MARXISM, THE OPPRESSORS, WOKE, AND INCOME GUILT

 

One highly esteemed pastor emeritus made a highly racist, but now a highly fashionable statement during an interview:

• A friend of mine recently, who is a pastor, was talking to a Norwegian man who had just moved into his community and went to his church. And at one point he heard the pastor talking about the fact that we’re all complicit in creating this narrative that ‘black people are dangerous’ and etcetera, and so we’re implicit in this. Afterward the white, the Norwegian came up and said “no no no, I’m Norwegian. No, I had nothing to do with it,” and my pastor friend said “studies have shown, that have pretty much proven that if you have white skin it’s worth a million dollars over a lifetime, over somebody who doesn’t have white skin. https://protestia.com/2020/09/18/tim-keller-if-you-have-white-skin-the-bible-says-youre-involved-in-injustice/

This absurd statement raises several questions.

Are all those who make on the average of a million dollars more than the average black guilty of racism, like blacks over six feet six who play for the NBA? Or those who are only black by various degree? Or blacks with white skin? Or whites with dark skin?

Are all whites guilty of the sins of a few whites? Are all blacks guilty of the crimes of a few blacks? Should there be different standards of justice and punishment based upon skin color? The less pigment, the more guilt? Must we calculate pigment before sentencing?

Do more whites than blacks perpetuate the racist narrative that blacks are dangerous? Even if someone believes this way, should this make them guilty? And what about blacks who think that whites are morally inferior? Should our justice system now include thought police? Evidently, this esteemed pastor emeritus would answer yes:

• And that’s because of historical forces that have come about, and at this point you can go at it several ways. One, as I’ve mentioned, if you have that asset of white skin, right now, historical asset, then you actually have to say ‘I didn’t deserve this’ and also to some degree, ‘I’m the product of…I’m standing on the shoulders of other people who got that through injustice.” So the Bible actually says ‘yes you do…you are involved in injustice’, and even if you didn’t actually do it, therefore you have a responsibility. Not just to say “well, maybe if I get around to it, maybe we can do something about the poor people out there.’ No- you’re part of the problem.

Is it unjust to benefit from the hard work of one’s parents? Is there a single Bible verse claims that we are guilty if we have more than our neighbor? Instead, it is biblically legitimate to pass on an inheritance to the children:

• A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous. (Proverbs 13:22)

If the inheritance is I’ll-begotten, then the inheritor has a duty to make reparations to the victims. However, this pastor unbiblically assumes that any disparity in wealth is a sin. But it is assumed that we should save to care, first of all, for our own families, even if this means that we have more wealth accumulated than our neighbor:

• If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows. (1 Timothy 5:16)

The Bible repeatedly claims that it is fitting that those who work should benefit from their labors, while those who refuse to work should bear the consequences:

• For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

Are the productive ones “the problems” as this pastor emeritus charges? While for the Marxist, they are. If you have accumulated wealth, you are automatically in-league with the oppressors and are guilty. However, we need to ask, “Did God make Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Job guilty by giving them great wealth? Of course, they had to share this wealth with those in need, usually in the form of a loan. However, it was understood that giving had to begin with those within their own  circle:

• And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:9-10)

No indication of income redistribution or equating wealth with guilt! Nevertheless, we do have a responsibility for the poor. However, in view of how indiscriminate entitlement programs have destroyed the recipients, their families, and communities, giving must be done wisely and with concern about the impact of the giving.

In regards to helping the under-privileged, Pastor Rick Warren has written in the preface to Theologian Wayne Grudem’s “The Poverty of Nations:

• Having traveled the globe for thirty years and trained leaders in 164 countries, I’ve witnessed firsthand that almost every government and NGO (non-profit) poverty program is actually harmful to the poor, hurting them in the long run rather than helping them. The typical poverty program creates dependency, robs people of dignity, stifles initiative, and can foster a “What have you done for me lately?” sense of entitlement.

REV. JESSE LEE PETERSON AND THE PROBLEMS THAT AFFLICT THE BLACK COMMUNITY

In The Antidote, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson writes that:

·       Hate of the white man in particular gave me a satisfying way to explain all my other failures.

However, Peterson is now arguing that Blacks must take responsibility for their own lives. In 1990, he founded BOND, the Black Organization of a New Destiny, to enable them to forgive and to rebuild their lives.

In her review of The Antidote, Terrell Clemmons writes:

·       Peterson analyzes the deep ills of the black community. Fueled by white guilt, black rage has been stoked for fifty years or more by the “civil rights” movement, a field now dominated by hustlers…Peterson compares them to alchemists because they “scheme to create wealth without sweat.” Unearned benefits, such as welfare, food stamps, payouts from lawsuits, and maybe one day “reparations,” which they hold up as the black man’s due, require recipients “to sacrifice something of infinite value: the sanctity of the two-parent family. It’s the devil’s bargain.” (Salvo Magazine, #3; Winter 2016, 58)

Peterson has been widely criticized for not being Black enough. Consequently, he has had to counter this charge:

·       For years, I drank deeply from a toxic spring of hatred. I consumed the poison. I wallowed in it. Thank God I lived long enough to find the antidote.

He claims that he is able to understand other Blacks and their acting-out in rage, because this had also been his own experience, having come from a broken family:

·       Single black mothers often take their frustration out on the son who resembles the man who abandoned them. They turn the child against the father by saying the father is “no good,” or “He doesn’t love you.” This constant disparagement makes the child feel unloved, and it destroys him emotionally and spiritually. A mother might curse her son, smack him, tell him he will amount to no more good than his old man. The boy cannot help but absorb that message.

His own rage damned him, and he sought to blame others, as many of the Black community do:

·       Later in life, these boys may tell the world how much they love their mothers, but many of them do not mean it. I certainly did not. When my mother separated me from my father, all I felt was anger; it was the sentiment I knew best. That anger was so consuming it took over my soul. I projected it everywhere, toward my mother and father, toward my teachers and friends, and especially toward white people. By having others to blame for the sorry state of my own life, I did not have to blame myself. Such was my life before I learned to forgive.

Peterson observes that many Whites also come from broken families, but the dynamic is different:

·       In an age when fatherlessness is epidemic throughout the culture, many white young men enter the world no better prepared than Michael [Brown killed while assaulting a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.]. There is, however, a difference between those white teens and boys like Michael, a fatal difference. Michael had an excuse for his failings that they did not. Michael was black. From the time he was a little boy, the people around Michael were telling him that the white man kept the black man down. He heard this at home, among his friends, on television, at school, and maybe even at church. Barack Obama’s mentor, Jeremiah Wright, was far from the only preacher preaching hate. This hatred may have made Michael’s own failings seem less painful and less personal, but it was crippling him.

According to Peterson, this is now a radically different country with radically different police. Consequently, the Black community, along with their White liberal handlers, have taken a wrong turn. Instead of self-examination and character development, the focus has been on hatred and blame:

·       Brown’s death, like Trayvon’s, could have been a teachable moment. The media might have said that when a child is shuttled between relatives all his life, when he is trapped in a series of failing government schools, when he is instructed in ways big and small about the evils of the white man, bad things happen.

Peterson blames the media for fanning the flames of racial hatred:

·       But this was not a story the media wanted to tell any more in 2014 than they did in 2012. The reporters and editors preferred to tell a story that would make them feel better about themselves. In their version of events, a racist cop shot a poor young black boy, a “gentle giant” with dreams of college, despite his willingness to surrender. To tell this story, the media had to ignore Wilson’s account, Brown’s life history, the convenience-store video, the brave grand jury testimony of eyewitnesses on the scene, and all the forensic evidence. Still, by projecting racism onto white people –Officer Wilson or cops in general –the media could assert their own moral superiority.

Instead, the media has been inflammatory, denying that this country is now a very different one. Consequently, the media happily endorsed Eric Holder’s take on the shooting of Michael Brown:

·       Said attorney general Eric Holder of Michael Brown’s death, “There is [an] enduring legacy that Emmett Till has left with us that we still have to confront as a nation.” The media played right into his hands.

The narrative that “This is still a racist nation” is ubiquitous, coming from our leaders and media, and the Black community is paying the highest price for this strategy of blame:

·       This pattern is so obvious I am still shocked almost no one talks about it. It is this simple: children, black or white, when deprived of fathers, grow up angry at their parents. White children displace their anger in many different directions. Black children, for the most part, channel theirs in a single destructive direction –toward and against white people. The [race-baiters] encourage them to do this, enable them, and even reward them. This anger fuels the system and pays the [race baiters’] bills.

Peterson claims that even the race baiters are aware of their twisted agenda:

·       In one of his rare honest moments, Jesse Jackson summed up the situation much too well. “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life,” Jackson admitted in 1993, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” I know exactly how Jackson feels. The difference is that I am not going to apologize for feeling that way. There is too much at stake, namely, the soul of the black community, which is dying, if not dead: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A fire still burns in those few who cling to the values of old, but our days as a people of character, self-respect, and unshakable spirit appear to be over.

Nevertheless, Rev. Peterson has a clear answer – forgive and take responsibility for your lives, something that can be done with the help of God.

RECONSTRUCTION, SEGREGATION, AND THE WHITE CHURCH

Retired Professor of History and Black Church Studies and author of “Black Preaching,” Henry H. Mitchell, had been charged with “teaching Black Church history like it’s your own family album.” Mitchell admitted to the charge, adding that he had also written to raise the esteem of his Black people.

Nevertheless, Mitchell also has some good things to say about the White Church and their role in Reconstruction:

·       After the South was opened up to the missionaries, under protection of military occupation, the Protestant churches of the North launched a veritable crusade to bring literacy to the huge host of the newly freed. (Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings, 142)

Well, how great was this crusade? Mitchell investigated the annual reports of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS):

·       I was stunned to see whole pages of names of people who had been sent south to do mission work. There were hundreds of these names, in tiny print, on page after page. (142)

·       Regardless of paternalism and hazards to African American self-esteem, it was this huge crew of volunteer and minimally paid instructors, of not just Baptist but all denominations, who laid the foundation for all the secondary and college work reported in the pages that follow. There may have been only a log cabin church to teach in at first; it may have been by firelight, but these volunteers taught their very hearts out. There simply isn’t room to begin to cover the host of primary reading classes that were begun in churches and elsewhere soon after the Union troops took over. (142-43)

Mitchell later lists a vast multitude of schools started by these White missionaries to train Black teachers, who gradually took their place:

·       There were, of course, some educated African Americans from the North hastening south to lift their sisters and brothers. But this vast number of newly freed African Americans required this white host at the outset… The first Southern generation of locally educated African American instructors was first trained in schools planted by white missionaries. (143)

Why am I writing about this? Well, for one thing, I was thrilled to read about this. I had been so tormented reading about how White Christians had failed their Black brethren during segregation. Reading about Reconstruction was a welcome relief.

This is certainly not because I am White and want to build my own self-esteem. Not at all! I am not White. Instead, I believe in the Church that Christ has purchased with His own blood and I rejoice when I see indications that our Lord still inhabits His people, and that this makes all the difference in the world.

Just the other day, a Black women solemnly informed me, “Whites do not love Blacks.” This perception needs to be countered.

I also do not want White Christians to carry undo guilt and to allow this false guilt to either silence them or to lead them into doing foolish things in a vain attempt to atone for their “sins.”

False guilt helps no one. As a panelist at a conference on racism, Professor Shelby Steele was asked what an ideal America would look like. He writes:

·       I said that what I wanted most for America was an end to white guilt... the terror of being seen as racist— [the] terror that has caused whites to act guiltily toward minorities even when they feel no actual guilt. My point was that this terror— and the lust it has inspired in whites to show themselves innocent of racism— has spawned a new white paternalism toward minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did. I also pleaded especially for an end to the condescension of affirmative action... the benevolent paternalism of white guilt, I said, had injured the self- esteem, if not the souls, of minorities in ways that the malevolent paternalism of white racism never had. Post- 1960s welfare policies, the proliferation of “identity politics” and group preferences, and all the grandiose social interventions of the War on Poverty and the Great Society— all this was meant to redeem the nation from its bigoted past, but paradoxically, it also invited minorities to make an identity and a politics out of grievance and inferiority... their entitlement and that protest politics was the best way to cash in on that entitlement. (Shame: How America's Past Sins have Polarized the Country)

Steele believes that white guilt is now more destructive to the Black community than white racism. He argues that the very programs intended to help Blacks were not simply ineffective but actually damaged the Black community:

·       White guilt was a smothering and distracting kindness that enmeshed minorities more in the struggle for white redemption than in their own struggle to develop as individuals capable of competing with all others.

However, even more than this, I want to see the different races reconciled together as one in the Body of Christ. I want to remind my Black brethren that they are beloved, even though the White Church has often failed to show it in helpful ways that might result in healing and forgiveness.

Oneness in Christ was Jesus’ prayer (John 17:20-23). It should also be ours.

FASHIONABLE RACISM AND UNFASHIONABLE RACISM

Racism has become fashionable among the Left, as long as it is directed against certain skin-tones. (I’ve yet to see a scale delineating which tones are given a pass. And where do Asians, Indians, and Jews fall by this racial measure? Evidently, racism only makes sense when it is not examined too closely.)

Huffington Press writes approvingly of a video of an interview of Muhammad Ali making a case in favor of judging according to skin color:

·       In a clip from a 1971 interview on the British chat show Parkinson (above) that’s now gone viral on Tumblr, boxing icon Muhammad Ali perfectly explains why the existence of some “good” white people isn’t always enough. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muhammad-ali-on-not-all-white-people_us_563a5e9ee4b0307f2cabb2e6

Here is what Ali stated in the clip:

·       There are many white people who mean right and in their hearts wanna do right. If 10,000 snakes were coming down that aisle now, and I had a door that I could shut, and in that 10,000, 1,000 meant right, 1,000 rattlesnakes didn’t want to bite me, I knew they were good... Should I let all these rattlesnakes come down, hoping that that thousand get together and form a shield? Or should I just close the door and stay safe?

Ali used this reasoning to justify not forgiving people who share a skin color like those who had committed heinous crimes against Africans under Jim Crow. Essentially, his rhetoric is racist. While his analogy makes good sense regarding rattlesnakes, whites aren’t rattlesnakes. Besides, it is difficult to exercise discernment when it comes to rattlesnakes. However, we can regard people as individuals and judge them accordingly.

Individuals are different and should be regarded differently. That’s the way justice should work. This also had been the ideal of M.L. King who affirmed the biblical ideal of judging people according to their character and not their skin color.

However, Ali had opted for judging according their skin color. While this was far more understandable back in 1971, it is not today. Nevertheless, our media and leadership continue to talk in terms of skin and not character, heightening racial division and hatred. If the skin-tone isn’t right, then it reeks with guilt. Huffington Press concludes:

·       Ali’s words are still a pretty powerful reminder of the reality of being black in America. It’s pretty amazing, if unfortunate, that over 40 years later his words still resonate.

Huffington talks as if racism remains unchanged. While these words should resonate during Jim Crow, they should not today. Yes, there still are racists, but they are found among all colors. Ironically, today, the only racist laws on the books are those that favor people of color.

However, this is not enough to satisfy the Leftist media, which has invented new “crimes” to shame and silence the people of less color, at least all of those who do not think like communists. Consequently, such “good” white people are guilty of “White Privilege,” and if this charge doesn’t stick, they are guilty of “Systemic Racism.” If that’s not enough, then they are also guilty of secret negative assessments of the people of color. And if they can’t admit to these, then they are in denial. And so how can you forgive such devious people? You can’t!

Those who are unwilling to forgive will always find “justification” for their inflammatory remarks. However, hiding behind unforgiveness is the belief that:

·       “I am better than you. I would never have done to you what you had done to me. Consequently, you do not deserve to be forgiven.”

Sometimes, racist rhetoric is purposely exploited to create division, using those who have suffered most as kindling for their fires of hatred and revolution. Instead, we all need to be forgiven. However, we often refuse to see this, prompting Jesus to teach:

·       For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15)

Meanwhile, crimes must be dealt with legally, as designated by law, not as blanket denunciations against people of a certain coloring. Racism cannot be healed by more racism.