Racism, Injustice, and the Church

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we have a conversation around a number of the current events that are swirling and things that have happened recently in our culture. We are in the relatively immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and also the protests that came from that and just the dialogue and the conversation that is happening throughout our society.

There's a lot of pain, there's a lot of suffering and a lot of anguish, and people are reeling from this. And what our hope is in this conversation is to look to God's Word as our guide and think about what God has said about these things, about racism and oppression and injustice and sin, and ultimately to encourage one another toward love and charity in the spirit, in the church, and also to point one another, as we always hope to do, to the peace and the hope and the rest that we have in Christ.

And then in the members area, we speak very personally to our members, including just addressing some of the emails that we have received from people who are hurting, and we aim to encourage one another with the hope of the new heaven and the new earth and what Christ has secured for us.

We hope this conversation is helpful. We hope that it is clarifying, and we hope that it is hope-giving and encouraging for you.

So stay tuned. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join Theocast in helping other people find rest in Christ, a simple way of doing that is simply by leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

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Theocast’s Mission and the Day’s Topic

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. One of the things that we aim to do here at Theocast is to take the gospel incredibly seriously and also to take seriously the suffering and the pain that people experience in a fallen world.

And at the same time, we strive to never take ourselves too seriously. And to that end, our brother John Moffitt has the pro con for today.

Yeah, new segment we started, we thought would be fun for us to do.

And we don't know how the people have responded to the pro con yet because those episodes haven't released yet, as we said. Yeah, they can hate it, but that's all right. So it might tank, it might bomb, but yeah, who knows?

All right, so I've got a pro today. One of my pros is churros. I love churros. And you have to do churros right because if you don't do churros right, then it's just a bunch of sugar and it's gooey and it's really not that great.

In Colombia, there is a Mexican restaurant chain called Victor's Taco Shop, originally from San Diego. And the particular one I go to, she's actually from she's from Mexico. And we have a great, great conversations.

Anyways, they put dulce de leche in an oversized churro. I mean, there's churros and then there's these churros. And it's this gooey, caramelly dulce de leche running on the inside and crispy, hard cinnamon on the outside.

Let me tell you what. It is the is a great way to a chase.

Sounds good. Didn't you bring me. Didn't you bring me to that restaurant when I came to visit you?

That was a different one and their churros were OK. They were OK. All right, just OK. When you guys come back out later this year, we're going to Victor's and we're going to.

Chase a carne asada burrito with the churro. And it's a taco shop out there in Cali. Last fall was good.

Yeah, that was pretty epic as well. I was good. All right. And then my my con and this always gets me in trouble, but I'm sorry. I just it's the truth. I don't think the office is funny and I don't. Wow.

And I've tried it. And if you're going to call me and tell me if you're going to message me and tell me I got to get past season one, two, three, whatever. Yeah, I ain't doing any more episodes. It's it is not funny.

There we go. That's my con.

I just not going to do it. That that's a that's a bold con. I mean, that's a bold con. Came out of the gate hot, man. Yeah, so I mean, I get it.

My response to that is probably even more shameful in that I've really never watched the office, so that's probably worse. And my wife, my wife has my wife likes it, so she might take issue with you, John, but I really don't even have ground for which to speak to.

My learned that there's like.

You either love it or you've never seen it or don't like it. There's not like a middle ground for people on that. So, right.

Yeah, right. Well, comedy, comedy shows in general are that way. There is no middle ground, you either love it or you know, I personally, I'm a fan of Arrested Development more than I am of the office.

But I know that I don't think that was our criticism. Oh, my goodness. See, now I'm I'm done. How do I get out of this? How do I get out of this? See, what do I need to say to get kicked off a topic today?

Because it's there's it causes like strife and diversity. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. Hey, Jim, why don't you let the people know what we're going to be talking about today?

Racism, Injustice, and Suffering in a Fallen World

Absolutely. So for those listening, not, not entirely sure of the date of the release of this podcast, but where we are currently situated in the United States in particular, is we are experiencing a high amount of grief and anger and frustration here in Minnesota.

Obviously, we recently saw the, and we'll just name it, right, part of being a theologian of the cross, as you call a thing what it is, we saw the horrific, unjust killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

And that sparked originally peaceful protests, which have then kind of morphed into looting and arsony and this has kind of spilled over into other large urban areas in the United States. And this past Sunday, it was the first time that our church regathered together and my sermon was out of Psalm 10.

And the beginning of Psalm 10, the Psalmist asked, you know, Lord, why do you stand so far away? And in the next few verses, he goes on to share about how the wicked are getting away with their wickedness.

And one of the things that I said to our church that's interesting to note is it seems like in times of these great tensions, the amount of intense suffering that our nation is going through, because it's not just police brutality.

It's not just racism. We have 40 million jobless claims in the United States right now, over 100 ,000 deaths to a virus that has no cure. And so suffering is just perhaps more than any time in our generation, right?

A generation that did not fight in World War II, a generation that did not fight in Vietnam, a generation that was relatively young during the first Gulf War, we are seeing more violence and we are seeing more suffering and evil kind of reign in our society than perhaps we ever have before.

But something that's interesting is that John Lennon's song, Imagine, has kind of become the anthem, kind of the anti-type to suffering in this world. But if you really slow down and listen to the lyrics, imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try. Imagine there's no hell below us. Imagine there's no countries. Imagine there, you know, and he goes on to list all of these things. And what's fascinating about that song, and to consider where we are today, that essentially what John Lennon is arguing for is imagine there's no order and imagine there's no absolute truth.

Imagine there's no God. And from a Christian perspective, when we consider that song, what makes it rather silly is that it's actually hopeless. It's anti-good news because Psalm 10 actually tells us what life looks like for those who think that there is no God, that they exact their own form of justice.

They exact their wickedness upon the lowly and the downcast and the oppressed. And so today, what we want to talk about is we want to have a pastoral and sensitive conversation, particularly about race and injustice and the things that we're seeing in the news today.

But I wanted to begin it there. And I want to begin by saying this, is that here at Theocast, we do, obviously, we believe that there is a God and we believe that there is absolute truth. And we believe that Jesus Christ is sitting on his throne and he's reigning, even when it doesn't appear that he is.

And so we want to reject the idea that if we could all just imagine there's no God, and if we could just imagine that there's no order, things would go well for us. No, that's not what we want to imagine at all.

So I want to throw it out to you guys as well and see if you want to offer some initial thoughts about our conversation today.

Jimmy, good words, man. Our hope is that there is a God in heaven, right? And that Christ is on the throne and that there is objective, absolute truth because God is, and the order that God has established and the things that God has revealed to us that are for our good are the only good things that we can say in a time like now.

I'll perhaps start with a few comments. I can speak for all of us when I say these things that at Theocast, we understand that racism and injustice, broadly speaking, is from hell. It's evil and it's wicked and it's terrible.

And we understand that racism and oppression and all forms of injustice are a result of sin. And by sin, we don't mean first and foremost, an action or a deed that's done or thoughts that are thought or anything like that.

By sin, we mean a condition or a state. It's the fall of man that we read about in Genesis chapter three in scripture that has given rise to hatred and malice and racism and oppression and injustice. And so we want to be really clear that we stand against all of those things because we understand them to be of the evil one, they are not of God.

And God hates those things. And so we do as well. And I think the next thing that I would say to start this conversation is also is, it's very clear as you survey the landscape, at least let's just even talk in our own country right now, because we are Americans and we live in this land and all across this land, there are people who are hurting terribly.

There is deep suffering and intense pain and much agony that has been experienced and is being felt by the masses right now. And in a particular way, there are certain segments of our population. I'm thinking about our African-American friends, our African-American brothers and sisters who in a pointed way are in pain.

And we want to acknowledge that pain and suffering that people are experiencing. And I know our hope in this conversation and always is to never minimize or to dismiss the pain and suffering of others.

And so those are just some starting point thoughts from me before we launch into anything else that we're going to say.

Weeping with Those Who Weep and the Need for Grace

Yeah. It's definitely painful to watch all of this. It breaks your heart. You never want to see anyone suffer. You don't want to see women who feel that they are belittled and degraded. I've lived in cultures where it's their Japanese have been, Mexicans have been, there's suffering everywhere.

And the result of sin, the victims of sin are massive. Everyone is the result and everyone is the victim of it. And it does not pick and choose, but it spreads its wings and covers all. And I think it's appropriate when Paul commissions the church to say, you need to weep with those who are weeping.

And in these moments right now, there are moments for us to stop and say, in my own church this last week, I've had to spend time in sorrow with people because their families have been the victim of COVID -19 and their loved one has died, and then there's within our own city and then just what's going on with the different issues with people's understanding.

And there seems to be a crossfire. And when sin gets involved, the crossfire, what ends up happening is we end up shooting at each other instead of listening to each other, and we end up shooting at each other instead of being gracious towards each other.

And what happens is that we become unreasonable. And that's not to say that every man around these microphones, we have it all under control and we're perfectly sanctified and we are reasonable and we've never done unreasonable things.

We've never had unreasonable thoughts. I mean, that is just absolutely ridiculous. This is why we too claim to be in equal need of grace as any racist that's out there, any murderer that's out there, anyone that's ever degraded a woman.

They are in equal need of grace as we are. No one stands and no one ever puts a shield of their own righteousness between them and the Father because it will be torched. You do not have righteousness, which kind of leads me to where I really want to go in this next section.

I'd love for you guys to speak into this, kind of what's going on.

Did you have something else you wanted to add? Well, I think there may be one other thing that would be useful to say before we launch into further comments. We were talking about this before we hit record, and we are aware that we are three middle-class white guys and we do not claim to understand everybody's experience existentially, but our confidence in even having this conversation, as daunting as it is, is that God has revealed himself and he has revealed truth in his holy word.

And we, being Christians and being reformed in our understanding of theology, we do uphold sola scriptura, that scripture is sufficient and it's adequate for us to look into it and to understand the things of God and his ways with us and to even understand ourselves rightly and to be able to assess sin, and God has told us what is good in his word.

And so that's our hope, is to look into God's word and be able to speak from it, not from our own experience so much, but to point people to scripture and ultimately to point people to the point of scripture, who is Jesus Christ, in this conversation.

And John, you're right that our hope too is to weep with those who are weeping and to come alongside and to help bear others' burdens. That's the goal for all of us in our churches and in our lives, broadly speaking, and we hope this conversation has that kind of a feel to it.

Virtue Signaling, Shame, and the Danger of False Moralism

Right. So what's been happening a lot, and the three of us have been going back and forth texting and phone calls, and we're deeply saddened by circumstances, but we're also saddened by, I think, responses from Christians that are on social media and even maybe well-known Christians, and you may have or have not heard of this phrase, but there's a concept called virtue signaling, and that's basically when you publicly express your position, or I would say you're demonstrating one's good character or moral correctness of a position or on a particular issue.

And so people will say things that I think they're always in good intentions. I've not, anytime I've seen someone who's virtue signaling, they're not trying to add to the fuel. They're not trying to add to the issue.

I think in their own way, they're trying to bring clarity, but in doing so, they're actually causing more problems. What I mean by this is that you want the world to know your position, and so you put it out there and like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this is bad, and then you say things that aren't, one, biblical, and number two, you say things that aren't helpful, and you're actually only adding to the confusion of what's going on in the circumstances.

And I've unfortunately seen this way too much where we haven't thought through what we're about to communicate from a biblical standpoint, and so we just throw statements out there so the world can see I'm against racism or I'm against the degradation of women, and we don't think through how is that being perceived by those who are experiencing the degradation, who are experiencing racism.

So, I would say that I don't know, I'm curious to see your guys' thoughts on maybe the dangers of virtue signaling, and we'll get to eventually how we should respond from a biblical perspective. But what's your guys' thoughts on maybe how this is not helpful?

Yeah, John, I think one of the reasons why virtue signaling can be so dangerous, and I'm going to speak particularly to the Christian brethren, is that it can destroy unity within the greater church, and virtue signaling happens inside and outside of the church, and far be it for me to kind of expect Christian and Christlike behavior from nonbelievers, so I'm not even going to speak to that.

We can expect it from that sphere. But within the church, it's kind of the ultimate subtweet. If you're on Twitter, you're familiar with that language where you tweet something out in response to somebody without directly addressing that person.

Virtue signaling, what it does or what it can do is it can create more disunity because it postures yourself to look better than others. Let me be the first to say, I am not perfect in this area. I understand that getting on social media and doing a 240-character rant feels really, really good.

I get that. But at some point, we all have to be mindful that throwing out our best tweet of righteousness, often what it can do is it can create this tiered system where I am better than you because I have thought of this when perhaps you haven't.

Let me throw out my virtue. Nobody does vice signaling. Nobody does that. Nobody throws out their dirty laundry, and yet that's actually one of the things that the scriptures does command us to do, to confess our sins to one another.

Maybe for every virtue signal you do on Twitter, maybe you should confess a sin publicly, but we can talk about that another time. JP, did you want to add to this as well?

Sure. Even the term virtue signaling means that we're drawing attention to at least what we perceive to be our own virtue, and that's a problem biblically. I'm mindful. It's not that how we live doesn't matter.

It matters, of course, how we live, and God gives us plenty of instruction in his word to the church in the New Testament, how we're to live with one another, and we're going to talk about some of those things on this episode.

It's not that it doesn't matter how we live, but I'm mindful of the apostle Paul, for example, in Philippians 3, where he talks about any righteousness that would be his, he considers it as less than nothing.

He considers it as rubbish because what he is concerned with is the righteousness of God that is found through Christ by faith, and so I think it's generally not good when we as believers are going to attempt in some way to showcase or parade around our own righteousness or our own virtue, and by at least an indirect implication, condemn other people.

Now, it's fine for us to try to correct misunderstanding. We want to do that. The three of us do that all the time as preachers of God's word, but what we want to try to do is to point people positively to what God has prescribed in his word rather than just dropping shame bombs all over the place and thinking that that's going to move the needle in people's minds.

A lot of times, as you brothers have pointed out, that kind of talk and rhetoric only serves to foster more division. It certainly doesn't bring unity, and I think that's one of the things that has grieved me this week, in addition to just being horrified by things that I've seen in videos that have been posted online and being grieved by just the pain that I see others experiencing, is to see the division that is out there, even amongst God's people, and some of the rhetoric has been really hard for me to read, and that's coming from all kinds of people, and many of these people I respect, and yeah, that's been tough.

David Zoll in his book, Seculosity, really didn't, I don't think, ever carry covered racism, but he was talking about basically how our culture has become a religious culture, even though it may not be centered around God or church, but they use the tactics of religion, and some of the tactics of a false religion or a bad religion, I would say, is shaming, and so if you don't hold my perspective, one, you are not going to be morally acceptable, and if you, because of that, I'm going to shame you into my perspective, and we use these tactics, and so if I don't hold your exact position on whatever it is, it could be abortion, it could be on gender equality, or in this case, it could be racism, we shame each other, and what the sad part is, is that Christians get involved in this, where we get so wrapped up in what's going on, which, listen, please don't, I am in no way, shape, or form, or steocast trying to lower the situation.

We agree the situation is horrible, and what's going on should not be going on, and we're not even saying racism doesn't exist in our culture. Racism exists around the world, and here's the thing, it's existed for thousands of years, so this isn't new to our culture.

Cultures have been dealing with this for decades, so this is not a new circumstance, and it's not a new issue. We're not the first culture to deal with it, but what we cannot do is disconnect, as believers, disconnect the hope that we have in Christ, and create this new subculture, this new religion that says, unless you hold my exact position on how to deal with this, then you are basically morally and ethically wrong, and that, I think, is dangerous, and it is happening.

The Church’s Mission, Indicatives and Imperatives, and the Sufficiency of the Gospel

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We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

It's really good, I think, just a quick interjection here. It's good for us to point out sin, and it's good for us to encourage people to repent of sin, but then we cross a line when we do start this shaming thing.

There's a difference in that. To point out sin and to shame people are different things, and in the church, to point out sin is good and to shame people is harmful, and I think, again, it harms unity, it promotes division, and it really helps not at all.

Right, and we have said this before previously, as I feel like we've been talking about just kind of evil and suffering ever since the coronavirus outbreak, and it just keeps morphing into something new, but we talked about this a few podcasts back where, as a culture, we've really lost, and I'm speaking to the Christian culture, we've lost the posture of lament.

I've seen the video of George Floyd. I've also seen videos of rioters senselessly beating other people, and I just can't do it anymore. All of that stuff. And it's absolutely horrible, all of it, and particularly the George Floyd situation, and we have lost the posture of lament that can we just sit with a moment and weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn and cry out to God and ask Him, Lord Jesus, return, come quickly, and rather, often what our posture can be, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

We've been praying that as a church weekly. Rather than lament and cry out to God in prayer, we can begin pointing the finger and say, if you would have done this, or if you would have done this, we wouldn't be here, and certainly there are nuanced conversations we can have within that.

But as Christians, I think primarily, prayer is, JP, I think it says this right on your church website, that prayer is the outworking of faith, and as people of faith, we get on our knees and we plead with the Lord to shed His mercy on His people.

And so that posture of lament, I think, is so keen in this time. And granted, we can do some soul searching and ask ourselves the difficult questions of, man, have I contributed to this within my own context, right, we can do that kind of soul searching, but ultimately, that kind of soul searching needs to be lived out within the body of the church.

It's not an isolated thing, and so, John, I think you wanted to kind of shift the conversation that way a little bit to the church in general.

Absolutely. This conversation has been going on for quite a while. I remember back at T4G when they brought this topic, well, they kind of hijacked the conference and made it about racism, but it started this conversation about the role of the church in racism, like what is the church's role?

And it really sparked the conversation about a lot of cultural issues. What's the church's role in social justice, in hunger, in abortion, adoption, gender roles, and there's so much that's pulling at the church and the mission of the church, well, I will say, I will tell you that all of the issues that we're struggling with today, the New Testament church struggled with as well.

It's not like the church is in a context that it's never been in before. The church has actually been in this context before, and I believe that in those contexts, Paul and the writers and Peter and James, they spoke to the context in a racist degradation of women.

There was prostitution and there was orphans. All of that was going on, and yet the mission of the church still remained. And so, is it the church's responsibility in culture to abolish all of these issues?

And that's really where the conversations become. And I want to speak into this because there's a lot of pressures on pastors that if you aren't relevant, you aren't kind, you aren't loving, you aren't reaching your culture, if you aren't emphasizing one of these issues from the pulpit, if you aren't preaching back against racism on a weekly basis in the pulpit, then you are not advancing the great commission.

And if you aren't trying to have a diverse church where there's a diversity of ethnicity in your church, then you aren't having a relevant church. Your church is adding to the problem where if you're only having a white church, then you actually are adding to the problem that's in our country already.

So, that's kind of where I would love for us to kind of talk about and think through these issues that I think are very sensitive and they're very, I mean, we're going to, I can already feel the bows being stretched with the arrows towards us, criticisms coming our way.

But I think these are relevant questions that we need to answer. So, guys, talk about this. I know that you guys have experienced this. You guys feel these pressures about having a diverse church and the mission of the church.

The Church’s Mission Is Word, Sacrament, and Christ Crucified

Jon, I think what is always mindful here, because we don't want to lose sight of kind of some of the things that are so key to theocasts. And one of those, we talk about indicatives and imperatives. And as we think about combating racism, doing soul searching, calling out some of the grievous evils that we see in our society, we want to make sure that those things are rooted in the indicatives, right?

And so, when we call evil, evil, and when we call racism, evil, and when we look at these things and we call people to repentance, why do we do that? Well, we do that because of the indicative truths about God, that He's holy and He's righteous and He's pure.

And yet, God, by His Son, Jesus Christ, has reconciled the world to Himself. And so, because of the blood of Christ shed for sinners on their behalf, because of His perfect righteousness imputed to us by grace alone through faith alone, we realize that combating racism or combating social injustice is not a salvation issue in that.

If we do not do these things to some arbitrary standard, we are not saved. But rather, we look at it through the lens of because we are saved, because of Christ's work on our behalf, when we are faced with it, we can call it what it is, right, we can call evil, evil, we can call sin, sin, right, that, you know, this is third use of the law is kind of helpful here, I think, in that racism, mistreatment of the poor, police brutality, right, these are all sinful things, and as Augustine has said, what is sin?

Well, sin is self turned inward on itself, where rather what God has laid out for us in His law to love God and to love our neighbor, those are two very outward oriented postures, not inward oriented.

And so, again, we want to be sensitive and nuance that we are for racial reconciliation, if you will, right? We are for those things, we are for diversity, you know, we celebrate that. I was telling this to my son the other day that in heaven, we will be with every color, and so it is foolish to simply say things like I don't see color and there's only one human race, right?

I mean, I understand the sentiment behind those things, but they're often more unhelpful than they are helpful. Rather, what we want to do is, yeah, it's flat, exactly, it's very flattening. We want to embrace those who look different than us, and so JP, go ahead.

Quick interjection on what you're saying right now, Jimmy. Galatians chapter three is sort of in view in this where Paul will say that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Well, what he's not doing there is saying that those distinctions don't exist. Of course, there are men and women, there are different ethnicities, tribes, peoples, nations, right? There are different roles that we play in society.

What he is saying is that we are one in the body of Christ, in that Christ is torn down the dividing wall of hostility. We all stood equally ruined and bankrupted by sin, and now we all stand equally righteous by faith in Christ and what he has done on our behalf.

And so if we were to make a statement that there is no such thing as race or there is no such thing as gender, right? We're just all one, then we actually, not only do we flatten the thing, we actually rob God of the glory that he gets in saving people who are male and female and from different tribes and peoples and languages, and we detract from and subtract from the beauty of the church and the fact that the design of the church is that there would be unity in diversity.

And so, yeah, we really don't do anybody any services when we say things like, well, we're colorblind or there is no such thing as race or gender. Those things are clear, and what we are striving for is something that's greater, that's supernatural, that is unity in Christ Jesus by the Spirit.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father overall is what we're for.

Yeah, and this is true of just the diversity in humanity. We're all gifted differently. We all have different talents. We all have different eye colors and hair color. I mean, the diversity creates this glorious unity and that we all contribute to because we bring something different.

If we were all the same, like legitimately all the same, then you can only do one thing, but because there's so much that is different, it creates that unity, so, you know, I agree with Jimmy in that if you flatten this out, I think you are removing what God has created as this one humanity that's full of diversity that will all be gloriously speaking different languages with different cultures in the new heavens and the new earth, and we will all be worshiping, bringing something that is the reflection of God and His awesome ability to create this glorious diversity within the history of the world.

So I agree in that I'm not against diversity. I'm for it. We see it. I mean, look, what if we only ate one kind of food? I mean, there's even diversity in what we eat and we enjoy that diversity.

Yeah. Yeah. Something I think you mentioned earlier, John, is, you know, I'm just going to pose the question. You know, should diversity be an active goal of the church? And what I mean by that question is, should we bank the church's faithfulness on whether or not diversity is being pursued?

And I would say, we were talking about this before, we would say generally, it is a good idea for your church to reflect the neighborhood in which it is situated, but we also want to recognize, John, your context in the greater Nashville area, and JP, your context in the greater Asheville, North Carolina area, is a lot different than mine here in Wilmer.

Like, we don't have neighborhoods in Wilmer. We don't have the such and such neighborhood. We just have Wilmer. It's a small town, okay? And so, ultimately, we want to reflect what Wilmer looks like, and we want to be a church that reflects what Wilmer looks like, but I think it's really difficult, particularly to put that yoke on pastors to have all of these initiatives laid on them that could, they don't necessarily have to, but that could detract from prayer and ministry of the word, which is ultimately what we believe that they are called to.

And then at the same time, you know, I do believe that it is the pastor as kind of the shepherd of the church, as he's dealing with, I've had conversations with pastors, even in my own area, as they come across these statements that are, quote unquote, pardon the pun, off color, right, that they are off color in terms of the conversation.

I do believe it is the responsibility of the pastor to lean into those and to address those, to be faithful to those, and be gracious and help people to see a larger picture. But at the same time, if we are talking about the preaching of the gospel and then saying a diverse church is equal to that, I think we can do a disservice to both of those things by equating them.

The Church’s Mission Is the Right Preaching of the Word and the Righteousness of Christ

That's right. So I've got two big thoughts that I'll want to share before we're done recording this, but I'm going to start with the first one. The second one has to do with just a posture that I think would be helpful in the church, but the first to your question that you threw out a few minutes ago, John, in terms of what the church's mission is, I'm going to say this, this is my take, I'm not speaking for you two guys, but here's my shot at that, I think the mission of the church, biblically speaking and thinking through the history of theology, is the right preaching of the word of God, the right administration of the sacraments for the salvation of God's elect, and there we go, that for me informs everything that I'm going to do as a pastor, and so for me, the main thing that I am concerned with, the primary thing always, is the heralding of the word of God, and in particular, that means the heralding of Christ crucified for sinners and the righteousness of Christ counted to sinners by faith, and I mean, partly even in this conversation, if we're going to talk about injustice and oppression and racism and sin in general, and the wreckage that it's caused in the world, the answer to that is Christ and the gospel, because when we herald Jesus, we are pushing back against all forms of evil and wickedness, you know, when we preach God's law, we are in that sense condemning all forms of evil and wickedness, and here's the thing, the only message and the only thing that could ever change the hearts of fallen men is the message of Christ, you know, and so we're preaching something that the Holy Spirit uses to actually transform and change people's hearts and give us new hearts, and then the Spirit takes up residence within us, and as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ, we're transformed from one degree of glory to another, and so that's always the primary piece, is the sufficiency of Jesus, the power of Jesus, the grace and mercy of Christ, and the patience of Christ towards sinners being heralded all the time in the church.