I object to CRT, and its toxic side-kicks, as a matter of principle, out of compassion for those whose lives would be wasted by it.

We seem to live in an age when an alarming number of people are horribly bad at math. How else to explain the rampaging enthusiasm for generalizing our understanding of humanity merely on the basis of one's own "lived experience"? However much we are naturally affected by our own lived experiences, our experiences are nothing more than anecdotes in the larger scheme of things. "Lived experiences" are subject to all of the normal limitations of logic that attend a hasty generalization. And that remains true, even when one's interpretation of lived experience is actually correct - which is by no means always guaranteed.

I object to CRT, and its toxic side-kicks, as a matter of principle, out of compassion for those whose lives would be wasted by it. My compassion is directed at all of those who are being encouraged to anchor their sense of themselves in the poisoned sands of victimhood, mistreatment, and oppression.

I was asked by a friend recently what, given my objections to CRT, I would say to a young black man who felt that he had been mistreated because he was black. My response to my friend was along the same lines of what I have always told my multi-racial children, and what I'll tell all of my multi-racial grandchildren when it comes to it.

First, I would tell his friend not to over-generalize from his own experience. It may be that he had indeed encountered someone or some situation in which his dark skin was leveraged as a vantage point for his mistreatment. But that doesn't mean that everyone he encounters will treat him that way. So he should be very cautious about over-generalizing from his own experience.

The second thing I would tell him is that if he hadn't been mistreated for his skin color, he would inevitably be mistreated for something else. Indeed, he's almost certain to be mistreated again, and repeatedly, before he shuffles off this mortal coil.

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but everyone is mistreated for something. Everyone. Like it or not, that's the nature of the world we live in. No one gets through the gauntlet of life unscathed. It's wrong and it's bad but we don't do ourselves any favors by deciding that our own well-being can only be established by insisting that everyone else conform to our desires. All that such a sense of aggrievement accomplishes is to empower the very people who mistreated us in the first place. Anyone who adopts that point of view is weakened, not strengthened, by it.

Focusing on our mistreatment also causes us to put our emotional well-being into the hands of others. I would tell the mistreated young man to toughen up emotionally and intellectually, recognize that his skin color was just the excuse of the moment, and recognize that people of all races are mistreated for one reason or another.

I would also tell him that he needs to think far less about his mistreatment and far more about what he intends to accomplish with his short life. His family and his friends need him to be useful, productive, and beneficial. Allowing slights and mistreatment to occupy his thought life, and coopt otherwise productive pursuits, accomplishes nothing but robbing him of precious and valuable time for really doing something with his short life. Build something. Create something. Grow something. Be a benefit to the people he actually knows and cares about.

This is in contrast to the approach to life encouraged by the CRT stooges, who recommend a life of aggrievement, and the paralysis and excuse-making that always attend resentment.

Self-absorption is destructive a trap, but it is being sold as a virtue by the CRT crowd. I don't entirely understand why more people, especially some highly-visible Christian leaders, seem not to understand this (That is, if we take their public statements at face value. It could be they do understand it, but are just being cowardly and hoping the crocodile will eat them last. Hard to tell.)

This, then, is just one of the practical and logical reasons to reject CRT: friends don't encourage friends to be more self-absorbed.

For more of a biblical reflection on the problems with CRT, and its toxic train of co-morbidities, you can go here (I've shared this before.):