We plan to take the week of Thanksgiving off from the podcast to give you some time to listen to the Providence book audiobook, those excerpts that we published last week. I hope you will set aside time to do that. It's really important content. I think you'll be blessed by it.

But we returned yesterday on Monday with a new episode on the growing debate over critical race theory. So what exactly is it? Pastor John is about to explain in this follow-up episode. On Monday we looked at the relational dimensions of the debate, and here now is Pastor John with Critical Race Theory Part 2, The Root Problem.

So this is our second episode about critical race theory. I focused last time on two biblical relational principles that I so wanted to plead for, and I postponed a definition of what critical race theory is and the question of why it is so controversial and why it matters. So that's what we are about now in this session.

In my understanding, critical race theory is worth talking about not only because it is causing divisions among Christians at points where I don't think those divisions need to exist, but also because in its main stream expression—not every use made of it, but in its main stream expression—it is another manifestation of the age-old enslavement of fallen human hearts to self-deification—I will be my own God—self-definition—I will define my own essential identity and self-determination.

I will decide my own truth and my own morality without deference to any authority outside myself. Now, I'm not saying that everybody who has gotten help from delving into critical race theory is guilty of those things—not at all, not by a long shot. I'm saying these are the root problems of the mainstream, scholarly, decades-long development of critical race theory, which is why it is being so hotly contested and, in that sense, rightly contested.

So my most fundamental aim here is to encourage us all in the convictions that we are not God, but Yahweh alone is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has spoken truthfully in Scripture. We are not those who can define our own essential identity. God does that by his Word, by his creation, by his blood-bought transformation of his people, and we do not have ultimate self-determination.

God decides what is true, not we. God decides what is right, not we. And if we are saved from sin and for God, it will be God who saves us and not we ourselves. Now, even more specifically, I want to establish us in these convictions over against the core philosophical convictions of critical race theory because I believe with all my heart that these convictions—not those of critical race theory—will serve the cause of racial harmony, racial justice, and the flourishing of a joyful, respectful, Christ-exalting racial and ethnic diversity in the body of Christ.

In other words, critical race theory is not a problem because it raises the challenge of racial justice and racial harmony and racial respect and racial glory. Instead, it's a problem because it fails us. It fails us as we try to take up these challenges in a hopeful, Christ-exalting way.

Now, what is it, and how does it manifest this self-deification and self-definition and self-determination? As with most philosophical schools of thought—and that is what we are dealing with—you can define critical race theory generically with regard to its aims, or you can define it more essentially with regard to its core assumptions and conclusions.

If we stay for a moment now at the generic level, critical race theory will not sound controversial because it will overlap with legitimate goals and concerns of many Christians. For example, the Purdue University website defines critical race theory in this generic way, like this, in terms of its goals.

"CRT"—that's short for critical race theory—"CRT scholars attempt to understand"—so you can hear that's a totally legitimate effort, right? We all want to understand things, and we ought to. "CRT scholars attempt to understand, one, how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural conceptions of race, and two, how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice." Now, if you don't read more than you should into any of those terms, there are many Christians who would say, rightly, "Well, those are my big concerns, at least some of them." So we might talk right past each other if we don't stop to get clarity about the meaning of critical race theory that we have in mind when we speak of it, either sympathetically or critically.

In this and many other issues, we need to take care to get our definitions clear up front in our conversations. Now, if we go beneath these generic goals of critical race theory to the assumptions and conclusions of its mainstream exponents, things become seriously problematic for Christians with biblical convictions because this is not a neutral theory.

It's laden with assumptions or viewpoints about reality that put it at odds with some biblical thinking. So let's try to get at this more essential definition of critical race theory. It helps us define critical race theory if we understand that it is an offshoot of critical theory. And what critical theory tries to do is understand society by viewing it primarily as interconnected groups which are related to each other as powerful or oppressed, advantaged or disadvantaged, or discriminated against.

It studies these groups in order to find and challenge power structures that shape the relationships between groups. Now, that's where the word "critical" and "theory" get their meaning. It's a theory in the sense that it's a way of explaining how society works, and it's critical in the sense that it assesses and challenges—that is, is critical of—assesses and challenges the way groups exert power or are oppressed by that power.

Now, even though critical theory may have started with a concern about the relationships of privilege and oppression between classes like rich and poor, white-collar, blue-collar, educated, less educated, professional tradesmen, bluebloods versus commoners, the theory now, as it has come into its fuller expression, has given rise to an array of focuses, theories, disciplines, studies from queer theory to fat studies.

Because as soon as you focus on groups and power dynamics between them, you see them everywhere, right? Women, men, heterosexual, homosexual, fixed-gender, transgender, old, young, Western, non-Western, American, Canadian, able-bodied, disabled, short, tall, slender, fat. On every one of these pairs, you can find books and studies more or less shaped by critical theory, a focus on the identity of the group and a challenge of the power or the privilege of one group over another.

So critical race theory—so add the word "race" to the term "critical theory." Critical race theory, then, tries to understand and challenge, deal critically with, the power and oppression relationships that have marked racial groups historically and still do today. Now, it's true that a focus on groups while minimizing the individual and a focus on power while minimizing other relational dynamics like love and humility and graciousness can skew our understanding and yield unhelpful strategies.

Yes, that's true. Nevertheless, those very focuses, misleading as they might be, can also reveal insights that may be strategically helpful in moving toward greater justice. So what's the root problem? To dig down to what I think is the root problem of critical race theory in mainstream scholarly expression, I had to probe behind a few controversial statements which were at first baffling to me and then became revealing.

Let me quote two of these statements and then describe my probing to the root issue. These are quotes from mainstream critical race theory or its proponents in Christian circles. Number one, "We cannot be anti-racist if we are homophobic or transphobic." Here's the second statement, and this time from a Christian conference moving in step with mainstream critical race theory, "Biblical inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought." Now my guess is that most of you hearing this are bamboozled by those two statements.

What? How did they get there? That has been the most illuminating question for me. How did they get there? So let's take those statements one at a time and ask that question because it gets us to the root of the issue. So here's the first one. "We cannot be anti-racist if we are homophobic or transphobic." Let's make sure that we are clear here about what mainstream critical race theorists mean by homophobic and transphobic.

They don't just mean the fear and hatred of people who try to change their sex or people who have sexual desires for people of the same sex. They mean homophobia, transphobia includes the Christian view that homosexual behavior is sinful and that trying to change your God-given sex is sinful.

So what they're trying to say then is this. You, you John Piper, or you Evangelical, you can't hold these historic Christian convictions and be anti-racist. So the question is, why not? Or how did they arrive at that conclusion? And here's my answer, and it's my deepest problem with critical race theory.

They arrive at this conclusion because at root they believe a person's essential identity is self-chosen, self-constructed, not God-designed or God-given. Or another way to say it would be that when it comes to our own identity, we are our own God. We do not acknowledge or submit to any divine truth or morality or theory as above us constraining or limiting our own self-definition, our own self-construction.

So if I choose to be a woman, though God made me a man, I am right to do so. No God, no morality, no religion, no ideology can replace me as the self-determining, self-defining, self-deifying sovereign of my own identity. Now you may be asking, as I did, "Well, how does that explain the statement we cannot be anti-racist if we are homophobic or transphobic?" And I think the answer from critical race theory would be something like this.

When you say, Piper, let's just say Piper, when you say, John Piper, that a person is wrong to claim to be a woman if he was born a man, and when you say that it's wrong for people to act on their homosexual desires, you, Piper, are wielding ideological power to oppress two groups of people who have freely and rightly chosen their identity.

Call it what you will, you are exerting your supremacy to marginalize a vulnerable group. And the reason people like you, Piper, who do that can't be anti-racist is because the same position of ideological supremacy from which you presume to denounce and marginalize a transgender person or a sexually active homosexual person is in essence the same position of power and privilege and supremacy from which you will justify your superiority as a dominant race over others.

When God is out of the picture, what's left to determine right and wrong and what our true identity is, what's left is personal autonomy, self-definition, self-determination, self-construction. And if a person like me, say, rejects such personal autonomy as the final arbiter of right and wrong, well, within the framework of God-evicting critical race theory, the only explanation left for my behavior, John Piper's behavior, is your own will to power, Piper.

That's all that's left. If you reject autonomy and God is not in the picture and a Bible is not in the picture, there's one thing left, and we know you're guilty of it— will to power. Therefore, if you reveal your rejection—you, Piper—if you reveal your rejection of human autonomy, self-determination, self-definition in regard to homosexual behavior or sex-changing, you show yourself guilty of governing all your relationships by a will to power rather than a respect for autonomy, for those are the only two options left where God and his Word are out of the picture, which leads, as you can see, directly to the roots of the second baffling statement, namely, "Biblical inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought." Now, why would a person say that?

What's the root issue behind that statement? The root issue is that the claim to have an infallible Bible undermines the fundamental assumption of critical race theory in its mainline expression, and that fundamental assumption is that human identity is self-constructed, not God-given. Any group, therefore, that claims to have access to an infallible Word of God that dictates human identity and human right and wrong is a manifest threat to human autonomy and, within the frame of reference of critical race theory, can only be understood as a group trying to seize power, in this case white power, since most of the confessions of faith in the history of the church that espouse biblical infallibility have been written by white men.

So, in conclusion and summary, critical race theory in its generic definition as a quest for understanding the history of oppression in race relations and the present attitudes and structures that continue that oppression is a worthy quest. And critical race theory in its more essential definition, including its mainstream assumptions and conclusions, is a manifestation of the age-old enslavement of the fallen human heart to self-deification—I will be my own God—and self-definition—I will define my own essential identity—and self-determination—I will decide my own truth, my own morality, without reference or deference to any authority outside myself.

And therefore, to try to make progress in racial justice and racial respect and racial harmony by absorbing the assumptions and categories and conclusions and strategies of critical race theory is a dead-end street. Or, as I said earlier, critical race theory is not a problem because it raises the challenge of racial justice and racial harmony and racial respect and racial glory.

It's a problem because it fails us. It fails us as we try to take up these challenges in a hopeful, Christ-exalting way. Inside critical race theory, God is small and negligible. Inside critical race theory, the Bible is small and negligible. Truth is small and negligible. And evil is big.

And there's no answer for it—none. It's a hopeless path—tragically hopeless. But inside that infallible Word called the Bible, there is an absolutely explosive redemption and blood-bought reconciliation and Christ-exalting harmony. And the failures of the church historically and today cannot cancel it. It is there. And if we would be more saturated by God's Word and more broken and humble and submitted to that Word in all of its radical ramifications, there would be hope.

Oh, there is hope. And that's my prayer. A lot rides on this. Thank you, Pastor John. And with that, we will see you on Monday for another all-new APJ episode. Can I speak my destiny true? A lot of TV preachers say that you can if you have enough faith.

Speak your destiny true. Name it and claim it. Pastor John will respond and help us better understand the open promise of Jesus in John chapter 15 and verse 7. I'm Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving break, and we will see you back here on Monday.