“The church is being brought ethical concerns and is responding with epistemological critique. Like a man who tells you he is bleeding, and you ask, ‘How did you come to that conclusion?’”
Rasool Berry
Teaching pastor at The Bridge Church in Brooklyn
I snatched this from a John Piper article explaining why it is wrong to label people who are Critical Race Theorists are Critical Race Theorists. This is an example that Piper used as to why we should not do that. Pastor Rasool, you see, is merely complaining about racism and has no other agenda, and when we rightly label his complaint as an example of CRT then we are guilty of slander. Never mind if the analysis of his complaint is accurate.
The Church indeed is being brought ethical concerns but they are ethical concerns birthed by a mother besides Christianity. The same people who are bringing all these ethical concerns are the same people complaining about “white fragility,” “systemic racism,” and “institutional racism.” The bleeding victim these people find is always non-caucasian and the perp of the crime is always some Christian White chap.
Epistemological critique is exactly what is needed because the complaint of “fallen man bleeding” seems to be always coming from the usual CRT suspects. I heard it ten years ago when I was at a Church conclave and one of the other representatives complained about Climate Change. When I tried to pin the chap with the complaint down he answered in a hostile manner that he knew people in Bangledesh whose crops were suffering and that it was because of the White Christian in the West who wouldn’t take Climate Change seriously. Here was a scenario where a representative of the bleeding man was faulting me for asking me how he came to the conclusion that the Bangladeshi farmer was bleeding. If the Bangladeshi farmer is bleeding it has nothing to do with something that doesn’t exist (anthropogenic climate change). He just wanted me to feel guilty and so support some form of reparations.
The bleeding man, exceptions notwithstanding, right now is the Christian White man and no tourniquet can be applied to staunch the bleeding because the guy doing the stabbing is the one complaining about how he is bleeding and how unfair it is that anyone would dare ask him how he knows he is bleeding. It is a classic example of accusing others of what you are yourself are guilty of.
