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John Piper: Bloodlines
A trailer for the full 20 minute documentary where Pastor John describes his childhood in the South, and how the Gospel transformed his life.:
No doubt, the South will be made to look evil. I hope not. Seriously, if John Piper had a problem growing up with racism, let’s spank his parents for being racists, but I hope the South-racism connection will be left out. John, whatever feelings you had of racism was not due to living in the South, for the record. It was strictly due to sin in your soul. I hope you don’t blame the South for your wrong doings.
Yeah bro.. I totally missed that in the video. You made me wanna look into this when there is more of a trailer to watch.
He is only trying to attract attention to himself. He is a “Christian hedonist”, remember? My mother’s folks were racist. My mom refused to teach me that vile stuff – even though we were all from the south (we do consider Oklahoma and Texas thataway). Joel is right – it aint’ about the south, it’s sin. The north was far more racist than the south and the northern Democrats and northern Republicans have lots of ‘splainin’ to do.
I’ve had more than enough of Piper – and I’ve never cared much for his style (too emotive) or his view of church hierarchy and structure. He and Tim Keller and all others who once were reformed and are now deformed need to be taken down off their podiums and put back in a pew to learn the gospel once again. Not the man pleasing garbage they now spew.
Where does Piper blame anyone? He himself admits that he was “swimming in a cesspool of sin.”
While the point that racism existed in the North as well in equal measure is valid, this notion that the South could do no wrong is an abject denial of reality. I am a proud Kentuckian; however I acknowledge the sins of my fellow Kentuckians when they kidnapped a black man and hung him from a tree on my great-great uncle’s farm for allegedly raping a white woman. No trial. No due process. They outright murdered him.
Extrajudicial killings like these were not isolated incidents. There were nearly 3500 of these in the South between the years 1882-1968. This figure does include the number of white people who were also lynched for being “n***** -lovers.” This is a fact and it is incontrovertible.
Good sir, it is my contention that the South (as the North) did indeed have a “problem.” To deny this only exacerbates the problem.
In the end, our Southern pride- yours and mine, means squat.
Who said the South was perfect or implied the notion that the South could do no wrong? Not I…
I have a simple question. Why is the modern notion of racism not in the Bible? Why is it not held out as distinctively evil – like murder, or rape, or theft, or idnapping or adultery or homosexuality? Or, if you prefer, one of the primary “heart” sins like lust, or avarice, or unforgiveness?
I think I have a simple answer. All the Bible says about sin, about distinctly named sins as the outworking of a sinful heart and fallen nature already cover every possible issue. If I defraud a black man as (being) a white man (and I am a white man) , I have defrauded him – as a man. If I as a white man murder a black man, I have murdered a man. If I as a white man (and by the way substitute any race here or in any of these examples) steal from a black man, I have simply stolen from him as a man. The Bible does not speak to a special sin of stealing from black folks, or oriental folks, or short folks, or folks who speak with southern accents, or folks who prefer Ron Paul, or folks who have long hair or short hair or those who drive Chevy’s and not Fords. Folks, even if you seek out another race to sin against deliberately, the sin is…the SIN! If I defraud black folk, my sin is I defraud. If I defraud white folk, my sin is that I defraud. If I defraud equally among the races, my sin is that I defraud.
My comments from another blog:
For the Christian, loving our neighbors as ourselves, does impact all our decisions. However, it appears that this assumes many things that I believe it should not. And with these assumptions comes, what I believe, is a reflection of the misunderstanding by Evangelicals, modern Evangelicals, with regard to race, ethnicity, culture and community and the differing contexts such as social, political and spiritual, in which they may be found and the regulative (or lack thereof) Biblical principles for each.
Frankly I do not anticipate Piper giving a deep treatment, rather, for the most part as he normally writes, I expect a treatment of what he considers the obvious and then an exhaustive sermonizing about their evils. In my view, one of Piper’s greatest weaknesses is his lack of rigorous testing of the prescriptive soundness of his assertions and I expect to find this in this book. Of course it is always with the hope of being wrong.
But let me give you a slight taste of what I mean by Evangelical misapprehension on the matter. Suppose you encounter a society that regulates itself by excluding women from certain social events. For example, voting with regard to publicly elected officials.
Does the Bible require us to commend or condemn this? Well, neither.
And now suppose a country decides that it wishes to regulate its population by bloodlines and all those who cannot demonstrate genetic relationship are not given citizenship. Does the Bible require us to commend or condemn this? Neither. In fact, take an Indian tribe such as, say…the Cherokee Nation who recently removed the voting rights of certain black slave descendants based, just on this issue, a lack of genetic relationship or genuine relationship. These were black slaves owned by individual Cherokees but not the Cherokee Tribe or nation itself. And a treaty after the Emancipation Proclamation between the US and the Cherokee Nation gave these Freeman (the now freed slaves and their descendants) Cherokee Indian status. The CN just voted them out. Does the Bible require inclusion of these people or not? Well, again, it does not have a binding protocol but some would seek to misuse the Bible to force a protocol and condemn the Cherokee Nation. They are in great error.
One might respond with the earlier context such as, “How is this not loving your neighbor as yourself?”. This question assumes, then, that loving your neighbor as yourself means changing public policy to reflect your own wishes and not that of the your collective neighbors who might actually prefer this. Would you want your neighbors to consider your desires and wishes? Right, so then you would, in order to love them as yourself, actually might need to silence yourself, not assert yourself.
Now, in spiritual contexts and without dispute, we all know that the Bible forbids favoritism or exclusion or any kind of preferential treatment with regard to one’s operation within the body of Christ. So I won’t deal with that since it is, really, without dispute though some issues of surreptitiousness might arise.
And I believe this is but a smidgen of the kind of consideration that is lacking in crusader issues within Evangelicalism. Racism is an opportunity for posturing and crusading and all too often this is the disappointing kind of rhetoric I find when essays and books are published on the matter. We’ll see.
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Joel Taylor, what’s the hoopla about? I don’t see it. Can we agree that the whole world is a cesspool of sin? Maybe I don’t see the rub because I am on the outside looking in, but do you really want to row with a brother about his experiences and guilts. This is just carnal stuff.
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Gloria,
I realize you posted to Joel but if I may I wish to respond to this in general. If the book were oh so innocently just about John Piper’s experiences and guilt then maybe there would be no rub. But the book is much more in its claims and imperatives; imperatives that are unsound and unbiblical and that is the rub.
When we minimize the offense of another we disrespect the valid process of claiming grievances. And there are many grievances to claim against some of the assertions by Piper in the book. I thorough review is forthcoming by several people that will demonstrate the theological distortions and frankly, logical distortions and contradictions, Piper uses to forward his ideas in the book.
Does this mean everything in the book is in error? No such foolish suggestion has been made. But there are some substantial mistakes that seek to impose upon believers, the Body of Christ, imperatives, demands, expectations or forms of evaluation that simply are misleading at best and honestly, atrocious and unscriptural. That is the rub and it needs a whole lot more rubbing.
I’ve read this comment 4 times now and am having trouble understanding what you are saying. Could you provide some specific ideas rather than just using broad words like “theological distortions?”
Jordon,
I did provide some specific ideas in my first post above dated Sept. 12, feel free to read it and follow up with any questions or rebuttals to those specific ideas I posted.
Alex