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by Charlie Wolcott

This will be the last aspect of false teachers and the consequences of getting sin wrong that I’ll write on in this series. This is one I’ve mentioned a number of times in passing, but I didn’t know enough to really dig into it. Yet while at the 2022 Shepherd’s Conference, the ideas of Liberation Theology and its sister Critical Race Theory have come into the church enough to warrant their attention. The central theme of the conference was “Unashamed,” but the primary false teaching that was addressed in dealing with being unashamed is this very wicked and evil theology. While John MacArthur hit it from several different angles, it was Voddie Baucham who really cemented what we are confronting in concrete terms. So for this post, I credit most of this knowledge to him.

First, we need to define a few terms here. Liberation Theology is the idea that Jesus came to this earth to save the “oppressed” from the “oppressor.” This idea has been around a while, but it hit the Roman Catholics in the 1960s and got a firm hold there before coming in through the liberal Protestants and now is fully imbibed in the conservative Protestants. Critical Race Theory is basically the social implementation of this idea. I cannot emphasize these terms “oppressed” and “oppressor” enough because these terms are selectively chosen to apply to ANY group that those who are teaching this theology does not like. It is applied to economics first and foremost. So, the “oppressed” would include blacks and people of color who are specifically in a “poor” economic situation, as opposed to the “oppressors” who are pictured as your standard American white population and CEOs, but not the politicians. As Baucham clearly points out, this is not a general statement because this theory does not identify Asians who are often wealthier than whites, nor Nigerian immigrants who are wealthier than. It is explicitly Marxist, and its purpose is to divide. Socially, if you are a white, conservative Christian, you are an “oppressor,” and if you are a street-smart black kid, you are among the “oppressed,” and there is no hope for escaping this classification, much like the caste system of Hindi India.

The philosophy is total Marxism: take from the rich (those who have money and power that those who hold these ideals do not like, because they never talk like this to each other) and give to the poor. Baucham retells the Parable of the Talents from this philosophy. The story goes exactly as it does in Scripture except in the end, the master takes five from the servant who had five and gained five. He gives one to the servant who had two and gained two, and he gives four to the servant who had one and did nothing. All three have five talents in the end. This is not Robin Hood; this is Marxism – rewarding the lazy while punishing the workers. The way the parable actually ends is where the servant with five ended up with eleven, the servant with two got four, and the lazy servant with one lost even his one. This is not a parable about the proper economic system, yet many people try to make it so.

These ideas take what initially sounds good on paper (let the wealthy help support the poor) and make it a religion that entirely opposes the Gospel and Christianity. But there is a far greater sinister side to it, and that’s the issue of sin. The authors and bloggers pushing these ideas are quoted by describing the American Slave Trade as our “original sin” (compare with Genesis 3). That is what the 1619 Project is about. That is the year that slaves were first brought to the American colonies and THAT is what they say “America is about.” Not our Constitution or our Declaration of Independence, but slavery. They never mention that whites were enslaved too during this time and that blacks also owned their own slaves.

When Baucham pointed out that they think this is America’s “original sin,” I was ready to get up in arms. Why? Because these anti-American and anti-Christian (those two are not synonymous here; they are just against both institutions) writers are stealing God’s description of sin to describe THIS kind of “racism” (which for the record is no longer defined as “animosity due to color of skin” but as “economic and social inequity”) as so endemic that white people who have nothing to do with these kind of things have to bow before this ideology and apologize for what their ancestors did. Just by being white, we are labeled as guilty merely by association. And they define all the terms in such away that ultimately, the white conservative Christian is irredeemable in their eyes, no matter what they do. Even if a white person were to try to make amends, he is seen as just trying to protect his white privilege, and if he denies being involved in that, it is called “white fragility.” No matter what, the average white American in this ideology is so steeped in the “sin of racism” that he cannot be saved.

This thinking has had the power that some of those whom we thought were our allies just a couple years ago have bought into this lie and apologized in public to these false teachings and lies. Keep in mind here: these ideologies have absolutely no intention of actually helping anyone. They want the “oppressed” people to stay oppressed, so they keep with a victim mentality, but then they direct that offense against those who actually have nothing to do with it. You will never see the people promoting these ideas actually stepping down so someone less fortunate than them can take their place. They always insist on someone else doing it. The goal of this is to keep these groups of people fighting each other, when the real source of the problem is found in those ideals. Go back to what I wrote about the Hegelian Dialectic; this is literally that methodology.

There are consequences for how anyone preaches the Gospel from this mentality. First, there are two groups of people – the “oppressed” and the “oppressors” – and only the “oppressors” are the sinners who must “repent” by doing “good works” to bow before the “oppressed.” Then the “oppressed” need to stick their chests out and declare themselves “victims” and therefore everything they want is “owed” to them. Both are works-based, so this is a theological issue, too. These people who claim to be Christians think that Jesus came to settle the economic and social injustice and imbalance. (Hint: Jesus never once addressed that and neither did the Apostles. In fact, Jesus said the poor would always be with us when Judas suggested they sell the perfume to “give to the poor”.) And the gospel of this message is achieved when all people have equity (the same economic power and resources; but the people will be poor while the teachers of these ideals rake in the cash). This also requires a different “gospel message,” one for the “oppressed” and one for the “oppressor.” And neither of them has Jesus at the center.

In Liberation Theology, we see almost the opposite side of the same coin of the Prosperity Gospel heresies. In both cases, the ultimate of reality is defined by financial and social success. In one they seek God for their wealth; in the other they seek the wealth of others. In one, sin is defined as blocking your way to money; in the other sin is defined as having more than others. Both corrupt and distort the image of Jesus to cater to those ideals. None of them look to self as the problem and self’s sin against God being the primary issue. Neither of them has Jesus as the answer to man’s malady. Next week, I will showcase how all these false teachings will destroy any effects of evangelism we try, then I’ll come back to the proper and true understanding of sin, and from there I’ll examine the proper response to sin.

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