Responding to a Fairly Decent Video From Jemar Tisby on Gospel Coalition

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Well, all right, I found a five minute video from Jamar Tisby on the Gospel Coalition that I had not seen before.

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So I am looking forward to this. He is going to tell us what discourages him the most as he listened to the race conversation today, but also what encourages him the most when he listens to the race conversation today.

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So I have not watched this yet. Let's go ahead and give him a thumbs up here.

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And let's just get started. And maybe at the end, I'll, I'll tell you how I would answer this question. Here we go.

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Christians talk about race today is the fact that so few understand that racism never goes away.

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It just adapts. So I think a lot of people think of racism strictly in terms of segregated schools, race based chattel slavery, you know, those kinds of overt forms of racism without realizing that even though the law has changed, people found ways to get around the law.

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Let's not. So on the one hand, he's right. I mean, obviously, there's always going to be racist people.

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You can't, you can't regulate or legally, legally outlaw something that's in the heart.

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I mean, God can do that, but you can't make a law and expect people to change their hearts. But to say that, to say that racism never goes away, and it never will, essentially,

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I think that is a very gospel -less presentation of it.

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Racism can go away and racism will go away. So you could see how this is sort of a, his ideology is just a recipe for never ending strife.

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And I just don't believe the Bible presents a situation like that. Forget that Brown v.

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Board desegregating public schools was passed in 1954. But for the next decade and a half, people found ways to prevent

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African Americans from going to previously all -white schools. And it took other court cases, for example,

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Alexander v. Holmes County in 1969, that put an exact deadline of January 1970 for the desegregation of public schools for it to actually begin happening.

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And then even after that, folks said, well, we still don't want to go to school with people of a different race.

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And they started forming their own academies and their own schools. And so this is a manifestation of the way race never goes away.

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It just adapts to new conditions. So it's a movement from - Again, that's true, except for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which

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I think we have good reason to believe that the nations will be discipled. And that doesn't mean that every person, there will be no racism in any heart.

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But I do believe that that means that all sins will be very rare and people will be discipled and people will be following Christ and things like that.

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I don't think Jamar would admit this, but I would say that we should believe that the Christian church would have less racists than the pagan culture.

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I think that's pretty obvious to me. I don't know if Jamar would actually agree with that, but I don't think there's any biblical reason not to agree with that.

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Slavery, the most overt form of racism, to laws that institutionalized segregation, which we know is

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Jim Crow, to now what some would call de facto segregation, which is never inscribed in words.

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It doesn't ever have to use black or white or race or ethnicity. And it also doesn't need any evidence.

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And yet still, people are segregated. Our schools now are still segregated.

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Our churches now are still segregated. And so the idea that because some laws were changed, which are good, it affects behavior.

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And I want those laws. But to say that the human heart... I don't want those laws.

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Because actually, I think that these laws, I think segregation laws, for example, they're not godly.

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You won't find anything like that. You won't find anything like that in the Bible. You won't say that we're going to force integration and things like that.

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You don't see that. What you do see is commands against partiality, commands against having any kind of ill will in your heart towards a brother for stupid reasons.

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And so I don't think the government should even be involved in that. And I think when the government gets involved in that, it actually makes racism and segregation worse than it would have been if the gospel just goes out and you say, well, look, there's no law for this, but God, your creator commands this.

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And therefore, if you disobey and you insist on disobeying, you will end up in eternal punishment.

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I think that's actually a better way. So I understand that that might sound crazy. But actually, I don't think the laws against segregation are very good laws or the hate crime laws or things like that.

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I don't think that those should actually be laws. You won't find anything like that in the scripture. You can't apply the general equity of God's law and come up with that kind of stuff that comes from human ideas that comes from human philosophies and things like that.

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And actually, it makes things worse. Affirmative action makes things worse. What does it make things worse is when you have the church actually be in the church and insisting that if you have this hatred in your heart, you must repent.

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And if you do not, you are out. Has changed. I know that sounds crazy, but that's the reality.

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And go to the Bible and prove me wrong. Is erroneous and not to be able to see the way racism manifests itself in systems and institutions is is very disappointing.

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Yeah, that's why we should get rid of those systems and institutions that are ungodly. So Jamar is disappointed that essentially white people can't see the racism that's in the systems and the institutions.

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Well, if you would provide the evidence for it, the actual evidence that there are racist ideas or feelings in the heart that are being applied in partial ways or whatever it is,

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I think a lot more white people would would accept it. One other disappointing aspect. I'll hold on a second.

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He was supposed to give us one, and now he's going to give us more. Point two is the desire for some

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Christians to withdraw from culture. They see changes, whether ideological changes that we see of increasingly secular society, a non

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Christian society, in some cases, even an anti Christian society. And the solution is, well, we've lost power.

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So so so let's go away and form our own groups where we still have power, even if it's in just a smaller setting.

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I think the way forward. And this is coming from a racial minority perspective.

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We've always had to engage with a group that in some senses wanted to marginalize us.

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And so we never had a choice but to engage in in the broader culture that wasn't always friendly.

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And I think going forward in the 21st century, Christians ought to think very critically about strategically engaging and withdrawing and what that means and what that conveys, especially in light of the gospel, the the the the evangel.

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How are we actually drawing others to us if we're continually separating ourselves from the people who who need the gospel the most?

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I think he's right about that. I think there is a tendency to sort of withdraw into spaces.

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I think Jeff Durbin calls them Christian ghettos. There's a tendency to withdraw into Christian ghettos where we still have some authority and we can sort of do our own thing.

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But I actually don't think that's the right strategy. I think that we must insist that people all over the place recognize

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Christ as Lord. And I think that is the evangel. That is what evangelism is. Christ commands us to go and make disciples of all nations.

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And then he says how to do that. He says you baptize them. That's, you know, conversion. And then you teach them to obey everything that Christ says.

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See, that's the part that most people miss because they a lot of people would say, well, why should the government do things in a

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Christian way? Because we have to baptize the nations and also teach them to obey every single thing that Christ said,

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Old and New Testament. So I think actually Jamar is right about this point. I don't think because I've never seen him really apply the general equity of the law in a consistent way for today and especially with this race issue.

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I think that's the main problem that a lot of the social justice warriors have. They have the right idea about the evangel requiring us to engage with that culture and to come up against that culture and really stand out, be salt and light and all that.

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They have the right idea there, but they're just not consistently applying the rest, the second half of that Great Commission.

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As far as what encourages me about Christians and the conversation about race,

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I think I'm increasingly understanding that there doesn't need to be a lot of people to make a difference.

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Jesus talks about the kingdom of God being a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, and yet it grows into a mighty tree.

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And I think that's what we're seeing. We're seeing a mustard seed movement. It is a multiracial, multigenerational, gender inclusive movement that is like nothing we've ever seen before.

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It has staunch biblical principles, historical, orthodox, biblical principles guide it, and yet it's very much a 21st century movement that stands in solidarity with all kinds of different people groups.

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I think it's minority led. I think women have a strong voice in this movement.

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And there's not a large group, but it's a significant group.

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It's a powerful group. And so I see Christians. I disagree with him that it's not a large group.

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This is the largest group. I absolutely disagree with that. This group is the group that's doing things according to the world.

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They might have foundational orthodox Christian beliefs, like they might believe Christ is Lord. They might believe the correct atonement doctrines, things like that.

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And not all of them do, actually, because a lot of them are, well, just say liberal. But this is the movers and shakers.

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The fact that he can be on a gospel coalition video and saying that they're a small group is absolutely shocking to me.

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It's just not the case at all. Genuinely committed to racial reconciliation, truth, and justice.

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I'm seeing more and more Christians from the racial majority committed to these things. And so it doesn't take a lot of us.

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But the thing is, as I said before, that they're not committed to truth and justice because they're not applying

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God's justice. What I need to see is specifics on how you apply the law of God in the civil realm to our issues today and how you get things like the segregation laws or things like hate crime laws or things like that or welfare or any of these things.

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I want to see how you do that because I'm not going to say you can't do it because I'm not that stupid.

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But what I will say is I've never seen it. And I'm pretty confident that it wouldn't be possible to do in a consistent way.

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Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see if potentially we'll see this one day. But it's happening. And I urge others to join the movement of God's spirit in our day.

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All right, well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So that was actually pretty decent. Well, I'll answer the question.

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What discourages me the most about the race conversation today is just the willingness that people have to really just adopt the world's categories, to adopt the world's strategies for solving the issue and to adopt the world's language.

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Even these ideas of white privilege and these ideas of oppressor oppression.

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You know, the scripture uses those words, but it uses them in very defined categories.

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An oppressor can only oppress according to how God says oppression works. And it's not income inequalities.

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It's not disparities in wealth and things like that. And so that discourages me the most because so many

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Christians who should know better are just essentially doing what the world is doing, applying the world's standards and applying the world's solutions.

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That is a recipe for disaster. And it's going to be a disaster in the future. What encourages me the most is that there are lots of people who know that this kind of stuff doesn't sound right, but are starting to delve into deeper.

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Why is it? Does it not sound right? Is it just because I have a bias of some kind or is it the scriptures that say this?

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And I think that the willingness of so many believers to make sure they're laser focused on the scripture.

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So when they see Jamar say things like he's saying, they say, show me in the scriptures, show me in the

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Bible, and I'll believe it. That commitment is very encouraging, and that will lead to the solutions in the future.

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So anyway, I hope this video was helpful. Go ahead and give Jamar a thumbs up on the