We Will Not Be Silenced Interview Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The culture is too far gone to reclaim, so Erwin Lutzer wants to reclaim the Church even as the Church buys into a decaying culture.

That's why he's written the new book, We Will Not Be Silenced, responding courageously to our culture's assault on Christianity. Today, what it's all about. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Now, along with Pastor Larry McCarthy, here is Pastor Lutzer. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer and I definitely want to welcome you once again to the ministry of Running to Win. Today we have a very special program. God has enabled me to write a new book entitled, We Will Not Be Silenced, responding courageously to our culture's assault on Christianity. And I believe very deeply that the issues that are discussed here are so relevant to our culture that we can't overlook them.

We need to be able to understand these issues and also to respond to them. Once again, I welcome here to the studio our good friend and pastoral staff member Larry McCarthy. Larry here at the Moody Church is responsible for compassion ministries but also local outreach.

And he has a number of other responsibilities here at the church. And he's always welcome. And we're so thankful, Larry, that you're with us. Well, it's good to see you again, Pastor Lutzer. And I'm honored to be here. What a great topic.

I mean, and so relevant, so much needed today. So I'm eager to get going. Let's do it.

Well, let me just ask you. First of all, we will not be silenced. Who's the we? The we actually, Larry, is the church.

I did not write this book in order to reclaim the culture. I don't want to be pessimistic but I think we're past that. We've crossed too many boundaries, too many barriers. The question is how do we reclaim the church because I see in today's world oftentimes the church is buying into the culture rather than standing against it.

The other thing that happens with the church is it doesn't know how to respond to these issues. We're caught in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, we want to come across as very loving and very accepting. At the same time, we have certain things we have to stand against. The question is how do we achieve that balance? And this book was written in order to help us to do that on a variety of different issues. Wow. So thank you for explaining what it is that you want to accomplish but I need to ask you, in chapter one, you talk about Marxism and you raise this issue of cultural Marxism.

Can you just put the hair for me? This is so critical to understand what's happening here in America. Marxism itself is the supremacy of the state over the individual. Marx looked at the fact that workers were being exploited.

There was no way for them out supposedly and so his view was if the state captured the means of production and the economy, the state could hand out benefits and so forth and wage wages equally and fairly. Now the problem was that when the revolution happened in Russia and so forth, people were so angry with their leaders and so forth. So the idea arose, look, we need Marxism. But cultural Marxism says we can do this without a major revolution.

We can do this incrementally. All that we need to do is to take care of the educational system. We have to be able to have laws that promote our agenda.

We need politicians that promote our agenda. So Marxism can take over in a way that will make people very happy with it once they see its benefits. You mentioned in the book that there are five cultural institutions that cultural Marxism is seeking to capture and family, social, political, educational and religious.

Absolutely. In fact, the one that I want to pick on to talk about is the family. Marx believed that standing in the way of this wonderful revolution was the family. The reason is because number one, rich people could pass on to their children their wealth and that was unfair. Also the other problem is women were being abused or what shall I say, they were being subjected to their husbands and so they were being oppressed. Now of course we know that oppression often happens and Marx was legitimately concerned about the oppression. His answer was totally wrongheaded because you see once the state you have – the state taking over all of these things, what you have after that is the fact that you have a regime that is even more oppressive than the previous one. We're going to have to come back to this topic also because this is part of the revolution that is taking place in America today where you have these people looting and burning buildings and demonstrating thinking if we were in charge, there would be equality. But the fact is there won't be because of human nature. It's something we're going to have to talk about because in the book I also have a chapter on socialism where we're going to get into this in more detail.

I really appreciated you outlining those five cultural institutions because it makes you pause to think about how the culture pushes against family and even the social issues and political and educational and even religious. You offer up this explanation on another subject. You say we can't rewrite the past to control the future.

You know that's actually the next chapter and I'm so glad that you brought it up because what I mean is this. There is in America today the idea that we have to destroy our Judeo-Christian heritage. The reason that it needs to be destroyed is because it was racist and we know that racism existed.

We're going to probably get into all those issues. But as a result of that, we really have to rewrite the past in order that we might control the future. Now just think, we were talking about Marxism a moment ago.

You think for example Larry as to what happened when there was the cultural revolution in China. I mean they renamed buildings, they tore down monuments. You know maybe the best example is I remember, you may be too young to remember, but St. Petersburg in Russia. At one time it was called Leningrad and then Stalingrad.

Today it is back to St. Petersburg. So what you want to do is to destroy the past to build a brand new future. Now Arthur Schlesinger who was a historian and a confidant of President Kennedy said something very interesting. He said a country's history is to that country what a person's memory is to the person.

So if a person loses his memory, he forgets who he is, he doesn't know exactly who he is and so he's willing to believe he is whatever people say he is. So the idea is this, that America because of its past racial history has to be destroyed. It's not worth preserving, but what we need is a brand new foundation and that brand new foundation is a form of humanism actually.

It is once again Marxist and once we get on the other side of this revolution that's taking place, we'll have peace and justice and a word that is so very important to people and that is the word equality. Now the question that I raise in this chapter is this. Certainly we recognize the horrors of slavery. That's not even a question. We also recognize that under Jim Crow laws segregation was so unfair and unjust and that's why Martin Luther King's venture in terms of civil rights was biblical because what he was saying is people should be equal under the law, they should be equal in opportunity.

So we get all that. But what is happening today is the point of view that is being taken is that because of the past, what we need to do is to build on an entirely new foundation and to those who are listening, I need to remind you of something. As I mentioned at the top of this program, Larry McCarthy is with me here in the studio. Larry, in the 1960s, your parents came to Moody Church. They were African-American and they were not always warmly welcomed back then, were they?

Larry McCarthy No, that's true. They weren't warmly welcomed by all but to be fair and to be honest, there were those white members of the church who did welcome them, who loved them, who encouraged them, who supported them in their walk with Christ and so there was balance but no, they weren't received with open arms, so to speak. In fact, sometimes when they would sit in the sanctuary, people would get up and move or ask them things like, don't they have any churches where you live? That's very sad and of course, we as a nation and as a church, we repent of those days but I always like to say this and perhaps people have heard me say it before, they'd have never dreamed that someday they would have a son who would be on the pastoral staff of the Moody Church. That never crossed their mind, did it? No, it didn't.

It didn't cross mine either. To your point about this eradicating the past, I had the privilege of going to Israel with you and they'd certainly talk about the Holocaust and they remind themselves of where they've been and it is such a part of the culture. Certainly, America's past has some really dark episodes in it but we put that in perspective of where we've come from and what we steer against. We don't ignore it and we don't sleep it under the rug and we don't say it didn't exist and I think you made an excellent point of bringing that out in chapter two of the book that yes, we have some dark history, some things that we're not very proud of but we address them with our eyes open and with the determination not to go back to that or to glorify it but to see it for exactly what it was then.

And you know there's so much that we can learn and do better but we don't have to destroy the country in order to do that. In other words, America can be fixed without putting it on an entirely different foundation and you know just speaking of slavery, when you read some of the literature and by the way you know I won't get into this in detail but in this chapter I have a section on the 1619 project that the New York Times did showing that the real history of America goes back to slavery and capitalism and it goes back to the time when the first slaves arrived and so forth. The problem with that is it is very imbalanced and you almost get the impression that America invented slavery. Now the fact is that there are still millions of slaves today, actually 40 million mostly in Africa and India so what we must recognize is that our country for all of its faults and you're absolutely right in saying that we should not overlook those faults, still we have made progress and there's more progress to be made and that's a much better way that we can look at all of this. Brian Smith I like when you put in your book, we didn't – America didn't invent slavery but America ended slavery. Tom Hanks And the thing is this, all these people who hate America, they will never compare America with another country. Saul Alinsky who greatly influenced this, you know, he died in 1976 but his book is still read, Rules for Radicals.

Saul Alinsky would never compare America with another country because how can you get people to hate America if you compare it with other countries and so what we need to do is to recognize that we are all sinners. In fact, we're going to get to that in just a moment. You know Larry, what we have to do is to get to chapter three which is titled Diversity is Used to Divide and to Destroy.

Brian Smith Well, we're in the deep end of the pool now. You talk about critical race theory so for people who are new to that expression, that term, can you put the cookies on the low shelf for us so we can all reach them? I can certainly do that.

At least I can try to do that. Now many parents send their kids to the university and they come back hating America and they hate America because of its racist past and things we've already talked about and the question is why? There are so many diversity studies, you know, there's, you know, study feminism and racism and these diversity studies, why do they cause such hate for America? So I will give you the big picture and then I will answer your question very specifically. The big picture is this, that these studies are not intended to bring about racial reconciliation.

We're going to be talking about that in just a few moments. These studies are intended to divide the racist perpetual conflict by making impossible demands and I get into the whole issue here of whiteness and, you know, its racist views. But now to critical race theory.

And this is critical. Critical race theory basically says that we put people in classifications. Just like Marxism, you have the oppressors which they believe to be the whites, the American whites. They're the oppressors. We are the oppressors. On the other hand, you have the oppressed which is the African Americans, the black Americans.

You have that happening. And so everybody is targeted in accordance with a group that they fit which is pure Marxism. Larry, this is totally against what Martin Luther King would have taught. Martin Luther King taught let's not judge one another by the color of our skin but by the content of our character. And here there is no opportunity to judge people by the content of their character. If you're white, you're guilty.

Confess it and live with it. So you're saying your identity can't be separated from the group you belong to. Absolutely. And that's exactly what Marxism was all about. If I could go into it in more detail, I'd point out that even people like LeBron James, for example, he would not be considered a person of privilege because he's a black American. So you have poor people but they also are people of privilege and people of oppression.

Why? Because they're white. This is a very racist point of view. The other thing that they believe is that victory is achieved when you have the oppressed overcoming the oppressors which again is based on Marx and that's why you have this perpetual conflict and then why does this help us to understand what's happening here in the United States?

You also have something else. There is no universal objective truth to which we work because Marx taught truth is what is used by the oppressors to keep people oppressed. So what this means is there's really no objective truth. What you need to do is to recognize that truth changes in accordance with whether or not it is touted by the oppressed or the oppressor. And so what you have is a total Marxist view of reality. Wow. You know, this abandonment of the pursuit of truth that we see in our culture, that explanation makes it really clear as to what exactly is going on.

Yeah. And so this is critical race theory and this is what is taught oftentimes and of course we know this has gone totally crazy. I have in my book an example of how arithmetic goes woke.

They want to show the racist aspect of arithmetic and math and all those things. That's just – but we're off on a tangent here, not you and me talking about this but our educational system and it has repercussions. Now Larry, what we need to do is to contrast this with Christianity, okay?

This is where my heart is. Christianity comes along and says wait a moment. We aren't in perpetual conflict because of diversity. There's a lot that we have in common. We are sinners. We all come to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ with our need.

Racism exists in every human heart and we must recognize therefore that really, if I might put it clearly, we don't have a skin problem. We have a sin problem. Say it. Say it.

Say it, yes. And so what we do is we confess. We are all humbled before the cross and Paul in Ephesians and in Colossians put it so clearly that Jesus Christ is the one who has broken down the hostility and therefore we can be one.

And you know if I might mention Moody Church again since we brought that subject up a few moments ago, we just rejoice in the fact that on any Sunday morning we have people from 70 different countries of origin. You look at what the Bible says in Revelation chapter 5 and you'll discover there that there are people from every race and color and nation and so forth and so what the church should be saying to a world that clearly has lost its way, you know there is another way that we can demonstrate unity without being in perpetual conflict. Having come to the cross, having humbled ourselves, we then ask the question, how can those who are privileged help the underprivileged? What can we do for one another to bring about unity, to bring about justice and so forth?

But it can't happen as long as you have diversity studies that are committed to dividing us. Thomas Sowell Boy, you just took our focus from the culture to what's going on outside and you brought it right inside the church building where we now cannot be silenced, the need to ask the questions and to listen and to be obedient to scripture here. Thomas Sowell Well you know that's my heart and I might say that this book which is entitled We Will Not Be Silenced, Responding Courageously to Our Culture's Assault on Christianity. Now to all those who are listening I need to say this, that as someone who has authored a number of books, it is very easy to always say this is my most important, right?

I mean after all if we didn't feel very deeply why would we even write it? But in this book what I try to do is to talk about our culture and then say this is the biblical response. For example in the next program we're actually going to be talking about issues of freedom of speech and I'm going to be explaining how propaganda works. This is very critical where cultural streams are created in such a way that if you stand against them you will be cancelled.

How does that work and how is that happening in America? So remember the book We Will Not Be Silenced and to the many people who are supporters of this ministry we are deeply grateful it is because of you we can make these resources available. Narrator Cultural Marxism and divisive diversity, enemies of the church and thus why we will not be silenced. Next time on Running to Win, the erosion of free speech and the rise of government propaganda.

Make sure to join us. The idea of freedom of speech being censored is really based on Marxism. You had a philosopher by the name of Marcuse. He said as long as we have freedom of speech the capitalists can win the argument. Only oppressed people should have the right to speak. Are we as a church even advertising correctly we are so afraid of being called unloving that often times we can make compromises in the name of love.

And people sometimes come and they see a very well timed worship service and then they have a talk from the preacher but what they don't hear is this is the word of God. Pastor Lutzer's new book We Will Not Be Silenced will be sent as our gift to you as you support Running to Win at this crucial time with your gift of any amount. Just call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. Or write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Online reach us at RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.