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.