Child
Calvin Coolidge said the more I study the Constitution, the more I realize that no other document devised by the hand of man has brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
Rick Green
You found the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders. We're taking on those hot topics from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective and today you get to pick the topics. Since it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday, send those emails into radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. Let's get into some of those questions. All right, David and Tim, we're jumping into our questions from the audience and the first one that gets to ask a question today is I think I'm saying this right Chevelle Thompson. Question is this please explain a Christian viewpoint of diversity, equity and inclusion? I keep seeing this in my classes and clubs. I'm so glad Chevelle sent this question in guys, because we keep talking about DEI and we keep hearing about it and politicians are talking about it on both sides, but we haven't really talked about what's a biblical perspective on this.
Tim Barton
It really is a good question because unfortunately, like many things in culture, there's a lot of Christians embracing things that aren't necessarily biblical. Where things can sound good, but the Bible tells us there's a way that seems right to man but it leads to death. And definitely there is some unbiblical positions in DEI. And DEI is diversity, equity and inclusion and the idea, like those words are not bad, there's nothing sinful about those words, but sometimes the way they're applied is very unbiblical. The idea of diversity well, the kingdom of God is diverse. We know that there's diversity. We know that when you study and read the Bible, God is a God of all people, that before the throne of God you read Revelation, it's people of every tribe, nation, tongue. I mean absolutely, God's a God of diversity.
But the problem is when you have a company that follows a DEI position under diversity, they say, well then, we have to have a quota. We have to have so many people from this group, so many people from that group, so many people from that, have to have so many people from this group, so many people from that group, so many people from that. And so, whether it is, we need so many black Americans and Asian Americans and white Americans right, whatever category they pick. And we need so many females and so many from the LGBTQIA + community. What we're doing is we're no longer evaluating the character, the quality of people. We're not looking at the content of character, we're looking at the color of skin, right. That is one of the modern problems with the way diversity is applied. Similar if you look at equity. There's nothing wrong with the word equity. Equity is similar to this notion of equality, but instead of it being equal opportunity, equity is equal outcome. And again, I mean some Christians. I can see where some Christians might go, yeah, but you know, there's equity when it comes to Christianity, because we all get to go to heaven. There's equal outcome. Okay, I hear what you are saying, but let me back you up.
Even though we believe in equal opportunity, if you go and read the parables of Jesus read Matthew 19, read Luke 25, the parable of the mind is the parable of the talent, and you see that sometimes the servants all were Luke 19, for example, they all got the same mind at the beginning equal opportunity, but they actually didn't have the same outcome and some were rewarded for doing a lot. Some were actually punished for not doing anything. They didn't have the same outcome. They were rewarded based on their productivity. Well, in Matthew 25, when you have the parable of the talents, it says the master gave to each according to his ability.
And I could remind people, go back and read the beginning of these parables, because the most common introduction to the parables of Jesus was the kingdom of heaven is like this, where Jesus is giving a practical life example of a deep, spiritual, eternal truth, where he says the kingdom of heaven is like this and then gives us example. Well, in God's kingdom, God has given us different skills, talents and abilities, and god's given us responsibilities, oftentimes in correspondence with the uh, the gifts, talents and abilities. So we have a responsibility based on what he's given us, but he hasn't given us all the exact same thing. And under this, DEI when we have this diversity and then equity, they say well, everybody needs the same thing. Well, that's socialism. And socialism is not a biblical perspective and we can go a long way down this rabbit hole. But equity, the way they use it, the way they apply it is socialism. And for those that don't remember their history under the ideas of socialism, communism and Marxism in the 20th century alone, where those were applied in nations. Look at all those nations. It was responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Well, that was nations that focus on equity. That was nations that embraced the ideas of socialism, which leads to communism and Marxism. That's that idea.
And then you have the idea of inclusion, that we're going to include everybody. But it's worth noting that the companies or the people on the left, these progressives, that say we want inclusion, they don't want to include Christians right, they want to censor Christians. They don't want to include people that believe that there are only two genders. They don't want to include people that believe marriage is between a man and woman. They only want to include people that agree with their leftist, progressive, secular ideology. So there's a lot of Christians that think, hey, it's good for us to be diverse, it's good for us to have this equity, this equality of outcome, it's good for us to be inclusive because we want to include, because the kingdom of God, God invites everybody. There's nothing wrong and sinful with the words, but the way they're applied are very unbiblical positions the way they are applied.
David Barton
And that explanation. I mean, there are so many good Bible verses to back that up. And, Tim, what you just said forward is really the way they try to present it. And I would go to one of the scriptures where the scripture says there is a way that seems right to man. Doesn't it really sound good to have all this equity and inclusion and man? That sounds so good. There's a way that seems right. But it says the ends thereof are the ways of death, and so it really looks good. Except it never works that way.
It allows discrimination in the name of inclusion, as you pointed out. It's not going to be conservative Christians, it's not going to be conservative Jews. If you're a liberal, secular, progressive Jew, that's great. If you're a Muslim, love it. If you're LGBTQIA+, that's great. You're a pastor, or you're a conservative Christian, or you're a Bible-believing Jew, biblical Jew, no, no, no, not that You're conservative. All of those groups go out. So they say they're including groups, but they use that inclusion to be able to really approve their discrimination.
And if you go back what the Bible says, Tim, you were talking about groups. If you go back to the biblical position, the Bible says a man's gift makes room for him. It's what a man does. It's his gifting. It's what he's able to do. It's not the color of his skin, it's not the gender. It it's what he's able to do. It's not the color of his skin, it's not the gender, it's not the perceptions, nothing like that. It's a man's gift, what he can do, his ability is what makes room for him. And in the same way the Bible says the soul that sinneth, it'll die. That's individualism. God looks individually at you, what you do, what you don't do. If you sin, it's not the group that gets in trouble, it is you that get in trouble for what you do. And that's why we're told in 1 Samuel 16:7, it says man looks on the outward appearance, god looks on the inside.
So everything about DEI, while it sounds really good to the biblically knowledgeable people, there are so many verses on the opposite side of that. God is dealing with individuals. He's not dealing with groups. Maybe the only exception to that that we know of biblically is his nation of Israel, his chosen people. Outside of that groups is not what God does. He does individuals.
If you look at Jesus, God sent Jesus for the world, but that doesn't mean the whole world gets saved, it's those that make the individual decision to follow him, it's not the group. God would love to see everybody do the right thing, but it doesn't work out that way. There are people that will not make the right decision and they don't get included just because they happen to be people and God sent his son for everybody. You got to make the decisions and do the behavior, and that's the big difference with DEI, where they look on the outside instead of the inside, they look at the group instead of the individual and they don't use biblical standards for what they do. Even though it sounds good for those that are not biblically literate, it's not a good deal.
Rick Green
I couldn't help but think about, especially, Tim, when you were talking about the whole equity issue and how that leads to socialism. You know, Dennis Prager had this one of his early Prager use when they first started coming out with these things on what he called the American Trinity e pluribus unum and God we trust, and liberty are the American values. And just like y'all are saying, not in groups, out of many one we become Americans. But he talks about the French Trinity and the French Trinity has equity right. So that French Revolution kind of thinking theirs is all about trying to make everybody equal. But that is not an American value, but that's exactly what DEI is bringing to the American value replacing American values with these kind of French Revolution values.
Tim Barton
Now, Rick, you're pretending like the French Revolution didn't turn out well, right?
Rick Green
Don't you actually have a guillotine at American Journey?
Tim Barton
I was going to say gonna say right, what's the worst that could happen? Well, the guillotine right was one of the worst that could happen. Uh, yes, at the at the American journey experience, we actually do have an, an actual French guillotine one that was actually used, uh, which, as disturbing as that would be for many people listening um, we were able to collect all kinds of history the good, the bad, the ugly but it enables us to tell the story and as we learn from history, we learn some things work and some things don't work. And the problem with DEI is it's taking ideas that have never worked and it's repackaging them with new words that sound nice and friendly.
And if people aren't strategic, if we're not critical thinkers, if we don't ask some questions and, dad, as you mentioned, if we're not biblically literate, if we don't know the Bible and if we're not digging deeper in the Bible to find what are the actual principles of the Bible that deal with this issue, then we can very easily be misled and unfortunately, there's a lot of people being misled by this. It's not that we don't want diversity, it's not that we don't want equity or inclusion in the sense of it. It's not that those are bad words, but the way it's being applied is not the biblical position. They're going about it a very incorrect way, but they're selling it in a way that sounds really nice and really attractive, but they're selling ideas that have never worked and are not biblical.
David Barton
And, if I can jump in, just a quick historical commentary. You guys mentioned the French Revolution and part of what they had in their motto was equality. That's what they're all about, that's what they say they're about, and it didn't work out that way. And then you mentioned the guillotine, just as a historical comment I will tell you. And then you mentioned the guillotine, just as a historical comment, I will tell you the guillotine was probably the most humane means they had for executing people. I can take you through the rest of it. You don't want to hear the rest of it, but if the guillotine is the most humane thing you can do, man, that's a twisted culture, but that's a culture built around that kind of equality and when you take it outside of biblical boundaries it just does not work well.
Rick Green
Well, speaking of being outside those biblical boundaries, I mean even when we say inclusion, right, I mean, think about what they're saying. When they say inclusion, they're wanting to include things that are literally evil. It's like you know, if your kids are going to have a slumber party and invite their friends over and they say, well, you know, there's this guy at school that's a child predator, but we felt like he was being excluded so we're gonna include him in the slumber party.
Tim Barton
That's a map.
It's a minor attracted person
Rick Green
oh, you're right, poor guy yeah he can't help it can you believe they really have made up that phrase? They actually are defending these pedophiles. It's unbelievable. But that's the I mean that's and people may say I'm taking it to the extreme. No, I mean, when they say inclusion, they want the drag queen story hour. They want these people that are mentally ill and child predators and they're coming after your kids and they want you to include these people that want to literally convert your children into all kinds of evil things. So, yeah, I am so glad uh Chevelle asked this question because you hear it. Just like you said, Tim sounds so sweet. You know, diversity, equity, inclusion, including what? Including evil? That's what they want to do. So quick break, guys. We'll be right back. Stay with us folks. It's Foundations of Freedom. Thursday. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.
Tim Barton
Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to let you know about an opportunity coming up for pastors and ministry leaders. We are doing our annual pastors briefing in Washington DC and we do this every year. We do one in the spring, we do one in the fall. This spring it's April 16th and 17th. This fall it is September 10th and 11th. This is one of the most significant things we do to encourage and challenge pastors in this culture we live in. It's in Washington DC.
On Tuesday night we do an after-hours tour of the US Capitol where we introduce pastors and ministry leaders to the history of the nation. The following day we have congressmen come and they give a briefing on what they're doing and how God is challenging and motivating and using them. And, frankly, most pastors, most ministry leaders, they don't know the rich spiritual heritage of the nation or what God is still doing moving in the hearts and lives of leaders in this nation. I would encourage you if you're a pastor, ministry leader, you need to come to this. It's one of the best things we do at WallBuilders. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and look for the pastor's briefing
Child
Thomas Jefferson said the constitutions of most of our states and of the United States assert that all power is inherent in the people, that they may exercise it by themselves, that is their right and duty to be at all times armed, and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of press.
Rick Green
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on Wall Builders Foundations of Freedom Thursday today, which means you get to ask the question, and the next question is from Kelsey. Kelsey said school choice is a controversial topic. Many say that school choice reform has unsavory backers like Soros I hadn't heard that one, guys, but anyway and that it's just another way for government infringement. For example, here in Tennessee we're fighting against the school voucher bills in our House and Senate. Written in these bills is DOE control and third party tracking. I don't know what that is, but she says, while initially I was a proponent of school choice, I'm very leery for example in Wisconsin the school choice movement stipulates no Bibles or chapel In Alaska, no religious materials or curriculum. We already have a lot of school choice in the US with homeschooling, private schools, public schools, charter schools and umbrella schools, etc. Please speak to both sides of the issue, as I'd love to hear. We are homeschooling family in Tennessee and do not want to see more government stipulations. Thank you First of all, Kelsey. Thank you so much for sending in the question. We definitely like having people that might even disagree with us send questions in so we can have some civil discourse.
All right, guys, I'm going to toss this to you because I know you got a lot to say. I'm just going to say, when we say we have lots of school choice, but it's only a choice if you spend the money twice. In other words, you only get the choice if you have enough money to both homeschool and pay your property taxes. That's not what we mean by school choice, but what we mean by school choice. But what we mean by school choice is you get the choice of where the money goes for your kid, instead of the money going to the public school, even if your kid's not going there, and then you got to spend your own money to go somewhere else. So anyway, I just want to address the actual definition of what we mean by school choice. Go ahead, fellas.
David Barton
Yeah, and I want to hit it real quick because there's so many things we can answer in this. We could talk about the various points and let's not make it about personalities like Soros. Let's make it about principles, but there's always going to be personalities drug into it. And, yeah, there are schools like in Alaska. You can't do that, but there were also schools that did school choice before the Supreme Court said, hey, it's okay to include religion. Again, in the last three years we've had two school choice decisions that said, hey, you can't exclude religion, so you've got all the. I mean, we can answer all these, but there really are some core principles I think we have to address.
Tim Barton
Well, and to that point it's worth noting that if you're saying I cannot support a principle because the bill has something bad in it, well then you're not against the principle, you're against the bad thing in the bill, right? If Congress says we're going to pass a law that says we're going to balance the budget, but then somebody in there says, hey, but also we're going to cut some money for Planned Parenthood, and you're like, well, we can't balance the budget because it funds Planned Parenthood, and you're like, wait a second, now those are two different things. Right, that balancing the budget would be a great thing. And just because somebody put something bad in the bill does not mean that the main topic is a bad thought, and that's an important distinction as well. When somebody looks and says, yes, but in this state they put something in the bill that is not good, Well, two things can be true at once that just because something bad is in the bill does not mean that this thought or this principle is a bad thought or a principle. So just kind of worth throwing that in there in the midst of this conversation. A lot more we need to get through, but I just wanted to inject that real quick.
David Barton
And there is a single principle, I think, that undergirds this. That's bigger than any other discussion with it, and I'll get to that in just a second. But even before we do that, I think we can all agree that the public school system as it exists right now is one of the greatest sources for training and inculcating bad thinking throughout the nation. Where did the trans movement came from? It came through education. Where did all the pro-abortion stuff come from? It came through education because parents I mean back in the 40s and 50s you weren't talking abortion. That started getting with the progressives in the 60s and the 70s and 80s, and so much of the bad stuff that's gotten in has come in through education.
Tim Barton
Well, and I will clarify, Dad, and please let me know if you agree, but I would say this was not introduced in education, that these ideas came from the devil, and that they were then taught in education. Right, because when we're talking about evil, understand, we're not saying that the school is creating evil, no, no, no, the devil creates evil. But when the public school is promoting the evil from the devil, okay, and I want to be real clear, we are people of faith and we believe that there is a God. We believe there's Satan. I want to be clear, we are people of faith and we believe that there's a God. We believe there's satan. We believe there's good, we believe there's evil and the bible gives us guidance for determining good and evil.
And and when you're talking about doing sexual operations, right, these, these sexual things on children, when you're talking about I mean, you kind of let's go down the list we're talking about murdering an unborn child and people arguing that in the third trimester, a partial birth, abortion, like extreme abortion. And public schools, teachers in public schools, have been promoting this and this doesn't mean every public school teacher has. Again, please hear us, because we know a lot of people in the public school, we know a lot of teachers. There's some good people that are in this system, but the system itself is incredibly broken and some of the most evil ideas that are now operating in America or even in the world are ideas that have been promoted and kids have learned in this public school system.
David Barton
I think, hands down my opinion. The greatest source of national and spiritual and cultural sewage in the nation comes out of the secular, progressive public education system. I think that's where more bad has been done, more harm has been done. Parents thought it was just like it was when I went to school and they gave away their kids not knowing that there had been a whole new generation of teachers coming in that have a different view. So I think that is the greatest thing. Now, here's the deal. Public schools are in a very tenuous position right now. They're funded right to the brink. If you could get rid of 10% of the funding of public schools in virtually any state, the system would go under. If you knock 10% of the funded public education out, they couldn't survive. They have to have everything they've got, plus more. So here's the deal. The number one driving principle, I think, for this is the principle of competition. That is a biblical principle. That's where we got the free market system. Was you have competition.
This goes all the way back to when Joshua was talking to his people as he's leading them in promised land after they've been in the wilderness for 40 years. He said guys. He said you've got a choice. You can choose the God of the Egyptians, from whose land you came, or you can choose the God of the Egyptions of whose land you came, you can choose the god of the Amorites and whose land you're going. But as for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. Competition Choose your faith, line them all up, see which one really works and choose the right one. We do the same thing with so many other. I mean Elijah on top of the Mount Carmel, he's got this competition 450 false prophets, 400 prophets of Baal they're all pagan gods. He said, hey, I'll represent God, you guys represent your side. Let's have a contest and see which God answers by fire. It's competition. And so you have that throughout. And you find that the scripturally Tim you mentioned earlier the parable, the talents and the minus I mean he looked at it and said all right, you produce 10 times more than this guy, so you get 10 times more reward. You produce five times more, you get five times more reward. Competition is throughout the Bible. And so to say, hey, I don't want competition with public education because there might be some bad strings attached. You know what? Don't take the money if you don't want to, but break the system, get some competition going in there. You want competition with hamburgers, you want it with cars, you want it with clothes, you want it with whatever your social media. You want competition. It makes everything better, and so the fundamental principle is break up the monopoly, break up the system.
The biblical principle is you want competition. Now, once you start breaking the back of the system, then you can start fixing the other things. You can start fixing the things and, man, if they're going to put strings on your money, you don't have to take it, but bust the system up so that you lose that secular, progressive indoctrination that is so damaging the nation right now. That's the biggest spigot of sewage in our nation, culturally speaking, is what's coming out of the schools. So you know, you can give me all the excuses you want, you can give me all the reasons you want, and Christians, maybe more than anybody else, have a lot of them. Oh, you know, strings Always an excuse.
Go back to the principle. The principle is you want competition, break that system, free market will work, give education a chance to have a free market shot and by the way, 32 states that have adopted school choice to this point, educational scores have gone up in all 32 states. When you have true genuine education, you get a better product out of it so don’t get sidetracked by looking at things that might happen look at the principle and drive for that big principle
Rick Green
Man, David, so many things you just said spot on, and it is about breaking the back of the sewage system there. And part of what I tell people is listen, Kelsey, I could design a perfect bill at least in my mind it would be a perfect school choice bill without any of the strings and all of those things. But I got to get it through a legislature, which means there's all these different opinions. You're never going to get a perfect bill. There's always going to be something in there that somebody doesn't like.
But, like David's saying, what this does is it says look, here's all these, literally hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by the leftist, controlled by the leftist, turning our kids into leftists, and all we're doing is slice off some of that and give it to the parents and let them decide where to spend it and let it go to better places and let them control it. Let the parents have the decision. And if the legislation in your particular state is so unsavory to you and you don't like whatever's in there, don't take the money. It's that simple. Don't take the money. But when you take away the choice of other parents other homeschool parents or private school parents to be able to choose. That's being a tyrant. You're actually telling them they don't have the choice. So don't be the tyrant, be the person that's for freedom and then choose not to be part of it if you don't want to be.
David Barton
Let me add to that. I want to go back to something Tim said. Look, there are good Christian teachers godly people in the public school system. We're not going after those people. But that's like saying, hey, because the captain of the Titanic is a Christian, we're in good hands now. No, if the ship's going to crash, the ship's going to crash and you had a lot of good Christian people on it, but the system is wrong and it's going under, and so this is not an attack on individual teachers. This is an attack on a system that is producing the wrong fruit.
The scripture says you judge a tree by its fruits, man, you judge the public school system by its fruits. You know what? There's going to be a few public schools here and there. They're probably going to be pretty good and they're probably pretty close to Christian schools in some locations, but the system itself is going to crash and burn and it's going to take the nation down if we don't get something changed, because this is the biggest source of evil indoctrination in the nation we've got right now, and so school choice is the best shot we have of bringing competition in and breaking the back of that. Really what has become a very wicked system. It was not always like that, but the people in charge of it right now have turned it in the wrong direction. We've got to have different choices.
Rick Green
And Kelsey last thing, just always err on the side of the principals, don’t get distracted, always go for the principles. As Tim said some of the personalities, or the neuanuce in that piece of legislation, what’s the overriding principle. In this case, competition, perental choice, perental rights should override those other things that you might see in some of those bills.
Tim Barton
So Rick, to add to that, I can be pro school choice but still be against a certain school choice bill if there is bad stuff in it. So that's the principle is it's not that I'm anti-competition, it's not that I'm pro socialism because I only want one school and the government's going to control it. I can be pro school choice, but against certain legislation if there's bad things in that legislation. So this is where, when Rick's saying, don't be distracted by these details and miss the big thing, this is where we would come. And again, we want to have civil discourse. It's OK, people have disagreements. We, all three of us we disagree all the time, but we want to always have that common ground and civil discourse is so important.
Rick Green
All right, folks out of time for today. Man, we could do several shows on that particular subject. It's actually kind of a fun one to debate because we do get to talk about all of those principles. So we appreciate you sending in that question, Kelsey. Thank you so much. Everybody else send your questions to radio at wallbuilders.com. We're out of time. Thanks for listening to The WallBuilders Show.