Responding to David Platt's T4G Speech on Racism (Part 5)

All right, let's continue our response reaction video to David Platt's T4G speech about racism.

Not just in our culture, but in the church, in light of stories in Ferguson or Falcon Heights or Baltimore or Baton Rouge.

And my aim is not to oversimplify this in any way, but the reality is statistically more white people are prone to immediately think on the left side of that spectrum.

More black people are prone to think on the right side of that spectrum, which affects our thoughts on so many things, affects the way we think about politics, economics, education, all sorts of things.

Right. So he's talking about that spectrum where it said that most white Christians will look at issues of disparities between the races and say, oh, it's individual responsibility.

That's, that's, you know, what's explains that. And then most black Christians will say, well, you know, it's, it's systemic injustice and oppression and things like that.

And you know, I, again, I didn't, I haven't looked at the statistics or the research at all. So I don't know really how they came to those conclusions, but let's just take it as, as if it's true.

Well, the question is, well, what's the Bible teach, right? Like, what does the Bible teach about this? Who is responsible for your success?

Who's responsible for your income, your wealth, your, you know,

I don't know, whatever, whatever the markers are that they're, that they're using. So if, if it's, we can't just pit whites versus blacks here, right?

It doesn't really matter what whites think or what blacks thinks. What matters is what's true, what God says is true.

And so how do we determine that? Well, we, we go to the scriptures, right? We have to see how closely what we believe matches up with the scriptures.

So I hope that that's what he's about to do in this next section. Because that's the only way to determine this.

That's how we adjudicate this, you know, who's right. Go to the scriptures and find out. We're oftentimes on different pages and we know this, don't we?

Like it was obvious in the last election. Let's just be honest. Somewhere around 81 % of white professing

Christians voted for Trump. Around 88 % of black professing Christians voted for Clinton. And many black

Christians couldn't fathom how so many of their white brothers and sisters in Christ would vote for Trump.

And many white Christians couldn't fathom how so many of their black brothers and sisters in Christ would vote for Clinton.

Yeah. Well, Hey, I'm really glad that he says that because, um, you know, he, it's, it's really on both sides, right?

Because personally, I didn't vote for either of those candidates. And, uh, I would never in a million years, um, maybe if I had a gun to my head,

I would, but, um, I wouldn't vote for either one of those candidates. And I can't really understand why a Christian would vote for either one of those candidates.

Now I understand their reasoning. I've, I've talked to people who have voted and I understand why they did what they did.

Um, but personally, I think it's inconsistent. Um, and it's inconsistent on both sides. We need to really address that.

I'm glad he, he decides to do that because it really is something that both sides need to take responsibility for.

Um, but I only really see most, most people talking about one of those sides. I've seen a ton of never

Trumpers out there, right? And talking about how racist Trump is and how, how he can't believe that white Christians voted for such a racist.

I've never seen the evidence that, that Trump is actually a racist by the way. Um, but, but, but I don't really see a lot of articles talking about never

Clinton, right? In fact, I see the opposite. I see articles written about how heroic black Christians were for saving evangelicalism for voting

Democrat in the face of all this opposition. I, I, I don't see it. There's a lot of inconsistency there.

Uh, it is inconsistent to the extreme for any Christian to vote for Hillary Clinton or any other of these pro, uh, you know, baby killing

Democrats. It's just inconsistent to the nth degree. Um, yet I see tons of articles talking about how great that was and how that's what we need to see.

We need to see more black Christians standing up and being political and all this kind of stuff. I'm glad David Platt is, is, is, is on board, you know, putting the responsibility on both sides because it really is very unfortunate that, um,

Christians are letting politics kind of get, um, be, become more important than their consistency as a

Christian witness. So good on you. My aim is not to say who you should have voted for.

My aim is just to say, we oftentimes don't understand each other, which means we really need to listen to and learn from one another.

None of us can think about this issue in isolation. We need to be in true multi -ethnic community where we're sitting around the table, sharing life with brothers and sisters who think differently from us.

And when we're at that table, we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

Yeah. I mean, we do need to listen to each other. That's true. I'm not really sure what ethnicity has to do with it. So, you know, wouldn't it be enough to, to, to, to talk to someone that just thinks differently than you that, you know,

I don't know. I mean, ethnicity seems to be a kind of a weird marker of, of, of, of diversity. You know what

I mean? That's kind of a very superficial kind of diversity, um, in my opinion. But, um, but yeah, he's, he's right.

Responsibility falls on both sides. We need to talk to people and be willing to listen and not to be angry and not to be, you know, get all uppity with someone who disagrees with us.

That's definitely something that has to happen. And, uh, you know, it has to happen more as Christians.

I, I agree with that. I think he's, I think he's on the right track. After all, as followers of Christ, we know the

Bible speaks to both sides of that screen without question. The Bible speaks to individual responsibility. We were responsible for God and one another for our actions.

Romans two, six through 10, we're responsible for working hard. Colossians, Colossians three 23. At the same time, the

Bible requires us to work hard for justice. Micah six, eight, correct oppression. Isaiah one 17 to defend the rights of those in need.

Proverbs 31 eight and nine. Um, that's imbalanced.

I mean, yes, the Bible definitely talks about working hard and individual responsibility. Yes. And it also does talk about, um, making sure that we have a just situation and ending oppression.

Yes. Um, but, but it, it defines justice and oppression in very specific ways.

And, um, you have not proved that there's an unjust situation here. You, you have not done that.

Um, I don't know if he's thinking, thinking that he has done that. Um, but he hasn't, all he's done is showed us a list of disparities.

Now, um, if you can show that those, those disparities are due to current, um, oppression, current unjust situations, then yeah, you might be onto something there.

We have to look at it from both perspectives, but that's not what that, that, that, that graph was showing.

That graph was saying that we're, that they're blaming all of this on oppression. Well, yeah, okay.

Maybe so, but you have to prove it. You can't just assume it. I can prove that the Bible talks about individual responsibility.

I can prove that the Bible puts responsibility for yourself on yourself. Um, I can prove those things scripturally.

He just did as well. Um, but you haven't proven oppression. All you've proven is that the

Bible talks about oppression and writing wrongs and, and justice and stuff like that. Well, that, and nobody disagrees with that.

Everybody agrees with that. Um, but the question is, does that apply to us today? Is there unjust, unjust situations and oppression today that you can point to that you have evidence for that?

You can say, okay, this is how it doesn't comport with biblical justice. And here's how we could make it comport with biblical justice.

All you've done is given me disparities. Well, unfortunately the Bible does not take Marx Marx's point of view where disparity equals oppression.

Well, not unfortunately, fortunately it doesn't. Um, so yeah, that, that was, that's kind of confusing because nobody disagrees that the

Bible says that there, that the Bible says that, that, uh, justice is important or, or ending oppression is important.

Everyone agrees with that. Um, but you have not proven, uh, oppression or, um, an unjust situation.

You have to do that first. And then we'll talk about fixing it. And we will miss it in the church.

If we're not sitting down at the same table with people who are different from us, with our Bibles open, listening to, and learning from one another.

But the key is the Bibles have to be open and we have to demonstrate these things. Biblically speaking with two or more witnesses, and we have to show that, that according to scriptural justice, this is unjust, right?

Maybe they're using unjust scales or, or maybe there's partiality or something, but, but, but the, but the disparities don't prove that unless you're a

Marxist, unless you're saying, well, Mark, according to Karl Marx, if it's, if it's, if it's an unequal, then it must be oppression.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you have your Bibles open, you will see that that's actually not the case. And there's so many other ways we can do that.

Just practically listen to podcasts from people who are of a different ethnicity than you. White pastors, listen to podcasts hosted by African -American pastors, church leaders and church members learn.

What about Latinos, man? I could use that again. I, I've always, I've joked a few times about that.

So, you know, I could easily use their methodology about racism and, and say, well, you're racist because you're not talking about Latinos.

I don't do that. That's, that's not a good methodology for determining racism, but, but yeah, that's a good idea. You should actually listen to podcasts from people who disagree with you.

Again, ethnicity, that's very superficial. Don't go looking for the person who's just ethnically different and listen to their podcast.

That's stupid because skin color is one of the dumbest differentiators that you could use in my opinion.

But yeah, listen to people from other perspectives, whether they're black or brown or white or whatever. That's very important.

I listen to people all the time from different perspectives. I listened to social justice warriors all the time. I listened to alt -right all the time.

Um, yeah, I highly recommend it. It's, it's, it's important to sort of make sure that, um, that you don't have a blind spot.

Um, you know, you don't think you have a blind spot because, because you're blind to it, obviously, but it's good to listen to other people's podcasts.

I agree with that. Share quote from what you've learned in your public ministry.

When was the last time you quoted an African American pastor or theologian or missionary in a sermon?

It makes me want to cry.

Who cares? Who cares? If you're listening to a sermon and your concern is what the ethnicity is of the people that the pastor is quoting, you are on a different planet from me.

I, I, that's not what I'm doing when I'm listening to a sermon. What matters is the quote, right? What matters is if it's true or not.

What matters is if it's biblical or it helps you understand the Bible, not the ethnicity of the person who cares.

So the last time you quoted an African American, who cares? That's the answer. Who cares? I don't know.

Don't care. One brother told me after a seminary class that he was given a list of missionary biographies to read and report on.

And not one African American was on the list. Who? Okay. Let's just get real here for a second.

If you have a problem with that, you can very easily go find a book about whatever color of the rainbow you want, uh, you know, a person of that and read it yourself.

What's the difference? What books they assign? And furthermore, who do you want to take off the list?

And who do you want to add to the list? Right? Give me, give me some people that you want, African Americans that you want added to the list that are better than whatever, whatever people are being assigned.

Who cares? Again, this is, I can't imagine going into a class and then you get the reading list and you're like,

Oh, hold on, but there's no blacks in this list. And there's, there's no Latinos. I mean, there's no

Asians. What's going on here? Oh my goodness. My life is over. This is why we call you a

Marxist. In missions we talk about Adoniram Judson as the first American missionary, but 30 years before Judson left for Burma, George Lyle went to Jamaica.

Where he started planning churches amidst fierce persecution, including Jamaican law that forbid. Man, when you, when you're teaching a class and you want to talk about whoever you want to talk about, go ahead, go ahead.

It's that no one's saying you have to use only white missionary people. This is, this is so ridiculous.

How does that prove anything? So you're saying these, these teachers are racist. These teachers are racist because they don't teach the books that you would teach.

My goodness. That doesn't prove anything. This is why we call these, these ideas, cultural

Marxist ideas. Oh my goodness gracious. And David Platt, when you, when you come out with your books and you, uh, and you, and you list all the

African -Americans, well, what about the Latinos? What about the Asians? What are you racist against Asians? This is, this is not how we do.

This is not how we decide if someone's racist or not. I just don't. Teaching the slaves, Lyle's legacy was felt across Jamaica, America, and into Africa as he raised up other missionaries to go to the nations.

Let's make sure we're not just listening to and learning from people who look like us in history or today.

As a side note, the BD's book in the bookstore, The Faithful Preacher is a helpful resource along these lines. It'll introduce you to three pioneering

African -American pastors, regardless of the race discussion. That book will be a blessing to you pastorally and personally.

Why is the BD so racist? Or doesn't he talk about Latino pastors? Why doesn't he talk about Asian pastors? Why doesn't he talk about Korean pastors?

Why doesn't he talk about Alaskan pastors? Why doesn't he talk? This is not how we, this is not how we do this, right?

This is not how we do this. If you want to write books about black people, that's totally fine, but let's not pretend like everyone who doesn't write books about black people or read books about black people is some kind of a closet white supremacist racist.

Let's not pretend that. And let's not pretend that like, if you don't read, if you haven't read a book by an

African -American theologian, that you're somehow unfaithful, you're somehow missing a huge part of Christianity.

That's just not the case. That's just not the case. You act like, you act like people are like, they know about these books by these black

Christians and they're like, Ooh, yeah, I can't, I can't learn from a black.

I mean, no, no. That's how you act. Nobody's doing that. I mean, I'm sure there's some people doing that. Some crazy racist, but you said you're not talking about the fringe here.

So why let's listen to and learn from each other.

And as we do, so fourth exhortation, let's love and lay aside our preferences for one another.

Let's love and lay aside our preferences for one another.

How about your preference to have missionary books from all the colors of the rainbow? You can lay that one aside.

No, you're not. Cause this is all about what other people do. This is not about, this is not about,

I'm going to, I'm going to say individual responsibility. It's not about your own self. This is about what everyone else is doing because yeah, we should lay aside our preferences.

And that would include the preferences to read a book. I'll have a reading list full of black people on it.

Go find it. If you want to do that and your teacher's not assigning it, you can still do that. No one's stopping you from doing that.

No one's stopping the teacher from assigning whatever books they want. I just, I, it seems like the laying aside is expected to be on one side of this issue and not the other.

It's just a real shame. Love one another.

Think John 13, 35, but this all people will know that you are my disciples when you love one another. Think back to that graphic on the screen, which on one hand is extremely discouraging, but I think there's another way to look at that picture and that's to see it as extremely encouraging.

And the way it's encouraging is the opportunity it represents. Just think about two individuals, one on each side here.

So a white follower of Christ far on the left side, a black follower of Christ far on the right side. They think about racism and the reasons behind it in totally different terms.

It affects so much of how they view the world economically, socially, politically. They're on opposite ends of the spectrum.

But now picture those two people in the same church listening to each other, learning from another and loving one another and authentic Christian community.

That makes no sense to the world. And that is what we want in our churches, the kind of churches that cause people to say, how are those people together?

And yeah, that's a, this is a really good point. I'm really glad he's bringing it up because, you know, what we see a lot of is a social justice

Christians trying to separate themselves from the church, not wanting, wanting to own their brothers and sisters who disagree with them on this.

In fact, Jamar Tisby, after Trump got elected, said he was scared to go to church with his white brothers and sisters in Christ.

He was scared of them. He didn't feel safe with them. I've seen articles celebrating sort of the separation and trying to, and trying to, to, to weaken white evangelicalism.

I've seen so many articles like that. So I'm glad David Platt's not going that direction because that's the stuff that really, really makes me nervous about this movement.

That's the stuff that really makes me disappointed where it's like, almost like, you know, those, those, those white

Christians that don't agree with me on this, they're almost like barely Christian. They're barely Christians. And some people even talk as if they're not, they're not even regenerate in any way.

So thanks for doing this, David Platt. That's actually a really good point. Each of our churches want to be a group of people from different economic positions and political persuasions who, if we were in some political discussions, we'd be on opposite sides of the aisle.

But when we gather together as the church and all throughout the week, we're sitting right next to each other with our Bible, Bibles open because this is what unites us.

The Word of God unites us. The Word made flesh. Jesus unites us. Our politics don't, but our

Savior does. But you might say, wait a minute, if that's true, if Jesus and the

Bible unite Christians, then why don't white and black followers of Jesus and believers in the

Bible come together in churches? Doesn't it seem like the Bible is actually dividing you?

Different color people believing in the Bible, yet diverging in the church. Some might even conclude there's a problem with the

Bible. Maybe it doesn't have power to bring together different races, ethnicities. I don't believe that's true.

There is nothing wrong with the Bible. There is nothing deficient in its power to bring God's people together.

Which means we need to ask the question, if there's nothing wrong with the

Bible, then there's something wrong in the pastors who are preaching it.

There's lots of other questions you could ask that don't assume that the pastors are in some kind of a sin.

That's the thing. A lot of assumptions here. There's so many assumptions of guilt and sin. I hope that if he's going to accuse pastors of some kind of a wrongdoing,

I hope he actually has evidence of this. Because according to the scripture, if you do not, I should not even entertain that.

There's a very clear commandment in the Bible. So if our Bibles are open, like he just said, then what I need to do, if you don't have evidence, two or more witnesses here,

Pastor Platt, is not even entertain it. Not even entertain it. But there's another question that you could ask about this.

And it's like, okay, well, you know, if there's nothing wrong with the Bible, and our churches don't look the way

Pastor Platt says they should look, then the question I would ask is, well, do we have the right goals?

Because presumably God is powerful enough to do what he wants with his church at this moment in history, right?

So God has enough sovereignty to fully integrate the churches in the way he wants to.

Is that right? So he has not done that for whatever reason. That doesn't mean that that's not the goal.

That doesn't mean that in the future it won't look more integrated. But right now it has not been. And so I think it's a valid question to say, well, do we have the right expectation?

Do we have the right goals? Is a proportional representation of each ethnicity in the exact proportion that it is in society, is that the goal of the gospel?

That's a more fundamental question, right? And I'm not going to tell you what the answer is. I mean, that's a question that we need to ask, because right now it's being assumed that it is.

So therefore, if you have 20 % whites and 20 % blacks and 20 %

Asians and 20 % Latinos, then your church will be 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%.

That's the assumption here. Now, I say that we cannot make that assumption. You have to demonstrate that assumption biblically, that that's what we should expect in our churches.

Because I'm not convinced that that's actually the way it works. So change my mind.

I mean, that's the thing. If you're saying this is how it ought to be, then show me biblically that it ought to be that way.

Remember, our Bibles are open. We're together. We don't agree. And we need to look at the scriptures and say, what do we need to expect here?

Think about this with me. We know there are historical reasons why churches split over racial, ethnic lines.

That's true. But let's not fool ourselves. There are contemporary reasons, too. After all, we like being around people who are like us.

People who sing songs that we like and do things the way we like to do them. Hasn't this been the name of the game in church growth for decades now?

How do you draw a crowd to the church? You appeal to the crowd's preferences.

We've practically created a reality TV show model of church where people walk away thinking, I give the sermon at six today, music at four, or vice versa.

This or that just didn't do it for me. And thinking like this about the church has had a significant impact. Yeah, I agree.

But like, you know, other social justice warrior Christians are actually calling for that exact thing. They want you to sing different songs and attract people with the songs that you sing and worship differently and have different messages and preach more social justice gospel and all that.

That's the same exact thing. You know what I mean? It's just attracting a different demographic, right?

So if you're saying, okay, well, people like to be with people that are like minded, and that's why, okay, well, first of all, is that a sin?

And first of all, not, I'm not so sure that it is. Second, second of all, okay, so then we'll do more of the social justice thing.

Well, all you're doing is attracting a different demographic instead of people that like to sing the same songs as you and like the same messages as you will now it's people that are social justice warriors.

I mean, you're not really not really solving much, I don't think. Significant contribution on division by race in the church to the point where so many of our churches, whether we realize it or not, have been affected by the homogeneous unit principle, which basically says that a church can grow the fastest if it only has one cultural group.

The thinking is if you want to reach as many people as possible and people like being around those who are most like them, then focus on trying to reach one type of person in one church and another type of person in another church.

So the way to grow a church, the fastest is to appeal to people's preferences.

We don't have time to go into this one biblically tonight, but suffice to say, it's not in the Bible. Neither is all this stuff that you're talking about, to be perfectly honest with you.

No, doesn't seem to be stopping you. Never see Paul saying to Jewish people, you guys stick together.

We can grow our churches a lot faster if we keep the Gentiles out. You Gentiles. You also don't hear him saying, well, we need to have cross -cultural worship and we need to sing kind of Jewish songs, but also some, you know,

Gentile -ish songs. And we also, you don't see that either. Start your own churches.

That's the best way to go. No, they're working hard to come together. They're sacrificing personal preferences because the church is not about their preferences.

It's about the display of Christ's supremacy and the glory of Jesus Christ shines most clearly when different groups of people come together and he is the only explanation for why they're together.

That's what we want to mark our churches. I wonder,

I mean, I wonder where he's getting that. I mean, I know that the, again, the eschatological church, the universal church is multi -ethnic and that's amazing in itself.

I think that that's quite glorious for the Lord. But he's talking about the local bodies. He's talking about the local bodies being multi -ethnic and how that is the goal of the

God. Prove it. I mean, I'd be interested to see where he's getting that from the Bible. I'm not going to say he doesn't have a biblical reason for that, but I'd be interested to know what it is.

But that's not easy. I would say especially not easy for minority brothers and sisters.

It's interesting. I guess not surprising. There's growing research that shows how most multi -ethnic churches in our country are still dominated by white cultural norms, music style, various preferences, authors and others referenced by the pastor.

We're going to stop there, but we live in a country that's 60 % or something like that white.

And so we have a particular culture. There's no question about that in this country. Is that a sin?

Why wouldn't churches in our culture have cultural markers in them that would be obvious?

Oh, that's an American church. What's the problem with that? Do we go to Ethiopia? They're going to have

Ethiopian churches. Is that a sin? You go to Korea, they're going to have Korean churches. Is that a sin?

I mean, if there are things that Korean culture or American culture does that are unbiblical, then yeah, we should get rid of those things.

And we should compare it to the scripture and our worship services should look the way the scriptures say they should look.

And so if we need to change them closer to that standard, then yeah, we should do that. But I don't think that's what he's talking about here.

So I'm just... We'll continue this later, but I'm just curious. What would he expect it to look like?