Note: Transcript fully created by automated AI
[00:00:00] Jesse Lin: Hi everyone. I’m Jesse Lin
[00:00:02] Angela Lin: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You Really from? Today we have a special guest that is a friend of the pod with that we’ve had on before. Keith coo. Welcome back to the show.
[00:00:16] Keith Koo: Hey, Angela. Hey, Jesse. Thanks for having me. Great to
[00:00:19] Angela Lin: see you.
Course, of course. So we were catching up a little bit before we hit record, but it’s been, it’s been like two years since we’ve talked to you or like a little under, um, I think you were one of our first external guests, cuz in the beginning we had like friends that were relevant for topics and I think you were one of the first like legitimate.
Guess we met through the podcast. Um, so it’s, it’s been a hot second, but it’s nice to have you back.
[00:00:44] Keith Koo: Great to see that you’re still going with the show. I think it’s super relevant, especially in what’s happened the last couple of years, uh, since pandemic and then the post pandemic and how people are trying to get reintegrated into society, so to speak.
So congratulations on keeping it.
[00:01:01] Angela Lin: Thank you. Um, well, since it has been quite a while since we’ve had you on, and the topic that we covered with you last time is quite different from what we’re gonna be talking about today. For those who did not listen to Keith’s original episode, that one was called Adulting 2.0, and we covered things like personal finance, estate planning, um, and kind of your experience because you did a lot of mentoring with youth, especially around these topics.
So, Very educational, I would say. Uh, if you are interested in those topics, definitely hop back to that episode, but today we’re talking about something completely different. So for those who don’t know, Keith, I wanna give you the chance to reintroduce yourself to our audience and then we can talk about, uh, the hot topic
[00:01:46] Keith Koo: for today.
So I grew up in Silicon Valley, San Francisco. I did the corporate thing, so did the whole go off the college, get a job, uh, stayed in corporate America, worked for companies like Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems, uh, doing m and a integration technology deals. And finished my career, uh, as an executive at the Bank of Tokyo or Mitsubishi Financial Group.
Uh, decided to ditch all. Kind of consider myself a corporate refugee. And about seven years ago I started mentoring large companies. And in that process, uh, many startups started coming to me and organically and I mentor startups and so help them scale. Um, there’s one right now that is, uh, also has a Asian c e o.
His wife is Mexican and it’s going great. Um, valued at a hundred million. So spend most of my time mentoring startups. I am a full-blown investment banker by more like a part-time status. And I’ve been, um, doing professional moderation at investor and enterprise events. I have a radio show, Silicon Valley Insider been on just finishing up five seasons on business and tech.
And I’m about to start a second radio show, which is the integration of faith and your life, and I’m pretty excited about that, but we can talk about that later. So that’s it. That’s about what I’m up.
[00:03:01] Angela Lin: Well, actually the topic of your second radio show is very relevant for today’s conversation because I actually don’t remember how much we talked about this in our last episode with you, or if it was only in our, kind of like off the record chit chat when we got to know you, but another big part of who you are and what you.
Do with your time is, um, with your community within your faith community. And so today’s topic is super interesting. I won’t try to encapsulate what’s happening, but, uh, if y’all are listening now, you saw that the title of this episode is When Church Meets State. So we are talking about some interesting topics here that have to do with faith, the church cultural racial identity.
Freedom of speech, a lot of different things. So Keith has been kind of, uh, in this whirlwind of, uh, things going on with his church related to all this stuff. So Keith, if you could give us a little bit of background on what’s happening, we can kind of dig into all these different pieces around
[00:04:06] Keith Koo: it. , and it’s funny that you mentioned whirlwind.
I think, uh, probably to external folks listening, uh, both people of color, non people of color, it’s more like they’ll think of it as a tempest and a teapot. But I think really the key is for those who, um, have followed me or hear my show, uh, whether it’s faith or not faith, they know that, um, my faith is very integrated into my life.
So although my wife and kids, we do attend a church and I’ve attend. Churches my entire life. Uh, for me, faith isn’t religion. It’s actually integrated into who I am. And so what we’re gonna talk about today is something that doesn’t get enough coverage in people of color overall, and especially in the Asian community.
And that is that. Racism is alive and well in churches. And when confronted with that, they have a really hard time dealing with it. And that’s something that I’ve been going through for about the last year and a half. So in the context is my wife and I have been attending a church for 16 years, since my daughter was one years old.
And we’ve been in ministry, we’ve been teachers. . And so what happened? Uh, we know that a few years ago, the George Floyd incident happened and Black Lives Matter happened, and our church happens to brand itself as a multicultural church. Uh, about two thirds of the congregants are people of color, but at the same time, it’s not one integrated service.
We have a Mandarin service. We have a tele, which is an Indian language service. We have a Cantonese service. We have one of the most significant deaf services in America. We have a Filipino service, and then we have a main. So, no doubt it’s a diverse community. I happened to co-teach high school, so the church had a very, very, uh, strong response to George Floyd incident embracing the black community.
And our church actually has a very small black community, so it’s just great to see them do that. So about a year later, what happened to the Asian American community? Uh, we had the Atlanta shootings, and for those who remember the Atlanta shootings, there were eight victims of senseless murder, and six of them happened to.
Women of color Asians, and I was giving a lesson BA one or two weeks later to a high school group that I’ve been teaching for six years that happened to be 80% female and 80% people of color. And during my talk, integrating the story of the Atlanta shootings, the main leader, um, tried to cut me off several times saying that the discussion.
Of the Atlanta shootings was inappropriate in a church setting and was irrelevant. And, uh, shouldn’t be brought up. And you know, for those who follow me on Clubhouse, I lead an Asian professional group, which is 10,700 people. I lead a Christian professional group of 6,300 people, which both groups are global.
Both groups are not solely for Asians. And there’s an aside here. There’s over 48 countries on the continent of Asian. And people are shocked that there are people who are not ethnically considered Asian. That are Asian. I can talk. Lebanon, I can talk about Russia, I can talk about Eastern Europeans, . And this concept like Asians are only those that have yellow skin, um, that is wrong.
Or that in Christian professionals you only have to have, follow the same faith to have any relevance to talking about that. So here we are teaching on the Atlantic shootings, and this leader says it’s irrelevant. You can’t talk about it. And so my daughter’s in this class as well, and in the, we’re doing it on Zoom, we’re still in lockdown, so we’re not meeting in person and in the chat function of Zoom, the.
Young women want to talk about it and they want to expand on it and wanna bring it up. So the meeting ended, uh, a week later. It was a conflict management model that Jesus gave in the Bible that the, uh, disciples, the apostles followed. So I reached out to this other leader on Zoom. Um, we had a discussion about what happened the week before.
That individual said they underst. As the leader of the organization. This is a parachurch, so it’s not like it’s a children’s ministry that he leads, that is not part of the church that’s associated with international kids ministry. Um, he said two things and I actually wrote a Facebook post on it. He said, I’ve always wondered why you’re more loyal to China, the United States.
And if you remember for the listeners before, actually I can’t speak Chinese. I was born in the United States. Um, I can understand Chinese dialects, but I’m not a fluent speaker of Chinese. And he said, um, as the leader of this organization, I never want you to teach on being Asian again. Said it with a straight face, said it without any thoughts.
I’m really close to our senior pastor. I told him about. He’s like, you know, you need to have grace on this individual. He struggles with this area and just move on. So this was like spring of 2021 now. So the night I talked to my pastor, I actually wrote a Facebook post about what just happened with no attribution, no gender, no ethnicity, just that a friend had questioned these things about my identity, which was shocking.
We teach every year, we rotate the subjects, um, on a cycle. So as I asked what the schedule was to the leadership team, um, this leader said I was, I was fired. I was out. And, uh, it was a contrived way of saying that he didn’t want me back. Um, I had escalated to the pastoral team saying that this is not the correct way of terminating a volunteer.
Uh, we met with another family pastor. , and I mean back to triggering for people of color, especially Asians. This is a conflict management exercise on trying to restore relationships. And he basically came in guns blazing, yelling at me for about an hour, pointing at me and standing over me, like full on screaming and yelling and um, I just stayed silent, which is pretty much no point in engaging.
And, uh, two weeks later we did it again for two and a half hours with two pastors, including the original. And at the two hour mark, what he said was, now that you know, How hurtful your Facebook post, I guess he read it. Um, you know why he pushed you out? So he said, sorry for that, but he never, ever apologized for any of his racist actions or beliefs.
And we had come to an agreement that within two weeks there would be just a very simple message to the students and the parents about why it was no longer teaching. And that never happened. And in fact, A month went on, more months, went on. The pastor of the church said that he needed to come clean or he would not be, be able to return to teach again.
Never happened. And uh, February came around and we escalated to the elder board, which there are people of color on the elder board and they buried it. In the meantime, there was another leader who started sending me text message. About how my lessons to these high school students who are predominantly people of color and predominantly female were off topic, not relevant to the Bible, and that, uh, this individual blamed Asians for breaking the relationship with their middle child.
When I escalated this to the elders in February of 2022, this past year, uh, the same person and their spouse, who was a former elder of the church, sent a message to their best friends on the elder. Making some very strong allegations against me. Where we’re at now as the elders think I’ve taken this way too seriously.
The only interaction I’ve had with them is they’ve told me that I don’t know what racism is. That this indivi, these individuals don’t hate Asians. That’s their only definition of racism. I’ve sent them copious external writings, both from a biblical perspective, historical perspective. I’ve spoken to over 35 leaders, um, all across the country.
Black, brown, Asian, white theologians, professors of ethnic studies, some very prominent Christians who happen to also be professor of ethnic studies. I spoken to the attorney General’s office of the state of California. The Deputy Attorney General of the state of the Sacramento County is 10 ho and he’s a devout Catholic and.
All of these leaders has said, I can’t drop this because it’s so important to the people of color community. Um, I’ve actually become friends with a civil rights attorney who happens to be Taiwanese American, married to an Indian, happens to be a Christian who’s been a civil rights attorney for 25 years.
I know exactly what laws have been broken. I’ve actually told the church exactly what laws have been broken. I don’t personally plan to take formal legal action, but they’re not taking it seriously.
[00:12:21] Angela Lin: Well,
there’s just so much to unpack with all of this. It’s so much to unpack. I think the first thing that stuck out to me is that you mentioned how on the surface it, your church is incredibly diverse and seemingly supportive of the diverse community with all these languages and even accessibility avenues and the George Floyd thing, I.
Look, I don’t know. I don’t know these people. I don’t know which congregation you’re talking about, and we probably should have started this, but Jesse and I, just for context, we are, we’re not Christian. We lie on different ends of the spirituality spectrum. So we are coming more from a secular background when we are talking about all this, but to me it feels like a lot of what’s going on, it’s like all the diversity support that they portray is more.
Surface level and to kind of like win brownie points to be seen as supportive. But when it comes down to the way it’s being taught, they actually prefer any cultural differences to be removed altogether from the way that the teachings are discussed. Is that fair? Uh,
[00:13:40] Keith Koo: I actually have a different perspective on that.
I, I can. coming from a secular background, um, that was how it would look I think in my wife and my assessment. And again, my wife led a children’s ministry under this group as well. We live in a city that has probably at this point exceeded two thirds people of color in Silicon Valley. Over 50% of the professional population do happen to be people of color specifically.
So South Asians, like Indians or Pakistanis and East Asians and other Asians. Um, so I can see where if you’re not educated in de and I, And I’ve been at it since I was 16 years old. You would assume that minority only means in terms of population and numbers, and so therefore when it comes to Asians, you can’t possibly be racist because they’re the majority not understanding that true power is in who’s in control, not in that.
So did the church invest in being branded as a multicultural church? Absolutely. Do they think that they’re a multicultural. Absolutely. Do they understand what racism is? No. I give them that maybe they didn’t even people of color may not be aware or there’s that whole term of being majority adjacent. In this role, I am both a Christ follower, but I’ve been a corporate executive.
I’m also very active in. Communities, people of color, and I do a lot of education when I start to send them articles, faith-based and non-faith based about racism in the church, when I actually bring materials from the affiliation and their stance on racism, which actually stated that as the church continues to grow in America, The church, big C, it’s like you have to recognize that the black, Latinx, and Asian communities, while minorities as individual groups, Will actually be cumulatively greater than the majority in that the majority needs to go out of their way to make efforts to understand where they’re coming from.
One thing I wanna make sure, because people are hearing about my faith, is that from people who are Christ’s followers, we’re all flawed human beings. We all have things we need to work on. None of us are perfect and none of us are better than anybody else. And I think there’s a big distinction between what is done between you and God and what’s.
The open. And so the biggest part, um, thinking about what the church is doing is that the leader, forget about the private conversation you had with me or pushing me out in front of a group of students and parents on Zoom specifically said that speaking on Reese is irrelevant. That there was no room for that, um, to be even talked about.
And the other leader who was writing notes to me, um, saying that they and this leader felt that, um, I was always off topic, that actually they had accused me of holding private sessions. On being Asian American. Now, first of all, that never happened. There’s no evidence of that. And second of all, um, all the meetings I had were with invitations to all the parents, pastors wives, students.
And so there’s no foundational evidence of that. But even if I did do that back to church and the state, that’s a protection of my First Amendment rights. And that’s one thing that they continue to downplay is that forget me and these leaders individually. Out in the open, they’ve stated these things and so back to the Civil Rights attorney, um, clearly delineating what were violations of First Amendment rights, and so you don’t get to hide behind your faith.
Or a church organization to say that it’s okay. And you also don’t get to say that myself as a person of color, that I don’t know what racism is. I think that this
[00:17:23] Jesse Lin: is like a really great example of how pernicious racism really is, because I feel like if you asked a lot of Asian individuals, like the majority, what was gonna happen to the Asian community during covid,
I don’t think a lot of people would’ve said violent attacks. I think it’s really easy for people to forget that they do feed into racism. Like everybody’s a little bit racist according to the Avenue Q off Broadway play. It’s true. Everyone is, there’s even inter racism between people of color, like it’s very well established that there’s racism playing on everybody in all different settings, and so it’s like really easy to.
What part that we all contribute to that, and this is just a really great example because people will defer that responsibility. They’ll say like, oh, I’m not racist. Like I have Asian friends, I have black friends. I contribute to this thing. But it’s not about those things. It’s like, what are you doing?
Like actively every day? to question yourself and say like, Hey, did, did I do something wrong here? Like, did I say something offensive here? And I think that a lot of people don’t want to do that cuz it confronts a really ugly reality about themselves and about the people that they associate with. So I just think that it’s a really great example of how really, like racism can seep into the best of intentions and really just cloud something.
Even though you, you, you think you’re doing something, something.
[00:18:48] Keith Koo: Yeah, there’s a few anecdotes to that. So one, back to we all have biases and that was one of the responses the elders gave to me. And like, yeah, we do all have biases. Um, some people control it better than others and some people don’t let it out in the open.
Uh, these individuals have had biases for over, you know, many years that I’ve been working with them. Uh, the one who has a strained relationship with their. when I first met them, they’re like, we love Asians. And not that I asked for, it’s like my child is socially awkward, but when they went to university, Asians, the only person that were kind to them as the daughter’s relationship got strained.
Now the family’s blaming Asians for their straight relationship with their child. And so my pastor was like, have Grace on them. You know what they’re going through. So that’s one, two. Uh, you know, we are ethically Chinese. We know there’s even regional variances between how different parts of China view other people from China.
And I was on a short term, uh, mission to India and there’s southern states in those northern states, and I was with friends from southern states who could actually speak languages from northern states. And they’re like, Keith, you probably have more in common with the northern state people than we. Even though we’re all Indian.
So I think there’s a point that biases exist because we’re humans. But on the other hand, how do you manage that? How do. Control those feelings. And how do you work on that internally? And do you accept that you have these biases and you acknowledge them, you try to work on them? Or how do you actually then kind of spew things like, and these are all real statements.
Um, the individual who, you know, said they apologized. His final words to me after he apologize for pushing me out was, you said you grew up in a white neighborhood. How come you’ve never done a lesson for white people? And my church didn’t think that was racist. I’m like, that is inherently racist. Your show Angela and JC are called, where you really from the number one racist incident.
Against Asians as people of color is not a violent attack, although violence is certainly in the news today. It is that we are automatically assumed as not belonging here in the United States. And when I say this directly, they think it’s not a big deal, even with the people of color down on the elder board.
It’s crazy. And that’s another thing that my daughter was in the. Three students quit the program and all of that just goes on deaf ears. They don’t think that as a big deal. And earlier, probably five minutes ago, Angela, you were asking about, you know, what was the church’s motivation? I think cuz I’m an organizational behavior major, right?
I didn’t study stem. So again, breaking a stereotype organizationally, doesn’t matter what organization it is, you come out with your own culture and your own ways of handling things. I don’t think that they’re consciously understanding that they’re promot. Or propagating racist attitudes. Belief they’re in protection mode because even though my wife and I have been there 16 years, these other people who’ve been there just as long have closer ties in relationships.
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[00:22:22] Keith Koo: I wanted everyone to know that. I actually reached out to Angela and Jesse about this cuz it’s the perfect platform and it’s a really important topic for people of color because it’s called othering.
And it was one of those things where people was like, it’s not racist, Keith. I’m like, yeah, it’s a form of racism. You can Wikipedia this and there’s like 10 different variations of racism in Wikipedia. What you
[00:22:39] Jesse Lin: were just saying about the PY dynamics, I mean it really speaks to what you were saying earlier about the differences between the definition of minority and a majority not, it’s not just even really.
About the actual amount of people, and that’s actually not how I’ve referred to it. You know, speaking in that manner for quite some time. It’s always been about the power. It’s about who has. The in who never has to question where their place is in society. That is the majority. It’s not really like just because they’re more of a certain type of people.
They are the majority. That’s not really the case, and I think that’s really well exemplified in the situation that you’re going through of like who has the power. I mean, you, you mentioned there are some people, people of color on the elder board and people of color in positions of power. So it’s just like it, it shows that you can be a minority.
In a majority. Acting against the interests of a minority. It’s quite, I think it’s very convoluted, mental gymnastics, but I, I thought that was like quite a good
[00:23:39] Angela Lin: example. Okay. So the authority is a big thing that comes to mind here because it kind of interplays with the minority subject because the thing that stood out to me a lot in what you were describing is that they kept coming to you to say, You should show Grace.
Yep. You should be the one to accept this and move past. It’s never. The other person should also show Grace and see where they have potentially, you know, been unkind and try to work through their things. It’s by default they’re asking you to be the one to do that. And you mentioned also you were just gonna yell that for several hours.
It’s kind of like, Exact personification of the model, minority stereotype that they’re trying to place onto you because they’re like, Hey, don’t rock the boat. You know, even if they did something wrong, like you should be the bigger person, so just stay quiet and don’t make it a big thing.
[00:24:37] Jesse Lin: Or like blame the victim kind of situation.
[00:24:39] Keith Koo: Yeah. Oh, it’s, it’s definitely blame shifting. I’ve told them that. So here, here’s the deal. I, I know churches get a lot of flack with how they handle. Or crimes. And let me be clear about this because what’s lost on this is that there, these are crimes. They might not be considered sex crimes or, uh, physical violence or theft.
But these are crimes. The biblical model for conflict resolution is you go to your brother or sister in Christ, you tell them what issue you have and you work it out. If it doesn’t get worked out, you escalate it to other leaders and if it doesn’t get worked out, you then bring it to the entire church board.
So I did all that. What happened was back to a verbal contract between me and two pastors and this individual leader, that at a minimum they’re gonna clear up what happened to why it was no longer teaching. That was the only thing I asked for. I didn’t ask about discipline. I didn’t ask about what they were gonna do.
I needed closure, but I needed to be transparent and we agreed to that. So the where churches get in trouble is when they do things in private versus doing things out in the open. If I told you that I had 900 pages of emails, cuz remember in my executive life I was in charge of technology risk, so I know how to document.
So I have 900 pages of emails where the only summary was that I don’t know what racism. That I needed to forgive and move on, and that I needed to reconcile with my attackers. So blame shifting. I’m like, what about them? Like, no, no. We believe them. They’re, they’re totally. Repent. They’re totally sorry for what they did.
I’m like, how come I don’t know that? How come? I say, how come I don’t see that? How come there’s no showings of that? There is a story in the Bible about a tax collector named the Kius. Back then, tax collectors were criminals. You, they would force you to sell your children to pay your taxes. This is not hyperbole.
[00:26:25] Angela Lin: Aren’t they still just kidding? .
[00:26:28] Keith Koo: So Zakia meets Jesus. Feels really sorry. And he says, I’m going to restore the people that I’ve defrauded by four x if I ever see them, if I ever come across somebody I’ve defrauded, I’ll pay them back four times how much I’ve, uh, defrauded them. Now, the co thing is the night that my wife and I escalated to our church and nothing happened was the day after one of the pastors taught on this story zaki.
So what has happened? In terms of blame shifting is they did finally issue a letter about me and my situation. What they said was, it’s a personal dispute and that this leader felt it was unwise to bring me back. So that’s a wrongful termination and that’s a total lie cuz they don’t talk about, he didn’t want me back cuz he’s a racist and they get freaked out when I say it.
I mean like, he might not be a mean racist, but yeah, he’s got racist tendencies. So what happened was that before they sent the letter to the public, , they sent a letter to me, my wife, that they saw no racism. So I actually have in black and white that there’s absolutely no racism. So here’s the funny story.
However, many months later, the church is accusing us of causing disunity in the church. And I said, if you’re causing, accusing us, causing disunity, I’m accusing you of slander for the letter. But before we get there, uh, so they sent three people of color elders to me. One is my age, one’s Indian, one’s Chinese, and one’s black.
Before we started anything, I talked to the black elder. I. , it’s relevant. Why I say this is like you are black and publicly. You’ve stated that as a group, not one individual. I don’t know what racism is, but I’ve sent you the Wikipedia articles, I’ve sent you definitions of it. Othering is an example. I’m like, explain to me what racism is.
And he had rehearsed this. He’s like, Hey, there’s Malcolm X, there’s Martin Luther King. Um, I know racism. I’m black. I’m like, okay. He goes there. Racism. There’s prejudice and then there’s belief. I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s belief? He’s like, well, we don’t think this individual knows that he’s a racist.
He doesn’t believe he’s a racist. I’m like, whoa. You have a person leading an entire children’s ministry who doesn’t believe that he’s a racist, and that’s what you wrote to me. That because he doesn’t hate Asians, that he’s not a. I’m like, look, Archie Bunker, the Nazis and the kkk, who probably identified being a Christian, whether they’re truly Christians or not, I don’t know.
God knows. Like I’m sure they didn’t think they’re a racist either. The moment I said that, the Chinese elder says, do you wanna ruins reputation? I’m like, what does this have to do with reputation? Like, if you don’t believe you’re a racist, then why wouldn’t you be defending what you said? The Indian leader says, you know, Keith, there’s no such thing as restitution.
There’s no mandating the Bible. I’m like, whoa, I’m not asking for restitution. and back to the point of being a person of color, if they weren’t back to leading a group of kids, I probably would’ve dropped it. It’s the fact that they’re still a year and a half later still leading a group of kids that are predominantly people of color.
They don’t seem to steal an issue when it comes to other crimes in the church. Sex crimes, child abuse, physical assault. Church has already had a hard. Dealing with this, right? And, and they’re trying to get better about that. The Catholic church, for instance, is trying to figure out a way to be more transparent about it.
Not that they’ve figured that out yet in the minds of some of these church leaders, racism just isn’t that bad compared to these other crimes. But they have the same behaviors in dealing with it. There is a study recently that was published that when you bring up racism to the majority, they shut. In order to deal with racism to the majority in the United States, you have to not use the term racist because the moment you use the term racist shields go up.
And I just read a number of articles on that and um, some researcher just came out to study that. It’s unfortunate that you cannot use the terminology in order for them to kind of accept that they might
[00:30:17] Jesse Lin: be based off of how things were handled. It sounds like there’s this very big bent. Forgiveness and grace, and that’s kind of like the end of it.
How do you reconcile that with like your personal connection to that person? You could say like, I forgive you. Let’s say for example, the person killed somebody in your family, but it was an accident. You’re like, I forgive you, but I still want you to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You killed somebody.
Like where does that kind of sit for you between. Your personal faith and your relationships with a person and like your legal obligation to do something for a person. Because I feel like that ties back to a lot of the problems that the church has been seeing because it seems like a very like internal like situation versus reconciling it with the reality, the legal realities of, of what you
[00:31:04] Keith Koo: have to do it.
It’s funny, Jesse, cuz you and Angela say you don’t have a faith background, you hit the nail in the. So the concept forgiveness, God commands us to forgive, but the forgiveness isn’t for the attacker. The forgiveness is for us as the individual, as the victim because of bitterness and because of not being able to fulfill our life’s work or being stuck.
And I know to the church, that’s what they feel like the, the center that I’m coming from, even though when I’m telling them it’s not, I have no issue with forgiveness. You have leaders over a children’s group. It’s no different than if a pastor was having an affair with a congregant at their church. If he repents and comes back to the congregation, you don’t let him be a pastor right away.
You may never let him be a pastor again. One of the key things about dealing with church matters for anybody who, who wants to actually know how to deal with it. You should never go alone. So I always was in the presence of at least two pastors, or my wife and my senior pastor who’s now moved on to another church.
Um, he probably won’t be too happy about me disclosing it, but he actually did say that if this happened to a black, brown person or was a sexual or physical assault, he would’ve treated differently. Now, he’s never told me that I interpreted that wrong, and my wife interpreted that wrong, but he’s told other people the church, that I didn’t get that right.
But yet in all of this that we’re talking about, these 900 pages that I’ve had with emails and these convers. They’ve never explained themselves. They’ve only said that I need to have forgiveness and I need to move on, and that they believe these individuals repented about restitution is and repentance.
That’s for the, that’s for the individual. That is not for me. That is back to, again, their personal relationship. Um, by themselves. Forgiveness is extremely important. I wanna make that clear that God commands us to forgive, but it’s really meant for our own psyche. Uh, repentance is important for the attack.
For the, for the person who’s created the crime. If somebody committed a crime against, If the individual’s repentant, they’re supposed to offer restitution, that’s not me. For me to ask, that’s for them to give, for me to expect. Justice and righteousness is completely compatible and consistent with the Bible.
So, um, there’s nothing mutually exclusive and anything we just said. It’s just that to organizations, um, to forgive is kind like the get outta free jail card. They just. , everything goes away. Christ commands us to teach under identity every single one of the leaders originally, when just hearing the story from the first, like we all teach under identity.
[00:33:24] Angela Lin: Another theme that keeps coming to mind in everything you’re saying is kind of faultiness of man. The way that I identify my spirituality is not associated with any like organized religion. I’m kind of defining it for myself. I think this is like, it just reinforces my kind. Personal beliefs around that, that a big reason I don’t like to associate with an organized religion is that you are dependent on flawed human beings who are interpreting what these spiritual lessons.
Or actually supposed to be teaching you. I think regardless of whatever, like religious or spiritual background you have, I think the kind of commonality across a lot of them is that one of your end goals is to try to kind of perfect yourself in terms of like how, how good, quote unquote good of a person you are, like morally and all that.
And so you’re always trying. Better become better. Right. And so I just like it does not sit well with me to hear the story that you’re sharing because a lot of it is completely contrasting the lessons that supposedly people of faith or any. Really religious background are supposed to have in trying to learn things like how am I being as kind as possible to other people?
Being understanding, being forgiving, like all these things, owning up to things myself, right? Like holding myself accountable to be better. And contrasting that with essentially people who have power in an organized structure who are kind. Negating those like universal lessons that we’re all trying to strive for to hold onto their own power that they’ve grasped.
Right. That’s kind of what I keep seeing in all the stories and it just pisses me off because it’s like, it feels counter the whole like reason. Religion and spirituality, you know, supposedly exists.
[00:35:23] Keith Koo: Beautifully stated, and I totally get where you’re coming from, goes back to my work in organizational behavior.
But I, I don’t often say I’m a Christian. I say I’m a Christ follower. Cause that shows the identify with Christ. And that, uh, when Jesus was on earth and his idea of creating community churches were meant for community not to replace the relationship. So, again, I, I don’t wanna get too into dogma. , but like for me, I don’t believe I need to go through a priest to talk to God.
I can talk to God anytime I want to, and I don’t need a church because conceptually for Christians, we believe Jesus is in us. And so therefore, in essence, we are a church. And so when we think about. The construct of a church, it gets convoluted. So we think about other countries where you cannot be a Christian or you cannot have a church, yet they still meet as a community setting.
Um, they are still honoring God, but they’re not calling it a church. So the structure of church is what we have a problem with. So there are 18,000 denominations of Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that because back to individual understanding of my relationship with Christ, what gets in the way is when.
Are protecting a structure, you’re protecting a systematic thing, and so racism can be systematic or systemic. What was so important for the church we attend is that you took the time, effort, you brought in consultants to be branded as a multicultural, multiracial church, and yet here’s a perfect teachable moment.
Like I never asked for the leaders to be kicked out. I never asked the leaders to be fired. I asked for them to come clean so that people would know. That these behaviors exist and how they could defend themselves from it. Because back to microaggressions, which we didn’t talk too much about, but microaggressions are also very common against people of color.
When you say things like, oh, race is irrelevant to God. When you say things like, English is the most important language, or I want my city back the way it was before, or when, you know, the person gets laid off by people of color as managers and they’re like, Asian always laid me off. These statements are inherently racially biased.
Now, whether they said it to a public audience or not doesn’t change that fact. So to bury it, in order to make things look like it. Um, either the system’s Okay. Or to protect the individuals or both. I wasn’t trying to cause shame, I was trying to address a systemic issue.
[00:37:50] Angela Lin: I don’t know what the like PC terms to use around all this, because I did note that you separated the term Christian from Fall of Christ.
Right? So I use Christian in the kind of, The main way people are talking about it. So the elephant in the room for me is kind of like, we all know that the, like people in power historically and I think continued into today largely around the Christian complex, like including of through Pope, the Pope, right?
Which encapsulates Catholicism as well are historically old white men. And when you think about how Christianity. Spread around the world. It started with white missionaries, right? That were like sent across to many different countries. So I think there’s inherently. Like built in, uh, prejudiced towards the white interpretation of the faith.
It’s because of that, that it’s like they don’t even notice when there is prejudice because it’s been the way that it’s been talked about forever. And unless you are in a church that is. Fully because there are churches where it’s, for example, like predominantly black churches or whatnot, right? Like I’m sure that they tailor the way that these lessons are discussed to integrate their own actual, personal and community-based experiences.
But otherwise, it feels like kind of the default interpretation of a lot of these lessons is in a white-based lens. So then especially even if like the people in power, for example, you talked about these three. Leaders that approached you and they were all people of color because they have power held within a traditionally white led, I assume, on kind of authority structure.
It’s still the lens that they’re taking. I’m not saying like it’s not their fault, uh, it’s more just like there is this kind of like built in kind of way of thinking. Based on the history and context of like how the Christian complex as almost like an industry has been built. You
[00:40:00] Keith Koo: know, when we talk about history in context of faith, there is of course what’s written the Bible, but there’s secular history too.
So for example, the Apostle Thomas, who probably had olive skin as a. Was martyred outside of Goa in India. And so Kerala is like one of the most Christian provinces or states of India. And so there wasn’t really that white interpretation until the Portuguese came later for Catholicism. So certainly there’s Western influence, even pre like written history, uh, Judaism, Christianity entered all parts of the world, uh, without necessarily Western missionaries.
Um, there’s a whole enclave. Orthodox Jews in a remote part of China that have been untouched for thousands and thousands of
[00:40:48] Angela Lin: years, just for my secular p o v .
[00:40:53] Keith Koo: No, no, it’s great. I have these, uh, like we were mentioning, um, during Pandemic. We had a community on clubhouse and, uh, these topics and questions came up all the time.
It was awesome. We’re gonna move on
[00:41:03] Jesse Lin: to our closing section, the Fortune cookie, because we always like to end on a sweet treat. What are kind of the next steps happening on this issue? Are there next steps happening or is it kind of tabled for the time?
[00:41:16] Keith Koo: Oh, uh, next SY steps is I’ve accused our elders of slander.
They’ve not responded. They said they’d respond. This is all The funny thing is they responded very late. So they responded five weeks ago. They responded two weeks, then they wanted another two weeks, and they’re just not responding. I think they’re just ignoring us, which is human nature. Um, next steps. I mean, we have very adamant that people need to know how to address racist incidents and racist acts inside and outside of their places of worship, inside and outside the places of.
And so we are committed to teaching anybody who asks us how to identify a race incident, a hate incident, or a hate crime, how to file it. Mm-hmm. . And so anybody, any of your listeners can ask me, uh, what the proper procedure is to identify a hate incident and how to
[00:41:59] Jesse Lin: report it. I think that’s great.
Something positive coming out of
[00:42:02] Keith Koo: something not so great. We’re not silent victims. We have, we are empowered. We can use the law. What’s really clear, if you’re listening in California volunteers in an unpaid position. So that’d be a Bible teacher, a church teacher. You are protected by the same laws against wrongful termination as if you were a paid employee.
Now, there might not be necessarily any financial penalties, but it is a crime, and so when you file your hate incident about being wrongfully terminated, it is also qualifies as a hate crime. Now, the authorities might not take it seriously, but it’s important to report it so that it can. Counted. And the positivity in that is Asians don’t have to be silent.
They don’t, I mean, we’re all talking people of color, but Asians in particular do not have to be silent, do not have to follow the model minority. You can rock the boat. It is legal and it is not a moral wrong. To call it racism anywhere, including your church. Well,
[00:42:58] Angela Lin: that is a really positive spin on something that’s very negative, has been difficult to discuss on this episode.
I think the other fortune cookie we wanted to talk about is on the kind of like, Other end of this because this was all like, this is hopeful and good, positive changes towards negating something bad. We wanna ask your opinion on if you’re hopeful that things will start to become more inclusive and actual like cultural understanding and.
Diverse understanding will actually start making its way kind of proactively or, you know, nor quote unquote normally into the church setting as opposed to from this more like dispute oriented angle.
[00:43:43] Keith Koo: Oh, there’s, there is always hope Angelas, there’s a story that I forgot to mention in the Bible. The Apostle Paul and the apostle Peter fought openly in Galatians two, where Peter was being, in essence, a racist.
Peter would not associate with Gentiles when Jews were around. They’re Jewish by ethnicity. Jesus said, you can preach the gospel to anybody, Asians, blacks, right? Peter would not talk to non-Jews. Of Jews were around and. Called him out publicly, posted it on the doors of the church, and the church eventually split apart.
And so people are like, that’s horrible. That’s terrible. Like, no, actually it spread the message even further. And so it’s okay to have disagreements, schisms, it’s okay to separate, but back to the positivity is to understand that disruption is not a bad. MLK was a disruptor. Disruption is not bad, and I think that’s where people are hiding.
And so back to having an organizational behavior bent, nothing changes unless you disrupt. And so if you see something wrong, you have the power to change it.
[00:44:49] Angela Lin: Great. Well, here’s two ongoing change in the the near future. Keith, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. We really enjoyed having you and wow, this is a lot that you were going through by more power to you, that you are kind of leading the way on something that is difficult to create change and to help people hold themselves accountable
[00:45:13] Keith Koo: as well.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jesse. Always great to see you. Likewise.
[00:45:18] Angela Lin: Um, you mentioned that you have a second radio show coming out. Is there more information on that that you wanna share with the listeners on where they can find it or more about what it’s gonna be about? All that good stuff?
[00:45:30] Keith Koo: Yeah, so, uh, you know, I’m working on it conceptually.
Uh, I’m on the radio here in Silicon Valley, so my regular show is Silicon Valley Insider Business Technology Innovation. You can go to S v I n.biz and find out more information there. My second show is called 10 Talents and it’s on spirituality and every aspect of your life. So we’ll be talking about business and tech, health and wellness, relationships, and dating.
We’ll be talking about conflict management, art, entertainment, and you’re gonna find out a bunch of people who are entertainers happen to have a strong faith background. And, uh, we’ll also be talking about how to raise your family. So looking forward to having you check it out for now. Come find me at Keith at SVI and Biz.
But this new show will launch in about a month.
[00:46:19] Angela Lin: Well, we wish you all the success with that new show and your current show, and of course with everything you’re doing with, with, uh, the current scuffle that you’re in. And, uh, listeners, if you have any questions for. Drop as a comment wherever you’re watching this currently, and we’ll funnel any questions to Keith or we can just have a lively discussion continued there.
And as
[00:46:47] Jesse Lin: always, come back for a fresh new episode next week.