Against Mission Drift

by Phil Johnson

've been retired from blogging for nearly four years now, and I almost forgot how to get back in here. Very few things (or people) could have persuaded me to come back.

But I do sincerely love Thabiti Anyabwile, and after I poked at him in a Tweet, he directed some comments at his blog to me. He deserves a reply. So I'm back today for one post, and one post only. I'm not wishing to prolong a controversy. I strongly agree with the gist of Thabiti's remarks in the video excerpts I posted early Thursday morning. One of the logical corollaries of that excellent 2010 T4G message is that if brothers in Christ find themselves engaging in a prolonged, bitter controversy over something extraneous to the gospel, they have clearly gone off-message.

Moreover, as Thabiti rightly said in 2010, "The gospel addresses this irreducible minimum: that individuals must repent and believe" in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. To view Christian ministry in terms of "'winning the culture, engaging the culture, changing the culture' as ambiguous as it is, the language itself signifies that mission drift is already under way." All I really want to do is re-emphasize and reaffirm that point, which he made.

Also, full disclosure: I have a son who is a police officer who currently works nights in one of the most dangerous precincts of Los Angeles. My concerns about Thabiti's mission drift are undoubtedly magnified by my conviction that some of the rhetoric peppering his Twitter feed over the past two years aids and encourages a movement whose influence has put my son's life at significantly greater risk. Based on how the media, millennials, and most Internet forums have handled the issues of racism and police work, it seems fair to assume that the sector of society where my son must live and work is far more openly hostile to cops than to young black men, and Thabiti's post-Ferguson rhetoric hasn't helped. Thabiti and friends are not going to diminish the very real problem of racism or remedy the cancer of corrupt or criminal cops by portraying law enforcement itself as an evil institution and automatically assuming every police shooting is unjust. If anything, such rhetoric has widened a wedge in the church that (by Thabiti's own admission) should not be there at all.

Anyway here are a few of my thoughts in response to Thabiti's post. I'll reply to him directly:



Dear brother,

Thanks for your gracious feedback and your willingness to have this exchange with me. Without getting into a lengthy debate (which I'm sure would be unprofitable for both of us), I want to underscore just a few vital points in reply to your Thursday blogpost:

1. I'm no doctor. I'm not a veterinarian. I've never even swept the floors at CVS. I recently removed my own stitches, but I don't think that qualifies me to be called "Dr." Dr. Phil is a totally different guy, in every way you can possibly imagine. The only thing I have in common with him is our first name and our home town.
   
2. I'm not sure why you began your post by suggesting my Thursday morning Tweet was prompted by some mention of the word justice from you. I said nothing whatsoever about justice (which I strongly advocate, without excluding criminal justice). Nor did I say anything about social justice (which strikes me as one of those terms like agitator, having a controversial history and carrying a significant load of baggage). What actually did goad me to post excerpts from my favorite Anyabwile message was your tweet on Wednesday recommending an avowed socialist, secularist, and ardent supporter of abortion as the most suitable candidate for African American voters.
   
3. You write, "If I understand this correctly, I’m the one now suffering 'mission drift,' one swept so powerfully to the left that the Bible and gospel have lost its center in my ministry." Yes. That's precisely what I allege, using your excellent 2010 description of how we can tell "that mission drift is already under way."
   
4. I do realize, of course, that "'justice' and justice in [all] its [true] 'social' implications are biblical terms and ideas." Again, your use of the word "justice" had nothing to do with what or why I posted that video excerpt. But since you bring it up, let me make the point that Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4; 2 Thessalonians 3:10; and Matthew 26:52 are just as surely tenets of biblical justice as Proverbs 31:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The movement you have aligned yourself with has (to borrow your words) "a curious way of ignoring those texts and any application of them."
   
5. Trigger warning: In this paragraph I will defend some politically incorrect terminology. Regarding the word agitator, you are correct that I was totally unaware that this word brought to mind racist connotations for anyone. I think you should investigate the actual history of the word, or easier yet, Google it alongside the word "communist." You'll find its dominant polemical use in the 20th century was to describe fomenters of left-wing political passions. (The Russians even invented a very useful term, agitprop, combining "agitate" and "propaganda" to describe the literature and systems by which Soviet Communist officials disseminated their views.) Anyway, if certain black leaders have commonly been labeled "agitators," I suspect it has rather more to do with their political opinions than with their race. And in any case, let me assure you that my use of this term had nothing whatsoever to do with race and everything to do with the Tweet you posted Wednesday (and its follow-ups), which understandably gave the impression to many who follow your Twitter feed that you are now stumping for Bernie Sanders. (Apologies to anyone who may think the verb "stump" is a microaggression against amputees. I don't mean it that way.)
   
   
   
6. You have repeatedly declared your support for #BlackLivesMatter (and the protests they have organized). But you have done this in a way that systematically blurs a crucial distinction between the slogan and the movement that goes by that name.
   
7. I don't know of any Christians anywhere who (in your words) "can’t seem to bring themselves to even utter the phrase [or] to say publicly, in principle, 'Black lives matter.'" Together with all my Christian brothers and sisters, I affirm emphatically that Black lives do matter—including the lives of unborn black infants. Many of us also want to stress that #BlueLivesMatter, too. And though loud voices in the BlackLivesMatter movement have already dismissed this as a racist slogan: All lives matter. We must make that confession together as well, because it is an essential tenet of biblical justice. Every human soul is precious—and each one will give account to God. That's why the gospel matters more than any injustice that might be committed against us as believers. And Christians who link arms with angry pagans in civic protests that threaten to become riots are actually behaving unjustly, by the biblical standard. Those seem like necessary conclusions of the premises you set forth in that 2010 message.
   
8. Furthermore, what the organization calling itself BlackLivesMatter.com has done with that slogan is a gross corruption of the biblical concept of social justice. Specifically, their angry rhetoric and efforts to portray all law enforcement officers as emblems of institutionalized injustice puts every policeman (regardless of ethnicity) at greater risk.
   
9. You famously stated: "It’s tragic that the country’s biggest sin is racism and the Church’s biggest omission is racial justice." I don't think either part of that statement is true. Perhaps the country's most talked-about sin is racism. There are at least a hundred churches in my town, and on any given Sunday if you could sample them all, you'll hear countless lectures on prosperity, relationships, social ills, politics, or the latest charismatic prophecies—almost anything except Scripture. You're far more likely to hear a lecture on the evils of racism than a clear exposition of some biblical text. So I'd say the greatest omission in the church is clear and accurate teaching of the Word of God. But more to the point: in a nation where millions of unborn infants are slaughtered annually, it seems pretty clear to me that the worst sin against blacks in America isn't racism per se, but the murders of countless unarmed black babies. Statistics suggest that twice as many blacks are killed by abortion as by all other causes combined. I know you are opposed to abortion, Thabiti, and you've even compared it to the sin of slavery. When you originally wrote that "the country’s biggest sin is racism," I dismissed that rhetoric as hyperbole. But your recent comments in the context of this year's election do give the clear impression that for you, abortion simply doesn't rise to the same level of urgency as racism. You seem to be moving steadily that way since you began to get pushback after your comments in the wake of the Ferguson riots and your continued defense of the "Hands up, don't shoot" myth. It does seem to me that your moral scales have become imbalanced.
   
10. Finally, given the subject matter that consumes your blogposts and Tweets nowadays, I don't know how you can seriously claim there has been no shift in your thinking or teaching since 2010's T4G message.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments I posted from Thabiti 2.010. If that seems like I'm taking a "shot" at you, forget me and just listen to what you yourself were saying in 2008-2010.

Collateral reading from Todd Pruitt on the blurring of lines between "Black lives do matter,: and #BlackLivesMatter: Black Lives Matter or black lives matter?

 

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My Last Post on Race

by The Late Frank Turk

Since coming back from Hiatus, I have laid down a lot of self-imposed blogging limits.  No more Mark Driscoll posts.  No posts which wouldn't serve as Sunday School material.  No more Global Warming posts, no more political posts (those two I haven't made much of, but note it).  No more posts about TGC.  It seems like all the things you might expect from a menace who must be stopped is ending, and the show is getting new writers.

Anyway, this video turned up last week:


Black and White: Learning from Ferguson Together from Desiring God on Vimeo.

And Thabiti is, frankly one of those guys I only want the best for. He seems like the most human and the most natural of the T4G luminaries, and frankly I just like him.  I like his books.  I like his blog.  Every time I see him speak to people, I like the way he treats people.  I want to actually meet him someday, but because I am also swearing off conferences which are not at my local church I think that's entirely unlikely.

Also, while I hold him in high esteem, I am still a fan of him as a public mediator on the subject of race in America.  I am 100% certain he is one of the guys who is rightly theologically moored to handle the discussion; I am also certain his personal experience has something to teach us about this issue.

Last, before I say what I have to say here, I had a private on-line conversation with him about this subject which, frankly, was not my best interpersonal moment, and while you will never see it, let me say that he was the better man in that exchange who called a brother to repent and to turn away from sin, so I also owe him a spiritual due.

I cannot say enough good about Thabiti because he's obviously full of grace and truth.

So in order to not hurt myself by now saying, "yeah but ...," I am going to offer some bullet points about this video, and this will be my final post about race and theology ever on the internet.

• Time 0:44 - 2:44
• While Thabiti starts by saying there is something he has learned, it's actually about something he wants other people to learn.  While I think what he says in the last 60 second of that piece of this video is interesting and useful for me personally (it's a version of this post from 2008), I think that there is something being missed in making that point.  Personally, I am 100% confident that the police have done wrong to young black men in America.  I'm not sure conflating that with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson (which is what Thabiti does in making his point) makes this discussion better.
• Time 2:44 - 3:12
• The reason why we shouldn't say more about the issue in the previous 2 minutes is that Thabiti cleans it up himself.  He recognizes that there is a problem of conflation, and a problem of profiling on both sides due to (using his phases) the history between blacks and the police.  It's right of him to point it out.
• Time 3:12 - 4:15
• My first reaction to this segment about the center of modern civil rights leadership is, "from your lips to God's ear."  If this were also true about "white" America, I think a new and more productive dialog could take place.
• Time 4:15 - 6:32
• The question of the discipline of the original civil rights movement vs. the current iteration of community action is a very good one, and his point about the Christian roots of the civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's is utterly necessary.  Anyone who ignores this is missing a huge difference between what happened then and what is happening, and how it is lead, right now.
• Time 6:32 - End
• I think this is the weakest part of the whole video for one reason only: the side being tarred as evil (I think: unjustly) is also being lectured for somehow usurping the dignity of the other side for complaining about the injustice of the charges against them.  What I think Thabiti has meant to say here is that there's a way to mourn with those who are mourning that gives them dignity while they are mourning, and that there should be a way to distinguish between language from pain and language meant to advance the conversation.  What he has instead wound up saying, it seems to me, is that when one group lashes out in pain and labels another group "X", the group labelled "X" doesn't have any ground to object until the time of mourning is over.

That's it.  Saying more than that would be piling on.  If you want to know what I really think about race and the Gospel, go here and read all the posts.

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All of the Remedies

by The late Frank Turk

After last week, the person reading this blog without an agenda (that is: without any built-in qualms against this blog) ought to be able to go and do likewise because they have been given all the rudimentary instructions the Bible gives someone who has the Gospel for dealing with something like racism.  But let's face it: not many come here under those terms.  Many come here looking for a reason to say, "yeah, but ..." or "no."

I'm here to help.

Let's imagine someone who has listened to the audio linked in this post, and then read all the fundamental non-biblical literature posted here and here to get a picture of what a semi-secular view of the problem is, and then waded through the muddled and simplistic things written here and here and here.  That person, after a week of rumination on these things, then says, "Frank, I just don't get it.  I mean: sure.  Theology, right.  But what is it that I am supposed to -do- if that's what I believe.  I mean: some other bloggers and authors have told me I should invite people to dinner rather than think about the problems of dignity or of competing consciousnesses  in the face of cruelty and dehumanization.  I completely understand how to invite somebody to dinner.  I do not understand all the big words you have used.  And to be honest: I think you don't either.  I think the problem is you hide behind the big words to avoid real people, and that I think it's a lot more helpful to tell me to invite people to dinner than it is to read W.E.B. DuBois from the turn of the last century and imagine that this is still the problem of black people today.  What's the actual 'to-do' item if all the things you have posted on and around your hiatus are true?"

My initial response to this way of approaching what I wrote is to think that this hypothetical person needs to graduate from the 6th grade.  From my perspective, I know a lot of 6th graders (all homeschooled, so that might be the problem and the solution) who could follow my instructions and get at least an "E" for effort.  However, because we live in an age when people demand instructions and then don't follow them anyway, I'll elaborate.

The first error my posts seek to foil is the error of saying, "If you are a White person you should ... but if you are a Black person, you should rather ..."  If there is a solution to racism, it is the same solution to both sides because while the problem may manifest different symptoms on both sides, at the end of the drama we should still be able to agree that what we really want is what MLK wanted -- "[that] little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  For that to happen, whoever you are, you personally need to behave in such a way that shows you clearly want to be judged by your own character, and you must judge others only by their character and not (for example) by their job or their neighborhood.  If you cannot agree to this, you are not about to implement the Gospel solution -- you are about to implement someone else's solution.  The "to do" there is to do unto others as you would have them do to you.  I know it's a cliche and may sound trite, but it is still a red-letter Jesus saying.

The second error my posts seek to foil is the one where we think that somehow some opportunities are beneath us.  In a sane world, I should have to append that sentiment with the clause "or above us (as in, out of our reach)," but the problem we have is that we think the only opportunities worth striving for are the ones which cause us to be Oprah or Bill Gates -- and the truth is that there are ample opportunities still for those who are willing to start where everyone really starts in order to get someplace worth arriving toward.  For example, if you want a career in Logistics (note: a career, like most people have, not to own all trucks), you could start by driving a truck -- and making about $40K your first year.  Given that your living expenses driving a truck over the road are pretty low (you usually live in the truck), that's a pretty decent wage -- and after doing that for 5 years, you could have saved enough to go to college and get a degree in logistics -- after which you have 5 years experience and a degree and no debt.

My point being: nobody dreams of being a truck driver -- but in a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, there is not merely nothing wrong with being a truck driver: it is actually a credit for you to do that in order to achieve something greater.  If you refuse to take that route (or one like it) in order to get where you think you want to go, that is not the fault of other people: that is part of the content of your character.  Seeing opportunities in the short term as beneath you is your problem, not the problem of someone else who, for example, worked summers and nights to pay for his college degree, and then worked from the bottom toward the "up".  If you see an opportunity like that as beneath you, you are your own enemy.  The "to do" there is to do the things everyone is expected to do to move from being without any skills to being skilled labor who gets skilled labor wages. Do not think too highly of yourself, as it says someplace in an ancient letter.

The third error my posts seek to expose and desiccate is the problem of false guilt -- either the false guilty we seek to impose on others by counting them as an ingredient in a statistical pie or the false guilt one might be willing to accept in order to honor someone else's identity crisis.  There is only one kind of guilt: actual responsibility for a crime or for doing something bad or wrong.  Everything else masquerading as guilt is actually a lie told to gain an advantage over you.  Put another way, the method for dismantling the problem of double-consciousness is not to create the same for others.  The right solution is to see that the aboriginal problem is a falsehood imposed by others and unfortunately accepted by those who bear it -- and it must be rejected by both to kill it dead.  If that is the solution of one sort of double-consciousness, it is the solution for them all.  That is actually the high plane of dignity and discipline, the place where we are not degenerating into either physical violence or moral injustice.  And the funny part of this is that if we are doing this actively, we won't have to ask ourselves about who we have invited to dinner lately -- because those we are inviting are those we have met, travelling on the same path we expect to be travelling on.  The "to do" here turns out to be to put away bitterness, anger, wrath and malice.

That outcome can sound like some sort of attractional model of like-attracts-like, but it is not a merely-pragmatic and merely-convenient approach.  What has happened as we will have implemented all of the remedies -- among which, most importantly, is the Gospel -- we will find ourselves in love with things the world does not love, and attracted to people the world did not expect us to love, and in close friendship and unity with people who now share not just some socio-economic goals but an eternal goal.  The defeat of racism comes from defeating the root cause of sin in the world, and that doesn't start with a culture war: it starts with our personal war on sin when we are faced with our own hearts changed by the Gospel.

If that does not help you, you're looking for the wrong answers.  You're looking for an explanation in the wrong terms.

The comments are open.

Post Script: I have received  a note from a trusted source that this post in particular, but this series in general, has sounded angry.  For example, if someone cannot understand how to do what is explained in the previous post, saying their ability to give it the ol' college try is actually not up to par for the 6th grade in this post is insulting.

Here's my concession to that criticism: everyone isn't always wrong.  It's possible that there are many mature and serious people who have never thought about the implications of putting off the old self because one has been raised with Christ.  How many of them are Christians I leave for the reader to discern.

For the rest, I make no apologies for being angry at the kinds of objections these posts deal with, and the reasons for those objections.

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The Jesus Part

by The late Frank Turk

What you never expected here is more than one post on something topical, but this subject is, frankly, one where a lot of people become unhinged in order to even consider it -- that is, first they become unhinged, and then they consider it.

I have actually already explained the reasons why -- and some of you (the faithful few, the ones who missed me while I was on hiatus) understood what I had to say.  Two weeks ago, it was the necessary idea that you had better deal with actual human beings in your approach and not exploding watermelons (or some other iteration of 3/5th of a person) -- you have to deal with the people who are actually involved in a way that you can demonstrate you know they have been injured in some way.  It's a topic I have dealt with before, but because we always forget it I have dealt with it again.

Last week, I exposed you to our common dirty little secret -- which is that we love to have enemies.  We love to hear other people run down our enemies, and to think that somehow we are not our own worst enemies in all situations.  It's actually the other side of the coin of dehumanizing other people -- it gives us the means to not only think less of what happened to them, but to insidiously think more of ourselves, to think more of our way of seeing the  problem and our cost of doing business with them.

But if we find ourselves realizing that the other guy is actually a human being and in the larger scheme of things -- that is, God's scheme of things, the way things run right now until Christ returns -- the person whose motives we ought to question first is not the other guy but you personally, now what?  I mean: what would be different in Ferguson, MO, if that was the way people were reacting instead of the way they have actually reacted?  And when do we get to the Jesus part?

Well, I fooled you.  I've been back for weeks now, and I fooled you because that's who I really am, and frankly that's who you really are.  You forget the basics of the Christian faith all the time, and sometimes you even find yourself rejecting them in spite of being as reformed and protestant and evangelical and biblical as possible.  This here is the Jesus part.

Look: The Jesus part reads like this when Paul tells it:

Put to death ... what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

"Oh Frank," some of you are warning.  "Oh Frank Frank Frank.  You have mistaken the Gospel for the Law, Frank.  You have swapped the indicative and the imperative, Frank.  Chris Rosebrough is going to podcast you, Frank.  You should have stayed on Hiatus."

Well, hogwash. The Gospel is not merely what Christ has done, but what Christ has done for us.  Jesus is not a metaphysical performance artist or merely a spectacle: Jesus is a Savior.  Jesus does something to us and for us which, if it is real, changes us in the world.

Yes, that's right: I said, "if it is real."  What Jesus did is not real if it doesn't result in something here where we can see it.  That's what's hidden in the ellipse in the quote from Col 3, above: that world-affirming word "THEREFORE."

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 

THEREFORE: ...

See: the Jesus part is not merely that He did something, but that it is done for us and it changes us and it makes something so true that when we set our minds on it and its final reward, THEREFORE this world changes for us.  We change in this world.

Just imagine a Savior who does something
and then nobody is actually saved, nobody
is moved or changed in status or position.
What kind of "savior" is that?

So the first piece of the Gospel which overcomes racism is that what Jesus has done solves the problems of culture by putting to death what is earthly about you.  In the idiom of W.E.B.DuBois, the Gospel ends the question of whether or not any man can impose a double consciousness on another, or whether any man ought to accept it as he recons himself.  All false consciousnesses are defeated by Christ.  All anger, wrath, slander, and obscene talk must be put away before him.  All evil desires.

And the one in whom this must be true first -- if it is true -- is not the other guy.  You are not waiting for the other guy's salvation and then sanctification before you start glancing at your moral shortcomings.  You personally (you say) will appear with Him in Glory because you have died and are hidden away with Christ in God.

For those who missed it, this is the MLK message in a nutshell.  I know Dr. King did NOT say anything about Jesus directly in the "I Have a Dream" speech, but he did say, explicitly, "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."  That is: whoever we are, if we are going to defeat the indignity and evil of racism and discrimination, we must go first and meet it with how we have changed.

Therefore: it must be you first if Racism is to be defeated.  It must be you first if there is still an enemy in this world -- because I promise you, it is you first for whom you will be accountable to God when Jesus does return with his winnowing fork and his great Fire.  You will wish it had been you first when he asks you about it, I am sure.

You first, and then my last post on this topic next week.

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The Enemies List

by The Late Frank Turk

So last week I put it to you that before you start talking about race and the Gospel, you better first start talking in ways that humanize this issue or else (to be blunt), shut up.  The reasons seems pretty self-evident to me, but I'm sure there are some who are still wondering why I would come back from hiatus in order to say such an inflammatory and unkind thing.

Hey: that's not the hard part yet.  That's the obvious and easy part.

This next part should also be part of the "easy part" of this topic and discussion, but it's not at all.  In fact, I think that after the problem of being insensitive to the people involved is at least admitted into the discussion, the next impossible error to overcome is the problem of creating enemies.  That is: the ability to take a tragedy and to leverage it to make innocent people into contemptible villains is big business in our nation, and we love it.

Here's how I know that's true: both John Stewart and Bill O'Reilly make a lot of money doing it every day.  Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton would be utterly unknown and penniless if this were not true.  Ann Coulter and Rachael Maddow need each other in a way which borders on criminal conspiracy.  But the only reason it's not actually criminal is simple: we pay them to do it for us.

Look: this one doesn't require a lot of unpacking here.  It doesn't require you to review the tapes or read the weekly columns -- because you are already doing that.  These people are famous because they are polarizing figures who visibly flourish when they are taking their best shots at the other side, and they make tons of money by identifying classes of enemies and calling them out by name.  And we love it - we can't get enough of this opportunistic and execrable form of entertainment.

Last week I reminded you that MLK thought that there were 3 barriers to the political freedom of black in America in 1963, and that we ought to consider that today he would likely add a fourth (desensitizing to violence).  Today I am saying that if MLK is the gold standard of political thinking here, this sort of villianization of people we disagree with actually violates the final objective of MLK's great dream for America, and it's time we started thinking in terms of the strategic end of this conflict rather than in terms of the tactical and economically-profitable short game which allegedly moves the ball along for our side.  Moving the ball out of bounds rather than to the actual goal line isn't strategic: it's sloppy and weak.

But there's a deeper problem with this for those of us who say we are Christians, and that's why I called your attention to W.E.B. DuBois in this space a few weeks ago.  The problem is not that we oppose what we perceive to be evil or unjust and say that something is evil or unjust: it is failing to remember that the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  It is failing to remember that our goal is not to destroy our enemies with the weapons of this world, but to destroy their sin and the power of death over them with the Gospel.  DuBois, of course, did not really express this the way a white Reformed guy would, but his point is clear: somehow, Black people have a self-perception problem due to the fact that they have a double consciousness -- one which they aspire to, and one which they see as the way the world sees them and treats them.  If DuBois were alive today, I wonder which consciousness he would say is winning out?

If you are a Christian, and you do not come to the table with this in mind when discussing this question, maybe you don't really understand what it means to be an ambassador of reconciliation. An ambassador is one who comes with the primary concern of making friends and allies out of people, not enemies.  In fact: an ambassador will come to Enemies with the express goal of making peace with them -- even if it turns out that the terms of peace are non-negotiable.

Whatever advice it is you think you have to give here, if you really want it to somehow have the Gospel in it, it has to reproach the power of sin and death in the lives of the people you are speaking to -- but not out of a sense of partisan righteousness, or a belief that somehow we are defending civilization.  Reproaching the power of sin and death will certainly make some people see us as enemies.  But we need to not see them as our enemies - because they are not our enemies.  And we must be certain we are treating others in a way which seeks to defeat the power and effects of sin which they have experienced.

You know: when Stephen the deacon declared the Gospel in Jerusalem, and those men there were offended by the Gospel, his final words to them were not, "I knew you filthy haters would do this eventually.  I can't wait to see God take his wrath out on you because you definitely deserve it."  He last words were this: "Lord, do not hold their sins against them!"

A few weeks ago, when I posted MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, you didn't hear him say that anyone who was his enemy deserved death or even infamy: he said specifically that even the worst of his enemies ought to repent for their own good, and that they could be part of a future which was greater than the oppression they carried out in that day.

You need to consider this, if you're wondering how the Gospel and Race are related: if you can make a list of the people who are your enemies in this conflict, you are doing it wrong.  You had better realize that your name needs to go at the top of that list as your own worst enemy, because that's a truth deeply rooted in the meaning of the Gospel -- and it's a truth which ought to make you a little more humble when attempting to build a bunker to protect the things you think you love. After that, you need to rethink the whole conflict from God's perspective.  In Christ, God is reconciling the world -- the world full of those who are His enemies -- to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You had better humanize this issue before you think you want to talk about it, and you had better decide whether or not you're thinking about this the way God does -- because God is not trying to make anyone his enemy.

With that said, next week we will start getting to the items which are not as rudimentary and crude as these have been.  It will not be for the faint of heart.

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In The Name of Human Opportunity

My guess is that if you read this blog, you have never read any W.E.B. DuBois. In fact, I'll bet that if you read this blog, you cannot tell me who this fellow is. Since last week we cited the greatest aspirational speech ever in our nation on the topic of race, I thought it would be perfectly and sincerely vital to look back a little further into the history of Black people in this nation to the man who might be the one who has best explained the world they live in. If I have any concerns about reprinting this here today, it is only that it leap-frogs backwards in time to a place before the height of Black culture in America. But that time would never have existed without DuBois' writings and thoughts.

Before we go there, let me say this as the last breath of my hiatus goes away: anyone asking the fellows at TeamPyro for some insight about theology and racism who have not themselves read DuBois and Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright and James Baldwin and so on (forgive me for listing none of the great voices of Black women) -- please don't lecture me about who I ought to have invited to dinner. Please don't expect me to take you seriously when what you think we ought to do is simply accept that we are ignorant and awful.  We didn't expect that the best we could do to take in the Black experience was to listen to rap music -- as if the White experience could be gleaned from country music.  Some white people have grown up among black people, and wanted to love them, and listened to them as they told us from their best voices what we ought to believe about who they are. We listened then, before most of the users of the internet knew there was a world bigger than their own neighborhood, and we decided early on that our expectations for any person would be the ones we had for ourselves -- namely, to expect the best, forgive honest mistakes and the faults of immaturity, and to do to any person what we would expect to be done to us.

The text below is from the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, copied and pasted from bartleby.com.  I have updated the paragraph breaks for internet readers.

fter the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,—it is the contradiction of double aims.

The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain -- Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,—suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:

“Shout, O children!
Shout, you’re free!
For God has bought your liberty!”

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:

“Take any shape but that,
and my firm nerves Shall never tremble!”

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

...

The bright ideals of the past,—physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,—all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one.

The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,—else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack.

We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

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The High Plane of Dignity and Discipline

On August 28th, 1963, (note: the internet has several sources listing this as 1962, which is wrong.  My apologies for not double-checking) in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the singularly most-important speech on race in the history of this country was given by a man who would die for his convictions.   It was a speech of 881 words, and anyone can read it out loud in about seven and a half minutes.  Think about the kind of simple and power truth that must be to be that brief yet that historically-significant.  In that speech, the right context of history is set, and the right vision for the future is set for all people because of its theology.

Before I say anything about race at this blog (I'm still on hiatus), I think it would be good for anyone asking the writers at this blog what we think about "theology and race" to review those words and take them to heart.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God's children.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the genuine discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, pray together; to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom forever, knowing that we will be free one day.

And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we're free at last!"

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Theology vs. Racism - a primer

by The Late Frank Turk

In 2008, Thabiti Anyabwile spoke for about 66 minutes on the theological problem of using "race" as away to see our differences, and someone ought to review those 66 minutes as soon as possible.  I'm embedding that talk here, unabridged, for your edification.  Also: so that person who ought to review it can find it easily.

We have an obligation to minimize us and maximize Christ.  It is to be displayed in the local church.



6 problems that are not immediately apparent to us when we trade in race:

1. The abuse of people and scripture in the name of "race". The category causes us to treat God's word and other people with the wrong assumptions.
2. It's a short walk from positing "race" to practicing racism.  It leans to into racism.  It assumes that I love people (only) like me.
3. It hinders meaningful engagement with others. It is inherently Ad-Hominem, against the man.  Ethnicity is permeable and subject to change; race is non-negotiable and an impasse.
4. It undermines the authority of Scripture. Race (as biology) denies that Scripture defines us and establishes our identity.
5. It causes us to resist the Holy Spirit.  It creates a barrier to sanctification and illumination.
6. It undermines the Gospel.  If we deny our common ground in Adam, how can we ever find our unity in Christ?

Our fundamental objective is not to build ethnic shrines.  Our project in Christ is to be living monuments to the living image of Christ.

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In No Particular Order

by Frank Turk

Recently, someone said we have to keep on talking about race in this country.  While I think I agree with the essay where he says that as a whole, it's not the most helpful turn of phrase as I see it.  But I have a couple of thoughts that are, it seems to me, useful.

In no particular order:

What does anyone deserve?

A long time ago in blog years, I posted an essay at my old blog about the primary pitfall in engaging with homosexuals and the people who love them.  I know most of you have not mastered clicking thru (maybe: you're just committed to not driving my page counter, you stingy louts), so I'll copy the key bit right here:

See: if I say, "well, homosexuality is a sin, Dustin," what Mr. Rowles hears -- and I think he's listening just fine -- is the subtle hint of this outrageous lie: "he actually deserved what he got." I know none of you regular readers of this blog would actually mean that, but the ones who harnessed that conclusion up to the horse of my assertion are the ones who pounded his Dad's face in for being gay -- you know, God hates fags, boy, so I'm going to smash a coke bottle in your face. ...
So the problem in talking to Mr. Rowles now is not trying to convince him what the Bible says about (for example) homosexuality. The problem is convincing him that you don't want to bash his father's head in over it. That kind of ferocious evil is what Dustin Rowles associates with the moral affirmation "homosexuality is a sin". My suggestion is that helping him believe what you believe about homosexuality is frankly a stupid gambit.

The application from the question of evangelizing homosexuals and the people who love them to evangelizing people who are committed to measuring anything by means of race is this: the problem is that somehow the facts are all interpreted right now toward the interpretation that anyone who is the victim of a cross-racial crime "got what he deserved."  Referring to the facts simply sounds, to the people you are talking to, like this statement: "When you think about it, he got what he deserved."

Your righteous indignation at the crime rate of blacks against whites? It sounds like you're saying that the victims of non-black-on-black crimes got what they deserved.

Your erudite notification of statistics which indicate that far more black people are killed by black people than by white people?  It sounds like the victims here, therefore, got what they deserved.

Your socio-economic analysis of what is the problem behind the problem?  It sounds like the victims here, therefore, got what they deserved.

What if we start here: it doesn't matter what Trayvon Martin was doing in that neighborhood.  He didn't deserve to die. He wasn't putting anyone's life in danger; he didn't deserve to die.  Until and unless you are willing to say that out loud -- and I don't care which side of the argument you are on here -- if you can't say that Trayvon Martin did not deserve to die, you frankly have no place in this discussion.  Your moral compass and your real empathy for other people are both broken.  You can't do anything to make this or the future better until you deal with that.

Having it both ways

The problem with our legal system is that, ultimately, it will make a decision.  That is: when something comes before it, it's meant to take action and not merely take it to committee for deep pondering.

Two weeks ago, our legal system decided that the Federal Government had no business saying anything about what constitutes marriage in this country.  That, apparently, was a victory.  This weekend, the same system at a different level reviewed the charges against George Zimmerman, the evidence presented, and concluded he was "not guilty."  Listen: it didn't say he was innocent.  It didn't say that Trayvon was not dead, nor that George did not pull the trigger.  It said that this man was, at the end of the day, not to be punished for the crime which he was brought before the court.

You can't have it both ways: either the system is working, or it is not working.  You can't say that the system works only when you like the outcome.  That every outcome does not benefit you politically or socially or even in terms of your self-esteem is probably about right.

Never Coming

Is racism a problem?  I live in a cul de sac where the families are mixed about 70-30 white-to-black.  There is no open animosity on the street (except for the one guy who posts anonymously to the neighborhood watch about his problems with every other person's yard, pets and children)(who is not me)(as far as you know)(no seriously: not me), but let me admit something: there is also not always the most neighborly atmosphere.  Maybe: it's a southern thing.  Maybe: its a local culture thing.  Maybe: the middle class changed from when I grew up and people just don't make friends the way they used to. But there are some families who do not even come out of their houses, and never come to neighborhood parties.

Without a doubt, what is happening is better than open hostility -- but only just barely.  It worries me that there are fences in place I don't understand and don't really know how to cross.  I am open to suggestions because I have tried the normal stuff, and it is received, at best, with kind indifference.

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