Seeing as many Christians are aware of the ethically suspect, if not entirely corrupt, process of vaccine development, and are aware of the serious side-effects of the gene-therapies that are now being rebranded as vaccines, there is a growing tide of individuals who feel the need to tell us that we are “not loving our neighbors” if we don’t get vaccinated. Visit social media and you can see them saying “I thought you were a Christian. Aren’t you supposed to love your neighbor?” Listen to the talking heads on television and online media outlets and you can hear them confidently asserting that “Jesus would have gotten the jab,” and so all Christians should get the jab in order to “love your neighbor like Jesus did.”

But what we are not seeing so much of is a biblical answer to the question posed by the singer Haddaway in 1993 –

What is love?

Instead, those who are “encouraging” us to get vaccinated assume that we share their definition of love and, therefore, should feel guilty for not acting in accordance with their definition of love. And, sadly, for many that is actually the case. Upon hearing that Christians who will not get vaccinated don’t love their neighbors, many professing Christians will feel guilty and get vaccinated against their convictions. This kind of manipulation is occurring on a daily basis and warrants a better response that is biblical and to the point. I hope to present that in this short article.

Defining Love

The American Heritage Dictionary online defines love as follows –

A strong feeling of affection and concern toward another person, as that arising from kinship or close friendship.

[…]

A strong feeling of affection and concern for another person accompanied by sexual attraction.

Similarly, Webster defines love in the following manner –

…strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties

…attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers

…affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests

What we see in these definitions, which I think are representative of how most people think about love, is that love is an affection – i.e. a favorable and tender disposition toward some person or thing – that arises from kinship or some other kind of intimate relationship we have with others. This understanding of love is problematic for a host of reasons. Let’s look at why it is problematic, and then look at what the Scriptures have to say.

In the first place, defining love as an affection (i.e. a favorable and tender disposition toward some person or thing) means that actions taken toward another person that are not favorable or tender are not loving. Yet our own proclamations of love for people show us that this is not the case. Leaving aside the question of who gets to define what is or is not “favorable” to the object of one’s love, we simply point out that those whom we love are often those with whom we tend to lack tenderness in certain situations. For instance, the father who loves his daughter will reprimand her harshly for using drugs, hanging out with the wrong crowd, disrespecting her mother, etc. He will also “tell her like it is,” knowing that it will drive a wedge between the two of them. Is his love suspended for his daughter when he keeps her from destroying her life with drugs, for instance, because he speaks harshly to her? We recognize that the father’s love is what fuels his response. His response is an instance of love, and it lacks the aforementioned tenderness and favorableness, from his daughter’s perspective that is, that is supposedly definitive of love.

The examples here can be multiplied –

• A sister who does not approve of her brother’s decision to divorce his wife and, therefore, refuses to give him emotional and financial support in his endeavors to split up his marriage.

• A church that disciplines a member who continues in flagrant and unrepentant sin.

• A parent who cuts off financial support for his children so that they can learn how to fend for themselves in the world.

• God taking the life of David’s child born of adultery.

• Christ calling Peter Satan.

The harshness in these examples is not evidence of the absence of love but, in fact, the proof of its central presence in the relationships described. What this means is that affection, as described above, is not essential to love. One can love another person by doing what is, according to that person, unfavorable and harsh. Our popular understanding of love, then, is wrong given our own understanding of our behaviors toward those whom we claim to love.

Secondly, because love is not an affection it cannot “arise from” some relationship we have with another person. Our relationship with another person may lead to us having positive/warm feelings for that person, but that isn’t the same thing as love. Our relationship with another person may lead to us acting tenderly toward that person, but that isn’t the same thing as love. We can interact tenderly with strangers we’ve never before met. We can also interact tenderly with people whom we hate. We can act favorably toward another person as a means of retribution, allowing that person to entertain delusions and engage in all kinds of self-destructive behavior, simply because we want him to suffer. Tenderness and favorableness cannot, therefore, be definitive of love.

So why do most people think love is a favorable and tender disposition toward another person? Simply put – they confuse the feelings they have while expressing love for another person with love itself. Unlike God, we experience emotional changes, as we are temporal and mutable creatures. We relate to others in time, moreover, experiencing emotional changes as time progresses in those relationships, and those relationships either grow to maturity or disintegrate. Is the building up of some shared life goal something that evokes positive emotions? Do those positive emotions grow as two people grow closer and see one another as reliable, trustworthy, considerate, and so on? Conversely, is the breaking of a covenant between two persons something that evokes negative emotions? Do those negative emotions grow as two people grow father apart and see one another as unreliable, untrustworthy, inconsiderate, and so on?

As creatures with passions – i.e. emotional states correlative to our proximity to perceived goods or evils – every relationship we have with others is marked by emotional changes. But as we saw above, we can be favorable and tender toward those we hate (as an expression of our hatred), just as we can be unfavorable and harsh toward those we love (as an expression of our love). Love, therefore, is not an affection, although it is accompanied by affection in many cases.

Another problem we must recognize is that of the love of God. Given that God does not have “passions” (as defined above), because he is perfect and unchanging, how are we to understand love?

Scripture Defines Love

In Romans 13:8-10, the apostle Paul writes –

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Within this pericope, we are given the definition of love, as well as examples of love in action. Love, he says, is the fulfilling of the law. The Law in question here is the law of God, i.e. the Ten Commandments, which include the first table (i.e. those commandments immediately pertaining to our relationship with God) as well as the second table (i.e. those commandments immediately pertaining to our relationship with other people). Actions which are loving are those which do no harm to our neighbor, including refraining from adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting.

But that isn’t everything. Paul adds this small clause “and any other commandment,” thereby implying that it is not merely our adherence to the second table of the law that constitutes love for our neighbor, but our adherence to the first table as well. To love one’s neighbor is to walk in accordance with God’s Law as it pertains to our relationship with him and with our fellow human. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Consequently, any act of love toward one’s neighbor that results in our disobedience to the first table of the law is not an act of love at all. Likewise, any act of love toward God that results in our disobedience to the second table of the law is not an act of love at all.

Consider Christ’s words in Mark 7:9-13 –

And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

Note here what Jesus is criticizing – it is the Pharisees’ attempt to pit obedience to God (in giving sacrificially to him) against obedience to God (in honoring one’s father and mother). What motivated these hypocrites was not love for God but sin, specifically greed, and that is evidenced by the result their supposed love for God produced – the Word of God was nullified, rendered incoherent, self-contradictory. By pitting obedience to the first table against obedience to the second table, the Pharisees had not done what is commanded by either table of the law.

Our Current Context

Given that love is not an emotion/affect but the fulfillment of God’s Law, are appeals to our duty to love our neighbor and “just get the shot” sound? In short, no. When we are told by others “if you really loved your neighbors you would get the jab!” we are being guilt tripped. This kind of manipulation is particularly nasty, seeing as it explicitly states that you don’t love your neighbor and, therefore, necessarily implies that you also don’t love God. It is important to know how this twofold accusation is false, therefore, in order to not be deceived into supposedly loving God or our neighbor at the expense of either and, consequently, failing to love either.

Let’s look at the argument being made:

If you love your neighbor, you will get the vaccine.
You will not get the vaccine.
Therefore, you do not love your neighbor.

In order for this argument to be sound, at least three things need to be true. Firstly, it must be the case that the vaccine will not harm me. Secondly, it must be the case that the vaccine will do my neighbor no harm. Thirdly, it must be the case that my decision to get vaccinated is not due to me having been manipulated, deceived, guilt-tripped, or coerced.

These three situations must be true in order for this syllogism to be sound. For in the first case, if I knowingly get vaccinated with a drug that will render me unable to fulfill the vocations which God has given me, then I am willingly abdicating my divinely ordained responsibilities (e.g. being a husband, father, worker, teacher, etc). Willingly getting vaccinated, in this instance, would not be an act of love toward God or my neighbor because it would render me incapable of worshiping God as he has commanded by making my body incapable of doing what is necessary to ensure no harm comes to my neighbor. In a word, if getting vaccinated renders me incapable of doing what is necessary to ensure no harm comes to my neighbor, then it is not an act of love toward God or my neighbor.

In the second case, if getting vaccinated does harm to my neighbor then it is an act that is loving toward neither God nor my neighbor. Physical harm is not the only harm that one can do to his neighbor, so even if we assume that the vaccine will not physically harm me or anyone else, there is still the danger of harming my neighbor socially. If getting vaccinated entails being publicly praised and retaining my God-given rights, and not getting vaccinated entails being publicly shamed and having my God-given rights suppressed, then getting vaccinated entails socially, and eventually physically, harming my neighbor who will not get vaccinated. For if my neighbor’s God-given rights are suppressed, then he is hindered from loving God by performing the vocations God has given him in order to love God and love his neighbor.

In the third case, if I get vaccinated because I have been manipulated, deceived, guilt-tripped, or coerced, then I have not acted in accordance with the truth. I have placed obedience to men on a par with, or above, obedience to God and, thereby, have engaged in idolatry. The duty to love God with all of my mind requires me to rationally assess my circumstances, and determine what actions I can or cannot take in order to achieve a goal that will directly or indirectly assist me in not doing my neighbor any harm. If I don’t do this, but instead succumb to the pressure to get vaccinated, I am not acting in accordance with the truth, and consequently not loving God or my neighbor.

Conclusion

Even if the vaccine is safe and effective, loving my neighbor requires me to love God, and loving God requires me to act not in submission to governmental mandates, media manipulators, or frantic family members, but in submission to the Lord God of Truth. If I am being told to succumb to bribes, manipulative emotional outbursts, coercive mandates, and so on, then I am being told to commit idolatry by not subjecting myself to the truth. I don’t have to demonstrate that the vaccines are not safe and effective, in other words, in order to justify not getting vaccinated. If I love God and my neighbor, then I will not obey another authority placing himself above God by forcing me to forgo the reasoning process requisite to making a good and God-honoring decision. If I love God and my neighbor, then I will not get vaccinated if that entails the ostracization of my neighbor because he is convinced that the vaccine is not safe and effective.

Those who are arguing that it is unloving – i.e. sinful – to not “get the jab” are engaging in behavior that is unloving toward their neighbors and God. This is not because they are promoting vaccination per se, but because they are twisting Scripture, disregarding truth, placing the desires of men above the revealed will of God, and placing love for God and love for one’s neighbor in contradiction to one another in their attempt to get their neighbors vaccinated. This is evil and must be rejected and refuted. Christians are to obey God rather than men, and God commands us to rationally assess our life situations in order to make decisions that are good for our neighbor’s well-being, and which bring God glory.

Critical Race Theory is anti-Christian, an ideological knot of interconnected falsehoods opposed to the entirety of the Christian faith. However, there is something that it gets right – namely, the importance of systematicity. You see, one of the main operative presuppositions in CRT is that foundational beliefs are, for lack of a better word, foundational. Consequently, a seemingly innocuous belief or behavior (e.g. preferring American food to Chinese food) is viewed as racist because the CRT proponent can, one way or another, connect it to a set of foundational beliefs and/or behaviors deemed to be racist. Consider the example I gave above, that of preferring American food to Chinese food. Here is how one can “prove” that such a preference is racist –

1. One prefers that with which one is most familiar.

2. Regarding cuisine, that with which a non-immigrant American citizen is most familiar with is American food.

3. “American food” is an abstract category under which ethnically-other foods have been subsumed via a process of cultural assimilation.

4. Given that cultures are historically constructed by unique people groups, however, it follows that true “cultural assimilation” cannot take place; rather, what takes place is the theft and modification of cultural elements privileged by the majority culture, and the elimination of those cultural elements the majority culture marginalizes.

5. To prefer “American food,” therefore, is to prefer those foods which have been forcibly removed from their original cultural context, modified so as to lose their culturally distinct otherness, and imperially renamed “American.”

6. Preferring “American food” to Chinese food, in other words, is racist because it is, in fact, an implicit agreement with the racist acts of genocide, conquest, de-personing, whitewashing, and so on.

The argument does not have to be sound. Rather, it has to sound as if it has established a link between the foundational beliefs and/or practices and the innocuous belief and/or practice in question. An attentive person will not give this kind of shoddy thinking a pass; however, those who are emotionally invested in the subject matter might very well be blinded, by their emotional state, to such atrocious reasoning. Yet the truth is that preferring one food to another is not an inherent form of ethnic partiality (i.e. “racism”), although one could possibly be motivated to not eat a certain ethnic food out of his conscious hatred of a particular ethnic group.

CRT Invites Us to See That It’s Self-Defeating

Ironically, what the CRT proponent gets right about systematicity he fails to appreciate when considering his own use of logic. By using any argument to affirm or deny y of x, one is implicitly affirming that the means whereby truths and falsehoods are knowable and known is absolute and universal, not culturally relative. Even when an argument is atrociously bad, the fact remains that an affirmation or denial that x is y rests upon the absolute distinction between x and ¬x. x has properties by which it is knowable and known; either y is one of those properties or it is not. In CRT, then, there is a glaring contradiction in play that obliterates it before it can get off the ground. Simply put:

If racism is inextricably woven into the very fabric of all social institutions and their attendant beliefs and practices, then the very act of affirming or denying that x is racist is in itself a racist action.

One can only “uncover implicit racism,” then, by engaging in an overtly racist action that only can produce racist conclusions. Every intellectual punch and kick against “systemic racism,” in other words, is itself a product of systemic racism and only succeeds in perpetuating it.

Christians Need Systematics

CRT is a self-destructive ideology, but it gets one thing right – it’s emphasis on systematicity. As the church faces infiltrators who claim to be using CRT as an analytical tool, let us take that point to heart. Let us relentlessly pluck and pull at the corrupt foundational beliefs and practices of CRT that set it at odds with itself and all of God’s revealed truth. Let us not lose sight of what the CRT proponents do not lose sight of – the need to attack systems of thought not merely from without, but, more importantly, from within. We must stand our ground, hold firm to the truth, and expose the self-contradictory foundations of CRT. This will require us to move past arguments that are intentionally geared toward raising emotions by focusing in on a particular current event, in an attempt to draw our attention away from the logically and morally corrupt foundational beliefs implied by CRT proponents’ arguments and criticisms, and away from the truth of Scripture.

We must put the effort in to teaching not merely the “practical” truths of Scripture, but the doctrinal system of Scripture from which those “practical” truths emerge. It is one thing to say that we ought to be gainfully employed; it is quite another to teach that we ought to be gainfully employed because we are the imago dei and, therefore, are rational beings who exercise dominion over creation through the numerous vocations we have had, now have, and will have. Similarly, it is one thing to teach that we ought not obey illegal governmental decrees; it is quite another to teach that all men have been given the right and duty of bearing the sword of judgment, thereby retaining the right and duty to resist and depose tyrannical rulers who have, by their tyranny, ceased to function as governing authorities.

CRT proponents are right to think that it is necessary to attack the foundations of a system if one desires to dismantle/destroy that system. However, they are wrong to think that they will ever succeed in doing so, given their ability to reason in any capacity destroys their core beliefs, as well as the beliefs which emerge from those core beliefs. Let us not preoccupy ourselves with cutting CRT’s branches, and thereby allowing it to further spread its roots. Rather, let us openly uproot CRT, in the sight of all, and encourage others to watch as that corrupt tree shrivels and dies.

[This article originally appeared on Invospec.org]

The Primary Focus of Black Lives Matter

Whereas CRT (Critical Race Theory) and SJ (Social Justice) are somewhat removed from one’s everyday experience as they are more “abstract” and less personal, Black Lives Matter is concrete, with its leaders, members, and supporters involved in flesh and blood socio-political activism. Repudiations of Black Lives Matter – as a movement as well as a slogan – are often met with negative knee-jerk responses from the movement’s professedly Christian supporters. Christian supporters usually think that BLM is motivated by a desire to right racially motivated social, judicial, and political wrongs. And if that were truly the case, there would be at least a prima facie justification for supporting the movement. Racism – by which I mean the hatred of anyone who is judged as not belonging to one’s phenotypically distinct ethnic group, the flip-side of which is the showing of partiality to those who are judged as belonging to one’s phenotypically distinct ethnic group – is wicked. We ought to preach that hatred is murder. We ought to preach that God condemns partiality. We ought to remind ourselves daily that all men – even those against whom we have what we perceive to be justifiable grievances – bear the imago dei and, therefore, are to be shown respect and honor as such.

However, this is not what Black Lives Matter is primarily endorsing. Rather, BLM is a spiritual movement that is antagonistic toward the truths of the Christian faith. As Hebah H. Farrag and Ann Gleig note in their article “Despite what conservatives think, Black Lives Matter is an inherently spiritual movement” –

Since its inception, BLM organizers have expressed their founding spirit of love through an emphasis on spiritual healing, principles, and practices in their racial justice work.

BLM leaders, such as co-founder Patrisse Cullors, are deeply committed to incorporating spiritual leadership. Cullors grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and later became ordained in Ifà, a west African Yoruba religion. Drawing on Native American, Buddhist and mindfulness traditions, her syncretic spiritual practice is fundamental to her work. As Cullors explained to us, “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”1

The leaders of BLM

…see themselves as inheritors of the spiritual duty to fight for racial justice, following in the footsteps of freedom fighters like abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

BLM leaders often invoke the names of abolitionist ancestors in a ceremony used at the beginning of protests. In fact, protests often contain many spiritual purification, protection and healing practices including the burning of sage, the practice of wearing white and the creation of sacred sites and altars at locations of mourning.2

Thus, while some Christians are led to think that marching, chanting, and singing with BLM protesters are merely political activities, the organization does not agree. The organization views participation in its various forms of activism as participation in spiritual practices.

Some have argued that the movement’s spiritual focus takes a backseat to its primary socio-political focus. However, Farrag elsewhere recounts that BLM’s leaders have stated that it is “first and foremost a spiritual movement.” She writes –

On June 2, 2020, Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles Chapter sponsored an action in front of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house…The action, what many would call a protest, began like a religious ceremony. Melina Abdullah…co-founder of BLM-LA, opened the event explaining that while the movement is a social justice movement, it is first and foremost a spiritual movement.

She led the group in a ritual: the reciting of names of those taken by state violence before their time—ancestors now being called back to animate their own justice:

“George Floyd. Asé. Philandro Castille. Asé. Andrew Joseph. Asé. Michael Brown. Asé. Erika Garner. Asé. Harriet Tubman. Asé. Malcom X. Asé. Martin Luther King. Asé.”

As each name is recited, Dr. Abdullah poured libations on the ground as the group of over 100 chanted “Asé,” a Yoruba term often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa, in return. This ritual, Dr. Abdullah explained, is a form of worship.3

By the admission of its own leaders, BLM is “first and foremost” a “spiritual movement” engaging in worship rituals that take the form of political activism.

BLM vs. “Institutional” Christianity

What is more, according to its leaders, BLM’s

…approach necessitates that communities work to dismantle systems of oppression not only in the state, but also between communities, within communities, in families, in gender relations, in religious practice, and ultimately, within oneself.4

To be opposed to “white supremacy,” in other words, is necessarily to also be actively opposed to, and actively seeking to dismantle, systems of oppression in “religious practices.”

Lest one think that BLM is simply opposed to “religious practices” that are legitimately sinful (e.g. hating one’s neighbor under false pretenses of piety), we must note that it is not merely the wicked actions of Christians in the past that are identified as constituting a “system of oppression” but “institutional Christianity” in general. Farrag and Gleig tell us that –

The history of white supremacy, often enacted within institutional Christianity, has often vilified and criminalized Indigenous and African beliefs...5

Note how this ties together “White supremacy” and religious exclusivism, thereby indirectly indicting biblical Christianity – in which there is only one God (namely, the Trinity) and one way of salvation and communion with God (namely, the perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God) – as a tool of systemic oppression that must be dismantled.

Given that the postmodernist wholesale rejection of “metanarratives” is embraced by the founders of BLM, it follows that “institutional Christianity” – by which we may assume it is meant “orthodox Christianity” – has neither an innate nor bestowed right to deem other religious beliefs and practices as illegitimate, immoral, demonic, and of no benefit to any person. This view reduces the Word of God to a mere cultural production that has no claim to universal applicability. Consequently, Christians who declare that the gods of all the nations are demons,6 and who declare that those who follow their false gods become like them (viz. foolish, deaf, dumb, and blind)7 are viewed as purveyors of “cultural genocide,” illegitimately applying their local “truths” universally.8

Institutional Christianity, BLM founder Patrice Cullors, explains “policed the way [blacks] are allowed to commune with the divine.”9 For instance, whereas Christianity explicitly and overwhelmingly predicates masculine attributes of God, understands man’s role to be that of the head of the household, and explicitly teaches that women are not called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, the Ifa religion places woman at the center of its practices.10 As Oyeronke Olajubu explains –

…[in] the practice of divination among the Yoruba […] female aesthetics feature prominently in all domains of Yoruba religious life. Ifa poetics, symbolism, iconography, and indeed the Odu (the oral texts that constitute the Ifa corpus, which is the wisdom storehouse of the Yoruba and the core of the divination focus) are symbolized as female, often as the essential wives of Ifa.11

Whereas “institutional” Christianity “polices” the roles of women, Ifa gives women numerous prominent religious roles from which to choose.

The Divine Self?

Additionally, whereas the Scriptures teach God and man are ontologically distinct beings,12 and that the desire to be God is the root sin of all sins,13 the Ifa religion teaches that the self is divine. As Wande Abimbola explains –

…the Yoruba religion…is based on what can be described as a worship of nature. We believe that when our divinities, known as Òrìsà, finished their work on earth, they then changed themselves to different forces of nature. […] The earth itself (herself) is a divinity. Human beings are themselves divine through their Ori (soul or unconscious mind) and Èmí (divine breath encased in our hearts), which are directly bestowed on humans from Òlódùmare, our High God.14

Hence, from Oct 2nd – Oct 4th of this year, BLM held “Black Women are Divine” events in which black women were encouraged to “reclaim [their] Divinity in the name of…the countless women [they’ve] lost.”15

BLM is Not Spiritually Neutral

At this point, it should be clear that BLM is not religiously neutral but actively promoting a syncretic form of the Ifa religion that, through political activism, engages in the following practices –

Idolatry
Ancestor worship
Prayers to the dead
Drink libations
Exorcisms16
Healing Ceremonies

All of these behaviors, we must note, are strictly forbidden by God in his Word. As it is written –

Leviticus 19:31 – “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-12 – “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.”

Isaiah 8:19-20 – And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.

God very clearly detests the actions that BLM is engaging in; consequently, he condemns their actions as abominable.

You Shall Not Be Unequally Yoked

Despite all that has been covered in this article, there will be some who argue that it is possible to work with BLM without engaging in their sins. However, what does the Scripture say?

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 – Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them
and walk among them, and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”

 Ephesians 5:11 – Take no part in the unfruitful works of     darkness, but instead expose them.

1 Timothy 5:22 – Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure.

Revelation 18:4 – Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues…”

God’s Word is by no means unclear on this matter – Christians are forbidden from engaging in the spiritual rituals practiced by BLM through political activism. Ironically, however, it is BLM, and not contemporary Christian supporters of BLM, that correctly notes its political activism allies are not neutral participants in a secular demand for a non-spiritual end. One cannot serve two masters – Either one is with Christ and, therefore, against the paganism of BLM (expressed through its slogan chanting, name chanting, marching, singing, protesting, etc); or one is with BLM and against Christ.

There is no other option.

---

1 https://www.mic.com/p/despite-what-conservatives-think-black-lives-matter-is-inherently-spiritual-movement-33913424, Accessed Oct 10, 2020. (emphasis added)
2 ibid. (emphasis added)
3 “The Fight for Black Lives is a Spiritual Movement,” Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, June 9, 2020, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/the-fight-for-black-lives-is-a-spiritual-movement. (emphasis added)
4 ibid. (emphasis added)
5 Despite What Conservatives Think. (emphasis added)
6 cf. Ps 96:5.
7 cf. Ps 115:4-8, 135:16-18; Rom 1:18-23.
8 For more on this subject, see Turpin, Katherine. “Christian Education, White Supremacy, and Humility in Formational Agendas,” in Religious Education, Vol.112, No. 4 (2017), 407-417.
9 ibid.
10 This notwithstanding, Yoruba culture is patriarchal. Women are considered to be less than men not merely with respect to physical strength but moral capacities as well. For more on this, see Familusi, O.O. “African Culture and the Status of Women: The Yoruba Example,” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 2012), 299-313.
11 “Seeing through a Woman's Eye: Yoruba Religious Tradition and Gender Relations,” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 45. (emphasis added)
12 cf. Gen 1:26-27 & 2:7; Num 23:19; Job 33:12b; Pss 90, et al.
13 cf. 2 Pet 2:4 & Jude 6; Eze 28:11-19 & Isa 14:4b-21; Gen 3:4-7.
14 “Religion, World Order, and Peace: An Indigenous African Perspective,” in CrossCurrents (September 2010), 308-309. (emphasis added)
15 https://blacklivesmatter.com/black-women-are-divine.
16 BLM leaders believe that through their political activities they can “exorcise” evil from various geographical locations. Elise M. Edwards, in her paper “’Let’s Imagine Something Different’: Spiritual Principles in Contemporary African American Justice Movements and Their Implications for the Built Movement,” writes –

Cullors…is inspired by indigenous spiritualities and Ifà…She explains that the spirituality of many Black Lives Matter activists is not based in traditional or formalized religious communities. Many of the activists felt rejected or even “pushed out” of churches because of their queer identities or challenges to patriarchy. Nevertheless, they continue to practice their spirituality through “healing justice work,” working to exorcise their communities of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[Religions (2017), 8, 256. (emphasis added)]

§ III. Valid Genetic Reasoning According to Scripture

Having elaborated on why the genetic fallacy, why it is a fallacy, and why CRT is entirely dependent on it, we now turn to answer the implied claim of CRT proponents that our genetic reasoning is fallacious. Given that Scripture contains no errors, logical or otherwise, we will be appealing to the it to defend genetic reasoning in general, and our own genetic reasoning in particular. For if our method of reasoning is not condoned explicitly or implicitly Scripture, then we must abandon it. It will be demonstrated that our reasoning is not only neither explicitly nor implicitly condemned by Scripture but required by Christians in our analysis of ideas that are purportedly derived from, supportive of, or in harmony with the teaching of Scripture.

Prior to Foucault, Freud, and Nietzsche, the enemies of Christ utilized the genetic fallacy in order to steer people away from the Lord Jesus. For example, in John 7:45-52 we see the fallacy employed by the Jewish leaders. There we read the following –

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

Whereas the Law of God does not judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning about what he does, the Jewish leaders rejected the claims of and about Christ for two reasons. Firstly, they asserted that the laity did not “know the law” (i.e. they were not rabinically trained) and, therefore, were not competent to assess whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. Ironically, through their fallacious argumentation the Jewish leaders also imply that their criticisms of Christ are correct because they originated with the so-called “learned” men of Israel. As a further point of dramatic irony, the reader by this point in John’s Gospel knows that Nicodemus, one of the elite teachers of Israel trained to “know the law” was woefully ignorant about Christ’s person and work, the doctrine of regeneration in the Old Testament, and the typology of the Old Testament.1 Secondly, the Jewish leaders asserted that Jesus could not be the Christ because “no prophet arises from Galilee.” What is being communicated is not merley that no prophet arises from Galilee geographically, another point which is demonstrably false,2 but what is also implied is that the Lord’s teaching about himself is not to be trusted because it originated with a man whose place of origin, i.e. Galilee, was low on the social totem pole.3

The Jewish leaders of Christ’s day did not differ much in this regard to Nietzsche, for whom the truth of Christianity was refuted by a genealogical analysis – or so he believed – of the origin of its central moral and metaphysical doctrines. What they fail to demonstrate is that the social standing of the people, and of the Lord Jesus as well, provides an unreliable foundation for the claims made about and by him. Simply being a layperson without formal rabbinical training does not render the theological claims one makes false. Likewise, simply being a person who was born into a family of a lower social stature does not render the theological claims one makes false. However, like their modern successors – Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and the gamut of CRT theorists, scholars, apologists, and activists – the Jewish leaders irrationally argued that the truth claims they were being presented with were false due to their origin among certain classes of people in society.

Genetic reasoning of the kind engaged in by the Jewish leaders is fallacious, but there is a kind of genetic reasoning exemplified in the thinking of Christ that is not. John 8:39-47 demonstrates how Christ utilized genetic reasoning in his refutation of the false sons of Abraham. There we read –

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father — even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

The Lord’s argumentation can be expressed as follows –

1. All offspring bear their father’s image. 

2. You are offspring.

3. Therefore, you bear your father’s image.

4. All of Abraham’s offspring do the works of Abraham. 

5. You do not do the works of Abraham. 

6. Therefore, you are not Abraham’s offspring. 

7. All of God’s spiritual offspring, love Me [i.e. Christ]. 

8. You do not love me. 

9. Therefore, you are not God’s spiritual offspring. 

10. All of God’s spiritual offspring hear God’s Word. 

11. You do not hear God’s Word. 

12. Therefore, you are not God’s spiritual offspring. 

13. All who are not the spiritual offspring of God are the spiritual offspring of the devil. 

14. You are not the spiritual offspring of God. 

15. Therefore, you are the spiritual offspring of the devil.

The Jewish leaders’ origin, theologically and morally speaking, was important because it undermined all of their claims. Given that their father was the “father of lies” in whom there is no truth, it follows that they, being his image bearers, were also liars in whom there is no truth. Their origin was important, moreover, because it demonstrated a clear link between the devil and the Jewish leaders. They were doing exactly what their father was doing – lying, opposing the truth, opposing God, and seeking to kill the Holy One of Israel.

Thus, our Lord shows us that appealing to one’s origin in the arena of truth is only proper when the origin and one’s ideas share an essential element. The Jews sought to identify their words about Jesus as true, and his words as false, on the basis of their biological connection to Abraham. However, it is one’s spiritual connection to Abraham – as a person of faith in the Gospel, and as one who works righteousness in accordance with one’s faith in the Gospel – that serves as the basis for claiming Abraham as one’s father. More importantly, God’s universal paternity as Creator, as well as his national paternity as the covenant God of the Jews does not entail his spiritual paternity of those who claim he is their father. Rather, it is only those who are like God morally (i.e. righteous after the image of the Son of God) who can claim that he is their father.

Jesus demonstrates that what is actually the case is that the unbelief and anti-Christ thinking and behavior of these Jews is traceable to the devil. Christ’s reasoning is not fallacious, although it is genetic. Jesus argues that sons bear the image of their father, but the Jews bear neither Abraham nor God’s moral/spiritual image.4 Consequently, they are not of God (i.e. not God’s children). Now those who are not of God do not hear/understand/comprehend/believe the words of God, so the claims made against Christ are by rendered false by this direct connection between the essence of the devil as a murderous liar and the spiritual/moral nature his descendants inherited from him.

If origins are appealed to properly, the one making the appeal must show the direct and unbroken transmission of what makes his opponent’s truth claims false. This is precisely what the Jewish leaders could not, and therefore did not, do, but what Christ could, and therefore did, do. And it is what Christians are called to do when considering the claim that Christianity, or one of its essential doctrines, is false. For as Paul the apostle explains in 1st Corinthians 2:14 –

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The “natural person,” as Calvin correctly notes, is “any man that is endowed with nothing more than the faculties of nature,” who are “left in a purely natural condition.”5 Fallen man’s problem with understanding and believing the claims of the Christian faith is his unregenerate condition. Apart from possessing a new nature that desires, seeks after, and submits to the truth, the judgment of fallen men leveled against Christianity – namely that it is false – is inevitable. As John Gill explains in his Exposition of the Old and New Testament –

There must be a natural visive discerning faculty, suited to the object; as there must be a natural visive faculty to see and discern natural things, so there must be a spiritual one, to see, discern, judge, and approve of spiritual things; and which only a spiritual, and not a natural man has.6

Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, in their commentary on this passage, further explain that the unregenerate person is “volitionally prejudiced against [the Christian faith], and rejects it in unbelief.”7Consequently, the unregenerate man’s statements made against the faith, in whole or in part, must be judged to be the fruit of an unregenerate and prejudiced mind. Additionally, the denunciation of essential doctrines (e.g. the deity of Christ, the Trinity, penal substitutionary atonement, etc) and the doctrines necessarily implied by the essentials made by self-identified Christians must be judged in the same manner.

For instance, consider the following fictional scenario –

Person A: You know, it’s scary to think about how young your denomination is, being only about 500 years old. The Roman Catholic Church has been around since the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. 

Person B: So you’re a Roman Catholic? 

Person A: Whether I am or am not a Roman Catholic is irrelevant. Facts are facts. 

Person B: It is not irrelevant. Roman Catholics believe that the teaching of the church is infallible, right? 

Person A: Yes.

Person B: Okay. And they teach that the church was founded upon Peter in Matthew 16, right?

Person A: Yes. But wh –

Person B: And they further teach that Christ promised that the church built upon Peter would not be prevailed against by the powers of hell, correct?

Person A: Yes. But why is any of that relevant?

Person B: It’s relevant because if the Roman church identifies its own teaching as infallible, and that teaching includes the ideas that (a.)the church as it is now is the same church founded by Jesus in Matt 16, and (b.)the gates of hell would not, in any way, prevail against that same church, then it follows that you could not be a Catholic and one who accepts evidence to the contrary. Your essential Roman Catholic beliefs determine what you can or cannot say about the church throughout history. You literally cannot say that the post-New Testament early church was vastly different from the contemporary Roman Catholic church.

A’s belief in the Roman Catholic church’s historical primacy and consistency is not derived from his use of evidence, but is determined by his adherence to Roman Catholic doctrine. If A is a Roman Catholic, he necessarily must assert that the early church’s doctrines are identical to his own. The identity of A, therefore, is not completely irrelevant in our assessment of his truth claims (in the above case, ecclesiastical truth claims).

Seeing as the Roman Catholic believes in a false gospel, he is an unregenerate man. As an unregenerate man, his judgments regarding peripheral doctrines are informed by his his desire to uphold, at all costs, his false gospel as true. Thus, while it may be the case that his judgments regarding peripheral doctrines are supported by arguments utilizing various forms of evidence, such argumentation is not what led him to his conclusions.

§ IV. Conclusion

While genetic reasoning may be utilized fallaciously, it is not the case that all genetic reasoning is fallacious. As we have noted above, genetic reasoning is fallacious when it used to poison the well and, thereby, write off a particular belief with which one does not agree. This is how genetic reasoning was employed by the Jewish leaders during the earthly ministry of Christ, and it is still being used by his enemies today. CRT is built on the genetic fallacy, as it judges ideas and truth claims as true or untrue, good or bad, right or wrong in light of their promulgators’ ethnic, gender, and socio-economic identity.

Non-fallacious genetic reasoning does not only discover and lay bare the origins of a particular truth claim, it demonstrates that there is unbroken link between the truth claim and its origin. When Christ identifies the Jewish leaders as children of the devil he demonstrates that they share essential properties with the devil (e.g. being liars and murderers). What the devil was from the beginning – namely, a liar and a murderer in whom there is no truth – is what his image bearing children are as well. Why did they object to Jesus’ truth claims? Because they were the works that come naturally to children of wrath.

The same holds true in our time. The underlying reason why men reject the faith is because of their identity in Adam. As postlapsarian Adam hid from God,8 so too do his descendants hide from God when he confronts them in their sin.9 As Cain pretended to be ignorant about the righteousness required of him by God, and of his failure to uphold God’s righteousness,10 so too do Cain’s descendants pretend to be ignorant about the truth, and their failure to believe in and uphold God’s truth.11 Simply put: Bad trees bear bad fruit. And it is because bad trees bear bad fruit that we must examine not merely an idea, but also demonstrate the unbroken link between that idea and its source of origin. This is precisely what we have sought to do when warning others about the anti-Christian philosophical foundations of Critical Race Theory.

1 cf. John 3:1-21.

2 The five Galilean prophets in question are Jonah, Nahum, Hosea, Elijah, and Elisha.

3 Some scholars argue that the overall perceptions of Galileans by the Jewish leaders was negative, as they were perceived to be unlearned and illiterate simpletons from the country.

4 Regarding the imago dei broadly considered, it is the case that all men bear the image of God as regards the communicable attributes of personality, intellect, and volition, but because of our death in Adam only believers share in the restored image of God/the image of the Son of God (cf. Col 3:1-10 & Eph 4:17-24).

5 “Calvin’s Commentaries,” Bible Hub, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/calvin/1_corinthians/2.htm, Accessed July 13, 2019.

6 http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/gill/co1002.htm, Accessed July 13, 2019.

7 The First Letter to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010), 135.

8 cf. Gen 3:8-10.

9 cf. Jer 49:7-10; Isa 2:10-11; Matt 25:25; Rev 6:15-17.

10 cf. Gen 4:9.

11 cf. Prov 24:11-12; Mal 1:2, 1:6-7, 2:13-14, 2:17, 3:13-14; Matt 21:23-27.