In this episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the Derek Chauvin trial, George Floyd, racism, and social justice.
Quotes from David Fry:
- Thabiti Anyabwile made an important point that we must distinguish between BLM the concept, BLM the organization, and BLM the movement. John Piper apologized for failing to recognize this in his initial reaction to BLM. BLM is a way of saying that Black Lives count as human too. Why is this important? Because it was not so long ago that they didn’t count.
- In our age of cell phone video, we should recognize that eye-witness testimony doesn’t preclude many different interpretations. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to judgment. Patience (long-suffering) is a virtue that social media does not foster.
- It takes patience to live in a multicultural context.
- “No justice, no peace” should be a Christian motto. Christians need to be on the front end, not the back end, of calls for justice and peace.
- Christians need to get out in front of these things and set the tone, rather than sitting back and always reacting.
- When I say that we need to pray for peace, I’ve always assumed that people assume that justice is entailed in that. But I’ve realized that people don’t automatically think that peace requires justice. In Christian theology, there is no peace without justice.
- Should we be surprised that corruption reaches even into law enforcement? There is an inherent criticism in our Christian confession that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead.
- Both sides speak from different positions of power. Racism is real and subtle (and sometimes not so subtle). For those in the majority, they speak from the position of power that comes from being in the majority. They have the privilege of having the majority opinion, the major voice, the largest voting bloc, etc. It is easy to deny racism from the majority position. On the other hand, our society appropriately works hard to protect and empower the minority, including allowing the minority the privilege of defining terms such as racism and social justice. It is possible that such terms can experience concept slippage so that any offense against a racial minority is labeled “racism.”
Quotes from Johnathan Arnold:
- We need to be aware of lingering racial prejudices. These things are important to God. He’s a God of justice.
- We need a robust theology of justice because if we don’t then the world defines it in a non-Christian way.
- We want Scripture and Church Tradition to shape our thinking on these issues, not the broader culture.
