[Morning Sermon] A New Way to Keep an Old Promise (Luke 5:33-39)

Why did the super religious folks in Jesus' day fast when His disciples didn't? In this passage, we learn that, even though Jesus has come to fulfill an old promise, He's done so in a new way that completely changes the way we think about our relationship with God. And if we stay stuck in the old mindset, we'll never embrace the newness of what He's done for us.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Welcome, welcome. So glad you all could join us tonight for our this installment of the upper room. Let's begin with singing. We're gonna start with holy, holy, holy. I'll invite you all to rise for this.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Holy, holy, holy Lord. Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and piety person, bless me, holy, holy, holy, all the saints are for thee. Holy, holy, holy, love the darkness high thee. Perfect and flood and priority. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of pity, all thy words shall praise my name in earth and sky and see. Holy, holy, holy, merciful liberty. God and prepers' blessing.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Our triumph God, Father, Son, and Spirit, we thank you for gathering us here tonight to enjoy fellowship and to study your word through the angle of the world in which you placed us. Help us to think well about this thing called progressivism. Lord, help us to be kind. You help us to be discerning, and help us to learn your word and how to articulate your word in ways that are winsome, ways that are helpful, ways that bear witness to Jesus. It's in his name that we pray. Amen. Alright, you may be seated. So tonight we are talking about progressivism. We'll talk in a minute about just what that is. But this could be a kind of charged topic. A lot of the things we've been talking about are charged topics. But this one especially. And our goal tonight is understanding so that we can respond with grace and truth. Grace in thinking the best of one another and thinking the best of others and listening to hear in the most charitable light. And truth and knowing that scripture, and not our feelings, not our experiences, but scripture is the touchstone in determining right and wrong. So grace and truth. But also grace and truth here tonight. Grace and truth and the way we talk to one another here. So what we're gonna do is a quick overview of progressivism and where it came from. Then we're gonna talk about two core features of progressivism. Two, not ten. Sorry about last week, two. And then we'll talk some about practical considerations for engaging progressive friends and neighbors. Alright, so kind of like we did last week with conservatism. If I were to ask you what progressivism is, as a kind of worldview, as a kind of uh political and ideological viewpoint, what is progressivism? Constant change. Constant change. Right, okay. Well, change is fair. I mean, that that's the difference between one of the key differences between a progressive and a conservative, right? Conservative wants to conserve. The progressive wants to change, to to grow ostensibly. Caesar, then Rob.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

It's a middle, it's uh usually considered as a middle-left worldview.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

A middle left worldview? Somebody might have been looking at my notes.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Rob it?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I think it's a shift, a shift, or maybe a push to a new uh culture, a new definition of moral culture.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, a new culture, new morality, a new world order, some might even say. Yeah? Somewhat communistic. Somewhat communistic, right? They're yeah, in various respects, yeah. You could say socialistic, you could say communistic. Yeah. Um uh we'll say charitably oriented toward the common good. Perhaps radically so, and maybe misguidedly so, yeah. Toward the common good.

SPEAKER_06 7:01

The future will be better.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

The future, future oriented, optimistic. Yeah, what else? More collectivism, more brute, I think. Uh less of the past. Collectivist. Yeah, we'll we'll put the past bit under future oriented. What else? Anything else?

SPEAKER_05 7:30

Move away from that tradition, kind of non-traditional.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Yeah, yeah. Uh non-traditional is a good way to put it. We're skeptical towards tradition. Yeah. Good. These are all real helpful. If you have it, Caesar.

SPEAKER_04 7:49

Um many deaths, what are the many uh death things that we don't believe?

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Yeah, um again, I want to be maybe that that goes well with shift to a new culture or morality. I mean, from another perspective, we might want to we might say morally chaotic, right? But we'll get there.

SPEAKER_06 8:12

What about power? What about power? Power is their main thing. The way to measure things, the way to get things done.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yeah, yeah, that's you know. So here we have like the marriage of progressivism and Marxism in a lot of ways. And a lot of progressivism today is to various extents enamored of a kind of Marxist ideology which views all things through the lens of power. We talked some about that when we uh we looked at critical theory. But yeah, that's it's there's much more of a tendency on the progressive side of things to see things through the lens of power, oppressed, oppressor. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, progressivism is a new liberalism for a new century. Last week we talked about conservatism. Uh and conservatism really is the classical liberalism. And what progressivism is, is a new liberalism. And usually when you hear someone referred to as a liberal, those terms are kind of interchangeable. It's someone who has a fundamentally progressive worldview. If you haven't turnover yet, on your sheet, you'll see at the top a definition of progressivism. And that comes from an article from the Center for American Progress, which is a liberal think tank. So I, you know, I went to the horse's mouth to learn a little bit more about what progressivism is, is an ideology and worldview. It says progressivism at its core is grounded in the idea of progress. Ding ding ding. Moving beyond the status quo to more equal and just social conditions consistent with original American democratic principles such as freedom, equality, and the common good. So the broad term you'll hear is the left, right? The left is the more progressive side of things in terms of our modern American political dynamic. And that term, anyone know where that term comes from? The left versus the right? No, it doesn't come from the Bible. You're thinking Ecclesiastes where the wise man inclines to the right? No, it doesn't go from the French National Assembly. French, yeah. The French Revolution, the National Assembly arising out of the third estate, which was the uprising of the commoners, and it was like their own assembly where they're gonna set aside the monarchy and craft their own new vision and constitution for a future democratic France. The people who sat on the right were more conservative, traditional, maybe more in favor of keeping the king. The ones on the left were more radical and more in favor of progressing beyond all that to something entirely new. So that's where we get that term, the left. On the American political spectrum, you know, we have two parties. So the Republican Party is the party of the right, the Democratic Party is the party of the left. Just as the Republican Party has kind of a breath within it, a spectrum, so does the left. The left has you know center left to wacky left, extreme radical. Center left would be moderates, like progressive Democrats, such as John Fetterman, or I'm sorry, pragmatic Democrats. Pragmatic Democrats, you know, senators who you know, they're on the left side of things, but they're reasonable enough. They want to get things done. So John Fetterman, John Ossoff, those kinds of people. Then you have progressives, so are kind of a tick to the left. That would be Chuck Schumer, Corey Booker, these kinds of people who have a fundamentally progressive outlook, but they're still kind of connected to institutions. They're not wanting to blow everything up, they're not completely out on capitalism. One more tick to the left, you have socialists like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where uh, you know, there are different brands of socialists. These would brand themselves as democratic socialists. So take that however you like. And another tick past then there, you start to get very radical thinkers, you start to get uh communists and all but name only, sometimes in name, like the mayor of New York City, and so on and so forth. So, what we're looking at tonight is progressivism, so like the middle of the left, if that makes sense. Um as a kind of representative of that sort of perspective. Historically, the rise of progressivism emerged from between 1890 and 1920, and it emerged as a response to the particular challenges presented by the Industrial Revolution. You have factories, you have uh dads leaving the home and going to work en masse for really the first time, uh, you have rapidly evolving conditions. So you have corruption, you have poverty, you have child labor, you have low wages, you have poor working and living conditions, you have factories absolutely abusing the environment, you have uh massive swings by people monkeying with the economy leading to depression, all this kind of stuff and progressivism arising as a movement to say we need more government involvement in order to clamp down on a lot of these abuses. As it developed throughout the 20th century, you have social liberalism following the World War I and the Great Depression, FDR's New Deal, where you bring in these different sort of you have these increasing government interventions in order to pull the different levers of society, in order to try to craft a society that's that's more favorable for all, right? So you have Social Security, you have unemployment insurance, you have labor rights, you have infrastructure spending, earlier on you have uh women's suffrage. And then following World War II, you have you have even more in the Great Society: civil rights, the war on poverty, the introduction of Medicare, Medicaid, and leading up into the 21st century, where you have contemporary progressivism, and we've kind of advanced to where the main issues are economic equality, health care for all, environmental justice, social justice, which means racial equality, LGBTQ plus rights, and criminal justice reform. So those are you know, those are broad strokes. Kind of there's a view of uh what equality looks like, what freedom looks like, and we're really gonna focus on those two words tonight: freedom and equality. A kind of view of what that looks like and what it's gonna take in order to move that society, move our society in that direction, and a willingness to really use government power in order to move that ball down the field. Now, coming back to the basic vision, everything I just said, progressivism at its core is grounded in the idea of progress, uh, moving beyond the status quo to more equal and just social conditions consistent with the original American democratic principles such as freedom, equality, and the common good. Before we dig into some core features, start doing, you know, uh maybe some evaluation, what can we sympathize with there? You know, I'm this is a conservative confessional, Reformed and Presbyterian church in Mount Julia, Tennessee. I'm assuming that most of us come from a fairly conservative viewpoint, though not all of us, and I know that for a fact in our church. So, kind of the tenor is me saying, hey, let's look at this and let's see what there is for us to appreciate in it. So that's just the perspective that I'm coming from as I talk about it. I'm obvious not 100% neutral, but I think we don't have to pretend to be 100% neutral. So, positives. What are some positive things? Things that we can affirm from a biblical perspective in this progressive worldview.

SPEAKER_08 16:36

Care for the uh care for the outcast and the poor. Yeah, care for the marginalized protection.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Yeah, uh James 1.27, pure and undefiled religion is this, how we look after the poor and the the widow and their the orphan and the widow and their distress. Yeah, the gospel, according to Luke, so much of it is focused on caring for the outsiders and how the gospel is for them. So there's an impulse there in progressivism that is very much biased toward the outcast and the marginalized. We can affirm that. And later we're going to talk about some tactics or some strategies for dialoguing with people who you know might come, we might come from a conservative perspective, they might come from a progressive perspective. What are some things in their worldview that we can affirm the problem they see even if we don't agree with them on the solution? It's good. It's good to be able to do that. It establishes common ground and we can advance the conversation. So, what other positives do we see in a progressive worldview?

SPEAKER_08 17:43

Well, I think you kind of touched on it there. I mean, all of these bullet points are things that both sides agree on. It's just a matter of how do we get to that. Yeah. You know, we all have different ideas about that.

SPEAKER_07 17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 17:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:57

Yeah. I mean, you look back, we said industrialization, just some kind of stop on greed, on extreme greed and power hungry and manipulating corruption and that. Yeah. I think that's a sort of a positive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Yeah. I'm going to write the word stewardship. Yeah. Because it fits into that category. And there is a great concern for stewardship from a progressive worldview. I doubt progressivism would necessarily use that term.

SPEAKER_09 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

But stewardship of creation and environmental concerns. Of course, Genesis 1 and 2. Man was created to cultivate the good create. I'll be in a second season. Cultivate the good gift that God had given in creation. Stewardship of work itself. Colossians 3, your work heartily is unto the Lord, for it is Him that you serve, right? You see some of that behind labor clause. Stewardship of gifts. Stewardship of money, right? These kinds of things. Caesar, what were you going to add?

SPEAKER_00 19:06

That they see problems. They might see problems that we might not agree with fixing, but they want to fix those problems in an effective manner.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yeah, so there's something when people see from a different perspective, they can often see things that you don't see from your perspective. So it's another way of saying a broken watch can be right twice a day, right? So a progressive looking at culture through the lens of, say, critical theory might see something that's actually broken. Where somebody's being abused, somebody's being manipulated, something is wrong. And we reject, I, as a conservative, might reject the premises that led them to look into that place. And I might reject their solution for dealing with the problem, but they've actually pointed me to a real problem. And for that we can be thankful, right? Even if we're not affirming everything else.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

It kind of goes along that line of showing compassion to those people who have different viewpoints of even who they are, you know, as far as male or female, and just having compassion towards them and loving them for being a human being.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Yeah. Yeah. This is one thing where, again, coming from a conservative biblical perspective, we're going to disagree strongly about compassion, what compassion looks like to say, someone who suffers from gender dysphoria, right? From a progressive standpoint, it's going to be like, well, let's affirm what you're feeling and let's give you everything you need in order to conform your bodily reality to your psychological situation. And we're going to say, no, that's not compassion, that's enablement. And that's actually going to enable someone in going into an actual worse situation. But again, that common ground we can find is to say, you care about that person, I care about that person. Okay, that's what we're talking about. So you might call me a transphobe, a homophobe, a bigot, whatever you might call me. Oh, that's not what we're talking about. You might think I'm misguided, but I don't hate that person. I love that person, and that's where I'm coming from. And I know that's where you're coming from, too. So maybe we can meet there and talk. Here's another one: justice. Social justice is a huge buzzword, right? So much so that we think about social justice warriors and we almost kind of feel like a reversion or a kind of aversion because a lot of what passes in social justice today is just a political ideology with a veneer of justice over it. But true justice, I mean, God's people, we ought to care very deeply about that. What is it? Micah 6, 8. Seek justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with your God. That's what God requires of God. God requires of us. Leviticus 19, 15, you shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor, defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. Deuteronomy 16, 9, you shall not pervert justice, you shall not show partiality, you shall not accept the bribe, so on and so forth. So justice, a concern for justice, is good. Again, even if we're going to disagree how we get to justice, Al. I think uh the stewardship also extends to environmental issues.

SPEAKER_07 22:29

I don't necessarily agree with all the solutions that. That occurred with their for example cleaning up uh some river, you know, with the atmosphere pollution after that occurred under progressive uh watch.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

There, there's a high persistence there was peace, peace, you know, particularly internationally, I think both are concerned about that. Both see different ways of maybe that is stewardship, but of ways of uh getting to that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, one more. The common good. In that its desire, you know, the caricature is that on the side of conservatism, everything is ordered around the corporate fat cats and making the rich richer, right? So the benefit of a few, and everything is ordered around constructing society, so the haves get richer, the poor get more. Whereas in the progressive view, and I'm not saying I'm not saying I agree with that, I'm saying that's a caricature, on the progressive side, responding to that caricature, the view is no, we're gonna use political power and legislation to take away from the haves in order to redistribute to the have-nots in order to even the playing field. And we'll talk about that. That's equity, right? And we'll get there. So on your sheet there, you've got a list of the core features of modern progressivism: freedom, the common good, pragmatism, equity, social justice, democracy, cooperation. We're gonna focus on two. And the two we're gonna focus on are freedom and equity. Actually, I think on your sheet it says equality, but we're gonna talk about the difference between the two when we get there. But first, freedom. So, anyone who's taken a civics class, you probably know these words by heart. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where did I get that? It's very progressive. Yeah. It is the Declaration of Independence, right? Thomas Jefferson. Now, liberty. What does it mean to have liberty? What does it mean to be free? What do you think? Be able to worship the way you want to worship. Be able to worship the way you want to worship? Does someone say it's just another term for having nothing left to lose?

SPEAKER_05 25:38

Yeah, it's just a freedom to do what you were designed to do.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Freedom to do what you were designed to do? Yeah. So the view of conservatism, or the general view of conservatism with respect to liberty or freedom, it's a negative view of freedom. In the sense that freedom is the absence of constraint. Freedom means the government gets out of the way and lets you do what you want to do. So the government is uh mostly small, legislation is mostly minimal, regulation is kept as minimal as possible so that we can do what we want to do. You know, it's and it's it's rooted in a sort of sense that we talked about it last week, a voluntary association or subsidiarity. The people who are best positioned to know how to order their lives are people themselves. The communities that are best positioned to know how to order their lives are the community themselves, not some theocrat or bureaucrat located thousands of miles away dictating how you should live in your space. So freedom is like, from a conservative viewpoint, freedom is a hands-off kind of thing. Now, from a progressive viewpoint, the part of the argument of progressivism is that view of freedom was much better suited to an agrarian economy. Once the Industrial Revolution came and you have all this consolidation of money and power, that form of freedom doesn't really work anymore. And what you need is a more active form of government in order to enable a more comprehensive vision of liberty. So a more positive form of freedom, a more effective form of freedom, in which here's how it works: the government doesn't just get out of your way, the government actually paves your way. So an exponent of this view of liberty was John Dewey, who many considered to be the father of American progressivism. And he wrote this in his liberalism and social action. Liberty, in the concrete, signifies release from the impact of particular oppressive forces, emancipation from something once taken as a normal part of human life but now experiences bondage. At one time, liberty signified liberation from chattel slavery. At another time, release of a class from serfdom. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it meant liberation from despotic dynastic rule. A century later, it meant release of industrialists from inherited legal customs that hampered the rise of new forces of production. Today, it signifies liberation from material insecurity and from the coercions and repressions that prevent multitudes from the participation in the vast cultural resources that are at hand. That last line is really the kicker. Because what that's saying is liberty is no longer about taking away everything that would impede you from the pursuit of happiness. Liberty is now giving people enhanced access to resources so that we can fund, so that we can underwrite their pursuit of happiness. So again, the government's job in a progressive view of liberty is not to stay out of your way, but to prepare your way, even to pay your way. Now, can you think of any contemporary examples of that dynamic? What comes to mind? Taxing the rich more than everyone else. Taxing the rich more than everyone else. That's the funding mechanism that enables this, but that's definitely a part of it. What are some ways in which the government kind of is freedom is not about just letting you do what you want to do, but actually actively engaging the government to give you what you need to do what you want to do. Al.

SPEAKER_07 29:58

So funding of uh several uh non-governmental uh organizations become NGOs, uh funding for planned parenthood, for example, yeah, or uh previously funding for uh sex change uh surgeries, uh so we think government general welfare system itself is uh progressive money for non-productive activities.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Yeah, so you know, service members, not so much under this administration, but under the previous administration, service members who wanted to undergo a sex change operation. It wasn't enough for that to be allowed. It was a matter of justice that their military benefits had to actually fit the bill for it.

SPEAKER_07 30:43

George, I saw your hand up. Our public school system paid for by the government to benefit all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

What about like open borders where they would allow them to come in, then they would give them things like money or a place to stay and go.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah, that that couldn't be that could be related to this. Um that could be an instance of this.

SPEAKER_08 31:16

This is headed towards equity.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

Yes, it is, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute. Other other examples would include universal health care, student debt forgiveness, uh, free college for all. Again, just as illustrations of this different view of freedom. Again, from a progressive viewpoint, freedom is not the government staying out of the way. Freedom is the government preparing the way. Because we need to be free to pursue what will make us happy. And we're not free to pursue what will make us happy if there's something standing in the way. And that something standing in the way can be the fact that we don't have enough money in our bank account. Or the fact that morality, I'm not saying I agree with this, but it could be the fact that you know moral, the mores and traditions say you shouldn't do that. Right? So, again, a progressive view of freedom is saying we're gonna tear all that down and we're gonna do what we need to do to give people what they need in order to pursue what they want to pursue. I think you could add affirmative action and you know, hiring practices to that as well. Yeah, you could. Yeah, and it goes hand in hand with a kind of view of justice as well. But that goes into equity, right? And that's you, we're getting there. But freedom. We'll stick with freedom for just another minute or two. Let's evaluate that view of freedom, starting with the positives again. Do you see anything good in that view of freedom? That positive view. That freedom isn't just getting out of the way, but freedom is kind of enabling someone in a certain direction.

SPEAKER_06 33:00

Take care for the hand. Yeah? ADA, stuff like that. Yeah. That seems positive to me.

SPEAKER_07 33:09

Sure, yeah. Yeah. Well, the uh when the government funds a particular activity, it means that I'm actually participating in the funding of that activity, so it's maybe they might call it freedom for others or doing that, but it's actually coercion for the others who pay for it.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Yeah. Yeah, it's in terms of like the actual mechanism by which the government makes this happen. I mean, it goes wrong in a thousand different ways. But for me, looking at that baseline view of freedom, we tend to have, you know, we conservatives tend to have an overly libertarian view of freedom in the sense that we define freedom as the absence of constraints. So to be free is to just be able to do whatever you want to do. Biblically and classically, freedom actually is in itself as a concept. Freedom is the ability to be and do what God has designed you to be and do. So look at Galatians 5, right, where you have these two visions, or all of Galatians, but especially Galatians 5. Galatians 5 is of how freedom is supposed to work in Christian community. If you use your supposed freedom in Christ to sow to the flesh all of the vices that Paul lists in Galatians 5, you're actually misusing your freedom. It's the wrong view of freedom. If you use your freedom in order to bless and benefit the church and the power of the Spirit by way of fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, then you're actually using your freedom in the right way. So this idea that freedom isn't just you do you, but freedom is hey, you've been set free to be who God wants you to be. There are ways in which a progressive view of freedom actually does that a little bit more justice, even though, as I said, it goes it goes wrong in a hundred different ways. And the reason why it goes wrong in a hundred different ways is because of the loss of moral order. Remember, we talked about that last week. From a conservative viewpoint, you know, there's much more of a of an appreciation for or acknowledgement of an existing moral order that's written into the fabric of creation. From a progressive viewpoint, especially tinged with Marxism, you know, any talk of a moral order is just kind of an imposition of the white, European, uh, word-centric male. I'm not being like pithy there. That's that's often the argument. So when you have when you have that view of freedom, if you have a view of freedom that says you're set free not to do whatever you want, but to do what God wants, that comes with a baked-in moral order. And that can actually be good. But insofar as that moral order is is missing, freedom runs amok. What do you call a glass of water broken free from its glass? You call it a mess. Or the example of the kite that I've used before. You're flying a kite up in the air and you decide I want to set this kite free, so you snip the string. What happens? Yeah, it crashes to the ground. So, you know, that's freedom. Let's talk about equity. When you look at the sheet there, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 36:29

Yeah, I I'm listening, and it it seems to me that both uh both systems have a defective view of the corruption of the heard you before say, you know, yeah, we let the fat cats go.

unknown 36:42

They're okay. Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Um these folks, you know, they think that everybody's perfect, so you can give everybody all the benefits you can and they're just why, you know, for capitalism to work, uh you have to presuppose a kind of Christian morality and virtue. Right? If you have that, then at least ideally and theoretically, you have the system with all the benefits of capitalism, but you don't have the greed and the corruption and the abuse and the manipulation, the exploitation, all those things. Randy.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Yeah, in both systems. Again, campaigning, you know, people that want to get into office, they'll tell you anything. You can keep your doctor if you want to. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I'm not gonna cost you. But once they're in office, okay, so we are supposed to make a decision based off lies. And we don't know, you know, we're we don't know whether it's why or not until after it's too late. Yeah. So that that destroys the whole concept here almost.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

Right, and that's that's interesting. There's a distinction between the worldview, that is progressivism, and the politicians who play on the sense the sympathies and sensibilities of people who buy the worldview. Because, you know, how many of the progressive politicians you know about actually believe what they're selling? Conservatives, too. How many politicians full stop, right, believe what they're selling? They see a base, they kind of know where they need to line up, and they say, Let's go, I'll tell you what you want to hear. Yeah, that's a that's a lament for another day. Next word is equity. Again, on your sheet, it says equality, and it offers a statement from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's not bad. It's actually pretty hard to critique. It says all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Not bad. But as the progressive movement has developed, the conversation has shifted somewhat from the idea of equality to the idea of equity. Now, is anyone familiar with the distinction there? Wants to hazard a guess?

SPEAKER_08 39:07

I mean, the the most common way I just like see the drawing is like you have like a tall person, a medium, and a short person. A quality, and like and like they're trying to like, they're trying to see over a fence. A quality is giving each person the same size of box where the medium person can hardly see over the fence, but the short person still can't. And equity is giving them different size boxes so that the short person can see over the fence. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 39:42

So basically more needs to people who need it more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 39:49

Yeah. The way I usually hear it is it's a quality of opportunity, equity of outcome. Yeah. Which is very different. Yes. You have, you know, everybody starts the same, but every they want everybody to finish the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:04

And that's you gotta add in personal responsibility there, and there's a lot of other factors. Yep, so that's that's good. I mean, these are good. That's a good picture, and that's a good distillation. Equality is about equal opportunity, equity is about equal outcome. So equality says we all start the race, we start the race from the same line. Equity says we all finish the race at the same time. We all cross the finish line at the same time. So last week when we talked about the principles of conservatism, we talked about the principle of variety, which holds that a society, in a free society, you are inevitably going to have winners and losers. And that actually creates a net positive for that society. So there's no nothing wrong inherently with a diversity of outcomes in the free market, so long as everyone starts from the same place. Now, progressives reject that viewpoint altogether. And they reject it because it assumes that everyone's playing on the same level playing field when, according to the progressive, they're not. Due to historic injustices, systemic injustices like redlining, generational poverty, systemic racism, patriarchy, all these kinds of things, different people start with significant disadvantages. So bringing back the racing metaphor. Conservatives who champion equality, says the progressive, like to pretend everyone's starting from the same line, but really some folks are starting a mile back with a broken leg and no shoes on. And so, in order to have equity, we have to change the rules of the race or change the rules of the game in order to bring things back into stability, into balance. We have to throttle back the front runners and give everyone a chance to catch up and to compete. So, what can you think of any examples, practical examples, of that kind of you know changing the game in order to level the field? Yeah, affirmative action. Affirmative action is a stark example of that.

SPEAKER_08 42:22

One thing I heard about affirmative action uh is they're thinking that the Supreme Court may be overturning it because it was intended for black people, and there's now a lot of Latinos and people, you know, there's other minorities, and they're not getting the opportunity that the black folks were getting because of affirmative action. So they may get rid of it for that reason to to actually make it more even.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

Yeah, there was something having to do with that, and admissions at Harvard, like a lot of Asian people were being overlooked, and they could be overlooked because affirmative action didn't really protect them.

unknown 42:58

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Yeah. Any other examples we can think of? Scholarships? Scholarships, yeah, in some respects. You do have a lot of institutions that are favoring uh historically marginalized individuals. I mean, you know, when I was applying to PhD programs, I applied to one conservative evangelical school and then 10 progressive top-tier schools, like Yale, Harvard, Duke, these kinds of places. And I got on the phone with someone from Yale, and he's uh he was basically like, yeah, good luck. You're just you're just not, they're not a committee of like 30 people from the religious studies department, they're gonna they're gonna read your stuff. Uh they're coming from very progressive, kind of liberal perspectives, uh, theologically and politically. They're gonna see they're gonna see you're a white conservative male, and let's just be realistic. This isn't gonna happen for you. Uh, in academia, right? If I, you know, I I got a PhD to serve in the church, right? I I had no delusions of getting a job in academia, but it's hard out there for everyone in academia, especially for white men. And I'm not I'm not on a soapbox here. It's this isn't me airing my grievances at all. It's just kind of the nature of the game right now. There's there's this idea that that the white man has had a lot of advantages for a long time, and that is. Necessarily disadvantaged women, minorities, uh, you know, the whole and the whole cornucopia of intersectional, you know, we talked about this when we talked about critical theory. This whole sort of uh variety of people with uh minority different perspectives and stories and so on and so forth. And so now is the time to hold back the historically powerful oppressor into platform the oppressed. That's just that's what's in the water now. That is that is what it is, but that is an example of equity in our culture, right? Or at least the pursuit of equity, Evan.

SPEAKER_08 45:12

So I was reminded by so I did just Google it, so I'm not the smart. But um, when we lived in Charlotte, we had to vote on a um, what are they called? Um one of the tiny things that are at the end of ballots. Referendum? Yes, and it was to uh take taxpayer dollars of a richer neighborhood and find public transportation at a park in a poor neighborhood.

unknown 45:37

Yeah. I mean, wow, that's literally everything.

SPEAKER_08 45:41

They're giving this one area a lot more money because they are starting at a lower level.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's one thing for a community to voluntarily say, hey, we've got enough, we're gonna give to fund this thing. It's a whole other thing when the government, backed with the power of violence and the ability to incarcerate you or take your life if you don't agree, says, You guys are gonna pitch in for this part. Uh should they willingly pitch in for the part? Yeah, maybe. But should they be coerced with? You know, that's that's another animal.

SPEAKER_08 46:19

Well, what did Jesus say about inequality in the world when he was here? You know, I know he talked about the poor, you're always gonna have the poor. Yeah. So, I mean, wasn't he recognizing that there's always going to be this tier of what on earth?

SPEAKER_03 46:35

And we talked about that some when we talked about variety. But so let's let's evaluate this uh biblically. Start with the positives, right? What's positive here about equity? Can you think of anything biblically that might lean in this direction? Heaven is equity, right?

SPEAKER_08 46:52

To some degree. I guess some have more crowns.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Yeah, yeah. Some have more rewards than others. Yeah, but we're all there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Equity aims to give everyone equal opportunities.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

Not just equal opportunities, but equal outcomes, and that's where it gets problematic, right?

SPEAKER_09 47:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

So think about Old Testament gleaning laws. The poor were given a right that others weren't to glean off the edges of the field. That was more equity than equality. Or think about distribution in the early church. There were Acts 4, 34 through 35. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet. And it was distributed to each as any had need. So there is something biblical in accommodating people with more intense needs and actually ministering to them on the basis of those needs. But why was the early church not socialist or communistic?

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Because they were there by choice.

SPEAKER_03 47:55

They were there by choice. It was a voluntary move where they came together and said, they said, we're going to take care of each other. I mean, a communistic worldview or a communistic form of government, none of the people in that room own anything. The government owns everything, and the government handles distribution. And that has gone so well historically.

unknown 48:17

What about the uh the distribution to the widows?

SPEAKER_03 48:22

I mean, appointed deacons to make that just. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's another example of something like equity. Right? We're not going to give everybody in the church 500 bucks to keep everything equal and fair. We're going to give these widows or these people who are in this desperate need 5,000 bucks, and everybody else gets nothing because nobody else needs anything, right? They're giving, these people are being given to. Again, completely different than manipulating the levers of government power in order to take from the rich and give to the poor. It's something that's in-house. It's something that's, you know, it's it's biblical. So negative, right? Negative evaluations, equity, right? Partiality can cut both ways, right? Injustice can cut both ways. I read Leviticus 19, 15 earlier. You shall do no injustice in courts. I mean, equity penalizes some groups, or at least it can penalize some groups in order to privilege other groups, individ in irrespective of individual desert. Right? So let's say I graduate from Trinity and I'm looking for an academic job, and I am just like the hottest hotshot in all the game. I've written the best dissertation, I'm smarter than everybody, and I'm eminently qualified for any theological faculty position anywhere. Like I'm that good. I'm the best, right? I can say these things because I am objectively not that. But just imagine that's the case. Strain your imagination to make that the case. So is it just that I would be basically thrown in the circular bin immediately in order to privilege these other people? No. It's a great injustice against me. It's a wrong that some would argue is serving a greater right, but it still is a wrong. What do mama tell us? Two wrongs don't make a right. Right? So it's still injustice. It's fundamentally unjust, and it's even pragmatically unwise. Because in practice, the the picture uh, I'm not gonna draw it, but you know, the this kind of word picture of you got the baseball fence, the fence in the outfield of the baseball game, and the different people with different heights, and you want to say that you know, we're gonna give each person a different size of box. But what ends up happening is you chop the rich person off at the legs and you try to stick those underneath the short, or sorry, the tall person, you chop them off at the knees, and you try to stick those legs underneath the short person, and everybody's worse off in the end. That's how it ends up working practically.

SPEAKER_08 51:11

I'm reminded of you know the concept in America that that Lady Justice is blind, she's wearing a blind bulk so that everyone gets the same treatment. Yeah. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_05 51:27

Yeah, yeah. Abortion is often looked at equity for women so they don't have to go through whatever hardship, but obviously a wrong, yeah, another example.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Yeah, yeah. I'm wrong. Yeah. Alright, I want to make sure we have, we've got just a few minutes left, and I want to make sure we have time for just some thoughts about how to engage people with whom we disagree on this. And I'll say it begins with the heart posture, right? You know, somebody you're you're having lunch with, you're having dinner with a family member, and they say something that is just completely opposite end of the opposite side of the aisle than you on some sort of hot button issue, and you feel your heartbeat start to raise or your heart rate start to rise 20 beats a minute, you know, you're gonna respond. How are you gonna respond? Why are you gonna respond? What's your motivation in responding? Are you interested in winning an argument? Are you interested in winning a person? And we recognize as Christians, you know, our job isn't to go out there and lay waste to every errant ideology in the world. Our job is to go out there and bear witness to Christ and win people to Christ, share the truth of the gospel, point people to God's wisdom revealed in his word. So our hearts need to be in that kind of place. We get there by prayer, right? We get there by asking God to give us that and put us there. But in terms of tactics, right, we can't unpack these as much as I wanted to unpack them. But basically, the vision I wanted to share was we listen, we affirm, and we ask better questions. So listening, behind every progressive prescription, there's a description of the world and something that's wrong in it. Right? So your progressive friend says something about racial reconciliation. Alright, what's underneath that? A longing for justice, a longing for equality, right, even if they money it up with equity, a longing for rights, that we respect human persons, that we respect their dignity. Somebody says something about gay rights. Okay, what's beneath that? Again, a desire for inclusion, a desire for belonging, a desire for treating people fairly. Environmentalism, right? You have a friend who's way into the Green New Deal, and you know, before you start unpacking the details and getting into it. Well, what do they care about? They care about stewardship. To some extent, even if they don't use the words, they care about God's creation and doing justice to it and all that sort of thing. And so listening means kind of taking the time to get in there and understand why people are, you know, where they're coming from, what's the problem they're trying to solve, and you just might find that you have a point of contact in terms of that problem. It's a problem of justice, a problem of inclusion, a problem belonging, problem stewardship. And that enables you to go to the second tactic, which is to affirm. Right? Let's say, let's say your progressive friend says something to the effect of, you know, the church has really been complicit and a whole lot of discrimination in American history. How do you respond? How do you respond to something like that? You're gonna hear that more from a progressive than a conservative. Yeah. What's that?

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Say, tell me more.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Tell me more, yeah. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_08 55:02

I'd say what organization has it been in history? Sure. Because I think it's unfair to judge the past by our present law. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

I think too though, you need to admit where the church was wrong. Admit it. Sure. And say, yes, I agree with you about whatever it was. But you know, I think like we were talking about, speak about the positive about what they agree on. I mean, what we both agree on of what their issue is of agreeing, okay, you're right, I can see that. Yeah, that in that situation we could all change, and you know, but just find a common ground and stay on that.

SPEAKER_03 55:41

Yeah, so here's a strategy to use along those lines. Yes, and yeah. Right? The church has been complicit in all kinds of moral corruption. Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

When a person admits it, you know, and say, You're right, you're right. Then they they kind of their wall comes down a little more, like, okay, good, you know. And they're kind of appeased, like, oh good, she admitted it.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Well, yeah, so yes, the church has been complicit in corruption. There have been plenty of times and ways in our history when churches have not loved their neighbors well, and I share your hatred for that. I hate it because it misrepresents Jesus and it falls short of everything he tells us that we're supposed to be as a church. Well, you know, that and that, and that's the case in the church? That's the case in all kinds of human institutions that fall short of their principles. Well, why is that the case? Well, the problem in the church is the same problem as every other institution. Sin. So you can try to legislate out all the sin if you like, but you just end up Pharisees, full of sin and self-righteousness. So you see the yes and move there, right? Like I've agreed with you in the true thing that you've said. You don't, you know, you don't set yourself back in an argument by denying truths. Right? If you concede a truth to the other side, it actually helps you in the argument. It brings you together a little bit, it actually establishes the authority of your side somewhat. And so you can say, yeah, you're right about that. And let me lead you more deeply or deeper into Christian principles and biblical truth that show why we actually share that same concern, and then we can continue moving on to why I have the more coherent version of why we should actually care about that. So, third tactic here is just to ask better questions, right? Uh force people to define terms, right? What do you mean by justice? Ask people how they got where they are. It's like, oh, that's an interesting idea, that's an interesting conclusion. Can you help me? How did you get there? Like, how did you arrive at that? Have you always believed that? Or there people you talked to, were there books you read? How did you get there? And in asking questions like that and probing, you actually start to unravel some. Because sometimes you'll hear things like, I don't know, that just seems right to me. Right? And it gives you openings, it gives you opportunities to kind of, you know, by way of a question, you go, Oh, well, have you considered alternate experiences? Have you considered other viewpoints? Like, why do you think someone might disagree with you on that? Right? You can ask these kind of questions that help lead in the direction where you're not just some angry conservative being the hateful bigot that the internet says you are and shouting someone down, but you're actually someone thoughtful, you're someone who cares about the person, wants to understand them and their perspective, and are willing to go on this journey with them towards truth and toward the rectification of that problem that you both agree the world has. Right? It's these are better ways to engage with someone rather than slinging mud back and forth or sharing your, you know, the latest talking points you picked up from whatever podcast you listen to on the drive to church that day or something.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Like we need to ask God, you know, like you said, pray. Yeah. Ask God to show you their heart.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

You know, and why they are so you know, dogmatic. It's because they feel there is a wrong and they're standing up for what's right in their life, you know, that's wrong.

unknown 59:22

So it softens your attitude toward them of like, oh, they're that way. Right. That's right.

SPEAKER_08 59:30

One of the things that I do when I'm talking to somebody, especially about politics, and I know that they're not a believer, is I remind myself that this is their heaven. Yeah, it doesn't get any better than this for them. Yeah. And I try to keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_03 59:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 59:47

Yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_03 59:48

That's a really good thing to keep in mind. So, last question I'll ask. Bill, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 59:54

So I wonder if our strategy in these interactions should be to form relationships. So we want to uh speak to people in a respectful way. We want to engage them because what we want to do is form relationships, not find arguments.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

Yeah. Right, and that takes a kind of wisdom, right? Because if you're talking to someone on an airplane, and we live in a different world now, you can you can build a relationship with someone on a plane, but if you're having an encounter where it's like it's gonna end, and you're probably never gonna talk to each other again, you know, you might want to lean in and have the argument and try to plant the seed, or what Greg Kokel says, put a stone in their shoe, right? So that they take that with them, and whoever God puts them in their path down the road can pick up the baton from you, right? You might want to do that. But a lot of times you really are talking to someone you know, right? Someone that you can be building a relationship with. And that's that's where the questions come in handy again. Because if you're asking good questions, you're not necessarily going in for the kill, but you're actually inviting someone to relationship, and you can keep having the dialogue. Alright, so final question. What before we sing and then we eat, what's the greatest obstacle to having better conversation with friends on the other side of the political or worldview aisle? What's the greatest obstacle you face?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Trust.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

What? We got pride, we got trust, I think I heard. Different worldviews, differences, Al, what did you say?

SPEAKER_07 1:01:35

Yeah, being the obstacle, big obstacle is um uh worldview, but the basis for your worldview.

unknown 1:01:42

Our basis is the Bible for our worldview.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:45

If you don't have that same basis, it becomes difficult. You've got to get to a common basis to have an agreement at some point.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

Yeah, uh a perceived lack of common ground.

unknown 1:01:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

I was gonna say, you know, you have a misconception of what they believe. You presume something that you know, if they believe that, then that means they believe this other stuff. Which in reality, a lot of them only believe maybe this much of that. And you have more in common than what you thought.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

Yeah, there have been lots of times when I've had an argument with someone who wasn't arguing with me, they were arguing with the version of me that they put together based on what they've read on the internet and seen on TV. Well, you're this, therefore you believe this. You're only saying that because this is who you are, blah blah blah blah blah. You're like, I didn't say that, I didn't affirm that, that's not where I'm coming from. I don't agree with that. How about you and me talk?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:40

Right? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

Good. Well, thank you all for coming tonight, and thank you all for engaging this conversation so well. Let's go ahead and sing. Hey girl, let's go ahead and sing, and then I'll pray, and then we'll eat.