Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - George Floyd, Race, Protest and the Bible | Keith and Patrick

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Racial justice is not a political issue, it’s a gospel issue. Despite the Bible’s clear call for racial unity, equality and justice, many white Christians don’t what the Bible says. In this episode, Patrick and Keith talk about the Bible’s teachings on racial justice in light of the tragic killing of George Floyd. At the end they focus on how their fellow white Christians should respond. Keith and Patrick have read many books on this topic and haven’t found one book that we agree with everything on… but that’s the nature of all books! We these three books are the best place to start: Color of Compromise - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=color+of+compromise&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=color+of+compromise&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2) Divided by Faith - https://www.amazon.com/Divided-Faith-Evangelical-Religion-Problem/dp/0195147073 (https://www.amazon.com/Divided-Faith-Evangelical-Religion-Problem/dp/0195147073) White Awake -http://amazon.com/White-Awake-Honest-Look-Means/dp/0830843930/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=white+awake&qid=1591216087&s=books&sr=1-1 ( amazon.com/White-Awake-Honest-Look-Means/dp/0830843930/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=white+awake&qid=1591216087&s=books&sr=1-1) Website: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/about/sundays/ (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/about/sundays/) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO/ (https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO/) Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter: https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Min of Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Would you rather die than be segregated? Would you rather die than allow someone to break apart what Jesus has brought together? That might sound like a question you don't think you're going to have to answer in your life, but it's a question that Christians had to answer during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. At the time, there was a ethnic genocide.

which is being perpetrated against the Tutsis by the Hutus. And in this particular instance, there were Christians on both sides of this ethnic divide. And there's a story about 13,000 Christian refugees. They were from both ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis. They'd been dislocated because of the war. And these militias came in and they told the Christians, you need to segregate. You need to divide into Hutus and Tutsis so that we can treat you differently. And the Christian said, no, we're not going to do it. Jesus has brought us together. He's brought us together, and we're not going to allow you to separate. They said, no, you've got to, you've got to. And finally, the Christians refused for long enough that the militias mowed down, they murdered all 13,000

people. They said, yeah, we would rather die than allow someone to separate what Jesus has brought together. When I think about people responding that way, it feels like a world apart. It feels like a different universe. Because when you think about Christianity in America today, right now, almost everybody in America, if you pay attention to the news, is thinking about the question of race and how should we as Christians respond to that. That's not a new question. It's not a new question in history. It's not a new question for Christian. It's certainly not a new question for Keith and I in our community. And so we wanted to spend some time thinking about this issue biblically. Full disclosure, I know it's a podcast, but Keith and I are both

white pastors. We can't pretend to speak as people who have lived in the black experience, but this is an issue that we both care about deeply. Yeah, I think the Rwandan genocide is a perfect thing to bring up here because when I looked into it, I found that a lot of the people in Rwanda claimed to be Christians. In other words, I don't want to give the impression that all the Christians in Rwanda were courageous as the ones that Patrick described. The sad reality, is that a lot of people in that country claimed Christ, and yet they let racial divisions tear their country apart. And unfortunately, I'm sure there were some who claimed to be Christians, at least, who were killing other people. But this group that Patrick talks about, they seem to have

understood the gospel in a profound way, and I would say even a more biblical way than their other countrymen and other church members. They got that Jesus was about bringing people together. So maybe it would be good to start and just share a bit of our own experience over the last week. We've both, I think, watched the video of George Floyd. And honestly, I don't know anybody who watched that video and was not shocked. It was hard for me to watch. It was just so obviously wrong, unjust, terrible, heartbreaking. And I think a lot of people watching it were shocked. Did you watch the whole eight minutes? Yeah, I watched the whole thing. Oh, I don't know how did it, I could see where it was going quickly, partly because of the headline, but partly because

you could just see indifference on the officer's face. And I just don't have the stomach to be able to watch that. It was a picture of evil, not just in the officer who was actually had his knee on George Floyd, but also in the others who are standing around. In my mind, they were extremely culpable for what happened. Any one of them could have stepped up and stepped in. But it's a little bit dangerous here for us because we can get into this what people are calling virtue signaling. Like, we're all going to pile on this officer and signal how great we are because we would never do something bad like that person. I think we need to do a little bit more personal examination and let this incident prick our own consciences and allow us to look into our own hearts and, you know,

to see if there's something in us inside the church, but inside our personal lives, that maybe we need to do differently. Because like you said, nobody is defending what happened in that Minneapolis street. Nobody that I know is defending it. So yes, it was evil. It was horrible. It was disgusting and unjust. Absolutely. But we need to move past that and say, what do we need to learn and how do we need to behave differently, think differently, believe differently. That's actually one reason why I watched that whole video. I knew that I needed to shake myself up a little bit. I knew that I at times, especially as a white Christian, can become incredibly comfortable with the status quo because I don't spend most of my day thinking about issues of my particular race. And watching videos like

that, seeing this injustice occur reminded me that this is a day-in, day-out reality for not just fellow black Americans out there, but for many of my Christian brothers and sisters out there, and I need to be aware of it. I need to reflect on myself and reflect on our culture. And so what we want to do, I mean, this is 10-minute Bible talk, so we're going to talk about the Bible. And that's kind of funny because when we do these episodes, Keith and I were talking at the time ago. We do a lot of episodes where we talk about topics that the Bible honestly doesn't say a ton about. The Bible doesn't say a lot about dating, but we've talked about dating on here. This is not one of those issues. This is an issue that

is crystal clear in the Bible. In fact, in an interview, Tim Keller talked about how in the Bible, there are four contemporary social issues that the Bible is pretty crystal clear on, issues of justice. And those issues are the protection of life, care for the poor, sexual ethics, and racial justice. Now, what's interesting is that most Christians tend to care only about two of those four, and we feel like we need to be convinced on the other two. You mentioned that the Bible is crystal clear on this issue of race. And probably if you're a Christian listening to this, you agree. But I don't think you fully get it.

In other words, I didn't get it either. I thought, yeah, should Christians care about race? Well, of course, we should be nice to people. But the Bible talks about this at a completely different level that I truly didn't understand. I remember years ago hearing about the Promise Keepers movement, and I even went to one of their rallies. I forget where exactly and who I was with, but it was a good time. I will say that when they kept talking about racial justice, when they made all these efforts to have speakers of different races,

when they sing songs about racial justice, I checked out. I thought, what does this have to do with Jesus and the gospel and the Bible? I thought, why are we bringing politics into this? Why are we bringing social issues into this? Shouldn't this promise keepers thing just be Christian? and not get involved in all that stuff. Of course we shouldn't be racist. Of course Christians shouldn't do that because we should love people. But I thought it was as simple as that.

And that to bring in racial justice was to bring in a foreign topic into a Christian conversation. And let's just say that is embarrassingly, foolishly naive. And to be honest, people thinking like me inside the church are a big part of the current problem. I think if you asked me five or 10 years ago, what was the central issue that the early church had to face? The central problem they had to address. I'm guessing my answer would have been justification by grace, by faith. I would have said, look, the big issue was that there were religious people who wanted to tell people that the only way to follow Jesus was by being a good person, and by being a good person, you could basically earn his favor. comes along and says, no, no, no, no, no, that's all wrong. That's not how things work with Jesus.

We are saved by grace. But in the last five years, I've come to realize that that is really not the point. That actually, probably the biggest issue facing the early church in their practical life, at least in the first few years, was this issue of race. See, in the early church, there were two ethnic groups, Jewish people, and then kind of a catch-all term, Gentiles. This would have been Greeks, Romans, Scythians, any people who are not of Jewish, disqualism. And the question of how Jewish followers of Jesus could be in the same community as Gentile followers of Jesus was a hot topic issue. It was incredibly challenging. And there were a lot of Jewish Christians who were saying that these Gentile Christians needed to take on a Jewish cultural identity.

They needed to become kind of ethnically Jewish to be able to be followers of Jesus. And Paul, right out of the gate, the first document that we have in the New Testament, the earliest document is the Book of Galatians, and it is a book which is primarily about the fact that we are justified by grace, not race. Yeah, so in the book of Galatians, you have this recounting of an episode where Paul rebukes another apostle, Peter, the only time that this happens in the New Testament. And the issue is that, because Peter has withdrawn from eating with the Gentile Christians, because the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem have come into town and said that it is inappropriate,

for Jewish Christians to eat with Gentile Christians. And as you peel back the layers of what this is all about, is that it is about race. Peter was not eating with the Gentile Christians because he didn't want to be associated with people who weren't Jewish. And this was such a culturally sensitive topic among the Jewish Christians that Peter had a lot of influence. It wasn't just him, but even Barnabas,

who was kind of one of Paul's key co-workers, was pulled away from meeting with the Gentiles and influenced by Peter's actions. And Paul saw this as the heart of the gospel. In other words, if the gospel can't bring together people from different races, if the gospel doesn't say anything about racial unity, then it's not true. Then it's not saying anything at all. And so Paul stands up in front of the church and publicly rebukes another apostle for what he's done because in Paul's mind, it wasn't just a social issue that was at stake. It was the very gospel

that was at stake. If someone did what Paul did today, he rebukes Peter because he will not eat with people of a different ethnicity. Someone did the equivalent of that today in a white church. You know what people would say, why are you bringing politics into the church? Why are you talking about politics? This isn't a political place. This is a gospel place. And I think if Paul was there, he'd say, no, no, no, no, no, this is a gospel issue. Why is it a gospel issue? Because one of Jesus's key achievements on the cross was not just the forgiveness of sin. It was the reunification of humanity. It was bringing people together who, despite now centuries and millennia of being separated by their ethnic differences, Jesus said, in me, I'm going to bring everyone together into a new

humanity. A lot of people know Ephesians 2, 8 to 10. It's one of those classic Bible passages where Paul talks about the fact that we are saved by grace, not works, so that nobody can boast. Here's what I find interesting. Almost everybody stops after verse 10. They don't keep reading the second half of Ephesians 2 because the second half of Ephesians 2 is all about this issue. Paul says that because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross, he has reunified people into a single humanity. I don't want to bore people, but I want to read a slightly long passage from the book of Ephesians because I think it only underlines how important this theme is to the apostle. Verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, You who are once far off, and he's talking to Gentile, Christians, you have been brought near by the

blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both, he's talking about Jews and Gentiles, one, and has broken down the flesh, the dividing wall of hostility. So he's broken down this dividing wall that existed between Jew and Gentile, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in the place of two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. So what Jesus has done on the cross is he's torn down the wall of hostility, he's brought people together, and he came and preached peace to you who were far off, that's the Gentiles, and peace to those who are near, that's the Jews, for through him we both have access in one

spirit to the Father. So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple and the Lord. This is an amazing vision of what the church should be, a holy temple to the Lord,

built up of stones who have come from as diverse backgrounds as imaginable. And then there's the book of Romans where Paul addresses the same issues. Now, it helps if you understand a little bit historical, background. In about 4849 A.D., Claudius kicks the Jews out of Rome. And the reason he does it, we see in the historical documents, is because of an argument they're having about Crestus. And everybody's pretty sure that what he is referring to there is Christ and the argument the Jews are having as an argument, a theological debate about who Jesus is. And so he kicks all the Jews out of

Rome, and therefore the churches that had been established there become Gentile churches. In other words, Gentiles are the only Christians participating in these churches, and so they take on Gentile customs. So we know in about 53 AD Jews are allowed back in Rome. So imagine this. There's a group of Jewish Christians who are now coming back into the churches that used to be Jew Gentile, but for the last few years have been only Gentile. And now they're trying to reconcile. They're trying to figure out how to do life together, church together. And that is a big reason, maybe the biggest reason, that the Apostle Paul sits down to write the letter of Romans, is he's trying to give them a theology, a biblical understanding that will help them do life together, help them learn to live together

within the same church, love each other, serve one another, worship together. So I think when we say that racial divisions are a political issue or a social issue and maybe they don't belong in the church, I think that shows that we don't really know our Bible very well because I'm pretty sure that Jesus and the apostles and the prophets from the Old Testament themselves would say, no, this is a central issue. If you don't get racial unity, if you don't get racial reconciliation, then you don't really get the gospel. The gospel's bigger than racial unity. but it's not smaller than that. It's not just that you don't get it,

it's that you will be a terrible witness to the world. One reason why Paul cared so much about this is that he understood the gospel is the good news that Jesus is our saving king. And the only way that people would know that he is the king is if his people lived in harmony and unity with one another. And the ancient world, that was the quintessential sign

of a good king. You look at their people. Are they living well together? And if the answer is no, then no one's convinced. That's a terrible king. And Paul didn't want the watching world to look in on his churches

and see Jews and Gentiles fighting against each other and say, see, this whole Jesus thing, it's a sham. No, he wanted to see Jews and Gentiles living together in unity and say, I don't see that anywhere else. Where else do I see people from these kinds of diverse backgrounds coming together and loving each other? And when people see that, they're attracted. They say, yes, this guy must be a king. Something different is happening here. So we've all heard that Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week. And what's meant by that, of course, is that people of different ethnic racial communities

tend to worship together. And of course, that's not 100%. There are churches that are predominantly white or predominantly black, but not exclusively so. And so the question is, is that biblical? Is that right? Is that okay? Now, that's a complicated question that I don't necessarily want to go down and fully explore here, partly because I don't have a lot of good answers on it. I'm not sure there are a lot of good answers to it. But I will say this. It is far from ideal. It's far from what it should be. I mean, think about it in heaven. We're told that we are going to be worshiping God in one community, every tongue, tribe, and nation. And if we are supposed to be the people of God now, that we will be then, then I think God would be very pleased if people from every race could be

worshiping together now. Now, again, it's complicated. We live in a sinful, broken world, not heaven. People have different preferences for what kind of churches they want, different cultural backgrounds, and there's nothing wrong with going to a predominantly black or predominantly white church. There are no perfect churches. But I think we have to see where we will end up in the future is all worshiping side by side together with Christians from every race. And therefore, we should at least want to live in harmony with Christians of every race. Even if we don't all go to the same church, even if we don't prefer the same styles of worship

or whatever you might think of, we should be loving one another, even if we're not we're not organizationally connected. We must be relationally connected. Like Keith just said, the goal of the entire story of the Bible is explained in Revelation 5.9, it's describing this heavenly worship service in the new creation. This is what it says. It says, and they sing a new song, saying, you, Jesus, were slaying. And by your blood, you forgave people's sins and that's the end of the story? No, catch this. By your blood, you ransom people for God from every tribe. and language and people and nation. Jesus has forgiven our sins. He has ransomed us from sin and death, but it's not the end of the Bible story if it's not for everyone, if it doesn't bring everybody

together. There's so much we could talk about here because we hear people say things like we should be a colorblind society or I don't see color, as if that's the goal. First of all, that's not true. Everyone sees color. Second, is that really the goal to be a colorblind society? And I think the verse you just read in Revelation gives an emphatic no to that answer. In fact, it's the distinction of every tongue, tribe, and nation that is pointed out in Revelation. So we're not going to become all the same color, all the same race, speak all the same language. Jesus is glorified when people who are different in some ways find unity in him, in that we are sinners who have been saved by His grace, and we now follow and worship King Jesus

with our lives, and therefore love the people that he loves, therefore love people who call Him Lord. So the goal here is not some colorblind society. So if you're out there thinking, well, I don't see color. No, you've missed it. That's not how the Bible talks or thinks. The goal here is a unity in diversity, or in my frame it the other way, diversity in unity. God wants to rescue people from all these tribes and nations, because each of them are bringing unique glories and beauties into the new creation, and they're all to be celebrated together. But what Jesus offers, and what only Jesus can offer, is an identity which actually transcends our cultural, ethnic, racial identities. And that's what brings us together. I may be white and someone else may be black or Asian,

but step back from that, we can all share an identity, which is even higher than that. We are in in Christ. We are His people. We are citizens of his kingdom. That is my primary identity, and it can be expressed diversely through our unique cultural, ethnic, and racial identities. So race relations always bring in history. There's always a temptation to say, can't we just kind of start fresh from today forward? And the answer is, no, of course you can't do that, because that's not how anything works in our life. We bring our history and the history of our culture into who we are today and into our world and into this conversation. So for example, I think it's fair to point out that one reason that the Sunday morning hour is so segregated is because it was white evangelicals,

so our spiritual and racial ancestors that kicked black Christians out of their churches. That's why a lot of black churches were started because they were no longer allowed to be a part of the white church. I'm not even talking about allowed to be equal members. I'm talking about just be present in the church and participate in the life of the church. Why did Martin Luther King, Jr., go to a liberal northern seminary when he was from Atlanta? Well, the reason is that he went to Crozer in Pennsylvania because evangelical seminaries in the South, Bible believing, gospel believing evangelical seminaries in the South would not accept him. They wouldn't allow him to come and study at their schools.

So we as white Christians have to own this a little bit. One guy, Jamar Tizby, says that it's white Christians that broke it, so it's up to white Christians to fix it. Now, maybe that's oversimplified. going to have to fix it together, but I still get his point. I think the point is that the bulk of the responsibility probably does fall at the doorstep of the churches and the ancestors of the people who, like he said, broke it. And that history goes far deeper than Jim Crow South. It reaches all the way back into American slavery, slave bibles that were put together, where they literally cut out the portions of the Bible, which would lead a slave to maybe question the fact that they were enslaved,

or might lead them to consider that God rejects slavery as an option. There's all different kinds of things in the history of white and black relationships in the United States that we have to account for. One thing that I think you can just look at yourself, if we can put yourself in front of the mirror, the very fact that most white Christians are relatively unaware of the centrality and the importance of racial justice in the early church in the New Testament and even in the Old Testament, the fact that we're unaware of this shows to me that we're We are culturally captive.

It shows that we are somewhat oblivious of these things. Why? Well, it's because the church's teachings on race have been historically dismissed by Western Christianity. And it's been dismissed so that we could justify slavery, oppression, overt, and covert racism, and even systemic racism. That's why we don't know about these things. Okay, so I'm just going to project myself onto you and say that if you're anything like me and where I've been in my history on this, you're thinking, did Patrick just blame me for Jim Crow and slavery? Because I wasn't alive during any of that. I don't support that. That's a long time ago. And we've got to tackle

that issue because I think that's a first response of a lot of people. So I read an illustration that helped me think through this a little bit about how our history works in the present. So imagine two baseball teams, and one is winning by 20 to nothing, and we're in the seventh inning. And it's found out that the team that's winning is cheating. And they go, okay, you caught us. Yeah, I get it. All right, we shouldn't have done that. We apologize for cheating for the first seven innings of this game.

Let's just finish out the game. We won't cheat anymore. And you can imagine the team on the other side who's down 20 to nothing and who wasn't, cheating is going, well, hang on a second, you're cheating, but you just want to finish out the game? That doesn't seem very fair. We've got to somehow start at a new place. We can't just finish out the last couple of innings. We're already down 20 to nothing. And you can imagine that now brought into the present when it comes to racial issues, that as a race, and again, we're not talking about individuals, but as a race, there are people who are disadvantaged because of the history. And I think

we could call slavery and Jim Crow laws, I think we could call that cheating and feel pretty good about it, that white people were advantaged over black people in a way that we all now see as unfair, and we don't want to keep doing it. But we have to go back and address those issues. We can't just say, okay, we're stop doing that. So now let's just move forward. The notion that because I did not individually, personally, volitionally do something, means that I am not in any fashion responsible for it is, frankly, it's a very Western worldview. You have to have been born in a country like America to think that way. And part of why I say that is, just go around.

Talk to people from other places in the world, and you'll start to realize that they have a sense of connection and even responsibility for the things that their ancestors have done. And this is in the Bible. This is actually a biblical way of thinking. In Daniel chapter 9, one of the most beautiful and expansive prayers of repentance is offered by Daniel. Now, let's just pause for a second. Daniel has held up as maybe the only individual I can think of outside of Jesus in the Bible who does not have any sins mentioned at all. He is held up as one of the most righteous and upright figures in the whole of the Old Testament. So here we have a towering figure of righteousness coming before God to lay himself down in repentance. And what is he repenting of? Well, he's repenting of idolatry. He's repenting of injustice. He's repenting of his sins? He's repenting of the sins of his ancestors. He's owning what his forebears did, in his case, 70, 100, 200, 300 years into the past.

I teach a Bible study every so often to different groups of guys going through Daniel. And when we get to Daniel 9, where this prayer is, I just tell them before we read it, I say, okay, I want you to watch the pronouns. I want you to watch the pronouns of what Daniel prays. And like Patrick said, Daniel asked for forgiveness. as he repents of the sins of his ancestors, but he doesn't say they. Like they did these horrible things, will you please forgive them? He says, we, our, my, their personal pronouns.

So what Daniel is doing is he's owning the sins of previous generations as if they are his sins in the present. So there is a spiritual connection between us and our ancestors. That's how the Bible thinks. No, Patrick's right. It's not how Western individualists think of which I am one, and you probably are two of one, no matter what race or age you are, we're all brought up in Western individualistic culture. But that's not a biblical culture. So what's the point? Well, we can't say those weren't my sins. I didn't do it, so don't blame me. Don't hold me accountable. We're not accountable in the same way as if we had done those sins, but we do need to say, have I been advantaged by them? I need to own them. I can repent of them. And I'll just be honest, if this is new to you, it was new to me until several years ago when I was challenged with some of this, because I would think, well, why are we apologizing for the sins of the past, or why would we ever think about reparations or that kind of thing? Well, the more you understand

the Bible, the more you might say, well, I don't know exactly what the right. policy is, but I do get the point that I am responsible and need to repent of the sins of my forefathers. Racial reconciliation is kingdom work. Jesus came announcing a kingdom. The kingdom of God is near, and part of what he accomplished was the reconciliation of people from different races. Now, one of the issues that we run into today is that there are lots of people, Christians and non-Christians, who want to see reconciliation between various races, not just white people and black people. many races. But when we think about how to do it, we want the kingdom. We want the promise of reconciliation without the king. And the reality is that apart from Jesus, Jesus is the only person who actually

has the resources to bring people together from diverse backgrounds. That's exactly right, because there are a lot of non-Christians who are calling for racial justice, racial integration. I agree with all that. I agree that they're calling for the right kind of thing. But the reality is that they don't have the power to make it happen. They act as if they can enact some political reform and it will cause it to be so. But that's not true. If the last years since the great society has proven anything, it is that laws in and of themselves will not bring about the kingdom. Now, I want to pause here because sometimes Christians say we shouldn't work in the legal realm, the legislative realm, because this is something that can only be changed through people's heart.

And I agree to some extent this does need to be a heart change. But there is a place for legislative work. There is a place for political work. There is a place for laws. Dr. King said that laws couldn't make a person love him, but they could keep a person from lynching him. And that that'd be a pretty good place to start. I just love that line because it shows that laws can't do everything. everything, but they are important. So political justice, working through legislative means,

but also working in people's hearts to change their heart so that they might really love their neighbor regardless of the neighbor's race. And I think it's worth saying that we didn't finish the legal work back in 1964, that there's still the repercussions of slavery, Jim Crow laws that exist into today. And we're witnessing that right now as a community and culture. And one of the hardest things is that Christians can have the same goal, but see different political means to get to the goal. So we're not advocating that it's as easy as enacting this or that policy or electing this or that person or political party. We're not advocating that at all. In fact, that's an overly simplistic way to think. But we as Christians need to give each other a

little bit of grace that we can work toward the same end but have different ideas about what will get us toward that end. So let's get practical here and talk about how Christians can respond to the protests that are happening around their country. They're happening in our city here in Columbia. They're happening in our state. They're happening all over the place. And the first thing I want to say is this. Even when I frame it as how should Christians respond to protest, well, that probably tells you something about me that I have not personally been out protesting. But beyond that, that can create a sense that it's a they who are out there protesting, not a we who are Christians who are not protesting. That's not right. There are Christians out there who are protesting. We, Christians, we are

already protesting. We are already in the streets and using our voices. So we need to start by not having an us and them attitude. We are protesting and we are not protesting. One of the things I learned in 2015 when Columbia, Missouri and the University of Missouri went through a big conversation about race is that I do best when I shut up and listen. When I read books, try to to educate myself and also ask other people questions to learn from them. It's required upon me to put forth effort, but it's also required for me to listen and engage, whether with other people and books or in person conversations, in a humble way. And what that's helped me do is see that other people are coming from a different experience than I am. Imagine that I'm holding a bottle.

that you can see what's on the front, but I can't because I'm behind it. I can only see what's on the back of the bottle. And since I'm drinking a monster right now, we'll just play along and say the can I'm holding in front of me is a monster can. And I ask you, what does it say? You say, well, it says monster. And I go, well, I don't see that. And I start reading the back label of the monster, which has all kinds of ingredients that you probably should not adjust into your body. And the reason I can't see what you see is because, I'm not looking at it from the same angle. If I'm going to see what you see, if I'm going to see the word monster, then I'm going to have to come around and look at it from your perspective. So what if that was a little bit of a model for how we engaged on this racial issue? What if I said, maybe I don't see it the way you see it because I'm looking at it from a different angle. And maybe I could come around and listen to you and stand in your shoes and look at it from the angle you're in it. Then maybe I'm looking at it from the angle you're in it, then maybe I would see some things that you're seeing that are real, but I've missed. Like he said back in 2015, Columbia made headline news when there were protests on campus.

Our football team was refusing to play. There were hunger protests. It was a tense time here in town, but one of the best things that I did, because at the time I was in college ministry, so I was on campus a lot, was I sat down with people who don't have the same skin color as I do. and I just asked questions and I listened. And I will be honest, I was shocked. I was surprised by some of the experiences that they had had on Mizzou's campus, things that I never would have personally experienced and things that I never would have expected.

I think that's key point. We have to listen. We have to listen empathetically. I think another thing we need to do is we need to mourn. The Bible calls us to mourn with those who are mourning. And so as we look at our black brothers and sisters who are mourning the death of people in our community, we need to weep with them. We need to lament and cry with them.

We tried to do this this last Sunday in our church services. When we read out the names of African Americans who had died in police violence, we were trying to mourn with people who are mourning. We were entering into their shoes, their lives, their experience. I think along the same lines, one thing that a lot of white Christians need to repent of, and we don't like to admit these things, but I'll admit that it's true of me, is we need to repent of our racist assumptions and stereotypes. No one wants to be called a racist. No one wants to admit that they have racialized thoughts. But the simple

truth is I don't know anybody who doesn't. And that's one thing that we have to repent of. I think as we examine our own heart, one of the things that I've been confronted with is that I fall into stereotypes, including racial stereotypes. And part of that, and I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway, is that black people are lazy or they need to get their act together. And I read a few years ago, another little story, illustration that kind of woke me up to my stereotyping and how much I'm prone to categorize people in a way that is completely unfair and, to be honest, just sinful. So the story goes like this. Imagine two brothers, both are overweight and they go to a weight loss camp, and they each live in two different houses. And one brother, his house is filled with

good workout equipment. He's got a nutritionist, a cook, a trainer, and the whole thing is designed to set him up to lose weight in a responsible, healthy, quick way. And the other brother, he lives in a house where there's tons of junk food around. He's got no trainer. He's got like a video, and the equipment is run down and broken. Now, both brothers assume that their environments are really similar, if not the exact same. And so when they meet up after a month, the brother who lived in the house with all the good equipment and all the advantages of a nutritionist and all that, well, he's lost a lot of weight. And his brother who was in a more difficult situation, he hasn't lost hardly any weight at all. And the brother who lost all the weight is kind of scolding the

brother who hasn't. Why don't you just get your act together? Why don't you be more disciplined? How come you cannot make more of yourself? And the younger brother who's in the difficult situation is going, well, this is really hard. I don't get it. How are you doing so well? Because I'm trying as hard as I can. And it's just not working for me. Now, if you kind of picture that in this world, it's people who have advantages that don't

even realize they have them, scolding people who don't have those same advantages, as if they just need to work harder and try harder and it will all be okay. Look, personal responsibility is incredibly important and no one's trying to minimize that. But to assume that we all have the same circumstances and advantages, well, that's just foolish. Of course that's not true. Now, I'm not advocating that we should have some third party come in and make sure everything is distributed equally. What I am saying is that you'll be a lot more sympathetic and empathetic and willing to help people, if you understand that everybody comes from a set of circumstances that's different. And therefore, you can't judge them based on what you have been given

and what you've been able to accomplish. Part of being an American is the myth of being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, whatever I have I've earned on my own. A great exercise that you could go through yourself is rather than arguing and trying to think of all the reasons why we're saying is wrong is just, again, look in the mirror and say, what are all the advantages that I've been given in my life. What are the opportunities that I've had that I never really earned? I was just born into them. They were given to me.

And my guess is that list will start getting really, really long. I will never forget in seminary. We had a day in class where they made everybody in this particular class go outside. And the professor stood at the far end of the lawn. And he started calling things out. And he said, if this is true of your life, take a step forward. So he'd say something like, if your parents are still married, take a step forward. If your parents made over X amount of money, take a step forward.

If you went to a four-year state school, take a step forward. If you went to a private school, take a step. And he just keep going. He's just listing thing after thing after thing. And after he was done, he said, I want everybody to stop. I want you to turn around. Now, full disclosure, I was at the almost front of the line. Because of that private schooling you had.

No, I didn't go to a private school. There was a few private school people ahead of me. But I was at the almost front of the line. I've had a very blessed life. I've had so many opportunities. But he said, turn around. We turned around. And this is just the truth.

where you were at in that line, where you're at in relation to the class, was largely connected to your race. Every single one of my classmates who was African American was at the back of the line. And it was an eye-opening experience for me. And so again, that's why I just say look in the mirror, take account, take stock of the opportunities that you've been given. Okay, now push back on this, Patrick, if you want. But I don't think our point here is to say that you should feel guilty because God has blessed you with certain things. What my professor said after this was, if you're at the front of the line, you have had incredible opportunity and even privilege in your life. And that's not something to feel guilty

about. That's a resource that God has given you to steward. And so the question is, Jesus is our example. In Philippians, too, it talks about how Jesus was in heaven with God. He's in heavenly, joyful bliss with God. And he set aside that. He set aside all that joy to come down and take the form of humans. And to not just do that, but to become a virtual slave, dying a death on a cross, the worst way to die. He set aside all of his power in order to become weak. Why? So that he could rescue his creation, so he could rescue us. And that's what my professor would say to me. He'd say, Patrick, you have a lot of opportunity. You've had a lot of privilege in your life. And the question is, what will you do with it? Will you set it aside?

Will you use it to advantage others? And that's actually maybe the next practical point here is to say that as Christians, one of our responsibilities is to take account of what we do have and use our voices, use what God has given us, and steward it to bless others who have less. In that cruciform life, giving up my power to help others, takes us all the way back to the Rwandan genocide, where the Hutu Christians in that camp you talked about could have said we're Hutu, and therefore they could have had their lives spared. But they didn't. They gave up that power, that privilege, and died with their brothers and sisters in Christ. the Tutsis. So they identified with them. So I think that's the point. What can I do to use the resources

God has blessed me with, to be thankful for them, and then to use them to work for justice and to work for the progress of God's kingdom here on earth? And along those same lines, some Christians are going to be called to protest. Some Christians might not be called the protest. Keith and I, we have the opportunity to be pastors and teachers. And us even doing a podcast on this is using the resources that God has given us to speak about a issue that I think God cares deeply about. But Christians do have to draw lines. There are limits. And what I mean when I say that is, right now, as we look around at the protests, there is violence, there is looting? And I've had Christians ask me, is that an okay thing for Christians to participate? And in fact, I heard a conversation between two

people who love Jesus, and they were saying, look, if you believe that World War II was justified, if you believe that the American Revolution was good, then you have to admit the fact that sometimes violence is necessary in order to bring about good things in the world. And they were saying, look, there's terrible injustice. And so, well, I don't like violence. It might be necessary to bring about change and transformation. This sentiment is not just being held by them.

I've read it in op-eds and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other places as well. And I just want to say this, that is not the way of Jesus. Sometimes people get this funny idea that Jesus came on earth and he died for people's sins. He laid down his power in order to rescue us and save us, and that he used nonviolence, self-sacrifice as his manner of transforming all things. And they say, well, that was really cute. And that's really nice that Jesus had to do that for sin. But in the real world, that doesn't really work. In the real world, we're going to have to take up guns and swords

and everything else in order to bring about transformation in the world. And I always just want to press back, especially to Christians who are thinking about participating in those kinds of things in protest. Remember, we follow a Savior. who said to turn the other cheek. A savior who said, don't just forgive seven times, forgive seven times 70 times. In other words, keep forgiving over and over and over again. We follow in the footsteps of an apostle who said that our war is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and the principality.

Jesus fixed the world by laying down his life. He fixed the world by sacrificing himself. And there is a rich history in the world of racial reconciliation of leaders who have followed in the pattern of Jesus. leaders like Martin Luther King, like Nelson Mandela, and they have set a path for the kinds of cultural transformation that I think we're longing for today. And I think as Christians, we need to follow their example. So Jesus may very well have been on the front lines of the protest, but he would have been doing it in a peaceful way, self-sacrificing way. And that's where Christians

need to be right now. That's where Patrick and I are trying to be, and we're trying to lead others that we have influence over, is that we're mourning, we're limited. lamenting, we're repenting, we are seeking justice, we are letting know our friends of color, that we are with them, and that we're praying for them, and we're standing by them, and that we are going to stand against injustice in this world and fight for God's kingdom. We know that God's kingdom of justice can only come with King Jesus. And so Christians really need to lead the way here. We need to lead the way toward reconciliation.

and repenting and humbling ourselves and listening to other people. There's freedom here to do it different ways. Not everyone is called to protest. Not everyone is called to be a part of the same political party or to advance the same political agenda. But one thing we all are called to do, and that is to speak up for the week, to be a voice for the voiceless, to pray for God's kingdom, God's justice to come here on earth and to work for that now.

So what could you do? Could you reach out to a friend of color? Could you read a good book? We'll throw some in the show notes. Could you educate yourself? Might you be called to go down and peacefully protest in your city? Don't sit back. Pray, God, what can I do? Do I need to repent of my own sins of racial superiority? What do I need to repent of? We'll throw some more resources in the show notes, but we're glad that you joined us. Let this be a way. wake up call for you. Take care. Have a good day. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.