Critical Race Theory, Part 2: The Root Problem
00:00:00.000 | We plan to take the week of Thanksgiving off from the podcast to give you some
00:00:07.640 | time to listen to the Providence book audiobook, those excerpts that we
00:00:11.720 | published last week. I hope you will set aside time to do that. It's really
00:00:14.940 | important content. I think you'll be blessed by it. But we returned yesterday
00:00:18.520 | on Monday with a new episode on the growing debate over critical race theory.
00:00:22.320 | So what exactly is it? Pastor John is about to explain in this follow-up
00:00:27.040 | episode. On Monday we looked at the relational dimensions of the debate, and
00:00:30.600 | here now is Pastor John with Critical Race Theory Part 2, The Root Problem.
00:00:36.000 | So this is our second episode about critical race theory. I focused last time
00:00:43.280 | on two biblical relational principles that I so wanted to plead for, and I
00:00:51.120 | postponed a definition of what critical race theory is and the question of why
00:00:58.200 | it is so controversial and why it matters. So that's what we are about now
00:01:04.520 | in this session. In my understanding, critical race theory is worth talking
00:01:10.520 | about not only because it is causing divisions among Christians at points
00:01:15.280 | where I don't think those divisions need to exist, but also because in its main
00:01:20.880 | stream expression—not every use made of it, but in its main stream expression—it
00:01:29.720 | is another manifestation of the age-old enslavement of fallen human hearts to
00:01:39.720 | self-deification—I will be my own God—self-definition—I will define my own
00:01:48.200 | essential identity and self-determination. I will decide my own
00:01:55.240 | truth and my own morality without deference to any authority outside
00:02:01.640 | myself. Now, I'm not saying that everybody who has gotten help from
00:02:11.200 | delving into critical race theory is guilty of those things—not at all, not by
00:02:16.320 | a long shot. I'm saying these are the root problems of the mainstream,
00:02:23.400 | scholarly, decades-long development of critical race theory, which is why it is
00:02:31.000 | being so hotly contested and, in that sense, rightly contested. So my most
00:02:39.720 | fundamental aim here is to encourage us all in the convictions that we are not
00:02:45.760 | God, but Yahweh alone is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has spoken
00:02:52.160 | truthfully in Scripture. We are not those who can define our own essential
00:02:59.640 | identity. God does that by his Word, by his creation, by his blood-bought
00:03:06.720 | transformation of his people, and we do not have ultimate self-determination. God
00:03:13.080 | decides what is true, not we. God decides what is right, not we. And if we are
00:03:21.000 | saved from sin and for God, it will be God who saves us and not we ourselves.
00:03:28.840 | Now, even more specifically, I want to establish us in these convictions over
00:03:35.640 | against the core philosophical convictions of critical race theory
00:03:40.720 | because I believe with all my heart that these convictions—not those of critical
00:03:48.800 | race theory—will serve the cause of racial harmony, racial justice, and the
00:03:56.680 | flourishing of a joyful, respectful, Christ-exalting racial and ethnic
00:04:03.320 | diversity in the body of Christ. In other words, critical race theory is not a
00:04:09.680 | problem because it raises the challenge of racial justice and racial harmony and
00:04:17.480 | racial respect and racial glory. Instead, it's a problem because it fails us. It
00:04:26.520 | fails us as we try to take up these challenges in a hopeful, Christ-exalting
00:04:34.720 | way. Now, what is it, and how does it manifest
00:04:42.240 | this self-deification and self-definition and self-determination? As with most
00:04:51.880 | philosophical schools of thought—and that is what we are dealing with—you can
00:04:58.080 | define critical race theory generically with regard to its aims, or you can define
00:05:07.320 | it more essentially with regard to its core assumptions and conclusions. If we
00:05:14.760 | stay for a moment now at the generic level, critical race theory will not
00:05:20.360 | sound controversial because it will overlap with legitimate goals and
00:05:26.440 | concerns of many Christians. For example, the Purdue University website defines
00:05:33.840 | critical race theory in this generic way, like this, in terms of its goals.
00:05:40.880 | "CRT"—that's short for critical race theory—"CRT scholars attempt to understand"—so you
00:05:50.280 | can hear that's a totally legitimate effort, right? We all want to understand
00:05:54.880 | things, and we ought to. "CRT scholars attempt to understand, one, how victims of
00:06:01.960 | systemic racism are affected by cultural conceptions of race, and two, how they are
00:06:10.680 | able to represent themselves to counter prejudice." Now, if you don't read more
00:06:17.640 | than you should into any of those terms, there are many Christians who would say,
00:06:23.720 | rightly, "Well, those are my big concerns, at least some of them." So we might talk
00:06:31.120 | right past each other if we don't stop to get clarity about the meaning of
00:06:36.360 | critical race theory that we have in mind when we speak of it, either
00:06:40.400 | sympathetically or critically. In this and many other issues, we need to take
00:06:46.400 | care to get our definitions clear up front in our conversations. Now, if we go
00:06:55.520 | beneath these generic goals of critical race theory to the assumptions and
00:07:00.800 | conclusions of its mainstream exponents, things become seriously problematic for
00:07:09.200 | Christians with biblical convictions because this is not a neutral theory.
00:07:18.560 | It's laden with assumptions or viewpoints about reality that put it at odds with
00:07:28.840 | some biblical thinking. So let's try to get at this more essential definition of
00:07:37.240 | critical race theory. It helps us define critical race theory if we understand
00:07:43.400 | that it is an offshoot of critical theory. And what critical theory tries to
00:07:49.480 | do is understand society by viewing it primarily as interconnected groups which
00:07:58.280 | are related to each other as powerful or oppressed, advantaged or disadvantaged,
00:08:05.640 | or discriminated against. It studies these groups in order to find and
00:08:12.440 | challenge power structures that shape the relationships between groups. Now,
00:08:20.960 | that's where the word "critical" and "theory" get their meaning. It's a theory in the
00:08:27.200 | sense that it's a way of explaining how society works, and it's critical in the
00:08:35.680 | sense that it assesses and challenges—that is, is critical of—assesses and
00:08:44.320 | challenges the way groups exert power or are oppressed by that power. Now, even
00:08:52.160 | though critical theory may have started with a concern about the relationships
00:08:58.640 | of privilege and oppression between classes like rich and poor, white-collar,
00:09:05.680 | blue-collar, educated, less educated, professional tradesmen, bluebloods
00:09:10.840 | versus commoners, the theory now, as it has come into its fuller expression, has
00:09:19.440 | given rise to an array of focuses, theories, disciplines, studies from queer
00:09:26.480 | theory to fat studies. Because as soon as you focus on groups and power dynamics
00:09:35.200 | between them, you see them everywhere, right? Women, men, heterosexual,
00:09:41.680 | homosexual, fixed-gender, transgender, old, young, Western, non-Western, American,
00:09:49.960 | Canadian, able-bodied, disabled, short, tall, slender, fat. On every one of these
00:09:58.240 | pairs, you can find books and studies more or less shaped by critical theory, a
00:10:05.520 | focus on the identity of the group and a challenge of the power or the privilege
00:10:13.200 | of one group over another. So critical race theory—so add the word "race" to the
00:10:23.000 | term "critical theory." Critical race theory, then, tries to understand and
00:10:29.440 | challenge, deal critically with, the power and oppression relationships that have
00:10:36.680 | marked racial groups historically and still do today. Now, it's true that a
00:10:46.880 | focus on groups while minimizing the individual and a focus on power while
00:10:53.720 | minimizing other relational dynamics like love and humility and graciousness
00:11:00.040 | can skew our understanding and yield unhelpful strategies. Yes, that's true.
00:11:09.000 | Nevertheless, those very focuses, misleading as they might be, can also
00:11:16.360 | reveal insights that may be strategically helpful in moving toward greater justice.
00:11:26.320 | So what's the root problem? To dig down to what I think is the root problem of
00:11:34.120 | critical race theory in mainstream scholarly expression, I had to probe
00:11:41.680 | behind a few controversial statements which were at first baffling to me and
00:11:50.120 | then became revealing. Let me quote two of these statements and then describe my
00:11:58.720 | probing to the root issue. These are quotes from mainstream critical race
00:12:05.560 | theory or its proponents in Christian circles. Number one, "We cannot be
00:12:14.400 | anti-racist if we are homophobic or transphobic." Here's the
00:12:22.800 | second statement, and this time from a Christian conference moving in step with
00:12:30.120 | mainstream critical race theory, "Biblical inerrancy and infallibility
00:12:37.480 | are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought." Now my guess is that
00:12:46.440 | most of you hearing this are bamboozled by those two statements. What?
00:12:53.720 | How did they get there? That has been the most illuminating question for me. How
00:13:01.680 | did they get there? So let's take those statements one at a time and ask that
00:13:08.600 | question because it gets us to the root of the issue. So here's the first one.
00:13:14.480 | "We cannot be anti-racist if we are homophobic or transphobic." Let's make sure that we
00:13:22.960 | are clear here about what mainstream critical race theorists mean by
00:13:29.640 | homophobic and transphobic. They don't just mean the fear and hatred of people
00:13:38.160 | who try to change their sex or people who have sexual desires for people of
00:13:45.440 | the same sex. They mean homophobia, transphobia includes the Christian view
00:13:55.080 | that homosexual behavior is sinful and that trying to change your God-given sex
00:14:01.840 | is sinful. So what they're trying to say then is this. You, you John Piper, or you
00:14:09.040 | Evangelical, you can't hold these historic Christian convictions and be
00:14:17.000 | anti-racist. So the question is, why not? Or how did they arrive at that
00:14:26.000 | conclusion? And here's my answer, and it's my deepest problem with critical race
00:14:32.520 | theory. They arrive at this conclusion because at root they believe a person's
00:14:40.160 | essential identity is self-chosen, self-constructed, not God-designed or
00:14:49.040 | God-given. Or another way to say it would be that when it comes to our own
00:14:55.240 | identity, we are our own God. We do not acknowledge or submit to any divine
00:15:04.720 | truth or morality or theory as above us constraining or limiting our own
00:15:14.160 | self-definition, our own self-construction. So if I choose to be a
00:15:21.240 | woman, though God made me a man, I am right to do so. No God, no morality, no
00:15:30.000 | religion, no ideology can replace me as the self-determining, self-defining,
00:15:37.880 | self-deifying sovereign of my own identity. Now you may be asking, as I did,
00:15:45.720 | "Well, how does that explain the statement we cannot be anti-racist if we are
00:15:54.360 | homophobic or transphobic?" And I think the answer from critical race theory
00:16:00.680 | would be something like this. When you say, Piper, let's just say Piper, when you
00:16:06.160 | say, John Piper, that a person is wrong to claim to be a woman if he was born a
00:16:13.800 | man, and when you say that it's wrong for people to act on their homosexual
00:16:21.400 | desires, you, Piper, are wielding ideological power to oppress two groups
00:16:30.200 | of people who have freely and rightly chosen their identity. Call it what you
00:16:36.360 | will, you are exerting your supremacy to marginalize a vulnerable group. And the
00:16:44.960 | reason people like you, Piper, who do that can't be anti-racist is because the
00:16:55.400 | same position of ideological supremacy from which you presume to denounce and
00:17:02.560 | marginalize a transgender person or a sexually active homosexual person is in
00:17:08.280 | essence the same position of power and privilege and supremacy from which you
00:17:14.240 | will justify your superiority as a dominant race over others. When God is
00:17:22.680 | out of the picture, what's left to determine right and wrong and what our
00:17:30.080 | true identity is, what's left is personal autonomy, self-definition,
00:17:38.600 | self-determination, self-construction. And if a person like me, say, rejects such
00:17:46.520 | personal autonomy as the final arbiter of right and wrong, well, within the
00:17:54.320 | framework of God-evicting critical race theory, the only explanation left for my
00:18:03.960 | behavior, John Piper's behavior, is your own will to power, Piper. That's all
00:18:10.560 | that's left. If you reject autonomy and God is not in the picture and a Bible is
00:18:16.520 | not in the picture, there's one thing left, and we know you're guilty of it—
00:18:19.920 | will to power. Therefore, if you reveal your rejection—you, Piper—if you reveal
00:18:28.320 | your rejection of human autonomy, self-determination, self-definition in
00:18:35.400 | regard to homosexual behavior or sex-changing, you show yourself guilty of
00:18:43.000 | governing all your relationships by a will to power rather than a respect for
00:18:50.400 | autonomy, for those are the only two options left where God and his Word are
00:18:56.920 | out of the picture, which leads, as you can see, directly to the roots of the
00:19:04.160 | second baffling statement, namely, "Biblical inerrancy and infallibility
00:19:10.960 | are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought." Now, why would a person say that?
00:19:17.120 | What's the root issue behind that statement? The root issue is that the
00:19:23.800 | claim to have an infallible Bible undermines the fundamental assumption of
00:19:32.200 | critical race theory in its mainline expression, and that fundamental
00:19:36.960 | assumption is that human identity is self-constructed, not God-given. Any group,
00:19:45.600 | therefore, that claims to have access to an infallible Word of God that dictates
00:19:54.200 | human identity and human right and wrong is a manifest threat to human autonomy
00:20:02.320 | and, within the frame of reference of critical race theory, can only be
00:20:10.240 | understood as a group trying to seize power, in this case white power, since
00:20:17.280 | most of the confessions of faith in the history of the church that espouse
00:20:22.080 | biblical infallibility have been written by white men. So, in conclusion and
00:20:29.880 | summary, critical race theory in its generic definition as a quest for
00:20:38.680 | understanding the history of oppression in race relations and the present
00:20:44.160 | attitudes and structures that continue that oppression is a worthy quest. And
00:20:50.800 | critical race theory in its more essential definition, including its
00:20:56.920 | mainstream assumptions and conclusions, is a manifestation of the age-old
00:21:03.200 | enslavement of the fallen human heart to self-deification—I will be my own God—and
00:21:14.360 | self-definition—I will define my own essential identity—and self-determination—I
00:21:23.600 | will decide my own truth, my own morality, without reference or deference to any
00:21:30.160 | authority outside myself. And therefore, to try to make progress in racial justice
00:21:39.160 | and racial respect and racial harmony by absorbing the assumptions and categories
00:21:46.320 | and conclusions and strategies of critical race theory is a dead-end
00:21:52.720 | street. Or, as I said earlier, critical race theory is not a problem because it
00:22:02.200 | raises the challenge of racial justice and racial harmony and racial respect
00:22:07.880 | and racial glory. It's a problem because it fails us. It fails us as we try to
00:22:18.680 | take up these challenges in a hopeful, Christ-exalting way. Inside critical race
00:22:26.640 | theory, God is small and negligible. Inside critical race theory, the Bible is
00:22:35.760 | small and negligible. Truth is small and negligible. And evil is big. And there's
00:22:45.960 | no answer for it—none. It's a hopeless path—tragically hopeless. But inside that
00:22:56.920 | infallible Word called the Bible, there is an absolutely explosive redemption and
00:23:08.240 | blood-bought reconciliation and Christ-exalting harmony. And the failures
00:23:16.720 | of the church historically and today cannot cancel it. It is there. And if we
00:23:24.120 | would be more saturated by God's Word and more broken and humble and submitted
00:23:32.040 | to that Word in all of its radical ramifications, there would be hope. Oh,
00:23:37.840 | there is hope. And that's my prayer. A lot rides on this. Thank you, Pastor John.
00:23:47.120 | And with that, we will see you on Monday for another all-new APJ episode. Can I
00:23:52.680 | speak my destiny true? A lot of TV preachers say that you can if you have
00:23:56.800 | enough faith. Speak your destiny true. Name it and claim it. Pastor John will
00:24:01.720 | respond and help us better understand the open promise of Jesus in John chapter
00:24:06.160 | 15 and verse 7. I'm Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving break, and we will
00:24:11.320 | see you back here on Monday.
00:24:15.480 | [BLANK_AUDIO]