Good Faith Debating at its Finest - Part 6

Alright, so I've decided just to power through this. Hopefully we can finish it today, and if not, we'll just do one more, and that'll be the end of it.

This is the Good Faith Debate, Racial Injustice with Justin Gibney vs. Brian Davis.

In the last episode, for the very first time, I was very happy with Brian, because he decided to get the churches back, because a lot of people like to pretend that the church is like the worst thing.

It's like the worst, it's the force for evil in the world, and they don't give it credit for anything.

They don't, they don't, they don't, it's just, it's just, it's just messed up to lie about the church that way. I don't think that pleases

God at all. That's his bride. And so I was very grateful for Brian Davis to get the churches back, and that's kind of where we left off.

And I was pretty hard on Justin Gibney, because he started talking about some of the specifics on reparations, which, you know, pretty much everybody in the comment section can see through the problem with reparations as well.

So we beaten that, that horse to death, but yeah, let's continue.

And it started to get a little spicy, so hopefully this will be a good situation. I got my coffee here.

I'm ready to go. Let's get to it. I would just say, I mean, it's hard to have the debate with just anecdotes, right?

Like we have to, we have to have some generalization. So even in, when I spoke, of course, the church is doing a lot of good things.

This particular conversation is about racial justice, and I think there has been a failure on a collective level and institutional level when it comes to racial justice.

And that's why I try to offer some of these numbers to say, people don't even think, after all this time, we're talking about U .S.

history, majority of people don't even, a majority of white Christians don't even think it was an issue. We have to talk about it.

I mean, that's something that we don't need anecdotes. Anecdotes don't really refute that. And that doesn't mean, let me say this, that doesn't mean that they're terrible people on everything else.

I'm saying it this way, because this conversation about racial justice, and there's been such a failure there, partially because we can't even deal with the truth of what's going on.

Right. So the thing is, like, he had to say that there because Brian Davis just, like I said, passionately got the churches back.

So he had to concede, well, of course, the church has done some good things, but I'm talking about racial justice.

And so the idea being that, I guess, if so many Christians don't believe in the oppression of the past, then it's the same situation now.

If you don't believe that there's oppression now, then you must just be just as blind as the people that don't believe there was oppression in the past.

And that's, you know, you can't, that's an assertion, you know, that doesn't really prove anything.

I've so often asked for all of the, what are you talking about, about these racial disparities and stuff like that?

Why are you saying that's an injustice? You know, obviously, it's one thing to show the statistics. It's another thing to show why those statistics are.

Why is it that black families earn less than white families? Why is it that Puerto Rican families earn less than white families?

Like, the why actually makes a huge difference, right? Because you can give me the statistics all day long, but what does that have to do with justice, right?

What does it have to do with reparations? Like, if we're going to prove a crime, that's one thing, so go ahead and prove it.

And that's the point. And so anyway, so yeah, I'm glad he had to concede that because that's not something that he would normally offer because he likes to slander the church all day long.

And so Brian Davis got the churches back and he's like, yeah, of course the church has done some good things. It's like, well, yeah,

I mean, the church has done a lot of good things. When you talk about, so would you say that the principle of reparations is no longer, so if I steal your shirt and I keep it and I give it to my son, is that his shirt?

I would share with him. So this is a stupid question, Justin. This is a stupid question because I've had 24 hours since I last saw the part of the debate that just happened, right?

And even with my mind 24 hours later, and in your world, because this is just one debate, this just happened a few minutes ago.

He just got done saying that it would be different if I stole your car and then

I become a Christian and say, well, yeah, I got to get you a car back. You know, obviously you have to make restitution for the car that you stole when you, if you're a

Christian, right? And actually it doesn't matter if you're a Christian or not, you have to make restitution. That's justice, right?

So this is a stupid question. The answer is, of course, if you stole my shirt and gave it to your son, you need to make restitution on the shirt that you stole.

That's the obvious answer. And he's already explained that. So Justin, this is a stupid question.

I mean, were you just not paying attention? Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was because I remember I saw his body language.

He was angry. He was pursing his lips. You know, he was holding onto his chair and stuff like that.

But somehow I was frustrated, too, with his whole presentation. And somehow 24 hours later, I remember that he said a few minutes ago the answer to your question.

But for some reason, you I mean, it's just very it's a very dumb question if you might cloak also.

Right. No, no. But does my shirt belong to my son or does it belong to your son? Give it back, brother. No. That's what

I'm saying. I think there's instances where I agree with the principle. Right. So, again, you steal a shirt, you can go get it. You steal a car, you can go give it back.

We start talking about tracing. And what he's trying to do, what he's trying. Let's let Brian answer, because it looks like he's about to give the right answer.

The historical failure to love black people in our country. And they're saying that the church ought to lead in that charge of.

I think. I think. So you talk about the doctrine of it. There's there's a wider application. I think you bring up a couple of specific instances.

You talk about the SBC. I think it's a great conversation to have with the SBC. I got I'll go there with you, but.

But you can't let the other denominations. So he interrupted him. So I'm just going to finish his thought there.

Justin. Justin is, you know, again, Justin's a shyster. Right. And he's and he's a clear thinker,

I think. So he knows what he's doing here. Right. So he said, well, you see, if I give it to my son, is it my son's shirt or is it your son's shirt?

And he's what he's trying to do is he's trying to make that similar to the situation where black people got stolen from from white people.

And see, even if it's their son, that it's still not there. It's not their stuff. Right. It's it's it's it's the black people's stuff that got stolen.

And that's a completely different example, because every example he can give that makes sense, that that biblically makes sense.

It's an individual who stole and gave it to an individual. And so we can we can trace that back and be like, oh, that's actually not your shirt.

You got to give that back. You know what I mean? You got to give that back. But that's not the case with with reparations.

These people are long dead. Brian Davis isn't dead. He's still sitting here right now. And so it would be his shirt because he's here.

Right. And you stole it. You stole it. Not just white people. See, this is the thing.

It's like every time they give an example, the example, it's a Motten Bailey. It's a bait and switch.

The example makes sense. But what does it have to do with the situation with blacks in America? And if we're going to play so fast and loose with this whole idea, a lot of people in the comments mentioned yesterday, you know,

Thomas Sowell has has done the calculations on the amount of of of of of wealth transfer that's happened from middle class white folks to to to underclass black folks through through welfare and through various government programs.

And we're talking billions and billions and billions of dollars. So as long as you're playing fast and loose with definitions and justice, let's just call that reparations because it's way more than you were owed.

And then have a nice day where, you know, that's it. That's the end of it. That's all. That's all you get. Yeah. I mean,

I don't I don't use that argument myself. You know, I think it's an interesting idea from Thomas Sowell. I'm not saying it's wrong.

I don't use that argument. But as long as we're playing fast and loose with all these definitions and we're making stuff up anyway, let's just go ahead and call that reparations and have a nice day.

Right. It wasn't just a theological seminary, but it wasn't just them. I mean, those are two examples that I gave, but we can give a lot of other examples of churches and other institutions that either because here's the reason that you give reparations.

Either you took something yourself or you did not take a very distinct stance against what was going on with somebody what was close for you or you benefited from it in some way.

And so there's a lot of different reasons that you might that you might be put in that position. And again, this isn't a force you to do it.

Are you compelled to say we've done something wrong? How do I restore it? Because we can I mean, we can go back to the disparity conversation, right?

We've done something wrong. But you see, this is the thing. And in the comments, people get this. It's like, you know, every people group can say that.

And so you can go reparations for every single person, every single person, every single family, every single tribe, every single nation to every other single nation.

And again, let's call it even because we've all done jacked up stuff in the past. And there you go.

Right. There you go. Yeah. You mean everyone understand Africans sold other Africans into slavery.

So you owe yourself money. And so take it from yourself and give it back to yourself. We're done.

Even Stevens. This is why we don't this is why God's law doesn't doesn't have us do this where we're searching out, you know, the lineage of different crimes, and then we're punishing the sons of the sins of the father, because it's insane to do that.

It never ends. You would just be constantly doing that. By the way, this is what the woke church is all about. It's constantly looking for grievances, constantly looking for grievances.

God doesn't want you to do that. God doesn't want you going deep inside and oh, we got to find we got to find your granddaddy, your grand, great, great, great, great granddaddy did this to my great, great, great, great granddaddy.

Now you got to pay up. And it's like God doesn't want you doing that, because that's a process that never ends.

It goes all the way to the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. Someone always is going to have a grievance against somebody else.

That's how it is. God does God's justice doesn't want you doing that doesn't want you spending and wasting your time trying to do that.

Because that's, that's a that's a grift. It's a grievance hustle. You always looking for something to be offended by.

You're always looking for something to get stuff from you're always looking to get a benefit from something.

God doesn't want you spending your time doing that. It's just that simple. If somebody steals from you, that's that person is responsible for their crime.

But these grievance hustlers, that's how they make a living. They make a living by digging into this and saying, Oh, yeah, you know, your great, great granddaddy, you know, like that kind of stuff.

God's justice has nothing to do with this. Nothing. I said on Twitter today that you know, what we need is a lot less racial sensitivity.

That's what we need. We Why would anybody want to be sensitive to stuff like this? It's just so stupid.

It's just so stupid. Now. We got white people that are just walking on eggshells all the time when they're around black people.

Is that what you really want? That's the life you want. Like like you want people to be walking around on eggshells around you that makes you feel good.

It's just like man, I just I just don't get it. I don't get it. I don't think that way. When people like think that I'm so fragile that I can't take a joke about Latinos like that.

I don't want that. If you have a joke for about Latinos, go ahead and tell it. I'll probably think it's funny to man.

I hate that. Why do these people want people just to grovel all the time? I just don't get it.

I don't get it. Right. I mean, well, let me let me let me do this because we any of these topics or these these threads.

Let me stop. Let me stop you because this is getting a little too heated. And that's not what a good faith debate is all about.

You can see Justin's mad. Justin's mad, you know, and honestly, like I get it.

I understand why he's mad, but but, you know, this is the thing with these good faith.

You can't raise your voice as a Christian. Nope. Pulling on could be its own hour long conversation.

I want to stay in the same vicinity. But one thing that you hear people say is, yes, it pertains to systemic racism.

There used to be systemic racism, but there's not anymore. Can we move on? I'm curious how both of you would respond to that statement.

It'd be an interesting one. I'll start with you. Sorry, I was you said, is there systemic racism? Yeah. Can we move on?

So there are people who say systemic racism used to exist, but no longer does.

So can we move on from this conversation? How does that comment land? I'm going to ask both of you, but I'll start with myself because this is my channel.

Yeah, I agree. I completely agree. I think, well, actually,

I can't really agree. But but the kind that he's talking about against black people and Latinos and stuff like that.

Yeah, that used to be a huge problem. It still exists. It still exists in pockets. There's no question about it.

But it's not systemic. It's not. I mean, basically, the last thing people would people these days would probably want to be branded as a child molester than they would be a racist.

That's how that's how unacceptable it is these days to be a racist. But there is still systemic racism.

I mean, we know we see it all the time. You know what? White white people are discriminated against all the time, all the time in the church, outside of the church, all over the time.

There still is systemic racism out there. However, not the kind that these guys care about, obviously.

So he's talking about black people. You never notice how Latinos always get left out of every one of these conversations.

I like it that way because I don't just leave me alone, you know, start with you, Brian. I think it's an unhelpful statement.

It's unhelpful. Perhaps the positive side of it is they're trying to acknowledge there's been a change, which, you know,

I think is important to acknowledge. Sometimes you get a conversation, people like it's just the same as it's been.

It's just like, that is so not the truth, you know. So I think maybe there's a little bit of that. I think there's also going to be a lack of agreement about what's happened historically, where things are, what statistics show or what have you.

But yeah, so I wouldn't think that to be a helpful statement or perspective. Yeah.

Do you, would you say that systemic racism no longer exists in our country?

No. I think, I think as long as it's going to be people. Canes have been killing Abel since the beginning and that's going to keep happening.

So people will continue to find sinful ways to diminish other people that will be, and they will be creative in how they do that.

It's always going to be based on, you know, something. And so, and that's going to happen until I think the

Lord comes back and makes everything right. Right. So, so, so I guess just got done saying that, you know, there's been improvement, but racism is still systemic.

It's just, and it's always going to be that way. It's always going to be that way. You know, that's not too many steps from Jamar Tisby's racism never goes away.

It just changes forms. It's basically the same idea. This is the conservative that gospel coalition shows to do this debate.

Yeah. I would just say that we can't watch it happen, nor can we participate in. And I think that's one of the differences with me.

I don't think we can say, yeah, it's going to happen. And I think, no, we have to be very serious and intent on doing some about it.

He's on the attack. Justin is on the attack. This guy, Brian Davis just said something really innocuous.

And again, he's an expert at saying things in this really circular roundabout kind of a way.

Brian Davis's statement there. It's just, it's just like the definition of squishy, right? What he just said is so squishy.

Very innocuous though. He didn't really say much. He didn't really say much. He said, yeah, systemic racism still exists. And Justin hears that and goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we got to do something about it. We got, we can't just watch it happen. And like, he's like attacking, attacking, attacking.

And like Brian Davis is like Brian Davis doesn't strike me as a fighter. Like he doesn't want to fight and, and, and okay, fine.

Like if that's your personality, you probably shouldn't have accepted the, uh, the invite to debate because that's what a debate is.

It's a verbal fight. Um, but like, obviously Brian doesn't want to fight, but Justin is just pouncing.

He's he's found his mark and he's just attack, attack. Brian didn't say anything offensive there to, to, to, to Justin's perspective.

In fact, he agreed with Justin's perspective, but Justin's like, we can't just sit there and watch it.

I know you, I know you said it's going to happen, but we can't just accept that. Well, I mean, I agree with what Justin's saying, but man, dude has no chill.

Systemic racism. I think the examples that I spoke of really speak to that. So number one, you see black women, you know, dying from pregnancy related causes three times more than white women do based off how people see the black body, how people see, see black pain.

And this isn't just, it's just not, it's really not on an economic level. I have a friend that was affluent and that she went through the same thing and his wife passed because of that.

Uh, you have the, the Brian Stevenson quote that I gave were 20 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim was, was white.

These are just two instances, but think about the implications of that. I'm sure that that black skin was the only mitigating factor in all of those things, right?

Like the only thing that was different about, but by the way, I'm, I'm not for this like lenient sentencing kind of thing.

If there's a death penalty offense, it, I mean, it should not be an option for the judge to be like, yeah, you know, but 20 years in jail, like that should not be an option.

It should be, if you've killed someone, it's a capital crime. You get the death penalty. That's just it. That's just as simple as that.

So, uh, I'm, I'm not trying to defend the difference in sentencing here. Cause I, I don't agree with that anyway, but, but yeah,

I'm sure that black skin would see, that's the thing that everything's flat for, for these, for these grifters, these shysters, everything's always flattened out.

It's always black versus white and there's no other mitigating, uh, difference that can be considered.

I mean, you don't want to be a racist, do you? Mindset. If it happens in those two instances in the way that we see black people, then it probably happens in a lot of other situations too.

Uh, this doesn't mean that everybody is poorly intended, but we have to agree on the facts. We have to agree on history.

I, I think I disagree with you on if people don't really want to take this statistics and they see them differently or they see the history differently.

That's, that's not okay because there has to be truth and truth has to matter. Right, right. But the thing is, right, okay, so let's just go with your statistics, right?

Obviously, obviously we don't have to interpret them the same way because your interpretation of the statistics all depends on your worldview, right?

And so you can see, oh wow, blacks have less money than whites. That's an injustice. Whites must have stolen it from the blacks and whites are keeping it from the blacks or you can say whites have more money than blacks.

I wonder how that could happen. Well, you know, white people have been in the country and in charge a lot longer and they didn't slave blacks.

And so white people had a head start. And so now, uh, we've got a situation where generationally, uh, the, the, the whites in our, in our nation have been more advanced and they've been able to build more infrastructure and stuff like that.

Look, my family came to the United States, uh, you know, a couple of generations ago and guess what? My father did much better than my grandfather, you know, financially and wealth wise and property and all that kind of stuff.

And I've started off doing much better than my father. Now, uh, I'm still behind him, but, but if, if you go by the trajectory, you know, my age where I'm 40 years old, just about,

I'm doing better than my father did at 40. And God willing, my children will do better than I will do.

And, and, and, and that tends to happen in families over time. And so you can look at this and say, well, was

I oppressed because I, I'm a Puerto Rican and, and statistically Puerto Ricans make less money than, than white families.

Am I oppressed? Well, and Justin's psycho worldview where everything always comes down to skin color.

Well then, yeah, that's how it is. And it's the same facts. We're looking at the same facts and I'm thinking about it a little bit more deeply than Justin is

I'm, listen, I'm not saying that, that, that, that, that there's no racism.

I've already said that, but what he's saying is you, the facts, the facts are the facts and you must interpret them the way

I do. No, I refuse to see the world according to your, you know, your racialized worldview.

I just don't do it that way. So there you go. We're all dealing with postmodernism. And some of the things

I go back and forth with some people on the left with is that postmodernism and not wanting to recognize truth. Christians have to recognize truth and not only recognize it, to act on it, to be just and righteous.

Yeah. But to act on it according to the law of God. So many problems from the left and, and, and quite frankly, the right operates this way a lot too, is that we have to do something.

We have to do something. There's a problem and we have to do something about it.

And it's like, yeah, but that something has to be the right thing. Right.

And it's like, it's like, it reminds me of the Ukraine situation. Right. It's like, we have to do something about Russia invading

Ukraine, just something, anything. And it's like, well, what are we going to do? Well, we're going to ban natural gas imports from Russia.

That'll show them. And it's like, yeah, but isn't that going to hurt us more than it hurts them?

Yeah, of course it is. Of course it is. Like it's not just do something and act on it. You have to act in an appropriate way.

You have to act according to love. And the only way to consistently love your neighbor as yourself, the only way to safely love your neighbor as yourself is to do it according to the law of God.

Because otherwise you end up banning natural gas imports from, from Russia. And, and, and, and so what

Russia goes and does and says, hey, hey, India, do you want to buy some gas from us? And they're like, yeah, sure.

What's the price? And, oh, the price, listen, it's a fire sale. We'll give it to you for 25 % off.

And then India is like, sure. And they buy as much as they humanly can buy because they know there's an arbitrage opportunity because they buy it 25 % off and then they turn around and sell it to Europe at the inflated price.

And they've just made money doing nothing. They slap an India sticker on it. Here you go. Here's some Indian natural gas.

But we had to do something. We had to do something. Yeah. You just, uh, you just, uh, cut off your own hand trying to hurt

Russia. I mean, congratulations. Congratulations. But yeah, it's, it's just that, that happens all the time.

People would just, we gotta do something. Well, do we, do we, I would say more often than not, when someone says we have to do something, you actually don't have to do anything.

You just let it ride. Let it play out. There is a political, obviously there are lots of political implications to what we're talking about.

One of the things that I hear often is that white evangelicals are captive to the

Republican party. Um, how do you process that in light of the other side?

People would say the African American in our country are captive to the democratic party because the percentage of voting is at least if not higher.

How do you process the captivity to the different political institutions as it pertains to racial injustice?

I think those are facts. And I think when you look at the history of the parties or how the ideologies connect with the parties, black people are in the democratic party because of how the democratic party reacted to civil rights.

Um, or, or at least the people who became part of the democratic party reacted to civil rights. And that's a whole different conversation. That's who we connected to.

That's who reached out a helping hand. And that's why we're in that party. Should we question that party sometimes more than we do?

Absolutely. And that's what my organization talks about quite a bit. The other thing that you said, though, is the captive, the captivity of white evangelicals to the

Republican party and to conservative ideology. And really to, you know, this speaks to the whole culture war conversation, because I think one of the things that we miss in this conversation is, especially when it comes to the white evangelical side, when you're, when you're so focused on the culture war, you're going to be defensive.

You're going to be opposition centered. You're gonna be focused on winning more than doing what's just. You're gonna be focused on beating those liberals more than you are about, about doing justice.

So even when you issue an apology, usually it's kind of tied to a ideological apologetic, but you can't be self -sacrificial and be defensive.

And I think that's what stops conservatives a lot of times from doing racial justice, because there's this, even when you want to do it, well,

I have to be on the defense because I can't give an inch to the other side. And so these ideologies and parties do stop us,

I think, on both sides from doing all the things we need to do. We could say that we could have that conversation with Democrats when it comes to abortion.

I do all the time, but we have to step out of that and be more biblical. All right. I'm going to ask you a different question, but again, you have to, but you have to just do more than be biblical and give it lip service.

Like you have to actually look at the policies themselves. Are they biblical or are they not? And the Democratic Party is,

I've said many times that Democrats should be church disciplined. And when people hear that, they often instantly say, oh, you just want to excommunicate

Democrats. No, no. Actually, what I want to do is I want to teach Democrats. That's what church discipline is all about. It's about correcting wrong beliefs, wrong behavior, and things like that.

And if you look at the Democratic Party platform, there are no redeeming qualities to it.

I mean, it's just evil from top to bottom. And we talk about abortion all the time because that's like the capstone of evil.

Like it's hard to imagine something that could be more obviously evil. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Like there's a whole mountain of evil underneath it as well. Top to bottom, there are no redeeming qualities.

And so the Democratic Party is past the point of no return. If you're a voting Democrat, if you identify with the

Democratic Party, in my opinion, the future will look at you as those who were part of the

Nazi Party in Germany. I don't think there's any question about that. You are participating and supporting and promoting and helping evil triumph.

That's what you're trying to do. And so you need to be taught better. And if you refuse, you need to be brought in front of the elders.

And if you refuse, you need to be excommunicated for promoting evil. The Republican Party is different because the

Republican Party, there's a lot of individual Republicans that are evil and are doing nonsense and stuff like that.

So that's for sure true. But the Republican Party platform is not evil top to bottom.

There is some evil in the Republican Party platform. There's no question about that. But it's not top to bottom.

There are some redeeming qualities to it. And so it's different for the Republicans. People all the time, when I say you should excommunicate

Democrats if they don't repent of being a Democrat, they say, and Republicans too. And no, it's actually, it's different.

It's different because there are some redeeming qualities to the Republican Party platform. It's not all good, but there are redeeming qualities.

The Democrats have no such redeeming quality. Totally different. So we need to compare that.

And I've spent so much time comparing things to the scripture, the law of God, what

God says is righteousness and justice. And that's what you got to do. And so in any case, we're going to end there.