Counsel for White Cops

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - A friend of ours, Greg Lucas, is a police officer

00:00:08.260 | and he writes in to ask this,

00:00:09.440 | "Pastor John, what can a white Christian police officer

00:00:13.200 | "who loves Jesus and his fellow man do

00:00:16.460 | "to make a God-honoring difference

00:00:18.680 | "in the race issues facing our country?"

00:00:21.480 | - Well, I'd say to Greg,

00:00:24.380 | why am I teaching you anything about this?

00:00:28.320 | I'm the one who ought to be sitting

00:00:30.080 | at your feet at this point.

00:00:32.000 | In fact, I really do believe we need to sit

00:00:34.480 | at the feet of godly policemen right now

00:00:36.900 | and have them talk to us because we may,

00:00:39.940 | John Piper may be a bit naive in things that I write

00:00:43.420 | and say about my reaction to police,

00:00:46.720 | but he beat me to the question,

00:00:50.200 | so perhaps I have to say something.

00:00:54.780 | My respect for Greg Lucas is enormous.

00:00:58.560 | Especially because of his care for kids with disabilities

00:01:03.560 | and his own faithfulness as a dad

00:01:06.320 | in his book, "Wrestling With an Angel."

00:01:09.080 | Greg is a thoughtful, caring,

00:01:11.080 | fair-minded dad and police officer,

00:01:14.040 | and of course there are thousands like him

00:01:18.000 | and he's a Christian,

00:01:19.480 | and so the way he posed the question comes out of that.

00:01:24.360 | Can a white officer who loves Jesus

00:01:27.440 | and his fellow man make a god-honoring difference

00:01:30.040 | in the race issues?

00:01:30.880 | And the answer is he can,

00:01:34.080 | and maybe even though I'm saying this with great hesitancy

00:01:38.960 | because I've never been a policeman,

00:01:41.280 | I've never stared down anybody with a knife or a gun

00:01:44.880 | or anything that would make my heart beat so hard,

00:01:48.080 | I'd probably just collapse in a moment.

00:01:50.480 | I'm gonna say some things and then expect the officers

00:01:55.000 | who listen to take them and do whatever tweaking

00:01:58.320 | and adjusting is necessary to give them a flavor of reality

00:02:02.040 | that I've never walked through.

00:02:04.560 | So here's my first suggestion.

00:02:06.440 | Greg and all the other officers

00:02:10.600 | develop a God-given thick skin.

00:02:15.360 | Everybody who leads,

00:02:17.320 | and all police officers lead and pastors lead,

00:02:20.280 | and goodness, everybody leads in some way,

00:02:21.920 | but everybody who leads, especially publicly,

00:02:25.600 | will be criticized, often unjustly.

00:02:28.720 | There are bad apples in every barrel,

00:02:31.000 | white barrels and black barrels,

00:02:32.720 | and community barrels and police barrels.

00:02:34.840 | There are bad apples in every barrel,

00:02:37.800 | and some people criticize the whole barrel,

00:02:40.200 | and the good apples can really get easily angered and hurt

00:02:45.200 | so that even the good apples then

00:02:47.440 | can start to be part of the problem,

00:02:49.400 | and that could be prevented

00:02:51.080 | if there was a God-given thick skin

00:02:56.080 | able to hear angry words

00:02:59.280 | and not be wounded or made vengeful by them.

00:03:03.120 | Or here's another way to say it,

00:03:04.400 | maybe more positively, would be that

00:03:06.560 | we need to cultivate,

00:03:10.520 | whether it's police officers or anybody,

00:03:12.640 | seeds of patience.

00:03:17.560 | I think Christian police officers will help others see

00:03:20.480 | that there are historic reasons

00:03:22.960 | for outcries against the police,

00:03:25.440 | and that there are some situations,

00:03:27.440 | some situations where there's warrant for the outcry,

00:03:32.200 | but that does not mean that all officers are being indicted,

00:03:38.720 | though it may feel that way in the moment,

00:03:41.720 | and I think it's just a great mark of maturity and patience

00:03:45.600 | to be able to hear criticism,

00:03:47.040 | and only own what is yours,

00:03:50.880 | and not what is not yours to own.

00:03:54.600 | I would say to Greg,

00:03:56.320 | speak to the issue of racial harmony in the department,

00:04:01.320 | the police force,

00:04:04.520 | when it's not a red-hot public issue.

00:04:08.720 | In other words, when the issue goes away

00:04:10.920 | from the front pages,

00:04:11.920 | and it will go away from the front pages,

00:04:16.160 | that's the golden moment, I think,

00:04:18.640 | to talk the issue of racial harmony,

00:04:23.640 | and racial reconciliation,

00:04:26.480 | and diversity, and justice,

00:04:29.000 | and you wanna sow seeds of ethnic harmony

00:04:33.200 | rooted in the Christian vision of man,

00:04:36.160 | created in the image of God,

00:04:37.720 | and man reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

00:04:42.280 | And then I would say,

00:04:44.560 | cultivate freedom from personal revenge

00:04:49.560 | as a motive in the use of power.

00:04:53.680 | And here's what I have in mind.

00:04:54.880 | Just yesterday, I read an article in the New York Times

00:04:59.880 | about a Navy pilot.

00:05:04.080 | He happened to be a classmate of mine.

00:05:05.920 | I didn't even know about this, from Wheaton.

00:05:08.680 | He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam,

00:05:12.800 | flew 500 combat missions.

00:05:16.480 | And what gave it such a personal twist

00:05:18.520 | is that his dad was a missionary in North Vietnam

00:05:22.880 | and had been killed by the Vietnamese,

00:05:26.680 | and how easy it would have been for this Navy pilot

00:05:31.680 | flying 500 combat missions

00:05:34.320 | to have his teeth grinding every time with revenge.

00:05:38.320 | And here's what he said in the article.

00:05:41.000 | "I was taught that vengeance was the Lord's,

00:05:45.400 | and you defer to that."

00:05:47.160 | So this is being reported in a major newspaper.

00:05:50.520 | He said, "After a strike,

00:05:54.280 | I was pleased that I could say, 'Mission accomplished,'

00:05:58.720 | but I never felt, 'Ah, I got somebody back.'

00:06:02.560 | In fact, if I had a junior officer

00:06:07.040 | that I knew was out for revenge,

00:06:09.000 | I would probably keep him out of the air."

00:06:12.520 | Now, I suspect that's probably good advice

00:06:16.040 | for police officers as well,

00:06:18.200 | which simply means I think Christians want to sow the seeds

00:06:22.440 | that there's justice to be done here,

00:06:25.760 | but it's not an occasional for personal revenge,

00:06:28.560 | and where personal vengeance

00:06:30.760 | is starting to take the upper place,

00:06:33.400 | the officers are gonna probably not do their job as well.

00:06:39.240 | And then I'd say, "Spot and expose policies,

00:06:44.240 | regulations, rules, procedures, traditions

00:06:48.640 | in the department that might be expressing

00:06:51.000 | or shaping racist attitudes."

00:06:53.880 | In other words, give attention

00:06:55.960 | to this whole issue of structural stuff

00:06:59.280 | and not just individual stuff.

00:07:03.320 | Just a couple more things.

00:07:04.280 | When I tweeted back in November,

00:07:07.840 | right after the Michael Brown case had come down

00:07:11.840 | with the non-indictment of Officer Wilson,

00:07:16.640 | I tweeted this,

00:07:18.280 | "An indictment of Wilson may not have been the way,

00:07:23.120 | but what's needed from police now

00:07:25.520 | is good evidence of firm resolve of equal treatment."

00:07:30.520 | Now, I got a lot of upswell of like what's,

00:07:36.960 | and so my next tweet,

00:07:38.440 | I think it was just an hour later maybe,

00:07:40.200 | was, for example,

00:07:42.560 | "Empathetic public resolves from the police."

00:07:47.360 | Two, "Redoubled effort

00:07:49.520 | to hire and train minority officers."

00:07:51.920 | Three, "Increased research and development

00:07:55.080 | on how to disarm without killing."

00:07:57.440 | And I think all three of those are important and serious.

00:08:02.440 | And the last thing I would say is,

00:08:05.360 | I just was reading a few weeks ago,

00:08:07.240 | and I put this in the blog I wrote recently

00:08:10.320 | after our experience down in Nashville,

00:08:14.440 | I mean Memphis,

00:08:15.520 | Richmond, California,

00:08:17.560 | a city with a high crime rate,

00:08:20.760 | has not seen any deaths

00:08:24.880 | from policemen on community since 2007.

00:08:29.720 | And the reasons were given like this,

00:08:32.480 | and I'll just tick 'em off.

00:08:33.760 | "One, an emphasis on alternatives to bullets

00:08:36.840 | like tasers and pepper spray.

00:08:38.320 | Two, an ethos of accountability,

00:08:41.240 | every bullet has your name on it.

00:08:43.200 | Three, monthly firearm training,

00:08:45.760 | quarterly role-playing in hard situations.

00:08:48.000 | Four, a strong force with manpower

00:08:51.560 | and money to deploy and train wisely.

00:08:54.440 | Five, a change in culture from the top down.

00:08:58.080 | Six, strong efforts in neighborhood relations.

00:09:01.840 | And seven, all of this flowing

00:09:04.400 | from a new culture-changing leader."

00:09:08.840 | So those are just random ideas and thoughts

00:09:11.960 | about how Christian police officers might move

00:09:15.200 | towards creating change for good

00:09:18.040 | in racial harmony and just treatment.

00:09:21.460 | But again, I just wanna say how thankful,

00:09:24.600 | how thankful I am in my neighborhood for policemen

00:09:29.640 | and how much I tremble for what they face

00:09:34.040 | over and over again,

00:09:35.920 | and how much I don't want to second-guess them,

00:09:39.280 | and how much I respect them,

00:09:40.640 | because biblically I'm supposed to pray for them.

00:09:42.920 | They are the instruments in God's hands

00:09:45.320 | for my protection and for the doing of justice.

00:09:49.200 | And so if they hear anything in this that sounds naive

00:09:52.600 | or like it's really out of touch with reality,

00:09:54.920 | well, it probably is, and forgive me,

00:09:57.560 | but if anything could be helpful,

00:09:59.560 | I offer it.

00:10:00.600 | Wonderful, Pastor John, thank you.

00:10:02.040 | And thank you for the question, Greg.

00:10:04.000 | This reminds me of an episode we released a while back

00:10:06.620 | titled "Should Christians Be Cops and Soldiers?"

00:10:10.400 | That was episode number 318,

00:10:12.080 | and you can find it in the Ask Pastor John podcast archive,

00:10:15.180 | in our free apps, or on our website, DesiringGod.org.

00:10:19.660 | We're gonna break for the weekend now,

00:10:21.120 | but we return with John Piper on Monday.

00:10:23.960 | Until then, please email your questions into us

00:10:26.240 | at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:10:29.240 | Please keep your questions brief and to the point.

00:10:31.460 | Keep it to one to three sentences, if you can, please.

00:10:34.760 | And of course, this weekend,

00:10:35.880 | you can visit us online at DesiringGod.org

00:10:38.800 | to find thousands of books, articles, sermons,

00:10:41.360 | and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

00:10:45.160 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:10:46.200 | Have a wonderful weekend.

00:10:47.600 | (upbeat music)

00:10:50.180 | (upbeat music)

00:10:52.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Counsel for White Cops

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