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Alright, no more collared shirts, no more of the formal nonsense, let's get back to the regular content. Once again, if you're new, thanks for watching, I really appreciate it, glad you're here, and I hope you find the content helpful.
You can always tell when I get an influx of new people, because I get people reaching out to me in email, very concerned with my tone, and various kinds of things like that, which I'm glad to field those emails, in fact I'm speaking to a couple people today about that exact topic, I'll definitely hear you out.
And we'll go from there, but suffice it to say that I have thought a lot about this, and my style, and all that kind of thing, and actually I wrote a book about the social justice controversy in the church, it's called Social Justice Pharisees, Woke Church Tactics, and How to Engage Them.
And in chapter 5, I wrote a chapter called Specs and Logs, which that idea of specs and logs will come back later in this video, and it's basically a chapter about how the woke church is guilty of everything it accuses you of, it's projecting, and often times it's gaslighting, so it's making you feel like, they attempt to make you feel like you're the problem, even though they're the actual problem here, you know what I mean?
I've seen this just again, and again, and again, Ruslan KD in one video that I criticized of him a few months ago, he was saying, I don't see my friends being treated well, but the thing is, you have to understand, we came against your friends because they started calling every white person racist, you know what I mean?
That's what started this, it's not like we just started picking out people to pick on, no, these are the guys that started saying every white person's racist, and white privilege, and all that stuff, you started it, you know what I mean?
You started it. So let's have a little consistency here. But anyway, I wanted to just talk about gaslighting and projection for a minute, because this is the love language of Big Eva. If you don't know what Big Eva is, by the way, I've been having a few questions about that.
Basically, when I refer to Big Eva, I'm talking about the evangelical machine in the United States, you know, the people that write the books and review each other's books, the people that go on the conference speaking circuit, you know, the leaders, you know, the people that write for Gospel Coalition, the leadership that has a ton of money around them, and all of that kind of thing.
You can always tell who's in Big Eva, and who's not in Big Eva based on who gets defended from accusations. Most recently, Kevin DeYoung wrote a critical article about reparations, and he got treated very shamefully.
They said, well, you're a racist, obviously, white supremacist, how could you be against reparations, you racist? And Big Eva circled the wagons around Kevin DeYoung. They said, how could you dare, how dare you treat him this way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But someone like me, if I get accused of being racist for the same arguments, you know, hey, reparations is wrong, it goes against this scripture, that scripture, if anyone were to come against me and call me a racist, number one, they don't do that anymore, because they know it doesn't work on me.
But number two, nobody would defend me. And when I say nobody, I mean like the leadership, nobody would say, oh, how dare you? That's who Big Eva is. It's this group that kind of defends itself and circles the wagon and all that kind of thing.
It's everyone who, you know, endorses each other's books and all that. So that's what I mean when I say Big Eva. Now, I wanted to just reference kind of a thing that we had kind of mentioned earlier on in this McLean Bible Church controversy, but it kind of got lost in the shuffle here.
If you remember, this guy, Mike Kelsey, he had this comment where, well, you know what, let me just let him explain it. This, you know, it created some controversy, understandably so. Let me just play what we have here.
Let me try to, you know what, I'll just keep it at normal speed.
Your feelings in the last few weeks, because Mike, a lot of people have just been on the internet. Maybe they don't have friends that are African-American, so they haven't had these conversations.
I've got black friends, so that's how you know. I'm not racist.
I want you to just share a little bit of what it's felt like, if you don't mind, to experience these last few weeks.
Yeah, man, a lot of people have asked that, and unfortunately, it feels the same as it has felt for me personally since Trayvon Martin was killed. That was a major turning point for me. A lot of people will say that new injustice was real, new racism was real, all these different things.
But that was a unique thing, and partially because now we have just video stuff and social media and all of that, and so it's just a mix. I was telling a mentor the other day, I feel like I keep kind of vacillating between sadness, anger, resignation, and resolve.
Like sometimes I'm just like, I'm done. Like I don't really want, I mean, I'm totally honest, like so being angry about the situation, but it's difficult for me sometimes not to just torch like all white people, because in particularly white evangelicals and Christians, and what keeps me from that is several things.
One, just meeting and being in community with so many white brothers and sisters, looking at the type of work that you're doing and other people are doing. I think following Jesus does not, Jesus never gives us permission to hold people in contempt.
Even people who are like straight up explicitly racist, right? And then also the Lord just really challenged me a couple of years ago with this question, do you want to be helpful or do you just want to be heard?
Okay, so that's the clip that kicked up a lot of fuss, and you could imagine the phrase that people keyed in on, including myself, because it's a ridiculous phrase, of course, but it just is difficult for him to resist the urge to just torch all white people, especially white evangelicals.
And a lot of people thought that the main criticism, and maybe I have to look back and listen to what I said, but I don't think my main criticism is that he actually wants to kill white people, but that's how a lot of people took it.
But to me, the issue here is that, so this is a man who's kind of put forward as someone who should be listened to and followed regarding race relations in the church, and here he is saying that he struggles with the urge to torch all white people every time he sees one of these issues, one of these shootings, or whatever the case may be.
And to me, that's the issue, because it's like, I've never in my entire life seen a black guy murder somebody, which happens with a significant more frequency than it does police officers murdering black people.
I've never seen that and said, I've never had any urge inside me to torch all black people, especially black Christians. That's never even been a thought, where it's like, that's what I want to do, I get mad at the whole group because these guys in Chicago are shooting people like crazy.
It's just never been a thought process to me. So to me, that was the issue, it's like, okay, you can be a Christian and struggle with this and all of that, I'm not saying that you can't struggle against sin as a Christian, but you're probably not the one to lead racial reconciliation.
You know what I'm trying to say? And this is not the only person like this, there's other people that are put up as these examples to follow on the issue of the Christian and race that have violent sort of tendencies in their hearts.
Let me play another clip. Well, actually, this is not a clip I'm going to play. This is a video that I did, there's my weird face I'm making, I don't know. But in this video, it's called Eric Mason and the Extremely Violent SJW Heart on Display.
I play a few different clips of people. This was right around the time of the Capitol insurrection. There's an Orwellian term. But anyway, Eric Mason says this, listen to this, this is a pastor, a Christian pastor who's put up as an example for someone to follow in the issues of race relations.
He says, oh, and if you still don't believe that this country don't have a racist system, black protest peacefully on the National Guard shows up, white people climb walls and burst in rooms and no guards.
P .S. A break in perimeter fed building calls for a kill shot. But yeah, I'm CRT. By the way, that's literally exactly how he sounds. So here he is saying that the January 6th protesters should have been shot and killed.
This is a violent heart on display. He's not sorry for this. And actually, this guy, Kelsey, we're going to talk about his apology because he actually does apologize for this. And I, for one, give him a lot of credit.
But there's even some gaslighting in the apology, which we'll see in a minute. But here's the thing. So people, you know, rightly question this. This is a Christian pastor looking for someone that's protesting to be killed?
A little bit weird, but that's not where it ends either. Here's a sermon that Eric Mason preached, and you'll see that my impression is dead on. But let me just listen to the racial hatred in his heart.
And this is a man that we're told that if we don't follow his prescriptions for race relations and stuff like that, then we're the racists. Listen to this man.
God's been working on me and my heart is that the root of bitterness sprouting up would defile many. And if I allow myself to stew in my frustration towards whites, Jesus won't be my center. My hatred will.
Okay, so here he is.
He's very animated. He's sweating. He's a very charismatic guy, no question, right? So he's into this. And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. That's totally fine. But he says actually something really good, that he can't allow his frustration to get the better of him, right?
He can't do it, because if he does that, then Christ won't be his center. His hatred will. So here's a man who's admitting that he has this hatred in his heart. He's talking about white people here, by the way.
He's got this hatred in his heart, and he struggles against it. Well, good. I'm glad he struggles against it. That's a good thing. We all have this battle with sin that we're all fighting, that we must be struggling against it.
But here's the thing, guys. So if someone were to make the obvious point, though, that, hey, maybe if you have this struggle of hatred of white people, maybe you should wait until you win that battle before you tout yourself as this leader in race relations.
Because there are plenty of people in the world that do not struggle with that particular sin. You see, this is actually a lie from Satan, by the way. I heard a Paul Washer sermon about this that was so good.
It was about sexual immorality, sexual sin. And this lie that's being told to young men was that everyone struggles with sexual sin. Everyone has sexual sin in their lives. And it's like the way it's presented, it's like nobody's had victory.
That's not true. It's not the case that everyone struggles against sexual sin all the time. People have victory over sexual sin. We can't allow that to sort of be taught in a way that's just kind of flippant like, no, there are people in this world that do not struggle with racial animosities.
Okay? I've never once seen a shooting in Chicago with a bunch of black guys shooting up a street block and killing a little kid. You've seen those videos. You've seen it. They're disgusting. They enrage me.
Right? And there's anger in my heart over that issue. Anger is not the problem, though. You have to have anger in a righteous way. So I've never once said, oh man, those blacks, I'm just pissed at all blacks, especially black Christians because of what these guys did.
I've never felt that way. See, that's the issue, right? But let's commend Eric Mason. He's struggling against his sin. That's good.
Let's see how the struggle's going. But on the other hand, whites have to do this, assume in Jesus' mighty name that because there is an offense that you need to press into that particular offense and begin to educate yourself on beginning to develop the opportunity to not have reductionistic ways in which you try to cause racial reconciliation, like through hiring non-qualified African Americans to be the multi-ethnic engineers in your local churches.
So let me just set this up. He said one of the ways that you don't do this, because he's the expert on racial relations, is that you don't hire non-qualified black pastors to be the engineers of racial reconciliation.
Now, I want you to hear this because he just got done saying less than 40 seconds ago that I can't allow my hatred to be my center.
Let's see how that fight is going. You know they're not qualified because blacks haven't hired them. And it works against unity when you hire somebody that we're not feeling, and you're wondering why multi-ethnicity isn't happening at your church.
It's because you have a person that's black on the outside but Angloid on the inside.
So there it is. And I keep coming back to this clip. I commented on this clip years ago, and I continue to bring it. Maybe you missed it. But Dr. Eric Mason, the pastor of Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia, who sets himself up as this engineer and this expert on racial unity and racial reconciliation, and if you don't hear him, you don't listen to him, you don't follow him, that you're the one who's a racist and has a problem, he just used a racial slur from a pulpit.
That's right. You're not getting unity because he's black on the outside but he's Angloid on the inside. As if Angloid on the inside is a negative. So you could see that his fight against the hatred against racism, it's not really going that well.
Because A, he uses white as a pejorative, so you're white on the inside, that's a negative. Which it isn't, by the way. And then secondly, he uses a racial slur, Angloid. Now, racial slurs against whites, who cares these days, right?
Because we have these standards that don't really match up. So obviously nobody freaked out about this, but just for a second, put yourself in a different situation where a pastor from the pulpit said that you had a negroid from the inside or a nigglet or something like that.
People would be flipping out, and rightfully so. They'd be freaking out, calling for him to resign. Of course, at the very least, nobody should listen to him on race relations, of course. But no, no, that's not how it goes here.
The way it goes here, because he's black and he's talking bad against white people, and if you have a problem with this, then you're the racist. This is gaslighting. This is gaslighting. This is a problem.
This man, what he just said, is sinful. He should not be listened to on race relations, obviously. And yet, if you have a problem with it, you're the racist. And so it's gaslighting, guys. The language of Big Eva is gaslighting.
I can give you so many examples. Here's Matt Chandler. I was going to play this, but I'm not going to play it. Matt Chandler, who one day says, well, I'm not a political man. The next day, he's supporting Black Lives Matter and says, if you don't support Black Lives Matter, then you've got the problem.
It's like, are you crazy, dude? But anyway, let's go back to Kelsey, because I did want to comment on this, because to his credit, Kelsey has apologized. But actually, before we get to Kelsey's apology, I did want to go into David Platt, because he addresses this comment about torching white people.
This is a pastor at David Platt's church, and David Platt addresses this in a sermon. And by the way, this is a weird sermon. It's very childish. I don't get it, but it kind of reminds me of the Christian Blippi.
I don't know.
It's going to work. I'm going to say a few words out loud, then you repeat after me. I won't have them on the screen while we're reciting, and you can't look down. No cheating. That would not be loving.
Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. All right. Here we go. You ready? 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4. First three words. Love is patient. So let's repeat that out loud with me. Love is patient. Say it one more time.
Love is patient. All right. We're off to a good start. Patient. Patient. Let's just kind of take this step by step.
This is so embarrassing, by the way. This is childish. But let's continue listening, because he's going to mention this in a moment.
Or assumptions. It's not quick to accuse. Love doesn't pop off on text or email, social media, or in person. Love is patient with each other and kind to each other. Let's say that with me. Love is patient and kind.
One more time. Love is patient and kind. Let's just let that soak in. Are our words to others always kind?
It's just shocking how infantile. He's infantilizing people.
Maybe a deeper question. Are our words about others always kind? I just don't get it. How is this attractive? Or do we assume the worst about them? For those of you who were here on Friday night in our time of repenting and praying, Mike apologized for an unhelpful, hurtful phrase that he had used in an interview a year ago that popped up on social media this week.
And I know he'll explain more at some point.
So he's referring to this thing where he said the torching white people thing. He said that on Friday night they had a time of repentance and prayer, and that's really good. And he apologized for using that phrase.
We're going to look at that apology in just a moment. And that's good. Nothing wrong with apologizing. Nothing wrong with repenting of something you should not have done. But let's continue.
I appreciated his humility. But I also grieved over how he had shared that phrase in the context of honestly expressing his own hurts and struggles. And that social media post this week had totally ignored that and immediately assumed the absolute worst about Mike.
I know I don't like my words being taken out of context. And I know I've taken others' words out of context. God, help us to be kind with our words, our thoughts, even that which no one else sees but God.
To believe the best, not the worst, about others. And to look for opportunities to give a kind word to others or about others.
Do you see how he flipped that script there? And this is just amazing gaslighting. Because there's so much truth in what he's saying. But he gaslit you to think, look, if you heard him say that he struggles not to torch all white people and especially white Christians, if you had a problem with that, you're the one with the problem.
Not him. Even though he's admitting he shouldn't have said that. It was an unhelpful term. And notice the downplaying as well. These guys are friends, Mike and David. So he downplays it. It's not that it was necessarily a sinful, wicked thing to feel or say.
It was unhelpful. It wasn't helpful. And that was the sin is that it wasn't helpful. And if you thought that he was a bad guy, then you're the one that's in sin. Look at the gaslighting there. It's epic, really, how he's done this.
I just can't even fathom thinking that was a good idea. That's the time. That's the time to bring this up. Because he's actually right, though. Because you don't want to assume the worst about him. Sure, maybe he misspoke.
In fact, in the video that I did about it, I think that's something that I said. We're not really sure exactly what he means. Maybe he meant something less than burning white people at the stake. But actually, that's not even the issue.
Assuming the best about someone doesn't mean that you don't believe what's plainly in front of you. Obviously, this man has a problem with racial hatred. He's admitting that. And that's an issue. That's an issue.
I'm not saying you can't be a Christian and struggle against racial hatred. You can. But the problem is you shouldn't be a pastor, number one. And number two, you definitely shouldn't be a pastor in charge of racial reconciliation at your church.
I mean, I feel like I'm pretty consistent here. Like if a white pastor had said something similar about blacks, I'd say the same thing. The problem is that David over here would say the same thing in that case.
But in this case, he's going to make excuses for it and say it just wasn't that helpful. Now, let's listen to Kelsey's apology here. Mike Kelsey.
I'm going to give you a moment in just a few moments. You can stay on your knees if you want or you can sit. But I'm going to give you another moment just between you and the Lord. And I was thinking a lot today and even just before coming out about God's words to us in several portions of Scripture.
First Peter 5, I was looking particularly at James chapter 4 where God says through James, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And this is what we do when we come before God in confession and repentance.
We are humbling ourselves before the holiness of God. And the good news is that God promises because of what Jesus has done for us that we can find mercy and grace in our time of need. There was a clip that has been circulated this week from an interview that I did last year where I was asked, how have you been feeling and processing your feelings?
And this was June of last year at the height of all the racial tension in our country. And I was asked, how are you processing your feelings in the midst of all the tension that's happening in our culture?
And I was sharing some of my personal journey of the Lord challenging me and helping me by his spirit to surrender my emotions to him. Surrendering my emotions to the Holy Spirit so that I prioritize the unity of the body of Christ and I'm Christ-like in the midst of so much of the hostility in our culture.
And I used the phrase in that interview that was unhelpful, even hurtful to people who saw that clip. And I was reading this this morning, Matthew 7. It says, judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.
And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. And I just heard the Lord speak to me so clearly. You have to own the speck in your own eye.
Have to start first by humbling yourself because God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And so I don't know how many of you saw that clip. I know some of you have, and I want to apologize for any hurt that caused, because the way the clip was cut and edited and circulated was actually done in a way to communicate the exact opposite of what I was intending to communicate, which is we have to submit our emotions and feelings and perspectives to the character of Christ and the influence of the Holy Spirit.
And I should have known better, especially in the midst of such hostility. And I think all of us would admit that maybe not in that particular situation, but in some situation in our life, in some of our relationships, that there are things that we need to confess to the Lord.
Ways that we've spoken, attitudes that we've...
All right, so we're going to stop there. He continues for a bit, and there's so much that I'm just... You probably noticed I'm nodding my head. There's so much that I agree with, but I cannot say that this is not an example of gaslighting again.
Again. So which is it, Mike? Was it an unhelpful, hurtful comment, or was it edited to make it seem like an unhelpful and hurtful comment? Which is it? Because it's either unhelpful or hurtful, or it was fine and it was edited to look like it...
Because he introduced some ambiguity there. Now, he's apologizing for it. So I guess we can believe all things and say that he believes that it was an unhelpful and hurtful comment. But he also likewise thinks that it was edited unfairly, I guess.
But you see, like, are you really owning the speck in your eye? Did you notice that he says it's a speck in his eye? It's not a log. Now, maybe that was misspeaking. Who knows? It certainly doesn't seem like misspeaking to me.
But are you really owning it if you're trying to blame the issue on the people who edited the video? But the point is, this is all irrelevant. Because it's not about the phrase being inflammatory or anything like that.
The problem is that you think you're some kind of racial reconciler. And yet, in your heart, you have this urge to see something happen with a white guy and a black guy negative. And you just have this urge, this anger.
Forget the phrase. Who cares about torching? You have this anger, not towards the person who did that, but all white people. And especially all white evangelicals, Christians, people that are in your congregation are part of that group.
So you've got this thing where you struggle against these feelings of hatred towards white people, white Christians. Every time you see a white Christian or not even a Christian, a white person do something bad to a black person from your perspective, you just have this hatred that kind of wells up within you.
Should you be a leader in the racial reconciliation movement? No. Nobody's saying you can't be a believer and struggle against sin, Mike. But the problem, you see, you don't even understand what the problem is.
And you're gaslighting as part of your defense. It's not so much the hateful rhetoric, although it is partially that because that was a pretty ridiculous thing to say. I've never even thought such a thing.
But it's this feeling. It's this mode. You can't lead racial reconciliation if your first reaction to seeing something bad a white person does is, man, those white evangelicals, I'm so mad. This is something that we train our children to correct in themselves.
This is flashing to anger. And listen, Mike, I'm treating you the way I would treat a white person who said the same thing. If I had a person that I knew of in the white church that said, well, the real problem here is every time I struggle, God's helping me.
But every time I see a black shooting in Chicago, I just have this I'm just angry with all blacks, especially black Christians. I would treat them the same way. And I think that if you're honest with yourself, Mike, you know that you would not let that fly, neither would David Platt, neither would anybody if a pastor had said something that way.
Bro, it's not the inflammatory I like inflammatory rhetoric sometimes. It's not that. It's that you think you know what racial reconciliation is all about, and you haven't even conquered it in your own heart.
That's the problem. That's the problem. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. I mean, the gaslight is so real. It is so real. I think that's all I have here. Yeah. Anyway, maybe I'll do another video today.
We will see. I hope you found this one helpful. God bless.
