Tag: racism

Racism and Christianity are Incompatible.

Does racism work with Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

With today being MLK Day, we think about a man who said he wants people to be judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. The dream was to see black and white boys and girls playing together and being friends. There was to be no advantage or disadvantage to race.

Sadly, the church hasn’t had a perfect track record here. It could be a natural human tendency to look with suspicion at the other. We often treat slavery as if it was the worst evil and also uniquely American. It is a great evil indeed, though I think some are worse, such as mass genocide, but it is also not uniquely American. Most every other culture has enslaved a group and been enslaved themselves. Many groups have enslaved their own people and sold their own people to be slaves.

There were too many Christians who were defending slavery in America. I recognize that my own denomination’s history has a black mark here, one that I am thankful we have recognized the error of. I have a professor here who has said if he could ask Jonathan Edwards one question, it would be “Why did you keep slaves?”

Generally, we recognize racism as wrong today, but why? What makes it wrong? We can’t just take these ideas as if they are a given. After all, if you went back 2,000 years ago and asked the average person in the Roman Empire if slavery was wrong, they would look at you puzzled. Of course not. Why would you think such a thing? Oddly, many of the slaves could think the exact same thing.

As Tom Holland argues in his book Dominion, even as an agnostic, he finds his values are really Christian ones. Our culture has been so shaped by Christianity that we don’t see it. We tend to think “This is the way everyone thinks.” No. It isn’t. Our beliefs on morality are something that have been tinkered out over a long period of time. I also suspect we’re about to see how important they are as the major movement today is to avoid any idea of morality in many areas, especially sex.

In Christianity, mankind is created in the image of God. There is no distinction in that regard between male and female. Both are said to be equally in the image of God, despite them both being very different. (Hallelujah that women are so different, might I add.) Too many of us have this idea that if there are any differences between two things, then one is superior and the other is inferior. Not always.

Are men superior in any way? Yes. Absolutely. So are women. Men are superior at being men. Women are superior at being women. (Something our culture is trying to destroy the idea of. It’s amazing women are complaining about the patriarchy all the while supporting the transgender movement.) There are benefits to being a man and there are benefits to being a woman and there are downsides to both.

The same can apply to races. Can there be differences between the races besides appearance? Absolutely. Does this mean that any one race is superior or inferior? Not a bit. (I cannot recommend enough Thomas Sowell on these kinds of questions.)

What racism does is it treats the image of God, the main aspect of man in Christianity, as if it was of lesser importance than race. Taking any secondary characteristic of a person and treating it as a primary characteristic is demeaning. This is also the same when we treat the most important aspect of a person to be any of the aspects I mentioned above.

This does not mean that these secondary qualities are unimportant, but they should not be ranked above the most important. Each person you meet is in the image of God. If they are, then you are to love them as yourself. You can speak all you want against what a person does, because that can be wicked and evil, but humanity is a good still, a good regardless of any of the secondary characteristics.

Also, this racism is not just treating as someone lesser because of a secondary characteristic. It’s also treating them as greater because of it. James had a problem with special privileges being given to the rich. He would have just as much problem with special privileges being given based on the secondary characteristics as well. If you want to see racism die in a society, you have to get rid of privileges as well as disadvantages.

A truly Christian society will be a society that is without racism.

Let’s aim for that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Obscure Mormon Doctrine

What do I think of Chris Jensen’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m actually going to be recommending a Mormon book to you. It’s not a book about something unrelated that just happens to be by a Mormon. It is a book by a Mormon talking about Mormonism and not even speaking opposed to Mormonism.

I found Obscure Mormon Doctrine when browsing for material on Eternal Progression. I looked at the reviews and I saw one person saying “I’m afraid you’ve written something that will very easily be used against us.” That was good enough for me. It didn’t cost a lot so I picked it up immediately.

Indeed, I think that was correct. Jensen goes through forty different subjects and not only does he explain them, he gives references to them. These are often times obscure doctrines. It was quite helpful when I had Mormons visiting me when I gave them from their own sources thinks to Jensen’s book exactly where Mormons say that the virgin birth (Which I do affirm) of Jesus was not a miracle as it is for us, but rather God the Father naturally having sex with Mary.

Also extremely helpful will be the chapter on Mormonism and race. The Mormon Church had a big problem that still hangs over their heads in the past with the way they treated the black community. The curse of Cain and the curse of the Lamanites was black skin for each. For a long time, black people were not allowed to hold the priesthood in Mormon circles.

Now that has changed, but it was not immediately after the Civil Rights Act. That change didn’t happen until 1978. Fortunately, Jensen gives the information on where this was said. It’s all very easy to find.

Naturally, there’s something on polygamy as well. Again, it seems convenient that what was supposed to be an eternal principle was changed the moment the government started to come in. By the way, pro tip for anyone. If you’re following someone who claims to be a prophet and the prophet gets information directly from God about his sex life that is directly beneficial to said prophet, you might want to reconsider your allegiance.

Another surprising chapter for me to find was the chapter on the temples. Not only does he talk about the temples, he actually goes into great detail describing the rituals that can take place in the temple. As if that wasn’t astounding enough, there is open admission that these come from the Masonic rituals to which Joseph Smith just thought that they had remnants still of the true religion to some extent in them. All of this is impressive to read in a Mormon book.

So if you’re interested in doing evangelism to Mormons, I really encourage you to pick up this book immediately. All the chapters are short and you can go right to the one that you need and every claim that you want to check on is referenced. I highly anticipate this becoming a new sourcebook for Christians dealing with Mormons.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: All One In Christ

What do I think of Edward Feser’s book published by Ignatius Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Edward Feser is one of my favorite writers and this time he has taken up his pen to deal with Critical Race Theory. This might be surprising for a philosopher to write about, but at the same time, a philosopher is quite good at pointing out all the problems in logic that proponents of CRT use. While Feser does write from a Catholic perspective on responding to racism and CRT from that position, Protestants and Orthodox will greatly benefit from this work as well.

Feser starts with defining his terms and making a defense of the value and uniqueness of every human being out there regardless of their race. He looks at the stance that the church has taken historically on issues in relation to race as well. This then builds up easily into looking at slavery which he does next.

In this section, he talks about the way the church handled slavery in the past and how they saw it as an evil. Does this mean that all Catholics everywhere lived this way? No. Does this mean the Church has always been innocent in everything? No. If there was a weakness overall here, I would like to have seen him critique writers like Hector Avalos who has pointed out statements that one could think lend to the idea of the church having problems with racist attitudes in the past.

From here, he critiques Critical Race Theory, CRT for short, and looks especially at writers like DiAngelo and Kendi. If you worry that you will not understand because you are not a philosopher and do not speak in these academic terms, don’t worry about that. Feser writes just for a layman here and when he talks about a logical fallacy, he not only explains what the fallacy is, but he also tells why it is a fallacy. This book is definitely friendly to the person who is a layman in the area.

He also looks at the sociological critiques of CRT and here he relies, rightly and heavily, on writers like Thomas Sowell. For instance, the huge overwhelming majority of human beings in prison in America are men. Since this is a disparity, does this mean that the justice department is sexist against men? Not at all. It just means more men commit these kinds of crimes.

He says that colonialism is wrong, but also that on the other hand, when many people came to colonize, they also brought with them technological advances that even after the colonials were gone, those who were left behind benefitted. He also shows that even when a people have been a minority in a population, they have often had a sizable influence on that population because they take their culture with them often. Germans, for example, wherever they go, they tend to make the best beer. In this, he also looks at immigration pointing out that a country should welcome immigrants, but also do so reasonably in a way they can provide for them and there is no evil in a country having a border and defending it.

Definitely worth pointing out is the damage fatherlessness has had. The black community has been hit hardest by this with the Asian community getting hit least of all. Fatherlessness damages a society which in turn damages an economy and all of this traces back to the sexual revolution, but obviously, one cannot speak against that!

Finally, he points out the damage that has been done by CRT. If anything, emphasizing race more actually makes race more of an issue and tends to lead to more racism. Morgan Freeman one time said one of the best treatments of racism would be to stop talking about it. I entirely concur.

Also, this book is short so you can read it easily, and you should. Go out and get this whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. You’ll be glad you did.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

On Charges Like Homophobia

Does it really make a difference to say such claims? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about the failure of the movie Bros. One claim brought up by Billy Eichner who was behind the movie was that it failed because of homophobia. I could talk about just that claim today, but there are plenty of others.

Let’s go back in time and consider Hillary Clinton’s “Basket of Deplorables” quote. She had said that half of Trump supporters could be placed in this basket. How did she describe these people? “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

The sad thing is sometimes, techniques like this work. People get scared because they don’t want to be labeled this way and seen this way. Nowadays, the same people that used to tell us about how totes awesome tolerance was, are the ones that will go scouring through someone’s Twitter history and seeing if just one time a decade ago they said something mildly offensive to ruin their lives.

For my part, when I hear the claim about racism, sexism, or even a counterpart such as white supremacist, I tend to disregard it immediately. Why? Because I have heard it so many times that I just can’t take it seriously. It has become a story of the boy who cried wolf.

Homophobia is a particularly odd one to me. Consider if I came up to you and said “So have you given any thought lately to having sex with your mother?” Now if you act repulsed at that, could I go and say “Oh! You must be an incestophobe!” (My spell check is saying that word is not real, but give it time.) Are we going to move soon from an age where we talk more about pedophobes than we do about pedophiles? (The former is a word that doesn’t exist yet in spell check, but I suspect it could be there within a decade.)

If anything, consider that you are accusing someone of having a phobia, which is a mental condition, and your reply is to make fun of them for it? Phobias are incredibly serious things when they are real that can severely limit someone’s life. Somehow, many more often on the left have chosen to use this term regularly.

Tolerance is no longer totes awesome.

Disagreement with a position doesn’t mean that you are afraid of it, unless we want to say every non-Christian is a Christophobe. If anything, you could have a positive attitude towards something and still choose to avoid it. Consider someone who is recovering from addiction. You can find plenty of people in an Alcoholics Anonymous group who somewhere would likely still love to have alcohol. They’re not alcoholphobes either. They just know it’s not good for them and they have to avoid it because the effects of it on them are not good.

Right now, looking at racism, I live in a city where it is very much a melting pot of various cultures. At many of the businesses around here, I am a minority. Does this cause me any trouble? Nope. I’m still a Christian and everyone around me is still in the image of God.

Another problem with the approach of crying something like racism or homophobe is that it really doesn’t require you actually listen to the other person. If you did not, for example, want Obama to be president, it is possible it could be because you are a racist, but it could also be because of other reasons, such as you didn’t like his policies and approach.

If someone is called a homophobe, it could be they find homosexuality disgusting, but it could also be that they have a view of the family that doesn’t allow for that. They think, and I agree, that a man-woman monogamous unit is the foundation of a society and raising up the next generation. Now someone like myself could be wrong on that, but just throwing out homophobe doesn’t allow us to even discuss the issue.

Every time something like this is said, what is no longer being discussed is the issue, but rather the person. For someone who receives this charge, defending yourself is not really the way to go, at least primarily. That distracts from the issue. What really needs to be discussed is the belief in question.

So for those of us who have heard this, the ideal goal is really to just not pay attention to this unless there’s serious evidence behind it. For those who do use this kind of claim, really try something better. You might be further convincing the choir, but you really just cause the rest of us to roll our eyes and not take you seriously.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

A Day To Remember

What difference did the 24th make? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have a hope that someday in the future June 24th will be declared a national holiday. I would be thrilled if it was the day we began to be truly woke, in the sense of woke up from our delusions on sexuality, and began ending the war against reality. When I heard the news, I was thrilled. I was in such a good mood that for awhile, even being at work didn’t bother me.

Now in reality, this doesn’t change a lot honestly. Most Democratic states will stay exactly the same. Most Republican states will stay exactly the same. I am in Tennessee now and I am not seeing anyone going crazy over what has happened. Most people I encounter aren’t saying anything about it.

Still, I’m happy. Life is being honored and upheld. If anything, the reaction I am seeing from people on the left is further demonstrating to me that this is the right decision. For people who have been saying we need more gun control, I have seen them showing images about how a gun could solve the Roe decision and a number of my friends unfriended others who were calling for violence. (Not unheard of. Remember someone tried to assassinate Kavanaugh.)

Also, this is not done. We still need to have Right To Life marches. Even if every states becomes pro-life, we should be having the marches regularly. We must never take the right to life for granted again.

For those on the left also, I am already seeing the posts about how this decision is racist. The more you play this race card over and over, the less seriously we take it. If anything, you are promoting anything as racism which damages the cases of real racism that are out there.

Ideas are already popping up that if those of us on the right did, would be called conspiracy theories. This includes getting rid of apps that track menstrual cycles and ideas about going camping instead of going to get an abortion. The about face I find simply incredible.

Now if you do want to get abortion back through the Supreme Court, then here’s what you really do. Make a case that is stronger than Roe and stronger than Casey. The case was just not argued well.

For those of us on the right, we need to keep reminding people of the importance of life and keep being there for women who are in crisis pregnancies, like we have been consistently already. Also, we definitely need to do something about adoption laws. Adoption costs way too much which is why plenty of people are going to other countries in order to adopt.

I also think we owe a thanks to Trump and Bush both for appointing judges that do uphold the pro-life position. Also, those judges who stood their ground and voted for life are brave souls indeed. These people were facing constant protests and threats and could have easily backed down and they never once did. I don’t know how many of us could have done the same thing.

The other side is right about one thing. The battle is not over. No matter what, life should never be taken for granted. Every life is a precious gift and every life has a right to life.

For now, let’s celebrate!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Parasitic Mind

What do I think of Gad Saad’s book published by Regnery publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

(Note that this was book was listened to through Audible so I cannot reference pages)

Gad Saad is a Lebanese Jew who is an evolutionary psychologist and probably more on the agnostic/atheistic side and is a Libertarian. I am a caucasian Christian apologist who has never left America and a solid Republican conservative. We are two very different people then and yet I think we would be able to converse on not only many areas we agree on, but many that we disagree on as well.

Saad is a professor and is seeing a contagion rise up in the university. This is a problem where we are more concerned about feelings than we are about truth. The university was meant to be a place where ideas were discussed and students were opened up to contrary thought and opinions. More and more universities are talking about safe spaces and microaggressions and trying to remove anyone who is a speaker that disagrees.

We all saw that when the 2016 election came to a close and soon numerous crowds were out in the public complaining constantly about the results and asking for safe spaces and therapy animals. We have people that are supposed to be either adults or preparing for adulthood and this is what happened. The same happened when Kavanaugh was being appointed to the Supreme Court.

This is also happening when people are allowed to put fear into everyone else because they feel offended. It happens when someone gets to a place of prominence and then something is found from ten years ago that they flippantly said on Twitter and then the Social Justice Warriors come out. This is a crowd that is hungry for blood and will raise their voices until their demands are met.

What is happening is more and more a world where feelings trump reality. If someone who is a boy says that they feel like a girl, well who are we to disagree? If someone then says they are a dog or a fire-breathing dragon or anything else, who are we to disagree? Feelings trump everything else.

This is also a world where anecdotal experience rules the day over real study. Consider the case of the idea that vaccines cause autism. Anecdotes are given of people who have a certain experience and that is supposed to overrule the studies that are done.

Many times, this is all done in the name of such ideas as diversity, inclusivity, and equality. Generally, these are thought to be good things, but not when they are weaponized. If you dare question someone, the first accusation that can be thrown out is racist or sexist or transphone or homophobe or any such claim.

Saad spends a lot of time talking about the whole idea of Islamophobia. He looks at the terrorists on the FBI most wanted list, the worst nations for women to live in, and other similar statistics and what do you know but there’s something that ties these all together. However, these people are said to not follow true Islam. Who does? Well your friend who claims to be a Muslim and eats pork and is gay. He is what Islam is all about.

Ultimately, Saad sees this as a war on reality and reason. I am inclined to agree. This does hit also in the area of science such as when a paper is given that says that women might not be as good as men at XYZ due to sex differences. This is not allowable because it’s sexist. It’s not asked “Is this true?” It’s instead asked “How does this make us feel?”

I did disagree with Saad some when he spoke so much about the scientific method, but this could be a difference in terminology and if we discussed we might find that we agree more than disagree. I would stress that not all things are scientifically verifiable and there are truths of math and logic and also truths of history that we uncover by studying historical documents.

Saad’s final message is that we stand up and let our voices be heard. Someone might unfriend you on Facebook? Big deal. Real friends don’t separate and pull apart just because they have political differences. There will be risks for all of us involved who want to stand up to what we see going on around us, but they will be worth it.

If you care about ideas and truth, get this book, learn it, and spread what you learn.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Margaret Sanger and the Klan

Why do Margaret Sanger statues still stand? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have never supported the tearing down of statues. Our history is not perfect, but we often try to think we can erase it like it never happened. Ultimately, it’s about symbolism. On explaining that further, I highly recommend reading this book.

So many people had their statues torn down regularly, but surprisingly, one person seemed to be immune to this. I wasn’t the one who first noticed this. The Babylon Bee actually made a point of this. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, remained safe.

Some people have had statues, books, and paintings removed for the most tenuous links to racism, even if it was their ancestors and not them themselves. However, if anyone has some connections to racism, it would be Sanger. To start with, birth control was largely promoted by her in order to promote the favored races and stifle the reproduction of the unfavored races.

This was the Eugenics movement. Did we take that seriously? Yep. That’s because there was this guy in Germany at the time named Hitler who was doing this by exterminating the people that he deemed unfit. World War II quickly put an end to the Eugenics movement, at least officially.

However, in her autobiography, Sanger talks about speaking to a group of aroused supporters. She considered any group like that a good group to talk to. Therefore, she accepted the invitation and went to speak.

So what was this group?

See for yourself:

All the world over, in Penang and Skagway, in El Paso and Helsingfors, I have found women’s psychology in the matter of childbearing essentially the same, no matter what the class, religion, or economic status. Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing.

So let’s also consider the way the logic works here.

An aroused group is a good group.
The women’s branch of the KKK was an aroused group.
Therefore, the women’s branch of the KKK was a good group.

You can read the book here.

Now I am consistent in that I think removing statues doesn’t work. If Planned Parenthood wants to keep the statue, they have that freedom. However, I notice that Sanger remains safe despite having ties like this. Not only that, but her organization of Planned Parenthood is celebrated as is the abortion that the organization promotes.

We know the reason why. No one dares to touch abortion since it is practically a sacrament to many on the left. We have seen with the news of the leak recently from the Supreme Court that people are going berserk because Roe V. Wade could be overturned.

This is why Sanger gets a lot more grace than anyone else does. Sanger goes and speaks to the KKK? No outrage whatsoever. Someone else was a descendant of someone who was thought to be a racist? We must expel them from our history!

I don’t expect consistency at all on this front. However, it looks like when it comes to which is more important, keeping abortion or removing any hint of racism, keeping abortion, which by the way can eliminate babies who are minorities, abortion wins.

Quite revealing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Hate Crime Hoax

What do I think of Wilfred Reilly’s book published by Blackstone Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I read a number of political books and normally, I don’t review them, but this one is an exception. I listened to it on Audible and decided the material was too important to not share. The author, Reilly, is himself a person of color, as he says, and yet wants to share this to show how in his mind the left is selling a fake race war based on hate crime hoaxes.

Now if you consider yourself someone on the left, please don’t shut down at this point or just close this blog page. Hear me out. If anything, the information in the book should strike you as good news.

By the way, before going further, I also want to say that there hate crime hoaxes done by conservatives and done by white conservatives especially that Reilly talks about. While a majority are on the other side, my own conservative party is not without its hoaxers.

Many of us know about such hoaxes when we think about the Jussie Smollett case, which happened just a month before the book was published so you won’t see it in here. We saw the outrage when Jussie said he was attacked and then before too long, everything changed. It became clear pretty quickly that no such attack had ever happened.

Unfortunately, too many hoaxes do not have the same response. The usual pattern is some “hate crime hoax” happens and then there is outrage and everyone gets up and does some virtue signaling and then, something happens and it’s found to be a hoax and people say “Well there’s still an issue here that needs to be dealt with” and any retraction is put offhandedly in a tiny paragraph on page 26 of the New York Times.

However, the good news is that so many of these crimes are hoaxes. Sadly, many times, anti-black crimes are committed by someone who is black and anti-gay crimes committed by someone who is gay and on and on. Some sad cases even end in real deaths and real injuries. The burning down of a gay club was actually done by the owner. A black church has been burnt down by a black member who made it look like a hate crime. One black minister even staged a hate crime at his home where he was going to go to bed and die in a blaze he had started. If his oldest son hadn’t been woken up by the sound and reacted, everyone would have died.

The story is told of two black children who encountered white men with shoe polish who told them “You’ll be white today” putting it on them. Fortunately, this never happened. Unfortunately, there was at least one white man who was beat up by three black men in response to this crime.

While these may be done to draw attention supposedly to racism, if anything, they make racism more and more of a problem. Each of these hoaxes gets people to take sides more and more. This is one reason I do not take accusations of racism very seriously anymore. I need to see highly convincing evidence.

I also don’t think it helps to take people who disagree and tell them that they are phobic of whatever it is that they disagree with. Throwing out terms like sexist and racist and bigot do not help understand a position and if you assume the motive at the start is something like racism in your opponent, then you won’t listen a bit. This is not to say that there are no racists out there among us, but we need to be very careful with the term.

One story I remember hearing about when it first happened was the pastor of a gay church who asked to get a Love Wins cake from the Whole Foods store. He claimed that there was an anti-homosexual slur that was written on the cake. Whole Foods faced a backlash and the baker of the cake got fired. I do not know if they got their job back or not, but I do know that it was found to be a hoax thanks to security footage.

One step that needs to be done to stop these is to have much harsher penalties for hoaxers. If someone commits a hate crime hoax on a campus, don’t celebrate it by having an event to raise awareness or building a building. Instead, expel the offender immediately and cancel any events or plans that were going to be set in motion by the hoax. Giving attention and fame to one hoaxer just empowers the next one.

Why should this be good news if you are on the left? If most of these hate crimes are hoaxes, then that means society is not as bad in this area as you think it is. In an economic way of putting it, the supply does not match the demand. Any time we deal with fake racism, we are kept from dealing with real racism. It should be kept in mind that crimes the police and FBI investigate that are hoaxes are also drainers of time they could be spending on real crimes.

I urge everyone out there to go and read this. Really consider what is being said and be careful the next time you hear of a hate crime. Don’t go and get your pitchforks ready to deal with the other side and don’t immediately start concluding that society is completely hopeless on this issue. Wait and see. Odds are, it will likely be a hoax.

Not the best news of all if it is, but still far better than the alternative.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Fault Lines

What do I think of Voddie Baucham Jrs book published by Salem Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Baucham is concerned about the evangelical church in America and the rest of the world for that matter. Too many good Christians are buying into Critical Race Theory. It might look good for awhile. After all, who wants to say that black lives don’t matter? Don’t we all agree that racism is a bad thing? Don’t we all want justice? Of course, but there are bad ways to get good things.

Baucham does agree that racism is in America, but America is not systematically racist. Racism is not at the root of all of our ills. He also sees CRT as Marxist and pagan in its origins. It will do more harm by far than good.

Baucham also deals with statistics on crime and other issues. For example, he tells the story of a young man who died tragically at the hands of police. A police officer pinned him to the ground and mocked him. He pleaded with the officers saying that they were going to kill him. The officers did nothing and kept making jokes.

No. That’s not George Floyd. That’s Tony Timpa. Timpa had schizophrenia and had called the police himself because he was off his meds and he had already been handcuffed by a security guard. Timpa died under those police officers before the paramedics arrived.

Most of you never heard of him because he was white.

On October 5, 2016, an officer was nearly beaten to death by a suspect. She knew she should have used her weapon. Her supervisor told her she should have. Why didn’t she?

Because she knew the next day she and her family would undergo scrutiny on the national news. There are real world consequences?

What about Dylan Noble? During a routine traffic stop, he reached into his wasitband and was shot 11 times. Why do you not know about him? He’s white.

Breanna Taylor made the national news when she did in a shooting involving the police. A police officer served an eviction notice on her Dad. The Dad pulled a weapon and the officer pulled out his gun and fired. The bullet passed through his arm and hit Ciara which caused her death eventually. Why do you not know about this? She was white.

Why bring these up? Because people love to bring up stories that fuel a narrative. In this case, it’s the idea that the police treat the black population unfairly. Baucham argues there is further evidence to back this.

Meanwhile , a National Academy of Sciences study ignited controversy when its authors proclaimed, “ We find no evidence of anti – Black or anti – Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non – White officers. ” 14 More fundamentally, the researchers noted that “ using population as a benchmark makes the strong assumption that White and Black civilians have equal exposure to situations that result in FOIS, ” which is the only way the 2.5 – to – 1 ratio could be viewed as prima facie evidence of police bias. Instead, they noted that contrary to the accepted narrative, “ If there are racial differences in exposure to these situations, calculations of racial disparity based on population benchmarks will be misleading. ” 15 In other words, the 2.5 – to – 1 ratio, taken at face value, is actually misleading.

CRT will not bring about unity. It will only bring further division. For example, if every incident involving interaction between blacks and whites is made into racism, even if no racist motives can be shown, then there will be hesitancy to act in any situation. Not only that, but if you cry wolf, real racism will go unnoticed. Even today, I am highly suspicious as soon as someone says “racist” about something or someone.

Baucham stresses that CRT has Marxist origins and thus is highly antithetical to Christian values. The church could let the nose of this camel in thinking they are doing good, only to wind up having the whole camel in and that will lead to chaos on other issues.

For many on the CRT side, if you deny that you are a racist, well that just shows you are a racist. No matter what you do, you are racist. You can marry someone of the another race or have children of another race and still be considered to be racist. You are guilty of racism until you are proven innocent, and you cannot be proven innocent.

I was amazed also to read parts of a sermon that Obama gave to a black church on a Father’s Day. I never supported Obama, but I have to say I agree so much with what he said.

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one.

The problems for the black community by and large are not from without but from within. Fatherlessness is too common and too many black men are dying at the hands of other black men. Restoring the family to the black community would be the best gift that could be given. CRT will not do that as groups like BLM are opposed to the typical nuclear family.

This book is written from a Christian perspective, but I think a non-Christian would get something out of it. They won’t care likely about what is going on in the church over this, but I would hope they would look at the case either way. I really hope Baucham is wrong about a future earthquake coming, but I fear that he is right.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: White Fragility

What do I think of Robin DiAngelo’s book published by Beacon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Multiple thoughts go through one’s head reading this book. I think of the trick Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay did where they wrote a paper that was absolute nonsense as they intended and got it published to show how lacking the academy is with publishing. Reading DiAngelo’s book, I wonder if it was one of those papers.

Then I think of the Life of Brian. In one scene in the movie, Brian is being followed by a crowd who is convinced he’s the Messiah. He denies it and is told that the true Messiah will always deny that he is the Messiah. Then when he says he is the Messiah, everyone jumps and says he is the Messiah.

I also think of presuppositionalism and see this book as a form of that. The author starts out with the assumption that all white people are racist. If they agree with that, they are working on their racism. If they disagree, that demonstrates their racism. No matter what the response, they are racist.

At the start, on page 15, she says race, like gender, is socially constructed. With this one claim, I think her whole thesis goes up in flames. Could a white person not just say that they are really a black person born in a white person’s body? You might think that sounds ridiculous, but if a person can be misgendered at birth, why not misraced?

Throughout the book, DiAngelo keeps switching definitions of racism and is not clear what kind she is talking about. She does say being a racist doesn’t mean a hate-filled racist automatically who actively hates black people. She sometimes does speak of Latinos, (Using the term Latinx which I’ve never seen a Latino person use) but her emphasis is on the black community.

The sad point is that when she does make some points that are valid, she’s already accused her audience enough that no one wants to listen to her. After all, she has started with her conclusion already and nothing anyone can say can change her mind so shut up and accept you’re a racist you bigot. The conclusion is here so who cares about the evidence?

There is a saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I also know the counterpart that if all you have is a hug, everything looks like a kitten. Unfortunately, in DiAngelo’s world, everything is racism. Not only that, every myth about racism she buys into. Michael Brown becomes an innocent victim even though he wasn’t.

The problem here is that racism is always being used so that nowadays, most people I encounter don’t really listen to the claims anymore. Everyone has to jump on the bandwagon. I recall seeing a liberal friend of mine on Facebook saying he had changed his mind on a case where a black man was shot by a cop and decided the police acted properly. What was the immediate charge made? Racism.

Yet if racism is not the problem at root, then we are not going to deal with the issues that are going on in this country properly. If anything, we could be making it worse and sadly, I think that is what DiAngelo is doing. She is contributing to a problem by making everything about race.

Not only that, she doesn’t interact with real problems that are going on. I don’t see anything in the book about how we need to deal with the problem of fatherlessness in the black community. There is nothing said about crime or gangs or the lyrics sang in much of the rap music today.

It’s a case often where the minority ruins it for the rest of us. Most people in the black community are not like that. Most people in the white community are not racists or white supremacists. Most men are not rapists.

Yet that is what is going on here as the majority are treated like the minority. What if I went and spoke to every woman like she was a golddigger wanting to use men and had that as my conclusion? What if I just assumed that every atheist had a burning hatred of God in their soul? What if I assumed every Muslim had a deep desire to be a terrorist and blow up and kill the infidel?

Such a situation would result in chaos, and yet DiAngelo has done that very thing. There is no doubt we can all improve the communication that we have between the races and the relationships that we have, but why assume racism is the problem? Why not ask all races why they respond to the others like they do? Then work with those answers.

If we picture this nation having a few people being a problem and those few representing a small fire that is burning, a book like this is pouring gasoline all over that. It will not help any problem, but it will heighten any supposed problem and make it worse. DiAngelo could have written a good book pointing out difficult issues and real problems and how to work on them, but instead she just straight to accusation every time. It’s not a shock people get defensive when they are accused and yet she has it that that demonstrates her case. In either situation, DiAngelo is right.

There is also a problem today that everyone is made responsible for everyone else’s feelings. We cannot make anyone feel miserable or feel happy. That is up to them. This is not to say we should be rude to people or anything of the sort, but it does say that when it comes to how someone feels, they must always own that. It is always something they can work on, no matter how difficult it may be. Unfortunately, our culture has a victim mentality going on where people seem to practically glorify in being victims when in turn, they actually become the perpetrators making real victims.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t read this. If you want better relations with a person of another race, just go and talk to them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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