As “Wokeness” becomes more and more prominent in today’s culture, it becomes harder and harder to know how to respond. Many react by joining in and advocating for “social justice,” failing to understand how that phrase has been redefined in recent years to reflect the postmodern and neo-Marxist “spirit of the age.” Dr. Owen Strachan, author of Christianity and Wokeness, and Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas, joins us this week to talk about the “woke” ideology and how to defend the truth in grace and love with our neighbors.
As “Wokeness” becomes more and more prominent in today’s culture, it becomes harder and harder to know how to respond. Many react by joining in and advocating for “social justice,” failing to understand how that phrase has been redefined in recent years to reflect the postmodern and neo-Marxist “spirit of the age.” Dr. Owen Strachan, author of Christianity and Wokeness, and Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas, joins us this week to talk about the “woke” ideology and how to defend the truth in grace and love with our neighbors.
The point stands in my mind, at least, love your neighbor does not mean do what your neighbor wants, so that your neighbor likes you from his own unbelieving standpoint that is antithetical to the Christian worldview. Love your neighbor means at base, at the very minimum, standing on God's truth and then operating out of grace as much as you can toward your neighbor to try to help them from that standpoint of truth.
Luke:As Christians, our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission, and today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Joining us on this podcast is to rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott:Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. And we dig into the powerful biblical ideas that have given rise to so many of the things that we love and take for granted in our own country and nations around the world. Also, look at the counterfeit ideas and lies that are so destructive in our own nation nations around the world. I'm here with Luke Allen, with John Bottimore. And we have a really special guest today that I am so excited to talk to. I'm been a big fan of his work, really, just so excited to have the opportunity to meet and talk with him. Owen Strachan. Owen is professor of Systematic Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas. He's also the provost there. And he is author of many books, including one that we'd like to talk about today a bit, his most recent book, it's called "Christianity and Wokeness, How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel and the Way to Stop it." So glad you had that little extra on your subtitle there. What a pleasure to meet you and thank you so much for your work, for your voice in the church, and your courage in writing a book like this. And anyways, just really grateful that you're out there and, and speaking and making a difference. Thanks for joining us today.
Owen Strachan:Well, thank you, Scott. It's really kind of you to say those words. And thank you for having me on. And I've appreciated your own stalwart ministry on these matters and others. So thank you for having me. And it's a joy to be with
Scott:Thanks. Love to hear just a little bit since it's the you. first time we've met. Can you tell us a little bit about your—besides your ministry work, which I kind of covered there a little bit—about your... I assume you're married or family?
Owen Strachan:Yes, I'm married to Bethany. And we're in our 17th year of marriage. And the Lord is doing good work in us continuing to sanctify us and grow us and deepen our love. So we're very thankful for that. We have three children, ages 14, 11, and 8, girl, boy, girl, and thrilled to be their father, and again, experience God's grace there and conformity to Christ challenging your flesh, in both the role of husband and father on a regular basis. But that's not a bad thing. As I tell the students here at Grace Bible Theological Seminary it isn't a bad thing. Though it feels like it sometimes to have our sin exposed, and the need for growth shown it's actually a victory for God to do that. So we're in a season of blessing as a family, and I'm very thankful for that. And so those are the basics about the family. Yes, I do get to be a provost and a seminary teacher as well. And so it's a joyful life. It's not a boring life.
Scott:That's wonderful. Listen, I'd love to just jump right in, if you don't mind, because, as you may know, I wrote a book very similar to your book"Christianity and Wokeness," called "Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice." And you know, I have a story there on why I wrote that book, but a lot of it just had to do with my alarm—not so much—I mean, first, certainly, with this set of ideas and what it was doing in the culture I saw, it was just really, in some ways, just so toxic and divisive and dangerous. But that my alarm was really piqued more just because I saw it coming into the church and in the past when bad ideas, non biblical ideas had come into the church, I always felt like there was a pretty good group of Guardians, you know, they're kind of at the doors that were raising alarms and saying, hey, you know, we've got to be careful with this. This is why this is different from what the Bible teaches, etc. And I just wasn't seeing that. I mean, very few, if any, were raising the alarm. I mean, it wasn't like there was none, there certainly was some, but some of the people that I would expect to be raising that alarm were not, and some were actually even kind of giving winks and head nods to this woke ideology. So anyways, when it got down to a very personal level with a lot of respected Christian friends here in Phoenix for me, who essentially tried to kind of convert me to this woke ideology. I knew we had a real problem. I would love to hear your story, though, on how did you end up writing this book? It's not an easy thing to write about, you know you're going to make some enemies by taking on this topic. So I'd love to just hear your story on how did you come about writing it? Why did you decide to take that on?
Owen Strachan:Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I did not have a deep background in critical theory or critical race theory, like many others, I didn't really know what all this stuff was even five, six years ago. I saw different trends happening in evangelicalism in particular and also, of course, in culture and society, and saw immediately that I was not a part of those things, and I couldn't support them. But I also did not have a sense of the broader ideological base that was at work in all of this movement. And so I'd heard some of the terms and seen some of the clashes online and that sort of thing. But it really took the Southern Baptist Convention, stating in a resolution in June 2019, that critical race theory was an analytical tool in a basically positive sense. It was framed pretty carefully, but it was basically a positive usage of critical race theory. And that's where, for me, the light bulb started to go on. Now, the Dallas statement had been written a year prior, and I agreed with the Dallas statement. It was a bit of a sticky matter in the SBC as to what you were going to say and what you weren't going to say. And I still had not done a lot of the reading. I was writing books on transgenderism, and homosexuality, and anthropology. And so my plate, just I hope it's not an excuse. But I wasn't assigned the task of working in these areas, at least by the Lord as I could perceive it. So I was writing on these other hot button issues, which were giving me plenty to handle. But then I realized, Okay, wait a minute, Owen. God has let you as a theologian, as a guy who has time, just in the most practical sense, in the week, to get up to speed with books, and read, and try to not necessarily master other topics, but at least get involved in them, engage them. And so I needed to do that. And so in January 2020, if I could speak dates right, I published a series of blogs on my patheos blog that I'm no longer blogging at, on critical race theory. And I was sharply critical of it. That led to an invitation to Minneapolis area church in the spring of 2020. At least the invitation came. And I thought, Oh, I mean, yeah, I'll try to do more work on that. Then George Floyd died at the end of May 2020. And riots kicked off for weeks and weeks following in Minneapolis and elsewhere, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, and people dying in different American cities. American cities being put to the torch. Businesses being destroyed in the name of justice, which was absolutely reprehensible and wicked. And so I realized, oh, wow, this issue was on my plate and many other people's plates. But I'm going to need to speak to this. I don't know how exactly because I'm sure that church in the Minneapolis area is not going to call me back. But then the church called me back and said, Actually, we really do want you to come Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, Minnesota, to the credit of Pastor Jason Redburg and the elders there. They they wanted me to come. And I was like, you want me to come? Yes, we do. So that pushed me even further into reading and woke literature and in critical race theory and social justice. So I kept getting more and more equipped. And at that same time—I'm sorry, I'm going on here—it was a bit of a journey, a bit of a winding journey. I had no plans to write a book on wokeness even at this point, then a friend told me that at a major church in the area I just mentioned, a pastor had basically indicted white people for being white supremacist, or at the very least, participating in the system of white supremacy as systemic injustice, systemically racist order, and had called for them to repent. And the friend who told me this had adopted numerous children that did not have skin color that looked like he and his wife. And when I heard that, that was the kind of personal angle to match the broader intellectual angle. It was a summons, as clearly as I've ever gotten one, from the Lord. And so then I went in very early October 2020, delivered these six talks lectures called"Christianity and Wokeness." Got a contract with Salem, around that same time to publish the lectures in an expanded book, didn't know what Voddie Baucham was doing, didn't know what you were doing, didn't really know what anyone was doing. But again, I felt the Lord saying—not saying, but the Lord summoning me to step up. And I remember one moment, Scott, I remember knowing. I was in chapel at Midwestern Seminary where I was teaching at the time that this was going to cost me bitterly. And it proved to. And Satan, just to be honest, last comment, I will make in this winding answer, I will not answer all questions this long on this interview, good grief. But I say your time, Satan has in fact, hit me very hard. And I have experienced the greatest suffering I've experienced in ministry after writing on these matters, but I don't regret one
Scott:Wow. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? bit of it. Owen, what's the reaction been like for you personally. You could elaborate a little bit on that. I don't want you to go in areas that you're violating confidences and things like this, but I would love to hear a little bit about that response to the book.
Owen Strachan:Yeah, I've lost a fair number of at least closeness in relationships. Because I haven't been the guy who has named every single name that could be named my book,"Christianity and Wokeness" is more of a general overview, though there are definitely names in it, in line with the writings of the apostle Paul, for example, as best I can be in the New Testament, naming teachers who are not in a sound place or drifting or that sort of thing. But yeah, there's been relational cost. There's been familial costs, just, you know this, taking on a hard issue has helped me understand why people don't take on hard issues, including many of the watchmen on the wall that you mentioned a few minutes ago, who took on issue after issue in the arts and the teens of the 21st century, to their credit. They had massive conferences and wrote needed books and did great talks and sermons on all sorts of issues. And I'm so grateful for so many of them in that reformed resurgence, and a number of them shaped me personally. But something happened in roughly the 2015 and following era, where a good number of those men either basically went silent or got confusing, or started, at least to some degree, embracing some tenets of wokeness. And now I know why you don't take on the toughest issues, in your flesh, that is. Because you pay, you pay dearly, and you don't pay generically. In terms that always felt almost a little bit humorous, you get a little, just a little taste of what Luther got when he was opposing Catholics soteriology and the Catholic doctrine of revelation in the church and so on in the early 16th century. And he has left to posterity the testimony that Satan himself tempted him and, you know, that's wild stuff that Luther is writing, but whatever exactly that looked like or didn't look like, we have a devilish foe that hates us. And, of course, he doesn't give us a little bitty prick, you know, from a little bitty stick in our shoulder and, Oh, that hurt. But that's over. He pours scorn, hatred, division, suffering on us, so I felt some of that. Wow.
Scott:You know, so did I. It sounds like you in some ways, and it makes sense, you're more well known in the public than I am. But, you know, it sounds like you faced more challenges, opposition's relationally than I did. I certainly did. I understand that. And this is a very divisive issue in the church. I also of course, I'm sure you did, too, received a lot of appreciation for helping to raise the alarm, to defend biblical justice in the face of this counterfeit. And that you know, for me, I'm sure you've felt the same way on that. When you're getting that kind of opposition, there's an encouraging side to it in the sense that you feel like you're over the target, right? Like, there's a reason that I'm getting really strong opposition here. The enemy doesn't like me right here in this place, doing what I'm doing. And of course, that's where we need to be. So anyways, thank you again, for your courage, although I'm sympathetic to the pain that comes, especially relationally. You know, and you know, when you lose close friends, or they're just not the same kind of friendships. So you think, Owen, the people, especially in the church, where we've had the divides, have you seen much change on your side with people that maybe we're kind of leaning towards, or even advocating kind of wokeness over the last couple of years? Because it seems like we've learned a lot more about it, you know, when you were beginning to write your book, and I was as well, most Christians had never even heard of critical theory. And it seemed like you could defend it by just wanting to be anti racist, or, you know, something like that. But we've learned a lot more. But do you think people have changed as a result of what we've learned? Or do you still, what's your sense of the lay of the land today?
Owen Strachan:God has done a tremendous work. Not us. It's not our strength or anything like that. It's not our grace. We have no grace to contribute. It's all God's grace that enables humble little dust motes like us to do anything, as you well know. And yet, the Overton Window has shifted. It has shifted in the culture and society. And it has shifted in evangelicalism, by which I mean, the debate has shifted and what is reasonably held by let's say, folks in the middle—most people tend to kind of gravitate toward the middle on issues, especially when those issues are being sorted out. They don't want to be seen as extreme on the right, they don't want to be seen as extreme on the left. Basically true in both the Christian world and the non Christian world, the political world or something like that. And so what we had, roughly from 2015 to 2020, and perhaps a little bit after, was a kind of mushy middle, especially in evangelicalism where, if you were a thoughtful Christian, you were sounding notes of being pro-social justice, and against racism and against systemic racism. And if you were particularly theological, you were probably citing Augustine for how sin gets into structures and these sorts of things. And of course.
Scott:I'm laughing just because I've had all those conversations so many times. Yeah.
Owen Strachan:I know you have. And we know from Scripture that rulers do oppress people and laws do foment oppression and injustice and these sorts of things. But that's a different matter than what Marx and Engels were after in their structural worldview, their critique of society that has then been applied, not just economically, but racially, today. So what I have seen is that the mushy middle got shifted, and a lot of people now realize, oh, okay, there's a whole ideology, there's a monster behind the curtain with regard to social justice, critical race theory, wokeness. There's a very godless, even anti-gospel ideology behind this. And so, even if some of those people have not jumped all the way over to where those of us on this podcast session would be, there's been a major shift that has occurred. And lastly, the evangelical rhetoric of many leaders has changed. And so praise God.
Luke:Hi, friends, I hope you're enjoying this fantastic interview with Owen Strachan. If you'd like to learn more about him and his recent book,"Christianity and Wokeness," just click on the link down in the show notes below that says episode landing page. And on that page, you can find out more about all of the resources that we mentioned here in this episode, including a link to Owen's podcast, "The Antithesis." Thanks again for listening to Ideas Have Consequences. We would really appreciate it if you give us just 30 seconds of your time to leave us a quick rating and review on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening. Or even better, share what you've learned in this episode with a friend and invite them to listen as well.
Scott:Well, I'm encouraged to hear that. You're seeing it more than I am actually but that's very encouraging to hear on. Yeah, I would like to ask and, John, I don't mean to dominate. I'd love to have you jump in here too, and Luke. But I'd love to ask, what did you learn about this ideology as you started really digging into it, and maybe things that took you by surprise or you didn't know when you started? What did you personally learn?
Owen Strachan:You know, probably the the major thing I learned is that this is a software update to post-modernism. The book"Cynical Theories" by Lindsey and Pluckrose. Yeah, it's not a Christian book at all, but very helpful in many respects. And it started giving me and many others the categories that I needed to then do my own critique from a very theological and hopefully biblical manner. But the one of the major insights and it wasn't even really a chapter or a very developed section in "Cynical Theories." But Lindsey and Pluckrose talk about how this movement that we're up against today is what I believe they call reified post modernism, which is basically hard postmodernism, which is very different than the soft post modernism, that all the evangelical conferences and books were talking about roughly 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. And we still have to deal with that kind of "You do your thing. I'll do mine," relativism, morality, epistemology. That's very much out there and alive and doing well. In large part because sinners love that ideology. We're always looking for an ideology that will let our flesh out, that will give vent to our lusts and passions and wickedness that's in all of us in our depraved heart. And the kind of soft postmodern worldview is a very nice vehicle for sinning. Hard post modernity still keeps the foundation-less reality of post modernity, but it acts as if the body of ideas it promotes is grounded epistemologically. So it argues that, for example, social justice is an imperative. And it treats itself—even though the true proponents of critical race theory and social justice and wokeness know they don't want a foundation in the sense that Christians do, ontologically and epistemologically, for all our knowledge and all our life. They don't want that foundation, they don't want there to be a God. They don't believe in a creator. That's the main problem with their worldview. Whereas we start with a creator/creature distinction and work from there, to cite Van Til and others. So they nonetheless though, work in public, according to what is called strategic essentialism, as if their worldview really is foundationally true. I won't go on and on here, but those two discovery, Scott, in terms of"reified" or hard post modernity, it still has no basis, it still is not even remotely claiming any deeper foundation for its worldview, but it's acting as if social justice ideology is true truth.
Scott:No, exactly. I mean, it posits this foundation in some kind of an objective moral reality that is inconsistent when you're starting, obviously, with postmodern ideology. It's interesting, you know, for me, the postmodern piece that I saw coming into it, was the Nietzschean idea of power, that that's all that exists. There is no truth, there is no good or evil. In a sense, it's just all power games. But the thing that surprised me in my own research was just how closely it hued to just kind of traditional Marxism, albeit with new categories. I didn't see that at the beginning. Because in my mind, Marx's theories were put to bed after the Berlin Wall fell. I was so wrong about that. They have not at all, they have just come back in such a huge way in this. And of course, the people that I was speaking with, especially in the church, they just completely deny this. "This isn't Marxism. I'm not a Marxist. You're accusing me of something that is mean, is wrong." But the more I got into it, I thought, no, this is very Marxist. That was my own kind of personal insight there.
Owen Strachan:Yeah, if I could. Owen, first, I want to say that we are encouraged by what you're saying are some observations of how the church has broadly seen this, seen the monster behind the curtain as you described it, and is addressing this and seeing this for what it is. That said, I want to pivot to a question of specific observations that you may see in the church. We see divide in the church over the social justice issue. I like to say yes, there's a divide and it's lamentable and certainly the Bible admonishes the church against division. We know many early church admonishments from Paul and others against that. But I say there's a divide becomes because someone moved. So, who moved? Why? And what does courageous leadership look like from the pulpit in addressing this, and I'll just say one other thing as a kind of a positional point. My observation is that there is frequently more interest in dealing with the divide and driving for unity in the church, which is a good outcome. But the real focus ought to be on biblical orthodoxy and the true gospel and not this false gospel. And seeking to have the divide solved through that, but not having "solving the divide" as the end in itself. It's biblical orthodoxy that matters in the end. Anyway, all of that to boil down to a question, what are the observations you're seeing in the church in general, and and by the church I mean, really, the local church? And you don't have to give specific examples if you want. But what does courageous leadership look like, from the pulpit in dealing with this, knowing that there might be a divide in the church and driving the church to unity, but unity against this, this social gospel movement? Yeah, we've all got to be "grace and truth" people. We tend to err one side or the other, many of us, most of us, I can see that in myself. But we're always striving and praying, at least we should, and be confessing and repenting where we're not being both. Where we're just blazing for truth, or just living over in grace territory, which ends up being, for too many of us, not actually really living by grace, it's more living by niceness or being liked or being accepted. I think we're going to talk more about that later, at least we may. But I would just say a lot of leaders, even surprisingly, in the reformed world, even those who did not seem like these were their instincts, played toward that middle that we were talking about. And there has been tremendous energy expended in our circles evangelical and reformed and Baptist circles—those are mine anyway—toward being seen as a thoughtful Christian, a positive Christian in society, not that kind of Christian, not fundamentalist, not legalist, not obscurantist, these sorts of realities. And that's been a real shock to me and many others. And I think a lot of us are still honestly processing this and working through it. Because what happened in the reformed resurgence of the last 15 years, 20 years, is there were so many leaders who were so bold at planting the flag in their congregations and their institutions for a kind of reformed zeal, biblical zeal, whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to organize the concept around. And they seemed countercultural, and counter world, but also joyful, and also loving the truth and genuinely being excited about discipleship and preaching and witness in the broader society. And that had a huge impact on me, and many others. But something happened. And I think it's probably because of the history of what is called race in America. Race is actually not a biblically grounded idea. There are not different races based on skin colors. There's no biblical support for that. There are different ethnos, different ethnicities in Scripture, but your skin color can be shared. But in one ethnos, it's not skin color that distinguishes between ethnos, necessarily. So the concept of race, though, in America has a very bad history, right? We have a history of slavery, and Jim Crow and all sorts of problems along those lines in particular, in past centuries. Though, these realities, partiality does not go away, it doesn't go away until Christ returns and makes all things right. So I think what happened, in brief, John, is that racism is such a fearsome brand. People fear in America, especially let's say if you're in the south, especially maybe if you have some connection to racism in your family's past or something like that. People fear nothing more, just about, than being branded a racist. And so Satan's scheme was very clever in the last four to 10 years, because he raised an issue where many of evangelicals is for a variety of reasons, including some I've just named didn't want to step up and be seen as at least racist. And that is what has happened for Scott and for me and Voddie Baucham and Virgil Walker, and Darryl Harrison and John MacArthur and many others we could name. You are branded a racist for standing against critical theory, critical race theory, social justice, brokenness, etc. You are. So what you have to do, by the power of the Spirit, last thing I'll say here, in your pulpit, in your ministry, to answer your second part of your question, John, is you have to be fearless. You have to find your identity in Jesus Christ, you have to pray like mad for the courage that is not in you, but comes down from heaven. You have to repent of your anxiety and man-centeredness when it flares. And then you have to clear your throat and speak and you're not speaking belligerently, or angrily or anti-human-ly or something like this, you're speaking as Calvin said, you're using one voice to encourage the sheep and one voice to call off the wolves. And you are using your call off the wolves voice because the wolves are in the camp, or at least threatening it. And you have to protect the true gospel. And you have to guard the good deposit Second
Timothy 1:13-14.
Scott:It's interesting that I totally agree with you. The racism issue was really the one that that drove the wedge into the evangelical church for the historical reasons that you're saying. But I really viscerally reacted against the woke ideology. And I had to kind of examine myself, like, why is that? What is it that makes me just so repellent to me? And it dawned on me halfway through writing my book that the reason was, I hate racism, I actually really hate racism. And this is a racist idealogy. In the sense that it's very happy to lump people together based on these immutable characteristics, like skin color, and then make judgments about them and put that judgment at the top of everything else. You know, it doesn't matter about your personal history or your beliefs or anything. All it matters is the color of your skin. And then I know pretty much all it's important to know about you. And I thought that's the most racist thing. I hate that. It's so wrong. It's so unbiblical, right? I'm dying to ask you another question, Owen, if you don't mind. As I got reactions to my book, there was a real surprise, I expected to be canceled, frankly, we had a discussion with our little board here about even publishing the book because I felt like it might really damage our ministry. It might cause us cost us a lot. But the pushback that I ended up getting the most kind of viscerally in some ways to the book was actually from the evangelical world. And it was kind of surprisingly from people also that were like minded with me in terms of being repelled by this woke ideology. But I ended my book by just challenging Christians, I said, one of the reasons that this ideology has gained so much traction in our society is that Christians over the last 150 years, 100 years because of going back to the old fundamentalist, the split within the church, between fundamentalism and liberalism, social gospel. You know, the church has kind of abandoned culture. In some ways, it's kind of said, Hey, what's really important is the ministry of the church in terms of proclaiming the gospel evangelism, etc. And believe me, I, I believe those things, but it was at the expense of engaging in the culture, you know, and bringing truth into the culture. And so we kind of left the playing field. And, you know, hey, if we're not out there in the game, guess what, somebody else is going to win. And that's what happened, right? So now wokeness now dominates in business, media, academia everywhere, you know. So I was calling out the church for that saying, we got to get back in the game. And then I got this pushback from Christians, that surprised me because I kind of thought we were past this, I guess a little bit. They were saying, Scott, no, you're calling people to engage in culture. That's a distraction. It's going to take us away from our primary mission, blah, blah, blah. You know, you know what I'm saying? I would love your reactions to that. Did you get any of that? What are your thoughts about that? Because I again, I understand those debates. 100 years ago, I thought we were kind of past that a little bit, but apparently we're not. Love your thoughts or reactions to what is shared.
Owen Strachan:Yeah. Fundamentally, I think it goes back to what we were talking about, and here it is again, a lot of evangelicals want to be liked by the culture. That is a different reality entirely from what Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, Van Til and others were doing in the mid 20th century and beyond in recovering what you were talking about. Recovering genuinely what I would call Christian cultural engagement, Christian cultural engagement, draws off of Acts
17:16-34, as it's really cornerstone texts, there's others, of course. But those of us who love Christian cultural engagement—or you could call it different things, public theology, but related, right, same, same basic idea—try to engage those who disagree with us in a kind of weird and very fun mishmash of apologetics, theology, and evangelism and just straight up proclamation. And so it requires you to do two things really, to be like the men of Issachar and to know the times and to know the word. And not everybody's called to that and some sectors of the church, especially kind of the some of the pastoral core, especially the pastoral core, that would really focus on weekly local church ministry and being faithful to the Bible, and I'm talking about men I agree with and love. But a lot of their mission isn't what I just described. They should know the times, they should be men of Issachar, or they should be shaped by Acts 17 and other texts, but their primary work needs to not be reading all sorts of books from the other side, whatever ideology it is, grasping it, trying to master it, and then responding to it. They can do some of that. But their primary work is shepherding, the primary work is preparing one to three sermons a week. The mission of the church, for them, really is Sunday proclamation and then weekly shepherding. I think we have to realize, though, that we're a body. The body doesn't only have one role, the body has lots of different parts. And there's a part for for this discipline that we are talking about cultural engagement. And it is not at all detracting from the mission of the church, to know the times and to respond with the word. It is not at all detracting from the mission of the church to, again, this weird blend of apologetics, evangelism, theolog,y and proclamation like Paul and Mars Hill, and give an answer for the hope that lies within us. Not everybody's called to that in the same way, but we need to support those who are trying to give an answer. And I'm so thankful for, you know, Bahnson, and others who did that so well, and Bochum today and others who are faithfully charting that course.
Scott:I think I totally agree with you. But I guess what I have in mind in terms of cultural engagement isn't just a kind of an apologetic type of response. I do think it's important for pastors in the church to play this role. It's more like this, that for a long time, the sacred/secular divide, there's been this kind of idea that the Bible speaks to spiritual topics, discipleship, evangelism, heaven, etc. But it doesn't speak to secular topics that are in the culture, let's say things like justice would be a good example. It doesn't speak to justice. It doesn't speak to business, it doesn't speak to education, you know, that those are kind of below the line. Those are secular topics. You go to other schools, and there's other professors that will teach you about those subjects. But you don't come to church to learn about those subjects. That's a problem to me, because I think if we're not defining justice, let's just take that word again, somebody else is. And that's exactly what's happened. It's been redefined. And this is where I feel like you go back to the reform group that you were talking about, I like those guys, because they want to do engage in the culture. But they were so quick to kind of adopt whatever the cultural definitions of these words and understandings are, whereas the Bible itself, shapes all of those things in a particular way. It shapes law, it shapes education, it shapes everything. But I feel like Christians don't fully understand that yet.
Owen Strachan:There's different strands of this conversation. And yes, if that's what you were after, I agree with you completely.
Scott:It's both. I think there is a role for Christian apologetics in the public square, but I'm talking about something even more fundamental.
Owen Strachan:I think you are and I think you're dead right. And I think that was one of the things that pushed me into the game, was actually just the term social justice and a related term—we've already talked about it a little bit—systemic injustice or systemic racism. Even people in my circles—whether you're reformed or not, by the way, these are all perennial issues right now in whatever sector of evangelicalism you're in—but a lot of people in my circles, were just using those terms. Of course, they're systemic, right? Like I said earlier, Augstine taught us this, or Paul taught us this or whatever. So of course, we're for social justice. We want justice in society. So you know, you don't even have to think about it. And I have totally pushed back against that. I am absolutely where you are. It's not just that we have this minimal, very sketchy concept of justice to offer people and they in the Big Bad Ivy League universities have this really thoughtful developed Greco Roman traditional understanding or this Marxist understanding or this Rawlsian understanding of this, Foucault-ian understanding, whatever it may be. Absolutely not. We not only have the strong hand, we have the only hand that will win at the table, we have the truth. True truth. We have the doctrine of justice or love or whatever it may be, it doesn't mean that unbelievers never see truth partially. It doesn't mean that we can't learn math from an atheist or something like this, because they can understand truth to a degree. But it does mean that we always are the ones with a strong hand. But Scott, tragically, we often don't act as if we do. We often just parrot the terms of James Cohn social justice, basically. And it's an absolute tragedy that we do.
Scott:Yeah, and I understand it, because they're using—justice is a very biblical word. It's rooted deeply in the Bible. But I think what surprised me was that I talked about in terms of counterfeit and original, you know, that the way that you spot a counterfeit is by having a really, really good understanding of the original. You can spot the differences. But it seemed to me that on this word, justice, that a lot of Christians just didn't understand the original. They didn't know it very well. So they were just buying the counterfeit because they wanted to stand for justice. And I think that happens a lot because we haven't been out there in the public square, building institutions, and lives, and putting forward. Nancy Pearcey is famous for saying the best way to push out a bad worldview is by offering a better one, but we haven't been doing that. We haven't been offering that better understanding of justice and everything else very well. I'm just kind of sharing my own thoughts on some of this.
Owen Strachan:Luke, you seem like you may have something, but—do you have a question? Because I have a point on that matter.
Luke:Go ahead. I'll add afterwards.
Owen Strachan:Okay. All right. I'll make this quick. A very related problem to what you were just sketching is like love your neighbor. In lockdowns, for example, where same thing that happened with social justice, it's almost like there's trends here. It's almost like there's a real problem perhaps, gazing off into the distance. Loving your neighbor ended up meaning for a lot of Christians doing whatever the state said, in order to make people as safe as possible. Lots of us wanted to be wise with a global illness and these sorts of things, a huge conversation to have in a podcast for a different day. And yet, the point stands, in my mind at least, love your neighbor does not mean do what your neighbor wants, so that your neighbor likes you from his own unbelieving standpoint that is antithetical to the Christian worldview. Love your neighbor means at that base, at the very minimum, standing on God's truth, and then operating out of grace as much as you can towards your neighbor to try to help them from that standpoint of truth.
Scott:Wow, that's so good. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt. You know, that's so good. Yeah, I love that so much. That's gonna end up on—Luke put them on our social media, please.
Owen Strachan:Thats a daily demonstration that all of us can do in our neighborhoods. And while there's always a place for what we're seeing in advocacy and state legislatures, and on the hill, and all of that's all good stuff for Christians to be involved in. It starts first in the family and gets exercised and demonstrated there, it starts on your street or your neighborhood. This is where I think the real root will take place in pushing out the darkness, more so, there's an important role for that advocacy and everything. But it's really a groundswell of Christians being the salt in light that they should be in society, that's really going to be the solution to this more so than any kind of top down advocacy types of things. So love.
Luke:Yeah, that's where I wanted to go, is just, how do we practically do this in our daily lives? You know, we're all familiar with the term "The negative world." And that's kind of what we've been talking about is this recognition that oh, we're in the negative world now. This isn't neutral anymore. We're getting a lot of flack for pushing back against this and standing on God's truth. But how do you interact with a world that doesn't want to hear you, that even inside the church, we're getting this flack, but outside of the church, it's even worse. A lot of people listening to this podcast could say, Oh, easy for you guys to talk about. You all work in ministry. You know, what about me, I work out in the secular world. If I speak up about this stuff, I'm gonna get shot down immediately. It doesn't seem like there's a way to go about this with grace and truth. Because if I bring up the truth, I'm just gonna get hammered immediately. How do we do that?
Owen Strachan:The exact strategy that God has appointed is the strategy that Satan most opposes, and most wants us to abandon. God wants us to be bold proclaimers of truth. We don't share truth. You've all used that phrase, I'm sure we'll all use it in the future, but we proclaim truth. We don't share Christ. You share a cookie. Christ is crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord of the cosmos, you proclaim Him. Your task as a Christian, whatever denomination, background, theological grid you hold, it is not to share anything. It is to proclaim Christ. It is to proclaim the Word. And it is to do so as one who has been seized by the grace of God. To quote Steve Lawson, the great preacher of our time, "Conversion is not a makeover," as a lot of Christians even think of it, you know, touch me up here, get a little makeup there. Conversion is a divine takeover. It's a seizure of us in the most loving and wonderful way possible. And so, when we are brought under the rulership of Jesus Christ, we're not doing extra credit work for Christ, we're called to live under orders. We're soldiers under orders. But that always is supposed to be that blend of grace and truth. It's not that we stoically, angrily, are supposed to proclaim. It's that we're supposed to proclaim truth, speaking in love. Ephesians 4:15, we're supposed to be those who actually are radically transformed by the gospel. And so even as we're saying, the hardest words this world knows, excuse me, we are to be those who are saying it in as loving a manner as we can. And we actually aren't trying to shut down conversations the way so many people across the spectrum are. We're not trying to have a viral moment in this. We can speak in sound bites or whatever. Sure, that's fine. We can do tweets or whatever. But we're not trying to shut down and destroy the other side. What we're trying to do is when the other side, we want conversation, we want debate. We want to be able to begin a friendship with somebody who is polar opposite us. We're never thinking that on the 27th time we talk, that's when we can begin to proclaim Christ and speak the truth. No, we're always trying to be both grace and truth by the grace of God. But those are some some quick thoughts. We need apostolic boldness in an Acts-like way, book of Acts-like way, even as we desperately need a loving nature and manner with unbelievers.
Scott:Owen, could you speak to Luke's part of the question, though, because I think this is kind of the nub of it, too. I love everything you've just said, but he's speaking about the price that is going to be paid when we do that. You're going to lose your job, you're going to lose friendships, it could even be worse than that. The Bible has a lot to say about that as well. But I think Christians do struggle with that, because we haven't had to live in an environment like that in the United States, for most of my life anyways. But the Bible has a lot to say about that. What do you say to Christians that say, hey, it's going to cost me. I don't know, like, if I lose my job, I don't know how I'm going to make ends meet. I can't do that. What do you say to people like that?
Owen Strachan:Yeah, love your neighbor. People are with transgenderism, for example, oh, don't call it out. Don't call people to repent of that. Just love them. Just be nice to them. And then you go to Matthew 14:1-12. And you see John the Baptist's example of calling out sin on the part of Herod, which is sexual sin, and it gets him beheaded. And so I've thought about writing, for my next book, I thought about borrowing a title, "Your Best Life Now, Beheading Addition." And maybe it will get me product placement on the shelves from Barnes and Noble workers who don't notice the difference and I'll get that Osteen territory and they won't see the beheading edition. I'm not the guy who has a lot of nuance to offer in terms of speaking truth when it's going to cost us because I think that is exactly the call. I think that's the call in the HR room. I think that's the call when you're on the board of directors at the fortune 100 company. I think that is the call when you're around the table making executive decisions at the local state university, on and on and on it goes. I think that's the call when you're on the team in Hollywood, and you're making a movie, and you could feature this character, or you could speak up in the writers room and say, I don't think we should have that character. There's so many other examples. What we need is what John was talking about, he was talking about it at the local level, like in your neighborhood. But it's equally true throughout all the ripple effects of your life, we need Christians who are bold in the boardroom, we need Christians who speak up at the Board of Trustees meeting where nobody else wants to say—there was a gentleman who came to me and said, he's been listening to some different podcast, and he said, I listened to a podcast that I heard recently, and in this Board of Trustees Meeting, I spoke up and encouraged that we take off one of these identifiers, you know, postgender or whatever, and it was struck. And 1000s and 1000s of students were influenced as a result. Now, has he won the day at that institution? Probably not. Will there be defeats in the future there well could be. That is a perfect example of what we're talking about. Use your capital, spend your powder, don't wait. And if you are fired, if Satan pours scorn on you, as he has me and others, then God will catch you.
Scott:Amen to that. Amen to that. And I think that's what Christians need to hear that. God is going to move in powerful ways that you can't imagine, when you think I'm going to lose my job and there's no, you know. Very often we that puts us at the very mercy of God Himself. And we're going to grow in our faith as a result of that. So I'm not saying it's easy to suffer. There's just so much to say about this topic. But I just think we need to hear things just like you said, Dr. Strachan. So that's so powerful. We're running low on time, and I really was hoping we could get into another topic. If you don't mind, I would love to have you back again. This has been such a rich conversation. But I would love to just touch on it. Anyways, you in your podcast, remind me the name of the podcast, it's called "The Antithesis," I believe, is that correct?
Owen Strachan:That's it.
Scott:Yeah, excellent podcast. I encourage everyone to listen to The Antithesis podcast. And while I'm mentioning things, go out and buy your copy of"Christianity and Wokeness." Really highly recommend that book. But on your podcast, you had a couple of episodes recently, one that was titled"The Winsomeness Project has Failed." And I just wanted to touch on that. That helped us a lot here in the DNA, because we've had a lot of discussions about just why is it that all of a sudden, there's this huge value on being nice. And we often are accused of not being nice, when actually we think we're pretty nice people. But you really hit the nail on the head. And I think you just touched on it there briefly, just a second ago when you were talking about the necessity of speaking truth. And that we're coming out of a time in evangelicalism where Luke mentioned these three worlds the positive, neutral and negative world. That that has to do with Aaron Renns kind of idea that the culture shifted around us from one that views Christianity in a positive light to one that's kind of neutral towards it to now one that's negative towards it. And we're now in this negative time. And in the neutral time, a lot of evangelical said what we need
Owen Strachan:Yeah, was Jesus Nice? Interesting question, to do is get a hearing for the gospel, and for Christianity amongst people who might be open to it. And the way we do that, is we're really winsome and engaging and nice. And, you know, we don't have a lot of sharp edges. And you know, we're not argumentative. We're not culture warriors, etc. So there was this high value on being nice. And that made a lot of sense to me. But then I think the thing that really for me was so clarifying was this—I hate to call up people by name, but there was this example of Francis Collins, you know, this evangelical Christian. I believe he's an evangelical at the National Institute of Health, you know, one of the highest kind of positions in government, especially during COVID. And he, to me, just typified where this nice theology goes. People always spoke well of him. He was a nice guy. But here's his agency funding, you know, some horrific things with baby body parts in places like Philadelphia. He was openly involved in championing LGBTQ rights things as policy in that agency, and he wasn't saying anything about it as an evangelical, but he was being nice. I thought this is so wrong. This is so wrong. That's not the calling of the hour. And it's not like you said in the podcast we're not called to be mean or jerks. We're called to be as graceful and gracious as we can be, but then need of the hour iss truth. So any more you want to say on that? I mean, we could have a whole episode just on that topic because it's so helpful. I appreciate so much you writing that. Any thoughts on that? right? Was Jesus a nice? Ask that to friends. Talk about it in your dorm room, I'm sure you know, you have a lot of listeners, you know, from a lot of backgrounds. Talk about it in your small group, talk about it among with your buddies, or your sisters at the Bible study, like was Jesus nice? Honestly? It's just a great question. It's not some genius question. It's really basic. And what we need to understand is that Jesus was the most loving man who's ever existed the God man. But Jesus was not nice in the cultural sense. They put them on a cross. They put 11 of his 12 disciples, his apostles on crosses or killed them. And so we need to just know that the Christian faith is not structured around niceness, and being seen as winsome. Every Christian must bear, Galatians 5:22-23, all the fruits of the Spirit. Those fruits are not things that we produce in ourselves. It's not"Ah, I gotta be gentle!" It is actually the fruit of grace in us. So wherever there's a conversion, over time, especially there will be those fruits, wherever there's not a conversion, the person may be all sorts of things, but there will not be those fruits. So those fruits need to be born in all of us. But that is not the same thing as being seen by a an unbelieving culture antithetical to Christ and hostile to the Gospel by nature, as winsome. It's not the same thing. Look, if you're thoughtful, and you try to understand the other side, and you try to speak well, and you have nuance in your argument, and all these sorts of things, there may be unbelievers, who say, winsome, that's a winsome Christian. There may also be unbelievers who absolutely hate you and derive you, even when you're trying to be godly and gracious and bear the fruits of the Spirit, even as you speak truth, very boldly, you proclaim it. There is no biblical mandate to be thought of in a certain form. Of course, we don't want to cast scandal upon the gospel so that in that sense, the elder doesn't want to be thought badly of by the community. But that doesn't, Paul doesn't mean when he's talking about the elders' character there, that everybody likes the elder, the one who's writing that in terms of the requirements for elders is the one who is going to die for the name of Jesus Christ. He's not going to be thought well of in that sense. There's a lot to say here. But I want to just exercise, I can't do this. But I'd love to try to exercise the church of this spirit of just being liked by our culture, and being seen as winsome, and what I would love to do—what I would love for God to do, who am I?—is to replace that with that apostolic spirit we talked about earlier, where yes, you love people sacrificially and generously, but always in the key of proclaiming God's truth and gospel.
Scott:Amen. Amen. Yeah, I am so grateful, Owen, for your voice on that very point out there right now. And I know that you're getting a lot of pain and pushback from people that you love. But just know that there's a lot of us who are just incredibly grateful for what you're doing by speaking out in the very way that you've been doing on this podcast. It means a ton to us. And so anyways, thank you.
Owen Strachan:Thank you, brother, that's kind.
Scott:Listen, we need to wrap up, John, Luke, any any final questions or thoughts on your part?
Owen Strachan:No, thank you. It's been a blessing to participate. We keep you in our prayers, Owen. Thank you.
Scott:Yeah. Owen, again, the book is called "Christianity and Wokeness, How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel and the Way to Stop it." I highly recommend this book, you go ahead and add it to the list of other books that are now out on this subject. And thank you for writing the book and for your podcast, for your your work beyond the seminary, Owen, and we really are grateful for it and for the time that you've given us today.
Owen Strachan:And thank you, Scott. Thank you, Luke. Thank you, John. I've loved being with you and appreciate you men very much.
Scott:Well, God bless you. And thanks, everyone for listening to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Luke:Thank you for joining us on this episode of Ideas Have Consequences brought to you by the Disciple Aations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, or on our website, which is disciplenations.org. As always, if you'd like to take a deeper dive into today's topic, feel free to visit this episode's landing page, which is linked down in the description below. And on that page, you can find resources and tools that will help you continue to learn about the rise of wokeness in the church, and how to stand firmly on the Bible in the face of opposition and even persecution. For next week's episode, we give our review and a biblical worldview analysis of the recent documentary "Uncle Tom II." I really enjoyed that episode and I think you will too and that will be out next Tuesday at 5pm Pacific Time.