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riot

Black Lives Matter; Remembering Ravi Zacharias

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your sunday drive podcast

In this new episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we discuss the current unrest following the death of George Floyd, including conversation about Black Lives Matter vs. “All Lives Matter,” protests vs. looting, the role of social media and politics, biblical examples (including Jesus flipping tables) and frameworks for understanding justice, value, etc.

We then take a brief moment to reflect on writer/speaker Ravi Zacharias, who passed away recently, sharing some takeaways and highlights of Ravi speaking.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Of Course All These Alt-Right Racists Are Wrong, but Why?

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you’re likely upset about
what happened in Charlottesville

maybe you’ve talked about it,
maybe took  some kind of
social media stance,
maybe just sort of saddened inside

it’s probably super obvious to you
that all these alt-right racists are wrong,
that racism is wrong
(“evil” as Trump (finally) put it),
has always been wrong,
that we should do something about it

fair enough,
understandable enough
(of course i agree)

but have you asked yourself
why?
not why you feel as you do,
or why racism seems so clearly wrong,
but actually
why is racism wrong?
what makes it wrong?
put another way,
how do we know it’s wrong or
are we justified in saying it’s wrong?

i mean . . .

is it wrong cuz it seems wrong?
(but unfortunately it doesn’t seem wrong to everyone)

is it wrong cuz everyone agrees it’s wrong?
(but unfortunately they don’t)

is it wrong cuz it’s not “fair?”
(what’s “fair” mean?
who defines it?
who says everything is
or should be “fair?”)

is it wrong cuz you wouldn’t want someone
to be racist to you,
so you shouldn’t be racist to someone else?
(wait, what makes this line of thinking
the line of thinking?
is there some other similar line of thinking
that applies certainly?)

is it wrong cuz humans (or Americans)
all “deserve” “dignity” “equally?”
(again: problems abound)

maybe you think racism is
self-evidently wrong
and that saying so
requires no justification at all
(but is it possible the alt-right racists
feel they’re self-evidently right?

can science prove racism is wrong?
(or could a solely Darwinian/naturalistic understanding
of eugenics in fact be used to support racism?
has it been? is it currently being?)

(we could go on)

what i’m saying is this:
none of these lines of thinking can
truly justify the claim that
racism is wrong;
further,
none of these lines of thinking can
justify the claim that
anything is wrong (or right)
in general

further,
there is but one line of thinking, in fact,
that can truly ground these kinds of moral claims,
and it’s the one where
we know, cuz God;
where things are wrong (or right),
in general,
cuz God

and so, further,
as a consequence,
making moral claims sans God,
ultimately,
is making ungrounded,
unjustified claims

so,
to circle back,
of course all these alt-right racists are wrong,
but why?
why is racism wrong?
what makes it wrong?
what right do we have to feel and think it’s wrong?
what justifies us when we say it’s wrong?
. . .
cuz God says so

(now, exactly how we know he says so,
how and where he does so,
what reason we have for thinking so,
what to do in response,
how to deal with the fact that
we continue to make horrible errors
even given all of this, etc. etc. . . .
those are (excellent) questions
for another time)

[For some awesome unpacking of these ideas that I stumbled upon recently through the Unbelievable? podcast (which you should totally subscribe to), check out “The Most Important Thing This French Atheist Taught Me About Christianity.” 

This article doesn’t necessarily make what’s called “the moral argument for God” – as I have above – but it does specifically look at philosopher (and atheist) Luc Ferry to trace our western ideal of human equality back to Christianity itself. As Ferry puts it:

. . . the Greek world is an aristocratic world, one which rests entirely upon the conviction that there exists a natural hierarchy…of plants, of animals, but also of men: some men are born to command, others to obey, which is why Greek political life accommodates itself easily to the notion of slavery.

In direct contradiction, Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity – an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.

This [idea of human equality] may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard-of at the time, and it turned an entire world-order upside down.

Given recent events in our country, it seems like a good time to remember that – just as much racism is culturally inherited – much of our outrage against racism is culturally inherited too, insofar as our culture is still “Christian.” However, we can intentionally choose these values and be justified in doing so, as described above.]

Let It Fall – Anatomy of a Riot

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It was twenty-five years ago this month that Los Angeles erupted in a violent civil disturbance. Many people remember it as a response to the acquittal of four police officers who were involved in beating Rodney King. While that verdict was an important component of the anger within the African American community, there is much more that led up to the violence that broke out. In Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 John Ridley (Oscar winner for his screenplay of 12 Years a Slave) lays out the broader history of those events.

It should be said that I have lived most of my life in the Los Angeles area. The situations that are chronicled in this film aren’t new information for me. But the film is valuable in showing the way things built up over this ten year period to reach an explosive situation. (It could be argued that there were left over issues from the 1965 Watts Riots at play as well, but that would likely be too long a history to distill into a film. Even with the ten year spread, this documentary runs nearly two and a half hours.

The story is told with both archival footage and with interviews of people who were involved. This includes people of various races and ethnicities. It includes police officers (including the lieutenant who made the decision to pull out of the 71st and Normandie area when the uprising was beginning.), community members, victims and their families, and even some of those who committed violent crimes during that time.

As noted, this is the culmination of many years of problems in Los Angeles. About the first third of the film deals with the police culture under then-Chief Darryl Gates. But it was not just policing that created the situation. There were issues between the Black and Korean communities that came to a head not long before the King beating with the killing by a Korean shopkeeper of African American ninth grader Latasha Harlens. The shopkeeper was found guilty of manslaughter and given probation.

The middle third deals with the King beating (referred to in the film as “The Foothill Incident”) and the trial of the police officers. This section includes the remembrances of the prosecutor of that case. The final third focuses on the civil disturbance itself. This is the part that most people will be familiar with from news reports, but because it includes interviews with some of those involved (both law breakers and those who stepped in to rescue people) it provides insights and perspectives that we might not otherwise know.

Of course, this is not just a history lesson of a turbulent time. The film never mentions more recent issues that have led to Black Lives Matter, but one cannot watch this film and not see today’s world. Certainly, there have been changes in law enforcement (at least in L.A.) since that time, but the underlying issues of race and justice continue to be in the forefront of our national and local contemplation. It may remind us how close we may still be to the possibility of those who feel oppressed rising to seek the justice that has been denied. It may be through protests or through other more violent means.

Photos courtesy of Lincoln Square Productions