pastor marcus MP3 interview file

The transcription is a discussion between Marcus and another individual about Christianity, race, and history. Marcus shares his personal journey of skepticism towards Christianity due to historical injustices and struggles with seeing representation of black people in the Bible. He emphasizes that Christianity is a multicultural and multi-ethnic movement of God, not belonging to any specific race. He delves into how Christianity was misused for colonization and slavery, highlighting the manipulation of the Bible to oppress black people. Marcus stresses the importance of understanding the true message of Christianity and the need to confront historical injustices. So, we'll go through seven, that's it. You first, go to the back. Uh-huh. Go back to the front. All right, I'm gonna start. Go to the back. All right. What's up, y'all? Welcome back to our podcast, Don't Borrow a Father. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, I've got something super special on one of our classes at Divine Community Church, where I go to face-to-face prayer with Jesus. Thanks for coming. Hey, what's up, y'all? How y'all doing? How y'all doing? Okay, so, today, we are going to talk about something that, honestly, it's like if somebody would have told me this or talked about it a year ago, I probably would have been more surprised or probably would have been more open to the Lord. And so, a little bit about me is that before I had met the Lord, I had truly, I was just, like, I didn't assume I was going to be black and be Christian, because I'm just like, if you're black, you know, all the different things that happen, and so, why would you follow this Jesus who is white? Why would you follow this Jesus who, he has done nothing for black people? Like, these are all the different things I've said. I remember in college telling one of my best friends that, you know, I will never be Christian because, like, it's just a false religion. It felt like I'm never gonna do this. And so, now, today, as someone who follows the Lord who is God, I think there's some things that, like, we still don't talk about or that, like, people who don't know the Lord yet like, want to know, and so, today, I pray that your heart is open and your mind is open, but also, you know, that the Lord is self-aware and he's a God who sees you, that he knew every single detail about your life. He knew the way that you would be formed. He knew how dark your skin would be. He knew every single detail about your life. And so, yeah, thank you so much for coming on. My name's Marcus. Yeah, man, I'm glad to be here. Mm-hmm. So, my first question for you, or you wanna say anything about yourself first? Yeah, my name's Marcus. I am a pastor at Divine Community Church. I'm also a church planter. I go about to plant a church here starting this summer in Greensboro, North Carolina. So, we'll be leaving here to work and maybe going down to Greensboro this summer. But other than that, those are things that I do, but who I am, I am the husband of Tempest Anderson. I am the father of Eliana and Naya Anderson, the brother to Marcel and Eddie Anderson and the son of Susie Anderson and Eddie, senior. So, and Mike is my brother and Angie. And so, in that light, that's really who I am and what makes me who I am. But being, but Christian, but doing things like this and being a pastor, that's just what I do. You know what I'm saying? That's like how I serve the Lord in this locale. So, yeah. Mm-hmm, yeah. All right, so my first question, or even honestly before this question, like what do you think that you wish you knew about Christianity, but also being like black and being a Christian before you get elected? Yeah, that's an interesting story. So, I'll reminisce a little bit. So, I grew up in the black church, primarily. I'm in the black church tradition. Had a lot of questions about why we do what we do and how we do what we do. And didn't really, nobody could really help us square that circle, especially when we know about what enslaved Africans went through here in America. It didn't really make a lot of sense. And so, in my formative years, you know, then you have things like the autobiography of Momma X. You then have the Momma X movie produced by our, you can say documentary, but it's a movie produced by Spike Lee, you know? And then you have different things like that, but then I couldn't square it because then you see, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King, you know, and the fight for civil rights and all those other things. So, the swirl was there for me. It was a swirl of just like conflicting information, I would say, and so it was really, really hard to kind of process that. And then I had an encounter with God that changed my life that I could not explain, right? And so, and the blessing of it was that I got saved by some guys that were on the football team that were Christians, that were believers, and they were black men. And so, seeing black men serve the Lord young was a whole other, like, what is this, right? And then I was in a multicultural, multi-ethnic movement that was led by black men. So, having white friends that were Christian just completely messed my mind, right? And so, I'm like, whoa, what is this? And then as I'm learning about God, learning about the gospel, learning about the church, and so, that was that first thing, but then I had another kind of crisis of faith where I couldn't see myself, like, in text, in the biblical text. I couldn't see black people and my people represented through scripture. And so, then that led me through a deep dive of church history, of biblical history, and just really, like, there's this one guy, I don't know if he's on the YouTube channel, but his tagline was, you just doubt towards faith, you know what I mean? Doubt from faith, right? And so, in that, as I was doubting towards faith, like, God, how do you reveal? That's when I started to discover all these things. So, I think, that's my long roundabout question, way to answer your question, is that one thing that I wish that people would know is that as black people and people from the African diaspora we are represented in the biblical text. We are all throughout the biblical text. Like, you can't have, like, you can't separate the ethnicity of who people are from the biblical text. Like, it starts with Adam and Eve. What we know is that was probably somewhere in North Africa, you know, like, you know, when you think about, like, the Jewish diaspora and what we know is not all Jews were white. Those are what we call Ashkenazi Jews, and then you have Sephardic Jews, I think it's the other half of that, which is the Jews that are not white. Right, basically, so, when you hear that and you see that and you know these things, you recognize that the Bible and Christianity does not belong to Europeans. It does not belong to white folk. It does not belong to any race, but it is a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial movement of God, that God is a God, and the God that we see in the Bible is a God of all people, is a God of creation, and he wants all people to come and worship him. And so, I would say, I would implore people that whatever knows, like, man, like, this is, that this, that the Bible and that Christianity is so much more robust and represents you in the text, is what I would say. Yeah, that's good, yeah, that's good. And I also like the part of, like, it's there, you know, versus, I feel like, whether it's on Instagram or, like, different places online, I feel like it's easy to learn or see, like, oh, it's not in the Word, or, like, this was used, like, I feel like it's outdated, like, this was used in slavery. For sure. Versus things like this are not talked about. For sure. Like, it's not seen in things like that. And what you gotta understand is that, like, the, that, that yes, yes, Christianity was used as a tool of colonization and enslavement. Yes, it was. But they had to cut so much of the Bible out to get there that was, like, like, people be searching for conspiracy theories and sometimes they miss the conspiracy theory that's right in front of their face. Right, like, and they know, like, the fact that when you go to National African American Museum of History and they have what they call a slave Bible, the slave Bible cut out 80% of the New Testament. Mm, so that's a false gospel. Yeah, that's a false, that's false. So they cut out anything that did with, with God freeing the slaves, anything that did with God looking after oppressed people, anything that did, which is most of the Old Testament, right, like, Exodus is not there. You know what I'm saying? And then anything that talked about freedom, anything that talked about, that talked about, like, the dignity of humanity, and so in that fight, these things were intentionally put together to dehumanize, right, and to subjugate black people. It took six years to make a quote, unquote, slave, when they walk over here on the slave ships, and so that is a routine dehumanization of people made in the image of God, and I would say it's like every religion or ideology will have its people that use that ideology towards the advancement of the elite or the advancement of someone who gains a benefit. James says that if there is any jealousy or selfish ambition, that is where the greatest evils are, right, and so there are people who use Christianity to gain an upper hand, right, and to create that, and to create the world and the culture in the way that we have, and the reason for that, why we know why that is is because there are rich white elites that created a system that subjugated poor white folks and enslaved Africans for them to gain monetary wealth, and this is the same fight that we're fighting right now. I think it was Hoover who said that if you give a poor white person someone to hate, he'll never notice you stealing out of his back pocket. Something like that. He'll never notice you stealing his wallet. You know what I'm saying? So that is why these things are the way that they are. When you look at the abolitionist movement, and Dr. Insano talks about this, and we look at the abolitionist movement, which is a movement to end slavery in America, one of the foundational questions that, this is a theological debate that they were having, and they said that we can't escape this one thing, and if we can't have an answer for this one thing that we see in the Bible, and we need to get rid of institutional slavery all together, well, do one to others as you would have them do one to yourself. And they're like, Jesus said this to live by this, but we can't square that circle. We can't. What do we do with that, and what does that mean? And that was one of the major things that they wrestled with, so one of the ways that they tried to explain it, and they never answered that out of the text, out of the biblical text. What they did was they answered that from a sociological perspective, not a biblical perspective. So they said black people are subhuman, so it is unloving for us to let them be free because they need a white caretaker to care for them, and that then became the basis for slavery, and how they tried to explain that away, right? And then out of that came so many heresies and other things like that, and that then became the foundation for, you know, for racist, white supremacist ideology using the Bible so that way they can preserve their agenda. And so there is no shortage of any school of thought or any religion, and we're just gonna talk about religion, any religious thought that has not co-opted what their beliefs for any type of gain or monetary advance, and unfortunately, Christianity is not immune to that as well, so. Yeah, because that's the difference between a false gospel versus the true gospel, right? The false gospel is based on man, or it's based on all these different things, versus the real gospel is based on what Jesus did, you know? And so that's a lot different in everything, but then also, like we were talking, maybe think about, it comes in first or second century, where it talks about the strange teachings of the Holy Spirit. Oh, yeah. Something about that. Yeah. Okay, here it is. So if we were talking about, like, what all these different things that people did and how it was in Scripture, and only in 1 Timothy 6, 3, if anyone uses a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he's teaching, that accords with Godliness, he is puffed up with sincerity and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels and words, which produce empty dissension and all those different things. But then, is this also, when you go down the line, but those who deserve to be rich for participation and to understand and to make their foot and harmful desires upon people and to bring destruction. And so when we were thinking about, or when we were talking about the, like the people who, they weren't wealthy, and they pronounced like they weren't wealthy and like, oh, I'm going to use whatever I need to do to get me this wealth. And it was done in a way that is unbiasing and it was done in a way that, like, they kept politicians patient. You know? And so, it's just like, it's like in an environment where it talks about flesh is worth the flesh and spirit is worth the spirit. And so, like, it's like the enemy is only supposed to enjoy it. And so, like, if my focus is so much on this, it's just going to keep going and going and going. And like, we, and like one thing that we, and I'm kind of getting us off topic, but like I think what we have to think about is, is that, is that, that there is, at like, that our main enemy is sin and sin corrupts absolutely from the inside out. And so, if I have desires in my heart that are unaligned and misaligned, right? Then, then, then I will, there is nothing that I won't, I won't care for my neighbor. You know what I'm saying? I won't care for the willful and those who are oppressed. I don't care for those who are vulnerable. And, and when you look at like how America is fractured, not fractured, not fractured, but how America like looks and the foundation of it was, was built off of backs of black people and in a, in a, in a social caste that was perpetuated by the love of money. Yeah, that is true. And when it goes back to like the love of money is the root of all evil. Jesus never said money was evil. He said the love of money is the root of all evil. And when we look at a capitalist system, and we all feel it right now, we're in a late state capitalist society right now. Like, like the joint is falling apart, right? But when we go after the love of money and the only thing that I worry about is my bottom line, I don't care for my neighbor. I don't care for the willful or the oppressed. I don't care for those who are oppressed because this is what I care for. This is how America was built, right? Like they, like they needed a class. We needed, we needed a caste, a social caste that would, that, that would like, that would be able to, we could build both of them. So, so, so, so the, they tried originally for the Indians, the Indian, the first nation people, but they funky and so they just ran away. Right? And so then they were like, well, let's import these people who have a different phenotype, right? That look differently, that are not from here and there's no way to get high. Right? And then we have to then create a social pecking order. So that way, these, that way, that way, that way, these two, these two castes won't mix and they won't come together. Right? And so, and so when black people were imported here as cargo in 1619 in Williamsburg, Virginia, right? That was the beginning of that system. And then now we see all the atrocities that come up with it. So let's go back to the text, right? Let's go back to, let's go back to the Bible and what Christianity has to do with this. Like, so much of the biblical text was omitted in order to justify what the slave owners and as well as the forefathers knew was wrong. Right? Like they knew what they were doing was wrong and they were, that they were deviating prescription and that they were deviating, that they were also disgracing the amount of the day. Right? And so, and so the start there was looking to start there. Right? There's a Thomas Jefferson quote that said that like, I fear the day, I fear for the day if the black man would do to us what we did to them. That's a Thomas Jefferson quote. Right? I butchered it, but you know, I think it's in Montpelier in his home somewhere in Montpelier, Virginia. But so when we look at this, right? Like does the Bible talk about slavery? Yes, the Bible does talk about slavery. Like the Bible does talk about slavery. Slavery is in the Bible. But one thing that we need to know, this is why we have to read the text in context, that the Bible, that the slavery in the Bible is not child slavery. It is not, that is a millennia of years away apart from each other. And so, so those two things are not the same. Right? And because of that, what ends up happening is God, because this is a social order, and the reason, how do we even get to slavery is because the world is sinful and evil, right? And that we live in a sinful, fallen, broken world. And God's design, when we zoom out, God's design is not for man to subjugate man. Right? God's design, how he created the world to be, is not for man to subjugate man. And I said it earlier, but I want to explain it here. There's a foundational term called the Imago Dei. It is Latin for made in the image of God. And so, when we say that someone, that every human being has inscribed on them the Imago Dei, that you have been made in the image of God. So because you've been made in the image of God, that means that inherent into you is a certain level of dignity, honor, and respect, just because you're made in the image of God. Right? Just because you're made in the image of God. Just because you're born, you're here, you are deserving of dignity, honor, work, and respect. Right? And so, because of that, the way that we look at the Bible, right, that there's a way that we are to interact and treat other persons, and other people who are made in the image of God, that automatically undercuts slavery. Yeah. Right? So when we see slavery in the Bible, we gotta understand that that is not how God wanted it to be. Right? So let's do, we gotta start there. Then as we go out, then, because man is sinful, and man desires to seek his own way, then this is it, it's one of the worst chapters in the Bible that says, man decides to go his own way, his own way, and God was just sad that he ever created man. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So because we are born into sin, shipped into iniquity, that means that we're born into sin, and our bodies are made to break the love. Now, the desire here is to have power over each other. So, when God then starts to build his nation, his people with Israelites, Moses then freed them. What is the first thing that God does? He frees them from slavery. Mm-hmm, yeah. So what we see in the Bible, we look at God. God is a liberator of those who are oppressed. God is a defender of the lonely. God is a defender of those who are weak. God is someone who fights for those who are the lowest, the last, the lost, and the least. Yeah. Right? So he frees his people, and then what he then does is, he then, when you look, read through the rest of the first Bible of survival, they call it the Pentateuch, or the Torah, when you read through the rest of the first Bible of survival, God then legislates a more just society. And he says that, hey, if you are to have slaves, you need to free them after a certain point. Yes. That you cannot, that if your slave has a child, that your slave has a child, then that child is free. You know what I'm saying? So he legislates, you know what I'm saying, because man's in a sinful, fallen, and broken world, go our own way, he then legislates a more just and equitable way, right, for us to have it. His ideal, though, is for us to not discriminate each other, right? And then as we continue to go further out from that, God is a God who liberates, God is a God who frees. So then Jesus comes on the scene to liberate us from our slave master's sin, so that we can choose God and choose his way over our way. And then now we see even more that Jesus doesn't talk about slavery, but that doesn't mean that, there's a lot of things Jesus didn't talk about explicitly, but that doesn't mean that we can't infer intentions, right? And so then you see later in Paul, where he tells these people, first Corinthians, hey, if you have opportunity to seek your freedom, gain it. Right, and then he tells Paul Amen, he wrote a letter to Paul Amen, telling him to free and treat one niece of his, who was his slave, like a brother in the faith, right? That's what I was gonna do with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I was about to say about, right? Yeah. And so when you see that, what you see here is that, I love what John Easton on the prophecy says, he says that, what was the, and I mean, he's quoting some of the abolitionists. He says, what was the ceiling in the New Testament is the floor for us. He says, Paul said these things because he was, because Christianity, Christians were an oppressed subculture, that they were not, they did not have any political power, they did not have any social power, they didn't have anything. So working within that system, he provided a framework for how Christians are able to live, should live, within the Roman culture and system, that's it, right? But it's completely different for those in, you know, 17, 18, or 18, 19, 20th century North America. We are the ones that run the culture. We are the ones that make the laws. We are, so Paul could only do so much of what he had, or the New Testament scholar writers could only do so much of what they had. We who have all the power, now we can actually abolish all this. Yeah, face the law. What was the ceiling for Paul is the floor for us, that we can then literally usher in a more just, more equitable society. And we see this in our political system today, that whenever there is the oppression of black people, that is also the oppression of all people, eventually. It starts with black people and then it extends out to everyone else. They started putting data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the blackest areas in the country, beside Atlanta, and other places, where more black people, don't, don't, don't come at me, don't come at me about that, where other places are black and brown. But, everybody was cool with that, because it was Memphis. Until it started showing up in Wisconsin. Until it started showing up in Utah. Until it started showing up in Minnesota. Until it started showing up in other places, right? And so, when we, when we don't look at how oppressed and the most vulnerable of us are, we miss on what potentially could be our future. So, that's, that's my big, little joint I want to say. I don't talk a lot, but I want to make sure. No, you did good, huh? Hot, hot, hot, hot, that was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was good. Okay, it's a little dicey. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm just trying to say this, but, it is sound dicey. Yeah. But, I get all your things, right? Yes. But, why am I going to follow Jesus over and over and over and follow? Great question. Especially when I'm black. Yeah. Like, why? That's a good question. Well, I would say a couple reasons. One, Christianity and Islam, Islam is 500 years after Christianity. So, Christianity predates Islam by 500 years. That's one thing. So, he was not around, Muhammad, the prophet was not around when any of these events were here, right? That's one thing. Then, when you look at how the, so, that's one thing. Another thing I would say is that, I find that really hard to believe, because when you look at the history, Christianity spread further south and east than it ever did west. Here's what I mean. That what are now a lot of Islamic nations were first Christian nations. The seat of Christian thought was actually what we would call Cappadocia, which is now, Cappadocia, now modern day Istanbul, Turkey, which is a Muslim nation. When you look at the Bible, when it was translated, it was translated into Korean Greek, which is common, layman's Greek, but then it was soon closely translated into Syriac, and as well as Coptic. Syriac is, think, all the regions around Syria, that's the Middle East, and then think about Coptic, that's Egypt, right? And so, one of the first Christian nations we see in Africa is the Kushites, or Ethiopia, I would say Ethiopia is probably the oldest, so we say, we definitely know for sure Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian nations still living to this day, right? And so, they have a different version of the Bible, they have, their Bible is just like, well, they have a couple extra chapters of, some of it is what we would call the Septuagint, the Deuterocles, which is like, some of the Roman, the Latin translations of different parts of the Old Testament, right? You know what I'm saying? And so, but it's still the same core message. You know what I'm saying? Message is not deviated. And so, when you think about that, like how Christianity spread all the way from starting in Israel, all the way to South, into Africa, deep into North Africa and Central Africa, and then it spread from 15 years ago, passed to India, all the way into China, is where Christianity was, well before Rome, and as well as, well before we even knew what Scotland was. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So, there's an Apostle named Sam Shonin in Holland, and he says that, what we don't understand, and what a lot of Muslims don't understand, is that your original faith was Christianity. Now, how did this happen? There were a lot of Islamic conquest and oppression. Two reasons why this happened. One, first reason, church split. They couldn't agree on certain things, long story short. I don't wanna go into the whole church history. So, East split with West. So, the Eastern Orthodox churches went one way, and then the Western Roman Catholic churches went another way. And because of that isolation and separation, the next thing came was intense years of unrelenting oppression, and persecution for the faith. And a lot of, and it was hard for those believers to hold on, so a lot of them perverted. And so, you could say, yeah, you know, like, Islam is the black man's religion, and that's who we are, and I was like, no, actually, it's not all the way complete. You know what I'm saying, that's more incomplete, because a lot of our ancestors came over all those ships with the faith, with the gospel, believing, like, our belief don't start with me at the plantation. Our belief actually starts in Africa, right? And so, there's a lot of things that we can get into that are a little bit more technical, but I would just say, just from a historical perspective, we need to look at that. Like, there's a, Thomas Ogden wrote a book called How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, and in there, he writes 10 things that Africa, that are African traditions, that then we see in America. One of those things is monasteries. That monasteries came from the Egyptian desert fathers and mothers, who sold everything that they had, and went to live in the desert to commune with God. They wrote some of the greatest books on intimacy with the Lord, and then, from that tradition, then birthed monasteries, and monks, some of the first monasteries are in Egypt and Ethiopia, and then that thing got carried over into Europe, right? And then, like, I'm trying to remember the other names, I think universities, might be another one, but I don't know, quote me on that. But, so there are 10 different things that he writes that are uniquely African things that help to shape how we are as a people. Another one, I would say, is if you look at like, different doctrines, and who were the people that fought for those doctrines, like, you got Athanasius, who's called the Black Dwarf, who was at the Council of Mycenae, was a staunch defender for the trinity, right? And he was a North African church father. Then you got St. Augustine, he was a, he was mixed, he was half Greek, half Egyptian, I think, but he was a North African, not white, church father. And when you look at, like, Catholicism, they always spoke the same message. You know what I'm saying? And so there are so many people, like, when you look at the Gospel of Mark, some theologians are crediting that Mark, who was John Mark, who was Barnabas's nephew, and who Barnabas and Paul broke up with, he was a Cyrenian Jew, that he was from Cyrene, the sun of North Africa. So the Gospel of, the writer of the Gospel of Mark, who was actually Peter's Gospel, is a African church father. The man who helped Jesus carry his cross, Simon, the Cyrenian, that's a North African Jew. I would never read that and think that. Yeah, yeah. So the man who helped Jesus carry his cross was black, was North African, and then what we see later is he came to save, he brought his family to save, because when you read in Acts 13, two of his sons are mentioned as church leaders in the church of Antioch. So when you think about this, from the Antiochian Union, you think about all the people mentioned throughout the text like black folk are all the way mentioned in while Jesus was still living, y'all, and Israel came 500 years after. Who was first? This is too bad. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I mean, it's true. It's been 500 years, there's been some more. And I also, it's just like, the Lord is the Lord, you know? Like he made every single child, every single patient, you know, and so, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, that's an easy answer I would ask somebody to look at and to see, so yeah. That's good. Yeah. Anything else, or like, why do you feel like black people should trust the Lord? Yeah? Yeah, well, I think every person should trust in the Lord. I mean, just given a broad reason, I would say like, Bryce Brooks said in his book, God is not dead, he says Christianity is the only world where there's nothing wrong with me, and that my greatest problem is sin, that sin separated me from God. And so, when we look at the world, we see that the world is evil. Like, there's nothing that, we can look at, look at the news, just look at some of the things that people are facing, that is real evil in the world. And what the Bible tells us is that it's not just evil out there, there's evil in here. That if I have lied, if I have lusted after someone, if I wanted what my neighbor had, if I, like, Jesus takes it further today, that if you lie, you lie to God. If you harbored hatred in your brother's heart, you murdered him, you know what I'm saying? If you lusted after him, you committed adultery with her, you know what I'm saying? And so, in that, like, we see that, like, man, that sin is corrupting the world, but sin is also corrupting us. Jesus offers a way out, and says, man, like, I will take away your sin, take away your shame, take away these things, and give you life and relationship with my Father. And that's the whole reason why I came, I came for you, right? And that you would come to me. And so, I would say, man, that's a message, being real tough, that's a dog, that's my hun, that's a message that I would say is one that captivates my heart every single time, that the reality of it is that, that unfortunately, like, I can't fix me, I've tried, you know what I'm saying, like, but what God does is, is that God says, in the midst of your imperfections, I still want you. That you don't have to have it all figured out in order to come to me. That actually, if you come to me, we'll walk together and we'll help you figure out how to put these, I'll show you where the pieces go. Yeah, I don't have to do myself up to come to Christ. Yeah, yeah, I don't have to do myself up to come to Christ. All I gotta do is just come, all I gotta do is just come, all I gotta do is just come to Him. And so, I would say, like, not just for black folk, but I would say for every person. Now, the question is for black people, so I would say for black people, why we should come to Christ. I would say, man, like, as we, one of the greatest things that Jesus has done for me that I was not ready for, was that Jesus helped me to forgive those who have sinned against me. That those who have oppressed me, who have oppressed my family, Jesus has helped me to forgive and to not hold on to that bitterness. I was just having a conversation with someone that I would say that if it was not for the Lord, I would be in a state of perpetual rage. Because you can't tell me, I know what happened to us. Right? And I know what's happening to us. And so, my counselor says that when we don't forgive, we hold on to a hot coal and expect it to burn a person that we got an offense of bitterness towards, right? And so, for me, going up the way that I grew up, I am the first generation of my family to live in a desegregated world, me. My mother grew up in the Jim Crow South. My father grew up in the Jim Crow South. All my uncles and uncles grew up in the Jim Crow South. They, my mother went to segregated schools. My mother just turned 80. And so, with that, knowing the stories, knowing what I got, I got my mother, she's my oldest daughter, like, and she's telling me from the story she heard, what it was like on the plantation. You know what I'm saying? From her grandmother, you know what I'm saying? And so, from her mother, my grandmother. And so, growing up, there was a lot of sour milk and hatred that I had for white people. Yeah. Like, like literal hatred. Just, and it was funny because, like, white folks didn't do nothing to me. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, you know, like, I had some white folks on the N-word, you know, not beautiful. You know, like, like, yeah, I had a woman, like, you know, like that. But I did not go through what my parents went through. But because of how I was bred, and what the stories I heard, I held a heart of that in my heart. And that, and a lot of black parents who do that, sometimes inadvertently protect that child to get them ready for the reality of the world that you're gonna face. Like, this is how white people are, was to me, and I think as well as like one, I think a lot of it is involved as well. This is that black people know white people better than they know themselves. Right? And so in that, like, like, so like, with that reality, there was a hardened heart that I had for white people. And that was one of the things that honestly kept me awake at the time. Yeah. Right? You know, but when I had that encounter with Jesus, and Jesus revealed himself and showed himself as real, I was in community with white people, but I didn't know how to do it. Right? And so here it is, one of my closest friends when I first got saved was Mike Parker. And Mike Parker was a believer. And here it is. He's like, we're gonna be friends. I'm like, no, we're not. Like, I'm kidding. I'm not gonna be friends. But in that man, he showed me what Christian brotherhood was like. And if only he didn't decide for me, we were just brothers. Like, we were just, we were equals. And it was like, okay, well, Mike is cool. Mike is good. You know what I'm saying? But then he married a girl named Brooke, and Brooke was another sister and friend of mine. And I got to talk to her, and then I met another guy named John Michael Payette, one of the coolest white boys I've ever met in my life. And Fisher, and all these other people. And I'm like, okay, well, these white people are good. Right? That was God chipping away. Chipping away at that heart of mine. Chipping away at that bitterness in that resentment. Chipping away at that hurt and that pain. Right? That I held on to. And then, God slowly just kept chipping away. Just kept chipping away, kept chipping away. And then finally, I ended up discipleship with one of my first white person, a white boy, his name was Gabe Rutter. And then another one came named Robert Judy. And those are now spiritual leaders in our church. And so, I'm discipling them. And I'm like, man. Like, Brian Lawrence says, when you disciple people, disciple means to help someone follow Jesus. When you're helping someone to follow Jesus, a lot more is caught and taught. And so here it is. I am wrestling with this hatred I have for white people as I'm trying to help a young white boy follow Christ. So I'm gonna wrestle. And it's not a good one. And then, one of them ended up taking interest in a black girl. I'm like, hey. Hey, my wife is black. Your girlfriend's gotta be black. Right? Like, don't, don't, don't. We gotta pick that up, right? You know what I'm saying? But this is, this is, this is, this is in my heart though. Like, it's coming out. Like, whatever, the Bible speaks what the heart is full of, right? It's coming out. And so here it is. And I'm, I'm wrestling. I'm wrestling. I'm like, man, but I love this boy. I love this boy. He's like my son. I love him. Oh, I don't like that. And so, we ended up, like, coming to a head on that. And, and, and then finally one day, I was in my room. I was up three o'clock in the morning. I woke up, I was talking to my friend, but I was praying. I just, it was, or I was just up. And I remember reading a, I remember listening to a song about Leon Sprump. And Leon Sprump was saying how he was raised in Alabama. And he was just saying how, how he hated, he was very supportive. And I hated white people. He said he was going to school one day and white people with different smiles still. You know what I'm saying? Calling them N-words. He was like, I hate white people. He said, so now he got saved. He's in church. He said the one woman that he's looking at, he's like, man, she got everything he wants in her life. He got a whole list. And then he's like, but the one that she didn't have is that she was black. So he goes to his mom and he's like, mama, like, this woman that always said that his mom was a believer, she was like, well, if she got all those things, that's not supposed to happen. That's the first time I do it. Right? And so, I'm listening to this. I'm like, your mama led you, all right? But I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm listening. And then he says this. He says, for the sake of the gospel, I am a son of God first, a husband second, a pastor third, I mean, a father third, a pastor fourth, and a black man last. Ooh. When he said that, that, ooh, I couldn't agree with that. I was like, and what the Lord was showing me was that I made an idol of my ethnicity. And I was holding on to her in the pain. And the last question, the last thing that happened, me and my wife was talking, and my wife knew I was pregnant, and she's like, baby, I got a question for you. She's like, if, because we're about to have our first daughter, she's like, if our daughter dates or gets married, who do you want our daughter to get married to? Do you want her to get married to a black man or a Christian? I was like, preferably a black Christian, right? Trying to silence that question. She's like, no, but think about it. Who would you have a daughter of? I was like, man, I would want my daughter to be married to someone that loves Jesus, because if they didn't love Jesus, they don't know how to love her well. Yeah. And in that, that was the last, like, strong, that was the strong that brought the candles back. And I had to repent for the prejudice and the hatred that I had in my heart towards my brother. And I had to let it go, and in letting it go, my life, I feel free, you know what I'm saying? And not only do I feel free, but I'm able to actually not harbor hatred for my brother's blood and faith, and I'm also able to not hold on and to let go. Freedom. Freedom, I'm able to live free. Now, that does not mean that I'm not cautious. That don't mean that I don't ignore, right? Like, there are certain, I have rules, like I'm not gonna get into certain conversations with people because I don't know where you at, right? You know what I'm saying? And all that, that don't mean that I'm like, oh yeah, you know me good. No, no, I'm still very much aware. Stay woke, but the heaviness that I had, right? That I lived with, and the heaviness that I see a lot of my brothers and sisters who are black live with. I don't live with that anymore, right? I don't live with that anymore. And God is faithful, and he knew like, hey, I'm a pastor at a multi-ethnic church. You know what I'm saying? Like, and so that's what I've learned over the years about plenty of churches that will be multi-ethnic. And so God was preparing me for where he was sending me, but then also to hold space for other black people, other people of color, and white people to show, hey, slavery hurts us all. Like, I think James Baldwin said, this is a psychological tax of whiteness. That because in the efforts, oh, it was James Baldwin or W.E.B. Boyce, but like, but because white folk wanted to be white, they sacrificed parts of themselves in order to get there, right? And what the Bible says, and if you look at James 1 and James 2, it's called the sin of partiality, right? And it's just like, if you give a seat to a rich man without a poor man, that's evil. And so why should a black person become a Christian or come to faith? I would say what I said in the beginning about, you know, like, saying all that stuff, but there's a different level of freedom and a different level of hope that I have. And that I didn't necessarily have before. That I believe that God can change men's hearts. And I believe that we can disciple the white-eyed people. I believe that, and I've seen it, I've seen people who were not woke or not aware of what was going on around us come to faith, have scales lift off their eyes, hear stories of who their brothers and sisters in faith are moved, and was like, what can we do? Right? Like, what can we do? And not from, well, now I'm aware, I know better. No, but no, like, how do I live life with you? And it's not just, oh, you're one of the good ones. No, but it's like, no, like, what does this look like? How do we live together? Like, I'm aware of this, I see this, I wanna do something about it. And that's the, I didn't have that before. Cause I didn't believe white people had it in them. And by God's grace, man, I'm okay at that. I've been able to live in that freedom and that hope by God's grace. So yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's so good, oh my goodness. Thank you Pastor Marcus, that was so good. That's good, okay. You got anything else that you wanna share? Or like takeaway? Yeah. In your community, what people who don't look like you. Yeah. I don't know, I don't wanna go back. But like, when you were talking about like, you know, your family did this, and now you know this. And you are living in that time now. Yeah, for sure. You know, like, how do I live in a community with people who don't look like me? Sometimes I make this up, and I'm like, ah, what are you doing? You know, and like all the different things versus like, plans are just like, oh, I'm done with you. Yeah, I would say you, all right, okay, now I'm gonna get like, this might mean, this might continue like, hurt. You have to, if you're a black person, or a person of color, or someone who might be a white person that is aware of these things, I would say that, and you're a Christian, and you're a Christian, and you believe in the Lord, I would say you gotta find healthy spaces and places where things like this are talked about, and that are actually diverse underneath, and not just on the surface. Because a lot of places that are diverse on the surface, but when you crack down underneath it, it's from a Eurocentric, white watch view. Yeah. Right, and so I would say, I would say you gotta find community with people where we can have these honest conversations, and in having those honest conversations, not saying everything that that person says is gonna be right. There has to be a level of grace and empathy afforded, but it's also a piece of, I'm willing to walk through together with this, to the other side, to see it through. Yeah, that unity. Yeah, and so I would say, I would say, yeah, I would say, and then with that, I would say, the second thing I would say is that, in that space, it gotta be uncomfortable for everybody. In that part, and you had to say it, and that. Yeah, so this is what I'm saying, so like, sometimes, I've heard this before, not, praise God, not at our church. Whoa, I'm just a big Willie Thompson, but like, not so much at our church, but I have heard churches, been in churches where it was like, yeah, it was diverse, but I felt like I had to leave parts of my culture behind to see it. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, there was a predominant culture there that was there, that not all of me could be fully in the space, is what I'm saying. Right, and so, when I say that you, it gotta be uncomfortable for everybody. In order for us to live multi-ethically, everybody gotta sacrifice. Yeah. So, I just can't come in here and say, oh, black folk, y'all gotta be okay, because we do CCM, but we're not gonna do no gospel. No, we probably won't have a gospel song in there. We'll probably have a CCM song, because they're great Christian music, and we'll probably do a hymn. You know what I'm saying? Maybe, maybe, maybe. To cheer everybody up. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, and so, but like, but that's intentional behind, it's costing us all something to be here. You gotta be okay, we probably won't speak in service. We probably won't speak, you know what I'm saying, if I'm in a spot with a lot of Haitians, we probably won't have a Creole version of the song. You know what I'm saying? Because it's gotta be uncomfortable for all of us. All of us are sacrificing something to be in community here, and it doesn't work if only one party is asked to sacrifice so everybody is gonna be comfortable. Yeah. But it gotta be, no, we are all uncomfortable here. I'm not used to having, if somebody comes in, and they're like, I'm not used to having a black pastor, we gotta be okay with that. Or for me, when I was like, we had left here with a degree, but I'm not accepting a white pastor. But okay, great, but for the sake of the gospel, we don't, and so I think that, I think black people have to be for the sake of the gospel, because what Jesus said, that they shall know you by the love that you have for one another. And then we look at the, again, in John 17, it says, through your, not in John, but it says, through your unity, they shall see the gospel. So for the sake of the gospel, through our unity, people will know who Jesus is. Yeah. They'll be confused by it and ask questions. So for the sake of the gospel, I'm willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel, I'm willing to be in a space, in a place, where we are talking about real issues in our church, in our community, and we'll try to find ways to address them together. For the sake of the gospel, I will leave places that are comfortable for me, so that I can be in community that are uncomfortable for me, so we can learn how we live together. And that does, that's what we aspire to do when we leave the green throne. That's what we're aspiring to do. I'm praying that, most of the people who are on our team are black, which is cool, praise God, I'm with it, I'm not upset by it, but I'm actually praying for white people to join us. Okay. Through our unity. Through our unity. Yeah. For the sake of the gospel, and it costs us all something. So my final quote, Tim Keller said, our team, to a real one, he said that we gotta take everything that is God-glorifying and God-edifying from our culture, cut it away from the bad, and sew it all together, so we can create a beautiful tapestry to the glory of God. And that's what it looks like to be in a multi-ethnic space. Mm-hmm. So. That's so good. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Praise God. Anything else? Yeah, man, y'all can follow me on Instagram, it's MAonMission, Instagram, if you wanna email me, it's Pastor Marcus, P-A-S-T-O-R, and Marcus, M-A-R-C-U-S, at D-U-C church, D-U-C church.org. I think it's MAonMission on everything, such as Instagram, Twitter. I'm not really on social media like that, so I'm probably not a good follow-up. But. But I give you all the different things here and there. But yeah, man, if you got, if you wanna talk more, if you got more questions, or if you're curious, or you're like, man, how did I get here, or whatever, please shoot me an email. I'm always down to have a conversation, always down to answer questions. This is something deeply personal to me, and so, yeah. Right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in, y'all, and I hope that you have a sweet rest of your week, and thank you so much, Pastor Marcus, for coming on. Yeah, man, no problem. Y'all be easy. All right, see y'all. Bye. That was so good. Oh, yeah. So good, I thought that'd be loud. Yeah. I was like, woo! Yeah. I was like, woo! I was like, woo! I was like, woo! I was like, woo! That was good. Yeah, yeah. That was so good. Great job, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, I was trying to answer some of those things. I was like, ah, I want to get into a, I was gonna go, I was like, man, I don't want to go down a politic, rap, homie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was, ugh, how do I answer this in a way? And so, yeah, so I was, ugh, but I'm glad that it flowed like how it flowed, and we had a lot of the things that you answered. I was like, oh, okay, I'll just answer this real quick. So, I feel like a Muslim one. Yeah. Yeah, I felt like the Lord put that in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just wondering what you guys think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, I go through, I was gonna use your mix, I go through my circles everywhere, because I'm not as well versed in the Quran, and to be able to cite chapter and verse, you know what I'm saying? Like how some people do online, I just be that dumb. But, when you know that it came around five million years after, and that none of the other people who were with Jesus were there, I probably should have said that most of the Bible was written, that most of the Bible was written.