Understanding the Term “Privilege”

Understanding the term privilege. That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host of the program, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, thanks for joining us today for another edition of the Christian Worldview Radio Program as we discuss understanding the term privilege. Now you've probably noticed that this word privilege is being used as a disqualifying modifier. For instance, you may be labeled as having white privilege and therefore are not qualified to participate on issues related to ethnicity or that you must give up your quote power by working to elevate others of ethnic minority. Other examples where the privilege label is attached is on those who maybe inherited wealth or live in the suburbs or were raised in an intact family or have access to certain opportunities or education.

This ideology of privilege is another tentacle of the destructive and divisive worldview of social justice, which seeks to divide people into identity groups, fan the flames of grievance, and then quote burn down the systemic injustice that is endemic in our society, unquote. Cal Beissner, founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, is our guest today on the Christian Worldview. We will discuss some of the recent events related to quote climate change, such as Elton John buying carbon offsets, the fires in the Amazon forest, the claim that this past July was the hottest on record, and then Cal will get into explaining what's behind the label of privilege and why it's so unbiblical. I think this will be a helpful segue to our speaker series event this Sunday evening, September 15th at 7pm on social justice with speaker Daryl Harrison at Grace Church Eden Prairie.

There's no registration, no cost, just come and bring others too. Let's get to the first segment of the interview with Cal Beissner. Cal, it's great to have you back on the Christian Worldview radio program to talk about so many issues involved with global warming.

And I want to start out by reading a short couple sentences from an article in World Magazine that you had linked from your website, CornwallAlliance.org. That article said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned human caused global warming is harming land based ecosystems and threatening our food supply. If warming increases even a few more tenths of a degree, the panel said, food will become scarcer, more expensive and less nutritious. Quote, I've lost a lot of sleep about what the science is saying, Coco Warner, a manager in the UN Climate Change Secretariat said in a statement.

As a person, it's pretty scary, unquote. First question for you, Cal, why is man caused global warming such an animating and useful issue for the left, for globalists and even liberal Christians? Well, because the alleged cause of man caused global warming is our use of energy, particularly energy derived from fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, which, by the way, give us roughly 85% of all the energy that we use in the world. The reason that that is such a wonderful uniting factor for the globalists, the socialists and so on is that if we're going to be forced to change our global energy infrastructure, moving away from fossil fuels to wind and solar and a few other renewables, that means we're going to have to change everything about our lives because energy goes into everything that we do. So if you are looking for a rationale to hand over control of people's lives to government, and if you're looking for a rationale to force the new infrastructure on everyone all over the world, rather than leaving it up to individual nations to decide for themselves, well, global warming caused by human use of fossil fuels is the perfect rationale. Cal Beissner with us today on The Christian Real View, the founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Just highly recommend that you go to their website, cornwallalliance.org, and subscribe to their free email.

You'll be informed on all these issues on a regular basis. Another issue recently in the news, Cal, was the fact that Elton John, the musician from England, had Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, use his private jet to fly to a climate change conference in Nice, I think it was. And there was lots of blowback because of this, you know, going to a climate change conference and you're emitting carbon emissions into the atmosphere on a private jet. In an article in the Spectator magazine online, it says this, Climate change has become ethics for the wealthy, preaching planetary salvation to justify their privileged position in society and telling the rest of us what we shouldn't do while forcing us to pay more for it into the bargain. Continuing in that article, reviewing carbon offset projects around the globe, Song, that's the name of the person who looked into it, found that they hadn't offset the emissions they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed, or that couldn't be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO2, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn't last. What is this practice of buying carbon offsets and why is it just really so ludicrous and actually religious? Yeah, it is the modern equivalent of the indulgences in the late Middle Ages that led to the Protestant Reformation. You could buy indulgences supposedly to make up for your sins. Well, if we're sinning by using fossil fuels and you want somehow or other to get forgiveness for that, you buy carbon offsets and that allows you to go ahead and use as much fossil fuel as you want to.

You can fly in your private jet to these big fancy gatherings of other elites to discuss how to get the rest of the world to do what we ought to do since they're not doing what they ought to do. The problem is that the studies done of the various different programs to supposedly offset carbon dioxide emissions show over and over again that they don't work, that in fact there is no offsetting of the carbon dioxide emissions. Some say we're going to plant new forests in particular places and they never get planted, or they plant some forest in one place but they tear down some forest in another place, or they plant the forest in a place but then they quickly remove it, or they don't plant enough forest to offset the carbon dioxide from whatever it is that somebody wants to offset.

It usually has to do with flying in jet aircraft. The simple fact is that it's all been a scam right from the start, a scam from which, by the way, Al Gore made many millions of dollars because he helped to start the carbon offset companies, the carbon trading stock exchanges, and he made a bunch of money out of them and then pulled out before they all fell apart. The whole notion of carbon trading has just flopped. But he did well.

That's a typical thing for him. That whole thing is just incredible. Now, you started Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship Creation. How many years ago was that, Cal? 2005, so it's 14 years now.

Fourteen years ago. I read a piece from your website recently. It said last month, 74 US medical and public health groups released a, quote, US call to action, declaring climate change a, quote, true public health emergency that can be solved by, quote, urgent action. The statement calls for a transition away from hydrocarbon energy and a move to a low carbon economy. But actual weather and health trends don't support either the alarm or the demanded actions.

The statement was endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Physicians. I just read this, I'm sort of chuckling, thinking, I mean, here we got health professionals. Now they're on the global warming bandwagon.

It's everyone, it's every sector of society. Did you ever think that when you started the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation 15 years ago, that there would be an unending litany of environmental issues capturing the interests of such diverse groups that you'd have to counteract? Well, actually, David, I had been watching the way these things go for more than 20 years before that anyway. And the environmentalists have had a really consistent track record of getting people to jump on their bandwagons, even if those people don't have any particular expertise in the subject.

There's actually, I think, a simple reason behind why this works this way. The word environment comes from a word from the French language meaning to turn around. So your environment is your surroundings.

Well, you know, from Alpha Centauri to the hair on the back of your neck, there's nothing that isn't part of your environment. And so really, environmentalism is the same thing as everything-ism. So you can always come up with a way of tying any supposed environmental issue to anything else in life. In fact, one of the common phrases in the environmental movement is everything is connected to everything else. So if you're a meteorologist and you're convinced that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming, and you are committed to an environmental way of thinking, well, you automatically begin to realize, oh, well, everything that everybody else does is tied to this, so we need to get everybody on this bandwagon.

The trouble, of course, is that it then becomes impossible to discipline yourself to really focus on the hard evidence in your own sphere of learning for whether or not your fear is justified. And so that's why what we see is small groups of activists managing to hijack large organizations and speak in their names. For instance, all of the various national academies of science who have issued public statements affirming dangerous manmade global warming, every one of those statements was put together by a small cadre of people in the inner offices of those.

Not a single one of them was sent out first to all the membership of those academies of science. And so you really don't have them speaking for all the members. You have them speaking for themselves, but pretending to speak for all.

Well, that's the same kind of thing. I'm quite positive that it's happened with this recent statement from these health professionals. No, it's not from all the health professionals in America. It's from a small cadre of activists. And the simple fact is that the best empirical evidence is that human emissions of carbon dioxide have extremely little, they do have real, but they have extremely little effect on global average temperature. It's certainly not enough to cause any disruption of any ecosystems or any disruption of human well-being. You are listening today to an interview with Cal Beisner, the founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a great organization that I would encourage you to connect with via their weekly email.

It's free. Go to CornwallAlliance.org. We've been updated on all the issues going on in this issue of, quote, unquote, climate change. What a different perspective you get from Cal Beisner than you get from the mainstream media and other sources. Okay, we have much more to get to today in the program, so stay tuned. More with Cal Beisner on understanding the term privilege when we return to The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. That's that with the issue of social justice, followed by a Q&A moderated by host David Wheaton.

No cost, no registration. Just come. The event will also be livestreamed on the Christian Worldview Facebook page. For more information, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit TheChristianWorldview.org. The Christian Worldview speaker series with Daryl Harrison, Sunday, September 15th at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie. Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit TheChristianWorldview.org. Before God opened Costi's eyes to understand sound doctrine and believe in the true gospel. Now a pastor, Costi has written an important book entitled God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel, which chronicles his own experience and gracefully points the reader to the truth of scripture. For a limited time, you can order this 224-page softcover book for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview.

Normal retail is $17.99 without shipping. To order, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit TheChristianWorldview.org. Alright, welcome back to the Christian Worldview radio program. I'm David Wheaton, the host. Our website is TheChristianWorldview.org. We're glad you joined us today as we discuss understanding the term privilege with our guest, Cal Beisner. He's the founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Before we get back to the second segment of that interview, just a reminder that you can subscribe to our free weekly email or our annual print newsletter by going to our website, TheChristianWorldview.org.

All the audio of past programs is there. You can order resources from our store. You can also support the ministry of The Christian Worldview.

We very much appreciate your support. Again, Cal Beisner is our guest today on The Christian Worldview radio program. He's one of our favorite guests that we have on from time to time. He's going over some environmental issues that are in the news and then he'll get to the term privilege and what's behind that.

Let's get back to the second segment with Cal Beisner. They keep on talking about this so that global temperatures are rising. There's another article on your website, CornwallAlliance.org. He said, now we are seeing news reports from CNN, BBC, Reuters that July 2019 was the hottest month on record for global average surface air temperatures. One would think that the very best data would be used to make this assessment. After all, it comes from official government sources such as NOAA and the World Meteorological Organization.

Easy for me to say. The current official pronouncements of global temperatures records come from a fairly limited and error-prone array of thermometers. The global surface thermometer network has three major problems when it comes to getting global average temperatures.

What are those problems briefly? Well, for one thing, the instruments differ over time. There have been a variety of different kinds of thermometers used and those bring in a significant margin of error. For another thing, the vast majority of the locations of thermometers used in the World Meteorological Organization network are located in built-up areas that have what meteorologists call the urban heat island effect.

Built-up areas, and by the way, this means anything from a handful of dwellings in a little tiny remote village to a city of 10 million people and everything in between. The urban heat island effect results in these thermometers yielding higher readings than thermometers out in rural areas that are completely uninhabited. Yet it's those areas that would be the real measure of whether there is global average temperature increase going on. And then a third problem with the surface thermometer network for measuring supposedly global average surface temperature is that those thermometers are overwhelmingly located in the northern hemisphere and in areas that have tended to be closer to the urban areas and a large number of measuring stations, in fact roughly two-thirds, got dropped out of the network in the early 1990s.

While the ones that were dropped out of the network were the ones in the least developed areas, the ones that were kept in the network were the ones in the most developed areas. So a lot of research has indicated that probably at least half of the apparent global average temperature increase over the last, say, 60 years has come from urban heat island effect and is in fact not global at all. The most reliable data sets that we have on global average temperature come from satellite measurements and they reach only back to 1979. And according to those, global average temperature increase has been much less, roughly a third of what was claimed on the basis of the surface thermometers. Furthermore, global average temperature increase was much faster from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s than it has been since then. It's slowed down to the point where, according to some of the data sets, essentially there's been no significant warming over the last 20 years. That is quite inconsistent with the idea that carbon dioxide drives it because our carbon dioxide emissions have not diminished over that time. We've actually increased and so we should have seen faster temperature increase instead of slower.

Cal Beissner with us today in the Christian Real View. One follow-up current event that has been much in the news has also been the fires down in the Amazon. Tell us the story behind that because you hear from one sense, you hear that the whole Amazon's burning up and it's going to be destroyed. Another, it's more on the fringes.

What is the story of what's going on down there? The amount of area being burned right now at this time this summer is roughly 80% more than what was being burned at the same time last summer. That sounds really, really awful until you discover that it is in fact only about 7% higher than the average over the last 40 years or so. In other words, last year was an exceptionally low year for forest depletion through fires. This year is a slightly exceptionally high year but certainly not by comparison with the long-term average.

If in fact it's only 7% above the long-term average but it's 80% above last year's average, then it's quite likely that some of the earlier years were also well above, around 80% or perhaps double the long-term average or double the last year's average. What you've got is activists using a short-term blip as an excuse to cry long-term disaster and that's also a common thing for environmentalists. Even the claim, for instance, that July was the hottest July on record. Well, the record that they have in mind is actually only the last 40 years but we do know that as far as the Western Hemisphere, the Northern Hemisphere, the Western Hemisphere, North America, the 1930s were far, far warmer than the current decade.

All of the greatest records for hottest temperatures, for hottest average temperatures and so on for North America were set in the 1930s, not now. Cal Beissner again with us today in The Christian Worldview, the founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Okay, I want to move into now the recent article that you wrote entitled, A Sad Tale of a Wealthy Millennial's Moral Confusion. I'm just going to give listeners some context here. You say, Adam Roberts, a millennial who wrote an article on the website Vox titled, Is Wealth Immoral, expressed his sense of guilt and injustice at having inherited over a million dollars as a child of wealthy parents. Quote, as I got politicized around things like wealth inequality, climate change, war and the forces connecting them, I didn't connect it too much with my own family or history, he wrote. But then he came to understand things differently. He confessed, as if they were sins, that his family had gained wealth through the oil industry, banking and stock in companies that built things for the military.

His parents had given him stock in Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron, another reason for guilt. As he became active as a, quote, community organizer in Boston, quote, no longer surrounded by wealthy peers, he said it felt absurd to have access to so much when so many others didn't. The whole system that allows people to amass such wealth while others struggle is immoral, he said. Everyone, he thinks, should have a modest first home. But nobody should have a, quote, 20 million dollar mansion in Newport, Rhode Island or a second home if anyone else is homeless or a third home or a fourth or a fifth.

Nobody should buy a new sofa when he could buy a used one and nobody should have a yacht at all. Quote, is it moral to hold any excess private wealth under capitalism, he asks, and later reveals that it's not. He draws toward his conclusion by writing, quote, in a system that produces a handful of people with billions of dollars, while hundreds of millions of people still lack access to basic human needs like health care and affordable housing, the question isn't what billionaires should do with their money. It's how to enact policies that prevent any one person from concentrating that much wealth and power in the first place, unquote. He recommends, quote, taxing wealthy families like mine a whole lot more because this totally happened in the past as part of the Green New Deal. And it's widely supported, unquote.

Now, there's a whole lot in that. When I read that article, Cal, I thought, wow, this is really an interesting article. But I think it's actually very indicative of what's going on in our country right now, even in the political system with the Democrat Party and the types of policies and in worldview they're presenting. Why is that line of reasoning in that article that you wrote about this young man, this millennial, so seductive to people, but so biblically wrong? Well, first, let me just remark that I do not want to just get down on Adam Roberts about this. I actually appreciate his care about those who are poor by comparison with himself. I admire his sense of compassion. What's really sad is his misunderstanding about what is justice, about what it is that we're required to do to do justice. And what he does is he confuses his compassion for the poor with what we all owe. And those are two very different things. When he's saying what we need is an economic system that prevents anyone from amassing, say, a billion dollar fortune, what he's really talking about is something that uses force to keep some people from accumulating more wealth than other people have. That, of course, ultimately means that we have to trust that some people are going to be virtuous enough to use that force in just ways.

And I don't think that that's going to be the case. We hope you are gaining from the interview with Cal Beister today on environmentalism and now on the term privilege. We have much more to come, so stay tuned. You're listening to the Christian Worldview radio program. I'm David Wheaton. Dinner event only registration includes a meet and greet on the lawn, a wonderful meal, a message by host David Wheaton, and a live interview with special guest Darryl Harrison. The fellowship content and setting combine to make this a memorable event in support of the Christian Worldview radio program. We hope you can come. Again, the Christian Worldview golf and dinner event is on Monday, September 16th at Woodhill in Wiesetta.

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Monthly partners can choose to receive resources throughout the year. Call 1-888-646-2233 or go to theChristianworldview.org. Thank you for your support. We're back on the Christian Worldview radio program. I'm the host, David Wheaton. Our website is theChristianworldview.org. Again, just a reminder that Sunday evening, September 15th, is our speaker series event, Grace Church Eden Prairie, Minnesota, 7 p.m., on the topic of social justice with speaker Daryl Harrison.

If you can't come, you can also watch online at our website, theChristianworldview.org or at the Christian Worldview Facebook page. Today, though, on the program, we're speaking with Cal Beisner. In the last segment, he was talking about an article written by a millennial who felt guilty, even that it was unjust, for inheriting money from his parents who had made their money in corporate America and oil companies and such. Cal is now going to explain the fallacies of such reasonings. But there are all sorts of confusions in his article. I mean, the very notion that you should never buy a new sofa unless you can buy a used one. Well, of course, as long as there are used sofas around, you could buy a used sofa instead of a new one.

The problem is that, of course, if nobody ever buys a new sofa, nobody can ever buy a used sofa. You know, there are just too many confusions in his article. One wonders, does he think that the world would be better off without all of the thousands, truly thousands of byproducts that we get from petroleum that we pump out of the ground? Many medications that have become so helpful in curing diseases and prolonging people's lives.

Plastics that allow us to package things with far less weight and therefore to conserve a great deal of energy in transporting food, clothing, shelter, everything else. Does he think that the world would be better off if we all still lived in caves without electricity at a time when human life expectancy at birth was 27 or 28 years instead of the roughly 70 years that it is now worldwide and 80 years in highly developed countries? What we see here is a young man who simply has not thought through the consequences of the policies that he prefers. And those consequences have been visibly demonstrated over and over again in societies that tried to adopt socialism, which is basically what he's going for. Socialism has kept people poor. It has dragged people back down into poverty. And most importantly, it has resulted in the murder of 100 million or more people by their own governments because you can make socialism work to the degree that it does work, which is never very well, only at the point of a gun. Only with the threat that you're willing to kill those who don't want to cooperate. And that's the long history of socialism and unfortunately too many people in our world today are too young to remember and have been too ill-educated to know of that history.

Cal Beissner with us today. Why is the reasoning of, well, we live in an immoral and unjust society, why is that reasoning so much more attractive, it seems like, than what you're talking about of biblical justice, voluntary compassion, and free market reasoning? Well, essentially because that way I can always shift the burden of either blame or responsibility onto somebody other than myself. You see, Mr. Roberts is very, you know, he's feeling very guilty over the fact that he inherited so much wealth. And he thinks that we should have a system that doesn't allow people to accumulate that much wealth in the first place. Well, there is a different thing that he could do. He could simply have given away all his wealth.

Now, he tells us that he's given away roughly a third and he wants to give away more. Well, if he shouldn't have any of it, why does he prolong it? If it's immoral to have that wealth, how is that any different from, say, murdering people, right? Murdering people is immoral too. Well, if one is a murderer and convicted in his heart, what I'm doing is wrong, should he taper off gradually or stop immediately?

Similarly, if having all that wealth is immoral, should he give it away bit by bit or should he just simply give it away all right now? That's a very, very good question. Lots of contradictory things that, like you said, aren't thought through to the logical end. Cal Beissner of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation with us today in the Christian worldview. Their website, cornwallalliance.org.

Just a couple of last questions for you, Cal. This issue of that article is latent with the idea of a new term that's been used all the time as a bludgeoning tool in society today called privilege. In other words, whites have white privilege. Wealthy people have wealth privilege. There's male privilege because you're a man, not a woman. Why is that such an effective label and why is that being used today?

Well, I think it's because of a confusion of ideas that has grown up around that term. The actual etymology of the word privilege is from two Latin words, privation or exclusion, on the one hand, and law, lex, on the other hand. Literally, privilege means being exempt from the rules. The law doesn't apply to you, so privilege is a mark of a society that is partial rather than impartial, and justice needs to be impartial.

All the rules need to apply to everyone equally. The problem is that people have begun to confuse privilege with blessing or abundance or wealth or high intelligence or great beauty or great skill, physical abilities, things like that. Those are not privileges.

There are no laws in God's world against being handsome or beautiful, against being highly intelligent, against being male or female, against having had wealthy parents. Those things are not privilege in the sense of being exempted from the laws, but people have begun to confuse those two. As a result, they think that somebody who's got this advantage or that advantage is somehow being unjust to others who don't have it. That's simply unrealistic. It is impossible for everybody to have equal outcomes or even equal opportunities without forcibly depriving some people of the advantages that they naturally have.

You can't ensure that no person has an advantage toward playing basketball without making sure that everybody's the same height and the same strength and has the same lung capacity to keep running back and forth up and down the court. Neither can you ensure that everybody has the same capacity for earning wealth unless you prevent some people from earning wealth that they otherwise freely could earn. Again, this is why what we always wind up doing is we turn from liberty, freedom, to tyranny, to the application of force. One of my favorite ways of distinguishing socialism from capitalism is to point out that socialism is the violent means of exchange, whereas capitalism is the peaceful means of exchange. In capitalism, I can get you to give me something that I want but that you have only by promising to give you, in exchange for it, something that you want even more than what you have and vice versa.

But in socialism, if I want you to give something to me and you don't want to give it to me, then I appeal to the state to force you to give it to me. And if you still refuse, well, the state can arrest you. It can imprison you. It can fine you. Ultimately, it can shoot you.

It can kill you. So socialism is the violent means of exchange. Capitalism is the peaceful means of exchange. Well explained.

Thank you for that. Cal Beisner with us today here on The Christian Worldview, the founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. In my opinion, the best organization out there to understand all these different issues of social justice and environmentalism from a biblical perspective.

Final question for you, Cal, was the conclusion to your article on this young man who wrote about feeling guilty over the wealth he inherited. You say the Bible has much to say about the need to protect the poor from oppression and to give charitably to those who cannot help themselves. But nowhere does it condemn wealth. Indeed, some of the most important of God's people were wealthy.

Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Joseph of Arimathea, and wealthy women who provided for Jesus and his disciples. The Bible condemns greed, selfishness, and injustice, but it never equates injustice with inequality. Adam Roberts, this young millennial, his confusion is sad, for it means he encourages not only envy and resentment toward many whom God has blessed, but also false guilt on the part of many, including himself, who are blessed. By all means, whether you consider yourself rich or middle class or poor, give to the poor and work to protect the poor from injustice. But don't condemn all inequality as injustice and don't spit in God's face, quote unquote, by feeling guilty for gifts he has given you. And that was a reference back to a story you said at the beginning of a woman who lived in the US and writing back to her mother in South Africa. And her mother doesn't have much and she was feeling guilty in America for all she had.

And her mother back in South Africa was saying, no, no, you just thank God for the blessings he's given you and pray for us and help us in the ways you can. So my question for you as we conclude today is, what do you think the future of the evangelical churches, especially in America, Cal, is with that mentality of social justice, privilege, some of these socialistic worldview mentality coming into the church? Cal Beissner will answer that question after this final break of the day here on The Christian Real View. It's certainly a pressing and relevant one for the worldview that has been gaining entrance into the evangelical churches around the country. Stay tuned for our final segment coming up on The Christian Real View.

I'm David Wheaton. The next Christian worldview speaker series event is on Sunday, September 15 at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie. It features Darryl Harrison presenting on how social justice impacts the gospel and the church. Darryl is a former fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary and an expository Bible teacher. He has a passion for helping Christians understand what they believe and why. He'll do just that with the issue of social justice, followed by a Q&A moderated by host David Wheaton.

No cost, no registration, just come. The event will also be live streamed on The Christian Real View Facebook page. For more information, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The Christian Real View speaker series with Darryl Harrison, Sunday, September 15 at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie.

Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The prosperity gospel is a prominent false gospel that God offers health, wealth and prosperity if you just have faith and give money. Costi Hinn grew up on the inside of the prosperity gospel movement.

His uncle is world renowned prosperity preacher Benny Hinn. Costi saw it all, the manipulation, staged healings, luxuriant lifestyles and perversion of scripture before God opened Costi's eyes to understand sound doctrine and believe in the true gospel. Now a pastor, Costi has written an important book entitled God, Greed and the Prosperity Gospel, which chronicles his own experience and gracefully points the reader to the truth of scripture. For a limited time, you can order this 224 page soft cover book for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View.

Normal retail is $17.99 without shipping. To order, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. Final segment of the day here on the Christian Real View radio program.

Thanks for joining us as we have been discussing the term privilege and also some environmental issues as well with our guest, Cal Beisner. He's the founder and national spokesperson for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Their website, by the way, is cornwallalliance.org. I strongly suggest you sign up for their free email that they offer. We also have one as well at thechristianrealview.org, our free weekly email in addition to our annual print newsletter, which is going to be coming out not too long from now.

You can also get audio of past programs at our website. You can order resources and also support this ministry as well. The article we've been discussing today with Cal on privilege is linked at our website, thechristianrealview.org.

Okay, let's get to the last segment of the interview with Cal Beisner. So my question for you as we conclude today is, what do you think the future of the evangelical churches, especially in America, Cal, is with that mentality of social justice, privilege, some of these socialistic worldview mentality coming into the church? Well, I think our future is very dim if we allow that kind of thinking to capture our minds.

What we need to do is to do what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 21, test all things, hold fast what is good. What's very clear is that the notions of social justice, of socialism, of forced redistribution of wealth, of calling every advantage that anyone has privilege as if somehow or other one were exempted from the requirements of the law. Those ideas are both false and extremely pernicious.

They bring about all kinds of suffering and that's been the history of the 20th century wherever socialism has reigned. What we need to do is to build our understanding of justice, of compassion, of economics, of everything else directly on the scriptures, the word of God. And particularly with regard to this subject, that has been what I've done in my booklet which you've read and I think in fact you've offered it to your listeners in the past. My booklet, Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice, How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel. We need to define justice biblically as rendering impartially and proportionally to everyone who is due in accord with the righteous standard of God's moral law. And then we need to define grace or charity biblically as benefits bestowed where they are not only not earned but where the opposite has been earned, where punishment has been earned. Only when we keep those two ideas fully distinct can we maintain our proper understanding of the Gospel which says that we are justified before God by grace alone, that is grace, mercy, what's not deserved rather than by grace plus merit or justice, through faith alone, not through faith plus our good works, in Christ alone, not in Christ plus ourselves or the church or the sacraments or the good deeds of others or any other such thing. Only if we properly understand both justice and grace biblically can we preserve the Gospel which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Well, thank you for ending our conversation today on that point. Really, really powerful and really based on the true Gospel of grace. Cal, thank you for coming on the Christian worldview today. Thank you for all the just really helpful work you do with regard to environmental issues, social justice, socialism, but most importantly, holding up the Gospel of Jesus Christ high and clear.

All of God's best and grace to you, Cal. Well, and thank you very much, David. God bless you and your continued work for the Gospel and for the Christian church.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the interview today with Cal Beisner. He is one of my favorite guests that we bring on the Christian worldview from time to time. Always appreciate the way he speaks with such clarity and reason and logic and such a biblical underpinning to all that he says. Always makes the Gospel clear as well. He's excellent on this topic of social justice as well.

And we still do have his social justice booklet. We carry it in our store so you can order that by going to thechristianrealview.org. Now, if you missed any of the interview today, we always archive the programs on our website. Or if you are a podcaster or know how to use the podcast app on your phone, you can just go to the Apple iStore or Google Play and search for the Christian worldview with my name, David Wheaton.

And you'll see that you can download that into your phone for free and get the full program and also the short takes every single week. Now, just one final reminder as we close the program today. This weekend is a big weekend for the Christian Real View.

We have a lot going on. Sunday evening, September 15th is our speaker series event on social justice with speaker Daryl Harrison. That's at Grace Church Eden Prairie, Minnesota at 7 p.m. on Sunday evening. You won't want to miss that event. We're very much looking forward to that event.

There's no cost, no registration. Just come. Now, if you can't come, you're listening from outside the state of Minnesota and it's too far to drive or fly, you can watch the event stream live on our website, which is thechristianrealview.org, or you can go to Facebook and search for the Christian Real View Facebook page. That will start at 7 p.m. Central Time.

Both sites, thechristianrealview.org homepage and the Christian Real View Facebook page will have the event streaming live and it will be archived there after the event concludes as well. We're going to have music by Higher Call Quartet. Looking forward to that.

Daryl is going to speak on social justice. There will be a Q&A, so very much looking forward to that evening and hopefully meeting some of you there. The next day, September 16th, that's Monday, we're having our annual golf and dinner event at Woodhill Country Club in Wysetta, Minnesota, which is just west of downtown Minneapolis. We had a couple cancellations for golf, so if you're interested in playing golf, you can get in contact with our office. If you have a couple people you'd like to bring or a foursome or just come on your own, we still have some room, just call us at our office number at 1-888-646-2233. If you're not a golfer and want to come to the dinner event, I think we have some space there as well.

Again, you can get in contact with us at the same number, 1-888-646-2233. The event is sort of two events in one. Golfers come for golf and dinner, and some people just come for the dinner event where we will have an extensive interview with Daryl Harrison, more on the personal side, along with a worldview message that evening. All right, we're out of time today. Hope you enjoyed the program with Cal Beisner on privilege. Hope you're looking forward to coming or watching the speaker series event on Sunday evening and perhaps coming to the golf and dinner event on Monday. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the program. If you did, we'd love to hear from you.

We'd love to hear from you. We are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly. We hope today's broadcast turned your heart toward God, His Word, and His Son. To order a CD copy of today's program, or sign up for our free weekly e-mail, or to find out how you can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a weekly one-hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233. Or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.