Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, NC, a widely traveled evangelist, and the author of several books. His books are available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com

“What exactly do you want?” seems like a good place to open most any discussion where lines have been drawn and mistrust abounds. And if there is any societal issue that has separated (or dare I say the word, “segregated”) people into warring factions, the issue of crime and race has done so.

The general battle lines are as follows. On one side, and I will call this side “we” or “us,” since I am in it, are people who actually want there to be peace between the races and would be more than willing simply to live and let live and go about our daily lives working, taking care of our families, and being nice to everyone. On the other side, whose pronouns will be “they” or “them,” are people who have no intentions at all of ever allowing peace and harmony between the races. Peace and harmony are “bad for business,” in their view.

I heard that question in your mind.

“Business? What business? What does business have to do with any of this?” I will get to that. But first, let’s deal with that opening question a bit more fully. What, exactly, do “we” want.

It’s pretty simple, really. We want what used to be a fairly radical concept espoused by a cutting-edge peaceful protester named Martin Luther King, Jr. We actually want a color-blind society in which people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We want everyone to work, play, worship, raise families, and enjoy the lives God has afforded us all. We want to be able to watch sports and enjoy it. We want to have the strongest, most prosperous, most outstanding nation on earth, and we want every American citizen, regardless of race, to stand shoulder to shoulder on equal ground with us in that outstanding nation. And when crime is committed, we want it dealt with. We want the police who deal with it thanked and respected, we want judges to hand down sentences that will keep the bad guys off the streets, and we want law-abiding citizens to not be penalized for the actions of criminals.

Pretty straightforward.

And, one would think, acceptable to all, right?

Not even close.

Let’s get back to that “business” thing.

The “they and them” on the other side of the battle lines literally do not want any of the above, as far as I can discern from them. You see, there really is a lot of money and a lot of power, the two main currencies of business, to be gained from continually fomenting strife. And by business, I am thinking of things such as media, academia, entertainment, politics, and sadly even some woke evangelical churches. Large swaths of these entities are raking in both money and power by the dump truck load through the continued stirring of racial strife.

Let’s begin with media. Although there are many fine local newspapers and other news outlets to be found across the landscape, there is also no question at all that “strife sells.” In other words, the media complex consisting of large newspapers, radio, 24/7 tv and cable news, magazines and periodicals, and so much more, needs to sell papers, ads, time slots, and so on to even exist. And what are people more likely to reach for, a paper with “Lovely Church Bake Sale Exceeds Expectations” on the front page, or one that has “White Guy Shoots Up A Crowd Of People” on the front page?”

“Ahh, but wait!” you say. “The news simply REPORTS on what happens, they do not DECIDE what happens!” And in saying that, you are not quite correct. The correct statement would be “The news looks at everything that has happened in any given day, they DECIDE what to report and what to ignore, and they also DECIDE how to frame each story.”

And that is why “we” get so frustrated. You see, something like “White Guy Shoots Up A Crowd Of People” is a perfectly acceptable and oft given headline, while something like “Two Black Guys Drug, Rape And Kill White Woman” or “Middle Eastern Guy Shoots And Kills Ten White People” are not. I chose those last two examples of potential headlines because both of them actually happened during the last couple of days, the former in Florida and the latter in Colorado. And yet the headlines of those did not even begin to resemble the potential headlines that I wrote above.

Now, for the record, I am okay with that. I am perfectly okay, in fact all of “us” are perfectly okay, not ever having race or religion or any other usually irrelevant thing brought up in headlines or stories. As long, that is, as it is handled that way across the board. But that is where “we” start to get really fed up with the open, dripping hypocrisy of “them.”

For instance, when news of the Boulder shooting took place, before one fact had even become known, David Hoffman tweeted this to his 72,000 followers: “I’ll bet anyone my salary right now that the shooter in Boulder is a right-wing, MAGA, white male.”

The shooter, by the way, was Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a Muslim immigrant from Syria whose social media posts were utterly “anti-MAGA.” But did Hoffman apologize for unjustly slandering scores of millions of people? HAHAHAHAHA no. He doubled down, as “they” always do.

Consider also popular activist Amy Siskind. Once again, as soon as the shooting became news along with the fact that the shooter was taken into custody, she also took to Twitter. Her “gem” of wisdom was “The shooter was taken into custody. In other words it was almost certainly a white man (again). If he were black or brown he would be dead.”

Oops. Turns out, again, he was a Middle Easterner, and a Muslim. So she (naturally) took to Twitter again, this time to say “Let’s mourn the victims, but not glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known.”

Dear Amy; nobody is buying your faux concern about “glorifying the victim by giving his name.” If his name was Bubba Jones, and he was a Baptist from Wetumpka, Alabama, you would be tweeting “2 4 6 8, who and what do we all hate? Bubba Jones, Baptist Jones, Bubba Baptist Bama Jones!”

But it is always like this. The “rules” of the left in America are as follows. Hate is bad unless you hate whites. Religion is good unless it is Christianity. Cops are always bad and systemically racist unless white guys storm the capital, then they are heroes.

And they follow these rules as if Moses just brought them down smoking hot from Mount Sinai to their newsrooms and Twitter feeds.

Academia is the same. A quick glance at the tuition and endowments of universities across the land will suffice to prove that academia is swimming in cash and hungry for more. And therefore they dare not go against the narrative of the society that delivers that cash. Thus American History has been largely supplanted by Critical Race Theory, because again, “white guys bad.”

Ditto the entertainment complex and self-loathing, Bible-twisting woke evangelical mega-churches.

As to the Political side of the equation, surely it is not necessary for me to explain how cash and control are their only currencies. And racial strife is great for those purposes. It is especially useful for the control side of the coin, since huge problems require, in their minds, huge government to solve those problems. Therefore it is a logical thing, in the minds of the left, at least, to keep racial strife always stirred, so that votes and loyalty are easy to come by from anyone who sees themselves as victims and government as savior.

So what in the world are “we” to do, because make no mistake, “they” do not want to do anything. “They” like the current paradigm. “They” would be perfectly happy continuing to play by their rules of “Hate is bad unless you hate whites, religion is good unless it is Christianity, cops are always bad and systemically racist unless white guys storm the capital, then they are heroes.” “They” would be perfectly happy, in fact, coming right out and saying “All lives matter except white lives.” They haven’t quite gotten there yet, but they will.

So what do we do?

First of all, “love your neighbor.” Love your white neighbor, your black neighbor, your brown neighbor, your “we aren’t quite sure what color he is” neighbor. People are being inundated with motivation to hate; show them a better way. Show them that what they see on the news is stupid. Prove it by the way you yourself treat people.

Second, fight back, but do so in the right way, with facts and logic. Don’t just let the hypocrisy go unchallenged. Point it out day after day, every time it comes up. Make stupid people look stupid.

Third, diversify. “They” rely on the concentration of power to accomplish their purposes. So take that from them. Choose Christian schools or private schools or home school and colleges that are not actively trying to destroy everything that is good. Find alternative social media sites on which to post truth and find truth and share your cat memes. Do business with small companies and mom-and-pop shops instead of continuing to feed the bloated left-wing bigots that are most of corporate America.

Fourth, network. Get to known good people, develop contacts, stay in touch. There is strength in numbers, but not if those numbers don’t even know about the other numbers.

Fifth, and most importantly, take the gospel and the teachings of Scripture to everyone of every race. The Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 did not just include evangelization, it also specifically said “teaching them to observe ALL things whatsoever I have commanded you.” A saved, Biblically literate populace will be a people who love each other and see through the lies and stupidity of the race-hucksters intent on dividing us all.

Pastor Wagner can be contacted by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org, and his books and audio files are available by clicking the “Store” link above.