This is part four of this series entitled, “A Biblical Examination of the Cultural Marxist Movement”. I want to again remind you of two things before we begin:
- In every sermon/session, I have stated how we will have a thesis for this entire series. Our thesis is this, “Cultural Marxism, and all of the ideologies that are associated with it, are both cancerous and incompatible with the Christian faith and message.” We will seek to confirm this thesis by the end of this session.
- The way we will prove this thesis is a very straight-forward approach. As I have said before, “Much like examining a hundred dollar bill for a fake, we will begin each session by going through Scripture and reaffirming what we hold as truth and then the second part of each sermon will consist in ‘holding up’ the teachings of Cultural Marxism with the truths of God’s Word. In the light of God’s Word, the errors will reveal themselves.”
I would like to begin this lesson by reading a portion from the book ‘Valley of Vision’. Page 13, is entitled ‘Man’s Great End’, and it reads,
Lord of all being, there is one thing that deserves my greatest care, that calls forth my ardent desires. That is, that I may answer the great end for which I am made – to glorify thee who hast given me being, and to do all the good I can for my fellow men; verily, life is not worth having if it be not improved for this noble purpose.
Yet, Lord how little is this the thought of mankind! Most men seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others. They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honors, pleasures of this life, as if they supposed that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy.
But, alas, what false delusive dreams are these! And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all our happiness consists in loving thee, and being holy as thou art holy. O may I never fall into the tempers and vanities, the sensuality and folly of the present world! It is a place of inexpressible sorrow, a vast empty nothingness. Time is for a moment, a vapor, and all its enjoyments are empty bubbles, fleeting blasts of wind, from which nothing satisfactory can be derived.
Give me grace always to keep in covenant with thee, and to reject as delusion a great name here or hereafter, together with all sinful pleasures or profits. Help me to know continually that there can be no true happiness, no fulfilling of thy purpose for me, apart from a life lived in and for the Son of thy love.
The Puritan who wrote that was meditating upon the reality of the Lordship of Christ and how this was the very purpose for which we were created and redeemed. As another Puritan, Thomas Watson puts it, “The excellence of a thing is the end for which it was made; as of a star to give light, and of a plant to be fruitful. So, the excellence of a Christian is to answer the end of his creation, which is to hallow God’s name, and live to that God by whom he lives.” The Scriptures affirm what these Puritans were expressing, namely, that one of the primary implications of the Gospel is that Jesus would be Lord over His redeemed people. If you recall in Titus when Paul says, “For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” (Titus 2:11-14) And in the book of Romans, Paul states, “For not one of us lives for himself, and not one of us dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” (Romans 14:7-9) Brothers and sisters in Christ, we were created and redeemed for Jesus. He is ours and we are His. Since Christ is our Lord then all of us belongs to Him. Every emotion, desire, action, activity, goal, passion, or “… whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1st Corinthians 10:31)
I remind you of this truth because in this session we will be discussing two areas in which the Lordship of Christ reigns in the life of the believer: in our ethics and values. Before we get to some of our Christian ethics and values, I believe it would be helpful to give a brief definition and example of these two terms:
- Ethics – a set of, or relating to, moral principles
- Values – the regard that something is held to deserve; or the importance, worth, or usefulness of something (it’s weightiness)
- For example: As Christians, we value human life because humans are made in the image of God. We value the imago Dei in every man and women. And so, we hold as an ethic that the unjust taking of that human life is wrong, like abortion in the womb or Cain slaying his brother in a field. In summary, human life is a value we affirm and the unjust taking of that life is an ethic we also affirm.
As Christians seeking to live under the Lordship of Christ, our life goal ought to be what Spurgeon once declared, “What Jesus loves, we love; what Jesus hates, we hate; what Jesus seeks, see seek; what Jesus shuns, we shun. This is true friendship when there is but one heart in two bodies.” This daily walk of the believer consists of constant renewal of, amongst other things, the ethics and values of our flesh and this world which are then replaced by the values and ethics that are pleasing unto God and found in His Word. These two things are significant because this Cultural Marxist worldview has its own set of ethics and values that are contrary to our own. For the purpose of this message we are only going to examine five Christian ethics/values and compare each to the worldview of Cultural Marxism. This list doesn’t exhaust every specific difference (I actually compiled many more but for the sake of time had to leave some examples out), but it should be sufficient to show the stark contrast between the Christian worldview and that of Cultural Marxism:
As Christians we highly value truth. This isn’t that radical of an idea and it isn’t a value that needs much support, but briefly, I want to remind you of what the Scriptures say regarding truth. The Psalmist declares, “The sum of Your Word is truth, and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.” (Psalm 119:160) And Jesus also made a similar declaration, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth.” (John 17:17) God Himself is the source and standard of all truth, this is why we hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, or that, Scripture is without error. All that God has revealed in His Word is true and so we hold fast to the truth found in God’s Word. We value truth so much that we, “… lay(ing) aside falsehood, speak the truth each one of you with his neighbor.” (Ephesians 4:25) We are told in Proverbs that some of the things which God hates and that are abominations to Him are, “a lying tongue” and “a false witness who utters lies,” (Proverbs 6:17, 19).
What about the Cultural Marxist movement, does it care about truth? The sad reality is that they don’t appear to value truth as much as assumed narratives. Here is a quote from ‘Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice’ which explains the fundamental problem of humans, “In this worldview, evil doesn’t originate in the human heart. There is no doctrine of the fall or human depravity. Rather, evil is sourced outside of man, in society, and specifically in social structures, systems, institutions, laws, and cultural norms that perpetuate inequalities and grant one group power and privileges at the expense of others.” In this worldview, the truth doesn’t matter as much as the whole narrative of oppressor versus the oppressed. This narrative isn’t proven by or validated as truth but is simply something that is assumed from the beginning, as Robin DiAngelo, author of ‘White Fragility’, puts it, “The question isn’t ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’”
One example where this worldview is willing to sacrifice truth upon the altar of ‘the narrative’ is the death of Michael Brown. This incident between officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, resulted in the famous line, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’, it was the catalyst for the BLM movement, and it resulted in the death of Michael Brown. And what exactly happened? According to ‘the narrative’ of Cultural Marxism, Mr. Brown was lynched and was another victim to the systemic racism in our police force. But is that the truth? No, the truth can be found in the evidence, multiple corroborating eyewitness testimonies, ballistic reports, and in-depth investigation. (under the Obama and Eric Holder Department of Justice) The sad reality is that a police officer, who happened to be white, justly defended himself from a violent suspect, who happened to be black, and that the self-defense of the officer resulted in the death of Michael Brown. I, nor anyone else, should applaud the death of this man, but my point for bringing this incident up is to show how this Cultural Marxist movement does not care about the truth, facts, evidence, circumstances, etc. but simply upon promoting a narrative. Rejecting truth is destructive, as David Scott Allen says, “It’s hard to overstate just how destructive all of this is. Truth, and a basic sense of honesty, is a glue that holds societies together. Weaken that bond, and things quickly fall apart. By denying objective truth, and devaluing logic, reason, facts, and evidence, ideological social justice (Cultural Marxism) actively and intentionally weakens the bonds of our society.” If we Christians so value truth, how can we dare accept a worldview that will so twist truth to fit a narrative?
My last point, on the value of truth, relates to what is called standpoint epistemology. I talked about this in the first sermon, so I won’t belabor this point for long, but as Christians, we believe in objective truth. For example, we affirm that God’s Word is inerrant. That is a truth claim, much like when we claim there is one God and Jesus is the Godman, we aren’t suggesting these could be true but that they are, that is an objective truth claim. To simply put it, we believe in objective truth because we have an objective standard, the Word of God. In Cultural Marxism, truth isn’t objective but is subjective. It doesn’t come from a divine standard, the Word of God, but “We gain knowledge of ‘truth’ through victims, who, based on their lived experience of oppression, have greater insight than oppressors.” (Scott David Allen) As Christians, how can we who hold fast to an objective standard of truth join with those who base truth off of subjective opinions?
The next value we hold to is ‘building each other up’. Paul addressed many issues with the Corinthians in his 1st letter to them and one problem they had was that they constantly tore each other down. He instructed them that we are called to edify each other, or build each other up, “What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification [building up].” (1st Corinthians 14:26). Paul also instructed the Ephesians to do the same, “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification [building up] according to the need of the moment …” (Ephesians 4:29) Paul, twice in 2nd Corinthians, instructed them that Christ gave Him authority specifically, “… for building you up and not for destroying you,” (2nd Corinthians 10:8; 13:10) This value makes much sense if you remember what was taught in the session on biblical unity. If we are united into body and we are all one in Christ, then love for Him and for each other should cause us to pursue lovingly build each other up.
But does this Cultural Marxism movement desire edification or building each other up? No, on the contrary they seek to actively ‘tear down’ hierarchies and deconstruct the oppressive system as they stand. In Cultural Marxism, you apply what is called Critical Race Theory as a kind of hound dog to sniff out the racism and bigotry in society for the purpose of overthrowing it with activism. As one of the foremost scholars of this movement explains, “CRT’s hallmark paranoid mind-set, which assumes racism is everywhere, always, just waiting to be found, is extremely unlikely to be helpful or healthy for those who adopt it. Always believing that one will be or is being discriminated against, and trying to find out how, is unlikely to improve the outcome of any situation… The job of the activist is to draw attention to this imbalance – often described as racism or white supremacy – in order to begin dismantling it.” (Dr. James Lindsay) In our culture, you see this as BLM and Antifa running around pulling down every statue, regardless of who the person is or why the statue was erected. In the church, this is seen when the president of the SBC, J.D. Greear publicly tweets to Beth Moore and says, “Thank you, Beth! Hoping that we are entering a new era where we in the complementarian world take all the Word of God seriously – not just the parts about distinction of roles but also the tearing down of all hierarchy & his gracious distribution of gifts to all his children.” I don’t know what Bible Mr. Greear is using, but there isn’t a single portion in all of God’s Word that speaks of ‘tearing down hierarchies’, that rhetoric can only be found in the worldview of Cultural Marxism, where the only problem in our world is oppression and injustice which is ever present. As Christians, who value building up, how can we have any part of a worldview that seeks to deconstruct and dismantle?
The next value is that of redemption. When I speak of redemption, I mean that we value the personal redemption for sinners found in the atoning work of Jesus Christ. If you want a sermon on this specific value, I highly recommend you go to YouTube and search, ‘Sovereign Nations’. This Christian organization recently put together a conference called, “The Great Awokening” in which they are specifically dealing with this Cultural Marxist movement. I recommend you go listen to each of the sessions but specifically, session #6, Darrell B. Harrison, from the Just Thinking Podcast and who is on staff at John MacArthur’s church, gave a message entitled, ‘The Problem is Enmity, Not Ethnicity’. My point for bringing him up is that the point of his message is that the Scriptures instruct us to see man’s enmity against God and need for personal redemption as what we must value the most. As we studied in the last sermon in this series, the Scriptures declare to us, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23) Man’s greatest problem is that he is a rebel against God and not that he is a victim. Not only does the natural man deserve God’s wrath but he is a stranger to the redeeming and perfect love of God, that is found in Christ. If man is at enmity with God and without Christ in this world, how could we value anything greater than redemption?
And does Cultural Marxism place any value on redemption? No, on the contrary they passionately pursue ‘racial reconciliation’. Now someone may interject and say, “Blake, what’s wrong with them pursuing ‘racial reconciliation’? Two responses:
- First: I would lovingly recommend you go back and listen to my lesson on biblical unity. Long story short, at the cross we have biblical, true reconciliation between sinners (of all ethnicities) when we are united in the body of Christ by faith alone.
- Second: In the famous words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
When the Cultural Marxist movement uses the term, ‘racial reconciliation’ it isn’t what you might think it’s supposed to mean. We think of it as a bringing together two enemies and finding a resolution, and clearly, as Christians who are called to live at peace with all men, we would agree with that definition. But sadly, that isn’t what is meant by that word, what is meant is equal outcomes in all of society (or the word equity). As long as there are different outcomes and disparities in society amongst people of different ethnicities then, according to them, there is still oppression and injustice. So, racial reconciliation is the goal of an egalitarian society where everyone is perfectly equal in every way. Instead of focusing on personal redemption of sinners to a holy God you focus on redistributing money, power, privilege, etc. to achieve social justice and ‘racial reconciliation’. My fellow Christians, can we really exchange the value of personal redemption of sinners to their God for ‘racial reconciliation’?
Our next value is forgiveness. This particular value also functions as an ethical behavior for our life, as Paul commands us to use this value towards each other, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32) and “bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.” (Colossians 3:13) Notice, in both of those verses when he gives the command to forgive each other, he supplies the reason behind it ‘just as (God in Christ or the Lord) has forgiven you’. We value forgiveness so highly because God has freely and graciously forgiven us for all of our sin. No matter how heinous or vile, no matter how much the sin or how great the shame of the past, by faith in the work of Christ “we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.” (Colossians 1:14) Since God has been gracious to us, so we are called to be imitators of Him to dying and lost world.
And so, does this Cultural Marxist movement value forgiveness? Absolutely not and it actually has no place for forgiveness, whether as a value or as an ethic. I have used this paraphrase of Romans 8:1 from James White before and it’s because it perfectly summarizes this movement, “There is now much condemnation for those in the woke church.” Whether it is in the church (a woke church) or just in the culture, this whole worldview knows nothing of the blood of Christ. “What can wash away my sin (especially of racism)?” The answer, nothing. There can be no final forgiveness for the sin of ‘racism’, only constant penance, which is activism and constant confession of your sin. In the culture, BLM and other activists will cancel you and seek to have you fired for the sin of ‘racism’. Oh, and remember from our last session that they don’t use God’s Law to define sin, so they have a different standard to define ‘racism’. Under God’s Law, racism is what we have always identified it to be, a hateful partiality based on the color of skin. We rightfully condemn that kind of behavior and will warn anyone practicing it to repent of this wickedness and turn to Christ for forgiveness. But in this movement, ‘racism’ is now different and I’ll allow Latasha Morrison, author of ‘Be The Bridge’, to explain what it means, “You’ll need to examine your own life and the lives of your ancestors so you can see whether you’ve participated in, perpetuated, or benefited from systems of racism.” Can anyone explain to me how benefiting from an alleged system of racism is a violation of the Law? In this worldview you can actually have a systemically racist society with no actual racists because the hegemony simply benefits from the society passed down to them. In summary, the only thing left for a ‘racist’ is to renounce their privilege, listen to ‘oppressed’ victims, become an ‘antiracist’ (or activist) and join the revolution to overthrow all of these hierarchies that the hegemony has established. Dear Christian, is this truly the path of forgiveness towards others?
Our last example is the ethic of separation from the world. The first passage that comes to mind is Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore I urge you, brethren by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind …” The NT is abundantly clear about our relationship to this fallen world and especially its teachings:
- 1st John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world …”
- Colossians 2:8: Warns us to not be, “… taken captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”
- James 1:27: teaches us that pure and undefiled religion isn’t just found in, “visiting orphans and widows in their distress” (and make no mistake about the importance of that charity) but also in, “keeping oneself unstained by the world.”
Though we are in this world and do experience God’s abundant blessings to us in this world, we are not of this world. We belong to a different world and are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. This doesn’t mean we don’t seek to serve this fallen world and to see God’s name hallowed, on Earth as it is in Heaven, but we must never seek to follow after, join with, or believe in the teachings of this world.
But does this Cultural Marxist movement hold to this ethic? Absolutely not, as I explained in the very first sermon, the ideologies found in this movement clearly qualify as those things to, “… not be taken captive by” in Colossians 2:8. This whole worldview isn’t according to Christ and His Word but it actually comes from the tradition of men like Karl Marx and his postmodern followers. In fact, this is why you see the LGBTQ+, radical feminism, and transgenderism so close to the BLM movement. I can’t remember who, but someone compared all of these movements as a single train with multiple train cars. The tracks represent the whole oppressor vs oppressed narrative, the whole worldview of Cultural Marxism and the assumptions of systemic injustice everywhere. The first car on the train is BLM but just behind it is the LGBTQ+ car, then the feminist car, then the transgender car, and mark my words, the pedophilia car and the bestiality car will be following suit. They all start with this worldview that assumes systemic injustice must always be occurring, and so these different victim classes will continue to appear.
And so, it is sad to see some pastors and organizations already jumping aboard the LGBTQ+ movement with ‘homosexual’ and ‘transgender’ Christians and that should be a clear sign to avoid such teachers and ministries. But I want to point out two prominent people who have clearly violated this ethic of not being conformed to this world:
- Thabiti Anyabwile: is a pastor at a church in DC, a prominent speaker in the reformed church and is a council member of the Gospel Coalition. In a series of tweets, which I have on saved to show to anyone who would desire but I don’t have enough time to walk through, ultimately places an ultimatum for ‘white Christians’. Because of the assumed oppression and injustice of “black people, whether in Christ or not” therefore Christians need to show, not a Christian solidarity, but a solidarity to “black people, whether in Christ or not”. He presents these two solutions for ‘white Christians’ and then states, “until that happens, we’ll have to choose black solidarity (over Christian solidarity).” A pastor, with a lot of influence, is leading other men to choose solidarity with the unbelievers, who happen to have the same skin color as him, over the body of Jesus Christ.
- Latasha Morrison: author of ‘Be the Bridge’ and head of the organization, ‘Be the Bridge’, I quoted from her book earlier where we see a new addition to the definition of racism. That definition isn’t surprising especially when you consider that she is on record praising two of the most prominent CRT proponents in America; Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. On a SiriusXM interview, Latasha publicly praises both of these authors/seminar speakers. Let me make this clear Ibram and Robin are not Christians at all, they publicly identify as Critical Theorists. These are the teachers of the hollow philosophies that we are called to not be enslaved to and Latasha Morrison sadly praises these false teachers and endorses them. It shows when her work is the same as theirs but just wrapped in a Christian lingo.
In summary, if we accept Cultural Marxism then we will have to reject the Lordship of Christ by replacing the values and ethics that He calls us to live by; thus proving that it is both cancerous and incompatible with the Christian faith and message.