(WokePreacherTV) Another mask-slip moment from the crypto-mainline American church’s June 2020 freakout. Rich Perez, pastor and New York City’s Christ Crucified Church and an alumnus of Redeemer City To City’s (founder, Tim Keller) pastoral incubator program, teaches on Amos 5, preaching a gospel that’s alien to the New Testament, demanding ethnic partiality and perpetual lament instead of joy in the Lord, and promoting the work of Barbara Brown Taylor, an old-school liberal theologian, palatable to New Agers like Oprah, who denies the exclusivity of Christ.
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Church, you should not be eager for the Lord’s coming, because when you stop crying over the poor and vulnerable and outcast instead of seeing them as your neighbors, hear me, they became your victims.
You see, when we stop lamenting and when we stop crying over the vulnerable and the poor and the outcast, let me be even more clear about who the vulnerable are in our country. Of course they are the widows and orphans, even as the Bible tells us, but more particularly in the case of America, they are those with black skin. They are those that identify with the black community.
When we stop lamenting and crying over the injustices done toward the poor and the vulnerable and the outcast and the marginalized and the forgotten, instead of seeing them as your neighbors, please hear me, they become your victims.
Why do you think George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry, and the countless other names are no longer with us, why are they not here with us today? Because America’s version of Christianity has made it easy for whiteness to believe that it is more valuable than black life.
…I love the way professor Barbara Brown Taylor put it. If you don’t know who she is, Google her. Read her books. She’s an incredible mind and an incredible soul and has an incredible insight...Listen to what Barbara Brown Taylor says. “The problem is many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the way that they do. Oh boy.
… You’re gonna hear those Christians that will tell you “preach the gospel only. Man, just preach the gospel. We need the gospel.” And I’m saying this is it. This is what God is saying that the good news is. The good news is that you have access to a God through his son that should transform and change all of you. The way that you see the world and the way that you engage with it. That the good news is good for your public life.
That the good news is good news because you have access to a God that will change the way that you see the political world that will change the way that you see your neighbor. That will change the way that you vote. That will change the way that you engage.
If your good news is simply good only for your interpersonal relationships, then you’ve missed at least two other thirds of your faith. The systemic realities that you live in. And the individual. It changes you, it changes your relationships, and it changes the society that you, as an agent of change, lives [sic] in.
… With these verses, Amos is saying that to even suggest that at the heart of authentically following God is not a deep and fundamental concerns [sic] with the social ills of your society that we belong to, it stinks. I ain’t saying this. This is what the text is saying. He’s saying that to even suggest that at the very heart of following God is not a deep and fundamental concern with the social ills of the society that we belong to, it’s a stench to God. It stinks.
Editor’s Note. This post was created and posted by @WokePreacherTv from his YouTube channel
