Oct. 21, 2025 - Epoch Times
04:12
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| You have uh the death of George Floyd and the spark of you know Black Lives Matter and the uh Black Lives Matter organization and movement and everything like that. | |
| And uh, you know, I was I'm I wasn't opposed to it at all. | |
| You know, I understood where uh the humanity and and where it all was coming from. | |
| Uh but me being a Christian at the time, uh, I was trying to figure out what does this mean? | |
| What is it what is an appropriate response uh that honors the truth and that honors giving an answer toward progress. | |
| And uh I remember having conversations with some 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 uh it was kind of like we don't we don't want to talk about that right now. | |
| Like that's that's that's that's not what this is about. | |
| And uh, and so although I understood where they were coming from, I kind of felt like man, this movement may not be for me. | |
| Uh the tone and the rhetoric, some of the things that were going on. | |
| I was like, I don't know if I can if I can uh give my allegiance, um, not that black lives don't matter, but give my allegiance to this movement because in the way that they're operating and speaking and everything like that. | |
| And so I remember uh, you know, there were riots that were going on and we were set to go into the bubble. | |
| And uh my pastor at the time was uh preaching a sermon on uh the moment that Jesus is captured by the Roman guard and one of his uh disciples, uh 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, uh resentment, retaliation, um, hatred, all these different things that will come natural to something like that happening, uh, we're gonna get the same result. | |
| Jesus said if you live by the sword, you're gonna die by the sword. | |
| And uh he said, if we could step into this moment with love, grace, mercy, and truth, there can really be uh progress and uh um, you know, mending of the black and white community, all these different things. | |
| And uh I I believed that, you know, and uh it really resonated with me that man, like I have an opportunity uh to love the love somebody that doesn't love me or be the first one to reach across the aisle and uh uh lend a hand and see if they would you know hit give a hand back. | |
| And that's just not what I saw with what was going on. | |
| And so uh 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 gonna be this moment in the bubble until we got in there. | |
| So we get into the bubble and a team that's playing, we're we were gonna play the next day, and so a team that was playing that today uh decided to kneel. | |
| And now there's this, you know, consciousness and ripple effect that's going through. | |
| Everybody was just going, oh shoot, we're if we don't kneel now, uh, we're gonna look like we're not a part of the movement and that we don't believe that black lives matter, and you know, the the whole nine. | |
| And uh so now the you know the our officials call everybody into a room, all the all the team, like, hey, let's let's get a grip on what we're gonna do. | |
| And they pretty much say, guys, whatever you're gonna do, we'll do the same. | |
| Just let us know. | |
| And uh now it's a team only meeting. | |
| And uh uh 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 nailed, if we don't kneel, then it's just gonna be, it's gonna, it's gonna make more chaos. | |
| And uh one of my teammates turned towards me and says, yo, like Jonathan, what are you gonna do? | |
| And I said, I said, fellas, I'm not gonna kneel, and I'm not gonna 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 I I see the problem. | |
| I'm not saying that I don't see the problem, 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 in our world. | |
| Um, because ultimately I believe that there are heart issues. |
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