Advice on Social Justice - One Latino to Another

A Response to a Pastor’s Questions About Racial Reconciliation and Social Justice

This video has two audiences in mind and the first audience is just my standard YouTube audience of people who watch my videos all the time and so I hope this is helpful for you. But really the primary audience for this video is Pastor Franco Martinez.

I saw Thabiti share a thread that you posted on Twitter and in that thread you asked for help. You wanted to know how to move forward with racial reconciliation and some of these social justice issues and that's commendable to be asking for help and so I urge you to watch this video in its entirety.

Now the beginning of the video might seem a little snarky to you and all of that kind of stuff and that's you know that's part of my personality and how I present these things but I urge you to walk to the end because or watch to the end rather because as one Latino to another, not that I think that really matters, but as one Latino to another I think that I know where the solutions to what you're asking can be found and towards the end of the video I start to talk about that.

So I hope this is helpful for you Pastor Martinez. Please I will attach my contact information to, I'll actually tweet this at you, how about that? Maybe we can talk offline or something like that. I hope that we can.

I've had many conversations with people that were very disturbed by my YouTube videos on the phone and we've had a lot of really good discussions and I think you all you sincerely do want to hear different perspectives and that is also very commendable.

So one pastor to another, one Latino to another. I hope you watch this video in its entirety and please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I would love to talk to you. Anyway here's the video and I hope this is helpful.

Critiquing the Idea That Skin Color Is a Perspective

God bless. All right well happy Monday. A pastor friend of mine online sent me this thread that Thabiti Anyabwili promoted on his Twitter feed and what it is it's a it's a thread from a pastor named Franco Martinez.

I believe he pastors in Connecticut. I don't know much of anything about him but I wanted to talk about it because I think it's it's quite interesting. Thabiti calls this an honest thread and beginning and let's let's read it and talk a little bit about this this is this could this this could be spicy we'll see.

All right this is what Franco Martinez has to say. He says I'm gonna do my best to be honest and transparent with this thread while at the same time hoping it doesn't come across as offensive or insensitive.

That's a good sign that it might. A thread on racial tensions the president must struggle to understand. He says when I came back to Twitter I made the decision that I wanted to follow Christian black leaders whether they be pastors, musicians, writers, politicians, etc.

I wanted to have my eyes open to different perspectives and my insulated disconnected random take on things. Now the first comment I want to make about this Twitter thread is there's everything good about wanting to listen to people and hear people from different perspectives and and things like that.

I have no problem with any of that. I do this all the time. I have consumed probably more alt-right media than you could ever imagine. I've consumed probably more cultural Marxist social justice warrior media that you could possibly imagine.

And it's some people would say that sounds like torture but it's something that I just happened to enjoy doing and I like hearing other people's perspectives. But the problem with this this tweet is that you've got to get past this superficial really dumbed-down version of diversity.

Franco says he wants to listen to black people to hear different perspectives. Black skin is not a perspective. You understand that? Let me look this let me look straight in the camera and say black skin your skin color is not a perspective.

Your skin color is simply a skin color. Your skin color doesn't think. Your skin color doesn't have an ideology. Your skin color is just a biological fact about the melanin count in your skin. If you want to listen to different perspectives, skin color literally has nothing to do with it.

It's about your ideology. It's about your perspective from a philosophical perspective. It's about your mind. We've got to get past this idea that skin color is actually a legitimate perspective or ideology.

There is no such thing as the black mentality. There's no such thing as the white mentality. These ideas used to be racist ideas. We used to consider those as racist ideas. And so if you're going to say, and I've seen a lot of people say this, you know Kyle Howard just recently said, well white evangelicals, I know they're not all the same, but they're pretty much the same so we can talk in generalities.

That's just a racist idea. That's what alt-right uses to talk about black people. They say that we want black people out of the country because they're all criminals. Well I know they're not all criminals, but there's enough of them that are.

You see this is all racism. So we've got to get past this idea that somehow my skin color as a Puerto Rican Latino has something to do with my ideology. Now it might have, there might be statistical disparities that we can talk about, but if you're looking for a different perspective, Pastor Franco, I would suggest looking beyond the superficiality of skin color.

That is really stupid. Really stupid. I would look for people that have different ideologies than you, different foundations than you. I would look maybe for people that have different assumptions or presuppositions.

That's how you have diversity. It's not just skin color. Anyway, sorry to go off on that rant. I didn't expect to talk too much about that one. But anyway, he goes on, he says, this led me to discover leaders such as blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I wasn't ready for the world my eyes would be open to and following them. Those five followers opened my eyes. At the very least, I was now even more aware, not just of the racial tensions, but of the pain and divide nationally and spiritually as well.

In my political detachment, I realized how aloof and disconnected I was from the struggle of a large portion of America is going through. Well, I'm going to take Franco at his word. He was aloof, politically disconnected politically.

And so he was unaware of the struggle of certain people groups. I'll take that as face value. I'm glad that you're no longer unaware of that. That's, that's fine. But let's not pretend and this is why Thabiti shares a thread like this.

He'll deny this. That's fine. He thought he shares a thread like this is because everyone who doesn't agree with him yet is in this position. They're just ignorant. They just don't know if they knew they would of course agree with pastor Thabiti.

Um, and that's just not the case at all. There are plenty of people who are very aware of the struggles of minorities. I am one of them who do not agree at all with your perspective. And so I'm glad pastor Martinez here is, is now awakened, awakened to this, but you know, Hey, no problem.

He goes on. He says, yes, I have Spanish background, but on the real I'm white. I'm laughing, but this is actually very sad. Um, Franco has been shamed over and over again. And effectively to Thabiti is effective at shaming people, putting people on the defensive, making people feel guilty.

And now we've got here a Franco Martinez who's saying I've got that white guilt, man, man, that's a trip. He says my current cultural surroundings and relationships aren't exactly plugins to the minority community.

Growing up. I was in a great city with many influences and people of many backgrounds. Now, not as much. This guy's literally apologizing for moving out of the city. I'm glad to be first generation American child immigrants.

Me too. I love growing up in the melting pot I grew up in, but my awareness was non-existent. Now I feel like my awareness has increased and yet my surroundings are much less of the melting pot variety.

So what now? Now here's the thing. Pastor Franco here is almost lamenting of the fact that he lives in a more, I guess, ethnically monolithic area than he used to. And the reality is that that's, I mean, if you don't want to live in a place that has one ethnicity, that's up to you.

I'm not saying that's a sin, but it's also not a sin to not want to live in an ethnically diverse area. There's nothing wrong with that unless you're showing impartiality, unless you are hating blacks or Latinos or Middle Easterns or things like that.

That's a sin. But if you live, I live in Vermont, right? Very mono-ethnic. It's, in fact, there's article after article about how white Vermont is and so it must be racist. And there's nothing wrong with me living here, right?

I enjoy living in Vermont. I've lived in Brooklyn. I've lived in very ethnically diverse areas. I lived in a Middle Eastern neighborhood in Brooklyn where there was a mosque on every corner, that kind of thing.

And that was great, too. I loved, I enjoyed that very much. But there's nothing wrong with living in Vermont where basically everyone I see in the street is white. So again, this thread puts this forward, like, this is something, this is a deficiency that needs to be overcome.

If you live in a mono-ethnic area, that's not a deficiency. There's nothing in the Bible that says that that is a deficiency unless you are showing partiality because of it. Unless you live in an all-white area and now you're racist.

I don't know about you, but I don't think white equals racist. I know a lot of you might think that, but it's not the case. There you go. He goes, the rabbit hole got deeper when I realized not only am I becoming more aware of the divide and pain, but I'm seeing spiritual leaders and a president who claims to profess Christianity as well be at odds with each other.

Again, I wasn't ready. In my political detachment, I was now being challenged as to what does my faith demand of me. And here's what this long thread boils down to. I don't know. I don't want to just do token things to claim that I did my part, but I want to do more.

This is why the social justice movement is so effective. Because people just don't know. They just don't know what to do about these kinds of issues. And that's our fault. That's our own fault. Because when you don't know what justice is, biblically speaking, scripturally speaking, and somebody comes along and says, well this is what justice is.

It's because we have these wealth inequalities and these income disparities and we need to solve those because otherwise it's not just. And it sounds really good. We're suffering. We're struggling. They pull the heartstrings and they really milk it.

You're a Christian. You're a godly Christian. You want to do the right thing. You can be influenced by that. You can be influenced by that. And it's not correct. Biblical justice has nothing to do with income inequalities.

Biblical justice doesn't have to do with statistical disparities in police work. Biblical justice doesn't say, well I know for a fact that there should not be any disparity between blacks and whites in this area.

Therefore we need to make it equal. That's Marxism. That's cultural Marxism. And I know you guys get angry when we say that, but that's what it is. To assume that everyone should be even, whether it's in policing, whether it's in murder rates, whether it's in income, that is not a biblical assumption.

You're not getting that from the Bible. In fact the Bible is full of income inequalities and different disparities between groups. That's just the reality. And so I believe Pastor Franco, and I feel sad for him, he doesn't know how a Christian should engage in politics, how a Christian should engage with the issues of justice.

He doesn't know. And that's very sad because he's a pastor. He should know, yet he doesn't. And that's a problem. And that's why people are being affected by this, because they have this hole in their message, in their gospel.

And they shouldn't have it, because the Bible talks about justice and righteousness constantly. And look, reformed people should know better, because reformed people, their view of the law is applying the general equity of the civil law given to Israel today.

That's what justice is. We know the general equity of the law. We can talk about what that is, and we can debate about that. But if you don't have that presupposition that we should apply the general equity of the law today, you have a hole in your gospel.

And so someone's gonna fill that with cultural Marxist nonsense. Or something else. I don't know what you fill it with. People fill the hole in their gospel when it comes to justice and righteousness with all kinds of crazy things.

But what we got to do is make sure we're filling it with biblical things. Anyway, so Franco is confused. He doesn't know what to do. And so he's looking to Pastor Thabiti to help him out. And Pastor Thabiti is more than willing to push his critical theory.

That's what Pastor Thabiti is willing to do. Because he's not giving him Bible verses. He'll say, let justice roll down like waters. But he'll never show you where the Bible defines justice as income and wealth inequalities.

He'll never show you that, because it's not there. And so Pastor Franco is being influenced by someone who's just as clueless as he is, or is doing it intentionally. He goes on, as a pastor, my heart is for people.

That's very good for Pastor Franco. You're not gonna see me helping someone campaign. But I do want to do something to connect with people hurting from this racial and spiritual division that is occurring currently.

My problem is I don't know what or how. And again, he's being very honest here. He should know what to do. But he doesn't know what to do. And I, listen, I don't know everything. So I'm not faulting Pastor Franco here.

I think he should do some more research into what biblical justice looks like. And not just listen to the social justice warriors. But here's the thing. A good way to start to avoid the racial and spiritual divisions that are occurring currently is to stop buying into the presuppositions of racists.

That skin color, all of a sudden, Matt, has some kind of effect on your morality. Skin color has some kind of effect on how correct your viewpoint is. So the very, the way you started this thread, I'm gonna listen to some black people to get a different perspective.

Stop doing that. Because that's the presupposition of a racist. And so if you want to help racial and spiritual divisions, we need to look to the Bible and not to skin color. From a man who lost his life just yesterday or before due to being placed in a chokehold to whatever tomorrow's news story is going to be of another racially tense doing, there's a conviction taking place in me that wants to see healing and reconciliation.

But now here's the reality. He makes it seem like this is just a rampant thing. Blacks are getting choked out and killed by whites constantly. And actually, if you look at the statistics, I'm not gonna even go there because that will get me in trouble.

I just don't know where to begin. I love Twitter, but all of this Twitter awakening means nothing if it doesn't leave this virtual realm to invade my actual reality. I'm not over here trying to write some thread for appearance's sake.

Ironically, this thread is self-defeating if there isn't an engagement that takes place to help me, propel me from a place of awareness and wanting to help actually serve in the needs of hurt and divide present, presented.

At the end of the day, I'm just trying to own up to the fact that my current status has kept me insulated from a world of disconnect and pain that my eyes have been open to now and I want to do something in a non-token way.

Help me get started. Franco, I'm gonna tweet this at you and I hope this helps you get started. Here's what you have to do as a Christian pastor. And brother, I say this as a Christian pastor who cares about issues of ethnic reconciliation, who cares about issues of social justice and biblical justice.

Scripture, Justice, and the General Equity of the Civil Law

The thing that you need to do, Franco, what you need to do is be laser focused on the scriptures. If somebody's telling you something that pulls at your heartstrings, and look, we all have heartstrings.

I mean, every Christian has a heart and we don't like to see people hurting or suffering and there's everything good about that. There's everything good with walking with people through suffering. So I'm not gonna discourage you from doing that.

But what I want to do is when you feel those heartstrings being pulled and you start feeling the emotions taking over, remember that you have a responsibility as a Christian pastor to rein in those emotions and filter every single thing through scripture.

Everything. God cares about justice, right? But we have to define justice biblically. The general equity of the civil law. You look at that and you say, hmm, is it injustice that black people make less money on average than white people?

Is that an injustice according to scripture? The answer is no. So why are people like to be quoting those things as injustices? Now there might be an injustice behind that and we can talk about that, but we have to talk about the details and then also the biblical solutions.

Because you say, Pastor Franco, and I believe you, you don't have the solutions. Brother, the scripture does. And so we cannot solve these things by unbiblical means, affirmative action. That's unbiblical.

That's showing partiality, you know, welfare and things like that. That's unbiblical. The government does not have that authority to take from some people and give to others. The church has that authority, not to take, but to receive from people and to give to others.

You see, the Bible has solutions for all of these things and we need to be laser focused. Pastor Martinez, I hope that you stay laser focused on the scriptures, what they say about justice, and what they say about solving it.

I hope this is helpful. Pastor Franco, please reach out to me if you're interested in hearing from a different perspective because I can assure you that I probably have a different perspective than many of the people you're listening to and maybe even you.

I'm not a Republican. I'm not alt-right. I'm not any of this stuff. I am willing to talk with you. I would love to talk because I believe you that you don't know what to do. I know a little bit about what to do.

I've thought about these things for a long time and I'm not perfect, but I am laser focused on the scriptures. And so I hope you see this video. I hope you hear my heart. I'm not trying to mock you or make fun of you, but I am trying to help you as a brother in Christ to find what is biblical justice is and what we do about it as Christians, as pastors.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless.