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00:00:00.000 | I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast.
00:00:15.620 | The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's
00:00:19.740 | been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand
00:00:24.600 | the test of scrutiny.
00:00:26.620 | As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people
00:00:32.340 | in the right direction.
00:00:41.720 | In this episode, I wanted to discuss Voddiebockum's latest book, which dropped on April 6th of
00:00:48.100 | 2021.
00:00:49.940 | That book is called Fault Lines, The Social Justice Movement, and Evangelicalism's Looming
00:00:56.180 | Catastrophe, which is an 11-chapter book.
00:01:00.100 | In the book, Voddie is wading into some controversial territory because he gives his perspective
00:01:06.060 | unabashedly on what the social justice movement is doing within what was previously accepted
00:01:11.460 | as conservative evangelical circles.
00:01:15.140 | He does also name names, but he does so reluctantly and charitably.
00:01:21.320 | And he's doing that because he doesn't want anybody to be dancing around who is being
00:01:26.220 | spoken of and what is being said and he wants to bring clarity to the subject.
00:01:32.360 | He doesn't do it for the sake of publicly shaming anyone.
00:01:37.960 | At the same time, when you are a public figure and you make far-reaching statements, it is
00:01:45.220 | fair if your statements are examined under the lens of scripture and plain reason to
00:01:51.200 | see if they pass the test of scrutiny.
00:01:54.700 | And he does this that in hopes he might win over his brothers and sisters.
00:02:00.420 | So before I begin this episode, let me tell you right now that there are going to be a
00:02:04.660 | lot of quotes from the book.
00:02:06.740 | I'm doing that so that I can give you a huge sampling of what exactly this book is about.
00:02:13.460 | But let me say that this book, at least in my opinion, does seem to go pretty hand in
00:02:18.340 | hand with another book I previously mentioned.
00:02:21.740 | And that was another book I was also on the launch team for.
00:02:25.500 | That book was called Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth by Thaddeus Williams.
00:02:32.140 | Now in that book, Professor Thaddeus Williams, he doesn't go so far as to name names, which
00:02:36.520 | is why I think that this book is a nice compliment to Confronting Injustice Without Compromising
00:02:44.820 | Truth.
00:02:45.820 | And although there is some overlap, the overlap is a lot more minimal than I thought it would
00:02:51.460 | be.
00:02:52.740 | In episode 10, which I recorded a while back, hasn't been published yet, but I use the same
00:02:58.060 | format as I'll do in this episode.
00:03:00.620 | So with that said, let me begin this episode by quoting to you a portion from the introduction
00:03:06.880 | of Vodi's book.
00:03:08.840 | Vodi writes, "Why are people and groups like Thabiti Anwabili, Tim Keller, Russell Moore,
00:03:18.560 | the Southern Baptist Convention, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Nine Marks,
00:03:24.160 | the Gospel Coalition, and Together for the Gospel, T4G, being identified with critical
00:03:30.320 | social justice on one side of the fault, and people like John MacArthur, Tom Askell, Owen
00:03:36.080 | Strayen, Douglas Wilson, and the late R. C. Sproul being identified on the other?
00:03:41.880 | There are groups and ministries that have embraced CRT, and those are problematic.
00:03:47.080 | But there is a larger group that is sympathetic to it because of their desire to fight what
00:03:50.840 | they see as a problem of racial injustice.
00:03:54.600 | Most of the groups I will mention in this book fall into the latter category.
00:03:58.980 | It is not a stretch to say we are seeing seismic shifts in the evangelical landscape.
00:04:04.400 | But is it an exaggeration to call this a coming catastrophe?
00:04:08.100 | I don't think so.
00:04:09.400 | John MacArthur calls it the greatest threat to the gospel in his lifetime, and he had
00:04:13.880 | a front row seat to the debates over both inerrancy and lordship salvation.
00:04:19.160 | What do I, MacArthur, and myriad other pastors and leaders see on the horizon that leads
00:04:25.720 | to such drastic statements?
00:04:30.160 | Before he gets into the main substance of the book, he gives a sort of mini autobiography.
00:04:38.360 | That starts with chapter 1.
00:04:40.040 | In chapter 1, entitled "A Black Man," he writes this, "I was born on the San Andreas
00:04:48.480 | Fault.
00:04:49.480 | More specifically, I was born in Los Angeles, California on March 11, 1969.
00:04:55.460 | This was the end of the Great Migration between 1915 and 1970 that saw somewhere between 5
00:05:02.760 | and 10 million blacks leave the South in search of a better life.
00:05:06.820 | This migration took place along very specific routes to the North and West and landed large
00:05:13.620 | swaths of the black population in cities like New York, Boston, Detroit, Oakland, Los Angeles,
00:05:21.060 | and other major urban areas."
00:05:25.020 | In chapter 2, he continues to make a case for his mini-autobiography by speaking about
00:05:30.140 | his life as a black Christian, and that chapter is aptly entitled "A Black Christian."
00:05:35.500 | Vouille writes, "There is a major debate among black evangelicals as to whether, in
00:05:41.540 | discussing and applying our faith in the midst of the current cultural crisis, the priority
00:05:47.580 | should be on our blackness or our Christianity.
00:05:51.260 | In other words, are we Christians or black people first?
00:05:54.900 | This may seem strange to non-black Christians; however, I assure you, it is a real issue
00:06:01.060 | and is relevant to the topic of this book.
00:06:03.660 | I have wrestled with this question since coming to faith, and I have fallen on both sides
00:06:08.020 | of it at different times, all of which I will detail in this chapter.
00:06:12.020 | The question of the proper order of faith and ethnicity is critical to understanding
00:06:16.900 | the various positions people take in the broader social justice debate, one with which all
00:06:22.780 | people must wrestle, regardless of their ethnicity; however, for black Christians, this concept
00:06:29.260 | has often been difficult to embrace for several reasons."
00:06:34.080 | He goes on to explain these reasons, one of which include the fact that black nationalists
00:06:40.580 | have often argued that Christianity is the "white man's religion" and used it to
00:06:45.300 | encourage slaves to be docile.
00:06:47.980 | He'll spend the next portion of the chapter talking about his conversion experience, which
00:06:51.940 | came in October of 1987 on the campus of New Mexico State University, where he was the
00:06:59.020 | starting tight-end.
00:07:00.020 | A guy named Steve Morgan, who was involved in a campus ministry, reached out to him and
00:07:05.420 | they began talking about the Bible, which eventually led to Vody repenting and believing
00:07:10.580 | in the gospel message.
00:07:12.780 | That was his first year in college.
00:07:15.040 | In his third year, he would go back to California because his cousin Jamal was murdered, which
00:07:19.980 | caused him to think deeply about how differently their paths diverged.
00:07:24.860 | Vody then goes on to talk about how early on in his faith, he approached Christianity
00:07:28.780 | with an extremely Afrocentric approach.
00:07:32.460 | Vody writes, "It also reminded me how Afrocentric I was at that time.
00:07:38.500 | There I stood, an HBU ministry student who would go on to win the prestigious Riverside
00:07:44.020 | Scholarship (a full scholarship to the Southern Baptist Seminary of my choice) for being an
00:07:49.620 | outstanding theology student, and I was wearing a t-shirt featuring MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and
00:07:56.140 | Elijah Muhammad.
00:07:57.580 | I assure you, it doesn't get more Afrocentric than that.
00:08:01.780 | Nor did my Afrocentrism stop at wearing t-shirts.
00:08:05.220 | Not only was I a member of Omega Psi Phi, a black fraternity known for having its members
00:08:10.620 | brand a Greek letter on their arms, but I also helped get it back onto the NMSU New
00:08:19.220 | Mexico State University campus after it had been suspended.
00:08:22.900 | I had married a woman from a historically black college, and was one of the founders
00:08:27.140 | of the Black Student Fellowship at HBU.
00:08:30.140 | At that point in my life, I was most certainly more black than Christian."
00:08:36.740 | He goes on to talk about how his star began to rise within the SPC, but as he began to
00:08:42.660 | take unpopular positions, he also experienced pushback.
00:08:47.380 | He began to see what the social justice ideology was doing way back before the events of this
00:08:52.940 | past year, and he saw how detrimental it could and would be for evangelicalism.
00:08:59.480 | Because of that, for Voti, being silent was not an option.
00:09:04.300 | I want to stop here really quickly because already in chapters 1 and 2, you have Voti
00:09:11.340 | laying the foundation for why he writes the book and why he has the credentials to talk
00:09:17.220 | about how when you place ethnicity over your identity in Christ, how that becomes extremely
00:09:25.100 | problematic and eventually leads to a completely different gospel.
00:09:29.600 | It is not neutral.
00:09:32.060 | It's not benign, and it's not neutral in nature.
00:09:34.020 | It is placing ethnicity over your identity in Christ is completely malignant to your
00:09:40.780 | faith and to the gospel message.
00:09:45.540 | We see something happening with Asians right now, something almost parallel.
00:09:53.140 | And so I think for that reason, this book has at least become, to me, an important book
00:10:03.540 | to read.
00:10:04.540 | I'm not saying it's like some kind of emergency and everyone needs to stop and read this book,
00:10:11.660 | but there is much to be gleaned on a personal level if you begin to buy into this whole
00:10:20.060 | narrative of what I see as causing Asians to become disgruntled and just kind of have
00:10:30.340 | their eyes taken off the gospel message and then ultimately led to a completely different
00:10:37.940 | direction than what is the actual gospel.
00:10:42.620 | But on with the book.
00:10:43.620 | In chapter 3, entitled Seeking True Justice, he talks about false social justice narratives
00:10:50.000 | and doesn't shy away from naming key figures such as Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James.
00:10:55.980 | He goes on to talk about what the actual cost of these false narratives are and provides
00:11:00.660 | actual academic research to back up his claims, including diving deep into statistics regarding
00:11:07.100 | policing in the US.
00:11:08.340 | He talks about George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, and Breonna Taylor
00:11:14.180 | while dealing with objections.
00:11:16.500 | In chapter 4, entitled A New Religion, he talks about the religious nature of CRT, aka
00:11:22.580 | anti-racism, aka the ideology behind the social justice movement.
00:11:27.700 | In chapter 4, Voti writes, "The anti-racist movement has many of the hallmarks of a cult,
00:11:35.260 | including staying close enough to the Bible to avoid immediate detection and hiding the
00:11:39.700 | fact that it has a new theology and a new glossary of terms that diverge ever so slightly
00:11:45.540 | from Christian orthodoxy, at least at first.
00:11:48.740 | In classic cult fashion, they borrow from the familiar and accept it, then infuse it
00:11:55.220 | with new meaning.
00:11:56.700 | This allows the cult to appeal to the faithful within the dominant orthodox religions from
00:12:01.600 | which it draws its converts.
00:12:03.900 | This new cult has created a new lexicon that has served as a scaffolding to support what
00:12:09.880 | has become an entire body of divinity.
00:12:12.940 | In the same manner, this new body of divinity comes complete with its own cosmology.
00:12:18.860 | CRT has original sin racism, law is anti-racism, gospel is racial reconciliation, martyrs are
00:12:28.360 | Saints Trayvon, Mike, George, Breonna, etc., the priests are the oppressed minorities,
00:12:34.820 | the means of atonement, reparations, new birth is wokeness, liturgy is lament, the canon
00:12:44.140 | is the social justice science, the theologians are D'Angelo, Kendi, Brown, Crenshaw, McIntosh,
00:12:53.380 | etc., and the catechism would be "say their names."
00:12:57.100 | We'll examine some of these topics in this chapter and a few later on.
00:13:03.380 | In chapter 5, entitled "A New Priesthood," he talks about ethnic Gnosticism which was
00:13:08.940 | a term he came up with to describe what's been going on in the culture.
00:13:13.300 | In chapter 5 he writes this, "It would be more accurate, though, in light of the broader
00:13:18.900 | assumptions of the critical social justice movement to use the term "minority Gnosticism,"
00:13:25.780 | since the same argument is applied to all oppressed minorities.
00:13:30.020 | In fact, it is their oppressed status that, according to CSJ, gives these groups their
00:13:35.780 | special knowledge.
00:13:37.200 | This is a central tenet of critical race theory.
00:13:40.260 | The voice of color thesis, writes Richard Delgado, holds that because of their different
00:13:45.380 | histories and experiences with oppression, black, American Indian, Asian, and Latino
00:13:51.740 | writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the
00:13:56.700 | whites are unlikely to know.
00:13:59.220 | Thus, according to CRT, minority status brings with it a presumed competence to speak about
00:14:07.420 | race and racism.
00:14:09.500 | This makes sense since critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements,
00:14:15.660 | critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.
00:14:21.220 | Specifically, the debt CRT owes to radical feminism is the towering influence of standpoint
00:14:27.540 | epistemology, the hallmark of ethnic Gnosticism."
00:14:33.940 | He goes on to state how in ethnic Gnosticism, one of the planks is that the narrative trumps
00:14:39.220 | truth.
00:14:40.780 | In chapter 6, entitled "A New Canon," he talks about how very subtly the Bible's
00:14:45.700 | sufficiency is being pepped away at, and giving a case study, Voughty writes this, "At
00:14:52.100 | the 2018 Together for the Gospel conference, David Platt, then head of the Southern Baptist
00:14:58.220 | Convention's International Mission Board, delivered a message from Amos 5, then repented
00:15:04.140 | in tears for his white privilege, silence, and inaction.
00:15:09.180 | Those inclined toward CSJ found it inspiring, but to others, Platt's message represented
00:15:15.220 | a fault line.
00:15:16.500 | It was an exercise in eisegesis.
00:15:19.340 | In other words, instead of being faithful to the text of Amos 5, he read foreign ideas
00:15:25.620 | into the text to make the Bible serve his agenda.
00:15:29.220 | The most aggravating aspect of Platt's message, wrote one blogger, was his flagrant
00:15:34.220 | misuse of Amos 5.
00:15:36.540 | One pastor summed it up well, "MLK said men should not be judged by the color of their
00:15:41.180 | skin, T4G said pastors should be judged by the color of their congregations."
00:15:47.620 | A Christianity Today writer tried to reduce the criticism to some kind of white fragility,
00:15:53.260 | but that was both inaccurate and disingenuous.
00:15:55.660 | In fact, many of those who agreed with Platt's sentiment acknowledged that his sermon fell
00:16:01.220 | short of exegetical standards.
00:16:03.500 | At least two high-level evangelical leaders, one closely associated with the conference,
00:16:08.620 | said as much to me personally.
00:16:10.860 | Another of course will go on record.
00:16:12.940 | Moreover, the message fell short of Platt's own standard.
00:16:16.580 | He has a Ph.D. in preaching and served as a professor of preaching and apologetics at
00:16:21.300 | New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
00:16:24.460 | So if anybody knows better than to misuse scripture like that, it is David Platt.
00:16:29.300 | The obvious question then is why someone of his caliber would preach a sermon that led
00:16:35.420 | one preaching professor to tell me privately, "If he had done that in my class, I would
00:16:40.020 | have given him a D."
00:16:41.660 | The answer is simple.
00:16:43.260 | David Platt loves Jesus, loves people, and is passionate about reconciliation.
00:16:48.180 | I know this because I know and love David Platt.
00:16:51.100 | I also know he started reading and being influenced by the "woke" canon.
00:16:56.340 | Consequently, he began to reach beyond the Bible to find God's truth regarding race.
00:17:01.220 | How did he get to that point?
00:17:03.180 | According to an article on the Gospel Coalition's website, Nine Marks founder Mark Devers suggested
00:17:08.820 | Platt read Divided by Faith, Evangelical Religion, and the Problem of Race in America by Michael
00:17:15.300 | Emerson and Christian Smith, a book Devers has publicly praised saying, "This won't
00:17:21.660 | be the most exciting book you read this year, but it may have the most exciting results
00:17:26.060 | in your life."
00:17:27.060 | Platt's message was dripping with the book's influence, especially his emphasis on the
00:17:32.740 | concept of America's being racialized, which is the book's main theme.
00:17:37.940 | Ironically, the book does not make Christianity Today's list, however, it is arguably the
00:17:43.620 | most frequently referenced and recommended race resource among Evangelicalism's Big
00:17:49.620 | Three, also known as the Gospel Coalition, Nine Marks, and Together for the Gospel."
00:17:57.620 | "I am a debater, I always have been.
00:18:20.020 | But in the current climate, debate is becoming a lost art, partly because of a general decline
00:18:25.100 | in the study of logic and rhetoric, but mostly because of the general feminization of culture
00:18:30.180 | and its consequent disdain for open, verbal combat.
00:18:34.260 | Gone are the days of Luther and Erasmus slugging it out over the question of original sin.
00:18:40.500 | Today, both men would be accused of being petty, for daring to split hairs over such
00:18:45.260 | theological minutia; mean-spirited, for daring to speak so forcefully in favor of their own
00:18:50.620 | position and against the others; and downright un-Christ-like, for throwing around the word
00:18:55.500 | heresy.
00:18:56.500 | I have often said, 'The eleventh commandment is, 'Thou shalt be nice.'
00:19:01.540 | And we don't believe the other ten.
00:19:04.260 | One of the negative results of this is no longer being able to deal with ideas without
00:19:08.420 | attacking the people who hold them.
00:19:10.660 | Disagreements quickly deteriorate into arguments and worse.
00:19:13.940 | Consequently, taking a position on an issue carries the automatic assumption that one
00:19:18.580 | is utterly opposed to not only the opposing view, but to all who hold it.
00:19:23.820 | Therefore, we don't debate ideas at all, but go straight for personal attacks and character
00:19:29.780 | assassination.
00:19:31.380 | And this debate is no different.
00:19:33.640 | To the anti-critical social justice camp, those on the side of CSJ are all cultural
00:19:38.340 | Marxists.
00:19:39.340 | Conversely, to the social justice camp, those who oppose their cause are all racists.
00:19:44.420 | Even fellow black people like me, who according to their definition of racism, can't be
00:19:48.500 | racist.
00:19:49.500 | But I digress.
00:19:50.860 | The result is a standstill, a demilitarized zone that exists, not because hostilities
00:19:56.340 | have ceased, but because we all tacitly believe there is no solution."
00:20:02.220 | In the same chapter, Votie writes about the Dallas Statement, which was a joint statement
00:20:10.060 | by John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, Daryl Harrison, and many others.
00:20:15.100 | It's also known as the Statement on Social Justice.
00:20:19.620 | Votie writes this, "Documents like the Dallas Statement are never meant to be a final
00:20:26.340 | word.
00:20:27.540 | The Bible is the final word.
00:20:29.460 | Nor did we believe our statement would be beyond reproach.
00:20:32.380 | Tom Askell, the principal architect of the first draft of the Dallas Statement, captured
00:20:36.300 | the sentiment perfectly when he wrote, "The statement makes no claim of any ecclesiastical
00:20:40.700 | authority.
00:20:41.700 | It is issued for the purpose of calling attention to and clarifying concerns.
00:20:46.580 | We have spoken on these issues with no disrespect or loss of love for our brothers and sisters
00:20:51.580 | who disagree with what we have written.
00:20:53.900 | Rather, our hope is that this statement might actually provoke the kind of brotherly dialogue
00:20:58.980 | that can promote unity in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we all love and trust."
00:21:04.980 | But that is not what happened.
00:21:06.100 | In fact, there has been very little formal pushback or dialogue.
00:21:09.760 | Most of our friends at NYMARCS, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Gospel
00:21:13.780 | Coalition, Together for the Gospel, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Presbyterian Church
00:21:18.340 | of America, all of whom had historically embraced us as ministry partners and been willing to
00:21:23.440 | critique us as brothers, didn't write a single word one way or the other.
00:21:28.500 | Tim Geller did offer a comment.
00:21:30.360 | When asked about the Dallas Statement, his response said more about its philosophical
00:21:34.040 | presuppositions than it did about the document.
00:21:37.460 | The statement can't be judged based upon whether or not the words are right, he said,
00:21:43.860 | but by the consequences those words might eventually bring out.
00:21:47.580 | By contrast, when John MacArthur, the lightning rider with whom most people associate the
00:21:51.580 | Dallas Statement, decided to hold services at his church in Southern California last
00:21:55.860 | summer in defiance of Governor Gavin Newsom's order to keep churches from meeting during
00:22:00.840 | the coronavirus pandemic, NYMARCS fired off a missive addressing MacArthur's decision
00:22:06.980 | from a biblical, theological, and historical perspective.
00:22:10.660 | But the Dallas Statement didn't warrant a drop of ink.
00:22:13.780 | Did these groups fail to address the statement because it was correct?
00:22:17.920 | If so, why didn't they join us in signing it?
00:22:21.580 | Was it because, as more than one of the leaders of the aforementioned ministry stated, the
00:22:26.500 | group lacked any names with gravitas, therefore implying the statement was insignificant?
00:22:32.880 | If MacArthur, who called the meeting, lacks gravitas, then there's no need to warn people
00:22:37.980 | to be cautious about following his lead.
00:22:40.820 | No, there was a much bigger issue at play, a fault line that everybody knew was there
00:22:46.420 | and that nobody wanted to acknowledge."
00:22:52.060 | Vody then goes on to talk about Resolution 9, which was when the SPC adopted CRT as an
00:22:57.560 | analytical tool, which occurred under the leadership of JD Greer.
00:23:02.380 | In chapter 8, entitled "The Damage," Vody goes on to talk about the devastation this
00:23:08.820 | worldview or rival religion has caused.
00:23:12.140 | Vody states in summary that what ends up happening is real problems end up not getting addressed
00:23:18.700 | because they do not line up with the false narrative.
00:23:22.140 | In chapter 9, entitled "Aftershock," he further goes on to give examples of how this
00:23:26.820 | worldview has drastically changed the tone of some of the celebrity pastors.
00:23:31.420 | He deals at length with statements from Tim Keller, David Platt, Mark Dever, and Jonathan
00:23:36.840 | Lehman within the context of abortion and so-called one-issue voting.
00:23:42.100 | In chapter 10, entitled "Restoration and Mitigation," Vody encourages the reader to contend Christianly.
00:23:48.900 | He writes, "Many modern Christians are uncomfortable with war language.
00:23:55.420 | Perhaps it is because of the aforementioned Eleventh Commandment, 'Thou shalt be nice.'
00:24:00.420 | As a result, anything that looks or sounds remotely aggressive, confrontational, or masculine
00:24:06.540 | is deemed less than Christian.
00:24:09.200 | But the Bible is replete with war language, and actual war.
00:24:12.500 | And that language is appropriate here because we are at war.
00:24:15.780 | But we must not rely on ordinary tactics.
00:24:18.780 | For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
00:24:22.960 | For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy
00:24:27.540 | strongholds.
00:24:28.540 | To destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
00:24:32.860 | And take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when
00:24:38.260 | your obedience is complete.
00:24:40.820 | As we wage this war, the Apostle's words will be our guide, and the kingdom of God, His
00:24:45.500 | rule and reign in our lives, and our world, will be our goal.
00:24:48.980 | But first, we must understand why we are at war.
00:24:53.220 | Spoiler alert, we didn't start it."
00:24:57.980 | The scripture reference that Vody quoted was 2 Corinthians 10, 3-6.
00:25:03.540 | So for those of you who are maybe starting to get nervous at this point, he makes it
00:25:08.940 | a point to show the reader that our war is spiritual, and our weapons are also spiritual,
00:25:15.220 | and we fight for the truth of the gospel and biblical justice.
00:25:18.940 | While not making light of the fact that we must destroy arguments and speculations, taking
00:25:23.720 | every thought captive, and confront lies while holding on to the truth.
00:25:29.260 | We must listen with discernment, but we must also correct.
00:25:34.180 | In the closing chapter entitled "Solid Ground," Vody states this, "I hope this book helps
00:25:40.900 | better equip you to be a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word
00:25:46.020 | of truth.
00:25:47.020 | I also hope to embolden you to pull back the curtain and expose the wizard.
00:25:51.540 | Call out the boy who cried wolf, proclaim that the emperor has no clothes, and any other
00:25:56.940 | metaphor you can think of for shedding light on these fault lines.
00:26:01.600 | Not so you can defeat your brethren in an argument, but so you can engage them with
00:26:05.620 | the hopes of winning them.
00:26:07.380 | Love your brothers and sisters enough to contend with them and for them."
00:26:13.140 | Well that does it for my preview or review of the book.
00:26:17.560 | And my goal here wasn't to just give you a summary of the book, but a huge sampling,
00:26:22.780 | which is why I felt giving you these lengthy quotes was the way to go.
00:26:26.820 | But before I sign off, I want to share just a little bit of my heart here.
00:26:31.220 | The reason I'm concerned about this movement is because it is taking well-meaning Christians
00:26:36.340 | on a road that is completely antithetical to the gospel.
00:26:40.600 | And I completely understand that it is difficult because we have friends, all of us do, from
00:26:46.060 | all different areas, or according to Vodi, differing sides of the fault line.
00:26:51.780 | But if you believe this ideology is as sinful as Vodi claims, then going along with this
00:26:57.420 | pseudo-gospel is not helping anyone at all.
00:27:01.100 | Moreover, I am personally convinced that this ideology is a wolf in sheep's clothing and
00:27:07.260 | the vast majority of celebrity pastors flatly do not care enough to speak out about it particularly
00:27:14.580 | based on Vodi's credible claims that many did not want to go on record condemning much
00:27:20.980 | of the CRT language coming out from big evangelicalism.
00:27:26.380 | Like Vodi, I agree, being silent is not an option.
00:27:35.380 | Thanks for making it to the end, I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it.
00:27:41.020 | To Him be honor, glory, and eternal dominion.
00:27:44.820 | James H. Hamauer
00:27:45.820 | [Music]
00:28:12.820 | [Music Fades Out]