It is OK to reject critical theories, Christian institutions

Quick post here because I really just want to say, “it’s OK”. Earlier today I was obliged to watch a series of videos from, let me just say, a good Christian institution that cares about relationships between people from different cultures. This would be a better post if I named the institution and tore down what was said in the videos specifically, but I’m not going to do that, sorry.

But the videos were a mixture of good, Biblical Christianity, and critical race theory… a pretty awkward and sometimes contradictory mixture, which will not surprise you. (Actually the Rebecca Shane also watched the videos and exclaimed at one point, “are they serious?”, so you understand that our marriage is in good shape there.) But it made me think because, as I said, it was from a good Christian institution. This was not Jemar Tisby trying to gain new converts to the gospel of CRT and, incidentally, make a bunch of money in the process. These were pretty normal people who meant well.

So what happened? Well I can probably tell you what happened. They wanted to be Biblical, they got that part done. But they also wanted to “follow the latest research results” and make sure their work is “up to date with the latest science”. And so they went down to their local public university (not really of course, but in essence), and asked for the latest social science textbooks about race and culture, and read them, and learned critical race theory. This was the latest and greatest and most helpful thing, the books said. (I think the videos were made before the big anti-CRT explosion that occurred over the last year, by the way.) And being pretty normal people engaged in pretty normal work in their day jobs, they weren’t really equipped to engage critically (ahem) with what they were reading, and so they largely accepted it as important new science, and mixed it with their Biblical Christianity, and there you go. (They knew just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to recognize the danger, you might say.)

I feel like I need to tell those people… it’s OK to be “boring”. OK that’s a lie, because Biblical Christianity isn’t boring, but it isn’t novel either. OK, it’s OK to “not be novel” then. No, let’s not unthinkingly reject all of modern social science either, there is some helpful stuff there if approached with a discerning eye. But unlike modern Physics, say, which really was entirely unknown to ancient people because they lacked the technology to see it, we humans have been observing other humans and thinking about the relationships between people and cultures literally as long as humans have been on the planet. There is good thinking on that topic all the way back to Genesis by golly. And so the modern thinkers on those same topics are likely, shall we say, to have less valuable new stuff to add than in some other fields of human endeavor (though some new thinking may be helpful).

And remember, you know, I’m not going to be the first person to remark that a lot of harm is done today by people who get paid to talk, and therefore must somehow keep talking. That leads to the production of a lot of stuff that is new, because you can get paid for new, but it also happens to be wrong or not helpful. Of course this is especially bad in mass media - I saw a headline earlier today, “is it safe to hang around people who haven’t been boosted?” Of course we laugh at that, as we should, but you get such articles because these are people who get paid to talk, and therefore must keep talking! They certainly cannot say “hey, life is pretty safe now, so you can stop reading us and go back to living”. That would be bad for business. Similarly, in academia as well, people have to spit out those publications that say something new, you don’t get publications as easily for saying the same old stuff over again. But often the old stuff is the true stuff.

It is OK just to be Biblical.