Exposing & Opposing Social Justice Theology | Guest: Dr. Voddie Baucham | Ep 282

[Music] hey guys welcome to relatable happy friday today i am talking to dr vody backham i am so excited about this and i know a lot of you are too he has been so helpful in helping me shape my biblical world view and his ministry has been so influential over thousands and thousands of people and he has special insight into social justice theology and how it is damaging the evangelical church today and the particular ways that it is incongruent with the biblical worldview so i am so excited to talk to him to hear about his story and his testimony how he came to know the lord and how the lord has led him down this journey of having so much influence and then we will talk uh especially and particularly about the gospel and why it is better than the critical theory theology and philosophy that is being uh shoved in our faces today so without further ado here is dr vody backham dr bakan thank you so much for joining me it's my pleasure i'm glad to be here i'm glad we finally worked this out yes me too i think most people listening to this and watching know exactly who you are they have watched your videos especially lately but can you tell everyone who you are and what you do just in case there are some people who don't know yeah well i'm i'm vody bakum i am i mean i wear a lot of hats i've been preaching for three decades now and have served the church in a number of capacities as pastor and itinerant preacher and um five years ago we moved to lusaka zambia i was serving in houston texas where we planted a church there um in spring in north houston and um the lord called us to zambia five years ago to come and help start the african christian university here uh which was started by the reformed baptist uh churches of zambia and so yeah we've been here for the last five years married to bridget for 31 years we have nine children seven sons and two daughters and we have now two grandsons and seven of our children are actually here they're still at home they're still here with us um so yeah that that's who i am and you were born and raised in los angeles were you raised in a christian home no my i was raised by a single mother a single teenage buddhist mother my my parents met and had me when they were in high school um i got got married because that's kind of what you did you know i was born 1969 but they didn't stay married and so my mother raised me um as a single mother she grew up in church but um eventually left that behind and went into buddhism um a lot of people are shocked to hear that but there was a a a vibrant black buddhist scene in los angeles during that time it was kind of the whole age of aquarius type thing you know and eastern mysticism was big yeah eastern mysticism was big and all of the the the the free love culture and the drug culture and the psychedelic culture and buddhism just really was on the rise at that time and so she didn't like how political in her understanding the black church had become and she didn't want to be part of the black power movement and generally those were kind of the two streams you know got martin luther king and malcolm x um and and so my f my father was more of a kind of malcolm x you know type uh person and you know some of the people around were more of the you know non-violent you know martin luther king you know political means type people but she was looking for something more transcendent um and so she became a buddhist and you know that i didn't grow up going to church i didn't grow up around christians or christianity i never heard the gospel really until i got to university well that's what i was about to ask how did you hear the gospel and how did you become a christian i mean i know that could be a an entire conversation in itself but just kind of briefly how did that happen yeah well i um i went to high school in san antonio and you know in in in texas um you know football is everything right um and and not only that but there's the fellowship of christian athletes is this really big you know deal and so in in texas high school football when i was playing that there were three things that you did and all of these three things had to do with the coach getting as much time with you as as legally possible right um the state has all these rules about how much time you can practice how much time you can you know spend you know in meetings and all this other kind of stuff and so you played football and then you ran track because that was the way for you to get in shape and get bigger stronger faster you know while you were preparing for football the next season and you participated in nfca um which again i didn't mean a whole lot for me other than um you know there there's an another group you know on on campus that i was adjacent to and so when i went off to play football in college it was you know kind of a big buzz you know uh because i was you know considered a little bit of a big deal and there's a guy on campus who was working in um campus crusade saw in my bio it's always interesting when you first go to college as a college athlete you know it's not a whole lot to put in your bio you've never played a game in college right you gotta so you just throw everything in there and so he saw on there that i was affiliated with the fellowship of christian athletes i had no idea that this didn't mean anything to me and came and talked to me about the possibility of starting a bible study with the football players realizing a couple of minutes that i didn't know jesus from the man and the moon and basically he spent the next three weeks talking to me about christianity about the gospel a lot of questions i didn't really understand a lot of things he tried to use this sort of four spiritual laws you know with me but i there were so many assumptions even in that that he needed to back up you know and so we spent we spent about three weeks together his name was steve morgan uh you know we still stay in contact to this day but one day steve came to meet with me it was friday november 13 1987 and i realized i didn't have any more questions and i i got it and so i laid down on the floor in the locker room while i was waiting for him and i just prayed i didn't even know what to pray i was like god you know the thing you did for steve that he's been telling me you want to do for me now's good um and uh yeah and and just sort of never looked back wow that is awesome and you went to seminary you have several degrees so how did that happen did you know immediately that you wanted to pursue this professionally or what was that journey like no not at all um [Music] i i was you know as we as as we say you know i was on fire for the lord right i was excited about this and that excitement came from a number of sources um you know when steve came into the locker room he was late i don't know why he was late that day and he would bring me material i would ask him questions and he would answer my question or if he didn't have an answer he would go get material to help answer my questions and you know i guess he was late getting some stuff together for us to look through a read through together and he came and i'm just bawling and he asked me you know what's wrong and i'm telling him what's going on he's man that's good news and i'm still just bawling and he says but what's wrong and i just said to him you know i had a a cousin named jamal jamal and i were about six months apart in age i was six months older than him and when i got old enough to find a little trouble in south central l.a or for trouble to find me my mother shipped me out and i moved from los angeles to beaufort south carolina where i went to live with her oldest brother my uncle who's a retired drill instructor in the marine corps and i got out of trouble um you know very very quickly and it was amazing just not only having a man in the home but having gi joe um in the home it was just it was incredible and he had he'd retired after 22 years in the marine corps and anyway jamal didn't leave south central jamal started selling drugs and eventually jamal was shot and killed and i had gone to jamal's funeral the year before i went to college and so steve comes to the locker room i'm sitting there balling he's asking me what's wrong and i said i should be able to pick up the phone right now and call my cousin but i can't because he's dead and and this is true and i believe it is then i i don't think i'll ever see him again no and so steve did two things number one he sat there and he cried with me and number two he asked me if there was anybody else that i needed to call and so i started calling people i started calling family and friends and you know and and just started evangelizing sharing and sharing my faith and eventually started talking about that on campus eventually i joined the fellowship of christian athletes at rice university and you know really had my first preaching opportunity through that group and when i had my first preaching opportunity at this group of meetings that we were doing at some high schools um i just i i didn't know what to say other than i think i found what i'm supposed to do and uh i went i wouldn't told the pastor of the church that i was attending at the time and you know it's this joke about you know black church experience versus white church experience you know and white church experience you go tell your pastor i think i'm called to preach and he says okay great we'll sign you up for seminary um for me i went and told my pastor i think i'm called to preach and he looked at the calendar and said third sunday of next month we'll all find out oh my gosh and so oh that was that that was it you know sort of a baptism by fire yeah wow that's amazing and so you ended up at oxford several years later correct yeah yeah i did um so i i eventually i left rice my senior year um nobody told me that you're not supposed to transfer in your senior year but uh i started preaching when i was a junior and you know here i am a you know football player you know this future nfl prospect and i start preaching and you know in texas what that means is you're gonna get invited to go speak at all kind of you know events all over the place and that's what was happening but again i was very young in the faith i didn't know much at all had just begun to you know read the bible and understand the bible um and you know here i was because when i preached at my church then they licensed me right so now i'm a licensed baptist minister which again whatever whatever that meant and so i'm getting all these invitations but i don't know anything and so um i i was just convicted i i need to know what i'm talking about and uh so i looked into you know transferring finding some place where i could go and study and providentially the lord sort of hemmed me in where i needed to stay in houston you know my wife bridget and i we married the summer between my sophomore and junior year and yeah yeah we we met january 21st and married june 30th um by myself that's amazing yeah yeah and then we had our first child 10 months later oh my goodness yeah we were we were efficient so bridgette was pregnant um she was student teaching she had to stop student teaching because of some preterm labor issues so she couldn't leave houston so i'm like okay i need to start preparing where do i go i'm riding around houston one day and i see houston baptist university never heard of it before i go and talk to some people there and talk about what's happening with me and what i want to do and and long story short i end up transferring uh my senior year to houston baptist university and i did i was about 14 months i took 46 credit hours in 14 months at hbu um you know being married and a new father and then i went immediately from there to southwestern seminary um and then i went and did a doctor of ministry degree at southeastern seminary and i felt like two things one my my my credentials were too baptist and then two i had some other you know personal things that i wanted to do so i got permission to do the last year of my doctoral ministry degree as the first year of a phd or a d phil in the ecology in oxford of the d field at oxford i got special permission from the president paige patterson to to go and do that so we sold our home we moved to england and um and and spent a year there at oxford uh while we were there bridget became um very ill we almost lost our that year and we ended up moving back um again by god's grace i was able to finish the first doctoral degree but didn't finish the second one and uh but you know that that was that was our little foray into academic life in in the uk um oxford was interesting um you know where people get excited when you talk about studying at oxford but it was an ordeal it was hard um the best way i could describe it is again it was a theological um you know education but the best way i could describe it is the people that i was studying with there and learning from there they believed little and practiced less um and it was it was rough being in that environment but i i praise god for it because it really helped prepare me for the ministry that he called me to you know amen and you have had uh a long ministry at this point at least um it seems that way from what i know we were listening to you when i uh when you were on focus on the family many years back when i was growing up that's a program that my parents listened to often in the car when we were going to school you've written several books but recently a lot of people who are my age who maybe didn't know who you were before didn't listen to you before even though you've been around for so long they have now watched your videos on things like cultural marxism on ethnic gnosticism on social justice and they've gained a lot of insight from you and your sermons and your interviews on on these topics have really opened a lot of people's eyes into these dangerous and insidious forms of theology that are seeping into the evangelical church how did you start talking about these subjects in in what made you realize okay these things are a threat and i need to start discussing them so you know it's really interesting and i'm glad we we segued into it this way because a lot of people um don't really understand why i deal with these things from this perspective some people will say you know i'm trying to curry favor with white people some people will say i'm insensitive some people will say i don't understand blackness or black the black struggle or or or whatever you know um but here's the deal my first book was published in 2004 the title of the book was the ever-loving truth can faith thrive in a post-christian culture so here i am at oxford you know to around you know 99 2000 and i'm working on um my my dissertation a critical analysis of the history and theology of the nation of islam right the black muslim movement malcolm x and you know and these guys and elijah muhammad and and and so on and so forth and and i'm there at oxford and i'm running into this pernicious influence of liberalism and post-modernism and i'm i'm seeing this stuff and so i i just really began to be wary of these threats um this this threat of of of post-christian culture of the these these sort of influences and so i started um you know looking into things like foucault and darada and you know you know all of this sort of stuff and also you know ideas of inclusivism and all these all these liberal ideas right that are that are coming to the church and eventually i start reading about people like you know again not just marx and and hegel and people like this you know the sort of classical marxist stream but also antonio gramsci and the frankfurt school um and this sort of this sort of new stream of of cultural marxism and critical theory and so on and so forth and so i've been talking about this stuff for nearly two decades now and it's it's and i've been saying for nearly two decades now that this stuff is dangerous and that its foundations are are creeping in and and will have devastating effects and so this is kind of how i came to this and the way i described it to someone you know because people have said things like well well you talk about this but then you don't talk about that or you talk about this but then you don't mention you know these justice issues or this or that or the other and what i say to them is i've been standing on this wall for almost two decades right i'm not saying that there are no other walls to stand on but this this one's mine right this is this is the wall that i've been standing on and by the way the enemy that i've been saying for two decades is trying to come over this wall well well they're over the wall now and so this is definitely not the time when i'm going to abandon this wall right um so it's interesting the other interesting thing is so i wrote that was my first book in 2004 then i wrote a trilogy of books um family driven faith family shepherds what he must be if he wants to marry my daughter and these books really i put in the category of applied apologetics and apologetic from biblical manhood and the importance of of the family and family discipleship i've been pushing home education um and home you know on family discipleship for a long time the interesting intersection between these things is this uh according to critical theory um you know there are there are a lot of forms racism takes a lot of forms it is inherently structural and it takes a lot of forms in one of the forms you know robin d'angelo is famous for this she calls it aversive racism right and she gives a list of things that qualify as aversive racism and one of the things that qualifies is attributing disparities between majority and minority or between oppressors and the press if you attribute those disparities to anything other than racism that is aversive racism right and so one of the things that people you know are harping on is you know people who are talking about um you know fatherlessness and um you know abortion and you know these sorts of things and and and educational issues and stuff within uh minority communities the immediate accusation is you're victim blaming and you're perpetuating white privilege and white supremacy because you are attributing disparities to something other than racism and saying that people can and should do better right this is just not allowed and so interest interestingly enough so here's here's look at my publishing record and the stuff that i've written and people are using the things that i've been writing by the way i grew up without a father i grew up in a community i i couldn't remember i didn't know people who had fathers right it just it just it just didn't happen it just did not compute that you had a mother and a father in your home and so i experienced these devastating effects i see these devastating effects and i start writing about these things because of the devastating effects that i've seen and ironically because i put the emphasis on that syllable people say that i've actually internalized racism and so it's just it's just it's pernicious it's it's incredibly pernicious right tell me well again we could spend hours just on this topic but social justice i think well you can tell me if you think that it is the umbrella under which things like ethnic gnosticism and cultural marxism exist or maybe you feel that marxism is the umbrella under which social justice and ethnic gnosticism exist or maybe you feel like critical theory is the umbrella so whatever you feel like is the umbrella um if you could describe what that is i think critical theory is the umbrella and i really i think you had neil shinvy on a while back yes i did um and i love uh shin villa i love shinvi's work one of the things that i've really gleaned from him is how counterproductive it can be to talk about cultural marxism one because people kind of get confused because you know there's a couple of different strains and of it and secondly because it does exactly what social justice does but in the opposite direction and so i've said for a long time that the problem with the idea of social justice is that it frames the conversation in such a way that if you disagree with it you are not just wrong but you're ungodly because you're against justice right and so it really shuts down the possibility of any pushback well i think the same thing happens when we start talking about cultural marxism and you know nobody wants to be a marxist and when i when i talk about cultural marxism again i've been talking about this for decades now and not just sort of pointing the finger and saying ah you're a cultural marxist and you know this and the other and putting people outside the camp um but i i think talking about critical theory um which really comes from the the cultural marxist and especially the the uh the the neo-marxist and the frankfurt school uh i think i think doing that helps people understand that that this is a world view and because you know when you hear cultural marxism we know what marxism is and everybody's like no you know i'm not a marxist so whatever you're saying you know i'm not that i think when you start talking about critical theory and presenting critical theory as a world view which it actually is i i think it sort of opens up an avenue for people to understand what's going on and why it's important to address it from a worldview perspective right and basically in very simple terms and you can correct me if i'm wrong but all of these terms have to do with seeing the world as the oppressed versus the oppressor hegemonic power is basically how you classify people according to their group identity that is how you understand truth that's how you understand morality that's how you understand economics and politics is the oppressed versus the oppressor and defining equity as redistributing power from the perceived oppressor to the perceived oppressed oppressed whether or not that oppression is actual whether or not that oppression is individual but simply according to group identity categorizing people as oppressed versus oppressor and then trying to get power from the so-called oppressor and giving it to the oppressed by whatever means possible would you say that that is an apt description of kind of all of these things in a way yeah i think i think that's that's that's a very good description of it and it's really about power dynamics i mean that that that is the issue that everything comes down to power dynamics and people who have power versus people who don't um and and there's a whole world view and i would say a whole quasi-religion a cult if you will that's built around these terminologies that are designed to explain um these power dynamics but yeah that's what it's all that's what it's all about and it does this comes from you know hegel uh who's marx's mentor and marx um you know these things these things flow from that a lot of people just sort of jump on marks but you got to understand when marx is writing you know when he's writing coming out of the feudal area era and into the industrial era and early industrialism wasn't pretty you know um you see these big factories and you know child labor and all this you know it just it just it wasn't pretty um and so people have people are trying to explain you know um how how this thing um works and so that idea you know coming from even from the feudal era where there are the haves and have-nots and then using that as a framework to understand this new industrial era as well um it it it really is a a lens and it's a set of world view assumptions that that sees everything from that perspective and and can only see things from that perspective and views the act of not seeing things from that perspective as a byproduct of the oppression of that perspective right and that is why as you said earlier that when you don't ascribe to the tenets of for example critical theory people accuse you of internalized white supremacy or internalized oppression and so it really is a way i mean it's really an epistemology it's it's a way to understand knowledge and to understand truth altogether and it challenges the the very idea of objective reality i know you talked about on glenn beck's program that document that was put out by the modern museum of african american history and culture that that associated uh whiteness with rational thinking and objective scientific method right and i think so so let's let's look yeah go ahead so let's look at that in light of what's happening right now so like black lives matter is built on this narrative and again i'm here in zambia and it's it's just horrible being an expat living outside of the united states right now seeing the picture that's being painted of america and the narrative is that police officers are hunting and killing black men do people believe that where you are that that's happening in america yes they do yes they do that people that the police officers are just you know hunting and killing black men and and then you look at the numbers and the numbers just do not bear that out and then they go well okay but you know that's that's the numbers but you know aren't you know black people disproportionately more likely to be shot no actually the research demonstrates to us now that no it's not we're not being disproportionately targeted you know being killed by the police then they go okay yes but these particular occurrences and there have been a couple of articles that have been just awesome um one by hughes and one by mcquarter where they have basically mapped out how every one of you know these names that we know right philando castile um you know george floyd um you know tamir rice winnie all of these all of these every one of them has happened to a white person usually multiple times right and so people know george floyd's name but they don't know tony tempa's name very similar to george floyd except they had their knee on his back for 14 minutes instead of you know under nine minutes and they mocked him while he died so all of these points of the narrative right um are there they're just true but when you start going to the data to try to demonstrate this ah guess what now you're using the scientific method right now using quantitative analysis and that by the way is white right right and so now it's like wait a minute you have a narrative that's not true we can demonstrate that the narrative is not true but when i use quantitative analysis to demonstrate that the narrative is not true your argument is that the way i'm disproving your narrative is actually part of the oppression that your narrative is trying to teach right and so what's the answer the answer is you have to listen to black voices you have to listen to black people's stories but only certain certain black voices recommend to your black voice no no no no so they would say that i'm not a black voice i'm a black body but not a black voice the only black voices are the black voices that agree with critical theory and robin d'angelo exactly exactly well robin d'angelo is the queen of critical theory you know and so you know the assumption there's a worldview assumption that is the starting point the starting point is critical theory and so critical theory sets the table as to what is true versus what is not true this is the world view this is the meta narrative right for us it's creation fall redemption consummation for them it's whiteness white privilege white supremacy um and then white fragility you know right um and so you know again even you we can't even people say well we need to we need to have the discussion well i mean you know i was born in 1969 all we've been doing my entire life is talking about race what do you mean we need to have the discussion we've never stopped having the discussion about race and the whole idea there is another idea that comes from critical critical theory and that is that this truth comes from narrative this truth comes from the voice of the oppressed because the oppressed and this goes all the way back to hegel right the oppressed by virtue of their oppression have access to a knowledge and understanding above and outside of the hegemony that those who are inside of the gemini don't have and so this is where i came up with the term ethnic gnosticism right um it is a it is a form of gnosticism that that locates truth and stories and narratives of the oppressed but the stories and narratives of the oppressed have to be told from the perspective of oppression because if they are not then they are being told from the perspective of the oppressor and they are actually upholding and reinforcing that oppression so it's it's it's complete circular reasoning it's nonsensical and it gets us nowhere um and christians have either imbibed it and or they are trying to ignore it but they're using the terminology that comes out of it well i think that there is a lot of um there's a lot of white guilt that i think perpetuates or encourages particularly white evangelicals to embrace this kind of stuff for the exact reasons that you articulated i have sincerely jesus loving friends who after george floyd uh was killed started out of nowhere it seemed like to me regurgitating these kind of white privilege white guilt talking points when we hadn't even figured out whether or not this was actually a a racist uh murder or racist killing of a man it was all of a sudden like it was just automatic uh an automatic regurgitation and reaction because of this guilt that they have been convinced that they collectively bear and that they have to agree with the narrative or else like you said they're just proving their white supremacy and you can't talk about data you can't talk about truth because that's just proving that you're on the side of the oppressor no christian wants to be on the side of the oppressor because we hear jesus came for the oppressed and so like what do you do what does someone like me do to my jesus loving friends who seem to be motivated by this white guild and are just regurgitating things that simply aren't true and are not biblical because they want to come across as loving yeah well you know i've been talking about just these these these five things one we have to expose and oppose critical theory and and and all of these ideologies we've we've got to expose this and we've got to oppose it we just we we have to have that as our starting point right um you know another thing that we need to do is we need to make sure that we keep law and gospel in order one of the things about this new religion uh this this wokeness is that it is very legalistic um it's uh you know you have to do the work of anti-racism that's how you do this there is no forgiveness you have to do the work of anti-racism you have to do it till you die and we don't always know what that means by the way it's always do the work and do better but what does that mean yes and it's and there's never solutions right there's never solutions i think a third thing is we need to have a mature and realistic understanding of our history and and and what i mean by that is there's there's a couple of ways to have an immature understanding of our history one is that childish understanding you know uh my kids i i love to hear the older kids and the younger kids um debate about me you know and it's things will happen like you know one of my younger sons the other day was saying how i could pick up the car and the older son was like no dad strong but he can't pick up the car and the younger one is like of course he could you know but that's that's being naive and immature they think you know that i can do no wrong and they think that i could you know i'm a superhero and i and there are some people who think about america like that and they're absolutely wrong but then on the other side there's the 1619 project right which has the the opposite of that which is our parents can do no right you know everything about america is racism and white supremacy and you know um and and nothing else is to be understood about america unless it's understood through that lens well i you know i think we have to have a a mature uh view of of who we are um and i i think also we need to make sure that we are fighting demons and not chasing ghosts and what i mean by that is you know when you ask people people say well you know structural racism obviously and i just go okay what is structural racism right and generally they'll eventually get around to two things one a narrative right and it'll go something like slavery jim crow segregation um you know mass incarceration redlining um you know and all the disparities of today are the results of all of those things and because those things cause the disparities all of these disparities are de facto uh evidence of systemic racism right which again critical theory anytime you see disparities the answer for the disparity is you know systemic oppression discrimination right yes discrimination and so the the problem with that is when you see these videos the really popular one that went around a while ago was you know the bob the tomato guy um yeah yeah yeah here it is he does what everybody does you know he takes this you know this selective tour through history and then he says i don't know what the solutions are exactly well why don't we have solutions well because we're chasing ghosts we're talking about you know things that theoretically manifest themselves in these ways and we won't even allow for other potential explanations which means we also don't allow for things that could could be that could alleviate some of these things right and so that's what i'll refer to when i say chasing ghosts because you you got to do the work of anti-racism well what is it i don't know a black person will tell you you know um but no no but you also hear at the same time if you ask a black person especially someone who is on the left side well black people shouldn't have to educate you there are plenty of resources out there we hear until that's right what is it do we need black people or should we not exactly but but so when i talk about you know fighting demons you know i'm talking about things that we know that we are that are out there that we can see for example you know racism is is very real and one of the things that we're not talking about is the darwinian evolutionary paradigm yes that gives rise to modern racism yes i've been thinking about that a lot recently i'm glad you brought that up this idea that black people and white people that the different races are different because they've evolved from different primates right black people evolved from the stronger less intellectual apes and white people from the the the weaker you know more intellectual chimpanzees and so forth and this explains the differences between well that's racism right one hand we're upholding this evolutionary mindset that really dogmatized racism again there was there was the idea of racism before you know darwin sort of codified these these these ideas and by the way he wasn't the first one to think in these terms but as far as the modern expression that's the way that we think well we need to attack that head on um and so then you get to things like eugenics and the eugenics movement and and you know black people making up 13 of the population but you know you know more than 30 of the abortions you know in in in black urban areas more black babies are aborted than born you know that's real um the people who are fighting against school choice who by the way happen to be teachers unions right who want to keep black students trapped in underperforming schools and so the answer answer's not throwing money at them because we look at schools like the new jersey school system there's an excellent documentary called waiting for superman right and everybody's like what's wrong with our schools they started off that way we're strong with our schools more money more money more money and then they show these people how much per student is being spent and immediately these people start going okay what are they doing with all this money right because absolutely ridiculous and then charter schools are outperforming public schools which is why the la unified school district right they're now saying that they want to to end all funding for charter schools before they'll come back by the way they also want to defund the police which is a whole nother um all together because you know education and defending the police yeah and so you know so one of the things one of the things that i've been involved in for a long time is promoting the idea of home education because the national home education research institute um you know their their research and i so appreciate the work that they've done it's demonstrating that home education is one of the ways that the achievement gap is bridged between my students right and so promoting things like home education and things like you know vouchers and things like this um police reform by the way there's a huge difference between police reform and defunding the police what's the difference it's world view see critical theory critical theory sees the police as enforcers of hegemony yep yes so if the police are in forces of hegemony well that's why you talk to a black police officer disrespectfully if you're a young white girl because it's not a black person it's the police it's the hegemony right and so if the police are you know a a necessary structure and things like this well then we re we reform policing but if the police are part of the hegemony you don't reform it you defund it yes so this language itself speaks to where these people are coming from oh sorry go ahead no the language of defunding the police is the language of revolution and by the way when you accept critical theory the ultimate end is revolution and the reason everybody wants to say i don't know what the solutions are is not because they don't know what the solutions are it's because they don't want to admit it because the relationship this the solution is overthrow the hegemony the solution is revolution and but you can't say that right right uh yeah and so anyway and that world view also takes away moral responsibility from the oppressed all of their responsibility for what ails the world is put on the so-called oppressor and so if someone brings up for example um homicide in these uh inner cities that is typically happening between black young men they don't want to talk about that because the they're part of an oppressed class and because they are part of the oppressed class it is actually the fault of the oppressor whom they would say are the police officers that are causing that violence to happen so i think that's why you hear a lot of them say okay well if we don't have the police officers anymore then you won't have that struck that structure of oppression and then crime will actually go down i heard a representative say the other day that if we defunded the police in these local cities it would just look like the suburbs just all of a sudden but like you said that is a world view when you believe that one of the big things about over police yeah yeah yes it is it is it is it is a it is a world view um it it it is a world view and so you know but my thing is the ir the ironic aspect of this is that as you just pointed out critical theory puts us on the tr on the track of chasing ghosts um while they work toward revolution and overthrow and takes us away from the track of actually putting our hands on things that are real and dealing with things you know um that are real and it's interesting you know again so i'm a martial artist um and i practiced brazilian jiu jitsu and i've been training in brazilian jiu jitsu since 2012 competing in brazilian jiu-jitsu since 2012 and a lot of police officers are trained in brazilian jiu-jitsu now the reason that they're trained in brazilian jiu jitsu is because unlike other martial arts brazilian jiu jitsu is about subduing an opponent with the minimum amount of force necessary right so whereas other arts are about you know hitting somebody as hard as you can or kicking him as hard as you can a brazilian jiu jitsu is about using various forms of control to subdue a point an opponent with the the least amount of force necessary and so one of the things that people are talking about and this is just one example right of of where you where you sort of get off the rails is they talk about choke holds right and you know people hear choke holds and they think you know when you're choking somebody you're trying to kill him um and actually um chokeholds uh save lives uh it sounds crazy right um but in brazilian jiu jitsu we use chokeholds all the time i teach people how to employ chokeholds i use them you know when we're grappling i use them in competition um and and it it is it is a way to subdue a bigger stronger opponent in a matter of seconds um and and very rarely are there complications again because you're especially there because they're you're not windpipe jokes you're not cutting off people's breathing but they're you know artery chokes where you're you know cutting off blood supply and people will go out in a matter of seconds and they can then be handcuffed you know put in a car or whatever now the problem however is that the police get very little training in going hand to hand and then using things like brazilian jiu jitsu so here's the great irony one of the things that i've been involved in since 2012 is training with police officers who are being trained in brazilian jiu jitsu so that they can you know use these things and use them very effectively and the answer is for police officers to have more training not less because here's the deal if somebody my size and i'm trained in martial arts if a police officer goes hands-on with me i have better training than he does and i will probably end up in a better situation we saw this in atlanta where two police officers couldn't handle you know this this this uh you know uh richard brooks richard brooks right and so he he ends up you know overpowering them taking their weapon and he ends up getting shot but here's the thing if police officers are going to take a guy like like me you know my size with my kind of training and they're going to go hands-on with me and i'm not going to go willingly well they're either going to have to if they can't choke me they're going to have to beat me into submission and of course that film will be all over the place and my family will get millions or they're gonna have to tase me which they tried to do with richard brooks and that didn't work out so well or they're gonna have to shoot me i would much rather these guys be trained properly in the use of you know these these restraints and and and methodologies but instead of doing that we're just going nope we're outlawing this and actually we're ironically putting people in more danger um by these sort of things not happening so that's just kind of one example of what i'm talking about when i say you know there's this narrative here and we you know go down the road of this narrative and think that we're working towards solutions and think that anybody on the other side of this right is somebody who's just you know trying to you know increase oppression or whatever um when when when nothing can be further from the truth and unfortunately this is republicans and democrats kind of fail in this arena that we only pay attention to the inner cities when we're kind of talking about them only almost as political pawns as a way to either indict the democrats that are over these cities or democrats saying that we're having guns flood in from the red states and different things like that and it's really unfortunate and as we are unwilling and unable to have these productive conversations like you were just talking about of solutions there are unfortunately people suffering uh there are police officers suffering there are these inner cities suffering and so um critical theory in the world view that it that it brings has disastrous and very tangible effects especially on vulnerable communities so um i appreciate you bringing that up could you i know that we have to let you go could you do me just one favor but before we leave um there are people who are listening to this while most people who listen to this podcast are already christians and they are seeking to um strengthen their biblical world view there may be people who are listening to this who do not know the gospel could you just briefly share the gospel to those people who maybe haven't heard it before yeah you know it's great we've been talking about this world view and how this worldview you know sees what's wrong with the world and critical theory sees oppressors and oppressed and the bible has a worldview as well and we talked about that meta-narrative creation fall redemption consummation there's a god who created the world and he created this perfect world um but then there was a fall our forefather adam fell into sin and all of us are guilty because of adam's sin he was our federal head our representative if you will and that brings not only guilt but it also gives us a sin nature and we are selfish and we desire our own way and we are opposed to god and opposed to all things that remind us of god and our god is holy and he is just and he must and he will punish sin and we all know that which is why one of the first things that we learn how to say is that's not fair right we want justice we crave justice and that's because the god who created us is a just god but justice demands that we pay for our sin and that payment for our sin is separation from god and separation not only through death but eternal separation in hell but again creation fall redemption where does that redemption come from even when the fall happens god says as the curse comes down upon the serpent i'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring he'll you'll bruise his heel but he'll he'll bruise your head and so christ the god man god wraps himself in flesh he not only takes on our humanity but he takes on our guilt he dies a vicarious substitutionary atoning death on the cross he dies a death that he doesn't owe in order to atone and pay a debt that we owe but can't pay and because of that as paul says in romans god is able to be just because he punishes sin in jesus and the justifier of by his faith in jesus and so we come to christ our substitute acknowledging our need for him repenting of our sin turning to christ in his finished work and god grants to us the righteousness that belongs to christ and places upon him the sinfulness that is ours that's creation fall there's redemption and then consummation listen our hope is not in doing the work of anti-racism our hope is in the age to come god will restore everything that is broken and we have a promise of that in his word a guarantee of that because of the person and finished work of jesus christ who will return again and set all things right and in the meantime our prayer is thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven and so we are interested in these issues and we do pursue these things not because we're looking for heaven on earth or believe we can create heaven on earth because we have a yearning in us for that which is broken to be repaired and christ will come again and do that beginning with the individual who comes to him through faith in his personal work thank you so much amen well i really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today amidst your busy schedule people can find you online votibalcom.com is that correct dot org dot org okay yeah and if they have a hard time with that just put vodi v-o-d-d-i-e and you will find me yes there aren't very many who who share your name uh well thank you so much i really appreciate you joining us today thank you it's my pleasure thank you so i just wanted to add a little closer to this episode because i i wanted to go a tiny bit deeper on uh what we were talking about when i brought up sincere jesus loving people particularly women regurgitating uh these critical theory talking points and regurgitating things about white guilt and white privilege and doing the work of anti-racism not realizing that they are borrowing from an anti-biblical worldview and if you need to know more about that go listen to my interview with neil shenvy we talked about critical theory what it is what all of these terms that we talked about today really mean and how they are so damaging to biblical theology go back and listen to that conversation it's going to blow your mind if you haven't listened to it if you have listened to it go back and listen to it again and take notes it is so important to understand what critical theory is and why it is simply incongruent with biblical theology and look to the christian women out there who have been reading things like white fragility and trying to apply it to their lives who have been told that in order to be a good christian you have to quote do the work of anti-racism and you have to talk about so-called systemic racism and you have to look at every discrimination or every disparity that exists between different ethnic groups and different socioeconomic classes and ascribe those disparities to discrimination and racism i would just highly encourage you to take a step back and to look at the world view that you are propagating and realize that it is not a biblical worldview you can listen to um more videos and sermons by dr vody backham you can go to shinvyapologetics.com my friend samuel say has a really good blog with resources and book reviews that talk about all of this my friend neil shin via simviapologetics.com he has reviews on color of compromise on be the bridge on white fragility on white awake all of these books that are being encouraged and are being promoted by the church right now they at least deserve a second look from a biblical perspective and let me just tell you if you are a christian who has bought into the idea that you have to push the social justice narratives in order to be loving in order to be kind in order to be on the side of justice and mercy i just want you to know that you have been duped you've been duped all the answers that we need for what justice looks like for what mercy looks like for what love looks like for what uh treating people as equal image bearers of god looks like it can all be found in scripture we don't have to borrow from critical theory in order to be lovers of justice in fact we have to go into god's word to tell us what justice actually looks like we have to go into the word of god to tell us what love and treating people equally and well and respectfully actually looks like we don't need to borrow from secular ideologies in order to be better christians that's ridiculous and even if you have so-called christians professing christians perpetuating this kind of ideology that doesn't mean that it's christ-like it doesn't mean that it's right and so i would just encourage you to take a step back and to examine some of the things that you have not just read but you've internalized and then regurgitated in the name of justice and mercy and weigh them against what the word of god says and i just pray for me for you for all of us to be discerning to be as wise as we possibly can and to realize that the gospel is not only enough it is the only thing that is enough and that doesn't mean that we don't also uh that we don't also obey god in our lives that doesn't mean that we don't also pursue just policies that doesn't mean that we don't care about justice and injustice of course we do and yes sure there is work associated with that and making sure that you are um trying to vote for a government that represents uh that is representative of um of real equity and real justice and so a government that is not discriminating against the rich a government that is not discriminating against the poor a government that is not discriminating against white or black of course that is something that we all want while still realizing that societies don't change without changed hearts and hearts don't change without the gospel of jesus christ and critical theory with the worldview that says everyone is the oppressed versus the oppressor in every disparity between those two groups is based on oppression and discrimination and racism it is incongruent with a biblical view and a biblical definition of justice and plus it's just not accurate and that's another thing that i want to say really quickly so unfortunately i have gotten into contentious conversations with christian friends in bringing up data that we talked about today that questioning the narrative that says that black people are being hunted by white people or being hunted by white police officers that the fatherlessness rate the abortion rate in the black community it's all due to systemic racism if you push back on that even citing so-called black voices like thomas soule like john mcquarter like jason reilly like vody bakum uh you get uh you get lambasted and you get accused of not being sufficiently empathetic you get accused of not being sufficiently compassionate because we are just supposed to listen and agree to uh people you know black lives matter activists for example without saying hey that's actually not factually true the data doesn't actually back that up and actually the biggest takers of black lives are abortion and black on black crime in these inner city communities if you say that that is considered racist that is considered not compassionate well i i would just um caution you from taking on that mentality and for um i would caution you from buying into the lie that says that you just have to nod in agreement when someone says that their experience um equates to uh equates to national data or when an experience or am a perspective is absolute truth that applies to the entire american system i would just caution you from embracing that it is not lacking compassion to talk about data in a truthful and in loving way it is not lacking compassion to talk about real solutions like we did today better training for police officers school choice uh making sure that mothers are are cared for and well-equipped to care for their children and making sure that planned parenthood doesn't uh plant their abortion mills specifically in these poor minority communities to make sure that they are getting as much business as possible from killing these black and minority babies it is not lacking compassion to push back against that because you see that embracing the narrative that every discrimination or every disparity that exists is due to discrimination or that black people are disproportionately being hunted by white police officers you see what kind of disarray and what kind of chaos that causes when it's not based on reality it's just not based on truth and it is not loving to allow someone to react to something that is not based on reality and truth and like he said about the the veggietales video about systemic racism you point to all these disparities and you just say that it's due to discrimination without any proof whatsoever and then you say there's really no solution you just have to do the work of anti-racism whatever that may be and i just don't think these nebulous conversations help anyone i don't think they help anyone so i encourage you i've got some homework for you read discrimination and disparities by thomas soule go listen to more of vody bakum's stuff uh go uh read people like john mcwhorter listen to people like glenn lowry coleman hughes those are not conservatives by the way but they have a very nuanced perspective on things like systemic racism and allow yourself to be challenged i allow myself to be challenged reading color of compromise and and wide awake and other books that you know who's the the authors i don't necessarily agree with politically but i am able to take in some of the things that they say that i think are productive and then realize that some of the world view that they are perpetuating simply isn't a biblical worldview and so i will never discourage you from reading things critically like that but just make sure that we are imbibing information critically from all sides and allowing ourselves to be challenged by truth and by fact not just by one person's experience or perspective but by truth and data in fact most importantly challenged and shaped and honed by the gospel of jesus christ and uh by the word of god which is supposed to shape our world view so i just wanted to end on that and i wanted to challenge you specifically those of you who are listening to this who disagree with me on everything that i say to widen your perspective dare i say listen to black voices is what we're always told but maybe listen to those that are outside of your ideological camp and um just just allow yourself to be honed and to be shaped in that way and um i think it is it would be much better if we were able to have conversations uh from uh between the disagreeing sides that don't erupt in accusations blanket accusations and empty accusations of racism simply because someone has a pushback okay that's all i have to say i hope that you guys have a great day and a great weekend and i will see you back here on monday we will be talking about next week we'll be talking about the end times with jeff durbin and i'm so excited about it so i will see you guys then [Music] you

Channel: Allie Beth Stuckey

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Id: MK4TT_6QDA8

Length: 66min 2sec (3962 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020