Reviewing the DeYoung TGC Review of Reparations

In our last episode, ‘An Interesting Back and Forth About Reparations,’ I introduced a pair of links regarding the book ‘Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Renewal’ by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. The first link is a review of that book at TGC by Pastor Kevin DeYoung. In this episode, I want to talk about DeYoung’s review. 

To give a review of a review may seem like an odd thing to do, but I think we can learn a lot from examining closely DeYoung’s treatment of this work. DeYoung is well-spoken for the most part, but he is like us in this one key regard. We can all get better at communication. And though I agree with all of DeYoung’s concerns stated in the nearly 6,000 word piece he published, he does pull his punches and send mixed signals.

Mixed Messaging

How is it possible for a work from two pastors to be presenting a competing worldview and Biblical framework, to be wrong in so many key and foundational ways, and for those two pastors to still be publicly affirmed for loving Jesus, the gospel, and the church? Why compliment them for their work while at the same time calling out that same work for being dangerous, misguided, and antithetical to orthodox Christian life and practice?

Perhaps it is not necessary or helpful to attack Kwon and Thompson personally. But we should describe them clearly. Are we still trying to wrestle with what precisely to make of Critical Race Theory and anti-racism, and proving indecisive and muddied as a result?

Are we afraid of being decried as a “White Supremacist” and racist, and consequently pulling our punches to the greatest extent possible? If so, the concerns are not unfounded. Caution is warranted. All the same, we need to steer well clear of flattery and ambiguity.

The truth of where the new brand of Woke Christians are coming from is, just like the subjects they often prefer to talk about so confidently, a bit complicated. Nevertheless, the complexity of the whole business is more a reason to be clear and direct rather than a reason to be less clear.

Strategy: The Direct Approach

In the interest of encouraging greater clarity and boldness, we who care about doctrinal purity and faithfulness to God in every facet of life need to be more bold ourselves even as we refrain from affirming a twisted kind of boldness on the part of men like Kwon and Thompson where their aggression should be more rightly called brashness.

Either this is false teaching or it isn’t. Either these truth claims are compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ or they aren’t. And if we are not quite sure one way or the other, we do well to examine the source and origin of these “analytical tools” as being what they are – Cultural Marxism, plain and simple.

For more on this topic…

Check out the earlier episode in this series, ‘An Interesting Back and Forth About Reparations,’ as well as the next two episodes in the series: ‘Unpacking the Response to the DeYoung TGC Review’, and ‘Yet Another Response from Kwon and Thompson’

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