Today on the Evangelist Podcast, racism and why it's everyone's problem.
SPEAKER_05The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_06This is the Evangelist Podcast. We hope to encourage you in your faith, sharing your faith. I've had over 170 episodes now. So today we're going to be looking at racism. We're not going to be doing racism, but we're going to be looking at racism and particularly having in mind Charlottesville. Yes. The recent clashes there.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_06But before we do that, we've got some special announcement to make, although we did I did mention it briefly last week, about uh our Christmas fundraiser. That's right. Which we're going to quickly talk about.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Christmas is coming, can't you feel it? In the air. Um so being Australian, obviously, when it's when it gets warm weather, it's that's that's what speaks of Christmas to me. And uh but yeah, we need to get ready for uh for Christmas because it's gonna be our biggest outreach yet. For six years we've been doing uh Christmas outreaches. We started with the anti-sante ranty back in 2011. And uh every year we've been doing something uh that tries to not only make a splash but to make disciples online. And uh this year I think we yeah, we're getting together professional script writers and videographers and actors, uh, and we're gonna go large, we're gonna go head to head with John Lewis and Coca-Cola, and people are gonna think, you know, who are they anymore? Christmas will not begin with the John Lewis advertisement, it will begin with a Speak Life Christmas outreach.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_06Now the most we've ever done is two Christmas videos in in one year.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_06Which was uh Sound of us, Jesus, and Christmas in Dark Places. But this is four. This is the plan.
SPEAKER_03The plan is four. So if we can raise enough money, uh we think we can get four episodes in a really cool mini drama. So each mini film kind of uh builds a little serial story uh about four characters at Christmas. We've got the boyfriend's story, the girlfriend's story, the f uh the the stepmother's story, and the father's story.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_03And each person in each episode encounters the nativity in uh in various ways. It's sort of a clash between 21st century and first century Christmas. And in moments of magic realism in each episode, these characters meet Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and uh and have their lives kind of transformed through encountering the true Christmas story. And it's gonna be hilariously funny and uh yes, gonna make you laugh, make you cry, and uh and we won't try and make you buy anything. It's not gonna be one of those kind of uh mini-films, but uh hopefully it will occupy that same space that that sort of John Lewis and Coca-Cola and Sainsbury's uh occupy in the public consciousness, and s also actually preach the Christmas story not just uh not just a Christmas feeling or sentiment, but actually how Jesus makes a difference in our lives. So yeah, if people can help, uh we love it.
SPEAKER_06So we need to raise quite a bit of money to get the first one done and then uh the subsequent ones. So where can folks help?
SPEAKER_03So if they go to give.net slash Christmasfilms, give.net slash Christmasfilms, and they'll find our crowdfunding page, and you can give tax efficiently there, and uh yeah, we'd really appreciate it. We think we're gonna go large and we'd love to reach millions. Exciting. Exciting, I think so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Right, well, we've recently had on the news clashes in Charlottesville in America. Can you sort of recap what's happened at the weekend?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I guess uh it sort of started with uh a statue of Robert E. Lee, who was a Confederate uh general, and uh there's a big statue there, and uh, as it turns out, there's there's Confederate statues, you know, all over the the United States, and they're and they are controversial. Robert E. Lee uh held slaves, uh, he wasn't particularly nice to those slaves either. And, you know, uh people, you know, quite understandably think, well, he shouldn't be on a pedestal. Perhaps he should be in a museum, but should we put him on a pedestal? Should we have him on a pedestal? And so actually in Virginia, in Charlest uh Charleston, they wanted to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee. Uh, and that sparked a whole bunch of people uh who are commonly referred to as the alt-right, um, white supremacists mainly, who held a a big sort of protest called Unite the Right, uh, which is cunning kind of marketing, uh, because they are very much a fringe number of people. I you know, I heard reports of like five hundred people maybe showing up at this from coming from across the States. Very much a a fringe element. And uh they marched. And uh if you've if you've not been on Mars, uh you know what happened next. And uh there were Antifa uh protests against them, anti-fascist uh protests against them. The police had a light touch, shall we say, it seemed to be, and um uh yeah, and there was there was tragedy. Not only not only was there a uh helicopter crash with two policemen dying, but also um there was uh one of these white supremacists getting into a car and knocking down, I think it was 19 and killing one. Um so absolutely, absolutely tragic. So that's that's really what happened. Um the alt-right, as as people are calling it, united and uh and went on the march. So so what does is that alternate right or alternative right seems to be this uh kind of phrase that's been coined, and and nobody was really talking about the alt-right until the presidential election and uh and Hillary Clinton started to point out that a lot of people supporting Trump identified as alt-right. What is the alt-right? Uh well I it's actually interesting to actually go to the horse's mouth, and it's quite chilling really to see what it is that they say about themselves. So I thought maybe we could play uh a video uh from Jared Taylor, who is one of the leaders of the alternative right, uh, and what it is that their philosophy is based on, and then we can see what we're dealing with.
SPEAKER_02What's the alt-right or alternative right? Millions of people heard the term for the first time when Hillary Clinton mentioned it in a campaign ad last week.
SPEAKER_01A campaign chair that ran a website that has become a field day for the alt-right, which is racist and all sorts of other ists, the alt-right, which is a sort of dressed up in suits version of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements.
SPEAKER_02She said it's full of terrible people, and she tried to connect it to Donald Trump. So the mainstream media are now full of stories explaining the alt-right. Even a Japanese newspaper interviewed me the other day about the Arto Raito. As a long-standing member of the alt-right, this is how I see it. We are a broad dissident movement that includes many different websites, organizations, and viewpoints. Some members hold distinctive positions on sex roles, trade in free markets, forms of government, and foreign policy. But they all agree on one thing. Equality is a dangerous myth. The alt-right is united in rejecting the current dogma that all races are equal. Races are different. They differ in average levels of intelligence, they do not build identical societies, and there is no reason to think non-whites can maintain Western civilization, the civilization that whites created. And most people prefer the culture created by their own race and prefer to be around people like themselves. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians express this preference all the time, and everyone thinks it's fine. It's only whites who are thought to be immoral if they openly prefer the culture, society, and people of Europe.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's probably enough. That's probably enough of that man, and uh you can't you can go to the show notes and see the rest of this video, but you we don't want to give that man any more views than he currently has. So, from the horse's mouth, here is a leader of the alt-right. What are they all about? They are about white supremacy. Yeah. They really are. Uh they are smashing the dangerous myth of equality and saying that uh various races uh are not equal and um yeah, and that it's it's dangerous to think of races as equal. Uh and and just notice, you know, it's the it's whites who built the West. As the race kind of has has given us, you know, our our modern liberal democracies and all that that sort of stuff. It is therefore an alternative not only to the right, it is an alternative to reality, it is an alternative to the gospel. You know, wh wh whatever whatever good we might see in the West, and there's plenty of bad in the West, but whatever good we might see, I I think as a Christian I'd want to say it's absolutely nothing to do with whites building anything, but may maybe Jesus had something to do with that. Maybe the gospel had something to do uh with building the kind of society that we've got. Um and what you often find in these alt-right figures, you've you've got people like Richard Spencer, who is really, really is a neo-Nazi, who who perhaps is is the leading figure in the alt-right. Um absolutely not a Christian, he would not identify as a Christian, but uh he holds to Christendom. And so he, you know, he he hasn't got got any time for Christianity, but uh he does uh he does like Christendom. Most most of the Christians I know are exactly the other way around. They would rather have Christianity and ditch the Christendom. Um but so many, so many on the alt right. Um yeah, it's whites that build the world that they want to inhabit, not Jesus.
SPEAKER_06And have a moral high ground. You mentioned about the moral side of it there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So it it is absolutely about white supremacy, uh the alt-right. And I think that's important to bear in mind because I I think I think a lot of people, um, if they're more conservatively minded culturally or politically, they might wonder to themselves, oh maybe I'm a little bit alt-right. In in that I'm right of centre, conservatively, politically, and that sort of thing. Um, dear friend, if you're right of centre, that does not mean you're anything to do with the alt-right, and and wash your hands of these people because they are white supremacists, they are racists, they absolutely deny uh the equality of all peoples. Um and they are an alternative uh not only to right-wing politics, they are an alternative to the gospel.
SPEAKER_06So what does what does the Bible say then? I mean, what's the Bible's pro position on on racism?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I think it's just so important to to get back to to the scriptures because I think white nationalists um you know I I've seen a couple of places where night white nationalists have been called Christian extremists. Right? Like like people like um Anders Breivik, who is the the Norwegian guy who shot so many people in Norway. I mean he he identified in one sense as a Christian, but but in that Richard Spencer sense of he rejects a personal faith in Christ, but he believes in Christendom. And he believes that whites have sort of built Christendom and and that sort of thing. And so he he's been labelled as a as a Christian extremist, and some white nationalists have been called Christian extremists, and th there's nothing extremely Christian about these people, you know. Um a a tiny bit of Christianity might help these people. Um they are not extremely Christian at all. You go back to the Bible, what does the Bible have to say about race and racism? On the very first page of the Bible, we've got Genesis chapter one, you know, God creates humanity in his image, male and female, he creates them. And really, we are from the same stock. All of us are from the same stock. There is just really one race, there's the race of Adam. Really, and genuinely, there is the race of Adam. And and Paul underlines that in Acts chapter 17. From one man God made every race of men, he says. Uh, in Acts chapter 17. So so really there there is, there's just humanity. And actually, where we have really ramped up this obsession with with race, I I hazard to suggest it hasn't come from looking at the Bible, I hazard to suggest it's looking it's come from looking at people like um Charles Darwin, for instance. You know, never never let it be forgotten that the subtitle of The Origin of the Species is uh on the preservation of favored races in the struggle for survival. Never let that be forgotten. In every conversation you ever have about race, think that. In the origin of the species, what what is Darwin's whole thesis? His whole thesis is the preservation of favored races in the struggle for survival. So I th I you know, so so really what what we're talking about in in the Bible is we are of one blood, we are of one race, the human race, we are all bound together in Adam, and in Christ, we are bound together in uh an absolutely fundamentally international community. So the great vision of Jesus, you know, he he said what I what he's looking forward to and and what he's bringing us into is a feast where yes, there's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast, but there are north and south and east and west and all are united together in him. Uh and you know the the Bible ends with every tribe, language, people, and nation. You know, this this is seven times in the book of Revelation, which is obviously significant in Revelation, seven times. The great vision of the future is of an international community where there is no longer Jew or Greek or barbarian or Scythian or slave or free, but we are all Christ. You know, Christ is all and is in all, um, as it says in Colossians chapter three. So the Bible is absolutely pro the harmony of the races together. You know, so that so in Adam we are one in in in a absolute sense of equality, and in Christ we become one in such a way of of harmonizing the races. So you cannot be a Christian and a racist. You absolutely cannot. You know, it's it is of the very essence of the Christian gospel that all are welcome at the feast of Christ on an equal platform.
SPEAKER_06But we we very often love to put ourselves into groups and uh you know we love to point out what's different between ourselves and others. Yes. We're desperately trying to get away from that, aren't we?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean it is interesting in in Revelation that you've that tribes and languages and peoples and nations kind of exist in the future. You know, so it's it's not as though we all get div dissolved into this acid wash and we we just become, you know, this this glob of humanity without distinction. It's far it's it's less about a monochrome culture and more about the harmony of distinct cultures coming together, which is a beautiful thing. It's it's a reflection of the nature of God. You know, God is God is not just one blob of deity. There's Father, Son, and Spirit in harmony together, distinct persons united in love. And so that's what humanity is meant to be distinct persons and even distinct cultures united together in love. So there are distinctions between us, but what what we really do, and the Bible calls this the problem with the flesh, you know, what we really try to do is my distinctness is what makes me better than you. And I I want to make a name for myself, so I will use whatever is different about me to raise myself up and look down on you who are different from me. And that's where the problem of the flesh really takes hold of us. And and and I could you know, I could take pride in my intelligence or in my looks or in my fame or in my sex or sexuality. I could take I could take pride in anything to do with me, and that's the flesh. Uh, and so whenever I raise myself up according to some kind of quality that is within myself, and I look down on others, that is the flesh, and it's absolutely condemned in the Bible. Um and probably the most vulgar um version of trusting in the flesh is to literally look at my flesh and say, look, look, it's white. Yippee hooray for me. Like to literally go be as skin deep shallow as that, and to literally look at your flesh and to think of yourself as better than others because of the colour of your skin. It is so ridiculous, but it's also so sulphurous. Um racism is one expression of this problem with the flesh, but it's that problem with the with the flesh that we all have.
SPEAKER_06So, I mean, when it comes to you know looking at the right, we have the tendency to do the same to the alt-right, don't we? Right. Right. They're they're so you know low down, dirty, horrible people. Yes. We're doing the same thing. We're looking at them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, their their ideology is sulfurous. Their ideology is sulphurous, but what we so quickly want to do is A, we want to say, and I never think anything wrong, and my ideology is pure. And B, we want to identify them with their ideology. And and not only to hate the racism, but to hate the racist. Um And so that that's that's a big danger as well, isn't it? That that yeah, that that I lift myself up as a as a better human being than other people.
SPEAKER_06This this chap Peter Yeah, how do we say this name Svetsanovichanovich. Um everyone's sort of like shaming him because he was pictured you know at at the at the demonstration.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean it's been tweeted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times. This this picture of uh a white supremacist, and he's just he's perfect because you know it's i it's a very well-taken photograph, and and there he is on a torch-lit rally, and the and the you know, the flames are sort of flickering on his on his paper white skin, and he's got the perfect side parting. You know, he's just he's just the perfect neo-Nazi to hate. Um and so, you know, yeah, an image of him has been retweeted, and everyone's like retweeting it saying, make sure this guy never gets a job, make sure this guy is absolutely destroyed socially, is destroyed economically, make sure he gets kicked out of the university where he is. Let's let's destroy this guy. Um and in one sense you just think, you know, that's that's kind of just there's there's a justice, you you know, he he he started it. He started on this torch-lit angry protest, right? And he has now fallen prey to another kind of torch-lit angry protest online, you know, this shame storm online. And you know, if you if you die by if you live by the angry protest, you die by the angry angry protest, so to speak. So in in one sense, you can yeah, that and it's totally it's a much better thing to take a photograph of him and just expose him to the world. And just it's much better to tweet that out than to try to, you know, smash his head in with a baseball bat, which is what you know um some people want to do. You know, they they want to absolutely through violence attack his ideology. And I don't think it's right to attack his ideology with violence. So uh if it's a choice between attacking him with a baseball bat or hitting retweet, hit retweet, please hit retweet. Um and and kinda and expose him and expose the racist ideology uh that is behind all of this. I I think that's that's really, really important. Um, you know, Martin Luther King, he famously said, Um uh in the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. And so w what he meant was what what he really wanted was for other people on the side of right and truth to stick up and whether you're white or black or brown or whatever you are, to actually say, I stand with you, Martin Lincoln Luther King, and I stand with this cause of justice. Um in the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends. And so those words are haunting, aren't they? So if if there is racism happening And if there's racism happening and some of these idiots want to claim the name of Christ and what you know, they want to be seen as you know, members of Christian extremist groups, or you know, so somewhere they some of those people they they protested on the Saturday, they went to church on the Sunday. This evil is in our own house, so to speak. This evil is in our own house, and so um we absolutely need to call it out, and we need to be those who are not silent uh about this. So absolutely one response um to this evil is to expose the darkness. And I think that is why people were so upset with Donald Trump on the on the day of of He didn't call it out the way they wanted to. He didn't call it out and he and he said, you know, there are bad people on every side, every side, there are bad people on every side. And you're like, come on. I mean, Donald Trump is somebody who, like, if you look at him wrong, he's gonna tweet, you know, something malicious about you to his millions of followers. Like instantly. He's gonna he's gonna call out anyone who slights him. And yet he didn't call out the white supremacists. Um he said there's you know, there's there's problems on every side and that sort of thing. And it took him a couple of days to kind of come out and say, Anything like what a Martin Luther King Jr. would want to see. You know, the the there was a silence in terms of the friends of truth. And um and it was very, very interesting that that soon after that, Marco Rubio, who was uh a Republican candidate for the presidency, he apparently tweets out proverbs all the time. And and one of the things he does on his Twitter account is is quote is is um tweet proverbs. But this is such a subtweet. This is such an indirect at um real Donald Trump, you know. Uh Proverbs ten ten. One who winks at a fault causes trouble, but one who frankly reproves promotes peace. Isn't that the most apt proverb in the world? One who winks at a fault causes trouble, but one who frankly reproves promotes peace. Um so there there is ancient wisdom. We need to expose the darkness. We need to frankly reprove where there is sulfurous racism going on. So absolutely, you know, one thing we need to do is to call out racists and to say why they're wrong and to absolutely stand against it. Um But I do have a question over the over the the shame the shaming that goes on online and whether that taps into the same flesh that is at the heart of racism itself. Yes. You know? Yeah, within that angry torchlit mob, I'm not gonna join that angry torchlit mob, but I might quite like to join another angry torchlit mob.
SPEAKER_06It's a bit like the the gladiatorial arena, you know, where one convict fights another. Right. Because they've murdered someone or something.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06But then there's all the people watching who want to see some one of them get killed, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, we and we love the flesh and we love that struggle and that rivalry and that supremacy. And and maybe and the racist thinks of in terms of white supremacy. But there's a way of being driven by the flesh where you think of of some other aspect of your own identity as being supreme. Maybe it's about, as I said, maybe it's about my intelligence or my looks or my connectedness or my sh my fame or whatever it is, we're always looking to ourselves and lifting ourselves up and denigrating the other person uh in order to be supreme. And so I I think as we look at these pictures of the white supremacist marching, one of the things we should think is that's like me. Right? You know, it's a very uncomfortable thought. But we should think that's that's like me. Uh Miroslav Wolf was a uh is uh a great theologian and uh wrote this book called uh exclusion and embrace, and it's all all about this issue of of how we get different races and different tribes and different ideologies to to to at least respect one another. And he said, the big problem is that I I always want to exclude you from the community of humans, and I want to exclude myself from the community of sinners. So what I always want to do is is you are subhuman because you've done this, but me, I am not a sinner, you know, and we're always doing that. And so I one one thing I think that we can do to to reverse that is we look at these pictures of these foolish bigots, and we say, me too. Actually, there's there's a part of me that is ugly, it's called the flesh, and as surely as there is skin wrapped around my bones, I've got it. I've got this problem. And maybe I'm not gonna join that angry torchlit mob, but I'm gonna join another angry torchlit mob, and we're gonna we're gonna s you know, we're gonna make supreme some other aspect of ourselves, and I need to repent of that. And I need to I need to not only condemn the flesh that we s that we saw in Virginia, I need to, you know, condemn the flesh that is in me. So that's that's one thing I need to do. I need to look to myself and kind of think there is an ugliness within me. And then I need to do the other thing that Mirislav Wolf says is is to include them in the community of the human and say they are not monsters, they are not a different species. Christ died for them too. And so you pray for these people, you know. And can we do that? Can we can we pray for these bigots? Um and I th I think uh Martin Luther King Jr. would would say amen to that. You know, I th you know, having having read his you know Love Your Enemies sermons, um yeah, this this is this is what he says. And he's here's one of the things he says in his uh one of one of his famous Love Your Enemies sermons. He says, um love has within it a redemptive power, and there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person, just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There's something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. This is this has gotta be the way forward because the shame storms that just identify the other side as the problem, that's just only gonna exacerbate the problem in the l in the long run. You can't just call out an evil ideology and despise people. That's not gonna last very long. In the end, where we need to find the strength is is through Christ, who was condemned at the cross, who took our flesh, who took on our sin, and who was torn apart by an angry mob. This you know, Jesus was absolutely crucified through the politics of pride and envy. He was absolutely torn apart by this mob, and he bore the wrath. You know, in my place condemned he stood. So my flesh needs condemning. Christ was condemned in my place. And as I meditate on that, I consider myself dead to the world, dead to my fleshly identity, and alive to God in Christ, who raises me up and seats me at the table alongside every other tribe and national people and tongue, not because of anything in my flesh, but apart from all the sin in my flesh. He seats me at that table and suddenly he's made me a a brother to every tribe and nation and people and tongue. It's gotta be it's gotta be Christ who actually is the answer, and he then gives me the strength to be able to love people who are different because I've been loved in all my difference. If I've been loved in all my difference, then I can love others in all their difference, and that's that's the power that's gonna actually transcend racism. Not just the shaming, not just the condemnation, but gospel love. That's gotta be the answer.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I mean it's it's worth sort of thinking over these things for for a while and just sort of identifying in ourselves the same attitudes, even if it's on the opposite side or or whatever. So, yeah, that's very thought-provoking. So thanks very much for listening. If you'd like to hear more episodes like this one, uh do subscribe to the Evangelist Podcast. You can do so at speaklife.org.uk slash tep. And if you'd like to give us a rating and review on iTunes, that would really help us if you could do that. So that's it for now. Um, we'll speak to you next time. See ya.