The True Freedom of Religion

Posted on by Alex

A common meme from anti-Christians is that Christianity is a restrictive religion. Many modern churches have also begun to sing this refrain as they attempt to abandon “legalism,” which they mostly define as rigid rules put in place by churches on music and attire (this is not true legalism, but difference in preference as I wrote about here). The Bible is a book of negative liberties – it tells us what NOT to do, therefore, true freedom can only be found by abandoning organized religion.

This line of thinking is dangerously ignorant.

Most people fail to realize that the “fun” they have at social gatherings is not due to drinking or taking other substances, but from the social gathering itself. Sociologist Emile Durkheim called the euphoric feeling at a social event “collective effervescence.” He theorized that it was this very effervescence that formed the basis of religion as a social system. He believed that religion is the worship of the group, therefore, specific doctrine, rites, and rituals are irrelevant. What matters is that people do it together.

This effervescence transcends substances. The only necessary ingredient is having a group of people in the physical presence of others, and essentially performing the same ritual – whether that be prayer and worship at church or doing the wave at a football game.

Religious groups are incredibly fun, in that they enjoy the same effervescence that secular groups feel. It is euphoric to gather and get to know people with similar interests. The only “restrictions” at most Christian events are no drugs or alcohol, no nudity or sex, and not engaging in other taboos. Again, if fun is based on being social, those additional “freedoms” are unnecessary.

Notice I put “freedoms” in quotation marks. This is because I do not believe true freedom comes from the sins of secularism.

Go to any recovery group and ask the members there if drinking or doing drugs brings freedom. At Reformer’s Unanimous, the Faith-based recovery group I attend, we speak of addiction as bondage. You might be fortunate enough to not suffer from a substance addiction, but a huge number of people do. They will tell you that the urge to use supersedes basic life functioning. Addicts often struggle with depression and other mental health issues.

This is not freedom.

If you have fallen for the lies of the “free love” movement of the 1960s in which we should all have the “freedom” to engage in uninhibited sexual conquest and public nudity – would draw your attention to the recent allegations throughout the #metoo movement. This social movement was born the minute that we told men and women that sex outside of the confines of marriage comes without repercussions. We now have exceptionally high single-parent poverty, abuse of power through sexual assault, increases in sexually transmitted diseases, and contentious debates over “toxic masculinity” and our universities being bastions of “rape culture” manifested on campuses.

This is not freedom.

Furthermore, Cultural Marxists infesting the media, universities, and Leftist political parties constantly remind us that we are all oppressed in some way. Racial and ethnic minorities, women, Muslims, LGBT, the poor, the uneducated, children, adults, the mentally ill, etc. living in a Western, capitalist society are oppressed by our economic system. Those not living in a capitalist society are oppressed by economic colonialist nations. Unless you are a member of the white, patriarchal, bourgeoisie, you are oppressed.

Statistics show that many of those elitist bourgeoisie also face greater risk of suicide and stress related deadly diseases. Being a wealthy, white, male business owner is oppressed by health risks.

This is not freedom.

Far too many in society try to convince us that wealth, sexual promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, and constant partying are expressions of freedom. This is simply not true.

Is religion, particularly Christianity, also oppressive?

There are certain periods we can point to in which major atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. The Crusades and Inquisition are blights on “Christian” history, but these events are not based in true Christianity, rather, they are based on the evil acts of wicked people who happened to call themselves Christians.

True Christianity demands that we avoid dangerous behavior. We have plenty of evidence that “the wages of sin are death”, not just spiritually, but they often lead to an early and painful demise in this life. Diseases linked to drinking, drugs, and smoking cigarettes number in the hundreds of thousands (the majority come from smoking). Contracting an STD can be range from perpetually irritating to deadly.

What comes from behaving in a Christ-like fashion? Being ostracized from society from not being like them. Have any diseases been linked to any specifically Christian behavior? Are there any unhealthy Christian addictions? Do true Christians start wars? Starve citizens? Murder children? Rape women? Enslave minorities? Murder the innocent?

The answer is clearly no. Christianity does not oppress Christians or anyone else. True Christianity is freedom; not freedom to be enslaved by behavior, but from being enslaved by it.

If you want true freedom, turn to Jesus Christ.

Advertisements

Exposing the “Mental Health Crisis”

Posted on by Alex

In sociology, mental health has long been viewed as a “social construction” like gender, race, etc. It is absolutely true in this case. Autism is new a “spectrum” that can be as wide as the mental health community wishes it to be. Homosexuality and transgenderism used to be afflictions that no longer appear in the DSM-V (the psychologists’ Bible for mental illnesses).

The United States of America is the most medicated society in the history of mankind. Do we really have a mental health crisis in which growing numbers of citizens are suffering from a mental illness, or are doctors and therapists merely prescribe more medication? I have always believed that the latter is the most likely answer, but my recent experiences have served to solidify that opinion.

I have been working as a mental health counselor in a local middle school for a few weeks now. It is a personally rewarding job, as helping kids overcome their social problems is an extremely important job. However, the unholy alliance of the education system, mental health industry, and government healthcare in the pockets of a private business has created an incredibly dangerous and destructive environment for our children.

My employer requires a minimum number of billable hours known as “productivity.” These hours are billed to Medicaid. The company needs to bill Medicaid so they can cover costs (payroll, rent, keeping the lights on, etc.) of doing business. I have to provide an average of 5 hours of productivity every day. I also need to have enough students on my caseload to meet those productivity standards. I share my caseload with a therapist who also has their own productivity numbers to meet.

Thus, a school therapist is incentivized to diagnose “enough” kids in the school to meet the productivity standards in order to bill Medicaid enough money to pay all of us.

The real consequence of this policy is an uptick in mental health diagnoses. I have already met with a number of students who have behavioral problems, not mental health problems. Most of them are on the “spectrum” – basically any kid who has trouble making friends ends up here. Several have been diagnosed with ADHD – any kid who has a hard time paying attention to boring teachers in classes that they don’t care about.

I have sat in public school classrooms. My clients are supposed to sit and exhibit ideal behavior while a half-dozen students who have not been diagnosed are acting like wild animals. My kids have “mental health” problems, but these other kids do not.

Many of my clients do not take prescribed medication because they say, “it makes me feel weird” or “I don’t feel like myself.” I completely understand this. In college, I read a paper about “the medicated self” which argues that those on anti-depressants are unsure which “self” is their true self.

Imagine being told that your “self” is not complete unless you are taking medication that basically turns you into a different person. This medicated “self” is the “good self”, while your natural existence is viewed as incomplete.

So we now have a group of students who are “mentally ill”, while other students who exhibit the same behavior are “mentally healthy.” One group is told that they need drugs to be complete, while the other is told they are whole. One group is diagnosed with “mental illnesses” whose definitions change over time, often due to social pressure from social justice lobbyists. One group needs to be diagnosed as mentally ill in order to keep therapists and CPSTs employed. One group is told they are incomplete, and we wonder why they grow up into adults who continue to exhibit mental health problems.

This does not even address the potential damage that a psychotropic drug can have when introduced to an otherwise healthy brain. Most people who are diagnosed have not had any sort of brain scan. An “expert” who sits in an office determines the brain chemistry of a client after a conversation or two – not an MRI or C/T scan, but a chat determines that neurons and synapses are not working properly –  and prescribes drugs to these individuals.

This is the reality of America’s “mental health crisis.” We are creating mental illness by redefining what makes someone ill and introducing brain chemistry altering drugs into potentially healthy brains.

**This is not to say that there are not legitimate cases of mental illness. I am merely saying that they are far less prevalent than we are led to believe.**

Many of our schools are filled with mental health workers who are incentivized to diagnose a certain number of students as mentally ill in order to fulfill arbitrary “productivity” standards.

It is my experience that the overwhelming similarity between clients is the lack of a two-parent household. Some poor kid who experiences abuse or abandonment in the home acts out at school to get attention to show that he has power somewhere. These kids do not have broken brains, they are victims of broken homes.

We must fix families. We must worry more about making these kids whole rather than meeting “productivity”. We must allow teachers and schools to deal with kids in a more effective way than slapping them with a mental health diagnosis that excuses bad behavior and will follow them for the rest of their lives.

We must stop telling our kids that they are not whole.

I would gladly sacrifice my job for the greater good. The “mental health crisis” needs to be discussed. We must shine a light on the dark corners of the mental health industry before it all gets worse.

If you are a mental health worker, do you agree or disagree? Where am I wrong? Where am I right? I would love to hear from you by either commenting on this post or you can email me at scornedchaos@hotmail.com.

Movie Review: The Last Jedi

Posted on by Alex

I usually don’t write up movie reviews, though I watch so many that perhaps I should. I think most reviewers try to hard to find mistakes so they can be the most prolific basher of a film. I always factor in entertainment. I think there are “bad” movies out there that are highly entertaining. There are also “good” movies that bore me to tears. There are movies that I would never recommend for someone to watch that I find incredibly fun and have seen dozens of times. This film, is both “good” and entertaining.

I watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi over the weekend. I went into the film without reading or watching any reviews whatsoever. I avoided all trailers after the first one. I did not look up the cast on imdb, or watch any interviews with the cast. I took no part in any promotional material since October.

First of all, here are my general criteria for a film review: entertainment, acting, visual appeal, and storytelling. Since this is a Star Wars film, I will also include a contribution to the overall story arch.

  1. Entertainment: The Last Jedi is incredibly entertaining. It is a fun bit of escapism for 2 and a half hours.
  2. Acting: I thought the performances were all great, but Adam Driver as Kylo Ren once again dominates his time on the screen. I really felt the actors’ emotions throughout the film and it really drew me in.
  3. Visual appeal: This is a beautiful film full of rich scenery, top notch special effects, amazing CGI and motion capture. The directing is fantastic.
  4. Storytelling: Save for one idiotic twenty-minute span halfway through the film, I like the path that the story took. There were essentially three main plot threads, and two of the three were quite strong. There were a few character arcs that had great payoffs. There were others that seem like they will pay off in the next episode, which brings me to. . .
  5. Overall story arch: This film builds and expands greatly on the characters and story built in The Force Awakens. The relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren is fleshed out more, the First Order is still hunting the Resistance/Rebels, and we find out more about what happened between Luke and Kylo. There are aspects of the force that are drawn from the original trilogy, and some new facets are included. I also think this film did a great job in diverging from some of the tropes we have come to expect. This apparently angers some fans, but I think it’s a brilliant stroke.

Overall, I think it is a great entry into the franchise. The criticisms that I have seen are misunderstandings of narratives and fans with unrealistic expectations not having their theories validated. Furthermore, I think many of the criticisms are unfair. We never judged the original trilogy this way.

There were dozens of plot holes and lack of backstory in the original films. We just didn’t care. Episode IV is vastly overrated, as it has been saved by the other two films. Episode V is long and tedious, but we give it a pass because of one of the greatest endings and legendary film moments in movie history. Episode VI has its flaws, but it finishes the story in a satisfactory way, thus closing the loop. We still knew NOTHING of the Emperor, very little of Darth Vader, Han Solo, Leia, and Boba Fett. Yet all of these characters were endearing.

Compare that to a much more fleshed out villain in Kylo Ren, an equally compelling hero in Rey, and the development of Snoke and Phasma in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are just as enigmatic as the Emperor and Boba Fett.

So get over it. I’ll wait for the epic finale to make any big decisions on “plot holes” (which, at the moment, are more lack of revelation than plot hole).

Immediately after viewing the film, I had it as my fifth favorite. Now that I’ve reflected for a day, I think it might be a top three Star Wars film. I like these first two entries of this trilogy more than the originals, and I understand that puts me in a minority. I take into consideration that the special effects are much better, and they are able to hire more seasoned actors. I also consider that nostalgia makes the original films seem better than they actually are. It is unfair to “compare” these movies to the originals. By capturing the spirit of the original films, they seem too much like them. By deviating from the original story, they seem too different. Either way appears to upset huge segments of the fanbase.

I, however, appreciate the new characters, story arcs, and bold choices in the deviation from what we expect, while also incorporating elements from the original story. The Last Jedi does not reinvent the franchise, but it does expand it.

It’s worth seeing in the theater. I’d suggest IMAX 3D if available in your area. The Last Jedi is an excellent film.

The Bully Dilemma

Posted on by Alex

This story about young Keaton Jones, a boy who poured his heart out as his mother filmed his teary-eyed confession and posted it on social media, is heartbreaking. No innocent person deserves to be treated with such disrespect. That being said, the response to this video has me concerned with the profound lack of understanding when it comes to bullying.

I used to be a bully.

My friends and I once made a book of fat jokes that landed us in trouble with the school and incentivized a female classmate to leave in the middle of the school year. We were 11.

The armchair psychologists who plague social media with their uninformed yet equally passionate responses would blame my parents for not showing me how to respect other kids. In the case of Keaton Jones, an armada of celebrities would call for some sort of new measures to stop me from ever doing such a heinous thing again.

The truth is that my parents taught me well, and I knew what I was doing was wrong. However, there is something truly primal that happens when you exert power over another person. When the girl I teased left school, I wore it as a badge of honor. I was mean and nasty. I could dominate another person into total submission. I felt powerful.

I used to be a victim of bullying.

I grew up as the only white kid in an all-black neighborhood. Since I was different, my “friends” used to try to get me to do stupid things all the time. I went along because I was desperate to fit in. One time, they coaxed me into a fight with a kid from another street. We did not know each other, but somehow were convinced that we should fight. I had never punched another person, and the “fight” did not go well for me. I was 8.

School was not much better for me. I rode the bus with mostly black students, one of which seemed to make it his life mission to mock me for being poor. He threatened to fight me almost every day, and I cowered in fear awaiting the time he would strike. My previous experience dictated that I would not fare well. Almost 30 years later, and I still see his face. When someone said his name when informing me that his father died, I immediately got angry.

You see, I gave my power to these people. I knew that I shouldn’t, but fear drove me to act against my will.

A Complex Issue

Bullying is not just a result of faulty parenting or “bad” kids. In most situations, I was a good kid – just as I am a good man now. However, I am not impervious to doing bad things. In fact, I have a talent for doing or saying awful things to other people. If I am not careful, I can destroy someone’s day in an instant. It’s reflexive.

My parents taught me better. My wife and kids teach me to be better every day, but it is a struggle. You see, my penchant to bully others comes from the desire to show others how powerful I am. Having given my power to other people as a childhood victim of bullying, or in certain adult relationships, I learned to put up a wall. I learned how to re-direct that power.

Sometimes I can do amazing things with it. I pour my emotions into playing drums or I furiously research a contentious topic. Sometimes I escape into solidarity and pray. Sometimes, I lash out to show others that they cannot hurt me, but I can hurt them.

You see, not all bullies are always bullies. Not all have parents who ignore them. Not all of them come from broken or abusive homes. This stereotyping lynch mob mentality of our society has forgotten that applying the perceived traits of a group to an individual is an unacceptable outcome. #NotAllBullies

People Can Change

I have been a bully and victim, but now I am neither. In fact, the thought of someone getting bullied infuriates me. However, I believe that the victim mentality is one of the most dangerous trends growing in America.

The response to the Keaton Jones story is troubling to me. His video is a great conversation starter. We can discuss bullying with our friends and our children using his words as a catalyst. But what will he learn from this?

Sean Hannity is leading a charge to raise thousands of dollars. Glenn Beck is inviting Keaton to his radio studio. Dana White wants to bring him to a UFC event. Others are calling for additional fundraising and starting up new and improved anti-bullying campaigns. This kid will have tens of thousands of dollars given to him by the very same people who complain about entitled “snowflakes” who cannot withstand opposing arguments.

His bullies are about to be socially ostracized. If the community does not already know their identities, they will figure it out soon. What will the negative sanctions be? A phone call to children’s services? Public shaming? The potential for bullying the bullies without understanding WHY they say what they say is an awful precedent.

None of the children involved will have a chance at natural change. Most kids grow out of bullying by the time they reach college. Most victims learn to develop thicker skin. The power imbalance that we see in instances like this often ends up equalizing.

A massive scale public interaction disrupts potential learning opportunities for these children. Society is robbing them of a healthy growth experience. This is the impact of social media. It can lead to great things, with both positive and negative ramifications.

Let’s not overreact.

What Worked for Me

I was born a sinner. I still am. That is why I find satisfaction in the pain of others. It is natural instinct for me. Thankfully, God has forgiven me for my sins. I need not dwell on my past, which allows me to learn from it. I can take an objective look at bullying because I have lived on both sides of the issue, allowing me to step back and analyze it properly.

There will be victims if there are bullies. There will be bullying so long as there is sin. Like it or not, all societies have suffered from one form of social inequality or another. Human nature is to exert our power over another, but we can overcome human nature.

Rather than giving or taking my power to/from other people, I give it to God. I let Him deal with my problems. When someone harasses me, I pray and ask for God to handle it, so I do not have to. I have learned to hold back and not hold on to anger. The solution is not raising money or new social programs. The solution is found in the Bible.

Matt 7:12 says, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

This is also known as “the golden rule.” Every sinful child must learn this principle. It is not innate. Some can grasp it more quickly than others. I pray that the bullies who are cruel to Keaton Jones learn this lesson soon, because others are about to do some not nice things to them and their families.

The Satanic Era

Posted on by Alex

In the first episode of Mindhunter, the Netflix show about how the FBI serial killer program began, an interesting proposition was presented. The gist is that prior to the 1970s, crime had motive. In the contemporary era, however, motive was no longer a factor. Serial killers may have a modus operandi, and even a purpose, but they essentially kill indiscriminately. Random people become targets. Of course, this is a fictional story, but does that make the point any less relevant?

We may understand a killer has a motive, such as creating fear or terror, but there is no motive for target selection. Consider the most recent case of the Las Vegas shooting. As of this writing, a full month has passed and no one knows what motivated Stephen Paddock to shoot 500 people. Many terror attacks are on large groups of people, but none involve a personal motive.

Gone are the days of organized crime when gangsters wanted to “send a message” by killing a rival or snitch. No longer must a woman die because she was cheating on her husband. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is as dangerous as infidelity in today’s world. When did this change?

I will once again point my finger at what I have termed “the Satanic Era” of the 1960s. Prior to the 1960s, the majority of mass killings were familicide. Since the 1960s, mass killings have been in public places against innocent bystanders. The deadliest decade prior to 1960 was the 30s, with 9 mass shootings. The 1960s had 6, the 70s had 13, there were 32 in the 1980s, and over 40 in the 1990s. The number since then as only increased.

Again, low numbers of mass shootings which primarily were targeted at family members prior to the 60s. Much higher frequency of shootings with a major increase in bystander fatalities since the 1960s.

How about serial killers, the focus of Mindhunter? According to one site, there were only a dozen or so serial killers in the United States in the decades leading up to the 1960s. There were 19 in the 1960s, 119 in the 70s, 200 in the 80s, and 141 in the 1990s. The number has since dropped to 60 or less in the twenty-first century, but the line drawn through the Satanic Era is still worth noting.

It does appear that this notion of random killing has increased since the 1960s.

17,000 women were forcibly raped in 1960. By the end of the decade, the number of victims had more than doubled. By 1992, the number peaked at over 109,000.

Recreational drug and alcohol use, though prevalent regardless of drug laws, has exploded since the 1960s.

Increases in violence against strangers, depictions of violence and sex in film and television, sexual assault, drug use, alcoholism, the opioid crisis, teen pregnancies, deviant sexual behaviors, homosexuality, transgenderism, mass murder, and serial killings are directly correlated with the decline in major religion and distrust of major media and government institutions.

In every single one of these categories – religious decline (secularization), increases in crime and deviance, the birth of new religious movements and serial killers – you can draw a line before and after the Satanic Era of the 1960s and see that there has been a seismic social shift in the United States.

One cannot help but notice that many of the same issues of the 1960s are manifest today. Civil unrest, shouts of racism, segregation, unending protest, free love, excessive drug use, sensitivity toward anything deemed “offensive”, attacks on free speech and the Constitution, militarized police, political corruption, calls for revolution, Marxism, and the list goes on and on.

I am a child of the 80s, but I would love to hear from those who were alive during the 60s. Does your lived experience mirror my theory? Has the shift been noticeable? Do you think there has actually been a shift? Please, I want to hear from you.

Taking God for Granted

Posted on by Alex

Think of all the things we take for granted in life.
The concepts of white privilege and patriarchy are that white males have certain historical advantages that they never actually think about. Things are becoming more egalitarian, for sure. However, Western civilization has been, for better or worse, a product of straight white men exploiting others.
Don’t believe me? When we identify colleagues or even friends, we often clarify the race of minorities, but not whites. You do not hear things like “famous male inventor Thomas Edison…” or “the straight, white Founding Fathers like Jefferson and Madison.” On the other hand, we do that for racial minorities, homosexuals, and women.

In other words, heterosexual and white are default categories. The all-encompassing term to describe all of humanity is “mankind.” Consider the term “straight,” which is the opposed of crooked, which has the negative connotation of deviance. These are taken for granted assumptions typically made by straight, white, men and are often challenged by those who violate one or more of those categories. The reaction from those in the majority is shock and denial of their privileges.

This happens when we take these concepts for granted, and Christians have been doing the same thing with doctrine. From everything from Bible translations to baptism, the modern American Christian has been fattened with privileges that go all-too-often ignored.

Our Christian Founding Fathers were persecuted and murdered for their Faith. The history of the Church is filled with meeting in secret locations under penalty of death from their governments, which still occurs in many countries. What do we, as Americans, do? We use our Christian colleges as an excuse to challenge and “correct” the Bible that our brothers and sisters and the Middle-East are being beheaded over. While we bicker about whether we should wear suits or have drums in a worship setting, Christians around the world are being crucified or burned alive.

We need not fear being used as gladiatorial fodder in the Colosseum of Rome, so we find minor things over which to quibble.

Almost 80% of Americans identify as Christian, but the average weekly church attendance for a believer in this country is 1.7 services per month. Attendance is not low because Uncle Sam is waiting to bust in our doors and imprison those inside, but because to 22% of American churchgoers, watching football has become a priority. Rather than being thrust into the arena to face lions, we can watch others combat live on television. We take our churches for granted, because we have churches to go to.

American Christians have taken church attendance for granted, but have also taken prayer and daily time in Scripture for granted. We can tell you anything you want about what our favorite actors are up to, but nothing about Solomon’s life. We can quote Tom Brady’s QB rating in the 2004 playoffs, but can’t quote a verse other than John 3:16. We have time to text, not call, but text our best friends with every detail of our daily lives, but spend no time having a conversation with our Heavenly Father.

I cannot tell you the number of fellow church members and Church members who gleefully post party pictures on social media with faces distorted by drunken frivolity; forgetting that we are called to be pictures of Christ to our unsaved friends and families. How can a drug addict be helped by someone who is right next to them shooting up? How might an alcoholic have a life change while we sit at the bar sharing shots? With no thought of the repercussions, we indulge in the very same behaviors as those who are lost. How will they ever be found when we throw the map in the garbage?

We do these things because we CAN do these things. We do them because we CHOOSE to do them. We put God’s will behind our own ambitions because we ignore the manifestation of His grace in our lives. We no longer count our blessings, because our insatiable thirst for humanistic pursuits has us spoiled and privileged.

No one is perfect. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. The difference is that the heroes of the Bible felt regret when they fell from grace. King David never fully recovered from his tryst with Bathsheba. Peter spent the rest of his life trying to make up for his denial of Christ before the crucifixion. Will we do the same, or will we continue to take our privilege for granted?

Check your privilege. It is there, and we must acknowledge its existence. The only way we will be effective at bringing others to Christ is if we throw away our hedonistic lifestyles and BE LIKE CHRIST. If you sin, it’s okay. Jesus’ blood covers Christians for all eternity. However, we must all try to avoid the temptation to flaunt our sin to everyone in our social networks.

Becoming a Christian is an easy decision for most privileged Americans. LIVING like a Christian is incredibly difficult. The first decision is personal, while the second affects the lives of all those around us. Remember who you represent. You are a child of the King of Kings. You are privileged, whether you want to admit it or not. Time is running out for our loved ones who have yet to accept Christ. Do them a favor and dare to be different. Be a rebel. We are already experiencing a revolution, so be revolutionary. Stop taking God for Granted.

I am a “Racist” and That’s Okay.

Posted on by Alex

I was talking to person of color yesterday about the lack of a major church led peace rally in response to the Black Lives Matter riots, and the conversation ended with me essentially being called a racist.

How did we get there?

This person, a self-professed Christian who happens to be biracial, seemed like a person who might want to have one of those “difficult discussions” or race that supposedly never happen. I said I wanted to see church leaders hold an MLK style march on Washington where hundreds of thousands of Christians could unite with a message promoting peaceful protests.

I was then informed that there are apparently 1500 peaceful protests that I don’t hear about. I responded that I have no problem with those protests, or those who are just regular folk who believe that too many black people are being killed by police. My problem is with those at the top who pour millions of dollars into the “movement” and bus professional agitators to a location seeking to set the city on fire.

I was told that I was uninformed because I did not know about the 1500 protests. An interesting indictment, because this person 1) was unaware of the millions of dollars given to BLM by George Soros and other big money donors; 2) was unaware that unions are busing in paid agitators; 3) has watched none of the shooting videos; 4) knows very few of the names of the victims.

As I provided the statistics about how only 200-250 blacks are killed by police each year. How 70-80 of those cases are justified. Maybe 10-15% are questionable, and the remaining 10-15% are absolutely unjustified. These statistics are all available from government sites (FBI, CDC, etc.). This person actually told me that those statistics cannot be trusted.

I was even told that my opinions are based on videos, not what actually happened. Although they admitted to not watching any videos, this person believed that perhaps the evidence that I saw with my own eyes was possibly falsified. I suppose my eyes are deceiving me.

In arguing about justified shootings, I informed them that if one of my little ginger daughters pulled a gun on the police, I would expect her to be shot as well. It is NOT a racial issue.

“Have you ever lost someone close to you?” I was asked. Thankfully, I have not. However, according to this person, losing someone is extremely emotional and I cannot expect someone in pain like that to behave rationally.

I told them that if someone walked into my house and killed my family, I would more than likely be filled with rage, but I would not set fire to my innocent neighbor’s house. I understand the outrage. I get that the community may be hurting. I know that they seek justice. I do not believe that burning down a local CVS is proper exercise of the outrage and pain.

This person challenged my Christianity. They asked how a Christian could be okay with black people being killed. I told them that I am not okay with it, but there is no reasonable way to stop all of these shootings. No matter what training is implemented; no matter how many cameras are on the person and vehicles of police officers, perpetrators will still pull illegal firearms out and aim it at officers, thus, justifying shooting in self-defense.

This person told me that they have to be scared for their spouse and children because they are black, and might be shot during a routine traffic stop. I told them that out of a population of 350 million people, fewer than 100 are killed by police for “no reason.”

I also have to teach my daughters to not mouth off  and especially not pull out a weapon on a police officer. I told this person about being personally harassed by police several times in my life. I have been pulled over for no reason many times. I was sucker-punched by a black man during a basketball game and looked to the police for help as I was 17 at the time. The officer harassed me for 20 minutes, trying to get me to admit that I said the “n word,” which I did not. No witness said I did, but the officer could not believe that I was punched just for playing basketball despite a dozen or so eyewitnesses that backed up my story.

Having grown up as a pale, ginger boy in an all-black neighborhood, I got into fights. I was bullied and the victim of racism. I had to go to private school because it would have been worse for me had I gone to a public school.

This, apparently, is why I have “racism in my heart” now according to the person I was conversing with. I was a victim of racism, so now I must be racist. There is no evidence of this during my entire lifetime, yet I suppose I must be.

I mean, I also had some bad run-ins with white people. The only other white kids on my block broke into my house while we were at church and stole all of our video games and systems (and yes, there were many). In fact, I got into fistfights exclusively with white people in high school. Reflecting on this made me realize that I must also be racist toward white people. They were all men too, so I must now be a man-hating sexist. Makes sense, right?

No.

I was also told that my obvious outrage over being called a racist was more proof of my racism. The conversation ended when I asked if they had ever had a bad incident with a white person, and they simply said “not until now.”

“Wow.” I left the conversation with that one word response.

This is the never ending cycle of circular reasoning and straw man arguments that keeps people quiet about race in America today. Whenever the subject is broached, white people become racists. A conversation beginning with a call for unity and healing ended with charges of racism and personal attacks.

Unfortunately, I am too stubborn to run from the topic. I will still talk about race, and I will do so with some academic authority on the subject. I will do so with research, statistics, social theories, and actual data. I refuse to believe that one “must be black” to discuss black issues. With that logic, no blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Islanders, etc. should be able to discuss white issues, which, if you use the liberal academic talking points of the day, are all issues. The default of our society is white and male.

Women can talk about men. People of color can talk about whites. Yet the reverse is not allowed? Who is the racist? Who is ethnocentric now?

A “discussion” requires two people. If we are to solve any social problem, the “opposing” groups must engage in a dialogue. It is the basis for understanding one another. I look forward to being called “racist” more often, so long as I continue to press for conversations about tough issues. I can live with that, because I know that the Truth is on my side.