Enemies Within the Church Part 3: The Theological Ruse

enemies within the church part three the theological ruse that is a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Real View radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ I'm David Wheaton the host the Christian Real View is a nonprofit listener supported radio ministry thank you to our Christian Real View partners and to our national sponsor Samaritan Ministries who provide a biblical solution to health care our toll free number is 1-888-646-2233 and our website is thechristianworldview.org in the previous two programs we have been examining the pervasive and pernicious nature of the social justice movement into evangelicalism trusted pastors churches denominations parachurch organizations colleges and seminaries have been taken captive by what Paul described in Galatians as quote a different gospel which is really not another only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ unquote so how does the social justice movement distort the gospel and sound doctrine that really is the key question for God's word is the standard by which we must judge all things is social justice or in other words rectifying alleged societal and ecclesiastical injustices against blacks women and homosexuals really a quote gospel issue especially when the means of achieving so-called equity requires one group to be favored over another John Harris author of Christianity and social justice and also social justice goes to church and the host of conversations that matter podcast joins us today to examine the heirs of social justice advocates John is featured in enemies within the church which is a two-hour documentary film on how social justice ideology has infiltrated evangelicalism for a limited time we are offering the DVD of enemies within the church for a donation of any amount to the Christian Real View let's get straight to the interview with John Harris Christian Real View today let's just start out by telling us about your background how you came to saving faith in Christ and what led you to writing two books on the social justice movement yeah thank you for having me David so much it's a privilege to be here and to talk about what I feel to be a very important topic and a threat to the church I came to Christ at a young age I grew up in a Christian home and put my trust in Jesus Christ and I didn't have a lot of sins that would make the news headlines but I certainly disobeyed my parents and later on in life I started getting into ministry more that was something I had a little bit of an aversion to because my dad was a pastor and I saw what that was like but I realized people are going to hell and they need the gospel and so in college I went down that path and I went to seminary and got some Bible training at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina and really did enjoy the first few years and then something happened after Donald Trump was elected it was almost like someone flipped a switch and I was hearing all kinds of terms I had never heard in seminary before and the there is a TV one example of a perhaps a political difference during the eight years of President Obama there was really not a whole lot of pushback for as far as statements being signed or statements really initiated within the seminary but in one semester fall of 2017 there were three statements against Donald Trump or the alt-right originating in the seminary or heavily supported by faculty and administration and I came to realize after a few really two semesters that it wasn't just a political difference I was seeing but there was a theological difference going on and I started hearing people talk about the gospel being something more centered on human action in the world we needed to do some kind of work to bring about the gospel in society it wasn't just salvation by faith in Christ Jesus and his atoning work but it was our work and what we could do to reform or revolutionize the world and this really concerned me and so I decided to start studying this more I would try to take the proper channels at seminary and talk to people about it but what I found was there was a huge hesitation and a fear of opposing this even though many shared my my my concern so I went to a Liberty University after that and got a masters in history and I used my time there to do a thesis on social justice and specifically how it made inroads and evangelicalism during the 1960s and 70s because there were many popular figures at that time which started we started to go down this path very similar to what's happening today and what I found was it this is false teaching this is a compromise, and I started talking about it on a line on YouTube and that formed into a podcast and a lot of people needed resources on this so I just started making resources and I've really seen a lot of fruit from people who have benefited from the books or the podcasts who are trying to understand this and they're seeing this happen at their church and they want to provide a biblical response and so that's kind of where I am today I am involved in ministry still college ministry music ministry at my church but this is kind of a temporary calling I think God has given me to help people understand this issue.

John Harris is our guest the author of two books on social justice both linked at our website the Christian worldview.org one of them is called social justice goes to church also the podcast host of conversations that matter his website is worldview conversations.com and it's also linked at our website as well. What is the best term for what is taking place in evangelicalism right now is it critical theory. Is it the social justice movement is it woke ism is a cultural Marxism.

How do you best describe or label it. So I approach this somewhat like a historian would and I like to look at things sequentially I think social justice is the best term to use. I like to start with the French Revolution and the ideas propagated by Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is really the philosopher that many point to as responsible for the ideas that became popular during that time period. And he believed that we needed to achieve an egalitarian ideal meaning everything needed to be equal equal outcomes for every kind of social group and the thing that was preventing this were these institutions like the family and the church and labor relationships. And in order to dismantle those institutions there needed to be an all powerful force you could think of it perhaps as the government that would come in and make everything equal. So it's a utopian scheme. It's the idea that mankind through collective effort will be able to somehow create an equal society and we hear the term equity inclusion diversity today. It's the same thing every iteration of social justice has really followed this same course and if you break it all down and peel the layers back.

That's what you're going to find this redistributive justice where we need to take from one group give to another group. So that equality will manifest itself and it's just not true. It can't happen when it's tried you get killing fields you get negative consequences hierarchy exists and Christians have always believed that we don't believe that. We live in a perfect world. We live in a sinful world, but we cannot change the nature of man or change the way that God created the world with our own human efforts.

In fact true peace and harmony and utopia is going to come after we die when Jesus Christ reigns supreme and and that's what we're looking forward to is the life the consummation of all things not something we can build in the here and now. And so the term itself was made popular social justice by a number of American Christians during the late 1800s really turn of the century Walter Rauschenbusch is the most recognizable name. They use this term because it was more palatable if they said let's advocate for socialism that American Christians associated that with immorality and with atheism. And so social justice was a nicer term. It was a term Christians would accept and be open to hearing about when they wouldn't have been open to hearing about socialism.

So that's where the term became popular. It's been around in popular for over a hundred years and it really does describe all kinds of different movements from the me to movement to the Black Lives Matter movement to the early Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism. And so many other things like critical race theory today but at the base level we'll see that utopian scheme and that's really what you want to look for. How would you quantify John just how big this movement is there there's always attacks on the gospel and sound theology throughout all of church history. Remember 20 years ago there was the emergent church movement and so forth that came and is gone maybe morphed into something else now. How big of a threat do you think this social justice movement really is? Because we don't want to overplay it but it seems like it's a tidal wave to me that has infected nearly everything in evangelicalism right now.

I'm completely in agreement with you. I think what John MacArthur said about this being the greatest threat to the gospel he had seen in his lifetime is spot on. It's difficult for some people to see it that way because there's kind of a spectrum or a slide if you will. Some people will accept certain tenants of this perhaps in ignorance or they have well-meaning motivations and they'll just go so far but not all the way and then other people buy the whole kit and caboodle hook line and sinker. And so there's certain degrees of compromise, but if we look at it the way that I argue we should look at it in my latest book Christianity and Social Justice.

I think it's a religion if someone is converting to another religion. They learn about it more as they get further and further into it and the compromise becomes more and more evident. And I think we've seen that in the evangelical world those who started going down this path five or six years ago. We can look at them now and they're hardly recognizable that some of them have left Christianity altogether others are compromising on really fundamental things.

And so there's there's a slippery slope here and the threat I cannot under sell you on the threat it is it is toxic. I have seen it on the personal level take over people that I really thought at one time were propagating the gospel and solid and now I have to say as Paul did. They're enemies of the cross of Christ. John Harris again with us today on the Christian worldview in your first book Social Justice goes to church. It says in the 1970s many campus radicals raised in Christian homes brought neo-Marxist new Marxist ideas from college back to church with them. At first figures like Jim Wallace sojourners Ron Sider same ilk and Richard Mao made great gains for their progressive evangelical cause.

But after the defeat of Jimmy Carter 1980 the religious right stole the headlines. One more paragraph today a new crop of mainstream evangelicals has taken up the cause of the new left whether they know it or not. As pro-life evangelicals rush to support movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too it is important to realize they are walking in footprints already laid down.

Their mission may be more successful but it is not new. What you're saying here is that this is the same progressive movement that destroyed the mainline Protestant denominations that made them go into a whole move away from sound theology, preaching of the gospel to a social mission, transform society. Last week we had in the program Michael Fallon a fellow guest of yours in the film we have been featuring enemies within the church. He described this social justice movement as a worldwide paradigm shift that everything must change, everything must be advanced towards globalism and all the different sectors whether it's education, media, also religion as well. It's like a foregone conclusion this is the way it's going, everyone needs to get on board, there are some people within the evangelical movement who realize this and who are the pushers behind this social justice movement. What are your thoughts on it as to looking back on people like Jim Wallace, Ron Sider, Richard Mao, these were considered hardly even evangelical just theologically liberal Christians. Are they really influencing the generation today?

In part, yeah. You have two streams, you have the secular world and the academy and some people just go to the academy and get radicalized. I mean remember this movement comes from the academy, from seminaries into institutions, it didn't start with the churches like a revival would. And then of course as I argue in that book you have people who call themselves evangelical who were already trying to go down this path, they were affected by the new left movements, the campus radical movements and they had their disciples. And I think what happened during the 1980s especially was the religious right captured all these headlines and it was a populist movement and so the media, all the cameras were focused on them but meanwhile in the academy the next generation of theologians they were reading people like Mao. And so I think there's an influence there and I think I argue effectively in the last chapter of that book that guys like Russell Moore and David Platt and Tim Keller and others have been influenced by that crop of evangelicals. They've read Ron Sider and that's influenced their own ideas of poverty and Americanism and in some ways perhaps the gospel. Tim Keller was very influenced by Richard Mao so I think that there is a connection there, it's not the only connection, you can get these ideas just coming in when you turn on your television today. You don't really need to look too far but they certainly showed a way to try to integrate socialist ideas, new left ideas with Christianity and that pattern is being repeated over and over and over. Richard Mao for listeners who don't know, I believe John correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't he the president of Fuller Seminary or something like that? Yeah Richard Mao was the president of Fuller Seminary, he was actually, some will recognize him from the pro-life evangelicals for Biden, he was part of that group. He wrote a book in 1971 called Political Evangelism and see if this sounds familiar because this is 1971 but it sounds like what we're hearing today.

He said that the atonement of Christ did not simply extend to individual souls and salvation, justification by faith, it extended beyond that to political institutions and structures. And so when we work in an activist way to try to reform or revolutionize or deconstruct and rebuild these institutions like the prison system for example, we're participating in evangelism, that's redemption, that's the gospel being carried out. And I see this all over evangelicalism today, I see it in the gospel coalition and Christianity today, I see a lot of popular preachers saying things very similar to this that you don't really have the whole gospel unless you're doing some activist kind of thing. That's the premise of the book Woke Church which is very popular. This really goes back to something that wasn't quite as popular in the 70s that now is gaining ground.

All they had to do was wait a couple decades. What happened to the church? How do you break down American Christianity?

Whiteness has caused blindness of heart! That message that they're going out and taking the world is not you need to repent of your sin, receive Christ, instead the message that you actually have is they are under the weight of racism or sexism or homophobia. The preceding is from Enemies Within the Church, a two hour documentary film that exposes how social justice ideology is infecting the church. You can order the DVD for a donation of any amount to the Christian Real View. Go to thechristianrealview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331.

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Learn more at SamaritanMinistries.org slash TCW. Welcome back to the Christian worldview. I'm David Wheaton, visit our website, theChristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Now back to today's program, John Harris with us today here on the Christian worldview, the author of two books on social justice also featured in the film that we are offering right now the documentary, the two hour documentary enemies within the church.

This comes from a endorsement that was written on one of your books, John by Douglas Kruger, who's the author of political correctness does more harm than good. He said the great injunction to the church was to preach the gospel to the world while not being of the world. Social justice neatly reverses this trend, preaching the ways of the world into the church. The gospel is about freedom from guilt and sin and bondage.

Social justice seeks above all to apportion guilt and sin and bondage, enslaving entire demographics and requiring that they kneel before man in attrition. Here's an example of what that sounds like from the documentary enemies within the church. There are no question that there are things that are absolutely true. But we can't just look at absolute truth in a vacuum. We can't possibly understand truth if we don't understand the lay of the land if we don't understand the power differential. Okay, what is he saying there, john, we can't understand the lay of the land unless we understand the power differential What does that mean? There's a fancy word standpoint epistemology, but I'll explain it.

It's not really as fancy as it sounds. It's this idea that certain groups of people, certain social locations have greater access into truth than other social locations. So think about it this way, there's competing versions of reality out there, you could conceive of the world in a certain way, but someone else could conceive of it in a different way. And they're going to conceive of it, perhaps based on their experience and their experience of oppression is going to be part of that. What's being said there, and you'll hear this all over the place is that if you are part of a quote unquote, oppressed group, according to sociologists, then you should not have as much of a say about what constitutes justice or what we should do about a certain problem, as say someone who's experienced oppression, because their version of reality is going to be superior to your version of reality, because they actually have the experience of being oppressed. This is a way of trying to neutralize anyone who would really bring in a biblical approach and objective approach to a situation and say, let's get out our Bibles, let's figure out what God says about this, we can all do it. No, if you're going to do that at all, you need to go through some kind of an oppressed lens to really understand it, to really get the insight that you need. And in that way, it actually mirrors Gnosticism in some ways. There's a barrier that's put in people's way before they can really understand the Bible. And of course, there's always going to be someone more oppressed than you are. So how do you ever really know if you have the correct interpretation or understanding of a situation?

You'll see little comments like the one you just played all over the place, but it's like an iceberg. There's a whole different view of truth that they have, a subjective view that underlies that. Let's get to the next part of that soundbite, where this is from, again, the film Enemies Within the Church. And this is from Jarvis Williams, a very well-known popular professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is the flagship seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention where Al Mulder is the president. Listen to what Jarvis Williams says in this soundbite. So I don't think it's possible in a Christian context to talk about reconciliation without likewise talking about justice. And we are working together, living together in love and spirit and power love.

That means we care about things like economic inequality and these sorts of things. That doesn't mean you're justified by economic equality, but that does mean that the gospel transforms us holistically. Jon, explain what he's saying there and who Jarvis Williams is. Yeah, Jarvis Williams is a professor, I believe, in New Testament studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's written a number of books, and he is probably one of the most articulate social justice proponents as far as trying to merge critical race theory with Christianity.

And he's pretty explicit about it. I have a number of quotes in my book from him where he says how much he has gleaned from critical race theory, how it's helped him understand the New Testament better. But what you're finding in the clip you just played is a different ethical outlook to some extent and at the end, perhaps attaching it to the gospel in some way. And the ethical outlook is that we can't have true peace or reconciliation. We can't be one in Christ and part of the same family unless there's some kind of a redistribution that takes place.

Now, that could be monetary, it could be reparations, but it doesn't have to be. It could simply be diversifying your theological library, platforming different kinds of people at your conferences, making sure your elder board. You're not just looking at the biblical qualifications for an elder, but you need to be looking at the ethnic makeup, perhaps, of that board. And so these kinds of interests get imported into the church. They are in addition to biblical ethics.

When you merge this with the gospel, you just get a false gospel similar to the Galatian heresy. Last thing I'll say about it, though, is this, that biblical justice, if we really want to have a conversation about that, they always claim we should have a conversation, is retributive. And it means that if you go to Exodus 23, you shouldn't favor people because of their connection to you as far as them being family members or friends. You shouldn't favor the poor man just because he can pull your heartstrings and give you a story that makes you want to subvert justice in his favor. You shouldn't oppress widows and orphans because they're vulnerable and easy to oppress. The whole principle is that justice is something that applies to everyone equally. It's called equality before the law. And what Jarvis Williams is promoting is not equality before the law.

Lady Justice takes off the blindfold in his world and then looks at external qualities and then makes different determinations, depending on what social group you're part of, to try to create an equal outcome. So it's redistributive instead of retributive. And that is a fundamental difference between biblical Christianity and social justice.

The word is partiality. That's the word the Bible uses when you show partiality toward one over the other. John Harris with us today here on The Christian Real View talking about enemies within the church, the DVD that he was interviewed in, the documentary film. And we're talking about the theological ruse of the social justice movement today. Now, let's get in specifically to that. You talk about, John, four aspects of the theological fallacy of the social justice movement, the epistemology, the metaphysical, the ethical, and the gospel. Maybe you could pick one or two of those and just explain for someone listening says, you're just saying that the social justice movement is bad. Tell us biblically why, from a theological standpoint, why this goes awry.

Well, we've already talked about two of them. We've talked about epistemology and this idea that certain social locations have a greater access into truth. And this is just unbiblical, because in the Bible we find over and over throughout Proverbs and the New Testament, it's the man of God. It's the righteous man.

It's the diligent workman. These are the people that understand true justice and what the word of God teaches. It's not some social location that you got to go to to find out what the truth is.

We should all be striving and coming together to try to objectively see what does the word of God say about a certain situation? Let me give you an example that helps some people understand this a little better. If you were going to have brain surgery, would you want someone who knew what they were talking about, who had gone to medical school, knew the brain surgery textbooks, had done it a number of times?

Or do you want someone who underwent a brain surgery, had the experience of a brain surgery, doing that brain surgery? Well, it's an obvious answer. So it's those who have true wisdom, who have applied biblical principles over time, who have studied the Bible, tried to know the mind of God. These are the people that we need to be seeking out in regards to justice, not someone simply because they have a minority or oppressed perspective in the minds of sociologists. It's the sociologists making these determinations. If everyone fits into a box of oppressor or oppressed, who's the one that's figuring out which box to favor, which outlook is the correct outlook? Well, there's got to be someone who transcends the box.

And in the social justice mindset, it's the sociologists. Well, we know that it's actually God. God has the outlook that he can look at everything and his word is true. He can adjudicate between any division or difference of perspective and he knows the truth.

So we need to know his word. OK, that's what Christianity teaches. It's very similar for the metaphysic social justice activists reduce everything down to ones and zeros. So there's oppressors, there's oppressed, everything fits into that.

There's nothing neutral. We can find oppression on the McDonald's menu. So they use this narrow channel of evaluation and they can connect anything to some kind of oppression because of that. And it really refutes itself because the very idea that everything breaks down into oppressor or oppressed, that very concept, where did it come from? Is that a concept derived from oppression or is it a concept derived from being oppressed?

It can't tell you. It's just something they assume and it does apply. If you apply their worldview to their basic assumption, the whole thing self-destructs. The Bible teaches that we have much in common. We are made in God's image. If we're in Christ, of course, we have something in common there. There's also differences between us and the world is full of flavor and life.

And there's just so many things that fall outside of whether one is oppressed or an oppressor. And then, of course, the gospel. The gospel is the biggest part of this that disturbs me, where there's sort of an insinuation that if you don't participate in activism, that you're missing out on a gospel issue. Or you only have half the gospel. Or you need, there's something left that Christ needs to complete in you for you to have the true gospel. And I'm sorry, the good news, which is what gospel means, is that Jesus has died in your place. And he has given you his righteousness in exchange for your sin and made things right with the Father.

That's the good news. It's bad news when you talk about works, because I'll never be able to do enough works to merit God's favor. But social justice activists think they can do that. And they're going to be on a hamster wheel forever, trying to renew their commitment to fight against injustice.

And they'll never be satisfied. John Harris with us today on The Christian Real View, a featured guest in the film that we are offering enemies within the church. You can order a copy for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View, a two-hour film. Just go to our website, thechristianrealview.org, or call us toll-free, 1-888-646-2233.

You can also write to us, and our address is given immediately following the program today. Another soundbite here from the film, where it touches on what's going on in these big parachurch organizations, like CREW, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, or InterVarsity. It starts out with you commenting on CREW. Well, I start finding out that Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is not the only compromised institution within evangelical Christianity. In fact, most of evangelical Christianity is compromised on some level, or is in the process of being compromised. So, one of the first things that happened after finding out the extent to which the cancer had been developing in the Southern Baptist Convention, I was reached out to by people at CREW, formerly Campus Crusade, and they were telling me about what was happening in their organization, and I decided to start watching their staff conference from the summer 2019, and it was worse than anything I think I had seen at Southeastern.

It was a woke fest. Your value is determined, based on a lie, your value is determined on your proximity to whiteness and your proximity to blackness. Friends, it is important for us to be awakened to the racial inequities. You may not be racist or whatever, but we all feel live in a racialized society. One who's actually on staff with CREW had everyone in the audience stand up, and they read a liturgy against white privilege, confessing their sin.

We have formed and developed church structures and denominations while excluding the voice of your global church due to racism and racial segregation. Lord, have mercy. We acknowledge the racial hierarchies and structures of privilege many have benefited from. Many have been oppressed by.

Lord, have mercy. The audience there, after she repeats these statements, is saying, we lament. This was at a CREW conference from, again, this is from the film Enemies Within the Church. John, tell us what is going on, not only in seminaries, Christian colleges, what's coming into the church, but tell us about the scene, what is taking place within these really well-known parachurch organizations like CREW, InterVarsity, elsewhere.

InterVarsity's been compromised for quite some time, really since the 1970s, to be honest. They were in that first wave of New Left Evangelicalism. In 1970 and 1973, there were some big conferences, and you can see the same exact thinking. I mean, if you go back to the InterVarsity conferences, Urbana, from that time, you're going to find guys like Tom Skinner talking about the gospel of the fundamentalists, which is faith in Jesus Christ, and then the social gospel and how we need to merge the two. And Tim Keller, by the way, ate this stuff up and loved it. So he's in the PCA, he's through Tom Skinner's influence and many others, pushing things that direction in the PCA.

As far as CREW, they were more, I'd say, faithful up until very recently. And from what I've heard from people who work in the organization, it's really been 2015 or so to the current time that things have really gotten radical. And the clips you were playing were from the 2019 staff conference, and the lament session was Letitia Morrison, she wrote a book called Be the Bridge. It's total critical race theory. Every aspect of critical race theory is represented in it, but this is what's happening in these organizations. They will say that they're not promoting critical race theory. Letitia Morrison says, I don't promote any critical race theory.

What are you talking about? And then you read her book, and it matches perfectly critical race theory. There's kind of a deception going on where what they're trying to say is that we're getting this from the Bible. It's just biblical teaching that we're giving you, when it's clearly not. They're importing social justice teaching into biblical categories.

And so if you find a verse that says, let justice roll down, or something that's positive about justice in the Bible, they'll import a Marxist definition of justice and say, well, that's what it means. We have kind of a cat and mouse game going on in many of these denominations and organizations. CREW has had a battle really since that convention that you played clips from, where there's a group of staff members who are very concerned about this and have tried to reform the organization from the inside, but have met major resistance from the leaders of the organization who pretend there's really no problem.

And then you have those from the Lenses Institute, which is an organization within CREW that is explicitly pro-critical race theory. They are on the other side saying, we need to go even harder left. And so both sides cannot coexist in the same organization, and these organizations are starting to fracture. And the sad thing about it is leadership tries to keep these sides together and pretend like there's nothing happening, we have unity, and it's peace-peace when there is no peace. You have to take a side, or else your organization is just going to collapse.

And CREW is in the middle of that, in my opinion, right now. If anything, it's probably the left that's getting the upper hand, and the conservatives are kind of, they're leaving, progressively leaving the organization and finding other places to minister. And same thing with the Southern Baptists, same thing with many other denominations and organizations. This is David Wheaton, and you are listening to The Christian Real View. Become a Christian Real View partner by calling 1-888-646-2233, visiting thechristianrealview.org, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Recent guest, Cal Beissner, defines economics as moral philosophy applied to marketplace relationships. So it makes sense that as our nation's judgment of what is right and wrong has moved away from biblical morality, our economic policies have gone the same wrong direction. So what is the Christian Real View on economics? Cal Beissner has written an insightful 56-page softcover booklet titled Biblical Foundations for Economics that shows how economic principles and policies need to be based on the Bible to achieve the greatest human flourishing. For a limited time, we are offering Biblical Foundations for Economics for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View.

To order, go to thechristianrealview.org, or call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Again, the website is thechristianrealview.org. David Wheaton here, host of The Christian Real View Radio Program. Listeners are often surprised to learn that we as a ministry pay to broadcast on the radio station, website, or app on which you are listening today. That expense is recouped through listeners like you making a donation or becoming a Christian Real View partner. Our aim is to have each broadcast outlet fully supported by the listeners of that outlet. If you would like to help us in our mission to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, go to thechristianrealview.org and click on Donate.

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Now, back to today's program. John Harris with us today on The Christian Real View, talking about the theological ruse behind the social justice movement. He's written two books on the Christian Real View, and one on the Christian Real View. We have them both linked at our website, thechristianrealview.org.

He's also a podcaster of conversations that matter. Now, in the last couple of weeks, and this week concluded, there's been lots of specific names mentioned on the program, and within the film, by the way, enemies within the church, too, whether it's Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, or Tim Keller, or David Platt, or Pastor Matt Chandler from Texas, or Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, John Piper, and there are many others. We don't mention their names to state that these people are complete apostates, apostates, someone who denies Jesus Christ and who he is and what he did.

We're not saying that. What we are saying about them is that they have shown indications, and I'm sure there's a spectrum on it, too. Some are more into it than others, John. So maybe you could help us explain, when we talk about some of these really big name evangelicals, how should Christians view these leaders? I mean, do you throw the baby out with the bathwater, or do you just have to have a discerning eye, knowing that there is sympathies in some of these men toward the social justice movement? How should we view them?

Yeah, that's a difficult question. I had a question recently at a conference about what do we do with good books by men who have compromised, and I don't know the full answer. I know we sing hymns sometimes, like It Is Well With My Soul, written by Horatio Spafford, who kind of went really heretical by the end of his life.

And so there are times that we do things like that. The way that I think about this, and has really helped others, is I look at the book of Galatians, and I see the distinction that Paul makes between the false teachers, who he says are anathema. In other words, you know, cursed. And then people like Peter, who were simply providing cover for the false teachers, they weren't being clear about the gospel. Clarity is so important right now.

More than ever. And pastors who won't be clear on these things need to be rebuked in the same way Paul rebuked Peter. Now, of course, you want to clarify. I'm not saying go and be a jerk and just start flamethrowing. What I'm saying is make sure that you heard correctly what your pastor is saying. Go privately.

Really make sure. But if there is an attempt to try to live at peace with a false religion, then that needs to be challenged. Some of the names that you just mentioned, some of them, I would think, are at the very least in that Peter category.

They may be worse, but at least in that Peter category. And then others, I would say, they're false brethren, or they're in there specifically to spy out and forward a false gospel. When I hear Matt Chandler, for instance, we'll use him preach at T4G, and he talks about systemic evil, and he gives the impression to the entire crowd that they are complicit in some kind of a sin simply because they haven't done enough to stop systemic racism, or because their skin color is white and they're part of whiteness in some way and have white privilege, and that this is some horrific sin, and he parallels that with the apostasy that took place in the book of Malachi. He makes a parallel here and says it's that bad, where you're in idolatry. What he's doing is he's signaling that he's buying into categories of the false religion. He's preaching, he's starting at least, he's on the road to preaching another gospel. He's changing what sin is. And when you start tampering with the fundamental DNA of the gospel, you're gonna get a false gospel.

You're gonna have a problem. Tim Keller does this to some extent. He talks about justice. He defines it in a 2010 article, Christianity Today, as owing the poor as much as you can give them. Now, that sounds nice, but I'm sorry, charity is giving to the poor.

If the poor have a claim on us, and we owe them, there's an obligation. Well, everyone is in need of salvation, but God doesn't provide salvation for everyone. And so is God unjust? You can see how this can play with the gospel. You change the definition of justice, and it's gonna change the gospel. And so we gotta be careful to make sure we're defining our terms. Sin, justice, good news, gospel.

Let's define these terms biblically. Let's use them in the way that the apostles used them, instead of the way that modern social justice activists try to use them, because if any even slight variation can get that foot in the door. And so I would be very wary and very careful and cautious of someone who's gonna start fundamentally changing the DNA of the gospel. And of course, if there's someone like Jarvis Williams or Walter Strickland, and they're explicitly saying, you don't have the gospel unless you do something, some social justice work, then you have to say that's a false brother.

You know, we reject that completely. Good example of this would be the book Woke Church, very popular. Eric Mason wrote that book.

Ligon Duncan, in fact, wrote the foreword to this book. And he says in that book that there's secular groups out there forwarding social justice that Christians can learn from in order to live out the gospel better. I'm sorry, non-Christians are not helping us in the world reach people with the gospel. They don't have the gospel.

They can't do that. Reforming the prison system isn't the gospel. That is a category confusion that we cannot compromise on. We discussed this a couple weeks ago, that it's not helpful to speak in generalities about the movement and what social justice is.

That's important. But we need to know actually who is promoting it or who's on board with it and to what degree so that we all can be more discerning. We can be like the Bereans who went to the Scriptures to see whether the things being said were so. We just can't make assumptions because they're some of the most popular evangelical leaders.

No one is above being critiqued. Not unfairly criticized, but actually critiqued for what they have publicly said or written or preached. John Harris is with us today here on the Christian worldview. As we consider this tidal wave to the once more conservative theologically evangelical church, how can this be stopped, John?

Or do you see this as it is just going to take captive, it's come too far now, it's just going to take captive a sizable wing of evangelicalism and there's just going to be a smaller remnant remaining? I would encourage people, especially people who might be listening and skeptical or frankly angry who might think that what I'm saying or perhaps what Kerry Gordon said or Michael O'Fallon said is motivated by some kind of racism or there's a lying element going on or a jealousy element. If you think any of those things, I would just encourage people the same way Paul did to just go check out what I'm saying.

My book has a lot of footnotes in it. Go to the sources, read what these people are saying, compare it to what Scripture teaches and come to your own conclusion about it. Don't believe it just because I said it. And I think that's the way that we're going to get out of this. I'm actually already seeing this start to happen. There's a separation going on. Churches are splitting, churches are forming, people are starting to associate with others who understand this threat and the dust hasn't settled yet but this process is already taking place.

Generally speaking, when it's done right, it looks like confronting the situation, clarifying, making sure you heard correctly and then if it's false teaching, you confront the situation. If that's not accepted, then you follow that Matthew 18 outline and you take others and you keep trying to win your brother and if it just becomes clear that this is an issue that's going to divide you, then you need to go somewhere else. You might even need to be part of a church plan or a new church if there's not one in your community. And so this is happening all over the place and it breaks my heart in some ways but in other ways, I'm very happy to see that God will always preserve his church. Paul did not compromise for one minute, he says, the truth of the gospel. And so that's what we need to be, uncompromising and the motive should be because we love people. The end of Romans 16, Paul warns about false teachers who come in and use flattering words, preach against the doctrine of Christ and their motive is their bellies and our motive needs to be a love for people, not our own bellies, our own platform. You know, who cares who John Harris is, right?

I'm so appreciative for you, David, but, and take this the right way because I love you and what you're doing, but who cares who David Wheaton is? We care who Jesus Christ is, right? And so that is what is going to win the day at the end and God's going to be behind it. He is behind it and he wins in the end and a false teaching is not going to prevail. His kingdom will, even if it looks bad out there, just keep looking to God for inspiration. Don't look at the waves like Peter did, look to Christ.

Be bold, be courageous, and some people are starting to be that way and it encourages my heart. Well, you certainly are, John, and we appreciate the way you've really investigated this. You've written extensively on it. You did a really good job in enemies within the church and your interviews there.

Informing people is really the first step because once people are informed, then some are going to take it to the next conclusion and they're going to look to Scripture, see whether these things are so, and they're going to protect, like you said, people, their own family, their school, maybe their Christian school, their college, from having these things really destroy them. So thank you for coming on the Christian Royal View today. We wish all of God's best and grace to you in your writing, your speaking, your podcasts. Thank you again for coming on the program. It's been an absolute pleasure, David.

Thank you. Well, I hope you gained from the interview today with John Harris. If you missed any of it, you can always hear archived programs at our website, thechristianrealview.org. While you're there, you can also order the DVD of this documentary film, Enemies Within the Church. It's a two-hour film. We're making it available for a donation of any amount to the Christian Royal View.

You can order there online or you can just call us at 1-888-646-2233 and I'll give the address at the end of the program if you'd rather write to us. So I've been thinking, why is social justice so alluring? Number one, because there has been injustice. There have been historic wrongs against blacks, against women, against others.

It's certainly not systemic today, as they would say. So there is some truth to the big lie, but certainly not to the extent to which it is alleged and accused. Number two, social justice appeals to pride. It's like solving the big problem.

The Middle East conflict. We're solving an issue of racism and sexism that have created conflict in society for millennia. If you think you've discovered an issue that 2,000 years of Christians have somehow missed and that you have a new way beyond salvation and sanctification to solve this issue, you are likely totally unaware of your own pride to think that you've discovered something and this new solution to it. The third reason social justice is so alluring is because of the power and adulation that comes with being a social justice warrior.

You are going to be praised and platformed from the most esteemed in society. But the fact is, social justice adds to and undermines the true biblical gospel. When people repent and believe in Christ, here's what happens, as it says in Galatians 3, starting in verse 26, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. In other words, when you become a believer, you're all sons of God.

Verse 27, for all of you who were baptized into Christ, those who were saved, have clothed yourselves with Christ. Verse 28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, breaks down the ethnicity distinction. There is neither slave nor free man, breaks down the class distinction. There is neither male nor female, breaks down the gender distinction, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The gospel makes all who are saved one in Christ, regardless of race or gender or any other identity.

Yes, there are differing roles for men and women within the church and the home, but they are still one in Christ. Meanwhile, social justice makes everything of race, of class, of gender, and sets these identities at odds with each other. In an effort to create quote-unquote equity, it discriminates against one group against another to achieve this coerced outcome. How about we just do what the Bible says in Leviticus 19, where it says, you shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. That would go a long way in society toward breaking down barriers, and that would be unifying, rather than trying to force certain diversity, equity, inclusion, makeups of your church's elder board or the types of books from BIPOC authors that now must be read in your Christian school. Instead, let's view other believers as God does, as one in Jesus Christ, and let's be impartial. Thank you for joining us today on The Christian Worldview. Thanks also to our Christian Worldview partners and Samaritan Ministries for funding today's program.

In just a moment, there will be information on how you can hear a replay of today's program, order transcripts and resources, and support this nonprofit radio ministry. Be encouraged. We may live in a world that's going headlong over social justice, but let's remember that Jesus Christ and His word are the same yesterday and today and forever. So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.