NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Divisive Poison Of Racial Reconciliation And Social Justice
Aired: 2020-12-24
Duration: 58:13


=== California vs Georgia Climate (09:10) ===

[00:00:00]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:00:04]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:00:11]  All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:16]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Weben.
[00:00:18]  Today, I'm very honored and privileged to have two of my friends, just incredible men of God, who have done a lot of great, courageous work for the church at large, standing up against some of the The false ideologies and vain philosophies that keep creeping into the church, and sadly, even into good reformed churches.
[00:00:42]  A lot of people, I don't think, are malicious.
[00:00:44]  I think a lot of people on this particular subject are just being played, they're just being deceived, that their sympathy and sentiment is getting the best of them.
[00:00:53]  They just need to be properly educated and informed about what the Bible says, in particular to the issue of social justice.
[00:01:03]  Racial reconciliation, identity politics, these kinds of topics, this big Trojan horse issue.
[00:01:11]  And I think two of the leading voices on this subject, even if they were white, they'd be leading voices because their content is what matters.
[00:01:18]  But two brothers, Daryl Harrison, Virgil Walker, can you guys introduce yourselves from the Just Thinking Podcast, Incredible Men of God?
[00:01:27]  Yeah, I'll get started, man.
[00:01:29]  Virgil Walker, I'm half of the dynamic duo known as the Just Thinking Podcast.
[00:01:36]  Uh, podcast Just Thinking Crew.
[00:01:38]  I'm here in Omaha, Nebraska, excited to be a part of what's going on.
[00:01:44]  Can't wait, uh, Brother Joel, to have this conversation with you, and glad to be here with my main man, Daryl.
[00:01:51]  Daryl Harrison, uh, the other half of the Just Thinking podcast, which I co host with my main man, Virgil Walker.
[00:01:58]  I'm based here in Southern California in the Valencia area.
[00:02:03]  Um, day job is as Dean of Social Media with Grace to You.
[00:02:08]  And glad to be with you here.
[00:02:10]  Once again, Joel's been a long time, brother.
[00:02:12]  Good to be with you.
[00:02:12]  Yeah, it's been a while.
[00:02:13]  The last time I think Daryl was, well, for both of you guys in person, was at the Shepherds Conference.
[00:02:22]  And it was right before all the craziness of COVID 19.
[00:02:25]  And little did we know what 2020 would have in store for us.
[00:02:29]  In fact, it was right after that Shepcon and we got home that all of the shutdowns started taking place.
[00:02:36]  That's right.
[00:02:37]  Yeah, our nation.
[00:02:39]  Our nation, especially California, where me and Daryl are, has been very much committed to seeing a spider in the house and then going ahead and just let's just burn the whole house down to get that spider.
[00:02:52]  So, all right.
[00:02:53]  So, before we hop into our topic, I just got to bring it up with you, Daryl, because you're a fellow California citizen in a state that greatly aspires to reach the likeness of other up and coming third world countries like Venezuela or North Korea or China.
[00:03:14]  What is it like for you, Derek?
[00:03:15]  Because I know you're conservative.
[00:03:16]  I know your politics.
[00:03:17]  I've gleaned so much from you.
[00:03:20]  What is it like having your views and living in California?
[00:03:23]  What's that like?
[00:03:25]  Yeah, California is different.
[00:03:27]  Just so your viewers and listeners will know, let me give a little bit of background.
[00:03:31]  I'm a native of Atlanta, Georgia.
[00:03:34]  My wife and I, my wife Melissa, and I, we relocated to Southern California in January of 2019 so I could take an opportunity here to join the staff at Grace to You.
[00:03:45]  Which is the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
[00:03:48]  And most of your viewers probably know that John MacArthur's church, Grace Community Church, is based here in Southern California.
[00:03:55]  So, my wife and I relocated from Atlanta to Valencia, California, in January of 2019.
[00:04:00]  So, I've been here close to two years now.
[00:04:03]  And I have to say that one of the things, there are many things that I'm still getting used to in this transition from Georgia to California.
[00:04:13]  And one of those things is just the political climate here.
[00:04:18]  The political climate here seems to me, as an outsider, having been here for almost a couple of years now, the political climate here is such that.
[00:04:28]  Long term residents of the state, natives of the state, seem content to put up with and adjust to some of the most onerous, burdensome laws and regulations, all for the sake of being able to live in a state where the weather is nice every day.
[00:04:53]  Right, right.
[00:04:54]  That's what it seems to me.
[00:04:56]  I mean, this is some of the things I'm learning.
[00:04:59]  I've been able to vote in two elections now.
[00:05:02]  Since I moved here to California, I've been able to vote in two elections here.
[00:05:06]  And some of the things, the referendums and whatnot that you see on the ballots, especially here in LA County, where I live, are just unbelievable.
[00:05:18]  There was the cost of living here, the degree to which government basically runs or to a very great degree influences.
[00:05:34]  Life here in this state.
[00:05:36]  It just seems to be, to me anyway, where most of the folks who live here, they just sort of put up with it.
[00:05:44]  There's nothing that they won't push back on from the standpoint of government intrusion in exchange for the sun coming out every day as if the government had anything to do with the sun coming out every day.
[00:05:58]  Right, right.
[00:05:59]  Yeah, it's, man, the regulation, you know, it always seems like, you know, it's safety versus liberty.
[00:06:06]  It seems like, in order for a government to be able to take more individual liberty away from its citizens, there has to be some kind of trade that the citizens find attractive.
[00:06:18]  They have to see the value in it.
[00:06:19]  And it always seems like public safety becomes the bait for citizens to be willing to forfeit individual freedom, individual liberty.
[00:06:29]  And so it's, I mean, I grew up in Texas, and at the end of this year, I'm taking, leading a team of 20 people out of California.
[00:06:37]  Leaving our church to plant a new church and the Republic of Texas going back.
[00:06:42]  And in Texas, you know, if you want to ride in the bed of a truck, it's dangerous.
[00:06:47]  Your safety is in jeopardy.
[00:06:49]  But you have the freedom to be stupid, right?
[00:06:52]  Like the government's not reaching in when I'm taking a shower to turn down the hot water so I don't burn myself.
[00:06:57]  You know, it's just get out of my bathroom, get out of my house, get out of my light, and give me freedom.
[00:07:03]  But I think if you can scare the populace, right, with some kind of, and that's why it seems like the Democratic Party, it's always some kind of threat.
[00:07:11]  Right, it's climate crisis, it's it's COVID 19.
[00:07:13]  It's there's always got to be some kind of threat to the public safety to where the people will say, We'll pay you in freedom for you to give us back in return our safety.
[00:07:25]  And uh, and that trade, a lot of the country is not willing to make, but Californians they just they're like, they just they love to make that trade.
[00:07:34]  I don't know what it is, I haven't been able to figure it out.
[00:07:37]  I like that that sort of wordplay you're doing there, you know, trade with the we're in trade with trade with the government.
[00:07:43]  In exchange for good weather here in California.
[00:07:45]  Yeah, we'll put up with higher taxes.
[00:07:47]  We'll put up with more burdensome regulations.
[00:07:49]  We'll put up with, you know, especially in the midst of this COVID situation, and we'll put up with more restrictions on our freedoms.
[00:07:58]  And you look at, for example, Virgin and I, the past couple of months, we've done a lot of travel.
[00:08:04]  We've probably been in the five or six states going to speak at one church or another.
[00:08:10]  And the thing that I've learned in our recent travels is that once you're outside of California, that's America.
[00:08:19]  It's outside of California.
[00:08:21]  Yeah.
[00:08:22]  Everything outside of California is relatively normal still.
[00:08:26]  We've been in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, through Texas, Missouri, states like that.
[00:08:32]  So once you're outside of California, that seems like America.
[00:08:36]  But once you're back in California, in California, then it really has to feel in contradistinction to those other states that this is very much an element of a third world nation.
[00:08:53]  Yeah.
[00:08:54]  Venezuela.
[00:08:55]  Cuba, North Korea, because you can't even listen when you have the government telling you now what you can and can't do within the confines of your own private residence, then your residence is no longer private.

=== America Outside California (05:59) ===

[00:09:11]  That's right.
[00:09:12]  Your residence is no longer private.
[00:09:13]  When the government, just by edict, okay, just by edict, when a Newsom or the government of Washington State or the governor of Michigan can just by edict sign their name to a document and say that within your own home, You can only have a certain number of individuals present.
[00:09:33]  And even when they're present, you must be massed up.
[00:09:36]  This is within your own home.
[00:09:38]  Now, when that happens, as it's happening right now, something has got to click within your mind that this is not supposed to be happening in America.
[00:09:55]  It is not.
[00:09:56]  Now, we all know as Christians, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, That the law has its place.
[00:10:04]  Right.
[00:10:05]  All has its place.
[00:10:07]  But what we're seeing right now is a total bastardization of the role that the God given role that government was designed by God to play in the context of Romans 13.
[00:10:22]  This is not that role.
[00:10:23]  No, it's not.
[00:10:25]  So when we have objective empirical evidence that government, instead of governing, is now ruling, So it's one thing to govern, it's another thing to rule.
[00:10:36]  Right.
[00:10:37]  Okay.
[00:10:38]  Government exists to govern, not to rule over us.
[00:10:42]  So something has got to click in your head that says, when I can't, when I'm being, it reminds me of Frederick Douglass said this.
[00:10:51]  Frederick Douglass said, I didn't know I was a slave until I couldn't do the things I wanted.
[00:10:56]  Right.
[00:10:57]  Right.
[00:10:58]  That's what's happening right now.
[00:11:00]  We are being made slaves in a country that was founded on freedom, a country that was founded.
[00:11:07]  So, they couldn't become slaves.
[00:11:08]  So, you have liberals primarily in the Democrat Party.
[00:11:13]  And I love what you said, Joel.
[00:11:14]  They want to make a crisis out of everything.
[00:11:16]  But you look at the Democrat Party historically, the Democrat Party never addressed the crisis that was actually the crisis.
[00:11:23]  They never addressed slavery.
[00:11:24]  See, slavery was the crisis.
[00:11:26]  Democrats tried to scare black people into thinking that freedom was not good for them.
[00:11:31]  So, what liberals do, they will flip the script.
[00:11:34]  So, whatever they say the crisis is, it's probably not that.
[00:11:38]  Right.
[00:11:38]  Yep.
[00:11:39]  And they create a crisis.
[00:11:40]  I like what you said about Frederick Douglass.
[00:11:42]  You know, like I didn't know I was a slave until I was eventually hindered or prohibited from doing the things I desired to do.
[00:11:49]  And I think, in terms of Californians, I think part of the reason is they don't know they're enslaved because I think of the C.S. Lewis quote, you know, that like our problem is not that we desire too much, it's we desire too little.
[00:12:02]  And I think part of the problem is we've got too many Christians nationwide, but especially in California, it seems like we have too many Christians that are content with just too low of aspirations, too little.
[00:12:15]  Of desires.
[00:12:16]  And so for me, I know for myself, part of it for me was my theology.
[00:12:20]  And so my theology initially that led me to California to plant the church that I planted here.
[00:12:27]  I've been here for 11 years.
[00:12:29]  A lot of my driving force was I want to plant a church, I want to preach the gospel, and I want to make converts.
[00:12:38]  I want to baptize people.
[00:12:40]  And so by God's grace in the last decade, I baptized over 100 people.
[00:12:45]  And now, At this stage of my life, I've realized I never want less than the Great Commission.
[00:12:51]  I never want less than discipling, baptizing, preaching.
[00:12:58]  I just want more.
[00:12:59]  Now, what I want is I want to plant churches that preach law and gospel, that see people converted, that are discipled.
[00:13:08]  The Great Commission will always forget this part teaching them to obey all of Christ's commands.
[00:13:12]  So, I want to disciple people into all of Christ's commands, not just the red letter, but the whole Bible is Christ.
[00:13:19]  Teaching them all of Christ's commands.
[00:13:21]  And I want to see baptisms.
[00:13:23]  I want to see conversion.
[00:13:24]  But then I also want to see members in my church have the freedom to start families, start a business, run for local office, start a publishing company, start schools.
[00:13:35]  I mean, you look at the Puritans, you look at church history, and one of the first things Christians did is that the beachhead was the church.
[00:13:42]  You plant a church, and then immediately, immediately, you start a school, right?
[00:13:48]  And then you start some kind of printing press, and then you're starting businesses.
[00:13:52]  And I think as Christians, we've just become content with just getting in the trenches and slugging it out.
[00:13:57]  And there's good, noble motivations there.
[00:14:00]  But I think we're content to just be behind enemy lines in the trenches, working towards conversion, snatching souls from the fire.
[00:14:11]  And that's good gospel work.
[00:14:12]  Praise God for that.
[00:14:14]  But part of me feels like, man, if we were willing to just not see it as quitting, but a tactical retreat for a generation or two, Let California fall on its face because Christians are no longer propping it up, then send our grandkids back in to take over the land.
[00:14:28]  I feel like that's a great strategy.
[00:14:31]  I like that.
[00:14:32]  And you know what, Joel, as I listen to you, what comes to my mind is that you talk about slavery.
[00:14:38]  See, slavery is mental first.
[00:14:41]  Slavery is mental.
[00:14:42]  Slavery is even for those who historically have been physically in bondage.
[00:14:48]  The ultimate goal, that's never the end goal, is to keep you physically in bondage.
[00:14:54]  To keep you in shackles, embraces.
[00:14:57]  The goal is to get you thinking up here that you're a slave so that you embrace that to such a degree that they can take the shackles off and try to escape.
[00:15:08]  Yeah.
[00:15:08]  You see, you get my point here?

=== Active and Passive Rights (11:38) ===

[00:15:11]  So, mental, what we're seeing right now in America and in the world is the greatest psychological operations in world history, what the military will call PSYOPS for short.
[00:15:23]  This is the greatest PSYOPS.
[00:15:26]  Undertaking in the history of the world.
[00:15:28]  And now we have, you know, I'm looking at right now in Jude, Jude, verse three, where Jude writes, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith.
[00:15:44]  The faith is to be contended for.
[00:15:45]  Now, part of a layer of that contention as believers is to assess the landscape of the world, the culture, and society through the length of the gospel.
[00:15:57]  Okay.
[00:15:58]  That's called having a biblical worldview of the culture, society, and the world in which you live.
[00:16:03]  And what were the, I love what you put, it was really sad that you had to say that, Joel, but you were right.
[00:16:08]  We have believers within the church right now who are so comfortable in their Christianity that they don't view it as something that needs to be contended for.
[00:16:19]  Now, we don't pick fights with anyone, we don't want to initiate with anyone, not at all.
[00:16:25]  But what we're experiencing right now, when the government says you can't open your church, and we've got Christians out here who are confused.
[00:16:35]  They're confused that the Constitution actually gives us the right to open and worship.
[00:16:41]  But that's not the reality.
[00:16:44]  The Constitution protects the inalienable right that we already have to worship.
[00:16:49]  That's right.
[00:16:50]  So, for anyone whose church out there is not open, there is no excuse for that.
[00:16:54]  Right.
[00:16:55]  Now, if you disagree, you can come at me.
[00:16:57]  Don't come at Joel.
[00:16:58]  You can come at me.
[00:16:59]  But until Christians understand that the Constitution doesn't give us the right to worship, That's right.
[00:17:07]  That's what the word inalienable means.
[00:17:11]  It is explicit of this present realm.
[00:17:14]  The Constitution protects a right that we already have.
[00:17:19]  Right.
[00:17:20]  But we have Christians today who are so complacent, especially in California.
[00:17:24]  Oh, well, I don't want to ruffle any feathers.
[00:17:26]  I don't want to cause any trouble.
[00:17:29]  The gospel is a message of causing trouble.
[00:17:32]  Yeah, it's an offense.
[00:17:33]  Jesus' whole earthly ministry caused trouble.
[00:17:38]  And Virgil and I, matter of fact, if I could just get this in here, because I think it fits with the context of what we're talking about here, Joel.
[00:17:46]  By the time this airs to your audience, this episode will already be out.
[00:17:50]  But as we record this interview, Virgil and I are working on an episode of our next Just Thinking podcast that's going to be titled An Exposition of Biblical Unity.
[00:17:59]  And I'm going to be bursting a lot of bubbles in that episode about what unity looks like and what unity does not look like.
[00:18:07]  And one of the things biblical unity does not look like is passivity.
[00:18:12]  Right.
[00:18:12]  Passivity and just sitting back on your lazy boy and letting the government dictate to you how you're supposed to live.
[00:18:19]  That's slavery.
[00:18:21]  Yeah, right.
[00:18:22]  And I think that's the problem.
[00:18:23]  When we talk about personal rights, there's passive rights and there are active rights.
[00:18:29]  And we've started thinking that there's a right to health care, there's a right to university, there's a right to even universal housing, universal income, where people become pets.
[00:18:41]  That's what a pet is.
[00:18:43]  Don't have to produce, it doesn't have to work, you know.
[00:18:45]  You feed it, you take it to the vet, and you know, human beings aren't meant to be pets.
[00:18:49]  And so, but when these active rights, um, like health care, it sounds good, but but what we don't realize is it takes that doctor and it says that his passive right, his name, namely his property, his labor, his intelligence, his work, doesn't belong to him anymore.
[00:19:04]  It belongs to me.
[00:19:04]  It makes so so my my active right to health care takes away the passive right of the doctor to his own labor, to his own property, his intellectual property, his experience, all those things.
[00:19:16]  And so I think as our generation becomes more and more entitled to those active rights, we see the freedom of those inalienable rights, human rights, the right to own property, the right to own your own labor, your own gifts, all that begins to erode.
[00:19:36]  As entitlement rises, active rights begin to infringe upon passive rights, and the right of the collective begins to enslave the individual.
[00:19:48]  And people just get stuck.
[00:19:50]  And you can wrap it all in really flowery, good sounding generosity biblical language.
[00:19:56]  You can really, anytime somebody wants, I forget who said the quote, but he was like, anytime the culture adopts a new liberal principle, you can be sure that some liberal theologian will find a verse in the Bible for it.
[00:20:09]  Sure.
[00:20:09]  I'm tempted to name names, but I'm not going to do that.
[00:20:14]  All right.
[00:20:14]  So, just to say this real quick.
[00:20:16]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:18]  When you talk about active rights, Taking priority or primacy over passive rights.
[00:20:24]  See, the Bible calls that stealing.
[00:20:26]  That's right.
[00:20:27]  That's the Bible calls that stealing.
[00:20:29]  Okay, that's just another way of stealing.
[00:20:31]  The word rights has done more damage to this country in the past 60 years, probably than any other word.
[00:20:38]  Now, and you look at a state like California, California, generally speaking, in terms of mindset, they're proud here.
[00:20:46]  They're proud to call themselves progressive.
[00:20:48]  They are proud.
[00:20:49]  They take it as a badge of honor when the government Gets even more onerous and burdensome on your life.
[00:20:55]  Think about that for a second.
[00:20:57]  California is like to boast in the fact that we're progressive.
[00:21:00]  We're leading the nation in forward thinking.
[00:21:04]  We're visionaries.
[00:21:06]  We're progressives in the way we think.
[00:21:08]  And progressivism is defined in such a way as to find any avenue possible to apply someone else's or some group's.
[00:21:23]  Active rights up against your passive rights, so that your passive rights are overtaken, which makes you a slave to others' active rights.
[00:21:32]  And here in California, that's the thing to be celebrated.
[00:21:35]  It's unbelievable.
[00:21:37]  Yeah.
[00:21:38]  Sodomy is another thing to be celebrated.
[00:21:40]  Gay pride.
[00:21:41]  There you go.
[00:21:42]  Yeah.
[00:21:42]  Calling good evil, evil good.
[00:21:45]  They become inventors of new kinds of evil.
[00:21:49]  It's pretty phenomenal.
[00:21:50]  California is a wonderful case study that we could learn a lot from.
[00:21:53]  All right, Virgil, I got to get to you, man.
[00:21:54]  I'm sorry we've been.
[00:21:56]  You're just living over there in privilege and freedom in Nebraska.
[00:22:00]  I just let y'all run.
[00:22:04]  I know y'all have to commiserate with the.
[00:22:06]  Yeah, I know.
[00:22:08]  We're in California, man.
[00:22:10]  So I totally get it.
[00:22:12]  I want to address one of the things that you mentioned.
[00:22:15]  You said leaving California and then sending the grandchildren back in, man.
[00:22:21]  Apart from ensuring that we really do an incredible job of providing biblical literacy.
[00:22:27]  Um biblical sufficiency and making sure that that that the next generation actually understands that all of all, of all that we have, that is good, holy right, just and true.
[00:22:38]  Uh comes from scripture uh we, you know it.
[00:22:41]  It ends up a you know a moot point to to do to do any, any any such thing, and so i'm glad for ministries like yours man, that that wants to equip others to do the same.
[00:22:50]  Second thing as you guys, as you guys were talking, I thought about a quote that that I pulled up uh, from Frederick Hayek, Which he said this, and I know we're going to talk about social justice in a bit.
[00:23:00]  He said, I'm certain that nothing, he says, I'm certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical, and that just means legal safeguards of individual freedom as a striving after this miracle of social justice.
[00:23:14]  So, you know, I know you guys were talking about, you know, the government and its overreach, you know, in a number of different areas.
[00:23:24]  A lot of that is informed by their ideas around social justice, about righting wrongs on the basis of subjective opinion, people's subjective ideas, or groups that have an axe to grind, you know, whether it's liberals, leftists, whether it's the LGBTQ community or the like.
[00:23:46]  They're wanting to establish justice on the basis of their subjective ideas.
[00:23:51]  And so it's those kinds of things that begin encroaching themselves.
[00:23:54]  They use the power of government because they know there's nothing transformative about their position.
[00:24:02]  And so they have to use the power of government to enforce the kinds of rights that they're after.
[00:24:07]  You're absolutely right.
[00:24:09]  It's funny, Marxism, I mean, really, it's all about material.
[00:24:12]  Everything's material.
[00:24:15]  There's so much vanity.
[00:24:17]  It's a zero sum game.
[00:24:18]  Wealth can't grow.
[00:24:19]  You guys know all that.
[00:24:21]  But I've been thinking about it's like, what's the easiest way to take somebody else's stuff?
[00:24:26]  Because that's what Marxism is all about.
[00:24:27]  I want your stuff.
[00:24:28]  It's all about stuff because stuff is the only thing that matters.
[00:24:31]  It's this godless worldview, evolution, everything's in there, baked into the whole thing.
[00:24:36]  And so if life is all about how much stuff I can get and I need to get your stuff, but I'm not bigger than you, right?
[00:24:43]  I mean, in a primitive world, you beat them up, you take their stuff.
[00:24:48]  But if I can't beat you up, if I can't take, I'm not powerful enough to take your stuff from you.
[00:24:54]  To go at an individual level and to prove how an individual has somehow immoral or somehow wrongfully come into the things that they possess, it's really difficult.
[00:25:04]  What's easy, though, is to just start chopping the whole population into groups.
[00:25:09]  And so it's like this one group over here, this one, because then it's all subjective, what you're saying.
[00:25:14]  But now we don't have to deal with facts, cross examination, two or three witnesses.
[00:25:20]  We don't have to deal in the realm of objectivity.
[00:25:22]  We're able to just say, here's a group.
[00:25:24]  Here's another group.
[00:25:25]  That group has a lot more stuff.
[00:25:27]  This other group wants that stuff.
[00:25:29]  All right, now, what can we look like?
[00:25:31]  And just group narratives, what can we easily indict this group that's got the stuff that we want?
[00:25:36]  What can we indict them for?
[00:25:38]  Well, if we just pan back 150 years, and then we don't have to actually have to deal with individual people and their actions.
[00:25:47]  And did they actually do something immoral?
[00:25:51]  And so it's the whole group dynamic, group politics, identity politics, social justice.
[00:25:56]  I really think a lot of it is just.
[00:25:59]  It's just a much more easy way of getting the stuff that we feel like we should have.
[00:26:07]  You guys, is that fair?
[00:26:09]  Thomas Sowell, in his book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, said that envy used to be one of the seven deadly sins until it was reintroduced by his new name, Social Justice.
[00:26:24]  Social Justice is just envy.
[00:26:27]  The four letter word envy is just as much an accurate term to describe.
[00:26:32]  Social justice.
[00:26:33]  And you know what social justicians are doing?
[00:26:37]  It's the old adage about how do you eat an elephant, right, Joel?
[00:26:42]  You eat an elephant one piece at a time.
[00:26:46]  And that's exactly what the social justicians are doing.

=== Grounding Truth in God (15:03) ===

[00:26:49]  Social justicians know that they have the right individuals in place in government to advance their agenda and get them ultimately to the goal that they want to reach, which is, as you said, Taking stuff that belongs to someone else for themselves.
[00:27:08]  Listen, it was probably 48 hours after the election on November 3rd that Black Lives Matter was already demanding of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to come through with what BLM wants the government to give them in return because of what BLM is claiming they were able to do to purportedly get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this victory.
[00:27:38]  And they did, in my assessment.
[00:27:40]  I feel like what better incentive to give someone an election than the blackmail of if you don't give us what we want, we'll throw a fit and burn some more buildings down.
[00:27:53]  Here's the stupidity of that kind of logic as it relates to BLM.
[00:27:57]  Here's how stupid that is.
[00:27:59]  See, what BLM did, BLM pretty much put their agenda on layaway.
[00:28:03]  They said, okay, we're going to, they said to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, all right, we're going to help you guys get into the White House.
[00:28:11]  And in return, when that happens, you will owe us this, But see, that's not how you negotiate.
[00:28:19]  That's not how you negotiate.
[00:28:20]  What they should have done was demand something from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris first.
[00:28:27]  And then once they come through, once you pay me my ransom, then I respond.
[00:28:34]  Right.
[00:28:35]  White House.
[00:28:36]  Right.
[00:28:36]  That's not how that, see, Black Lives Matter is in the same position as many Black pastors were when Barack Obama was elected.
[00:28:44]  For his first term and his second term.
[00:28:46]  Verge, you may remember this.
[00:28:47]  Not long after Barack Obama was inaugurated in, been elected in inaugurated 2012, this group of black pastors got together and wrote him a demand letter.
[00:28:59]  We did an episode about Justinian podcasts on this.
[00:29:02]  They wrote him a demand letter, basically saying the same thing the BLM said.
[00:29:06]  This is again, this is putting, listen, we put our votes, we put you on layaway, now it's time for us to cash in.
[00:29:11]  But what did black people get out of two terms of Obama's administration?
[00:29:16]  Zip.
[00:29:17]  They got zipped.
[00:29:18]  And you know, the same thing is going to happen if it turns out that Biden and Harris are inaugurated in January.
[00:29:23]  Black Lives Matter and the 90% plus of Black voters who voted for Biden and Harris are going to get zipped.
[00:29:31]  Why do I owe you anything, Black Lives Matter?
[00:29:34]  Why do I owe you anything, Black church, when I already know going into the election that nine out of 10 of you are going to vote for me regardless?
[00:29:42]  Right, right.
[00:29:44]  Why should I give you anything?
[00:29:45]  Right, right.
[00:29:47]  Yeah, it's settling.
[00:29:48]  It's back to that C.S. Lewis quote, desiring too little.
[00:29:50]  It's, it's, you're settling for, for so little.
[00:29:54]  The Democratic Party is like, oh, we, we, to have your allegiance, to have your vote, to have your loyalty, we don't have to, we don't have to produce anything.
[00:30:02]  Whereas Donald Trump, it's like, man, for him, I mean, I know it's small, but it's still remarkable to double the black vote from, you know, he didn't, you know, he, Biden still appears to have, you know, he is allegedly put, you know, president elect, and we'll see how those things happen in the courts and all that.
[00:30:20]  And, And if he gets it and he gets it legally, he will be my president.
[00:30:24]  I'm not going to be that stuck up rat saying he's not my president.
[00:30:26]  No, he is my president.
[00:30:28]  And I will pray for him and honor him in the ways that I can.
[00:30:34]  But all that being said, my point is I mean, Trump doubled the black vote in this election because he has to actually work for that.
[00:30:43]  He had to prove jobs, employment, a higher quality of living, all those kind of things.
[00:30:48]  Whereas Democratic officials, it's just, They don't have to prove anything.
[00:30:53]  They don't have to actually prove with statistics that life is better, that you stand to benefit.
[00:30:59]  And man, it's, but I think things are changing because I think a lot of guys like you, I think the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, like, I mean, Christian guys and then Common Grace examples who aren't even Christian, Candace Owens, Larry Elder, the Uncle Tom documentary, I'm sure you guys saw.
[00:31:18]  Like, there's so much, so good content that keeps coming out and coming out.
[00:31:23]  And everybody, regardless of ethnicity, everybody, I think, That if there's anything good that came out of this last election, I think it's the exposure of the corruption in the mainstream media and even some big tech problems.
[00:31:36]  And all of a sudden, I think these alternative media sources like Daily Wire and The Blaze and Just Thinking Podcasts and people are actually giving us an ear for the first time and considering that we actually might have something to say.
[00:31:52]  And I think liberals have overplayed their hand.
[00:31:55]  I think the tides are going to turn, and I feel hopeful.
[00:32:00]  I agree with you to an extent.
[00:32:02]  And I'm with you.
[00:32:02]  I think all of those people you've named, and a lot of the, you know, everybody from Larry Elder to Candace Owen to the Shapiros, I think all of them have done a fantastic job of putting the message out and really explaining in simple terms what they're getting for their vote or what they're not getting for their vote.
[00:32:24]  And so I think those kinds of things are helpful.
[00:32:27]  A lot of Black folks have been, quote unquote, red pilled.
[00:32:30]  Right, uh, Brandon Tatum and others who are who are have videos and things like that.
[00:32:36]  One of the things that, and we and we love, I'm thankful for their work.
[00:32:39]  I think I love the way you set that up by explaining he's these are the common grace gifts that God has established at the end of the day, though.
[00:32:48]  We have to realize the people of God have to realize that the real answer, the true answer is not in politics, uh, but it's in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[00:32:59]  And so, while I'm thankful for Candace Owen, I'm more grateful and thankful.
[00:33:04]  For people like Allie Stuckey, because I think when she's out there expressing her positions about political issues, she's anchoring them in the truth of the Word of God and expressing that the only true light that we have is the light of the gospel at the end of the day.
[00:33:19]  So, those are some, I do think it is critically important for us to make those distinctions.
[00:33:25]  Otherwise, you'll be like me, because back in the day, I used to do urban radio.
[00:33:30]  And that's kind of how Daryl and I got connected.
[00:33:33]  And I told him, man, one, you need to do a podcast.
[00:33:36]  Too, I've done some radio, and man, I think your voice needs to be out there, so we kind of partnered in that regard.
[00:33:42]  But one of the things I did, Joel, is I spent a lot of time uh talking about conservatism on my on the radio, and I was known as the black conservative you know, not not I love the moniker, I thought that was cool, yeah, lone black guy, conservative, you know, and all of that.
[00:33:59]  But what I realized over the course of time was what I began to amplify was conservatism above the cross of Christ, that's right, and so.
[00:34:08]  It's critically important to make that distinction.
[00:34:10]  I think we have to be informed about the issues.
[00:34:14]  And Daryl and I just did an episode about the doctrine of elections.
[00:34:19]  And so it's critically important that we don't leave our doctrine at the doorstep, but that we're informed by doctrine and that we allow our mind to be informed and then to go into the voting booth and vote accordingly in the establishment of having righteous lawmakers, right?
[00:34:37]  Righteous politicians who uphold the standard of God.
[00:34:40]  So that's how we need to operate.
[00:34:41]  That's how we need to be informed.
[00:34:42]  That's how we need to walk in.
[00:34:44]  But we have to make the distinction that conservatism is great, but it will never be greater than the cross of Christ and the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.
[00:34:55]  Right.
[00:34:55]  I'm with you.
[00:34:56]  And I think conservative, the way I see it is all truth is God's truth.
[00:34:59]  So whatever is not merely conservative, but it is truly conservative in the sense that it is true.
[00:35:06]  It's really what we find there is it's not even separate from the cross of Christ, it stems from the cross of Christ.
[00:35:16]  And what we have for those who are not Christians is we have that common grace example of somebody who's borrowing from God's worldview.
[00:35:22]  They're borrowing God's truth, but without turning and giving God homage, without acknowledging God as the source of all that is good and all that is true.
[00:35:32]  But the problem is that the Christian worldview and the gospel, God's law and his gospel, which I love our founders' friends, that God loves his law just as much as he loves his gospel because both are a revelation, a manifestation of his own character.
[00:35:47]  God is holy and God is merciful.
[00:35:49]  And so, because God loves his own triune self, because God is a self glorifying, self adoring, self loving God, he loves his law, loves his gospel, both manifest his own nature, his own perfections and character.
[00:36:01]  And stemming from God's law and his gospel, we have these conservative views.
[00:36:07]  They stem from that.
[00:36:09]  The problem is that without the worldview, it's like hanging a truth in midair.
[00:36:17]  And so, what happens is that somebody, even a blind squirrel, can find an acorn every now and then.
[00:36:23]  And even a broken clock can be right twice a day.
[00:36:26]  And so what happens is that you get some common grace examples, like King Cyrus.
[00:36:32]  It's like, why is he funding the people of Israel to go back?
[00:36:36]  And so you get those examples because God's sovereign and he directs the heart of the king like waters in the way that he wants it to go.
[00:36:43]  But the problem is, if it's just hanging in midair, although all truth is God's truth, if God's truth is not ultimately grounded in the ultimate truth, Of his gospel and his law and his own nature, then it can just one generation can borrow and then another generation replaces it because it's just hanging there.
[00:37:05]  And I think that's the problem if we only win people to agree with you, Virgil, if we only win people to conservatism for the sake of conservatism, but we hang it in midair instead of grounding it in the triune God, which makes it true, then the next generation, I think that what we do is we teach our kids what.
[00:37:26]  What you should do, what you should do.
[00:37:27]  But if we don't teach them why, they abandon the what because they don't have the reason.
[00:37:34]  And that's how we, so sadly, you're so right.
[00:37:37]  That's so insightful because that's precisely how we got here.
[00:37:41]  That's why we took God out of our schools and we took God out of our nation.
[00:37:44]  We thought we don't need the foundation to have the benefits, we don't need the roots of the tree to eat these apples, to have this fruit.
[00:37:52]  And then all the fruit eventually dried up and it's gone.
[00:37:55]  And now we're finding fruit again.
[00:37:57]  And we want to just hang apples in the middle of the air without planting trees.
[00:38:01]  And so, even if we can win the populace to conservatism without giving them the why and grounding the gospel and the law, it'll only last for a generation.
[00:38:12]  It won't be that deep, long, multi generational work.
[00:38:16]  You guys agree with that?
[00:38:18]  Yeah, totally agree with you, Joel, there.
[00:38:20]  And I think fundamental to what you and Virgil are saying here is that the church no longer preaches that we're aliens and strangers, the church no longer preaches that.
[00:38:30]  The church no longer preaches that we are as Christians, as believers.
[00:38:33]  We're aliens and strangers here.
[00:38:35]  So, given that that's not part of our orthodoxy, it's not part of our orthopraxy, you don't hear that in pulpits anymore.
[00:38:47]  So, what we've done as a church, we've started to buy into this soteriology that the government has been selling.
[00:38:53]  You see, we got a bunch of blind squirrels.
[00:38:55]  I'm glad you use that.
[00:38:56]  We got a bunch of blind squirrels out of here, out here who are thinking because their worldview is so grounded in the world, in their life, their physical life here.
[00:39:08]  Their physical existence here.
[00:39:10]  That's where their focus is.
[00:39:11]  So we just have a bunch of blind squirrels out here willing to accept, well, if the government gives us an acorn here, the government gives us an apple over here, then I should be content with that.
[00:39:22]  You see, but we're aliens and strangers.
[00:39:24]  This is what Peters is saying in 1 Peter 2, verse 11.
[00:39:29]  Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers.
[00:39:35]  That little two word preposition as, that's stating a reality.
[00:39:39]  That's a definitive objective reality.
[00:39:40]  That's who you are.
[00:39:42]  That's who you are.
[00:39:43]  You are not people who, though you live physically in America, it goes back to what you were saying, Joel, earlier.
[00:39:50]  We just have a low view of accepting less versus more.
[00:39:54]  So we accept these acorns because, oh, woe is me.
[00:39:57]  This is my existence in this life.
[00:39:59]  And I'll see God in eternity when I die.
[00:40:02]  No, this is not the mindset that God wants us living with.
[00:40:07]  But we're a bunch of blind squirrels just willing to accept a little acorn every now and then as I run into it.
[00:40:13]  And then, as the government knows this, the government knows that we have a bunch of churches, a bunch of professing Christians out here who are just scared, timid, frightened to contend for the faith.
[00:40:29]  They know this.
[00:40:31]  This is why Governor Newsom, Gavin Newsom in California, Governor Whitmer in Michigan, and other states, they know that they can just roll out these incremental edicts, these fiats.
[00:40:44]  And they know that the churches in these states and Christians are just going to cave to them.
[00:40:49]  We're just going to genuflect to them.
[00:40:54]  We won't stand up in the face of what is objectively biblically evil.
[00:40:59]  Right, right.
[00:41:00]  We need to start doing that.
[00:41:02]  Yeah, I can only imagine in the time of Daniel, you know, a 30 day edict.
[00:41:08]  Can you just imagine that the worshipers of Yahweh, right, the Christians at that time say, hey, surely we should submit to the civil magistrate?
[00:41:16]  In fact, it's only a 30 day edict, you know, and certainly God will understand if we forego prayer for it's temporary, you know, and we listen to that, and I'm being facetious, but sometimes that kind of argumentation helps put things into perspective, you know, because if you apply that, right, like that kind of language, any God fearing Christian would be like, oh, that's ridiculous.
[00:41:38]  And then I would say, and help me see how it's different.
[00:41:41]  What would it be?
[00:41:43]  Yeah, but I think the difference is, and I completely agree with you.
[00:41:48]  I think the problem is what Daryl stated, which is up front.

=== Reformed Believers and Justice (14:57) ===

[00:41:52]  We don't think of ourselves as aliens and strangers, number one.
[00:41:56]  Number two, we have no doctrine of suffering.
[00:42:00]  We have no doctrine of suffering.
[00:42:03]  And so, as a result of not having a doctrine of suffering, we think that we are right in doing that which is righteous when government and society and the culture agree with us.
[00:42:15]  So, if culture and society agree with us and things are peaceful, Then we're doing the right thing.
[00:42:22]  When government, society, and culture is against us, we must have something wrong with our message.
[00:42:28]  And so we've got to go fix our message, recalibrate the message, and then represent it in the hope that we'll be liked by others.
[00:42:35]  That's kind of what's happened.
[00:42:37]  You're right.
[00:42:38]  When we get pushback, our immediate thought is that we're doing something wrong.
[00:42:42]  Whereas if we read the words of Christ, our immediate thought would be we're in good company.
[00:42:47]  We're doing something right.
[00:42:49]  Yep.
[00:42:49]  All right.
[00:42:49]  Well, let me ask you guys this because we're kind of getting short on time.
[00:42:54]  This is the biggest question that I just wanted to make it really specific to the church and even more specific because most of our listeners are.
[00:43:00]  Already going to be, you know, reformed, at least in their soteriology and Calvinistic and, you know, in our camp.
[00:43:10]  And so I guess my question is this the Reformed Church, it seems like for the last 10, 15 years, I'm a little bit younger.
[00:43:18]  You guys probably saw this more than I did, you know, but I was still kind of watching as a young man, seeing what was going on.
[00:43:25]  It seemed like with big conferences between, you know, Together for the Gospel and Gospel Coalition and guys like Piper and Desiring God and Ligonier, you know, and And even just the friendship between guys like John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul, lots of doctrinal distinctions, I should say, differences, and yet a loving tenderness, a brotherly love, able to partner, doing all these things together.
[00:43:50]  And so, my question is the Reformed Church seemingly has been able to bridge the gap on some big doctrinal issues, such as continuationists versus cessationists.
[00:44:02]  I mean, we know John MacArthur.
[00:44:05]  New Testament prophecy, he's not going to say, Yeah, I disagree.
[00:44:08]  He's going to say, I think it's destroying the church.
[00:44:11]  I think it's a big deal.
[00:44:13]  And yet he loves John Piper.
[00:44:15]  He's able, you know, so gifts of the spirit, baptism, credo, pedo, covenant theology versus dispensationalism, all these kinds of things, massive issues.
[00:44:25]  And yet we can pack 20,000 guys in a conference setting and singing hymns to the Lord and psalms and spiritual songs, like linking arms, giving hugs, and we strongly disagree.
[00:44:39]  And it seems like, in my just sitting here watching what's going on, in my perspective, it seems like the dividing line that the Reformed church, not just the church, not just the culture, but that the Reformed gospel loving church is not going to be able to get over is the dividing line of social justice, racial reconciliation, identity politics.
[00:45:05]  And I guess I just want to put it to you guys to me, it seems to communicate that.
[00:45:11]  That this issue is bigger than baptism, it's bigger than confessionalism, it's bigger than covenant theology, it's bigger than gifts of the spirit.
[00:45:19]  Um, because this is the one that we're not willing to link arms over.
[00:45:23]  This is the dividing line, and I think it's a dividing line just to show my hand.
[00:45:28]  I think it is a dividing line, I think it is bigger than those things.
[00:45:31]  I guess my question is, why is this issue bigger than all those other doctrinal issues?
[00:45:39]  Yeah, let me let me start, Joel, and then I'll let Virgil jump in here.
[00:45:43]  Um, I think a problem with reformed believers when it comes to this issue of social justice is that they're not, I think they've been caught off guard from where this thing, this issue, this whole issue came from.
[00:45:57]  And what I mean by that, see, there's no Westminster Confession to go back to to refer to when it comes to social justice, you see.
[00:46:04]  Right.
[00:46:07]  There's no Belgian Confession to go back to.
[00:46:09]  There's no Puritans.
[00:46:11]  There are no social justice Puritans to go back to.
[00:46:15]  See, social justice didn't come from.
[00:46:19]  A theological origin.
[00:46:21]  It's Genesis, it's not theological, it's cultural.
[00:46:25]  It's cultural.
[00:46:26]  See, this has been my one issue with reformed believers is that they're so academic.
[00:46:34]  They're so academic in their theology.
[00:46:36]  Their hands are so clean that they don't know how to go.
[00:46:40]  They don't know how to make the shift between a theological argument and defending or arguing against a cultural argument.
[00:46:47]  They don't know how to make that shift.
[00:46:49]  See, Virgil, we operate in both of those arenas.
[00:46:53]  So we're both reformed.
[00:46:55]  So we can sit here and have a A theological academic conversation with you on reformed theology.
[00:47:01]  But we can also come back with an apologetic from a cultural standpoint because that's the milieu in which Virgil and I grew up.
[00:47:09]  You see, so I could quote you just as easily Martin Luther King as I can John Calvin.
[00:47:16]  Okay, but we need reformed believers who can do that, who can cross those lines back and forth, come back and forth, and offer a biblically orthodox apologetic against what has a cultural origin.
[00:47:28]  You see, this is why social justice is a dividing line because reform people are so used to going back to, well, let's see what the Westminster said.
[00:47:40]  Right.
[00:47:40]  Let's see what the Westminster said.
[00:47:42]  But have you read Martin Luther King's papers from Crozier Theological Seminary?
[00:47:47]  Have you read those papers?
[00:47:49]  You see, I get that you've read Jonathan Edwards.
[00:47:53]  I get that.
[00:47:53]  But have you read James Cohn?
[00:47:56]  You see, have you read, I mean, read Cohn.
[00:47:59]  I don't mean go on Google and Google James Cohn and then something pops up.
[00:48:03]  Have you read James Cohn?
[00:48:04]  Have you read Martin Luther King?
[00:48:07]  Did you know that in a paper at Clojure Theological Seminary in 1948 that Martin Luther King, as a 19 year old, said in black and white, wrote, that I am a staunch proponent of the social gospel?
[00:48:22]  In his own words, can you quote Martin Luther King in his own words and say, well, Martin Luther King was a social gospel proponent?
[00:48:29]  And can you say, can you go back in current day right now and read and quote a Raphael Warnock?
[00:48:36]  Who is the successor to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King preached, and dissect and pick apart Warnock's Black liberation theology and bring it into a reformed theological construct?
[00:48:50]  We don't have reformed believers who are prepared to do that.
[00:48:52]  So that's why this issue seems so.
[00:48:54]  Listen, social justice, and John MacArthur has said this, and I think he's absolutely right.
[00:48:58]  He agrees exactly with what you just said, Joel.
[00:49:00]  John MacArthur has said that social justice is the most important issue the church has ever faced.
[00:49:07]  Yeah.
[00:49:08]  That's because, as I said earlier, we have such a misplaced soteriology that our doctrine of salvation is rooted in our life here on earth.
[00:49:19]  Right.
[00:49:21]  Not with God in heaven later.
[00:49:23]  Our reward is in heaven.
[00:49:24]  1 Peter 1 makes that clear.
[00:49:27]  So we have a, in 1 Peter 1 5, he says, we have an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.
[00:49:42]  And see, we're trying to get that reward here.
[00:49:44]  Right.
[00:49:45]  You see, so again, I think a big problem within Reformed theology is that we have believers who are so academic in their theological worldview, they don't want to get their hands dirty.
[00:49:57]  Yeah.
[00:49:58]  They want to get their hands dirty.
[00:49:59]  See, to battle social justice and critical race theory, you got to be willing to get your hands dirty.
[00:50:05]  And I mean, you need to be able to say, hey, I went into some of these urban communities, I talked with these black church pastors who are preaching Black Phil Grace theology from these coal pits.
[00:50:14]  And you can name names and you can name churches, but until we get outside of the Westminster Confession, there is no question in the Westminster Confession that addresses Christ.
[00:50:27]  So, how are you going to handle that?
[00:50:28]  Right.
[00:50:29]  Now you're right.
[00:50:30]  Virgil, what do you think?
[00:50:31]  I'll briefly summarize.
[00:50:32]  I know you run short on time and just say this is a different gospel.
[00:50:36]  The social justice gospel is a different gospel.
[00:50:39]  It has, it's established an anti biblical, Anthropology, right?
[00:50:46]  The idea of races of people.
[00:50:49]  It has an unbiblical hermiteology, right?
[00:50:55]  The sole sin that Christ didn't pay for was the sin of racism.
[00:51:00]  So it has an ethnic soteriology where you're going to have to, as a white person, works are going to be anti racist works are going to have to be involved for you for the remainder of your life in order to make retribution.
[00:51:19]  Restitution, or even reparations, six different forms of reparations that need to be paid.
[00:51:25]  So, the idea that what Christ did on the cross was sufficient to save is antithetical to a worldview where social justice, where Black Lives Matter, where critical race theory are embraced.
[00:51:38]  This is a different gospel.
[00:51:41]  And I think Daryl explained it well.
[00:51:44]  We have to know what these things are.
[00:51:45]  We have to go back and read Kendi.
[00:51:48]  We have to go back and read and know only for the thought of, Knowing where these folks are coming from.
[00:51:55]  Right.
[00:51:56]  Where they've come from.
[00:51:57]  Yeah.
[00:51:57]  Well, to my left, I've got Cohn's works, right?
[00:52:01]  I've got all of his writings.
[00:52:03]  I've got the Marxian origins.
[00:52:06]  You mentioned the social gospel that was embraced.
[00:52:08]  I think Daryl did, the social gospel that was embraced by Martin Luther King.
[00:52:13]  I've read Walter Rauschenbusch's works.
[00:52:15]  We know where this stuff comes from in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
[00:52:20]  So we have to be versed on those things.
[00:52:22]  We have to know what that is, but we have to do it.
[00:52:25]  Through the lens of a biblical worldview.
[00:52:26]  I think that's been the popularity of what we're doing with just thinking.
[00:52:31]  And Joel, what I know you're trying to establish with right response, it's making sure that you have a biblical lens by which to view all the issues of culture so that you can rightly divide the word.
[00:52:43]  That's right.
[00:52:44]  That's so good, guys.
[00:52:47]  Daryl and Virgil, that's what I wanted to hear you guys say, but that's been my suspicion.
[00:52:53]  I think that just growing suspicion is I think the reason why the Reformed camp has been able to bridge, overcome our differences, bridge the divide on baptism, confessional, confessionalism, dispensationalism versus covenant theology, our different eschatologies.
[00:53:11]  We could be pre mill and post mill, and yet we can all get together, love each other, support each other.
[00:53:17]  And these are massive issues gifts of the spirit versus cessationism.
[00:53:21]  I think the reason why what I hear both of you guys saying is because all those things, as big a differences as there are, they all have their source.
[00:53:30]  In Christianity.
[00:53:32]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:53:34]  Whereas what we're dealing with now has its source in the pit of hell.
[00:53:39]  It is a vain philosophy, a godless ideology, and pastors can't sniff it out because what you're saying, Daryl, they're versed in John Calvin, but they're not versed in James Cohn.
[00:53:54]  And so they hear some other guy, right, that game of telephone.
[00:53:56]  So by the time it gets to them, they're like, well, that sounds pretty Christian.
[00:54:00]  So they treat it just like credo versus pedo baptism.
[00:54:04]  You know, like, but both could, you know, like, yeah, there are some differences, but these are our brothers.
[00:54:08]  But if they traced it back to its source, they would find that, oh, it wasn't like there was one denomination, Christian denomination, that baptized infants and one denomination, Christian denomination, that didn't.
[00:54:18]  No, no, no.
[00:54:19]  Here's what Christians view on the issue of anthropology who God is, who man is, who unites us.
[00:54:26]  Are we united in Christ or not?
[00:54:28]  Is there more ministry of reconciliation that has to be done because Christ didn't finish the work?
[00:54:33]  Or if we trace this back to its source, social justice, identity politics, we find that it arises.
[00:54:42]  Not from theologians.
[00:54:44]  It doesn't arise from pastors.
[00:54:46]  It arises from godless Marxist philosophers that, to even make a claim that these men themselves were regenerate, would be difficult to defend.
[00:55:02]  And I think that's, in short, to kind of just conclude us.
[00:55:07]  I think the reason why this issue is bigger than anything else isn't because we just want to talk about race again and again and again.
[00:55:14]  It's because this issue, all those other issues are tertiary or secondary.
[00:55:20]  This is primary.
[00:55:22]  Because, like Virgil, you said it perfect.
[00:55:24]  It's another gospel.
[00:55:26]  It's another gospel.
[00:55:28]  All right, brothers, thank you so much for it.
[00:55:31]  I've been so blessed by you guys, your ministry.
[00:55:33]  Your podcast is different than anybody else.
[00:55:35]  Like what we just did here today, I pray will be helpful and fruitful for people.
[00:55:39]  But for our listeners, you got to know what I do, I think there's a lot of strength to it.
[00:55:44]  But it's not what Virgil and Daryl do.
[00:55:46]  Nobody, I don't know of anybody who's doing what they do on the Just Thinking podcast.
[00:55:52]  It's got the feel of a podcast and the feel of a seminary lecture at the same time.
[00:55:58]  The amount of work that these guys put into it, the amount of reading and quotes and scripture is just, there's no other podcast like it.
[00:56:07]  A lot of podcasts, you listen to podcasts, it's helpful, but you get a lot of quips and pundits and just, you know, you get fired up.
[00:56:15]  But Daryl and Virgil will teach you how, from the beginning to the end, how to show.
[00:56:18]  Structure the whole argument and not just make that little quip, you know, that little, that next Twitter, you know, little tweet that'll get you some, some followers.
[00:56:26]  But so you got to follow the Just Thinking podcast.
[00:56:29]  Any other way that guys can follow you men and what you're doing?
[00:56:32]  Justthinking.me, justthinking.me.
[00:56:36]  That's the, I mean, wherever you download your podcast, Spotify, I mean, we're on all the, all the, you know, Apple, iTunes, all that stuff.
[00:56:43]  But if, you know, if you want to get it from the website, you go to justthinking.me.

=== Join the Club Today (01:23) ===

[00:56:49]  Okay, great.
[00:56:50]  So we're going to have our bonus question.
[00:56:53]  So, anybody, if you're not a responder, that's one of our club members.
[00:56:56]  We encourage you to go to our website, become a club member.
[00:57:00]  We just can't do it without your support, your prayers, your finances.
[00:57:04]  And so, if you're not a responder, one of our club members with Right Response Ministries, please do that.
[00:57:09]  And for our club members, our responders, we have our bonus edition.
[00:57:13]  And so, Daryl and Virgil are going to stay on for an extra five to 10 minutes.
[00:57:18]  And our bonus question, just to whet your appetite, is.
[00:57:22]  Daryl and Virgil, what do you guys think about reparations and what is a biblical support for whether or not that's a good or bad idea?
[00:57:30]  So, thanks for tuning into this episode, and we'll see you guys in our next episode of Theology Applied.
[00:57:36]  Thanks for tuning in to Right Response Ministries.
[00:57:38]  As a reminder, all of our resources should only be used as a supplement and not a substitute for the local church.
[00:57:44]  Be sure to check out our website, rightresponseministries.com, or download our free app.
[00:57:49]  There you can find out how to join our team by supporting us monthly as a responder.
[00:57:54]  As a responder, you will receive a Soli Deo Gloria t shirt and a physical copy of Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
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