Oct. 21, 2025 - Epoch Times
04:12
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| You have the death of George Floyd and the spark of Black Lives Matter and the Black Lives Matter organization and movement and everything like that. | |
| And I wasn't opposed to it at all. | |
| I understood where the humanity and where it all was coming from. | |
| But me being a Christian at the time, I was trying to figure out what does this mean? | |
| What is an appropriate response that honors the truth and that honors giving an answer toward progress. | |
| And I remember having conversations with some buddies early on in the movement, and I would offer some of that in terms of Christ ultimately being the thing that could bring all of us together. | |
| And it was kind of like, we don't want to talk about that right now. | |
| That's not what this is about. | |
| And so although I understood where they were coming from, I kind of felt like, man, this movement may not be for me. | |
| The tone and the rhetoric, some of the things that were going on. | |
| I was like, I don't know if I can give my allegiance. | |
| Not that Black Lives Don't Matter, but give my allegiance to this movement because of the way that they're operating and speaking and everything like that. | |
| And so I remember there were riots that were going on and we were set to go into the bubble. | |
| And my pastor at the time was preaching a sermon on the moment that Jesus is captured by the Roman Guard and one of his disciples, Peter, takes out his sword and cuts off the guy's ear. | |
| And what he said was, if with what happened to George Floyd, we have an opportunity. | |
| If we respond in the way that's natural in terms of our nature, which is anger, resentment, retaliation, hatred, all these different things that will come natural to something like that happening, we're going to get the same result. | |
| Jesus said, if you live by the sword, you're going to die by the sword. | |
| And he said, if we could step into this moment with love, grace, mercy, and truth, there could really be progress and, you know, mending of the black and white community, all these different things. | |
| And I believed that, you know, and it really resonated with me that, man, like I have an opportunity to love somebody that doesn't love me or be the first one to reach across the aisle and lend a hand and see if they would give a hand back. | |
| And that's just not what I saw with what was going on. | |
| And so I kind of just hid that in my heart. | |
| I didn't have this plan to speak up or anything like that because I didn't know that there was going to be this moment in the bubble until we got in there. | |
| So we get into the bubble and a team that's playing, we were going to play the next day. | |
| And so a team that was playing that today decided to kneel. | |
| And now there's this consciousness and ripple effect that's going through. | |
| Everybody was just going, oh, shoot, if we don't kneel now, we're going to look like we're not a part of the movement and that we don't believe that Black Lives Matter and the whole nine. | |
| And so now our officials call everybody into a room, all the team, like, hey, let's get a grip on what we're going to do. | |
| And they pretty much say, guys, whatever you're going to do, we'll do the same. | |
| Just let us know. | |
| And now it's a team-only meeting. | |
| And we get into a team-only meeting and guys are pretty much like, look, we don't have a choice. | |
| You know, there's no choice here. | |
| You know, the team already knowed if we don't kneel, then it's just going to be, it's going to make more chaos. | |
| And one of my teammates turned towards me and said, yo, Jonathan, what are you going to do? | |
| And I said, I said, fellas, I'm not going to kneel and I'm not going to wear that t-shirt. | |
| And, you know, everybody's like, oh, my gosh, here we go. | |
| One of my teammates is like, what is wrong with you? | |
| Why not? | |
| And I pretty much said, look, I see the problem. | |
| I'm not saying that I don't see the problem. | |
| I'm not saying that I didn't see what happened to George Floyd. | |
| I just believe that there's a better and greater solution to not only racism, but all the problems that we see in our world. | |
| Because ultimately, I believe that there are heart issues. |
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