Race Reconciliation Good Faith Debate - Who Cares? Part 1

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the channel. God bless you. Glad you came back. So, today we're going to be doing the good faith debate on racial reconciliation.

I asked in the last video if you guys wanted me to do it, and quite a few of you reached out and said yes. Of course, there were a few no's.

I get it. I understand. These good faith debates are hard. So, we're going to do it. This will be the last good faith debate that we do, unless there's something just so juicy.

If there's something really juicy, then we'll do it. Anyway, here we go.

Then, Monday, just to give you a heads up on what's going to be happening here on the channel. Monday, I'll have

Joel Webben on the show. We're going to be talking about the book that he wrote about Christians leaving blue areas and going into red areas as a strategic kind of thing, and for their families and stuff like that.

All the dust up that that kicked up, because on Twitter, lots of people were very mad about that.

They were hopping mad. They said a lot of really just ridiculous things, just things that you read them and you just ask yourself, there's no way this guy is that stupid, is there?

I'm not talking about Joel. I'm talking about the people that were taking a lot of umbrage with what he had to say. The thing is, you don't have to agree with Joel, but just the way that they've responded, it really makes you question people's intelligence.

I'm not going to lie. We're going to talk about that. After that, I'm going to take some time off, probably a week or so, maybe a little bit more.

I'll probably still do some of those short videos that I've been doing on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter.

I really want people to follow me on Twitter, not because I think Twitter's great, but I've been putting out a lot of very brief, two minute video content out there.

I've done some video threads as well, because I refuse to pay Elon Musk to use Twitter. In any case,

I'll probably do some of those, but not much more than that. Let's jump right into it today though.

Racial reconciliation. Can true racial reconciliation happen? That's the name of this video.

I got to be honest with you guys. I'm at this point. I know that there are real people that don't like other ethnicities.

I know that that really exists. I've experienced it myself, so I know it's real just from my own experience.

I know that other people, they've experienced it. They're not lying. I get all that.

It can be ugly. I get that. I got to be honest with you. Any serious discussion about racism these days,

I find absolutely hilarious, because nine times out of 10, it's complete malarkey.

I don't know what really malarkey means, but I say it. Bunko. It's flim flam. Fugazi. It's fugazi is what it is.

Nine times out of 10, you see a serious conversation about race. It's a bunch of nonsense.

I find it really funny now. I have a hard time. I'm just admitting this to you.

I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm just telling you what my reality is.

My reality is this. When two guys get very ultra serious to discuss racism in 2023 in the

United States, I find it funny. Or antisemitism.

When people get hopping mad because you use the term synagogue of Satan, which I use all the time.

I love using that term. It's just a wonderful term. I love it. People get all hopping mad.

Look at this. This is an example of the antisemitism. I find that hilarious.

I think it's funny. I think it's funny. I get a little bit of jollies out of it. It's not the best thing in the world, but it is.

It's delicious. It's lovely. Anyway, so that's my mindset going into it. I feel like I've been poisoned by these liberals.

When you're the boy who cried wolf, and you cry wolf again and again, and there's never a wolf.

You can't blame people for finding you funny the next time you cry wolf. It doesn't mean the next time you cry wolf, there won't be a wolf.

But if there isn't, and they're just laughing at you, you can't really hold it against them. At least,

I don't think so. I don't know, man. I don't know. I texted my brother the other day. I forget which diversity hire it was.

There was a recent diversity hire that happened, and it was a black guy.

Forget what it was that he was hired for. But anyway, it was a clear diversity hire. Anyway, beside the point,

I texted my brother. I said, this kind of thing makes me question a lot. And I said, I wonder, do we actually have any evidence that Jackie Robinson was any good?

Jackie Robinson's like a patron saint. I've known about Jackie Robinson before. I knew about Babe Ruth.

And the thing is, I got nothing against Jackie Robinson. I'm not saying he was bad at baseball. I'm not saying he was a diversity hire.

All I'm saying, though, is that it makes you wonder, do we actually have any evidence that Jackie Robinson was any good?

Did Pee Wee Reese exist? Did he even exist? I'm questioning everything now. In any case,

I still like Jackie Robinson. I'm just joking. I'm just joking, everybody. Don't get all crazy on me. Anyway, let's jump into this.

I think I've trampled on enough sacred cows for one year. So let's jump into this.

Can true racial reconciliation happen? Good faith debate. You know, this is annoying.

I find this so annoying. They always do this. They title the video something different than what the actual debate is over.

The debate is over, can racial reconciliation happen without racial justice being achieved first.

So it's not really about true racial reconciliation can happen. It's really about racial justice. This is a little bit of a bait and switch.

I find the Gospel Coalition keeps doing this. Pretty much every debate is done this way. It's framed differently in the title than in the actual content.

I find that so annoying. This is a Gospel Coalition special. I'm already in a bad mood.

Let's jump into it. Welcome to TGC's Good Faith Debates.

This is a series of conversations that are designed to help you navigate issues or topics that are confusing.

They could be contentious. They just could be difficult. And our hope is that we would be able to bring in people, talk about this in a way that is helpful to the viewer of these debates.

My name is Jim Davis. I pastor Orlando Grace I have these shoes. In fact, I'm wearing them right now.

I'm not going to show you because that's weird, but you'll just have to trust me. I'm wearing these exact shoes right now.

Nice job, buddy. To be able to moderate these debates and the topic at hand today is the relationship between racial reconciliation and racial justice.

Are they inextricably linked, whether that's going forward or backward, or is it possible for racial justice to move ahead even if racial reconciliation doesn't?

So I'm for this conversation. I'm sure you're for this conversation. By the way, I feel like they didn't put the racial justice thing in here is because they know people don't care about that.

They're sick of it. So they think if we're going to get any clicks on this video, which

I channel that has 182 ,000 subscribers.

Gospel Coalition has almost 200 ,000 subscribers and they barely get more views than I get.

That's pretty, pretty pathetic. Williamson, the lead pastor of Living Faith Bible, a lot of fake subscribers here from me in Tampa, Florida, and also by George Yancy, professor of religion and sociology at Baylor University.

Thank you for joining us for this important conversation. Good haircuts. Daryl, we'll start with you.

Can you give us your perspective on this issue? Sure. First of all, he's just so impressed with this beautiful black man.

Just look at his face. He just loves to sit at the feet of a beautiful black man and learn all about how racist he is.

I'm really honored to be here. A lot of respect for you, Jim, and appreciate what you do.

And Dr. Yancy, I'm just really eager to chat with you. I really hope this guy's the good guy in this debate because he's got my shoes.

I appreciate the question, which is really to ask, can you have really one without the other?

Can I have racial reconciliation with no racial justice? Is it possible for those who have a strong conviction about justice to move ahead with that without reconciliation?

I think the answer, to be is absolutely not. You cannot really divorce those.

It's a weird question, too. Honestly, I would argue, do

I even care about this? I don't even know if I want to formulate an opinion about this. It just doesn't really matter to me at all because I don't care about racial reconciliation.

I honestly don't even really know exactly what it is because how does a group of people that share certain traits and things like that reconcile with another group of people who share different traits?

I don't understand that. I don't get it. I honestly don't understand how that would even work on a massive scale.

People can reconcile, of course, and that's if there's some kind of a wrong between the people, we can reconcile that wrong.

I don't even understand the question. I don't even care about this at all. It's not one of those things where it's like,

I don't even know what you mean by that. Some people will say, I don't know what you mean by race. They know full well what we mean by race or what someone means by race.

That's annoying. I hate when people do that. I honestly don't really even know what this would look like. How would you know racial reconciliation has been achieved?

I think that what they'd probably say is some kind of parody or financial equality, but that doesn't have anything to do with reconciliation.

Socialism is what it is. Can socialism be achieved without racial justice? Again, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

This is just a really ridiculous question in the first place, in my opinion. I'm not going to formulate an opinion.

I don't care. Here's my answer. Can true racial reconciliation happen without racial justice first?

Who cares? Because neither one of those are a goal of mine. See, that's the thing.

I'm not even going to participate in this nonsense. Who cares? The answer is Jimmy Crack Corn, and I don't care because I'm not pursuing racial reconciliation, nor am

I pursuing racial justice, because both of those are nonsense terms, and who cares?

The answer is who cares? There it is. That's my whole review of this video.

Who cares? I'm sure these guys care though. Conveniences in pursuing one versus the other, but I do think the way you asked it that they are inextricably tied together.

These two nonsense terms are inextricably tied together. Reconciliation means to value the situation.

Can we pursue peace with the Romulans without first pursuing peace with the

Ferengi? That's a serious question. Let's kick that one around in a good faith debate.

The Romulans, can we pursue racial reconciliation with Romulans without first making peace with the

Ferengi? I like the Ferengi. The Ferengi are pretty based.

So it's important not to trivialize those experiences or circumstances in light of relationship goals.

The fact that we sit down together and have a meaningful moment does not set aside what folks experience outside of that moment.

I think it's vital to recognize, to value all the folks who were involved, to see their dignity, to see their concerns, to value what's going on in their hearts.

For example, if we think about not to spend too much time thinking about the history, but if we think about like after—

I'll tell you right now, I care more about the racial reconciliation of Klingons and humans. You know, the Klingons, I think—I'm starting to believe some of the propaganda about Klingons.

I think the Klingons really did create Shakespeare and the humans stole it. I think the Klingons are onto something there.

Man, when the federal troops were there in the South— We need some Shakespeare— Protection and cover for—

White Southerners were offended, and they found that to be a profound injustice.

And then when through protests and political maneuvering, they were able to get the federal troops out, we saw kind of a reign of terror and control that emerged during the era of Jim Crow.

And so if we believe that segregation is an injustice, I think looking back on it, it's easy. I mean, that's not controversial today.

I think we'd have consensus on that. But if we were to concede that,

I think we would agree that there's no way to try to achieve meaningful reconciliation, even amongst

Black and white Christians in the South in the late 19th, early 20th century, without dealing with the subjugation that the freedmen, the

Black Southerners were experiencing. If we didn't take seriously their experiences of lynching, the stealing of land that had been given to them, in many cases there were reparational acts in the

South that was done by certain slave owners. My family experience benefited from that. We don't talk about that a lot, but it is a reality in our history.

But a lot of those things were stolen, were taken. And so there's no way to see meaningful unity between Black and white in the church, outside the church, if those injustices aren't dealt with.

Now, why is that the case? That's not the case, obviously, because here's the thing.

Here's the thing. Actually, I got to take a quick break. One sec. All right, I'm back. I had to get some breakfast for the kids.

All right. So I kind of forgot what we were talking about, but I kind of remember. And here's the thing.

He's talking in the context of a church. He says, you got to deal with this injustice of the lynchings and things like that in the church in order to have the racial reconciliation.

And that's just simply not true. That's just simply not true. And it's pretty basic. I mean, it's pretty easy. Forgiveness. There you go.

Forgiveness in the Lord. Sacrificial forgiveness. It's pretty easy.

It's pretty easy. Now, that's not to say that if someone demands justice, that justice should not be done.

But what we're talking about here is generational stuff. So it's like, your grandpappy, you know, lynched my grandpappy.

So like, okay, so what are you supposed to do there? How do you deal with that? You acknowledge it?

Do you apologize for it? How is that going to make anything better? Yeah, you shouldn't have done that. I mean, obviously, in the church, we understand, you know, if someone gets lynched, yeah, you shouldn't have done that.

We get that. We get that. And it's like, but so what do you do?

I mean, if it's still bothering you, here's what you do. Get over it. And forgive the person who didn't do anything to you anyway, because he didn't do anything to you anyway.

I mean, my father has told me of various injustices that happened to him over his history.

My grandfather has told me about racial tensions that he experienced in New York when he first came over from Puerto Rico, right?

And there were some things that he went through, and he's told me about him. But you know what? He never expressed any kind of bitterness towards anybody, because he's a

Christian. My grandfather's a Christian. He's a legitimate, God -fearing, God -loving

Christian who understands that for all the things that evil people did to him, he's been forgiven of much more by his

Lord. And this is the thing. It's like, once you realize your own standing in Christ, it's hard to hold things against people.

So when my grandfather's telling me these stories, it's a matter of him sharing his history with me.

It's not a matter of him sharing his bitterness with me. And so if you don't, like, listen, if you grow up and you hear these stories, but you don't have it from a perspective of envy, my grandfather was never envious of any white person.

My grandfather was never angry with white people in general for things that had happened to him.

He never shared any of that with me. There was no bitterness. There was no covetousness in the stories that he told me.

So I heard the stories, and guess what? I knew that that wasn't right.

I knew that wasn't a right thing that happened to him. But because he didn't share any bitterness with me, he did not share any covetousness with me,

I never grew up, my father the same way, we never grew up with that in our repertoire, in our worldview.

I didn't hate my white friends or wasn't jealous of my white friends or thinking I needed what my white friends had.

I never had any of that growing up as a Puerto Rican, you know, grew up in an urban context, then a suburban context, then a rural context.

I never grew up with any of that because that was never transferred to me. And so, yes, you actually can have these things without dealing with it directly because, you know, you don't actually have to accept your grandfather's or your father's bitterness, or their covetousness, or any of that stuff.

You don't have to do it. You can simply forgive, which I don't know when my grandfather forgave these people, but as far as I've known him, the stories

I've ever heard, ever since I was a little kid, the stories were passed along as just part of his history, but not as a worldview of covetousness and bitterness.

It's possible, and there's lots of black people that likewise have heard stories from their grandfathers and things like that, that they also didn't, because they were

Christians, they didn't want to pass along covetousness and envy and bitterness. They simply do not have those things in their worldview.

So, it is possible. The fact is that a lot of black people, and this is just a fact, a lot of black people of the liberal persuasions and the progressive persuasions do not want to give up their covetousness.

They simply do not want to give up their bitterness. They want to be bitter to the day they die.

They want to be covetous to the day they die, and so they will be, and no matter what you do, you have never dealt with it.

No matter what you say, you could have a hundred statements, you could give money after money after money, and none of it matters, because they want their covetousness.

They need their bitterness, and so no matter what you freaking do, it's never enough.

You have not dealt with the reality of the racism of the past. This video got serious because it's so pathetic to hear people say, we haven't dealt with this.

What are you talking about? We haven't dealt with this. This is the point. This is why it's a nonsense question, because the parameters are nonsensical.

We haven't dealt with it until what? You know what the reality is? The reality is something that James Cone used to make explicit.

A lot of these guys, they don't make this kind of thing explicit, but James Cone made it explicit.

He was just dumb enough to say it out loud, right? Here's what James Cone said. He said, white people are not absolved.

They're not forgiven. They're not, what is it called? What's the actual word?

I wish I had the quote here, but essentially they're not off the hook. White people are not off the hook as long as there's even one black person that says they're not.

If there's even one black person that says they're not off the hook, white people are not off the hook. That's the reality of the situation, and every minority huckster that's promoting racial justice and saying we've never dealt with this believes the same thing.

They're just not too stupid to say it like James Cone. James Cone was a lunatic out of his mind. He'll just say whatever.

He'll just say a lot of things that they actually hold dear, and so the reality is can true racial reconciliation happen, whatever that's supposed to freaking mean?

No, because people are committed, committed to bitterness and covetousness.

That's the reality, okay? Let's continue. Ultimately, reconciliation is about peace or shalom, and so it's about -

You can't have racial reconciliation to someone who's committed to being at war with you.

That's the point. He's right about that. He's right about that. You cannot have racial reconciliation without, or any reconciliation.

I'm not going to say racial reconciliation because, again, that's a nonsense term. You can't have reconciliation with someone who's committed to not having it.

You can only just do your best, and I got to be honest with you. The white church has done their freaking best at this point, and it's not enough, so my advice to people in the white church is just to stop.

Just stop it. It's nonsense anyway. People want to be at war with you. They're going to be at war with you, and you need to be confident in your standing before Christ.

You need to be confident in your forgiveness before Christ, so it doesn't matter what Joe Blow black guy down the street.

He doesn't forgive you. Christ forgives you. This is real stuff here, guys. I'm hoping you white people hear this.

It doesn't matter if the random black guy on CNBC, or NBC, or MSNBC, or CNN, or Fox News doesn't forgive you.

Who cares if black people don't forgive you? What matters is you're forgiven by Christ, so do what you've got to do.

Do your best. Do what's right before God. Do what's honoring to God, and don't give two rips if the black pastor down the street says, you haven't done enough to acknowledge the slavery of the past and the lynching in the past.

Who cares? Who cares? Walk rightly before God. Have your integrity before God, and leave it at that, because these people, many of them, are committed to holding on to their bitterness until the very end, and they're going to end up in the bad place.

They're going to end up in the pit of hell, because if you hold on to your sin so tightly, the way a lot of these guys do,

I mean, that's it. That's it for you. This is a serious thing. Of settledness, and Shalom does not mean paradise.

It doesn't mean that we've arrived in heaven. It just means that we're all at a place where we can meaningfully experience what

God has called us to for this age, and so if somehow our cultural mandate calling is blocked or frustrated through injustices, we cannot have

Shalom. Now, I think the question for us is, okay, then how do we advance a

Shalom vision, which is to say, how do we advance both a reconciliation and justice vision in the church so that the very least

Christians can live this out? And obviously, I think there's an impact that we would like to see the church have beyond its borders.

I think it begins with, and I can't think of a better way of saying it, with us getting the gospel right.

Now, when I say by the gospel, I don't mean a narrow definition of what

God has done to account for our sinfulness, which is core to the gospel.

We think about justification, but I think it's really more of a broader sense as to what is the baseline of our accountability before God?

What will God judge us on when we stand before Him? What is the basis of the judgment?

And so, and I think that's a part of the gospel because our safety at the judgment is the good news, right?

And so, I don't want to arrive there at risk. And so, I think it's important that we, as pastors and leaders in the church, help our people to understand that the judgment seat biblically is inherently ethical.

It is not orthodoxical. And so, it is not a doctrinal exam.

And so, you don't get to give the password. I've accepted Christ as my Savior. It is not the key to a favorable judgment.

The key to a favorable judgment is a demonstrable righteousness that comes about because of the dwelling presence of the

Spirit and because we are regenerate. And so, what is the basis of our regeneration at the judgment?

It is not our confession. It is actually our living. And I think we need, theologically, our people to understand that, which

I think changes the whole conversation around injustice.

Because now I see, by thinking about Matthew 25, 31 through 48, I see that indifference to injustice or indifference to need, right?

And so, when I was hungry, Jesus says, when I was thirsty, Jesus says, when I was naked, when

I was sick, when I was in prison, if you were indifferent to those things, that's a judgment problem.

And so, we need to take Christ's words very seriously. And I think that's really a good place for it to begin.

I think if we can broach that, it would change the attitude. I think right now there's a lot of dismissiveness.

I think we feel safe. Many of us feel we can safely dismiss the concerns of injustice because it's not consequential for my eschatological interest, right?

But the truth of the matter is, it is very much in your interest to get that right. It doesn't mean it's worse righteousness.

It just means it's the nature of the judgment. So, I'll stop right there. And so, yeah. That's helpful.

That's not helpful. You can be sure that if this guy in the middle says that's helpful, that what you just heard was convoluted, confusing, and the opposite of helpful.

That's it. He's a contrarian indicator. I'm going to be honest with you.

That was rough. I'm going to have to listen to that a little bit more carefully because it sure sounded like the brother said that the basis of your justification is how you've lived.

That's what it sure sounded like. It's the living, is what he said. Now, I could have missed something there because I wasn't really taking this seriously.

The basis of your justification is the living. It's how you've lived, is what he described.

Yeah, I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to have to listen to that one more carefully because I know very intimately that people have been misunderstood on this kind of a topic and called a heretic when they're not a heretic.

I completely get that. But it sure sounded like this guy just said that if you're not living in racial justice, if you're indifferent in racial justice, then you can't possibly be justified because the basis of your justification,

I believe that's how he put it, the basis of your justification is how you've lived and it's in the context of racial reconciliation.

I could be wrong on that, so I'm going to preface this by saying I'm going to probably go back and listen to that a little bit more carefully.

That was pretty rough. That was pretty rough. Again, I think the point is, though, anytime this guy says, that's helpful, you can be sure that what you just heard was awful.

In any case, we're going to get going. That's the first episode. Eight minutes, you know, that's actually pretty good.

I usually don't do quite that much in the first part. I hope you found this video helpful.