Cultural War Updates and an Interview with Owen Strachan on Being Woke

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Three years ago, I asked a question, did a poll on Facebook, just did it a couple days ago on Twitter, so three years later, asking the same question about the Gospel and the intersection of culture, politics, etc., saying should pastors and Christian leaders just, quote, preach the Gospel, or should they also comment on relevant social political issues? I'll tell you about the results to that poll in a moment. I'll cover some important news items I think, well, some will startle you, some will encourage you, and then bottom of the hour, I'm going to be joined by Owen Strawn to talk about his new book, Christianity and Wokeness. So here's a question you can respond to, 866-34-TRUTH. Let's say you go to a local church. Do you think your pastor should just stick with, quote, preaching the Gospel, going through the Bible, telling you how to grow in your relationship with God, telling you how to get closer to the Lord, get more grounded in the Word and godly living, how to be a good parent, how to be responsible in your job, whatever the situation is, how to share the Gospel with others, how to deepen your prayer life? Should that be the only thing that your pastors talk about?

Or, when relevant, should they also comment on what's happening in the society, politics, culture, that kind of thing? What do you think? 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87884, quote, Gospel only? Would you say that's a misnomer, the Gospel itself touches on other areas of society? Would you say, no, absolutely Gospel only, look at the mess we've gotten in by getting into politics, you could say, what? What are you talking about?

The fact is, our pastors don't help equip us to deal with life in this world, that's the problem. What's your take? 866-34-TRUTH. Before I get to some current news items, tell you the result of polling I did on this question I'm raising now three years ago. So, this morning, I went to tweet something out, and look at what I found on Twitter. My account has been temporarily blocked, and I'll give you the context, what I just put on the screen for those watching, I'll leave it up here for a moment. So, I posted on Facebook and on Twitter over the weekend, a statement saying, look, for those who haven't been vaccinated yet, do you honestly think, maybe you're critical why people haven't been vaccinated, do you honestly think that if these people were 100% sure that the vaccine was safe long term, and that it would help save lives, don't you think the vast majority of them would go ahead and get vaccinated? So, that launched a very lively discussion on Facebook and Twitter, well over 1,000 comments just on the thread on Facebook. I was surprised it didn't get pulled down because it was talking about the vaccine, but I wasn't airing an opinion. My stated position was everyone do the research and make an informed responsible choice.

That's my official recommendation to everyone. So, anyway, someone posted on Twitter, a descendant, a distant descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the early Christian leaders in America, and said, and said, do you know that Cotton Mather really encouraged medical science working together with Christianity, and he himself got vaccinated. So, this is what I posted in response. Interestingly, Jonathan Edwards died in 1758 as a result of the smallpox vaccine he received.

That's the reality. Smallpox inoculation, if you want to be more technical about it, but that's common knowledge. Many years ago, when I was learning about Jonathan Edwards, oh, there's how he died.

So, he's trying to do the right thing, the responsible thing, the responsible thing, and he died. That's it. So, I was told that I posted misinformation about COVID.

Yeah. So, I could just remove it, but then I don't get to go through the appeal process. So, this time I decided, I'm removing the heartbeat. It's immaterial to me to have it up or not have it up, but I decided to appeal it.

So, we shall see. If the appeal drags on, I may just remove it so I can access my account again. But yeah, if in fact they review this, think of it. Friends, think of this. Think of this.

If they block my account and don't allow me back on, because I tweeted that, that means that you are not allowed simply to give factually true historical information if it violates a particular social media agenda. I mean, think of that. We're not talking about me getting up and advocating a dangerous conspiracy theory. We're not even talking about me getting on social media and saying, you know, I don't think you should get vaccinated.

It's probably just not a good idea. Not even talking about that. Not even talking about giving an opinion. We're talking about me simply stating a historical fact in a relevant context. When someone's talking about early American history and vaccines and Christian leaders say, yeah, this is also an interesting fact.

That's it. Do you think that an educated person, a thinking literate human being today living in 2021 will think, well, if someone died of complications of a vaccine in 1758, they can't be too safe today? I mean, do you think that someone is really going to make that connection?

It's going to take someone completely unthinking to compare medical practices in America in 1758 to medical practices in America in 2021. But even so, is Twitter telling me that I cannot post something historically true without comment? Only comment is the word interestingly.

That's it. But without any moral assessment or comment or recommendation pertaining to today that I'm not allowed to recount history? I mean, what if, what if Twitter was owned and run by racists and I post a factual soundbite, little, little truth about slavery in America? They ban it.

Why? What violates our, our narrative? I mean, what, what kind of madness is this?

So the hope is that with the billions and trillions, billions and trillions of how many tweets go out that this just hit something because of vaccine, whatever, and somebody immediately blocked it. I got blocked on Facebook once because we posted a political cartoon and it was telling about Hamas wanted to kill Jews. And they said, we don't advocate killing Jews. Like, would you look at the cartoon?

It's about Hamas. They go, Oh, sorry. We misread it. Okay. That can happen.

Anybody can make a mistake, but, but we shall see. And by the way, the vaccine issue is not the big issue to me. My official position, my official recommendation is do the research and make an informed decision.

That's, that's my official recommendation, period. That's not the big issue to me. The big issue is when you are not allowed to post historical truths because they violate a particular narrative you're trying to put forth, which is everyone should be vaccinated and anyone that's not vaccinated is hurting America and believe in some kind of conspiracy theory. I mean, that's the exaggerated narrative you could say that's being put forward.

That would concern me. I mean, you're, we're not just talking about pulling down monuments. We're talking about you cannot post a simple historical fact.

So we'll, we'll keep you posted on that. Again, the tweet itself, meaningless overall. The fact I can't be on Twitter right now.

Okay, whatever. I got 40 something thousand followers. It's not, it's not some life critical thing. We take it seriously. We try to reach people, minister to them, get out good information there, et cetera, provide good links. We take our social media platforms very seriously, whether it's hundreds of thousands or 20,000, we do our best to be edifying and use those well, but it's not the end of the world.

I'm just talking about a trend. That's what concerns me. Okay. Eight six, six, three, four truth. And tell you what, Chris, we'll, we'll come back to the poll a little later in the show.

All right. So we'll come back to that poll. Um, check out this disturbing news. Um, redstate.com reports, this code red comics book burners are coming for your books. Jim Thompson posted this July 16th.

So just three days ago. And, uh, check this out this week, the American booksellers association prostrated itself at the woke altar and digitally burned Abigail Schrier's book, irreversible damage. The written statement is absurd. The association called dissemination of her book, quote, a serious violent incident.

Why? And then in his strongly opinionated terms, because a handful of children disguised as adults screamed at them. And early in the article, he quotes John Milton, great British poet who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, but who he, he, who destroys a good book kills reason itself, banning her digital books. What Amazon banned advertising of the book, irreversible damage. You said, well, what, why are they banning it? Because it tells the truth. The truth about what you say the truth about the irreversible damage being done to many girls and young women today, who identify as transgender only to come to regret it and realize that they are now sterilized for life or that they will now be partially male in terms of certain, certain bodily appearances for life, or here they are 20 years old and they already had a full mastectomy only to say, what on earth did I do? Or, or they stunted their development and growth as women during the formative years. And they can never get that back.

Reverse the damage. It is a compassionately written factually accurate book. Amazingly, Amazon hasn't banned it entirely like they did Ryan Anderson's excellent important book.

When Harry became Sally, this friends is the madness of what's out there. This is why we speak up. This is why we speak out.

And friends, I'm very conscious of the fact that God's given me a great platform through radio and TV and internet, social media outlets, articles, books, different things. We can shout this message out. So we're shouting for you. I know you're shouting in your own world that you're getting the message out in your own world.

You're, you're pouring into your kids. You're a single person at college and standing for what's right. You're, you're, you're, you're holding, holding your own in the workplace where your ideas are mocked, but you're not ashamed of the gospel. So here together, we are raising our voices and I'm doing my best friends to use the platform we have to be a voice of moral sanity and spiritual clarity, to be your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. So together friends, we can be a conscience of the society. We can shine like light.

We can function assault. I've got some encouraging news on the other side of the break, but how about a little wake up call? We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Thanks friends for joining us on the line of fire. Michael Brown, delighted to be with you, 866-34-TRUTH. Okay, let's take a look at this poll. I posted this three years ago on Facebook, just one of these memories that come up.

You have a memory from, you know, keeps telling you things from the past. So three years ago, I posted this question on the Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page. So, I don't know, it's been pretty steady in terms of our number there. So we're in the close to 600,000 Facebook followers. And then you could post polls, but you can only give two choices.

I don't think you can post them now on the main pages, you know, aside from personal page. So I said this, what's your opinion? Should pastors and Christian leaders just preach the gospel? Or should they also comment on relevant social and political issues?

If you have an opinion other than that, if you have an opinion other than these two choices, please explain. I also encourage you to explain why you voted as you did. Let's set a fine challenge and help each other as we interact. So we got almost 2,000 votes, 1.9,000 votes. And it was 84% said gospel and culture, and 16% said gospel only.

I'm sure some would differ with my very definition and say, of course, the gospel intersects with culture. But again, simple poll, that's what was posted. That's why we wanted people to further interact. So I posted the same poll on Twitter. I can't access that page now because Twitter has temporarily blocked me as I explained in the previous segment. But posted the same question and explained, hey, I only gave two choices because on Twitter you can give four because this is how I did it on Facebook. And here was basically 80%, between 79 and 80% saying yes, gospel plus culture, social issues, politics, versus 20%, between 20 and 21, saying gospel only.

So very, very similar results. Now, I found that interesting because we got so caught up in politics in the last year in particular. And we got so caught up in social issues that I thought more people might have felt that, hey, we need to just back away from this, kind of catch our breath and get our minds clear, and that the numbers might have shifted more. Plus, a lot of folks who were really ardent Trump supporters got very upset with me when I said, look, he hasn't won.

It's over. Whether the election was stolen or not, we don't know. But God did not put him back in office and the prophecies are wrong.

So I lost a number of Trump supporters, very ardent Trump supporters, because I even voted for Trump. So I thought maybe the numbers would just be a little shifted, more than this. But overall, and Twitter, of course, is different than Facebook, and I've only got 42,000 people on Twitter. So there are differences. But it ends up pretty similar, 84% to 80%, saying yes, pastors and Christian leaders should also comment on relevant political social issues.

If you go to stream.org, or to my website, askdrbrown.org, you can read an article where I talk about the polls, but then talk about many comments. I share many comments people are making, which is like, we live in this world, and the Gospel touches on every area of life, and we need to be equipped and helped to know how to live in this world. I don't believe that pastors should major on political issues or social issues.

But as the Gospel touches on them, and as relevant to help our people live godly lives in the midst of society, amen, it's appropriate that we do. Okay, check this out. JK Rowling, one of the world's best-selling authors, author of the Harry Potter series, she has come under a lot of attack because she has said there's a difference between male and female, and a man who identifies as a woman is still not a biological woman, and things like that. And only women can get pregnant, not just people get pregnant, only women can menstruate, not just people can menstruate. So she has gotten heavily attacked for this. There was a push to get her banned from the publicity organization that works with her. So now, the latest round, JK Rowling, Breitbart reports this, fires back after, quote, hundreds of transgender activists threatened to beat, rape, assassinate, and bomb her.

Yeah, let me re-read that to you. JK Rowling fires back after, quote, hundreds of transgender activists threatened to beat, rape, assassinate, and bomb her. All right, so here's the background info to that story.

In a desire to make her look bad and just to harass her, there are transgender extremists, people who are of ill will and bad temper, who are posting porn on her Twitter feed, and because a lot of kids read the feed and things like that. And then they're coming, they're saying, ah, you see, you see, you didn't block that. Ah, you see, you didn't, you didn't get that removed.

Ah, you see, you see, that's proof that you're not doing enough. And it's like, what are you talking about? I report everything I see.

She must have a massive Twitter follow. She goes, I report everything I see. But sometimes you have to leave it there to report it. So of course I report every one of these things. So when she pushed back, then the pushback against her, and this is not your average transgender person is not trying to kill somebody or wish their death, but there are plenty of extremists out there. And now this is how they're coming against, oh, makes, makes their cause look great, huh? You dare say only women can get pregnant?

You dare say only women menstruate? We'll kill you. Friends, this is the madness of our society today. And some good news.

How about this? The Blaze reported this on July 16th, court rules against university that targeted Christian groups saying they were hard pressed to find a more blatant example of discrimination. Friends, this is part of the pushback that we have been talking about for years.

It continues. So Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled against the University of Iowa, calling its decision to de-register a Christian student group as one of the most obvious examples of discrimination that it has ever seen. In a ruling issued on Friday, the court unanimously sided with Intravarsity Christian Fellowship, a national faith-based group that organizes local chapters at colleges and universities around the country, putting on Bible studies and worship gatherings.

In 2018, the University of Iowa decided to de-register Intravarsity, along with other student religious groups on campus, over its common sense practice of requiring leaders to agree with its statement of faith. What? How big it is?

How big? How horrible? How? I don't know. Look, look. If you have a PETA group, you are activists against, you know, you're vegan activists and activists against using animal products for fur, for food, whatever, right?

And you're going to have somebody who's like the beef-eating champion of your campus. No, you can't. No. You've got to agree with their purpose. If you are an atheist, you're not going to lead the local Muslim, devoted Muslim club. If you are an ultra-orthodox Jew, you're not going to lead the Catholic club. So Intravarsity just said, you have to agree with our statement of faith.

No. And look, this has happened. Groups have been kicked off college campuses. This has happened, friends.

Why? Well, because you say we believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman. And if someone's going to serve as leadership, anyone can come to the group. Anyone can come to the group. But if you're going to serve as a leader, you have to agree with our tenets of faith.

But of course, whatever the group is, if you are young Republicans and you are an ardent supporter of Bernie Sanders and AOC, and you hate the Republicans, you're not going to lead the young Republican group and converse the young Democrats. Okay. So anyway, what a good rule that they could not think of a more blatant example of discrimination may similar rooting spread. And then this last one, a couple of years back, 2018, Franklin Graham took out ads on these double-decker buses in England, announcing meetings he was going to have. Well, that offended some of the local gay groups in particular, Muslims as well, because Franklin Graham has spoken out in the past about homosexuality and same-sex marriage and Islam as a Christian, shared his views.

All right. You say, yeah, but he talked about Trump a lot. Yeah, this wasn't about Trump.

This wasn't about Trump. This was about his views on LGBTQ issues plus Islam. But the major protest came from LGBTQ people.

So a black pool, a black pool council and black pool transport services limited. They made a joint decision to remove advertisements and reading from their statement, promoting the Lancashire festival of hope due to be held at the winter grounds between 21st, 23rd, September, 2018, et cetera. So they got complaints because of the religious beliefs that were held to by Franklin Graham, but the ads themselves just were advertising the event period.

So the case went to court and the court sided with Franklin Graham and look at this statement of apology. We accept that the advertisements were not in themselves offensive. We further accept that in removing the advertisements, we did not take into account the fact that this might cause offense to other members of the public and suggest that some voices should not be heard. We also regret that we did not consult with the organizers prior to taking our decision. We accept the findings of the court that we discriminated against Lancashire festival of hope because of the religious beliefs of Franklin Graham and in doing so interfere with Lancashire festival of hope's right to freedom of speech. We sincerely apologize to the organizers of the event for the upset and inconvenience caused. We have learned from this experience.

We are committed to ensuring quality of access and opportunity for the population of black pool in providing and improving quality services for all. We have now introduced clear and transparent policies that will ensure no repeat of events such as these. So they could have simply said, we accept the verdict of the court, we pay the fine, but they issued an articulate apology saying, hey, by catering to one group, we're now hurting another group as opposed to say, hey, if the thing itself, the ad itself is generic, what it's promoting is a gospel meeting. The fact that somebody has a problem with Franklin Graham does not give them the right to have that ad removed. Now you've heard another part of the public and on and on it would go.

So I appreciate that apology. It's a good step in the right direction because UK has had a lot of oppressive examples of the gospel being hidden. Okay, we come back. I'm going to talk to professor Owen Strawn about his new book, Christianity and Wokeness. You know, we find ourselves in a really interesting position today as followers of Jesus. We care about righteousness. We care about justice.

We want to see racial reconciliation where there are still remnants of our bad past. We want to address them. And yet there is a woke mentality that is sweeping through not just the nation, but the church that really is unrelated to the gospel and is more tied in with the politically correct spirit than the biblical message. So professor Owen Strawn, he is Provost Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, Senior Fellow with the Family Research Council. He's written an important book. I've thought about the subject a lot, written about it some. So glad to see he devoted the whole book to it, Christianity and Wokeness, how the social justice movement is hijacking the gospel and the way to stop it. If I read you the recommendations from the book by recognized leaders, we wouldn't have time for the interview. So trust me friends, it is highly recommended. Hey Owen, thanks so much for joining us on the broadcast today. Thank you so much for having me on.

I do appreciate it. So when you say social justice, does that have a particular meaning today? Is that different than the biblical call to pursue justice?

You know, that is a fascinating question, because almost no term that we have endlessly pounded into our little brain today is ever defined in the public square. And justice, like equity or like fairness or like diversity, is one of those terms. But basically social justice is distributive leftist justice.

It is justice, so-called, that is no justice at all. It really, in truth, seeks the dynamiting of God's creation order. So where there is a system that God's Word sets up, for example, what we call in America in the 21st century, the free market, social justice seeks to dismantle that. Social justice argues that capitalism causes inequality.

Inequality is one of the most evil realities of our age, and so we should dismantle modern capitalism. So that's an example of how different social justice is from the Word of God, which teaches that the ox is worthy of its wages, it teaches that biblical justice beyond the free market is God giving us what we deserve. That's not a distributive form of justice with Scripture that has special focus on holding sinners to account. But that is not what justice means in the public square today from woke voices, as I say in my book, Christianity in Woke.

You know, it's interesting. I attempted early on to try to redeem the term or recapture the term and referred to some gospel-related truths in terms of social justice. And next thing, everyone thought I was espousing communist principles. I thought, what are you talking about?

I said, well, it is a technical term of the certainty. I thought I'd forget that. I'll just leave that out. But here, I'll play the devil's advocate. Who are you, a conservative white Christian, to lecture us about what justice is and isn't, and what's right and wrong with CRT? What gives you the right? I mean, certainly, that's part of today's narrative.

Yes. Well, the answer, very quickly, is I have no right. The answer is I'm no one, and my word carries no weight beyond the sound of my voice. But whatever my skin color, background, earning-level heritage is, as a Christian, I am called to stand on the timeless, inerrant, authoritative, and all-sufficient Word of God. And so that is what I am trying to bring to this conversation.

The best understanding I can give people of the Word of God and the Word of God's teachings on numerous issues related to what we call wokeness. A Christian is going to have their own background that is given them by God. And many people in this culture will say, for example, of a white guy like me, even though I have Jewish heritage in my background that nobody would know about, but hey, everybody feels comfortable stereotyping one another. So they would look at me as a white person, point being, as you alluded to rightly, and they'd say, you don't have a right to speak into this conversation. And what we need to be clear about as the Church, as the people of Christ, is that we always are in every conversation.

We never opt out of a conversation, out of a tough, tough issue because of our skin color, our heritage. We're always at the table, or should be, because of the Word of God compelling us to speak. We have a fire in our bones, like the old prophet, and we cannot help but tell the truth. Yeah, and I love the way you put it. Really, we are all called as followers of Jesus to be soul through the earth, light of the world. That's the fact, where we find ourselves. And by the way, I did not know that about your background.

I'm Jewish on both sides, mom and dad, but my name, Brown, got shortened generations back when grandparents came over from Russia. So by the way, for those that are going to order the book, Christianity and Wokeness, looking for Owen Strong, it's S-T-R-A-C-H-A-N. Got that, friends? So when you go to order the book, spell the last name right and you'll find it. Okay, we always pray in the Church, awakening. We talk about first-grade awakening, second-grade awakening. We need an awakening in America today. What's the difference between awakening and being woke? Because you talk about, in your book, how wokeness is entering the culture, how wokeness is entering the Church, so what is your definition of wokeness?

Yeah, good question. Wokeness means being alert to the nature of systemic injustice, systemic racism, and systemic inequality today. That's what people really mean, or at least that's what the the theorists mean when they use that term. That is fundamentally a very different set of ideas than what Scripture calls us to be awake to. We are dead in our sins and transgressions in Adam.

All of us are born sinners and born deserving God's eternal wrath for our sins. The awakening, every individual needs, is to wake up to Jesus Christ and see that He is the Savior appointed by the Father, taking the Father's wrath in our place on the cross, rising against the dead for our vindication at the throne of God. That is the awakening every person needs. But wokeness tells us, no, no, no, no, forget about all that spiritual stuff, all that theological stuff.

We have a bunch of jargon, we have a bunch of sociological jargon to offer you. If you will decenter your privilege, if you will unnormalize whiteness, if you will recognize that the whole order is full of microaggressions, systemic racism, then that is the waking up you need to do. So as you framed it, there is a contest of waking up that is taking place in America. We desperately need an outbreak of the Gospel in the 21st century.

That's the waking up to God, to divine wrath that we need. But our culture and critical race theorists and intersectionality experts tell us the opposite. They say you need to wake up to our body of ideology that is really built off of Marxism and the oppressed or oppressed dynamic, and that is just a cul-de-sac.

That is not going to lead you anywhere good in intellectual or spiritual terms. So if it could be shown that there was still systemic racism in our systems of justice or educational systems, whatever, then how would the Gospel intersect with that? Well look, if there were laws on the books that hindered people of a certain skin color from thriving, that unfairly deprived them of their American rights or something like this, then what the Gospel would do for the true church is it would summon us to be a voice against that. For example, depending on how you frame it, abortion is a systemic issue. I don't like that term, I don't like the term systemic injustice, not because there's no evidence in history of sin getting into laws and policies and government.

That certainly is to be found in history, but because these are Marxist terms that have very fuzzy provenance. But let's just say, let's take abortion. Let's go to that real present-day example of injustice. We should speak as the church against abortion. That is an issue, society-wide, structural if you want, written into the very laws of America that allows sinners like us to murder their children. So we have to have a conscience against that and speak up in public about it and oppose it every way we can. In the same way, if there was to be a racist law on the books again in America today, well yes, then Gospel-captivated Christians should absolutely speak against it.

We should, we must. Right, so, and I put that out just because it's so easy to misunderstand one another these days, even when people use certain terms like CRT, okay, what exactly do you mean by it? And sometimes we're talking past each other, even well-meaning Christians. And you wrote this book, obviously with a sense of urgency, to get the message out. How exactly is wokeness entering in the church, and why is this so dangerous? Why is this worthy of a book shouting from the rooftops, America, Wake Up to Wokeness? Yes, Christianity and Wokeness attempts to be that book.

I am saying, absolutely, wake up. This is infiltrating the church. It is getting in, in a lot of cases, through weak men, weak pastors, who are letting themselves be taken captive by an ungodly ideology, and are in many cases as so-called white men, buying the lie that they have white privilege and they are white supremacists at some level by virtue of their whiteness. And every person of any skin color has to watch their heart, has to watch about partiality, has to watch racism, sure, ethnocentrism, a more technical term, but by and large, we've got to recognize that these ideas that are speaking into the church are not from Scripture. They're just not from Scripture, they're not sound ideas. They are from sociology, they are from Marxism, they are from blessing, and so what is actually happening all the way down the pew is that lots of people in the pew who are, let's say, white, are hearing that they are white supremacists and that they are contributing to systemic racism in America, and they need to repent of that. Even after becoming a Christian, there's more to repent of through systemic racism and systemic injustice than they thought.

So really, this ends up being a legalistic system that adds to the Gospel. And I care about the public's explorations, Michael. I care about them greatly. I don't want America to burn. I don't want this civilization to fall apart. It may well do that, my intention notwithstanding, but I especially care about the Church of Jesus Christ, and when ordinary men and women are being told that they are structurally a racist and there's nothing they can do about their racism to take it away, that is adding to the Gospel and that is condemning them, which is a violation of Romans 8.1, that there is no condemnation now in Christ Jesus. So the stakes could not be higher with wokeness entering the church. Yeah, so there's kind of a guilt-ridden stage people might go through, just like if you started doing outreach to Native Americans and then find out history or you find yourself in a certain situation and then, as opposed to a motivation to really minister into a situation, this guilt cycle comes, which ends up doing more harm than good. Hey, could you stay for a couple more minutes on the other side of the break?

You're able to do that? Absolutely. All right, we will be right back with professor and author Owen Strahn. Remember, last name is spelled S-T-R-A-C-H-A-N. Look at my screen to make sure I have it right. His important new book, Christianity and Wokeness, how the social justice movement is hijacking the Gospel and the way to stop it. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with professor Owen Strahn, S-T-R-A-C-H-A-N, his new book, Christianity and Wokeness. Table of contents, chapter one, how wokeness is entering the culture. Next chapter, how wokeness is entering the church.

Next chapter, why is wokeness an ungodly system? Focusing on theological issues. The next one, cultural issues. Then what does the Bible teach about identity and ethnicity?

Two chapters, one dealing with Old Testament, one dealing with New, and then hard questions on American history and other hot topics. Owen, you raise as a hot question total depravity, and if total depravity is real that human beings in themselves are hopelessly lost and fallen and will naturally go the way of evil, then doesn't that support all the other ideas of wokeness? I mean, so we are systemically racist and we are systemically this and that, and just how can you argue for one without accepting the other? So you address that. What's your short version of the answer? Yeah, good question. Short version would be we absolutely have the seeds of sin in our heart of so many different sins, right?

And they can all flower in different ways at different times, so we're aware of that. Fundamentally, we are shot through with sin. We are not like God, we are morally corrupt from birth, and we need divine rescue to be saved. But that is not the same thing as saying that I am guilty of systemic pedophilia or something like that, some terrible sin. In other words, I want to recognize that sin is going to come to expression in my mind, in my heart, in my mouth, in my actions, absolutely. But that is not the same thing as me walking up to somebody and saying, you're a pedophile.

The seeds of that sin are in a person, that wickedness. But that is not the same thing as assuming, especially because of a person's skin color, that they are a certain type of sinner. And that's really the major end problem we have with this concept of systemic racism and all white people being white supremacists could your average, to use a silly phrase, white person fall into the trap of white supremacy? Yes, they could. People have.

People will. But is any white person you go up to in the local shopping mall this fire-breathing white supremacist? No, that's not a fair conclusion at all. And so we need to go back, not to stereotyping people as a sinner because of how they look, but to actually addressing the sin that is in our own heart, which you can only know, Michael, by getting to know someone. You can't know that by looking at their skin color. People are all different types of sinners and all different types of saints, even if they seemingly share pigmentation. Yeah, and you know what's so ironic about all this, that in the past, white Christians sinned against Africans by saying they were either inferior culturally or mentally or that they were under some type of curse. So therefore their skin color was somehow determinative of who they really were on the inside or that they were just lesser. So now that gets turned around, of course, not in the same way, but it gets turned around to if you have, if you're white, then you are inherently evil and part of an evil system and whites throughout history are always oppressors, et cetera.

So you get these caricatures, and instead of drawing people together around Jesus so we can really work at fixing the real problems in our world, it just makes us further divide it, doesn't it? Yeah, and that's what I say in this book, Christianity and Wokeness. I say that critical race theory is not anti-racism.

That's how it's presented. That's what Ibram X. Kendi at Boston University, making millions a year, tells everybody. He says through promoting his quest on so-called white supremacy, every white person being that, he is opposing racism. He's an anti-racist. In reality, he's a neo-racist. That's what I say in the book, Christianity and Wokeness. He's a neo-racist. He is simply turning that horrible paradigm around where people used to think they knew so-called that black people were inferior, and now they're turning around and applying that to white people and basically saying that white people are inferior.

In reality, this isn't just a black-white issue, this isn't just an American issue. I mean, people sin against one another in these ways, in these partial ways, from the dawn of the fall. This is one of the oldest forms of sin, and the only way to oppose this, ultimately, is not just by holding hands and saying, I like you, you like me, we're all good, and then Barney dances in the background. It is through embracing the gospel of divine grace and then recognizing that Ephesians 2, there's not a Jew church and a Gentile church, there's not separate peoples, there's not separate rooms in heaven for the people of God, there is one new man constituted by the blood of Christ. That's where we need to go as the church. It's very strange that we are asking unsaved sociology professors to lead the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ on these issues.

Tragically, we are, and I pray we stop. Well friends, you heard it loudly and clearly, the new book Christianity and Wokeness. Oh, and may the Lord's blessing be on your endeavors. Appreciate you coming on the air with us today.

Thank you for your time, appreciate it. All right, so friends, let me say this. I am absolutely committed to biblical justice, and when that means having uncomfortable conversations with people, I am absolutely committed to it. And when I have a blind spot, and you're going to be the one to expose that blind spot, I might not appreciate it at first, but trust me, I'll appreciate it because I don't want to have blind spots.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with Nancy in the decades we've known each other, which is since 1974 and married since 76, where I did not initially react positively to her critical comments, only to thank her later and say, hey, what you said was true, and I know your motivation was just in my best interest. So we will have the difficult conversations, but we will not go the way of the world. In other words, my purpose here is not to prove to a particular group of constituents, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, Jewish, whoever, conservative, to prove that I am woke, or on top of this, my goal is to honor the Lord, live biblically, fulfill the Great Commission in terms of my role, my part in it, and love Jesus, love my neighbor, and be the maximum blessing and help I can to those with whom I come in contact. And where I need to make course corrections, I want to make them. And where I need to learn from mistakes from the past, mine or others, I want to do it.

And I hope it's the same for you. So by all means, let's have uncomfortable conversations, but let's do it as as Owen Strong's urging us on gospel terms, not on the world's terms. Look, when you talk about the social justice movement or social justice warrior, I'm sure there are people involved within that with sincere motivation, really trying to make wrongs right in Jesus' name, but they're caught up in a larger movement that actually has a different ideology and different presuppositions and different goals. For example, equal opportunity is very different than equal outcome. And if you want to try to guarantee equal outcome, you are ultimately advocating for a socialist Marxist type of position, which in the end will bring destruction. And in the end will take away many of the things that have made America what it is in the best sense of the word. And look, you didn't need America or capitalism for slavery because slavery's been here as long as human beings have been here. And it is here. There are hundreds of millions of people enslaved today around the world.

These are realities. And and every different group is enslaved. Every other group. You want to see atrocities committed in war by one group against the other.

It has no ethnic or racial boundaries. Humans do terrible things to humans. It happens all the time across the board. At the same time, the gospel calls us to live differently. Friends, not just in terms of, oh, I'm praising the Lord or have a beautiful time in prayer. Yes, praise the Lord and have that beautiful time in prayer and then go out of there and love your neighbor. Then go out of there and be a responsible parent. Then be out of there and be a God-fearing young person.

Leave your prayer closet and go out there and be a God-fearing young person. The gospel intersects with every area of society. You say, yeah, but the church has all been on the wrong side of this or that. Well, let's not get the world to correct this. Let's go back to the word of God.

Let's get on our knees and our faces here. You think back to sermons of Martin Luther King and early civil rights leaders. A lot of quotes come from the words of the prophets or for the ethics of Jesus.

In other words, and some of these people genuinely knew the Lord and some were more nominally Christian, but they understood that the Bible itself gave more than enough material to call us to live righteously, to call us to do justice, to call us to have compassion on the poor, to call us to care about the least of these. That the Bible itself, God's word, gave us all the holy ammunition that we needed to be world changers. That's why one of the three R's of our ministry is revolution, meaning a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution. That as Jesus really changes us and we live differently and impact those around us, it will lead to radical, dramatic, moral and cultural change, which is also known as revolution.

It's not through guns and knives, not through anger and hatred, not through intimidation, and not even primarily through the political system or the legal system. Rather, the old idea that politics is downstream from culture, then culture is downstream from how God's people are going to live if there are enough of us in a society. So let us be wholehearted Jesus people. Let us commit to having the uncomfortable conversations and let us stand for righteousness, justice, reconciliation, and truth. And let's figure out as God's people, based on the word of God, with the help of His Spirit, let's figure out how to live it out. Are you on board with me? Bye. Another program powered by the Truth Network.