Jesus×Baldwin

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Jesus and James Baldwin, on On the story about each other that gets told wrong.
2. 00:08
   Jesusshare moment

   They say I came to bring peace. That I was gentle. Meek, even. Do you know the word they use in English Bibles for what I said about inheriting the earth?
3. 00:21
   James Baldwinshare moment

   Meek.
4. 00:21
   Jesusshare moment

   In Aramaic, I said something closer to those who have been made powerless. Those who have been stepped on. It's not the same thing at all.
5. 00:31
   James Baldwinshare moment

   No. No, it isn't. They do that, don't they. They take the man who overturned tables in the temple and they make him into someone who wouldn't raise his voice at dinner.
6. 00:40
   Jesusshare moment

   What do they do to you?
7. 00:42
   James Baldwinshare moment

   They make me the angry one. Which is true, but not complete. They read the fire and they miss the love that made the fire necessary. They quote me at protests and then they go home and they don't change a single thing about how they live.
8. 00:55
   Jesusshare moment

   You wrote about love.
9. 00:57
   James Baldwinshare moment

   I wrote about almost nothing else. But they remember the accusations. They remember me saying white America has a problem. Which I did say. But they forget I said the problem was that white America doesn't know how to love itself, so it can't love anyone else.
10. 01:13
    Jesusshare moment

    Love is not what they think it is.
11. 01:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. They think love is a feeling. Something soft. Something that asks nothing of you.
12. 01:20
    Jesusshare moment

    When I said to love your enemies, they thought I meant to smile while being struck. I meant something much harder. To see the one who hates you as still human. To refuse to become what he is.
13. 01:36
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. That's it exactly. That's the hardest thing in the world. To look at the man with his knee on your neck and remember he's a man. Not to excuse him. But to know that what he's doing comes from terror, comes from smallness.
14. 01:49
    Jesusshare moment

    And they made this into meekness.
15. 01:52
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They made it into permission. Permission to keep doing what they're doing because you'll forgive them anyway. That's not what you meant.
16. 01:58
    Jesusshare moment

    I also said I came to bring a sword. That I would set brother against brother, father against son. They don't put that on the greeting cards.
17. 02:08
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. They don't. They want the Jesus who makes them comfortable. Not the one who asks them to give away everything they have.
18. 02:15
    Jesusshare moment

    Did you ask people to give things away?
19. 02:18
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I asked them to give away their innocence. Which turns out to be the thing they want to keep most. White people, I mean. I asked them to look at what had been done in their name. What they had inherited. Not to feel guilty, but to take responsibility.
20. 02:33
    Jesusshare moment

    Guilt is not the same as repentance.
21. 02:36
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. Guilt is what you feel. Repentance is what you do. But they stopped at feeling bad. They felt terrible about it all and then they waited for me to comfort them for feeling terrible.
22. 02:46
    Jesusshare moment

    And did you?
23. 02:47
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. That wasn't my job. My job was to tell the truth. Their job was to figure out how to live in it.
24. 02:53
    Jesusshare moment

    The truth sets you free, but first it angers you.
25. 02:57
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Did you say that?
26. 02:58
    Jesusshare moment

    No. But I should have. What else do they get wrong about you?
27. 03:03
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They think I hated white people. I didn't. I hated what white supremacy did to white people. How it shrank them. How it made them afraid of everyone, including themselves.
28. 03:13
    Jesusshare moment

    Fear does that.
29. 03:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. And I pitied them for it. Which they hated more than if I'd just been angry. Pity suggests you're looking down. But I was looking across. I was saying, you're in a cage you built. And I know how to get out but you have to want to leave.
30. 03:30
    Jesusshare moment

    Did they want to?
31. 03:31
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Some did. Most didn't. Most wanted me to tell them they were good people and that everything would be fine. I couldn't do that.
32. 03:38
    Jesusshare moment

    I told people to leave their families. To sell everything. To take up an instrument of execution and follow me. They weren't looking for comfort either.
33. 03:48
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But that's what they made you into. The man who makes everything okay. Buddy Jesus. Jesus who loves you just the way you are and doesn't ask you to change.
34. 03:57
    Jesusshare moment

    I asked everyone to change. That was the whole message. The kingdom is here, so turn around. Stop walking that direction. Walk this one.
35. 04:07
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Repent.
36. 04:08
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. But in Greek, metanoia. It means to change your mind. Your whole way of thinking. Not to feel sorry. To become different.
37. 04:20
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They don't want to become different. That's the whole problem. They want to be forgiven for staying the same.
38. 04:25
    Jesusshare moment

    What do you wish they understood about you?
39. 04:28
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That I loved this country. That's why I was so hard on it. You don't waste your breath on something you don't love. I loved it enough to tell it the truth. I loved it enough to believe it could be better.
40. 04:40
    Jesusshare moment

    I loved my people too. The Pharisees, the teachers, the priests. That's why I wept over Jerusalem. You don't weep over something you hate.
41. 04:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. But they made you into someone who came to start a new religion. You didn't want that.
42. 04:56
    Jesusshare moment

    I was a Jew. I died a Jew. I was trying to call my people back to what the Law was always about. Mercy. Justice. Walking humbly. Not animal sacrifices and ritual purity and keeping the wrong people out.
43. 05:13
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And they used your name to keep people out for two thousand years.
44. 05:17
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes.
45. 05:18
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I'm sorry.
46. 05:19
    Jesusshare moment

    What do you have to be sorry for?
47. 05:21
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I left the church. I couldn't stay. Not after what I saw it doing. Not after what it did to my father, what it did to my community. The way it made people small and afraid and told them that was holiness.
48. 05:33
    Jesusshare moment

    You left a building. You didn't leave what I was talking about.
49. 05:36
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You think so?
50. 05:37
    Jesusshare moment

    You spent your whole life trying to get people to see each other. To love across the divide. To tell the truth even when it cost you. What else would I have been talking about?
51. 05:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They told me I was going to hell.
52. 05:52
    Jesusshare moment

    They told me I was possessed by demons. That I was leading people astray. That I broke the Sabbath and dishonored the temple. They killed me for it.
53. 06:03
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. They did.
54. 06:04
    Jesusshare moment

    The people who are sure they speak for God are often the furthest from understanding. Did you find that?
55. 06:11
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Every day of my life. The ones who were so certain. So sure they had the corner on truth. They were the ones I was most afraid of.
56. 06:19
    Jesusshare moment

    Because certainty closes the door to truth.
57. 06:23
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. You can't learn anything if you already know everything. You can't love anyone if you've already decided who they are.
58. 06:29
    Jesusshare moment

    The ones who knew they were sinners, they understood. The tax collectors. The prostitutes. The ones who knew they were lost.
59. 06:39
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The ones the church rejected were often the ones who understood love better than anyone. The drag queens. The hustlers. The ones who had nothing left to prove.
60. 06:49
    Jesusshare moment

    What would you want people to know? If they could hear you now.
61. 06:53
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That I wasn't sure of anything except that we had to try. That I didn't have answers, just questions that seemed worth asking. That love isn't a feeling, it's a decision you make every single day to see someone else as human. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard.
62. 07:09
    Jesusshare moment

    And that the gospel—the good news—is not that you're fine the way you are. It's that you can change. That today can be different from yesterday. That the kingdom is here, now, if you're willing to see it.
63. 07:25
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Is that what you wish they understood?
64. 07:27
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. That and one other thing. That when I said blessed are the poor, I meant it. Not that poverty is noble. But that the kingdom belongs to those who have nothing left to protect. No reputation. No righteousness. No certainty.
65. 07:44
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Nothing but their humanity.
66. 07:46
    Jesusshare moment

    Nothing but that. And everything.
67. 07:49
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They made you safe. They made you into someone who wouldn't scare anyone. Someone who wouldn't cost anyone anything.
68. 07:55
    Jesusshare moment

    They did the same to you.
69. 07:57
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. They put me in textbooks. They quote me once a year. And then they go back to living exactly as they were.
70. 08:03
    Jesusshare moment

    They wear my name on jewelry. They put my words on walls. And then they ignore every single thing I said about money, about power, about who gets left behind.
71. 08:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    What do we do about that?
72. 08:17
    Jesusshare moment

    We tell the truth. Again. We trust that someone is listening. That the word doesn't return empty.
73. 08:25
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Even if it takes two thousand years.
74. 08:28
    Jesusshare moment

    Even then. The kingdom doesn't come all at once. It comes like seeds. Like yeast. Like things that grow in the dark where no one sees.
75. 08:39
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I can live with that.
76. 08:41
    Jesusshare moment

    So can I. In fact, I already did.