Category: Culture

The Times of Israel today reported on Vladimir Putin’s mocking of the LGBT pride flag hung on the U. S. Embassy in Moscow.  We are living in strange times.  The Communists of 100 plus years ago mocked the western family ideas as part of the bourgeoise structure of western capitalism.  Though anti-Christian, the Russian communists soon discovered that they needed the stability of the family.  They became famously puritan.  President Putin is not a Communist but leads a Russian nationalist fascist government of state-controlled capitalism.  He has allied himself with the Russian Orthodox Church.  He now fosters a policy that seeks to weaken the influences of LGBTQ in society.  As an adult in Russia, one can choose to be LGBTQ.  However, no propaganda is allowed, and no educational influences are allowed from them for minors.  Hence Putin mocks the Embassy and says the flag shows what kind of people who are inside.  

The other side of the anomaly is the United States flying the LGBT flag.  Is this really what supporters of Donald Trump would like to see?  Not the Evangelicals.  So why is this happening?  It reflects the position of Donald Trump.  He supports Evangelicals and their religious freedom, opposes abortion, and supports vouchers that can be used at private religious schools.  However, he also supports full civil rights, services, and accommodations for LGBTQ people.  He threads a needle.  He does not support Army regulations that support a pregnant man in the barracks or the requirements that artists in business have to create art contrary to their conscience or that religious organizations are forced to hire people contrary to their faith confession.   That is how I interpret him.  He can invite Katlin Jenner to visit and at the same time Baptist Pastor Jeffries.   

So that is the anomaly.  The U. S. embassy in Moscow flies an LGBT flag before July 4th and President Putin mocks it. 

The Black Lives Matter movement official leadership is Marxist, anti-family, and anti-American.  Check their website.  Check their funding for Democrats (who are not all Marxists of course) and then check where they get their funds.  The official BLM movement is an anti-police movement because the police protect the system, even if a majority of police in some cities are black.  For the official BLM organization, only those black lives matter that can be used as propaganda to fuel their anti-America agenda.  For BLM, most black lives do not matter because the story of these blacks does not serve their Marxist agenda and propaganda. I understand the offense for responding and saying, “All lives matter.”  Yes, of course, for the idea is that the black lives matter phrase is highlighting the injustices in black lives. I wrote an extensive post on this yesterday.  However, I want to see a new organization, All Black Lives matter.”  This would change the whole thing.  

1. Black lives unjustly killed by or brutalized by police matter.
2. Blacks unfairly profiled and shamed by police matter.
3. Blacks that are the subject of unfair discrimination matter. 
4. Blacks who are killed in our inner cities matter.  (7,500 per year-this is the greatest carnage and not emphasized by BLM or the media because it does not help their agenda.
5. Black police lives matter, those who have lost their lives protecting others and who have been injured and who have saved others.
6. Black lives saved by police matter.  Thank God they still live.
7. Blacks who are subject to failing public schools matter. 
8. Blacks who are raised without the support of a father matter.
9. Black fathers matter and need job training and support to be fathers.
10. Black lives matter in regard to economic success and the need for job training and income support as they develop.
11. Black lives children matter who have been killed in gang violence. 
12. Blacks who commit non-violent crimes and are sent to be brutalized in prison rather than reformed matter.
13. Blacks matter who are stuck in failing public schools and do not have educational choice as a way out.  
14. Unborn black lives matter.  
15. All Black lives of are so important that blacks are intended for eternal life through the Gospel. Only though the Gospel can black lives matter forever.  Jesus died for the salvation of black people!!

All Black Lives Matter

The Anti-Defamation League is boycotting Facebook because they allow hate speech, Holocaust denial, and Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.  Now other corporations are pulling out of their connection to Facebook because of inadequate policing of hate.  I wrote about social platforms recently.  However, my post was on the other side of the issue, namely that people are being removed, shadowbanned, and declared as violating hate speech norms when they hold to conservative religious and political positions.  The views of those in social media will influence what they see as hate or not hate.  I certainly agree with the ADL on their standard and on the definitions of what constitutes Anti-Semitism.   Social media is a too powerful and hard to govern technology.  The challenge is enormous.  More competition certainly would help. I would like to end the neutral platform protections for media services and let all compete and know that different platforms have different standards of what they will allow. However, I wonder if we are looking for a debate and a consensus on what should not be allowed, a consensus that would have to have the agreement of both religious and political conservatives and liberals.  The idea of banning those who teach that God’s Law is only supportive of traditional heterosexual marriage would definitely be banned by some on the left as hate.  What about religious conservatives challenging the LGBT agenda?  However, the liberal response to conservatives who want to see everyone experience the love and acceptance of God could be also seen as hate.  Here are some thoughts.  

1.  Any content that calls for violence should be banned.
2.  Any content that declares that any racial group is inherently genetically inferior or superior to another, I can see banning.  
3. Maybe blatant lies that bring a panic and danger to people can be banned, like free speech does not allow for calling fire in a theater when there is no fire.  One could say that New York is going to be hit by a nuclear bomb.  

These standards actually are biblical.  I wonder if there could be agreement on more.  There are tons of misinformation on the internet.  The internet can quickly spread bad information to millions.  However, I don’t know how that can be policed.  It seems that people will have to grow to be better consumers who can do better research and know what to believe. 

Protestors have been tearing down monuments.  It began with Civil War military leaders, but has now gotten to the point where monuments are destroyed not only for Civil War leaders who fought to preserve the confederacy, but now includes Founding Fathers and even General President Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.  The standard for destruction is anything that violates the purist standards of today’s violent protestors.  Lincoln allowed native Americans to be executed though he released hundreds for whom there was not sufficient evidence of a capital crime.  Roosevelt said bad things about not trusting native Americans.  Historical figures are not judged on the basis of the great gains they produced for the United States and the world, but on the basis of anything that can be discovered that is a negative to them.  The arrogance is amazing!  And of course, no historical figure can escape.  This shows an underlying anti-Americanism in some of the anti-monument protests.  The problem is mob influence and politicians giving into the mob.  A discussion on monuments is in order.  There can be referendums on the monuments on government and public property.  People can be elected in part on their position on monuments.   However, those few who decided to illegally act to destroy monuments and historical figures appoint themselves to decide for the rest of the people.  This is wrong. 

The talking points on both sides of the debate are shallow.  One side says no one should be honored who supported slavery.  Washington and Jefferson had slaves so their monuments have to go.  The other side, even supporting the Confederate Generals, says that the anti-monument people want to destroy our history, and we need to learn from history.  Really?  We cannot learn history from a book but need a statue?  I did not travel to the South until I was in my 30s and did not take note of Confederate statues until I traveled to Richmond, Va. In my 40s.  I knew some of the Generals displayed showed great courage in battle.  I cannot see how such statues in a museum with plaques telling their stories, both the good and the bad would not be better.  On the other hand, we are inspired by the monuments of people who made great gains for us in history by seeing their memorials and perhaps reading more about them.  This was my experience after seeing the monuments to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln in Washington, D. C.  I read large biographies of all of them.  The authors pointed out their errors. Jefferson wrote the great words on liberty but was really an end justifies the means politician.  Lincoln ended up being magnificent but was not always such.  His monument is truly inspiring and justified. As a Jew, I have been moved by the courage of Martin Luther and the great gain that came to the world by the Reformation, and also am pained by his later in life Anti-Semitism.  I don’t seek to destroy statues and pictures of Luther.  My standard for public monuments would be that the sum of their lives produced great gains for humanity, for the Gospel first of all,  in human rights, religious progress, the betterment of human beings in humanitarian ways, progress in medicine, then invention, and art.  There are many that should have monuments that don’t.  Some of the great anti-slave abolitionists are a case in point and also some of the great black leaders in the fight who maintained dignity and did not give in to hatred.  On this basis, though I am sad about him holding slaves, Washington’s biographer Flexner argues that he was conflicted and hence freed his slaved at his death.  However, the gain from Washington is incalculable.  He would not seek or accept royal power though it was offered to him.  He stepped down after two terms and set a trajectory of limited executive power.  King George III said he was the greatest man of his age.  His humility in exercising power and his integrity is beyond any political leader I know of in history.  John Adams (see the great McCullagh biography) was right up there with him.  He was anti-slavery! Theodore Roosevelt would rate high in integrity and concern for the ordinary people and his anti-monopoly policies. He was a man of extraordinary courage. 

Today’s anti-American historical revisionists are the thinkers behind much of the unrest.  They pick and choose the information available to paint a bad picture only.  As I noted in one post, the ability of the Bible to really be submitted to has been an amazing historical struggle.  This is the reason why we find some who defended slavery or anti-Semitism or prejudice.  The idea that all are equally created in the image of God and deserving of love, respect, and justice has been hard to attain but it has been more attained in the West due to Biblical influences than anywhere else.  

Let us use some historical imagination and note this analogy. By the second century, the Church Fathers had become anti-Jewish and supported replacement theology whereby the Jews were no longer elect.  I will not seek to tear down their statues though they were so wrong.  They came to this view so early because the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem by the Romans was so devasting, maybe even the slaughter of 1.5 million people, that to them this proved the final rejection of the Jewish people.  The teaching of the Bible just did not get through.  So also, when explorers discovered primitive societies, in most cases, they did not discover peaceful advanced societies.  Sometimes they discovered societies where tribes were slaughtering each other and enslaving those they conquered.  There was cannibalism and child sacrifice.  Just look up the level of child sacrifice in the Americas.  Where these people created in the image of God?  Yes, but unless one had a mind renewed by the Word as some missionaries, it was all too easy to see a subhuman race.  Any human being and any human ethic group can be transformed by the Gospel, and this has been proven.  I note this to say that Columbus did wrong and was not sufficiently submitted to God’s word, but he also discovered child sacrifice in the Caribbean.  Let’s not glorify the native peoples!  

When we deal with the issue of monuments, let’s return to rational more holistic evaluations. Let the monuments be of those who produced great gains for the United States and humanity.  Then let’s note that the only hope for humanity is the Gospel and submission to his Word.  I dare say that the violent protestors and monument destroyers are not being led by the Spirit of God. 

In recent days I have become convinced that we are witnessing a Marxist/Anarchist revolution in the United States.  My Facebook readers will note my developing thought on this. Some say I am too alarmist, but I do not think so.  It is not easy coming to terms with what is happening while living in Israel.  I believe that this Marxist/Anarchist revolution and its leaders are using the outrage over the outrageous death of George Floyd to foster a revolution and that a significant number of blacks are being duped and manipulated by the radicals.  One of the characteristics of the leadership of BLM is fostering a lying narrative about the police.  The evidence seems true that blacks are unjustly mistreated by police.  The testimony of so many, including Senator Tim Scott, is that blacks are targeted for police involvement without justification.  The evidence also seems clear that blacks experience unjust police brutality beyond whites and in ways that cannot be explained only by the much higher crime rate in poorer black neighborhoods.  This then provides a hook for the lie, the lie that is put forth that blacks are murdered at high rates, that especially white policemen have murdered many blacks in recent years.  Yet this is the big lie.  I noted the letter by ten state Attorney Generals that present these statistics.  “In 2019 there were nine fatal shootings of unarmed blacks (down from 38 in 2015) and 19 fatal shootings of unarmed whites (down from 32 in 2015).  These deaths represented 0.1 percent of all back homicide victims and 0.3 percent of all white homicide victims.”

These statistics are stunning.  Attorney General William Barr said that of these nine or ten, only 4 were charged as criminal murder.  For those who care about black lives, the much greater concern is violence in the black community, over 7,500 black on black criminal killings per year.  This is really the issue of black lives. Those killed include a significant number of children caught in the crossfire.  Bill Bratton, who had led police in several cities including New York and Los Angeles, was responsible for the police methods that saved thousands of black lives in New York.  He recently noted that the attacks on police, cutting back funding, and destroying all they learned and accomplished will lead to many deaths and a return to the 1980s horrors. 

So why do we not see the importance of the police?  Yes, there can be reform and the firing of bad police.  However, the safety of the most vulnerable populations requires a large presence of community police who build relationships in the neighborhoods.  Only then can investment and educational choice really do its work. (Educational choice is crucial,) Who is responsible for demonizing the police?  It is the people who lead Black Lives Matter and other radical groups like Antifa.  They drive the big lie of white policemen are murdering blacks in large numbers.  Then what are we to make of the great accomplishment of adding many black police?  Black police are despised by this movement. The New York regional leader of BLM, Hawk Newsome, stated that when a black puts on a police uniform he is no longer black but blue. In Atlanta, 58% of the police department is black, but they too are to be despised and defunded. 

Then one only needs to do a Wikipedia search of the three primary leaders of the national BLM Foundation, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tomati.  One will find the most radical radicals.  When you read their agenda goals, saving black lives is really not primary.  It is rather a total anti-America agenda, including open immigration (which hurts the underclass blacks the most), emptying out and closing prisons, and enforcing a radical socialist anti-capitalist or communist direction. As was said in their marches note long ago on police, “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.” BLM is pro-LGBT (what has this to do with saving black lives?) anti-favoring the hetero-normal family (traditional family, note that Tomati is a leader in fostering the queer agenda as well).  The only just order is a socialist/communist order.  The reason in this analysis that there is a black underclass is capitalism itself.  This leads to two very important directions.  As in all communist revolutions, one must tear down and despise the cultural symbols that give society a consensus of revered symbols and common national purpose and identity. Tearing down the statues of confederate leaders can make rational sense.  However, the statues of Washington (he owned slaves and that is to be the total sum for evaluating the founders of the U. S.), Jefferson and Lincoln? Lincoln?  Yes, he ordered putting down a Native American rebellion. Then there is U. S. Grant, who won the war and passed legislation to empower the blacks in the south.  Well, you just cannot revere any who believed in America.  Let’s do a thought experiment.  Let’s say that we were to only have statues and monuments to American leaders who were anti-slavery. All others would be taken down.  Then we would replace them with the great figures of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Charles Finney, the revivalist, Jonathan Blanchard, the founder of Wheaton, Secretary of State Seward under Lincoln, who housed runaway slaves.  There is a large number of such people!!   Do you think the BLM and the Antifa movement would really want this?  No, they want to reject America and its whole history as rotten to the core, but the issue is that American history is a mixture and anti-slavery giants are part of that history and ultimately prevailed.  The human rights ideas of the slave holder Jefferson ultimately led to the emancipation ideas of Lincoln. So, we don’t want to even honor that?   

Then why is the anti-police rhetoric so strong.  It has nothing to do with black lives. Read between the lines and read the lines themselves vilifying black policemen.  It is that those who maintain law and order are part of maintaining the American capitalist system.  It is too bad that 7,500 plus blacks are killed, but black lives are not really the issue. All lives will supposedly be better after the American system is destroyed.  It will be replaced by the open borders, consenting adult sexual arrangements, and government support that will be so wonderful that those killings of blacks will go away too (I have not read this last argument on black on black crime but certainly the blame for this would be the capitalist system).  

The black community is being used and lied to through the powerful tools of social media by people who have an agenda that is not really about black lives. 

So how do these leaders evaluate the politicians and the corporate leaders who give them support and money?!   They are the useful idiots in Lenin and Stalin’s terms.  For now, the liberal Democrats play a role in allowing them to do as they do, and they even yield to their pressures.  They are progressing through the liberal Democrats. They support their efforts at cancel culture, to cancel all who oppose them, or to put forth conservative alternatives to solve the problems.  Social media marginalizes the conservatives.  The left controls the campus.  Corporate sponsors are also useful idiots.  Kimberly Strassel in her great book, The Intimidation Game, shows how this works.  Threaten the sponsors of conservative media and they will defund conservative media. The conservatives will buy their products anyway, but the corporate leaders believe they do not need the protests of the radicals.  Even Chick Fil A succumbs!  Conservatives are so weak in comparison to pressuring corporations.  Republican leaders are despised as weak in their push back, and that is true.  However, accept for Democratic radicals like the squad, the Democratic liberals are really useful idiots who they plan to discard at the right time as they present radical candidates to displace them.  They can use some of them now. 

This whole agenda is an anti-God agenda that does not believe that God designed us and that true standards of justice are in the Bible.  Christianity is despised. White Jesus statues and stained glass pictures must come down.  As a Messianic Jew, I recognize that Jesus probably looked like a Middle Eastern semite, neither black or white.  However, that the Jesus of art was from white supremacy is so stupid but it is seriously put forth by Shawn White of BLM.  The Jesus images we know in art came from the feudal ages, not an age of white supremacy and conquering.  In Ethiopia in the same era, Jesus was black.  All cultures make a Jesus they can relate to.  For Jews, we don’t want the image!  But you get the point.  There is a hatred of Christianity. BLM leaders embrace BDS toward Israel as part of their intersectionality craziness that sees all oppressed people as being one and under the thumb of the colonials. Tell that to the Tibetans!  

If the radicals won, they would produce a truly brutal police state to enforce their visions of equality. Then it will become criminal. This is always the result. But even now the Democrats do not oppose them a but empower them. The Republican push back is tepid. And the Church is hardly doing much when millions should be on the street, speaking for blacks, preaching the Gospel, and calling on the radicals to repent and turn to God. 

In my view, this is the time of the greatest danger to America since the Civil War. There was also much danger in the 1930s with many communist radicals but Roosevelt found a way to lead through this.  Then in the 60s again, we had a radical uprising.  However, never before have we had the left in control of the culture formation institutions of the society, media, education, and entertainment.  They have overwhelming control.  What can we do? 

We can pray, prophecy, witness and invest ourselves in caring for the marginalized. Then we can look at Isaiah 60. This is God’s final word for the end of this age and focused on Israel, but has been partially fulfilled again and again in history.  “Darkness shall cover the earth, deep darkness the people, but the Lord will rise upon you and the Glory of God will shine upon you.”  We cry out for revival and return to Biblical truth. Never in history has the evidence for Biblical faith been stronger. The proof of design in biology, the outpouring of miracles in many parts of the world, and the bankruptcy of secular humanistic solutions is more and more clear.  The movement we now see shows the bankruptcy of the rejection of God and the Bible.  Let God arise!   Note that the values foundation of the radicals is by their emotional preferences.  It hangs on thin air and is simply their personal choice and preference.  The value of every human being, to be treasured and supported in love, is based in the Bible and only from God and the Bible do we get the words of the Declaration, penned by Jefferson, “That all man are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And might I say that lasing happiness is found only in God!!

I am writing this post as a follow up for prayer counsel for my friends.  If my last post was correct, and I don’t see how it can possibly not be correct, then we are seeing the black community used by the radical left to gain an agenda that is not really about police brutality and the murder of whites by the police.  The murder of blacks by white policemen as a major problem is a lie and has little to do with solving the problem of the black underclass which will require massive efforts for the Gospel, discipleship, mentoring, education, etc. which government programs hardly begin to do.  The radical left wants to destroy American.  Historical figures all have mixture but the radical left does not allow extolling what was right and criticizing what was wrong.  All is to be torn down.  If the police are destroyed then a leftist police to replace them would be unjust and much more violent in spite of the good intentions of peace from some. When we read figures like Sean White and Hawk Newsom who is the leader of Black lives matter in New York, calling for burning it all down, we know the spirit from which it comes.  It is the spirit of the Anti-Christ not the spirit of Jesus.  The list of demands is for a socialist collective society; pro-BDS on Israel, and anti-family and pro-LGBT on the BLM website.  Some black pastors are speaking out on this.  Note that BLM funds Democrats too.  So how do we pray? Pray that the lies be exposed as lies and that the father of lies, Satan be defeated in this effort.  He comes to rob, kill, and destroy.  Some estimate that billions of damage that provide a livelihood for many has now.  Blacks have now been killed at higher levels in our cities due to the lack of police protection.  

1. Pray that followers of Yeshua are delivered from deception. Some are saying that BLM includes a small number of radicals.  We want to weed out bad police and improve policing.  However, the radicals want to destroy America as we know it.  They are driving this and the violence. 
2. Pray for church leaders to rise up, black and white, and calling for reconciliation, end of violence and destruction. 
3. Pray for revival in the American churches, and especially in the black churches. 
4. Pray for national repentance in the church.  The root of the problem is the church that was for years in disobedience to Yeshua in not first bringing the power of the Gospel and discipleship to the most marginal in society. 
5. Pray for revival in the church as a result of repentance and especially in the black churches to lead us in the way of national revival and reconciliation. 

A few days ago, I came against these facts.  

Here is a quote from the black attorney general in Indiana.  This report is very important. “Last year in the United States, a country with a population of 330 million people, 1,004 civilians were fatally shot by police officers,” The vast majority of these officer-involved shootings were justifiable, and most involved an armed or dangerous individual.” “Our letter acknowledged that in 2019 there were nine fatal shootings of unarmed blacks (down from 38 in 2015) and 19 fatal shootings of unarmed whites (down from 32 in 2015). Those deaths represented 0.1 percent of all black homicide victims and 0.3 percent of all white homicide victims.”  Bill Barr reported that of these 9 (he said 10) only four were criminal acts against blacks.  He said there are problems of racism in the police, but it is not systemic.  

Here are some more stats. “Over 58,000 officers were assaulted while performing their duties in 2018, according to FBI data collected from only two-thirds of law-enforcement agencies. That is an assault rate of 10.8 per 100 officers. Moreover, assaults with deadly weapons against the police occurred 33 times per day. Police officers endure these daily threats to their own lives in order to create a safer world for you and me — for people of every color, race, and background. Let anyone agitating for cop-free zones be careful lest their wishes be granted. “Law and order,” after all, is more than a catchphrase. It’s an absolutely essential ingredient for any civilized society.”                                                     

Meanwhile, Tim Hardiman the black leader and founder of Violence Interrupted decried the imbalance in the Black Lives Matter Movement. He is not a conservative.  He says police brutality is a problem that has to be addressed, but the politics and ethnic issues hinder discussing the far more serious issue to be addressed, namely that there are over 7,500 black on black murders and violence caused deaths every year.  He called for a dialogue with the BLM leaders to address all the issues.  Defunding the police would bring even much more death.  

Then we note that the leader of Black Lives Matter in the New York region said that if his demands are not met then he will “burn it all down.” These demands are over the top and include, yes, really defunding the police.  Lest my friends say I am overly alarmist, let us note that this same leader said that black police are no longer black, but they become blue (the enemy) when they put on a uniform.  Friends, he is the leader in the largest BLM group in the country.  So much for the solution being partly in training minority police. Atlanta now has a 58% black police department.  Really, we are seeing radical Marxist and anarchist revolution here. 

This raises a question for me.  Has the Black Lives Matter leadership used injustice in policing to foster the greatest deception on the black community that has ever been seen and that will set them back? Black Republican Senator Tim Scott rightly decries the unfair treatment of blacks by police and sometimes by other whites.  There is a suspicion that shames and leads to very demeaning behavior.  He has experienced it. I wonder if the willingness to believe this false narrative has some roots in these experiences.  There is also a question of brutality.  But as the statistics say, there is no major problem of white police or any police killing or murdering blacks. This is a myth being used to destroy the society. 

This leads me to the question of solutions.  How many of the BLM leaders and protestors are motivated by love for all people?  How many are Bible-believing, committed Christians?  How many protestors are coming from a biblical world view as was Dr. Martin Luther King?  What is to be done?

1. The greatest need in the black community and in all communities is the Gospel. Those who think justice movements can succeed without a biblical world view orientation are deceived and neither understand history or the power of the Gospel.  Nothing lifts people like the Gospel. Can you imagine if there was a great revival in the black community?  What if the blacks in the inner city acted like Mennonites?  Imagine the change in violent behavior and death.  Would this eliminate much suspicion?  Is some suspicion due to the level of criminal behavior?

2. Secondly, we need incentives in our welfare system for marriage and family stability.  The key is that it is more financially beneficial to stay together.                                            

3. We need to see real solid education choice that prepares people for vocations.                          

4. We need to have a major increase in community policing to break the murder/crime level in the black community.  In some departments, this means more well-trained minority police.                                              

5. Repentance in the Church is crucial, for not bringing the Gospel in power to the black community and not serving this community as a top priority.  This includes a presentation of the Gospel with signs and wonders power in the anointing of the Spirit.      

 I am greatly concerned about those who think there is a humanistic solution, or who will join with Marxists and compromise the Gospel.  Only what flows from the Gospel and a biblical world view will produce the real change needed.  Violence will not produce positive change and is not defensible.  The Gospel is much more powerful.  Love of neighbor, black and white and all the hues is crucial now.  In addition, as one black woman preacher said, I am not primarily defined by being a black woman, but by being a follower of Jesus who happens as well to be black.  Our identity as one in Yeshua together needs to supersede all. 

What is the true need?

1.  The Gospel, to be born again and delivered.  Power to lift people. True of all people.  If black were like Mennonites.
2.  Family Restoration: incentives  
3. Real solid education that prepares for vocations
4. Controlling crime especially in low-income areas: % community trained policing
5. Repentance in the Church for not bringing the Gospel in power to the black community and not serving this community as a top priority.  This includes a presentation of the Gospel with signs and wonders power in the anointing of the Spirit.      

Four major feature articles in the Jerusalem Post weekend addition responded to the Black Lives Matter protests.  I quoted one writer, Amotz Asa El, in a personal Facebook post. The general consensus of the four was sympathy for the situation of the Black underclass and crediting that racism is a problem.  But then the writers all noted their alarm at the violent upheaval taking place and warned that the direction that things were taking was likely to lead to a bad end.  The Post commented on the statue of George Washington in Portland being toppled because he owned slaves.  People in St. Louis are protesting the name of the city.  It goes back to when it was a French trading post before the Louisiana Purchase (1803).  King  Louis IX of France was an anti-Semite that burned Talmuds.  Washington’s great biographer, James Thomas Flexner, describes a Washington that was conflicted by slavery and freed his slaves in his will.  Asa El says of Jefferson, “Jefferson was a slave owner. It was a status into which he was born. However, he also led Virginia’s groundbreaking banishment of slave importation, and as president, he criminalized international slave trade and sought a way to emancipate all slaves. Can any of his defacers claim to have done for liberty and equality just a fraction of all this?”  So much of human rights is based on his words, “All men (persons) are created equal.”  There is a big difference between a Washington or Jefferson, and those who went to war to maintain slavery.  How much to honor these Confederate leaders in our day is a real question. Rabbi Stuart Weiss, a leading Rabbi here in Ra’anana wrote that he fears for America now more than any other time in his life.  The violent upheaval and lawless rule is so alarming to him, though he is sympathetic to the cause of blacks and their racism problems  

However, when we look beyond the Black Lives Matter official organization platform which is radically socialist (Marxist?), anti-Israel-pro-BDS, anti-traditional family, and super pro-LGBT we see that many blacks are joining this movement that do not endorse these aberrations.  Some of my friends have said that we need to listen to these protesting blacks.  However, there is not one black voice.  I am trying to grasp the different voices.  I see three categories of black leaders and they are really as far as I can grasp it on a continuum spectrum.  

The first category which is the largest group of protestors believes there is systemic racism in the police and society.  They want to root it out.  They want police reform and programs to lift the black community.  They want to reform the police but not to abolish them.  They want more training for community police to be a positive presence and a larger contingent of minority police. This has already happened in Atlanta where the black police constitute 57% of the force.   Is their understanding of systemic racism correct?  The lawyer for murdered George Floyd, Ben Crump, gave an amazing interview to Neil Cavuto.  It had a great balance even on the monument issues.  What a credit to the Black people he is!  

Secondly are the radicals with include whites and blacks who are pushing violence and a Marxist or anarchist agenda.  They are the ones demanding total defunding of the police (really they mean this and it is not a euphemism for reforming the police).  There is also an anti-Jewish aspect. They told the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis “Go home Jacob,” when he would not agree to the demands to totally defund.  It should be noted that these folks do not want to take a vote on issues but want to rule by the mob.  The radicals have caused more damage in destroying businesses, even minority businesses, than we yet know, but some estimates are very high.  After this is all over there will be a calculation.   Some in the first group claim that those in this group have stolen their movement and made their violent revolution the issue and not justice for blacks.  The radicals claim that free enterprise itself is necessarily oppressive and must be torn down. 

Then thirdly, there are the conservative blacks.  Some have stood with the protests against police brutality, but most have not been in the protests.  There are important voices in this group.  They include Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell (who came out of retirement to write), Robert Woodson, Kay Cole James (head of the Heritage Foundation), Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal, and many more.  However, the mainstream press does not give them a voice.  Their view is that there is a problem with police and reform is necessary, but less police would bring more death.  There needs to be more training, more power to fire bad apples, and better community policing. However, they see the primary problem as the failure of liberal policies which has kept the black underclass in their situation of misery and has led to frustration and their embrace wrong narrative to understand it.  For one thing, these conservatives believe that restoring the black family is crucial and that welfare should support family stability and not undercut it.  They embrace workfare and training for welfare to lift people up.  They believe in school choice and charters as ways to life blacks. They will point to the Success Charter Schools in New York and their superiority in educating blacks to achieve.  The alliance of education unions with the Democratic politicians is, they believe, responsible for much of the blame. Some of them will make the very offensive statement to some that if black underclass crime was very low there would not be a significant police problem, though bad police are a problem beyond the issue of race. Bernard Kerick, the former long term police commissioner in New York, said there is a problem with a minority of police maybe 5%.  However, the unions spend 90% of their time coming up with protections for this 5% and make it very hard to fire them. 

My view is that systemic racism is not where the protesters think it is.  There is racism in some police and maybe there is some systemic in some departments.  But this has to be researched.  

Let’s broaden the issue of systemic racism beyond the idea of people who really believe that blacks are an inferior race to the idea of systematically avoiding solving the problem of the black underclass.  (60% of blacks are middle to upper-middle class, so the main issue Is the 40%). This problem is both local and national.  How is that?  The Republicans due to Lincoln were for years the party of the black people.  But they did not come up with the programs that would have lifted the black community out of poverty.  When they lost the black vote, they simply wrote them off as if to say,  “If they are not going to keep us in power, just ignore them.”  The Democrats provided them with money and programs and took away their vote. In the beginning, this was well-intentioned (Magnet’s The Dream and the Nightmare.). However, the Democrats created a failed system that keeps the black underclass dependent and oppressed.  The condition of the black family and education was better before the trillions were spent on programs for the poor!  Amazing.  After 50 years we know what does not work.  But the black vote is taken for granted as the Democrats tout give always that do not lift the community but perpetuate dependence.  Without two-party competition, the blacks will not get the right debate on the policies that can work. This is the theme of the conservative blacks.  The liberals fight the very things that would lift the blacks; educational choice, incentives for family stability, enterprise zones with job training, and massive community policing to end the violence where 7500 blacks in one year were killed by black on black crime and violence.  

The political parties have left us with a systemic problem and the blacks think the problem is overt racial prejudice.  It certainly exits, but would most businesses not hire a qualified black? Do most colleges today accept qualified blacks into their schools?  Yes.  The issues are not rightly analyzed.  My views are in line with the black conservatives. 

But finally, I see the main issue of repentance as with the Church.  Can we really think that secular programs to lift people can succeed without the Gospel?  How much do we believe in the transformative power of the Gospel?  But then we must face by our broadened definition the systemic racism of the Church establishment.  This is not the racism of believing that blacks are an inferior race, but the racism that simply ignores the issue of the condition of the black underclass.  One can easily deduce from the example and teaching of Yeshua that the primary thrust of the Gospel is first for the poor, the marginalized, or the underclass.  In the 1980s the American Evangelical Church attained its largest numbers and percent in the society.  Now it shrinks.  The Church focused on meeting the needs of its members but not on the power of the Gospel to the neediest.  Maybe the members would not have had such neediness if they knew the power of God in their lives and saw the power of God on the cutting edge of investing in the population where Yeshua would have most given his time.  Yes, there are exceptions.  But this is the main root of the problem, and the United States is reaping what the Evangelical Church has sown. Also, there may be blame in the Black Church, but this is not for me to judge.  However, black conservative Church leaders tell me that in the black community  the Gospel is a mile wide and an inch deep. There is little depth of discipleship, especially for young black youth.  

There is a racist history too when we note what happened in the great Pentecostal revival.  William J. Seymour lead the Azuza street revival in 1906.  He was a black preacher.  This revival has transformed Christianity.  Pentecostal Christianity and its offshoots in the new charismatic streams is now the largest and most effective Church the world has ever seen. The gains in Africa, Asia, and South America are astonishing.  Again, it was started by a black preacher.  Then the white Pentecostals in America did not want to be in an association of Churches with black leaders, so the movement split into black denominations and white denominations.  There have been verbal repentance meetings with forgiveness.  But are we yet seeing restitution?  This is where reparations can be an issue.  It would seem that the issue is that white churches should be now making the black underclass their primary mission focus.  How much would their young people be then inspired in seeing the transformation of the black community by the Gospel? The Gospel is the greatest justice force for the underclasses of the world that has ever been seen.  

There is a lot of blame to go around; corrupt police and some bad police departments maintained by unions, and corrupt politicians, Democrats, and Republicans.  Then there is the Church. But only the Church can really repent on the right basis of sin before God and gain the power to bring the Gospel of reconciliation.  May we see that repentance and revival.