Last week, actor and television host Terry Crews cited an Old Testament biblical story in urging Americans of different races and political parties to reconcile, saying division "is going to kill" the nation if citizens don't learn to talk to one another.
Crews made the remarks on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, addressing much-debated tweets from 2020 about "white supremacy" and "black supremacy." They were posted during the Black Lives Matter protests.
Crews apologized for the tweets during his Daily Show appearance, saying, "it was a mistake to tweet that out at that time."
"You can't have a nuanced conversation on Twitter," he said, laughing. Crews discusses the situation, in detail, in his new book, Tough: My Journey to True Power.
"If we don't start this movement with the idea of reconciliation, we are just postponing a greater war," he told Noah, explaining his motive behind the tweets. "And my whole thing is I didn't hear a lot of reconciliation. Because reconciliation doesn't mean agreement."
Crews, a professing Christian, then cited the story of Solomon and the two women who were arguing over the ownership of a baby. Both women said it was their child.
"So Solomon, the wisest man says, 'Okay, what we're going to do is cut the baby in half. And I'll give you a half of the baby, and you get the other half.' And one woman said, 'Yes, that's the way we do it.' But the other woman said, 'No, no. Save this baby. Save this baby. In fact, give it to her.'"
Solomon gave the baby to the woman who wanted to give it away.
"That's reconciliation," Crews said. "It doesn't mean you get the result you want. It means you're saving it because dividing it is going to kill it. But when I look at America, dividing it is going to kill it. ... We have to reconcile, we have to – white and black, male and female, Republican [and] Democrat – we have to find a way to reconcile, or we're going to kill what we have."
Related:
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Terry Crews under Fire for Criticizing Black Lives Matter Movement
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Frazer Harrison/Staff
Video courtesy: ©The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
