Interview with Visionary Erwin Lutzer (Part 2 of 3)
Interview with Visionary Erwin Lutzer (Part 2 of 3)
By Tim Moore
Erwin Lutzer: The Revealer
Tim Moore: I could focus on many of your books, Pastor Lutzer, and you have been very prolific in your writing, but one that impacted me tremendously is your latest book, We Will Not be Silenced. What an incredibly visionary book! It was published in 2020. It touches on all of the drama and trauma that had descended upon our nation during those tumultuous months. What inspired you to write this book for such a time as this?
Erwin Lutzer: The subject has been very important to me. I began to realize that the Radical Left in America does not believe that America can be fixed, rather, it has to be destroyed. That is to say, its institutions have to be destroyed and rebuilt upon a Cultural Marxist foundation. Now, Cultural Marxism differs from Classical Marxism because Cultural Marxism says we can bring about Marxism incrementally if we capture the media, and education, and law. If we vote for the right people, we can bring about a Marxist state. So, once I began to understand that agenda, it explained why there’s such a concentrated effort towards the vilification of our history by the tearing down of monuments and what have you. Judeo-Christian values are being destroyed and spoken against.
Then I applied Cultural Marxism to race, and I discovered that the whole intention of all of these diversity studies in our universities is to keep the various races and ethnicities at war with one another. That’s their intended purpose. That stems from Saul Alinsky’s teachings, going way back to him.
I also applied Cultural Marxism to what they are attempting to do to freedom of speech. I didn’t realize at first that Marx’s view was that if freedom of speech was allowed that the Capitalists might win because, after all, to the Marxist’s mind, they are the oppressors. What they had to do is to have two standards. They believe it is time for the “oppressed” to speak, and they are the only ones who should have freedom. But, all of those “oppressors,” well, they should be quiet.
Then I applied Cultural Marxism to the growing breakup of the family. The bottom line here is, once you understand what Cultural Marxism is, how everything begins to fall into place. The breakup of the family helps us understand what is happening with the degradation of our society.
Tim Moore: You’ve hit the nail on the head again! So many of the negative trends that we are witnessing right now are based on Marx’s ideology. Marx was the ultimate critical theorist in the terms of tearing down everything. He wasn’t criticizing constructively, for he wanted to tear down every structure, beginning with society and government, but definitely including the family and religion. Marx doled out most of his hatred toward Christianity in particular.
You mentioned Saul Alinsky, who was another product of Chicago. The radical ideas embraced by these atheistic advocates of upheaval and anarchy have recently become mainstream in our own day and age. How did we get here as a society?
Erwin Lutzer: We got here because there is something that is very attractive about Cultural Marxism. Our society misuses words, such as equality. Who is going to argue against equality? Or, fairness? But then, what’s pushed is marriage equality, meaning same-sex marriage. We have income equality, which is socialism. Then, of course, there’s the misuse of the word justice. We end up with environmental justice and reproductive justice for women. So, what they do is couch all of these ideas in lofty language and propaganda. When you see those sorts of labels on a box, you want to open the box and see what is inside of it. In my book We Will Not be Silenced, I have a chapter on propaganda, because quickly, the purpose of propaganda is to so shape people’s view of reality so that no matter how much evidence is produced against it, people will not change their minds. I explain how that happens.
Tim Moore: You wrote in your book, and I love this statement: “I see much of Christianity submitting to the culture in many areas of life, especially in matters of sexuality. I fear we are allowing culture to inform our thinking, and even raise our children.”
Then you assert, “The day of casual commitment to the Gospel must come to an end.” That reminds me of the warnings by Jesus Himself, as well as Peter and Paul, made throughout the New Testament. You also testified, “I write not so much to reclaim the culture, as to reclaim the Church.” How bad is this cultural virus that is infecting the Church today?
As an aside, I would note that President Biden’s recommendation this year that we bring children into the government’s sphere of education, beginning at age three, is an example of the latest advocacy for letting our children be raised by other people than their parents.
Erwin Lutzer: Tim, you’ve actually raised a host of issues, and I wish I had time to pause and comment on each one of them, so I have to point people to read my book. But, I will say this, that the Church has bought into the culture in a way that is very detrimental.
I was asked one time to speak on the topic of how to reclaim America. I’m not sure we can reclaim it in this sense. We cannot reverse same-sex marriage and some of the other counter-biblical trends. I wrote the book not so much for the purpose of being able to reclaim the culture, as to reclaim the Church. How is the Church submitting? Sometimes there’s a confusion between social justice with biblical justice, yet especially in the issue of sexuality, happening under the guise of love. People don’t realize that love can oftentimes be very detrimental and evil. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they didn’t stop loving, they just started to love themselves and love pleasure and lovers of money. So, just because you want to “quote love,” that doesn’t make things right. “Herein is love, that you keep my commandments” (1 John 5:3).
So, my hope is what my book does is help people to understand the biblical definitions. By the way, every chapter contains what should be the response of the Church, because that is where my heart is. How do we live faithfully in a culture that has lost its way? That’s really the question that all Christians should be asking.
Tim Moore: In my last election for Kentucky state congress, my opponent was an avowed Progressive. That word masks a shameless advocacy of abortion on demand, sexual deviancy, and unchecked Socialism. So, I love the analogy that you use in your book about making a wrong turn on the highway. You say, “Progress in the wrong direction is not something to celebrate.”
Erwin Lutzer: Exactly! When you stop to think about all of the deviancies that are called Progressive, and you listed several of them, they are actually detrimental and are leading us along a very dangerous road. Let us remember that in the eyes of the Radical Left, it is not enough to take evil and to call it good, that’s only half their agenda; the other half is to take that which is good, and call it evil. Then what you have to do is celebrate the evil. Someone at Moody Church who teaches in the school system here in Chicago said he was told, “It is not enough if you simply tolerate same-sex marriage, rather if you don’t celebrate it, you will lose your job.” So, it is not simply enough to have evil win, rather evil needs to be celebrated. That’s considered to be progress in a nation that has lost its way.
In Part 3, the final segment in this interview of Pastor Erwin Lutzer, he will instruct Christians how to live in this troubled Church of Laodicean age.