“Why Critical Theory is not compatible with Christ” This is from Mel Wild, and just an awesome article that really helps to explain and clarify the nature of the problem in a way that is easy to understand.
It’s ALL good, you should go read it yourself. As for me, I’ll just spotlight one part that has given me so much struggle personally, “As believers, our priority must always be Christ over culture. And while our battle is not against people, but against principalities and spiritual powers, it’s also against arguments and pretensions that blind the minds of people to the freedom that Christ offers all people.”
Something that blinds our minds to the freedom Christ offers us is a victim mentality, this idea that we are oppressed and powerless, persecuted and trapped, and that the nature of our problems stem exclusively from external sources, be it racism, sexism, or things like dysfunctional parents and poverty.
That mindset can be so incredibly damaging because every time we blame something outside of ourselves, something external, we basically hand all our power away. We are who Jesus Christ says we are, not who the culture says we are, so even if some of these challenges we face are true, we are not defined by our circumstances nor by the labels we think we have been assigned.
Love is sacrificial and looks to the well being of someone else, what is actually in their best interests. Often what people really need is not your pity, not your validation, but you to remind them of how much power (and moral responsibility) they have living within them.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
If a student of mine turned that video in as a class project on Critical Theory they would not get better than a D. Know your sources. Critical Theory has a specific technical meaning, and it is not what that video describes. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/ Critical Theory is not the same thing as Critical Race Theory, although (again, pace that SEP article), in the broad sense the Critical Race Theorists are, to a degree, working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. Granted, the Frankfurt School folks are Marxists, and one can argue that Marxists can’t be Christian, but the liberation theologians would beg to differ, nonetheless. Intersectionality as described in that video, similarly, would be unrecognizable to the author of the core paper on that concept. Nevertheless, Wild is theorizing based on a dumbed-down and inaccurate version of the relevant concepts.
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Okay, so we have Hat’s opinion on the matter. 🙂
So here’s my deal, all the academic gobbly gook, all the intersectionality flow charts, all the elaborate liberation theology and CRT actually becomes irrelevant because I’m just looking at cause and effect, the truth and reality of real people’s lives when we have been enslaved by this garbage, this brainwashing. You’re looking at grading a paper with a “D,” I’m looking at why families are being destroyed, why people are turning to addiction, why violence and homelessness is happening. The fruit of these ideas is dark and ugly and it destroys people.
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Just a quick point to HAT’s assertion, IB. Yes, of course, my post was a “dumbed-down version.” I said it was was giving a simplistic explanation because the theory itself is too convoluted and tedious for most people to wade through. But the central point is valid. These Marxist theories have no compatibility with Christ, and have never produced real freedom any time they have been tried in history. Yet, people still try…
And to your point, IB: “The fruit of these ideas is dark and ugly and it destroys people.” Yes, absolutely. This emperor has no clothes but he has a gun pointed at our heads.
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I think you are doing a good job with what you have to work with. I think your sources are letting you down.
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I have to question whether critical theory is a primary contributor to addiction, violence, and homelessness. I would look elsewhere. Like to the dysfunctional social system(s) that the critical theorists set out to criticize in the first place.
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How about the dysfunctional social system created when we dismantle traditional families, devalue fatherhood, and produce a welfare state?
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One of the main points for the Critical Theorists was to take people’s lived experience seriously, and to understand how that experience is connected to social facts, which we (whoever “we” are) have a hand in producing and maintaining. Also, to understand how and why people interpret their experience the way they do, and how people’s interpretation of their experience becomes part of the whole process that produces and maintains those social facts. All of this with the aim of taking the practical action necessary to secure the conditions for a free society.
So … yes.
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Thanks for the mention, IB. There is a silver lining to all of this. A growing number of people are waking up from all the crazy wokeness. Many leftist liberals are leaving the current version of the Democratic party and SJW movement because they cannot stand all the “wokesplaining” going on by white liberals (see this interview with former SJW here: https://youtu.be/dA1B8NAQ6ps). As Candace Owens said, this wokeness should actually be seen as an insult to black people, it’s narcissistic, and hypocritical virtue-signalling by white people (who DO live in economic privilege) projecting their white guilt on others while using Black people to assuage their own guilt. This point was brought out beautifully in the following deleted scene from the movie, “Uncle Tom.”
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Good stuff, Mel! I really like how he said in the video, “I can change an honest bigot faster than I can change a patronizing liberal.” A patronizing person is always trying to rob you of power. It comes across cloaked as compassion, but without fail it is a tactic designed to put you in your place, to keep you small. The same is true of “pity” (not to be confused with compassion or empathy,) but pity is also designed to rob people of their power.
I remember the story told by Shirley Chisholm who had to deal with George Wallace, who really was a bigot and her ideological rival. When he got shot, she went to visit him in the hospital and they suddenly became friends, they became allies. She really endured some major abuse from her supporters for that, but when we cut through the ideology and the politics and just deal with people one an one, often we gain compassion and empathy towards them as individuals and then we heal.
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As Damani Felder said so well in a couple of places about white liberalism: “We call it ‘xenophilic tokenism.’ They take on the struggles of others so that they can deflect away from talking about actual issues….
“they have weaponized the notion of being a victim…”
Reminds me of what Thomas Sowell once said: “Many white liberals have adopted blacks as mascots, in order to ‘make a statement’ against American society. But mascots are only symbols, and their well-being is seldom a top priority.”
I’ve said this before, but every American should watch this movie at http://www.uncletom.com. It will open your eyes to the truth and expose the false narrative given to us over the last 50 years.
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Thanks, IB and Mel, for writing something I can understand. I am also glad to see Hat’s opposing view. It troubles me that the videos to which Mel refers have been taken down. I only received a “video not available.” I would assume they were not taken down for truth’s sake.
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Sometimes the links can get messed up, sometimes you tube censors stuff, and some movies have to be rented or paid for. Nothing on the internet is actually “removed,” so “video not available” just means that either the internet connection is bad, the link is broken, or the video has been moved elsewhere. I just mention that because a lot of people are afraid this is like book burning where you can burn the last copy. Nahh, the internet is forever and often when something has been bumped off you tube, there are going to be 8 million copies posted elsewhere.
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Hi Oneta! Which video links weren’t working? I just checked the ones on my post and they all seemed to still be functional. But I might’ve put a link in incorrectly. If you can tell me which one I can see if I can get it corrected. Thanks!
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Thanks, that is disturbing to a lot of my friends and family.
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You say sometimes Utube censors stuff. That is what I was concerned about.
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Me too! I often have to take some deep breaths and calm down. I hate censorship and yes, it is very real on the internet.
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Amen!
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