Equipoise

What's the deal with Disney? How should we respond to the recent hubbub about their LGBTQIA+ agenda? Should we even respond at all? What to do? I hope this podcast episode gives us some ideas as we explore a few tactics used to advance any agenda on the big screen (or little screen).

Here's the link to Brett McCracken's article as promised: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/turning-red/

In today's episode, I take what started as one episode, then turned into two, then three, then four, and then all the way back to just one again. In other words, the longer I studied on the topic, the deeper the rabbit hole got, and I had to make a decision -- turn this into a 5-part series, or just condense and stay on the surface. I decided to go with the latter option.

[On the San Diego Foundation’s website, you’ll read that United Nations defines social justice as follows: “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.” Ok, so the United Nations is linking it primarily to economics here. Next, to hear the National Association of Social Workers tell it, “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.” Ok, so these folks go a little deeper and say that it’s not just economics that need to be redistributed — it’s politics and social rights and opportunities. There’s some ambiguity here, but that’s to be expected with a nebulous term like this. Let’s continue and see if we can’t get a little bit more elucidation on this. Another organization, the Center for Economic and Social Justice, states the following: “Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others.” Ok, so this is the clearest definition so far. Although after that, I admit to wondering what they mean by economic distribution as well as distribution of political and social opportunities. Who’s doing the distributing of the economics and opportunities? And to whom? And from whom are we redistributing? And based on what metrics? So I’m still compelled to ask, “what is social justice?” I eventually found a website called “Investopedia,” which had this to say: “Social justice is a political and philosophical theory asserting that there are dimensions to the concept of justice beyond those embodied in the principles of civil or criminal law, economic supply and demand, or traditional moral frameworks.” Ok, so this means that social justice means we’re not just applying justice in the traditional way, where “justice is blind,” so to speak. Let’s continue with the quote to understand a little bit more: “Social justice tends to focus more on just relations among groups within society as opposed to the justice of individual conduct or justice for individuals.” So this means not only are we taking off justice’s blindfold, but we’re now using group factors to decide on justice rather than individual factors. The quote continues: “Historically and in theory, the idea of social justice is that all people should have equal access to wealth, health, well-being, justice, privileges, and opportunity, regardless of their legal, political, economic, or other circumstances.” Now listen to this last part carefully: “In modern practice, social justice revolves around favoring or punishing different groups of the population, regardless of any given individual's choices or actions, based on value judgments regarding historical events, current conditions, and group relations. In economic terms, this often means redistribution of wealth, income, and economic opportunities from groups whom social justice advocates consider to be oppressors to those whom they consider to be the oppressed.”]

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/reparations-are-biblical/

https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/social-justice-not-what-you-think-it

In this episode, I talk about what it means to do the work necessary to properly understand and teach the Bible.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. I did have fun with this one. :)

Used music: "The Little Flying Bears" (C) Zagreb Film and CinéGroupe. Use protected under Fair Use as described in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

With anything this large and looming on the world stage, there appear many people who feel that they know a lot about what's going on, as if they have the inside scoop. Thing is, they often disagree with each other. So who's right? What do we do? Well, at the very least, we ought to check our biases. That's a good place to start.

A recent FB post containing a quote from the late scholar Søren Kierkegaard was used to defend simplicity and consequently vilify learning, criticism, and careful research. But was this quote used in context? Is simplicity equal to saintliness after all? Let's take a look.

Is there virtue to be found in a declaration of simplicity and ignorance? Or is it just a cover to veil a retreat from complexity?

I finish up our brief look at this phrase "the Word of God" and talk about why correctly using this phrase matters.

Today we're beginning a two-parter on the phrase "The Word of God." I hope it's a help to you.

As promised in the episode, here's a list of how the phrase "Word of God" is used in the Old Testament as follows:

It’s found 49 times across 48 verses in the while Protestant Bible, but only four of those times are in the Old Testament. Three out of the four times it’s found in the English Old Testament, it’s a translation of the Hebrew word “דָּבָר (daw-bar)” which it self simply means “matter of thing,” or “act, advice, affair, answer, counsel, decree,” and so on. All three of these times refer not to a written word, but a shown word (in the case of I Samuel 9:7) or a spoken word to a prophet (in the case of I Kings 12:22 and I Chronicles 17:3).

The other time we see in the Hebrew Scriptures, it’s found in the thirtieth chapter of the book of Proverbs, which is Agur’s proverb. It’s the Hebrew word “אִמְרָה (eem-raw)” and means “something said, answer, saying, speech,” and “word.” So it’s pretty clear we’re talking about edicts and declarations, just like in the other three cases — Agur has just chosen to use another word for it.

In this episode, I try to bring some balance to the commonly-used (and often abused, though I don't have the time to get into that in this episode) phrase, "The Word of God." Today, we almost exclusively use that phrase to refer to the 66 books we call The Bible, but is that how the Biblical authors used this phrase? Hope this helps.