Years ago, as my wife and I were renovating our house, we met an African American gentleman who came to help with one of our projects. We welcomed him into our home and left him to do his work. After he finished the job, we began to talk. He graciously thanked us for the hospitality and mentioned it was not always the case. Upon my inquiry, he proceeded to describe some horrendous experiences he had endured as a Black man in people’s homes in our small Southern community. Some wouldn’t allow him in their houses, others watched him like a hawk, and others spoke in passive but incredibly derogatory ways toward him as he worked. He even told us that there were certain areas in town that he asked not to be assigned because Confederate flags fly proudly in front yards, which is still far too common for those of us who call this place home.
As Christians, the ways that this man had been treated should turn our stomachs and push us toward a righteous resolve to rid our communities of these abohorent and blatantly sinful attacks on the dignity of our fellow image-bearer. And while racism isn’t as open and obvious as it once was in our nation, it is still painfully present even if in more subdued or subtle forms. Many Christians today often feel caught between the realities of racism in our society and the calls for social justice that at times are at odds with the biblical social ethic. On one hand, some tend to argue that racism is nonexistent or at least not a prominent issue facing the church — often being seen as a secondary or tertiary issue to other cultural and social issues in Christian ethics. On the other hand, much of what is promoted in terms of social justice today does not accord with true social justice, biblical defined which is rooted in the inherent dignity of all image bearers and redemption through the cross of Christ.
The Rundown
Your next job interview could be with a robot – Joann Muller | Axios
Automated interviews vastly expand the job candidate pool and are designed to ensure consistent hiring practices by rooting out ways that bias seeps into interviews, recruiters say. But job applicants complain they’re dehumanizing and stressful.
Twitter Has Started Blocking Porn in Germany – Matt Burgess | Wired
The nationwide block of certain profiles in Germany is a rare example of a major social media platform bowing to regulatory pressure to make it harder for children to view porn online.
Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop – Billy Perrigo | Time
Despite their importance to Facebook, the workers in this Nairobi office are among the lowest-paid workers for the platform anywhere in the world, with some of them taking home as little as $1.50 per hour, a TIME investigation found.
🔒Burning Straw Men by the Bushel – David French | The Dispatch
A strange thing is happening online and over the airwaves—one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. The old left and the new right are launching a vigorous anti-war movement in response to a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine when there is no pro-war movement. There is not a single national leader who is arguing…
We Are All Realists Now – George Packer | The Atlantic
The field of human rights is littered with hypocrisy. No individual or organization possesses a scale of judgment that carefully matches the condemnation to the crime and then applies it consistently across a globe of oppression; personal and political biases always skew the calculation.
3 Lessons for Chinese Churches from Herman Bavinck – Ximian Xu | Christianity Today
A hundred years after his death, Herman Bavinck no longer belongs to the Dutch church. The 19th-century theologian has gone global in the 21st.
Online activists are doxxing Ottawa’s anti-vax protesters – Tanya Basu | MIT Technology Review
Over the past few weeks, convoys of truckers and sympathizers protesting vaccination mandates and covid restrictions have cut off Ottawa’s busiest border with the US.