What Can We Learn from ‘Black Lives Matter’?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Thanks for listening to another week
00:00:06.360 | of the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:00:07.880 | as we close out the week here.
00:00:09.520 | We get a lot of really good questions via email
00:00:11.960 | and of course you can send those questions to me
00:00:13.880 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:00:17.000 | And a number of those email questions have come in
00:00:19.120 | on the Black Lives Matter movement.
00:00:22.780 | Pastor John, I'll just put this topic out there for now.
00:00:25.960 | I mean, talk to us about the Black Lives Matter movement.
00:00:28.840 | What can we learn from it?
00:00:30.720 | And what have you learned from it?
00:00:32.280 | - One of the main things to learn
00:00:34.600 | from the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement
00:00:39.400 | is the need to distinguish between one,
00:00:45.340 | the plain truth of the slogan,
00:00:48.160 | two, the ideological nature of its origin,
00:00:52.440 | and three, the strategies of action
00:00:55.880 | that it unleashes on the street.
00:00:57.940 | We need to distinguish those when we talk about this.
00:01:01.060 | Now you would think after wrestling with these things
00:01:03.940 | for 40 years, these ethnic, racial, social dynamics,
00:01:08.940 | after 40 years that this would be more obvious to me,
00:01:12.880 | those distinctions, but they weren't.
00:01:17.220 | I had to be corrected.
00:01:20.220 | So another thing to learn besides those distinctions
00:01:23.440 | is no matter how long you've been at this, like me,
00:01:27.800 | no matter how long you've been at this,
00:01:30.080 | thinking about the issue, talking about it,
00:01:32.160 | writing about it, you can easily fall
00:01:35.320 | into unhelpful ways of thinking or talking,
00:01:40.320 | which is why ongoing friendships
00:01:46.360 | across ethnic lines is important.
00:01:51.500 | Conversations embedded in friendships
00:01:55.400 | is ongoingly important.
00:01:58.720 | So let me tell a story now just to illustrate my blowing it
00:02:03.160 | and the lessons, those two lessons that emerged from it.
00:02:08.160 | Last year, 2015, there were widespread protests
00:02:13.940 | under the banner of Black Lives Matter,
00:02:16.400 | largely because of some high profile cases
00:02:19.700 | in which police killed unarmed black men.
00:02:24.880 | Good question, whether it was warranted or not.
00:02:27.240 | And that's of course the tip of the iceberg
00:02:31.520 | because there were about 100 of those
00:02:33.840 | and most of them were not high profile in 2015.
00:02:37.940 | I saw a statistic that there were 102 unarmed black men
00:02:41.760 | killed by police and that compares in its rate
00:02:46.760 | to a rate five times larger
00:02:50.520 | than the killing of unarmed whites.
00:02:53.360 | So you can get a feel for why there might be some concern
00:02:58.360 | and the emergence of something like Black Lives Matter.
00:03:03.200 | And as I was watching all of this happen,
00:03:06.480 | I wondered what to think about it, what to say about it.
00:03:10.260 | And I Googled and found, oh, there's a website
00:03:15.260 | called blacklivesmatter.com.
00:03:18.440 | And I read it and oh my goodness, it was awful.
00:03:22.280 | I mean, I didn't like it because it featured three women
00:03:27.280 | who claimed to be the founders of Black Lives Matter,
00:03:35.200 | Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrice Cullors,
00:03:39.840 | and they self-identify as quote, clear queer,
00:03:44.200 | not clear, queer black women.
00:03:47.000 | And in big bold banners on their, her story,
00:03:52.520 | not history, her story page,
00:03:55.000 | they say that they are queer affirming
00:04:00.000 | and transgender affirming.
00:04:02.980 | Well, this did not excite me as of course it wouldn't
00:04:07.040 | most of my Christian black brothers and sisters.
00:04:11.320 | And I was so surprised I tweeted this link
00:04:16.320 | so that people could be aware of these roots.
00:04:21.880 | Well, a few weeks later, I was in Louisville
00:04:26.280 | with the Together for the Gospel team,
00:04:28.120 | which included Thabiti Anyabwile.
00:04:31.120 | And if you don't know Thabiti,
00:04:32.800 | he's a black pastor in Washington, DC.
00:04:36.360 | And he is, as everyone who knows him realizes,
00:04:39.600 | intellectually, theologically, culturally,
00:04:41.960 | highly intelligent, highly articulated,
00:04:45.080 | highly courageous, highly level-headed,
00:04:47.840 | and not a pushover.
00:04:51.360 | And he let me know clearly that I wasn't helpful.
00:04:55.780 | That kind of thing, unqualified, no context,
00:05:03.100 | was in the give and take we were having around the table.
00:05:07.360 | We did it for two, three days, great friendships there,
00:05:10.000 | a lot of blunt in your face talk at that meeting.
00:05:14.960 | And he helped me see, for the mass of ordinary folks,
00:05:19.240 | black folks in particular, that website is a non-issue.
00:05:23.840 | It doesn't even exist.
00:05:25.680 | They don't even know it's there.
00:05:27.000 | It's not driving anything.
00:05:28.600 | And therefore, my call now, my learning afresh
00:05:32.720 | of needing to make distinctions between,
00:05:36.100 | one, a patently true slogan, Black Lives Matter,
00:05:41.100 | and two, ideological roots of a name
00:05:47.920 | that may be the real roots, or they may have been co-opted.
00:05:52.920 | I mean, the name may have been co-opted.
00:05:56.360 | So there's a double point here for my learning,
00:05:59.860 | and I hope for all of us who are listening to grow in.
00:06:02.560 | First, we need ongoing regular conversations
00:06:07.560 | in the context of friendship across ethnic lines,
00:06:11.600 | because otherwise, we will see things in a certain way,
00:06:14.900 | say things in a certain way that may be naive at best
00:06:19.820 | and hurtful at worst.
00:06:21.780 | The best way to be discerning in regard
00:06:26.520 | to the complexities of racial matters
00:06:28.720 | is to be in regular, normal, not exceptional,
00:06:32.440 | normal conversations across ethnic lines
00:06:36.480 | so that we see through other eyes.
00:06:43.600 | And the other lesson is that we should distinguish.
00:06:46.740 | We learn from these conversations
00:06:48.660 | to distinguish the plain truth of the slogan,
00:06:51.360 | the ideological nature of its art,
00:06:53.320 | the strategies of action that may or may not
00:06:55.440 | always be the best.
00:06:57.280 | Patently, Black Lives Matter, that's true.
00:07:02.160 | And before, it's another little lesson maybe,
00:07:04.520 | I'm just sticking this in.
00:07:06.320 | Before we say anything like, "All lives matter,"
00:07:09.840 | before we say that, we need to pause.
00:07:14.720 | Because if you quickly add that, it sounds like a rebuke.
00:07:19.720 | It sounds like a minimizing of what was just said.
00:07:25.480 | It sounds like the point that was trying to be made
00:07:28.960 | isn't worth being made.
00:07:32.240 | So you don't wanna make that point.
00:07:34.360 | You don't want to say that.
00:07:36.400 | So you'd learn that pretty quickly in that conversation
00:07:40.480 | if you added, "All lives matter."
00:07:42.480 | Of course that's true, all lives matter.
00:07:44.160 | But oh, how timing matters and how context matters.
00:07:48.940 | Let me give one more illustration of this friendship issue.
00:07:54.280 | I have been meeting about once a month
00:07:59.280 | with a pastor friend, a Black pastor friend
00:08:01.920 | in the Twin Cities.
00:08:03.440 | And we have talked about over the last months
00:08:07.080 | the case of Jamar Clark here,
00:08:08.920 | who was killed by the police last November,
00:08:10.680 | November, 2015 in the Twin Cities here, unarmed.
00:08:15.680 | And I have learned things in this conversation
00:08:19.160 | with my friend that I would have just never,
00:08:22.960 | ever been aware of.
00:08:24.080 | I've learned things about the sorrows
00:08:26.320 | of the Black community here in the Twin Cities
00:08:31.040 | that I would have never felt without this friendship.
00:08:34.240 | Everything would have been seen from a distance,
00:08:37.160 | seen through political or ideological eyes.
00:08:39.680 | But oh, what a difference to listen
00:08:42.160 | to the sorrows of a man pushing 60
00:08:44.280 | who's been at this business for a long time
00:08:47.160 | in his community and to hear him unpack the depths
00:08:51.160 | of things that cannot be bought or sold,
00:08:54.880 | that can only be received in trust and friendship.
00:08:58.920 | So those are my two or three lessons
00:09:02.880 | that I offer to everyone from my blowing it
00:09:05.800 | for your consideration.
00:09:08.960 | Enjoy some close friendships across ethnic lines
00:09:12.720 | and be sure to make distinctions between true slogans
00:09:16.880 | like Black Lives Matter and questionable roots
00:09:21.640 | and strategic applications.
00:09:23.120 | They're not all the same
00:09:24.640 | and many things need to be said about each one.
00:09:27.600 | - That's so good, thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:29.400 | Well, 34,000 people follow Thabiti on Twitter
00:09:32.240 | and so should you.
00:09:33.120 | Go to Twitter and search for Thabiti, T-H-A-B-I-T-I
00:09:37.000 | and you'll find him.
00:09:37.840 | Grateful to God for Thabiti's life and ministry.
00:09:40.360 | Well, we're gonna break for the weekend now
00:09:41.800 | and you can look back on the episodes from the week,
00:09:44.120 | search our archives of hundreds of episodes,
00:09:46.120 | download our podcast app, subscribe to the podcast,
00:09:49.480 | or even send us a question of your own.
00:09:50.920 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:55.200 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:56.440 | I'll see you on Monday.
00:09:58.520 | (upbeat music)
00:10:01.120 | (upbeat music)
00:10:03.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]