Well, good morning and welcome. If you've not received already, there is a handout. You could use either the handout from last week. There's another one this week that kind of condenses things. There's some sheets in the back. Mike, I can also pass them out as well. But it's essentially going to be the same handout as the week that we've had before. Before going into some of the newer material today, we're gonna do just a tiny little bit of review as a refresher. Then this week, we're gonna be going over some unbiblical responses to critical theory. And I've asked Pastor Elsherman if it'd be okay to do a third week, because we really need to get to what is the biblical response to critical theory. I find it very appropriate for us today, at last week and the week coming up, that we are discussing the book of Jude. Because as you may notice from the book of Jude, we are called to earnestly contend for the faith. Because there have been certain men who have crept in unawares. And as you may have seen, There are those who have crept into the professing church who seek to despise dominion, despise authority, and seek to cause division. And this ideology, which has gone across our land, has caused so much division and has not brought unity as the gospel should. So again, we're going to go over, review a couple things today before we get into some unbiblical responses. As you can see on your handout, we went through last week some of the four basic teachings of critical theory. The first one that we discussed last week is the idea that they had of the social binary, meaning that people Individuals, they are inseparable from groups. People are to be identified by their group. And their groups are defined along the lines of race, class, gender, age, physical ability, religion, sexual identity. According to critical theory, the closer one is to being older, rich, white, able-bodied, straight, male, and Christian, the more that person is to be considered a part of the dominant and the oppressor class. The further one is from those characteristics, the more that person is to be considered a part of the victimized or the oppressed class. Then as we saw the second point of critical theory, they said that oppression is not just blatant acts of injustice or blatant acts of discrimination, but it is also trying to impose on other people the dominant group's values through their social structures, their systems. We noted that this is based on what we call postmodernism. Postmodernism has been around for many, many years, but it's the idea of universal truth. If it exists, well, it can't really be known. Rather, each group constructs knowledge, builds it, makes it like a building from the ground up, and they build this for the purpose of maintaining or gaining power. Thirdly, we noticed that in critical theory, they believe that victimized groups, they have special access to truths about their oppression through their firsthand perspectives, which outweigh any reason or objective evidence. Then finally, we saw that they advocated social justice, the idea that society should get woke and dismantle the oppressor's power so that all groups can achieve equal outcomes, not fairness, and not equality under law. Today, we're going to learn about some of the unbiblical responses that people can have to critical theory. This one I think is very important for us to study because this is happening in our societies today and is often affecting our young people when they step out of our homes, when they step into colleges and universities. Within the last couple of years, we may have seen the word deconstruct or deconstructionism And you'll see what this is based off of. It's the idea of postmodernism again. People construct truth, construct a value system, and then impose it on other people. Deconstruction is tearing down that building of power, tearing down those values. to expose them for what they're supposedly already are, just maintaining power, and then building up an edifice for yourself. So deconstructionism is the idea, again, of tearing apart anybody who makes a truth claim and saying, whenever you speak truth, whenever you speak a value, that person declaring a value They're really just trying to gain power over you. They're just trying to maintain their power. You need to tear that all down and now develop your own self-determined value system, your own determined theology. Again, this is very popular amongst people who are in their late teens, 20s, even through their 40s. This is something that is important for us to understand because we're going to see young people go out from our midst, and sometimes it looks like they embrace the theology of our church, the theologies of our families, the theology of Orthodox churches. And they go out from our midst, and suddenly, within a few years, they will apostatize. And we may wonder, how did this happen? Where did they go? Where did we go wrong? And we need to understand why this is happening so that we can fortify ourselves, fortify our families. Deconstructionism often begins when someone will go through a very difficult circumstance in their lives. Somebody might have an unanswered prayer. Somebody might go through unexpected suffering. Some people might have unwanted hardships in their life. Sometimes people will discover real or imagined sin within the professed church. They will see all of these difficulties and they will begin to question things. I learned that God is good. I learned that God is loving. I learned that we are supposed to have male headship in the church. But I've seen abuse. I've seen a difficult circumstance. And they began to question, and they began to elevate their feelings. Feelings ends up being what is most important for deconstructionists. Or you may hear my truth. their truth. They're going to elevate how they feel, or they're going to elevate how their supposed group feels. You may hear expressions like, my body, my choice. These are all important to deconstructionists as they begin to question all the difficult circumstances in their life. The key thing that we're gonna notice with a deconstructionist is, as they go through difficult circumstances, as they begin to question, they no longer turn to the Bible. The Bible is no longer important to someone who wants to apostatize. They might look at it, but they don't really care to see what do the original authors of Scripture mean? What was the authorial intent of Scripture? That's no longer important to them because they're going to say, we can't know what the original authors meant. We can only know what my previous group tried to impose on me. So now that they've elevated feelings, now that they've disregarded Scripture, they're going to actually question or abandon the Scripture's teaching on many topics. They may now start to deny, is Scripture really infallible? Is it without error? That's what my pastor used to teach me, that's what my parents used to teach me, but I'm not sure that that's true anymore. They may question male headship in the home and in the church. They may question things like abortion, homosexuality. They may question Christ's atonement, and they may question things like the final judgment of the wicked. Are these things really true, they may say. And anyone then who begins to push back against them, they're going to accuse them and say, no. My body, my truth, my truth is the most important. If you are denying what I believe, what I've constructed, you're just being oppressive. You're just being abusive. You are just power hungry. How dare you tell me, mom or dad, how dare you tell me, pastor, steward, or deacon, that God is going to have a final judgment of the wicked in hell. How dare you tell me these things and impose your values on top of me? I wanna go over some examples today of what deconstructionism actually looks like. Some popular forms of it and some not so popular forms. We often see deconstruction showing up in four different ways. One of those ways is you'll see deconstructionists write history books. And I say, selective history books. They'll write about the professed church in the past. And they will generally highlight when the church does something they perceive to be wrong. And they'll talk about the wrongs. That's all they'll talk about to say, look, this is what Christianity is like. Therefore, you're going to want to reject the whole system because of these blind spots, these errors. So history is a way sometimes people will try to help others deconstruct. A second way, this is one of the most popular, is by writing Memoirs. Memoirs are very popular right now. I would say within the last five to 10 years, there has been an increase of published memoirs. And they're often written by people who are in their 20s through 40s. Their lives are not yet over, and yet they're going to be talking about their life as if they are an expert on the topic. These are like autobiographies. And in these autobiographies, storytelling determines what is true. Storytelling determines what is right doctrine. Their feelings will determine. So you'll read these memoirs, and you'll see that they will say, well, because this is the way I feel, this must be true. And they'll try to find others like them to support their evidence. TikTok, by the way. TikTok has been used by many, many deconstructionists to give 30 seconds to two minute clips to try to convince people why they should no longer believe in Christianity. They'll pose questions, whatever it may be, they will try to get people to doubt Orthodox Christianity. And then lastly, the fourth category, where you'll see deconstructionism, is you'll see it sometimes in the academy when people will write even Bible commentaries, and they will try to convince people why you shouldn't believe this teaching of the church. Even in some Bible translations, there will be some deconstructionism. So I want to give some examples of what deconstructionism can look like. One of the most, I'm gonna say, popular books within the last couple of years was written by a journalist from NPR, Sarah McCannon. She wrote a book entitled The Exvangelicals, meaning that they were formally calling themselves evangelicals, but they are not anymore. She grew up within conservative Christianity in the 1980s and the 1990s. She and her family attended a large charismatic church. In fact, she attended a Christian school in Kansas City, Missouri, which is now a part of ACSI. She attended all of these institutions And when she became an adult, she threw off completely the faith of her parents, the faith of her church, the faith of her Christian school. She decided to throw it all away. And she wrote a memoir about it. And she interviewed others who had similar stories. In this book that she wrote over this year, she published it this year, she talked about her lived experience, her story, what she went through in life, and she began to explain what doctrines she no longer held, which ones she disliked. She decided to throw out a couple doctrines that were inconvenient for her, that were uncomfortable for her. One of those things that she threw out was the doctrine of the judgment of the lost, or the doctrine of hell. She said, I no longer believe this. Those who are outside of Christ, I used to believe that they were eternally damned. I no longer believe that anymore. And she gave a story to illustrate why. She said that she had a Muslim friend. And one day, this Muslim friend asked her, would he go to hell if he wasn't a Christian? She knew the obvious answer. But she thought it over for the moment and said, but he's my friend. I like him. He's a nice guy. And she began to question, based on her feelings, is hell really true? Or is it something that's just made up by my church, made up by my parents to make us conform to their value system? And she decided, There goes the doctrine of hell. There goes the doctrine of the judgment of the lost. I have a nice Muslim friend. I can't tell him he's going to go to hell one day. Also, she didn't like the doctrine of biblical sexuality. She didn't like that the church was teaching that a man and a woman should be the only people that marry. Heterosexual marriage is the only true marriage. She began to question this as well. Again, she provided a story. Sarah, when she was older, she went through a divorce, and her evangelical parents did not support her in that divorce. But she did have a grandfather who supported her. He was kind. He was an atheist. He was a homosexual. Because he was kind, and he was atheist, and he was homosexual, well, I guess then that that's not a problem either, because he was nice towards me and the evangelicals, they were not nice towards me in the difficult circumstance in my life. So she threw out the doctrine of hell, she threw out the doctrines of biblical sexuality, again, all based on her feelings, all based on her personal story. This is one way that we see how people will deconstruct. Another way of deconstruction that I'll bring up this morning, and I have multiple examples, but I just want to give a few. Recently, there was a documentary that came out, a documentary that was produced by Kristin Kobe Dumez. She's a history professor at Calvin University, Calvin College. This was founded by the Dutch Reformed Church. But you'll notice how the doctrine is being eroded here, the doctrine of Christianity. She produced a documentary that's called For Our Daughters. This documentary interviews a lot of abuse victims, people who went through abuse in the professed church. She details these things, she interviews them, all for the purpose of denouncing male headship. She's trying to show that if you promote male headship within a family, within the church, then your church is ripe for abuse. You want to get rid of male headship. You want to have egalitarianism, where men and women have the same roles. In fact, in the documentary, she interviewed Rachel Denhollander. She is a famous lawyer and a former gymnast who testified at the Larry Nassar case. In the interview, Rachel says this. When you've created a culture where manhood and womanhood is defined by submission and authority, you have created a culture where authority goes unchecked and easily becomes abuse. And so men think they can get away with abuse because they actually can get away with it. You'll notice, again, they're using stories, anecdotal evidence to say what is right or wrong. It's wrong to have male headship because someone has abused male headship. And these are just two examples of what deconstructionism can look like. These are, again, examples that we can see of that that we need to guard ourselves from. But what are some other ways where people can respond wrongly to deconstructionism? A second way that we can see this happening is where different ministries, different schools, colleges, churches, even employers begin to promote the idea of intersectional consciousness, meaning this. Because of critical theory, many people oftentimes in leadership will begin to say, I need to fill certain quotas within my church, within my leadership, within my ministry. And so they will begin looking around at the demographics around them to see, Do I have enough of this category? Do I have enough men? Do I have enough women? Do I have enough people from this ethnicity or this ethnicity? Do I have enough people of this sexual orientation, and they will begin trying to fill their organization by quotas. No longer is it the word of God that determines what is right and wrong, but it is trying to fill things by quotas, by groups around us, by the pressure. This is often where we will see in society the DEI departments, diversity, equity, and inclusion. They will hire officers to make sure that this organization has enough of this group or that one. Again, it's not being, it's not standing upon the standard of God's word. It's trying to just fill bodies and say, do I have enough of this group or that group? This can end up with ministries who are more concerned about tokenism than God's word. Well, we need to have one person from this group on our board, so let's bring them on so we look diverse. It's not standing on God's word, it's more just trying to fill bodies to say, I have all these numbers. Thirdly, Another wrong response to critical theory, some people will respond in rage and say, well, if that's the way that you think I am, then I will actually become an oppressor. I will become sexist. I will become racist. I will do what critical theory says. You put me in that category, you put me in that group, I will become one. That is also a wrong response. That is not how any of us should respond. Going through these quickly, number four, another wrong response can be is when we ignore real injustices that happen in our spheres, whether in the past or in the present. And a critical theorist may be the one that points them out. And we may feel uncomfortable because, well, that came from a liberal. It can't be true. But it can. Sometimes, critical theorists will point to the past, and they will point out real injustices, like how the Indians were removed from their own land. Or, they may point out the African slave trade and segregation. They may point to Japanese internment camps during World War II. These were all injustices. They truly happened. They were wrong. But you'll notice that critical theorists will often just point to them. They won't point to other injustices in the past or in the present. They won't talk about other cultures that have polygamy, and human sacrifice, and cannibalism. They won't point out the persecution that has taken place to Christians over the century in the Roman Empire, or during the time of the Reformation, or even during the modern missions movement. You won't hear from critical theorists talking about injustices like abortion. These are all things that we should be grieved about. We should not ignore these things even in our own time. Three other points that we'll go through very quickly here. Number five. Just because critical theorists refer to reparations doesn't mean that reparations are always wrong. There are times that reparations are appropriate. Reparations, paying back for a crime, paying back for a wrong, should happen when the person who has committed the offense they are there, they should repent of their own sin that they have done specifically wrong, then they should repair it. Not someone that's five generations later. We're talking somebody right now. If they've committed a crime, they should repair and restore what they have done wrong. The example we have from scripture is Zacchaeus, after all. He said, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I've taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore to him fourfold. And then as scripture has told us, we are told to forgive, even 70 times seven. So there are appropriate times for reparations. Second to last, we should not disregard everything that comes from a different perspective than our own. Just because we hear the word lived experience, which just means experience, doesn't mean we should push it all out. There is a problem with how critical theorists teach it. They teach it as you should listen to someone else, listen to them, and affirm everything they say, because that person is infallible. That's the part that's wrong. They're not infallible. But yet, it is wise for us to listen to other people who have different stories, different backgrounds, different walks of life. Not all of us will go through the same experiences in life. Some of us have been born in a different country. Some of us may have difficulties in our lives that other people in this room may never go through. Yet we ought to listen to one another. We ought to have unity and fellowship in Christ. That's what we all have in common. And lastly, Number seven, some people respond wrongly to critical theory by saying there are no enemies on the right. There are no enemies amongst those who are conservative. We should join hands with everyone who criticizes critical theory. even if they be racist or sexist, because we ought to destroy the left. We ought to destroy critical theorists. It's the idea of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that's not always the case. There are people who may want to destroy critical theory, which we ought not to be allies with whatsoever. So these are seven things that we ought to be careful with when dealing with critical theory. The next class that we may have, we're gonna go through more of what are appropriate responses. How ought we respond biblically to critical theory?