Ole' AD's Gospel Coalition Audition Tape

AD Robles

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Well, before I begin, I just wanted to say I can't tell you how excited I was to hear that the

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Gospel Coalition is going to start a blog section of their website. I'm sorry, I should say a vlog section of their website.

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I know, you know, I've been a fan of the YouTube channel for a very long time, and so I just wanted to just say how good of an idea

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I think this is, sort of this, you know, one -on -one, one -on -camera sort of vlog series.

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I'm excited about the expansion Gospel Coalition. I just wanted to submit my audition tape with the quickest of quickness, if that makes sense.

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I don't know if it does, but anyway, before I begin and my audition is going to follow,

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I just wanted to just make sure that at the outset, I just wanted you to know I completely disavow white supremacy and sexism and misogyny.

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I just, there's nothing about those things that is compatible with the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ. I just want everyone to know where I stand there. I disavow. I disavow.

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And so now that that's out of the way, let's get to my audition tape. And well, here we go.

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This is my first one. What the church can learn from daytime judge shows.

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One thing you might not know about me is when I was in college, I used to watch a lot of daytime judge shows. You know,

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Judge Judy is very popular. And you know, of course, the people's court, that's how it all started. I think, you know, those shows are, are just so interesting that, you know, they really give you a window into the brokenness that a lot of people experience in their lives.

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It really shows you how, you know, maybe we're not flourishing as much as we should.

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And I think, you know, at the end of the day, those shows, you know, there could be a little bit you could identify them as, you know, maybe a little bit trashy, you might say, but, but I don't,

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I don't look at it that way. I look at it as, as just sort of a window into the brokenness that people experience in day to day life.

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And I think these judge shows have a lot of value, because did you not know that, that, that the church will, will, will judge the world, will even judge angels.

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And so I think that there's a lot of gospel judging that we can gather from these shows.

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But there's one thing in particular that I noticed a long time ago, and I think that the church really can learn this from daytime shows, and it has to do with gospel diversity.

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That's right, gospel diversity. Think about these judge shows for a second, and there's a lot of diversity in the different judges.

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We've got Judge Judy, of course, and we've got Judge Joe Brown, we've got Judge Mathis, we've got all these different judges,

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Judge, Judge, what's her name? Malin? Malin? Marin? I don't remember her name, but the people's court lady, the woman from, from, from, from divorce court.

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And there's just so much diversity displayed in the, in the vast swath of the number of the kinds of judges that are out there.

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And I think that that's just so beautiful. It's a foretaste into what the New Jerusalem will be like, the book of Revelation, every tribe, tongue, and nation is represented by the judges.

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But even more so than that, the church can even learn more than that, because each individual show shows that beautiful gospel diversity that we long for as the church, that we ache for, that we cannot wait for to happen in the church.

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And let's just be honest, you know, Sunday at between 9 and 11, that's the most segregated hour in the country, but the judge shows aren't segregated at all.

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And here's what I've noticed. This is Judge Judy, as you can see, she's a white woman, but if you look at her bailiff, her bailiff, bailiff bird is black, a black man.

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So you've got a white woman as a judge and a black man. What about Judge Milan, Marilyn Millon?

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She's the people's court judge. Let's take a look at her bailiff. This is her bailiff, Douglas, again, a black man.

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I mean, this diversity is just beautiful, but lest you think my friends that it's only one way, like the white people are the judges and the black people are the bailiff.

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That's not how it is. Here's Judge Mathis. Another one of my favorite shows, Judge Mathis, as you can see, is a black man, a beautiful black man.

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And his bailiff is Doyle DeVrow. And you can't really see it here.

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This is Judge Mathis and his bailiff and Doyle DeVrow is a white man. And so it works the other way too.

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And this is why I say that we can really learn a lot from these judge shows as a church, because we need to decenter whiteness.

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You see, it's not enough for us to have a black pastor. We need black lead pastors. And we need to have, we need to make it, you know, see optics matter.

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We need to make it known that you can submit yourself to a black person. That's not the message that the church sends today.

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That's not the message that the church sends today. Here's Lynn Toller. She's the judge from divorce court.

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Beautiful gospel diversity here. A black, not only is she black, but she's a woman. And that's just beautiful.

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A woman doing a role that, let's just be honest, the church over the years has said that only men can do.

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A judge and women absolutely can take that gospel diversity and that gospel leadership.

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We need to empower women. And I think that Judge Lynn Toller is a great example, but look at her bailiff.

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Look at her bailiff. Bailiff Joe. You know, it's kind of hard to tell.

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I think he's a white guy. So this is beautiful. Like again, it's not just that black people submit to white judges.

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No, it's black judges. And even black female judges, white men can submit to them.

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And you can see bailiff Joe. But this is my favorite judge. I'll be honest. My favorite judge of all of the judges is

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Judge Joe Brown. He was always my favorite show. Judge Joe Brown was beautiful. He was a beautiful black man.

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And I think at the end of the day, Judge Joe Brown, one of the things I loved about him was just his winsome attitude.

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He was serious. He was a serious man. But at the same time, he was a fair man, a kind man, and all of that.

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Judge Joe Brown was a black man. And let's look at his bailiff. Judge Joe Brown's bailiff,

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Sonia Montoyanjo. Yeah, I'm sorry for not pronouncing that name correctly.

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But as you can see, a white woman. And I just, again, I just want you to understand that gospel diversity is just such an important thing.

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It is part of the gospel. It's absolutely a gospel issue. And I think that the judge shows, the daytime judge shows on daytime television gets this right, where the church so often gets things wrong.

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And so we have a lot to learn. We can submit to each other. Yes, whites can submit to non -whites.

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Non -whites can submit to whites. And women and men, women can be in leadership too. Look at this powerful, strong woman,

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Sonia Montoyanjo. She's a bailiff and she's powerful. She's in charge of her courtroom.

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And I love that. I love that. And so I think the church, if it's really honest with ourselves, we can look at our past.

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And the first thing that you need to do is be honest with your history. Be honest with the damage that you have done and look to the daytime judge show, television shows, and realize that we have a lot to learn about gospel diversity.

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And in many ways, these shows demonstrate what we look forward to in revelation more so than the church of Christ.

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Anyway, I hope that was very helpful. God bless. Here's my second audition tape.

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I know you asked for two and I just wanted to do two different ones. How to talk to your kids about Willy Wonka.

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If you're like me, you grew up watching Willy Wonka and in many ways you were taught to think this was a very harmless kids movie.

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Just a lot of fun, you know, whimsy, very whimsical and very magical and just a whole lot of fun.

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And you learn a few lessons and you learn about not being greedy and being kind and things like that.

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I used to love Charlie Bucket. I used to love Charlie Bucket. He was just such a good little boy.

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You know, he always was thinking about others and providing for his family. It's just a beautiful story about a good kid getting good things.

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And I think it's just such a beautiful picture of what we can expect in the church and getting good things and good gifts and all of that.

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But once I grew up, I've noticed some more, let's call them broken elements of the movie and some problematic elements of the movie.

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And let's just be honest, we need to work as a church on de -centering whiteness.

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And so I want to tell you how you should talk to your kids about Willy Wonka. Willy Wonka is a movie that, let's just be honest, in many ways is about centering whiteness.

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Here's the cast of Willy Wonka. As you can see, all of the children that get to spend their days going through the factory and get the privileges of winning these golden tickets are white people.

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And if you remember the plot of this movie, there was a Latino, a South American man, who had won a golden ticket and Charlie thought that was the last golden ticket.

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And so we had an opportunity for a non -white, a minority to get this privilege, but then it was taken away.

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That minority was just cheating. And that just reinforces the trope that just minorities are cheaters, that they're other, they don't get the privileges that all of these white folks get.

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And that's just so damaging. But even more so, this is something I didn't notice at first.

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But if you notice, who are the workers, who are the servants of the factory? Of course, we've got the owner of the factory,

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Willy Wonka here, a very white man, and then literally colored people as his workers.

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And this is so problematic, in my opinion. Now you might be thinking, oh, but they're orange.

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I mean, that's not really colored people. Well, the 1995 rendition of this movie makes this theme even more plain, even more blatant.

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Here's the Willy Wonka of 1995. As you can see, this was played by Johnny Depp. And you can see that his whiteness is emphasized.

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He's even more pale than he was, almost ghostly than he was in the original movie. And you can see that he is a very white man, aggressively white.

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I mean, this is the 1995 version centers whiteness even more. And then when it comes to the

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Oompa Loompas, again, it made it even more clear what the message of this movie was, what the messaging of this movie was.

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Remember, optics matter, my brothers and sisters in Christ. And so what the 1995 version of this movie did, it changed them from orange, and it made them just literally darker people, believe he's an

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Indian of some kind. And so you can see that the message here is the white people get the privilege.

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As you can see, this is the group of kids. Again, they're all white, all white, they get the privileges of going to this factory.

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And then the workers are dark. They're dark skinned people. And this brothers and sisters, we need to talk to our kids honestly about this.

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And not only this, guys, this is bad enough. But there is a trope. And this is a well known media trope called the magical Negro, the magical Negro.

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And what this trope tells you is that darker skinned people, and many times it's black people, you can see this in the

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Green Mile. Okay, this John Coffey is a trope. He's a character that's in many movies, the magical Negro.

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Oftentimes that this person is either disabled or disadvantaged in some way. Again, there's another good example, the legend of Bagger Vance.

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And what his role in the movie is is to help the white people to learn a valuable lesson or to win an award or something like that.

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This is the trope of the magical Negro. And the Willy Wonka movie does this as well. What are the

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Oompa Loompas do when you think about it? What do they do? What are they there for? Well, they're there to make the white man's chocolate.

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They're there to make white people's chocolate and to teach them lessons to help them to help them not be greedy to help them to learn how to be kind and to love.

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And this is so damaging. Brothers and sisters, my white brothers and sisters in Christ, black people and minorities are not there to help you learn.

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They're not there to help you learn a valuable lesson. They're not there for your service.

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They're full image bearers of the Lord. And we need to teach our kids that this Willy Wonka stuff is unacceptable.

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It's not an innocent movie. It's not a harmless movie. It reinforces common tropes that center whiteness and other black people.

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The Oompa Loompas are other. And the message of this movie is that colored people are other, and they're there for your benefit, white people.

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We need to take a step back and sit at the feet of our black and brown brothers and sisters of Christ.

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Not in a way that says, oh, you're here for my benefit. No, no, no, not like that, but really to let them lead, to step aside and listen.

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We really need to listen. So there's my submission.

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I hope that you consider me for your new role as a Gospel Coalition vlogger.

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Before I finish, I just want to know if there's anything else that you'd like me to disavow. I can think of a few other things.

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I definitely disavow cannibalism and sex trafficking is definitely something I disavow. Sexual abuse, of course.

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I mean, listen, if there's anything else you'd like me to disavow and show you why it's not

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Gospel -centered, I would be glad to do it. So just reach out to me, and I'll provide any kind of disavowals that you would need.