156. Defining Wokeness and Why It Matters To The Church

I found my freedom in you I found a joy I can't lose And thank God it's true You wrapped your arms around me And heaven broke through From the moment you found me I found my freedom in you Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safer and Brad Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a blessing it is to be back with you in the hot seat in our new season of the podcast. What a great time it has been. Great time last week recording just a welcome back episode. And then we got to go to the inauguration. What a great time that was. Brett, how is your life doing? They've been calling for some snow this week. Maybe this weekend coming up here after the inauguration. What's your how are things going? You're around the world, my friend. We got this snow coming in. It's going to be pretty, pretty cold this week. You know, so they're they're they're predicting ice all the way down to the Gulf Coast. And so I'm just not looking forward to that. When I was a kid, I like the snow. I know you said that you're a cold weather person. But just like the older I get, I'm just I'm not the snow is not in the cold. I like the snow, but if it could be snow and warm at the same time, that'd be good for me. But man, I'm just I'm so jealous you got to go to the inauguration. I wish I could have been there. I'm sorry that Trump didn't call you up to pray. I know you was he was waiting on that, you know. But I think you were you were next in line. It didn't work out. Things didn't go your way. Time constraints happen. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm sure you got to go in the Oval Office and, you know, sit down and talk to Trump for a few minutes. So I'm glad you got that opportunity. Well, he had a he had a Bible there and he asked me to sign it. And so I figured, you know, I'm part of one of the authors, James. And so it just made sense for me to put my autograph in there. And so that was a blessing to be able to do that. But no, we had a great time. Me and Brody had a couple of people from our church went with us, had had a couple extra tickets there that was given. So we invited them to go with us. And I asked my dad to go. And he's like, you know, crowds, the older I get, I just don't want to be around them anymore. Asked my father-in-law to go. No, he didn't want to go. I'm like, come on now, guys. I've got this awesome opportunity and no one's going. Asked Brett to go. He told me no. John asked him to go. He told me no. What a bum. But yeah, we had a wonderful time. And looking forward to this time in ministry. Right now, I've started the Book of Acts, Brett. My plan is to preach through the Book of Acts this year. And so, man, what a blessing it has been just to study and read intently through the Book of Acts. I've never preached through this entire book. And so I've preached portions of it. So I'm excited about doing that. And even took a little bit of your expertise in the AI world this last week. And did some chat GPT of sermon clips as far as inspirational quotes. And just trying to branch out. Use technology. It really excited me hearing you talk through it. And so I've already started implementing that a little bit. And excited about what we've got going on. Oh, yeah. Just a lot of stuff like that. It just saves so much time. And it's a tool for us to use. And like I said when we talked about it last week, we don't need to be afraid to use new stuff. It's okay to use something modern. Our whole shtick is we have freedom in Christ. That's right. We don't need to be afraid of these new things that come down the pike. God is giving us these things for blessing. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's the devil. And so we definitely want to use the tools that are made available to us. And I'm thankful you got something out of that. And, man, I'm just excited about this new series we've got coming up. We talked about this new series for a long time. We started talking about this a few months before we stopped our last season, before we took our Christmas break. And so these subjects have been on our heart and on our mind for a long time. It's something current. It's something that people are curious about. We don't need to shy away from subjects just because they're difficult. And this is one of those subjects that nobody likes to talk about, but it's a conversation that needs to be had in the church. Yeah. Well, we've created a little trailer to intro this series. And so we'll play that at this time. And then we'll jump right into today's episode, which is wokeness in the church and defining that today. We cannot truly worship God while we stay silent on injustice in all kinds of areas. And I know as a white pastor, I have blind spots. So I am part of the problem. James, Paul elected to unhitch the Christian faith from their Jewish scriptures. And my friends, we must as well. White people fear black men. That's not fair. But it's true. Jesus repents of his racism and extends healing to this woman's daughter. I love this story because it's a reminder that Jesus is human. He had prejudices and bias. And when confronted with it, he was willing to do his work. I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints, as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the ace quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love. So, beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief. Amen. This woke self-loathing. And we will never let the woke left take it away. It's because they're putting woke ideology. To a woke mob that can't even tell you what a woman is. In this season of the For Freedom Podcast, we want to bring to you some enlightening topics that deal with the wokeness of the church. We want to bring to light some issues that are often overlooked, and we hope that it will be a blessing to you in your listening experience. Hey, hey, hey, hey, man, rock time. Everybody okay? Well, Brett, what did you think of that intro, my friend? Man, that was cool. I let my AMS here in the county listen to that, and a couple of the pastors in my pastors meeting listened to that, and floored by some of those comments. That's actually a condensed version of what we originally had. We originally had many more clips in that, but we thought we didn't want it to be 10 minutes long. So we cut it back. But yeah, I like it, man. I like it. I think that was cool. Yeah. Well, today we're going to be talking about wokeness and defining that and what it means. And anytime we hear a term, there are terms that get diluted or changed over time. And so it's good to get a good working definition of the term itself. And so sort of the history and the definition of the term wokeness is beginning in the early 2010s, it became used to refer as a broader awareness of social inequalities, such as racial injustice, sexism, denying of the LGBTQ rights. The term woke has became used as a shorthand for some ideas for basically the American left involved in identity politics, social justice, such as white privilege and reparations, for slavery in the United States. And so this is a term that has been sort of overwhelmingly being used lately in the political realm, but we're beginning to see wokeness come into the church. And so we need to sort of be on guard for those things and begin to ask ourselves what's going on. The phrase stay woke was utterly in recording from the mid 20th century by Leadbelly and the postmillennial of Eric Bada. The term woke gained further popularity in the late 2010s. Over time, it became increasingly connected to matters beyond race, such as gender and identities perceived as marginalized. During the 2014 Ferguson protest, the phrase was popularized by Black Lives Matter. They were activists seeking to raise awareness for the police shootings. After that, a term on Black Twitter didn't even know this was a thing, but Black Twitter is out there. Woke was increasingly used by white people. It often referred to it as a signal of their support for Black Lives Matter. The term became popular with millennials and members of Gen Z. And as it spread internationally, woke was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. By 2019, the term was being used sarcastically as a pejorative among many on the political right and some centrists in the Western countries targeting various leftist and progressive movements. It's been used to disparage actions such as superficial or insincere. But subsequently, terms such as the woke washing and woke capitalism emerged from the critical organizations who had advertised their commitment to social justice for financial gain. This is often referred to as performative activism. And so, Brett, that was just a definition that we pulled off of the Internet. Wanted to give you something that we can begin to talk with. And again, those were terms that we're not going to talk about with social justice and radical justice, sexism, LGBTQ. Those are some issues that definitely in the political world that are talked about. But in the church, necessarily of this series, we're not going to talk about those things. We are going to be talking about what this wokeness has done to the church. And so, Brett, what are some issues of wokeness in the church? And why is this even a matter of an ongoing debate? What is this social justice mentality that's been promulgated in the church right now? You know, when you talk about wokeness, when you were talking about it just then, it just reminded me that our culture and our government and the left and the elitists in Hollywood, they tried to shove this wokeness down our throats. And we've seen it in the movie theaters and the new shows that are being put up. It's like you can't even watch a new show on TV without it having an agenda. And Disney has definitely learned the term go woke, go broke, because they're putting out all these new shows on TV. And it has, you know, people are a lot of Americans just aren't having it and they're turning away from it. Well, now, just like you said, this wokeness has tried to creep into the church and try to infiltrate the house of God. And it is a cause for concern. And the reason is one of the reasons for this concern is there are theological concerns with this wokeness, because, you know, some say that elements of wokeness conflict with core Christian doctrines, because what happens is they start prioritizing social justice issues over the gospel and they shift the focus away from the gospel message. It's like the gospel is social justice is what they're saying now. And that's not what the gospel is, you know, which, you know, the central purpose of the church is the gospel of Jesus. And when you have something that takes the focus off of Jesus and off the gospel, that's a cause for concern. Another concern about wokeness in the church is divisiveness, because some people believe that the social and political aspects of wokeness can create division within the church. They worry that such movements may foster tension between different factions leading to conflicts and disagreements over issues that they feel should not be divisive within the body of Christ. And we see this firsthand. Look at what happened with David Platt and his church. He started, you know, everybody's seen by now they've seen the documentary with him. He brought in this woke agenda and started splitting the church and running people off. And now the focus isn't on the gospel anymore. The focus is on this woke race agenda, wokeness in the church. And it causes conflict and division where there shouldn't be. You want to do a couple more? Yeah, Brett, I want to piggyback on what you just said, because the very first moment that I was really introduced to this wokeness that we're going to be defining here of the social justice and these things was the divisiveness that I'd read after David Platt. I've been reading David Platt since, you know, the early 2000s when he came out with Radical. It radically changed my life and the way I thought about the gospel and the way that I thought about a lot of things. And so I had the opportunity to go to T4G back in, I think it was 2017. And they're in Louisville and David Platt was preaching. David Platt got up and I was excited, but I had my notebook out. You know, I'm fresh into the SBC. I'm trying to figure out all the things that are going on. And he gets up and he preaches this. I'm just going to use the term, this woke message on how he uses this illustration. He said, men in this room, there were 10 or 15,000 of us in the room. He said, men in this room, our dinner tables are too white. He said, we need to make our dinner tables more diverse. And he basically got up and preached this whole message on condemning the white man by, because of our dinner table has been too white and our church has been too white. And then that year at the Southern Baptist Convention, the first, you know, the first time I was a messenger to the convention there at the North Carolina Convention, they do a little pastor's conference beforehand. And they did seven different messages. And six of the seven messages were all about this. We're too white. Our churches are too white. Our convention is too white. And I walked away and I just thought, what is going on here? Why are we like that? We're talking about something that's a non-issue in my mind. But they were causing this division, this divisiveness to come in. When you read through the book of Acts, they were unified in one mind and one spirit. And that's when the Lord began to work. And so the divisiveness is a huge thing. One reason why or concern that people have about wokeness in the churches, it begins to focus on identity politics. The emphasis on identity politics within some woke movements can be seen by critics as a counterproductive to the Christian principle of the unity of Christ as we just talked about. Some people will say that it's a social justice versus a biblical justice. Some individuals feel that the way social justice issues are framed in woke cultures might not align with the biblical understanding of justice. They may argue that the church should address social issues through the lens of biblical morality rather than adopting political or secular ideologies. Brett, why don't you hit this last one that we've written down of the concerns that we're going to be addressing in this episode. Another concern is worldly influence. Listen, some Christians are concerned that the churches, that churches embrace of wokeness represents an unhealthy alignment with secular or worldly philosophies. They might feel that this undermines the church's prophetic role in offering a distinct countercultural witness to the world based on the teachings of Christ. And look, we're not at all saying that racism doesn't exist. Okay, definitely does. There are issues. We're not saying that there's not issues, but we don't need to make the gospel. We don't need to make the church all about that. That doesn't need to be our identity. And that is the point that I think we're trying to make. Yeah. Well, Brett, as we begin to continue talking through this, people may say, James, Brett, this is not an issue. Why are we talking about this? What is the reason that this is something that we're even looking at or talking about today? Well, back in 2023, a guy named Eric Mason wrote a book. He's a African-American pastor, a black pastor up north, and he came out with a book, and the title of the book was called Woke Church. And so we're going to talk through this a little bit, talk through some of the wokeness in the church that we've seen and we've addressed. And then we're going to go through what the scripture says about wokeness in the church and diversity in the church, and then give some closing thoughts on how we can address some of these issues when we see these things coming up. So Eric Mason, he described his understanding of wokeness as it pertained to a radical issue, or sorry, a racial issue in the church. And this is what Mason writes in his book, Woke Church. My desire in this book is to encourage the church to utilize the mind of Christ and to be fully awake to the issues of race and injustice in this country. Pan-Africanists and black nationalists use the term woke to refer to no longer being naive nor in the mental slavery. We have borrowed the term and redeemed it to be used in the context of being awakened from deadenedness, sinful thinking. In fact, every believer has been awakened from the sins effects of Satan's deceptions. He quotes Ephesians 5.14. Thus, the believer is able to be aware of sin and challenge it whenever it is. Brett? Well, you know, Samuel Say makes a convincing observation that the concept of wokeness in our day significantly overlaps with the tradition of black liberation theology developed by James Cone in the 1960s during the Black Power Movement as a reaction to evangelical apathy on racial injustice. He continues, black liberation theology is Martin Luther King Jr.'s social gospel and Malcolm X's black nationalism in one. Black liberation theology exchanges the power of God for black power. It exchanges a supremacy of Christ for black supremacy. Black liberation theology is built on a foundation of bitterness and victimhood with social justice as its chief cornerstone. Now, while Mason claims to have redeemed the concept of wokeness for the purposes of the church, we must recognize that it is neither legitimate nor helpful for Christianity to build upon such a shaky foundation. Although distinctions exist between black liberation theology and woke Christianity, vast similarities unify the two theologies in one dangerous threat to the church. Wokeism is also strongly informed by other philosophical ideas, such as critical theory, which undergirds most contemporary social justice movements. This ideology essentially categorizes people into either oppressive or oppressed groups that are unified around various identity traits, such as class, economic status, ethnicity, or sex. Critical theory and wokeism work hand in hand. For the first pushes a narrative of oppression, and the second demands a reckoning. As it relates to local congregants, a woke church is a multi-ethnic congregation that strives to fight against racism and injustice by becoming heavily involved in social justice activism in its community. In the particular realm of ministry, this meant giving skin color a much greater weight than either musical ability or character. The woke church Christianizes an otherwise secular way of thinking, which has black liberation theology and critical theory loaded into it. But the main question that we have to ask, and I'm going to pose this question to you, James, is what does the word of God have to say about it? Yes, great thought. And as we think through those terms, being redeemed from our dead in this and sinful thinking, they're using these terms that we've used before in Christianity, redeeming our thoughts, redeeming our mind, redeeming the life that God has given us. And they take it and they put just enough truth in it to taint our way of thinking, to taint the way that, well, hey, I've been told that, yeah, we need to put off the old man and put on the new man. And so I need to put off of the old thinking and put on this new way of thinking. And they take those little bits of truth and they pepper just enough truth in there to where it sounds right. And then they bring in this woke ideology that changes the church's ultimate purpose, which is to grasp a hold of God's power and to see God work in a mighty way in our churches and our community. And they've got this, this, the critical race theory. It brings in this idea that you are either oppressed or you are the oppressor and you cannot change. There's nothing you can do. For instance, like you can be like reverse racism doesn't exist because there's no way that the oppressed could ever be racist against the oppressor. There's nothing you can do about it. It's just the hand you were dealt. And this, I have to believe that completely goes against what the Bible teaches, completely goes against scripture. It's anti-gospel. And, you know, it permanently divides us when the word of God wants to unify us, wants to bring us together, wants to say, look, there is no Jew. There is no Greek. There is no male. There is no female. We are just all children of God. And I think this message is the opposite of that. And that makes it anti-gospel. Yeah, exactly. Well, Brad, as we turn to scripture and we turn toward what the Bible says about this issue, we find that in the very beginning, God created one man from the dust of the ground in Genesis 1. And from the rib of this man named Adam, he fashioned for himself a helpmeet named Eve in Genesis 2. And every human being since has come from these two people. Genesis 10 and 11 are the very first beginning of the very first reference of the very various ethnicities, clans, nations, and even languages being established and developing into the world after the time of Babel. So God disperses and separates these various peoples by language and geographical location. And in these foundational passages is where we're introduced to the concept of ethnicity or what we find in our day, concept ethnicity or what many in our day refer to as race. Immediately following Genesis 11, we're introduced to Abraham in chapter 12, whom God, by his sovereign decree, separates for himself to become a new people in whom will be a great nation and a blessing to the other nations in Genesis 12, 2 and 3. Exactly. And James, throughout the rest of the Old Testament, there's a God-ordained distinction and separation made between Israel, God's covenant people, and the Gentiles or those outside of the covenant with God. Though the sinful blood of Adam still ran through Israel, God, by the way of covenant, set apart for himself a people who were to be a holy nation, a royal priesthood who followed his commands and adhered to his law in the midst of watching the world. It is important for us to know that throughout the Old Testament, Gentiles could indeed become a part of Israel and thus be woven into the fabric of God's covenant people, regardless of their ethnic background. We see examples of this throughout the Old Testament as early as the Passover. And in the case of Rahab's family, to be an Israelite was to be a part of the old covenant community of God's people. Yep. And over time, Brett, we see the distinctions between the covenantal Israel and the non-covenantal Gentiles became clearer and even more separate. Through the centuries of God-designated separation of people groups, through locations, culture, traditions, language, and even skin tones and physical features. The distinctions between the world's people groups became that much more firmly contrasted and thoroughly defined. It's important for us to continue to remember that even though ethnic distinctions became more sharply contrasted through human history, the essence of the sinful human nature remained the same in our common ancestor, Adam. Because we all came from Adam. We all come from this common ancestor. Exactly. And that actually brings us into the New Testament because as we enter into the New Testament and we're introduced to the central character of all Scripture, namely the long-awaited seed of Eve, Jesus Christ. Jesus was and is the only true Israelite who has ever lived. Through perfect obedience to God's law, Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham by the flesh, accomplished and fulfilled all righteousness and upheld God's covenantal requirements. In his dying on the cross as a propitiation for the sins of his people, Christ fulfilled the purposes for which God the Father set Abraham apart back in Genesis. And the only that through his offspring, the world and all ethnic categories therein would be blessed. Thus, the New Testament clearly explains that there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. And Brett, this brings us to the redemptive message, the story of Scripture, that the eternal Son of God added to himself the human nature, died the death that Adam and therefore all of us deserved, and rose again on the third day so that anyone who puts their trust in Jesus in this new covenant through his blood, through the sacrificial death and resurrection, accomplish reconciliation between God and man, subsequently between man and man. But not only in him, in and through Christ alone. All human beings who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, get these woke realities wrong, regardless of their nationalities, they can never see this forgiveness from their sins and salvation into eternal life. It is only through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that we get this. Amen. And then we come to Revelation chapter 7. This is a future day when John sees a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. These are the new covenant people of God that are like an ocean of humanity, ranging in skin color from the lightest of beige to the darkest of brown and everything in between. Scripture ends with this beautiful picture of a fully restored and vastly diverse humanity who will dwell with God in Christ for all of eternity in perfect harmony and peace. Yeah. And Brett, as you look through that and you read through that, you understand at a foundational level, there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see an ethnically diverse group of people serving and worshiping with God all together. I'm reminded of when I was able to go to the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, and seeing all the different ethnic people that were there singing in different tongues and speaking in different languages, and we're all worshiping Jesus in our own tongue, even when we went to Nicaragua together, we got to see that and experience that. And it was a true picture of what heaven was going to be like one day, and that we got to see here on earth. The problem with that is the woke church is loudly calling for the white people to seek out friendship and to build relationships with black people to strengthen diversity. And in one sense, we're calling for these kinds of diversity. Yes, we want to see it. But in another sense, I'm concerned that churches may be disobeying the biblical injunction against favoritism. As we begin to see this, it is a less sinful way to show partiality toward an ethnically different man instead of the rich man. James 2, chapter 2, verses 1 through 9 began to talk through this. A rich man comes into your church, and you put him in the best place, and you do all the things for that rich man. And the poor man comes in, and you say, you're my footstool. You get over here. Well, this is what happens when we begin to be racially diverse. And this wokeness is this sort of woke, infused language puts ethnicity at the forefront of everyone's mind. All of a sudden, a social target of maybe a black person or a white person comes in of an ethnic minority, and the congregation is pummeled with invitations to their friendship of this unnatural place where they would never have this happen before. This can leave them wondering, is there actually an interest for me to be a fellow believer or a friend, or are they merely bringing me on as a token minority of a relationship? If we're going to develop authentic Christ-centered relationships within the body of Christ, this must happen equally among all skin tones, and naturally through organic side-by-side ministry efforts, without showing partiality for or against any type of skin color challenge. And then this is where we begin to really dissect and say, how am I truly doing ministry? Am I doing these things because I want to have the terms of Jack Howell's the largest bus ministry, and we're going to go into the inner cities because they're the most depraved people, and we're going to bring them because you begin to prey on their ethnicity and their social status, just so you can get the reward for having the largest whatever. And you're not trying to build a friendship. You're just trying to build a name for yourself. And this is the same way on the other side of it as well. Exactly. And I think, you know, you quoted, you talked about James chapter 2, verses 1 through 9, this passage of scripture about favoritism in the church. And man, I can't think of a better passage of scripture that applies to this subject than that right there. We are called not to show favoritism. I mean, not only for, you know, financial reasons, because somebody's rich or somebody's poor, but also for racial reasons, Gentile, Greek, Jew, skin color, culture. You know, we're not, we're supposed to treat everybody the same and not overly favorite group of people or an ethnicity because they're different than us. And so, you know, I think that that passage of scripture talks about this in a good way, and we need to reference a lot, reference it a lot with this subject. Owen, how does he pronounce that? Owen Strand. Owen Strand's book on Christianity and wokeness. And the closing chapter looks at nine ways in which wokeness has a negative spiritual, has negative spiritual effects on the believer. And we can talk through these. Wokeness, first, it divides us from others. And, you know, I think that that's, that's what we've been talking about. This is a division we're called to be unifying. But this focuses in so much on our skin color that it puts us into different categories. And we're no longer, you know, children in Christ. It causes us to despise others. And this is, this is a big thing in the woke left liberal camp. You know, for, for a group of people that preaches tolerance, while being some of the most intolerant people in the world, when you don't think like them, or you have different ideas like them, they'll write you off, they'll not talk to you, they'll, you know, scream at the top of their lungs so you can't speak. And so this is what this ideology leads towards. It also leads us to condemn others in pride. It robs us of joyful peace. It, this wokeness, this woke culture, it directs us away from the gospel. It makes us bitter. It makes moving on from wrongs very hard. It veils God's providence. And it makes man big and God small. Absolutely. When you, I want to hit on that first point again, it divides us. When, when you look at scripture, when you look at what the early church did in chapter nine, it says chapter one of Acts, the church is gathered and Jesus is left. And in chapter, chapter one, verse 12, it says, and they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which the Sabbath day of the week of walk from Jerusalem. And when they had entered, they went up into the other room and the disciples were there. And they all continued in one accord in prayer, in supplication with the women and Mary of mother Jesus and his brothers. They were all there and they were unified in one way, shape and form. They were unified around the gospel. They were unified around what Christ had done through the death, burial, resurrection, and now ascension. And they were coming together and they were saying, you know what? We're going to come together for the sake of the gospel. We're going to come together in unity. We're going to pray. We see the rest of that happen in chapter one and chapter two, they get up and they preach the gospel to all who are around. It says that, that 40 different tribes and tongues are around. They didn't discriminate on who heard it. They didn't care on who heard it because they were unified in one message, in one mindset. How often does these things come together and it causes division and division is always from the devil. The vision is going to cause the church to suffer. When the church prospers, it's because the church is unified with one message, with one mindset, with one mind of Christ. And all of a sudden division comes in and it's a small way of division where we're going to elevate one person, not based on what they've done or their accomplishments, but basically just what they look like. They have red hair and so we're going to elevate them to a better place at the table. And all of a sudden this begins to breed resentment. As we talked about, we begin to despise one another. And all of a sudden this spiraling of making us bitter and beginning to see man as this big thing because of their skin color, their eye color, their whatever vision they have, what they look like, what they're wearing. And we elevate them because of that. And all of a sudden God becomes really, really small in everything we do. When we, you know, you've seen this, you go to a convention and everyone's in a, everyone that wants to be on stage is in a suit and tie because they want to be elevated. The other guys, they're just coming up in a polo and hanging out and enjoying fellowship. And all of a sudden you begin to see this because of a popularity contest, because we look the picture, we act the picture and we're wanting ourselves to be elevated. Exactly. You know, this new woke gospel is, is, is not another version of the biblical gospel, but it's actually a false gospel altogether. All believers should work towards things like social harmony, true justice, improved human relations and so on and so forth. But this should be done God's way. Otherwise it will be just another failed utopian social experiment with all the negative outcomes that flow from that. Shran is to be praised for bringing us back to where we always should be back to God and his word. I'm not relying on trendy lefty social theories and ideologies that always fail and cause more, more harm than good. And look, we, we should fight against racism. We should fight against all of those things, but those should not be the center of our message. They not, they should not be what the church is all about. It's something that we do is we fight against injustice and we fight against racism, but it should not become our identity. You know, and that, that takes away from Jesus. And that's all we're saying is this, this culture that we live in has taken these things to extreme. And we've created whole churches around it, whole movements around it. People's identities have all been about it. People can get degrees in college on this stuff. And it's all they talk about. And, you know, for what I'm seeing in America is most people, most people don't want this. They reject this every chance they get and as it should be. But the, you know, the world keeps pushing it. And if they keep pushing it, our kids are going to come up and, you know, what one generation tolerates, the next generation accepts. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a great thing to realign ourselves with what the Bible says, bringing ourselves back to scripture and asking ourselves, maybe I have been seeing people through the wrong lens. I've been viewing people in this subservient view of the woke culture of saying, you know, a skin color or a status of someone is going to elevate them. When in reality, every single soul matters. Christ said, preach Christ above all. Preach Christ to all men, children, no matter their skin color. We go back to Revelation chapter 7. And it says in Revelation chapter 7, salvation belongs to God who sits on the throne with a lamb. And all that are standing around, clothed in robes, will wave their palm branches and their hands clout, singing with a loud voice. And it says that a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and all peoples and all languages, standing before the throne of God. Man, that's the picture that we should get to, is I'm going to preach Christ to all that will hear. And I'm going to let Christ get the increase. I'm going to let Christ get the glory. And however he sees fit to build his church, I'm going to let him build it. I'm not going to build it on some man's ideology. I'm not going to build it on some status quo of, I've got to have X amount of this type of people, X amount of this group of people, X amount of this language group of people. No, just let Christ build this church and you just preach the gospel. I think when we get back to the simplicity of that, and we get back to a unified mindset, we will see God do some crazy, amazing things in our churches. Amen. Amen. Agreed. All right, Brett, any final thoughts for you as we close up today? You know, we're called not to conform to this world. And there is a push to get churches and pastors to conform to this new way of thinking. And, you know, we need to stand on the foundation of the word of God, stand on the foundation of the gospel, keep Jesus at the center of everything we do. And don't let modern culture, you know, sway us in this direction. And I think that that is what we should do. Absolutely. Man, thank you for listening today. Thank you for giving us the time of your day. We thank you for that. From the bottom of our heart, we wouldn't do this if you didn't listen. And if this has encouraged you, or maybe you didn't agree with something we said, man, reach out to us, give us a comment, give us a direct message, let us entertain a conversation with you. And we're thankful that we have this opportunity, this platform, as we didn't mention at the beginning of the show, but if you would like to support us by purchasing some cigars from our For Freedom Cigar Company, we would greatly appreciate that. And anything that we can do to help you out, we would love to be there for you. Until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name, found that good grace, found that healing, and the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance, found my best friend, found my forgiveness, found my happiness, I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. 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