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Voddie Baucham - Defining Social Justice · Voddie Baucham Sermons

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: As has been said, my assignment is to define this
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: idea of social justice. If you'll give me a moment here.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: And I think it's very important for us to do this.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: But before we do this, let me just quote a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Nobel laureate, Frederick Hayek, because I think his words sort
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of sum up my understanding approach and my attitude as
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: it relates to this subject. Hayek writes, I have come
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: render to my fellow men would be that I could
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: again to employ the term social justice. I think that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is a worthy goal to make speakers and writers everywhere
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: ashamed to ever again use the term social justice.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And why? Why would I want to do that?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Well, let me quote someone else who's not a Nobel laureate,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: but insightful nonetheless, Inigo Montoya. You keep on using that word,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I do not think it means what you think it means.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: The biggest problem with the concept of social justice, with
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the word social justice, with the terminology of social justice,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: is that it doesn't mean what we think it means.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes when we address the issue of social justice,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: those who have decided to go ahead and use the terminology,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: want first for the terminology to be understood based on
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: their intentions and not based on the broader understanding. And
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: that is simply, number one, not fair, and secondly, quite naive.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And so I want to look at three things. Number one,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I want to look at the meaning of social justice.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And as we do this, here's what I'm not arguing.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not arguing that we need to reduce this to
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a question of semantics and then move on. That would
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: be inappropriate. If all we're talking about here is semantics,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that would be inappropriate. That's not my argument, but we
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: do need to look at the term. Secondly, I want
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to look at the movement. And thirdly, the mission, the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: meaning of social justice, the movement of social justice. There
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: is a social justice movement. and it has a mission.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Let's look first at the meaning of social justice. Kevin DeYoung,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: in a very insightful article, Is Social Justice a Gospel Issue?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: writes this, Social justice is a nebulous term, unassailable to
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: some and arousing suspicion in others. DeYoung goes on in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: his article to say that if this is what you
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: mean by social justice, then no, it's not a gospel issue.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But if this is what you mean, then yes, we
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: can agree that it's a gospel issue. The only problem
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: is that social justice actually does mean what de Young
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: posits in his first argument and not that which he
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: agrees with in the end. William Young writes, while often
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: an amorphous term, social justice is has evolved generally to
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: mean state redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to satisfy their rights to social and economic equality. I'll
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: say more about that as we go along, but let
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: me just sort of unpack that for a moment. Social
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: justice has evolved to generally mean state redistribution of advantages
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and resources to disadvantaged groups.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Advantages, resources, groups.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Those are incredibly important words to satisfy their right to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: social and economic equality. Their right to social equality and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: their right to economic equality. Here's why this becomes problematic.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: God demands justice.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Amen?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: God demands demands justice. Justice is not optional for the believer.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Injustice is sin. Therefore, if social justice is truly justice,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: then disagreement cannot be allowed.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Now think about any.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Social justice issue that comes to mind, and you already
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: understand why this is problematic. Because in any social justice
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: issue that just came to your mind, there are people
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: on one side arguing for social justice that say the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: answer is A, the injustice is A. And there are
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: people on the other side arguing for social justice, and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: they're saying that the injustice is B. They can't both
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: be right, except in the social justice world, because the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: social justice world is not about justice. We must be
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: about justice. Micah chapter six, verses one through eight. Hear
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: what the Lord says. Arise, plead your case before the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: mountains and let the hills hear your voice. Hear you mountains,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the indictment of the Lord and you enduring foundations of
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the earth. For the Lord has an indictment against his
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: people and he will contend with Israel.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Oh my people, what have I done to you? How
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: have I wearied you?
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  Speaker 1: Answer me, for I brought you up from the land
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  Speaker 1: of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery.
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  Speaker 1: And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, devised, and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him, and what
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the
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  Speaker 1: righteous acts of the Lord.
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  Speaker 2: What then?
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  Speaker 1: Shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
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  Speaker 1: with calves of a year old?
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  Speaker 2: Will the Lord be.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
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  Speaker 1: He has told you, O man, what is good. And
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: what does the Lord require of you but to do good?
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  Speaker 1: to love kindness or mercy and to walk humbly with
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  Speaker 1: your God.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Justice is not optional. We must do justice.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the mission of social justice as we
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: continue to try to understand its meaning. The mission of
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: social justice really happens in stages. We've heard about some
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of it. Number one, identifying disadvantaged groups. And it's important
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to understand that social justice is not about the individual.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: It's about the group. And this is why, I mean,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you can say as much as you want about an
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: individual having success. But the issue is not individuals who
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: have success or whether individuals can have success. Hooray, there
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was a bi-ethnic man who was the president, right? But again,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that does not negate the issues inherent to the group
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: as a whole. And so the mission of social justice
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: first is to identify disadvantaged groups.
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  Speaker 2: And I say groups and not minorities.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Often we talk about disadvantaged minorities, but that is not
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the case. And you need only one example to prove
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that that's not the case, and that example is women.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Women are more than 50% of the population. They are
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a majority. However, women are considered, for the sake of
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  Speaker 1: social justice, a disadvantaged minority. I mean, I don't write
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: the rules, y'all, okay? There's more of them than there
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: are of us, but they are a minority. So the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: identification of disadvantaged groups, this is incredibly important.
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  Speaker 2: This is why we do politics the way that we do.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: In politics, we don't want to know if this candidate
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: is ahead in the polls. That's not enough.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: We want to know that this guy is doing really
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: well with red-headed, left-handed, white females. And this guy over
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: here is really doing well with blue collar, Ford truck driving.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, we want to know which groups they are representing.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Because politics now is identity politics. And we want to
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: know what you will do for our group. Not necessarily
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: who you are, what you believe, but what you will
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: do for our group. So identify disadvantaged groups. Assess group outcomes. Again,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: this is not about individual outcomes. This is about group outcomes.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: We have to assess group outcomes. Thirdly, assign blame for
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: disparate outcomes. Assign blame for disparate outcomes. If this group
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: is having a negative outcome in this particular area, then
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: we need to find out who's to blame for that.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: if this group doesn't do as well academically, if this
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: group doesn't do as well economically, if this group is
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: not as well represented politically. And then finally, there needs
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to be a redistribution of power and resources in order
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to redress those grievances.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: That's the answer.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And that has to be the answer according to social justice.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So you may say, well, wait a minute, this group
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: may be disadvantaged in this area because of something within
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that group. That's victim blaming. Yeah, but there could be
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: statistical reason. I don't want to hear about your statistics.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You're blaming the victim. The answer is a redress of grievances.
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  Speaker 1: That's the ideology of social justice. Listen to this from
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  Speaker 1: John Rawls in his book, A Theory of Justice, really
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  Speaker 1: a seminal work on the topic. He writes, since the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: principle for an individual is to advance as far as
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: possible his own welfare, the principle for society is to
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  Speaker 1: advance as far as possible the welfare of the group.
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  Speaker 1: Social justice is the principle of rational prudence applied to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: an aggregative conception of the welfare of the group. The
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  Speaker 1: welfare of the group. Another author puts it this way.
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  Speaker 1: As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness
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  Speaker 1: and respect for diversity, as well as the eradication of
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: existing forms of social oppression Social justice entails a redistribution
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  Speaker 1: of resources from those who have unjustly gained them. And
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  Speaker 1: by the way, all of those who have them are
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  Speaker 1: assumed to have unjustly gained them unless they are a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: member of an aggrieved minority group. So if you're a
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  Speaker 1: white person who has acquired wealth, That's unjust.
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  Speaker 2: It's unjust.
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  Speaker 1: Black people dominate the shortest and the longest race in
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the Olympics.
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  Speaker 2: Justice. Make up the majority of the NBA and the NFL. Justice.
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  Speaker 2: Do you see?
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  Speaker 1: The idea here is if the disparity accrues to the
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  Speaker 1: benefit of a group that is identified as an oppressed minority,
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  Speaker 1: then the disparity.
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  Speaker 2: Is not to be looked at.
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  Speaker 1: Social justice entails a redistribution of resources from those who
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: have unjustly gained them to those who justly deserve them.
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  Speaker 1: And it also means creating and ensuring the processes of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: truly democratic participation in decision-making. It seems clear that only
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: a decisive redistribution of resources and decision-making power can ensure
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  Speaker 1: social justice and authentic democracy.
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  Speaker 2: Redistribution. That's the goal.
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  Speaker 1: Redistribution of both resources and of power. redistribution from those
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  Speaker 1: who have gained them unjustly to those who actually deserve them.
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  Speaker 1: And here's what's interesting. We're talking about groups. So what
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  Speaker 1: that means is we're not saying that you were unjust.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you could have worked hard. In fact, you
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: could have come from nothing, from less than nothing, pulled
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  Speaker 1: yourself up by your own bootstraps, worked from the bottom
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  Speaker 1: of the ladder all the way to the top, you
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: can be a self-made man. But if you're a self-made man,
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  Speaker 1: the determination of whether you have it justly or unjustly
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  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with how you got there and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: has everything to do with what group you belong to.
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  Speaker 1: So you can be a white person from Appalachia who
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: was born with nothing and clawed yourself out.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. You are the privileged one.
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  Speaker 1: And if you stand shoulder to shoulder with the son
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: or daughter of Colin Powell who grew up with privilege
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  Speaker 1: and power, the answer is whatever they have, they deserve.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And whatever you have, you did not. Because social justice
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: examines the group. It looks at the group level. The
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: mission of social justice then addresses myriad issues, but let
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: me just give you one example.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: There's a group.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Called Faithful America on their website. They identify themselves as
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the largest, fastest growing online community of Christians putting faith
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: into practice for social justice. So again, they're using the word.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: They understand what the word means. By the way, if
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: you just look at the Oxford Dictionary, the English language,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: they agree.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Social justice is distributive justice.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: So there is complete agreement in the academic world. There's
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: complete agreement in the political world. There's complete agreement in
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: society at large as to what we mean.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: When we use the word social justice.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Faithful America has on their page some of their victories
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and exploits in fighting for justice. Again, largest online Christian
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: group fighting for social justice. What have they accomplished? Well,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: they fought back against Hobby Lobby. That's number one on
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: their list. They fought back against Hobby Lobby. Why did
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: they need to fight back against Hobby Lobby? Because Hobby
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Lobby was fighting for the oppression of.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Minorities who are not minorities. Okay.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Convinced Google to drop World Vision. Convinced Google to drop
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: World Vision. Three, forced MSNBC to drop the Family Research Council.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Are you seeing a pattern here? Four, helped students win
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: justice for a fired principal. The fired principal was a sodomite.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Openly gay man. They went to war and won justice
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: for this individual. Defended an unjustly defrocked pastor. Who's the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: unjustly defrocked pastor? Well, he's a Methodist pastor who, against
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the orders of his denomination, performed a same-sex wedding for
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: his son and his son's.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Pardon.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And that it was unjust for him to be fired.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Now remember, folks, injustice equals sin. It is a sin
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: not to perform same-sex unions. This is their argument. And
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: in the last one, and I love that they just
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: have this tacked on. Fought the fracking industry.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Justice! Now, if you think that.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Those don't make any sense, then you don't understand the
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: social justice movement. Let me explain this for you. There
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: are three main areas encompassing the social justice movement. Three
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: main areas. There are others for sure, and we'll talk
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: about some of those, but there are three main areas.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: The first is minority equality, writ large. Minority equality, okay?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: The second one is feminism and women's rights. And the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: third one is LGBTQA plus rights. Minority equality. When they
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: talk about minority equality, this idea that we've already talked about,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: success and wealth are a result of illegitimate privilege unless
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that success.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And wealth.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Has been accrued by someone who does not belong to
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the illegitimately privileged class. So for example, Asians are a minority, right?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Asians are a minority. However, on college entrance, college admission,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: they're whooping everybody. Not everybody, they're whooping everybody. That's beyond everybody, right? Economically,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: they surpass whites. But again, not an issue.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Because inequality equals injustice unless it accrues to the benefit
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: of a minority. Or let's say not a minority, but
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: to an oppressed group. Because remember, women are majority, but.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Are given minority status. Feminism and women's rights. Again, this
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: is another one. It is always, always part of the argument.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: This is the heart of the social justice movement. The
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: feminist movement is there. You cannot, and I believe it's
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: naive for those who want to say, you know, on
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the one hand, well, no, we don't want to promote
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: feminism and we don't want to promote LGBTQA plus rights
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. Really, we just want, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: we don't even want in on all of the so-called
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: minority equality movement. It's just racial equality and even specifically there,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: just black people and white people. That's like putting hot
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: water in the front of your bathtub and saying you
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: don't want the back to heat up. You can't get
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: away from it. And then the third one, LGBTQA plus rights.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm not being funny when I
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: say LGBTQA plus. L, lesbian. B, bisexual. G, gay. T, transgender. Q,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: queer or questioning, and A is for allies. LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: queer and questioning and their allies. And then plus, because
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: we don't want to offend anybody because they haven't been
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: included as part of the acronym. There was a book,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: called After the Ball. Probably you may have even heard
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: me speak about this book. After the Ball, the subtitle
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is How America Will Overcome Its Fear and Hatred of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Gays in the Decade of the 90s. It was written
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: by two Harvard professors, Russell Kirk and Hunter Mattson, one
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a professor in psychology, the other a professor in marketing.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: And their book, in their own words, was a propaganda
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: strategy Their propaganda strategy had three phases. Phase number one, desensitizing.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Phase number two, jamming. And phase number three, conversion. These
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: are also the phases of brainwashing. And they acknowledge this
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: in their book.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Desensitizing. What do we do in the desensitizing?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Well, you get straight people used to seeing gays, gay people,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: gay relationships, gay sex, Get them used to seeing it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: And Kirk and Madsen in the book say, this is
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the analogy that they use, right? They may have an
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: aversion initially to taking a shower, but eventually they'll get
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: used to being wet. Just bombard them through the media.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Bombard them through television. Bombard them through movies. Bombard them
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: through the educational system to where it's just normalized.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: And here's what's interesting.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: We've lived in Zambia now for the last three and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: a half years, and I come back three, four times
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a year. The family is here. We're on a two-month furlough,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and I've been getting my football fix, you know, the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: playoffs going on, and I've been getting some other stuff
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like that that we just, you know, done even when
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I was here.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe not.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Now that I can't do it, man, I need it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm watching and I'm noticing a number of things.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I'm noticing that there are a couple of commercials that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing, a couple of companies that are running commercials.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And I keep seeing these commercials over and over again.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: One of them is a company that is promoting the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: sale of jewelry, right? And for special occasions. And there's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: vignettes of various couples. And in every one of their commercials,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: there's at least one vignette of a same-sex couple.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: And again, a lot of the people that I talk to,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: they go, oh yeah. Why? Because we're desensitized. I mean,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: it's just there all the time.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I've noticed in virtually every football game that I've seen,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: college football game or a professional football game, there's commercials
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and there's always at least one of the commercials that
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: includes a female football player. Huh? Huh?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: When did this? Social justice. Social justice.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Minority equality, feminism, women's rights, and LGBTQ plus rights. And
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: now we've sort of moved beyond. You know, there's the desensitizing,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: then there's the jamming, and the jamming, what they do
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: is they say they want to reduce the so-called psychic rewards.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: They want to, you know, identify the idea of being
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: against same-sex marriage with the idea of being a skinhead
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: or a neo-Nazi or whatever. Some of you are still
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: offended because I used the word sodomite earlier. I did
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that intentionally because I was going to talk about being
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: desensitized and being jammed. The reason that you felt uncomfortable
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: with me using that word is because you've been jammed.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: It's a word the Bible uses.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Amen. Amen. The word homosexual, very recent invention. The word gay,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: up until, I mean, just a single, within a single lifetime,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: you've seen gay going from meaning happy and, right? Queer,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the word queer. Anybody read The Secret Garden? Right, The
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Secret Garden? It's the book that we read, Secret Garden, right?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: We were listening to The Secret Garden during one of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: our trips, and I did several, like half a dozen times.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: The word queer is used. It means, used to mean,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: somebody's a little strange. We've been desensitized, we've been jammed,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and then there's conversion. Conversion is when people become allies.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Become allies. How do you make people allies? to the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: LGBTQA plus community. Kirk and Matson, by identifying gays and
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: gay people as aggrieved minorities and hitching their wagon to
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: the civil rights slash social justice movement so that the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: idea of being anti-gay is equivalent to the idea of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: being a.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Member of the KKK. What about other issues? Because there
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: are other issues.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: One, environmentalism and climate change is a social justice issue,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and according to most people, it is the number one
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: social justice issue. Because, I don't know if you realize
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: this or not, climate change primarily affects minorities. Don't ask
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: me to explain, I'm just telling you. Income inequality. Global inequality.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: So you've heard about white privilege, right? But the same
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: article basically puts American privilege on par with white privilege.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Here, it's white privilege. Globally, it's American privilege.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: So think about social justice in the American context, and
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: then back up and look at the entire world, and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: America is the rich bad guy who has unjustly acquired
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: his wealth, who needs to be brought to heel and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: have that wealth redistributed to the rest of the world.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: How are you going to do that? Go back to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: number one, climate change. How are we going to deal
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: with climate change? Well, easy.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: You guys pay.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Immigration, universal health care, animal rights, veganism and vegetarianism, and
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: access to abortion. I want us to look at two
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of these, because some of y'all are like, veganism and vegetarianism.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Yes. If I could show you, I'd show you this website.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Black veganism rooted in social justice. What does black veganism
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: have to do with social justice? Well, the article goes
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: on to say, for a lot of black people, it's
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the link between social justice and food access. Veganism gives
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: black youth personal autonomy. We take back control of our
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: own diet in a system in which we are not
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: in control of many of the things that we purchase.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: How about the issue of abortion or access to abortion?
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Women on the Web.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Has an article, Abortion, a matter of human rights and
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: social justice. You see, here's the great irony, because there
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people who would argue that abortion
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: is absolutely a justice issue. The murder of the unborn
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: is a justice issue, amen? And ironically, the murder of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the unborn disproportionately affects the unborn, who, if they were born,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: would look like me. It's a justice issue, right? But
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: within the social justice movement, it is access to abortion
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: that's the social justice issue.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Do you see that?
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Got less than two minutes left. Three issues here. As
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: far as this terminology goes. There's three things we need
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to think about. Number one, clarity. Does using the terminology
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: of social justice give us the greatest clarity?
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I say absolutely not.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Because whenever we want to argue that social justice is
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: a gospel issue, the first thing we have to do
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: is move away from the definition of social justice that.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Everybody already knows.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: We have to define it in a way that the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Oxford Dictionary of the English language doesn't define it. We
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: have to define it in a way that schools of
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: sociology and social justice, yes. Stanford, University of Texas, University
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of Chicago. A number of schools are offering degrees in.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Sociology and social justice.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: And the way we define it in order to say
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: this is a gospel issue looks nothing like the way
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: it's being defined in the culture at large. So no,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: we lose on the clarity issue. The second one is toxicity.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I believe it's toxic. It's toxic terminology when you see
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: some of the groups that are using this terminology, who
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: are identified with this terminology.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: It's toxic. Thirdly, necessity.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Is it necessary for us to use social justice terminology
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: in order to get at the issues that we're trying
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to get at?
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think it is.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: There are alternatives, and we need to use those alternatives. Finally,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the use of this terminology has a chilling effect. First
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: of all, it begs the question, literally not. I don't
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: mean it raises the question. A lot of people use
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: begs the question when they mean raises the question. That's
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: a whole other issue of using wrong terminology. But I
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: mean begging the question in terms of debate, right? Arguing
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: facts that are not in evidence. It begs the question.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: If I say something is a social justice issue, if
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: you and I are having a disagreement and I declare
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: that it's a social justice issue, I've already declared that
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: my position is the high ground. And it confers omniscience
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: upon the person using the terminology. Because there could be
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: myriad factors that would explain an inequity. And when I
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: say that is a social justice issue, I'm assuming that
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I understand all of those factors.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And then finally, it shuts down debate, argument, discussion. Because see,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: God demands justice.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: The minute I say this is a justice issue, I've
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: just said to you that if you're not on the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: side of it that I'm arguing, you're in sin. And
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: so it has a chilling effect. We have people scared
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to talk to each other. All because of this terminology
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: that is really well established, clearly understood. Why go through
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the gymnastics necessary in order to use the terminology? Well,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I believe it's because unfortunately we're trying to satisfy the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: very people from whom the terminology comes. And that's a fight.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Worth fighting.