With The Perrys - Jesus and Politics, Wokeness and Other Stuff

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Politics. It’s how people become dehumanized in the sight of the “free” and the hearts of the “brave.” In this episode, we chat with our friend, Justin Giboney of The And Campaign, about identity idolatry in politics, the Gospel-focused roles Christians should play in politics, and three components necessary to truly love our neighbors, regardless of their political affiliation.  For more information on The And Campaign, visit https://andcampaign.org/ Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What up St. Sane's. How are you? What's up with y'all? So when you were like in middle school, did you wear Jibos? Everybody wore Jibos. Not everybody, because Jibos were for the wealthies or the drug dealers. Yeah, see. How many did you have? I had like a good five pair in rotation. Oh, wow.

You know, I was a little. But was you one of those dudes? Because there was some dudes that's like, okay, you flat out wearing that same pair with the red strap a good three times a month. But did you wear Anichi? I found some fake ones because they didn't have girl Anichi. Oh, you have fake Anichi? Well, not, not Anich. Not Anichy, no, because we're older.

So Anichi wasn't cool. So I meant the one with the M on the back. You know what I'm talking about? It was like a big- Mecca. No. That was so like, no. You're trying to say Pepepe, or Pepe.

Pepys? Pepys? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. No, we were wearing Abercrombia Fitch. Erapostle was. like if you're struggling financially

Hollister was like popping you know what I'm saying and then like obviously Jay's Air Force One's the little clip cell phone I'm three years older than you but we're in the same

But I'm saying you was a senior when I was a freshman and you was in Chicago y'all were a bit yeah we wore a lot of Pelly Pelly No we didn't

We didn't wear that What about you Justin You wore Pelly Pelly Pelly My cousins I'm not from Chicago. Where you from? Chicago wore Jibos. We wore guests a lot too.

Guests? I'm from Denver. Okay. That makes sense. I can see guests being nice. I guess. I'm imagining guests now and I like the style. It has like a traditional kind of simplistic, like polo-ish kind of thing.

Why? Anywho, they ain't got nothing to do. What are we talking about? It never does. But we're here with Justin Gibbitt. I keep one and call you Gaboni. Gaboni. Justin Gibboni.

the co-founder president of Anne campaign, which is an organization, I'm probably not going to represent your rights, so please clear me up. But an organization that's like teaching and training like Christians to like see value and engaging in like civic stuff. You could just say what y'all do. Yeah, so it's a Christian civic organization. What we're trying to do is kind of raise civic literacy. So raise people's understanding of the political process. But also give them a biblical framework to engage. Because I think what happens a lot of time today is we have a progressive.

framework or we have a conservative framework and we kind of might put a a jesus piece on it but it ain't really a biblical framework and so we're trying to say let's not worry so much about being partisan or ideological let's focus on being Christian first so you were in politics yeah what did you or are you in politics present tense i would say was i mean i was so i worked for the mayor of atlanta for eight years uh ran campaigns for about a decade and so i don't run campaigns i'm not working for the mayor now so I'm not in politics. And that way,

by a minute from the sense that the end campaign engages politics. Okay. One more question. And then we can get to, I guess I'm intrigued by what motivates people to get in. Because when I look at like, what was that show we was watching on Netflix? It's Ratchet.

It's a terrible little show. Or the white lady and she was husband, like she was married to the white man who was in politics. How's a car? Yeah. And it was just like, it felt demonic. It's like, this is so. And then when I watch documentaries about Watergate,

It's like everybody's liars. So I guess that's what I'd be feeling like too. I was like, well, I don't, I don't believe none of y'all. So what was the motivation? So I'll give you my motivation. I'll give you with the right motivation. When I first got into politics, my motivation was power. I was young.

I was in Atlanta. Wow. You know, power. I was into, but I was interested in politics too. But at the same time, I was like, you know, this is a way to, I think, number one, somebody who was playing football all their life, I stopped playing. I wanted that competitive feel. And then also, I think the power played a part into it.

Now, the reason that Christians should do it, right? And I had to learn this over time is because I think it gives us a robust opportunity to love our neighbors. Interesting. This is within our sphere of influence. Are we going to, are we going to steward our influence, right? Politics gives us one way to do that to make sure people are taking care of when it comes to education, health care, and things like that. Politics gives us a really big opportunity to do that. Interesting.

That's so helpful. Man, because I ain't never seen nothing good about it. Yeah, me neither. Well, I have. I've seen you guys and I've seen, I know politicians in Chicago who are really good people, but it's just so much, you know. A couple of months ago, my wife, she, you know, she posted some things on social media. And I think it's good to talk about those things.

She posted, you know, I forget the lady's name. Katanji? Kajongi Brown Jackson. Yeah. Yeah. It was a picture of. of her, I think at the Supreme Court hearing or something. And it was a picture of her daughter, like, kind of behind her smiling with this, like, proud smile.

And when I saw it, I thought of my three daughters. And I was like, man, like, that's how I want my children to look at me one day, where it's, like, they're proud of their mother. Literally, that was all in my life. And I remember her, I remember her, like, looking at the picture. And she didn't think anything political about it. She was just like, wow, she thought about her and Eden, you know? Yeah. And all the things that she's accomplished and she posted it and people.

I said mood. She said mood. That was part of the problem. Frazy. And when she posted it, you know, people, you know, attacked her. You know how social media is, but. No, we need to, we need to specify the attacks. Yeah, I mean.

I can say it. Okay. Okay. I don't even want to get like to. They thought I was an abortionist, that I was affirming an abortionist, that I was a Republican, that everybody that invites. me to their youth conferences need to stop, that I wasn't a believer, that I was on my way to hell.

Like, it was like, when it blew up, I literally can anticipate some pushback to certain things. I did not anticipate that, which is my fault, because I should have been like, this is Twitter. Like, what did you think would happen? Yeah. Yeah. And so before I even ask you this question, I want to say, you know, I don't want to leave us void without an excuse because I know when God has given you a platform. sometimes we all have been guilty of it of not thinking things through before we post

something we understand that when we post something on social media everybody is not going to have full context of who you are and so all they are left with is assumptions and so you know and so especially on twitter when they don't see your face they don't know you like that and it's not really personable but when she posted it you know one of the things that i saw on social media is is the end campaign you guys um publicly defending her And giving, I guess, a more nuance and light to why she posted it. So I guess the two-part question is like, why did you guys feel the need to, you know, defend Jackie? And I know you guys, we guys have a relationship with you.

And you know us personally. But also speak to the politics that happens on social media and how problematic it can be. And why you think that is. Yeah. Yeah, so we defended her, I think, because we have a strong appreciation for what Jackie does. There's a lot of folks who talk on Twitter, but then there are people who go into tough spaces with charity and stand ten toes down on the gospel. Yeah. Not everybody has the courage or the ability to speak in that way.

And so we see her as very valuable to what's going on and we appreciate her. And then we, you know, we understood what was going on. I didn't have any problem with what Jackie said or what she posted. Yeah, yeah. Um, which she, I think what the mistake was, what they saw the mistake as being is that she tried to humanize what they only wanted to be a political abstraction. Mm. So to these people, Katanji is not, Justice, Justice Brown Jackson is not, uh, a mother with a daughter who looks up to her. She's not a woman who, despite all the things that she'd been through as a black woman who achieved something great.

She was only a progressive person who supported abortion. Wow. And what Jackie did was say, no, no, no, there's more to this conversation, which is what the gospel demands that we do. Wow. This is a person with a testimony. This is a person with a story. She port that story out there, but they don't, ideological tribes, they don't want you

to humanize what they just want to be a character. Woo! Right? And so, that's where you get all this wokeness and all that. And the response to the wokeness, especially coming from evangelical circles, you have this freak out about wokeness was really an attempt to avoid. the truth historical truth it's an attempt to avoid accountability for the church's failures when it came to racial justice wow and so just the picture shines a puts a mirror in front of

the face of somebody who doesn't want to see what's really going on and I think that's what happened and we're always going to defend our brothers and sisters who are trying to stand I mean that's what we're for I just don't think especially in politics in in the public square there's not not enough people holding the line yeah and I see Jackie you both of you as somebody who hold the line and so we'll always stand up for that well i appreciate it man as our husband i appreciated it you know because it always feels good i mean not only do i have a public you know platform but my wife has a public platform and so sometimes even try to navigate you know the attacks that i'm getting and then you know me being a husband you know i'm going to

always defend my wife and sometimes i feel like the lord has me not to speak about certain situations because he wants me to focus on something so it's always good to have brothers and sisters in Christ out there who I feel like is fighting with me. And so I really appreciate it, you guys. You know, you know. I do too. Now, I got off Twitter shortly after that because I feel like it's a demonic place. But it seems like in the last, probably around the Trump era is when it seemed to get super

volatile and angsty and divisive, especially how like the, how people's different politics are influencing the way they read the way they tweet all the things now before the trump era would you say that this same tribalism existed i guess in people who are familiar or who live in political spheres or did twitter just bring out something that wasn't even there does it make sense what i'm saying yeah yeah i think it was bubbling up even before trump i don't think trump started all of this but he kind of finalized and broke the seal okay and so he started talking to people any kind of way. There was no civility. You got the feeling that civility was weakness. And the crazy part about it, it happened on both sides. Because Trump did it. And then the people that

really disliked Trump, for some reason, they started to use his same type of rhetoric and have the same vitriol as he did, which is ridiculous. But you kind of become your enemies when you have contempt for them. And I think that's what at the center of what's wrong with Twitter. It's contempt. And what contempt is is thinking that your political opponent or somebody who disagrees. with you is worthless. They're not worth consideration. They're not worth trying to persuade. You just got to get them out the way.

And once you get them out the way if you can, now we have this utopia. We know that's never going to happen. But that's the way that people treat it. And then you also have the somewhat the anonymity, right? So you got a lot of folks who will say something to you over Twitter that they would never say to you in your face. They know they're going to get up on it.

Yeah. Yeah. You never say this in my face. No, they won't. Yeah. And so you have that, you know, some anonymity that comes with it, you have the fact that your ideological tribe is really going to pat you on the back when you do it. And it makes you feel courageous. But the truth of the matter

is there's nothing courageous about when you do something that you're going to get patted on the back for. So everybody can bark at the other side who really ain't listening half the time, but you can bark at the other side and feel courageous. But you wouldn't say nothing to your own side when they're doing things that are wrong. To me, that's even more courageous because there's a consequence attached. And what's crazy is I have the same. I have the same. stands and I've always felt like I was so in line with you guys theological stances so about abortion. You know, I've partnered with, you know, your, your, your campaign about abortion a couple of times. So my Aji Lovs and stuff like that. And, you know, I believe that all life starts at

conception that God cares about the life in the womb. And so I've always talked about the nuances of, you know, just supporting whole life, you know, and like the mother and the child. And I think People on the right have always kind of felt some type of way about that. But I remember a couple of months ago, felt a way about what? Felt some type of way that I was challenging people to think about the mother and the baby. Got it. Because I think that sometimes we should just so gunhole of like, let's talk about abortion, let's talk about this or whatever.

And we don't want to think about the people in these communities who we don't want to think about what drives them to get abortions in the first place. Right, right. And so a couple months ago, you know, to your point, I posted a post about just, you know, making a stand on why I stand for abortion. A lot of conservatives who follow me thought it all was being so brave. And I was like, no, I'm actually not being brave. I don't get attacked from people on the left or whatever.

Because that's not my following. You know what I'm saying? That's not my following. That's not the people who follow me. The people who attack me are the people who want me to just say, abortion is wrong and yada yada, yada, and who don't want me to challenge people to think deeply about this, about this subject.

And so that's why I think Twitter is so problematic at times. because like you said, it's just people on their side of the fence saying what all their followers want them to say, and there's never no pushback. And so you just have a whole bunch of, you know, coward, cowardly tweets at each other. And I just, I just hate it. I had this conversation with this woman probably after, during Trump's first term, and she was talking about how she was just so confused by some leading black. Christians kind of like condemnation of Trump and all the things. And she was telling me she was like, I was just confused and I still am confused. And she was like, because even though I know like he's not, you know, the most holiest person,

she was like, I felt like I had no choice. And that was so deep to me. And so I guess in my mind, if you were having that conversation with that woman, what would you say? Well, I would say you always have a choice. I think what she was saying was the other choice was worse. And I can actually respect somebody who says that. What I can't respect is somebody who supports any politician who's doing saying negative things, treating people a certain way and doesn't check them. As Christians, you can vote for somebody, but you don't just defend everything that they do.

And that was really my part. I could see if somebody said, you know, I just thought the other option was worse. Here are my top three issues. He covered those. I, you know, I held my nose and I voted for him. Cool. But does that mean that you defend him? What do you, what do you say to the Christians who say is policies over personality or politics over person?

Because I saw that a lot. When we say, like, hold him accountable. And they say, no, like the things that Trump, you know, is, is, is, is. That he upholds like Christian ideals. Kind of. Like, like, it's policies over personality. What do you say to those people? I mean, policy does matter.

I mean, policy is a big deal. But that's just convenient now. because when Clinton was in office, character mattered. Yeah. And so now when it's inconvenient, when it's politically expedient to say character doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I think they both matter. Yeah, yeah.

And I think when you have somebody who's leading a nation, we don't expect them to be Jesus, right? But there is, there should be a standard by which they're held to and how they talk about people, how they talk about immigrants and things of that nature. And when you go below that standard and you defend somebody who continually goes below that standard, I think that has an impact on your public witness. Yeah. And to me, bigger than policy, character, all that other stuff is our public witness.

I want to win. We often say at the end campaign, we care about winning because winning impacts lives. These are serious issues when you're talking about politics. But your witness has to be more important than winning because your witness is going to live on long after that win dies. Like what do other people see when they see Christians doing politics? Just trying to win or putting something out there to say, I would rather lose than for you not to know what the gospel looks like in the application of the public swear. Yeah. That's good.

Now, amen. But I just hear people in my mind saying, but this ain't about, that's not, like, we're distracting from the gospel, Justin. Like that Jesus came and died and rose from the dead. And so then my question to you would be, was Jesus political? Like, is like what do, what does politics and God's gospel, like, how do they even? align with each other. Oh man. I mean,

Jesus, who he was, had political implications. Jesus' life had implications for everything. And so the idea

that there should be some false dichotomy, some separation between preaching, professing the gospel and how we treat our neighbors. So I'm not going to sacrifice for my neighbor

because I got to preach the gospel. How are those two separate? Why can't you do both? Aren't they, you know, I mean, you go to, what is it,

first John 3, we know that love is sacrifice. And I think, what politics gives us the opportunity to do is sacrifice people we may not know but with our who are in our sphere of influence and so i just don't like that false separation between caring about people in tangible ways and professing the gospel i mean number one until you show somebody you care about them why do they care about what you got to say yeah that's good that's good the thing that i've always this is just me personally that i've always hated about politics um

I hate it Well That's intense Strongly disliked about politics Uphored Is it like you don't I don't see a lot of people Humanizing other people

Right And I made a post not too long ago Then I said when you care more about policies Than you do people No when you invest it more in policies Than you do in people When you hear someone's testimony You won't hear a testimony

But a position And I think a lot of times That's what I see And so like even in the Christian realm Like, you know, like when I talked about, you know, systemic racism or just from my own personal experience, when I talked about how I don't like the way Trump talks to people, people automatically thought that I was a liberal or, you know, critical race theories or, you know, like I was attacked because I was, I was sharing my story. And I feel like when you even dibble and dabble in the little political world, you automatically become a position and not a person. And so when I see politics on TV, that's all it is. It's like people, they spend so much, about hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make people believe that this person has this position.

And, you know, they don't tell them about the actual person. And so how are we as Christians? are supposed to navigate in this in this in this in this in this realm of politics when it's so steeped in this that type of environment that's interesting yeah I think that's exactly why Christians need to engage because too often in politics people just get treated like chest pieces and either you're on my side or you're on the other side and I got to have to treat you accordingly but that goes back to what I was saying about the the controversy that Jackie was talking about is Christians can never treat people just like political abstractions, just like you are what you believe or you are our disagreement.

People are almost always more than the disagreement that you might have with them. And if you build a relationship with them, they might even listen to what you have to say. But there's an advantage. If I'm a political leader that wants y'all to do whatever I say, there's an advantage to me pressuring you or teaching you or conditioning you to see the other side as just political abstractions. That way it doesn't matter if they're hurting. It doesn't matter what's going on.

I can keep you vitriolic. I can keep you enraged at people that you haven't even gotten the chance to know. And that doesn't even mean that your disagreements aren't real. Like the disagreements I have with Trump, I think are real. The disagreements I have with some progressives are real, but I cannot not see them as people. And I think honestly, that's one of the things that the civil rights movement did better than almost any other movement that I've seen in America is it refused. Even though it was very tenacious and how it went about trying to change policy, it refused to not see even the folks who were. lynching them and beating them as people.

It refused to not see their brokenness. Wow. Because when you can see their brokenness, then you say, yeah, you're wrong and I'm going to go against you, but I can't hate you. I can't have contempt for you. What I hear you saying is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, there is, because I've heard a lot of Christians saying, I don't even care about politics. God wasn't a Republican or Democrat.

You know, Jesus wasn't a Republican or Democrat. He was a lamb, not a donkey. There is, there is a particular space that. that we can be in in the political space that teaches people how to do politics in a way that that humanizes people and informs people about different people groups. And like what I hear you saying is like if we listen to one another, we can we can grow. You know what I'm saying? We can grow together. It doesn't have we don't have to necessarily pick aside, you know, all the time.

It feels similar to some of the like encouragement or like, like, um, I guess frameworks that I try to like help Christians have when it comes to the gay community, which is like one thing that really works against us, I think, in love is not being curious, right? And so I like think, I think having a curiosity for people kind of allows you to lean in and hear from them rather than assume things. You know, it allows you to learn about them and even learn from them rather than thinking that you're in a position of power over everybody because you know. what you know. And so I just wonder if we had curiosity, not like big, like just

with our neighbor that's a Republican or our neighbor that's a liberal. Like let's talk and figure each other out and let me pick your brain and you pick my brain. I think we naturally just have more love and humility. No? Yeah. And I agree. Yeah. I mean, I think, so the

end campaign talks about civic pluralism which is the understanding that we have, you have to respect people with different opinions than you. Right? But that doesn't mean that we can't get things done together, right? So I agree with you. It's going to take a level of curiosity and just respect for people that disagree with you. And then it's humility too.

It's a humility and understanding that, no, I don't know everything. There's something I can learn from you whether you're a believer or not a believer. And what does that mean as we carry on? I think one of the biggest problems in our political back and forth is that everybody's trying to maintain this perfect narrative. I'm black, you're white, Asian, whatever. We all have this perfect narrative about ourselves. that are probably about, you know, 25% fictional, if not more, but we want to maintain it.

And I don't think Christians can do it because it's very prideful. And if you think about it, how many people walked up to Jesus with these perfect narratives about who they were and how things went and who other people were and walked away with that narrative intact. Nobody did. So we got to be willing to go into conversations with other people, understanding that our narrative isn't what we would like it to be. Like, we've painted these pictures of ourselves that we know are false.

And we sell them to each other, but we know it's not true. and we expect other people to believe them. But why is somebody going to believe that you're perfect and they know you're not? Do you think that some of this is that people on both sides have not only like have done two things, like made an idol out of their tribe, but also like because it's an idolatry situation, you also find a lot of identity and value and worth in the positions that you hold. Therefore, when you meet somebody who opposes your position, it's not that they oppose a policy. It's like, no, you oppose me.

and my people and my idea. It's kind of like when you, we talked about Hebrew Israelism, where like when people want to, you know, preach the gospel to them, it's like for them to like lay aside Hebrew Israelism is for them to lay aside quote unquote themselves. And so I guess like how do you even deal with that when it's entrenched in their humanity to a certain degree? Because if it is an idol, it's not just a political conversation.

It's deep, it's a deep spiritual. thing, you know. It's personal and warfare. And warfare. You know what I'm saying? And it feels demonic at times. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole lot of identity, idolatry in politics. And again, it's because sometimes the people at the top want you to be so closely identified

with your party or with your ideology that you'll do anything to defend it. So I've been a Democrat all my life. But y'all can say anything about Democrats, I could agree or disagree. I don't feel like you attacked me. Yeah. Can I say something about. Republicans are progressives and conservatives without you feeling like I attacked you. If that's not the case, then I think there's some idolatry there.

Yeah. But we have to be very careful. Unless even, we can even talk about the woke conversation. You know, I think conservatives have co-opted whokeness to, as I said before, protect themselves, right? To be able to point at something and say, that's worse. And let's pay attention to that instead of the history and all that stuff. But progressives have done something similar.

I think they've co-opted, white progressives in many instances have co-opted, wokeness to push a false narrative. And so now you hear these conversations, and we have to be very, it's very important that we distinguish between the two. Because what happens is they're trying to reshape blackness in the image of secular progressivism. Once you're a progressive, that's what black people have to be. And so any issue that we take on, that's a black issue.

That's what black people do. So if you watch closely, whether it's just an irreverence, they're trying to merge blackness with just irreverence, with a lack of standards. with sex positivity, with transgenderism. To be black is now ideological and it's to accept

all these things. Otherwise, you're like those white conservatives over there and you know you don't want to be that. Wow. So what happens is basically blackness

becomes just a divergence from whiteness, not its own thing. A divergence from whiteness so you get to, you know, to believe in the authority of scripture is whiteness.

To be on time as whiteness. To follow the rules is whiteness. And it's like, there's no dignity in me. You're actually centering the thing that you say you dislike. Come on now. Like, I'm not somebody in comparison to somebody else.

We have our own culture. We have our own, you know what I'm saying? We have our own traditions and things of that nature. But ideology would force you to kind of see yourself as the ideology. And then I get to, you see how easily manipulated that is? All I have to do is say something is white. And now you want to be the opposite of that. instead of focusing on the truth and love and the things that gospel tells us to focus on.

That's really good. That's really good. We want to, I feel like we're more comfortable when people are in boxes. Yeah. And we can categorize them as this. We can categorize it. Even when you said, I've been a Democrat my whole life. I'm pretty sure so many people who heard that thought, oh, he's for abortion when you're not.

You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, he's for transgender, you know, when you're not. You know what I'm saying? And so, like, there is, it's such a lack of nuance. and even how we see one another. You know what I'm saying? And so like, man, that's so good. What's fascinating to me is how so much of this is just our innate desire for community.

Right. You know, like we just want to belong somewhere to somebody. And we want to be loyal and have a tribe and all of that. But it's just like Galatians. Like Jesus died for us to be unified with one another even in our differences, male, female, slave-free, etc., etc., etc. And so thank you, Justin, for that. Like, I really hope this was helpful to somebody. So your website and all the things will be in the show notes, but is there anything you want to put out there, anything y'all working on stuff you want people to buy?

I don't know. No, I would just thank y'all, man, for your witness and what y'all do. I think y'all are very, again, you stand for what you believe. You're not trying too hard to be black, trying too hard to do that. You are who you are. And I think it stands out. And people really appreciate it, man. So there's no, the Ann campaign is behind you all the way.

No, man. We appreciate you, man. You ain't swagger with your little Freddie Cougar hat on, man. You know what I'm saying? You feel good because the Lakers won one game. We took that one game. So Jessica Giviti, he texts me all the time toward me and me about the Lakers because he know I'm a Bronn fan, you know what I'm saying?

But, you know, they go turn it around. They go turn it around. You're hopeful. But actually, yes, they want two in a row. I don't know. They just won two in a row. About nothing. All right, y'all.

Bye. Peace. That was good. Appreciate you, man. That was so good. 30 Minutes with the Perry's is a production of Ivy Media podcast. Edited by Angie Elkins, video recording and audio production by Kim Powell, artwork by hop and music by swoop.

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