David Wood, Don't Go Woke

Cornerstone Church

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David would my friend don't go woke

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I don't think you have I think you're teetering in that direction I watched your your video on police and I didn't like it and then

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I just watch this and I didn't like it I'm going to show a 40 minute interaction with your boy

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Carlton and and then interact with it so we're supposed to be slow to speak quick to listen slow to become angry so I'm not going to comment

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I'm going to listen for 40 minutes take notes respond to as much of it as I can for those of you who don't know myself

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I'm Jeff Cleaver pastor of Cornerstone Church in Mount Laurel and have hosted an apologetics conference over the years and David has come a couple of times done a tremendous job teaching us

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I appreciate David very much his his ministry to Muslims and his ministry in theology and in so many ways

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I'm a huge supporter very thankful for what God has done through this man many many people have come to Christ and David I think is blazing the trail to not treat

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Muslims with kid gloves but to speak the truth blatantly and firmly and and I've learned a lot from him in that way

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I think he's right about his perspective in how to to deal with Mohammed and the

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Quran which the world will call hateful and bigoted but in truth is loving and I appreciate

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David very much and I appreciate Carlton I've never met Carlton this is my first time seeing him I appreciate him very much as well and just hope that he would be encouraged in the faith so please take this criticism as in the spirit of correction as a friend to be preferred to a kiss from an enemy a slap from a friend

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I do offer I think a pretty sharp critique of what you guys are putting out there but I do so in love couple resources

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I'll point you to one is Walter Williams an economist and just Google suffer no fools really good kind of documentary about his life in it he tells the story of a young black kid and I don't like the term black and white people of color nonsense but just for the sake of communication he says a black kid came up to him the kid was probably 12 years old and lamented that he wanted to become an

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Air Force pilot but he knows that the white man would never allow it to happen

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Walter Williams said that was one of the saddest things he ever saw because the kid walked away sad and yet this was decades after the

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Tuskegee Airmen and his point goes on to be that this concept of systemic racism being a determining factor in the black community in holding down a people so that they cannot achieve the

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American dream or whatever it is that they want is itself oppressive this narrative which is taught and enforced and reinforced over and over again is the problem itself

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Greg Morse from Desiring God talks about microaggressions and in this video you guys talk about microaggressions he says he was walking with his kid and Greg Morse is a black guy and he had his kid in the stroller and his wife with him and as he approached someone on the sidewalk this lady blatantly crossed the street and passed on the other side and Greg Morse in his article for Desiring God I forget the name of it but you could

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Google Google it and find it pretty easily he says he could have gone home and tweeted about that microaggression or put it on Facebook and he would have had hundreds of likes just like that lamenting the racism of America and this microaggression against him but instead he realized that for him to impute to her this old lady who crossed the street the accusation of racism would be slanderous of her because he can't look into her heart and see racism there in fact he then offers a number of possible reasons why this woman crossed the street maybe she's afraid of COVID maybe she thinks

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I'm gonna cross the street when anybody comes by because I don't want to be within six feet of people maybe she has other reason that there's any number of reasons why she could have crossed the street and microaggressions plays

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God in reading the hearts of people to impute racism where a man is unable to see so a couple examples there

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Walter Williams Greg Morse I would encourage the reading of Thomas Sowell his book

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Discrimination and Disparities deals with a lot of the questions that are raised by this coming video here but without any further ado here is

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David Wood and his friend Carlton discussing racial injustices calling for reparations saying that there are microaggressions that we need to be very aware of and decrying systemic racism in our culture let's listen for 40 minutes and then

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I'll respond Carlton easy question for you

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Carlton easy question reparations bring on Carlton I want to ask him if he's a left -leaning person so we got we got we got three things here are you one are you a left -leaning

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Christian no

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I'm for the agenda of the lamb not for the donkey or the elephant what was the question about James White does he like James White he loves

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James White what is the truth about James White what do I think about James White what do you think about James White's take on social justice and lack of culture

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I try to get smoked man try to get me canceled before I even get started yeah buddy I like him for some stuff but not so much for others man like what are the things that you don't like on mom tell us everything you don't like about every apologist you don't like oh my somebody said to do the

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Carlton oh man can you do the Carlton I can do it but oh my god step back step are you just so everyone knows his actual name is

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Carlton that's not a nickname it's a family name that goes back he wasn't named after Carlton that's a family name and so he just got the the coolest name in the world and then learned to do the dance

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I did learn to try it he learned it because it's his name so um you ever met anybody named a black guy named

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Carlson that can't do the Carlson I feel like it's just part of the DNA like it's just in your DNA to know it all right now scoot you in a little because the mic's right here okay reparations yes or no oh my gosh easy question easy yes you're no question all my wife for just a while it's just quenched up like no man

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I think it just depends on what how you're defining it because I think I think it's one of those things where I think a lot of people just express incredulity at it at first and so when you start to look at state mandated evils that generational impact that have that haven't been rectified you know and I mean a lot of times the question goes from being should something be done to well how would we do something and then what we don't know how we would do it so nothing should be done as opposed to I think what the middle thing would be is should something be done and then we can discuss method afterwards and so the concept of reparations and keep in mind

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I'm not necessarily trying to be pinned down to just saying hey let's everybody just get a free check but I do think it's a conversation worth exploring that I think just gets shut down from the onset and I'm sure nobody just got triggered from what

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I just said yeah and just you know just in case yeah I don't want him to be the only one triggering people we had a discussion about it last night with a group of people and I sort of laid out my view that I gave the example of Max Bear who's a boxer back in the 1920s and 1930s and he actually killed or had a role in killing two guys in the ring and he actually

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I know at least one of them had kids and Max Bear spent the rest of his life paying for that guy's kids you know to go all the way to college and so on but but I mean think about that it's it's you you know

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I had a role in taking your father away and therefore I'm going to do something that your father would have done if he if I hadn't had that role in in taking him away and so he's saying you know

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I'm going to do that but you know what I was talking about was you know what what if what if it was like my great grandfather who had done that and like that if my great grandfather had killed your great grandfather and now that has affected your family and you'd been in poverty and so on well it's weird to say that I have to do this or I have to hand over something but I would say if I know that then

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I would say it's a good thing to do if I know that I can do something that has been caused by my family or something like that and I can somehow do something then

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I would say it's good and so yeah if it's a situation where one group has been oppressed or abused by another my position if you can do something sometimes you can't sometimes there's nothing sometimes it's so long ago you just there's no there's no way to do it

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I would say it's a good thing to do if you can do it the question then becomes can you do it what can you do about it and is it actually good and would it actually work but as you're pointing out the discussion usually gets shut down because people are thinking oh you're saying we just take tons of money and hand it over and I gotta pay

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I'm gonna take all the money out of my wallet and give it to you and then everything's right right we wonder what would that have to do with anything so it's gotta yeah it's gotta be something different something just happened in Asheville recently where they did approve something for reparations in the sense of now they're putting a lot of funding towards investing in you know home ownership and a lot of businesses for I guess for the black residents so they're recognizing the economic impacts that certain things like slavery and oppression had so do you take dance classes

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Carlton no I don't take dance classes so that that just came natural that is natural man but um yeah but right but I do think that you know the fact that this is something that's being looked into you know

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I think it's progress you know what I mean I think a lot of times when we think about justice especially in a restorative sense in the sense that a lot of times it's just I think that true reconciliation involves more than just admitting an offense

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I think it involves making the defrauded party whole and so I think you know if we take a look at what that looks like then maybe you know that's where we can have discussions but I think too often it just gets shut down at nope whatever just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and I think you know certain conversations are worth looking into uh just had a question asking how old

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I am uh 44 like a magnum yeah just got that bumble clap boy said oh so this goes back to what

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I was mentioning earlier if you don't believe in the Quran why would a verse claiming the biblical scriptures are corrupted matter to you hypothetically well if the

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Quran said that the bible has been corrupted the Quran said that the bible is corrupted I wouldn't care at all it's the

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Quran I don't believe in it this isn't about us this is a point about Muslims using an attack against the bible which is contradicted by their own god and their own prophet and so they're using it illicitly right so to give you an example if I were arguing for the resurrection of Jesus and an atheist said that's stupid because miracles don't occur

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I might need to make a case for the existence of God and for the possibility of miracles with that atheist if I were arguing for the resurrection with a

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Muslim and the Muslim said that's stupid because miracles don't occur my response would not be an argument for the existence of God or for the possibility of miracles my art my response would be what the heck are you talking about you're a

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Muslim the Quran is filled with claims that Jesus performed miracles and that miracles are possible and that God exists why are you using that you're not allowed to use that if you want to leave

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Islam and become an atheist and then come back and use that argument be my guest but as a Muslim I'm not letting you use an argument that you are not allowed to use so what we're doing is there's something similar where you've got

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Muslims around the world saying your bible's been corrupted your bible's been corrupted your bible's been corrupted we open the Muslim sources and Allah says over and over again like a beating drum that our scriptures are the inspired preserved authoritative word of God they can't be corrupted and we still have to judge by them and honor them and so Muslims are saying something that completely contradicts what their

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God and their prophets say and their leaders who tell them no the Quran says that the bible's been corrupted are flat out lying to them they're flat out lying to them about what it's just like they lie about uh oh the

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Quran's been miraculously preserved they know that's a lie just keep telling people these things so um so it's it's a weird situation where we actually have more respect for the

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Quran than a lot of Muslim leaders do because we're at least honest about what it says so what we're telling

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Muslims is as long as you are adhering to the authority of your book you have to respect the authority of our book you don't realize it because your leaders conceal these things from you we're going to draw your attention to those things so that you stop arguing this in other words there are differences between Islam and Christianity and there are very important points of discussion and places where we want to examine the evidence this isn't supposed to be a dispute between us we believe in the authority of our scriptures your god the god of Islam believed in the authority of our scriptures and your prophet believed in the authority of our scriptures so if you don't believe in the authority of your scriptures you're out of line not simply with us but with your own religion and we're the ones who have to tell you what kind of sad situation is that so that's the situation it's this doesn't have anything to do with us gathering authority for our book it's pointing out a contradiction in their religion their religion affirms scriptures that contradict their religion and that's just a problem and they don't know about it and they won't know about it unless we tell them about it so that's the idea you see any questions you want to respond to don't get nervous now yeah no you just danced in front of all these people that is very true man i don't think it gets much more nerve -wracking than that i know someone asked what's my favorite argument for the existence of god i'm a big fan of the kalam and the moral argument pretty standard but i think they're really powerful hey for for people who believe right so you always have these extremes right yeah you always have these extremes so you'll have people who see racism everywhere yeah everything's racist everything you say is racist anything blah blah blah is racist but then you have people oh come on man it's the 21st century no one's racist anymore yeah and anyway i'm just bringing this up because yesterday uh someone asked you what do you think about microaggressions because we think of microaggressions as ridiculous because everyone sees anything anyone says as a microaggression for sure and you're pointing out no you actually believe there are these things called microaggressions and you gave an example so tell everyone what you would experience as a microaggression yeah for sure and i think it's one of those things like because everything gets heavily politicized so i think oh yeah my bad yeah so i think for instance i think it's possible to have some problems maybe with an ideology without having racial animus so for instance i went to the national science and faith conference uh i think two years ago and i asked this question about the law of causality and the origin of the universe and the scientists they were like oh my gosh it was a great question and so afterwards this uh 75 year old white guy comes up to me and he's like man i was wondering what's a little black boy doing asking a smart question like that and i looked at it i was just like you know what i didn't go off on the guy because you know obviously those were the vestiges of the time he grew up in but he meant that as a compliment you know and even though there wasn't any racial animus there i was still really racist what he said you know assuming that because i'm black i can't be intelligent you want to mean now there wasn't any conscious um racial animus there but i still think that would be something that could be perceived as a quote -unquote microaggression yes he's not deliberately being aggressive exactly but there is something yeah and a set of erroneous beliefs that's i guess maybe coloring the world uh you know the lens that he views the world through and so and he might not be conscious of it but then you know it's like if somebody says wow you're really smart for a black person or wow you're really pretty for a mexican like a lot of times people will say that and they'll mean it sincerely as a compliment right but that would be an example of something where there isn't necessarily an intent or an aggressive uh you know intent there but there's still something of you know something that's kind of still racist there and i think something that should be fixed and it's funny because you you talk about all kinds of stuff and then i just i bring up the stuff that's going to trigger people yeah exactly i talk about so much more than reparations talk about reparations and microaggressions that's what we want to hear about everything yeah because here's the thing i i kind of like triggering people i can tell yeah uh it's it's weird i noticed that like years ago i didn't i mean apart from abortion i didn't really have political positions i would just take the opposite political position of anyone i was in the room with right if i was if i was in if i was in a room with like you know diehard leftist i'd praise god for george w bush right you know like that and if i was in the of course room with a bunch of you know conservatives or republicans or something like that i would i'd be i'd be maintaining the opposite yeah i just realized that you know yeah yeah it's kind of fun so i mean whenever i'm in a room people my left -leaning friends think i'm right -leaning and my right -leaning friends think i'm left -leaning yeah now just to be clear i do have certain political positions now but um yeah on lots of things on lots of things it's not just going to be hey this is the side i'm on and therefore i agree with everything on this side uh or i'm again you know i'm you know i disagree with this side on this huge issue therefore i disagree with everything they say yeah we got to disabuse ourselves from this political tribalism that i really think does you know permeates a lot of american christianity because people be ideologically gangbanging remember tribalism try so in this conversation we're having yesterday this uh this white dude says uh this white dude says uh you know tell me if i'm wrong here's something along the lines of you know what's you know what's cool about white people is we don't have this tribalism that other groups have yeah and and that that's a situation where he's not meaning anything offensive and but we you know we're like so i started going so which tribe is he from that's what i meant whatever we like they would say something and then we would uh you know exactly was christianity's position on black what is jesus really that white as he's portraying now who's asking that that is could could these okay well we dealt with we dealt with reparations now we dealt with reparations and microaggressions and now was jesus as white as he said i'm a liberal oh here we go there you go all right so okay so we're about to get the cultural marxist the intersectionality sjw sj the woke mob uh victimhood mentality yeah always complaining about a victim right the reparations we got here give me the reparations i'm a victim i'm not a liberal but this is this is what happens though like you speak on racial after you mentioned that and they're like you must support abortion or you know and it's like no but as a christian i stand against injustice and so the question is is injustice happening and instead they just there's such a uh you know we marry conservatism with christianity so much that if you disagree with one thing and it's a part of it you don't have the gospel anymore and i think that that's not what's up that's not jesus that's that's ceasar and christ together come on i guess i'm just saying man so you know all right anyway all right somebody passed me the offer and put no no no yeah yeah you're getting you're getting some feedback here yeah you're getting some feedback that's right you're getting some feedback that's right amateur on said he's about to school you here oh gosh here you go the way i look at reparations is no one alive in the u .s

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was a slave or owns a slave so i don't agree with it at all okay how well i guess he just disproved every now um so i guess part of it would be i think the concept of reparations isn't foreign so we think about it like let's say with respect to indigenous persons who because we recognize that there was a state mandated evil that was done against them that had it wasn't that didn't just die with them that had generational impacts that still manifest today no one alive was responsible for the taking of the natives land but we recognize the impact that that had on them and that still permeates a lot of today and so because of that we recognize that something needs to be done to rectify that because we can't interpret events in a vacuum history is constantly influencing the president it is not so much focusing on hey just leave all that stuff in the past alone but when we recognize the the impacts that it's has that it's had and the lack of reparations which literally just means i guess the the fixing of a problem that was done sometimes either monetarily or by other means i think that that's one of the things that can go into it so it's not so much on this individualistic notion of i'm not necessarily guilty of it so much as you know an evil that was done to a people that that i guess in some sense has continued to be done not necessarily slavery but a lot of the other oppressions that take place but that still has a lot of impacts and i think the reparations you know not to mention the slave masters were given reparations for lost labor you know and there was a reason why slaves were promised 40 acres in a mule and then they weren't given that because owning land is one of the main keys to gaining generational wealth so then all of a sudden now all the land is bought up all the property a lot of the power and then these people you know don't have access to that and i think that you're seeing a lot of the that play out with respect to poverty which is one of the big influencers in a lot of different areas but yeah i don't think that that's a really good objection but i understand the sentence yeah because uh you you could make your case because i said i said my position and i'd be i'd be open to modification is it's uh you know it's if it's in in so far in the distant past that there's just no way to work it out then obviously there's no way to undo the the injustice yeah but if there is something that can be done and just you know i don't think oh let's take this money and hand this to this i don't think that works um it's it's more like you know let's say this community is was massively poor because of things that were done is there something you can do to help fix that and i think we think of things as so far in the distant past you know what i mean one the emancipation proclamation was in 1863 but then the aftermath of that didn't even really get down black people well not even all people juneteenth is something that got recognition now right in 1865 so more than two years after the fact when the last slaves were free but then afterwards you started to see um i guess if you read the 13th amendment it doesn't necessarily say the ending of slavery it just says the ending of slavery except as a punishment of a crime so then you look after that and then all of a sudden you see black crimes that take place and sharecropping and so a lot of them end up back on the same plantations that they were freed from and then you start to see you know the march on selma was like 55 years ago but i feel like there's this perception that a lot of these issues are just so far removed in the past that's like what are you guys complaining about and so i think when we recognize the impacts that history has had on the present and not just it being historical but then when you take a look at some of the things that still take place i think it vastly you know i guess changes the scope of the conversation yeah and i mean notice here again i mean if you took this seriously yeah then when you have an example like a boxer kills another dude and that dude's family let's say is now impoverished because you know they they had a mother and a father their father was earning money and now he's gone and so on let's suppose that family's in poverty um let's suppose it's not him let's suppose it's me and i'm his son and i have an opportunity to help these kids who were impoverished because something my dad did it's just a question if if you can do it is it a good thing to do i would say yes but if we follow this well no i'm not the one who did it i didn't bust his head open and these kids didn't have their heads busted open and therefore uh you what you shouldn't do it i don't know it's just something something something weird about that so again the question is you know how far can you how far can you push these things back and so on uh anyway i hear you yeah because keep it keep in mind this isn't just slavery there's a lot of things after after slavery i feel like there's this really sanitized history of you know with black people in the struggle in america that slavery happened like and the way that they'll see it like it was like something that was 400 years ago so but even though it wasn't let's say slavery happened that got solved and then black people were kind of treated bad then martin luther king gave some speeches and then he solved racism and so what what were you guys complaining about you know and you look at the practices of redlining which for those of you who don't know that was something that started kind of in the 30s and the 40s that kind of barred black people from buying land and buying houses in you know nicer neighborhoods with whites they said no no no they drew red lines around certain things they can't be here and so that's what created a lot of the hoods ghettos in america and am i saying that every black person lives in the ghetto no but that's what created a lot of that it's not like a whole bunch of people just said hey you know what i want to live in the poorest most dangerous communities and yeah that sounds like the life a lot of them still that's like the literally the systemic outworking of a systemic evil that was taking place and then it's not just something that was historical there are banks within the last decade uh i think bank of america wells fargo all are have been found guilty of this practice of redlining to here and they're losing millions and millions of dollars so when we see a lot of that i think it you know but i think it i think it informs a lot of it um you just had uh i think i've seen a few super oh you're getting you're getting refuted now oh let's see hey it's the same oh snap with your hand okay so if blacks in the if blacks in the u .s

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want reparations they should start with the blacks in africa for selling them to europeans oh just just saying man he gonna talk about black on black crime neck no i'm playing but um yeah so hang on i just wanted to bring up ladies and gentlemen here's here's here's here's what i here's what i here's something i wanted to here's something i wanted to address real quick right because there there are people who are going to be flipping out how how dare you he's in the woke gospel right i've noticed that anytime someone we're just developing a culture right like like we have of course cancel culture right where everyone has to be someone has to be destroyed for saying anything i disagreed with even if it's 10 years ago right um and most of us look down on and say that that that that is ridiculous right but there is something similar going on with so many people on so many different sides namely that the second you say something that i think is in any way associated with some position that i i do not want to hear you and i immediately want to shout you down and say that this is ridiculous and so where's my inclination is go and make it go and make your case i don't care what it is you you you want to want to make a case for white supremacy tell me what you got i want to i want to i'll hear this i'll listen to this go ahead somebody just asked did jesus ask for reparations no i'm like first off the whole concept of reparations is justice the whole glory of the gospel is that the cross is the place where love mercy grace and justice meet just the only reason the gospel works is because of justice that's why first john 2 1 says he's the propitiation for our sins not only for that but those of the whole world there was a propitiation that satisfied god's wrath the same thing is spoken about in romans 3 24 to 28 so the whole purpose is that he wasn't unjust in what he was doing justice worked through the cross so that question literally makes no sense especially within a gospel framework i'm just saying that right but i noticed you just skipped over oh yeah but the blacks blacks in the u .s

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reparations there we go they should start let me get with the blacks in africa for selling them to europeans so yeah okay so part of that i think is one we're reading a 21st century mindset with respect to race into african relationships one africa wasn't a monolith so it's not like they just viewed each other as black people a lot of times the people that were sold into slavery were prisons of war so usually get back to tribalism right there were competing tribes so it wasn't like hey i'm a black person and i'm selling another black person into slavery the same way that i don't ask you know when the ottomans fought other you know european nations well why did they fight each other they were white you know like that's not part of what it was but second the whole thing about i guess it being in africa is that the injustices well i guess one the europeans then a lot of times they weren't kidnapping africans but even with the ones that were sold from fellow africans into that the injustice is done to them but one millions died in the um just the way here and then in america that's where all of a sudden the injustice permeated you know and that's where they started to be i guess propagated in terms of now you are dehumanized and that's why you know i feel like the whole world blacks should you know and i guess too it was a state sanctioned evil like it was in u .s