More Thoughts on Matt Chandler's #MLK50 ERLC Affirmative Action Scheme

I received a few comments on a couple of my videos that were very similar. So I figured it would probably be a good idea to address it. And I thought I was making this clear in some of those videos, but clearly I wasn't.

Correcting Past Injustice Without Creating New Injustice

And so that's on me. So I wanted to use an example to sort of show you what I mean. The question has come up numerous times. The counterpoint to what I'm saying is a lot of people will say something like this.

Because of the discrimination and slavery in the past and systemic and institutional injustice of the past, there are effects of that that continue today. And so what we need to do is correct those effects that are still with us today.

So the argument would say something like this. In slave times, because of slavery, because of Jim Crow, white people have more wealth than they would have without slavery and Jim Crow. And black people have less wealth than they would have if slavery and Jim Crow wasn't a thing.

So what we need to do is kind of correct that. And basically, sometimes people will say, well, we need to give black people almost like sort of like a back pay situation, to make up for the wealth that they would have had if they were paid for their work.

Or take away from white people what they've earned unjustly in the present, in other words. So because of the crimes of the past, in the present, we need to correct those disparities that wouldn't exist.

That's what the argument says. It wouldn't exist if not for the injustices of the past. And I would say that we correct injustice when we have the ability to do it. So if there was something that we could do now, like let's say there was someone who held slaves that was still alive today, and we could demonstrate how exactly what they stole from certain people and how exactly they did it, and we had two or more witnesses, we should make restitution in that instance.

But since we can't do that, since it was so long ago, and since we wouldn't have the correct witnesses and we wouldn't really be able to figure that all out, we don't do that. We don't go that far back and try to correct those things today.

Abortion as a Present-Day Systemic Injustice

And I think an example that would be good to show why we shouldn't do that is something that we could potentially talk about regarding a current institutional and systemic injustice. And I think that all Christians can agree that there is a very specific, provable, two or more witnesses, all the whole thing, current systemic and institutional injustice in the United States of America.

And that is the injustice of abortion. Abortion is the murder of an unborn human being. And so in the United States, we have systemically and institutionally enshrined abortion rights into law. And so the unborn do not have the right to life.

They don't have the right to not be murdered. And so if you murder an unborn child in the United States, there is no penalty for that. In fact, that is promoted by our government. And so that's an institutional systemic injustice that is real that we can prove today.

Now, the question is, what should be done to correct that systemic and institutional injustice? Now, I would say, and this is how it should be done with the other systemic injustice as well, what you do is you reverse the laws and so you make it a crime to murder an unborn child.

It's amazing that we even have to say that. This is so basic, but it should be a crime, a criminal act to murder an unborn child. So we change the law and then that's what we do. We sort of let, we prosecute people who do kill their unborn children.

We, the just penalty for murder, we accomplish that kind of thing. And in that way, that's how you establish justice because God's law says that murder should be a crime and we establish justice in that way.

People will still murder, that's very true. People will still have abortions, but they would be prosecuted with two or more witnesses and the whole thing. So that's how you establish justice. Now, does that mean that the black community would have less abortions than the white community?

I don't know how that will shake out. There might still be disparities there, but we apply justice equally in the black community, in the white community, in the Latino community, the whole thing. Now, that's what we should do with the systemic injustices of the past.

Why Affirmative Action Replaces Justice With Partiality

And so we reverse Jim Crow. We make it so that everyone is impartial, or at least by law has to be impartial. The government can't treat people differently based on skin color or based on ethnicity. The government is not allowed to do that.

I think that's a very good thing and we've already done that. So people have equal standing according to the law. Now, that doesn't mean that they're always treated the same. So sometimes people have racial biases.

And so we should take care of that as the situation warrants and that's how you establish justice. Now, does that mean that the income inequalities or the wealth inequalities are gonna disappear overnight?

No, it does not. But does that mean you should correct those? Well, again, let's go back to the abortion idea. Would it be just to say, okay, we're gonna end abortion. We're gonna say that murdering an unborn child is a crime, but we also realize that the black community has been disproportionately affected by abortions of the past.

And so proportionally more black babies die than white babies comparative to their population levels. And so do we then go then say, okay, well, to make it even, what we should do is kill a bunch of white babies, unborn babies to make it even.

Obviously not, that wouldn't make sense. You know, would it make sense? Okay, well, because abortions are advertised more in Latino and black communities in the past, what we should do now is maybe we don't kill white babies, but what we do is we should promote abortions more in white neighborhoods to make it more even.

No, we don't do that either. That would obviously be unjust. You don't fix injustice with more injustice. You don't fix partiality with more partiality. And that's exactly why I stand against affirmative action.

Matt Chandler, Partiality, and Hiring a Pastor

In Matt Chandler's speech, he promoted affirmative action in how he hires a pastor. He said that he would hire a black man with lesser qualifications than a white man. That's what he's looking for. He's looking for someone with the right skin color.

And so I would say, no, you can't fight partiality, which, you know, let's just all agree that there was partiality in the church in the past, but you can't say, okay, to correct that, what we'll do is we'll have more partiality now in reverse.

And so that'll correct the injustice. It doesn't work that way. I think it's very easy to see that with the issue of abortion. You can't solve abortion, the disparities that you find in abortion with more abortion.

You know what I mean? It doesn't work that way. And so maybe that is a better way to kind of think about these things. How do you solve the injustices of the past? Well, how would you solve the injustice of abortion?

You would correct the law, make it more in line with God's law. You would make it a just law, and then you prosecute evenly. You accomplish that law evenly. It's the same law, whether you're black, whether you're white, whether you're Latino, it's one law, whether you're a native or a sojourner, whether you're an immigrant or a native born, it's the same law.

That's what God says. And so Matt Chandler's idea of showing partiality to correct sort of a systemic injustice in the past, I'm sorry, that's not having the same law for white people and for black people.

That's having a different law. That's having a partial law. That is not allowed according to scripture. And so a pastor should not be partaking in partiality, even partiality that is reversing, supposed to reverse some kind of previous discrimination.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. I hope this is a little bit more clear. God bless.