome a guest whose ministry I've been following for quite some time.
I have just learned so much, been so well equipped to pastor my local flock, my congregation.
Here in San Diego, California, by all the wonderful resources and teaching that this individual has put out.
And so, without further ado, my guest for today's episode is Jared Longshore with Founders Ministries.
Jared, could you take a moment and tell our viewers a little bit about yourself and the ministry you're a part of?
Yeah, I'm happy to, Joel.
My name is Jared Longshore, married to my wife, Heather Longshore.
We have seven kids.
I'm an associate pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, which is in southwest Florida.
And I'm the vice president of Founders Ministries.
It's a ministry committed to the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of churches.
So, yeah, it's about my happenings.
That's great.
And are you, in your church life, are you an associate pastor?
What is your role there?
Yeah, I'm an associate pastor with Tom.
Tom.
Great.
We serve here together.
And Tom Asko, is he the senior pastor there?
He is, yeah.
Great.
All right.
Well, thanks for joining us, Jared.
We'll go ahead and hop right in.
Critical Race Theory Intentions00:13:21
Our title for our episode today is Critical Race Theory When Good Intentions Go Back.
Critical Race Theory When Good Intentions Go Back.
Founders Ministry, both Tom and Jared have done a lot of great work on this, as well as other wonderful men of God like Bodie Bockham, John MacArthur, James White.
And so I wanted to just take some time to ask some specific questions with Jared on the topic of critical race theory, but especially.
In regards to, although both of us believe that it is a demonic ideology that really is forged and nothing less than the pit of hell, we do believe that there are many genuine regenerate brothers and sisters in Christ who are well meaning and that have been played.
And so I want to really be able to address that and pick Jared's brain on this topic.
So, first question, just diving right in Jared, could you just define for our listeners what is critical race theory and what makes it so dangerous?
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.
But it basically holds that racism is a universal, it's just a universal reality.
That's one of the core tenets and perhaps one of the central tenets that exist.
And then there's an experiential knowledge.
That is central to critical race theory.
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.
So those are a few of the tenets, but it's Going to be rooted in critical theory.
So, you got to go back and understand critical theory.
You're going to spend some time in the Frankfurt School to understand that.
And then you're going to end up at a foundation of a metaphysic and understanding of reality that is materialistic.
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.
But you actually mean something different than the supernatural Christian understanding of God's world.
It's just a given, a universal racism.
I've heard people say that it's not just white people who are racist.
Everybody's racist under the lens of critical race theory.
The problem is that white people, because they're the dominant demographic, because they're the majority, they have power, and therefore their racism, everyone's racist, but white people benefit the most from being racist, and therefore they are extra complicit, extra, you know, they bear an extra degree of moral guilt for.
That universal racism.
Is that true?
Well, if it's.
Well, not true.
Is that true to the worldview?
Yeah.
So, what's happening when somebody's 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.
It's a worldview where there is the oppressor and the oppressed.
But where Marx, it was.
Strictly financial, and the way that he was understanding this.
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.
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.
And so you get confused about all sorts of things like hegemony.
So they talk about hegemony.
Can you define hegemony?
Yeah, well, again, according to theory, it's going to be that the oppressor class is the one who sets the customs, who sets the patterns or the norms of that given society.
And the problem is, Christians come in and they say, well, isn't it true?
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?
And I have no problem saying, of course, it's true that people that are in power.
But the problem is, that's not what theory is teaching.
Theory locks in those categories of oppressor and oppressed along the lines of intersectionality.
Critical race theory is going to do that with white and black.
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.
It's just, well, you're white, so you categorically are.
You are the hegemony.
You are the straight white male.
You are the one who is going to set the customs, which is really not the case.
And that's the problem with.
So people want to come in and kind of harmonize it and say, well, we do know that people with power do indeed set customs.
Well, yes, but at that point, you're not talking critical theory or critical race theory anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've noticed that one consistent theme with many liberal ideologies is a disintegration of the individual.
Whether it's the individual's right to own property or whatever it is.
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.
You're just immediately categorized with a group based on some kind of exterior characteristic.
In the case of critical race theory, it would be your ethnicity.
And there's just no individual.
Why do you think it is that liberal ideologies, or really any ideology that's just in contradiction to a Christian worldview, why is it so dead set on erasing the individual?
Yeah, well, I imagine if you're talking to.
Different people, you're going to get different responses about why it is that they want to classify people in their groups and have that group identity trump a sense of individual identity.
But my main suspicion when I see that and you ask, okay, what's the cause of it, is the will to power idea that you reduce, you know, for so many Christians, I'm assuming a lot of your listeners are Christians,
you have to back out of this whole Christian understanding of the world and say, okay, Well, imagine that there is no God, and imagine that all exists is all of the wealth that this world has to offer, all of the resources that exist, this materialistic understanding of the world, and there you are.
And, you know, there's some people that have stuff, and you want that stuff.
And so, how are you going to get it from?
Well, I mean, you could go like try to mug them, you know, you could do that.
Or you could find a way to classify all those people and say, well, I'm going to mark.
All of them as one particular thing.
And so all white people, therefore, are now oppressors.
They're in the category of oppressor.
And so we need to now elevate the voice of those who are not white.
And by doing that, you're finding a way for you to advance in the world.
And so it's a great system for trying to get people stuff.
It's a great way to go about that.
If you're someone who doesn't have as much stuff as another person, Well, begin to classify people that way.
And so, where the Marxist system didn't work as well, because you only have two classifications, you have basically the have and the have nots, where you can advance the idea with intersectionality.
You can divide the world up into male and female, into white and non white, into straight and to 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.
And again, you might just think, well, why in the world would you even do that?
Well, part of the materialistic concept of the world is that it's a zero sum game.
We don't, Christians believe that wealth can grow.
You get one banana tree and stick it in the ground, and you get all sorts of bananas from just that one.
You can even cut off one of the pups from it and give it to somebody else, and they can have bananas.
It's a rich world that continues to produce, but not according to this other system.
And there's other systems, if you're going to get anything, well, you have to get it from the people who have it.
And they're not just going to give it to you.
And so you need to find ways to either guilt them or to shame them or to politically maneuver them.
And to do that with every single individual, well, that's going to take a really long time.
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 the society is, well, now we can see that, you know, you men, you have certain privileges that women don't have.
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.
And then Christian says, Well, why would you do that?
Because, you know, we don't want all the women to have all the same stuff that men do.
You know, men have to be conscripted into the army to go fight battles.
Why would we want women to do that?
Well, that's because you're thinking like a Christian and you're thinking about what God's revealed in the Word.
But no, that's not the way this one works.
This one says if we're going to have equality, it's got to be a feminist equality.
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 in their group identity so that we can raise up the oppressed category and get at some state of perfect equality.
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.
They want things, and the way you get it is through power maneuvers.
That's so helpful.
So it's a tool to redistribute wealth.
And I love what you said, Jared, about just the antithetical view from a Christian worldview that wealth is this zero sum game.
And I think that even plays into abortion in the sense that, like, well, overpopulation, which.
Whatever, but let's just roll with it for a second that idea that the world is overpopulated.
Well, what do you fundamentally view people as?
Do you view them as lowercase c creators, not ex nihilo, but that we produce, that we multiply, that we build?
Or do you just view them as leeches, consumers?
And the worldly view of people, it's so funny, I've noticed it's so reverse.
So for the Christian, we believe in total depravity, but also the imago dei.
Whereas it's completely opposite for the unbeliever.
They would say that, you know, so we would say, like, in your heart of hearts, you're depraved.
You need to be converted.
But because you're made in the image of God, you, even the unbeliever, can produce and multiply wealth and create and all these kinds of things.
Whereas the non Christian would do the exact opposite.
They would say, in your heart of hearts, kind of a Disney worldview, you're really good.
And on the outside, you just make some mistakes and you're a consumer and you're not going to.
So it's like the unbeliever is going to say that people are a leech.
With good intentions and a good heart.
Where the believer says people are not consumers, but creators, lowercase c, creators, with at the inside a depraved heart and need Jesus.
Did you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, well, the Imago Dei is a glorious Christian doctrine that we have assumed for a really long time.
And even in our society, we have treated people with respect because that doctrine has been underneath.
We might not have maintained it in a civil way over the last.
50 years or so, um, but it has still been bearing fruit, and now you see the erosion of that.
That you can have people that get terribly confused about what a human being is.
That's what we've seen with all of the um transgender realities that are now upon us, where people are saying, I can manipulate my own existence and become kind of whatever I want to be.
And if that's the case, if you're not, if you really are, um.
Confusion About Human Identity00:15:15
Able to do that kind of thing, and there's nothing that marks you.
You are not created in the image of God.
Well, why in the world should we respect you?
Why in the world should we not take your stuff and just do whatever we want to with you?
So, there absolutely has to be a recovery of that doctrine, a clear teaching on it in the church so that people can live accordingly.
Yeah, that's super helpful.
Let me go on.
I got some more questions here.
So, you talked about critical race theory is just one specific.
One specific subset of critical theory.
So, we could almost, in some sense, we could, you know, we've heard a lot of guys talking about the Trojan horse of social justice andor the Trojan horse of, you know, racial reconciliation, the just thinking guys, Daryl and Virgil.
I know you guys have had, you and Tom have had him, those guys before.
That Trojan horse of race reconciliation, social justice, from that, you know, we get critical race theory.
But even from critical race theory, we get, you know, we just get critical theory.
And so, one of my questions is this, as As churches and Christians, many of them unknowingly, as they begin to adopt critical theory, what are some of the things that we can expect to see, or some of the things that maybe you and Tom have already seen in churches that have come about from critical theory that aren't related, something separate from race?
So, not just critical theory, critical race theory, but as critical theory in general is being adopted by local churches, have you noticed any, the way that they do conflict resolution?
Or a dynamic of power between pastor and congregant?
What are some other ways that critical theory in general is destructive for churches?
And have you have some predictions or even some observations that you've already seen occurring?
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.
Any of God's law, the claim is, well, we can just tell what's wrong with society.
We can tell that something is not equal or something is not right.
And we want to critique it.
We want to critique it, again, without God, without His word.
But we know, hey, 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 and they'll 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 beautiful notion of equality.
We'll reach that utopia somewhere out there in the future.
So, what we need to do is critique it.
So, you might even say, somebody would say, well, use reason, just look at the world, see what's wrong with it, try to critique it, try your best to fix it.
That's my, in plain terms, my central concern with critical theory.
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.
And so, you know, hey, we don't have a lot of youth around here.
What do we need?
Well, we need a cool youth pastor, is what we need.
If we get that guy, then we're going to do this kind of thing, you know, or music.
You know, we need this modern kind of music thing that's going to be able to bring it in.
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.
And once they recognize us as friends, well, then we'll be able to engage it.
So there could be all sorts of specifics.
The central problem is trying to critique and improve, enhance things, whether it be in your church or your community, without God.
It's basically a paganism in the sense that there's no transcendent God in that world.
And so prayer is out the door.
We're not worried about.
We're not worried about prayer because what we need to do is actually critique something.
We need to do something.
Well, it is true that there are things for us to do in the Christian faith.
We gather and we worship and we preach the gospel and we do evangelism, we do discipleship, all of that.
But we do all of that depending upon the Spirit of God.
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.
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.
Wow.
That's really well said.
It makes me think of kind of like a giant game of whack a mole.
It sounds like we, according to human wisdom, identify that.
Something over here seems to be missing or less, and then something over here seems to be maybe, according to human wisdom, out of proportion.
There's more of it.
And so, then through critiquing the critical piece, we're just going to whack this mole, knock it down long enough for this one to grow up until we, like you said, think that they're equal.
So, we're going to criticize this, but not according well, first, it's human wisdom in the sense that maybe this is supposed to be lesser.
Maybe God has something that's supposed to be emphasized in his church.
Maybe it's not just this androgenized equality over everything, steamrolling everything.
So, first, according to human wisdom, we notice that something's lesser and we just assume that everything's meant to be equal.
And then the hammer that we use is the criticism, that critical piece.
And we just hammer this down, So, if we're in a church that we feel like the pastor's got too much authority, we're just going to really.
Really, you know, be critical about that until we feel like the congregation has more of it.
Or if we feel like there's too many old people, not enough young people, we're going to criticize an older generation and really, you know, emphasize a younger generation and how much God cares about the youth and those kind of things.
Is that kind of what you're getting at?
Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah, it's a huge deal.
It's hard to articulate how bad critical theory and critical race theory are.
You know, I mean, Paul tells us in Colossians, see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.
And So, the idea of these various isms that kind of set in upon us, and it's like a fog.
It's not like a clear cut, here's the error.
I see they're coming for the deity of Christ.
I see they're coming for the humanity of Christ.
Rather, what we're dealing with is like epistemology or how we know the truth, and then even the nature of reality.
So, ontology, what is.
And so, as you were saying, there's so many directions where it.
It goes wrong, and so many places where it goes wrong.
One of which is what is equality?
What is it?
And we know, according to the Christian system, that it's not just everybody having the exact same stuff and looking exactly the same.
I remember being at a Ted Tripp conference right when my wife and I were having our first child, and it was a parenting conference.
And he had this line where he said, You know, if you have the egalitarian system, And the way you think about the world.
And he wasn't just meaning like manhood and womanhood, but just your egalitarian worldview.
He said, the only way that you can have, the only way you can think about authority is you'll say, well, you can have authority over me if I let you have authority over me, or you can have authority over me if you're stronger than me.
And he says, but there's no other way for you to be okay with authority in the world.
And he says, but if you buy into the hierarchical system, which is the system God has made, there's hierarchy in the world.
Well, then you can understand the goodness of hierarchy and authority and submission.
And then again, it's going to have nuance.
It depends on if you're talking about the family, you're talking about the church, are you talking about civil society?
Are you talking about just employment at Carabas where there's a manager and then there's waiters and waitresses?
But seeing that that is the structure of the world helps you to think okay, yes, so there is equality.
There is justice.
Someone's doing something and receiving the appropriate thing for what was done.
That very.
The foundational idea is just ripped out, torn away, thrown away.
People aren't even thinking like that.
And that's where you have biblical justice, which is trying to do what God would have us do.
And then you have social justice, which is based on this materialistic understanding of the world where equality is simply everybody having the same stuff.
Yep.
Yep.
Really helpful.
So, again, the topic today is critical race theory when good intentions go bad.
So, I want to get to that second piece, that second half when good intentions go bad.
So, the question I have for you is why are so many Christians and even pastors falling for this ideology, falling for critical race theory?
What's the appeal?
Because it seems like a lot of them are well meaning.
So, what is it about critical theory?
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?
Yeah, it's a real threat for a number of reasons.
It is a worldview.
By that, I mean it's a system.
It's a way of thinking that answers a lot of questions.
You know, I mean, so if you buy into it, you say, okay, equality is us all having the same stuff.
You know, and that can make sense if you just throw the Bible in the garbage can.
It's like, well, we're all human beings, aren't we?
We should all have the same stuff.
And so that fits.
And then you've got an eschatology going on, too, because we don't all yet have that same stuff.
We are not all yet living as one, as John Lennon was saying about, you know, and imagine.
And so we need to pursue it.
And so you've got something you're moving toward.
You know, we're going to progress toward this state of equality.
And it's got a sense of moral rightness to it.
I mean, aren't you for equality?
Aren't you for everybody having the same things?
And if you're not, it sounds like you want to hold on to your stuff.
And that means you're the bad guy.
And therefore, you know, now we have conflict.
And so it's going to take me courage to stand up to you and tell you why you need to stop holding on to all of your stuff and begin to hand it over.
So you've got this whole system.
You've got morality.
You've got eschatology and something that has some teeth to it.
So, as a system, it can be very appealing to people.
And then Christians, particularly getting caught up in it, are just, we've just become too worldly.
We haven't paid enough attention to scripture and what God has told us to do.
And so we see people talking about justice, and we're too quick to say, Hey, that sounds good.
I'm all for justice, too, rather than stop and say, Hey, what do you mean?
And let me tell you what I mean.
Yeah, that's good.
One of the things I've been so blessed by with your ministry is just the sufficiency of scripture.
I think we've fought that battle.
I say the proverbial we.
I wasn't around for that battle, but for the inerrancy of scripture and everybody's.
Willing to kind of salute, you know, like that is a sword.
It's double edged, it's really sharp, and it looks really nice in that glass case on my mantle, you know.
But that is a sword.
It's an authoritative sword, an effective sword.
But there's a difference in acknowledging the sword and saluting the sword versus what you guys often talk about, wielding the sword.
The inerrancy of Scripture is one thing, and it's necessary, it's paramount.
But the sufficiency of Scripture, I think so many Christians who would profess to be Bible believing Christians would say the Word of God is inerrant.
But they just, I don't even think they mean to.
They just haven't been taught, they haven't been educated that the Bible has something to say.
That's why I love me and you talked about this offline a little bit, but I'm so grateful for Doug Wilson and his ministry.
I just, I love their little mission statement all of Christ for all of life.
And I think for too long we've regulated Christ and his lordship through the agency of scripture to the home and the church, as though the Bible has nothing to say of politics, vocation, entertainment, media.
I like Schaefer, you know, his.
Seven mountains.
And so that's really a lot of that's the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish with this podcast, Theology Applied.
And it turns out the Bible applies to more than just your marriage, your parenting, and an hour and a half on Sunday morning.
So you guys have done that really, really well, the sufficiency of Scripture.
Yeah, that's a big deal.
We actually have a project coming out called Wield the Sword, kind of a follow up to our film, By What Standard.
And the thought process behind it was just that, that we have a lot of Christians, even conservative Christians right now, that are saying we really do believe the Bible, we believe it's inerrant, 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.
So C.S. Lewis calls this resistance thinking, 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.
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.
And so you've kind of 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.
They're not going to where the problem is.
And there's a lot of texts that you can go to, and you think, well, I'm preaching exegetical sermons.
It's just I never.
Turn to the texts that are actually under assault right there, and therefore, I'm not actually discipling my people to face the challenges that they're facing, thinking biblically about what is going on.
Distinctions in Male and Female00:06:57
And so, you alluded to kind of this Kyperian notion of all of Christ for all of life, right?
And we do need to cover that, and we're being forced to recover that.
We're being forced to recover that along the lines of complementarian issues, so narrow complementarianism versus broad complementarianism.
Narrow complementarianism was a more of a tenable position until.
Recently, and we start to see that we've got, we know there are implications in the world for manhood and womanhood.
And so we want to be wise in those applications.
But when they start considering drafting women into the military, the idea that biblical manhood and womanhood 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.
Men and womenhood, I think of.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, with biblical masculinity, manhood, and womanhood, I always think of.
I preached through 1 Timothy recently with our church, and that was a difficult book of the Bible.
And we were going through 1 Timothy 2, verse 9 through 15.
One of my big things as a preacher, it rhymes, so it must be good.
But I said, Genesis 1 and 2, it's not male and female roles, he assigned them.
It's male and female, he designed them.
And so, biblical manhood and biblical womanhood is not just something we do, it's who we are.
And if it is who we are, I think with that soft, narrow complementarianism, it's as though we acted as though manhood and womanhood is strictly has to do with roles.
But what we unhitched is the reality that God, our God, who has a design and who is a God of order, he assigns roles based on the way that he creates his creatures.
So the role of a bird to fly stems from the design that he gives a bird wings, and the fish has fins and gills, the role is to swim.
But it has the nature, the design that accommodates that role.
And so, if men and women have these roles in the home and the church, it's not just the role, the role stems from the design.
And if we really are designed all the way down, not just on the outside, but on the inside, men and women actually dynamically different in the way that we're designed, then to think that that difference, that distinction in our design would have no application in any realm other than the home and the church just is illogical.
It just makes no sense.
Yeah.
And if your listeners are saying, I thought this thing was on critical race theory, why were they talking about manhood and womanhood?
Well, if you open up Delgado's introduction, he talks about the kind of precursors to critical race theory.
And right there is not only the postmodern thought, but also radical feminism.
So these categories all flow together.
Intersectionality is a helpful term to know if people aren't up to speed on that, because it's a broader concept.
And that involves critical race theory.
So, intersectionality with oppressor and oppressed.
And as soon as you start buying into this, you really can't talk about the way critical race theory operates with white and black and not talk about the way the radical feminist mindset operates with male and female.
Yep, I completely agree.
One more thought that I didn't have this prepared, but you just got me thinking because you're right, we did get into the male and female, but it all has the same root.
But along those lines, I was just wondering do you have any.
Assessment or thought, Jared, in regards to the fact that when I look biblically, I feel as though my assessment of the scripture, God places little emphasis, I don't want to say no emphasis, but He places little emphasis or less emphasis on distinctions with ethnicity, but a lot of emphasis on the distinction of gender male, female.
So it's like God draws a real big line, real bold line with male and female.
But not as big or bold of lines, black and white.
And then what I see happening in our culture is, right, it's almost like the play is, because it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the goal is not to go from two genders to 37.
It seems like the goal is to go from two to one.
But the easiest, that's a big shift, that's a big change.
So the way you get a society to go from two genders to one, because I think that is the goal, is you go up first and then you come back down, right?
So first you just confuse the heck out of everybody and you go from two genders to You know, to three and four and five, and all the way up to a hundred different types of gender.
And then it's just, you know, the whole thing gets steamrolled to this androgyny.
And so, I guess my question is God seems to make a big distinction male, female, smaller distinction, ethnicity, black, white.
But what we see happening in our culture is the exact reversal of black and white is everything, that distinction.
Male and female, that distinction doesn't matter at all.
What's the incentive?
Do you think it's just because people just want to go directly reverse, like the serpent, just wanting to reverse God's good created order?
Is it just that hostility?
And the mind of the fleshly man that's hostile towards God?
Or is there a clear goal in wanting to make a big deal out of the distinction in race, or we would say ethnicity, and make no deal of the distinction with gender?
Why is that so opposite?
What are they trying to achieve?
Yeah, well, I think you're right about what scripture teaches on those issues.
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.
And that's a text that nobody wants to really cite or talk about these days.
And yet, that is a distinction between male and female.
And you don't see that same kind of thing when you're dealing with ethnicity.
Now, ethnicity is a distinction there, and every tribe, nation, and tongue would be around the throne.
But when it comes to the binary of male and female, there is something.
Foundational there, the way God has created the world, the way that he has created mankind.
So, what, you know, why in our current moment?
I think some of the race issues that we're experiencing right now in America, you know, there have always been, you know, tensions along these lines, not only in our history, but it's something that you experience universally in the world.
Social Justice and the Gospel00:05:22
But those are exacerbated right now.
Primarily for political purposes, as I see it, the ways that your agendas that are trying to be advanced.
What you see going on with the transgenderism stuff and the tendency to basically have a world in which you can be whatever sex you want to be and even creating new sexes and all kinds of crazy ideas, you're watching a Romans 1 situation right there.
You're watching a deep depravity set in.
And an unwillingness for many who know better to say that's not true.
That's not who you are, what you are.
So, you do have different dynamics going on there.
Both of our manipulations on that are certainly driven by sin.
And it's interesting to watch them kind of operating in different ways as you deepen.
Yeah.
Last question I'd like to ask you, and I really appreciate the time that you're given to us.
The last question for our interview, and we'll have a couple bonus questions for our club members.
But, Is this issue of critical race theory and just more broadly critical theory?
Because I know that you and Tom both would agree that it's not just a tool, it is a worldview.
It can't be separated from the worldview that it comes from.
And because it is another worldview, there's a sense in which it's another gospel and antithetical to the gospel of Christ.
If all that's true, and I feel like you and Tom have made those kinds of statements, is this issue.
Worth a Christian leaving their local church over?
If their pastors are, is this something?
And how would you know if your pastor, right?
Because maybe he's just, maybe he's still learning, right?
He's doing racial reconciliation nights with good intentions.
And he's using a lot of pretty biblical language, but then every now and then he recommends white fragility as a reading assignment or something.
But he just doesn't know.
At what point do you say, when do you pull the plug?
When is it worth leaving a church over?
Yeah, well, it certainly is worth leaving a church over.
And with that statement comes the qualification of enduring and making sure that you're clear.
That there really is an influence of critical race theory or intersectionality upon this church.
Because you're right, you can hold your racial reconciliation night.
Bodie Bachman was here at our church and one of our conferences preached a racial reconciliation sermon.
And it was the farthest thing from critical race theory that you've ever heard.
And then people, it's right for us to talk about justice, it's right for us to talk about equality.
So when you hear somebody saying those terms, if a person came to me and said, you know, my pastor used the word equality, and so I know that critical race theory is there, I'm getting out of here.
I say, well, hold on, let's talk about what it is.
And you really do have to come up with definitions.
So if you're recommending white fragility, you got serious problems.
You need to head on and get out of there.
Yeah.
But I still think the statement on social justice and the gospel is a great resource for this question.
When Tom went to that meeting in Dallas, and then he was tasked with writing up the affirmations and denials.
So I remember he sat down here and he said, well, I got to come up with these statements of affirmations and denials and put it for the Crew, and we had no idea at that time, you know, how big it would be.
Right.
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.
Well, what is it?
And what is it not?
There's a lot of talk about culture and ethnicity.
What is it?
What is it not?
What is it not?
And you could put that before people in your congregation.
You could ask to meet with your elders if things are coming up and say, hey, where do you agree with this statement on social justice in the gospel?
Where do you disagree?
With his statement on social justice and the gospel.
And I think we've come out of that meeting with a lot more information and hopefully enough to help you make a wise decision.
Really helpful.
All right, Jared, real quick, I'll read the bonus questions just to whet our listeners' appetite for joining us for our kind of behind the scenes conversation.
But before I do, thank you so much for coming on.
And could you tell our listeners how they could keep up with you, follow your ministry?
Yeah, go to founders.org.
That's our website.
There, you'll find access to all sorts of things.
Our articles, we have a podcast called The Sword and the Trowel.
Founders Ministries is on all the platforms Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of that.
We have a conference coming up in January.
And so, man, if anybody wants to be a part of that, it's going to be on the doctrine of God.
We've got a number of good guys coming.
Guys, we've got some, got a guy from California named Chad Vegas out here, might be joining us.
Vodie Bockham is going to be joining us down here for that conference.
And so, we've got a lot of Good stuff there.
We'd love for you to come enjoy Florida in January.
Great, great.
Okay, well, thanks so much for your time, Jared, and we'll hop back on here for our club members, our responders, here in just a moment.
Join Our Upcoming Conference00:00:26
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