Response to The Urban Perspective on Dr. James White (part 2)

I wanted to continue today my response to the Urban Perspectives video about Dr. James White. And the next section of this video is really good, right about minute 11 through about 18. I recommend that you watch it.

It's a really good review of the history of slavery, racism, and just dehumanization and oppression that black Americans experienced from the time of slavery all the way to pretty recently. And from my perspective, I don't really see anything that I want to disagree with too much in it.

It's a sad history and this brother's obviously done his homework. He knows a lot about this and I recommend that if you don't know a lot about it, if your recollections of this time period from school or Black History Month, if it just kind of leaves you with, yeah, slavery's wrong and it's wrong because you're not supposed to own people and things like that.

If that's the extent of what you know about it, I recommend you go back and learn more because it was horrific. Owning somebody is bad enough, but there was all kinds of physical oppression, psychological oppression, things within the families and stuff like that that was perpetrated on black people, horrible.

So we need to really understand the level of depravity that was unleashed during these times. And the church was unfortunately part of it. The church was right there and of course there were people that were opposed to slavery from the beginning.

There were Christians that didn't just stay silent, that worked to actively end the oppression. But there were also Christians, and we need to admit this, there were also Christians who actively participated in it.

And we don't want to just gloss over that because that's dishonest and we need to be honest with our history. But right about minute 17 and a half, I want to play this because this is something that I was honestly very, very happy to see and I'll just play it and you'll see what I mean.

The Image of God and the Church's Responsibility

He created them male and female in the image of God. He created. So we didn't bring the Imago Dei, the church, throughout all those hundreds of years. Absolutely. So Christians when talking about this should have a special humility in many ways because the reason why the whole racial construct which isn't real exists, I would dare to say is because my Christian brothers and sisters did not lift up the Imago Dei.

And that's why people have a hard time even in hearing our voice because we created sort of the complexity that again James White speaks to. We created that complexity, the church. And I say we because I am not going to disassociate myself even from the horrific, ignorant, slave-holding past of my brothers and sisters.

Because again, I know this is where total depravity comes in. The cross means we've got an ugly past. And in humility, then yes, that's a part of my journey. But all the more reasons why Christians should be able to talk about this without defense because the cross allows us to look truthfully at our past.

And Christians have to own that the complexity of race and all of this conversation really lies at our doorstep because of both our silence, but even our intentionality of developing systems and structures that even would cause society to think that certain groups of people again are less than, less intelligent because of race.

I mean our theological institutions fell right in line with what the rest of society said. Well, thank you so much, man.

I agree. Thank you so much, Pastor James White, for what you just said because it's not a small deal. There are a number of Christians these days that would absolutely want to dissociate themselves from the church's past.

And the church is a force for good in the world. There's no question about that, but it's not perfect, and it's not pretty sometimes. And for this brother to sit here and say, I do not disassociate myself from the slave-holding, despicable things that the church sat by and either allowed or did themselves and actively participated in.

That's an amazing thing, and I appreciate Pastor James White for doing that because we do not have the right to sit here and say, I'm going to divorce the white church. We don't have the right to say, I am not comfortable worshipping with white people after Trump got elected.

We don't have that right as Christians. So what this brother did, thank you. Thank you, Pastor James White, for saying what you said because we do need to own as Christians the ugly past. The cross lets us do that because Jesus died for all kinds of sins, not just the little ones that we think are not a big deal, not just the ones that are in our present right now, but also the sins of the church of the past.

So when people say that John Edwards either own-slaved or he was a chaplain on a slave ship, Christ died for his sins as well as your sins. So I appreciate this. We need to be humble about it. We need to be humble about this conversation in such a way that we acknowledge that we could be in sin.

We dare not think of ourselves as infallible or incapable of this kind of a sin. That's why I wanted to really emphasize what I did last time because the sin of partiality, according to race, can be committed by anybody.

It can be committed by anybody. And so we do need to come at this from a humble place. And so I really appreciate Pastor James White's comments there. Let's move on a little bit.

Race, Systems, and Individual Responsibility

That was huge because typically the distinction I see between how many black and brown process race, racial insensitivity, and racial injustice is we look at it systemically, whereas our white brothers and sisters, not all but many, look at it individually.

And that seems to be what James White did in his mischaracterization of Jamar Tisby's article because Jamar was just simply talking about just being in this system to where we can't necessarily express ourselves or feeling uncomfortable.

Feeling uncomfortable isn't divisive. He's talking about how he feels. And being an African American within the PCA in terms of his testimony and seeing some of these things, it seems like James White began to mischaracterize not only the article but even Jamar himself.

When Jamar is speaking from personal experience, which can't not be debated, these are things that he's experiencing. You had over 19 years.

Okay, that's where we're going to stop for right now. And some important things were said there as well. He makes the comment that black and brown people tend to look at things, issues of race, from a systemic or institutional perspective and white people tend to look at the issues of race from an individual perspective.

And he does make a specific— he does kind of make sure to say that not all white people look at it this way. And he's definitely right. I know plenty of white people who look at the issues of race through systemic lenses as well.

Just like I also know plenty of black and brown people who look at the issue of race through a more individual perspective. And so because of that, I wonder how true his statement is and why that statement.

If it is true, why is it that white people tend to look at this from an individual perspective and black and brown people tend to look at it from a systemic perspective? I have a suspicion that it has nothing to do with race at all.

I have a suspicion that it's an ideological thing. It's a political thing. Some ideologies tend to emphasize systemic issues and social population issues and group issues as opposed to more individual issues.

The question is what's correct, right? Because is it more an individual issue or is it more a systemic issue? Has it been a systemic issue in the past and now we've moved beyond that and it's more of an individual issue?

These are questions that we need to explore. But I don't think it's as easy as saying it's just a racial thing. It's just that white people look at it one way, black people look at it another way. I think that this pastor admits that.

He says that it's not all white people, it's just some. So I wonder if race even is a factor in that at all or if it's just political ideology. The question is what's right and I think that there's nuance here.

Deuteronomy and the Limits of Corporate Punishment

But one of the principles I think for this, we can draw straight from the Bible. From Deuteronomy, the scriptures say that fathers shall not be put to death for their sons nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers.

Everyone shall be put to death for their own sin. And so there are certainly, when it comes to issues of oppression or criminal activity or sins, God seems to say this is more of an individual thing. We cannot be punished for the sins of our fathers.

Our fathers cannot be punished for the sins that we commit. And so that's just a principle. I'm not saying that that answers everything here because it doesn't. And there is certainly an issue of societal sin and cultural sin as well that we could explore.

But these are the things we need to be talking about. We do need to bring scripture to bear on some of these questions because these are important questions. Whether or not partiality is a systemic thing versus an individual thing, we need to look at principles from scripture to decide.

Feelings, Experience, and Debatable Claims

The other thing I wanted to address was where he starts talking about Dr. James White criticizing Jamar Tisby for some of his writing. And one of the things he says is that Jamar was writing about his feelings and his experiences and that that can't be debated is what he says.

And to a certain extent, he's right. You know, we don't want to talk to someone who's telling us their feelings, telling us about their experiences. We don't want to say, hey, you know, you don't really feel that way.

Or those feelings, they're not valid. Because if somebody feels a certain way, I think it's appropriate and polite and right to say, okay, I believe that you feel that way. But the issue is once you start to project those feelings and say, hey, the reason I feel this way is because this group is making me feel this way.

Right? Because that's kind of what Jamar starts to go into. He starts to say, I don't feel comfortable, you know, worshiping with white people because white people, you know, did whatever. I mean, in one instance, it's because they voted for Trump.

Or in another instance, it's for other reasons. And so once you start doing that, that can be debated, I think. Because, you know, yes, your feelings are valid. They're your feelings. Your experiences are valid.

They're your experiences. But once you start to try to not blame but use other people as an explanation for those feelings, we can look at the facts of the case and see, okay, what's really happened here?

I've got an example. There was a church that I was a part of that some of the women at one of our church meetings said, hey, you know, women aren't being heard in this church. And I feel like we're kind of, you know, not on the same level.

We're not giving as much attention as the men. And their examples were that there was a men's Bible study group. And, you know, there were other kind of programs for men, but they weren't. They didn't have them for women.

And so, you know, if I was the pastor of that church, which I wasn't, but if I was, I would be very glad to know that that's how some women felt because that needs to be addressed. If someone has a certain feeling in a church, we want to address that.

We don't want to just push that aside and say, no, no, no, you don't feel that way. But in this case, the reality was that there was a women's group, right? So there were programs specifically geared towards women.

They weren't the same programs, obviously. We had a men's group and we had a women's group. They were different, but they were there. So the question is, we need to address why this group of women felt that way.

But when they try to, you know, blame a certain reason for the way they feel, we can engage with that and we can say, OK, it doesn't seem to be accurate. So let's talk about what's really going on. OK, and I think that Dr. James White was probably going down that road with Jamar.

Critical Theory, Policy Claims, and Closing Thoughts

I would probably do the same thing. I mean, I read Jamar's article about not being comfortable worshipping with white people after Trump's election. I thought it was ridiculous. I'm not white. I didn't vote for Trump.

I never would vote for Trump. I'm not a Republican. I don't even vote. But I thought that that was a ridiculous thing to say because I'm sure he felt uncomfortable. I'm sure he felt however he said he felt.

The question is, was it appropriate for him to feel that way? Was it appropriate for him to say, I'm not comfortable worshipping with white people as a group because of this election result? So that's the thing.

So this is part of sort of this whole theory, which this is critical theory. I mean, this is part of it. This kind of storytelling, this experience sharing, that's part of the whole theory. That's what you do to sort of demonstrate oppression or whatever it is.

And we don't want to just say that's invalid completely. But at the same time, there is a debate to be had. Once you start projecting those feelings and those experiences and saying, and the reason I feel a certain way is because of this group or this situation.

Once you get into that realm, we can certainly start debating. So it's not about delegitimizing your feelings. It's not about not accepting your feelings. We certainly do want to affirm people's feelings.

I'm not one of these that say your feelings don't matter. But once you start taking those feelings and start hinting at policy changes and system changes and things like that, we can certainly debate those because that is absolutely debatable.

But anyway, really great section here. And again, I stress I want you to listen to this. I hope you do, because I think you'll learn a lot. And we'll continue on the next video.