Reading While Black: A Conversation with Dr. Esau McCaulley

Hello saints and names, welcome to 30 minutes with Perry. What is good? How are you doing? How are you doing? My name is Jackie Hi Perry. My name is Preston Perry. What is his middle name? Um, start at the end. What is it? It's none of his business. It's not funny, I'm rooting for them, even though I'm rooting for them. I am the guest. I must laugh. I can see why he thought he was funny, but we have a guest with us here. His name is Esau Professor Esau Macaulay Dr. Esau, what else do you have? This is Esau.

May he be well, well, your teacher, people must respect you because you respect my name. Now, if you know something about something, you already know Esau, but if not, tell us who you are, I don't need to. I present to you. I am an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. I am a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. I have three books, only two of which anyone could have read. The second book is called

reading

while

African American

black

s are biblical. Interpretation is an exercise in hope and the third book is a children's book called Joseph Johnson's Hair and the Holy Spirit and I have no idea when this podcast is coming out but it came out yesterday on the 10th as of now this was Ni I didn't even think about asking this question until you introduced yourself.

Do you have someone in your family who puts a little before your things? No, it is and underneath there is a little pride, but we don't want you to do it. I feel like yeah, you're not all that with your little book, it's like it's the main one, your little articles with the New York Times, okay, so Esau we met up a couple of weeks ago and we talked about how you published an article about Easter . yeah, and I made it wasn't a mistake, oh, it's well stopped, I'm joking, joking, but I retweeted it with the quote from the article where you said that when my body rises it will be a

black

body, now I thought. that was the least controversial thing, it's like I'm black in the article because am I just stating or are you just stating that we will be raised as ourselves, yes our ethnicity doesn't go away but people were so mad at me, yes people, the people, understanding their feelings, people got mad at me, saying I ruined Easter, I missed the point of the resurrection, you know, I was like I didn't think I put him back in the grave, I thought he was resurrected. in my article I can say a lot about that, I can say a lot about that, one of them is how we talk about Christian truth, you know, there are certain things that, as everyone claims, you know about the resurrection, anyone who is an Orthodox Christian under frames things like the resurrection of the body, but I think sometimes people don't always consider what it means to apply a text to particular groups of people, so the point of the article was this, historically in America, black bodies have been devalued, this is not even that controversial right from slavery to Jim Crow, through all these things, the black body was devalued and therefore what I was actually rejecting was the denial of the resurrection of the body, In other words, this idea. that when you die your soul goes to heaven and you are in a better place that is the end of the story I said that is insufficient because black people imagine all these photos of lynchings where they literally hang and burn a black body well that was the final statement in the earth on this person's body, then the question is good, what does God think about that statement?

Does God think that what happened to that body was good and good, the resurrection of the body is a rejection of the evil done to that black body so that when this body is resurrected and comes back as black it is saying that this thing that you tried to destroy and devalue the values ​​of God himself and one of the things and how to get into it because this is the New York Times that I can't follow all these things from the Bible by the way, but one of the things that it talks about in the book of Revelation It's that God will wipe every tear from our eyes before we enter the new creation, so in other words, the Bible describes this.

The idea that when we rise from the dead we don't actually forget Trump doesn't say that he says that God ministers to our trauma one last time before we enter the kingdom of God. Well then I need to ask people. This question, which resurrected black people are likely to be traumatized by potentially racial trauma? In other words, God ministers to that racial trauma and then ushers us into the kingdom. So I think what people really don't like is when we start asking how does this general truth for Christianity in general terms sometimes touch on the particular needs of black people?

Now I want to say with as much love and caution as I can that the rule is almost only in effect for black people. This is what I mean when I say that. when you're sitting at a wedding or at a youth retreat or any other kind of subset of people, we say, how does this particular text speak to young married couples? In other words, if you are at a retreat and there are 25 young people. two or three people and you have a biblical text, you are asking a particular question, how does this biblical text affect this married couple now?

If you were dealing with people who are widows, you preach the same text differently so that we really understand what it means. They shape a sermon, they are still biblically faithful to the particular needs of the community, but that is only the case when we start. to talk about how Christianity touches on the particular issues of black racial trauma that people have in their feelings and the reason that people have in their feelings is because sometimes they feel implicated in racial trauma; In other words, when I say that this is how the gospel talks about the things that black people have experienced, they have to reflect on what really happened to black people in America, which can then raise problems. of guilt or whatever is going on, but that's not my problem, my problem is that I want to say something that helps a particular community without denying this universal, the universal implications of the gospel that we really do, that we really do for everyone. the other things, I mean. from children to marriage to divorce to grief, everyone has their own ministry except black people, oh, wow, but also, and I want you to talk about this because I think now that we are such a unique time in the that race and culture matter.

Talking about it is almost considered a no-no, as if certain circles in Christendom are being conditioned and taught that talking about race is literally turning away from the gospel or not trusting the Scriptures and putting your race above of Scripture, so I guess for those people who have been conditioned to think that, man, if I mention race, I don't speak too loudly if I talk about race or if I hear someone talk about race, yeah, the first thing I they think is about man, this person or this person thinks about his career, career, career, career, can you talk to those types of people?

Yes, I think one of the things I will say to those people is that We, sometimes, too often and I speak from experience, people use the language of sticking to the gospel again only when it comes to racial issues and it What I want to do is I was always going to take a step back and talk by analogy, so for example you can say you know they might be a couple that really loves Jesus, but their financial history can improve and they can be super converted and still so not knowing how to handle money until the church says they know. which we're not just going to preach the gospel to you, we're going to tell you how the implications of the gospel impact your money, you could be, you could be a group of people who really love Jesus, you could convert, but they don't really know how to talk to each other. , they communicate healthily in a relationship because he said you know what I know you saved now I'm going to disciple you in communication in other words, we are always as a church thinking about how The gospel actually touches the flesh with particular problems.

The same in raising children. Just because you saved you don't get the holy spirit, it doesn't automatically teach you exactly how to be a good parent because you inherit all the dysfunctional parenting habits that you might have passed on and we. said you know what we need to have a retreat that brings these parents together so they don't deceive their children, so the question is that when we say just preach the gospel, we tend to believe that racism is the only sin that magically disappears with a conversion. or maybe you may have inherited and this is difficult to hear stereotypes, ways of thinking, ways of acting that may not be in accordance with the gospel and what you might really need to do, in the same way that you need to read and find out how. being a Christian parent how to be a good Christian spouse how to manage your money as a Christian who needs to think intentionally and theologically about racial racism and its impact on people now the other thing I want to say and this is actually me A very nice white student He came up to me and asked me this question.

Really a good boy. He said he was talking to my black friend about race and I just want to make sure he doesn't get too involved in his race if he stays focused on Jesus and I'm like, okay man, why don't we take a step back and look at the story of the church and say what has really caused the most damage in the history of the church? Black people care too much about their race. or anti-black racism in Christianity, in other words, we tend to be afraid of the last of the smaller issues now, before we get into this kind of super controversial moment in the church.

I think you know, the one that black people used to talk about. Black people who also like to be black like we used to joke about people who like super woke, it was quite a meme before woke became a political thing, like man listen you can't be aware that everything is not the right system, so we had a way of dealing with it internally, we knew people who were like breakfast, yeah, you know, and I was wondering why this bacon is so black, the man did everything you remember, like see before, when that's like that, I'm blacking black, black, so we've had If we had in the black community an ongoing

conversation

about being overly conscious, yeah, so we really watch for this in our community, the idea that someone outside of our community being able to say that you're being too black in a context where, like, black cultural expression is often downplayed seems to be very problematic and so what I would say, what I think they believe is that if you downplay our blackness , then we will have a unity that emerges naturally, what really happens is if this everyone conforms to white culture and because they don't recognize white culture as a particular culture, we just think that we are all unified and I love to hear, I love and I'm not one of those people who only likes Kirk Franklin.

Kurt he's the goat so that's not my path but I could take a worship song but I can do both well I can do a good worship song or a gospel but if you're saying the requirement for us to be unified in Christ. is to adopt only a particular cultural form, then that is colonialization and I know it sounds difficult but it is actually true, if you believe that normal is what you do in the majority culture and unity means that everyone else adapts to you, so that is not unity, that is actually colonizing people's culture and the goal of the gospel is that the gospel transforms the culture and then each of those cultures offers those gifts to god and then the reason why I am not willing to abandon my culture is because god made me black on purpose and that a redeemed black culture is a gift to the body of christ that no one else can give and therefore if you eliminate my culture you eliminate the work that the gospel has done in my culture so I'm fighting for not exclusive black context but the gifts of black Christians to give to the body of Christ so you wrote

reading

while

all black people liked it and I think the premise of the book is to teach people or exalt that we all must have, not all of us have. but black biblical interpretation is kind of true, yeah, why did you think it was necessary to even write a book about a couple of things?

One is what I had in mind. I was living in the UK at the time and saw a lot of things. of the things that were happening with a lot of the protests in 2016 2015 2014 2013 and I remember people saying this wasn't your parents' civil rights movement and I was like, these are black people saying this and I was like, man. . The African American Christian tradition has often been on the side of justice, not an enemy of justice, so I wanted to write a book that expressed how African Americans came to the conclusion that the Bible was a friend, not an enemy, in the search for justice. liberation, but another thing that underlies all of that is, in much of the African American type theological enterprise, one of the normative ideas um that is called card herman doubt to suspicion, which means that you have to fight the liberation of the text that it is not there, that you will have to read against the grain of the text to find thefreedom, and in fact, I was raised to trust the Scriptures, and in trusting the Scriptures, I found liberation, and so I wanted to write a book that had at its heart something like what I think the African-American stance toward Scriptures were normative in most black churches I knew and in most black churches I knew in Alabama and the South while we were growing up.

We love the Bible but we also believe that in that Bible it spoke of the essential value of all people and that God did not enjoy it, God was not in favor of what happened to us and God was on the side of people like Martin Luther King and his liberating work , so that was the origin of this and that relates to African Americans. biblical interpretation people get angry when I talk about this and they wonder what skin color has to do with biblical interpretation, aren't you making everything racial? This is again when they call me a heretic, let me explain to people.

What I want to say, the first thing I want to say is talk about being black, what does it mean to be black? Actually, I don't maintain that having dark skin makes you a certain interpreter of the Bible, it doesn't like to create. These magical interpretive ideas, but what I am saying is that they are common, not universal, experiences that go along with being black. In America we experience certain things and this collective experience raises certain questions that we then bring to the biblical text and then by bringing those black biblical questions, those black questions arise from being black to the biblical text, trusting that god will give us an answer and the The fruit of that is what I call black biblical interpretation, one of the sufficient examples that I use all the time.

I don't know of any white church that has to consistently grapple with this idea. Is Christianity the white man's religion because they don't do it. That's not a criticism of them, but if you're black growing up, you should know what the Bible says. it says you know the bible and you're not desperate until that's an example, one of the other things I say and this is very important to understand, this is the only way to describe it, the best way to describe it historically, there are moments of debate . happening in America during the abolitionist period and then again during the civil rights period and other times in history and there was a group of people saying that the Bible supports slavery and that we should enslave all these black people and these are the reasons biblical why and then there was a large group of black people who started historically black churches who responded and said no, that's not what the Bible says, so there's a historical group of people who are called, I mean, They were called black churches. while black churches exist, black churches existed, I'm sorry to tell you the story besides the story, he said well, they were literally driven out of the white churches, so the best description for these churches that were driven out of the white church is that they have to find their own denomination so they can worship God freely with the black churches those black churches read the Bible differently than the majority white churches and there is a historical record that you can go back and look at and say oh, black people say during the time of slavery, well, white people were in the time of slavery, etc.

When I talk about African American biblical interpretation, I talked first about the literary repository, what we said at these different points of controversy, and what kind of Bible reading habits emerged from having to answer questions from black people that we've encountered. of racist churches, then African American biblical interpretation is the African American method of finding freedom through trust in the scriptures that has a kind of black Christianity marked in America over time and once again I like to tell the people history because this is important and I can I can I can be nervous for a second jack, go ahead professor, okay, these are the people, so this is what I'm talking about, so anyone who has studied the reform, I know. , I don't know how nerdy your listeners are, they'll say, Well, this is what was happening in Germany, you studied reparation reform, Jackie, okay, so they say, okay, this is what's happening in Germany, this is what Luther was going through, this is what Luther is experiencing and these experiences that Luther had in Germany. the catholic church led luther to read the bible in a certain way and see in the bible the grace of god, in other words, everyone understands that luther's theology emerged from a certain context but, nevertheless, it was true and the theology of Luther relied on his experiences, so in other words, someone else who did not experience what Luther had experienced may not have devised a doctrine of grace, but although that was a uniquely German experience, Luther still had it. spoke a theological truth and therefore if you believe in the Reformation, I believe that social location can give rise to theological truths that are universally applicable, then what I mean is that African American biblical interpretation arises from a particular set of circumstances which, however, are universal and applicable to other people.

What I would say is that anyone who studies theology recognizes that cultural temperaments influence how theology is done; In other words, British theology is actually a little different to German theology, which is a little different from what is done in Scotland; In other words, we have things like the Scottish Theology Magazine and no one is saying to stop talking about race and start talking about Scottish theology, no one is saying to stop talking about British theology, no one is really saying to stop talking about German theology, We all recognize that these are traditions, the difference is that we tend to think that the United States only has one theological tradition and it does not, it has subtraditions and African American theology and biblical interpretation are a subtradition.

Lastly, I want to say, even in Australia, anyone knows that Australian evangelicalism is different to what we are doing. here, so we recognize the cultural difference and how that influences the truth, however, they can be universally applicable, but only black people are not allowed to have a particular culture that provides things to the broader body of Christ because we are from Who are you talking to? about race, but it is a rule that has been given exclusively to us, so my question is what do you think comes from this idea that all American Christians have to conform to one style of worship and one way of thinking?

When, in the United States? There are a lot of different cultures and you know, groups of people, I think I think at the heart of this, in the most generous interpretation, is the idea that the best way to solve the race issue is to not have to be colorblind. , in other words. If I don't recognize the difference, then I can't judge the basic difference, so I just won't take it into consideration and I think people think they're trying to solve the problem without recognizing it. race and I think that historically hasn't been helpful in terms of helping us get through it, I mean, if you imagine if something bad happened in your family two or three years ago, the best way to deal with it is to say we're.

We are never going to talk about this as a family, the best way to resolve it is to talk about it and find out what happened, what went wrong and how we can avoid doing those things again and I think there is another truth that we have to address. Let's recognize that if we are, we are being intellectually honest and I think this is again one of the interesting and difficult parts of these types of

conversation

s: that people don't understand what's really going on in black communities, what we're talking about, there's blood, there is blood. There are people who talk about race in ways that are helpful and there are people who talk about race in ways that are spiritually destructive and, in other words, there are people who say that Christianity itself is so hopelessly racist or whatever that We black people should.

Let's not be Christians, I think there are people who have talked about race in ways that are not helpful and have not used, I mean, that's the wrong word, one of the things I really sympathize with is people. who experience racial trauma in other words, I can't, I mean, I would lament people who walk away from the faith. I admit that anyone walks away from the faith, but I understand the frustration with Christianity that makes them question the things they believe and so what I want to say is that if there is someone whose racial trauma has driven them away from the faith, the solution is not That is to say, your trauma is not so bad, we are united in Christ the solution. that's saying this is how the gospel ministers to your trauma and this is how the gospel provides you with more than just retribution and that's why I think some people are so afraid to deal with the ministerial reality of the church's racial history and they can't. .

I can't imagine a kind of biblical faithfulness on the other side of these difficult questions and one of the things I say for better or worse and the black church is not perfect, we have our own dysfunctions and stuff, but we have always known how to be Christian and at the same time being deeply disappointed in other Christians. One thing we specialize in is we know what it's like to follow Jesus when everyone around us who calls to Him is of no use to Him, so this idea is that we. Can we not, as a church, fully acknowledge the evil and the evil and the things we have done in the name of Jesus and then, on the other hand, remain biblically faithful and theologically sound?

It is something that people can do. I don't imagine that you think that if I acknowledge these things then people will lose faith, but what I mean is that what was done in the dark must be the lights coming on and then the lights going out. on yes we will see that the evil church is over we also see the goodness of God shining through I also want to go back to this black biblical interpretation because I think the part that is really intriguing to me is how people I really don't know or maybe I don't have the tools to identify the frames or biases they bring to the passages and having a frame and a bias isn't even necessarily a bad thing.

I think it becomes bad when you don't do it. I don't see it so even something small like a couple of days ago I'm studying Samuel 1 first because I have to do this Bible study on prayer and stuff like that and I was reading about Hannah and how I said Hannah didn't have children and I. I'm looking at comments and literally it's like no one really lands or sticks with the fact that Hannah is barren, they just skip past that and go into the Elkanah genealogy and, uh, polygamy, and I was like, uh, I think I care about her sterility. like an implication of what it was like to be a woman because I'm a woman so I'm asking questions from this text because I'm a woman with friends who are infertile and all that and I was like uh even the comments are affected because people don't identify their frameworks, so this is what I think people don't understand about this.

Your experiences lead you to ask questions that the text itself can answer. In other words, you are not distorted in the text. Text you are saying: No, no people who do not have these experiences do not play them. I will give you an example. I will not mention this person's name. I'm reading this comment and it's talking about a slave passage. This is true. God bless this brother and he said, well, during the ancient world, most people were free at the age of 35 or whatever, so slavery wasn't that bad and then in a footnote , we will leave that aside that was the first one." part let's let that go let that happen, okay, but it gets worse than the footnote, the footnote said "like" and I quote something like "except the women, most of them weren't free".

Let's say I said wait a minute, that's half the population, so you do it, but he didn't even like it or even realize that I was trying to make it clear that for men this would be really good, he he says, but the women didn't get that benefit, so he could have kept that small part to himself. Another part was reading this comment. I think he was talking about the Good Samaritan. A different comment or something. He said there are certain ones. groups of people who like it as soon as you see them, he's trying to apply the text as soon as you see them, you start to get nervous, like someone from the Middle East and I was like, well, no, if you had asked me as a black . man from the south, who was the person who initially made me nervous, would have been a different analogy - in other words, I don't think we often realize how much our interpretive comments are aimed at the people they are applying to. the text for the white middle class who like it and that has a distorting impact on the things that are emphasized and the things that are downplayed that are in the text itself or how the text is applied.

I remember, I remember, one of the things in my book and I was so angry about it there were two parts to the book in the chapter on black identity there are two parts to the story that neitherI didn't even know until I was literally researching the book, one of them was when I was talking about Ephraim and Nasa and I don't know what they were, they haven't read that chapter. I knew it, but no one applied it to me, like Abraham, sorry, Joseph's two sons, who were later adopted. The nation of Israel was half Egyptian and half Jewish and when he when when when Joseph brings his two his two his two sons to his father the father says that God made me a promise you are going to make me the father of many nations therefore , I am going to take these two children, effort of Manasseh, and I am going to adopt them into the 12 tribes, in other words, Joseph's father said that because of the ethnicities of these children, because I see ethnicity, I want to adopt these children and they are Africans and nobody.

Have I ever said well how this could apply to a young brother of African descent running around this place in the kingdom of god the other thing I'm reading listen I'm checking the comments and the comments mention that yes they are half Egyptian , neither of them land the other is and this is also in the book when it says after the plagues on the people of Israel are leaving Egypt, there is this line there where the writer says that a mixed crowd went up with them and I was like , what is it? that mixed multitude that they have to recover in my Hebrew the mixed multitude means different ethnic groups, that's the word it means, so the Bible is there telling you where they are, in Egypt, these are African peoples that are in the Twi, who said , did you know?

They looked at the 12 tribes and said: you know what I want, that god, not your god, so after the plagues, a group of Africans said: let's go with them, and these are things that are actually in the text that the most scholars Some haven't uh, haven't worried about these issues like ethnic identity because that's not a question for them and so the reason why the black interpretation is useful is not because we distort the text but because we find things that other people might. I can't find them because you're not looking for them. It's the same with women.

Women can see things in text that we might not notice unless we really do. Because it may not be a concern for me. Sorry, this may be too much information. but I had a student who had just given a paper and she was talking about something about menstruation in Leviticus and she started talking like you know the woman's cycle and all these other things and I had never considered how all these things landed. because I never had a cycle before and she was going through the text and all these ways I think the point is that we think we don't need each other and I want to believe that we all need each other to properly discern the mind of Christ , different cultures bring different knowledge that, as long as we are committed to the authority of Scripture, we can judge according to what the text says and see if this knowledge is really good or bad. we say diversify your library your comments your sermon your seminar course book thing what do you call them things what do you call them the little thing syllabus here's the thing here's the thing I love the church of God and I love the American church but I think one of One of the things that the American church does when we think about diversity is we only think about skin color, so a lot of these churches will try to diversify a church by putting blacks, whites, Asians or whatever, but in the When someone comes in who is culturally or from the neighborhood, you know what I'm saying, they don't really know how to accept it, so I think trying to make people conform to a way of thinking can diversify, but if not you have a lot of different cultures, well that's diversity, although yes, that's true, so you're saying we need, we need to articulate what diversity is absolutely because someone might say my church is diversified, I have black whites, do you? all of you books are diversified?

Yes, yes, that is that is the question yes, one of the difficult things to do is to have this it is difficult to have these conversations in public there are none, we all know that there is no single essence of blackness in which everyone who They are black, they agree for sure that there is no such thing as a monolithic blackness and that, but we also recognize that there are cultural norms, there are types of habits and ways of being the culture, being part of the black community, and when you talk about what It happens a lot, it's just, man, this is going to be Complicated people say we just can't find the right fit and what that often means is that we want to find a black person who thinks like us so we can have a black person in charge who doesn't like challenges.

That's what I meant. what I meant and so even if you don't completely agree with everything the black community says, if you were raised in it and trained in it, you intuitively understand and this is what I say all the time, the people who want to diversify their staff, sometimes the very black person that you're trying to find that makes you feel comfortable will connect with the black people that you're trying to reach and that's the hard part because if you feel uncomfortable, probably the black person that everyone would say, yeah, that's someone who was actually going to say, that's why certain black people in certain white spaces are so hotheaded, right, I'm trying to unsee and this It's, hey, man, we can take it. there we could take it no, we can't, yes, we can, no, we can't, I'm taking it there Esau here this is the conversation I mean it's complicated and well, I didn't want to essentialize blackness so that no one who doesn't agree with us is not authentically black blacks are as diverse as any other culture we have people who have a variety of opinions the question is who chooses who speaks for us in other words, one thing is that I notice yes, this is the brother that I met in the streets and I've seen it, but no one listens to this brother, but if everyone, if someone outside of our culture, says this is the black person who gets it, that's when it becomes problematic, then I have to say, well, Wait, I'm not questioning his blackness or her blackness.

I'm saying no one or 95 of us would come to a different conclusion and if you want to have and it's not my job, it's not my job as an African American. respond to the black person that you absolutely like and that's the one thing that I want many of you to know, my white brothers and sisters and white evangelicals to understand that if they say that, they can't, they can't say in a sense, oh, everything is about race, but then think that if you find a black person who thinks it's not just about race, but if you find a black person who thinks like you, then that person is qualified to totally talk about black people or because that way you've done it totally because of race it's like no what you just said is very important it's like man like why can't we choose who speaks for black culture or black people, you know what I mean and I think if we elect him, I think they'll be able to learn from people like me and you and I think it's also the stance, in other words, if you put five black people in a room. and on a panel and it's a black audience from black communities, everyone will know what the community's position is and if you come from a minority position it will change the way you speak, in other words you're not going to speak as if everyone is on your side and everyone doesn't agree with you it's ridiculous you're going to have to at least have a stance because I know I'll reject you sometimes like common ideas in the black community but I know what I'm doing right I know. when I'm doing that, one of the things, for example, reading while black, the hermeneutics of trust, the idea that the Bible itself, as written, leads to liberation, is not everyone's normal disposition. black scholars, so I knew that part of the book was going to be controversial.

People were going to love the liberation part. Wouldn't they love to repent of their sins to be saved and follow Jesus and continue to hold this part. So I learned that that book traveled to a black community in that part. The book was going to be complicated, so I spoke in a way that said why am I doing this. I think in the same way, if you're a black person speaking in a majority white environment, you have some responsibility to say accurately. communicate the opinions of the community that you can represent and when you separate yourself from that and have your own opinion, you have to offer to take with some humility, that's great and especially, and when I say this I mean, I'm talking. about black people who love Jesus and love the Scriptures like you and who disagree, and that's what I try to be.

I try, as a writer and as a thinker, to be as clear as possible about what I'm doing and when I'm doing it. I'm articulating the heart of what our community has always believed, I mean, you said it all, professor, I guess we could, we could end this, you have a new book about the holy spirit and black people, black girls, yeah, yes people like it if you if you wait I need to warn you if you didn't like the Easter item don't buy this no I love you and I love it because I read it with my daughters because now when I get books my daughter oldest is seven years old. can read, so I'll have her read it to me and her sister and I guess have her read words that I haven't considered that she hasn't read like Pentecost, you know, it was like nations, tribes, tongues, flames of fire and I .

It was like, oh Ax, it's really creative when you think about it, but then my four-year-old daughter, almost four, didn't care about the words, but she looked at the picture and said her hair was like that. Mine and I were like, wow, that's really special, not only having this communication of the holy spirit and indwelling all peoples and nations and languages ​​and things, but even having this illustration that looks like my children, obviously, that was intentional with you. right, yeah, well, a couple of things, I told you I wanted a black woman to illustrate it because I knew she could draw hair, yeah, um, and what I think, and this is probably my lifelong ministry, maybe I don't.

I don't say it summed up in that book, but I feel like there are certain places where you can go to get black cultural affirmation in a certain place where you can go to get this spiritual affirmation and I want to put things together to bring these things together. You're not the only person who does it, I'm not talking about that, what I'm saying is that I wanted both experiences to be there for the parents, they could have a book with pictures that look like them and that talks about gods that worship the same time and we all heard I love you, you know, I love the super book and I love all these little cartoons, they're all white, that's fine, God could use that too, but my daughter needs to see someone who looks like her trying to follow her.

Jesus too, so even if no one buys it except your daughter and she had that experience, then I think I did my job and we bought your editor senate, but I will. You were arguing with me about keeping it now. Like I'm trying, yeah, for free, I know, I feel like my friends, I feel like if there's anyone whose work I support, you all can get 20 of my dollars, so everyone who emails me and tells Esau, can I send this to you? influencer box so no, keep the box, I'll buy it or send it to someone else, okay, I never said, I just feel like because every little one, every little one, like a cell means something, right, yeah, sorry, I'm sorry and I'm sorry. like you're not securing the bag by taking the photo at the checkout, but with every sale you make, you can say I sold that much, which means they got one more dust jacket for the next book, so I feel like I'm contributing. towards your future sales, this is a learning, a learning, uh, something for some people who want me to make a list, insuring the bag means insuring how much money you make, you see, it's not just about color, it's about training , increase the amount of carrying the bag. it means keep getting all the money omg yeah now the reason I said this is people don't understand this they just don't understand the people who maybe don't care about this but I care about this , I know people.

Say they should support black writers and stuff they really should, because if they buy the books, the publishers will have evidence that these books are sold and then more are produced, so each cell is not literally just a deposit in someone's bank account. It's a deposit in the creation of a culture, so I'm glad the reason why black is not in front of me because I'll be fine, I'm fine, but that's it, people look for the next read, while black is not for me, but for Others like the writer and people tend to think that black books don't sell, so if I sell black books, that means someone else can sell black books, so I I consider it as doing everything I can to create.

I support creating a marketplace, so there's a black labor ecosystem and I'm sorry, this is not this, it wasn't on the podcast. I'm going to say this, no, it's necessary, itthat happens, although this happens a lot, especially, can I say as a judicially minded Orthodox, whatever you want? I mean what we do is for a long time our voices were suppressed and then people say well I can't find any books like this because everyone dismissed us every time we started talking about Jesus and race, right? so you only allow us to produce certain types of black art the black legend will be produced and then that creates a stereotype of so and so then when you have someone like you or others producing the books we have to support them so that the breadth of the black Christian tradition to be accessible in print to people and that's why I'm passionate about it.

It's one of the things that if I couldn't do anything else is that I really want to support black people. black writers and artists who continue to produce things that I think our life given to our culture is incredible, well, thank you Professor Esau, this was very informative, frank and intelligent. You should also write a book. Next you are the next one I'm writing. the book right now is fine, so what's it called no, doesn't matter, don't tell us yet We're not ready, he doesn't even know, I still don't know what it's called, but I know what the topic is and I'm going to think about it.

Okay, brother, I'll talk to you later.