Dr. Buster Soaries | Is America Living Up To Its Promise?

- [Announc­er] We believe, and have always believed, in this coun­try that man was cre­at­ed in the image of God, that he was giv­en tal­ents and respon­si­bil­i­ty and was instruct­ed to use them to make this world a bet­ter place in which to live. And you see, this is the real­ly great thing of America.

- It’s time to dis­cov­er what binds us togeth­er. And find­ing it has the pow­er to trans­form our world. That’s what I believe, how about you? Well, hi every­one, I’m Doug DeVos, and wel­come to ​“Believe!” You know, it’s always so fun to have a chance to do these episodes, and to be able to talk to some very, very spe­cial peo­ple, and to talk about some impor­tant top­ics. So today we’re talk­ing about Amer­i­ca, and is it liv­ing up to its promise? And what about, and how do we under­stand or think about, what do we believe about Amer­i­ca’s jour­ney to jus­tice? What have we learned so far? What do we need to think about as we go for­ward? And so today I’m just thrilled to join with a friend of mine, Dr. Buster Soaries, who is an expert in this area, has lived it his whole life. Buster, thank you for join­ing us. Thank you for being part of this. It’s so great to see you again. All’s well with you?

- Much all is well, and I’d be remiss if I did­n’t start by just thank­ing you and thank­ing God and thank­ing your fam­i­ly for Rich DeVos. In the mid 80s, when I was com­mit­ted to being a full-time youth evan­ge­list, a com­pa­ny called Gospel Films came along, and helped me dis­trib­ute my mes­sage much more broad­ly than I could by foot. And your dad was the crit­i­cal sup­port for Bil­ly Zeoli and that whole team. And the DeVos fam­i­ly from then, up to and includ­ing my cur­rent work, has been a part­ner in my min­istry, and I thank God for you.

- Well, we thank God for you too, and we’re blessed to have that rela­tion­ship and that con­nec­tion, because your mes­sage and your work is incred­i­bly impact­ful. And that’s what we wan­na spend a lit­tle time unpack­ing because you have a tremen­dous insight, under­stand­ing and per­spec­tive on issues that impact our lives, that build com­mu­ni­ty, that build rela­tion­ships, and have seen and expe­ri­enced things that have done the oppo­site, that have, you know, removed rela­tion­ships, or tak­en us away from peo­ple work­ing togeth­er. So, first of all, just tell us a lit­tle bit more about you. Let’s talk about you. We were talk­ing ear­li­er about your mom and your fam­i­ly. So tell us a lit­tle bit about you and how you kind of start­ed into your work in the civ­il rights. But even before that, start just about you and your family.

- Sure, well I grew up in a sub­urb of New York, Mont­clair, New Jer­sey, sub­ur­ban town. It was a diverse town, about ¹⁄₄ of the town was Black. And we had a lit­tle enclave in the south­ern end of town. My fam­i­ly had moved there, because my grand­moth­er worked for a wealthy fam­i­ly in Vir­ginia. And when that fam­i­ly migrat­ed from Vir­ginia to New Jer­sey, they brought their domes­tic help with them, with my grand­moth­er being one. And so my moth­er grew up in Mont­clair. My dad grew up in Brook­lyn, New York. And when they got mar­ried, they decid­ed that it would be best for the fam­i­ly and the future, to live in New Jer­sey. And so as a very young child, I moved to New Jer­sey with my fam­i­ly, of course, and was raised in New Jer­sey with the pub­lic schools, all of my K‑12 career. Had a won­der­ful ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion, went to a seg­re­gat­ed school, was all Black. The schools there were deter­mined by the hous­ing pat­terns. And of course, since the south­ern end of town was all African Amer­i­can, we went to an African Amer­i­can school. But it was a fine edu­ca­tion. We did­n’t real­ize any­thing about injus­tice. We played sports, we went to the park. It was a well-kept town. All of my neigh­bors owned their own homes, or they, like we did, we lived in our grand­moth­er’s house. There was no divorce. Not one of my friends was raised by a sin­gle par­ent. The fam­i­lies were all intact. I lived down the street from my best friend, Joe Evans. And the rule was, if I was­n’t in the house by the time the street light came on, I had to be at Joe Evans’ house. And so we had that kind of real close-knit com­mu­ni­ty that I con­sid­ered nor­mal. I did­n’t real­ize until I was an adult, that many peo­ple and now most peo­ple, don’t live that way. But I went on to high school, and in my high school I was an ath­lete, but I also became an activist. I was a junior in high school when Mar­tin Luther King was killed. And it was his death that impact­ed my grand­moth­er to the extent that her response impact­ed me. I real­ly, being a child of the north, being in the sub­urbs, I real­ly did­n’t know much about civ­il rights. I knew a lit­tle bit about the glob­al injus­tices. I knew a lit­tle bit about the enslave­ment of Africans. But my focus in high school Doug, was bas­ket­ball and girls.

- Sounds like a good focus for a lot of us, right?

- That was a great focus. And when Dr. King was killed, it broad­ened my per­spec­tive. My dad was a part-time pas­tor and a full-time school teacher. My mom was a cor­po­rate sec­re­tary. And so my junior year in high school, when Dr. King was killed, began a process of my want­i­ng to do more than just chase girls and play bas­ket­ball. I became a stu­dent leader in high school, a stu­dent activist in col­lege. I went on to work for Jesse Jack­son, when after Dr. King was killed, Jesse Jack­son formed his own orga­ni­za­tion. And I was very, very excit­ed about civ­il rights work. I was raised in the church, but I did­n’t have a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Christ. And I got a lit­tle dis­en­chant­ed with the church, because I thought it was a lit­tle too stuffy, a lit­tle too legal­is­tic. And it was in fact, my rela­tion­ship with civ­il rights that took me back to church. But it took me back to church more for strate­gic pur­pos­es than for spir­i­tu­al pur­pos­es. And right at the peak of my civ­il rights career, I was 24 years old. I was the nation­al direc­tor of Oper­a­tion Push, report­ing every day to Rev­erend Jack­son, who was wide­ly per­ceived as the suc­ces­sor of Mar­tin Luther King. My dad died at 47 years old. He died as a result of hav­ing tests that required anes­the­sia. And the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist gave him more than his heart could han­dle, and he died from an anes­the­sia-induced heart attack. And that night, I real­ized when I was writ­ing my dad’s obit­u­ary, that he was actu­al­ly in a bet­ter place than I was, because in the obit­u­ary, I knew enough about my dad to say that we should­n’t real­ly wor­ry about him, because he was liv­ing for­ev­er in heav­en with Christ. And I was going to church, and I was an activist. I was, as it were, lead­ing a social move­ment that had a spir­i­tu­al ring to it. But it was my dad’s death that real­ly was the cat­a­lyst to put me on my knees, and tell God that I want­ed a rela­tion­ship with Him the way my dad had, and that’s when I became a Christian.

- Wow, wow, what a pow­er­ful sto­ry. And what an impact in your life to be able to make that tran­si­tion. And thank you for shar­ing that. As you talk about, you know, your per­spec­tive, and kind of find­ing your way for­ward, talk about a lit­tle bit, you men­tioned your grand­moth­er was high­ly impact­ed by Dr. King’s assas­si­na­tion. Tell me a lit­tle bit more about her, and why it was so impact­ful on her, and how that trans­lat­ed to you.

- I was very close to both of my grand­moth­ers, my mater­nal and pater­nal grand­moth­er. This was my moth­er’s moth­er. We lived in her home. And on the day that Dr. King was killed, I went to her house to get some sweet pota­to pie. She was famous for her sweet pota­to pie. And when I got to the house, she was sit­ting at the din­ing room table with tears in her eyes. And I’d nev­er seen her cry before. My grand­moth­er had buried two of her adult chil­dren, but she was so strong, almost sto­ic-like. I’d nev­er seen her cry. So you can be sure it got my atten­tion. And when I asked her why she was sit­ting at the din­ing room table with tears in her eyes, she said, ​“They shot Dr. King today.” And this was star­tling to me Doug, because my grand­moth­er was a church moth­er, mean­ing she had real high rank in a Pen­te­costal church. She real­ly did not believe in protest. She would nev­er, ever march in a demon­stra­tion. She would nev­er go to jail. My grand­moth­er’s phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy was that God would take care of any injus­tice, to go along, to get along. And in her words specif­i­cal­ly, that we should­n’t be stir­ring up a fuss. So, it was coun­ter­in­tu­itive for me to watch my grand­moth­er, who was lit­er­al­ly a non-activist, almost an anti-activist, be so moved by this activist Bap­tist min­is­ter, who lived 1,000 miles away. But it deep­ened my appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that even peo­ple like my grand­moth­er knew that God was going to ush­er in a new sea­son in this coun­try, and that the civ­il rights that her par­ents did­n’t have, and that she did­n’t have, would be achieved. And thus, she appre­ci­at­ed the val­ue of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. And she also appre­ci­at­ed the val­ue of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. And I grew to under­stand more, because I decid­ed that any man whose life could impact my grand­moth­er’s life that sig­nif­i­cant­ly, was a life that I need­ed to under­stand so that my life could impact some­one’s life in sim­i­lar fash­ion. And so that was a very mov­ing moment for me, because I knew my grand­moth­er’s per­son­al­i­ty, and she’d nev­er march and go to jail, like the activists of the South.

- Wow, wow. Well, thank you for shar­ing that as well. That’s again, a very pow­er­ful per­spec­tive of how you began think­ing about these top­ics. So tell us a lit­tle bit more at that stage, when you start to think about match­ing what you expe­ri­ence at that stage of your life, where we are today, kind of bring­ing those togeth­er as a coun­try. We seem to be being tear­ing our­selves apart for so many rea­sons and cer­tain­ly civ­il rights and rela­tions, rela­tion­ships between African Amer­i­cans and oth­ers in our coun­try. Those rela­tion­ships seem just so strained. So help us under­stand how should we think about, how should we think about jus­tice as a coun­try? And does Amer­i­ca have the foun­da­tions in place to actu­al­ly achieve it? We have a, cer­tain­ly a bad past, you know. But we’ve got some good things too. How should we bal­ance that? And how should we think about it today?

- Well, you know, we have in our cre­do, ​“In God We Trust.” We’re a coun­try that has always acknowl­edged the pres­ence and the pow­er and the pur­pose of the Cre­ator of heav­en and earth. We’ve not always agreed on God’s agen­da. We’ve not always agreed on, even what to call God. We don’t all wor­ship God the same way. But there is, there is a sig­nif­i­cant real­i­ty in both the his­to­ry and the cul­ture of our coun­try. And that is as a nation, unlike many oth­er nations on the plan­et, we’ve always rec­og­nized our­selves as being sub­ject to the divine pow­er of a divine Cre­ator. And so, as you described it, we have had a dif­fi­cult past, but we were found­ed on lofty prin­ci­ples. We were found­ed on prin­ci­ples so lofty, that they exceed the prin­ci­ples of the found­ing of any coun­try in the his­to­ry of the world. You know, up until the 17^th cen­tu­ry, the dri­ving prin­ci­ple was one of roy­al­ty. You had to be born of a cer­tain fam­i­ly and had to have blood from a cer­tain blood­line to lead and to be qual­i­fied for sig­nif­i­cance. And what hap­pened with, not just the Magna Cara, but the fil­ing of this coun­try, was there was a social shift that was impact­ful, even to this day, where the peo­ple, the peo­ple endowed by their Cre­ator were real­ly the pow­er base. It was the affir­ma­tion of peo­ple, it was the will of the peo­ple that would deter­mine who was qual­i­fied to lead. And so these words, these self-evi­dent truths, that were cre­at­ed by God, and each indi­vid­ual has cer­tain inalien­able rights. You see Doug, the only rea­son we can say that Amer­i­ca’s had a flawed past, is because we’re flawed in jux­ta­po­si­tion to the prin­ci­ples. If we had no prin­ci­ples, there’d be no basis for describ­ing our­selves as hav­ing flaws. As the Bible says, ​“If there’s no law, there’s no sin.” And so these prin­ci­ples were so lofty, that in many ways, the peo­ple who wrote them could not live up to them. But what they’ve done for our coun­try through­out our his­to­ry, is give us goals and stan­dards for which we should aspire. And that’s the great­ness of our coun­try. The great­ness of our coun­try is not that we have amassed more wealth, or that we have the strongest mil­i­tary. The great­ness of our coun­try is that we have such lofty prin­ci­ples, that we always have some­thing to strive for in the human expe­ri­ence. And that’s what gives us opti­mism. So the Civ­il Rights Move­ment was a move­ment that said be true Amer­i­ca, to what you put on paper. Unfor­tu­nate­ly today, we often have allowed polit­i­cal pow­er, and the lust for pow­er and con­trol, to real­ly under­mine the prin­ci­ples for which we should fight. Those prin­ci­ples require a sense of humil­i­ty. They require a sense of account­abil­i­ty. And those prin­ci­ples, to attain the prin­ci­ples of the founders, it requires a sense of uni­ty. It’s, ​“We hold these truths to be self evi­dent.” It’s the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. It’s e pluribus unum, one out of many. And so I think we’ve allowed our­selves to suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion of lust­ing for pow­er, as opposed to lust­ing for purpose.

- Yeah, wow, wow. You said so much in that seg­ment there, I’ve been try­ing to write down, and fig­ure out how to dive into some more areas. But this lust­ing for pow­er ver­sus pur­pose. Let me go back again, ​’cause some­times a lot of the dis­cus­sion today would be that Amer­i­ca is so flawed. We haven’t lived up to our pur­pose, but we are so flawed that we need to dis­re­gard and start over. Is that what you believe?

- What you believe about?

- Well, no, because. No, no, no. What mit­i­gates the real­i­ty of the flaws, is the real­i­ty of the growth. And when you look at Amer­i­ca’s past, if you only look at the flaws, you will not rec­og­nize, or even cel­e­brate, Amer­i­ca’s abil­i­ty to self-cor­rect its own flaws. We weren’t invad­ed by for­eign nations to end slav­ery. We did that our­selves. Now, it was bloody, and it was bru­tal. But we did it our­selves. We did­n’t grant women the right to vote, because the Unit­ed Nations vot­ed and demand­ed of us. We did that, we’re a self-cor­rect­ing coun­try. We did­n’t fix many of abhor­rent labor con­di­tions that often were abu­sive for all kinds of peo­ple, not the least of who being chil­dren, because you know, the world court found us guilty. Amer­i­ca, in its struc­ture, is a self-cor­rect­ing Repub­lic. And we did­n’t have the mil­i­tary march on the White House, and take over the gov­ern­ment. There have been 40 coup d’e­tats in Africa, in the last few years. 40, where the mil­i­tary just march­es on their ver­sion of the White House with guns, and either kills or dri­ves the lead­ers out. That’s not us. Every four years, with con­tro­ver­sy, with dif­fi­cul­ty every four years, ulti­mate­ly we’ve had a smooth trans­fer of pow­er in Wash­ing­ton. We’ve had a smooth trans­fer of pow­er in 50 states. We have smooth trans­fers of pow­er in thou­sands of munic­i­pal­i­ties and coun­ties around the coun­try. So the exper­i­ment is work­ing. And con­trary to what some of the media hype might sug­gest, and con­trary to, again, some of the blem­ish­es that are revealed by ongo­ing data, we are still the mod­el for self-cor­rect­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices with these lofty prin­ci­ples. So, no, there’s no need to start over. The need is to have moral lead­er­ship that will stay faith­ful to the prin­ci­ples and be hum­ble enough to rec­og­nize where we make mis­takes, but to be con­fi­dent enough to build on those principles.

- Wow, beau­ti­ful­ly said. And that gives us con­fi­dence that when we make mis­takes, we’re not done. There is a redemp­tion avail­able to us as a nation. And you talked about your tran­si­tion from attend­ing church to hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with Christ, and how your dad’s pass­ing had such an impact on you to think about that in a dif­fer­ent way. Help us under­stand how that, how your faith shapes your per­spec­tive on our com­mu­ni­ty, on our neigh­bor­hoods, on our coun­try. How should we think about whether we, for the audi­ence where they have the faith, or whether they don’t have a faith or some­where in between. How has it been for you? And how has your faith, you know, shaped what you believe?

- Well, you know, I was so inspired when I dis­cov­ered that the name of your pod­cast was ​“Believe It,” or ​“Believe!” right? What, is it ​“Believed”? I know it-

- ​“Believed!”

- ​“Believed!”

- Yes.

- Because our behav­ior flows from our beliefs. And our free­doms are depen­dent upon indi­vid­ual behav­iors. When I became a Chris­t­ian, I guess for the pur­pos­es of this con­ver­sa­tion, one of the key changes in my life was that I had to start by focus­ing on my own behav­ior and my own beliefs, as opposed to being an activist, whose focus was exclu­sive­ly on how oth­er peo­ple treat­ed me. You know, Jesus said that you should be con­cerned, if you’re able to rec­og­nize the speck in some­one else’s eye, and ignore the log in your own. And while it,

- That’s great.

- in some ways it’s a nuance. But from a human per­spec­tive, we start with our own per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. You know about my work rel­a­tive to finances,

- Yes.

- and what we teach peo­ple. It’s large­ly based on Luke chap­ter 15. And in Luke chap­ter 15, you see a young man who inher­its great wealth from his dad, but he blows it. Now, if you had bumped into that guy when he was broke, you might con­sid­er him a vic­tim of cir­cum­stances. You might assume that some­one robbed him. But the nar­ra­tive says that his own choic­es, his own behav­ior, pro­duced those out­comes. And so I had to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for my own behav­ior. And as a Chris­t­ian now, not only do I have a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty, but thank God I have a role mod­el in Jesus. So Jesus defines for me, even more fun­da­men­tal­ly than the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion or Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Jesus defines for me my behav­ior, because as a believ­er, I’m believ­ing in Jesus. I don’t believe in a par­tic­u­lar trans­la­tion of the Bible over anoth­er trans­la­tion. I don’t believe in a denom­i­na­tion over anoth­er denom­i­na­tion. I don’t believe in a race over anoth­er race. My belief sys­tem flows from Jesus. And Jesus did and said just enough to help me shape a whole new per­son­al­i­ty. And God, my the­ol­o­gy says, that God not only gives me these Jesus prin­ci­ples and Jesus stan­dards, but God pro­vides a spir­i­tu­al source of pow­er to enable me to accom­plish those things. So, instead of look­ing at the social impact on my life, I look at the spir­i­tu­al oblig­a­tions that flow from my belief in Jesus.

- That’s spec­tac­u­lar that, you know, and that it’s real­ly impor­tant. Again, we’re not… This isn’t the forum to try to, to evan­ge­lize here, even though you do it so well no mat­ter where you are. But you talk about, and I think the idea of liv­ing out your beliefs, is to me kind of the def­i­n­i­tion of evan­ge­lism any­way. It’s liv­ing out your beliefs in a way that’s cred­i­ble and believ­able. And I’m try­ing to, I think of the, what was it St. Fran­cis of Assisi said, ​“Spread the gospel, and if nec­es­sary use words.”

- Right.

- You know, so it’s your behav­iors. Expand a lit­tle bit more on this idea of, you were talk­ing about what peo­ple were doing to you. And then as you tran­si­tion your faith, it was about the per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty of how you were behav­ing, and what you were respon­si­ble for because of what you believed. How can that, if you, not dis­con­nect it from a faith dis­cus­sion, but con­nect it into a neigh­bor­hood dis­cus­sion, a com­mu­ni­ty dis­cus­sion. How can that help us think through what we can do? ​‘Cause I’ll watch the news, and I’ll com­plain about this, and they should do that. And of course I have all the bet­ter ideas of what some­body else should do. Just like, you know, just like a coach at a bas­ket­ball game, right? Well, the coach should have done this. The play­ers should have done this. I can’t do any­thing that, that they’re doing. So how should we think about focus­ing on our­selves as we deal with some of the issues that we’re fac­ing as a nation? And as we try to answer that ques­tion, is how are we gonna live up to our promise, as a nation, as a community?

- Yeah, well in the first instance, when look­ing at myself, I have to ask myself the ques­tion, what are the dis­tinct char­ac­ter­is­tics for being human? There are many life forms. But if you look at it anthro­po­log­i­cal­ly, if you look at it bio­log­i­cal­ly, if you look at it soci­o­log­i­cal­ly, but look at life the­o­log­i­cal­ly, you have to con­clude objec­tive­ly that the human species is the supe­ri­or life form. We are not mon­keys. We are not kan­ga­roos. We are not dogs and cats. Although they are alive too. If you shoot a mon­key, it’ll bleed. Right?

- Right, right.

- But there’s a dis­tinct dif­fer­ence between the Homo sapi­en lifestyle. So what sep­a­rates us? What sep­a­rates us from those crea­tures? Not only do we have intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty, we write books, we have libraries, we have schools, but we also have social struc­tures. We have inter­ac­tive expec­ta­tions. And so just on a human lev­el, when we look at what does it mean to be a Homo sapi­en? What does it mean to be a func­tion­al crea­ture that has all of these gifts and all of this tal­ent? You know, we call it the image of God. But leave the­ol­o­gy out for a moment. What does it mean to be a per­son, as it relates to fam­i­ly, as it relates to friend­ship, as it relates to finance, as it relates. And so what hap­pens is, if you wan­na look at it through the lens of jus­tice ver­sus injus­tice, the ques­tion becomes, what does a just human look like? And of course, the­o­log­i­cal­ly, it’s easy for me as a Chris­t­ian, because one of the prin­ci­ples is treat oth­er peo­ple the way you wan­na be treated.

- Right. Yeah, that’s right.

- That’s from the gospel.

- Yeah.

- And so if I’m read­ing the gospel, from the per­spec­tive of try­ing to answer that ques­tion, what dis­tin­guish­es me as a Homo sapi­en from all of the oth­er life forms that God made, there are cer­tain­ly sim­i­lar­i­ties. The biol­o­gists will tell us that mam­mals have so much in com­mon. But there’s got­ta be some dis­tinc­tive­ness for our crowd, you know, for our lev­el of exis­tence. And what that does, it just leads you Doug, to some very basic com­mon sense answers. When I talk to teenagers, and we were talk­ing, in fact, this is one of the videos your dad helped us pro­duce. And we were talk­ing about sex­u­al moral­i­ty. You know, what does a dog do? A dog impreg­nates anoth­er dog. And the male dog does­n’t stick around to see what the lit­tle pup­pies look like. The male dog does­n’t go to Cub Scouts with the lit­tle pup­py dogs. The male dog does­n’t go to back-to-school night. Male dogs just kind of move from female dog to female dog. And that’s appro­pri­ate behav­ior for a dog. But if I’m a man,

- Yeah, yeah.

- well, I share some sim­i­lar­i­ties in terms of, you know, the abil­i­ty to pro­cre­ate, the assump­tion is that a male, a human, behaves in a supe­ri­or fash­ion to a dog. So a human, you know, is able to com­mit to a mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship, make vows and keep vows, bear chil­dren, and raise the chil­dren, be a man, be a dad, go to back-to-school night, attend grad­u­a­tion. And you don’t need any the­ol­o­gy at all to under­stand that there must be a dif­fer­ence in terms of sex­u­al moral­i­ty between a man and a dog.

- Right.

- So you can take that to

- Sure.

- any area of life you want to. But I believe that I’m a Chris­t­ian, because I believe Chris­tian­i­ty answers the ques­tion best of how, you know, Frankie Scha­ef­fer said it, ​“How then shall we live?”

- Shall we live?

- How should humans be human?

- Right.

- But what­ev­er tra­di­tion, what­ev­er ide­ol­o­gy, what­ev­er phi­los­o­phy we embrace, at the end of the day, our bot­tom line is that we will be born, and we will die. And all of that time in between, we should be demon­strat­ing the unique­ness of what it meant to be human.

- Yeah, yeah, exact­ly. We had anoth­er friend said, it’s all about the dash, right? On your grave­stone, you’ll have your birth­date and the day you die. It’s all about the dash. What are we doing with our lives? And that’s what we’re real­ly try­ing to explore and under­stand. I’m so grate­ful, you know, Buster for your insights here. Tell us a lit­tle bit more, I’m gonna tran­si­tion a lit­tle bit more. You had a chance to serve as the sec­re­tary of state for the State of New Jer­sey. You know, you’re active in civ­il rights, you find faith, you are lead­ing a church. And then you have this oppor­tu­ni­ty to have pub­lic ser­vice. Tell us a lit­tle bit about that expe­ri­ence, and how that again, helped inform or shape some of your beliefs?

- It was the most inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence of my life. I had nev­er been in gov­ern­ment ser­vice. I had only worked in non­prof­it and church. And I had been pas­tor of the church, from which I recent­ly retired, for 10 years. And the gov­er­nor called and said, ​“I real­ly need help run­ning the State of New Jer­sey.” What was inter­est­ing is at that time, we did not have a lieu­tenant gov­er­nor posi­tion. We do now, in large mea­sure because of the work we did. And our gov­er­nor was, well, she was the first and only woman to serve as a gov­er­nor. She grew up on a farm in rur­al New Jer­sey, and her fam­i­ly was very wealthy. Which means that while she had integri­ty that was endorsed by the vot­ers, thus mak­ing her gov­er­nor, she did­n’t have a lot of expe­ri­ence with urban issues. She did­n’t have a lot of expo­sure to peo­ple from oth­er cul­tures. She lived a rather shel­tered life. And even as gov­er­nor, while her pas­sion was to be the gov­er­nor for all peo­ple, she real­ly need­ed help. And for her first term, her staff kept call­ing me, because they knew about my work in com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment. They knew about my back­ground in civ­il rights and race rela­tions. And so by her sec­ond term, she said, ​“Lis­ten, you know, we call you every week. Why don’t you just come down to the state­house, and help me run the state?” And I said no, because Doug, at that time, we were com­plet­ing the con­struc­tion of our new sanc­tu­ary at the church. And I could­n’t run down there and help the gov­er­nor, and leave the church wondering,

- Right, right, sure.

- the sanc­tu­ary. So final­ly she kept the posi­tion open. It’s an appoint­ed posi­tion in New Jer­sey. She kept the posi­tion open for nine months. Final­ly, she called my wife, and she said to my wife, ​“Don­na, I need your hus­band down here in Tren­ton.” And, I came home from the church one day, my wife said, ​“The gov­er­nor called me today, and I like her. You need to go and help her.” So, the gov­er­nor, she’s run­ning around, you know, went to the pow­er source. But I went

- Exact­ly.

- and just to show you how inter­est­ing life became, a few days after I was sworn in as sec­re­tary of state, that ter­ri­ble, vio­lent shoot­ing in Columbine hap­pened, where all of those chil­dren got killed. And she turned to me and she said, ​“You know, this is not in your job descrip­tion, but I know of your work with teenagers. I need you to put togeth­er an anti-vio­lence strat­e­gy for the school kids in New Jer­sey. We do not want anoth­er Columbine.” And we put togeth­er a statewide ini­tia­tive, stu­dent-led, to pre­vent vio­lence, vic­tim­iza­tion and van­dal­ism. And if you were to ask Gov­er­nor Whit­man today about my achiev­ing any­thing when I was in office, she will men­tion that, even though it had noth­ing to do with the office of sec­re­tary of state, but she trust­ed me to do projects like that. And I had a won­der­ful time of gov­ern­ment ser­vice con­tin­u­ing, basi­cal­ly doing the same work that I nor­mal­ly did, but I just had a title and a dri­ver. That’s right. And more work to do.

- That’s right.

- And more work to do. So it’s always some­thing. When God wants some­thing done, He asks the busy per­son to do it, right? So you got a lot going on, but there you go. You’ve been able to see that per­spec­tive of gov­ern­ment ser­vice, and the role it plays in our com­mu­ni­ty. And let me, you know, we got maybe anoth­er, in the time we have here, help me con­nect a lit­tle bit, the faith com­mu­ni­ty, your patri­o­tism, the, you know, the race rela­tions work you’ve done, and the work you’ve done in gov­ern­ment. How do those pieces, how should we think, and our audi­ence think, about the roles that maybe those insti­tu­tions play in our soci­ety, and how they can work togeth­er? Because, as I’m lis­ten­ing, your role in gov­ern­ment was­n’t just an action of tak­ing your posi­tion in gov­ern­ment and doing work. It was because you had this his­to­ry, because you were you, and you had expe­ri­ence in these oth­er areas, that you were able to effec­tive­ly do work that was­n’t in your job descrip­tion even. So help us under­stand how maybe some of these insti­tu­tions can work together.

- Well, when you have a posi­tion or an insti­tu­tion that con­trols resources, human resources, finan­cial resources, facil­i­ties, any kind of resources, I think the ques­tion becomes, how do we lever­age those resources to do the most good for peo­ple who need good done? In some instances, it’s fos­ter chil­dren. We did a lot of work in the fos­ter care sys­tem, bring­ing church­es and gov­ern­ment togeth­er to recruit and train fam­i­lies for fos­ter chil­dren. The gov­ern­ment had the need, the church had the peo­ple. And so I think the col­lab­o­ra­tive ques­tion is how do we iden­ti­fy the resources that we have? Some­times we call them capa­bil­i­ties. What capa­bil­i­ties does cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca have? What capa­bil­i­ties do church­es have? What capa­bil­i­ties do indi­vid­u­als have? And then, we make a list of needs. What are the needs? And by needs, I’m talk­ing about how do we link those capa­bil­i­ties to areas in our coun­try that could do much bet­ter if a col­lab­o­ra­tion did exist? And so it’s what I do every day. When I actu­al­ly decid­ed to build a com­pa­ny called Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ty Con­nec­tions, where we take cor­po­rate lead­er­ship, cor­po­rate resources, cor­po­rate activ­i­ties, and con­nect them with com­mu­ni­ties that could use access to those resources, and by the way, cor­po­ra­tions that could use access to expand­ed mar­kets. You look at it from a mar­ket­ing stand­point. And it’s just, I just enjoy it every day of my life. I look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect peo­ple, to con­nect resources, to con­nect insti­tu­tions, in a way that pro­duce mutu­al­ly-ben­e­fi­cial out­comes. And it’s that mutu­al ben­e­fit that’s the key. You see, when you’re real­ly com­mit­ted to mutu­al ben­e­fit, it real­ly negates the temp­ta­tion to grab for pow­er. Because it’s mutu­al ben­e­fit assumes that every activ­i­ty and every rela­tion­ship is win-win. And so even today, as I look at jus­tice, you know Doug, that one of the rag­ing issues in our nation is police and com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions. What I’ve done in the past, is bring lead­er­ship from law enforce­ment, and lead­er­ship from com­mu­ni­ties togeth­er, to do two things. One, rec­og­nize we need each oth­er. You can­not stop all of the crime in this coun­try by law enforce­ment alone. Every police agency, every dis­trict attor­ney needs help from the com­mu­ni­ty. And like all com­mu­ni­ties, can­not main­tain civ­il order on their own. And since we have this mutu­al need, the ques­tion is how best can we con­struct a part­ner­ship to pro­vide the kind of qual­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing that we all deserve? And that part­ner­ship will pro­duce jus­tice. And there’ll always be some peo­ple on either side, on the law enforce­ment side or the com­mu­ni­ty side, that kind of vio­late the stan­dards and the prin­ci­ples of a real part­ner­ship. And you take them some­where and put them some­where, but you don’t throw away the baby with the bath water.

- Right, right, yeah. Exact­ly. So, kind of in that theme, can you give us a cou­ple exam­ples? As we talk about Amer­i­ca and our his­to­ry, our aspi­ra­tions and our prin­ci­ples and ideals, yet the actions that we’ve, where we’ve missed it, where we’ve not lived up to those ideals, but we’ve self cor­rect­ed. What does progress look like to you today? What are some exam­ples that you’ve seen, you maybe men­tioned a cou­ple, maybe you could dive a lit­tle deep­er, or add a cou­ple to it. What have you seen where we should look around and say, ​“Okay, hey, there is progress being made. There are some, you know, suc­cess sto­ries in com­mu­ni­ties around our coun­try. So it’s worth it for us to dive in, and work togeth­er even hard­er going for­ward.” Help us under­stand that from your perspective.

- Sure, one of the dis­ad­van­tages we have Doug, is that main­stream media, that real­ly has the major­i­ty of the atten­tion, don’t real­ly find these kinds of sto­ries mean­ing­ful, and so they go vir­tu­al­ly unno­ticed. But there are com­mu­ni­ties like Las Vegas, Neva­da, like Dal­las, Texas, where com­mu­ni­ties, and often led by for­mer crim­i­nals, are form­ing part­ner­ship with the police, so that com­mu­ni­ties and police can work togeth­er. All over the coun­try, Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, New York, Queens, New York. I could take you to 50 com­mu­ni­ties tomor­row, where peo­ple, some of whom are for­mer crim­i­nals, I’m telling you, come out of jail, and they decide to bring heal­ing to the same com­mu­ni­ties where they wreaked hav­oc. And they work hand in hand with the very police that incar­cer­at­ed them.

- Mm, wow.

- This is hap­pen­ing. What’s hap­pen­ing around the coun­try is that more and more finan­cial insti­tu­tions are mak­ing cap­i­tal avail­able for Black-owned busi­ness­es and women who oth­er­wise found it dif­fi­cult to access cap­i­tal. I formed a part­ner­ship that I announced last month with a com­pa­ny out of Cal­i­for­nia. And they pledged $220 mil­lion to peo­ple in our orga­ni­za­tion, and peo­ple that fol­low us, to buy, fix up and sell houses.

- Right.

- And not one news orga­ni­za­tion was will­ing to write that. Now, if I had done an announce­ment that $220 mil­lion was denied Black peo­ple by some white racist, I’d have been on ​“60 Min­utes,” you see?

- Sure, sure, yeah.

- And I’m telling you, the news media is doing this coun­try a dis­ser­vice. And I’m talk­ing about all of the news media, because they have the micro­phones, they have the plat­forms, and if they would tell more good news, then good news would spread and grow. So we have, we have eco­nom­ic gaps being filled. We have a his­toric inclu­sion on boards of direc­tors. I’m on the board of a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar mort­gage-ser­vic­ing com­pa­ny. There’s sev­en direc­tors. Two are women, two are Black. Out­ta sev­en peo­ple, we’re a major­i­ty, minor­i­ty board in a com­pa­ny that has over a mil­lion cus­tomers. So what I’m telling you is that there is as much good news, if not more, than there is bad news. And that’s why we need guys like you and pod­casts like ​“Believe!” to help peo­ple under­stand that this is not a time to give up. This is a time to do exact­ly what we’re talk­ing about. You don’t cre­ate suc­cess by study­ing fail­ure alone. You cre­ate suc­cess by find­ing suc­cess­es, exam­ples of suc­cess­es. You make them best prac­tices. You extract the prin­ci­ples so they can be spread, and then you tell the sto­ry, and teach the strat­e­gy. That’s how you win. Your com­pa­ny was not built on fail­ure, your com­pa­ny was built on, ​“Look, Mrs. Smith was able to be suc­cess­ful. And let’s show you what she did. Let’s train you in that method. You apply it to where you are, and you can build your busi­ness the way she built her business.”

- Exact­ly, exact­ly right. You know, and the idea that so many peo­ple are out there doing good things, and Buster, maybe just kin­da close with tell us a lit­tle bit about some of the good things that you’re doing. Because you men­tioned, we talked recent­ly that you’re retir­ing. And I knew as soon as you said, I said, ​“There’s no way Buster’s gonna retire from ever, from any­thing ever.” You may be tran­si­tion­ing to dif­fer­ent type of work, and you’re doing that. But tell us a lit­tle bit about, you’re on these boards. You’re doing some oth­er activ­i­ties as well, I know. So tell us a lit­tle bit about that, and that can help us maybe think through, all the audi­ence here, what can we do? You know, how do we study suc­cess by fol­low­ing Buster, by doing what you’re doing, and in our own way, in our own com­mu­ni­ty, with our own capac­i­ty, with our own inter­est, but think­ing about our neigh­bors? Maybe give us a lit­tle idea as we kind of wrap things up here.

- Well, you know Doug, God has blessed me to have more, do more, and know more than I ever dreamt. But it’s always been through some indi­vid­ual that has reached out to help me, always. The gov­er­nor called me. I did­n’t cam­paign to be sec­re­tary of state, the gov­er­nor called me. I’m on this cor­po­rate board. A lawyer called the CEO and said, ​“You need this guy on your board.” And so what I’ve tried to do with my life, is to take the bless­ing that I’ve received, and the suc­cess­es that I’ve had, and cre­ate some insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures that can take that to scale. So that it’s not just Buster Soaries know­ing Doug DeVos. But it’s Buster Soaries, and the net­work that I can build, con­nect­ing with Doug DeVos and the net­work that he has to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties that nei­ther you nor I have to touch physically.

- Right.

- And so for instance, all of the data indi­cates that Black Amer­i­cans are less like­ly to speak to a finan­cial pro­fes­sion­al than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. You know, we gen­er­al­ly get our finan­cial advice from the bar­bers and the beau­ty shops. And so know­ing that, and Pru­den­tial’s one of the great finan­cial com­pa­nies of the world, they’re right here in New Jer­sey. I have a rela­tion­ship with Pru­den­tial where when we have events with church­es, we have online events, we ask peo­ple to please let us intro­duce you to a finan­cial pro­fes­sion­al, who will give you a con­sul­ta­tion for free. And Pru­den­tial pro­vides those finan­cial pro­fes­sion­als. And so we’ve got thou­sands of peo­ple every month that are con­nect­ing for the first time in their lives with a finan­cial pro­fes­sion­al, to put togeth­er a bud­get, a retire­ment plan. How much mon­ey do I have to save if I’m 45, and wan­na retire at 70? So, this is the work that we do every day of our lives. I men­tioned the access to cap­i­tal for buy­ing and fix­ing up and sell­ing homes. What I try to do is real­ly aim at the weak­est spots in Black Amer­i­ca, because Black Amer­i­ca has this racial-wealth gap, where we are fur­ther behind, for obvi­ous rea­sons, than any oth­er eth­nic group. And so whether it’s build­ing your cred­it, or whether it’s access­ing cap­i­tal, whether it’s becom­ing first-time home buy­ers, what I’ve done is take my civ­il rights back­ground and my nation­al con­tacts and my church base, and just spread the word. There are oppor­tu­ni­ties out here, and let us con­nect you to those oppor­tu­ni­ties. So that’s real­ly my, that’s my lifestyle. That’s my mantra, that’s my work, and it shows up in var­i­ous ways. I have a for-prof­it com­pa­ny. I have a non­prof­it foun­da­tion. And it’s fun. I just love get­ting email from peo­ple, and mes­sages online telling me that they met with a pro­fes­sion­al, or they accessed an oppor­tu­ni­ty. And they can’t thank me enough.

- Wow, well, you know, Buster, your activ­i­ty, you are turn­ing your beliefs into behav­iors. You are act­ing on the beliefs that you have, and you’re impact­ing so many in your com­mu­ni­ty and beyond, as you said, build­ing net­works and build­ing rela­tion­ships, build­ing win-win con­nec­tions that are an inspi­ra­tion for all of us, and to fol­low your lead. When we have a call, respond, that it may have to go through our spouse to get there, but you know, but to respond and to be avail­able, and to make the con­nec­tions that we can make. Maybe we can’t, as an indi­vid­ual, fix every­thing. But if we have a con­nec­tion, let’s make the con­nec­tion that we can, reach out to peo­ple who are hurt­ing, and believe in them enough that they can help them­selves. But they just might need a lit­tle hand, you know, a start, one con­nec­tion that they can take, and move for­ward from there. So, Buster, I just grate­ful for these con­ver­sa­tions. Any­thing else that I missed that you wan­na share with our audi­ence as we kind of wrap things up here, my friend?

- Well, I’ve decid­ed also Doug, that it’s impor­tant to write some of this stuff down. For years, I was inse­cure about my writ­ing. And anoth­er rea­son I appre­ci­ate, of course your fam­i­ly, is that through indi­rect con­tacts, I end­ed up meet­ing the peo­ple at Zon­der­van in Grand Rapids. And Zon­der­van pub­lished my first book. Of course, Thomas, not Thomas, David Cook pub­lished anoth­er book, but Zon­der­van got me start­ed as an author. So I have a lot to thank God for. Com­ing from Grand Rapids, Michi­gan, and I’ve got, I’ve got nine books now, and they’re avail­able on ama​zon​.com of course. And any­one who real­ly wants deep­er insights, excuse me, any­one who wants deep­er insights into my strat­e­gy, or my his­to­ry, I’m pret­ty trans­par­ent in my writ­ing. And those books are avail­able. And I’ll con­tin­ue to write, because I do believe that old Jamaican friend of mine, said, ​“A drop of ink can make a mil­lion think.” And so I think we have to use, we have to use all of these media that we now have access to, to spread good news, and to help peo­ple look for exam­ples of things they can do. You asked the ques­tion what can peo­ple do? I find that most peo­ple would like to do some­thing, if they had a sug­ges­tion that was man­age­able, that was afford­able, and that was use­ful. And every­one I’ve ever met, like your­self, has had some inter­est in answer­ing that ques­tion, ​“What can I do?” And I think if we can build around that answer, we would have less anx­i­ety, we’d have more jus­tice, and we would expe­ri­ence, as a nation, greater freedom.

- Amen, my friend. Thank you, thank you so much, Buster. I’m just so grate­ful for what you do, who you are, and for your will­ing­ness to share, whether it’s writ­ten down in your books, but for tak­ing your time here to share with us, and the encour­age­ment for us to express our beliefs, and to be engaged in our com­mu­ni­ty in what­ev­er way that we can. As you said, it was man­age­able, afford­able and useful.

- Right.

- You don’t wan­na spend time, and not be use­ful. So we wan­na use­ful in our com­mu­ni­ties and our neigh­bor­hoods. So Buster Soaries, thank you for your time. Thank you for your friend­ship. Thank you for your lead­er­ship, and all that you’re doing. And thanks for spend­ing a lit­tle time with us here on ​“Believe!”

- Thank you, Doug. God bless you.

- God bless you too. So that’s it for this episode of ​“Believe!” Thank you again to Dr. Buster Soaries for join­ing us, and thank you for join­ing us, and we’ll look for­ward to see­ing you all soon. Thanks everyone.