Short Take 2: Resurgence Turned Divergence, Part 2

When you put forward what you hope to be a friendly amendment to it, it was deemed unfriendly. We see this in the film by Curtis Woods, the professor of Southern.

And he responded that critical race theory for the purpose of this amendment was nothing more than a quote, analytical tool. How will this resolution now play out? What effect is this going to have now that the Southern Baptist Convention has recognized and voted in favor of this resolution?

And why is it insidious? First of all, resolutions have no binding authority on any Southern Baptist agency, institution or church. So every Southern Baptist, individually, every church, corporately is free to completely reject and ignore this resolution. All it does is it expresses what messengers at any given time, whenever a resolution is passed, affirm.

So that's it. So there's no authority in a resolution. That doesn't mean it's unimportant, but there's no binding authority to it. It's insidious because it insinuates now into our conversation and into people listening or watching the idea that Southern Baptists have affirmed critical race theory and intersectionality, which on one level is very true. Now, the resolution number nine itself has caveats and nuances in it, which are good, saying that the scripture is supreme, it's authoritative and everything else must be brought under its authority and rejected if it violates scripture at any point.

All that's right, good and true. However, the tool that you choose to accomplish a work matters. If you choose the wrong tool to accomplish something, then you're going to have some very difficult and maybe even devastating results. For example, here in Southwest Florida, we are infected with what we call no-see-ums, these little things that bite like mosquitoes, but you can't see them. And man, they'll just eat you alive if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, whenever the no-see-ums invade, I take it personally, I get upset, I want to smash them. I don't want to just get rid of them, I want to smash them. Well, suppose I said, okay, let me grab this hammer to smash no-see-ums.

Well, I could probably kill a few, but in the process, I'm going to wreak havoc on structures that I hit with a hammer and on my own bones, on the bones of other people that I'm trying to protect from no-see-ums. The tool that you use matters. And critical race theory is a faulty tool. It cannot deal biblically with the issue of racism or ethnic superiority ideas or bigotry. It cannot do it. Only the gospel can deal with those things. And critical race theory, to be brought in and to be elevated, even at a level of an analytical tool, is unhelpful. It's insidious because it's subtle. It will take some people down bad paths who say, oh, okay, well, we heard critical race theory can be a good analytical tool, so let me use it to start assessing relationships between races and how we ought to advocate for justice in race relations.