Roger Marsh: Hello, and welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Today on our program, we're going to address the hot button topics of racism and cultural division, but of course, we're going to do it from a biblical perspective. Now to help us tackle these issues, we have one of contemporary Christianity's most respected voices, a man who has seen generations grow up in America. He himself grew up during segregation in Baltimore, Maryland, and he wound up founding a church in south Dallas in the 1970s. His name is Dr. Tony Evans. You might recognize him from the many times that he and our own Dr. Dobson have sat down in the studio to discuss faith, scripture and other biblical topics. Or you might know Dr. Evans from his many books or his daily radio program, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Well, today we are presenting an interview that Tony did with our co-host Dr. Tim Clinton at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention this past March. Here now is Dr. Tim Clinton.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Dr. Tony Evans is one of the country's most respected evangelical leaders. He's a pastor, bestselling author, frequent speaker at Bible conferences and seminars throughout the nation. He has served as senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship for nearly four decades, witnessing a growth from about 10 people back in the mid '70s to 10,000 plus congregates, 100 plus ministries and more. He also serves as president of the Urban Alternative, a national ministry that seeks to bring about spiritual renewal in America through the church. His daily radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on more than 1200 radio outlets throughout the United States and in more than 130 countries. He's written over 50 books, Kingdom Agenda, Tony Evans' Book of Illustrations, Oneness Embraced. We're going to talk a lot about that today, Marriage Matters, and so much more. He also served as chaplain to the NFL Dallas Cowboys. I like the Steelers, but we're okay with the Cowboys, and continues to serve as chaplain of the NBA Dallas Mavericks. It's such a delight to have you. Tony, thank you for joining us.
Dr. Tony Evans: Thank you for having me. It's always good to be with you, sir.
Dr. Tim Clinton: I know Dr. Dobson sends his regard. He has such a love for you and what God's doing in and through you. He wanted me to make sure and say, "Tell Tony I said hello."
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, you give him my love, he and his lovely wife. They have meant a lot to our lives personally, as well our ministry.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. Tony, it's been a pretty tough road over the last couple of years. Really difficult, actually for most Americans and people around the globe. Last time you were with us though, you were coming off ... Well, we had a conversation about your wife Lois, and the loss in your life. That was quite an interview. I'll never forget it. I just wanted to ask how you were doing, how the family's doing.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, we fight forward, because our circumstances haven't been great, but our faith is strong and that's what carries you forward when you face the trials of life. So we've had our share over the last couple of years, losing eight family members, just one right after the other, virtually every six months. So that means adjustments, but because our family is close, sometimes too close, because my kids worry me to death, but other than that, we're staying close and enjoying one another and still everybody's active in ministry. So we're moving forward, but there are those rollercoaster moments.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. Tony, I think with COVID hitting a couple of years ago and the lockdowns, the loss, the loneliness, and then you begin to just dial back about what we've been through. There was that stretch of racial trauma that really captivated the country, creating a lot of tension, rioting. You go into the election fiasco and everything that went on around that. People are emotionally shot. They're wiped out. But I think there's a recognition that in many ways, we're just torn apart. There's tension everywhere. People are confused. They're angry, they're frustrated. Maybe brothers pitted it against brothers, sister against sister, citizen against citizen, even Christian against Christian. It's hard to find agreement, it's hard to find harmony, especially as we look to the future. You wrote a new book, Oneness Embraced: The Kingdom Race Theology for Reconciliation, Unity, and Justice. Tony, we're here to talk about what that book is all about. Tell us what's in your heart, where this came from, where it originated from.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, 2 Chronicles 15:3-6 says that there was no peace in those days. And it says people rose up against people, city rose up against city and nation rose up against nation. So it is a perfect description of perpetual conflict on every level. But then it says at the end of verse six, "For God troubled them with every kind of distress." You would've thought it would've said the devil troubled them, but it doesn't. It says God troubled them. And it says the reason God troubled them, in verse three, is because idolatry had taken over, the ministry had failed. It says there was no teaching priest. And then it says people made up their own rules, so there was no standard that people could operate by. So it perfectly describes the culture and the country we're living in now.
If God is your problem, God troubled them, then that means it doesn't matter who you elect. It doesn't matter what programs you come up with and how they are funded. If God is your problem, that means only God is your solution. So I view all of these things that you so aptly summarize theologically, not sociologically and politically. Those are fruit, not root, because God is the issue. That means God has to be repositioned and His standards in our lives and in the culture. Oneness Embraced argues that it is the unity of Christians, and unity we define as oneness of purpose, that will determine the engagement of God. God will only engage to the degree that His people are legitimately unified.
John chapter 17 verses 23 to 25 says that they might be one. Jesus says, "Perfect them in unity so that they might see my glory." There's one God composed a three coequal persons. One in essence, distinctive personality. The Father is not the Son, Son is not the Spirit, but they all make up the one unified Godhead. When it comes to our human relationships, God is not color blind. He's just not blinded by color. He does not want the distinctives that He has allowed and created to be the ultimate place of our identity. And what we have done is we've made race, color, culture, ethnicities, class a point of identity, which makes it a point of idolatry. And whenever false identity is rooted in a personal inner culture, it has become idolatrous. And once it becomes idolatrous, then we're back to verse three, no true God. And that's because the pulpits have failed, and a mist in the pulpit will always lead to a fog in the pew, so that people don't know how to respond.
When I wrote Kingdom Race Theology, there's the big book, 434 pages of in depth theological analysis, and then we have a pullout from that, the small book. I call it Kingdom Race Theology for people who don't want to read 434 pages. What we are trying to argue is God has given us a theology that we can link into to override, overrule, and bring harmony in a chaotic situation. So as bad as things look, there's an opportunity here like we've never had before because the culture doesn't have answers.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tony, would just say that the culture, everyone's screaming, but no one's listening? No one can really hear. Let's go back to Trayvon Martin, maybe around what, 2012. You fast forward, come up into 2020, the Ahmaud Arbery situation, and then of course, the horrific scenes of George Floyd. Tony, it just escalated everything into like an explosion. What are you seeing out there, and what really has you concerned? Before we can receive the truth, I'm trying to see what's happening in culture and can we break through. Because in some respects, a lot of people think racism is going backwards, not forward.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, it's gone backwards because we keep picking fruit and not digging a root. As long as you're picking fruit, new fruit's going to grow if the root is not addressed. And the root is having a right view of the Imago Dei. The Imago Dei, the biblical word for the image of God. The image of God starts in the womb. It starts in God from conception. Psalm 139:16, "God is engaged in the beginning and the origin of life." But the Imago Dei is also used of our relationship with one another. James chapter three, verse nine says that you are not to curse another person because of the image of God. So what we've had is a term life agenda and not a whole life agenda. So there should be the right to life pre-birth and the right to life pro birth, and those two must be hitched together.
When they're unhitched, then that creates a divisiveness that God never intended. It's like the unity between righteousness and justice. The Bible always makes them twin towers and never ... I mean, they're Siamese twins. Over and over and over again, those two, Psalm 89:14, "From His throne comes righteousness and justice." God tells Abraham, Genesis 18:19, "Raise your children in righteousness and justice." But because people haven't preached them as twins and because people don't receive them as equals, they divide the two. And when that division happens theologically, it happens sociologically and culturally. So we need to get to a Imago Dei understanding of life. And then when we proclaim that, live that and model that, now people are looking at life differently.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, I would agree with you completely. I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine and it was over the issue of racism. He is a black leader and someone that I care a lot about. He said, "Tim, a lot of people don't understand racism and how common it is." He went on to tell me about what it was like to live in his world and how people would come by taking human feces and put it all over his mailbox, destroy his mailbox, put everything on the ground, et cetera. He said, "Tim, when you receive that stuff every day, it does something inside of you." And I just listened to him. He said, "Let me tell you what it was like to grow up as a boy and to work hard, to become the valedictorian of a class. And then have people basically turn away from you and not recognize you because of the color of your skin." And as we continue to have this conversation, I said, "Let's just talk about racism. What is it?" Tony, help us understand.
Dr. Tony Evans: Racism is the decision to relate to a person or to treat a person in a way that demeans their dignity because of color or ethnicity. So, it is prejudicial action based on illegitimate criteria, which is their color of skin or culture or ethnicity. That can happen individually or it can happen structurally. We tend to be more familiar with individual racial animus, but it can be structural. The illustration I give in the book of one that's embraced is adjacent to our church is a golf course, and blacks were not allowed on that golf course until 1994. The way they would keep blacks away is a structure. What they would say is if a black person was brought to this course, two-thirds of the membership had to agree for them to become members. Well, you would never ever get two-thirds to agree, and therefore blacks would be kept out. So an individual who brought a black person could argue, "I'm not a racist," but the system of the golf course was. It wasn't written. It was in the structure of how they operated. So, things like that.
I'm the fourth African American to attend Dallas Seminary in 1972. If I would've tried to get in a couple of years earlier, they would not have let me in because it was segregated. Now this is the leading independent theological seminary in America, but they were still culturally bound, not biblically sound. So when you see all of those kinds of things here ... We're are doing this taping from NRB. Well, there were stations who told us until Moody came aboard and until Dr. Dobson wrote a letter telling these stations to give us the opportunity, and that's where our affinity comes from on the early stages of our ministry, we were being rejected simply because of race. So when those are your life experiences, to varying degrees, because some had much more vitriolic experiences than I had, but when those are your experiences or the experiences of your context of life, then the issue of race hits you differently and much deeper. If you've never been pulled over by a policeman like I have, simply because of your race or the neighborhood you're in, you're going to relate to the issue differently.
Dr. Tim Clinton: The word discrimination, add that to our conversation.
Dr. Tony Evans: Yeah. Well when you talk about racism, there is a discrimination that is where you are making choices for a person because of who they are or against a person because of who they are. So you're creating a discriminatory or a divisive different based on illegitimate criteria. When people talk about white privilege, they're talking about the fact that whites have never been rejected because of skin color, and therefore benefits accrue to them that were not historically available to black people because of skin color. Therefore, they were discriminated against illegitimately.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Is it fair to say, Tony, then in the midst of what we've been through and began to experience and watch unfold in front of our eyes and more, that people began to just spin with this and you saw some politicizing of this. And then of course the birth of the Black Lives Matter organization. People started debating that and they saw two different sides and they debated both sides. And then comes critical race theory and the debating that went on there. Help us understand what you saw or what you see happening in culture and where this thing's getting away from us.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, you have different sides coming at this from different perspectives, so they're drawing different conclusions. And some of the conclusions are legitimate and some of the conclusions are not legitimate. For example, black lives matter. Well, yes, that's a true statement like when people say the life of the unborn matters. We give that credence, the life of the unborn matters. So you have a pro-life movement. And because of the history of the treatment of black people by police and black men in particular, the emphasis of black lives matter. Now when you break that off from all lives matter, now you have a biblical issue because the Bible does teach that all lives matter, but we shouldn't condemn the fact that black lives matter, like we don't condemn the fact that the lives of the unborn matter.
The problem is other things get attached to it, like other things get attached to pro-life like bombings of abortion clinics. That's an illegitimate attachment. It doesn't deny the essential reality, nor should illegitimate attachments. We should reject the attachments, but not the legitimate complaints. But having said that, you can talk about that all day, but until you have a plan set forth to address it, and this is where the failure comes in, there are legitimate critiques without a sufficient answer. That's where the church should be coming in.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tony, our time is ...
Dr. Tony Evans: Woo, it's rolling right along.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We're running, and I love this conversation. We've got to get into where do we go from here? Because the church is broken here and we've got to press in and say, "God, help us. Show us the road forward." I believe that God's given you a voice and some wisdom here, Tony. Take us down. The words of Jesus, "Lord, I pray that they would be one, even as we are one." Help us.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, we have a strategy that we're promoting nationally called "A Kingdom Strategy for Community Transformation." It's a national strategy, but local implementation. It's simply saying biblically minded churches come together around three As. First of all, once a year, they assemble, a solemn assembly, which was a sacred gathering in Scripture whenever there was a crisis to call God in. So these biblically minded, kingdom minded churches come together to call on God. Second A is address. That is where they speak with one voice biblically about the issues facing their community as spiritual leaders and spiritual gatekeepers. The third A is act. Act is where they do something common to all of the churches and all of the passes that benefit the community, adopting every public school and providing mentoring and family support services to the at risk students in those schools, adopting the police precinct together so that we become the bridge between the police and the community.
And then we're initiating an initiative called "Kindness in the Culture," where a pastor will get all of his members to do one act of kindness a week just as they move about, helping a homeless person, giving somebody a meal, helping an elderly person, encouraging somebody who's distressed. They do this act of kindness, but then they pray for that person and then share the gospel. And even if they can't share the gospel, we'll have a card that they can give them that'll have a QR code so that a person can hear the gospel. So you're no longer doing good things, you're doing good works. So, the Urban Alternative is going to make that available to churches and Christians all across America. If you get millions of Christians in all this vitriol doing a visible act of kindness, and on the card, they can have their own church's name so that the person knows what church did it, and maybe then can get connected to the church. And that's part of this three point plan that's called the "Kindness in the Culture."
Dr. Tim Clinton: We've got to be intentional in our efforts because again, the tendency is just to throw your hands up in the air and just move on and just do your own thing, cocoon, isolate, which is the tendency in culture, because ultimately the goal is to silence and shame and stigmatize people, is what's going on. When you process this at 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning-
Dr. Tony Evans: That's a good time for me.
Dr. Tim Clinton: ... what's cycling in that mind of yours and in your heart, as you wrestle with God and say, "God, it seems like the biggest barrier here, it's this, and help us get through this"?
Dr. Tony Evans: The biggest barrier is spiritual leadership. When you don't have good shepherds, you have confused sheep. So we've got to challenge spiritual leadership at a kingdom level, not a church level, because the church only exists for the kingdom. The church does not exist for itself. And when you can get spiritual leaders to become kingdomized and not culturized and transfer that down, now you can have an army that is ready to spiritually go to war.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tony, I'd like to end the broadcast today by going back to where we began. You talked about the image of God in each and every one of us. If we miss that and if we don't see our brothers and sisters anchored right there, we're lost.
Dr. Tony Evans: Absolutely, because you're starting in the wrong place.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Explain again to us as we go what that means to you.
Dr. Tony Evans: It means to me that every life matters, every life has inherent dignity and every life we should seek to become conformed to Christ through the content of the gospel, but also through the scope of the gospel, where we give them the message of forgiveness for Heaven, but also the message of transformation in history. And all because the mark of God has been stamped upon them at birth and through all of life.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tony, what a word for such a time as this, praying that God would continue to just sew good seed in your heart, give you the leadership skills and put around you some people to help rally. I agree with you. The greatest challenge we have is spiritual leadership. I believe that with all my heart. And we've got to press in like never before for such a time as this.
Dr. Tony Evans: Well for those folks or leaders who want to find out more about the initiatives and how they can plug into it, TonyEvans.org, and they can also get the books on TonyEvans.org. So we'd love to serve them.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tony, the book again is Oneness Embraced: Kingdom Race Theology for Reconciliation, Unity and Justice. The one and only Tony Evans, a dear friend of Dr. Dobson, his wife Shirley, the entire team here at Family Talk. Dr. Evans again, thank you for taking time to join us. We'll pray with you that God would unite our hearts and that we truly would be one even as they are one. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Tony Evans: Thank you very much.
Roger Marsh: That was Dr. Tony Evans with our own Dr. Tim Clinton here on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, and I'm Roger Marsh. Today's program featured a very difficult and multifaceted topic, but who better to address this topic of racism, division and reconciliation than Dr. Tony Evans? He is a devoted follower of Jesus Christ and is dedicated to teaching biblical principles. To remind you, Dr. Evans also is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas. He's the author of, get ready for this, over 125 books and Bible studies, including the subject material for today's conversation, a book called Oneness Embraced: Kingdom Race Theology for Reconciliation, Unity and Justice. Dr. Tony Evans was the first African-American to earn his doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and he wrote and published the first full Bible commentary and study Bible by an African-American as well.
Dr. Tony Evans' biblically based viewpoint of the dangers of racism and how the church can and should step into this conversation and provide answers is so valuable. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Evans, his ministry and his books, visit drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. While you're there, you can also listen to any part of the program that you might have missed today. In addition, you can download the audio file or request a CD copy to keep or to share. Again, that ministry web address is drjamesdobson.org/broadcast.
And finally, before we leave for today, I'd like to remind you once again about our Easter Life Basket Initiative. Here's how it works. First, choose a person in your life who does not yet know the Lord. It could be a neighbor, a coworker, even an old friend. Then take a simple basket, like what you find at Hobby Lobby or online, Walmart, you get the idea, and fill it up with treats and other goodies for that person or their family. Add an invitation to your church's Easter services, along with a small Bible and a gospel tract, and finally pray. Give it to that person and then watch the Lord work.
Easter is the perfect opportunity to invite your non-Christian friends and family to church, and life baskets are a unique, fun way to do just that. For more information on how to create a life basket and also helpful links for what to put in it, go to drjamesdobson.org/life basket. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks so much for listening to Family Talk today and every day for that matter. Please join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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Dr. James Dobson: Hello everyone. Do you need help dealing with the everyday tasks of raising a family? I'm James Dobson here. And if you do, I hope you'll tune in to our next edition of Family Talk. Our main purpose in this ministry is to put tools into your hands that will strengthen your marriage and help you raise your kids. Hope to see you right here in next time for another edition of Family Talk.