The Third Option with Miles McPherson

how you doing everybody miles mcpherson here pastor of the rock church in san diego i want to thank pastor grogan for the opportunity to speak to the east lake network churches how y'all doing um i pray that this message the third option is going to encourage you uh as we battle racism here once again it's reared its ugly head in a horrible ugly way but i am confident this word is going to encourage you and give you wisdom on something you can do today to bring racial unity to your world god bless you and enjoy the message uh there's a japanese art uh ancient art form called kitsugi as probably to pronounce it wrong and in consuki they take pottery that was broken and they bring it back together they reassemble the pottery with gold and they take all the pieces and put the pottery back together and the belief is that the pottery that was repaired is more valuable than the original satan has done an amazing job at splitting us apart and by the way satan's the enemy not the white man not the black man not the poor not the immigrant satan's enemy can i get amen and satan has done a great job of bringing of dividing us through different kinds of racism personally mediated racism one to another white black hispanic asian it's not a white black thing only it's all of us all around the world globally as well internalized racism where people start to internalize the message that they have been told there are people who have been told that they're less than and now believe it and they hate themselves and their own culture internalized racism you might not heard that and then there's institutional racism there's systems designed to keep people in place the devil has done an amazing job of splitting us apart but god god jesus has this thing about bringing broken pieces together can i get amen he has this thing about making things that were ugly beautiful broken fixed and he can't do it and won't do it except through us we are his vehicle it has to be us but we have to do something different we have to move past the optics of diversity you can have lots of colors and and nationalities in your church and in your house but they're not in your heart they could be in your room but they're not you don't have a ministry you have a diverse crowd but not a diverse ministry so we want to move past churches minister into neighborhoods where they feel comfortable and all the neighborhoods that god has given them don't drive around i had a prayer meeting in san diego years ago and and uh i intentionally put it in the black community and they had pastors driving there and they said we've never been to this part of the town i said so you're telling me you fly to africa to minister to the poor black people but you won't go 10 minutes right down the street amen we have to get past where god says i'm going to call you to go wherever and by the way if you're a black church in the black community or are you going to the hispanic community right down the street or if you're a hispanic are you going to the black church it's all of us can i get eight minutes all of us so we got to move past it let me give you some context of who i am and where i get this from i have two black grandfathers from jamaica all my grandparents from jamaica i'm not gonna do this though i got 40 jobs brother 40 jobs all right and i got two two two both my grandmothers all my grandparents grew up jamaica one grandmother was half chinese half black the other grandmother was white her parents sent her from jamaica with cindy's they didn't wanted to marry black jamaican so they sent to jamaica new york where she met a black jamaican i grew up in a black neighborhood went to school in a white neighborhood because of this tan color i was too dark for the white people so i got called all those names i was too light for the black people so i got called all those names so that's why i'm learning spanish and i am learning spanish i'm going to preach my first spanish sermon sixth of may my church is also as diverse as san diego my church is also diverse in san diego we are leaning into this two years ago there was a shooting in san diego uh immigrant from uganda was shot by a police officer it was filmed that was put on tv for a week our city did this and for a week the devil said you have to pick one of these each side you have to be against the police of florida police for the black community against the black community the devil gave you two options in every race conversation the devil's only going to give you two options and in those two options he's going to say you're going to be on one side against the other fighting the other and you have to pick there's a third option and that's what the book is about it's the third option in joshua now read this real quick in joshua chapter five joshua's leading the jews into the promised land it says in verse 13 it came to pass when joshua was by jericho that he lifted his eyes up and looked and behold the man stood opposite him with a sword and joshua said to him are you for us or our adversaries angel you have to pick a side are you on the outside of this side and you'll say uh homie don't do that i don't pick size i am the side so he said he said he said are you for us and then he said no he said no i ain't asked you are you also he said no he said if you bow down i'm not gonna read the whole thing you bow down and worship the only way you're gonna get into the promised land if you honor and worship the presence of god in your midst this is not about you it's not about you it's not about you it's about god coming amen and so i want to talk to you about that because the third option is that we look at every single one of us and by the way save or not save people people you don't like people you have nothing in common with every single person what do we have 100 in common by the way we're all 99.9 genetically the same i'm not even talking about that white black asian rich poor you're 99.9 genetically exactly the same but you are 100 the same that god has given the same image to every single one of us amen and the image of god has the responsibility to acknowledge itself and other people the image of god has the ability to acknowledge itself and other people the image of god has the ability to walk with god love with like god forgive like god encouraged like god speak like god we we do god a disservice when we are racist or when we look down on people because we are looking at the image of god and someone else saying your image is inferior to my image when that's not biblical at all that every single image is the same value because god can't god can't look down on himself he's the same yesterday today and tomorrow and he's the same there there there there they're there and every single one of us and so i want to talk about how we got divided here's what i'm talking about how we got divided and then how we can apply the third option to bring us back together sociologists call it uh call our division um grouping in group out group grouping is the way we sort people into either like me or not like me this is a group christians ministers senior pastors as a group uh mega church senior pastors is another group women are a group men are group youth pastors our group we're all part of many groups football is a group and when you're in part of a group you are intimately involved and intimately knowledgeable about your group okay if you're a senior pastor you know senior pastor issues if you're if you're a sister pastor you know assistant pastor issues and so whatever group you're in you understand uh the intimacies of that group whatever group you're not in that's called your out group you don't know intimate information about that that's why we make ignorant statements about people we don't know about we we say those people because we don't know and we're ignorant so we shouldn't say anything but that's the out group but you're in group you know all the intricacies of your in-group there's a thing called in group bias in-group bias is your tendency to give preferential treatment to the people of your in-group i want you to think with me right now and by the way uh take this personal but don't take it personal are you do you follow him saying let the spirit of god minister to you we don't think we got to get past this ingroup bias is when you look at people who are like you whether it be by profession by race by look and you give them preferential treatment i'm gonna give you a list of some things they're gonna go on the screen i am more comfortable with those like me i am more inclined to spend time socially with those like me i am more patient with those like me i give the benefit of the doubt quicker to those like me i express more grace given when mistakes are made to those like me it is easy to communicate with those like me i assume i will get along easier with those like me i am more willing to get out of i go out of my way to help those like me i possess more positive assumptions about those like me say a minute that makes sense hey yo we're in alabama you got people coming you got guy walks in the room hey how you doing hey hey i play for the uh the football team oh you all of a sudden be part of my in i'm gonna give you grace come on in how can i give it see you hey date my daughter whatever you want to do everything's cool y'all do that in alabama you're all good our group is the opposite there's out-group discrimination outgrow discrimination is withholding in-group bias against people why because in that part of your group i am less comfortable with those not like me i am less inclined to spend time socially with those like me i'm less patient with those not like me i give the i give the benefit of doubt slower to those not like me i express less grace when mistakes are made by those not like me it is more difficult to communicate with those not like me i don't assume you will get along i will get along with those not like me i'm less willing to go out of my way to help those not like me i possess less positive assumptions about those like me listen people say well i'm a racist so i'm not a racist you only got two choices here's your third choice your third choice is you're human and you can work better at being unbiased but you could say you know what maybe i do give a little preference or treatment of people who look like me better than people who don't because i feel more comfortable with them that's fine you may not have have a white sheet or whatever or whatever form of racism your people whatever your people are express all of us but the outgrowth is if i walk into a room and someone's going to give me less patience and less grace i don't care what you call it it ain't good i had a lady come up to me she said and this is this story is in the book i don't really come to me she said she said um she said why can't you just get over it i said i said here's what i want you to do and i and i created this thing called um the uh walk in my shoes field trip i said this white lady i said she's a dear friend i'm loving it love her to death she speaks god speaks to her through me okay you can not know these things and be a very nice person but then you need to learn i said why don't you go to a place where you were the only white person just for 10 minutes just try it she's like well well well she did it she did it she did it and i had all these questions i want you to ask i said i want you to tell me how you felt when i asked you how you felt when you were driving there how you felt when you were there how do people treat you what you fear happened did it happen and i wrote all this stuff down and she asked i have six people by the way and two of them said no and one guy went on 10 minutes while he wouldn't go and actually and i actually had him write a paragraph to put in the book to tell why he didn't want he said you know if i if i went to a black church i would feel uncomfortable like i had to leave right away that breaks my heart that breaks my heart and when when people say can't you get over it i'm like you have been living amidst your in-group you flow in your in-group all day and night you are getting preferential treatment over the out group all day and night so you don't understand what it means to have that not like me all over every day i want you to flip the script in this room most of the people in this room are white i want you to flip it i want you to make sure make believe that all the people who are in this room that are white or not white and then all the people who are not white or white do y'all follow him saying and i wonder how many white people would come here i wonder if you would have registered to come he said that that's not my crowd why we're here we're walking in the midst of out group are y'all following them saying that that you have to you have to in your mind uh you have to in your mind think why how does that make me feel why does it make me feel that way because that's where god can work does that make you a racist absolutely not necessarily it just means hey i got that's something i can learn you can go today and go someplace and say listen and don't think don't go automatically to i got to go to danger zone [Laughter] [Applause] god put his image in all kinds of shades and they're wonderful people and because it's an out group you may only have anecdotal information and so you generalize and you see stuff on tv and someone told you this but you have no personal experience that's where relationship pastor chris talked about touch hey i'll be right here after come touch me [Applause] in in in in um uh stephen jones dr stephen jones in san diego wrote this article called the right hand the privilege this country was designed for right-handed people literally most people are right-handed i'm left-handed so because i'm left-handed i gotta go who's left-handed hey man okay so so you can't just go get golf clubs at any place you gotta go you gotta go to extra store you can't get get admit when you're at school it's right-handed desk and you're like this are you following me so you you gotta you gotta go through extra steps i want you to imagine if you're in group just because made a right-handed culture but you're left-handed so you have to live in a right-handed culture it's not it's not the same and so you're walking in the right-handed culture and because you're right-handed everything what's the problem all the right-handed people go i don't see the problem i don't see a problem everything fits like i could buy everything i don't know why what are you talking about what are you what are you worried about and then someone comes here and said i i can't use that desk i can't i can't use that glove i can't use those clubs i can't i can't find a store i got to go on amazon and all the comments too far [Applause] four things i want to give you just to respect time four things four things i want you to do please put these down write these down rename everybody you see as your brother and your sister why oh oh listen look at look what it says in in matthew chapter that god hit me with this matthew chapter 22 37 you shall love your lord to god with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind this is the great first and great commandment and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself everyone say neighbor first john 4 20 if someone says i love god and hates his brother say brother say sister if you say you're a liar for he does not how does he not love his brother sister say brother sister whom he has seen but he can't how can he love god he has not seen now the bible says clearly you have to love your neighbor your brother as yourself can i get amen number one ma'am if you can't do that everything else is nullified but what if they're not your brother what if you renamed them they're not like you they're not all they're not like you they're down here when i used to watch it when i used to watch cowboys and indian movies they always called the indian savages they weren't people they were down here blacks were called animals down here everyone had things charlottesville they were saying that down here so if you're not if you call someone an n word or a white privilege or an illegal or an arab or whatever you call people as soon as you do that you give yourself permission not to love them that's right because you just changed the identification so therefore i i need to be your brother because the devil is the enemy not me and you're my brother if the devil's you're not my enemy the devil is your enemy can i get amen number two number two number two give in group love to your out group next time you're around people who don't look like you and by the way this applies to all kinds of stuff it's just the bible next time all guys next time you're in a place where you see someone that's not like you and by the way they may be the only one not like you in the whole room think about the illustration about the ark conference if you were the only white person in this room they had two guys arrested in starbucks here i'm sure you saw it i don't need to go into the whole thing but the next time you go to starbucks listen i don't know about starbucks the lady who called the cops the owner came down he spent three days god bless that dude for coming down and did the philly and deal with it god bless him he got caught in the middle he's now taking the hump brunt from some lady who called the cops because two brothers are sitting there waiting for a dude right next time in the situation whatever the situation is black white hispanic asian you may be the major minority there's a one white person one hispanic person give them the same grace that you give your people think about that number three see my color stop saying you don't see color hey hey when you go out get a town i go to hawaii every year i get a tan yes we tan i get a 10 hawaii and it looks really good i got his hand and and i want your ladies you get a tan you dating a guy you want a date a guy you get a tan and you come to work you spend five days in a while getting your brown on and then you come with your little spaghetti strap and you're walking around working see my brown see my brown and for five days the dude you're trying to get attention to says nothing about your tan and you're like is it do you not see my tan and he says to you i don't see color that ain't happening when you get a tan in hawaii it's beautiful when you get a tan in the womb it's criminalized when you get a tandem wound it's scary it's inferior i am not saying that all you all think that i'm saying this is the difference when you say you don't see color you are nullifying not only the color but the burden that comes with the color you're nullifying the experience of being in the out group and so if you if you say and when people when the first people said it to me i said i don't see a color i was like i really thought they didn't see red green brown i was like this that's so sad everything's great i i don't get it i didn't understand [Applause] and they were like no no no i i don't see your color and i was like well well how do you know even to say that to me if you don't see it so i'm i'm confused so then i said well what color am i i mean am i did you make me like you i want to be like me and i want you to be like you i was watching stand for the sun sand from the sun [Applause] y'all know san francisco oh my goodness how many y'all don't know stanford son you're probably young you don't know okay sam anderson i want you how i don't know how you can be old 30 years old and i know who ready fred g sanford is fred g sanford i just want you okay so red fox was a comedian african-american comedian and he was raunchy and he was he was just hilarious but he had a show that was on tv so it was relatively clean and he was a junk man in south central los angeles and there were two cops always came to the house one cop was black one cop was white and and the black cop had to already interpret to the white cop what fred was saying it's hilarious it's great it's hilarious and the white cop was very formal and he would talk straight and and he would say uh so someone robbed fred g sandra's house and he said um uh fred mr sanford was the perpetrator colored and he goes yeah he was colored white the devil says you have two options white people and people of color god says no no no i made all y'all colored and i made all your color to be beautiful everyone say i am beautiful end of story you white people are beautiful you black people beautiful you're brown being beautiful everyone's beautiful fourthly give me your heart and i want to say me gets give each other our heart rod carew was a panamanian baseball player he's older so a lot of y'all might not know him but um he was panamanian if you saw him on the street you think he was black black panamanian he had a 328 batting average 3 000 hits 18 time all-star rookie of the year he was the man he was a man and i grew up on rockaroo when he was 71 he had a heart attack and he needed a heart and a kidney at the time there was a 27 year old white tight end nfl played at stanford named comrade and comrade had went into a coma and conrad in a coma his mother put her head on his chest says baby you're going to get up one day i'm going to heal your heart again well comrade died and right before comrade died he gave his body his organs to be donated and rock crew got his heart sirac crew calls comrade's mother cameron's mother calls rockaroo you have my son's heart roccaroo says do you want to come listen to your son's heart he goes over the house and she puts her chest on rockeroo's chest hears her son's heart again when conrad was 11 years old he met rockaroo and he came home and said mom i'm gonna be a professional athlete because i met my hero how is it that a white man his heart can be in a panamanian black man if we're so different i'm gonna end with the story let me end with your story there was a guy who was hunting in the woods and he saw this monster coming at him and the monster was 100 yards away and he was trying to get a good shot and it kept getting closer and closer it was behind a tree he was behind a rock it was behind the tree it was behind a rock and he said i can't this thing's going to kill me i got to shoot it i got to shoot it and next thing you know the monster was right here and then he realized it wasn't a monster it was his brother there's no monsters in here there are people who do bad things and by the way they look all kinds of shades okay but we're not monsters and when i say we we god made us in his image so we can honor him glorify him love like him encourage like him speak life like him into himself and other people and if we can understand and realize and see each other as his brothers and sisters and that we are all one family then god can bring this broken fractured nation back together lord jesus thank you so much for your faithfulness thank you for your goodness we honor you and praise you in jesus name amen thank you very much

Channel: EastLake Church

Views: 4,847

Rating: 4.8198199 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 6nvKq7djtJo

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020