Responding to Comments on "A Couple Thoughts"

Responding to Pushback on the Podcast Discussion

I posted a video this week which was the audio of an appearance I did on somebody's podcast. It's called A Couple Thoughts Podcast and we talked all about these issues regarding social justice and racism and things like that.

And the majority of the feedback I got was very positive, although I did get a few longer comments of feedback that were not very positive. And that's cool. I think that it actually is important to get pushback like that because it'll help you clarify your ideas, maybe be more clear, or maybe even change your ideas.

And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to read the feedback and respond to it here and hopefully provide a little bit more clarity. Now I did offer to speak to this person in person over the phone, I mean, or on YouTube or something like that.

And the person declined. He said that he finds that these conversations are most useful when you know the person at a deeper level. I don't agree with that. I think it would have been very helpful to sort of see a give and take live.

But that's okay. And out of respect for that request, I'm not going to name this person, but I am going to respond to what he says. And so, you know, and on that note, if you know anybody that would be willing to have a conversation that we could record, and I think that would be very beneficial to the church to see sort of the give and take and maybe provide an example of how this conversation should go in a way that you mutually respect each other, you get clarification, you have time for nuance, things like that.

I don't mind doing these kind of monologues, but I think it'd be more effective if we had some give and take. And so let me know if you know anyone that'd be willing to do it, and I'd be glad to do it.

Anyway, here is the pushback. And so I'm going to read some of it and we'll kind of respond from there. It says, it seems no one here questions any of the claims made in the podcast. I feel I need to bring up some concerns.

I hope people listening can consider what is a really biblical way to live out racial or social justice in their Christian lives. Me too. In this podcast, I heard that a disparity is not racism until proven.

I rhetorically ask what evidence, what is evidence that proves racism? How do you prove oppression? How do you prove a motive in the heart in a court of law? Now that's an interesting thing, and so I'll start with the last one.

Proving Motive, Racism, and Oppression

How do you prove the motive of the heart in a court of law? I'm not sure that you really need to. In other words, if a black person kills a Chinese person, is it really important to know whether he killed them because he hates Chinese people or whether he killed them because he just hated this particular Chinese person?

Is that important to the case? I don't really think it is. Now, motive, of course, is something that you do want to establish in a civil court, and we have examples of how to do that all the time. It would be quite easy to see, well, was the motive racial?

You could look at the murderer, the person who perpetrated the crime, and say, well, does he have hate speech posted on his Facebook post? Does he talk all the time about how he wants to kill such and such a race, and then he goes ahead and does it?

It seems to me it'd be quite easy to do, but I don't really see the importance of it. In other words, for example, hate crime law, it's so stupid because every crime is a hate crime. If you are committing a crime against someone, you hate that person.

There's just no question about it. What does it matter if it's hate towards a certain group? I don't really think that makes a difference. But then he asked, what evidence proves racism? And I've given examples of that a lot.

I mean, a statistical disparity might be sort of an indicator of racism, but you have to go beyond that. You have to look at the motivations, and this person seems to be thinking that it's impossible to look at someone's motivations.

No, it isn't. And I'll give you an example. The person who founded Planned Parenthood, she didn't like Black people, and she wanted to keep the undesirable elements of society down, almost like The Purge in the movie The Purge.

The undesirable elements, she wanted to sort of limit those as much as possible, and so abortion was a way to do that for her. And then her organization now kills more Blacks and Hispanic babies proportionally than white babies.

And so you've got a stated goal, then you've got the result. It's quite easy to see that you're doing what you said you wanted to do. Therefore, that is your motivation. That's a racist thing. I think abortion is fundamentally a racist action, a criminal action.

And so I think it'd be fairly straightforward to prove racism, to prove racist motivations. How do you prove oppression? It's the same thing. I think that'd be pretty straightforward. So I'm not really sure what this person's trying to do, but I said it on the podcast, and I'll say it again.

Disparities do not prove racism, because we can get real ridiculous with this. So I'll give you an example. People would say that the female gender is the oppressed gender. I think that's pretty much, you know, everyone accepts that on this side of the issue, the social justice side of the issue.

Well, if females are oppressed, then how come when males and females have similar crimes and things like that, well, how come, you know, female sentences are so much lighter than male sentences? Wouldn't that mean that males are oppressed?

You know, because a lot of times I'll hear people say, well, the sentences that Black people get are statistically worse than the sentences that white people get. Therefore, Blacks are oppressed. Okay, so then let's turn it around.

Are males oppressed because they get statistically worse sentences? I think what you'll find a lot of the times when people give examples, oh, see, look, this Black person's sentence is so much worse than this white person's.

A lot of times you'll see that maybe the crime is the same, but the factors that go into it aren't necessarily always the same. Or maybe it's like their third or fourth infraction. You know, so there's always when you look at statistics like these, these disparity statistics, there's always, it seems to me that there's always one crucial element that's left out.

And so it looks like it's really bad, but it really isn't when you take into effect that crucial element. You know what I mean? You know, are men oppressed? I mean, their suicide rates are so much higher than female suicide rates.

I mean, that's a statistical disparity. Does that mean men are oppressed? I don't think so. I don't think that's what it means. So again, I said it on the podcast. There's nothing here that really refutes that.

But yeah, I guess that's his pushback. He says, cultural prejudice is a human dynamic that the law is not equipped to deal with. I disagree. I just gave you a few examples. For example, even though the civil rights movement stepped up the quality of life for Black people, white people on the whole still thought of Black people as inferior.

Interestingly enough, you see, this is the point. So he said that the law is not equipped to deal with it. No, it actually is, because it takes into account the civil rights movement. It took into account that people aren't going to change on this.

So we have to make it illegal to discriminate, literally illegal. And they did that. They made it literally illegal. Now, you can question whether or not that was the right move. And I tend to think that that wasn't the right move.

I don't think the law is supposed to be used for things like that. And it actually drives a wedge between the races more than it does solving anything. But anyway, so he's saying the law is not equipped.

It actually is equipped. It is equipped to do that. Anyway, interesting enough, this is also the reason why God's Old Testament law was not good enough to reconcile his people to him. It required the relational work of Jesus and the continuing heart change of the Holy Spirit.

Well, I agree with that. I mean, people, their fallen nature were unable to do the law. And so we needed a redeemer. It wasn't really about his relational work. It was about the fact that he was God himself.

He did the law, and he imputes that to us. And so I'm not so sure what really that has to do with it. But no, I mean, the Old Testament law was not good enough to reconcile his people to himself. It's not that it wasn't good enough.

It's just that we couldn't do it. We weren't good enough. There was no fault in the law. So that's a misunderstanding. He says the Old Testament law was not good enough. No, no, it's not that. The Old Testament law was perfect.

We weren't good enough to do it. And so anyway, that was his first point of pushback. Denied. The second point is, he says, at one point, you all ponder, what are the reasons that a minority would not want to attend a majority white church?

You can't think of any other reason besides the minority being racist towards whites. For a conversation on biblical racial justice, I really expected better. To speak of people who are afraid of their majority white churches after Trump's elections as deranged shows that you really need to lean in and really listen some more.

Have you considered that when a minority doesn't feel safe at a majority white church, it doesn't necessarily mean physically, but perhaps emotionally, mentally. Psychologically. Have you considered that their hurt is understood too little in the context of their church to be able to share openly and honestly?

Yeah, I have considered all those things. And this is actually, this actually does frustrate me a little bit. He says that the fact that I can't think of anything, any reason, any good reason to be afraid of white churches besides a racial prejudice means that I need to lean in and listen more.

There's a couple of things that frustrate me about that. Number one, this person doesn't know how much I've listened. I can guarantee that I've listened more than the majority of people that this person knows.

I've consumed so much media on this. I have people in my own family who have this perspective. I'm a minority myself. You know, here's the thing. So like, so number one, you have no idea what I've listened to or who I've listened to.

So that's just a weird thing to say. Two, what about listening would make you think that I would change my opinion on this? Why is listening the automatic sort of, well, if you don't agree, you just need to lean in and listen more.

Well, I have listened and I still don't agree. So what, do I just need to listen more? So is this just like, listen until you believe? So I just don't understand that, that quite, that frustrates me quite a bit because it makes some assumptions about me and also the two people on the podcast that I don't think are necessarily true.

I have listened and I still don't agree. Now to say that he can't think of any other, uh, that he can think of lots of other reasons, um, that people would be afraid to be in a white church besides a racial prejudice.

I actually can't because no matter what happened to you with what, let's just say white people abused you. Let's just say that you, you used to go to a white church and then there was a white person there that called you the N word, right?

Or something like that. Or actually this actually happened to my own father. My own father was at a church and he was running for Congress as you can see. Um, and when he was running for Congress, I, I, I might have some of the details of this story wrong, but, um, there was a Democrat, um, person at church that, that was very angry that he was doing that and called him all kinds of racial slurs, right?

That's, that actually happened to, to my own father at a church. And, um, and you know, I never actually, I never heard about that until much later in my adulthood because my parents didn't, you know, tell me about that kind of stuff when I was, when I was a child.

Um, now if my father then goes and says, well, all white, I'm scared of all white people, emotionally, physically, psychologically, mentally, that would be a race racist position because what you're doing is you're applying what the sins of one person or a group of people to everybody.

And that's exactly why I say that what Jamar Tisby said after Trump's election is a racist statement. He's saying, well, um, some people that support Trump are racist and are, and are, and are unsafe to be around.

And therefore all my white brothers and sisters in Christ, I'm nervous to go to church there. I'm fearful to do it. And I'm not questioning the fear. I'm, I believe Jamar Tisby was scared to go to church that Sunday.

I believe what he said. I believe he had fear in his heart. But what I'm saying is that fear is an ungodly fear. That fear is based on a racial bias. That fear is based on a racial prejudice and ethnic prejudice.

And that is not a godly aspect of anything. That was something that, that's something that Jamar should repent of that attitude, not something that should be proudly shared and say, well, see white people, your move now, what are you going to do?

I'm scared. So, so, so yeah, I, I still can't think of a reason that someone wouldn't want to, well, actually I can just because a preference, a personal preference. I prefer to go to a church that has, you know, more Latin people, or I prefer to go to a church that has black people.

And I don't think there's any problem with that. I don't think there's any issue with that. But when you're talking about someone who's fearful to go to a white church, scared to go to a white church, refuses to go to a white church, no matter what they're basing that I might be legitimate fear, but if they're basing it on lived experience or something like that, that is a racial prejudice.

I stand by that. And so I'm, I'll, I'll, I'll still be willing to listen to other reasons. And so if you have some reasons that would, that aren't racially, you know, motivated racial biases, I'd be glad to hear them out.

I can't think of one. Maybe you can. The third post point is by the end of the podcast, it seems like social racial justice work Christian or not is boxed into some heresy of cultural Marxism. That's offensive.

You all made a lot of negative comments about racial justice work. I would have loved to hear some affirmations of the very real reasons why this work needs to exist. And especially in the church, I'd like to think that everyone can agree that there is a problem.

And I would love to have heard an allusion to some problem solving. Well, I do think that there are racist people out there. And in fact, I think that there's almost guarantee that there are some racist people in the church, but I do not accept that it's a rampant problem.

I do not accept that it's something that we haven't been doing over the past decades. I think that we absolutely have been doing this over the past decades. And there's been a lot of progress, a lot. One of the things about this social movement, social justice movement, is that they like to pretend like there's been no progress since Jim Crow.

And like, we're almost still in the Jim Crow era. And so I think that that's just dishonest. And so, no, I don't think that it's a gigantic problem that needs solving. Now, I think it might be a problem in some areas more than others, but in the United States in general, no, I don't think that's a problem.

In fact, in my church, I know it's not a problem. Could somebody in my church have secret racist beliefs? Maybe. But if they never expressed and they're never acted upon, then it's a problem for them.

But is it a problem for the society? Is it a problem for the church? No, it isn't. It is a problem for their own souls. And that's something that we need to talk about. And we do talk about. And this is an issue of how, I mean, the church believes that racism is wrong.

Everyone, you know what I mean? So, no, I don't think that this is really legitimate. And yeah, we have talked about cultural Marxism because not every person who's concerned with racial justice is expressing cultural Marxist beliefs, but a lot of people are.

And that's what the podcast was about. So if you wanted to talk about something else, we could have done that, I suppose. But this was about the cultural Marxist critical theory, social justice warrior side of this issue.

That's what the podcast was about. And so I'm not going to apologize for talking about what the podcast was about. Are there people that are doing real racial justice work? Absolutely. Absolutely. There are people who are doing that.

Are there people that are fighting for real social biblical justice or biblical social justice? Absolutely. They are. But that's not what these conferences were about. Then we were talking about these conferences.

Listening, Evidence, and “Believe Them”

Okay, here's the next point. They're always wrong. A question was posed. What is being asked of evangelicals in this time of racial tension? Here's my answer. Listen, empathize first. Because while you may see this as a debatable political issue for minorities, many times it means their life and their health and their emotional well-being.

When minorities share their life experience, believe them. Know our country's stained history. Acknowledge systemic injustice and not just individual ones. I like the first part of the answer. Yes. Listen, I've said many times, listening to your brothers and sisters in Christ who are from this other perspective and your minority brothers and sisters in Christ, there's everything good about that.

In fact, I said that in the podcast. However, when you then say, believe them, I do believe them, but we also have to verify because just because somebody said, well, at one time, like I'll go back to my father.

One time a white person said this to me, I'll believe him. But does that mean that there's a systemic problem of white people saying that? Not necessarily. We have to verify that. And again, I pointed out into the Bible where it talks about there are standards for evidence.

And so this advice is not good. We don't just listen and believe there are standards for evidence. And so if somebody is going to make an accusation against a church or an elder in a church, we need two or three witnesses before we can do anything about that.

And that's just the reality of it. And that's something that I'm not going to be flexible on because the Bible is not flexible on it. And then he says, acknowledge systemic injustice and not just individual ones.

Great. I will. When you can demonstrate that they're real. A systemic injustice can't just be proven by individual stories. That's not a big enough sample size. You need to have lots of evidence to prove systemic injustices.

And we can do that. It's possible. You know, we can look at what happens with the abortion issue here in the United States and say that is a systemic institutional injustice. All of the laws are for it.

And people are for it. And this happens in our midst. This injustice happens in our midst daily. We can prove it. We have evidence. That's a systemic institutional injustice. Now, if you had the same kind of evidence as we have for abortion that's happening in our country with this other stuff, I'd be right there with you.

I'd be right there with you. But a disparity doesn't prove it. Just saying. All right. Here's the next one. Personally, I didn't become passionate about racial reconciliation in the church because it was the latest in a worldly fad turned Christian.

I cared because my friends and myself were not having their life perspective understood. Soon after I got getting started, I found many more who had been doing the hard work of racial reconciliation long before me.

So I challenge you all to consider that while this application of the gospel may be new to you, it is not new in other places. It's not new to me. So that's the answer to that. Okay. Here's what I keep recommending for y 'all.

Listening, Critical Theory, and Historical Examples

Keep listening really deeply. Read up. So again, the assumption here is that if you just listen and read more, you'll agree. No. One, you have no idea how much I've listened and read. And two, why would you think that that would, that would be the only solution?

You see, this is, and this guy's not going to like me saying this. This is cultural Marxist methodology. This is critical theory. This is listen, listen, lived experiences, storytelling. That's how you prove things.

No, you do listen. You do listen to stories if you want to, but you verify you use reasoned arguments. You use evidence. You use statistics. You use all this stuff in order to prove this. And so the recommendation, it just, it doesn't really have an effect on me because I've, I've listened plenty.

You know what I mean? I've listened plenty and I don't see any reason to think why Natalie and Chris haven't. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. I don't know them personally, but this is just a really weird thing to say to someone when you don't have any idea how often they've listened or what books they've read.

But even if they hadn't, I mean, what would make you think that? So you think everyone that disagrees with this hasn't read and hasn't listened. That's really what you think. That seems to me a bizarre assumption.

I'm not sure. He says, for some 2020 hindsight on unlitigated systemic racism in America, Google redlining, Google sundown towns, Google the surge in private school enrollment after Brown versus Board, then extrapolate how such things could also exist today.

I've done all of these things. I mean, I know all about this stuff. I remember a pastor friend of mine, a close guy, a close friend of mine who, unfortunately, we're no longer friends. Um, he told me, well, don't you know about redlining?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I do. And then, but here's the thing. This is, this is, this is another sort of method. They say, well, all these things in the past, Google it and then extrapolate how it's happening today.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. We look at the past and say, okay, yeah, there was systemic injustice there. We can all agree on that. Awful racism, awful. All that stuff was awful.

But that doesn't mean that it's automatically happening today. It could mean that it would still could. I had a brother tell me, oh, do you really think we've gotten over racism in the last 50 years? And I'm just like, no, but a lot of the systems and institutions have been repealed and completely reversed.

And so, yes, in that way, in some things we've gotten over them. So then extrapolate how such things could exist today. If you don't actually believe that the church has a race problem, Google the origins of the AME church.

Google the first year of the African American was admitted to your favorite evangelical seminary. If you've made it this far, I appreciate it. I have made it this far. And, you know, you know, I hope you listen to this.

The person who wrote this, um, please don't assume that the only real reason for disagreement here is ignorance. This whole comment, all, all of these put all of these pushbacks had one thing in common.

And what it assumed is that if you don't agree on this, really the only reason you couldn't agree on this is ignorance. You just don't know. You haven't read. You haven't talked to enough people and you just don't know what's going on.

You know, you don't even know about the racist past of our, of our, of our, uh, churches and things like that. And so therefore you don't agree. And so, but if you just knew you would, and you know, a lot of people from this perspective think that, and that's just not the case.

Um, I can assure you that I know a lot about this issue. I don't know you. So I don't know if I know more than you about this issue, but I know a lot about it. I thought about it a lot. I'm a minority myself.

And if I was being systemically and institutionally oppressed, I should really like to know about it. We got to get past this idea that people that disagree with us are just ignorant. They just don't know.

They're just not as smart as me. They haven't read as much as me. We got to get past that. Otherwise we're never going to have this conversation. You said that it wouldn't be a helpful conversation. Um, if we don't know each other personally, I disagree with that, but I can guarantee you it won't be a helpful conversation.

If you just assume that I'm ignorant, everyone who has my perspective is ignorant. And what we need is more education. Maybe some of us do, but that's not the case of all of us. I disagree with every one of your points.

I know what I'm talking about and I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying you have some assumptions that are faulty. I've identified a few of them here and I could have gotten a little deeper and identified more assumptions.

But anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless. Let's get nuts.