Justin Perdue: Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we have a conversation around a number of the current events that are swirling and things that have happened recently in our culture. We are in the relatively immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the protests that came from that, and just the dialogue and the conversation that is happening throughout our society. There's a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and a lot of anguish - and people are reeling from this.
What our hope is in this conversation is to look to God's word as our guide and think about what God has said about these things - about racism, oppression, injustice, and sin - and ultimately to encourage one another toward love and charity in the Spirit and in the church. Also, to point one another, as we always hope to do, to the peace, hope, and the rest that we have in Christ.
Then in the members' area, we speak very personally to our members, including addressing some of the emails that we have received from people who are hurting. We aim to encourage one another with the hope of the new heaven and the new earth and what Christ has secured for us.
We hope this conversation is helpful, clarifying, hope-giving and encouraging for you. So stay tuned.
Jimmy Buehler: For those listening, where we are currently situated in the United States in particular, that is in Minnesota, we are experiencing a high amount of grief, anger, and frustration.
Part of being a theologian of the cross is you call a thing what it is. We saw the horrific unjust killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. That sparked originally peaceful protests, which morphed into looting and arson, which has then spilled over into other large urban areas in the United States.
This past Sunday, it was the first time that our church gathered together again. My sermon was out of Psalm 10. At the beginning of Psalm 10, the psalmist asked, "Lord, why do you stand so far away?" In the next few verses, he goes on to share about how the wicked are getting away with their wickedness.
One of the things that I said to our church that's interesting to note is it seems like in times of these great tensions, the amount of intense suffering that our nation is going through - because it's not just police brutality, it's not just racism, we also have 40 million jobless claims in the United States right now and over 100,000 deaths to a virus that has no cure - that there is perhaps more suffering now than any time in our generation. Our generation that did not fight in World War II, our generation that did not fight in Vietnam, and our generation were relatively young during the first Gulf War. We are seeing more violence, suffering, and evil reign in our society than perhaps we ever have before.
Something that's interesting is that John Lennon's song "Imagine" has become the anthem of the antitype to suffering in this world. But if you really slow down and listen to the lyrics - "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. Imagine there's no hell below us. Imagine there's no countries..." He goes on to list all of these things. What's fascinating about that song, and to consider where we are today, is that essentially what John Lennon is arguing for is to imagine there is no order, imagine there's no absolute truth, imagine there is no God. From a Christian perspective, what makes it rather silly is that it is actually hopeless. It's anti-good news. Psalm 10 tells us what life looks like for those who think that there is no God: they exact their own form of justice; they exact their wickedness upon the lowly, the downcast, and the oppressed.
Today, we want to have a pastoral and sensitive conversation particularly about race, injustice, and the things that we're seeing in the news today. I want to begin by saying this: here at Theocast, we believe that there is a God, we believe that there is absolute truth, and we believe that Jesus Christ is sitting on his throne and he's reigning, even when it doesn't appear that he is. So we want to reject the idea that imagining there's no God and there's no order things mean that everything would go well for us. That's not what we want to imagine at all.
Justin Perdue: Our hope is that there is a God in heaven, that Christ is on the throne, and that there is objective and absolute truth because God is; the order that God has established and the things that God has revealed to us that are for our good are the only good things that we can say in a time like now.
I can speak for all of us when I say that at Theocast, we understand that that racism and injustice, broadly speaking, are from hell - it's evil, it's wicked, and it's terrible. We understand that racism, oppression, and all forms of injustice are results of sin - and by sin, we don't mean an action or a deed that's done, or thoughts that are thought or anything like that - by sin we mean a condition or a state. It's the fall of man that we read about in Scripture, particularly in Genesis 3, that has given rise to hatred, malice, racism, oppression, and injustice. We want to be really clear that we stand against all of those things, because we understand them to be of the evil one. They are not of God and God hates those things. We do as well.
The next thing that I would say, to start, is it's very clear as you survey the landscape, particularly America for this conversation, is that there are people who are hurting terribly. There is deep suffering, intense pain, and much agony that have been experienced and are being felt by the masses right now in a particular way. There are certain segments of our population - I'm thinking about our African-American brothers and sisters - who in a pointed way are in pain. We want to acknowledge the pain and suffering that people are experiencing. Our hope in this conversation and always is to never minimize or dismiss the pain and suffering of others. Those are some starting points from me before we launch into anything else that we're going to say.
Jon Moffitt: It is definitely painful to watch all of this. It breaks your heart. You never want to see anyone suffer. You don't want to see women feel that they are belittled and degraded. I've lived in cultures where the Japanese people and the Mexican people have been degraded. There is suffering everywhere. The victims of sin are massive - everyone is the result and everyone is the victim of it; it does not pick and choose, but it spreads its wings and covers all. I think it's appropriate when Paul commissions the church to say, "You need to weep with those who are weeping." In my own church last week, I've had to spend time in sorrow with people because their families have been the victims of COVID-19, and some of their loved ones have died. Then within our own city, just what's going on with the different issues and people's understanding. There seems to be a crossfire. And when sin gets involved, what ends up happening is we shoot at each other instead of listening; we end up shooting at each other instead of being gracious towards each other. We become unreasonable. That's not to say that every man around these microphones have it all under control and we're perfectly sanctified and reasonable, we've never done unreasonable things, and we've never had unreasonable thoughts. That is just absolutely ridiculous. This is why we too claim to be an equal need of grace as any racist that's out there, any murderer that's out there, and anyone that's ever degraded a woman. They are in equal need of grace as we are.
No one ever puts a shield of their own righteousness between them and the Father, because it will be torched. You do not have righteousness.
Justin Perdue: We are aware that we are three middle-class white guys, and we do not claim to understand everybody's experience existentially. But our confidence in even having this conversation, as daunting as it is, is that God has revealed Himself and He has revealed truth in His holy word. Being Christians and being Reformed in our understanding of theology, we do uphold sola scriptura - that Scripture is sufficient and it's adequate for us to look into it and understand the things of God and His ways with us, to understand ourselves rightly, and to be able to assess sin. God has told us what is good in His word. Our hope is to look into God's word and be able to speak from it, not so much from our own experience, but to point people to Scripture and ultimately to the point of Scripture, which is who Jesus Christ is.
Our hope too is to weep with those who are weeping, and to come alongside and help bear other's burdens. That's the goal for all of us in our churches and in our lives, broadly speaking. We hope this conversation has that kind of feel to it.
Jon Moffitt: We're deeply saddened by circumstances, but we're also saddened by responses from Christians that are on social media - even well-known Christians.
You may not have heard of this phrase, but there's a concept called virtue signaling. It is basically when you publicly express your position, or you were demonstrating one's good character or moral correctness on a particular issue.
I think they're always in good intentions. Anytime I see someone who is virtue signaling, they're not trying to add to the fuel; they're not trying to add to the issue. I think, in their own way, they're trying to bring clarity. But in doing so, they're actually causing more problems. What I mean by this is that you want the world to know your position and so you put it out there. You say things that aren't biblical or helpful; you're actually only adding to the confusion in the circumstances.
I've unfortunately seen this way too much where we don't think through what we communicate from a biblical standpoint. We just throw statements out there so the world can see we're against racism or the degradation of women. How is that being perceived by those who are experiencing the degradation and racism?
Jimmy Buehler: One of the reasons why virtue signaling can be so dangerous, and I'm going to speak particularly to the Christian brethren, is that it can destroy unity within the greater church. Virtue signaling happens inside and outside of the church. Far be it for me to expect Christian and Christ-like behavior from non-believers, so I'm not even going to speak to that. We can't expect it from that sphere. But within the church, it's the ultimate sub-tweet. If you're on Twitter, you're familiar with that language where you tweet something out in response to somebody without directly addressing that person. What virtue signaling does or what it can do is it can create more disunity because it postures yourself to look better than others.
Let me be the first to say that I am not perfect in this area. I understand that getting on social media and doing a 240-character rant feels really, really good. I get that. But at some point we all have to be mindful that throwing out our best tweet of righteousness can create this tier system where the posture is, "I am better than you because I have thought of this when perhaps you haven't; let me throw out my virtue." Nobody does vice signaling. Nobody airs out his or her own dirty laundry. Yet that's actually one of the things that the Scripture commands us to do: to confess our sins.
Justin Perdue: The term virtue signaling means that we're drawing attention to what we perceive to be our own virtue, and that's a problem biblically. It's not that how we live doesn't matter - it matters, of course, how we live; God gives us plenty of instruction in His word to the church in the New Testament about how we're to live with one another.
I'm mindful of the apostle Paul in Philippians 3 where he talks about how any righteousness that would be his, he considers it as less than nothing. He considers it as rubbish because what he is concerned with is the righteousness of God that is found through Christ by faith.
Generally, it's not good when we, as believers, attempt to showcase or parade around our own righteousness or virtue and condemn other people by an indirect implication.
It's fine for us to try to correct misunderstanding - we want to do that. The three of us do that all the time as preachers of God's word. But what we want to try to do is to point people positively to what God has prescribed in His word rather than just dropping shame bombs all over the place, while thinking that's going to move the needle in people's minds. As you brothers have pointed out, that kind of talk and rhetoric only serves to foster more division; it certainly doesn't bring unity.
That's one of the things that has grieved me this week - in addition to being horrified by things that I've seen in videos posted online, and being grieved by the pain that I see others experiencing - is seeing the division that is out there even amongst God's people.
Some of the rhetoric have been really hard for me to read. And that's coming from all kinds of people - and many of these people I respect. That has been tough.
Jon Moffitt: David Zahl and his book Seculosity... I don't think it covered racism, but he was talking about how our culture has become a religious culture, even though it may not be centered around God or church. They use the tactics of religion - and some of the tactics of a false religion or a bad religion, I would say, is shaming. "If you don't hold my perspective, you are not going to be morally acceptable. Because of that, I'm going to shame you into my perspective." We use these tactics. If I don't hold your exact position on whatever it is - it could be abortion, gender equality, or in this case, it could be racism - we shame each other.
The sad part is that Christians get involved in this where we get so wrapped up in what's going on. Just to be clear, in no way, shape, or form is Theocast trying to lower the situation; we agree that the situation is horrible and what's going on should not be going on. We're not even saying racism doesn't exist in our culture; racism exists around the world and it's existed for thousands of years. This isn't new to our culture; cultures have been dealing with this for decades. This is not a new circumstance and it's not a new issue. We're not the first culture to deal with it. But what we cannot do, as believers, is disconnect to the hope that we have in Christ and create this new subculture wherein this new religion says, "Unless you hold my exact position on how to deal with this, then you are basically morally and ethically wrong." That is dangerous and it is happening.
Justin Perdue: It's good for us to point out sin and it's good for us to encourage people to repent of sin. But then we cross a line where we start this shaming thing. Pointing out sin and shaming people are different things. In the church, to point out sin is good and to shame people is harmful. It harms unity, it promotes division, and it really does not help at all.
Jimmy Buehler: We've been talking about evil and suffering ever since the coronavirus outbreak, and it just keeps morphing into something new. We talked about this a few podcasts back where, as a Christian culture, we've lost the posture of lament. I've seen the video of George Floyd, I've also seen videos of rioters senselessly beating other people, and I just can't do it anymore - it's absolutely horrible, in particular, the George Floyd situation. We have lost the posture of lament that can we just sit with a moment and weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn, and cry out to God and ask Jesus to return quickly. What our posture can be is, "Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy." We've been praying that as a church weekly. What we can tend to do is, rather than lament and cry out to God in prayer, we can begin pointing the finger and say, "If you would have done this, we wouldn't be here."
Certainly there are nuanced conversations we can have within that. But as Christians, prayer is the outworking of faith; as people of faith, we get on our knees and we plead with the Lord to shed His mercy on His people. That posture of lament is so keen in this time. Granted, we can do some soul searching and ask ourselves the difficult questions like whether I have contributed to this within my own context. We can do that kind of soul searching. But ultimately, that kind of soul searching needs to be lived out within the body of the church. It's not an isolated thing.
Jon, I think you wanted to kind of shift the conversation to the church in general.
Jon Moffitt: Absolutely. This conversation has been going on for quite a while. I remember back at T4G when they brought this topic up - well, they kind of hijacked the conference and made it about racism - but it started this conversation about the role of the church in racism and it really sparked the conversation about a lot of cultural issues. What's the church's role in social justice? In hunger? In abortion and adoption? Gender roles? There is so much that's pulling at the church and the mission of the church.
I will tell you that all of the issues that we're struggling with today, the New Testament church struggled with as well. It's not like the church is in a context that it's never been in before - the church has actually been in this context before. I believe that in those contexts, Paul, Peter, and James spoke to the context that experienced racism and degradation of women: there was prostitution, there were orphans, and all of that was going on. Yet the mission of the church still remained.
Is it the church's responsibility in culture to abolish all of these issues? That's really where the conversations would come. I want to speak into this because there is a lot of pressure on pastors that if you aren't relevant, you aren't kind, you aren't loving, you aren't reaching your culture, if you aren't emphasizing one of these issues from the pulpit, if you weren't preaching back against racism on a weekly basis in the pulpit, then you, you are not advancing the great commission. If you are not trying to have a diverse church where there's a diversity of ethnicity in your church, then you aren't having a relevant church; where if you're only having a white church, then you actually are adding to the problems that are already plaguing our country.
I would love for us to talk about and think through these issues. They are very sensitive - I can already feel the bows being stretched with the arrows aimed towards us, the criticisms coming our way. But I think these are relevant questions that we need to answer.
Jimmy Buehler: We don't want to lose sight of some of the things that are key to Theocast, and one of those is indicatives and imperatives. As we think about combating racism, doing soul searching, calling out some of the grievous evils that we see in our society, we want to make sure that those things are rooted in the indicatives. When we call evil evil, and when we call racism evil, and when we look at these things and call people to repentance, why do we do that? We do that because of the indicative truths about God - that He's holy, He's righteous, and He's pure. Yet God, by his Son, Jesus Christ, has reconciled the world to Himself. Because of the blood of Christ shed for sinners on their behalf, because of his perfect righteousness imputed to us by grace alone, through faith alone, we realize that combating racism or social injustice is not a salvation issue in that if we do not do these things to some arbitrary standard, we are not saved. Rather we look at it through the lens of us being saved because of Christ's work on our behalf. When we are faced with it, we can call it what it is - we can call evil evil, we can call sin sin.
The third use of the Law is helpful here. Racism, mistreatment of the poor, police brutality - these are all sinful things. As Augustus said, what is sin? Sin is self turned inward on itself. On the other hand, what God has laid out for us in His Law is to love God and to love our neighbor. Those are two very outward-oriented postures, not inward-oriented. Again, we want to be sensitive and nuance that we are for racial reconciliation, if you will. We are for those things. We are for diversity. We celebrate that.
I was telling my son the other day that in heaven, we will be with every color. It is foolish to simply say things like, "I don't see color. There's only one human race." I understand the sentiment behind those things, but they're often more unhelpful than they are helpful. It's very flattening. We want to embrace those who look different than us.
Justin Perdue: Galatians 3 is in view in this where Paul will say that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. What he's not doing there is saying that those distinctions don't exist. Of course, there are men and women. There are different ethnicities, tribes, peoples, and nations. There are different roles that we play in society.
What he is saying is that we are one in the body of Christ in that Christ has torn down the dividing wall of hostility. We all stood equally ruined and bankrupted by sin, and now we all stand equally righteous by faith in Christ and what he has done on our behalf. If we were to make a statement that there is no such thing as race, or there is no such thing as gender, that we're just all one, not only do we flatten the thing, we actually rob God of the glory that He gets in saving people who are male and female, and from different tribes and peoples and languages. We detract from and subtract from the beauty of the church, and the fact that the design of the church is that there is unity in diversity. We really don't do anybody service when we say things like, "We're colorblind," or, "There is no such thing as race or gender." Those things are clear. The situation that is happening that is greater, that is supernatural, that is unity in Christ Jesus by the Spirit - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father overall - this is what we're for.
Jon Moffitt: This is true of diversity and humanity: we're all gifted differently, we all have different talents, and we all have different eye colors and hair color. All the diversity creates this glorious unity that we all contribute to because we bring something different. If we were legitimately all the same, then we can only do one thing, but because there is so much that is different, it creates that unity.
I agree with Jimmy in that if you flatten this out, you're removing what God has created - this one humanity that's full of diversity that will all be, gloriously speaking, different languages with different cultures in the new heavens and the new earth. We will all be worshiping by reflecting God in His awesome ability to create this glorious diversity within all the history of the world. So I agree in that I'm not against diversity - I'm for it. What if we only ate one kind of food? There's even diversity in what we eat and we enjoy that diversity.
Jimmy Buehler: I'm going to pose this question: should diversity be an active goal of the church? What I mean by that question is should we bank the church's faithfulness on whether or not diversity is being pursued?
We would say that generally, it is a good idea for your church to reflect the neighborhood in which it is situated, but we also want to recognize that Jon, your context in the greater Nashville area, and Justin, your context and the greater Asheville, North Carolina area, are a lot different than mine here in Willmar. We don't have neighborhoods in Willmar. We don't have the such and such neighborhood; we just have Willmar. It's a small town. Ultimately we want to reflect what Willmar looks like, and we want to be a church that reflects what Willmar looks like. It's really difficult, particularly to put that yoke on pastors, to have all of these initiatives laid on them that they don't necessarily have to, that could detract from prayer and ministry of the word, which is ultimately what we believe that they are called to.
I've had conversations with pastors in my own area as they come across these statements that are, pardon the pun, "off color". In terms of the conversation, I do believe it is the responsibility of the pastor to lean into and address those, to be faithful to those, and to be gracious and help people to see a larger picture. At the same time, if we are talking about the preaching of the gospel and then saying a diverse church is equal to that, I think we can do a disservice to both of those things by equating them.
Justin Perdue: I've got two big thoughts that I'll want to share before we're done recording this. I'm going to start with the first one. The second one has to do with a posture that I think would be helpful in the church. But the first, to your question that you threw out a few minutes ago, Jon, in terms of what the church's mission is, I'm going to say this. This is my take; I'm not speaking for you two guys.
I think the mission of the church, biblically speaking and thinking through the history of theology, is the right preaching of the word of God, and the right administration of the sacraments for the salvation of God's elect. That, for me, informs everything that I'm going to do as a pastor. For me, the main thing that I am concerned with, the primary thing always, is the heralding of the word of God - in particular, that means the heralding of Christ crucified for sinners and the righteousness of Christ counted to sinners by faith.
Partly, even in this conversation, if we're going to talk about injustice, oppression, racism, and sin in general, and the wreckage that it has caused in the world, the answer to that is Christ and the gospel. Because when we herald Jesus, we are pushing back against all forms of evil and wickedness. When we preach God's Law, we are, in that sense, condemning all forms of evil and wickedness.
Here's the thing: the only thing that could ever change the hearts of fallen men is the message of Christ. We're preaching something that the Holy Spirit uses to actually transform and change people's hearts and give us new hearts; then the Spirit takes up residence within us. As we behold the Lord Jesus Christ, we're transformed from one degree of glory to another. That's always the primary piece - the sufficiency of Jesus, the power of Jesus, the grace and mercy of Christ, and the patience of Christ towards sinners being heralded all the time.
Jon Moffitt: When you think about speaking back against racism and even virtue signaling, these are all indulgences of the flesh. We are responding fleshly to circumstances, no matter what they are - and the Bible is very clear. It may not say this is how you deal with racism, but it says at the end of Colossians 2, it says that you're trying to use asceticism and all these different rules and regulations to control the indulgence of the flesh, but it won't work. Paul in Galatians 3 also speaks about if you've begun by the Spirit, why do you think you're going to perfect yourself by the flesh by doing these regulations? In Corinthians, he talks about how if you walk by the Spirit, you will not indulge the flesh. The church has a very relevant conversation to all of these circumstances, and it's always pushing us back to faith in Christ; if we look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we look at the message of the gospel as it is unpacked and unfolded, that it transforms us, our thoughts, and our actions. So the mission of the church actually touches any cultural issue you're going to ever find as it relates to sin.
There are certain cultural things that are neither right nor wrong. Whether you buy a Mercedes or whether you buy a Camry - the Bible is not necessarily going to speak to that unless you're doing it out of envy or out of greed. But when it comes to these circumstances, the church absolutely does if it stays on mission and it stays on point, which is administering the word of God to the people of God. It builds them up so that they may love. If you look at racism and the degradation of women, those are issues of love. All of these sins are an issue of not loving your neighbor.
When the church appropriately administers the gospel to its people, Ephesians says that it builds itself up in love. If you want to fight back against racism appropriately, use the church in which God designed it to do. We can at least rescue some. We may not be able to rescue culture, but we'll be at least be able to rescue some.
Jimmy Buehler: A friend of mine said it wisely the other day. I'm sure there are a lot of pastors out there that are afraid to speak on these issues because of the political ideologies that have seeped into their church, which is natural because we're sinful human beings. They're afraid to speak on these difficult, sensitive issues, because they're going to be perceived as being this social justice warrior. It's sad that we've come to this place that politics and political leanings have prevented us from saying and doing inherently Christian things - that God, because of the fact that we were the enemies of God, that He has loved us in Christ, He has pushed us and He calls us now to love our neighbors as ourselves. That is one of our greatest things that we can do on this earth: to love our neighbors. Us three, as pastors, what we are simply calling ourselves to is not radical but rather, it's what the Scriptures talk about. As Jon always emphasized, when he was actively part of planting our church, he said when the church is functioning properly, what is it doing? It's building itself up and love.
To encourage the pastors out there, as much as you want to be involved in the national conversation, the best posture for you right now is probably to be involved in your local church context conversation and what's happening there.
Justin Perdue: Whenever we can't say what the Bible says, that's indicative of a problem. If we can't use biblical language, we've got a theological problem in the church.
A final thought from me before we transition over to the members' area: I talked a second ago about what I understand the mission of the church to be. There are a few thoughts from me on what I would encourage, and this is me speaking for me; I'm not trying to put these words in Jon's mouth or Jimmy's mouth. What I would encourage the posture of the church to be - and it's in line with a lot of the things you brothers have just been saying, and God has been very clear in His word - the main command Jesus gives to us in the church is to love one another. We should seek to love one another. And then also, more broadly, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Then there's a second command that's likened to it: we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We are seeking to love one another most immediately in the church. We are seeking to love our neighbor indiscriminately; we are seeking to love them in as much as we are able. Something that would help all of us is, I'm speaking to the church right now, as we're thinking about loving one another, we should remember that one of the goals in loving each other is to seek understanding because there's a lot of hurt, pain, and strife. There's a lot of misunderstanding out there right now. So for us in the church, to lovingly and graciously seek understanding is a good thing.
In these conversations, mercy and compassion are necessary - and this has to flow both directions. Mercy and compassion make room for the answers you're not expecting. Mercy and compassion gives room for a question that's not stated or worded well, or a question that conveys a blind spot. Mercy and compassion will speak kindly into that situation so that we can actually arrive at greater levels of understanding, empathy, and sympathy for one another.
We would do well to remember, as we've already talked about throughout this episode, the unity that we do have in Christ Jesus, Paul doesn't say you should be one - he tells us we are one. It's that indicative imperative piece where we are simply wanting to live underneath those great indicative realities. You are one in Christ - so we live from that and out of that.
It has been a good conversation for me. I've been encouraged listening to the two of you. I found this episode, as we were talking about recording it, to be a daunting prospect because we all feel the weight of this. This is a sober thing that we're talking about.
Our prayer, as we've said so many times already is Lord, be merciful. Christ, have mercy. Come, Lord Jesus, and make all things right. And until he comes, should he tarry, let's strive to love one another and extend mercy and compassion to our brothers and sisters, and to our neighbor.
We've got more to discuss and we're going to do that over in the members' area. If you're new to Theocast and you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go to our website Theocast.org, and you can find all kinds of things there including information about our total access membership. I believe we still offer a 14-day free trial on that. You can get access to all of the content that's been produced over several years: that includes podcasts, audio content, but also some written content as well. So avail yourselves of that if you so choose. For those of you making your way over to the members' podcast, we will talk with you there.
Members Transcript
Members Podcast
