Ed Uszynsky | Race and Christian Discernment in a New Political Space

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about usefultogod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, the D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Ed Usinski. Ed's coming back to the show. He's actually the author of Untangling Critical Race Theory. And what I really loved about Untangling Critical Race Theory and our conversation about it is that it's a, as we were talking about before the episode, Ed, it's just a slow, measured treatment of what critical race theory is. It's not a, hey, let's bash it or let's embrace it. It's a question of how do we exercise Christian discernment about this very interesting and complex topic. And so I'm excited to have Ed back on the show today. He's going to be speaking at Exiles in Babylon, which is a conference that Theology in the Raw puts on, I believe, every year. And he's also been involved in Athletes in Action for 20 years, 30 years? Over 30 years, almost 35. Over 30 years, almost 35 years. And so, Ed, welcome back to the program, man. I really appreciate you being here. Good to be here. I was excited when you reached back out. Yeah. Well, hey, we're going to start by talking about a little bit, giving people a preview of what you're going to be talking about at Exiles in Babylon, right? This sort of five years post-George Floyd, where are we kind of conversation. So why don't you go ahead and start and just tell us a little bit about what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, well, you know, I am friends with Preston Sprinkle, who leads and oversees the whole theology in the raw movement, if you will. And so I think he just, he circles back to me every once in a while, I think when he wants to kind of revisit when it comes to the race conversation and he wants a white conservative evangelical perspective. But he knows that I, as you said, even in the introduction, that I am actually trying to slow down and bring a more nuanced understanding to what any of the issues are that he's trying to talk about, but especially when it comes to race. So he approached me last fall and just said, you know, it's the five-year anniversary of George Floyd, and that was going to be one of the themes. They're doing it up in Minneapolis. So it's super relevant, obviously, to that being the place where everything went down with the Floyd incident. And so, yeah, I've thought quite a bit about, you know, where are we as a nation? And it's interesting, and I'll just say this, James, I think this is true, really, with any issue and you come to a five-year or 10-year anniversary or whatever and ask, where are we? And I think it always winds up depending on who the we is that we're looking at and paying attention to. And it's definitely true when it comes to the race conversation because there are some groups of we who I think have, for lack of a better word, they've progressed. They've gone deeper in their thinking about race maybe than they ever had before, the George Floyd and other things that happened in the last decade. But the George Floyd certainly kind of pushed things over the top for a lot of people to slow down and just rethink and ask themselves about their own racial history and why they think the way they think about race. And others have dug their heels in deeper, and I hear the word retrenchment. You know, they've almost gone backwards for various reasons, and maybe we can talk about some of that if we want to get into it here. But that's always the case. So you can find examples of people that I think are in a much different place, and you can find people that are still very much in the same place they were before everything happened. It sort of feels to me, Ed, like what ends up happening when we see something like the George Floyd event is that we have this sort of moment of, boy, I hate to use, of very intense impetus to change a lot of things. So in other words, things start moving very quickly. You get a lot of media coverage. You get a lot of conversation about policy. You get a lot of, you know, sort of what I would call blunt calls to action. You know, we had the Defund the Police movement and those kind of things, which just intuitively, you sit back and you say, well, defund the police doesn't sound like the best idea. Maybe we should take a more surgical approach as opposed to just, you know, coming in with a meat cleaver and cutting things off. And so you have this real intense sort of revolution almost happening when the event happens. And then as that energy starts to fade a bit, now what you're left with is sort of the boring, you know, less exciting aspects of administrative policy, you know, really deeply diving into data, trying to understand what might move the needle one way or another. But interestingly, in this case, I think we've almost had sort of a departure from that pattern because we have had two administrations, the Biden administration and the Trump administration, who seem to lean very opposite directions on this and were able to push a nuanced policy to the forefront. You know, and so everything became about fixing, you know, different disparities within the country, it seemed like, at least that was the messaging that came out with Biden. And now with Trump, it's like, no, we're going to go back to a more normalized meritocratic, you know, sort of a vibe within the country. And it feels to me, and, you know, I've talked about this elsewhere, that it feels to me like that's covering over certain partialities that exist. And so is that a, what do you think of that reading of the situation? Yeah, I think it's very well said, James. And a word that was going through my mind as you were saying all that is that it seems like whenever there's an incident of any kind, there there's an overcorrection that takes place or an overreaction or at least what we wind up hearing about are the most extreme forms of the correction. Yeah. Like you mentioned, defunding the police. And, you know, again, even we throw that out there, what did people mean by defunding the police? I was in conversations where, and I'll say this, I was not for that idea. I did not think that was the best, but again, in talking about there being nuance, why would you take money away from the police force? Well, because people felt like there's no other way to hurt them, but then to cut funding to try to get their attention so that they will bring the reforms that need to happen within their own departments because they're, they're covered in Teflon. You know, they can't be touched. It doesn't, no amount of raising of voices and bringing different arguments to the table has seemed to get the attention of the police forces enough. So let's find a different way to hurt them. And we can disagree with that as a, as a strategy, but it wasn't like it was again, in some of the circles that I was running in where that was being talked about there, there really was thoughtful, um, rationale for how do we hurt them so that they will do what, you know, a majority of people are wanting them to do. Interesting. That being said, it, it, uh, what you just said, there tends to be these overcorrections and then the pendulum swings all the way back again in the opposite direction. I sit there as a, as a person who's trying to think with a Christian worldview, if I can use that language and get away with that language, a Christian informed way of viewing history and what God is doing in the world or what my responsibility is as salt and light to try to represent in the world. I always come back to this idea of just needing to transcend the binaries that are being given to us, that we're, we're given this sort of pendulum swing of these extreme binary options. And I think more often than not, the Christian response is somewhere above it. It's somewhere above it down and discerning. I like to use that word discerning, discerning what does wisdom mean in this moment? Yeah. What does wisdom mean in this situation in this moment, given these circumstances? It's interesting. There's a, there's this quote I love. I don't know whether you're familiar with Slavoj Žižek, but he's like a Marxist philosopher, but I, I just find him amusing. So I listened to a lot of.

This stuff. And one of his one of his comment is that ideology is efficient, not because it doesn't deal with real problems. It often deals with it is often in the dealing of with real problems that it is efficient. And so he says that there aren't just wrong answers. There are actually wrong questions. In other words, there are wrong questions that tend to reinforce the problems that are trying to be solved. And I think about that an awful lot when we when we come at this from a Christian informed perspective, because what I think we're trying to do is we're trying to say, this is a real problem, but the wrong questions are being asked, and thus we're never going to get to the right solution on this. Now, the zenith of that wrong question is, you know, what's the root problem here? And we could say things like, well, the root problem is human sin. The root problem is rebellion against God. We have an unguided understanding of how the world is supposed to work and how we're supposed to treat people. You know, we could go that deep with it, but I think oftentimes that can be a little unhelpful. We need to have that in mind, but it, you know, abstracting it so far away from this specific situation, I think is problematic. And so we've got to get in there and really think through, okay, what questions aren't being asked here and how can this really work itself out? Can it work itself out? And not only, you know, sort of living out a Christian alternative, but living out a Christian alternative in the way that we think about these things, I think is really crucial. So what's going through my mind as you're saying that is I'm thinking about the whole controversy around DEI and sort of where we're at with that now is that DEI has come to stand in for the idea of, what if I can just say it, replacing credible white people with unqualified non-white people and non-males, okay? That's sort of what it's coming. The assumption is that DEI is all about just taking white males out of their position and replacing them with something other than that, okay? And I just find myself, and I know there's examples where, yes, there are people who have just been taken out of positions to be replaced with a non-white male. I know that there are examples of that. But I feel like the question that's not being asked is why do diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, why did they begin in the first place? What had been happening across decades that caused someone to say, well, we think that a strategic way to fix that would be to come up with groups of people like committees of people, cohorts, departments that are paid to make sure that there's a, there's different representation at the table, especially in academic settings, which is where I think it was, was, you know, really birthed out of. And so now again, there's this overreaction to, we need to just do away with the idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion altogether. It has become a boogeyman. It is evil at its core. It's replacing one injustice with another. And I say, okay, what are we going to do to make sure that the problem that created it in the first place is addressed? What are we going to do? And we talked about this a little bit before, James. What are we going to do to make sure that in situations where a diversity of representation actually really is, is helpful and it brings wisdom? Not every single situation needs diversity. Right. But the ones that do, and in the settings where it does, where traditionally it has only been usually white men who are sitting at the table, how are we going to ensure that there's other voices at the table? That's the, that's the question. And I don't, I don't hear that. That question is not being talked about in the, in certainly in the news media today. And I, again, I always come back to the church. Are we winsome enough to recognize why DEI started in the first place? And on our watch and our spaces, are we making sure that we're not having to be coerced to be inclusive? We're inclusive because we recognize the wisdom in it, in the local church, for example. I'll stop. Go ahead. What, what would you say to that? No, I mean, I, I think two things, you know, my mind goes to the book of James. And when he talks about, let's not show partiality to the rich, you know, don't put the rich at the head of the table that has to do with, you know, don't, don't try to butter up the rich. So that your security becomes their favor. And you, you stop them pursuing God. I think from a Christian perspective, we have to watch out for all sorts of partiality. And I think part of the problem that we're dealing with, with the whole DEI versus maybe we'd call it meritocracy thing, right. Is that we're allowing that conversation to be framed solely along the lines of race. When, when we look at it from a biblical perspective, it's often rich and poor, and we can almost say powerful and not powerful. You know, we see this from Levitical laws all the way through the book of James. Where the Levitical laws actually are saying, don't be partial to the poor unjustly. That's right. Don't do either one. You're, you're movements of justice. You're not to be partial to the rich or the poor. So you're not to allow your greed, let's say, uh, to overpower justice. And you're not allowed, you're not supposed to have your compassion, uh, overpowering justice. You can't just determine what, who is right and who is wrong based on their social status. And I think there's something in that when we're looking at hiring procedures and different things like that, there has to be a recognition that of course, there's going to be a network effect. Right? Um, you know, you and I have had an interview before, um, right. And so I knew to call you when I wanted to talk about this stuff. Well, that's sort of a network effect. That's right. It's not to say that there couldn't be 50 other people I could have had on the show to talk about these exact same things, but I know you. And so now we're kind of networked together and that works. Who would be better is what you're implying, really. Like we, you could. Could be. Who deserve it more, maybe who have more knowledge about it, but if it's a function of connection. Right. Yeah. And I, and I think the same way, like for me, even running this podcast, the way this whole thing came about was through a series of, I wouldn't say random connections, but it was basically that. I knew people who I'd worked with in the past, and we were able to come up with a situation where me running this podcast made sense. There's probably a lot of people who deserve to run a podcast more than me. And so you can't get away from those network effects. The question I think becomes, is what's our, what's our tolerance for a margin of error within this? Right. So that, you know, you range from somebody who's given a position and they're completely incompetent and they're only given it based on certain characteristics and or their network versus someone who is pretty competent, right, but also knows people and is now slotted into that position because it's important for you to be able to trust the people that you're putting into positions. There's a range of, uh, there's a range here, I think that we have to just recognize. And then we have to understand what our tolerances are. And so, yeah, I guess what I would, what I'd ultimately kind of end this with is I've really been impressed with the way the NFL handled this. Let me ask you a serious question. 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So there was this time in the NFL where they didn't have African American coaches. And now they have sort of multiple African American head coaches who are doing really well. And to do that, they just said, OK, you have to interview, you know, there have to be a certain number of people you have to interview within the, when you're looking for a head coach, you can't just go out and grab the first guy, you know. They're disrupting that network effect to a bit. And they're saying you need to evaluate these other candidates on these different levels of coaching so that you're allowing new people into your network. That's my perception of how that worked. Yeah. And I think they've done it without a lot of animosity. Well, I was gonna say, and it certainly doesn't guarantee then that there will be a change in the balance. But I like that word disruption. It's again, it is a strategy to say, we're going to intervene. We're going to disrupt the normal flow of things that will at least create a crack, open a door for something

point is they did something to disrupt the normal flow that I don't think was just lip service. I think they recognize the value, especially in a league that is made up largely of African American players. That's right. And media. And, you know, so it's harder to kind of hide and and just keep things the way they've always been. Right. Racially. Yeah. Now you still don't have as much representation at the general manager or ownership level. That's a whole other level of commitment. It's a whole different thing. It's a whole different thing. Yeah. But again, the point is that there was a disruption created to try to change the imbalance. Right. And it just seems like there's, you know, as we're looking and you and I talked a little bit about Trump's policies, he gave a speech where he talked about meritocracy a little bit, which I've always been a little uncomfortable with, but then he's got this other executive order kind of walking back some of the diversity, equity and inclusion aspects. And I, you know, my concern with that is, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on it, but my concern is that if it gets walked back so far that you start to lose those disruptive elements that break up these little network effects where I say, well, I'm going to hire my buddies and all my buddies happen to be, you know, white males. Wouldn't necessarily even have to be that, but it could be, you know, all my buddies are of the same social status as me. All my buddies went to the same school as I did. All, you know, George Carlin has a great line where he says, you don't have to have a formal conspiracy theory when interests converge. And it's just a very interesting sort of thought process. And so as we have these interests converge, oftentimes that's our network. You know, we have similar purposes, similar upsides, similar downsides. And so we're picking people who we feel like are on team and we're ignoring some of those other diversity elements. So my concern with some of what is happening right now isn't that we would get rid of the, maybe what are the darker sides of DEI sort of initiatives, right? But that this unnuanced approach of just walking everything back is going to leave us vulnerable to prejudices of a different kind. Well, it definitely will, James. I mean, you know that and you're, and you're saying it in a very nuanced way. Absolutely, it will. I don't get the impression that this current administration is worried about diversity or representation at the table at all. That's not one of their priorities or values. And so, okay, what are the consequences of that? And again, I think it's different to talk about what are the consequences politically and for a nation versus having this same conversation in the church. A hundred percent. You know, so I think to do what the current administration is doing will ultimately, it will anger people. It will cause those who feel, and it will create fear. And when people get scared, they do one of two things. They either cower, okay, under fear, or they coalesce with one another and they rise up and they punch back. I mean, that's just history. That's not even just America. That's all around the world. And so what I wish, what I wish a politician would do on either side, I wish there was this kind of sanity. I appreciate some of what Donald Trump is representing right now and what is he and those around him are pushing back against. I, I totally appreciate what, again, has been called wokeness, and I don't like using that word because that ends up meaning so many different things. But I'll just for, for the sake of your listening audience, the anti-wokeness stuff that he represents, I don't disagree with all of that, and yet I think he is doing and they are doing the same kind of thing that Biden and them did. He is swinging the pendulum so far, and he doesn't even sound like he's trying to act like he's going to protect vulnerable people. You know, in the way we talk about the whole immigration thing, I don't hear rhetoric inside of this sort of immigration correction. I don't hear rhetoric that would cause me to feel safe if I was anything other than a white, wealthy, preferably male person in this country right now who are kind of taking back, you know, making America great again represents that group of people having power and they're not going to use that power to protect. I guess I don't get that impression from the rhetoric that I hear. Again, even just pretend, you know, use, use your words to make people feel we are correcting something that's broke, but we're going to make sure we watch out for people and that we make it possible for them to flourish here. Immigrants, that is in that, in that case. I don't hear that. I hear rhetoric that would cause me to be afraid. Yeah. Um, not just as a criminal element, but of anybody that does not Anybody that doesn't qualify as the in-group, okay? I agree. I think that's a really important, that in-group quotation you just did, I think is really important because the rhetoric you often hear with immigration is we want people who will be productive in this country. And I think that this gets to something that, you know, needs to be different for Christians when we think about it. We're not a community that looks for producers. We are a community that bears the burdens of one another. And so, yes, there's a sense in which we want people to work, right? We don't want them to just be, you know, sort of leeches on the community, right? That kind of thing, right? You know. Um, but at the same time, we're not looking at it and saying, We just want the best and the brightest and we'll send the rest back. That can't be the way Christians look at it. Now, from a governmental policy perspective, you can make the argument, yeah, we, we can't, we can't sustain all these extra people, right? But I think there's also a way to talk about that, that, to your point, would be far more compassionate and oriented toward a capacity conversation which governments have to think about as opposed to making it a very us versus them dichotomy and fight. Yep. Well, and developing a disdain, a subtle disdain for whoever them is, which is why, which is why all across the Bible, heavily in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament, God is warning his people. I see this over and over again, the two things. He confronts people for turning their back on him, for chasing other idols, for pursuing other gods. So you see that theme all over the place and in a really close second is the way we are treating the most vulnerable in society. Yeah. Leave your gift at the altar and, and pursue justice on behalf of the vulnerable people. You are seeing, you see that all throughout the scriptures. It's sort of an ethos that says the heart of God is that people who have power would watch out for those who don't. Right. So again, I, what I, what I hear today, and this is not a Republican or Democrat thing. I don't think either side represents that, but I'm just saying where we are at right now and the verbiage and the rhetoric and sort of the demeanor does, does not give me any confidence that what's happening is going to, to do that. It's going to watch out for the vulnerable, which just means that then I, as a church member need to be careful that I do not so closely associate myself with the political party. In this case, the Republican party who has power that I'm, I'm not deluded into thinking that they are representing a holistic kingdom approach and how to do it. I know what their confrontation is with the progressives. I get that, but don't fall for the idea that they're representing the kingdom holistically. They're not. They're not trying to. They are representing the kingdom of man. And I need to separate myself from that. And then also just ask on my watch, in my spaces, my church community, where I live, wherever I find my church, are we, are our antenna up to make sure that people, vulnerable people, are not being disdained? They're, they're not being further marginalized in this climate that we live in today. I think we need to be even more careful about that. Yeah. As church people. I think there's a couple of really good points there. I mean, Veronica Ogil wrote a book on Augustine's City of God, and one of the things she points to in there is Augustine's view that certain political systems could make a nation more healthy and other could make the nation sicker. Okay. And I think, but neither one of them can turn the city of man into the city of God. Interesting. Right. There's no, there's no way for the city of man to transcend to become the city of God. And

So what we're always dealing with in governments is we're always dealing with what I would say is kind of half measures, right? A gesturing toward the good, a gesturing toward God's justice, but it's always incomplete. You can never actually get it there. And so what we're struggling with in my mind in the Christian community is mistaking something that is incomplete for something that's actually complete. So you're assuming that some of these things that are happening, because they're no longer the progressive pieces, and they've moved back toward conservatism, we're kind of like, whew, we're finally back to where we need to be. And it's like, no, we need to affirm some of these things. That's fine. Let's affirm what's good. Let's affirm what's truthful. Let's affirm what's beautiful. Let's affirm all of those things while at the same time expanding those, critiquing those, pointing out where they're not complete. That's where I think our position as the church comes in. We have God's revelation. We understand the truth, the good, and the beautiful better because it's couched in the triune God. So we understand it from that perspective, and that's the perspective we can bring. So we just have to be really careful. I mean, I love the way you phrase that. Like, we can't just say, because they're fixing these progressive problems, this Republican Party represents the kingdom of God. They don't. They represent a city of man who may be making our country healthier in certain ways. And that should be affirmed. But they could also be making our country sicker in other ways. And those are the things that need to be critiqued. At the very same time, right? At the very same time. So, you know, I, What I'm always hoping for or striving for is that we in the Christian community know and understand our Bible well enough to be able to give that kind of a critique. And so again, that's, and sometimes yes, sometimes no. Even at the pastoral level, which I know that that's messy and complicated to even say, but I'm not convinced that across the board, we do know our Bibles well enough. These right now in this cultural moment that we find ourselves in, maybe let me just put it as a question. Do I know my Bible well enough that my interior life is more framed by the prophets rather than political pundits? Which is the louder voice in my consciousness? Okay, now again, honestly, that's a, and I think you can even go through seasons maybe where you at one time were very immersed in a biblical way of thinking about the world and maybe have gotten away from it across the decades. And so you've suddenly become way more influenced by the voices that you've been feeding yourself with who are more politically driven than they are prophetically driven. And even in using that word prophetic, you know, as a church, we can't lose our prophetic voice. The voice that speaks truth back into that, what you just described, James, I love how you talked about that, where there's certain things here that we can grab onto and say are good, but we at the same time need to have a prophetic voice that says that's not okay to keep talking in that way about this group of people, or that's not going to be healthy for our community to keep talking in this way. I see this even in local churches here and again, I'm not going to, I'm not necessarily name names, but you know, social media can make your pastor really angry. And he winds up reacting, coming from a spirit that's reacting more against what he disagrees with politically. And again, it's usually on the side, at least in, I would guess with this audience, disagrees with what's coming from the progressive side of the aisle. And that tone and that tenor can wind up being retaliatory. And it becomes us versus them. I hear this all the time and I just say, no, you're actually supposed to represent a different kingdom. Your tone right now sounds like you're, you're on this side of this political kingdom against that side. And I understand why, but in the church, we're actually supposed to transcend the binary. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And speak down at both sides of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard a pastor online talking about, and I haven't looked into it enough to really know whether I buy into it, but I just like the analogy he used. He said when people were, when it was Barabbas and Jesus up on stage and the people were choosing, they chose Barabbas. And his spin on it was he didn't think that they chose Barabbas because they hated Jesus, that Jesus was such a bad guy and they thought he was just going to do all this evil. What they were rejecting was the way of Jesus and what they wanted was the way of Barabbas. And so he talks about that in terms of, you know, sort of the logics we use to make the decisions that we make. Who are we going to choose as a president? Do we want a strong man? Do we want somebody who's very blunt? Do we want somebody who's just going to push things through? It doesn't matter, you know, whatever, right? And he says, you know, that is the way of Barabbas because the way of Jesus just doesn't do that. And so we get kind of construe that in a number of different ways, but I really like the divergence of it's a way. And so we're to choose a different way. We're to be an alternative and we're to look different, think different about these issues. And so that I think blunts our defensiveness. So when we're seeing things on social media and we're seeing crazy ideas and stuff like that, and we're like, well, of course they're going to be crazy ideas. We have to expect crazy ideas from non-Christians because they only have a small sliver of the picture that we have. Well, in my flesh, I love, you didn't use this word, James, but my flesh loves Barabbas. It loves the way of Barabbas. It loves the kind of the, the, the despite back and your own vindication. Yeah. So again, I really love how, how you said that there, especially when you live at a time where you disagree with what's happening politically. Sure. Very attractive to have someone come in with sort of a bully voice that says, we're not going to do it this way anymore. And, and just starts trashing the whole system. Um, even, even if he winds up doing it in a way that, uh, that trashes the system, right. Take advantage of the constitution, just ignores all of it, you know, and is just going to do what he wants to do. Yeah. Um, there's something attractive about that when you hate the way things have gone until it goes too far. And there, there will be a point where it goes too far and you're the thing too now. It's interesting to watch because I would say over the last six years, Oh, well, probably not even six years, like five years, the Biden presidency and now the new Trump hundred days or 150 days, wherever we're at. I think we've seen this on both sides. It's like when you think about some of the fundamental assumptions that have been questioned during the Biden administration, right? Um, the distinction between male and female, whatever you may think about that, right. Because I don't really want to get into the political issue of transgenderism, right. But male and female have meant something for a whole lot of years. Yes. And the prior administration started to dismantle that meaning and put a new conceptual grid on top of it. And you sit back and you're like, wait a minute. Like, doesn't consent to the govern mean anything here? Because we've understood it to be this male, female difference in biological sex, binary, you know, not fluidity. But now you're creating laws that completely explode that concept without ever really having a people who are going to be governed by these laws way in on it. And so, you know, we have that on the one side and now we have Trump doing a lot of executive orders and, you know, yes, we voted for him. That doesn't mean that every idea that pops into his head was something that we all want. And so that's why that checks and balance thing is there because the representatives in the House and the Senator are supposed to represent our voices. They're supposed to have these deliberations. That's why it's a very slow process. Yeah. So it slows the process. That's exactly what I was just thinking, James, at the very least, it slows the process down. It makes it very.

difficult to get things done, which again, why it can be refreshing for people just to come in and blow things up. Right, right. If that aligns with what you want to see happen, but as far as what it means to be an American, that slowing down of the process has been What's distinguished us from tyrannical nations. Correct. Monarchies and the king or queen being able to do whatever they want, regardless of what the people want or think. I've said this for years, James, just even going back specific into the political realm. I feel like progressives are characterized by trying to erase lines. That's what I've said to my friends and in my own mind. They want to erase lines wherever lines have been drawn, whatever has been considered normal. And those lines have been put in place by conservative-minded people or by people with power who decided this is where the lines should go around race, around gender, around all these different social constructs. Yep. And progressives want to come in and just get rid of all the lines. And while some of the lines need to be erased or they need to be redrawn, and an overcorrection is to just do away with all lines, just do away with anywhere a line has been drawn, like you just said, between male and female. We're going to just do away with all of it. No, that's not wisdom. That's not wisdom. Yeah, I like that analogy, the drawing of lines, because when we look at Scripture, we do see distinctions being made. I mean, one of the ways when I teach on Genesis 6, the sons of God and the daughters of men, what I encourage people to do is not get caught up in all the different options for who the sons of God are. But just to recognize that the Bible is making a distinction between two parties that were not intended to be together. And that maintaining these distinctions and boundaries is crucial. And then you look at the flood and you say, look what the punishment fits the crime. As those distinctions were deemed unnecessary and the sons of God and the daughters of men come together, what does God do? He disorders now, in other words, removes the boundary markers between water and earth. And so there is something to these boundaries and these distinctions that God has put in place. And we need to figure out how do we retain some of those distinctions and how do we act across them. What's allowable, what's appropriate, and not necessarily just abolishing all of them. So I love the way you put that. Yeah, look for where there's been abuses. Look for where there have been imbalances that have caused one part of the Imago Dei to suffer as a result. Again, I'm just using theological language. But the answer then is not to get rid of all of them, nor is the answer to come back and start making more lines, draw thicker boundaries. It's so interesting, James, you sent me, what was the executive order that you had sent me that you actually wanted to talk about? I can't remember what the title of it is, but it was on some of those diversity and equity and inclusion kind of programs and that kind of thing. It was called Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. There we go. I don't remember what the number is on it, but Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. I don't usually take a ton of time to read all the executive orders. But fascinating, wasn't it? It really is fascinating to see the language that's being used. But just in this one alone, and again, this is where I think in this conversation that we've had even about race, and I said this in Untangling, I've said it on almost every podcast that I've been a part of. And Donald Trump or whoever wrote this order did this again. And that is co-mingled the race conversation with the gender and sexuality conversation. Mash those two together as though they are the same thing. And they are not. They're not. Historically, they never have been in the same category. Only in the 1960s and 1970s in the academic world did they start to get merged together where the gender and sexuality people recognized that there was already this oppressed minority group that had civil rights, had a civil rights movement that was trying to get things done for them, and they glommed onto. You know, they merged them all together. Let's just say it like that. And I have felt from the beginning that the race conversation loses the most because so much of what at least the brothers and sisters that I've spent time with across the last 35 plus years in ministry, the non-white brothers and sisters, have been calling white brothers and sisters back to a biblical view when it comes to race. They've been trying to get white brothers and sisters to shed their idolatrous association with a culture that created race and created separation between people on the basis of skin color. They're calling white people back to the Bible. Whereas when it comes to gender and sexuality, beyond just right... They're pulling people away from it. They're trying to dissolve God-ordained boundaries. Now again, there also have been abuses towards homosexual people. There have been abuses towards women that need to be confronted just on the level of being abusive. That's not right. But to try to redefine what it means to be a man or a woman, to redefine what it means to be married. I mean, we kind of moved past that whole... Right. Right. Yeah, that ship left the dock a long time ago. Yeah. But that was a boundary that was created by God. Yeah. And so when you try to merge them all together, you end up not thinking well about race as a church person, as a Christ follower. I agree. Yeah. They are fundamentally different issues, and it's almost as if there's been a concerted effort to create a synergy where really there was only an affinity. In other words, some of the themes that would have addressed the race issue of injustice, of partiality, of those kind of things, certainly would be applied within some of these other realms. But to equate them is completely off. Well said. Yeah, it's an interesting point. Well, Ed, we're coming up on time, and I want to see if you can give kind of one last statement to the audience, Christian audience. What do you think as we're approaching some of these sort of political issues as we're moving through the Trump administration, as we're moving further away from the George Floyd incident, right, where we started? What would your advice be to Christians to think well about race and race relations in the United States? Oh, gosh. Well, I wrote a book about it. Everything that I want to say about it is basically in the book. I want us, and I've already said it even in this hour, to slow down, to separate ourselves from the political rhetoric around race. There is still, there will always be a race problem until Jesus comes back. I've been talking a lot about that. It's naive to think that we somehow will be absolved from the sin of racism or partiality like you talked about or judging one another on the basis of some external reality. That's, Satan is always going to use that. So I need to stop thinking to myself, well, I've arrived now in this healthy place where I don't need to think about this anymore or talk about it. That's just naive. Just like, you know, because I heard a message on sexual purity or sexual wholeness when I was in my twenties, do I not need to hear that message anymore across the rest of my life? No, I constantly need to hear about it because I live in a hyper-sexualized nation and a hyper-sexualized moment. I need to constantly be brought back to what is God's ethic. The same thing is true when it comes to race and racism and partiality on the basis of skin color, especially in a nation that's had the history that we've had that lives in a cultural moment right now, again, where we have an administration who certainly is not going to be sensitive to racial distinction or ethnic distinction. We've already said that. He is very all or nothing in the way that he is talking about things. Let's not fall for that. And, you know, it really does come down to continuing to move towards people that are different from us, continuing to try to understand people that are different from us. It's not just white and black. I mean, this is true for all of us. Right. Just Continuing to have a missiological mindset, which means a missions mindset to try to appreciate and love people that have been created different from us so that we can move towards them the way Jesus would want us to instead of create more dividing lines the way Satan would want us to. Yeah.

I need to keep doing that work. Yeah. I like that, Ed. Yeah, let's keep doing the work. I encourage people. Ed, thanks for being on the show, man. This has been an awesome conversation, everything I could have hoped it would be. I mean, we didn't cover half the stuff we talked about before the interview, but I think it was an awesome conversation nonetheless. Loved it. And I'll put the link to your book in the show description, so I really do recommend Untangling Critical Race Theory. I thought it was a fantastic book. I think Ed does a great job of being balanced and measured about the way he treats critical race theory. And I'd encourage Christians to read it and start thinking through these issues in a slower manner. And so, Ed, yeah, thanks for being here, man. And yeah, just really appreciate your perspective and enjoy the Exiles in Babylon conference. Thanks, man. Let's do it again. We'll do it. All right. Absolutely. All right, everybody, take care. Thanks for listening. And we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at LifeAudio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to LifeAudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Are you seeking a deeper connection with God, but just can't seem to find time to make prayer a priority? Introducing Mindful Christian Prayers. Whether starting your day or winding down at night, this show is your resource for spiritual renewal. Each episode features short guided prayers, scripture readings, and moments of silence to help you reflect and connect with the Lord, no matter how busy your schedule might be. Tune in now at LifeAudio.com or your favorite podcasting app to embrace the power of prayer and deepen your faith with Mindful Christian Prayers.