Are Christians Being Duped Into the New Social Justice Ideology? With Voddie Baucham

hey everyone welcome to a live episode of the alisa childers podcast in just a moment we are going to have a q a session with dr vody backham i know so many of you are excited about this you've been waiting for it if you're tuning in on facebook or youtube and you'd like to ask a question you can go ahead and start putting your questions in now and please write the word question in all caps so that we are sure to see it i also want to help thank david wolcott for moderating today's discussion but without any further ado i'll bring my guest on dr vody backham he's an author and a speaker a former pastor he's currently the dean of theology at african christian university in lusaka zambia dr bocam welcome to the show we're so glad to have you on today ah thank you very much it's a pleasure to be with you well we're excited to talk with you we have a facebook group with over 3000 people in it and we just finished reading your book called fault lines the social justice movement and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe and by the way for the viewers out there if you want to learn how you can join us in our private facebook book club group stay tuned because after the interview i'm going to give you some important information on that but dr bockham your your book is called fault lines and that provides the analogy for the whole book and i wonder if you can quickly set that up for us why did you choose that title and why do you think that that is such a relevant analogy for discussions surrounding racism and social justice and and critical theory well i grew up in in los angeles california on a fault line and experienced a couple of earthquakes in in my day and as i looked out and thought about what was happening and as i watched these divisions taking place um that imagery uh just sort of stayed with me the idea that we are on a fault line that it's shifting and that there are people who are going to find themselves on the wrong side of this divide when the catastrophe strikes uh not if but when the catastrophe strikes so because that sort of you know stayed with me uh i found it as a helpful tool and communicating to people what i was seeing in terms of what's going on so in your book you write about growing up in south central los angeles and specifically you wrote about your mom i really loved reading what you wrote about your mom and her role in shaping you as a person and i'd like to read yeah most people do yes people do we're here right the book apparently is my mom so many people when they've read the book they go i love your mom i want to meet your mom we all fell in love with your mom reading this book for sure and i'd like to read a quote from the book and then ask you a little bit about your backstory so in your book you write i grew up poor without a father and surrounded by drugs gangs violence and dysfunction in one of the toughest urban environments imaginable yet through all of that i didn't just survive i thrived not because of government programs or white people doing the work of anti-racism i thrived in large part because by god's grace my mother protected me sacrificed for me advocated for me and disciplined me so i wonder if you can share a little bit about your mom about your back story but also walk us through how you came to faith in christ yeah so my mother and my father they were you know children of the 60s i was born in 1969 my mother was in high school um when she got pregnant with me and um my parents ended up getting married because that was you know what you did during that time but they didn't stay married very long so i was raised by my mother as a single mother a single teenage buddhist mother and the first time i heard the gospel was in college i was in university uh before i ever really heard the gospel and it was really there that i came face to face with the fact that i was a sinner um i was always you know because of the way that my mother raised me you know i was that kid that you know other kids parents wanted them to be like and so i never thought that i needed anything and here comes this campus crusade staffer um talking to you about jesus and the gospel and talking to me about my need for a savior and when we first started talking i didn't i didn't really even have enough of a foundation to be able to follow what he was communicating to me and so we just sort of slowed everything down and went back to the basics and spent two and a half or three weeks with him answering my questions and eventually showing me how to find answers to my questions about god and about the scriptures until i eventually didn't have any more questions and one day we were supposed to meet and he was late and i i just laid down on the floor i was in the locker room and i just said you know got that thing you did for steve that he's been telling me you want to do for me now's good and i just trusted christ to save me i didn't have the fancy words to say or whatever but i came to repentance and faith there on the floor in the locker room oops i muted myself that's a beautiful story and i loved reading about that in your book in in the description for fault lines it says this but what if there's more to the social justice movement than christians understand or even worse what if they've been duped into preaching ideas that actually oppose the kingdom of god i wonder if you could expound on that a little bit because i know that this has been a very confusing year for a lot of christians with everything that's been happening in culture how do you see christians being duped into some of these anti-gospel ideas well let me just say that as early as 2004 2005 um i was talking and preaching and and writing about um really neo-marxism gramsci and marxism um talking about this guy gramsci and people sort of looked at me and crossed their eyes so i i've been worried about this for a long time i've been worried about this as it relates to education and government education and again people sort of look at me cross-eyed about that this movement this current movement the critical social justice movement is really built upon those same ideas and frameworks this is just another iteration um this is just another advancement of that same ideology so this is not something that i just started thinking about a few months ago this is something i've been thinking about for a long time and warning about for a long time and these ideas are poisonous ideas and when i say that people are being duped what i'm saying is that people are using um phrases like social justice for example that sound really good um racial justice yeah i mean that that sounds really good we're all for justice right and equity and you know diversity and so on and so forth and we don't understand that these words these phrases anti-racism right we don't understand that they're part of an ideology and beyond that we don't understand that these words are really designed in such a way that they are meant to do and to confuse and a lot of people are falling prey to them yes and in your book you talk about it being more of a world view and i wonder if you could unpack that a little bit for us explain to us how the current iteration of the social justice movement sort of takes on that religious tone of having a worldview that's really antithetical to the gospel yeah it comes from this this neo-marxist style ideology this neo-marxist worldview these these basic overarching assumptions about the way the world is structured and organized about the way that relationships between people are structured and organized these power dynamics if you will um everybody's familiar by now with this oppressed oppressed paradigm right and they may not know gramsci's idea of hegemony but they get this idea that there is this you know cultural hegemony that the oppressor uses um as a tool to oppress uh people and in our environment uh that hegemonic tool is whiteness which broadly refers to more than just people with with with white skin if you will but white male heterosexual cisgendered able-bodied navy you know native-born um all the way down to christian right christianity is part of this sort of you know hegemonic power as well and the the terminology that is used for example there's this talk about america's original sin right original sin this is religious language you know um and this need for redemption and for reconciliation and people are talking about bible verses and you know biblical concepts and you know they're they're using biblical stories and when i say people i'm talking about not just within the church but even outside of the church people are talking about things like the good samaritan and you know and and and you know the tax collector and all this sort of stuff they're using these stories and these ideas in order to communicate what it is that we need to be about in this work of anti-racism this work of anti-racism is a religious work it is a work that doesn't it's penance right it's not it's not repentance because it never ends you never finish doing the work of anti-racism and the the terminology is religious but it's very different in that it moves away from the heart of the individual towards structures so now we don't talk about racism we talk about systemic racism we talk about structural racism and the work of anti-racism has nothing to do with individual hearts and everything to do with systems and structures and so it's political in nature and it's oriented toward power well in a moment we're going to get to our questions uh but i wanted to just ask you something kind of specific so i think one of the things that's been the most confusing for christians trying to navigate these waters especially in the last year maybe two years is that there are christian leaders and you talk about some of these leaders in your book who you know they're they're they're affirming all of the gospel essentials right they're they're good on the atonement of jesus the second coming all of these things the need for salvation uh grace all of this and yet they might even come out and say well i officially denounce critical race theory we don't use that but then it seems like they're using some of the categories and um i i just you know one of the people you mention in your book is is tim keller and i you know i've been a big fan of tim keller's in the past i've quoted him in my book i think he brings a lot of valuable discussions but he's he kind of represents i think that group that's been a little bit confusing on this issue i wonder if you had any comments on that yeah it's interesting what's happening now is people are saying one of a few things one they're saying that you know crt is not a real issue right you'll hear about the crt boogeyman right the other thing is people will say that you know nobody's teaching crt right um and then you'll hear people say things like i don't agree with crt but then those same people will talk about ideas that are derived from critical race theory the primary assumptions of critical race theory and so you hear them talking about the idea for example that that racism is normal that racism is structural and systemic um you know this idea of convergence interest convergence theory right the idea that the way that we deal with this is by elevating minority voices um again because narrative is the way that we we find truth the idea that you know even that that knowledge is socially constructed and things of this nature and so what they're doing is imagine if somebody said listen i reject hinduism right i really reject hinduism but i really do feel like we need to do a better job of being aware of karma and reincarnation um you know because these things are real and these things are important that's what people are doing now they're using the categories and the language of crt all the while saying that they that they don't believe crt that they don't buy into crt and what they're doing is they're redefining critical race theory and critical race theorists and they're saying for example that this is just you know an obscure ideology that you only find in law schools right um you know or on the other hand you have people who are saying no no trt is just about um having honest discussions about america's past racial sins um as as though you know those discussions haven't happened or can't happen without crt um so that's why it ends up sounding confusing uh because people are really communicating the ideas that are inherent to critical race theory to critical theory and more critical theories more broad right critical race theory is a subset of critical theory so they use these categories they use the oppressor oppressed you know uh paradigm for example um and what they'll do is they'll go to scripture and they'll say well well the bible talks about oppression um which it that's it's just wicked right because the bible absolutely talks about oppression but the bible doesn't teach that the way we understand the world is by looking at everything through the lens of an oppressor oppressed paradigm right um so yeah that that's why it ends up being confusing and so people start talking about things like i'll give you a classic one racial justice what in the world i mean i'm not sure most people hear that and they go i'm not sure what it is but i think i'm probably for it right right i mean i don't think as a christian that i would be for racial injustice so sure racial justice but when people say racial justice what they mean is disparities are proof of discrimination right that because through the oppressor oppressed paradigm when you see disparities you assume that those experience disparities exist because of oppression and you don't look for another cause for those disparities you merely go after the racist systems that are inevitably the cause of those disparities that's what people mean when they say racial justice and that's crt 101. so what's your practical advice to christians who are trying to navigate through those types of discussions that they're having with people in their churches even their pastors and friends when words and phrases like that get brought up what's the best way to go about bringing clarity into that discussion asking people what they mean you know first educate yourself you know one of the reasons that i i wrote this book i didn't write this book because i want to um i wrote this book because i felt like i had to i felt like i needed to um you know nobody needs this grief [Laughter] this is one of those books that you know as soon as it hits the presses um there's a fault line right and there are people who are going to fall on either side of it and there are some people who are going to dismiss it before they turn the first page um you know so you you know that that's going to happen but if we're going to get this um we need to understand terminology terminology and ideology so that we can have conversations where we press one another and we say okay when you say that what do you mean right because social justice has a very clear meaning social justice is redistributive justice right social justice is about equal outcomes and the redistrict redistribution of wealth and the redistribution of you know privileges and opportunities or whatever so that we get equitable not equal right equality is about equal opportunity equity is about equal outcome so that's what that word means well most people you know christians who are talking about you know social justice they would say no no that's not what i'm talking about that's not what i mean and so then what i'm saying to people is okay find a better word then stop using that word because it means something right stop using racial justice because racial justice and racial injustice that means something so you know so what i want is for people to be able to yeah you know use this book in order to understand the lay of the land to understand where these ideas are coming from and whom these ideas are coming from and be able to have conversations where we make sure that we're on the same page sometimes what that's going to lead to is a conversation where people say no that's actually not what i mean sometimes it's going to lead to conversations where people say well i didn't think that's what i meant but maybe it is what i mean right and then we can we can we can take it from there but we've got to clarify that's good uh that leads me to a question here from cindy she's asking how do i as a white person approach engaging with people of color in this discussion without being offensive yeah you can't do that you can't even think about it like that we you you've already lost because you've already assumed that because of the level of melanin that you have right that somehow you automatically carry the burden of somebody else's offense and that's that's just not true that's wrong right um when we have relationships with people we have authentic relationships with people and if i can't say something to you um without you assuming the worst and taking offense and then shutting down then we didn't really have a relationship to begin with and my problem is not a problem with melanin right there's a deeper problem there um and so i i think what we need to do is we need to we need to take a step back and really examine our relationships and whether or not our relationships are authentic and i think what a lot of people are admitting is that they don't have authentic relationships and that and if there isn't trust there um there's no way forward yeah when that's where we're starting yeah uh next question is coming from allison and she wants to know what are some cautions in not swinging too far in the opposite direction against critical social justice and i suppose what she might even be implying here is that you know there tends to be sort of these extremes we see where you'll have one group that any discussions on racism or uh anything like that they just get labeled oh that's critical theory or that's marxism and then you kind of have extremes on the other side too uh what would your advice be i don't think i don't think that's true okay i'm just not seeing that um i hear that all the time from people when they're when they're when they're doing their presentations they'll say on the once on the one side you have the people where any discussion about race or racism and you get labeled as critical racist well that's not true i talk about race and racism you go look up my sermon on genesis chapter 10 where i'm tracing the history of race and racism nobody ever accused me of being a marxist why because i rail against marxism and because i was using biblical categories so i that's just not happening that that's that's really that that's a straw man that's being set up yeah and and so i'm i'm not i don't know anybody and nobody has ever shown me evidence of anyone who says any discussion about race and you your your that's marxism um owen strand has a new book uh christianity and wokeness and he starts off in christianity and wokeness and you can hear sermon on christianity and wokeness and he says listen wokeness is not boom boom boom boom boom right and he goes through just being concerned about uh race being concerned about justice being concerned that's not what we're talking about here and so i think one of the things we have to do is you know in in sort of a avoiding any kind of wild swings is to make sure that we're talking about scripture to make sure that we're interpreting the word of god and the other thing that we need to do is not let people rent space inside our heads right because what people are trying to do is they're trying to make us sort of blunt the force of our arguments by having them die the death of a thousand qualifications and so listen if somebody is going to dismiss me and say that you know i'm just this you know extremist whatever listen i'm sorry you don't know me either you don't know me or you're being dishonest about me um and that's just the bottom line and so i am not worried about you know these these these wild extremes because i'm railing against an extreme critical race theory critical social justice is an extreme right and what i'm doing is i'm not arguing anything about you know other directions or maybe no no no i'm saying this is evil i'm saying this is wicked i'm saying this is that war with the gospel and and i'm i'm i'm taking every thought captive i'm destroying arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of god right now that may look like something that's extreme because we're it war right ideological warfare is extreme but it's a necessary extreme you can't fight against something you know without that kind of extreme so so don't be afraid of that and and don't let people back you into a corner you know by making you somehow so afraid of making forceful stands when forceful stands are required and that's what's required in this instance that's good stuff this is a question from brian he says i'm half black and puerto rican sometimes i feel that i'm on the wrong side being a man of color in terms of crt what strengthens you most while others uh see you as an uncle tom or something like that oh boy a couple of things one is time you know um you know there's there's this phrase in in in weightlifting time under tension right um and time under tension builds strength and something happens when you when you walk through a situation where you take a stand and then people take shot shots at you and you and you turn around and you realize two things number one i'm okay and number two they didn't answer my argument they just called me a name right yeah that i i i know what that means right right what that means is they don't have an argument and so you know i couldn't care less about people you know calling me names um that that that's that's that's not what what concerns me you know i've got i got bigger concerns than that and whatever the worst thing is that you can say about me um if you knew me if you really knew me you'd probably realize that there's worse things to be said about me than that that's good we have several questions from people who have uh biracial children or adopted children of course i don't i probably don't even like the phrase biracial because we're one race but we know what what they mean by that um so here's one from kristen i prefer by ethnic by ethnic that's good yeah kristen is asking as white parents of a biracial by ethnic child what should we be teaching him about his race and his ethnicity i was told that i can't quote unquote teach him how to be black and i have to get him around as many people of color as possible just to be as kind and gentle as i can that's kind of racist that's kind of assuming this racial essentialism that's kind of assuming that black people are alike and that all you have to do is find a black person and if you get your child to a black person then they're going to get the black experience as if there is such a thing um there is no such thing as the black experience and when you're talking about by ethnic children um again what is the by ethnic experience there is no such thing and when we're raising children there are so many other things to be worried about than that right i mean we're trying to raise children who run hard after god we're trying to raise children who understand who they are in christ we're trying to raise children who regardless of you know the other assumption is that somehow you know black families who are raising black children um don't have children who have identity crises when they get to their teen years right um you know i don't know about you but everybody i know regardless of by whom they were raised at some point in their life came to a crisis where they looked at themselves and they looked at their family and said you know what i might not even be one of them right i mean that's just part of life that's part of growing up where you have to discover who you are apart from the people who raised you the other reality is nobody is a carbon copy of or you know an absolute representation of the people who raised them we are individuals and somehow you know when when parents bring children into their home and i'm an adopted father right um we're seven of our nine children who came into our family by way of adoption um i'm a father of uh of a by ethnic child right and so you know i i understand a little bit about you know this this this topic um and so you know the the fact is that we all go through that and the fact is that when people end up you know in an adoption situation or in a sort of multi-ethnic situation they just kind of lose their minds and start believing things that if you just close your eyes and took 15 seconds to think about it would sound totally absurd yeah uh emily wants to know are we headed for massive church splits over crt are we headed toward massive persecution of believers in the u.s what do you think about that um no and maybe are we headed toward massive church blitz no we're already seeing massive church splits we're not heading there we are there um are we headed toward persecution of christians um in in the us um maybe maybe um you know as you i don't know if you've you've said you know i'm serving here in this lot because zambia i'm hence our connection and delays or whatever um but being an american expat um living in a different part of the world um it it gives me an interesting perspective on you know what it means to be american and um what america is and and what america has been and what america is capable of and um is it possible yes um it's possible but if it if it does come and if it does happen um it won't be unique in church history it won't be unique in world history and god's bigger than that right um to me i'm not worried about whether christians are going to be persecuted in america i'm worried about christians who think that somehow that would mean that the wheels have fallen off and that the kingdom's in danger that's good and and one of the things that was so fascinating in your book was that comparison you made of what you see even regarding police and the way that that things just are culturally in zambia versus the united states and then when you hear people in the united states saying things about the way they are here it was like uh i don't know can you unpack that a little bit for us and just for anyone who hasn't read your book just that was such a that was such an eye-opening uh thing to read there yeah and this is one of the things that really motivated me to just go ahead and write the book um our students here at acu um began to ask me questions about whether i felt safe in america and you know about the police and now this is in a country where you know the police set up these you know road blocks road stops and you know you you you pull up and they look for violations and if they find a violation they pull you over on the side of the road where you have to pay your fine in cash um you know this is a place where professional policing isn't a thing if somebody comes and breaks into my house right now i can't call 9-1-1 if i need to go and get the police they're going to want me to pay them a bribe for them to even come and and and do something about whatever is going on um you know you get caught stealing here you can count on a beating from the police you get caught filming the police while they're beating somebody you can count on losing your phone and maybe getting a beating just like the person who's getting a beating from the police and so when people here started asking me about whether or not i was worried about the police in america i just that was it i mean that was the moment where i said this is a bridge too far um i got to do this i i got to write this now yeah one of them i mean even before all this happened we've been here i'm sorry we've been here for uh six years as of next month right and i remember after maybe the second year i flew into the us because i come to the us three or four times a year for a speaking tour and i flew in and i don't remember what airport it was that i landed in i think it may have been work and there were three police officers from three different um jurisdictions i think there was an airport cop a city cop and you know somebody else and they were there having a conversation and i'm about to go out and meet the person who's going to pick me up and i just felt compelled i just walked over to them i said i just want to shake your hand i just want to thank you you know for what you do i live in a country where professional policing is just absolutely non-existent and i'm grateful for men like you who do what you do and lay it on the line and and i mean they got choked up you know they literally got choked up um but i i again that this is one of the reasons that people complain about america but nobody's trying to leave because we know better yeah it's good uh one of the criticisms i see on tw especially twitter tw and twitter's sort of the bottom of the barrel it's kind of a cesspool of social media i stay away oh i know i i actually i'm not even on twitter anymore oh my gosh [Laughter] no i actually deleted my twitter page because i was just like p i don't people don't need this access to me all the time to say all these things to me all the time but sometimes i'll go on there and search certain words and see what people are saying one of the criticisms i see especially on twitter is and this is kind of something i saw this week where people will say everybody who is railing against critical race theory of all those people nobody can define it if you ask them what it is they can't even tell you what it is and so this is sort of leading into a question here from emily she says how would you boil crt down in layman's terms like if how do i help my kids understand how would i maybe explain it if possible in a minute what it is and why it's dangerous if somebody says well can you even define what it is can you help us with language on that yeah well there's a broader definition you know in the book obviously but if i'm talking to you know a layman i'm talking to a young person critical race theory is an ideology that was born out of critical legal studies that comes from critical theory it's based on the presupposition that racism is the defining characteristic and the defining reality of american culture and that all things are to be understood through that lens now there's a broader definition i i gave you some of those main pillars there they're really four main pillars of crt um you know the idea that racism is normal interest conversions theory is the idea that white people are incapable of righteous actions in the area of race unless their interests converge with people of color um and you know then there's this sort of anti-liberalism that rejects um things like objective truth meritocracy so on and so forth because they believe that those are constructed from the hegemony and then that leads to this fourth premise which is this idea that we find truth through narrative um and so i i understand what crt is i can define crt i define crt in my book i'm not the only one who is able to define critical race theory um there are a lot of people out there defining critical race theory and anybody who's i've seen some of the same stuff right everybody's reeling against it but nobody can define it um and in some of those feats you have people who give a definition but it just doesn't matter right um because that's a dodge you know um but but yeah critical race theory is definable um there is an entire literature out there on um on critical race theory from critical race theorists yeah that's good and and here's an interesting question that um i'd love to get your thoughts on this is from mary beth she says in the midst of all of this what does or what does of what does sorry the broad evangelical church need to repent so i think she's asking is there anything the broad evangelical church does need to repent for because you see that a lot people will say you know the church needs to repent we all need to repent and so do you just reject that all together or what would your thought yeah no because what i mean sinners need to repent right yeah sinners need to repent and not not broad evangelicalism right broad evangelicalism how do you even how do you even you know look at that categorically you know no sinners need to repent um and and there may be collective people collective groups that that that need to repent um the southern baptist convention has dealt with this for example um with its history and its founding and you know things of that nature um and so yeah there was there was repentance there from you know from from from that particular group but even that was symbolic because the people who did that were dead right they're they're they're gone yeah and the people to whom they did that were dead they were they were gone um so no no absolutely not yeah uh here's another question from somebody who hasn't adopted son from ethiopia she says my husband and i are white and i've had people tell my son that we were colonizing him by adopting him could could votey speak to this what what advice would you give to these parents about what to how to talk to their son and how to navigate that sort of sticky situation yeah well [Laughter] yeah so remember when i talked about not being sanctified enough for twitter um i'm almost not sanctified enough for people who will look at a child who has had the privilege of being adopted and look at a family that has made the immense sacrifice of adopting and have anything to say to that child that's not your business you have no idea who these people are you have no idea what these people's intentions are and the other thing is this again that's this sort of racial and ethnic and non-national essentialism going on here again what's funny about that is some of these same people are the ones who want america to open up its borders so that everybody can leave their nation and come to america well which is it do we believe that everybody needs to stay in their nation and with their ethnicity and not have any mixing and mingling so that everybody can hold on to the purity right what that means today you know or do we believe that that that that people do move that by god's providence people do end up in other places and circumstances by god's providence i ended up because of slavery i ended up being having the privilege of being raised in the center of the universe in the greatest republic in the history of the world and the place where people all over the world will give everything in order to be there i carry the magic passport right because of this horrible reality that my ancestors went through so again anybody who's saying that they don't understand the providence of god they don't understand you know the privilege of of adoption um yeah that anyway then why'd you get me started on that why why i you know i think it's so heartbreaking though it's so heartbreaking to see how this is affecting people in their families in their in their everyday lives and even coming between parents and children it's it's really heartbreaking and uh this and i write about that also in the book i read about that also i think in chapter nine where i talk about this sort of adoption issue and there is this phenomenon the reason that we adopted seven children is not because we went looking to adopt seven times we went looking to adopt one time and then after that adoption agencies were calling us because most adoption agencies if a if a black birth mother says that she wants to place her child with a black family the overwhelming majority of adoption agencies don't have one there's not one available just let that sink in for a moment yeah and so here are people who step in where they are needed right where in many instances there wasn't a black family available and then some family that didn't put their lives on the line has the audacity to be offended by the fact that that family did what needed to be done i i just i have very little patience for that yeah it's good uh lynn wants to know she says i'm starting to see posts from christians saying things like crt isn't all true but it's not all bad don't overreact just like not everything is racism not everything is crt you can't throw all of it out so how can we as christians respond to people who are saying that that what we're talking about in this livestream today is an overreaction or like the boogeyman as you put it yeah here's what i don't ever see i don't ever see the elements of crt that are good number one being presented and being presented honestly usually people will say something like yeah we do need to focus on you know have an honest discussion about race okay you you you haven't how is that crt right because crt is not an honest discussion about race the the underlying premises of crt are ruined from the word go right so that's the first problem the second problem is you have to show me where crt is contributing something that we don't have in the scriptures it's good that we don't have in a better way in the scriptures because now you're arguing against the sufficiency of scripture so no crt even if you're just talking about um in the social sciences let's let's just get away from the the sufficiency of scripture for a moment and let's just talk about in the social sciences even in the social sciences crt is useless in the social sciences crt is ruined from the word go it's not making any contributions that are absolutely beneficial and necessary from the word go because its underlying dispositions are bankrupt so even if we just go there not to mention if we come into you know bible country and start talking about what the bible has to say about you know race ethnicity um you know sin salvation reconciliation and so on and so forth so yeah that's not people say that because it sounds good what they're trying to do is you know to set the equivalency you know they're they're trying to have this sort of third way you know and and a lot of the books that are coming out about this are these sort of you know weak lymph wristed mealy mouth third way books right these guys are bad over here and these guys are bad over here um but i'm balanced you know yeah and what ballot what balance means is i accept the assumptions of crt but i use the word gospel a lot yeah oh that's good i i was actually talking with someone the other day about the word balance like everybody thinks that's such a good goal like i want to be balanced well sometimes you want to be balanced but there are some things you don't want to be balanced and you don't want to be balanced when it comes to murder you want to be against murder right you know it's like you don't want to try to find some middle ground um here's a question from youtube and i think this is this is the question so many people are wanting to know should we stop listening to pastors who support crt and i'll even add to that question and say when is it time to sort of maybe stop listening to a pastor who maybe even rejects crt officially but still sort of uses the categories and employs the language has that third kind of way when is it time to just to stop listening to them on other things or do you think that you can separate them what would your advice be yeah two things number one fight for your relationship with your pastor and number two stop calling people who are not your pastor your pastor the guy you listen to online because you like his style that's not your pastor that's number one number two if you don't have a real pastor somebody who's shepherding your soul get one and have a real relationship with that person because if you have a real relationship with that person then you fight for that relationship you go sit down face to face with that person and it's not until you recognize in that face-to-face conversation that there's something heretical being pushed here that you make such a drastic decision but i think one of the reasons that we wrestle with you know when do i stop listening is that we don't have real relationships with real pastors and so we we call a guy our pastor that we watch on a screen and and he's not um if you just watch somebody on the screen and you know they start going in the wrong directions watch somebody else on the screen right um that's not that that's not costly um but if you have somebody who really is your shepherd then you fight for that relationship with everything you've got it's good jamie wants to know in your book you say that the division crt is causing in the church is necessary can you explain that because this is one of those arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of god and we are to destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of god so it's necessary that this division comes if there are people in the church who are identifying themselves as a christian or even if they're not identifying themselves as christian um when ideologies like this are being presented just again if somebody's talking about vishnu and krishna and you know shiva and karma and reincarnation what do you do if somebody brings that into your church you identify that as something that's a threat to the gospel that is another gospel um and and so it's necessary at that point that we have division between us and that other gospel this is no different it's good we have time uh for a couple more here this is from lauren she's asking do you have friends and or family that are cr critical social justice warriors that you dialogue with anything you've learned from them or about the movement in conversations um do i yes i mean i've got people all around me who i know and whom i love and you know one of the things that i try to communicate in the book but people don't seem to realize or appreciate is that a number of the people that i name in the book are friends mentors heroes of mine and i can still i still consider um these people friends um and if you have a problem with that then you don't understand friendship you know um and so yeah i do have people who think differently about this i have had you know many interactions with people who think differently about this and over the years that has really helped me to sort of hone the way that i speak about this um and and come to a place where um i feel more comfortable and confident with the positions that i've taken and come to a place where i realize where i need to press and where i don't that's good well we'll do a final question here this is from youtube from nathaniel uh he wants to know as a student at christian university that's embracing crt which boy that that's happening everywhere so many college students are facing this he's asking what should we as students do to combat it yeah that's a difficult one because you're paying these people to be your teachers um and and so on on the one hand there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance that goes on and you know we do this there's a message that i've often done at homeschool conferences and the title is harvard or heaven right like what are we preparing our children for and the cognitive dissonance that takes place is when we say on the one hand i want to send my child to be mentored and discipled and taught by these people and then on the other hand we say i don't want my child to come away from these people with the ideology that they're pushing but but i'm paying money for these people to give my child that ideology um or if i'm a student right i'm i'm paying for these people to give me this ideology um i mean sometimes we do that um you know i've i've done that um myself but if you do it be honest about what you're doing be honest about the fact that you're in enemy territory that there's something that you need and you're there to get get that and get out but you're not there to fix the institution right you you're not paying you know tens of thousands of dollars so that you can fix an institution and if you are um you you're not smart enough to be in college yeah that's that's good uh any final words you'd leave us with uh with the people who have just read through your book and have been so helped by it what what final word did you like to leave us with today well first of all thank you um i i'm really encouraged i've been overwhelmed by the response to the book by the number of people who have purchased the book um i just yeah been been amazed and overwhelmed by that and i'm grateful for people who are reading it and who are recommending it and being helped by it and so just know that um i i want this to be a tool for you um because i want you to be helped in this because i believe that this is something worth fighting for um i believe that the bride of christ is beautiful and glorious and prized and precious to our savior who died to redeem her and because of that we need we need to fight for her we need to defend her we need to protect her um and that's the other thing that really worries me about a lot of the language you asked me the question about you know what evangelicalism needs to repent of it's amazing to be how people are blaspheming the bride of christ today you listen to some people and they talk about the bride of christ as though she's the of babylon not as though she is the precious blood-bought bride of christ whom he died to redeem and is going to you know return to to to take unto himself and i think we need to i think we need to think about the church in that way and so my hope is that i've helped people to do that well indeed you have and that's such a strong and beautiful word and we're just so grateful that you joined us for this time today for everybody watching we're gonna say goodbye to dr buckham right now but stay tuned because i've got some announcements but uh dr bockham thank you god bless you and you have a great day thanks so much for joining us today uh you are most welcome it's been my pleasure all right we'll talk to you soon all right everybody so i promised to give you some information about how to join our facebook book club so this is a a private facebook book club and every time we do a new book we open up the group for new members and then we close it and the reason we do that is because we want to sort of read through the book together and not have people joining us in the middle of a book or or something like that so right after this live stream the book club group i guess it is group will open back up for new members and we'll leave that open for a few weeks so that new people can join us for our next book study and if you want to join the book club group wait till after this live stream and you can go to facebook.com groups slash elisa childers book club so that's facebook.com slash groups slash alisa childers book club and we're going to open that back up this is very important you will have to agree to a belief statement and the group rules in order to be allowed into the group uh it's just we like to keep a group of like-minded people who are pursuing jesus and wanting to to learn more about our worldview why we believe what we believe so that's why we have that belief statement it's a very general basic christian belief statement and we also have some group of roles that you have to agree to so you must agree to both of those things in order to be let into the group again that's facebook.com groups slash elisa childers book club i want to let you know about a couple of live streams that we've or a couple of events we have coming up one is a live stream on the 26th of july that's this month on the 26th at 7 00 pm central so that's 5 p.m pacific 7 central 8 eastern i'm going to be talking with john and corey cooper of the band skillet as well as jeremy camp and his wife adrian about all of this phenomenon of deconstruction as it's relating to the contemporary christian music industry we are not experts on deconstruction but we do have uh sort of a bird's eye view and insight into the contemporary christian music industry and what specific things about that might be contributing to the the deconstructions that we're seeing from contemporary christian music artists so tune in here on youtube for that on the 26th at p.m central i also want to let you know next week if you enjoyed this interview you're probably going to enjoy next week's interview with my good friend monique dusan from the center for biblical unity we have a little teaser for you that i'm going to leave you with today but thank you so much for watching for tuning in for asking such great questions and stay tuned for this little teaser and we will see you next time [Music] so when you open twitter and youtube oh twitter and you start looking at what people are saying what drives you what drives you crazy oh it's a lot of things you only want one i think what drives me crazy is the idea that my voice as a black woman because it doesn't go along with culture is usually downplayed talked about made to seem like well that she's just talking white but then on the other hand it's like well black people aren't monolithic and black people all think differently but as soon as you step out of the the narrative um then it's it's white so i think that drives me crazy where it's like but i thought that we weren't all the same so i think that you know you want to lift black voices but y'all won't lift my black voice and i know a lot of people even say hey monique everything you just said you know you're just letting white people off the hook i get it and i get it from both sides so i get that i'm a trump supporting blah blah blah or i for some reason when i use the word unity it triggers people and so then i got like i'm a blm loving dot dot dot i'm like you know neither one of those are actually right but you

Channel: Alisa Childers

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Length: 64min 19sec (3859 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021