Issues in Biblical Anthropology, Lecture 1
Key Topics
Race/Ethnicity (throughout)
Wokeness (throughout)
Image of God (throughout)
Man as technological project (throughout)
Man as mere matter (throughout)
Identity (throughout)
Critical Race Theory (1:07:00 to end)
Human Sexuality (55:00 to end)
Freud (56:00-1:01:00)
Therapeutic man (38:00 to end)
Transcript with YouTube timestamps
0:01this is issues in anthropology or issues in biblical anthropology as you know this is an advanced study of the
0:06doctrine of humanity with special attention given to the nature of the image of god gender and sexuality critical race
0:12theory slash wokeness slash intersectionality transhumanism justice human identity and vocation so we have
0:19a fair bit to cover together you see on the syllabus if it’s accessible to you no worries if it’s not
0:26but you see the course objectives keep in mind that this is indeed an elective so
0:32i’m not trying on these different subjects that we’re going to cover to lay all the elemental groundwork for
0:38you i don’t know where each of you is and i see many of you on the screen back here and it’s a joy to see your
0:44faces at least on zoom i’ve been doing a fair bit of zoom teaching at midwestern seminary my seminary
0:50i’m going to just assume that you have some of that foundation laid in anthropology or if you haven’t taken
0:56theology one or i would assume that’s where it’s covered or theology too i believe you have four theology sections
1:02uh that you will have that so i’m not going to be doing the the more foundational groundwork in the
1:08doctrine of humanity we’ll be delving into it at different points including today where we talk about the image of god
1:15nonetheless uh you have other anthropological coverage in your
1:20mdiv in your master’s programming and i’m banking on that this is an elective so we’re going to be double clicking on
1:26certain issues that we wouldn’t have the time to do in a intro theology course let me just say a
1:34quick word about the readings you see a required reading there six texts tried to give you a nice balance uh of
1:41of uh of the subjects that we are covering in the course
1:46beall’s book is on idolatry it’s very important because many people today do not realize that they are
1:53an idolater and that they are being shaped by the idol that they worship um and so i think this is an important
2:00book for pastoral ministry for unbelievers certainly but also for christians that which we pursue
2:07that which we follow is not just not good it’s not just not god it shapes us
2:14it forms us we come to look like the idols we worship a point you would know from the bible
2:20from your biblical study i’m sure and yet beale draws this out very nicely in this book
2:25next book mark cortez’s christological anthropology in historical perspective what i wanted
2:31with this book and i’m not going to be referencing these readings throughout the week by the way but what i
2:36in a few places perhaps but in general i want the reading to to be an opportunity for you to dive in further
2:42to the lecture material that i’m giving you in course in this course this text gives you just a number of
2:49historical treatments historical voices about different anthropological issues don’t assume
2:55that every voice you will be encountering you’ll be hearing in cortez’s book is a voice that i would affirm
3:03or affirm fully i do want to expose you though to different anthropological
3:09perspectives in the christian tradition over the centuries and that is a feature a strength of cortez’s book so note that mark
3:16cortez and i would also have some disagreements on some different issues so note that as well and then the next book
3:22is edited by jared longshore of founders ministries pastor in florida with tom askle known
3:29to many of you i’m sure by what standard god’s world god’s rules this is one of the only higher level
3:36treatments of social justice wokeness and intersectionality available on the
3:41market today from a conservative evangelical standpoint and so i’m glad to assign
3:47this text to you there’s different presentations voting becomes ethnic gnosticism presentation for example is of great
3:53value uh to our current uh situation and there are other chapters as well that fit that mold but that’s a
4:00quick word about by what’s standard i myself am working on a manuscript
4:06currently about uh critical race theory wokeness and intersectionality called christianity and wokeness i gave some
4:13lectures a few months ago on that subject by that title that are on youtube christianity and wokeness
4:18and it will be coming out lord willing as a book uh in coming months hopefully by summer at the
4:24latest with a forward from dr macarthur which is very exciting to me then the next book is by some yahoo with
4:31a strange last name by the way the pronunciation is stran everybody say it with me even though
4:37you’re muted stran okay i’m not going to be doing a lot of rick warren like fill in the blank
4:43pronunciation say it out loud with me during the class don’t worry but uh in this case it seems appropriate
4:48for you to actually speak into existence this strange scottish last name stran with a gaelic
4:55pronunciation and yes as i told dr business just a few moments ago there is indeed a village in scotland
5:02with the name strucken that’s the scottish pronunciation that is not gaelic so if any of you get to travel to
5:09scotland in days ahead if we still can indeed travel internationally which we all hope
5:14for uh in coming months you will get bonus points with me if you go to the village of strocken in
5:22scotland were you expecting all this this is this is bonus for taking this course name pronunciation my book re-enchanting
5:30humanity uh involves some of the course lecture notes that you’re going to be hearing from i’m developing material
5:36from the book for these lectures so it’s not simply going to be a rereading or something like that i don’t do that in my teaching
5:42but nonetheless this is my 432 page anthropology doctrine of humanity
5:49i am trying to do a couple things i’m trying to give and lay out a doctrine of humanity in this book but
5:54then also engage uh current issues as well and then the next book is what does the bible teach about transgenderism this is
6:01part of a three book series that gavin peacock and i wrote together just this previous year and it delves into the issue of
6:07transgenderism but from a lay perspective re-enchanting humanity is an academic theology
6:13work uh this book is more of a lay level or also uh church level writing on this
6:19subject that i pray will point people away from transgenderism to the scripture and then finally van hooser and strand the
6:26pastor’s public theologian this is just where i want you to understand
6:31how you are the one you are the one who is called to shape god’s people
6:37praise god for seminaries praise god for teaching opportunities praise god for youtube ministries and on and on it goes
6:44yes but actually those who are called to form the people of god as many of you of
6:49course will know and be committed to already that’s part of why you’re at tms i’m sure are the are the pastors of god’s church
6:57so pastors are the ones who are supposed to take material like that which we will be
7:02uncovering and unfolding here this week and then communicate it to the people and help the people who are caught
7:09amidst all these issues and all all these complications and uh disciple people and win people to
7:16the faith out of the complex of these issues so hopefully the pastor’s public theologian can give you a further
7:22vision for that those of you who are here on campus or nearby obviously are seeing
7:27that unfold every week under dr macarthur at grace probably the world leading church today
7:33and so i don’t think this is unfamiliar to you but i i did want to expose you to a
7:39further unfolding of that perspective and van hooser is probably the most lyrical communicator i have ever
7:46witnessed in person having him in class at trinity evangelical divinity school in chicago for my phd
7:52i did mine in historical theology was an experience man sometimes you just get a teacher or a
7:58communicator who seems to talk poetry theological poetry
8:03in this case and that was what it was like to study under van hooser okay you see the requirements
8:08for the course you got to do the reading you got to participate that’s changed a little bit in terms of
8:13what that’s going to look like for participation i will try to stop though at a few points
8:19and you can do the hand raise thing on zoom do you know about this i think you do so i’ll i’ll try to do
8:27some questions i think we can do that and then you have a critical book review that you do on re-enchanting humanity
8:33you engage three issues from the book and then you do a research paper i’m not going to grade it but it will be graded
8:40you’re going to write an essay of 10 to 15 pages on one of the major subjects covered in
8:45the course so something that engages you that pulls you in and you see what you’re supposed to do
8:51there you’re supposed to make a robust biblical theological argument you’re supposed to interact with key theologians on the issues involved
8:57you’re supposed to be historically aware and accurate and then engage contemporary positions and so you
9:04deliver that assignment as with the other assignments six weeks after the end of
9:09of the in-person or uh zoom sessions last thing and then we dive in
9:14class outline today we cover the image of god and related issues tomorrow we do gender
9:20sexuality a few things to say there uh wednesday we do wokeness
9:27thursday transhumanism and technology it’ll probably be broader than just transhumanism i should say
9:33it’ll probably be how we handle tech today just just so you know so it says transhumanism we will indeed
9:40be covering that but we’ll be covering more than that on thursday and then on friday i
9:45downshift it a little just because it will be friday and we will have man sledded through some intense forest land
9:52uh in terms of subject material and density and so we’re going to close with a study of vocation
9:58something that we take for granted a lot but we don’t often preach about very much where the
10:03majority of our people in our local churches they live this they they have to think about vocation
10:09and work and and uh and their daily goings on a great deal uh so we need to i think equip them
10:17in the issue of how they approach work how they approach building a vocation which is going to
10:23comprise the majority of their waking hours on planet earth so fairly significant
10:29and important subject okay that is the quick outline we will now
10:37transition to begin our study together of the image of god
10:4450 years ago the question landed like a bombshell on the cover of time magazine is god
10:52dead now death of god theology had actually debuted many decades prior in the west so it was
10:59not new to hear someone speak about the death of god the philosopher friedrich nietzsche is
11:05probably most famously associated with this line of thinking and argumentation that god was effectively dead that we
11:12had effectively killed him atheism was not new to the 20th century nor to the 19th century
11:17when nietzsche was writing the late 19th century it debuts in a very public form
11:22in the enlightenment the european enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries and yet in america to land on the cover
11:30of time magazine as a subject was a very significant cultural event indeed is
11:38god dead the april 1966 coverage
11:44of this theology on the nation’s leading publication the cover of it
11:50made the conversation over the death of god and over atheism a public one theologians like
11:58thomas j.j altizer william hamilton and paul van buren all wrote in this
12:04period on death of god theology yes my friends you can actually make
12:12a pretty good living and have your summers off as a theologian telling people that god
12:19is dead it was true then in the sixties it is still very much true today death of god
12:27theology really popped in the mid 1960s but do not misunderstand it has not gone
12:35away in fact one professor introduced a new liturgy to be used in churches to mark
12:42the death of god again in churches to for the people to say confessing
12:49corporately on sunday morning adapting psalm 23 in fact he was
12:55our guide and our stay he walked with us beside still waters
13:03he was our help in ages past he is gone he is stolen by darkness
13:12heaven is empty this was a liturgy for
13:19ostensibly religious people to say again confessing this together in
13:26corporate worship so we’re not reciting psalm 23 any longer
13:32we are reciting that god is gone stolen by darkness and heaven
13:39is empty friends you need to pause for just a moment and
13:45think about what a scourge this thinking has been
13:52in religious circles in the last 50 or 60 years in america
13:58certainly in europe as well we’re all used to atheism now
14:03aren’t we it’s a normal thing many of us including me went to secular colleges or universities and
14:09and we had to engage this was good for us we had to engage people who did not agree with us
14:14and we had to engage atheism so we’re glad to engage it but just note that the average congregant in a
14:21local church and i’m going to be making frequent application to church life and church ministry because
14:27this isn’t a university class this is a seminary classes just how i teach at midwestern seminary in kansas city
14:32the average person wasn’t reading thomas j.j altizer on these things the average person
14:38in any congregation whether it’s evangelical or otherwise barely ever reads a theological work
14:44then and now and so this kind of theology hits them it hits them like a wave and they don’t
14:52know it’s coming necessarily and they don’t have the tools to grapple with it and all they can do
14:57is recite he is gone he is stolen by darkness so the trends that play out at high levels
15:05of intellectual life of theology of philosophy and elsewhere are going to show up in the pew
15:13even if they seem far off and unimportant and esoteric in academic terms if you have death of
15:19god theology at union seminary in new york and you have these cutting edge theologians who are promoting it in
15:25their books and their writings it will show up in the pew and people in the pew then and now
15:33will not know how to handle it and it will sweep over them like a wave and they will go from theists
15:41to atheists almost without knowing it and that is a very sobering thing for us to think about indeed
15:48well all this means that our culture has shifted
15:54from it being to use charles taylor’s terms basically impossible not to believe in
16:00for example the time of the reformation in god that is impossible not to believe to
16:06increasingly dominant folks in intellectual settings thinking that it is impossible to
16:12believe so the conditions of belief have
16:17changed profoundly in part through this theology and this thinking in the last 50 years or so
16:25again in high level elite american culture and society it is no longer
16:32thought that it is impossible not to believe in god it is increasingly very much the case
16:38that people think that it is impossible to believe in the biblical god i should qualify
16:43that because actually people believe in lots of things today don’t they when you turn your back on god when you
16:50rebel against god when you embrace unbelief it doesn’t turn out for actually a good number of people that you don’t believe in
16:56anything and some of you have heard a version of this quote it turns out that you believe in everything and that’s where a good number of people
17:02are as well so so we really have two tracks don’t we if we widen the frame here in 2021 in america in the west more
17:10broadly we have a strong uh thread of people who are atheists or skeptics or that sort of
17:16thing and then we also have a very strong thread of people who are spiritual
17:21but not religious people who continue to be religious etc and on it goes and you need to know that there’s not
17:27one profile of unbeliever out there today of non-christian if you will there are
17:32those who are atheists and skeptics and this position has very much advanced because of this kind of trend and then
17:38there are also many people who have some kind of belief a form of belief as the new testament says
17:43but not true christian commitment and faith well in our time a second question has
17:50emerged drafting off of that famous time magazine cover question is god dead the question today my friends i would
17:57submit with is god dead still being a very live grenade in our time is this is man
18:03dead is humanity dead
18:09you say well what do you mean by humanity being dead people are still walking people are still breathing today
18:17yes they are but the question gets at this is there any meaning to the human person
18:26is there anything that we are to say about humanity beyond the fact that we are
18:32bodies walking cells colliding atoms
18:37more or less cohering is there any meaning to humanity
18:44now you have a certain body of convictions and principles of course that you will bring to bear on a question
18:50like that praise god what i’m really interested in here though is if you go out on the street
18:56if you go to starbucks if you go to your local coffee shop if you go to the park if you go to the beach and you talk to people what do they say
19:04is there any meaning to humanity does it mean anything to be a huma what does it mean
19:09to be a human if you wanted an evangelistic and apologetic question you could do worse
19:15than that one today you’re probably not going to ask that of everybody but hey if you got a thinker on your hands
19:21the person next to you on the airplane on the bus or whatever is uh is reading a book
19:28you could ask that question what does it mean to be human for you over the last 50 years following
19:34on the death of god western society has re-envisioned the human person
19:39for millennia humanity was understood in light of god i don’t mean everybody believed the same thing i don’t mean that everybody was a
19:46believer in the lord jesus christ don’t misunderstand but broadly speaking it was impossible not to believe again to quote taylor’s
19:52framework mankind according to the protestant tradition and also the catholic tradition
19:58was made in the image of god and that meant that the human person had certain duties
20:04before god had a certain understanding of the human person and mankind understood itself as
20:09fundamentally a spiritual being you could not understand humanity without confessing at some level
20:16that humanity is a spiritual being made to know god now of course many people as
20:23i said just a few moments ago still have this confession in some form but things have changed with the rise of the death of god
20:29theology with the rise of hyper spiritualization in western
20:34thinking mankind is no longer seen as the special creation of almighty god mankind is no longer
20:42seen as the image of god which we’re going to be talking about much more in just a few moments what i want to do right now is walk
20:49through five views on mankind today that proliferate and are held by many people in our time
20:56and then we will look at a sixth view which is the biblical view of the image of god
21:02our first cultural view then on humanity we’re going to walk through five man as mere matter man as mere
21:10matter the prevailing view in scientific circles today
21:16is that mankind is a blank slate evolved from an eon’s old combustion of
21:23gases this is of course i’m referring to an evolutionary framework
21:28for human origins and human existence according to the view that man is mere
21:34matter which is bigger than evolution though it includes it humanity has no divine origin
21:41it has an accidental origin this is part of what is so important for
21:46us to walk people through when we are talking through people who when we are talking through excuse me
21:52evolution as a system it’s not just the age of the earth or something like this that matters that
21:57does matter but evolution matters anthropologically doesn’t it it has a
22:03massive effect on your doctrine of humanity because according to evolutionary theory of the
22:09darwinian kind of the secular kind there is no creator god who makes us according to his image in his likeness
22:16humanity has an accidental formation no creative figure guides the human
22:22person’s existence no one shapes the human person’s identity
22:27no one does it we are human beings and we are what we are only because of a chance result
22:36of processes that have played out without any divine design any divine intelligence behind it that
22:44means then we’re talking specifically about anthropology here in this class
22:49that means that the human race has no real distinction from the beasts from the animals
22:57you have probably heard language like this if you listen to different cultural voices we are a higher animal we’re just an
23:04animal we’re nothing more you and i hear that we have to get outside of our framework
23:10don’t we to be good missionaries and apologists to the culture evangelists and we think
23:16no we’re not we’re not a higher animal people around us think that all sorts of people think that people
23:23shape their lives around a view like that people live as if that is true
23:29you don’t praise god i don’t by the grace of god but lots of people do ideas have
23:36consequences the human person according to the man is mere matter perspective and there’s a
23:42variety of perspectives in this cultural view as in the others i will be laying out
23:47sees no greater story to human existence there’s no telos end greek word for end
23:55there’s no ordained point to which we are traveling
24:01there’s nothing higher at all francis schaefer famously mapped out
24:07upper story and lower story truth and you can correlate that to upper story and lower story existence in
24:14a certain form just know that many people around us do not think that there is an
24:19upper story many people around us are hearing in college classrooms and
24:24high school settings that they’re just an evolved animal atoms collide and so does mankind
24:33humanity is just matter and ethically if you hold to this view which you do
24:38not hold impartially do you as an unbeliever you can do whatever you
24:44want and there are no consequences truly there are no consequences
24:49you do your actions you do what you want you live however you see fit and there’s nothing more there’s nothing
24:56beyond it because you are just matter you d how many times have you heard this
25:03in evangelism you die you go into the ground that’s it end of
25:09story roll credits fade to black people believe this people more
25:16significantly perhaps want to believe this
25:21never think that unbelievers including us in our pre-christian state are only operating
25:28out of a kind of pursuit of intellectual neutrality unto the truth there is no
25:35neutral person on planet earth with regard to god
25:40you are either an idolater following your own wisdom or you are a worshiper of the lord jesus
25:47christ by the grace of god following divine wisdom i’m not saying that people don’t have to think things through
25:54and read books to adjudicate claims and these sorts of things i don’t mean that they should we should point them to do
25:59so but point them to do so remembering that neutrality is a
26:05fiction there is no neutral mind out there who is in a state of perfect fairness
26:12evaluating the claims of this worldview this worldview and the christian worldview and he’ll get back to you
26:17and tell you what he thinks in his state of perfect neutrality the human heart because of adam’s real
26:23historical fall a real historical atom in genesis 3 1-13 is shot through with sin the noetic
26:31effects of the fall are real so when you meet an unbeliever yes you
26:36try to engage them and get them to think and read and evaluate claims and these sorts of things
26:42absolutely you do but you always do so remembering that they are not neutral they want
26:50excuses they want reasons to dodge god they want to believe that
26:56man is mere matter it makes sense you get to live however you want if that is the case
27:02our second cultural view moving on man as technological project
27:09man is technological project uh we will come back to this on thursday
27:16as we will with a few of these views as we go but we’re laying the groundwork here on day one
27:22some of you may have heard of the best-selling book homo deus by uval noah harrari homo deus
27:30caught fire just a couple years ago in the west and has been a book that tons of people have read it’s been a
27:36long time bestseller and the author of homo deus predicts the following
27:42homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step merging with robots and computers in the
27:49process until our descendants will look back and realize they are no longer the kind of animal
27:55that wrote the bible built the great wall of china and laughed at charlie chaplin’s antics
28:02what is being said here by harari puts into perspective the view that
28:09man is a technological project so where a system an operating system if
28:16you will that needs to be upgraded and we do so specifically by merging with robots and
28:24computers humanity then is in the process of upgrading itself
28:30and evolving people around us believe this
28:35people around us believe that reality is not enough this has profound implications for the
28:42christian worldview and discipleship and evangelism if you start thinking about it
28:47people around us believe let me repeat myself that reality is not enough
28:52that reality needs to be augmented it needs to be upgraded it needs to be
29:00improved it’s like your phone my phone is so annoying it’s always asking me if i want to update the
29:07software i suppose now that i’m old enough that i can claim to be a cranky cranky guy sometimes because i don’t
29:13want to upgrade the software i want the software to stay the same
29:18just stay the same why do we always have to upgrade okay anyway sorry you’re getting a little bit of psychological drama here reality isn’t
29:27enough reality needs to be upgraded you and i need to be upgraded we need to adapt the
29:34operating software of ourselves that kind of perspective is going to
29:42altogether reshape the living of your days where it’s not going to be enough to
29:48take a walk think about this just in the church it’s not going to be enough
29:54just to have a normal face-to-face conversation with somebody how long are your face-to-face
29:59conversations now how long time yourself time your friend how long in your next conversation we’re
30:06all guilty will you or that person go before they have to pick up their phone and check it
30:13or do pick up their phone and check it it’s become a matter of augmented
30:19reality this world that we live in we cannot live without our devices
30:27you say stran are you saying to go back to um carts and buggies or this sort of thing do you want to return us to i don’t know
30:34set back the clock to 1814 or something no i i don’t think we can do that i use my phone i use this ipad
30:42uh um macbook i we’re using zoom right now people develop this i’m glad that we are so we need a
30:49balanced perspective on technology don’t we nonetheless don’t miss that there are embedded
30:56world views and there are hidden gospels all around us they are in
31:04the devices we use even they’re in the perspectives that predominate in our culture that no one questions
31:12is reality enough is it enough to have face-to-face interaction
31:18or do you need to constantly be accessing your devices can you go for a week without checking
31:25your email or does that collapse your world does that collapse your church these are the kind of matters that we’re
31:31not just having to think through now we’re going to have to keep thinking through can your children entertain themselves for longer than six minutes or do they
31:38need a hit a hit another hit another hit of technology
31:43my kids watch shows on the ipad too but these are things that matter for christian discipleship this
31:49isn’t just a matter of what the pastor proclaims from the pulpit this is a matter of how we train fathers and mothers to raise their
31:55children are we raising our children as if their life depends upon devices many of us are going to use
32:02devices use technology in different ways of course for our children but are we teaching our children are we
32:08are we indoctrinating them to believe subtly without even meaning to necessarily that they need technology to
32:14be happy to exist can they sit in the car
32:20for 25 minutes and be bored it’s actually a good skill
32:25you know that you need to be able to be bored you remember that in summer break when you were a kid what did you say to your
32:32mom i’m bored i’m bored you saw it as a bad thing i saw it as a bad thing
32:37well of course there’s a form of boredom that’s not good right it’s do you know it’s actually good for
32:42you to have time where you’re unplugged and your brain can sort of
32:48go where it needs to go you’re going to hear a few i’m going to warn you up front you’re
32:54going to hear a few winston churchill analogies this week i really enjoy
33:00winston churchill we can talk about that another day but some of you know the significance of churchill’s prime
33:07minister leadership right in opposing hitler and saving western civilization not a bad gig if
33:14you can get it not an easy gig if you can get it churchill not to my knowledge an evangelical
33:20christian but just a fascinating historical figure of great significance had in the 1930s
33:26a lot of times where because he was out of power he had to go home and the vocation he
33:34chose for himself this extremely bright and intelligent man who was constantly writing and
33:39speaking was to lay bricks he built the walls of his country estate called chartwell
33:46in kent in england he laid bricks if any of you have laid bricks or are
33:52laying bricks to pay the seminary bills there’s no shame in that does anyone lay bricks anymore i don’t know
33:57anyway uh it’s not exactly a mental puzzle it’s pretty basic it’s almost boring
34:05but you can see that when you’re doing activity like that there’s a lot that happens mentally and
34:12even can happen for a christian spiritually as you have time to breathe and rest
34:18and not constantly be plugged in consuming think about that word we’re always
34:23consuming information sometimes we need to not consume sometimes we need to rest and recharge
34:30and think and be bored don’t tell your mother i said that
34:36accordingly in this technological mindset if you picked up uh this in harare’s
34:42quotation the bible is an artifact of essentially prehistoric times
34:48i think that’s really interesting because you and i increasingly are going to be seen by this technological
34:54technocentric culture as cavemen cave women by extension in the
34:59church pastors are going to be seen as essentially prehistoric
35:05you preach a 3 000 year old book you know that’s not the normal human
35:11thing to do on a weekly basis to get a text that is several thousand years old and plummets depths
35:17but this is what we do friends this is going to be seen increasingly as extra special weird by people all
35:24around us harare is voicing that perspective it is assumed that if it is new and
35:29advanced and exciting it is good and if it is
35:34old and ancient and bygone it’s of little value and nothing
35:41could be a more bible-defeating view than that
35:47that the bible isn’t relevant the bible isn’t fitted to us when in truth
35:54the bible is exactly what we need and you couldn’t make the bible more relevant
36:00in air quotes if you tried this isn’t all though this technological
36:08mindset this cultural view believes that it can put an end to death if you’re following developments for
36:14example in silicon valley not far from here in la you will know that silicon valley
36:21and its leading lights who are many of them now they used to be young and cool and now they’re middle aged and
36:27used to be cool they they are trying to solve the problem of death and they believe they can solve it well
36:35lifespan may lengthen it seems to be lengthening in this time in actual factual terms but
36:42do not miss that people are always making theological claims even when they’re not
36:48having a debate over the puritans or something like this the view that you can put an end in
36:54secular terms to death is a theological claim and people want to believe this and are believing it
36:59and so one of the things we most need to help people understand and disciple them in is a
37:05proper theology of death we need to get them ready for death
37:10that’s part of what pastors do that’s part of what christian ministry exists for to get people ready for death it’s the
37:18opposite of your best life now your best life is not now no one’s best life is is now is it your best life is later
37:26it’s not that this life isn’t enchanted with the grace of god it is praise god for that we need to reap that
37:32common grace and especially special grace for the christian but eternity is coming for us
37:39heaven is coming for us the new heavens and new earth are coming for us they’re bearing down
37:45on us that’s more real than the headlines you see on your smartphone or your computer
37:50every day eternity is coming we can’t ultimately solve the problem of death no silicon
37:56valley technologist can only christ can solve the problem
38:01of death theologies everywhere around us today even where our culture
38:07seems secular third cultural view of humanity man as
38:14expressive therapeutic being as expressive therapeutic
38:22being we need to unwind things a little bit to understand the claim here we’ll be talking about
38:29this more tomorrow in the next view as well essentially
38:34america has shifted from a theological society or a religious one
38:41if you want to a psychological one
38:47there’s almost nothing that’s more important for those training for christian ministry and in some cases in it to understand than that
38:54sentence this reality i’m gonna i’m gonna put a mark down here
39:00okay early in our class i’m gonna put myself on record and forever on video if you’re watching this
39:06by video later after the initial run of this class and say that i think that this is probably the
39:13greatest challenge to the christian faith you say a strong the greatest challenges
39:22can be those which announce themselves and try to break down the front door can’t they surely they can ascendant
39:30islam if you’re a christian in the middle east is not a small thing
39:35it is a very big thing let’s not miss that i think though the hardest challenges
39:44are often those that are the toughest to spot i’m from maine
39:51coastal maine as i think i said earlier my wife says why do people from texas and maine always talk about their state
39:58i don’t know why but it’s true i’m from maine and my dad was a forester
40:04by trade by vocation very cool vocation i would like to submit to you
40:10what what what does your dad do i was asked as a boy oh he walks the woods of maine for a
40:15living those of you who enjoy the outdoors and enjoy trees trees are very important in biblical
40:21theology the storyline of scripture by the way um those of you who like getting out in nature for a walk which i assume
40:27is many of you will understand that a job that lets you walk in forests
40:33is a cool job that’s what my dad did part of what my dad did in managing
40:39people’s plots of land is he would try to make the trees
40:45healthy right if you have this beautiful 150 200 year old tree
40:51you want to keep it healthy this is a whole profession some of you may work in this profession or may have
40:58there are obvious killers of trees like when an airborne disease that would
41:04affect trees comes to a region something or a bug sometimes you hear about this on headlines a bug comes to the region it’s
41:11going to kill existing plant life and and tree life do you know though
41:16some of the the most efficient killers of trees are vines
41:23that wrap themselves around a tree and they effectively hide behind
41:30leaf coverage and the normal person having a plot of
41:37land having a beautiful tree that they see every day they drink their coffee in the morning and they just look at the tree it’s a
41:43good life isn’t it they won’t know that there’s a vine
41:48an evil vine essentially wrapping itself around the tree to choke the tree and
41:53kill it a weed a vine this is real
41:59so what does it take to protect this beautiful blooming tree that
42:04blesses all who see it a trained eye you need a trained eye you know who you need
42:11you need a forester you need somebody who can come to your property and say oh your trees look really healthy and
42:18and in a sense they are they’re blooming but if you look really closely you have two
42:24vines wrapping themselves around your tree and they’re going to eventually kill that tree those are the toughest
42:31enemies of the trees to spot the toughest challenges to the christian
42:36faith are often those that the untrained eye hear me in the right sense
42:43does not see they have not been they have not been trained up in the scriptures they’ve not been
42:50educated and reared on sound doctrine it’s not that they’re you know a bad
42:55christian necessarily or something like this most people in the church will not get
43:00the training you are getting at tms most of them will not get the training my students at midwestern seminary in
43:06kansas city are getting most of them will not get any training and they won’t see
43:12vines wrapping themselves around us the church that’s why you need
43:19skillful handling of the word of god second timothy 2 15.
43:27psychology psychotherapy therapy is a vine that is wrapping
43:34itself around many trees in our time and people can’t spot it because it’s
43:42not one of these major competitive challenges to the church
43:48let me let me illustrate quickly the term broken there is definitely a way a form
43:54of the term broken that a solid christian can affirm as usage there are
44:01other forms though of the term broken that we would very much not want to
44:06affirm for example if we swapped out the category of sin
44:13with a psychotherapeutic category of brokenness or a related term
44:18that would be a massive sea change in our theological program that honestly
44:26most people wouldn’t pick up on because sin does cause brokenness i’m affirming that right now sin causes
44:33brokenness it absolutely does some of you have experienced this firsthand in a familial situation for example you know
44:40the wreckage of a life pursuing sin without repentance it’s
44:45terrible it’s tragic all of us know this in different forms we ourselves hard to admit isn’t it cause
44:51brokenness perhaps in small forms but brokenness nonetheless
44:57but you have to get that order right don’t you you must in biblical terms if you swap
45:03the order if you say the real problem before us is brokenness here is what you have done you have
45:09swapped in a therapeutic category for a theological
45:14one you’ve swapped it out you’ve swapped out the theological one and so now if you take this into the pulpit with you into christian ministry
45:21for example people will think that their primary problem is some form of psychological brokenness and not
45:29theological sin spiritual depravity we don’t have to only say there’s one of
45:36these realities in play and not the other we can say as i have said that sin does cause brokenness if you are in
45:43a tough situation you may pick up really bad habits and these sorts of things and you may look back on those
45:48habits yes is sin actually but also is just profoundly broken ways to live as a human being that’s that’s real i
45:55think that is an example brothers that is an example men of how you can embrace a worldview
46:02without even intending to do so you’re not even thinking you are people in the church won’t pick up on it
46:07friends right now in american christianity people are not picking up on this people believe for example that our our
46:14major problem is that forces factors in our upbringing in our youth warped us
46:23and directed us to unhealthy things and so we became a false
46:30self and what we need to become is our true self
46:37we were led for example by a religious upbringing this very common way to think today in america
46:42in the west to be religious and uh mouth these formulations and never
46:48doubt anything and and downplay who we truly were who we truly are and not affirm our
46:55inmost desires and passions and so we have become inauthentic people
47:00very similar uh concept to true self thinking and what we need to do is embrace
47:06personal authenticity this is essentially the prevailing gospel of the age there
47:12are others there are others but this i think is probably the subtlest one the
47:20subtlest false gospel of our time so we need to
47:25embrace personal authenticity your average person on the streets of la
47:30today is believing this not everybody but your average person is i need to become true to myself i need
47:37to be authentic and then what follows from that is that you need to express
47:42yourself no one should stop the authentic self-expression of the true self
47:50you see the true self is not formed and defined and shaped according to a biblical mold or even any source of
47:58authority i am the source of authority i am my authority
48:05i am the one who determines what is authentic not you certainly not this book
48:12not what a preacher says not what a father and mother says this is this is a satanic attack not
48:18only on the word of god which it surely is on divine authority and attacks on divine authority
48:24proliferate in our time even in evangelical circles this is also an attack on fatherly
48:33and motherly authority my my parents do not have the right to shape
48:39who i am do you understand how this will eat like an acid through fatherhood and motherhood it
48:46will change it will change fathers and mothers from guardians and authority figures into
48:53uh custodians in the great project of self-realization and what will that mean in practical
49:00terms it means that fathers and mothers won’t discipline their children they won’t raise them in the
49:05christian faith they won’t raise them in any world view they’ll raise them to discover they’ll raise a child to
49:11discover their authentic self and fathers and mothers all around us will
49:17not only do this sort of grudgingly they will pat themselves on the back they will think they are a good person
49:23for not inhibiting the development of the child’s realization of the authentic true self
49:30does this sound familiar in terms of our milieu in terms of our culture
49:37people are operating by this psychotherapeutic paradigm all over the place christians
49:45churches operate in these categories to a shocking degree
49:52so the um the trajectory is authenticity
50:00leads to expression which leads to affirmation do you want
50:07the cultural gospel prevailing in america today in many not
50:12all circles i would submit to you that this is it aea authenticity
50:22leads to personal expression the expression of self leads to affirmation what’s the last
50:29part here well that that’s the kicker that’s the clincher once somebody discovers their
50:34authentic self once somebody figures out who they truly are uh they’re not part of the
50:40oppressive heteronormal white patriarchy for example they’ve
50:45gone to college and they’ve learned how bad that is then they need to express themselves
50:52they’ve found their authentic self they need to express themselves and then they need to be affirmed
50:58you need to affirm them i need to affirm them in their identity that is the third step aea
51:05this is what a expressive therapeutic world view or if you want more simply just a
51:12therapeutic world view essentially boils down to there’s other steps to say there’s other things we’re kind of just painting in
51:19broad strokes nonetheless this is real i need to find my authentic self i then need to express my authentic self
51:26nobody can tell me i should not because if i’m not free to express myself i’m not free
51:31and then you need to affirm me everyone must affirm my identity no
51:38one’s identity then is wrong everyone’s identity is equally valid
51:47i feel like i am just reciting the modern 21st century handbook at this point
51:54but this is a view of humanity and this
52:01is a cultural gospel this is the predominant cultural gospel
52:09in america today this is probably at least for now
52:16the major challenge you are up against in making disciples this has penetrated
52:23many families in the church this has led perhaps brothers and sisters cousins
52:29family members of yours to walk away from their upbringing and embrace for
52:35example a homosexual lifestyle or something like this a transgender identity this has destroyed marriages
52:44because somebody is not authentic they’re they’re trapped in patterns that
52:49society says they need to be in and they’re not truly happy i remember reading about a famous uh
52:55artist rock musician who had a wife and three kids
53:00and just discovered he said to one of these men’s magazines men’s journal or something like this
53:06he said i just wasn’t happy he had a wife and three kids and he wasn’t happy so what did he do he
53:12walked away and he got a new wife and a new family and the article
53:18presented this without any i mean any criticism the article was perfectly
53:25happy for him to do this the the magazine because you see his happiness which is closely
53:32correlated with his authenticity yes his happiness was inhibited was inhibited he couldn’t
53:39be who he really was he had these strictures of the structure of family upon him
53:46and that was man that was getting him down that was a negative for him that was a downer
53:51so he needed to be authentic to himself he needed to realize that he wasn’t happy and he wasn’t being true
53:57and thus he needed to be able to express himself how did he express himself blow up his marriage walk away from his
54:02kids and then he needed to be affirmed even as men’s journal or whatever it was was doing
54:08affirming his decision this this is a major challenge today but
54:15it’s one that the word and the true gospel is sufficient for
54:20because this is not a springboard to happiness this is a prison you are imprisoning
54:27yourself in the prison of the self and you will not escape if if you make
54:34your desires and your passions the prevailing end of your life
54:41you will never know happiness ironically deep irony there isn’t there
54:46there’s much more we could say about man as a therapeutic being
54:52but we need to be those in ministry who feed people not psychological
54:59categories fundamentally but theological and spiritual categories in those categories
55:07there is complexity there are going to be people in your local church in your ministry who need serious
55:15counseling they will have to walk through all sorts of issues
55:20so let that be said we are a complex being we have emotions we have a mind we have a soul
55:27we have a i mean we are a complex individual so christian ministry involves complex care
55:34but it never goes outside the bounds of theology and doctrine that’s always what we are
55:40ministering to people even as we we minister kindness and grace and
55:45charity and all sorts of christian virtues but those virtues are theological virtues
55:51you can only be a kind person in a god honoring sense if the gospel takes hold of you fourth
55:58cultural view man as sexualized being man is sexualized being
56:05i’m going to save my fire for tomorrow on this count
56:13suffice it to say that alongside the last world view or ideology we
56:20mentioned sexual desire is believed to be
56:25essentially the driving engine of human personality
56:31freud the founder of modern psychology in american terms is the one who most promotes this idea
56:40put in simpler form everyone is a frustrated sexual being
56:46or you could flip it everyone is a sexually frustrated being
56:51in some sense freud believed further that men and
56:57women are bisexual in nature and therefore direct their sexual drive
57:05bisexual sexual drive to diverse objects
57:14what this means then is that people think of themselves not simply as bisexual in
57:21uh sexual activity but in self personal identity if you have heard
57:28someone talk about getting in touch with their feminine side or getting in touch with their
57:33masculine side they owe sigmund freud five cents
57:38in the reference bank because that is his ideology that is framed that concept
57:46you will not find in the scripture a sense that every person has a masculine side and a
57:52feminine side you will find it in freudian psychotherapy which has been massively influential in
58:00western culture and society and has caused people to believe in this kind of dualistic mindset
58:06and then has led furthermore to the view that your sexual orientation
58:12your enduring pattern of sexual attraction is a neutral reality should i repeat
58:19that i think i’ll repeat that because of freud’s ideas people believe that they have a sexual
58:26orientation a pattern of attraction in a sexual direction
58:31that is a neutral reality
58:38this has caught on in the unlikeliest of places the
58:44christian church including sectors of the reformed
58:50christian church conservative christianity gospel-centered
58:55christianity choose your term people now believe we have very prominent voices who you
59:03know of and i know of that you who would argue that you shouldn’t engage for example in
59:10homosexual sexual behavior but that you can have a gay christian
59:16identity and that’s fine not that’s too weak it’s not just fine that’s who you are
59:24not just that that’s who god made you god made you gay i don’t i’m not quoting
59:31here by paraphrase people on the far evangelical left i’m quoting people who speak at major
59:39conferences that you and i go to or might want to go to or have
59:44gone to publishers publish books that make this argument that are endorsed by
59:50serious conservative thinkers pastors leaders gay christianity has caught on
59:57in a massive way and it owes it’s built upon people don’t know this people don’t know where ideas
1:00:03come from it’s built upon a freudian foundation it’s built upon a psychotherapeutic conception
1:00:08of orientation that reads it not as a moral matter does this sound familiar
1:00:14but as a neutral psychological matter and what that then means is that your
1:00:21identity is a reality to be managed not a condition to be treated
1:00:28spiritually your identity is managed psychologically
1:00:33not treated spiritually you’re in pursuit of healing and
1:00:40wholeness in a therapeutic way not theological and spiritual soundness
1:00:51and if we took stock of the evangelical church again i think we would be surprised at how many people would buy into such
1:00:58a line of thinking the the much more simple form of this
1:01:06in american culture and society is very simply that we are first and foremost a sexual being
1:01:14and so your sexual proclivities tell you who you are your
1:01:21patterns of attraction frame all your thinking about your identity
1:01:29said more simply you are your sexual patterns of attraction
1:01:34you are what you are attracted to that is the most important truth about
1:01:40you about me
1:01:47we need to understand as i’m guessing you do and as we’ll be talking about tomorrow that that is also a system of thought
1:01:56that the unregenerate man wants to hold it’s not just a line of argumentation
1:02:02it’s not just a philosophy propounded in a college classroom it is also a system that our heart
1:02:11craves we are all craving a stronghold to quote the apostle paul
1:02:18in second corinthians 10 and 11. we all want in our natural state that is
1:02:24a stronghold that will shut god out that will be our castle effectively that
1:02:31we live in and that will justify our sin we all want this in our natural state even
1:02:38as a christian if we’re not careful if we don’t diligently keep our heart proverbs 4
1:02:4323 we will start building a new a godless castle
1:02:50a system that justifies our behavior this is what the human heart naturally does d.a carson the great new testament
1:02:57scholar has talked about this at some length how our hearts are naturally self-justifying
1:03:02factories and so this world view reminds us that if we are drawn for reasons that
1:03:10are hard to explain scientists have not found for example a gay gene or something like this if we’re drawn naturally
1:03:16to homosexuality for example in a depraved state which we all are in naturally we are
1:03:22going to want to justify that we’re going to want a system and a stronghold
1:03:28that explains that and grounds it and gets us off the hook
1:03:34so you must remember that man as sexualized being or sexual being
1:03:39is of course not a neutral thought system it’s one that ultimately drives
1:03:47our sinful desires and behaviors and allows us to
1:03:54express them it’s hard to understate
1:04:02how prevalent this view is it works hand in glove with the previous one the the therapeutic understanding of the
1:04:09human self and it certainly surfs the wave of
1:04:16one of the strongest forces god has put into us the sexual drive sexual desire
1:04:24sexual desire pre-fall is so strong that it was designed by god
1:04:30to drive a man out of the quietude of self-solace and push him to take a
1:04:38wife for himself god wired what i’m saying is that god
1:04:43wired sexual desire in the man in particular to be a really strong force
1:04:52such that out of one person and one person being off to the side from one another a
1:04:58family would be formed one new flesh would be created that’s how strong sexual desire is
1:05:04we’re not confused as christians biblical bible loving christians by how strong sexual desire is we’re not
1:05:11ashamed of it we shouldn’t be quiet about it we didn’t create this
1:05:17god created this god put this drive pre-fall in adam and
1:05:23also of course in eve but he put it especially strong in adam to drive him out of aloneness
1:05:31the only not good thing about the pre-fall creation into marriage into family
1:05:39this is this is a desire of fire in many people if it is not
1:05:46tended and stewarded if it is not driven the right direction
1:05:53it like fire consumes sinners doesn’t it you know this
1:06:00i’m not telling you something you don’t know but do not go soft on on the fiery
1:06:07power of sexual desire it can either be a vessel for the
1:06:14glorification of god through the formation as god leads as you are called
1:06:19to marriage and family such that such that you you create little image bearers with a
1:06:25wife praise god or it can absolutely destroy you as
1:06:32our culture encourages us to do in just a few moments i’m going to take a break by the way
1:06:40so know that fifth cultural view we’re going to leave
1:06:45off there i’ll say more in coming hours in the class on man as sexualized being man as racial
1:06:54being man as racial being
1:07:00today a system of thought called critical race theory is causing people to think of
1:07:07themselves in racial terms there is much to say about this subject
1:07:13and we’ll be talking about this at much greater length on wednesday suffice it to say
1:07:19that crt as many of you will be aware is gaining major traction in american
1:07:26life because of our checkered racial past america has real failings in numerous
1:07:33ways along these lines we think of slavery we think of jim crow
1:07:38we think of internment camps in world war ii we could go we could go on at some length and
1:07:44recount how this country but every other country on earth in different forms as well
1:07:51has structured people along racial or ethnic lines and then fomented discrimination
1:07:57and persecution because of that crt encourages us to think though of the
1:08:02american experience as something unique along these lines we should understand that racism and ethnocentrism are
1:08:10historic manifestations of what james and other texts in scripture will call
1:08:15partiality the sin of racism and ethnocentrism
1:08:20is nothing other than the sin of partiality applied to the construct of race
1:08:27and the reality of ethnicity crt going back to that now
1:08:35is a way of reading power dynamics in american societal and cultural life
1:08:42crt argues fundamentally that there are oppressors and oppressed people crt thus trafficks and marxist
1:08:51thought along these lines in seeing the world as divided up into either oppressor or
1:08:58oppressed every person is in one of those two categories many people are in the oppressed
1:09:06category critical race theory argues that in america whiteness as a construct
1:09:13has functioned to oppress people and all who have been oppressed by whiteness
1:09:20are in the oppressed category what this means then is that if you have white skin
1:09:26in in different forms different pigmentation levels that is you are an oppressor you may not want to
1:09:32be an oppressor you may not seek to be an oppressor you may not have consciously chosen that role it doesn’t matter according to critical
1:09:40race theory at the academic level whiteness is equivalent to
1:09:46the oppressor status this means then that if america is going
1:09:52to be a just society an equitable society which is what crt ostensibly says it is after we are going
1:09:59to have to write these power dynamics of oppressor and oppressed and we are going to have to de-privilege
1:10:05and de-platform whiteness because whiteness
1:10:10is really our chief societal problem in fact critical race theory and the
1:10:17mindset that i call wokeness most broadly teaches that whiteness is not only a bad
1:10:25condition but all white people or all those who benefit from whiteness are
1:10:31white supremacists this is according to ibram x kendy for
1:10:37example or robin d’angelo two of the best-selling authors on the subject of wokeness critical race
1:10:44theory intersectionality so what this means then is that your average white person again is a white
1:10:52supremacist not because they have consciously chosen that in many cases because this is simply the inherent
1:10:59implicit power of whiteness in america
1:11:06this means then to bring this all the way to a close that little
1:11:13children who have white skin pigmentation or lack thereof more properly are white
1:11:19supremacists in budding form and this means that america needs to be massively
1:11:25restructured dynamited and rebuilt such that whiteness and white supremacy is
1:11:33effectively removed from society and so the way we discover
1:11:40how we can make changes along those lines is we look for example at statistics or at different markers of
1:11:47human experience and we determine where there are disparities
1:11:52for example where there are different nutritional levels in one community versus another one
1:11:59ethnicity one race versus another and when you see disparities
1:12:04you are seeing inequities and when you see inequities you are seeing injustice let me repeat that
1:12:10this is very important for you to understand we’ll talk more about this but this is a framing uh time for us now
1:12:16when you see disparities between peoples disparities you are seeing inequities
1:12:23and when you see inequities you are seeing injustice i’m going to try to take the camera with me here
1:12:28here we go i’m out of frame do not be
1:12:34scared well i’ll put it on the board for you
1:12:40disparities lead to this is another one of these chains lead
1:12:45to the discovery of inequities which lead to the discovery of
1:12:51injustices there’s much more to say about this line of thinking but what i want you to understand is
1:12:57that disparities could be indicative of uh inequities and therefore of injustice
1:13:04there could be racism operating in a given community or even in our nation more broadly absolutely there could there has been
1:13:11days past there could be today so we’re not close to that we’re not dismissive
1:13:16whenever we see a disparity in fact probably we’re going to want to think very hard
1:13:21about why there would be this reading level in this community versus that and many christians will
1:13:28will be moved to pray and if they can act at whatever level is available to them
1:13:34to to try to make things a better situation however that can be done responsibly unconscionably nonetheless
1:13:42we should not necessarily jump to the view that disparities signal inequities which signal injustice
1:13:49that has to be proven it has to be proven for example that police are targeting minorities and cities out
1:13:56of racist motives if you’re going to claim that for example police shootings are evidence
1:14:02irrefutably of police brutality against minorities that could be happening it also could be that there are complex
1:14:10causes in play in many of the disparities that we see societally you need to
1:14:17you need to think very hard about the data that is presented to you and you need to recognize that yes it’s
1:14:23possible that there are simple explanations of the conditions of society and culture before
1:14:29us it’s possible it’s also possible that there are complex factors
1:14:34leading to those conditions and that’s going to take a lot of thinking and unwinding and policy work
1:14:40and all these sorts of things to address well we’re not about to transition this class
1:14:46into a cultural policy seminar but uh but we should be very much aware
1:14:52of this view of humanity today said more simply i’m trying to give you
1:14:57just a quick dip into the formal ideology of critical race theory and wokeness
1:15:03said more simply people see themselves today are being encouraged to see themselves in fundamental terms
1:15:09according to their race or their ethnicity so people believe that skin color said
1:15:16most simply is the most important part of who they are skin color determines your identity
1:15:24if i have this skin color if i am from this community that is the foremost marker of my
1:15:29identity if you’re from that community different from me we are different
1:15:35we are almost different human races if you will and that is a major claim
1:15:43and that is one that is leading to no small cultural chaos in our time
1:15:51and needs to be handled carefully and clearly according to the
1:15:58inspired inerrant authoritative and sufficient word of god that is where this needs to be sorted
1:16:04out it needs to be sorted out with grace and with truth we need to
1:16:10recognize that there are real failings in american history and even in american church history so
1:16:16we need to be thoughtful along these lines and there’s again a broader conversation to have here
1:16:21nonetheless this view is is a very viable view today that we
1:16:28are racial or ethnic beings essentially and it’s having major effect and major divisive effect not only in
1:16:35american society but in the church as well here as in these views more broadly
1:16:43there are contact points with the truth aren’t there god has given us a
1:16:49background god has given us skin color god has given us a heritage god has
1:16:56given us feelings god has allowed us to develop technology
1:17:01god has given us a very strong sexual drive or a sexual drive at all god is the one
1:17:08who has created humanity many of these views take an element of biblical truth
1:17:14biblical truth note how i’m marking that out and they then blow it up into an entire world view and thought system of
1:17:20philosophy it’s not that there is no contact point i’m choosing my term very carefully
1:17:26in a van tillian way here it’s not that there is no contact point with biblical truth there is
1:17:33we have an ethnic background i actually do believe that race is a
1:17:38social construct i don’t think there is such a thing as the white race for example or the black race or or others that we
1:17:44could mention so i do think race is a is a construct but i do think ethnicity is a reality
1:17:51god god made jews god made gentiles according to scripture that’s one of the issues that is really
1:17:56being sorted out isn’t it in the letters of paul for example in the new testament that’s not nothing that’s something
1:18:02that’s significant that needs to be handled carefully but if you blow that
1:18:07up into the the central marker of your identity well now you are on
1:18:13unbiblical grounds if you make technology the entire pursuit of your life the
1:18:18defeat of death for example through technological means well now you are in unbiblical territory
1:18:23if you teach people and you believe that your sexual desires your attraction patterns tell you who
1:18:30you are you have taken something that god made and god gave humanity
1:18:36for our good in his glory and you are in unbiblical territory there’s
1:18:42almost like there’s a pattern here that requires vigilance and careful thought and
1:18:49deep biblical thinking
1:18:56you
Standing Before God, This We Are and No More 