The recent situation in Ferguson, Missouri has been all over the news and it has again sparked a lot of conversation about race in America, Pastor John. From this vantage point in time right now, we hear a number of conflicting reports about what actually happened in Ferguson. But from your perspective as someone who has invested a lot of time in thinking about the trajectory of race relations in America, what are some key lessons we can take away from this at this point?

This has been a really tough season for a lot of people after the killing of Michael Brown, unarmed, 18 years old, in a hail of bullets from a policeman. We don't know all the facts, yes, there are people who like to say that and people get really angry when you say that first.

I'm just trying to learn what is going on in the dialogue, not just in the wider community but in the Christian church. And here are three things. I want to mainly address, I think, my white fellow evangelicals and plead with them to think hard about three things that might feed in to why the black community would respond at least emotionally, if not theoretically, differently from the majority culture.

Number one, I learned this from, I think his name is Bixby, Pastor Bixby, who wrote a blog about this and it's an incredibly important principle. If you are a minority, it doesn't have to be black, if you're a minority living in a majority culture, so blacks in this country are what, 13, 14 percent, something like that, so around them is a majority culture.

The minority ethos tends to be an us, a we, a community, an identity along the lines of what defines them as the minority. The majority culture never has to do this. They're never even aware that they are a group. When a white guy shoots a white guy, we don't say, "Oh, white on white crime." We don't think about it.

It's the luxury, it's the privilege of being majority. So to be aware that any time anything happens of a critical nature in the black community, there is a sense of us that is intrinsic, it's reflexive, it's natural, it's understandable, precisely because of the nature of the community as a minority community.

That's one of the most important lessons I've had reaffirmed as I have listened. Number two, feeding into this event is a history. I mean, there's slavery, and then within my lifetime, a long history of Jim Crow laws, they were called, roughly coming to an end at the Civil Rights Movement, but being ugly, horrible, demeaning, to a degree that one can hardly imagine the indignities of it.

So the long history of slavery, the long history of Jim Crow injustices and abuses are part of the matrix of that minority self-consciousness. We have been hated, we have been abused, we have been mistreated for a long time. And I know that there are other voices who say, "Come on, if we don't get beyond that, we won't make any progress." That's true, that's true, but it's not canceling out the reality of the consciousness.

We just need to handle that consciousness in a way, and whites need to be aware that we've never had to deal with that, and they still do. That's number two lesson. Number three is this. I went to church last Sunday, and I was wondering, is Kenny going to address the issue?

Bless his pee-picking heart. He began with the issue, and then he put it in a wider context, and I was so thankful. He's just so racially, ethnically, culturally sensitive that he began his sermon. And what he drew attention to, along with other things, I knew this, but he had the names already, and I don't have them already now, but he listed, I think, five other unarmed black men who had died in the last month at the hands of police.

Now you don't have all the facts with those. Every one of them may be warranted in some way, but when you put a centuries-long history together with a minority consciousness of us, them, together with a long history of innocent black men being lynched, and in the moment, some unarmed black men being killed by people with authority, you just got to believe and understand that when another one happens, it's going to feel different.

It's going to feel—now, having said all that, I'm pleading for white evangelical patience and understanding and listening. And I know that those observations don't warrant untrue or ill-advised or inflammatory talk from the black community towards the white community. And I've talked with the brothers about that. So that's it, Tony.

That's where I am in my effort to listen and understand and admonish and be admonished. So I hope that's of some help to the majority white, especially evangelical, culture as we deal with these things. Yeah, thank you, Pastor John. Within our circles—YRR, neo-Calvinism, whatever you want to call it—were you surprised by the amount of what some would say was misunderstanding between blacks and whites on Ferguson?

Did this come as a surprise to you? No. I think that's going to continue to be there. And I don't know if misunderstanding is the way I would have described it. Lack of empathy is what I think I would put my finger on. I said to one brother, "I'm hearing what they're saying, and I'm hearing true things." "They" meaning black community.

"I'm hearing what you're saying and the facts I'm agreeing with." But here's the problem. Agreeing with that, in this context with a dead man on the street, against that backdrop, without some kind of effort to say that you have empathy, that you have compassion, that you have understanding, that's what's missing.

And no, that doesn't understand me. We haven't gotten there yet. In fact, I think there's probably some pushback on that. Do we have to pander to this every time something comes along? Do we have to deal with those kinds of emotional things? And I'd say, "Well, I think there's probably a way to do it that isn't pandering, and that isn't belittling, that isn't dishonoring by owning a sense of understanding and empathy." Very good.

Thank you, Pastor John. And you can find that article by Bob Bixby online. It's titled "The Gospel in Black and White, A Missiological Perspective on Ferguson." And of course, you can download and read Pastor John's book, Bloodlines, for free. Go to DesiringGod.org and click on Books and look for the title, Bloodlines.

And speaking of topics in the news, Israel and Palestine are at war again. There have been ceasefires and truces, but the tensions seem unresolved. So should we take our stand with Israel or with Palestine? That's tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

Thank you. Thanks for listening. Thank you.