All right, let's pray. Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would help us even in this unusual setting where we're on Zoom apart from each other, but trying to concentrate on this subject. I thank you for technology. There's a certain sense that we don't like it, but there's a sense that we thrive with it and we're thankful for technology when it comes to our vehicles, certainly medicine, and even something like this that can be used for such good. And I pray that you'd be with us, help me to be clear and help our minds to be engaged, to be equipped to understand our world, help us to love our world as well, not just to understand it, but have a real compassion and concern. I pray also that this information would help us in the years to come as people come to the church and are hurting and confused. I pray this now in Christ's name, amen. All right, so we are looking at, if you're on video, we're looking at this book called Critical Dilemma. and it is published in 2023 by Neil Shenvey and Pat Sawyer. I love this book. It's about total 500 pages and they really stress understanding critical theory. So if you We're just looking at a couple parts of it, but if you look at how the book is laid out, first is understanding, and then the second is critiquing, and the third is engaging, which is a great way to think about a subject like this, that the initial thing is understanding. One of the other things I like about it, is they quote heavily from the sources. So when you're reading this, you're not reading the original sources, but you are getting a lot of original material. And I think if one of the authors that they quote would say, well, I don't agree with how you characterize me, they would say, well, we're just quoting you from your own book, your own writing. So let me also share with you this page that we've looked at a lot, just to review. Okay, so this is, only the four basic things. It's not the whole book, but if you understand these things, it would be helpful. We looked at social binary, and that is how this worldview looks at people who are dominant, who are the oppressors, and then the marginalized people who are oppressed. And this covers kind of everything, race, class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, immigration status, religion, et cetera. And of course, we said that the white Christians, male, they are the they're always going to be the privileged, always going to be the oppressor. It's structural, just the way it is. And the marginalized people, they will be the minoritized people, which are obvious. And in that, we talked about intersexuality. Intersectionality, that means that if you have multiple oppressed characteristics, you're really in a tough spot. So if you're black and if you're a woman and you're trans or gay, you feel very oppressed. Conversely, if you're like me, you're male, white, Christian, educated, I'm in a position to just naturally oppress. It's just structural. We talked about hegemonic power, or hegemony, that just means dominant. It's not a word that they made up, they just used it. Matt talks about the way that people like me have structured society and anybody who's in that class of white, educated, whatever, we have this structure in place that dominates the minoritized people. And so we're imposing our values, our traditions, our norms and doing it in such a way that, well, of course, this is the way it is. I mean, God has ordained this and And so you're black, you're gonna be oppressed. And what's bad about that is people that are oppressed actually internalize this. So the big thing there is that there's structural power, that is it's in society and it's oppressing people who are minoritized. The one we looked at, last Saturday was lived experience. And that refers to the fact that if you are in the oppressed state, you are unaware that you are oppressing people, but the people who are being oppressed, they have insight into the one that's oppressing and in their life. So we need to listen to those with this lived experience and give credence to what they say. It's not as if you can counter them when they say something that is the truth. And we talked about that last week. That has to do with ideas of epistemology, how you get truth. Truth for them is almost manufactured. You come up with truth. And so those ideas are the ones that we've covered, this lived experience, you, if you're minoritized, you have special knowledge of special insight. Now we're going to look at social justice. This is probably one that I can't imagine you not knowing about this one. I can see that you may not know about social binary, I can understand if you weren't clear on hegemonic power, and I can also see if lived experience is a new one for you. Not this one. You know about social justice. You may not have heard the exact term social justice, but you know this. We're gonna define social justice kind of as best we can. no one definition, we'll go over some of them. And this has to do with the liberation of people who are being treated unjustly. And so it's not just thinking about it, it's actually dismantling the system structures and all these norms that perpetuate this evil. So that's what we'll look at today. Am I right in saying that you, maybe you don't know the term, I don't know if you know the term social justice, but you know what this one is pretty much about already, right? Yeah, they're kind of cramming it down our throats at every possible chance. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think just going through this, you'll say, oh yeah, I get this. I never really realized they were saying it this way, but all right, so I'm gonna stop that share, and then I'm gonna read quite a little bit on this. This is just not a lot of pages, but so here are some of the statements that showed the terms malleability. In other words, it's not specific. You're gonna not agree with all of these, but I don't think you'll disagree with all of them either. Here's some of the ways that social justice is used. One, social justice requires us to protect the legal rights of the poor. Social justice is concerned about the needs of the under-resourced communities. social justice minded educators make efforts to offer cultural relevant pedagogy to their students. In other words, teach in a way that's relevant to them. Those who are concerned about social justice champion legislation that expand the rights of the trans community, social justice, we bring together allies for gender and reproductive justice with other social justice allies to increase their collective influence. And finally, it's caring for our rivers and oceans. So we would not say, oh, I agree with all those, but we would certainly say, oh, you know, there's something about that. John McWhirter who teaches at Columbia and he's a New York Times op-ed writer and I don't know if he's literature or what but he's kind of interesting because he's liberal but he'll criticize liberal people. He has this phrase well it's from a title of his book words are on the move and this is especially true in this subject because you can't pin things down with a word. Remember we said it's kind of elusive. So that's true in this case. Don't focus on words, focus on the ideas. And second of all, when you look at this social justice, this is not something that we should just categorically dismiss. Let me read some verses about social justice in the Old Testament. You shall not wrong a sojourner or a person for your sojourners in the land of Egypt. If you lend money to any of my people with who, with you who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender to them, and you shall not exact interest from him. You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. And you could go on and on. So social justice per se is not incompatible with Christianity. In fact, it's an imperative. We should be concerned about the social justice of poor. So, to kind of understand where social justice is with critical theory. In academics, social justice is enveloped in the distinctives of critical social theory and defined along the vector of its overriding concern, the elimination of oppression with a view toward liberation. I think this oppression and the word liberation, you don't want to forget that because You know what Marx said in an essay on Feuerbach, one of the Ludwig Feuerbach was a contemporary of Karl Marx. And Karl Marx has this, I don't know if you've heard this, but it's kind of a famous quote. The philosophers tried to understand the world. He said, our task is not to understand the world, but to change it. This philosophy, is wants to change the world, wants to liberate people who are oppressed. And that is really important to understand. It will help you understand when you see certain movements or things on TV or read about them. Since its inception, critical theory has been primarily concerned with the elimination of oppression and the promotion of justice. Liberation is a theme that runs through critical theory. liberation from objective oppressors such as colonizers and exploitive employers, and liberation from subjective forces such as mass culture and ideology. The social justice is primarily concerned with the emancipation of marginalized groups out of structural domination, out of oppressive societal systems and institutions. So that's important because if I said I know in your view, if you're a critical theorist, you're home to that. I'd say, I don't, I'm not impressing, I'm sorry, I'm not oppressing anyone. Today, I'm just gonna do this or that, and I'm not, they would say, no, you don't get it. It's structurally, and it's been in place for so long, you're not aware of it. I'd say, I don't feel that I'm a, it doesn't matter what you feel, that's what's going on. And so they need to, and they would also say, and you need to listen to us because you don't understand you're blind. All right, let me go on then I'll entertain some questions. So if you have some, hold on to them. Critical social theories are those conceptual accounts of the social world that attempt to understand and explain the cause of structural domination and inequality in order to facilitate human emancipation and equity. Social justice advocates are concerned about the power. Who has it, who doesn't and why? That's such an important sentence. It's all about power. Who has it, who doesn't and why? Critical social theory is a paradigmatic perspective that focuses on the reflective assessment of social systems and pursuit of identifying, evaluating and challenging systems of power. All right, let me stop there for a second and entertain any questions. It gets worse by the way. Okay, I do. I just couldn't get my button to work. It really mimics the kingdom structure. God has all the power. God saves us and liberates us from ourselves, our flesh, our sinful desires. He constructs, they deconstruct. It's kind of a mimicking system because all the elements that are in the kingdom are in this, and it just seems like it's a deconstruction of what the Lord ordained. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't that seem like it's true? I think you saw it on my one paper, the phrase, these ideas of critical theory colonize the mind, or they're a worldview, and it's an all-encompassing worldview. If you really believe this, if you held to this, this is the way you look at the world, just like as a Christian, it's the way you look at the world. I remember Francis Schaeffer, who, because I'm older, he was a guy I listened to back in the 80s and 90s. He talked about worldview and it just changed everything for me. And yes, this has all the elements of a religion or a worldview and it's not up for, well, I don't want this part, I don't want this part. No, it's all there. It's perverted. Yeah, it's perverted. Yes. Okay, I'll keep going. You can stop me if you want. The role of critical theory is to raise consciousness about present oppression and to demonstrate the possibility of qualitatively different future society. This commitment to social transformation in the service of social justice is arguably contemporary critical theories raison d'etre, the reason for existence. In a book called, Is Everyone Really Equal? Two authors reject the idea that social justice is based on principles of fairness and equality for all people and respect for their basic human rights. They define social justice in terms of a critical approach that refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified, that is divided and unequal in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. This critical approach recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in a fabric of society. and actively seeks to change this. Such social justice education requires a theory of oppression that teaches students the pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. In particular, students must understand how oppression is manifested through racism, white privilege, immigration status, sexism, heterosexism, and transgender experience, religious oppression, and antisemitism, and classism, ableism, and ageism, adultism. It's just like everything. I really, it's so interesting to kind of wrap your head around the word heterosexism. So that means that the idea that we think a man and a woman only should marry is called heteronormativity or heterosexism. That is a norm that you're oppressing all these trans and gay, et cetera, people. And I haven't watched the Olympics, but the Olympics in Paris this year, 2024, showed a real perverse opening, kind of mimicking the Last Supper, but it's just to free people the way they would view it. I'll keep going here unless you have a question. All right. Two of the essential distinctives of social justice education revolve around Did I just read that revolve around the analysis of oppression with a view to dismantling oppressive conditions by acting upon the world to bring societal changes. Educators who prioritize social justice and their pedagogy draw from a broad spectrum of critical social theory and political discourses, including critical pedagogy, feminism, multiculturalism, democratic education, critical race theory, post-structuralism, queer theory, critical studies, globalization, and post-colonialism. So you can see if you're an educator, especially at a higher level, but then people that are educated at these colleges are gonna bring it down to a lower level. They're gonna attack, which we've seen, Western civilization. I don't know if I took it in college or high school, but I had courses in Western civilization. The, you know, we wanted to learn about Rome, we wanted to learn about our law, all this stuff. Well, now, as you have picked up in all kinds of things, we're tearing that down. We're saying, you know, we haven't been so great. We've had slavery, we've done this, we've done that. Well, every, I think every nation has had slavery. It's just part of our sinful nature. But you read all these things and you can see that Educators are talking, and we'll get into a quote, educators are taking this idea and getting into all fields of study. So students, I'd say most students are gonna come face-to-face with this. All right, let me talk about equity and a recent author, how to be an anti-racist. Equity used to be a synonym for equality, but critical theorists intentionally contrast equity with equality because they believe that the systematic oppression sometimes requires unequal treatment of groups that are unequally situated. For instance, racial discrimination is forbidden under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, Critical theorists may argue that treating white applicants and black applicants equally is actually unjust because it doesn't take into account the legacy of historic racism or the reality of white privilege today. Now, again, this is not something you wanna just dismiss out of hand. There's something to this if, If one person goes, what color they are, it doesn't matter. If one person goes to a great high school, or they have homeschooling, and then they're prepared, and another student doesn't, they aren't equal. Now, you may say, well, what you do about that is the question, and I would agree with that. But you can see it. This is not a observation that is without merit. So let me tell you about Ibram X. Kendi. He is, I think he's at Boston College now. He's from Queens in New York City, educated in Florida. And he wrote a book that all people just love it. It's called, How to Be an Antiracist. He's black. So here's an example of racial inequity. 71% of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 41% of Black families. Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on relatively equal footing. Note that this measure of equity is entirely outcome-based and takes no account whatsoever of factors that might contribute to different outcomes. For instance, the medium ages of different groups, the medium family size, the medium incomes, et cetera. However, he goes on further, insists that every policy can be classified as either racist or anti-racist solely on the basis of whether it contributes to racial equity, meaning equality of outcome. Now, I have to admit here, this is kind of, you might, you would have to go over this a couple of times if this is first time you've heard this. A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An anti-racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. He then draws out the implication of his position quite clearly. If discrimination is creating equity, then it's anti-racist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. Do you follow that one? Kind of what he's saying is the only way to level the field is to give an edge up to those who are minoritized. That's the only way you can, do it. That sort of provides a sort of provides a passive opportunity for someone that wouldn't choose that. Does that make sense at all? I mean, I'm thinking they're eliminating choices. I mean, I feel like the reason a lot of people are living in their own home is because they have been taught that their choices equal how they prosper. You know, if you're lazy, you don't prosper as much as you are if you're ambitious, you know. I mean, they're sort of eliminating a lot of those choices, you know, just because if they're saying that we're oppressing people, they're gonna put unqualified oppressed people in there. Does that make sense? You know, it's a tough one. Like, let's say I live in Flint and there aren't, my dad wasn't around, I didn't really learn how to save money, didn't learn how to work, and there aren't really great jobs. compared to a kid in Fenton whose parents were savers and whatever. And when I'm 50, I've got a house in Fenton. When they're 50, they're renting. I mean, I kind of see that. I think it's complicated. I think that how would I be, what kind of person would I be if I was raised in Flint and my dad wasn't around? So, but yeah. I guess I'd say to this how to be anti-racist. I don't think it's that simple. And he's been actually, I think it was, I think John McWhirter criticized him. Let me see if this is in here. I read this somewhere. So these folks are being criticized by people who are in that same camp. Let me, I read this somewhere. Maybe it's not this one, but let me, this was, okay, written in 23. So he goes on and quotes Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020. She narrated this video. In it, she explains that there's a big difference between equity and equality. Equity suggests, oh, everyone should get the same amount. The problem with that, not everyone, everybody's starting off in the same place. The accompanying animation shows two men climbing a mountain. The white man starts at ground level in reach of a rope dangling from the mountain's peak, but the black man starts in a ditch from which he can't reach the rope. Harris then contrasts equality with equity, stating that equity is about giving people the resources and the support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing. As she speaks, the black man is given a boost so that he too can reach the rope and ascend to the top of the mountain. Harris concludes, equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. This last line in particular shows how equity collapses onto equality of outcome. If we assume that equitable treatment will result in everyone achieving the same outcome, then unequal outcomes can only be the result of inequitable treatment. So the example is not bad, but the last sentence is what's really tough. The last sentence being equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. So here's what I think being so close to Flint, I've often thought, what if I grew up in Flint? How would I think? I'm a saver. I save my money. I've always worked hard. I'm curious, so I like to read. Well, is that me or is it my surroundings or is it a combination? I think it's a combination. So let's say, if you wanted to say we're gonna be equitable, we would say, okay, we're gonna go in the inner city and stress education, family and jobs and give us 20 years, leave us alone, give us 20 years. And if we have those three things, and focus our attention on that, that would give them a better chance to succeed. So I think there's definitely something here and I don't want you to accept it without analyzing, but I don't want you to reject it without analyzing. You should hear what they're saying and where they're going wrong. I think on this one, where she goes wrong is equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. That just can't, like the authors say, it just collapses on that last sentence. Well, the reason it does is because it doesn't consider how each individual person is made. We all have a pair of arms, a pair of legs, a head, all the structural things that we need, but in our intangibles, Some people have different gifts. Some people have a different way of viewing the world. That's not considered at all. I mean, I work with people that have the gift of organization and the two of them have completely redone the place to make it more efficient and everything like that. And I'm thinking to myself and they they think that way, you know, and that's the way they're designed. That's the way it's amazing. But if you if you If you're talking about giftings, and there's, what, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, I think they list all sorts of different giftings, and there's different combinations that the Lord puts us together. We're not gonna end up in the same place, just because of the way we're made. If you think that a car is a ceiling fan, and you sit on the face of the ceiling fan, you're gonna get your butt chopped up. You know what I mean? Yeah, you have to kind of take it all in and think about it and look at the world. All right, let me go on with this whiteness and white fragility. The Smithsonian, I looked at this last night actually, they have, a white lady explaining whiteness and white fragility. She wrote a book, something about, I think it might be white fragility. And in the Museum of African-American something in Washington, D.C., they have a book They talk about whiteness and white fragility. And she has a talk that she gave at a Methodist church called Deconstructing White Privilege. Talking about whiteness, we'll get into some of this about whiteness. It's really interesting, the characteristics of white people. Similarly, the blurring of sex and gender categories flows out of the belief that gender, possibly even sex, is socially constructed. Men and heterosexuals have established cultural norms that validate the patriarchy and or heterosexism. By the way, Nancy Peercy wrote a book called The Toxic War on Masculinity, and And you will often hear masculinity with the adjective toxic. There's no such thing as godly masculinity, good masculinity. It's often what you hear is toxic masculinity. So this says, these norms are promoted as natural common sense or God-ordained, but function to subjugate women and cast LGBTQ plus individuals as deviant. The reason, sorry, this reasoning explains CNN's statement that, listen to this, it's not possible to know a person's gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth. That was in 2021. Social justice demands that we work to expose and demandle the patriarchy, heterosexism, hegemonic discourses of the ruling class. Hence, we should only embrace a category of gender identity that is distinct from sex, but should also question whether sex categories themselves can be reliably known through biology. That's the thinking that people have. How about this one? ACLU's strange omission of women from its litany of people who will supposedly be harmed by abortion bans can be understood in a similar way. Recall that they claimed abortion bans disproportionately harm Black, indigenous and other people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, young people, those working to make ends meet, people with disabilities. Their list reads almost like a verbatim enumeration of the various oppressed groups in the catalog of contemporary critical theory, social binary. But because the ACLU is emphatically committed to the position that trans women are women, that is biological males, who identify as women are women, the category of woman is an exception. It's just amazing. We used to say that abortion hurts, sorry, abortion bans hurt women. Now they're not even including that in there. All right, let me, If you would like, I can go to critical race theory. Looks like it's about 840. So let me stop there because I'd like to go from here to critical race theory, but I wanna make sure we kinda get this. Some of you that are quiet, you've gotta have some questions. Maybe not. All right. I'll keep going. We'll keep going for a little bit and have time for questions. This is a critical race theory. Now, this is another one that I know if you follow, if you follow news at all, you've heard of this critical race theory. If you watch like the Foxes and the conservative media, everything that's bad is critical race theory. If you watch the more liberal news like MSNBC, They defend critical race theory as an esoteric legal theory that is not taught in K through 12 schools. It's just nothing but a framework to teach honest history. So you can kind of see that one side is saying it's pervasive, it's all over. The other side is, oh, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. So critical race theory is an area of knowledge created to challenge and interrogate the ways in which race, racism, racial power, and white supremacy are constructed and manifests, specifically in legal, cultural, and more broadly in society. Traditional jurisprudence, that is law, teaching of law, argued that the law can be grounded in self-evident universal moral principles, but following the guidance of reason, sorry, by following the guidance of reason, these general principles can be applied to particular legal cases to predictably arrive at correct decisions. And so that was kind of how we thought. But then critical legal theorists, they said that The law actually was a mechanism by which the ruling class imposed its will on the populace, shoring up its dominance and protecting its interest. Thus, laws should be understood primarily through the lens of social power. Remember how we said critical theory is understood to be focused on power, who has it, who doesn't, and why? they ask questions like, how does this law benefit the ruling class? How is it an extension of social power? Which perspective does it assume and which does it exclude? So critical race theory comes from critical legal theory and critical legal theory was more theoretical. It was dealing with the uh ideas of of law a critical race theory is more practical and it wants to wants to change things uh yeah critical race theory wants activism and results critical race theory differs from critical legal theory in that it has an activistic aspect the end goal of which is to bring change that could implement social justice now Again, you don't want to say that that is totally wrong, but if you watch the news, that's what you're saying. I think you could put defund the police phrase into this category and it would make sense. Critical race theory believes that critical legal theory failed to recognize the radical character of the law. The law was not merely a mechanism of social control, but of racial control. Critical race theory aimed to expose how law functioned as a tool of white supremacy, reinforcing the racial status quo under the guise of liberalism, colorblindness, and even civil rights. So I don't want to get into this too much, but contemporary critical race theory would look back at Martin Luther King Jr. and say, oh, he did not understand it. Because if you remember Martin Luther King Jr., for all his flaws, he criticized the country and the churches for not being Christian enough. Case in point, his letter from a Birmingham jail, he was asking, imploring the Christians to act like Christians and not be racist. Our contemporaries that would hold to critical race theory said, oh, he did not understand that he didn't have a fighting chance. Law is just a function of social oppression. The law is not a reflection of God's will or anything like that. Law is just I'm gonna use this to oppress. And so you can see why politics is so important to them. Okay, let me, any questions, any input? They don't consider that there's just one lawgiver. Where did any original idea come from? Heaven. Say that one more time. I said, where did any original idea come from? Heaven. They don't consider that there's a supreme lawgiver. Oh, no, no. That is a norm that they would say needs to be dismantled. Because if you believe that, no one can question you. So law is not from God, law is, and truth is constructed by us. Yes, your observation is correct. Somebody else is gonna say something too. No, Pastor, I was just gonna say, having just graduated from, you know, the College of Ed at Eastern Michigan. I mean, that's, you know, not a very big university. It's not like a U of M or MSU, but just how, what you were talking about teaching and even that, how it being in the humanities, you know, gonna be a social studies teacher, like this framework was all that we were taught. I mean, when I was there, this critical theories framework for education and how to be a social justice educator and a multicultural educator, all of these things. I mean, that was just all of the stuff. And I know my sister just graduated from a similar university in Illinois and it was the exact same thing. And I can't speak to the past, having not been around or maybe experiencing it, but I do believe going forward, in education colleges and stuff, just from my experience and from what I've seen and things I've read. I mean, this is definitely what is going to be pushed in the future for, excuse me, for like K through 12, like how to teach kids. Yeah, and I said to you, I think I said to this group, this is, This is something that is entrenched and its tentacles are everywhere. You're not gonna find that in 10 years, we're not doing this anymore. You will not be able to get a position unless you hold to this in academics, even in something like teaching high school. It's going to be with us for decades. I said to, I think I said to Church in the announcement, I said, you know, I'm not the only one that explains this, this is not the only book, but if you wanna understand the world, this is the topic to look at. And it is as radical, it's actually, it's probably more radical than Marxism. It has a way, so Marxism, I think, You can't have Marxism unless it dominates a culture. This could be in any culture and it can just permeate and people won't even know it. And a lot of these scholars are from the United States. You can kind of tell it's white versus black, but Paulo Freire, he's from Brazil. There's scholars from other parts of the world. So it's not just the United States, it's all over the world. And it's clearly in the government, it's clearly in our movies, it's clearly in media, academics, sports. So what's the WNB, Caitlin Clark, is that her name? The gal that's doing so well, she's a rookie. One of the criticisms of her is that she's white and she has a boyfriend, and a lot of the players are black and lesbian. And I don't know about the WNBA, this is just what I've heard, but what I see that, the reason I mentioned that is not to get into the WNBA, that everywhere you go, this is talked about. So you're just gonna have to, if you wanna understand the world and interact with the world, you're just gonna have to understand this. It's already here. I mean, here you are, you just graduated. You said that's all you heard. That means that everybody who's trained in the last 20 years probably has interacted with this. And the next, I don't know how many decades they'll interact with this. So anybody in position of power or influence has been trained by this. And the way they're trained is there's no other way to look at this. If Mary says, well, wait a minute, law comes from God, they go, see, that's your problem. You have this norm and you're oppressing us with this. And everybody would say, yeah, Mary, we don't wanna hear that. And they will actually kind of stop their ears because this is a problem with you white religious people. We've had it with your norms. You've had your time. And here's another example, and I'll stop on it just in question. I've been listening to a series of Tim Keller on evangelism in New York City. And he'll give a talk and then have question and answer. And I've listened to quite a few of these and the whole thing. And the perspective of secular people is how awful Christianity is. And Tim Keller doesn't push back enough in my mind, but you just wanna say, do you think Stalin and Mao and Hitler were religious? Do you think in Cambodia that they were religious? No, these are secular people have done all these things, but boy, at least the questions that I've heard there is, it comes down to you religious people are so bad. they're actually religious though they're they're actually practicing religion well yes that's true that's true yes they don't they don't admit it but they're worshiping themselves yeah any other questions especially from you some of you quiet ones like the wagners i'm calling you out No questions from my end. What was that? I said no questions from my end. All right. OK, well, yeah, this has been This is really tough. I couldn't find it. I was reading last night about whiteness and they were talking about whiteness as if, oh shoot, it meant scientific, logical, reasonable. And I thought of one of my favorite black people, George Washington Carver, who did not invent peanut butter, but he taught, he was trained at the University of Iowa, was around the Midwest for a while. Finally, he went to Tuskegee and he was just this giant of a person. And he taught agriculture and he taught about soybeans and peanuts and all these different products. And he was a scientist, a brilliant scientist. I think if you said to him, well, whiteness is thinking logically and whatever, he would just laugh and say, that sounds racist to me. But that's what it's called now, is that critical thinking, being logical, that's white thinking. And this is not just, I'm not just saying this to say, oh, just one person says this. This is really what's being taught. I think it's in that, if you go to the website of the African-American Museum, you'll find it. there um all right so uh one last thing is i think at least i should say i'm contemplating doing uh continuing this at some point uh looking at books i told i was telling andrew that one of the books i'm reading which i'd recommend is called remaking the world by andrew wilson And he takes the year 1776 and he goes, he looks at the whole world and he says, all the events surrounding that year in all these different disciplines has formed to create us to be the acronym WEIRDER, Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic. And I'm currently, it's one of the books I'm reading right now. And I think talking about that would really help you, another book to help you understand where we are in the world. So I may bring this back up sometime in the future. We'll let you know if that happens. All right, any other thoughts before we conclude? I would suggest reading this book, getting your hands on it. It's called Critical Dilemma. It's not a hard book to read. Also, you don't have to read the whole thing. You can just read part of it, but having this little introduction would help you get through it. You don't have to get through the whole thing, but it's really helpful to read the quotes that they have from other authors to see how radical this is. Pastor Mark, I thank you for having this class. I think it's been worthwhile, just thought provoking. I hope so. I hope maybe if you talk about it, people will either wanna listen to these or read the book and you will I think now that you've gone through this, you'll hear things in the media and say, oh, I know where that's coming from. Now that I've done this, that makes sense. All right, well, let me pray and then we'll enjoy the rest of our day. Lord, I thank you for this day. Thank you for the sunshine that we're experiencing in this August day. Thank you for Thank you for people that write and speak, that help us understand our faith, understand the world. I thank you for minds that can understand different viewpoints, not necessarily agreeing with them, but trying to stand under the idea so that we grow. I pray that as we do this, we would have a love for people who are different than we are, that we'd have a compassionate view of people who see things differently. Thank you so much that we have all these wonderful technologies. We can read a book that has paper. We can read a book on a device. We can listen to podcasts, listen to sermons. It's just, we just have so many wonderful opportunities and I'm so thankful. I pray for each person that's here. We pray for our church as we prepare to worship tomorrow, especially those who are hurting, dealing with cancer or dealing with medical issues. And I pray that you would guide us and lead us. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.