In a stunning theological development, pastor and “Desiring God” teacher John Piper has come to the conclusion that God is just not “big enough” to solve race problems. Employing his usual amorphous, affable and directionless prose, and employing the phrase ‘I don’t know’ for earnest emphasis three separate times, Piper admitted that race is just too large a problem for the Great High King of the Universe. According to Piper some level of black separatism is something we should be “thankful for.”
John Piper–who simultaneously lamented abortion and wept tears of joy at the election of a passionately pro-abortion Barack Obama –worried that a black person unhappy with “white evangelicalism” could become a kind of reverse Damascus story and a critic of the church, thereby creating a problem that God might not be able to solve without compassionate virtue-signaling on the part of white Evangelicals. In the case of hip hop performer, Lecrae–who waxed nostalgic about his mother’s Angela Davis iconography–Piper exulted that “all things might just work together” for a Christian who harbors affection for a Marxist radical praised by godless dictators from East Germany, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. (Angela Davis purchased guns used in the murder of four people at a Marin County courtroom; the pastoral value of this life story seemed unclear, except, to be certain, she was not Donald Trump, and this, too, would be able to help God on the race-tension issue.)
Lecrae caused some confusion in the Michael Brown case, when no one could quite decipher whether he thought years of systematic oppression meant police should just allow urban youth to wrestle their service pistols away from them. While Lecrai admits, “I don’t know what really happened,” the chance to help God with racial justice matters seemed like too good an opportunity to waste.
John Piper, who began his career as a tap dancer, gracefully shimmied away from the implications of a white evangelical seeking out his own “whiteness,” apart from people of color in the church.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ,” Piper responded, “unless you grew up with a lot of Angela Davis hero worship as a child, and then it looks like we’ll have to help God out on that one.”
