Video Transcript: Critical Grace Theory Grand Narrative
Henry - Welcome back to the critical grace theory class. And I suppose we should probably step back a little bit and give a little context to the whole thing. First, problem is what is the working definition of critical grace theory. And we understand that for the purpose of this class, critical grace theory is the study of how biblical grace is applied to society and culture, and how it functions in the personal lives of sinful humans redeeming of. That is so good. Did you write that? Yeah. Read it again, slow it down. I think critical Grace theory is the study of how biblical grace is applied to society and culture, and how it functions in the personal lives of sinful humans redeemed for the message of Christianity. Yeah, so that's, you know, like, well, it was a really interesting, over the weekend, one of the major networks on television, had a pastor in California talk about critical race theory and he had no definition. So it really like, Okay, we have to get a clear, what is it? So that if someone asks us, what is it well, so this little lecture is like a little bonus, it's a little bonus lecture again. And if I was also good also to actually step back and talk about what is the grand narrative of Christianity. Why, why this is so important. And then we're going to talk about this book right here a little bit, The Madness of Crowds, which is a book that talks about a lot of these things. So I thought it would probably be good to step back a little bit. Now, one thing though, is we're going to do some quotes here. So you can read some narrative. So we want you to see the words, like we kind of like get the context is good, every word matters. And we will put this PowerPoint in the presentation if you'd like to teach this, so you can share this with others. So the Christian grand narrative was what's that say. So we'll go ahead and read that. The biblical grand narrative begins this way. God, as revealed in the Bible created human beings as image bearers, male and female, in Genesis 2 He told them to be fruitful, and populate the earth. He told them to be the development ministers of the planet. Genesis 1:20, and and God blessed them. And God said unto them, Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over every living thing, that moveth upon the earth. I put the King James Version, I remember, as a child, you know, like those early catechisms, when Christians and that was sort of like, foundation.
Steve - And, you know, it's been around a long time that has been the grand narrative of how we got here, what's going on? So we're going back to that.
Henry - well, one time I think is interesting, the Hebrew word of Have dominion, all that is to be like to steward the deacon, we talk a lot about at Christian Leaders Alliance about we are deacons, ministers of the New Covenant. But the first ministers were Adam and Eve as they were ministers of the planet, to develop on the planet. Pretty amazing and cool.
Steve - Okay, God gave humans the freedom to either align themselves with God or not. They could eat of two trees one meant an alignment with God, and the other meant, they would go their own way.
Henry - Genesis 2:16-17, the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Again, that grand language, from a grand narrative that was in the King James Version, the 17th century or 16th, and beautiful.
Steve - The narrative continues, the biblical grand narrative depicts that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were tempted by a rebellious fallen angel, Satan, through the form of a serpent. He said, you will not surely die, but you will be like God, knowing good and evil, Adam and Eve went that way. That is the default setting for human society even today.
Henry - That is interesting in the fallen, sinful default setting.
Steve - And, you know, I think this grand narrative is something we sense, Right. Something good. But something's wrong. Right? I mean, I think that's, that's the struggle people, even people that don't believe in this grand narrative. Like movies, I see movies, following this narrative all the time, that the story starts out with some kind of hopeful something, right? And then it all goes sour,
Henry - the inciting incident.
Steve - And then the rest of the movie is what do we do about that? Right? Okay, as the narrative of the Bible unfolds through the pages of the Old Testament, into the New Testament, Christians believe that God sent his son Jesus Christ to restore the broken relationship with God. Jesus paid for our sins, and through His resurrection gives us new life. Now we are taught. Now, we are taught to, to live live new lives. The broken relationship with humanity is restored, and God has given us the Holy Spirit, we are free to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, we are called to still be stewards of our planet, while we share the gospel of restoration and salvation.
Henry - So as powerful narrative is like Jesus Christ, he came on Easter or on Christmas incarnation, God with us. Died on the cross, Good Friday, rose again from the dead. On Pentecost pours out His Holy Spirit. And essentially, it's all about the reclamation project. That is the Christian grand narrative, right?
Steve - So good, problem. How do we solve the problem? And that's every story. Every story has been copying that grand narrative, right?
Henry - So in The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray, who himself is an atheist. And a gay atheist. Go figure I mean, I wouldn't say that this is a person that aligns themselves with our grand narrative, right, however, points out a few things that we sort of connect here. Is the Christian under the grand narrative of Christianity have something to say, in this age of critical theory? So let's ask that question. Douglas Murray, in his book I mentioned manage the crowd says that post modernism killed all the grand narratives, including religion, he pointed out, he points out that people in rich developing nations are looking for something to make them grand.
Steve - The explanations for our existence that used to be used to be provided by religion, went first falling away from the 19th century onwards. Then over the last century, the secular hopes held out by all political ideologies, began to follow in religions wake. In the latter part of the 20th century, we entered the post modern era, an era which defined itself and was defined by it's suspicion towards all grand narratives including religion, Christianity, however, as all school children learn, nature abhors a vacuum, and into the postmodern vacuum, new ideas began to creep, with the intention of providing explanations and meanings of their own.
Henry - I think we should probably talk a little bit about that. So first of all, what's a vacuum?
Steve - Vacuum is when you take the air out of something like a bottle, and you take the air out and now reverse pressure and something wants to fill it. Right? Because it's, it wants to reinflate. And
Henry - okay. So he's saying that post modernism has picked apart all of the grand narratives. In fact, here's an example like, like, there used to be patriotism, right? That's a narrative, a grand narrative. But there's others as well. Like, like, the traditional institutional, marriage right, via grand narrative, family, or family or business and how we do everything has a narrative, historically, associated with it.
Steve - But the biggest narratives are, how did we get here? Why are we here? Where's it all going? And who are we? Who are we? What's our role? What's our future? Right? All those things have been obliterated. But what he's saying is, yeah, you can destroy it. It's easy to tear things down. But then something wants to take place.
Henry - So people in Western democracies today, to not simply remain the first people to record to absolutely have no explanation of what we are doing here and no story to give life purpose. Whatever else they lacked, the grand narrative of the past at least gave life meaning. The question of what exactly we are meant to do now, other than get rich, where we can and have whatever fun is on offer was going to have to be answered by something. So he goes on to say, a new religion,
Steve - a new religion, the purpose unknowing, in some people deliberate in others, is to embed a new metaphysics into our societies, a new religion, if you will.
Henry - And I find it interesting. Dr. Roy Clouser talks about in our philosophy program talks about but often that, that there is a religious motivation, with every single single system, without fail.
Steve - right. So even an atheistic system that destroys the religious system now becomes a new religion. Like you can't, like there's nothing neutral, you can just get rid of religion know right anew one will take its place. Yeah.
Henry - So it's interesting if you there's gonna be a new religion. Let's use the metaphor of Trinity because in Christianity, we have Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Murray actually talks about the Trinity. So even though he's not a Christian anymore, uses our metaphor or our identity of God as a metaphor, and says. This is what he says,
Steve - the new Trinity social justice is one part of the Trinity make everything a social justice, concern, who can be against social justice. identity group politics, segment groups into critical conflict theory and pit them off against each other. And then intersectionality instead of building up for the Holy Spirit does and Christianity destructively destroy historical structure and systems to develop a Marxist utopia? With a new twist?
Henry - Looking at social justice, today's social justice one, it's further because it sounds and is in some versions is attractive, even the term itself is set up to be anti oppositional? You're opposed to social justice? What do you want social injustice? You know, you read through this book, what did you make of that? Comment? Are you against social justice?
Steve - the new religion, word sort of exploring here. They present themselves in terms that you look foolish, when you argue it against. You picks up
something like social justice, and then you stick all your new religion into it right? Now, it's like in you first have to argue against apple pie, right? Finally get their point. But inside the apple pie is razor blades. And it's hard to get to that. Well, it's very, you know, it's so like, develop, right? I mean, that's what he did with Adam and Eve. He hides it, he makes it subtle. Oh, you can be like God, when you were talking about this, this isn't a bad thing. And he's very subtle, painting a new picture, that, that if we're not careful, we can easily get taken.
Henry - see historically, in Christianity, this occurred in the past, they call it social gospel, social justice, where within the Bible was redefined by social issues, and the gospel of grace, of salvation, of new life of eternal life was
replaced for doing good, it was a good thing, feed the hungry. But if you make Christianity only about being hungry, you gutted out of Christianity it's essence. So again, it was hard to be critical of something that is helpful Are you against bringing water wells or feeding the hungry but but it reduced them all. squeezed? The whole it was a partial gospel, right elements of truth, not the whole truth.
Steve - Then we have the second part of the Trinity, the Incarnation, identity politics. Identity Politics, meanwhile, has become the place where social justice finds it's causes it atomizes society into different interest groups according to sex or gender, race, sexual preference, and more. It assumed that such characteristics are the main or only relevant attributes of their old
Henry - So, how do you? What do you take that to mean?
Steve - Well, everything has become identity politics, not what's best for the whole society, right? And not, you know, your family or being part of a group like the church is reduced to these. What's your gender, like gender is important race is important, right? Wealthy or not wealthy is what's important. And all the things that used to make, you know, tell us who we are, you know, like, we're good friends. Because we grew up from a culture, religious culture, we have some connection to Dutch culture. But you won't even talk about that today. No, it's like that.
Henry - generation ago, you can turn around, if you ain't Dutch you ain't much. Thought that was stupid. We didn't really mean that, right? But even saying that today would be like, What are you saying you're better than us? So we're gonna be talking about critical race theory and critical grace theory in comparison. And
coming up, you're gonna see an interview with a leader from Rwanda, which their country really focused on the racial divides in 2000, 1994. And, in we'll see how some of this theory plays itself out when you take God out, and how he
wants the best for society, and you elevate race as the only important thing in a broad in Rwanda, according to this leader, genocide of a million people in three months.
Steve - A lot is at stake. Okay. Third one is intersectionality.
Henry - The least attractive sounding of this Trinity is the concept of intersectionality. This is the invitation to spend the rest of our lives attempting to work out each and every identity and vulnerability claims in ourselves and others and then organize along whatever system of justice emerges from the perpetually moving hierarchy, which we uncover. It is a system that's just not workable, but demanding, making demands that are impossible toward ends that are unachievable. But today intersectionality has broken out from the Social Science departments of liberal arts colleges, from which it originated, it is now taken seriously by generation of young people. And as we shall see, have become embedded via employment law, specifically through commitment to diversity in all major corporations and governments.
Steve - So I remember, I remember reading about this, in this book, and part of the problem he saw was, you know, there's race, there's gender, there's wealth, there's disabilities, there's every all these different things that make you marginalized, and vulnerable to others who take advantage of you. Right? But how do you rank them? Right? How do you, let's say, you know, does does a person's color of their skin a stronger problem than their gender? Or, you know, if you're missing limb, does that put you in what part? Where do you fit when? Because all these different groups are now vying for attention or for justice. Right? But how do you get justice when you have one problem versus another problem and how do you rank these problems because there's so many things that the you know,
Henry - the fallen sinful humanity and creation groans Christian narrative would say, The author brings out, these things are just really coming out the last 35 years. So they're all new. So we're forcing solutions in the things that have developed over centuries and centuries. And now all of a sudden we are trying to fix something in his book he's talking like for instance with transgender problems. So if you're in the you see this in the news a lot recently, where you could be born call it cisgender, a female and you're working your whole life to run a track meet, this just came up in Connecticut somewhere and then then all of a sudden, the rights of a trans woman who was born cis male and then because of identity, believe that he is now she. This gets complicated. And that now, there's a track meet. And now a genetic male body in a female identity wins
the race and abo obliviates or destroys female sports in the state. Right? Now there's an example where you're saying two
Steve - the person they got beat also had a handicap. So why does one person's particular place where they're being discriminated against? How does that affect someone else's who is also being dissed? You know, redheads worldwide are discriminated against I was born a redhead and then you know, so now you have that versus something else and then you have short people or tall people. On and on and on. how do you right all these wrongs? Because one is one more how can you be against social justice. David, or his point was, but how do you right some of these because you don't even know which one's the worst thing? You know, when you're comparing two things, right?
Henry - And in ministry, these things are going to come up more and more and more. So syncretism. The danger of syncretism for ministry. Okay, so first of all even talk about it. Let's talk about syncretism. So how do you see syncretism?
Steve – Well syncretism was, in some ways, how the Gospels spread initially, it it spread to other countries, you know, way back in the third, fourth century, it would go to a new I was in the Philippines for a year, and the Philippines had a tribal culture, animalism. And, and then when the Catholic Church came in, they just all they did is replace the coconut God, let's say and put one of the saints on the right. And now the people are doing the exact same dances. But instead of the coconut god
Henry - Christianity is trying to many in Christianity are accommodating the gospel narrative
Steve - and then hoping that over time, more and more pieces of Christianity will replace the old system right? Now we have Christianity. And then the danger of syncretism is to accommodate the culture, we start doing things and then soon we get a half and a half thing,
Henry - right So we marginalize the gospel or worse, present another gospel, it does not have the power to redeem the world. II Corinthians 10:4-5, the weapons we fight are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish every argument, every pretension that sets us up against the knowledge of God, we take half of every thought and make it obedient to Christ. That sounds more like the narrative of Christianity brings transformation to the world. We're not trying to position Christianity at a place that's palatable to really a secular, postmodern worldview. So that's probably good. You see all this? One thing I want you all to know, and
we feel this way. We get the brokenness of sin, that we understand that it is frustrating. Is it sad to have disabilities or to see yourself not as others see you. Or, you know, sometimes Christianity can be positioned by some assaying like, do you care about someone if they feel transgender in their identity? Do you care about someone who is feel experienced same sex, you care about? The issue of race, and the gospel cares about it all? And the gospel is transforming. And the gospel also gets, that there's a brokenness. How do you feel about the brokenness piece that the gospel sees that?
Steve - Well, the Gospel can accommodate all this brokenness in our culture, and we don't have to reinvent another religion to do it. Now, historically, sometimes, individual Christians are sometimes whole groups of Christians can use the power of the church and marginalized people and all those things. Again, it's the brokenness of sin. Right. So the reason that some of these new systems take hold, is because there is sin and there is, you know, churches are imperfect pastors are imperfect people's interpretation of the Bible. Sometimes they're imperfect. But let's not throw out Christianity and reinvent Christianity because people still have sin, right. That's the whole point of Christianity is everyone's a sinner and in need of a Savior. We can't let go that needing a savior part.
Henry - Right. In fact, I'm happy that the Bible doesn't take the need of the Savior out of the Old Testament. The story of David in his fall with Bathsheba and his family, the New Testament. Peter denied Jesus three times. I mean, they could have taken that out but they left that in there. So the Bibles gives an honest, transparent, understanding that very broken people need a wonderful and powerful Savior who died for their sins. We don't need to have a new gospel to re explain things and then pick the Bible apart because the Bible is transparent about some of the weaknesses of humanity. Anyway, well, folks is probably should get on with the class now and really dig into grace, the critical grace theory. Hang on cause here we go.