“Right You Are, Chief!” The White/Mahler Debate

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Introduction

One of the things my father-in-law used to say was, “who has more fun than people?”

This old observation of his came back to me for some reason when I started to think about how best to respond to the James White/Corey Mahler debate. Upon reflection, I think that it is time for me to limber up a bit and have myself a little bit of fun. But because duty comes before pleasure, the first part of all this will offer a sober-minded assessment of what the heck I think was going on. As I warm to my subject, we will start to have a bit more fun. Those of you who like to eat dessert first can just skip down. And then after that, I offer a sincere invitation to Corey Mahler. The fact that his position is festooned with rampant silliness does not prevent his destination from being a black and deadly serious one

The debate, in case you have some extra brain cells to burn, is embedded at the bottom of this post. And there was one really good thing about the periodic gut health commercials . . . whenever they interrupted Mahler, it raised the level of discourse some.

What Actually Happened

James White won that debate, and he won it walking away.

Now I say this knowing that this was the kind of debate where the true believers always go into it believing that their champion will wipe the floor with his opponent, and they come out of the debate believing that this is exactly what happened, regardless of what happened. And because I agree with James on the merits, I know that it will be said that this is what I am doing. But no, actually. As I will explain, James won the debate on points, and he won it walking away.

This is the kind of debate where Dufflepuds come out afterwards in anon-like force—they are invisible, remember—and they make their voice heard in various comment threads, saying things like, “Right you are, chief!” and “water is powerful wet.”

But with real tenacity James stayed right on topic and repeatedly showed from Scripture, particularly from Col. 3:8-11, that the grace of justification and sanctification was operative in all who had believed, in all who had put off the old man and put on the new man. Mahler kept on asserting that this was referring to justification, and which he did not deny could be imputed to blacks. But the text that James cited was also talking about the ongoing process of renewal, which is sanctification, and Paul explicitly says that there was no barrier in that on-going process between Greeks, Jews, barbarians, or Scythians. By implication, we are invited to keep on going, applying this glorious truth to all ethnic groups. When Jesus says that a sparrow can’t fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father, this doesn’t mean that robins could fall outside His care.

So this Colossians passage was a text that was tailor-made for this debate, and it was a text that also was, as they say, “on the nose.” Mahler said he didn’t agree, and so James naturally asked him a couple of times what Mahler thought the text was saying then. No answer. So on this exchange alone, QED and Bob’s yer uncle.

Although James clearly won, it couldn’t be described as a knock-out, because Mahler’s method of debating was to bob and weave while acting as though he was going to take a swing eventually, promise. He hid his distant and ever-receding point underneath a series of interrogative and very redundant questions, which I will get to in a minute. But James still won on points, and he won by a large margin.

Mahler is an experienced outrage farmer, and his schtick is to look as solemn as a judge while saying beyond-the-frozen-limit things. He looked for all the world as though he had just presented a knock-down argument, which was not in fact the case. His M.O. is to shock the bourgeoisie, and then to sit there confidently, like a squatter in a deserted mansion, claiming a title that he had failed to obtain. It was all pretty silly.

He looked as though he had adopted the strategy that I would adopt if forced to play against a grand chess master. I would make some random move, and then just sit back with a confident and intelligent look on my face, perhaps even smoking a pipe, in the hope that my opponent would assume that there had to be some rationale for the move. He would then spend half an hour trying to figure out what it could possibly be.

But as soon as he realized I had nothing, it would be all over in three moves.

Can People Fly?

Mahler’s central argument, such as it was, advanced the idea that there were certain things that God could not do. Because He had created the world in a particular way, it was necessary for Him to operate within the constraints that He Himself had established. Mahler repeatedly appealed to the idea that there were certain things that “God could not do.” This was central to his case.

And of course, this is quite true. There are certain things that God cannot do. God cannot cease to be God. God cannot contradict Himself. God cannot lie. God cannot draw round squares. As C.S. Lewis put it somewhere, nonsense doesn’t cease to be nonsense simply because you preface it with the words “God can.” Not only is this granted, we would insist on it.

But then Mahler murked up that reasonable point by mixing in things that would involve no divine self-contradiction, and hence would not be in the same category at all. Having established that God could not draw round squares, Mahler triumphantly proceeded to his conclusion, which was that God couldn’t draw round circles either.

In a tedious line of questioning in his cross-ex, Corey asked this: “Can people fly?” The point that he was attempting to belabor (and the belaboring part was successful) was that God had constituted the world in a certain way, conforming to certain rules and that, given those rules, God could not circumvent them. And in Mahler’s mind, the average person learning to fly was like the average black Christian trying to outdo the average white Christian in sanctification points. He thought those two situations were comparable.

And they are . . . but not the way Mahler was thinking. Here’s the thing . . . people can fly.

“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air . . .” (1 Thess. 4:17). Sounds like flying to me. “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). Not only that, but the first person to fly like this was a Jew.

I don’t know, Corey. I’ve got another round square for you. Can people walk on water (Matt. 14:22)?

Mahler was arguing that God sanctifying the average black Christian man more rapidly was like squaring the circle. But it is not at all like that. God gives grace (Rom. 1:7). God gives more grace (Jas. 4:6). God gives great grace (Acts 4:33). God gives grace upon grace (John 1:16). God knows how to multiply grace (2 Pet. 1:2). Unless, Mahler intrudes, you are an average black man, in which case the divine power is thwarted. Stymied. Hog-tied. Quit praying about it. Nothing Heaven can do.

Mahler simply jumbled up three categories—things that are self-contradictory, things that are contrary to the usual “laws” of nature, and things that were simply “more difficult.” And then he wanted to assert that God overcoming the difficulty of hard-hearted blacks was tantamount to saying that God could engage in flat self-contradiction. This is an absurdity stacked upon a teetering absurdity.

Not only so, but this argument was put forward and advanced, in a civilized country, by a man with a solemn and very white face. How are we supposed to believe in white superiority when confronted with a white man arguing like this? C’mon, man. You have to give us something to work with.

And then, right near the end of the debate, Mahler threw in yet another divine limitation of the same nature. God cannot sanctify the average Jew either. And this will certainly continue to be the case . . . until He does.

Crime and Sanctification

Mahler was big on crime statistics, asserting that in America crimes of violence were overwhelmingly committed by blacks. This is actually true—quite true. And not only is it true, it is entirely beside the point. James was not arguing that unregenerate blacks behave like regenerate blacks. And having blacks be unregenerate and regenerate at the same time really would be an “A and not A” situation. That really would be something God could not do.

So when Mahler says that such criminal activity is not the behavior of “Christian men,” James can simply reply—”exactly.” The men Mahler is pointing to are not Christian men. What is the point of debating what the Spirit does inside a man when the Spirit is not inside him at all? Mahler wanted to argue that they are professing Christian men, but then again, that is not the point. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are professing Christians too. The point is what the Spirit does in men when He is actually present. No one is arguing that there is no such thing as black hypocrisy. There most certainly is. And, as has been well said, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Gather me up a roster of evangelical black men, say a thousand of them. They have professed faith in Christ, have been baptized, and worship the Lord on the Lord’s Day. They read their Bibles regularly. They own their own business or they are gainfully employed. They love their wives, and they provide for and cherish their children. And Mahler can’t give me the glib dodge that there aren’t any black men like this. That won’t work on those of us who know them. Now, when this roster is completed, let’s have a look at the crime statistics from that group. How many assaults? How many rapes? How many murders?

Now, in the spirit of equal weights and measures, let’s evaluate whites the same way Mahler wants to evaluate the blacks (Matt. 7:1-2). Who came up with the welfare system that destroyed the black family? Whites did. Who started subsidizing black illegitimacy? Whites did. Who oversaw the big “defund the police” push? Whites did. The liberal and progressive disease that is destroying our country is overwhelmingly what color? That is correct—white. Vermont is the one of the whitest states in the country and in the last election, two thirds of those guys voted for us to continue to get the treatment, good and hard. Now if I thought the way Mahler does, I would say that they are conspiring to wreck our once great republic because they are white. But that is not the reason, not at all. The reason is that there is no fear of God before their eyes. They are fools and blind—that’s the reason. In other words, they are just like Mahler.

So Mahler says that white on black rapes are zero. He said that, by way of contrast, there were thousands of black on white rapes. And he asserted what is most obvious . . . that men who do such vile things are not Christian men. But let us reflect for a moment on what else is not the behavior of Christian men. I would say that a prime example would be voting for a continuation of the progressive chaos that created this state of affairs. And yet . . . tens of millions of whites did exactly that. The white establishment is self-loathing, and consequently and regularly summons non-whites to come in and destroy whatever they want. Their instrument for this is anarcho-tyranny—soft on criminals and harsh with law-abiding citizens, and that particular bright idea was imposed on us by whites. And remember that such white self-loathing is a white sin. It is something that whites do.

So it is certainly wicked for black men to violate the wives of others. But is it not also wicked for white men to offer no defense? To continue supporting the framework for such mayhem to continue? Let us gather up another roster—let us take at random one thousand male subscribers to Christianity Today. Having done so, let’s go have a look at the bumpers of their cars, and see how many Biden or Harris stickers we can find. And now let us check out how many of the drivers of those cars are a pasty white. Ah. I thought so.

Mahler referred several times to the fact that black men are like this because of a warrior gene or something. So how do we account for the white acquiescence? There are those who rape other men’s wives, and then there are the husbands who try to understand it all in terms of root causes. Maybe these white men have that soft capon gene.

The Black Heart of James White

The one place where Mahler appeared take umbrage was where he accused James of having a black heart because James was denigrating his own people. Mahler said that this revealed that James had a black heart because he was taking up the cause of those other ethnic groups, and running down his own people.

But of course James was doing nothing of the kind. He was doing nothing other than asserting the basic Christian doctrine of the fall of all mankind in Adam, no exceptions. James was not saying that white were uniquely evil, and he was not saying that blacks are somehow uniquely good. All of us have turned aside, all of us have together become worthless. Unlike Mahler, James does not have his thumb on the scale.

Look. Gentiles are sinners. Jews are sinners. Blacks are sinners. Whites are sinners. Women are sinners. Scythians are sinners. Barbarians are sinners. Slaves are sinners. Free men are sinners.

We can only wonder what that cryptic phrase “no difference” might mean. One searches the lexicons in vain.

Now a confession that all have sinned needs to be tempered with a realization that there are particular sins that need to be confronted in the course of evangelizing various cultures. Bringing the gospel to the Cretans required that an emphasis be placed on having them repent of their lying, for example. Bringing the gospel to Martha’s Vineyard would mean we would need to confront the lazy conceit and hubris. Bringing the gospel to South Central LA means you need to confront the promiscuity and violence. All of that is true. But a man who confronts a particular sin in one place is not defending particular sins of other ethnic groups in other places. When James points to white sins, as he did, he is offering up no defense of black sins, which are also many and grievous. He was simply asserting the background for every faithful gospel message. All have sinned.

The Cretans Make Themselves Useful Yet Again

Quite naturally the sinful proclivities of the Cretans came up. Mahler wanted to note that here was a particular ethnic group, identified by name, and that the apostle was willing to hang the jibe of Epimenides around their collective neck. Taken as a group, they were liars, beasts, and gluttons. Okay, good.

There are three things that should be said in response to this. I will just mention them briefly, and then we can let the healing begin.

First, cultures and generations in Scripture are in fact moral agents, and they can exhibit particular moral or immoral traits. Thus far Mahler is correct. I have traveled to countries where it is necessary for me to carry my wallet differently than I usually do . . . because the people in that place are more given to thievery. It is not a hate crime to recognize this sort of thing, and act accordingly. And it was not a hate crime for Titus to preach and rebuke accordingly.

Second, the next verse indicates that Paul expected Titus to do something about it. Rebuke them sharply, Paul says, and to what end? So that they might be sound in the faith. So apparently these cultural dispositions are traits that Spirit-empowered teaching can do something about. Sanctification gets at this kind of thing. These were particular sinful traits in Cretan believers, not ineradicable traits. Paul tells Titus to teach them how to live differently, and not to throw up his hands in despair over their genetic prison. Paul was not telling Titus to square the circle.

And third . . . these Cretans were white. Apparently just a bunch of losers. I would ask Mahler if Titus should have written off the white losers.

Let Us Not Neglect to Address the Howlers

There was a moment in the debate where Mahler filled the cup of conceit full to the brim, and then someone jostled the table and it overflowed. He repeatedly cited the Scriptures where the Israelites were called a stiff-necked people, which was true enough, but then he actually went on to say that had the Germans been there in the wilderness instead of the Jews, they would not have done the golden calf bit. One doesn’t know where to look on such occasions. Speaking of the Germans, they do have an excellent word for this. It was kind of a fremdschamen moment.

This was like hearing Angus McCrie proclaiming from a pulpit in Aberdeen that had God only had the foresight to put a faithful Scots Presbyterian in the Garden of Eden we could have avoided all this trouble.

Those darn Jews and that calf of theirs. White Europeans wouldn’t have sinned like that. I see. But then . . . one simply wonders . . . just curious . . . why did Paul warn some white Europeans against sinning in exactly that same way? He was writing to white Corinthians, remember? What’s the deal?

And so then Mahler entered right on cue, stage right, declaring that he thinketh he standeth.

“Careful, you white guys!” Paul declares. “If you get conceited, you will start acting just like the Jews in the wilderness. You will be filled with presumption and entitlement, and you will become stiff-necked and hard-hearted. Listen to my admonition, first of all.” And so then Mahler ignores the admonition, waves it off as an impossibility, and becomes a poster child of Pauline foresight.

Had the debate gone another half hour I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Mahler say that God should have had a Germanic root support the Abrahamic tree.

Another thing. Mahler claimed, and this one was really interesting, that European pagans did not engage in human sacrifice. Huh is the thought that comes to mind. Perhaps he ought to read a book. Or failing that, one of his disciples could spring for an Internet connection—Starlink or something like that should do it. According to Julius Caesar (and Tacitus, whom Mahler quoted elsewhere), the Druids practiced human sacrifice, putting victims in wicker baskets and burning them alive. In ancient Greece, Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia. The Romans had a distaste for human sacrifice, considering it beneath them and something that only the Germanic barbarians up north did, but they still practiced it under duress. Livy mentions such sacrifices being made (by means of burial alive) during the Second Punic War. And Tacitus describes Germanic tribes sacrificing humans, while The Poetic Edda talks about kings and warriors being sacrificed for the sake of divine favor.

But I can grant Mahler something on this point. Europeans were never able to make it scale the way the Aztecs did, at least not until the twentieth century.

Afterthought

Mahler mentioned more than once that he was of Germanic descent, and he also mentioned a bit of Scottish in there. But I really don’t know. If physiognomy is destiny, as some of these folks would have us believe, I think we really need to do some further checking. Mahler sure looks for all the world like a Ukrainian rabbi to me. Maybe James should have asked him if would be willing to have them both take a DNA test, even-Steven, and with a mutual commitment to publish the results. That would be betting with real money, that would.

Enough Horsing Around

Dear Corey,

You have been living in your own head for far too long, You are surrounded by toad-eaters, cranks and sycophants, which can be flattering and reassuring for a time. But when you consistently find yourself to be the smartest person in the room, you need to forget how it makes you feel . . . you must find a better room.

Your soul is in peril. You mentioned several times how stiff-necked the Jews were in the wilderness, but Psalm 95 instructs us to take heed from their bad example. If you object to how stiff-necked they were, don’t follow them. And if the Jews today reject Christ from the left, it doesn’t help matters at all for you to reject Him from the right.

And it will not do for you to say that you don’t reject Him. I know that you don’t . . . not with your lips. But you are nevertheless following in the old pattern that the ancient rebels set.

The New Testament contains some fearsome warnings for false teachers. They bring down upon themselves “swift destruction” (2 Pet. 2:1). They are rewarded according to their works (2 TIm. 4:14). They are accursed (Gal. 1:8). They go in the way of Cain, they run after Balaam, and they perish with Korah (Jude 11). For them is reserved the blackness of darkness forever (Jude 13). It is a grim business, and so you need to look straight at where you are headed.

A day is coming when everything is going to be made manifest, and all of these issues will consequently appear in quite a different light.

When heaven and earth run away, how will you stand? Upon what could you stand? In that day, naked before God, you will not be wondering how severe He will be with the blacks, or with the Jews. The sins of others will suddenly become irrelevant to you, but your sins toward them will retain all their relevance. And it might be easy to think that under such conditions, repentance for you would be easy. But it doesn’t work that way. Repentance is always now. Today if you hear His voice . . .

I don’t know how you got this kink in your soul, but I do know that your flatterers are not going to tell you about it. They are following you for reasons of their own, reasons that have nothing whatever to do with your best interests, or your eternal well-being. Since the debate, those who have been collecting unacknowledged “wisdom” from you have been strangely silent. And those who are loud and open in their acclaim are those whose good opinion is worthless.

It is obvious that we are your adversaries. We are unalterably opposed to the rancid brew that you have been drinking, and are now bottling and selling. To Hell with all of that. But despite that, despite the fact that we are your foes, we are willing to tell you the truth. You have gotten yourself into a terrible place, a place where your only true friends are your enemies. A true friend speaks the truth. And because Jesus Christ Himself is the ultimate Truth, we as His servants are authorized to speak the truth to you.

I don’t mean the truth about blacks, or the truth about Jews, or the truth about Hitler. I am talking about that abscess in the middle of your forehead. You have a mortal disease, and you have told yourself a series of tangled and twisted lies about it. Your lies about all this other ethnic and historical stuff are simply the delivery platform, one that enables you to persuade yourself that all is well deep inside your own soul. But all is not well down there, not even close. Your flatterers have stolen all your mirrors, and are lying to you about that abscess. And although you still use phrases from the Bible, you are not using the Scriptures as a mirror the way that all of us are instructed to do (Jas. 1:23-24). If you were, then you would see what I am talking about.

Christ forgives all kinds of sins—red and yellow, black and white. He receives all kinds of sinners—red and yellow, black and white. You also may come. You too may come. He would receive you warmly, and so would we. Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.