Systemic Racism, Riots, & the Boston Tea Party

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00:00

Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

00:08

Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie? Or are you gonna bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

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Delusional's okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

00:21

So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me!

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Yes! What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

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Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

00:58

That's a joke, Pasta. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

01:26

What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. You guys can get us at ApologiaStudios .com.

01:31

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I encourage you to check out the last couple of days of content. We have some great stuff up there. Evangelism Conversation with a young lady outside of one of the mills we were ministering at.

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We have some new content coming up with stories with John Barros. I'm so excited about that.

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I sound like Jerry right now. I'm so excited. Just lots of great stuff there.

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Lots of great stuff happening. God's blessing so many ways. Thank you to all of our ministry partners who have made everything possible for us to be a witness to the world.

02:43

God bless you all. Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of Apologia Radio. Very excited about this episode.

02:50

You, I think, are going to learn a lot and be encouraged. We have lots of stuff to show you, to talk about in light of all the cultural circumstances that we are facing right now.

03:00

I wanted to point, of course, to an amazing passage from the Word of God. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free.

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There is no male and female for you are all one in Messiah, Jesus, Galatians 3, 28.

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I think most of you guys know that passage. I hope you do. It's an amazing one. It's really at the center and the heart of the gospel itself and the

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Christian world being what the Lord Jesus, the King of the Earth, the Messiah is doing in the world bringing all the tribes, tongues, peoples, nations, languages together into one body under the same only

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God and to love and worship him together. So I am here today with Luke the

03:39

Bear. What up? I'm Jeff the Calm of the Ninja. Of course, you can see to my left over here, we have a special guest today.

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This is Zach Lautenschlager, our boy. How are you doing, brother? I'm well, thank you. All right, so glad you could join us today, brother.

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Let's see, lots to go through. And you have to forgive me, guys. We had so much going on today. I totally forgot to plug in the video stuff here.

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I hope this doesn't blow things up. And so, Isaac, you just get ready and just tell me if it works or not. Let's see if this works.

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While you're doing that, I got a funny story. Go for it. It's all about our friend here. Go for it. Mr. Zach. Which, by the way,

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I put this shirt on today. This is J .C. Ryle. And I realize this looks like an old version of you.

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It does. Doesn't it? It totally does. Like if your beard was like a foot longer. Right, right. Is it a future version?

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Yeah, future. We were coming today. I was with my wife. And we pulled up behind this van at the stoplight.

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And my daughter was like, Utah, I get a point! Or something. I don't know what she was playing in the back. And my wife goes, oh, big van,

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Utah. Must be Mormons. And then we pulled up right behind Zach and his wife. Well, I do have six children.

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Yeah. But I also have a beard. The main Mormons don't have beards anymore.

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If I shave, they think I'm one of them. Oh, I know. We have a few families at our church with big vans like that that get mistaken all the time.

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With lots of kids. Is it working? Are we good? So, Luke, Isaac told me to check the power strip.

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Did it get turned off again? I don't know. Maybe it did. Let's give it a shot. I'm going to disappear for a second. Yeah, you work on that right there.

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That might have been me. I plugged in down there next to the switch. Yeah, so Luke, sorry. I tried not to butt in. I apologize. All the technical issues are now working live.

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What's that? It's on? It's plugged in? Yeah. All right, so I don't know what's going on here, Isaac. We'll see if I can get this to work.

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We only do things very professionally here at Apologia Studios, as you can see. Well, I just wanted to be able to show you at least this picture here.

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Well, maybe I don't have to do it. We can probably skip some of this stuff if it's just not going to work. Well, let's talk.

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Obviously, we are facing a lot of stuff right now in our current culture and in our circumstances. We're talking about the riots, the looting that's going on all over the country.

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We're talking about the class conflict and all of the difficulties that we have to really be able to provide an answer for as Christians.

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And we really do need to, as Christians, be able to provide an answer for what's happening around us.

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Because if we don't step into this moment and provide biblical answers that are consistent with the biblical worldview, that are consistent with God's law, then someone else is going to find that space and they're going to step in there and they're going to give something that actually isn't

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Christian, isn't true, isn't biblical. And many people are doing that right now, even with a veneer of the

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Christian world. You're using Christian language and all the rest. And it could devastate, really, our current circumstances.

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It could devastate the lives of our children and our grandchildren. If Christians don't do the really hard task of facing the culture and pointing to the cultural idols, calling people to repent of them, pointing to God's just and righteous statutes, and calling people to actually uphold those.

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And the reason why I'm talking about this is you'll hear people today in the midst of this conflict, popular buzz term going around today, social justice.

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And you'll even hear people, come on in, Carmen. I'll talk to everyone while you're trying to figure this situation out.

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This is Carmen, guys. Say hi to Carmen. Hi. Hi, Carmen. Is this your first time in the middle of an episode?

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I think so. It is. Carmen's been with us forever. How long?

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You were just a baby when you first came to us. Like five years. Maybe five, six years, something like that. As you can see from his face, there's a reason we hide him.

07:34

Yeah, that's messed up. So Carmen, actually, a lot of the old content you'll see from Apologia Studios was

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Carmen, a little Carmen, little boy Carmen. Hide my camera. Wee little Carmen. Just wee little

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Carmen working the camera stuff. So back to the discussion.

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The issue of social justice, people are using that terminology today.

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They're using it a lot. And I said that people are using even a Christian veneer. They're talking a lot about Christian language as they talk about social justice.

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But if you challenge these people and you ask them, what do you mean by that?

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Like, okay, so we've got this systemic racism. We've got privilege. We've got all these problems in culture and society.

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And so what we need is social justice. So, okay, great. I'm all ears. What is social justice according to your perspective?

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And what you don't hear coming from these people who are professing to be believers and they're using this Christian language, you don't hear things that are consistent with God's stipulated statutes and law, like what he's revealed.

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Like this is justice. These are righteous statutes and all the rest. You really hear things that are just coordinate with the neo -Marxist perspective, intersectionality.

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You really hear them talking like communists. And it's wicked.

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It's evil. It isn't Christian. No matter how many, no matter the robes you're wearing while you say it, no matter the little white thing at your neck as you say it, no matter what's going on, you say social justice.

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You call yourself a Christian. If you're not talking about what's in God's law, it isn't justice. It isn't social justice.

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And so we need to talk about that. What's it mean? Look, if we're going to engage in the conversation about systematic racism, we're going to talk about privilege, and we're going to talk about all these evils, even the murder of George Floyd, we have to do it in a way that's coherent, that's meaningful, that's biblical, that's

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Christian. Fundamentally Christian. If you're new to Apologia Radio, and nice to meet you.

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I'm Jeff, that's Luke. We've been doing this for a long time. We're pastors of Apologia Church. We want you to know our standard.

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Our standard is the revealed Word of God. If you want to take a very high philosophical terminology and know where we're coming from, if you're into that kind of thing, we have a revelational epistemology.

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That means that we know what we know, and we can claim to know things and be certain about them because God himself has revealed himself to us, and he's told us so.

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He's told us, this is who I am. This is my world. This is who you are. This is the gospel. This is the truth.

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This is righteousness. This is what holiness is. And so our perspective is, certainty is found in the

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Word of God. Certainty doesn't go with the different waves of cultural likes and dislikes and all the different propaganda that we're seeing today.

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We're asking the question of, what does God say? What's his Word say? What's the truth? Jesus says,

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I'm the way and the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. We believe that the living God, the one who is the first, the last, the beginning and the end, the only

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God who knows of no other gods, the one and only true and living God is the standard of truth.

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You want to know what's true? You go to God's Word. You want to know what's just in society? You go to God's law.

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You want to know what God says about human beings? And races? There's a human race.

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And then there are tribes. And what we're seeing today around us is really tribalism.

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And we're going to talk a lot about it today. We have big help today when we bring glory to Jesus. We have a lot to do. I'm trying to go fast here.

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And one of the things Luke says, we've got a lot to go over today so we've got to go fast. So I'm going to try to do that. So Isaac, how are we doing?

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We have audio but no video. We have audio. No video for some reason.

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We have video but no audio. Isaac, just come on in here and let me know. I want to make sure everyone sees this stuff. Yeah, we have audio but no video.

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Okay. Well, let me try again. It's probably your fault, Isaac. No, no. You have to switch the resolution on the

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Mac. Carmen came and did that. He tried to but it didn't show the proper resolution we needed. For some reason, it's just not there.

11:47

Okay. All right. Maybe we'll just skip it. I had some fun stuff to show everybody. But we'll just go through the issues.

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But hey, Jeff, how good are you working with a Mac? Well, see, Macs are stupid. I was just going to ask why you're using a

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Mac. It's not his. I'll just leave it there. It's the guys over there. It's their fault.

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That's why it's not working. Well, I'm glad you guys are hanging with us through these technical issues. We do have a lot to go over.

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I'm just going to go ahead and go over the stuff. I'll just send you to our page when we get to it. For those listening on the live stream, yes, there's a video of us.

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There's not a video of what Jeff's trying to play. People are like, no, there's a video of you. I can see you. Thank you, guys.

12:27

I know you guys can see us right now, but we're trying to get you to see what's on my computer. I had some fun stuff I wanted to show you. Actually, I had some really fun stuff.

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It means a lot to me, actually. I was going to show you a video of my coach and then one of my teammates.

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It stinks, man. Maybe I'll save that stuff for after we take a commercial break.

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We can have the guys come in here to fix it during the commercial break. If we go to commercial break, we'll get it going. If you want to do it sooner, that's fine.

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I'll do it later after commercial break. This way we don't fiddle around with it on the show. Thank you guys for hanging out with us.

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I'm sorry about all the technical issues right now. All right, here we go. Let's start with the thing that's in the front part here of the title of this particular broadcast, this show.

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That's the issue of systemic racism. Systemic racism.

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Let's talk about it because it's important. It's something that's kicked around a lot right now. First, let's lay a foundation down so that everybody who hears this understands something about what we believe.

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What we believe is true. What we believe is beautiful. What's most important in this discussion.

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We hold to a Christian worldview. That means that we believe in a creator. We believe in a creation.

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We are creatures made by the only God. Everything you see around us was made by this

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God. There is only one God. We are unique creations of this one God. God created in the garden

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His image. In the image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created them. We believe that all human beings are made in the imago

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Dei, in the image of God. We absolutely reject and repudiate the perspective of Charles Darwin and Darwinianism that teaches that there are certain groups of people based upon the color of their skin that are less evolved.

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If you hate... I'll use the word because it's popular. If you hate racism today, then you need to go and talk to your public schools because the worldview taught in the public school system for a long time now is the neo -Darwinian, micro -mutation, macro -evolutionary worldview.

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Speciation, one thing going to another. You have all of us descendants of bacteria. We have evolved here through unguided processes.

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There's no purpose or meaning or goal -directed forces in the universe. There is no good. There is no evil. Your sexuality is your sexuality.

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Mine is mine. You've got human beings as part of just this story of the universe that doesn't have a storyteller.

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It's just happening. It's just time and chance acting on matter. You've got the Darwinian model, the evolutionary worldview.

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Grab hold of it. Accept it. It's what it teaches. That's where it came from. You've got people who have evolved in this purposeless universe and cosmos who are less evolved.

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You don't believe me? Go look up Darwin on his view of black people. If you don't like the issue of racism and this idea of purposeless and human beings as tribes better than the other, less evolved, look, that's been tried before.

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You know. You've heard it before. You know the story. I know it looks like a person.

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It's not a person. It's a Jew. I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. It's a black slave.

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People have done that. That comes from somewhere. Let me tell you where it doesn't come from.

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Christianity. It doesn't come from God's word because God's word says, from one blood,

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God has made all these different tribes and nations and people. Look, here's the deal. All these different colors, all the differences in cultures, they are stinking awesome.

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Black is beautiful. White is beautiful. Brown is beautiful. I love what

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Vody says when he talks about one of the things you get away from as a Christian is looking at me and saying, you don't see black.

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He's like, don't do that. Yes, we're all in the image of God. We're all exactly the same. He's like, but God gave me this because it's beautiful.

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And he gave you what he gave you because it's beautiful. It's like looking at a rose garden with all these different color roses and saying, all

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I see is rose. No, it's awesome. It's the creator. It's beautiful.

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All these differences are amazing but the truth is is that all of us have the same mom and dad.

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Ultimately, we're brothers and sisters in humanity. So the Christian worldview says this. There's no difference ontologically.

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We are the same. Human beings, human family. And so all of us as image bearers of God have unique value and worth and dignity and beauty.

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All that stuff, right? And all of us deserve justice. God wants justice for all humans no matter the color.

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So if you want to know where we're coming from in terms of race, tribes, all that stuff, we're all the same before God and we need the same

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Savior. And the beauty of the gospel of the kingdom is the one God and his one Savior of the world,

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Jew and Gentile, slave and free, all of that brings together all the tribes to peace and unity and harmony and love before his throne.

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That's the beautiful worldview that this world needs right now. You're not solving this problem through money, throwing money at the issue of racism.

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You're not going to solve this problem through government control. You're not going to solve this problem through pithy platitudes.

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You're going to solve this problem when human hearts are transformed and they see God for who he is and them for who they are and they come together under the throne of the one

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God because of Jesus. The Christian worldview is the solution to this problem. It is. It's the only solution that matters, is meaningful, and is true.

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All that to say, into the discussion, people say, we've got to deal with systemic racism.

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It's systemic racism. Okay, you already know how we feel about tribalism and the sin of the hate of another person because of the color of their skin and all the rest.

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But we've got to think like Christians. We've got to think like Christians and say, think logically, reasonably. So let's deal with the issue of systemic racism.

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People bring it up a lot right now. So my response... Look, I'm a pastor. I'm a minister of the gospel.

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It's my job to listen. It's my job to be corrected where I need to be corrected. And it's my job to speak the truth where it needs to be spoken.

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No matter how much it hurts somebody or rubs against cultural sensitivities, all that stuff.

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Here's the thing. Someone says to me, look, there's systemic racism. I'm going to say, okay, alright, that sounds serious. And if it's true, racism is a sin.

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It deserves to go to hell. So let's deal with it. Where? It's systemic racism.

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It's everywhere. That's interesting. I've been here for a long time. I'm 42 years old.

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I know. Stop it. 42 years old and I'm having a hard time seeing the systemic racism in...

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Not saying I don't see racism. I do. There are racists and it deserves to go to hell. That's a good distinction.

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Can you make the distinction? Systemic racism versus hatred and evil of another person. Racism. There are racists out there and it's an abomination and it will burn in hell forever.

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There you go. Now I feel about it. But systemic means systematic. System. It's built into the system.

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So I go, alright. Now I know that in the 50s, 100 % yes. I can point to the laws.

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You can see it historically. You go, systemic, yeah. You have laws and ordinances that prohibit certain people of color not to do certain things or not to have certain privileges or rights or justice or whatever the case may be.

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I go, yeah. I'll take you to the 50s and I'll show you the ordinances and the laws and I'll show you the video. That's evil, wicked.

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I mean, to hell with that. But I see today and I go, systemic. Can you show me the law or ordinance that prohibits a white person from doing a particular thing because they're white or...

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Let's talk about what we need to talk about. Do you know of a law or ordinance that says that a person of color, a black person because of the color of skin can't get a job or should be put a certain place in the line?

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It's an ordinance. It's a law. It's in the system. Or do you know of a particular ordinance that prohibits a black person from holding a certain office?

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Systemic means it's in the system. There's an ordinance. There's a law. And so, my challenge is that.

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Can you show me the law or ordinance that prohibits based upon color? Now, if somebody says, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

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Okay, no. No, no. There isn't that. There's just obvious racism happening. That's a different thing.

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Racism in somebody's heart expressed over here is a sinful expression. It should be repudiated.

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We should all call it out. We should hate it and heap scorn upon it. But when you say systemic, it's in the system.

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So, where's the law? Where's the ordinance? And if you can't point to it, then it isn't systemic.

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It's an expression over here. That's large scale, broad, bird's eye view looking above.

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Right? But Zach does have something to say in terms of systemic racism that is happening today.

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And so, let's talk about that. Hold on. Before you get to that, because I don't want to miss this point. I would say, if anything, the systemic racism points the other direction.

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What I mean by that, especially in pro sports, for example, there's a lot, like in football and some of these other groups, there are rules.

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They're not laws, but they're rules where if you're hiring a new coach or someone in management, you have to interview someone that's a minority.

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So, in other words, affirmative action. Exactly. And someone just said that. It's not systemic racism. It's affirmative action. But that's the point.

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I know even within the church, there's been a lot of talk in the last couple of years. There's pastors coming out that are saying, if I had the choice between a white pastor who's more qualified and a black pastor who's less qualified,

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I would go with the black pastor because I need more color in my church. But that's the direction it's going in.

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So I think it's pointing the other way. I don't think it's pointing in the direction that everybody's saying. Even in those cases, though, here's what's important.

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In order to demonstrate something is systemic, you've got to be able to point to the systematic application that's inherent in the system that everybody's following.

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Not just a particular expression from a person or a particular community, but systemic is everyone.

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That's what's being argued. Is it systemic? It's law -like. It's ordinance. It's built into the system.

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And the answer is you probably need to get out more of your community because if you find racism large -scale in your community, you should probably come to mind for a little bit over here in mine because in my community, it isn't what you're seeing over there.

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So a lot of this has to do with pockets. And I want to point, I'm going to hand this off to Zach here because this is really important to hear what he has to say.

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But can I just say this? Please hear me on this and just please be gracious to me on this and just try to give me a hearing.

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Be humble enough to give me a hearing. I'm going to talk in a minute about my almost being killed because of the color of my skin.

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And that was a particular community that I was around at the time. But I want to point to the fact that this is an expression of the sinful heart of man that exists all over the planet.

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So can I give you one example? If you're in Japan right now or certain parts of China, do you know that it's not color difference?

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It's I hate you because you're Chinese. I hate you because you're Japanese. But guess what?

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You're both Asian. So there's this hatred of the other person because of their culture and it's

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Japanese versus Chinese. And then if you can move to other parts of the world, guess what? Ireland.

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It's another example of white on white. But it's cultural and they say it's

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Protestant versus Catholic. But guess what? It's meaningless. It's not even really doctrinal. It's just cultural community.

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Animosity. And guess what? The problem is whites on whites. What do we do with that?

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It's all over the world. This is hate in the heart of man of another image bearer of God. Sometimes it's expressed because of color.

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Sometimes no. When you look at it, that's as racist as white on black, black on white.

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We are one race. Vody is correct. And it does have a heritage aspect.

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If you look at the white on white in Ireland, I come from the Ulster Scots. So that's my people.

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I was just in your homeland. That's that reality. So I think that when we look at that bigger picture and we ask, is it systematic racism?

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No, but it is systematic oppression. Is it systematic oppression of one race? No, the federal government has been oppressing people for a really long time.

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I grew up in South Dakota where we have a very, very small black population, but our minority are Native American.

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And every day and I'll talk with my Native American friends who were legitimately oppressed and hurt and violated by a federal government.

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And I tell them, look, I'm really sorry. That is my government. You're an American too, right? I mean, you're proud of that.

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It is your government too. And they oppress me as much as they oppress you. I'm sorry.

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We can look at a million different ways in which the federal government does this. What about state governments? What about city government?

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This is evil, satanic philosophy applied to government. That's what it is.

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And one of the ways in which it does apply, and you know, I'm going to adjust my point from earlier, I think because, you know, if you're going to define systematic racism the way you just defined it, and I said, well, yes, but there is gun control.

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Is it supposed to be applied across the board? Yes, and unfortunately it exists, and now we have wicked evil government, which is applying it across the board.

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Now, the sad reality is you go to certain places and you see them applying it very specifically to black people and not white people.

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Yeah, that pocket. And the reason it kind of doesn't fit in the categories because gun control was passed for this express purpose of controlling black people.

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That's where it was invented in America. It didn't exist in America until we started saying, wait a minute, now they're reconstructing the

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South, but these people can vote, these people, those people, black people. We can't let them have guns.

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We need laws that say you can't have guns, and then it was at that time very selectively enforced. You could be a black dude and you couldn't own a gun, and a white man, you could have whatever you wanted.

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Gun control. Absolutely. Straight up gun control, but only for one side.

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Right? It's still applied that way. Now it's applied to everyone, but that is an example, and that's why I say systematic racism, no.

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Systematic oppression, you bet. That is the evil of allowing our government to do things that are outside the jurisdiction that God has given them.

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Allowing them to speak to anything that's outside the jurisdiction and allowing them to do anything within that jurisdiction that God says is wrong.

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Or that we can principally say, no, that's the wrong step. And the systematic oppression that you're referring to,

27:33

Zach, is systematic oppression from a government moving outside of their jurisdiction upon everybody.

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Upon everybody. Although, like you said, maybe in your neighborhood, it is applied systematically to one colored skin and not another.

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That does happen. That absolutely does happen. And there are certain cultural realities, not in every police department, there are some in some.

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I've seen it. You go to Rapid City, South Dakota, where I spent a lot of time growing up, if you're an

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Indian guy, you're going to get treated really differently by the police department there than if you're a white guy. And the laws are going to be applied differently to you.

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It does happen. And so I agree 100 % with what you're saying. If we're going to say there's systematic racism, what we're saying is that in America the laws are consistently applied differently to black people.

28:19

No, that's not even true. And that's very hard to argue. Yeah, that's my point. You have to look at it and take it by case -by -case basis in terms of community.

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But what's the answer? The answer isn't the color issue. The answer is the justice issue. Put government back in its box.

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That's right. It's an issue of justice. What should the government be doing?

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How are they supposed to operate? And how should they be treating every human being? I want a just and righteous standard for George Floyd and Jeff Durbin.

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I want the same exact thing. And the interesting thing here is that when you bring up a good point, guys, we could spend a whole episode talking about the times in my life doing ministry as a pastor where we've been oppressed by the police.

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We're Christians. We have different colored people at our church. We have a whole variety of colors at our church.

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But a lot of times it's the white Christians outside of abortion mills that are being abused by police officers.

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That's a common occurrence. There's no justice for us, right? I'm not going to emphasize the issue of my color.

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I'm going to talk about the issue of justice. I'm not even going to bring up the issue.

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It's because I'm Christian. Ain't it? I'm going to say what you ought to be doing is upholding this constitutional standard.

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You don't have a right to search me, to seize anything. You don't even have a right to ask me questions right now.

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I want that applied to everybody. Christian, black, white, red, yellow, purple,

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I don't care what you are. I want justice for everybody and my interpretation of what justice is, is the word of God.

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These are His standards. This is what's right to do to every image bearer of God. I wanted to talk about the issue of systemic racism.

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But I want to talk about the issue and I like how Zach talked through that in terms of where are you?

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In this place, yeah, it happens a lot. You'll see a lot of wickedness and evil and hatred for another person. Sometimes it's not black people.

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Sometimes it's quote unquote red people. Sometimes you might be in some areas where and I've witnessed this.

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You might be in some areas where it's a largely Hispanic community and there are black people who are afraid to walk in those neighborhoods because there's a lot of hatred in terms of that color versus that color.

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Or if you're in LA, you're Korean in certain neighborhoods and they're going to come burn your business down. It's hatred in the heart for other fellow image bearers of God and sometimes it just becomes tribal conflict.

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It's just tribalism. So what you want to end is tribalism and the person who brings the tribes together is Jesus. Makes us all together unified, peace with God, peace among one another.

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But I wanted to bring this up in terms of, we have to think about this in terms of biblical categories and healing because of what

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God has done in Christ and who we really are according to God's definition. But you know, in my experience, and I wanted to say this as humbly as possible, you know that I think racism is an abomination.

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You know that I think that it's hatred for brother. You know that I've challenged anybody who names the name of Jesus who has hatred or animosity for another image bearer of God because of the color of their skin to repent in a hurry.

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I do believe that people will be in hell for, quote, racism. It's a sin against a holy God. I think

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God hates racism. I think it's illogical. It's irrational. It is wicked.

31:48

Okay, you know how I feel about it. But can I tell you a personal history? And I know Luke probably has stories himself here.

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He grew up in Chicago as a white guy in Chicago. Look, I grew up for a large part of my life in Washington, D .C.

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And I can tell you my very first day in school, I grew up on military bases in Holland, in Japan.

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My very first public school was Poe Monkey Middle School right outside Washington, D .C.

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Wait, what is it called? The name of the city is Poe Monkey. It's Maryland. We were 15 minutes outside of Washington, D .C.

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I don't know a soul. I'm telling you the truth. I just drove from across the country.

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We landed in California or Vegas. We drove across the country. We get to D .C. I don't know a soul.

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My first day of school is two days after I arrive in D .C. So everything is new to me. First public school experience.

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And I don't know a soul. I walk into the gym where everyone's gathering for a welcome to school kind of a thing.

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And I see a crowd of guys. They weren't my color. There were more black people in my school than there were white people.

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That would be how it looked. And I see a group of guys sort of talking and obviously looking at me hard and everything.

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And next thing you know, one of the guys comes over and just starts wailing on me, like beating me up. But thank

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God I know martial arts. And so I threw him against the wall. We had a go at it. And people called me

33:27

Kung Fu Jeff from that day forward. The very first day of school it became actually very popular because it was like a Bruce Lee movie right there.

33:34

And very successful by the way. It was awesome. Now watch. I'm going to continue the story here.

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I'm in Washington D .C. I'm white. Okay. And my heroes in the area, many of them were black.

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So like in the martial arts world is huge on the East Coast at the time. I was competing every weekend.

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I was traveling the nation. I was on national karate teams. I'm going to world championships, national championships.

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I mean I'm in a new tournament every weekend. And the time you had to go up and down the East Coast to go to the regional tournaments to get all your points to make sure you were still high in the rankings.

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And so I went to a lot of tournaments regionally. I went to inner city. Very, very scary places to do tournaments.

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All over. I mean talking about New York, New Jersey, Washington D .C. Some hard areas, right?

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And can I just say something? The friends that I had, the people that I looked up to most, they weren't white.

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They were my heroes. They weren't white. These are men that I highly revered and respected. And then my coaches and my teammates weren't white.

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These guys were legends. I'm talking legends. One of the greatest influences in my life was a man named

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Willie the Bam Johnson. He is a powerful man. He is this little black guy.

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Fast, strong, amazing. When he used to go up to perform, I was in awe. Imagine me, this kid, like I'm in awe of this man.

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I'd follow him around tournaments and I finally got to know him so well that I ended up sort of he created a relationship with me.

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He became my coach and he would train me once a week and teach me. He was my coach and he was like the world champion. He was like the first American to win in China in a

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Wushu tournament. He was legendary. He's in movies and TV shows. He was a legend in the sports.

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Now he's my teacher. Then we became very close. His son Marco essentially became like a brother to me.

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He'd stay at my house. We lived together. It was like family. The guys on my team, these guys

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I revered these men. Different color of skin than me. I say all that to say this. While this is happening and I'm living in Washington D .C.,

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you knew in Washington D .C. that there were certain areas, certain communities that if you came through and you had the wrong color skin your life was in danger.

35:58

Your life was in danger. One time, because I was white, I was walking through a neighborhood.

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A car stopped. People poured out of the car and pulled guns and pointed them right at me and started chasing me. I was with a friend.

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We both split up, ran through the woods, ran into a neighborhood. I jumped over some random person's fence, crawled under the deck.

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I remember it to this day. There was spider webs and mud and this random person's backyard under their wooden deck.

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I'm just not moving while these men are yelling racial obscenities about my color of my skin.

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They're chasing us with guns. Another time, it was like 9 o 'clock at night. I'm leaving my house to go spend the night with a friend.

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I'm walking through my own neighborhood around a curve and I'm on the left side of the road so cars should be coming towards me on that side.

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I can hear an engine rumbling right behind me for like a good 30 seconds, 45 seconds. I'm like, why is this car on the wrong side of the street?

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It's dark outside. I'm afraid to look behind me because I don't want to give off that I know there's someone behind me and I'm coming to turn into where this cul -de -sac is.

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There's a house to my left and guys, I'll never forget every breath of this moment. It was intense.

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I hear the car door opening behind me and something inside of me is like, run. I start to run and I look behind me and out of this car spills a bunch of guys.

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It's night time. I'm alone. I'm like 15 years old. I turn the corner on this house and truth before God, this is what happened.

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Something deep in my soul it felt like. I heard it inside me.

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I know this sounds weird coming from a foreign guy. I'm not charismatic. I wasn't even a Christian at the time. All I heard was jump and I did.

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I jumped. There was bushes in front of this house. I jumped over the bushes. I landed on the ground.

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I hit it like dead weight. Like just bricks. Bam! I didn't move because I didn't want to rustle the bushes. I hit that and next thing you know, all

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I see under the bushes is boots. Boots. Boots. Boots passing me. All I hear the whole time is racial obscenities.

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They're talking about me being white. White MF -er. White this.

38:05

White that. These guys are now in the neighborhood so I wait for enough time to pass. I peel myself back the other direction.

38:12

I go to the next cul -de -sac across the street. I sneak across. I'm hiding behind cars. I'm watching these men who were not my skin color looking under cars, looking around this neighborhood for me.

38:21

They're holding pipes, I think, and bats. It was all men, not my color, yelling racial obscenities in that community.

38:31

Why are you bringing this up? Because that was an isolated place and those were guys who were expressing sin.

38:38

I wasn't even a Christian. You know what I never did? I never then went to my training that was required for our national karate team with all of my black heroes and then assumed you have something to apologize for.

38:52

Right? Your community is guilty of this. I never went to my coach, Willie the Bam Johnson, who to this day is one of my greatest heroes.

38:59

He was like a father to me. I never ever went into that training with him or had his son living with me, like as a brother.

39:06

I never saw him any differently. I even saw then there are just particular pockets of this stuff that you just have to avoid.

39:16

And I'll give you one more story. Luke's heard this probably a million times and then I'll shut up. One time I was going to film a video game.

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I was in a video game called The Untouchable and I remember that the producer of the game was like, Hey, we're filming it here in this location.

39:31

And I was like, Huh, I know the area really well. I'm from DC. I said, Travis, that's not an area

39:38

I'm supposed to be in. And he was like, No, no, no, no. We rented this warehouse. We got it all set. The set's all there.

39:43

It's all ready to go. We're only going to film during the daytime. You should be perfectly fine. I was like, Travis, I don't feel good about this.

39:51

He's like, Well, you have to do it, blah, blah. And I was like, Okay, but I have to be out of there before nighttime because it's not safe for me.

39:59

Everyone knows you can't go into that neighborhood if you're not that color. And so he's like, Don't worry, we'll have you out of there by nighttime.

40:05

And sure enough, by the way, this is the ice cream truck. The ice cream truck that came through that neighborhood was an armored vehicle.

40:12

And in one of those bank vehicles, and when the ice cream came out, you'd put the money in, it would go, cha -cha -chunk.

40:18

You'd put the thing in, cha -cha -chunk. Right? It was intense. Anyway, he didn't have us out of there.

40:23

He didn't have us out of there until dark. And now I've got to make my way through this neighborhood that everybody knows you can't drive through and not be that color.

40:32

And I remember that night, I'm driving, I had people in the car with me, and I'm literally, there's people on the corners, like, waiting for your car to stop.

40:41

And I'm driving past these red lights, and I'm driving literally right through them. I'm just driving through the red lights.

40:47

I'm driving through the red lights. I'm not even stopping at the red lights because I know the rules for this area. And I know that your life could be in danger.

40:54

And I notice this car is pacing me the entire time, kind of, you know, behind me a little bit, and it's going through the lights with me.

41:00

It's going through the lights with me. And finally, I look over, and lo and behold, it's a police officer in a cop car.

41:06

And all he does is he looks over at me, he nods his head, and we both continue to go through the red lights together.

41:13

Because even he knew I wasn't able to stop in that area. And what I want to say about that is this, is a lot of this is dependent upon the community that you're in, and the sin that is inherent in that place, what's accepted in that place.

41:26

Sometimes it's white against black, sometimes it's black against white, sometimes it's black against brown and Asian, whatever the case may be.

41:34

But here's the deal, look, what I would never say as a Christian is because I was almost killed because of the color of my skin in a particular area, that means that my other black brothers and sisters should be held responsible for those people's sin.

41:50

It's a wicked sin that I can't now say across the board, so you're all guilty for, it's what you're all like.

41:55

That's the wickedness. That's the sin. What if I were to do that? What if I were to say, in my experience growing up,

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I almost lost my life because of the color of my skin in a certain neighborhood. Would you condemn me if I said, so all my black brothers and sisters are all like that?

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What would you say? What would you say to me if I said something as wicked as that?

42:17

You'd call me to repentance, rightly so. And in the same way, we need to interpret the current cultural model that tries to suggest that to us, that we need to judge a whole people group on the basis of the activities of some in the people group.

42:34

That's not how you deal with sin and problems. You deal with the heart issue and you call that sin out. So I'll shut up now.

42:39

I wanted to tell that story. Well, I'll say something real quick. We probably should get to a break here, but I think, my wife and I were talking about this last night and yeah,

42:46

I mean to echo what you were saying, I grew up 30 miles southeast of downtown Chicago and 5 miles from downtown

42:53

Gary. And for many years they would fight over murder capital of the US.

42:59

So there's areas, if you're white, you just didn't go on those, you know, it's the same thing. I don't go around thinking all black people are like that because I couldn't drive to downtown

43:07

Gary without getting shot. So anyways, but my wife and I were talking about this last night and this is why

43:15

I was saying like the issue or the solution is the gospel. It's not all this peripheral like laws and all this nonsense that's not going to change anything.

43:26

The only thing that's going to change people and make this right is the gospel. And so that should be, and I know that's what we're trying to do, but that's where we should be coming from.

43:34

And when you say that, can we say this Luke? What you just said is like that's the answer. But people hear that and it becomes just a slogan.

43:42

The gospel's the answer. Okay, we'll go to a commercial break here, okay? But why? It's good news of a kingdom, right?

43:49

A king who's accomplished salvation and redemption for people from every tribe, people, tongue, and language, right?

43:57

All those image bearers of God that are fallen in Adam and all dead and enemies of God, there is peace available through Jesus Christ and his redemption he's accomplished.

44:08

And you know what's beautiful is in Revelation there's this scene of the worship that takes place before the throne of God and you know what's happening before that throne?

44:18

Men from every tribe, tongue, people, nation, and language are worshipping the Father and the

44:23

Son. They're worshipping the one true God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They are before that throne, all of them saved by the same blood, all of them image bearers of God.

44:33

So when we say the gospel is the solution, because there's a whole worldview that says this is who people are, this is who

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God is, here's what's wrong, it's all the same, here's who Jesus is, this is what he did, here's what he accomplishes in the world, here's how he brings peace.

44:46

The gospel is the answer. That's the answer. So we're going to take a quick break, come back, and I'm going to,

44:53

I can't wait for this. This man is a blessing to us, and I hope you get to know Zach really well.

44:59

His understanding of history and worldview, all that stuff, so very important. We're going to talk about two things coming back.

45:04

Number one, I'm going to do a quick answer to false teacher Joy Micah, and her trying to compare the temple cleansing of Jesus to the looting and rioting going on.

45:16

Oh, she was one of the ones? She did it. This woman has, I'm going to show you, this woman has absolutely no right to be teaching anybody anything about the

45:26

Bible, and shameful, shameful stuff. And it's a blight on the name of Christ and Christianity.

45:33

But then we're going to talk about the Boston Tea Party, because people have tried to allege that what's happening tonight with the looting and the riots is like the

45:38

Boston Tea Party. Why are you so mad? This happened before. You guys praised this stuff before. And so,

45:44

Zach's going to help us a lot with that. And so, stay with us, guys. You don't want to miss it. It's going to be good stuff. It'll help you a lot as you engage on these issues.

45:52

Praise God for His grace, and for the Messiah who brings us together. Every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, language, we're all together in Christ.

45:58

Praise God for that. We will be right back. Stay with us. I want their faith to not just be something that stands, but something around which culture can be built.

46:11

We want students who can think critically about arguments, but also about the culture around them, that can then speak clearly to it, and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message.

46:23

Because that's really what the Gospel does. The Gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people, it influences, and it changes.

46:39

The goal for New St. Andrews College, as it trains its students, is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs.

46:49

People who will just be bricks in the wall of our society. The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

48:38

Go to ApologiaStudios .com Get signed up. Partner with us on all access. You get all of the radio programs, you get the

48:44

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