Yes, Our Daily Bread is Compromised

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Here goes

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John Harris. We have a long podcast today. We're gonna be talking about Our Daily Bread Ministries.

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And many of you have asked me about this and I promised to do one. So here is me keeping my promise.

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I have a letter in front of me. This is to one of the listeners of this podcast from the president of Our Daily Bread Ministries.

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His name is Matt Lucas. And he writes a letter in defense of Our Daily Bread against podcasts such as mine, where I suggested that they had compromised or promoted social justice ideology last fall.

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I showed you some examples of that beyond just the conference that he mentions in this. I'll read it to you in a second, but also stuff from their website, from their

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X page. And so he essentially denies that Our Daily Bread Ministries has changed at all, that they are compromising on any of their convictions.

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None of this is true. He wishes people like myself would reach out to him. And so I'm gonna give you a reaction to all of this.

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And then I'm gonna play you some content from their website and, or at least from their YouTube channel. And frankly, I'm just scratching the surface on the content that's out there, promoted by, financed by Our Daily Bread Ministries, that is social justice, that frankly even compromises the gospel.

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You're gonna be a little surprised if you are someone who really likes Our Daily Bread, which many in this audience apparently do, and you see what

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Our Daily Bread has been promoting. And it might make you wonder whether or not you should be giving your finances to Our Daily Bread Ministries.

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So it doesn't do me any pleasure to bring you this information. I don't like listening to hours of woke content.

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I mean, I've obviously done a lot of that in my life already, but I will certainly do more of it to warn you about a ministry that is frankly acting, at least the president, in a duplicitous fashion.

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He is trying to, people reaching out confused about this, and including the gentleman who sent me this letter, are thinking, well, they have great devotionals,

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I think. And this letter seems to indicate that there's no problems there.

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And one of the things, I'll just say this real quick. One of the things that I know I've said this before is

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I don't mind reaching out to folks at these ministries and just really for the sake of warning more than anything else to say, hey, did you know this was on your website?

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Did you know you guys are promoting this? This is a problem. Have you thought about this? Reaching out to get confirmation or to find out whether or not they are in fact or have promoted social justice teachings, nine out of 10 times, if not,

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I can't think of an exception. I'm gonna say 10 out of 10 times, it always winds up the same way. And it's the way that this letter right here, it's the way that this letter is framed.

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Basically what happens is it's denied, it's disguised, it's downplayed, and you are made to feel like a judgmental

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Christian of some kind or a Christian who doesn't have his facts straight. You're just confused, you're the problem.

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There's no apology, there's no rectification, there's no acknowledgement, no repentance. It's just a bunch of, well,

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I'll read this to you and you can decide for yourself whether what I'm saying is accurate, but it's a bunch of gymnastics to say we're not compromised.

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And anyone who would suggest we are, they're the ones that have the problem. And it almost always goes this way.

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And so I would suggest if you're really trying to nail down, hey, is the ministry compromised in this way? Don't email them and ask them, hey, are you compromised?

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You know what you're gonna get. Do a little research, go to their website, go to their YouTube page, go to their social media.

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You could look up keywords if you wanna do a search, or you could just go through their timeline and just look at the kind of content they're putting out.

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And that's really all I did. It took me about 15 seconds, but as I went onto their YouTube page yesterday to find out, yes, they are compromised on social justice teachings.

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I listened to a few hours from different podcasts. I feel like I scratched the surface, but I have more than enough to show you today that yes, they have stuff that's not even 2020.

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It's stuff that's happened since then. More recent material that's on their YouTube channel currently, financed by them, sponsored by them, that is thoroughly compromised to the point of denying the gospel.

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So I will, or at least, yeah, I'm comfortable saying that. Some of it

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I think really does deny the gospel. So I'm gonna show you that stuff. Before we get to all that though, I want to thank everyone who went and purchased or streamed my album, gave me some feedback, gave it a rating.

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It's called, Driving Down a Mountain Road. You can go to johnharristunes .com to find all the links on social media or the streaming services.

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So it's on iTunes and Amazon and Spotify. You can get a physical CD on that website if you want, johnharristunes .com.

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But one of the things I wanted to do was put out a few songs that were intended for congregational worship. This is one of the songs we actually do at my church and they seem to enjoy it called,

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Oh Grace, How Great Your Story, if you like it. Then I would just encourage you to go to the website, check out that song.

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The sheet music is even there for it. And maybe it's something that you could do at your church. And since I'm the author and I'm telling you, it's not a violation of any copyright.

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I'm giving you permission to play it in any live setting, including at church. So the song, Oh Grace, How Great Your Story was written in probably about 20 minutes after I came back from a trip in New Mexico and Colorado last year.

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And I just got to see so many beautiful sights in the desert and then in the mountains. The Rocky Mountains obviously spectacular and breathtaking.

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And I had a lot of windshield time just thinking about my own life, where it had led, what the

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Lord was doing. And this is the result of that. And so I hope you enjoy it.

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We sing it at my church and people seem to enjoy it there. And maybe it's something that you could incorporate at your own church.

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I have the music online at johnharristunes .com, johnharristunes .com.

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But the song, Oh Grace, How Great Your Story, I think is great for congregational singing. Check it out. ♪ The doors they broke and opened wide,

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I'm alive, I'm alive ♪ ♪ Oh grace, how great your story.

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♪ All right, let's talk about the subject at hand. I'm gonna read for you this letter.

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I have the physical copy in my hand. I have blocked out portions of it so that those who send it to me are not, you know, in trouble or anything like that.

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But this is the letter that was sent on January 14th to an unnamed individual.

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And this is what the president, Matt Lucas of Our Daily Bread Ministries has to say. He says, greetings from the

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Philippines. I am currently meeting with our team here and we'll be returning at the end of the week. Thank you for reaching out with your concerns.

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I believe your query came from a situation last fall related to the Joy and Justice 2024. Now this is just part of it.

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Yes, Joy and Justice 2024, at least for this podcast. We talked about that, but then we also went deeper.

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I showed you stuff from their X account, from their YouTube account, I think their website.

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So that was one part of it. I understand someone told me that they backed out of sponsoring this conference, which is good.

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That means they do respond to pressure when it's rightly applied, when it's a good kind of pressure, but for biblical fidelity.

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But here's what he has to say. He says that the conference and its association with Our Daily Bread Ministries, specifically that there was a suggestion our organization has altered its convictions to accommodate cultural norms that are convulsing the church today.

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Nothing could be further from the truth. So the accusation, what

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I even talked about on this podcast, I guess is perhaps not true.

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Now here's the thing. I never actually said that they had altered their, as far as I remember, altered their convictions.

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I don't know. They may not have had any convictions on this. So they're just open to social justice teachings. They may not have had to alter much of anything.

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That's possible. I'm open to that. But he's saying that that's, he's framing that as the accusation and then saying that that's not true.

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I have been tracking such posts, he said, and have been frustrated that none of the podcast hosts have reached out to us for information or clarification.

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And this is pretty classic. I had this even recently with Sean McDowell. I've had this, I don't know, for however long, since the beginning with various ministries, and they almost always say the same thing.

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Like, well, if you just reach out to us. Well, what's that gonna do? Like, I don't mind reaching out to say you have a problem.

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Here's an opportunity to change course, repent, warn people about the teachings you previously promoted. But that's not what they're saying 10 times out of 10, that's not what's going on.

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It's, cause I've actually gotten into these conversations and it's a wine and dine routine.

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It's more mental gymnastics. It's trying to say, you're the problem, essentially.

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You're the problem. You're not being nice to us. I think there are times to reach out privately. This was already a public thing before I touched it, but this is a big ministry.

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They've, I think even at my own church, we have our daily bread stuff there. If we don't, not long ago, we did.

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And it's troubling. The amount of social justice stuff they have on their

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YouTube channel is troubling. But reaching out, it's not gonna change any of that.

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None of the facts change, right? There's no clarification that can be offered. There's no way to disassociate what's happening that they've promoted.

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They've promoted it. It's on their platforms. It's their sponsorships, et cetera. So I don't find that much good comes from this.

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I find that people in the audience who have gone down this path of reaching out to these organizations, get the runaround, that's never a way in my mind to confirm whether or not an organization is compromised by asking them if they're compromised.

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I mean, if you think there's an issue that's confusing and you want clarification, that's one thing. These aren't confusing issues though. And the material is on their website.

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So what's the point of reaching out? What's the discussion going to do essentially?

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I mean, there's already more than enough information to say there's a problem here and we don't need to have a discussion to confirm any of that.

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Anyway, let's see. Misinformation can quickly go viral before anyone falsely accused is able to respond.

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So now they're being falsely accused. They're the victims, right? Unfortunately, not everyone practices Second Timothy 2, 24 through 25 and the

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Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to acknowledge the truth.

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So yes, yours truly, I suppose, is in violation of this according to the president here. And if it's not me, there's others online.

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I'm not sure who else. I think Protesty did an article about it but they're not a podcast. So while they do it, there is a

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Protesty podcast. Maybe they talked about it, I don't know. But I can guarantee you they weren't violating

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Second Timothy 2, 24. According to this, Paul would be violating his own teachings by pointing out false teaching.

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In the podcast, two issues have been raised. Our Daily Bread Ministries has changed its biblical convictions and we supported positions that do not align with scripture.

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Okay, number two is absolutely correct and I will demonstrate it. Despite cultural changes we are experiencing in our society, our ministry remains faithful and unwavering in our commitment to historic biblical

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Christianity and its teachings on everything from believing in the infallibility of scripture. This is so classic.

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Salvation is in Christ, diversity is to be celebrated. And this is an interesting one. So this is historic biblical

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Christianity. You ready? Diversity is to be celebrated and is a reflection of God's image in humanity.

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I don't remember that Bible verse about diversity needing to be celebrated. There's an obligation to celebrate diversity in the

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Bible. What does that mean? And why would you just put that in the modern context? If you mean something biblical by it, what do you mean?

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Because in our world, everyone, and I mean, everyone hears that and they're thinking immediately, celebrate diversity.

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Oh yeah, we're going down the DEI path. And that's God's design for marriage and sex is between a man and a woman.

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And it's from this biblical foundation that we produce our content. It is this standard to which all our employees in the

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United States and globally adhere. So this is interesting, all the employees. So if you wanna, all the employees, including the ones who were part of sponsoring some of what

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I'm about to show you or distributing and producing what I'm about to show you. Since our ministry was founded in 1938, we have been, you think in 1938, the first president of our daily bread ministries was saying, you know, one of those historic biblical things right along with salvation in Christ alone, the infallibility of scripture, celebrating diversity.

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I don't think so. I just, for some reason think maybe that's a change. Maybe that is a difference between 1938 and today.

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I'm just saying, I stand corrected. If you can produce a document from 1938 that shows our daily bread ministries was dedicated from the beginning, from the inception to historic biblical

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Christianity, which included in their minds, celebrating diversity. But I do digress. We have been working with a broad spectrum of organizations to distribute our resources and fulfill our mission to make the life -changing wisdom of the

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Bible understandable and accessible to all. One of those relationships was with the

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Witness Foundation to distribute our material through their Joy and Justice Conference. What we did not know nor did we agree to was their statement that we were sponsoring the conference.

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They corrected this, but the damage has been done. This situation has raised a lot of questions. So what does that,

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I do, I mean, this just raises more questions in my mind. And this is such a minor point in the whole thing because it really doesn't matter whether they sponsored it or not.

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Their stuff is obviously, the stuff I'm about to show you is much more important than whether or not they sponsored this particular conference.

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But, you know, so they worked with this ministry in order to fulfill their mission and they've formed a relationship to distribute material.

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So they let the Witness Foundation distribute their material at their conference. Okay, so,

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I mean, I don't know how that came about. I don't know exactly what that looks like. It seems like that's more than just a vendor relationship.

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If they're distributing material, if the organization itself is, then someone's paying to have that happen.

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Either Our Daily Bread is paying to have that happen, in which case money is being transferred from Our Daily Bread to the

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Witness Foundation. Or the Witness Foundation just purchased a bunch of Daily Bread stuff. And in which case then the

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Witness Foundation lied and they should be thrown under the bus. Well, you know, they should be called to account for that.

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Like, you know, you just lied about us. But he doesn't really tell you which it is, just that they didn't agree to be a sponsor.

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So, but yeah, I mean, I've been, obviously I'm getting my feet wet and doing conferences and stuff.

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And when you specifically, this is one of the things that TrueScript has been talking about. When you specifically give materials and you're donating them, right?

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This is, or you're paying to have them distributed, which is what that is. There is a level of sponsorship happening.

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There is, you are helping that organization. You are attracting people. You are helping, help, you know, the finances.

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You're bearing that burden of the conference. So I don't, I'm, my suspicion is something, there was some transfer that happened here.

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Anyway, he says, this situation has raised a lot of questions for us. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss those with you and hear from feedback over a phone call.

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It would also give me the opportunity to share other things we are doing to ensure that this does not happen again. I will return to Grand Rapids on January 18th.

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My cell number is, and I'm not gonna read that. I hope we can connect soon. Well, there you have it.

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I think that it's important to remind everyone, including myself as we proceed, that the reason that we're engaged in this is not because simply the fact that there are corrupt or compromised ministries.

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There are people who say things that aren't true in ministries, who project, whatever.

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I think that ultimately this comes down to some doctrinal issues. And we want to defend the word of God.

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We wanna defend Christ, his mission. I think that it's funny because the big ministries that promote

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DEI and social justice stuff will often say that the reason they're doing it is because they wanna be a good witness.

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When in reality, and you'll actually, you'll hear this in one of the clips, it takes away from the witness.

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It takes away from the witness of the church. And it, I think, detracts and takes resources that should be used for actual discipleship and reroutes them into just the opposite of that.

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It literally is the opposite. And you'll see that. So I'm gonna start with a pretty mild example of what

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I'm talking about. We're gonna go in sequential order with some of the podcasts that I listened to. This is from 2021, a gentleman named

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Russell Berry, who is fairly connected with Crew, as I understand it. If you go to his website, sorry, did

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I say Crew? He is connected to Crew, but he's also connected to Our Daily Bread. So I think he's done some stuff for Crew as well in the past.

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But if you go to his website, Our Daily Bread is front and center. So they're connected somehow. But he is, this is on the

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Our Daily Bread YouTube channel. This is where all the information that I'm about to show you, I pulled from. And this is the end of 2021.

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And it's a short video, Our Daily Bread video devotional. So they have video devotionals in addition to their printed material.

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And this is what Russell Berry had to say. Hey, it's

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Russell Berry. And I'm here in Nazareth, Israel, reflecting on how this city gives hope to anyone who comes from broken backgrounds.

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I began to really reflect and discover the words and the life of Jesus. I love how the apostle

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Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians. He said, he who was rich became poor so that we who were poor could become rich.

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There's this generous exchange that Paul refers to as the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, where he essentially helps us understand that it's not by coincidence that Jesus comes from Nazareth.

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It was very much part of the divine mission to have the savior of the universe, identify with those who come from brokenness from those who come from poverty.

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And I - Okay, let's stop there. That's a very, I would say liberation theology read of that passage.

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If you go to the passage, I'm gonna back up here so you can see what we were looking at. 2

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Corinthians 8, 9, you could read 2 Corinthians 8. Paul is commending sacrificial giving and he uses

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Christ as an example of that. He does not command. He even says,

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I think in chapter, in verse eight or so, I'm not giving you a command here.

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He's not commanding believers that they need to be giving to the point of impoverishing themselves, but giving is important.

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And the bigger thing and the more important thing to recognize in all of this though, is that there is nothing said about Nazareth and Jesus going to Nazareth as an identification with the poor.

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He's not going there because he specifically wanted to be with the poor people because there's something more noble or virtuous or supreme about being poor.

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And that's the way liberation theologians would read that passage, but it's not actually in the passage.

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They have to smuggle that in. So yes, Christ is giving and he came from heaven and we call it the condescension.

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He condescended to this earth in order to live with humans that even if he was in the richest palace there could be on this earth, he would still be giving up so much to be here.

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So this is a reading of, he's first taking Nazareth as if this represents

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God's identification with the oppressed and the poor. Then he's reading that into second

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Corinthians eight and saying that when it talks about Christ's condescension, that Nazareth is somehow part of this.

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And that being from Nazareth means there is an identification with the poor. It's a universal message.

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Christ came to rescue all of us, poor, rich, whether or not you have material goods is irrelevant to that.

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So that's a good message for everyone, not just the poor. But, and you might think this is mild.

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This is no big deal. Yeah, fine. Okay, there's a lot more coming, but I thought that this was a twisting and that twisting is not something that you want in your devotional materials, right?

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Those who come from brokenness from. All right, so we already heard him. Let's get to some more stuff here that I think is more concerning.

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This is from the God hears her podcast. This is all again from our daily bread ministries, healing racial trauma, episode 119 with Sheila Wise Rowe.

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And this was posted on February 20th, 2023. So it's not ancient history. And there's what the podcast has to say.

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My experience is completely different. And I also grew up in Texas, which is a very different expression of the whole crisis that we were all going through.

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Can you describe what you mean by racial trauma and even trauma to begin with?

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So she's saying, this is the host, as she, and I clipped it, but as a white woman is what you didn't hear.

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So as a white woman who has a set of experiences, I don't understand racial trauma, but then she goes the extra step and say, or trauma, just tell me about trauma because I'm a white woman.

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So this is, again, you're getting a sense of that standpoint theory, whereas a white woman, you don't have access to something that's universal.

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This is a universal thing. Understanding something that they're saying is biblical, something that's related to the human experience of, and I'm putting obviously the best possible face on this, but sin and its effects on people, trauma, i .e.

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trauma. This is something that obviously you can look in scripture, you can find out about, but as a white woman, she's got this big barrier, apparently.

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She doesn't know exactly what it is. So she asks, and here's part of the answer. We saw what happened with George Floyd, horrific.

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It has a special meaning and a deeper meaning for a black mother who's watching this man be killed before our eyes and having him cry out, mama.

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It was gut -wrenching because we have thoughts about our own family members and that's traumatizing.

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There are ways in which racial trauma happens when, and it may seem like, well, that's just a statue. What's the big deal?

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But that statue, a statue of a Confederate statue, possibly, has a meaning.

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And it may have meaning to certain people. And it's one of, well, this is part of the culture, the heritage or whatever.

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And for black folk, the meaning of that statue is very different. The meaning is enslavement.

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The meaning is who's in charge and who's superior. So all of those things contribute towards racial trauma.

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The first step really is - All right, so you wanna understand trauma, you gotta understand

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George Floyd, you gotta understand statues that may have an admiration for Confederate soldiers or generals.

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And these have, I agree, they do have meanings, but she's reading these meanings through a certain filter where it's not the authors, it's not the people who erected these statues.

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It's not objectively what actually happened to George Floyd that he died of a fentanyl overdose.

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Those things aren't front and center at all. And by February 20th, 2023, we knew what had happened to George Floyd.

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These are read through the experience, frankly, people who have,

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I think, by and large, been conditioned to read the past, to read these events in certain ways.

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So it's not the monument marker that will define what the monument was about. And most of the vast majority,

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I've seen probably a hundred of these things. I've seen a lot of them. I mean, I've done, I did a whole documentary on monuments called

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American Monuments. So not only have I been to many of these, but I've also seen, obviously, online monument markers and plaques and things.

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And they are pretty standard. I mean, they say things like it's to heroism, it's to bravery, it's to sacrifice.

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It's the same thing that you'll see in Union monuments or war monuments to Revolutionary War soldiers or World War II soldiers or Vietnam veterans.

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It's the same kinds of things. But for some reason, these particular monuments get a different reading because they're meant to intimidate, they're meant to promote slavery.

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You're not gonna get that from the authors who put them up. You're not gonna get that from the plaques that are on the monuments.

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You know where you get that from? Our modern retellings, modern memory studied, propelled retellings of these monuments and what they actually mean.

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So we'll tell you what they mean. And then of course, if you do this with any, do this with the Bible, right? We'll tell you what it means.

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We don't need to understand it according to the original audience and what Paul meant when he was talking about women being submissive.

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We're just gonna tell you that that's chauvinistic today. And I mean, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do that, right? If those are the rules.

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So it's preferring this one particular reading, which of the past of events, even in the current world that forward a particular narrative.

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Are we able to listen to one another and to validate one another's stories?

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And if you look at scripture, this whole notion of grieving with those who are grieving, meeting people exactly where they are, looking at scriptures around the parts of the body and the importance of all the different parts of the body.

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So if we're talking about believers, if the foot is in pain, you better pay attention to the foot.

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You can't ignore it. Don't pretend it's not there. This is part of the problem because rejoice with those who rejoice, right?

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So Donald Trump won and I'm rejoicing that Donald Trump won. So shouldn't Sheila Wise Rowe rejoice with me because scripture commands rejoicing, right?

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This gets silly because really at the end of the day, what we're talking about are differences of opinion based upon a lot of preconceptions.

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Let me give you a crazy example, right? Then this is admittedly a crazy example. What if someone was rejoicing because they won the lottery but they didn't actually win the lottery, right?

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They're just deceived into thinking, should you rejoice with them? What if they're upset because they,

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I don't know, they think that they should be, I mean, this is actually a, this is sort of a real example because this is a current debate over transgender stuff, right?

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But someone thinks that they are actually a woman when biologically they're a man and they want you to weep with them and well, they're engaging in a lie.

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You can't weep with them on that, right? That would be the wrong thing. You could weep with them over the fact that they're confused, that maybe there's sin at play here.

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You could weep over that, but you're not gonna be able to join with them and engage in a lie. And I think that's what you're being asked to do here.

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You're being asked to, there's an emotional response because of conditioning to what happened with George Floyd, for example.

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And you can certainly rejoice over, or rather weep over many things connected to that.

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But if you're being specifically asked to weep over the fact that this is a racially motivated incident, there's not evidence to demonstrate that.

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So what do you do, right? This is a big problem. You can weep over the fact that this man died, that there was a tragic life here, that there was a life of crime and this crime led him to this area.

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But you can't weep over the fact that, well, he was unjustifiably killed by the police and the police are racist and that's why they did it.

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And this is what you're being asked to engage in. So you need the truth first.

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If you wanna rejoice with someone or weep with someone, it's important that you're doing it with over something that's actually true.

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And just to, this is emotionally manipulative to just say, well, you just got it. We gotta listen, you gotta believe what

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I say and then you gotta react accordingly. Pay attention, ask the questions, listen to the stories.

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I think that's just the starting point. And right now I feel like what's happening is that that's been just cut off.

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It's like, we're not listening to anybody's stories. We just, we have our narrative, our perspective and often it's based politically.

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And so therefore we're not gonna entertain a notion that somebody else is having an alternative experience.

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It's often interpersonal. You see, this is, that sounds like projection to me.

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Like we're not gonna objectively look at these things because we have this political narrative that we need to uphold, but that's what she's upholding.

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She's upholding a political narrative. If you look into the George Floyd thing, if you look into the plaques that, into the motivations behind putting up Confederate monuments and there's a myriad of historic,

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I mean, it's not like we don't have historical examples of these things. There's a small handful of things they try to use to show that universally, hundreds of these things are all racist.

30:27

If you actually do an actual study, you take in, you have a paradigm that takes account of all the information, you won't come up with this kind of narrative about them, but it's a political agenda that wants to erase this kind of history and wants to frame the

30:42

George Floyd thing in a certain way that gives you the narrative that Sheila Wise Rose is promoting here and saying, these are the facts, essentially.

30:49

These are the facts and you must listen, you must accept. Racism that causes racial trauma, but that there are systems that are in place and that is the reality.

31:00

And whether you believe that or not, it's true. So it's, if you actually want to do the research, you will discover there are many -

31:09

It's just true. You just got to accept it, it's just true. It's the systems that are causing the racial trauma and well, let's keep playing,

31:16

I'll give you more. Many ways in which there are blocks that are set up. And so just being aware, like is this possibly an issue in this particular situation, whatever that situation might be, that there was something systemic that is going on here that needs to be addressed.

31:32

And particularly if you're looking at, okay, how is the church functioning, your particular church?

31:38

How is your community functioning? How do you relate to those outside of your community? What are the differences that you see?

31:44

Is there a difference between the services that you see in your community and it's mostly white.

31:51

And yet when you look at the inner city communities and you see trash isn't being picked up, schools are horrible, it's just like an under -resourced, it's not even just about bad teachers, it's bad buildings, bad school supplies.

32:05

When you look at those two and you can say, okay, it's a tax issue, but it's not just that because both of these are public schools.

32:13

There's an organ. All right, well, there you have it. Public schools that don't have the resources or there aren't in the same bracket as schools in other areas that are more white.

32:26

If majority black public schools have deteriorating materials or buildings, you can chalk that up to, it must be systemic in some way.

32:37

It's gotta be the fact that our system is favoring white schools, white neighborhoods, white people over black people.

32:44

And that's just true. That's what she wants you to think. That's just true that that is a problem or maybe perhaps even the problem, depending on the situation.

32:55

And because of that, you must react accordingly. You must look to systemic solutions to solve these systemic problems.

33:03

I've said this before, if you can frame the problem, then the solution will follow. So if you frame it that way, then the solution becomes, well, it's a systemic thing.

33:13

And what does that give you? Well, if it's money that's not going, not enough money's going to these schools, we just need more money.

33:20

And this is, I mean, I live in New York, right? So this is something we hear all the time. New York City's not very,

33:27

I mean, it's like an hour and a half, two hour drive south of where I'm sitting right now. This is constantly a topic of conversation.

33:36

And some of the schools that get, some of the best funded schools in the country that have the most money per student coming to them are failing.

33:45

And Donald Trump is right about this. Our American education system is extremely expensive and yet the results are terrible.

33:54

We don't have good results. And this would, and the solution is always this, we always get the same thing.

34:00

When politicians start talking about it, it's like, well, we just don't have the resources. We just don't pay the teachers enough. We just don't, we need more, better updated computers.

34:08

We need better updated textbooks. We just don't have what we need. And the question

34:14

I have is at what point, like where's the actual number or what's the actual threshold that we need to match in order to finally say that we're meeting the, do they have to be funded twice as much, three times as much as some comparable suburban white school?

34:32

What, how do we measure this? And it's what you hear here.

34:37

It's never actual metrics, very rarely, at least. I have not heard it.

34:43

It is appeals to emotion. It is just chalking it up to that must be the problem.

34:48

Well, maybe there's another problem. Have you thought of that? Maybe there's actually other issues going on, maybe crime.

34:56

Maybe there's cultural factors at play here. There's probably a lot of things in play and it just say, well, it's gotta be this.

35:04

It's frankly, it's irresponsible. You're not going to get this kind of solutions you need. Again, this is a ministry that is known for promoting devotional materials that is giving you this stuff.

35:16

Is this really, I mean, is this what you would expect from that kind of a ministry, I think, is a fair question to ask.

35:24

Organization called TELL that only deals with adult victims of therapist and clergy. This is

35:29

Out of the Cage podcast, episode 142 with Amy Nordhus also on 20, it was

35:36

October 30th, 2023. So not ancient history. And this is what Amy Nordhus has to say.

35:43

Clergy abuse and they tell me they get 40 to 50 ,000 people to their website every year.

35:49

And these are adults who are being taken advantage of. And there's so much shame, even more shame for an adult.

35:55

We're often blamed. It's often labeled an affair. People don't understand abuse of power or they don't want to.

36:03

I knew he was hinting at like an emotional affair at least. And then it was pretty much whatever he wanted to do physically.

36:10

And I would just cry and cry and cry and ask him to stop. This is a story that she's telling about a therapist.

36:19

I believe it's actually at a church. So, or in the context of a church, I don't know if it's someone she met at church, but he was an elder at the church and they would have three hour therapy sessions.

36:30

And she's saying here, it started off gradual. He was hinting at an emotional affair and then it got physical.

36:38

You wouldn't. And then I'd come back for the next session. And I told him, I feel like a prostitute and you didn't even talk to me.

36:44

And this is my therapist. Not only are you sexually assaulted, but you're made to believe or at least feel that you are a participant.

36:54

And it's such a vicious circle with the, it's like the warning comes up of I'm not safe, but then you circle straight into I'm a loser and it's my fault and I'm a participant, et cetera.

37:07

And then that I'm not safe. Every time you feel it, you go back into the, no, it's my fault, it's my fault.

37:12

And you're so trapped in it. And I think that's something I really wanna point out for all listening is that that's what we do.

37:22

I mean, it just breaks my heart, but that's the way we're made. That's the way we conclude is that it's our fault.

37:27

The first thing I do in these cases is sit down with a couple and inform the husband that your wife was a victim of a felony and the victims of crimes owe explanations as to what happened to them.

37:37

No, that was sexual assault. Society expects an explanation. But anyway, he took it like an affair at first and it was just devastating.

37:45

My husband eventually saw that it was abuse, but that took a long time and eventually that trickled into my children.

37:52

But we eventually gained the healing that we needed. And now we have a much stronger, more connected marriage.

37:59

God used it to really obliterate our marriage down to the rafters and then rebuild it into something stronger.

38:05

I also want people to understand that it's okay. You can be angry with God. You can be angry with the church.

38:11

You can take as long as you need. You don't have to rush your healing. It takes forever. It takes years.

38:17

Your journey is your own. You get to heal at your own rate. You can certainly Google. All right, so we're gonna stop it there.

38:24

And I wanna read for you a scripture here. Deuteronomy 22, 23 to 27.

38:29

If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death.

38:39

A girl because she did not cry out in the city and a man because he has violated his neighbor's wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

38:46

But in the field, the man, if in the field the man finds a girl who is engaged and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the girl.

38:55

There is no sin in the girl worthy of death for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.

39:03

When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.

39:08

So obviously the difference here, and you've heard me talk about this passage before, is that in the city, there are people around.

39:14

There's an alarm system set up. There's a mechanism for stopping what's happening, even if it's being forced upon you.

39:21

In the field, there is not. People won't hear you, so the assumption is you did scream, you did try to warn, but there was no one there to hear, so you can't prove it.

39:31

So we're gonna, actually, this is very against the man who's doing this in this case, because you're saying that we're just gonna assume the man's guilty of this and he'll have to pay a penalty for this.

39:44

Now, in what you just heard, you just heard it's okay to be mad at God, it's okay to be mad at the church, it's not your fault, you're the victim, and it's society that expects you to give some kind of an account of what happened, and you shouldn't be required to give any kind of an account for what actually happened.

40:02

And this is so terrible. The husband himself assumed at first this was an affair.

40:08

This wife said it started off gradually, it was emotional, and then it got physical. And at no point does she say in this podcast that she felt like stopping, she didn't want it to go on, but she didn't actually stop because she kept going back to this guy.

40:22

Now, I can understand there's manipulation out there, I can understand there's guys who will use their powerful positions, and that's a big part of this whole thing, that he had a powerful position to manipulate people.

40:34

I totally get that. And I think that should be taken into account, and the guy should obviously be punished.

40:41

But this doesn't excuse a woman who is in this kind of a relationship, and that is what it is, it is a relationship.

40:49

She even talks about if she were to see him in the store, she didn't know if she would give him a hug or be mad at him.

40:56

She's so confused about it because she ended up going for a long period of time forming a bond with this guy over time.

41:05

And it's now, you can't call it an affair though, you can't say this is adultery, even though she is doing this while married, it must be abuse.

41:13

Even though for all intents and purposes, this was consensual from the standpoint that, from a legal perspective, she doesn't talk at least about, she left out information than this would have been important to bring up, but she doesn't physically try to stop him, and she keeps going back.

41:35

So what do you do? Biblically, what do you do? That's the real question here. This is a devotional ministry, right?

41:40

So if you're gonna do a devotional or do a biblical study on this topic, we need to know what the Bible has to say about it.

41:46

It's not ever brought up at all. It's just assumed that the Me Too logic of today is what we should go with.

41:52

And my heart goes out to someone like this. I really, I do think that people are manipulated, that people are,

41:59

I don't even think it's necessarily wrong to call that kind of manipulation an abuse of authority or power.

42:05

But I don't think that you can say, well, it's just doesn't qualify as an affair. There's no element of it that a personal responsibility that a woman in that situation takes because there's a power disparity and this person had more authority than them.

42:20

See, that would just throw all the assumptions in scripture about what sin is, what adultery is, how to handle these things, even in a civil judicial manner out the window.

42:31

And we don't look at any of those. And all we do is we just look at modern Me Too power dynamic type logic and use that to adjudicate these kinds of cases.

42:44

All right, this next video is from Where Ya From, which is presented by Voices, which is sponsored by Our Daily Bread Ministries.

42:56

And it was posted January 2nd, 2024. And it is an interview with Jamar Tisby.

43:03

Razul Barry is the one doing the interview. And the title is Racism and the American Church.

43:08

So let's see what Jamar Tisby has to say. Sophisticated definitions of microaggressions.

43:15

But to me, it's racism by a thousand cuts, you know, like a paper cut is small but painful.

43:24

So microaggressions are sort of everyday reminders that you are different, other, marginalized, less than, many times unintentional.

43:35

Instances would include pretty much every black person, specifically black males.

43:44

Upon first meeting someone, they would ask you, what sport do you play? The assumption being that if you are black and on this campus, you must be an athlete.

43:53

And one of my friends was an engineer, black guy who did not play sports.

44:00

And whenever he got that question, he said, I play academics. Never forgotten that. Another example would be,

44:08

I'm short and I shaved my head at that time. And so white guys, my classmates would just take all kinds of liberty to rub my head, you know?

44:21

And it's almost like touching a black woman's hair. You just don't do that. It's an invasion and a violation of like personal space and your own bodily autonomy.

44:30

And it was also quite patronizing, right? Rubbing someone's head as if to say, hey boy.

44:37

So that occurred. And then just sort of the social dynamics, right? Of being a black person amidst all these white guys, like they would have these dorm parties and they'd be playing

44:49

Brown Eyed Girl and Lady in Red and you know, Leonard Skinner. And I'm like, what is all this music?

44:57

What is this? And then the hip hop song would come on and they turned to me like, Jamar, rap the song, do the dance.

45:03

I'm like, what? So, like I said, you know, I experienced all that and it felt uncomfortable.

45:10

So in 1915. Okay, all right. So we got some microaggressions,

45:17

I guess. These are examples of microaggressions. It seems fairly innocuous stuff.

45:24

I mean, he doesn't seem to like the Leonard Skinner music. So, I mean, maybe I should be offended, but he's saying that because people would treat him in ways that he found uncomfortable, it must be because there was some kind of a racially charged, racially motivated thing going on behind the scenes that's creating these actions, these microaggressions.

45:47

Microaggressions obviously being a term from the woke social justice BLM dictionary, not something that, actually,

45:55

I don't even hear that word quite as much now, but I'm sure it's still alive and well in many HR departments and it's still being used.

46:03

You could say, you know, rubbing a guy's head, it's rude, say stop. You know, I've seen this kind of thing though with bald people, white, black, it doesn't really matter who they are, where people will wanna touch their head because it's,

46:17

I guess, different, it's a novelty. It's, what does that feel like? I know, you know, with my wife, we just had to have a baby.

46:24

That's a common thing. People think they can just kind of come up and touch your baby. These are social things that don't necessarily,

46:30

I don't think this necessarily means, I mean, he's really spinning and putting some motives on this that you wouldn't, you weren't required to put on them, but this is the assumption that he's bringing to the table.

46:43

Again, I will remind you for the fifth or sixth time, probably during this podcast, that this is a devotional ministry.

46:49

So how does this help you? I don't know, but somehow this is supposed to help you and reward you to not do microaggressions, and that's how we're gonna frame it.

46:59

This is a racist thing, not necessarily just a respect thing or a manners kind of thing.

47:06

In, you get the resurrection of the KKK through this ceremony. A white, former

47:12

Methodist circuit rider, so he's a former preacher, leads a group of white men to the top of Stone Mountain, Georgia, on which is emblazoned these

47:20

Confederate heroes, right, who were all pro -slavery and owned slaves. And on top of that, they do a ceremony and they have a couple of elements.

47:29

Number one, they burn a cross, which is gonna become a symbol of racial terrorism in the 20th century.

47:36

Number two, they build an altar and on that altar, they put a Bible and an

47:41

American flag. And what that is saying in terms of the symbolism and the identity is that this is a white man's country and it is a white

47:52

Protestant Christian man's country. We have God and the Bible on our side. And this is what sociologists call

48:00

Christian nationalism, which is not so much a theological movement as it is a socio -political and cultural movement that basically says a well -ordered society is one in which white

48:11

Protestant Christians are in charge. How do you respond to some of those critiques and questions and concerns?

48:18

All right, well, let's stop there for just a second. And I don't know if I have to say much to that other than apparently that's

48:24

Christian nationalism, right? So the Klan, Christian nationalism, we're talking about the same kind of thing here.

48:30

And Christian nationalism is a broad term that's basically just used about anyone who's a

48:36

Christian who wants America to have a Christian identity, who looks at America and thinks that there's problems that could be rectified if we were to return to a

48:46

Christian understanding of things. That is now, and I'm picking the broadest possible definition of this because even the narrower definitions from guys like Stephen Wolfe who would claim the mantle of Christian nationalism are, they would be so far outside the scope of this.

49:05

He's not saying, I mean, some people think that a guy like Wolfe, I guess, wants the Klan to return or something, but if you look at his definition and what he's writing about, he's just saying it is the conception of the nation as Christian and then the carrying out of these

49:22

Christian social mores and laws and so forth for both earthly and heavenly good.

49:29

And somehow though, either that or even the broadest, most innocuous type of Christian nationalism you can think of where it's just Christians wanna be politically involved.

49:38

They see the nation as Christian. They want it to be Christian. This is now Klan stuff. This is, I don't think I have to explain what's going on here, but this is our daily bread.

49:45

Who's putting it out there. So there you go. And I think that's a terrible thing because, frankly, a lot of the people using this term and even the media using it as a smear, they really want something very simple.

49:57

They want in a time when Christianity has been so kicked out of public places and the halls of power, they wanna bring it back.

50:06

They want Christianity to reign supreme in those areas. And at a very, in just a very basic way, as Christians, we should be for that.

50:16

We should want to be salt and light. We should want to affect the world around us.

50:22

And we should want to see Christian morality hold sway. And so for Jamar Tisby to smear it like this, he's being used, obviously he's on the left, but he's being used by the left too.

50:32

Concerns that people have about even saying Black Lives Matter or in any way being associated with an organization that there's multiple types of concerns about.

50:42

The first thing I'd say is do some independent research. If we're only relying on politicians and pundits and talking heads for our information, we're really limiting ourselves and our knowledge.

50:52

The other thing I'll say is there's always objections to the black freedom struggle in whatever form it takes.

50:58

There were people who fought on the side of the Confederacy, pro -slavery and against abolition. There were people who looked at the civil rights movement and folks like MLK, who is literally an ordained minister and has a

51:10

PhD in theology and labeled him communist, Marxist, anti -Christian, labeled the entire civil rights movement as violent and destructive.

51:18

And I would say, particularly to the violence piece, understand that a lot of this is happening in response to the violence inflicted upon black people, particularly through police brutality.

51:28

So if we're gonna talk about violence, let's start there with the root of why these protests are happening.

51:35

And then understand that any movement, any struggle for justice is gonna be messy. There's gonna be an element of unpredictability to it.

51:42

But for decades, the churches had the opportunity to lead on issues of racial justice and to start a movement and lead a movement on racial justice.

51:51

But in many ways, we didn't do it. How would you describe trauma? Yeah, they've described - Okay, so we're gonna do another podcast.

51:58

So let's put a cap on the Jamar Tisby stuff. He justifies BLM support because they're responding to police brutality, essentially.

52:07

And there might be some things that make you uncomfortable, but you gotta understand this is,

52:13

I mean, it also reminds me of, was it Mao Zedong? Or I forget who it was now. You know, you gotta crack a couple eggs.

52:20

Which communist dictator that was who said that to make an omelet? This is the kind of thinking here.

52:27

Like you have to, you just have to understand that they're responding to police brutality. So somehow this is justified.

52:34

Christian, and this is for Christians. Christians should, could, can support this kind of thing, this kind of a movement with the violence because it's responding to violence.

52:45

And that's just, that's part of your Christian duty. That's the weird thing to me about the whole thing that Our Daily Bread wants to put this out there as part of their

52:54

Christian devotional biblical ministry. Described it as big

53:00

T traumas and little T traumas. And the reality - Okay, so we're talking about trauma now. Big T traumas, little T traumas with Sheila Risedrow again on another podcast released or at least posted in January 2nd, 2024,

53:13

Healing Racial Trauma. And this is again, the Where You From podcast through Our Daily Bread Ministries.

53:20

All of these though, is that when you think about little T traumas, which seem like a minor thing.

53:26

So it may seem like, okay, that's a minor thing, Sheila, that the teacher called you up in front of the class. That's not a big deal.

53:33

That's a little T trauma technically. A big T trauma would be something major like witnessing a murder, getting in a major car accident or something like that.

53:43

What they've shown is that the accumulation of little T traumas has a greater impact than a big

53:50

T trauma event. So if you think about just my experience, experiences of many others where it's cumulative, it's not just one thing.

53:59

It's personal, it's what's happening in my community. It's what's happening with my father and their business being sabotaged.

54:05

It's the lack of services in the community. It's being humiliated in front of the class.

54:12

It's having certain doors shut or you just having to go the extra, extra, extra mile to actually have some sort of a breakthrough.

54:19

So all of that, as you think about everything that I've laid out as well as literal attacks to your body and not just emotionally, that is what trauma is.

54:30

So when we talk about racial trauma, we're talking all that, we're also talking history. It wasn't just my father, but what happened to his parents dying because of the whole

54:41

TB outbreak. And then before that, and then we go all the way back to the enslavement of my ancestors and that these are stories, these are experiences that are passed down generationally.

54:52

And that is trauma. So that whole basket is it. Right, you wrote, many of us are unaware of how historical racial trauma rather than individual trauma spans multiple generations and still affects us.

55:08

And you refer to this aspect of epigenetics. Share with us what that is and what that statement means.

55:15

So there's studies that are around that. And a lot of it originated with some studies around trauma with Holocaust survivors, that they were noticing that their children of Holocaust survivors or even the grandchildren were experiencing emotional issues and struggles that almost mirrored like someone who had gone through that.

55:35

And it was, okay, how did that happen? Was it just that they heard the stories? Is that why this is the case?

55:41

They also did it with First Nation communities and they actually realized like, that's part of it.

55:47

Part of it is stories that are passed down in folklore. But then there's a part of it where genetically trauma lodges in our bodies and it affects our bodies.

55:57

I'm not just our minds and memories, but there's a way in which we can, the stress and strain can affect our

56:04

DNA. It doesn't change the structure of the DNA, but there's a weakening. So there's a susceptibility to things.

56:10

So if you look at like the native population and then just the high prevalence of alcoholism, it's like, okay, is that alcoholism because it just is from the family or where is that coming from?

56:21

And if you look at historically, things like the Trail of Tears, just what they've had to endure, that there are ways of managing coping.

56:30

So the introduction of alcohol and how that has affected them even to this day.

56:36

And so as black folk, yes, we hear some of the stories. A lot of times they're missing pieces.

56:43

So we don't know everything, but what we have seen is the stress that, for instance, with women, black women, the level of maternal death in childbirth is the highest.

56:55

And part of that is that level of just the stress and strain that we carry from our mother, from our grandmother going back.

57:05

Yeah, I think about specifically the high instances of hypertension, high blood pressure.

57:10

And it kind of makes sense if high blood pressure is a response to stress, to elevated stress levels.

57:17

But that's pretty profound that it actually can somehow impact us physically to the point that something can become inherited in that sense, just for those that don't know.

57:26

Okay, all right, that was a long stretch. So high blood pressure, I guess it's not diet and food, maybe that contributes, but it's this generational trauma.

57:38

It's sinful things like alcoholism, generational trauma, again. I mean, how many things did she say were part of generational trauma there?

57:48

I mean, that is such a convenient thing if you can just say, well, it's my grandparents went through this. And there's so many things that I would like to make sense of because white males have the highest suicide rate.

57:59

So is that because we have the most generational trauma or Appalachia where it's mostly white people, seven of the 10 deadliest diseases are predominant there.

58:10

Is that because they had generational trauma? I mean, look, here's the thing that when you look at history, there's a lot of countervailing forces that often make complex situations that show or demonstrate what we have today.

58:25

Sometimes we don't even know what they all are, but you can certainly look at Appalachia and you can see like a lot of tragedy, a lot of poverty, a whole bunch of things.

58:34

If you're a pastor in Appalachia though, and I'm specifically choosing that because I want you to envision a church that's primarily gonna be composed of probably white

58:41

MAGA Trump people. What do you tell them about that? What do you say? What do you say to them? How do you encourage them?

58:47

I mean, our Daily Bread usually has devotionals that are encouraged, right? What's the biblical way to approach those things?

58:52

Especially sinful things like alcoholism. Well, you'd never find in the Bible, well, it's because of what your grandfather went through and people just got to understand.

59:02

It's more like repent, stop what you're doing. We have a standard to maintain.

59:08

If you're a leader in the church, you can't even be, you should not be addicted to much wine, but it's a sin to be mastered by anything.

59:15

Instead, what are you supposed to do? Be filled with the spirit. This is a universal command to all Christians regardless of what their grandparents went through.

59:22

I also find it interesting that it seems like it's those who did not live through slavery or even civil rights that are the most upset about it and woke and all the rest and wanna change everything and make sure the social institutions are promoting equity because they didn't go through this stuff that they're complaining about the most.

59:47

But this is a convenient way I suppose to say, well, our grandparents did, therefore it's also our experience.

59:55

I mean, I think that in history, you do have conditions that are passed down to you and advice that's passed down to you and so forth.

01:00:03

I don't know about this genetics thing, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that there's some genetic stuff. What are you supposed to do with that?

01:00:10

Do you think the God of the universe who created everything would have known about something like that? And if he wrote a book that's sufficient for our life and godliness that he would have, if it was important enough, he would have talked about that kind of thing.

01:00:23

I think that the solutions are in scripture. I would, you would think Daily Bread would think the solutions for these kinds of things are in scripture.

01:00:30

If you're dealing with trauma as they say it, but someone sinned against you or you're sinning yourself and you're dealing with the consequences of those things, then there's plenty of stuff in scripture to help you navigate those challenges.

01:00:45

And I don't find any of it, I don't find anything that says it's because you are experiencing a delayed reaction to what your grandfather went through.

01:00:58

And therefore, as a result of that, in order to understand trauma, we got to cut you slack or we got to somehow redistribute or we need to do something social here.

01:01:08

It's you personally, you've been sinned against, what's the step? You got to get to learn to what?

01:01:14

Forgive, got to learn to forgive. Or say that the person who sinned against you is not repentant of that, you don't want to forgive them.

01:01:23

Well, you need to learn to come to terms with it and you need to learn to live with it and not engage in sin yourself because of a reaction to sin.

01:01:34

You don't hear that kind of stuff in these podcasts, you just, you hear more woke nonsense. So more could be said, but let's go to the next one for the sake of time.

01:01:45

Healing, oh, we're still in the, okay. So remember, I mean. Yeah, this is the same podcast. Okay, healing racial trauma.

01:01:51

You had Michael Brown's killing, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, all of that was at its apex.

01:01:58

And then a political atmosphere in which suddenly racialized rhetoric and language becomes normalized.

01:02:05

And all that's happening at the same time. And so you kind of enter into that space with some sense of shock that even the place that you had recognized and even experienced racial trauma from before was still somewhat different.

01:02:18

So at what point you make the connection from South Africa to present day US and go, okay, we have a problem.

01:02:24

Yeah, when it became evident that it wasn't just something like out there, like I'm watching

01:02:29

TV, but it was closer to home. It started to manifest the symptoms of racial trauma in me as a person and those around me.

01:02:39

And so concern for like my black husband and son and daughter, and I'm hearing from friends and I'm seeing in the media,

01:02:49

I'm seeing that these are not just isolated things. And as a black woman, as a mother, like when

01:02:56

I see what happened to Michael Brown and him laying in the street for hours, I see

01:03:01

Michael Brown, but I see like that could be my son, my nephew, one of my brothers.

01:03:07

I mean, we know we have family members who have been pulled over, who have been taken into custody, who there was almost a case of mistaken identity and in terms of a trial, and we know it's familiar.

01:03:21

And so the trauma is, it's a vicarious trauma that we're experiencing. And so it's as if it did happen to us.

01:03:29

We saw with our... Man, I have so much trauma, I guess. I mean, my family kicked out of England.

01:03:36

They had to flee because of persecution and came to the new world. And then some of them settled in the

01:03:43

South and they were invaded, they were impoverished, but then they were invaded and their area burned, their churches burned.

01:03:51

I mean, what am I supposed to do with all of this? And then I look on the news and I see a man named Donald J.

01:03:57

Trump who wants to represent me and they're trying to put him in jail. They're trying to shoot at him. And I mean, look at all the trauma that I have as a result of this.

01:04:04

No one speaks this way for an obvious reason because as adults living in the world, we realize that while there may be those who wanna stop the

01:04:15

MAGA political movement or whatever, they didn't shoot at me and they didn't put me in jail personally. And I may take offense to them doing that to someone like Donald Trump, but I would never call it trauma.

01:04:25

I would never say I have trauma because, oh my goodness, it just reminds me back to all the things that have happened in my family and all of the family members

01:04:34

I have who have gone to jail and it's just, it's discrimination against my family or something like that.

01:04:40

We don't do that. And nor should you do that. It's not healthy. It's, this is going, this is the kind of thing that conditions you to have trauma when you shouldn't have trauma.

01:04:50

You're going to now be susceptible to being suspicious and nervous and all the rest because you're being told this is somehow all connected to you.

01:05:04

And look, the examples that were just given were not even good example.

01:05:09

Michael Brown, really? Are you kidding me? The hands up, don't shoot. The DOJ report says didn't happen.

01:05:15

I mean, really it looks like what happened was the guy actually went and tried to take Officer Wilson's gun.

01:05:21

And it's been framed and the framing continues that this was a racially motivated police shooting, which we don't even have evidence to suggest that that was what actually happened.

01:05:31

But we're just going to take that and we're going to say that that is racial, that contributes to racial trauma.

01:05:38

And this does not help anyone in their lives. And to even focus on this kind of thing and frame it this way is,

01:05:46

I think shows a lack of trust in God and in his purposes.

01:05:51

And it is sinning against Officer Wilson in this case, but it is not giving the benefit of the doubt.

01:05:58

It's not respecting due process. How can you call that Christian? Any of that? It's terrible that Daily Bread's putting this kind of stuff out.

01:06:06

Research was not that all Christians are less motivated, but particularly white Christians and Asian Christians as well.

01:06:13

And to a lesser degree, Hispanic or Latino Christians. This is an episode called Faithful Anti -Racism.

01:06:19

He's talking about all the groups that aren't concerned about racism enough. So whites at the top of the list and then these other groups tend to be less motivated to address racial injustice in our society.

01:06:30

And his name is Chad Brennan. And the other lady you're gonna hear in a moment is Dr. Christina Edmondson.

01:06:36

American Christians tend to be more motivated than non -Christians and that's an intensifying effect.

01:06:41

So a white Christian is significantly less motivated to address racial injustice in the

01:06:47

United States than a white non -Christian. You also talk about the cross and the gospel.

01:06:54

I've heard this by the way. I think I looked it up once years ago, but I've heard this so many times that this is the case that white evangelical or white

01:07:03

Christians are the most racist demographic in the country because they don't care about racism. And then the black church is the most concerned with this kind of thing.

01:07:12

And so there's this moral superiority. The thing I wonder about the whole thing is that you look at like voting numbers, like black

01:07:21

Protestants vote, it's astronomical. It's like close to like 90%.

01:07:27

They vote for the Democrat and then for white evangelicals, it's not quite as high, but it's pretty high that they vote for the

01:07:36

Republican. And how did they frame this study is what

01:07:41

I wanna know. And I don't know, I don't have it in front of me, but if caring about the supposed solutions, the socialist motivated solutions to these things makes you care more on the study, you care more about race.

01:07:56

You think it's more of a problem. You think it needs to be addressed because you're on the left. And these are the things that you're swimming in and the solutions that you want.

01:08:03

It would make sense that those kind of numbers would make sense. And I would be, I think it would be good.

01:08:08

It is a good thing if that's the case for the white Christians to not be as concerned with it, because they're not gonna be looking for socialist solutions to these kinds of things.

01:08:18

And they probably do think it's overblown, just like the Michael Brown thing isn't how it's portrayed. They're probably not conditioned in the same way.

01:08:25

That doesn't mean though, and this is the problem. It doesn't mean that there's this moral play where there's this great disparity and white

01:08:31

Christians are, they're worse than non -Christians on this because they don't buy the narrative really is what it amounts to.

01:08:39

Being both vertical and horizontal in nature. And I think, especially because some of the things that I've heard throughout doing justice work in the church context is often that we should be focused on the gospel.

01:08:52

So Chad. Listen closely here though. You said the gospel has this vertical and this horizontal. That's Russell Berry you're hearing doing the interview.

01:08:58

And he asked Chad Brennan, so what about the gospel? And this is where I said earlier, I think that Dave, Our Daily Bread has promoted stuff that actually does take away from the gospel that corrupts the gospel.

01:09:11

You're about to hear it. Listen closely. Help us with that. Help us to think about why anti -racism is relevant to the gospel or not.

01:09:19

Are we just adding something extraneous to what it is that we're supposed to be about? Yes. I think really so much, especially when it comes down to theological foundations for this work comes back to what is the gospel.

01:09:32

And that's why we focus on it so much in the book. And my experience, both personally, and then as I work with Christians around the country is that very rarely do

01:09:39

I come across a Christian that would argue against the idea that there is both a vertical and horizontal component to the gospel.

01:09:46

So they would say, oh yes, I know. It's not just about me and God. It's also about me and others. But the way that that gets worked out for different Christians is radically different.

01:09:55

The Christian community that I was a part of that I grew up in, it's mostly about me and Jesus or me and God through Christ. And then

01:10:01

I'm called to kind of live at these fruits of the spirit and be kind to others and those kinds of things. But it kind of ended there.

01:10:07

It was mostly a relational one -on -one love your neighbor kind of piece, but it didn't really extend to more systemic issues.

01:10:16

Where did you catch it? The shift from gospel to law right there that we're talking about, is this related to the gospel?

01:10:24

He affirms that it is. And it's this horizontal component to the gospel.

01:10:31

And now what is he talking about? Loving neighbor. He's talking about the law. He's talking about what actually condemns us. And also as a reaction and gratitude to what

01:10:40

Christ has done, we're supposed to live in such a way that pleases God, which means obeying his commands, which means loving others.

01:10:45

But this is not the gospel. It's not the good news of what Christ has done. He's talking about what we're doing. He's talking about our works.

01:10:51

And this is what I say. Why I say this is like the Galatian heresy 2 .0. Justice and those types of things kind of ended there.

01:10:57

So it was a message of silence in many ways. Like we're not talking about that. We're not emphasizing that.

01:11:03

And so that's very common. I mean, as we've seen with our research, is that that's a really common thing that we hear consistently as we do surveys or do focus groups around the country is sentiment.

01:11:13

I don't think we should focus on social issues like racism. We should just focus on the gospel.

01:11:20

And so the implication there is that, these are either apart from or even contrary to.

01:11:27

Trauma can feel like. Yeah, it would be apart from the gospel. The gospel is what the power of God is salvation for those who believe.

01:11:37

It is what Christ has done. It is not our works. It's not what we do. It's not our social justice, anti -racism thing that we do.

01:11:45

That's not part of the gospel. I'm sorry. A set of lenses that we put on, like when we have a traumatic experience, it kind of shapes the way that we see ourselves, the way we see the world, even the way that we see

01:11:54

God. We can find ourself asking questions like, is this how it's supposed to be? Have I done something wrong?

01:11:59

But it also has an impact on our physiology, like our own bodies, like our blood pressure, right? Our physical health is impacted by the stress that trauma creates and our body experiences that stress.

01:12:11

And so there's a number of resources that specifically talk about the ways in which racism impacts physical health, but certainly also psychological health as well, right?

01:12:21

And so we can look in within the African -American community, for example, and look at the rates of anxiety disorders that we see in that particular population.

01:12:30

And we can also think about the way that racial trauma impacts our spiritual health.

01:12:36

So when we're wrestling with this sense of the faith and what does it mean to forgive and what does it mean to endure and where did

01:12:44

I get this faith from? And even like this whole movement right now, you have people who are interrogating, have I even been given the right

01:12:50

Christianity? Is this a Christianity of the oppressor, right? Am I being manipulated by Christianity, right?

01:12:56

Even the wrestling of those questions are oftentimes a reaction to experiencing very real racial trauma that have opened the door, sometimes to really helpful and necessary work, but also sometimes to really painful work that pulls people out of the church instead of towards God for answers.

01:13:13

That is such a good point. Yes, I've said this so many times. It is the off -ramp, guys.

01:13:18

It is the off -ramp. You start saying, well, you know what? The church, pretty racist. They actually are more racist than non -Christians in the white church, at least.

01:13:27

And the church has this history, it's terrible. Christian nationalism, that's like the KKK. It's just, it's awful.

01:13:33

All these Christians are awful. And then you expect, what's the reaction gonna be? Well, I guess

01:13:39

I'll leave, right? Obviously, and she's admitting it here. Yes, it is an off -ramp when you start doing these kinds of things.

01:13:45

And you start categorizing all these minor, these things you just heard her talk about. Again, we're in the microaggression land.

01:13:51

It's either the level of anxiety is because of these traumatic things. And it's, you know, racism is this looming thing that is just affecting so much.

01:14:00

It's down to your blood pressure numbers are, it could be racism. What's that parody that I saw?

01:14:07

I know it's gone around a few times from a show where it's this kid who's got like a heart problem and the mother goes in and doesn't know what the problem is.

01:14:16

And the doctor comes back and says, it's racism. And it's, I thought it was a joke at first, but it's actually from some television show.

01:14:21

I mean, that's what you're getting. You're getting the same narrative coming from, of all places, our Daily Bread Ministries.

01:14:27

As white Christians, and this has been part of my journey the more we understand about how racial injustice operates both in our own lives and in society, we have to wrestle with our own personal part of that.

01:14:39

Like, how have I personally contributed during my 49 years of living on this planet? But then also the community that I'm a part of, how has it contributed to it?

01:14:48

And that's a space we're not typically very good at, especially as American Christians, we don't usually think corporately about our spiritual lives, but the

01:14:56

Bible talks a lot about our corporate spiritual lives. And so, you know, we have to wrestle with, to what degree do

01:15:02

I have ownership for the people that are part of my nation, or my tribe, or my people group, my racial group?

01:15:07

The great news on that is, and this has been something that I'm still very much in process on, but I'm so thankful for, is that Christ is the answer to individual sin and to corporate sin.

01:15:16

Just bringing people together in the same space does not always equal progress. In many cases, it equals pain and suffering, particularly for people of color, who are required to put up with microaggressions and painful power dynamics, and just all kinds of oppressive dynamics in Christian organizations.

01:15:34

And so that's one of our magical approaches. So if we can just reach some kind of statistical threshold, then magically we're gonna achieve biblical community.

01:15:44

But sadly, oftentimes that we've observed consistently over the last 15 years, is that as the racial diversity increases, so do the problematic dynamics.

01:15:53

And in many cases, I think one of the assumptions in that is that both people of color and white people are going to make good changes in those spaces, and it's gonna work out great.

01:16:03

But unfortunately, what we tend to see is a much stronger change required on the part of people of color.

01:16:09

So they're required to kind of adapt to white normativity and white ways of doing things. All right, so we end the podcast with...

01:16:17

Hey, it's Rob. All right, what I would consider to be a just, it sounds like an argument for segregation, to be quite honest with you, that you get these people together, you think that you're making progress, but you're not because the exposure of black people to white people means that there's these white standards that come in, and I guess they can't live up to them or they don't live up to them, and this creates more friction.

01:16:41

And it's just a bad thing all around when you start mixing these people. So what are you supposed to do? I mean, what's the solution that if that's a problem, if the problem is white people being around,

01:16:51

I mean, I guess you could eliminate white people, that would be an option, or you have to get away from them somehow, right? And go somewhere else.

01:16:57

You can't make this up. And this is Our Daily Bread Ministries putting it out. So I think people should be aware. This is a devotional ministry.

01:17:04

This is a scripture ministry. This is a ministry that many of you probably thought for years, this is a solid ministry, but they're doing some other projects, and they're on their

01:17:13

YouTube channel right now. There's more. I feel like I scratched the surface. There's a lot more, but these are just some of the things that I found just searching a little bit here and there on their

01:17:24

YouTube channel that I would consider to be woke. And the thing that I think bothers me about it is the way it's promoted, that this is

01:17:33

Christian, that this is how Christians ought to think about these things. And obviously on many of the things that I showed you, it is running completely contrary to scripture, even on the gospel, something as basic as that.

01:17:44

So there you go. In closing, I'll just say, please check out my new album. On a positive note, do check out my new album, please.

01:17:53

I really do appreciate everyone who supported me on that. This is somewhat of a passion project. So johnharristoons .com.

01:17:59

And then I'll say this finally about the, not just this organization, but crew and other organizations that have compromised in these ways.

01:18:08

Pray for them. Pray that they would truly repent and not just course correct, not just do smoke and mirrors and say where there's nothing to see here and people are being mean to us.

01:18:18

No, that they would actually own what they've said, that they would repent, that they would take this stuff down from their YouTube channel.

01:18:23

That would actually demonstrate that they've repented and that they would be fully solid in every way because clearly

01:18:31

Our Daily Bread Ministries is not at this point. And I could not recommend them because of that.

01:18:37

If you wanna use their devotionals and there's nothing objectionable and they're, okay. Aren't there better things you could be doing though, aren't there?

01:18:43

I mean, I know I'm not like everyone. I read the Bible, but I read a passage from Augustine.

01:18:50

So I'm going through his confessions and I just read a section. It's a little section. It's about an Our Daily Bread length section every day.

01:18:56

Maybe do that. Maybe find another devotional that might be better. In my opinion, I wouldn't wanna support them. And I know many churches do these mass, they'll buy a bunch of them for everyone in their church.

01:19:06

And Our Daily Bread's gonna, I mean, they're gonna freak out with videos like this because that's their money. That's their business. That's where it hurts.

01:19:12

And maybe that will be the thing that will help them to stop this nonsense. But I personally, like I'm gonna,

01:19:19

I know I'm gonna have a conversation later with my pastor about this. And I'm gonna be like, hey, are we still promoting them?

01:19:25

Because I don't know if we should be doing that. We'll see where that goes. So anyway, God bless. I hope that was helpful for many of you who have asked.