Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson led the charge in passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act which will codify a woke organization’s definition of antisemitism to be used by the Department of Education. The bill has divided Conservative Inc. as even Ben Shapiro has come out saying that the bill goes too far. Yet Mark Levin is on board with the bill and is citing John Hagee and Ralph Reed to quell Christian backlash against the bill.
Despite, Mike Johnson’s Southern Baptist background, the bill’s definition of antisemitism is outsourced to an organization that opposes assigning any culpability to the death of Jesus to Jews. This sentiment that the Bible reiterates on numerous occasions was highlighted by Freedom Caucus members who voted against the legislation.
According to a statement given to Jewish Insider:
Hagee and Reid argue that it is “insulting” to Christianity to highlight how this bill could easily be weaponized against Christians. They go on to erroneously apply Matthew 25:40 to modern Jews.
Hagee and Reed go on to defend the concept of hate crimes. The line “you cannot defeat what you are unwilling to define” is especially ironic as Mike Johnson’s bill outsourced its key definition of antisemitism. The organization that it outsourced to is unclear but lists numerous problematic examples that attack people for not being blind.
Some attacks on this legislation are appalling. Thank you, Pastor Hagee and Ralph Reed https://t.co/NrUlHZ2dZq
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) May 3, 2024
Mark Levin praised Hagee and Reed for being a whip against Christians who opposed the bill. Mark Levin branded himself as a constitutional scholar yet was nowhere to be found when the government imposed lockdowns. And now he’s supporting hate speech legislation. Yike.
As for John Hagee, it was already obvious he was a false teacher.
8 Responses
If it is just an “add on” crime, then that would be another problem. The trouble with such “add on” crimes is that they inevitably lead to an attempt to determine intent. And the determination of intent is antithetical to scripture, as far as I understand scripture. If the Lord says don’t do something, and you do it, intent is entirely irrelevant.
What was Adam’s intent? It’s irrelevant, aside from the fact that it was Satan who used the “intent” argument to deceive Eve.
Biblically, not only is intent irrelevant, we’re supposed to ignore the entire concept of “intent”, because that’s one way we can end up straying off the straight and narrow. It can be used to deceive us. It can be used as an excuse. So on and so forth.
So the “intent” and the context would be entirely up to prosecutors to determine at their whim. Basically trying to read someone’s mind. If the media were involved, it were a high-profile case, and an individual is being tried in the court of public opinion, and so on, then it would be nothing but mob rule.
Ironically, exactly like the mob that Pilate feared.
He didn’t want an insurrection or riot, so he allowed the mob to send Jesus to die, based in significant part on what it presumed His “intent” to be.
The notion of “add on” crimes is another problem by itself.
The determination of “intent” is a problem we’ve all seen play out over the past several years, used by activists for lawfare, to impose double-standards, to target certain groups and individuals, to weaponize the law. From “intent” it’s just a hop skip and a jump from guilt by association. The application of it will inevitably be baseless and relativist, dependent on whichever way the winds of society are blowing at a given time.
It’s dangerous territory. Does the bill entirely outlaw any scripture? No, not technically. But it leaves the determination of “context”, and whether or not antisemitism is the intent, up to the whims of the prosecutors.
I believe the proper way to be addressing this would be, at least in part, to use scripture to determine the proper context, to list those examples. We know the proper context by how the Apostles placed it in context, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The proper contexts are given in scripture itself, if we’ll pay close attention. If the subject is prophecy, that’s a valid context. If the subject is sharing the Gospel, that’s a valid context. So on and so forth.
You can’t address an issue such as this and be lazy about it. The subject is scripture, and the historical facts it contains. You can’t just throw together a bill and defer judgement of context and intent to the whims of who knows who as to whether or not God’s word might be allowed.
The law does attempt to take a one-time snapshot of the IHRA guidelines, to presumably avoid a third party being able to change the law by changing the guidelines, at some point in the future, but that’s nowhere near good enough, when no effort is made to specifically describe allowable contexts, how in the sam hill intent is to be determined in deciding whether or not to add on the charge, and so on.
If the law cannot be made specific enough, to a reasonable degree, then it shouldn’t exist at all.
My initial statement on intent needs to be correct. It’s not irrelevant, because there are some sins that God has defined that do involve intent. He knows the mind and heart, and He knows our intent. But in such instances, as we imperfect human beings are to judge things, God has given us very specific standards to go by.
And He also made it clear that any charge requires two or three witnesses. And false accusation is a serious offense. So we are not to go around accusing people of thought crimes, as if we could know their heart or mind.
Like the sins of greed, envy, etc.
Take those in combination with the sin of theft. It is often driven by greed, envy, and other sins. But there is no “greed” or “envy” add-on crime in cases of theft. It’s wrong regardless.
If we start inferring more guilt as a matter of trying to infer intent, then we’ve created a situation where one might also infer less guilt as a matter of trying to infer intent. Right, and that’s how we end up with woke prosecutors refusing to prosecute crimes, because they’ve presumed good intent, and made excuses. So the inference of more guilt is just as antithetical to scripture as the inference of less guilt. The crime has a penalty. God set the penalty. The penalty doesn’t change. The rules are not bendable.
That was the point I was trying to make. If I’ve made any sense here …
Lust is another such sin.
As is lasciviousness.
The Bible is clear that “intent” alone can be sinful by itself, regardless of whether or not any other sin precedes or follows. But it doesn’t tack on a “lust” charge to a charge of adultery, much less leave such an “add on” charge up to the whims of a prosecutor or social media mob.
Intent does matter. It’s not always irrelevant, as I wrote in the first post here …
Reading through the bill just now, turns out it even includes the word “intent” …
” … the Department of Education shall take into consideration the definition of antisemitism as part of the Department’s assessment of whether the practice was motivated by antisemitic intent.”
So the DOE is supposed to look at a “definition” which says …
“… could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to …”
… without any specific explanations or examples of what overall contexts may or may not be allowable, and to consider that in an attempt to determine someone’s intent.
As I stated before, when you have rules and laws that are not specific enough, they can be used to target certain individuals, open the door to unfair application and enforcement, leave it up to different prosecutors, judges, and juries to apply the same law in different manner to different individuals (which will happen even if everyone involved is as good a person as they possible can be – no two people will interpret it the same), open the door to lawfare, etc., you are likely to create more problems than you solve.
Perceived unfairness is what feeds most of the conspiracy theories. If you make a bill that defers determinations of intent, you’re begging for unfair application, and your bill will itself become a part of the conspiracy theories it’s intended to address. Since the bill itself is focused on Jewish ethnicity, how could you turn around and say it isn’t?
I generally have a problem with any and all vague and unspecific laws, whatever the subject. Such laws are basically begging for more trouble, and cause more problems than they solve.
Given the way information spreads, and how things can tend to snowball, consideration of intent is not the way to go about it, for that reason also.
One person may point out the disproportionate involvement of Jews, apparent or real, depending on their own world view, in the promotion of marxism, feminism, porneia, capitalism, racism, or any other number of perceived evils, perceived or real, whether grounded in absolute truth of God’s word, or entirely on worldly moral relativism.
And that individual may do so with the intent to try to get those Jews involved to quit doing whatever it is they’re doing.
The next individual who comes along and reads what was written, may take what was said, begin to form an animosity toward Jews, a desire to war against Jews, and so on. And as it snowballs, sooner or later somebody ends up having the desire to force Jews to strip naked, march to a mass grave, shoot them in the head, and shove them in. (of course, in many cases they were made to climb into the hole and stand on the dead bodies, to save the nazis the trouble of having to push them in)
The goal of the IHRA is presumably to try to avoid another holocaust.
Well, it’s worth remembering that the nazis didn’t start out with the intent to slaughter the Jews. It started out fairly benign. It snowballed into a nightmare.
So the focus on intent could also open the door for severe problems from that perspective as well. Some things shouldn’t be said regardless of intent, certainly if said without very sufficient explanation, enough to prevent it being used to snowball into something you didn’t intend.
Like the old game of “telephone” we played in school. By the time whatever was said got to the other end of the classroom, it was something entirely different than what was originally said, much less with different intent.
If we read the epistles, we’ll see that the Apostles went to great lengths to give sufficient explanation. They not only gave us the contexts in which to say certain things, but also an understanding of why those things were said, and also how to explain it sufficiently enough such that we’re reasonably assured it could not end up being used for nefarious purposes. Their words set a standard that we can refer back to, so that if things start snowballing out of control, we can refer back to that standard, and correct. Since they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and God Himself essentially wrote those epistles, they’ve stood the test of time as that perfect standard. So whatever we say, even making every effort to follow their example and to explain, we still must refer back to that perfect standard that God gave us. We should make an effort, while also understanding our effort will inevitably fall short, and be ready to repent and correct ourselves when and if anything we’ve said has contributed, or could contribute, to such snowballing.
But if I were the IHRA, I’d take issue with the focus on “intent”, and the vagueness and lack of specificity, for those reasons also. They’d be wise to do more work on defining exactly which overall contexts they’re referring to. Because context is indeed important.
Nowadays with all the darwinism underlying definitions of identities, where sin is considered to be a genetic attribute, we have to be even more careful about what we say, and have to go into even more detailed explanation.
If the identity in question is itself a sin, then yes we are indeed supposed to disparage, call it out, point it out, and full-on rebuke it, as the Bible rebukes such identities. Identities such as thief, murderer, liar, transvestite, homosexual, adulterer, pagan, occultist, atheist, and so on, we can and should rebuke the identity itself, along with the sin. If it’s Judaism, then criticize Judaism, but not Jews as an ethnicity.
If the identity in question is not itself a sin, then we should go about it a different way. Ethnicity is one such identity. As is culture. In those cases, as I repeatedly posted here, we should call out and rebuke the sin, and the individuals involved, but avoid talking about the identity, in most all cases, or at the very least be very careful about how we go about it.
And this is my opinion. I believe it is solidly based on scripture. If the identity in question is not sinful, then don’t rebuke that which isn’t sin.
There’s no question it is a very fine line to walk. It’s a very straight and very narrow path. And when you talk about things like antisemitism, we kind of know what it is, but it’s hard to put into words and actually define. But if we’re going to start making laws about it, we’ve got to do that hard work.
And when we rebuke sinful identities, we remember that repentant believers are no longer identified by their sin. We’ve got to remember the words “such were some of you”.
And of course, looking at things in terms of disproportionate representation is the wokeist critical theory point of view.
Saying there are a disproportionate number of Jews in the media and hollywood, therefore they must be up to something, is about the same as blacks saying there are a disproportionate number of whites in a given field, therefore whites must be up to something. Which is about the same as whites saying there’s a disproportionate number of blacks in the NFL, therefore blacks must be up to something.
It’s the same wrong point of view. It’s fairly stupid, to put it bluntly. And it is antithetical to scripture.
It also doesn’t apply to identities/groups that are sinful in and of themselves. There are a disproportionate number of homosexuals among Christians, a proportion of 0% according to scripture, because homosexuals are indeed up to something rebellious and sinful. That disproportion is supposed to be there. The same way there should be zero homosexuals allowed inside the walls of God’s house, much less behind the pulpit.
Some people, one minute they say “those woke Jews!”
The next minute they say “there are too many Jews in the media!”
… well, make up your mind, are you for marxism or are you against it
So it’s not only sinful to rebuke that which isn’t sin, it’s self-defeating. If we just stick with God’s word, we won’t back ourselves into such corners, or walk into any traps.