Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm your host Adam Young and today we are continuing

to look at the racial trauma that pervades contemporary America. Let me say at the outset that

this is going to be a lot to take in. So if you need to listen a couple times or if you need to

listen in chunks, that's totally fine. Please hit pause when you've had enough and you need to

just ponder what you've heard. Okay, here we go. Last time I shared some of my story about the

racism in me. Today I want to look at the Bible's take on how Christians are called to respond

when racial injustice is occurring in our land. I am not going to devote any time to making a case

that America is an unjust society. If you believe that America is just and fair, I beg you to pick up

any of the books on anti-racism written by a person of color and find out if people of color

experience America as just and fair. I'm assuming that America is unjust. My experience is that

many white Christians will in fact acknowledge that America is unjust, but they do not believe that

they are personally responsible for doing anything about it because they are not personally doing

the acts of injustice. And this is where I want to focus. This episode is primarily for white

Christians who have a sense inside of I acknowledge that racial injustice exists in America.

But since I am not personally committing acts of injustice, I am therefore not personally responsible

for the injustice that is occurring. Let's look at what the Bible has to say about this subject

because it says a lot. The Hebrew word for justice is Mishpoth and it occurs over 200 times in the

Old Testament. Mishpoth means to treat people equitably. It means punishing every person the same

regardless of race or social status. The idea behind Mishpoth is that anyone who commits the

same wrong must pay the same penalty. Likewise, it means acquitting every person equally.

And Israel was to be governed by Mishpoth by justice. Now, I think it is an uncontroversial

statement to say that the United States has very little Mishpoth in it. We have scores of studies

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