Willy Rice on Social Justice

Willie Rice, SBC Politics, and the Case for a Stronger Leader

The Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. We're going to talk today a little bit more about Willie Rice, who is the pastor nominated to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I was pretty clear. I said the first time we talked about Willie Rice, this will be the third video, so the first time I said, I think he's coming from the more progressive side. I think the progressives are rallying around him.

Now it's possible, the closer we get to the convention, maybe another more progressive candidate will emerge. I don't think Willie Rice thinks of himself as a progressive, but I think for the context in the Southern Baptist Convention, if you understand SBC politics to some extent, and the way that this needle is being moved, this kind of, in the name of moderation, this third way that is being pushed to conservative churches, I think you'd have to conclude Willie Rice is definitely in that vein, in that stream.

I want to be fair as much as I possibly can, and I want to show you some more clips. So far we've talked about the, really it's a woke panel, but the panel he did on race and the gospel. And then we did yesterday, hopefully this is fresh in everyone's mind, and I hope people go watch this.

If they're listening to me in this podcast, please go watch the one that I put out yesterday on Willie Rice and whether or not he's against critical race theory, because the talk that he gave on this, I think was woefully inadequate and really showed that he, well, I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I already did the podcast. Just go watch it. Just go watch it. It's a third way to really summarize. I think it's a third way that, so he can say he's against it. He's not in favor of critical race theory.

He denounced critical race theory, but at the same time, leave room open for those in the Southern Baptist Convention. And he mentioned specifically Dottie Lewis, who are promoting critical race theory.

And they might not be doing it by name, but they're promoting the concepts attached to it. What do you mean, John? What concepts? Well, some of the things you're going to see in the clip that I'm about to play for you.

White privilege, systemic racism, and race being a normative thing, race or standpoint epistemology. And you have to humble yourself and listen to these perspectives because you have blinders in your eyes if you're white, you don't have the same social location, you can't understand things the same way, you're in need of that.

These are the kinds of things that are being pushed, and in this context today, the last few years, from people who are influenced by critical race theory. That's just, these are the times in which we live.

And so I would say that what's going on right now in the Southern Baptist Convention is an attempt to distance oneself from the label critical race theory, and it's not just the Southern Baptist, it's evangelicals in general, to say that that's wrong, we shouldn't have that.

But at the same time, to promote many of the ideas that stream from it and come up with this middle way. And I see that very much, I think, in Willie Rice, disparities must mean injustice somewhere, right?

Those kinds of things. And so I want to play for you some more stuff from Willie Rice. Willie Rice is so, what he said on this topic, in my opinion, is so confusing, because it's so all over the place, and there's inherent contradictions in so much of what he said, that it's very hard to figure out, well, what does he actually believe?

I read for you the blog that he wrote, he doesn't write political blogs much, but he did after the January 6 incident in 2021, and man was it lopsided, you know, saying I'm not going to bash the Trump supporters, but then the rest of the blog was pretty much doing just that.

And people who would idolize the nation and tie politics too close to religion, and Trumpism is dead, and repeating that kind of CNN mantra narrative. And really the core of it, and I made the argument in the first video I did about Willie Rice, I said the core of this is in the first paragraph.

He talks about the fact that he is concerned that church will have a bad reputation in the world. And if that's motivating you, this is the argument I want to make, and what I want to reveal, really. The argument's already kind of set in stone in my mind, but this is what I want to reveal.

I think it's a given that in the coming days, you need someone who is, has a, just as solid as can be, like more solid than any other president of the Southern Baptist Convention maybe. Just a heart of grace, but of grit.

Of willing to be mocked, if need be. Willing to suffer. Shouldn't surprise us as Christians, Christ suffered. Christ was actually portrayed as a rebel against, you know, we have no king but Caesar, against the authorities.

Willing to be portrayed that way, willing to make the hard calls, willing to navigate what's going to come in the next few years, which is going to be, and already is, a minefield of threats from the government, from the narratives coming in from the greater society.

We're going to need someone with a backbone made of steel, okay? That's a given in my mind. I think Votie Bauckham is like that, by the way. I think that that kind of a guy is what you need in this position.

It's not normal times, right? In times of peace, you may have a different leader than times of war. This is a time of war. So my whole thing is, do you want really Willie Rice, who's Mr. Third Way, Mr. Moderate, Mr. just, can't we all just get along and let's portray some kind of, in my opinion, fake unity?

And I honestly think in a biblical, not just my opinion, I think biblically, it's a fake unity that he's, in some ways, arguing for. Do you want that kind of a guy in the position of President of the Southern Baptist Convention with the challenges that lie ahead?

That's the question, and that's what I want people to think about. If you get caught up in, well, is Willie Rice pro or anti-CRT, you're not going to come up with a very definitive answer, because he's all over the place on stuff.

That's part of the problem. So I think we need to, I need to show you kind of what, a little bit of review, and then I'm going to talk about some new material, new sermons that I've listened to from Willie Rice, trying to pin down where is he at, what does he believe, and I think the conclusion, I'm giving it away at the beginning, is going to be, this is not the kind of guy you want in leadership.

You need a bugle that makes a firm, clear sound. You don't need mixed sounds coming, where the army doesn't know what they're doing, because retreat and charge are both being played at the same time, all right?

So let's start with this. I want to play for you some, these are just clips from the Woke montage, the Woke discussion, I should say, about race and the gospel, race, social justice, the gospel. Willie Rice put this on, this is in 2020, June, and it's a few minutes, and if you want to get the link for it, go to the info section here.

We're calling this, and I love the title of this, Help Me Understand. That's the title, Help Me Understand, and the subtitle is an authentic conversation about race, social justice, and the gospel. From the very founding of our nation, this has been a problem.

That bitter root was planted in the ground from the beginning, and we're still struggling with it. We're still battling the fruit of that. I think sometimes, you know, growing up in a comfortable, white setting, there is the tendency maybe for some, not all, but some to say, isn't racism, isn't that a past?

We read about that. We read about that. But now, hey, you know, LeBron James has plenty of money. We had a black president. Isn't everything fine now? Does that really still exist? And what I'm hearing from so many of my black brothers is, more than you know.

I've asked him to share this story.

That was this white guy that walks up, you know, has a nice, seemingly friendly smile and says, wow, that's a lot of stuff you got there. Where'd you get that from? I get home, and I'm watching on the cable news the mother of this young lady in Louisville that had been shot eight times, getting up out of her sleep.

And just listening to that mother speak, it reminded me of so many mothers that have talked about what has happened to their black children. And I'm feeling the pain because I can so not just empathize, sympathize with her.

Because I've lost a relative to police brutality myself. Anyway, the phone rings. And the gentleman says, are you John Matthews? Do you have anyone that can verify, anyone that can give us the chain of custody for those items as to how you got them?

Because I'm black. I was born suspicious. And after 63 years, I'm still suspicious. And until I die, unless something radically changes in America, I will be suspicious.

If you'd been carrying that in your truck, you and I aren't going to get stopped.

We're not getting stopped. Yeah. That idea of privilege started to come, and this white privilege, that's one of the questions I have for my black friends on the stage right now is how do we do better?

Help me understand. And how can I convey that to my white friends who say, no, that doesn't exist?

Shane, you've talked a lot. You and I have talked about some of those definitions, those terms, and again, how people use the same words, but they're not meaning the same thing, race, prejudice, discrimination.

Talk a little bit about what those words mean to you.

It is in the very fabric of how America was created. It's woven into it. It's in the foundation that was laid. And as we start to pull on that thread of trying to remove racism, or we start to pull out the rocks of racism, we are going to start to unravel what people know as America.

And that's going to scare the crap out of people. That is where we've been called as the church to step in. These different things that have been structurally set up, whether it's gerrymandering, whether it's redlining, whether it's incarceration, minimum sentencing, all of those different things, they might have been pulled out of law and no longer codified, but the structure has set up a culture that continues to perpetuate itself when people don't speak up about it.

When people hear the word racist, they always feel like, well, I don't say those things. I don't do those things. So I'm not racist. We're not talking about that. I know that the majority of people, especially those who claim faith, don't do that.

The issue is when you see all these things, when you hear his story, if we were to share the different things that have happened while driving while black, there are structures in there that are designed to subjugate one race for the benefit of another.

And I hear you saying that can be happening then unconsciously. Most definitely. In other words, people who are better than that and want to be better than that, nevertheless, we're in a world in which that very real pronounced brokenness manifests itself.

Zelvis, you speak into that just from your experience. Again, for those who say, is this real? Is this a real thing? And helping, because I've heard many, many in the white community say over the last several days, help me, title of our panel, help me understand, is this a real thing?

It is a very real thing. And let me say this, if you go back to the image of Officer Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd, it's one of the most grotesque things you'll ever see outside of Emmett Till.

But when you look at that image, all you have to do is look at it as a black person in America. And what you hear is all that needs to be said from that image. What that image says to me when I see that, and many of my black brothers and sisters agree with me on this, is that this is the condition that we pulled you out of West Africa from.

This is the condition that you were in when you arrived on the shores of America. This is the condition that you've been in, that your ancestors were in, in slavery. This is what y 'all were in in Jim Crow.

This is what y 'all were in even after the civil rights, and this is where you will continue to be under my knee. Here's a sad reality. Is there racism? Yes. And it's all over America, but here's the sad reality.

It's in the church. And I believe that's why you want this dialogue tonight.

Jason, you're another leader here. Like Jeff, you have a black son that you've adopted. Your family's raising and beautiful family. You have to think about this as you raise your son. Jeff said, hey, I didn't think about these issues until.

Is that kind of your story?

How do you think about it? I've spent the last two weeks talking to colleagues, as many people as I know and can respect that have a different experience and perspective than I do.

Kevin, what do white people need to know in a different culture that they sometimes don't know? And there's blind spots on this whole idea of race that as a black man, you say, I wish you understood this.

I got pulled over literally just driving down the street. I had a doctor with me. We just got done doing a talk and driving the speed limit. And then I got pulled over and it's the white doctor that I get pulled over.

I'm like, why'd you pull me over? And he said, well, because I couldn't read your tag. I'm like, why would you read my tag? You are on the side of the road. I was driving by the speed limit. Well, you know, I just my system couldn't pull it up.

I'm like, OK. And then the doctor broke his iPad. He's like, sir, what happened to your iPad? He's like, I dropped it. He's like, OK. Is everything OK? Yes. OK, you can go now. If there's if this was Jeff in the car, you think he would have pulled him over?

No. It just looks strange. There's a black male and a white male together. Something must be going on there.

Every thinking, compassionate, moral person was bothered by that. Bothered is not even a strong enough word, you know, outraged by it. But it doesn't impact everyone exactly the same way, because it. So what do you.

You know, Shane, you can speak to what when when when people who are in the white community are seeing the anger being expressed and they think that's inappropriate, why are you so angry? How do you how do you help them understand?

That anger? Yes. So we talked about this prior to going live. But Robin DeAngelo has written a book called White Fragility. And basically what it means is there's this natural tension that happens in the dialogue between black people and white people when it concerns racism.

And what it says is that it's such and such a sensitive topic that can be offensive, that there is a fragile nature to the white culture when they get in dialogue with this.

I think it was Charlie Dates, the pastor, who said, we don't have an anthropology problem. We have a theology problem. And that's what Shane was getting at. At the heart of this is a failure of theology, is a failure to believe what God has said in his word about the importance of every single person.

Because in response to that story, the question was, well, who is my neighbor? And the story was the Good Samaritan, which is a profoundly racial story. Pentecost is the answer to Babel. Babel divided mankind.

Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and made one body in Christ. But it hasn't always been that way. And in our culture, in our world, the church hasn't, as someone has said, we have been as impacted and sometimes perpetuated racism.

How? Why? I didn't realize this implicit bias that I had and this privilege that I had. And that comes from, in part, the systemic things. And so you look at the church, you look at our nation, and I know you are a great patriot, Jason.

And yet our nation was founded on, essentially, we stole the land of people who were here. And then we took free labor from East Africa to make ourselves rich. That's not stuff you see in our history textbooks.

And unfortunately, many Christians use the Bible to justify their actions. And so when that's the reality that we're talking about, that's a hard thing for me to face as a white man.

Gospel men who love one another. None of us have all the answers. None of us are perfect. We're struggling through this. We all have prejudice. That is, we all have blind spots. We all have assumptions that have to be challenged.

We all have pride that needs to be knocked down. But we have the answer in Christ, don't we? I mean, the answer is, I don't know of anything other than the gospel that says you and you are brothers, and that says we who are different come and we are one in Christ.

Other than the gospel. Nationality can't do that. Nationalism really can't do that. The gospel does that. So how do we help us move forward in our churches? What does that look like? Does it look like talking more?

Or does it look like forgiving more, serving more? Shane, take a stab at that, or anybody, jump in there.

Help us see a way forward. We need to get out of the things that make us comfortable, the things that are convenient for us, and move to a place where we're saying, I want to know the other. Help me understand.

So in our worship service, we have different music. When people are preaching, they preach in a different style. We bring other people in because, and that's one thing I loved about the Brethren Church.

There was no head pastor. There was a group of elders, but even within that, there were itinerant speakers who would come around. So you got a different flavor, different way of people interpreting the same scripture that someone just read.

Someone just preached on last Sunday. Someone else came and preached on it again, but they did it in a different way. You saw the breadth of who God is, and you realize there's another perspective to this.

Because if you've only seen it one way, what you see is your reality, perception's reality. Kingdom of God is much bigger.

We're talking about the hope of the gospel. You're a pastor, newer church, so you've got dreams of what that church ought to be. How can our churches live out that gospel at unity, and how can we make a difference in the world?

We've got to be honest and say, this is going to take some time. It's not going to be solved overnight, and we might not even see it in our lifetimes, but our kids may see it. It's worth developing disciples, and that's what ministries are about.

Pastors are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So that's a process of discipleship. And so we have got to start this conversation in our homes, in our pulpits. We've got to encourage our fellow co-laborers in the ministry to also have this honest dialogue.

You cannot legislate hate. You just can't do it. Now are there some policy reforms that need to happen? Should we be having some national discussions in our senate, in our house, and the president? Yes, absolutely.

Those things should be happening. But hate can't be legislated. And so again, back to what you're saying, the gospel discipleship, and being intentional in modeling to the world. The Bible says this, the world will know that you belong to me by the way you love one another.

And so if we can demonstrate this love that transcends color, transcends socioeconomic status, all of that stuff and junk that makes no sense in the body of Christ, if we can transcend that, then the world will begin to wonder, how can the church love each other like that?

I wonder what's the power behind that. I'm glad you asked that question. It's the gospel, because the gospel is still the power of God unto salvation for those who believe. That's the solution. This is not an end.

It's just a beginning.

You have conversations. It may be a lunch. It may be a coffee. It may be with the neighbors Kevin spoke about. Let this be an encouragement to you to do what you can do, where you can do it.

Race, Social Justice, and the Gospel Panel

Okay, so now you've seen this particular panel, and if you hadn't seen my first video on this, and you can see that the narrative, the CRT, the BLM narrative is really playing out. It's white privilege, systemic racism, standpoint epistemology, mixing the pursuit of we got to fight for justice with the gospel in interesting ways, very much the social justice stuff streaming in from the left and evangelicalism.

That's what you're getting in that particular interview. Now, some may say, well, maybe he's changed his opinion. Maybe he corrected that. Maybe it's the people on the panel that were more radical. It's not Willie Rice.

Of course, Willie Rice participated in this, nodded along, encouraged it, and some of those statements you heard were from him, but let's just say he had a bad day. He had some woke guys come, which I don't think that gets anyone off the hook, but what would be the response you'd think?

Willie Rice would have to go apologize. He'd have to go talk to the church. He'd have to retract. He'd have to say that was a mistake. This and this and this were taught. This is not biblical. We don't believe that, and I'm sorry, right?

That would be the normal thing. Now, as far as I can tell, and I've looked, a tape like that doesn't exist. I haven't seen any video of that. I haven't heard any audio of that. I haven't seen anything written about it.

Instead, what we see is this. One month later, so this is also, this is in 2020, one month, and I'll show you on the website just so people can see here. You have, this is the Help Me Understand an Authentic Conversation About Race, Social Justice, and the Gospel from June 3rd, 2020.

Now, you have one month later, Willie Rice preaches again, and the name of the sermon is Liberty and Justice for All. This is from July 5th, 2020. This is not long afterward, just a little more than a month afterward, and this would be a good opportunity, right, if he's going to speak about justice to maybe correct, hey, this happened a month ago, and we don't agree, but instead, what you find is what I'm about to play for you.

Let's talk about this. Let me play some of these clips. I've taken this sermon that's like, I think, almost 50 minutes and reduced it down to like 16, and I wanna give you relevant clips here, and I just wanna talk about it with you, go through it, because I think it's awfully confusing for a lot of people, and so I wanna try to make clear as much as I can, and I wanna say one more thing before I get started.

Some may wanna know, especially if you're new to this program, well, why not just do an interview with Willie Rice? We'll get what he believes, and the issue has been, for those who are new to this battle in the Southern Baptist especially, this is something that you need to, if you have someone on your program, if you do an interview, if you reach out, there's two things that'll happen, because I've tried this kind of thing.

Number one, you'll get the private answer that's supposed to assure you that they're not as bad as the public clips say they are, suggest they are. That doesn't help. This has to be, the stuff that is said publicly needs to be, I think, corrected publicly for the purpose of the sheep.

The sheep who are hearing this need to know their shepherd cares about them and is willing to refute lies. So, I don't do that. Number one, that's number one. Number two is, if we just did an interview, and hey, this is what really Willie Rice thinks, I don't know the guy.

I don't know to what extent is, can I trust that? Can I not trust that? Here's the thing, if he's going, if he doesn't believe in what he proclaimed in 2020 and 2021, as we saw on the video yesterday, then he would have to make a statement to the people that he preached it to, or that he allowed to hear it and gave a platform to it on the stage of his church.

He'd have to talk to them about it publicly. They're the ones that would be misled mostly by this. Now, of course, this is getting a wider audience because he's running for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency, but this program wouldn't be the place to do it.

It really wouldn't. It would be, this would be wrong to do it on this program. So it would have to be there first, and that would be the evidence that Willie Rice has repented of those things, and he's retracted, and he doesn't believe that, okay?

So I don't think it's worth it to try to, like, you know, what if he came on this show? Hypothetically, what if Willie Rice did, and not that he'd even agree to it, but he, you know, yeah, I'll do an interview, and I ask him the questions, and he gives good answers.

Well, really, it's not people in this audience that he needs to give those answers to. It's the people in his congregation. And so I think, and I don't want to put too much political pressure on this.

I already am in making these videos, but there's an insane amount of political pressure in the SBC on both sides, really, honestly. And someone making a decision under, in political pressure, you can say one thing to one audience, one thing to another audience, I just want to know what the person believes.

I just want to know what the truth is, and I think you're like that. That's why this audience, I think, is going to be the audience that, and it already is, changing things. You care about the truth. You're not just willing to believe a good story someone says in the moment.

You want to say, well, hey, you know, are you going to correct what you said before? You repented that. You're going to show some humility. That's very important for someone who's going to be a leader, especially to test whether they care about the people they're leading, okay?

So that's, I wanted to just get that out of the way for people who might ask that. That's kind of an old question for people listening, but I know there's a lot of new listeners. So that's the reason we're doing it this way.

We're examining the public record. What has Willie Rice said when there wasn't as much political pressure applied? There's certainly some in his congregation, but there wasn't as much. And so I want you to notice something first.

Before we play the clip, you can see he has an American flag lapel pin. This is right, this is the day after July 4th, I believe. That's at least the date on the website. And so this is, you know, Patriotic Sunday.

For those who don't know, in Southern Baptist churches, that's traditionally, now I think a lot of Southern Baptist churches aren't doing this now, but traditionally, you know, since post-World War II, I guess.

That's maybe post-World War I. There's been an emphasis during that particular week on patriotism and all that, right? So Willie Rice, in that tradition, has an American flag pin. So, you know, I don't want you to think that this guy is totally, thoroughly, and in every way, woke.

I'm going to try to give you the best paradigm I know to explain this, but like a lot of Southern Baptist guys, it could be that there's a lot of political stuff going on. And the convictions on this might not be as firm as we would want.

It may be that, well, you know, we're going to kind of try to veer in the middle somewhere and kind of take from this, take from that. And I think you're going to see that in the clip I'm going to play.

And this is very concerning to me because we need someone who's got a steel of spine on these things for what lies ahead. So let's play the clip. May the 25th. It wasn't all that long ago.

You saw it. You've seen the video. A black man died in police custody, George Floyd, in Minneapolis. The video is etched in our memory, a man with a knee on his neck, begging to breathe, crying for his mother, and then growing limp and unconscious.

It has resulted in weeks of unrest and protest. In some places, those protests have given way to violence, causing even more deaths. And in some cases, those protests have become a platform for political extremism, calling for a complete reshaping of American culture and government, if not a complete repudiation of it.

This eruption has occurred along an old fault line in America life, the issue of race. It is an issue so difficult, so potentially divisive, that many have just steered clear of the conversation. One wrong word, one poorly articulated sentiment can bring an avalanche of criticism from this side or that, and sometimes from both sides at once.

In many cases, and through too much of our history, churches like ours, churches that may be predominantly white, have either not seen the problem or made a conscious effort to avoid the issue. Or we've just been too fearful to say, Thus saith the Lord.

It's easier to talk about someone else's sins than your own. It's easier to talk about the speck in your brother's eye than the beam in your own. That is true enough, but it's not good enough. We know that at times we need to be corrected, and we must humble ourselves and ask, Does the Lord have a word?

And if he does, and we know he does, then we must be prepared for that word, which will sometimes correct us. It reproves us, as well as training and instructing us. And reproof is never pleasant. Correction is never easy, but it is necessary if we are to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Okay, so let's stop right there. Let me summarize for you. Okay, we've played two minutes of this 15-minute clip, series of clips. Willie Rice is saying he connects what happened with George Floyd to the issue of race, and then he connects it to American history.

Now, you're already seeing a framing issue, hopefully, in this, that it's never been proven that racism motivated Derek Chauvin or what happened that day with the other police who helped Derek Chauvin.

That's just an assumption, and it's an assumption that streams from what? What ideology promotes this assumption that race is normative, racism is normative, that disparities mean racism, that if there's a power dynamic with police and minorities, that it must be racism?

What narrative promotes that? It's not Christianity. Christianity promotes actual justice, which means that there has to be actual evidence, witnesses. If you want to, there really isn't even a category for hate crime in Christianity.

There's crimes, but let's, you know, if you're going to say that it's motivated by some kind of a hatred or something, you have to have evidence. There isn't. There isn't evidence that that's what caused this.

It's just an assumption. Now, I know there's, we've heard the narrative a million times, but Willie Rice buys into it at the beginning here. I know, you know, that sounded really polished and everything, but that's essentially what he's saying is that it's this old issue of race that's coming up, which honestly, were those riots, all that happened there.

Was that really about race or was that about something else? Was that about destroying the foundations of American values, culture, institutions? You know, what was that really about? You know, I don't even know if I'd phrase it that way.

It's not the issue of race. Is race an issue? It's the issue of social justice. That was the issue, and so Willie Rice then proceeds to say Christians get it wrong. Christians have gotten it wrong. Christians could still possibly be getting it wrong, and we need the correction of God's word on this issue, and it's all connected.

The issue of George Floyd, racism, history of America, church gets it wrong, today some of us are getting it wrong. We need correction from the Bible. This is a problem in our church. That's what you're getting from the intro of this sermon.

This is a month after that woke panel you just watched parts of. So, do I see a correction here? Do I see, I see more of a double down.

Let's keep going. A gospel movement, there is no answer. Tony Evans recently said, the great black pastor, he said we're in a medical pandemic. At the same time, we're in a cultural pandemic. We're in a cultural pandemic, though, because we are in a spiritual pandemic.

It is a gospel concern. How are we to live in such an age as followers of Christ? What does the Lord have to say? Plenty.

All right, so this is further connected with the gospel. So, it's not just Christian ethics. It's not just the church goofed on an ethical thing. Apparently, the church got the gospel wrong or didn't, or failed to live out the gospel somehow.

So, there's, I'm always uncomfortable when you start doing this, going down this path. The gospel is Christ's work. It's not our work. But he, it elevates it to a level of seriousness, which goes beyond getting an ethical thing wrong.

I mean, this is like fundamental to who Christians are. We got something really bad wrong if we're failing to believe the gospel somehow or apply the gospel somehow, right? So, what verses is he going to use?

Now, he uses a number of them. This is just representative, but it should be no surprise to you which ones he appeals to. Micah 6 .8.

Mankind, he has told each of you what is good. And what it is the Lord requires of you. To act justly. To love faithfulness. And to walk humbly with your God. Let's pray. Father, as we read the words of the ancient prophet, as you corrected your people, then correct us now.