Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 389 | Anti-Asian Crimes & Our Obligation to the Truth

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Today we're going to discuss a heavy topic: the horrific shooting in Atlanta last week, the allegations of white supremacy surrounding the situation, and the truth behind the alleged rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. As Christians, we know each life has infinite value because we are all image bearers of God, regardless of our skin color. So, it's wrong to try to quantify the evil perpetrated in Atlanta by looking at whose skin was what color. And yet, that's exactly what the media and progressives are doing. That kind of thinking only impedes real progress and distracts from other issues like human trafficking and the objectification of women by society. --- Today's Sponsors: Built Bar is the rare item of food that's both healthy & delicious! Don't give up on your resolution => go to BuiltBar.com & use promo code 'RELATABLE' to get 15% off your next order! Issuu is the all-in-one platform to create & distribute beautiful digital content. Get started at Issuu.com/podcast & use promo code 'ALLIE' to get 50% off your premium account! --- Show Links: SFGate: "Black Attacks on Asians: Racism or Opportunity?" https://bit.ly/3vSukAE U.S. Dept of Justice, Bureau of Justice Studies: "Criminal Victimization, 2018" https://bit.ly/3d14mlU FBI: UCR 2019: Hate Crime Statistics https://bit.ly/314CM1P The Guardian: "Biden Administration Drops Trump-Era Discrimination Lawsuit Against Yale" https://bit.ly/3vOegA0 ABC 7: "SF School Board Votes to End Merit-Based Admission at Lowell High, Move School Into Lottery System" https://abc7ne.ws/3lG0B9J Wall Street Journal Opinion: "The Woke 'Model Minority' Myth" https://on.wsj.com/3rbACb5 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Today we are going to talk about a tough subject, an uncomfortable subject. That is the charge of white supremacy as the reason for the recent reported surge in anti-Asian hate crimes. We're going to look specifically at the mass shooting that occurred in Atlanta last week, where a white man shot nine people, seven of them, or Asian women. The races are important because that's part of the conversation that we're having. That's part of why we're talking about this. We're going to talk about some of the accusations being made about his motives, the assumptions that are rising about the cause of this kind of terrible crime. We're first going to remember the victims. We're going to remind ourselves why we care when things like this happen,

why we cannot get swept up in emotional, performative activism on Instagram and media narratives rather than remembering what it means as Christians in particular to care about the loss of life. We're then going to talk about the Atlanta incident, what happened, the suspect, his stated motivations, the reaction to these stated motivations, the immediate analysis from politicians, from journalists, activists, and pastors about why they think he did this, the accusations of white supremacy, the attempt to make anyone who criticizes China, critical race theory, culpable in this, not just for this crime, by the way, but for all recent crimes against Asian Americans, and why these kinds of accusations just do not match up with reality.

We'll also talk about the obvious hypocrisy that we see from some of these. accusers in light of all of this. We're going to talk about why assuming motivations without knowledge or even at times contrary to objective knowledge actually stops us from seeking real answers and real solutions to real problems. And then finally, we are going to end with why Christians have an obligation to the truth. Why? We cannot under any circumstances exchange God's perfect justice for secular justice. Why are knowledge of the gospel? Why? our hope in Christ should make our reactions to news like this slower, more measured, truthful, more human-centric, more hope-filled than that of the world.

So let's talk about specifically what happened in Atlanta. So eight people were killed at three massage businesses in Atlanta and nearby Cherokee County on Tuesday, March 16th. This happened in what has been reported as a surge of, anti-Asian hate crimes over the past year, and we'll talk a little bit more specifically about that charge, about that claim in just a minute. Robert Aaron Long has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault. Six of the victims were Asian. Two were Caucasian. Seven were women. So here are their names. Sun Chung Park was 74.

Jan Zheng Grant was 51. Suncha Kim was 69. Young A.U. was 63. Delana Ashley Yuan was 33. Zauji Tan was 49. Dow You Fang was 44. Paul Andrea Michaels was 54. LCSR. Hernandez Ortiz was 30 and he was seriously injured. He is, I think, still at the hospital and hopefully recovering from his injuries. This is reported from Atlanta's 11 alive. Authority said the first shooting has, happened at Young's Asian massage in Cherokee County just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16th. Four people were killed there and one man was injured. The owner of a business next door said she had a bullet come through her wall. They were screaming. And I told my husband, can you see what happened with them? They may need help, she said. Just 45 minutes later, a second and third shooting happened in Midtown Atlanta, where police said three more people were killed at the gold spa and a fourth at the aromatherapy spa on Piedmont Road.

Those businesses are across the street from each other. Police said they quickly identified Long as the suspect after they put out surveillance photos of the gunman and Long's family contacted them. Law enforcement said they then used Long's phone to track him down and arrest him in Crisp County Tuesday night. They said he told them he was headed to Florida to commit similar acts. So that is completely chilling, that rendering of what happened. I cannot imagine the terror of being a witness to that or being one of these victims who watched

another victim die and knowing what's coming for you. I can't imagine what possesses a person to commit something like this and then to go on to keep doing it after that. You have to be so desensitized to violence and so callous towards human life to continue committing these kinds of crimes over and over again. Andrew Yang had a Twitter thread that cited descriptions of a few of the victims that the media had had gotten from friends and family members. So here's what we have so far. Delana Ashley Yuan was 33. She was described by a friend as someone who seemed to have a light around her that just drew you in. She was a mother to a teenage son and a baby girl. She and her husband had gone for a couple's massage the day of the shootings.

and so she was not apparently someone that worked there. Zauji Tan was 49. Those who knew Zauji called her a, quote, curious, hardworking and caring woman who was always filled with joy. The next day would have been her 50th birthday when she would have shared her favorite strawberry fresh cake with her only daughter. That's what Andrew Yang says in his commentary.

Paul Andre Michaels, 54. He grew up in Detroit to a big family, leaving to serve in the army. He ultimately followed his brother to Atlanta where he did electrical work and met his wife. His brother described him as hardworking, generous, and caring. And then you have Elsie R. Hernandez Ortiz, who again is injured, but hopefully is going to survive. He arrived from Guatemala a decade ago and opened his own auto repair business in Atlanta. He has a 10-year-old daughter whose birthday is next week. Elsius is now in the hospital due to injuries endured during the shooting. And then lastly, Huen Jung Grant, 51, her eldest son considered her both his mother

and a friend. She was fun, hardworking, and love to dance. They would go for sushi dinners before she left for work. Before coming to America, she taught elementary school in Korea. So those are some of the descriptions that we've been able to get from some of the victims that were affected in this tragedy last week. We don't know much. more about these people, but what we know as Christians about them is enough to mourn. We don't need proximity to them. We don't have to have known them. We don't have to be able to relate to their life or their station. We don't have to look like them. They don't have to represent a cause or a belief system that we share for us to care. Some of those things like relatability or

proximity can obviously understandably increase our sadness, but we don't need to be. We don't need these things to mourn because we care and we mourn because these people were made fearfully and wonderfully in their mother's womb. People that like all human beings were made in God's image. Every single one of them by nature of being human had a life that was worth more than the life of any other kind of creature on earth, more than the most majestic animal, the most loved pet, the worth of the most magnificent features of creation is nothing compared to the value of just one of their lives. That's how we as Christians view human beings as that valuable because we believe that humans are image bearers, no matter our race, no matter our ability or

our disability, no matter what talents we bring to the table, how much money we make, how many friends we have, how many accolades we've earned. This is how much the Christian worldview is distinguished from something like secular humanism, which asserts that we're just evolved animals, we're just clumps of matter, we're just material objects with no great purpose, with no divine origin, with no soul. And the fact, and this is something that we kind of talked about last week, last Monday, I believe it was, the fact that atheists, that secular humanists still mourn death goes to show that even those who deny God have eternity written on their hearts. Ecclesiastes 311 says he has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put

eternity into man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. If we were truly just a product of the evolutionary process, soulless clumps of matter, surely we would have evolved to be able to accept the single inevitability of human existence. We'd grow accustomed to the most persistent and the most common human experience, but we don't. It's still shocking to us. Death is still disturbing. It's devastating, especially when it happens to someone that we love. And just as an aside, by the way, that's part of why communism always stops before it starts.

It's a secular ideology that's built on this secular humanism that views people as material, that is endlessly adaptable, moldable. it tries to coerce people into a communist system using whatever means possible, shame, torture, imprisonment, famine, murder. We've talked a lot about all these things and what kind of causes and pushes communism before. But like a beach ball trying to be pushed underwater, human nature just keeps popping up. Human beings will always long for personal private property, for profit, for family, some form of freedom. And they will never give these things up to the state voluntarily. History shows us this over and over again, and communists and fascists and all

kind of totalitarians will always seek to take these things to the point of death. And because humans just can't shake the shock of injustice and murder, there will always be a remnant of dissent. We can't shake the shock of death because we know deep down inside of all of us that it's not supposed to be this way. There is a memory. Or maybe it's an expectation or maybe it's both buried deep inside all of us of something that is different. Maybe it's the inherited memory of walking in the cool of the shade of the Garden of Eden, naked and unashamed and perfect fellowship with our creator. Maybe it's the knowledge that there is something after and beyond this life,

something to look forward to, something beyond the here and then now to seek and to live for. maybe it's that hope against hope that heaven is real that we really were created and that we are wanted and loved and redeemed and saved by an all-powerful ruler of the universe who one day will write all the wrongs who will end all injustice who will do something about the sickness and the sorrow and the evil we see in the world that one day up will be up down will be down truth will be revealed and everyone will know it things will be as we in this inexplicable way know that they should be. No death, no sadness, no pain, just peace under the perfect rule of our good, just God and king. So that is why we as Christians mourn because these

are people and because they matter because they're more than just matter. They're image bears, their souls. And we carry this heavy weight of sadness in us because of the knowledge that it's not supposed to be this way, that the consequences of sin so often play out in these devastating, deadly ways that we are still waiting and sometimes more impatiently than others for all of this madness to stop for redemption. And whatever I struggle with the question of why evil happens, and I do struggle with this question, just like every believer ever has, why such horrible abuse and torment and persecution and wickedness is allowed to persist for so long, why so much happens that it seems so utterly cruel and why this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God seems to be,

at times, not doing the things that I want him to do to stop it. I have to force my eyes back to the scriptures and remind myself, he's not doing nothing. He's not doing nothing. Isaiah 139 tells us, Behold, the day of the Lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the land desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. And that doesn't seem like an encouraging passage, but to anyone who has wrestled with the cruel existence of evil, it is. It means that God is doing something. His wrath is being stored up. It's being built up. It will be unleashed on evildoers. Wickedness and sin and Satan will fully and finally be to destroyed, he's not doing nothing. He's not absent. He will exact, perfect, divine revenge on the wicked,

and all those that he has graciously redeemed through Christ will be spared. I also love Psalm 37 here verses 34 through 36, although I really recommend the whole chapter, wait for the Lord and keep his way and he will exalt you to inherit the land. You will look on when the wicked are cut off. I have seen a wicked, ruthless man spreading himself like a green laurel tree. But he passed away. And behold, he was no more. Though I sought him, he could not be found. So every child abused, every baby aborted, every civilian casualty of war, every victim of totalitarianism, every person oppressed, or neglected, every life lynched, crucified, murdered, will be avenged. Everything stolen, every lie told, every instance of extortion, manipulation, will be paid for.

will be defeated. Our only hope as sinners ourselves is to trust in Christ for our salvation so that we will be saved and live forever in joy and peace with our God. So in the midst of sorrow and confusion of devastating, depressing news stories like this one, the Christian's view of what's going on in this is so much bigger than the myopic media narrative. If we are to maintain our hope and our obedience to God, it must be bigger than what we see on social media, the talking points parodied by pundits, bigger than the headlines, deeper than the Instagram posts, more complex than the tweets wiser and wider than the knee-jerk reactions that we see. Because we view it in light of both the temporal and the eternal. Yes, these were mothers, these were fathers, these were friends and

sisters. Yes, this may speak to problems that need to be dealt with here on earth. But more than anything, we feel what Romans 8 describes as creation's groanings like that of childbirth, as it, along with believers, are painstakingly waiting for Jesus's return for everything to be made right. And so, in light of all of this, what does this mean? How does this affect how we react to a media report of a man killing eight people? First, I think that it means that we are bound by love and a deep care for both the victims and the people in their lives. who will mourn them. We pray for those that they left behind. That they would know the gospel if they don't already. That somehow God would be glorified in all of this. That God would not allow Satan to get

what he wants here, which is more division and hate and fist shaking at God. That instead, what Satan meant for harm, God would in a way that we cannot understand use it for good. If you are in the area, maybe it means that you can see how you can help in tangible ways. Maybe your church is helping the victim's families. Maybe there is a way that you can offer that kind of support. As Christians, we run into the sadness. We are eager to share the weight of others' burdens. We are eager to listen.

We are eager to help. Second, I think that it means that we are bound by the truth, which means we are slow to react. And I have not always kept this rule by the way. but I am always so glad I can just tell you this from personal experience and I hope that you'll learn from my mistakes. I am always so glad when I wait to react to something until I get all the details. I have many times regretted hastiness, but I have never ever regretted pausing to consider the weight and the truthfulness and the necessity of my words. Proverbs 29 20 says,

do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. That also means that we have to try as hard as we can to decipher what is actually true. We can't ascribe motives without knowledge. We don't conjure up causes of incidents to confirm our preconceived biases. We don't seek ways to shift blame onto people or groups of people not involved because it feels good or is convenient. And we've all failed at this. Me included for sure.

social media and its perpetual rewarding of hastiness and foolishness and callousness has gotten the best of all of us. We are all guilty in this way. But man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to try. We have to be different from the world in this way. It also means that we resist partiality. Proverbs 2821 says to show partiality is not good, but for a piece of bread, a man will do wrong. So that means our sadness and our outrage is not dictated by the skin colors or the political parties or the socioeconomic classes or the genders of those involved. Yes, those factors might be

important, but they don't determine how sad we are when an image bearer is killed or assaulted in some way or victimized. It means when the perpetrator of a crime is a white man, We are no quicker to ascribe racialized motives to him than we are if it were a black man. It means that our ears don't only perk up when the story fits into our political narrative and that our indignation isn't only expressed when a story advances our agenda. And oh man, how many of us have shown this kind of partiality for a piece of bread, for a like, for a retweet, for a pat on the back to feel included among our peers or among people that we see is important. It's not of God. That doesn't mean that we can't have opinions or

perspectives or priorities, but when these things blind us to the truth, when they motivate us to push a narrative about something that is not actually true or make us callous towards other forms of injustice, other crimes, that's a problem. And I'm telling you, we've talked about this a lot before that that is exactly what I have seen happen among Christians in the past year. Immediately latch on to mainstream narrative, latch on to a mainstream assumption about something. Whenever a white person is a suspect or the perpetrator, the immediate accusation is of white supremacy and of systemic racism without even a question about what the truth is, without even a care in the world to the cases that have occurred that don't fit into that box.

Why? Because it feels good, it feels right, it feels empathetic, it feels loving. We're applauded by both the world at a huge chunk of the church. That feels amazing. And quite honestly, to question the narrative or the assumed motives or the pervasive cause when it comes to any incident involving a white perpetrator and a non-white victim is really uncomfortable. And maybe we're convinced that that would just be a toxic product of our white privilege. What an incredible tactic. Sin has employed to stop people from ever asking themselves in these kinds of situations, what is true? Just post the Black Square. Share the post. Repeat the talking points. Read the books and never allow yourself to look beyond what you're being told. James 317 tells us,

but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. So godly wisdom is open to reason. It's not shut off by bias and narrative. Reason is driven by truth, by facts. And this is where we get into the uncomfortable part of the episode, separating fact from fiction, to ensure that we are being open to reason, that we are are employing the wisdom that is from above with the truth, with the facts that are available to us when it comes to looking at the cause of these things and the trends and whether or not this is indicative of systemic anti-Asian racism and white supremacy, we've got to look at the facts that we have. So the popular accusation that we have seen paraded across the press

and our social media this past week is that the man in Atlanta shot and killed these people because of his own racism, as well as the white supremacy that exists in this country. We are being told that anti-Asian violence is because of white supremacy. It's because of Trump and his supporters calling the coronavirus, the China virus, and that this incident shows us how we have to root out the kind of white nationalism that we see from the right. Here are some examples of that particular accusation from CNN. Why anti-Asian American violence is really?

rising, along with white supremacist propaganda. This is a headline in the nation. The massacre in Atlanta was as predictable as white supremacy. This is from Representative Acosio-Cortez. Dismandling racist anti-Asian violence means standing up to white supremacy. The same ideology that asks us to empathize with those who commit racist violence rather than the families destroyed and communities targeted by it. I don't even know who's doing that.

Corey Bush says to our Asian neighbors, family, and friends, I know that the world seems more scary today, more cruel, know that we love you. And I think that that statement alone, by the way, is fine. Then she goes on to say, we mourn those killed last night in Atlanta with you. We will dismantle white supremacy alongside you. Iona Presley, eight lives were stolen. We stand in solidarity and deep compassion with our AAPI family in Georgia. And across the country, racism, misogyny, and white supremacy are a threat to all of our communities. Minkha T. Fam said this tweet went viral. It has, as of right now, almost 76,000 retweets.

He didn't have a sexual addiction, and we'll get more into that claim in just a second. He had racist, sexualized fantasies about dominating Asian women. In other words, he had fantasies of white supremacy and acted on them, name it. But here's the truth. We have no idea if this was motivated by race. We just don't know. It might have been, but we do not know that. So here's what's being reported by Atlanta's 11 alive.

Quote, as of Wednesday evening, Long is being held at the Cherokee County Detention Center. Officials said Long told them he was a sex addict during interviews and that he targeted the spas because of temptation. He apparently has an issue of what he considers an addiction and sees these locations as something that allow him to go to these places. And it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate. Cherokee County Captain Jay Baker said in a press conference.

The New York Times also reports Robert Aaron Long, the man charged with killing eight people in a rampage at Atlanta area massage parlors, spent several months being treated for what he described as a sex addiction and regularly went to massage parlors for sex, one of his former roommates at a halfway house said. Tyler Bayliss, the former roommate said in an interview that he lived with Mr. Long at the house at the house in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell for about five months beginning in August 2019. Nearly once a month, Mr. Long, who is then 20, would admit to Mr. Bayliss and others in the

apartment that he had again relapsed by visiting a massage parlor to have sex with an employee, Mr. Bayliss said. He said Mr. Long's admissions were always paired with discussions about his Christian faith and his relationship with God and his parents. It tore him up inside Mr. Baylis says. Now, we only have these people's word for it. That's what he's saying. We don't know for sure.

But it is true that massage parlors are sometimes affront for prostitution. That's not just like a random accusation. The New York Times writes, although many massage parlors are just that places to get a massage, experts say there are more than 9,000 such businesses in the United States that are fronts for prostitution and that many of the women working there are being exploited. In 2020, Street Grace, a faith-based anti-trafficking organization used a popular website used by those who frequent such spots to identify 165 illicit massage businesses in Georgia, more than three quarters of which were in the greater Atlanta area.

The organization set up cameras outside the shops and reviewed the comments on the review site, on the review website rub maps to estimate that the illicit massage industry in Georgia has more than a thousand customers a day and an estimated annual gross revenue of more than $42 million. Yvonne Chen, an advocate for sex trafficking victims who works with Asian women who work at massage businesses, said not all of them are willing to provide sex to their clients, but those who refuse are often attacked by their customers. I don't, it goes on to say, I don't I don't think there's enough discussion of the violence that comes from the buyers. She said. Customers often go on membership-only review websites where they describe in detail what sexual services employees at a given spa are willing to provide. The two spas targeted in the attacks in Atlanta, aromatherap and goldspa have dozens of comments on rubnaps. So like from what we see from what this guy said as well as what the reports are, what his friends have said that he has said in the past. this actually seems plausible that he was engaged in this kind of behavior. Again, that doesn't mean

that we know for sure all of his motivations or that there was no other kind of motivation involved, but very credibly, we see that he probably did have some kind of sex addiction and that he was visiting these parlors. That doesn't justify anything. I'm not trying to say that, well, we just need to have a more nuanced, you know, look about this and have a little bit more sympathy or understanding. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, like, we need to be clear about what is probably true about his motivations and what his experiences actually were. And if we want compassion for these victims, which I think that we should absolutely have, we need to be looking at this problem. We need to be looking at the fact that a lot of these, a lot of these women are being exploited and a lot of

these women are subject to this kind of violence. Instead, here's what we get from an article in the Washington Post. The alleged killer told police that race, was an emotive, but given his targets, that is just not credible. Partly, no doubt, those incidents came thanks to President Donald Trump's insistence on calling the coronavirus, the China virus, and the Kung flu. Many recognized early that such words aligned him with the strain of hatred and accompanying, accompanying vigilante violence that has existed in the United States for as long as Asian immigrants have been here. White supremacy depends on pitting people of color against one another so they don't see their shared cause.

Racial profiling does not stem from the same stereotypes for Asian Americans, black people, Muslims, and other groups, but it serves a common purpose to define who is essential and who belongs to the nation. The best way to keep Asian Americans safe is for the United States to improve its economy and promote global equality for everyone without fearmongering about the countries their ancestors left. So there's really a lot there. First, I want to acknowledge that yes, absolutely, there has been. anti-Asian racism in this country. And I have no doubt that it still exists in the same way that

there has been and still exists anti-black racism, all kinds of racism, all kinds of isms exist. And unfortunately, we'll always exist. I would say at one point, we're systemic. And thankfully, there have been so many improvements in this country to ensure that people of all different kinds of backgrounds can exceed and are given the same kinds of opportunities. We had Chinese railroads. We had Japanese internment camps. Asian populations, especially where they are concentrated in different parts of the country, have seen forms of harassment that other groups haven't seen. So I want to acknowledge that yes, absolutely, there has been a history of targeting Asian people. And unfortunately, as we will get to in just a minute, it seems like they are still

being targeted sometimes by some people. But I want to kind of unpack. this analysis from the Washington Post. I want to point out everything that we're getting from that article. Not just is it whiteness and white supremacy we are reading, but it's also Donald Trump. It's also criticism of China that causes this. The original headline to this article was actually titled, Anti-China rhetoric leads to anti-Asian violence like the Atlanta shooting. And now it reads bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia leads to anti-Asian violence.

So we see what's going on here. We see that we are being told that we can't criticize China. We can't talk about the origins of the coronavirus without being complicit in these kinds of terrible murders like the one that happened in Atlanta. But here's the truth. And again, I believe that we're bound to the truth. If we're looking at this objectively, which we should. There is not a country in the world who systemically oppresses more Asians than China and the Chinese communist. party. I'm not talking about the Chinese people. I'm talking about the leadership in China.

They have one million of their own people in concentration camps as we speak, because they are Muslim, where they are forcibly sterilized, where their babies are aborted, sometimes at full term, where their men are tortured and abused, maimed, where their children are indoctrinated, where some of their organs are harvested and then sold. They have completely taken over Hong Kong, the CCP, which used to be autonomous, and has jailed or killed every dissenter. They hid the data about the coronavirus and disappeared the researchers and the scientists that spoke out about it. Their lockdowns reportedly consisted of welding people into their homes until they died of starvation. According to the New York Times, they kicked African immigrants out of their own apartments.

They kept them out of restaurants in China accusing them of being vectors of the virus. They employ slave labor right now to make their products. They steal other countries, intellectual property. They are currently colonizing poor countries in Africa and South America. Their own people do not have freedom. They don't have rights. They don't have privacy. They don't have free speech. They don't get to worship who or how they want. They don't have any liberty to speak up. There's no such thing as a human right there. And for decades, they have used racial tensions in the United States as propaganda to convince people both here and abroad that the United States has no right to criticize them.

And if you believe that, then you've bought into the propaganda. Anyone who uses the tragedy of what happened in Atlanta to say that we should not criticize the CCP or point out where the virus came from and was actively covered up is doing the bidding of the most brutal and oppressive and racist regime on the planet. Now, should we always distinguish between Chinese people? people in the CCP? Absolutely. Should we ever view people of any skin color or nationality is inherently bad or dirty or less than in any way? Absolutely not. Should we ever use a virus as an excuse to discriminate against a certain type of person? No. But should we also be able to have this sense to call out

corruption where we see it while still loving our neighbors that hail from a different country? Yes. Plus, there is absolutely no data proving any kind of correlation or causation between Trump naming the origin of the virus, white supremacy, and the reported rise in violent crimes against Asian people. And here's another point. And so we've read continually that there is a rise in hate crimes against Asian people. I think I saw, according to CBS, like 150 percent rise from last year. Here's what we don't really know. We don't know how that is being defined how that's being recorded, what the methodology of that study is. So it's really hard to know why is this happening, where is this happening, according to whom? Because the reality is,

is we'll read in a report in just a second. Violent crimes have been up over the past year. Unfortunately, against all different kinds of people. You might remember, I think it was at the beginning of 2020. We were having a very similar conversation about repeated attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community in places like New York. And we were also being told that it had to do with white supremacy and white nationalism. That narrative didn't go very far because it just wasn't true. We have the reports and we had the data before us. But there's a lot of confusion, I think, that's shrouding this conversation and this claim.

I don't doubt that there is an increase in crimes against Asian Americans. But I think that we need a little bit of clarity on the reporting. So I'm just going to say that as a caveat for any of you. you who are wondering, like, where are these numbers coming from? We keep hearing. There's a surge in anti-Asian violence. Where are we seeing that. What are the reports about that? We're going to get into some of that. But know that there's still a lack of definitions and a lack of clarity and a lack of sourcing around that that makes it very difficult for us to have a proper analysis. And so that's actually why I would say people are able to kind of make this commentary of, well,

this probably has to do with Donald Trump and criticizing China and white supremacy and things like that because there's still so much vagueness surrounding the reporting and surrounding the claim. But I will read this report from The Spectator by Zaid Jalani. Quote, democratic lawmakers have been quick to blame former President Donald Trump's anti-China rhetoric for the violence. A lengthy New York Times op ed on the topic goes back further, positioning the latest spree of violence as an extension of white mobs in the 19th century, brutally assaulting immigrants. The article carefully avoids identifying the ethnic background of the assailants in this year's attacks.

In New York City, hundreds of people marched in a rally that called on the city to unite against white nationalism. A piece of art promoting the event demanded justice for Vicha Radina Pakti. Radina Pacti, who immigrated to the United States from Thailand, was brutally assaulted in San Francisco in late January, and he died soon after. here's the problem. There is no evidence that Antoine Watson, the 19-year-old, charged with killing Ratanapakhti, is a white nationalist. Watson isn't white. He's African-American. In fact, almost all of the suspects in the recent high-profile attacks against Asian Americans that are drawing public

attention are from minority groups. We don't know how many of the attacks are even motivated by ethnic hatred to begin with. He says, Yaha Muslim, an African-American man who is the center of one of the highest profile attacks on Asian Americans is reportedly homeless and mentally ill. And prosecutors have yet to bring hate crime charges against him. As an aside, this definition, hate crime can be arbitrary, but it usually means it's motivated by some kind of specific animus to do with someone's race, to do with someone's gender, even someone's disability, just to try to make that as clear as possible. Over the past year, the article goes on to say we've seen a huge spike in violent crime, particularly shootings and homicides. It's possible that these crimes against Asian

Americans are simply part of a larger crime wave that is making major American cities increasingly unsafe. Some of these crimes, however, involved explicit invocations of anti-Asian hatred. One Seattle court filing from January I reviewed described Samuel Green shoving Asian American Catherine Yeager so hard that it knocked the wind out of her while saying Asians need to be put in their place. Again, green is not a white supremacist. He is black. These are not the only cases. I looked at the recent reports of crimes against Asian Americans without looking for any kind of suspect or any kind of perpetrator. It's actually very hard to find who the suspect is in a lot of cases. So I just found what I could find

in the reporting of the recent cases. So within the span of what is considered like the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes, which I think would go probably to like February of 2020 until until now. And these are some of the cases that I can find. According to New York Daily News, an ex-convict with a history of victimizing elderly Asian people has been charged with murder and a brutal death of a 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground during a strong-arm robbery in California, authorities said Thursday, the suspect fled the scene but was arrested a short time after the incident, he was identified as Tiante Bailey, a 26-year-old criminal with multiple convictions for assault, burglary, other crimes, according to officials.

This elderly man, like the headline says, was an Asian man. Bailey is also an African American. According to ABC, a man named Salman Muflihi stabbed an Asian man in the back in Chinatown in New York. We don't know his race, but I would guess that it's probably likely that he is not a white supremacist. According to people, quote, on January 31st, three elderly people were attacked in Oakland's Chinatown district, including a 91-year-old man who suffered lacerations, abrasions, and a contusion to the left thumb. The other two victims included a 60-year-old man and 55-year-old woman, Oakland police previously said. Yaya Muslim 28 was charged with three counts of assault with forced left. likely to produce great bodily injury and one count of elder or dependent adult abuse.

These were Asian people that were victimized by a man with the last name of Muslim who was also African American. ABC eyewitness news in New York obtained a video of another unprovoked attack on an Asian man on March 3rd. This man was also African American. New York Daily News reports, quote, a 68-year-old man punched in the face by a stranger on a Tribeca subway train, leaving him in critical condition was the latest victim of anti-Asian hate, a good Samaritan who helped the victim told the Daily News. Police arrested a subject, Mark Matthew of the Bronx on assault charges Sunday. I'll put a picture of the suspect up. We see from the picture that he is an African-American man. New York Daily News reported an Asian man riding a train in New York City

that was dragged off the train by a man saying, you're infected, China boy. So this would obviously be an instance of obvious racism. We don't know the race of the perpetrator. I'll put the picture up so that you can see. It seems kind of ambiguous. A San Francisco woman, according to CBS 5 in San Francisco, was randomly attacked by a man on Market Street. We don't know who the, well, actually, no, we do know who the suspect is now.

We didn't get a good picture of him, but it looks like from the video that it is probably the white guy that's on the stretcher. and we don't know exactly what happened, but it seems like he just totally randomly attacked these two Asian elderly people in San Francisco. According to NBC in late February of last year, so still within the span of a reported surge of anti-Asian hate crimes, quote, Dwayne Grayson 20 is facing charges including robbery and elder abuse as well as a hate crime enhancement and Saturday's attack on a 68-year-old man who is Asian, collecting recyclables, police said. He's also accused a probation violation for a prior robbery, conviction. Dwayne Grayson is also African American. The video of this assault and harassment is awful. If we look at the most recently available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics,

which is 2018 when it comes to this particular statistic, it shows us that Hispanic offenders account for 7% of crimes against Asians. White offenders account for 24.1% of violent crimes against Asians. Asian offenders also account for exactly 24.1% of violent crimes against Asians, but black Americans account for 27% of crimes against Asians. And remember, both Hispanics and whites account for much larger shares of the total American population than black Americans do. And also what's interesting about that is that every other race is primarily victimized by people of their own race. So white people tend to kill white people, Hispanic people, tend to kill Hispanic people. Black people tend to kill black people, but only among Asians do we see

another demographic as the primary offender. And another thing to know is that the bulk of these crimes are happening in San Francisco and New York and L.A. So when you're thinking about people's politics, which politicians are probably influencing them or whether or not white supremacy is the culprit, I think it's important to keep that point in mind as well. And I mean, I don't know what to say. I'm not making a judgment about all of this. I understand that even reading those reports and reading that data is offensive. I'm not trying to be offensive or to cause controversy. I'm not making any judgments about any particular group by reading these headlines.

I'm not ascribing motives or painting with a broad brush. It's just what it is. I have no agenda behind reporting that. It makes no difference to me, whether it is white people or black people doing the victimization of Asian people. in any case, I think it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that we should do everything we feasibly can to protect vulnerable communities from violence. But I do care about what's true. I do care about false narratives. According to the outlet SF gate, walking to a convenience store in San Francisco's Visitation Valley last fall, Rangshi Chen eyed a pair of young black men

coming his way with no warning the men grabbed the 64-year-old, lifted him and threw him in the concrete that kicked his ribs, broke his collarbone, and made off with $200 credit cards, and Chen's identification. He's not alone. At least four high-profile attacks involving blacks and Asians have occurred since January in San Francisco and Oakland, including the beating death of Tian Xing Yu, 59 last month, to 18-year-old men, have been charged with murder. Others, including the police chiefs in San Francisco and Oakland, are just as empathetic, or sorry, just as emphatic, that the problem is not hatred of Asian Americans, but a hazardous collision between angry young men and a vulnerable population with cash in their pockets.

And so this is a problem that's been going on for a long time. The data that I just read you about the disproportionate number of crimes committed against Asians being by black Americans has persisted. if you look at the justice data from 1993 to 2018, you'll see that consistent pattern that has remained pretty much stagnant. Now, I think it's probably true that as this 2010 article is saying the police chief said in San Francisco and Oakland that there's not necessarily an indication of most of these crimes being what is considered a hate crime, meaning people targeted for their race. And it's important to note that according to FBI data on hate crimes, about 2.4,000.

of all hate crimes are classified as anti-Asian hate crimes, 205 in 2019, 46% of those were committed by white people, 15% committed by black people, 34% by someone of unknown ethnicity. So again, that's very vague. And the definition of hate crime is very vague. And how they decide what's a hate crime is also very vague and sometimes arbitrary. But that particular statistic, if we're taking it at face value, is more in line with the population sizes, with the proportions of both groups. It is odd, by the way, how few of these we tend to hear about. There is a long history of tense Asian and black relations.

Outlands like Fox and the Brookings Institute, who, by the way, I think, has produced a lot of good and really helpful stuff. They try to say that it's actually still the fault of white supremacy and white people when a black person victimizes an Asian person because of what they call the, quote, model minority myth that they claim, white people use to pit Asian people against black people in order to try to, you know, not have them on the same side. But while it may be true that white Americans discriminating against both Asian Americans and African Americans, or they have discriminated against

these two groups, and while it's true that our history is unquestionably rife with different kinds of discrimination and isms, the idea that this myth is today perpetuated by white people and is the cause of black-on-asian crime is literally preposterous. It's infantilizing. It robs people of moral agency and an effort to stick to a narrative in which whiteness and white supremacy are always the culprit. Plus, it ignores the facts Asian Americans do, statistically, objectively, have among all ethnicities in America, including white people, the highest graduation rates, the lowest crime rates, the lowest divorce and fatherlessness rates, the highest median income, Asians between 12 and 20 or half as likely as the average young

American to drink underage Asian students do on average 50% more homework than the average American student. That's not a myth. That's just true. And I understand that is very disconcerting. It's very inconvenient to the whole narrative that every system that is in place in America today is created to uphold whiteness and to uphold white supremacy. because if that were true, the fact that Asian people on average are doing better than white people

in all of these categories, it puts a real wrench in that theory. And so I understand why people don't want to talk about that and they want to pretend that that that doesn't exist and that it's actually just some sort of myth that white people are perpetuating again to uphold white supremacy. But it's a faulty premise. It's a wrong narrative. It's not factual. Lauren Chen, who is half Chinese, she pointed some of these things out on Twitter.

She then posted some of the DMs that she got from people. She originally said, you know, like, I'm from an Asian family. We value these things. And she got a very vicious response from some people. She got some messages that said, for example, your house probably smelled like cat stew and bat's old, Kung flu, cussword, cussword that I won't say. Also, another message called her the B word, you eat cats and dogs, you are a C-H-I-N-K, y'all eat effing cats. This was not, by the way, these messages that she posted from people in reaction to this were not from white supremacists.

The fact is this, quote, model minority trope is something that is used much more by progressives than anyone else to try to justify discriminating against Asian Americans. And here's how, according to the Guardian. Biden administration drops Trump-era discrimination lawsuit against Yale. The lawsuit had claimed university discriminates against Asian-American and white applicants, which via affirmative action is actually true. And the Trump administration was trying to go after Yale because of this, because they were purposely discriminating against these two groups, and the Biden administration decided to put an end to the lawsuit.

The Trump admin federal prosecutors had argued, quote, the university violates civil rights laws when it discriminated. based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinant of factor in hundreds of admission decisions every year. And that's absolutely true. In order to meet certain quotas, universities will discriminate against Asian students because there would be too many Asians and not enough of other groups if they simply allowed it to be by merit. That's just the fact. The Biden admin announced February 3rd that it had dropped the discrimination lawsuit. So apparently, when it comes to discrimination against Asian Americans,

We don't care enough to actually pursue justice in that kind of situation. According to ABC 7, San Francisco School Board votes to end merit-based admission to LOW High, move school into lottery system. And apparently, the motivation is because, again, there are too many Asian students. San Francisco Board of Education voted to end the merit-based admission at Lowl, a top academic high school. The article says, quote, in October because of the pandemic, the San Francisco School Board proposed eliminating soliciting,

selective merit-based admissions at Lowell for one school year. But when racist incidents resurfaced at the high school last month, the board quickly proposed a resolution to make the change permanent. According to California's school dashboard, about 50% of the students at Lowell are Asian, 18% are white, 12% are Latino and 2% are African-American. They're trying to change that last one. And so they are, I mean, explicitly, they say they're taking away merit-based admission to change those numbers, which I think sounds a lot like bigotry.

But their ongoing questions and concerns about whether moving Lowell to the lottery system will end or address racism at the school. You're just shifting racism. You're just kind of renaming and reminipulating racism to go against one group because you're afraid that Asians, if you keep it merit-based, are going to continue to be the dominant percentage at that school. And so you get rid of merit altogether and you use a lottery system in order to make it more superficially diverse. And so that kind of discrimination from progressives is apparently okay. This is a really interesting article from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal titled, The Woke Model Minority Myth for Progressives Asian American Achievement is

an embarrassment. Quote, North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey Washington made headlines in November when their equity report classified Asian Americans along with whites instead of as students of color. Apparently, the Asian Americans were doing too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was an overwhelming public response, it admitted its category choices had racist implications and dropped the equity report from its website. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between oppressors defined as whites and the oppressed. defined as everyone else. You guys know exactly what that is if you listen to this podcast. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes you white or white adjacent.

Even if your family came from China or India. Asian Americans are caught in a bind. Condend the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be banished from the victim group as white adjacent. Says Wyn Wu, executive director of Californians for equal rights. The progressive contention is that admitting students on individual merit is really about upholding white dominance. What about Asian American success then? In this narrative, that's using the model minority myth as a wedge against African Americans to send in the false message that with strong families and hard work, America's racism can be overcome. In reality, by applying different

interest standards for different racial groups, the equity movement is stoking racial resentment and pitting one group against another. In the past, anti-Asian big a tree took the form of direct assaults. These reflected claims that Asian Americans were inferior and capable of assimilating or stealing jobs. But today, many Asian Americans are learning that the progressive form of discrimination may be the most insidious of all. What do progressive say to a Chinese American or Indian American when she realizes their ideology means her children will be held to higher standards to get into college simply because of their race? Asked why Hua Chin, a charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

Should we really have to tell her children, they must accept that because of their race, they will have to work harder to get the same opportunities as others and accept this new racism as the price of woke America. Now, I'm not saying that this form of progressive discrimination, and what I think is anti-Asian bigotry, is what causes these anti-Asian crimes. I don't know enough to say that. I'm not prideful enough to pretend to be able to make that kind of causal argument. All I'm trying to say is that history, as well as our current reality, is a lot more complex than white bad, non-white good. And when we fail to see that, when we turn into these

morally flimsy intellectually weak people who can't see our problems for what they are, it means that we can't actually address the issues at hand. We look at a case like what happened in Atlanta where a white man shot and killed a group that was predominantly Asian. And we decide that it must be indicative of widespread systemic racism and white supremacy that is being weaponized against Asian people. We rush to blame Trump and white people and conservatives for these crimes. And we make this case about those things without any kind of knowledge supporting it. and actually contrary to the knowledge that we do have about patterns of recent crimes and completely ignoring other factors that might come into play.

We fail then to reach any kind of real solution. When we tried to use this one horrifying instance and say that it characterizes all of our problems, we lose our ability to think clearly. We won't look at the problem, for example, of exploitation and trafficking reportedly occurring at some of these salons when we are focused on the problem only being white perpetuated racism when we don't even have the facts to support that. We won't talk about these women being forced into vulnerable situations in which frustrated men take out their violence and anger on them.

We won't talk about why so many young people today are turning to pornography and some to prostitution instead of forming real relationships with women. It means that we will mourn for this situation as we should, but we won't hear about or care about as much a shooting at a Dallas nightclub in which eight people were shot because it doesn't perpetuate any sort of pattern that we hope to prove or make a useful political point. And most people won't hear or care about Sequoria Turner, the eight-year-old black girl that was killed by a BLM rioter in Atlanta last year or the six-year-old girl in Texas who was just shot in the chest twice and killed on Friday by a relative because she spilled some water.

Her black life isn't as politically useful because she was killed by someone who looked like We probably won't hear quite as much about the mentally ill man of Rochester, New York, who is burned alive in his home by two black teenagers because he's white. It's not politically expedient. It doesn't advance any kind of narrative. That's what happens when we fail to see things as they are. When we are so dogmatically loyal to one particular storyline and one particular narrative, we refuse. to see reality. And we lose our moral compass in the process. Maybe this guy, Robert Long,

was a racist. Maybe he did fantasize about dominating Asian women. Maybe he was inspired by anti-Asian rhetoric. That is absolutely a possibility. But we have no idea if that's true. We don't know. And for the people who are pointing to the police officer saying or paraphrasing what Robert Long said is his reasoning for committing the murder saying he had a bad day. And then they're trying to claimed this is whiteness at work. Just remember, when Antoine Watson murdered Vichara Radina Pakti, the district attorney in that case said that Watson was just throwing a temper tantrum. So again, let us be fair. We can't just rush to confirm our own biases. All of this is very complex. There are a lot of different parts to it. America is not just split into white oppressors and

non-white people who are being oppressed. And again, when we try to fit everything into those two categories, we lose moral clarity and we become intellectually mushy, rushing to confirm biases in this story. Not just when it comes to race, but also when it comes to ideology is exactly what's happening right now, not just in the media, but also in the church. I will talk about that in just one second. So we have Salon articles about how this is a result of purity culture in the Baptist Church. And I mean, give me a break. I've got my problems with some of the stuff that teens were taught in church about sex when I was growing up. I've talked about that. Some of it was anti-gospel unhealthy, unproductive. But let's just blow the tiniest gust of air into that house

of cards that people are trying to build with this argument by asking for some numbers to back up that assertion. You think most of the guys raping and beating up women every year are Baptist church-going kids who got the purity talk at church camp. I don't say that doesn't happen. I think it definitely does. But you're going to tell me that's the trend the data indicates. It doesn't maybe have anything to do with the rampant objectification of women in our culture, easily accessible pornography, which according to trafficking hub can apparently be tailored

by whatever racial proclivities and perversions a person might have. That's not a possibility. I don't think an analysis of victimizers is going to support the claim that rapists and sex assaulters in this country are predominantly products of misguided youth pastors. Again, not saying that that's not a problem, but to go so far as to say that that this dude's murder rampage was due to that just does not hold up to any scrutiny. Robert P. George, or sorry, Robert P. Jones reported this, not incidental. He says on Twitter, Atlanta murder suspects, SBC Church, Southern Baptist Convention Church, belongs to founders ministries.

A group that claims a white fragility is pro-racism calls critical race theory, critical race theory, godless and materialistic ideologies, equates women preaching with abuse. I don't know if that last one is true. Then Dr. Anthony Bradley, who is a religion professor at King's College, he responded to Robert Jones's tweet like this. Again, CRT, critical race theory, is not the threat SBC leaders should be worried about. It's the anti-CRT gang using the faux CRT hysteria to mask their Jim Crow era evangelicalism. The same one that they called MLK a communist.

The discipleship crisis is their errant gospel understanding. So trying to translate this. Because Founders Ministries has spoken biblically and logically and kindly, by the way, against the godlessness, against the illogic of critical race theory, which we've already seen so much of. as we've been talking about this subject today. And because the church that this suspect was one time a part of is a part of founders' ministries, being against CRT is somehow to blame for this.

And being against CRT is being a Jim Crow evangelical. So when Ariel Robinson and her husband, a black couple from South Carolina, beat their adopted daughter to death days after Ariel Robinson tweeted about her white adopted kids having white privilege, this was just a couple months ago, we can't make any connection between the possible toxicity of that kind of thinking. But when a murder who went to a church that's part of the ministry that recorded a few podcasts about the inconsistencies of critical race theory with the Bible, it's totally fair game to say that this is part of the problem that inspired this guy to commit murders.

The answer is yes to some people. Because ironically, that is what CRT forces its adherence to believe. I'll explain that in a second. Now, interestingly, Dr. Bradley tweeted this last night. He says, data violence against Asians, 1993 to 2018, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dr. Anthony Bradley tweets this. Table 14 of those committing violence against Asians, 24% are committed by whites, 24% are committed by Asians, 7% by Hispanics, 27.5% by blacks. It's mostly black and we're still not talking about it. Why? The reason Dr. Bradley is because of the mentality of critical race theory that you say criticizing

is akin to being a Jim Crow evangelical. Critical race theory is a secular world deal that sees the world through the lens of race predominantly primarily as white versus black. Its main assertion is that America is systemically racist against black people always has been, always will be, until we dismantle all the patterns, all the institutions, all the norms, all the systems that hold white power structures in place through a variety of interventions, getting white people to give up their power, their capital, their influence, their voice, et cetera, and give it to non-white people specifically to black people. It sees whites as active or complicit in racism, only two options. There is no such thing in critical race theory as being not racist. And all black people, it sees as in one way or another, as victims of white oppression. Therefore, there is no room for black people in this critical race theory worldview to be in any way seen as an oppressor.

So you want to know why we don't hear about the dominance of black on Asian crime? Because of the intersectionality CRT worldview that has increasingly affected our media and academia is seeping into the church, has been for the past decade, that weighs culpability based on race rather than on actual action and response. So that's why you see articles, an activist, clamoring to explain that even black on Asian crime is the result of white supremacy. When that is your worldview and you have to fit everything and cited, that's the only way to make sense of what's going on. But we know that this rubs up against what we as Christians know to be true, that we are all going to stand individually before God

one day and give an account, that we are each of us dead in sin apart from Christ and are bound for the same hell without him and the same heaven with him. Matthew 1519 says, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Out of Robert Long's heart, out of Antoine Watson's heart, came murder for which they both must give an account before God. And because God loves the image bears they killed,

and because God embodies justice, he will show no part. to one over the other based on skin color. Jesus can forgive them both. Jesus can save them both. Reconcile both of them. I pray he does. And that doesn't mean that we can't talk about differences of experiences, different kinds of oppression, different environments, different motives, whatever we can. We should try to understand different types of people and backgrounds in this country. But the idea that some people will have or should have less culpability in eternity or should have less culpability on earth based on the experiences of people who looked like them or based on some intersectionality scale is not justice.

Remember, justice according to God, impartial, direct, truthful, proportional. Exodus 23-1 through 3, you shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. you shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, citing with the many so as to prefer a pervert justice. You shall be partial to a poor man. You shall not be partial to a poor man in a lawsuit. There's Leviticus 1915. There's Deuteronomy 1915 through 21. There's Acts 1034 that talks about the evil of partiality. There's James 28 through 9 that talks about the evil of partiality. We've gone.

through all of these citations many times of this podcast. We've got Matthew 538 through 42 that talks about proportionality and the directness of God's justice, God's justice, according to the Bible is impartial. It is direct. It is truthful. It is proportional. We will not know God's justice perfectly until we're on the other side of eternity, but we've got to do our best to promote it here. So when we fail to look to God as a guide, we allow our outrage to be swayed by mainstream narratives and media headlines and Twitter trends. We only get upset about certain kinds of murders and crimes in certain contexts that help bolster our biases, but we don't care about other crimes that happen that fall out of those

biases or fall out of those narratives. Personally, I think that Robert Long deserves the death penalty without a doubt. And I know I haven't done an episode yet giving you my biblical reasoning for that. I am actually filming that soon. I'm preparing for that. God cares about the loss of innocent life so much that the only punishment that he gives as fit for murder is the death penalty. And far be it from me to pretend I am more just or more merciful than God. If it comes out that Robert Long is a virulent racist, if crimes against Asian people clearly inspired by white supremacist, see start trending, I will have absolutely no problem talking about that on this podcast. Like I said, I don't care one way or another.

I think we have an obligation to call out evil and an obligation also to be as truthful as we can, as we finite human beings can. Let me end with this. As I said at the beginning of last Thursday's episode, which go listen to that just beginning monologue of last Thursday's episode if you can, I don't like to talk about this stuff. I don't like to talk about race. I don't like pushing back against mainstream narrative surrounding race because it makes people mad, especially coming from me, a white girl.

Worse than that, a white girl with conservative views. Immediately, by some, I am either labeled privileged and ignorant at best or racist at worst. I'm disqualified from having this conversation, and yet here I am. Is it because I like during the pot? No, it's definitely not that. I actually dread these kinds of episodes. Believe it or not, I really really. do not desire controversy. I don't want to go viral. I don't want to disagree with prominent voices,

especially Christian voices on this. That's not my desire. I don't want to be placing categories I know are false just because I buck up against the popular commentary in much of the church today surrounding so-called racial and social justice. I want to be able to nod my head as I'm hearing people tell me what a systemically racist country of America is to this day, that white supremacy is the cause of all racial disparities and problems we see in our country. I want to be able to agree with the media narrative surrounding terrible incidents like the ones involving George Floyd, like the tragedy we saw in Atlanta last week. Everything would be a whole lot easier if I did. I could conveniently walk that line as I see so many Christian walk between woke and conservative. I could agree with Ibrax

Kendi and Robin DiAngelo when it comes to race and racism while maybe putting a bit of a Christian sounding spin on it, but I could still hold my ground for the most part when it comes to gender and sexuality, save a little nuance for the sake of empathy. I could say being pro-life means being holistically pro-life, which somehow leaves out fighting for the legal right of babies to live in the womb, but includes immigration issues, at least while Trump was president, abolishing the death penalty for murderers and expanding unaccountable welfare programs. Basically, I could ensure that there is very little daylight as little daylight as possible between my political and moral views and the views of the secular world while still affirming most tenets of Orthodox Christianity.

So as to avoid cancellation and condemnation from the majority in both camps for as long as possible, I could take my cues from the mainstream when it comes to politics, when it comes to morality, put my Bible spin on it, and keep myself safe, at least for the time being, and you could too. But if you don't, you will be called divisive. You will be accused of not lacking empathy, of not being relational enough. Worse, you might be called a racist, a bigot, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a terrorist. If you criticize, for example, critical race theory, you may be accused of being the cause of murders, which is what we are seeing happen right now among some people who call themselves followers of the Lord. You could be the most of the most. You could be

the most charitable, loving, generous, gospel-loving woman in the world. And if you do not fall in line when it comes to what are categorizes social justice issues, especially if you're outspoken about it, you will be flogged. And that hostility that you see is meant to intimidate you, to shame you, to make you realize that it's much safer. There's much less risk. And settling in the comfortable middle, or at least, at the very least, just being quiet about it. When it comes to race, maybe the hottest topic both in and outside of the church right now, you could bow to the pressure that says white people aren't allowed to disagree when it comes to this stuff, or that you as a black person who might disagree with some of this stuff, that you've just internalized white

supremacy. You could buy the lie that being loving and empathetic means silently nodding with mainstream, nodding along with mainstream narratives surrounding events that involve a white and non-white person. You could replace lived experience with objective truth. Or you could do the uncomfortable and what I believe to be the right thing of digging past the headlines, digging past the emotionalism displayed in social media activism and to see what's really going on. And to do what I have been saying for months is the most important and impactful thing that you can do right now, which is to live not by lies, as the title of Rod Dreher's book tells us about a Soviet dissident. Don't accept them.

Don't tell them. Don't repeat them. Do your best not to believe them. Live not by lies. And I never ever claim to have any kind of monopoly on the truth. Thank the Lord. I am wrong a lot. I'm wrong plenty. You guys at times disagree with me. You give me corrections. You respectfully and lovingly push back on me. I've issued corrections on this podcast. I've apologized where I overstated or misstated or got a fact wrong. I've given light to some contentions that some of you may have. I have begged you, ordered you to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. I'm just one finite person, a fallible person who needs to be shaped and helps just as much as all of us do. So all I'm trying to do is to come together in all things and to try to see

things as much as we can as they are, to view everything that happens through the lens of God's justice and in light of eternity. And I'm so thankful for your support and your help in trying to do that. That's what I tried to do today. I hope it at least sparked some conversation and spark some thoughts about how the media and how some people, even in the church, react to this kind of stuff and what really is going on beneath the surface and why it's so important for us to be able to look at objective truth, not just biblical moral truth, but also scientific, numerical truth as well, to try to live in the realm of reality and to live not by lies as much as we possibly can. All right. And it was a long episode. Thank you guys so much for

listening or watching. I will be back here tomorrow.