Christianity and Racism

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

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Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

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Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Durham, David Kassin, Andrew Hudson, and we are firing off episode number two of this new season.

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We're glad to be back and glad to have you all with us again along with all these questions that have been sent in and we are thankful for every question that we have and we're gonna put that out up front as we read these two questions next.

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We truly are thankful for every question that we do receive and we do plan to answer them as best we can according to what the

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Scriptures have to say about the categories that are either brought up in these questions or that are latent within it and see what our

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Lord has to say about them. I'm going to be reading two questions in tandem and the first question reads,

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Most white supremacists I have met are Christian. What is it about Christianity that attracts racists?

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I am an atheist and my atheist friends and I work to promote racial equality. Why do you think atheism attracts colorblind people?

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Okay and the second question reads, Why are Christians so supportive of Donald Trump and his racism?

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The church includes all people. The church should be inclusive and diverse. That is exactly what every tongue, tribe, and nation means.

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Biden is obviously a terrible president but at least he is not racist and what we need is to bring this country together, heal together, and then we can move forward from all this divisive rhetoric.

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So there's a lot to unpack in both of these questions and they're a little bit different because it seems like the background of the questioner is different in each one so we're not going to assume that this is the same questioner but they're dealing with the same topic and Michael why don't you get us started on this?

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So there are a lot of terms that are used and there are a lot of assumptions that are also made and obviously someone's working from a worldview and also they're working from sources of information and they're working from sources of authority that are giving them not only the definitions of their terms but are also supplying the moral framework by which they are making these determinations.

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So it's, I think, a polite thing to do our best to try to understand where someone is coming from, what their worldview is, what those sources of information, those trusted sources of information that they rely on, and why do they find the moral framework that has been handed to them so compelling?

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And those are all part and parcel to trying to unpack these multi -layered questions that in one way or another have greatly affected the regular church member of our church and other churches as well.

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These topics have been extremely front and center in the mainstream media since 2012.

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There's been, and even as far as back as 2008, there has been a lot of extra conversation about race and white supremacy and racists and so on since the, you know, late 2000s moving on to today.

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It's been something of a resurrected topic, shall we say. So the first characterization is most white supremacists

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I have met are Christian. So there's no offering of a definition for what white supremacist is.

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So who gets to define that? What is that? My definition for white supremacist is probably going to be far different than the person who asked this question.

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And what definition are we going to rely on? And who gets to be the observer to say who is who and so on?

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So if somebody has a Marxist background, they're going to be white supremacist in every bush in all of society.

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If somebody has a different background, they're probably gonna have a hard time finding white supremacists.

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So that's just going to be one difference. Now when they say most white supremacists I've met are Christian, what's your definition for Christian?

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Somebody who believes in God and the Bible in general. Because my definition for a Christian is going to be, once again, much more narrow than somebody else's definition of what a

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Christian is. Okay, so that once again there's definitional differences. There's going to be a big challenge for somebody coming from this worldview to be able to have a profitable conversation without, you know, we've got to define a whole bunch of terms first.

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And obviously we would want to do that. And then a big assumption that is obviously a kind of assumption and a question that is condemning by nature.

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What is it about Christianity that attracts racists? It's like walking up to somebody and saying, when did you stop beating your wife?

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Okay, so this is a logical fallacy. It's an inappropriate kind of discourse that's dishonest.

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Without two unproven definitions, white supremacists and Christians, based on one's personal experience, most white supremacists

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I therefore Christianity attracts racists. So tell me, what about Christianity attracts racists?

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So this is a dishonest discourse. It's not a profitable question. And in fact, when there is a desire, and let's say, let's assume,

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I am assuming this is the same question on both. If there's a desire to move away from divisive rhetoric, to start this way is to insert divisive rhetoric from the very beginning.

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So when there's a saying, I'm an atheist, I appreciate the openness and honesty about that. I'm an atheist, my atheist friends and I work to promote racial equality.

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And again, I'm interested. I mean, what does that look like? How do you go about that? And then the question is, why do you think atheism attracts colorblind people?

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So once again, the person is using some terms that I would be interested to hear more definition about.

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What is this racial equality that you're promoting? How is it that you're working to do that? But once again, there is this dishonest discourse because of this person's personal experience.

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Therefore, atheism inherently attracts colorblind people. When you think about the definition of colorblind, that's a very interesting term, especially since many of the leading voices that are pushing for social equality and racial reconciliation, they have labeled and identified the term colorblind as incredibly racist and emerging from white supremacy.

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White supremacist dog whistle, they call it. Yeah, it's a white supremacist dog whistle. So here is this person asking a question and using terms that have been identified by leaders of racial reconciliation as white supremacist dog whistles.

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So based upon their own, I would say, assumed sources of authority to try to even describe what racial reconciliation is, this question on the face of it is incoherent and not established correctly.

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So that becomes a very difficult kind of question to answer, but I would say that when these terms come up,

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I would encourage striving for definition of terms and identifying those sources of authority and where you're getting your moral framework from.

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I'm very interested to hear how is it that you think that this is a coherent approach and a profitable approach.

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I'm open to hearing why are you taking this particular tack. So I think that is a way of handling a question like that, that it makes assumptions and brings moral condemnation and asserts moral supremacy without actually establishing any kind of values openly.

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I mean, this person basically said, in my experience, most of the racists I have come across, white supremacists I have come across are

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Christians, and in my experience with me and my friends, you know, atheism seems to attract colorblindness.

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Why is that the case? And your response is, all right, let's go over those definitions and let's see how come your experience is normative, because my experience has been the exact opposite, and I've seen some pretty horribly racist and deadly actions from the atheist side as well.

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I mean, you just, looking in history, it sort of decimates that. But you're saying, well, this has been my perspective.

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This has been what I've seen in this local context. I'm not talking about Mao's China, you know, 1960s.

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That's a good point. What about the United States in the 20th century? I mean, we were like headquarters for atheistic eugenicists.

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Nazi Germany took a lot of cues from the United States in their policies, so there's no clean hands on the atheist side.

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We outdid Hitler in a lot of ways. Oh my. So, another thing about this question, because it is experience -based, you know, this is my experience with, you know, obviously this person is not well -traveled, okay, because if they spent any time where the

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Christian majority lives, then you would find a whole lot more South Koreans and a lot more folks in Africa.

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You would find a whole lot of people in Southeast Asia. Are you talking about the ethnos scattered across the globe?

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Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna count numbers, and some people, I think people, as someone asking this question would be someone who is interested in statistics and probably deriving a lot of their assumptions from statistics, and whether or not those statistics are being formulated properly is something to be discussed.

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However, the majority of Christians aren't white, okay, and if we're going to be, what is it about Christianity that attracts racists, okay, but you're thinking white supremacists.

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So, your experience is very limited in understanding who Christians are, especially from history, especially in the present day, where Christians are all over the world today in a variety of nations and cultures.

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So, I think it's a very limited experience, and it's bringing some inappropriate assumptions to the question. You want to see some really stark racism go to the

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Middle East. You know, the Arabs hate anybody who's not Arab. It's not just non -Muslim.

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You see how the Arabs hate the Persians, how they have the disdain that they have for the

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Turk. They have people from Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, and they treat them as just dogs and servants.

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Well, you know, because you're not Arab. Are you saying that every people group has a group of racists? I'm saying that every people group has a group of racists.

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Okay. My last observation about the question is that the assumption is being made, why do you think atheism attracts colorblind people?

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I think that, if anything, if we were to look at where atheism is headquartered, the shrines, the temples of atheism, we should look at the secular university, and I would say that if there's any place in America today that is most focused on color and obsessed with what color you are, and engaging in proactive segregation based on your skin color, it would be the secular universities of our nation.

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So that's my last observation about the question, and that's why I find it incoherent, and I don't think it's very well rooted in some very basic observations.

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But I see there is a sense in which they see something immoral about Christianity and something moral about atheism, and it's mostly centered around what color someone's skin is.

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Well, looking in the New Testament, giving the New Testament response, and this flows into the next question,

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I think, but the New Testament response to the atheism framing himself, or themselves, as morally superior, the

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New Testament response is that in Christ those racial lines become secondary.

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Your identity is in Christ, and you're identified as a Christian first.

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You don't lose those national identities or that ethnicity, because we have, from Isaiah to Matthew 28 to Revelation 7, where you have the command of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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It says, every tribe, tongue, and nation, there are people that I have called out for myself, says the King, and he is bringing these nations to himself, and it is in Christ and in his authority.

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And this is what the Scriptures say, not just in the New Testament, but throughout. I mean, we talk about Psalm 2, and the kingdom of the

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Messiah is of every members of every single people group, but they identify themselves as in Christ first.

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And all of those kind of lines fade into the background, because that's not the priority, but Christ's priority is to take, because he said he was going to do this, every tribe, tongue, and nation, to himself, because that is what gives glory to the

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Father. So I would say, and I love the statement, most Christians aren't white.

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And Andrew had said this earlier, I mean, who is building the church? Christ is building the church.

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These are the people he is calling out for themselves. And yes, some of them are going to be white, some of them are not going to be white.

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That's not the issue. The issue is, Christ is calling them to himself, and is building his church, and it does look very, very colorful.

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And that's okay, and that's great. But he's the one who's building it. And if there's a particular church in a particular area that has a particular people group, and they happen to be monochromatic,

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Christ built that church. Yeah, I think the following question is getting to, how is Christ building this church?

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And the question is, why are Christians so supportive of Donald Trump and his racism? Again, this is another loaded question that is very much in the same style as the first set of two questions.

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But why are Christians so supportive of Donald Trump and his racism? Well, I've not met any Christian anywhere who has pointed out to anything where Donald Trump has said something racist, and said, boy,

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I am so supportive of that. So again, it comes back to the definitions. What are you saying is his racism?

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And where exactly do you find Christians supporting that racism? And who gave you that definition? And what moral framework are you using?

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So we have to go back to all those definitions of terms, and see whether or not those moral frameworks and definitions are coherent or incoherent.

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Are they actually true, or are they absurd? But if you spend any time at all listening to Christians over the last decade, you are going to find that there is not monolithic support for Donald Trump.

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We spend half our time yelling at each other about, you know, not supporting him, and try not to support him too much.

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And here's how much you can support him, or you shouldn't support him at all. To lump all Christians together as some sort of monolith, that they are so supportive of Donald Trump and his racism,

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I think is unfortunate groupthink. Christians aren't a monolith, and they're always holding each other accountable about this particular issue.

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Now there are some who are political in nature, and they're looking for power. I think Robert Jeffers, you know, is anointing

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Donald Trump as the second coming of the Messiah, but he's doing that for political gain. And there's, you know, there's

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TBN types who are looking for fame, and they're gonna ride the coattails of Donald Trump. But no Bible -believing

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Christian trying to follow Jesus and do the right thing takes those people seriously. Like, who cares about what these dog and pony show people do?

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We know them by their fruits, and we don't... they don't speak for us. So we don't support

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Donald Trump for his racism. If we do vote for him, and say he's a better option than the other guy, most of the time, overwhelmingly, most of the time, it's, we think there's a better chance that he might appoint judges that might end up with less babies being killed inside the womb.

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That's generally the level of our support. And since abortion is one of the most racist and racially charged...

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Margaret Sanger. Yeah. I'm gonna go back to Atheist Genesis. Like, any effort whatsoever to push back against abortion is the most anti -racist thing you can possibly do.

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And when it says, so the church includes all people, the church should be inclusive and diverse. Again, those terms, that you keep using those terms, but I don't think that they mean what you think that they mean, right?

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What do you mean by those terms? Because the definitions of inclusive and diverse, according to a

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Marxist, is going to be completely different in thinking about including others and having a wide plethora of kinds of people in the church.

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Those terms from a biblical worldview are not going to be the same terms from a Marxist worldview. And so when someone is saying, hey, the church should be inclusive and diverse, where'd you get those terms?

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What do they mean? And when they say that is exactly what every tribe, tongue, and nation means, actually, we don't take definitions that are defined by the mainstream media and then take those terms and bring them into the

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Bible and say, this is what exactly the Bible means. That is interpreting the Scripture in light of some other hermeneutic.

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Actually, Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, died upon the cross and shed his blood and purchased unto

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God people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. He redeemed them by his blood.

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He suffered under the wrath of God, completing all the righteousness that was required for them to have peace with God, redeemed them unto

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God, and was raised from the dead for their justification to be brought to God. And so that's what every tribe, tongue, and nation means.

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And yes, God loves the tribes. Jesus died for the tribes. He died for all these different nations.

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And in fact, we find when the gospel goes out, the gospel first preached at Pentecost was preached to people from all over the

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Roman Empire, and it was preached in such a way so that they heard it in their own native heart language.

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What do we learn from that? We learn from that that God loves it when the gospel is preached in the heart language of the tribes, which is why

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Christians have labored and labored and labored for centuries and spent all this money and time to translate the scriptures into the heart languages of the tribes so that they can know the gospel in their best understood language.

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We don't require them to learn English. We want them to know God's Word from the

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Greek and Hebrew straight to their heart language, and we got that model from Pentecost from Acts chapter 2. So yeah, the

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Church is very diverse. It has all these tribes and tongues and nations, and God loves that, and that's a good thing.

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Now it says, so Biden's a terrible president, but at least he's not racist. Again, who said—who gets to define it?

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Who told you that, and why is it true? And they said, well, we need to bring this country together, heal together, and then we can move forward from all this divisive—move forward to what?

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Well, again, I think the best way for us, for our country to come together, for our country to heal together, the best way a country can move forward from divisive rhetoric is to stop talking about race so much.

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Let's stop talking about race all the stinking time. Let's stop talking about how much money some people have all the stinking time.

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Let's stop being materialists. Let's stop focusing on pigmentation. Let's stop focusing on materialism, and the best way for us to move together, heal together, and get past divisive rhetoric is for us all to confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, all of us to bow the knee, and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father, and that's going to be unity.

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Yeah, there's no unity outside Christ. There's none. He is the Son of Man. He is King of Kings. He is the

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King of all the rulers of the earth, and if you want unity, then everybody bow the knee to him and make everything about him, not about race, like these questions do.

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So, having said that, everything we just said went right past the atheist, right? It just went right past the unbeliever.

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Might have hit him in the head and fell on the floor and they stomped on it. So, we are very careful to parse apart the definitions.

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We take loads of time to explain ourselves and then to be honest about these things from a biblical perspective, but these questions always put

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Christians on the defense. I mean, and push back on you guys if this is out there, but you don't get to determine what sin is for me.

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That's correct. Tell me why racism is sinful. Yeah. Tell me, where'd you make up, where'd you get that made -up sin?

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I'm not finding it. Are you saying to explain their moral foundation? Where do they derive it? Yeah, but not just where do you derive it, but how do you think that's, how do you think that puts guilt on me?

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How is you calling me a racist, or even if I were to think that I'm a racist, biblically? Why were you making that up to hoist guilt upon me in order for you to manipulate me?

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That's my territory. That's my Lord's territory. He says what the sin is. You don't.

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Right. And Christians have been taking these questions for 15, 14 years now as if they're legitimate, as if they're serious questions in order to solve issues in the church, that we actually have these problems.

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And the one, I mean, white guilt, it's in their texts. Like, they want you to feel that.

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That's the purpose of it. We need to quit being so defensive on these things and say, no, not a serious question, not a real question.

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And you don't get to come into my Lord's realm about sin and tell me how I'm sinful about things.

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I just don't, I don't get the, I mean, I understand wanting to make a defense for, bring a defense for every question or contrary opinion to the gospel.

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I understand that. But we're talking about people who are using rhetorics to push guilt on to Christians in mass.

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Yeah, but that's the thing is, and that's why I answered the way I did, because the argument is a moral argument and all kinds of truth claims are being made.

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But where are you getting that from? And generally it comes back to, well, the consensus has spoken.

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Well, so you heard everybody say that? No. No, somebody spoke for the consensus and told me it was the consensus and that's why it's true.

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Today. Yeah, true today, but that, that changes. And it's a really fun read to find out how many times what people were told was the truth turned out to not be the truth, which is part of the human experience to continually be fooled by what you thought was the truth.

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And, and it's like, well, that's, so when you're coming and saying Christians are this and Christians are that and they need to change and hoisting a moral, a moral obligation and condemnation upon the church, it's like, hang on a second, you don't get to define truth and morality that belong to Jesus Christ.

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So let's, let's talk about why are you deceiving and being deceived? Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to get to is like the moral framework for them doesn't matter.

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They'll pick up a new one as soon as they can to defend the envy, to defend the hate. And I think behind these questions, like how, how many times we can list how many times the word white is brought up in the questions.

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Right. Like what's the focus? We were talking earlier in the first episode about the Lord, whenever he wants to signal something to us, themes come up again and again and again.

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What's important? What's the most important thing? I think in these questions, what we will find most central and important is the word white.

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Yeah. Christian comes up a lot too, but white is, white's the big one. And I think pointing out that you have a problem with envy.

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You have it towards white people. You have it towards white men, white male Christians. This is your issue.

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Your issue is, is not the fact that we act the way that we do. You have a hate in your heart and our

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Lord has a cure for that hate in your heart. For whether it be white or whether it be black or any other ethnic group you can think of,

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I think getting towards the motivation of these things, they're signaling to us all the time.

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And that's why we're getting just like inundated and beat down with the questions. Like we have to answer this the same way over and over again.

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When we can go to the basic motivations rather than, because we are so careful and we take so much time, but how much of it is time wasting rather than getting to the motivations and the heart of things?

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And I know that may sound pretty jaded, but it can get tiresome hearing this stuff all over and over and over.

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Enjoy Reed's voice as we heard earlier. There's, um, we did make an assumption that the first question was, you know, from the atheist perspective, but the second question may have been from the

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Christian, a Christian perspective, or somebody who goes to church at least. The framing of the question appeared to be a little bit different.

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How do you respond if this, I hate to put words in the questioner's mouth, I do, but I'm making an assumption that when they said, you know, the church should be inclusive and diverse, this is exactly what every tribe, tongue, and nation means, they're trying to say, the

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Bible says every tribe, tongue, and nation, so the church is supposed to be inclusive and diverse, and you're not doing that.

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So aren't you in violation of the text? How do you respond to someone who appears to be appealing to the authority, and I don't think they're trying to do it to, ironically,

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I think they're actually, I think this person is trying to parse through this. It's using it as a support for their position, right?

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I agree. I think so, but maybe the maybe the second person, the second question is disingenuous,

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I don't know, but how would you respond if this person says, but your own book, or our own book says every tribe, tongue, and nation, we're supposed to be inclusive and diverse, how do we respond to that?

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There's three things here. First of all, this is coming from an observation that has long been made, the most segregated hour in America is

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Sunday morning church. You know, there's the trope. Okay, so first of all, the assumption is made, every single local church needs to look like Revelation chapter 5.

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Okay, but that's not what the text says, and in fact, the praise is coming from the 24 elders that are standing in for all of the nations that are redeemed, and the same group gets revisited again in chapter 7, the very same group, but this time they're called the 144 ,000 of the tribes of Israel, but it's

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Israel re -envisioned in Christ, and at the same time, even though they're numbered, you know, 12 times 12 times 10 to the third power, which is, you know, completion completion upon perfection and so on, they're also called the multitude which no man can count.

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This is everybody, this is the entire scope of all of the redeemed all at once.

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So yes, of course, every tribe, tongue, and nation are seen together at the same time in this glorious vision, and all true

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Christians rejoice. So this is not about a local isolated church, this is about the church, the whole

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Bride of Christ all at the same time. Now, I said, well, shouldn't the local church look like the universal church?

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Shouldn't that be the way that it looks? Shouldn't our worship on earth be a meaning that which we see in heaven?

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Like, okay, so now let me ask you two more questions. When you look at the local church and you're looking for inclusivity and diversity, what are you looking for?

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Because I would bet that if you're not finding inclusivity and diversity in a local church, it's because your theology is skin -deep, and you are so focused on pigmentation and melanin that you don't understand what diversity is like.

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As a pastor, as I think about each family in our congregation, all the cultural differences between each family in our congregation, the upbringings that were different, the histories that are different, the different church backgrounds that different families come in, some have none at all, and all the differences that are in each family and within each family, as I think about married couples and how they were brought together from diverse backgrounds, my only hope for unity day in and day out, week in and week out, is that we would love

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Jesus and that we would love Christ. He's the only reason why we can have unity, okay?

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So when you think about a local church, if your theology is skin -deep because you're so focused on race, because race is everything to you, and so you don't see different colors, then you would think, oh, this is not diverse and inclusive.

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But God has made us in His image. It doesn't say that God made us in different colors, okay?

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So if we're going to find diversity and inclusivity, let's use God's definitions and God's point of view on who we are, okay?

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The last observation is this. This requirement that a local church should have different skin colors, and this biological extension, because of a

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Marxist presupposition, moves into, well, you have to have equal number of women and men on staff, and now you have to have people from the

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LGBTQ plus community also favorably represented, and you have to have all of these little virtues present in order to be truly diverse and inclusive.

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This requirement for a local church to somehow look all this way to someone's satisfaction of being diverse and inclusive, that requirement is never placed on any church in Africa, on any church in Asia, on any church in Southeast Asia, never placed on any church in Chile or Brazil or South Africa or in Lebanon.

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Never, ever. This is an American vanity, and it is not theological at all.

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Is it American or is it European? Because I think this applies to the British and any of the other white countries as well.

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Europe thinks America has lost its mind. A whole bunch of Europeans think

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America has lost their minds. I agree, and I think a lot of Americans think that Americans have lost their minds. I'm saying, like, in the church, is it not applied in the other white countries as well?

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Okay, so it is a far less of a deal. In Britain? You say there are some, in Britain and France, you're gonna find some of the same pathos, but Europe is not monolithic.

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Oh, yeah, I agree. It very much is not monolithic, but what's happening is, when

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I'm listening to pastors like in Ireland, pastors in the UK, pastors in France, they talk about all the time how they're trying to insulate and protect their church from all of this wokeism coming from evangelical leaders in America and infiltrating their churches and causing havoc and division in their churches, because they're being accused of not having the gospel, not preaching the gospel, because you don't have a

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Yeah, I'm not saying that we're not the ones applying it to Europe, because we are. I think we're the ones who are exporting it, but if you look at where this is being exported to, it is specifically the other white countries, right?

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Yeah, but I'm saying we're the fountain of it. That's what I'm saying, I agreed. I was shocked by it. I thought it was from Europe over...

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No, no, no. Yeah, I'm shocked by that. I didn't know. No, that's what I'm saying. I completely agree, but the point you're making is that it is being exported to specifically white countries and no other ethnic...

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There are uniquely American theologies. Yeah. There are uniquely American theologies.

31:17

Dispensationalism is uniquely American, and it was UK, but it's uniquely American. It grew here, it prospered here, the reason why it's in the rest of the world is because it's uniquely

31:29

American, cultivated, American -focused theology that was then exported, and the same thing goes with this

31:38

DEI evangelicalism. Agreed. It's uniquely American, and it's being exported elsewhere.

31:45

But we exported dispensationalism to other places other than white countries. I think my point is...

31:50

You're right. Back to the focus, the focus of the question, the focus of this happening in the church is, you're saying, again, it's skin deep, and it is going to just those who have the white skin of European descended peoples.

32:04

This isn't going to Africa, this isn't going to Latin America. If it did, there'd be more chaos than there is here. The only reason it's taken here is because we've had centuries and centuries of relative peace between the

32:16

European peoples and a culture that is colored with Christendom, and so we're able to swallow the guilt more readily and not go to blows like the other ethnic groups around the world likely would, because those wounds haven't healed yet as much as ours have.

32:34

I think my point is, the focus of the question, the focus of this stuff in the church, we're dealing with things theological, but the root motivations are envy for a very specific group, and I think when we swallow that pill as the

32:49

American church, we can learn how to deal with it a little more directly and a little more offensively.

32:55

So the examples that we always try to pull out are, well, what about Africa, or what about Latin America? Well, it's not going to go there.

33:00

Yeah, but it's going to show up differently. So the whole idea of getting different groups to be at odds with each other because of disparities is

33:11

Marxism. Oh, yeah. It happened in Rhodesia, it happened in... Sure. Whatever that leverage point is, it's not like Marxism was created to cultivate white hate.

33:24

It's just, that's what works here. But it's something else elsewhere.

33:31

I agree. I completely agree, but what I'm saying is the current iteration of it, the current iteration is very specific, and it's not morphed in those...

33:41

Because if it would, they would use a different lever point, so it never works. The problem that we're dealing with right now in the

33:49

West is one that is very specific to white Christians or just white people in general.

33:54

Yeah. So I think part of the challenge as well is when we're saying, okay, hang on a second, you're going to try to heap guilt of you're not inclusive and diverse enough.

34:04

What about all the nations? What's a nation, by the way? Yeah. Since you're going to quote the

34:09

Bible to me about nations, let's get into the text and see what is a nation according to the Bible? Because you're probably thinking political empires, but what does the

34:19

Bible mean when it uses the term Gentiles or Ethnoi? What does it mean when it says nations? And how do we see nations and how do we see the church operating in the

34:29

Bible itself and so forth? So if we're going to have that discussion, let's have that discussion, but let's use biblical terms and not import somebody else's value system and somebody else's dictionary into the scriptures and then create a hash of things and join arm in arm with the devil and become the accuser of the brethren.

34:46

Right. Which is really what this question has done. It's taken the Marxist terms of oppressor and oppressor.

34:54

Well, back then it was more economic. The lever was there, economic, of course, proletariat.

34:59

No, I mean, they used the ethnic issues. I mean, they recruited loads of ethnic Jews after World War II and the

35:05

Holocaust because that's what they had, the grievances that they had. They cover that on Martyr Made, the five -hour -long podcast about communism or that period of time.

35:14

And that's exactly what they did. They used ethnic tensions in the region to say, and what they would do is they would say, all

35:21

Germans must die. That's what they did in East Germany. They put the Germans under the boot because they were a lesser being at that point.

35:28

Was it in the 40s at this point, the 40s? Yeah, yeah. You're talking about, yeah, so after World War II. Yeah, well, and even during World War II.

35:35

Sure. Yeah, they were - Whatever would ever lever the powers that be needed to use, whether it's ethnic, whether it's economic.

35:43

And to your point, that is the particular lever right now.

35:49

It's effective. But the framing of this question is coming from the oppressor and oppressed framing.

35:56

And that is what it says. So you as the church need to address these issues that Marxism, which

36:05

Ted has identified as problems, go. And I reject your premise because you are defining morality using

36:16

Marx or using Engels or using somebody else, and morality is defined by Christ.

36:23

And so you have to turn the argument on its head from the very beginning. Some of the statements that you've, although historically accurate, see a bunch of white supremacists says, no, these same terms are applied in other countries that have nothing.

36:37

There's with no white people in them. And it's still levers that people will use because there are people who are sinners and they love power.

36:44

And they're envious, right? The root of most of this stuff is just straight up envy.

36:50

They're seeking to destroy. Yeah. So in understanding what the assumptions are in the project that's being proposed, the assumption is made that America is one nation made up of all of these different statistics, all these different demographics.

37:07

So we're one nation under demographics to be properly represented at every single institution and gathering within the proper demographic.

37:18

Otherwise you're not virtuous. This is ignoring the fact that the

37:23

American empire is filled with many nations and that God is for the nations and he is for the tribes.

37:31

He is for these different peoples and so much so that he rejoices when these nations gather together as families and greater families, and they praise his name.

37:41

And those groups are happy and joyful that other nations are doing the very same thing.

37:48

And they don't mind if they happen to mix, but they're not more righteous because they do. And they're not those who have the gospel versus those who don't because we have a proper demographic spread represented visually in the same location.

38:03

So in the focus on materialism, which is going to be necessary for envy, always focusing on materialism, then it's, you have to have the demographics in a particular location all at the same time.

38:16

It's all about space and matter. That's where the focus is. That's where the virtue is.

38:21

And when the question is like, we need to bring this country together, the idea is like, we've got to have all the different demographics in the same room equally pleased to be there.

38:30

It's like a diverse homogeneity, like everything everywhere has to be equally diverse.

38:37

Yes. So at that point, it's like, okay, well, all the assumptions that have been laid into this problem are the problem, right?

38:48

When someone's like, we have a big racist problem in our country, all of the assumptions, the false definitions, the illegitimate values, the improper hermeneutics, all of these things, that's what the problem is.

39:03

Once you accept those things as your authority and as your basis, that's when you have this unsolvable problem that has not been raised to the attention that it has, so that anything can be solved.

39:18

This is not a problem to be solved. This is an unsolvable problem given the parameters that created it, which is all the false information and the false definitions and so forth, the wrong -headed questions.

39:30

It creates a problem that has no solution whatsoever because the problem is not supposed to be solved.

39:36

The problem is a tool. The problem is a tool to accomplish something else, which is division.

39:43

The problem is a tool to create the division. So buying into the whole system in the first place and living your life so vitally concerned about this problem is what is contributing to the division long -term.

39:59

Any Christian anywhere dealing with this can simply say, you know what? Race isn't at the right hand of the

40:05

Father, and materialism isn't at the right hand of the Father, and demographics aren't at the right hand of the

40:11

Father, but Jesus Christ is. Amen. And I can rejoice in Him and rest in His righteousness and love

40:16

Him and follow Him, and He will always bring me into the love of my neighbor no matter what anyone else may say, and I can do that rejoicing together with my local church.

40:24

It doesn't matter what our skin pigmentation looks like, and rest in that and rejoice in it. You know, you've been preaching through Acts, and this whole conversation is just so foreign to what's happening in the book of Acts.

40:35

You know, we follow along with Paul a lot, and to think he's a

40:42

Jew of the Jewish people, but he is going across the globe because he loves

40:48

Christ, and he loves the nations, and he sees a vision, and okay,

40:54

I guess now we're going to because they too are Christ's people.

41:00

This stuff, it's so outside of what real Christianity is, all this diversity and ethnic homogeneity.

41:08

It's just, it's so weird. Weird is a good word for weird. Unnatural. It is.

41:14

It's so far away from what Christianity is. Well, I think we have sufficiently answered that question as best we can tonight, and gone down the rabbit holes that we could, but we are going to move on to our recommendations for this week, and we'll start with you,

41:29

Michael. I've got a book called The Person of Christ, A Biblical and Historical Analysis of the

41:35

Incarnation by David Wells. It's an older book. It's part of a series, Foundations for Faith.

41:41

So, The Person of Christ, this is a book that was in the footnotes of another book

41:46

I was reading on The Doctrine of Christ by Stephen Wellam that I've recommended before, but he kept on quoting

41:51

David Wells. I'm like, well, I'm going to go get David Wells' book, since you're going to reference him so often. And I find it to be shorter and more information dense.

42:03

Obviously, what I'm saying is that it's very rich, but I think it's very readable as well. I really enjoy

42:08

David's approach to this doctrine, his reverence and his warmth as he talks about Christ.

42:16

So, as I'm reading everything I can think is profitable on The Doctrine of Christ, The Doctrine of the

42:22

Incarnation, I highly recommend David F. Wells. This is a little book that I've had on my shelf for a while, and I love this thing.

42:29

This was given to me years ago because a phrase I kept using was, well, worst case scenario, this, this, this, worst case scenario.

42:38

And then my friends started to call me worst case Dave. That's officer thinking.

42:47

And then so I was gifted the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook.

42:53

And it is, it's indestructible. I mean, it's, it's, it is so funny. So little things like, you know, how to fend off a shark.

43:01

We have how to fend off a shark, how to escape from a bear, how to jump from a building into a dumpster, how to leap from a motorcycle into a car, you know, things, how do you know how to treat frostbite, you know, how to treat a leg fracture.

43:14

Some of those seem more practical than others. How to survive if your parachute fails to open, you know, these are great.

43:21

So I'm going to pass this around because this is one of the funniest books that I kept reading through. Hold on a second.

43:27

Before I touch this, has this been in the bathroom? No. Because this seems like a bathroom book. You just said it, you know, you got your little shelf of stuff to read.

43:36

I'll just thumb through this. You went to the Worst Case Scenario, didn't you? Worst case. No, this would be a great, but no, no, it's never been in the bathroom basket.

43:48

How to identify a bomb. How to identify a bomb. It explodes. It's self -critiquing.

43:55

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How to land a plane. There, you needed that one. I did. I needed that one.

44:01

You can critique it. And it's just, it goes to like two to three pages for each individual scenario.

44:07

And it just, it just makes me laugh every single time because it's, it's so serious.

44:12

And, you know, and there's, there's others like how to foil an alien objection. You know, there's some that are more useful than others, but you know, if you want to know how to escape from quicksand or wrestle an alligator, the worst case survival handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borschnick, there's a

44:29

German name is maybe for you. So I looked at this, I was looking through recommendations and I have several that I want to bring to the group, but this was just too funny that I needed to let you guys know that this.

44:41

When you were listing all of that, that sounded like episodes of Tintin. Oh yeah. You know, give it, for those of you who have boys, you know, give it, you know, give it to them.

44:49

They may need that someday. I need one for my bathroom. But anyway, so I really,

44:57

I'm in a phase of life where I don't have as much leisure reading time. So whether it's a school studies or preparing for Sundays for Sunday school,

45:06

I really don't have as much, but I will say, don't be tempted to walk away from the simplicity in Christ that we all have.

45:15

Reading the scriptures is a rich journey and do not neglect it.

45:21

I'll just leave it at that. Very good. Amen. Well, I'm giving you a recommendation that somebody else recommended to me.

45:28

This is the song of Roland that was recommended to me by Jacob Cole, our resident

45:36

French scholar. There was much discussion about the crusades recently and our men's group.

45:43

And so he recommended this as a piece of, there was a poem written during the time of he, what he told me was the third crusade.

45:51

I didn't confirm, so he could be wrong. I could be wrong, but the song of Roland and the translation is by Michael A .H.

45:59

Knuth. It's actually a pretty interesting read as it is really focused on loyalty to Christ and loyalty to one's country and King and a very strict code of conduct and honor.

46:13

And there's betrayal, there's dealing with outside enemy. And it's actually a really interesting listen, especially

46:21

I think the author did or the translator did a decent job of trying to bring across the, at least the, how it sounds from the

46:29

French to the English, which would be difficult to do. But he seemed to have done that as I listened to just a bit in French.

46:35

I had no idea what was being said, but the cadence and the meter and the sound was very, very similar.

46:43

So I really appreciated the efforts of the translator in that trying to at least bring a little bit of that across, even though you can't get it all across.

46:51

So that's the song of Roland translation by Michael A .H. Knuth. We'll move on to what are we thankful for?

46:57

Michael. I'm thankful for the crusades. I went there.

47:04

Actually, I'm thankful for God who works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose.

47:11

And that no matter what difficult and chaotic time we live through and are called to be faithful in, our hope and our confidence is always in the

47:21

Lord who governs and governs for our good and his glory. David.

47:27

I am thankful for our small group of men that we can shoot questions to.

47:35

We have a group chat that we occasionally will post stuff to. And it's okay to ask questions or make statements that maybe the larger group, the larger church would be a little bit more hesitant to ask.

47:49

So it's kind of a safe space because you'll take some spears just for fun. You ask your question, but bam, bam, bam, you'll get hit.

47:58

But then once we get the ribbing over, you can really get your questions addressed in a thoughtful, careful manner by people that love you.

48:06

And so I'm thankful that we have this group and I'm thankful that we have the technology where we can share that kind of stuff.

48:14

Even those of us that are several time zones away or doing it across the country. So I'm very, very thankful for that.

48:21

Amen. Andrew. You know, I've said this before, man, it's obviously this topic of race comes up a lot.

48:28

But I thank God for the series of events of the gospel going from Israelites across this planet by the work of many different ethnically aligned

48:44

Christians, followers of the way, the Christ. And to be part of the number of the innumerable is the most thankful thing

48:55

I can be. Amen. Along the lines of the question and your thankfulness, Andrew, I'm thankful to the

49:01

Lord that there are men who come from dark places or places that have not had the gospel before.

49:09

And they come, they receive it, they believe, they repent, and they take it back to their tribe and they take it back to their people because they love their people.

49:18

And it is good to love your people. It is good to love your family. It is good to prefer those good things about your family and about your people.

49:27

Those preferences are not bad. And so to bring it back to your people, the most precious gift, the most precious message that the world has, the only thing that we have been given to cross ethnic lines for any form of unity at all, to bring that back to your people, to avoid the eternal damnation that awaits anybody outside of the new covenant, and to avoid even temporal now disasters that come with a people group who are outside of the new covenant, outside of Christ.

50:06

There are consequences to that as well. And to come back and bring the gospel to your tribe, to your people,

50:13

I am so thankful for those men, those men through history, those men that I know personally that have done that and have built covenant communities of churches in their homeland and networks that are reaching out not just to their people on their island or in their country, but even to now the other ones around them.

50:30

Because they saw that how good it was for their tribe and they want it for other tribes. And they don't feel like they have to press everybody in to the same meat grinder and make it look all the same coming out on the other side.

50:42

No, they're able to give men a very precious gift that they can go give themselves.

50:47

Christ is just sufficient for our unity. Ethnicity is insufficient for unity.

50:54

It's just, it's that simple. This idea, my people group, we come from a very similar background.

51:01

They were pagans, idol worshipers. I want the gospel to go to every single person on this planet.

51:09

There's not a single brother in here that doesn't want the nations to hear the good news.

51:16

There's not a single brother in here that denies that every single nation won't either.

51:21

We know that they will. That's right. We're given that in scripture and we are so thankful for that as well.

51:26

Yeah, we have peace in Christ. Amen. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.