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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

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This week we're getting into the subject of hate, specifically hating evil, and we're doing so as we dive into Psalm 97, so I'll read it now. It's called the Lord Reigns. He turns up his adversaries all around. And, as we've done all week, our main focus verse is verse 10. Again it reads oh you who love the Lord hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

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And for this week, my thesis is that we, as Christians, don't hate evil nearly enough. Yesterday we talked about the evil of child abuse. Today we're going to talk about how Christians don't hate the evil of standpoint epistemology enough. So for some, and perhaps most of you, you've never heard of standpoint epistemology before, at least as a term, right, but you'll recognize it when I explain it. So epistemology is simply the study of what knowledge is and how we get it and, essentially, what people that believe in this and people that believe in standpoint epistemology think. They think that what we know and how we know it is completely determined by our social position or standpoint in a given culture or society. So it is associated with Marxism and feminism and more on those tomorrow and it is most often, in my estimation it manifests as critical race theory. Okay Now, without getting too far out into the weeds, because we only got five minutes, standpoint epistemology is directly related to Gnosticism. You may have heard of that before. So Gnosticism revolves around a supposed secret knowledge. That's gnosis, right? That's what knowledge is. It's a secret knowledge that only some can surmise, right.

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But here are three reasons why we should hate standpoint epistemology more. Reason number one it exchanges the capital T truth of God for quote, unquote my truth. Okay. So basically that might be true for you but it isn't for me, kind of a thing. So your perspective from your standpoint is truth. That's what these people think. Your perspective from your standpoint is actually truth. But in John 17, we see Jesus praying over his disciples and during the prayer Jesus says this, as recorded in John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So, guys, the word of God, the sword of the spirit, is capital T truth.

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Reason number two God condemns partiality. So James, the brother or half brother of Jesus, said this in James 2, 1, my brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. So you see a feature, not a bug of standpoint epistemology is that certain identity groups with certain immutable characteristics have higher or lower moral worth than other identity groups. And guys, let's just be real clear about this. This, definitively, is partiality, and God condemns this.

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And reason number three is this Our identity should be in Christ above everything else. Right, we are not to find value or worth in our social standing or our identity group above the value that is being identified with Christ. So the Apostle Paul says this in Galatians 3.28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So standpoint epistemology is literally antithetical to the unity that we are supposed to have and enjoy in the body of Christ. So are Christians called to hate? Yes, we are called to hate evil, and our hatred must compel us to act. So we should push back the darkness of standpoint epistemology at every opportunity. Don't miss tomorrow. We'll wrap the week up then.

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Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you want to help equip other men for the fight episode Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.