Where do we go from Here?

The Way Forward, 6-2-2020

            Many years ago I was discipling someone.  I gave her a Bible and told her about Jesus.  When I saw her several weeks later, she was excited.  Proudly, she told me she put that Bible under her pillow every night.  She had not read a page.  But she was growing in Christ because she slept on it each night.

            If all we do is sleep with the Bible, it is useless (and probably makes the pillow lumpy).  The Bible is also useless as photo op, useless as a truth-totem in court.  A teller of boldfaced lies, will tell those lies after swearing on a Bible.  The Bible is not a totem, a prop, or an accessory. 

The Bible is God’s living word, God’s message to the world conveyed through law, prophecy, creation narratives, chronicles of kings, Gospels, poetry, and letters. 

In America, we’ve exceeded 100,000 COVID-19 related deaths.  We’ve watched in horror as defenseless African Americans have been killed by law enforcement officers.  Know their names: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.  Expressing outrage at the evil of structural injustice, advocates for justice have protested, peacefully. 

Opportunists have hijacked peaceful protests turning them into lawless outbursts nationwide.     Our president has not by addressed the systemic injustice that leads to unarmed, surrendered suspects being strangled.  Instead, he has threatened deadly force and has insulted governors across the country. 

What’s the way forward from here?  For Christians it is to take the Bible out from under the pillow and out of the photo ops.  To recognize the force of God’s word, the Bible must be opened, must be read.  Three passages stand out to me. 

First, Acts 16:1-3, Paul’s recruitment of young Timothy to his missionary team.  Timothy is one of many biracial people in the Bible, with a Jewish Christian mom and Pagan Greek dad.  The Jerusalem Council determined Gentile believers need not be circumcised (Acts 15).  However, Paul recognizes that in order to gain a hearing with Jewish audiences, Jews on his team should be circumcised.  So, he circumcised Timothy. 

That’s not a small thing without the availability of anesthesia.  But Timothy accepted extreme discomfort to become a more effective witness.  He thought it was worth it to sacrifice in an unpleasant way.  He wanted Jews would listen when he preached and consider Jesus.  He did it for the good of others.

How much are we doing for the good of others?  If you’re white, how much thought have you given to the way black people have been humiliated in our country’s history.  The video image of Derek Chauvin holding George Floyd’s down is dehumanizing.  Black people have put up with that kind of treatment for 500-600 years.  Derek Chauvin’s commitment is to protect and serve.  Maybe he felt he needed to subdue Mr. Floyd.  He went murderously beyond that.  White Christians, we have to empathize with the pain our black brothers and sisters have experienced.  We have to think, speak, and act for the good of others.  Paul and Timothy set the tone for this self-giving attitude with Timothy’s circumcision.

Next, we then turn to 1 Corinthians 9:21-23, where Paul says,

²¹ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. ²³ I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Identity politics is a conversation stopper.  If I think you are assailing my identity as a white man or as someone who cares about justice, I’ll rush to defend myself as I forget common sense. I’ll ignore the teachings of Jesus.  In defense of my preciously held identity, I might even denigrate you, without thought for the consequences.  Of course, you’re as human as I am, so you’ll take the same tack.  Defending myself, I’ll put you down; you, in turn, will defend yourself and your preciously held identity, and put me down. 

How did Paul defend his identity?  He didn’t.  Wait, what?  Don’t you trot Philippians 3:4-6 out to me, claiming Paul was as much committed to identity politics as anyone else.  What does he say in verse 7?  “Whatever gains I had I count as loss because of Christ?”  Who is saying that today?  Who is saying, whatever I have accomplished is rubbish (Phil. 3:8) because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord? Are our leaders saying anything like this?  I don’t hear it.  When see elected officials, I see posturing, self-promotion, defensiveness, and photo ops.  Paul calls that kind of behavior trash.  He will be whatever he has to be to help you know Jesus.  His concern is your soul, not his identity. 

Christians, our calling is to love our neighbors.  My fellow white Christians, if our black and brown neighbors feel distressed by economic disadvantage, disproportionate suffering, and distrust of public institutions, we need to stand with them in empathetic solidarity.  If they feel we are indifferent to their pain, why would they care what we have to say about Jesus? Like Paul we count our own identities as “loss” for the sake of knowing Christ and helping others know him. 

How is a white Christian standing with a black brother in the face of prejudice something I actually do for God?  How is a rejection of white supremacist conditions is an act of love for Jesus? Consider his words in Matthew 25:40.   He says to the righteous whom he has invited to inherit the kingdom (25:34) that they are blessed in this way because they cared for the least in his kingdom (v.40); and, in caring for the least, we care for Jesus.

I am not saying black and brown persons are “less than” white Christians any more than I would say the hungry or the stranger are “less than” anyone else.  The way our society is structured, some people are inherently advantaged.  Others have to struggle.  When the advantaged give up privilege and help their struggling neighbors, it is as if they are doing it for Jesus.  God notices.

God also notices when the advantaged ignore those who struggle.  When we turn a blind eye on the pain around us, Jesus says, “Depart from me” (25:41).  Why?  We ignored Jesus in his time of need.  “When did we do that,” the privileged ask.  Jesus answers, “Whenever you failed to care for the least of these. 

Don’t stand, posing for pictures holding your Bible.  Sit down, open it, and read it.  Don’t self-righteously decry violent protests.  Empathize with people who are in such pain, the only way they know to express it is through loud, over-the-top activism.  They’re trying to get the attention of a country they feel is ignoring them.  Did you hear me advocate burning buildings or smashing windows or attacking anyone?  No, you did not.  I did not say any of that is ok. 

But, I read the Bible and I see where God’s sympathy lies.  He’s with everyone who is broken.  When someone starts a fire as a part of a protest, it’s because they’re in pain.  Jesus cares about their pain.  We, his people, show our care for him by the way we care for people in pain and the way we work for justice and harmony. 

If you would like to respond to anything you’ve read here, I heartily invite you to share stories of how you’ve reacted to people in pain, and stories of what you’ve done to make the world a safer, more just place as you stand with those Jesus is standing with. 

Your Faith is too Small

            I attended the New Baptist Covenant, gathering of Baptists black and white.  We assembled in Atlanta, Georgia in 2018, the heart of the President Trump era in a racially divided America. NBC, began as a vision of Former President Jimmy Carter in 2008.  He was unhappy with divides – the many divides among Baptists in America, and the racial divide that has tortured our country for centuries.  He dreamed of remedying both by bringing together Baptists of all races around topics of justice, unity, and love.

            I first attended the NBC summit in Atlanta in 2016 and was back this time around with a lot of guilt in my heart.  Every time I hear a speaker say something to the effect that our world is run by “white men,” and that is not a good thing, I hear myself being counted among the worst of racists.  I possess every advantage: healthy?  Check.  White?  Check.  Male?  Check.  Educated?  I have a bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees.  Economically, I qualify as middle to upper middle class.  I am heterosexual and married.  I lived with every conceivable privilege.  In the past 5 years, the scales have fallen from my eyes as I have learned of my own privilege as well as the institutional prejudice that once rendered even benefits like the GI bill inaccessible to African Americans. 

            I carry guilt.  When I attend events like the Racial Equity Institute’s phase 1 anti-racism training or I read books like Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here, I expect to be hit by a tidal wave of blame for problems.  Injustice in America is mostly, if not entirely, the result of the racism of white men.  I expect to be hit with this and I expect to take it because there is much truth in it. 

            That guilt rode me heavy in Atlanta.  Additionally, I contemplated the rhetoric of the most ardent supporters of President Trump, whites who rally to preserve Confederate monuments and deny the inherent racism of the Confederacy.  “It’s not about slavery or racism,” they say, “It’s about heritage and culture.”  “OK,” I respond, but what is the content or substance of the culture you want to preserve?  It’s white supremacy.”  Defenders of southern culture, whatever that phrase means, know that what they’re standing for is unabashedly white hegemony, yet they don’t explicitly acknowledge it.  Or worse, they do.  An alarmingly high number of white Americans are happy to call all brown skinned people potential terrorists, and to look on all black people with disdain.  The division seems utterly unbridgeable. 

            I sat in the reflection group wearing my cloak of guilt and my coat of hopelessness.  And that’s when the group leader hit me with something I wasn’t expecting; grace and invitation.  Rev. Kasay Jones, formerly a pastor in Washington DC and now on staff with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global welcomed me as a brother in Christ.  She is an African American woman, and she did not see me, a white man, as a bearer of guilt.  She saw me as a fellow Christ follower, a part of her family. Thank you God!  She offered what I needed, but dare not ask for.  I was grateful. 

            Dr. Patricia Murphy of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, an African American woman, could see I was struggling with the topics being discussed as I listened in the breakout session she led.  She looked right at me and said, “You’re safe here.”  I have tried so hard to convey that very message to people who come to our church.  I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear someone say those words to me.  She gave me space to work out how I understand my participation in unity and racial justice from my perspective as a white man.  Thank you God!  She, like Rev. Jones, let me know I am not the enemy.  I am with her in Christ.  And that’s where I want to be.

            Those invitations meant the world to me, but I still felt overwhelmed as I envisioned trying to be a peacemaker with whites who are perfectly happy to live in their privilege while pretending they aren’t tremendously privileged or insisting privilege doesn’t exist.  I felt like, we were a few hundred people in Atlanta talking about this, and the millions in that one city, let alone all of America, did not know or care that we were there.  Sure, I had my own epiphany, but how could such a small group make any difference.

            My Bible reading for the final morning of the event was Matthew 17.  I didn’t seek that passage out.  It was just the next reading up in the journal I’m keeping, Matthew 17:14-23.  In this passage, the disciples are perplexed that they cannot drive out a demon.  Jesus drives it out.  Why couldn’t they, they wonder.  His answer to them is His answer when I bemoan that we black and white Baptists are not enough to make any kind of waves in the cause of the Kingdom of God and racial unity and racial justice.  Jesus said (to me), “Your faith is too small.  What I’m about to tell you is true.  If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, it is enough.  You can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you” (17:20-21).

            As a pastor, you’d think I know that.  But let me let you in on something.  Pastors aren’t any holier than you are.  Pastors do not have a “hotline to heaven.”  Pastors get discouraged.  In many ways, this year after my Sabbatical of 2017 has been the hardest, most discouraging years of my career.  Some of it has been professional.  Some personal.  Much of it has been around the issue of race in America and the tendency of white America to deny realities and work to maintain status quo.  Some days, it feels like the discouragements pile up. 

            And then I went to Atlanta.  And two sisters in Christ, well credentialed ministry professionals opened their hearts to me and invited me in and told me it was safe and I wasn’t the enemy. 

            And Jesus said to me, “I conquered death.  I can face racism.”  And Jesus said to me, “Rob, you are going to face racism and evil because my Holy Spirit is in you.”

            Now I am back from Atlanta, back into the normal rhythms of life.  There are good days and bright spots as well as disappointments and times of ennui.  That’s true in just about any season of life.  But now, I cannot wilt and hide in my white guilt or my white fragility.  I have been invited by Christ and His church to be a bearer of good news and a worker for justice and love and peace.  I cannot say the problem is too big or too hard.  I have been given mountain-moving faith.  It’s time to live it. 

Book Review - Up Against the Wall

I’ve just finished reading Curtis J. Austin’s Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (2006).  Austin’s research into this storyline of the struggle for equality for black people in America is in depth.  He spoke at length with original sources, people who were in the Black Panther Party (BPP) and survived.  His description of his encounters with Elaine Brown are especially poignant.

This review is really my reaction.  I inhabit the group that for centuries subjugated people of color (POC) – white, middle class, educated males.  The animosity felt toward whites by the founders of the BPP is understandable, if white people accept our role in institutional prejudice, or at least accept that we have benefited from privilege that we have not earned.  It makes sense that there were black people who did not buy into the Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent resistance.  Lynchings, abuse by the authorities, and lack of opportunities afforded to whites from the 1960’s up through to today are born of violence, perpetuated by those in power (whites), and victimize POC’s. 

My own feelings from reading the book are sorrow and regret.  I am sorry my ancestors maintained a system that kept an entire group of people as an underclass.  I hate it. 

However, I also know that many whites today are ignorant of the injustices of Jim Crow and don’t want to be educated.  Many whites today want equality, they say, but they don’t want to give anything up for it.  They don’t want to hear why black people are so angry; angry enough to espouse the violence that was policy for the BPP.  I have had maddening conversations with educated white people who simply will not acknowledge the existence of white privilege or that they have benefited from it. 

A mantra I hear from black friends in the struggle for equality (or equity) is “If you see something, say something.”  In other words, if you, a white person, see another white say or do something racially insensitive, confront that person.  However, when I’ve done that it leads to the other white person acting defensively and never gaining any insight into his or her own privilege.  Whatever sense of entitlement he or she felt that enabled him to say or do the racially insensitive thing is only magnified when I confront him.  Maybe I am just not good at the conversation.  But I also think a lot of white people aren’t interested in the conversation. 

This lack of drive for equity and a racially equal society, this callous indifference from whites, is the fuel to the fire that burned in Huey Newton and Elderidge Cleaver and the others who led the BPP from a place of anger.  I hope society is in a better place or at least moving toward a better place.  The events in Charlottesville, VA (summer 2017) are either a sign that we are as racially divided as ever, or the last gasps of a dying racism.  I hope it is the latter, but I fear it is the former.  If I that is so, then Antifa is a modern day incarnation of reactionaries driven by the same rage that drove the BPP.

Something Worse than Protests Gone Bad - Review of "The New Jim Crow"

            Decrying the horrors of white nationalism is low hanging fruit.  Conservatives and liberals alike agree that white supremacy, KKK, neo-Nazis, and racist fascists are all evil.  The accepted verbiage in American culture in 2017 is that racism is an inherently bad thing.

            I intentionally excluded President Donald Trump from the above generalizations (conservatives and liberals) because as he showed on Monday, August 15, 2017, in his third set of statements responding to white nationalist protest from Charlottesville, VA, he actually doesn’t blanket condemnation on white hate groups.  He blames victims, that is, oppressed minorities, when confrontations turn violent.

            Here I address everyone else, which is most of America.  President Trump’s election has emboldened the brazenly racist.  But most people are not brazenly racist.  Their racism is hidden behind a veil of ‘colorblindness.’  Their racism is concealed, even from themselves much of the time, behind the misguided belief that the end of the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s was the end of systematic racism in America.  Their racism is buried deep because they know racism is evil, so they don’t want to face it in themselves.

            Two acts in the last few days will do nothing to combat this abiding racism that continues to render African Americans and Latinos in our country as second class citizens.  Michelle Alexander calls black and brown skinned persons the lowest caste and she believes America has an intricate, nearly intractable caste system (The New Jim Crowe, 2010).  First, there was the rally-gone-wrong in Charlottesville.  White supremacists protested the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.  Anti-racists counter protesters confronted the protesters.  Some of the confrontations became quite violent.  One white nationalist, James Alex Fields of Ohio, ran a car at high-speed into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer of Virginia.  Heather was trying to stand up to the bullying evil of white supremacy. 

            The entire event and especially James Fields’ murderous act is easy to condemn in the harshest of terms.  That condemnation, spoken in the language and town of damning, fiery rhetoric, will do nothing to deal with the system that keeps black and brown people in an under caste, denied of rights, and unable to thrive in American life.

            Second, on Monday, August 15, in Durham, NC, a group of protestors, angry at white nationalists and at the president for failing to condemn them, forcibly toppled a Confederate statue and then gleefully taunted the fallen monument.  The rage felt by the crowd that performed this act – rage at racism and rage at the continued debasement brought on by an unfair social and legal system – is justified.  Toppling that statue and all confederate statutes, especially in such a mocking way, won’t change the conditions that have produced this unfair social and legal system. 

      Michelle Alexander shows why.  The so-called war on drugs targets minority communities and doles out impossibly harsh penalties for minor drug offenses.  First comes the felony conviction, which the prosecutor bullies the usually impoverished black suspect into accepting.  Then the sentence.  The convict loses years of his life in prison, comes out, and is unable to find a job, public housing, or get food stamps.  This is because employers can discriminate in hiring based on a felony conviction.  A felony conviction also makes one ineligible for federal housing and food assistance. 

            There are as many drug users among Asians as among whites as among Hispanics as among blacks.  But all the felony convictions seem to fall on the blacks and Hispanics.[i]  The most dangerous drug is alcohol.  Drunk-driving accidents and alcohol related deaths greatly out-number deaths related to other drug usage.  Alcohol is far more dangerous to everyone than crystal meth or crack cocaine.  So why do we fear the meth and the cocaine?  Why are the harshest punishments assigned to the drugs mostly used by African Americans?  Why are African Americans more likely to be arrested and convicted than whites committing the exact same crimes at the same rates?  Blacks don’t commit more crime, they just get punished more often and more harshly. 

Shouting about how awful racism is, and waving an angry middle finger at a white nationalist or toppled confederate statue won’t change this.  The people who enforce the system that has wrecked so many black lives claim to be colorblind.  Many who enforce mass incarceration are the same people who shout about the evils of racism.  Alexander illustrates thoroughly in The New Jim Crow that two of our supposedly most black-friendly presidents, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, did much in their respective tenures to increase the weight of mass incarceration born by black people who are openly targeted in the “war on drugs.”

Alexander offers only the beginning of what might be ways out of this systemic oppression of black communities.  To go into detail would entail another book (which I hope she writes).  Organizations like the New Baptist Covenant (http://newbaptistcovenant.org/) are taking steps to combat racism in meaningful ways.  But while Alexander does not outline ideas for how to end mass incarceration, she does give the kernel of the idea that’s needed.  She writes, “To deny the individual agency of those caught up in the system [of mass incarceration] – their capacity to overcome seemingly impossible odds – would be to deny an essential element of their humanity.   We (human beings) have a higher self, a capacity for transcendence” (p.176).  Then, she goes on to say, “Rather than shaming and condemning an already deeply stigmatized group (poor black convicted felons), we, collectively, can embrace them – no necessarily their behavior, but them – their humanness.  ‘Hate the crime, but love the criminal’” (p.176-177).

Until we (“we” = all Americans of every color and social class) see poor black people as people and the erasure of poor black people from mainstream society through mass incarceration as itself a crime, the problems of systemic racism will plague our society.  Toppling and taunting statues and yelling at supremacists won’t change a thing. 

The Bible has a framework for what Michelle Alexander is saying.  Human beings are made in the image of God.  This was emphasized in Genesis right before Adam and Eve were the first to flagrantly disobey God and then their son Cain committed the first murder, killing their other son, his brother Abel.  This idea of ‘image of God’ is central to the Biblical view of creation.  We don’t know the skin tone of the first humans, and the Bible does not specify.  The central theme is God is creator and humans – all humans – are special in God’s creation, the highpoint of God’s creation (Genesis 1:27-28, 31).  So, the poor, undereducated black 15-year-old who is targeted by cops and then busted for ‘possession’ the first time someone, maybe his mentor, slips him a small sealed bag of white powder and is then convicted and trapped in the system of mass incarceration – that kid is an “image bearer.” 

What does God look like?  Look at that kid.  When you do, see the image God.  Don’t see a “thug.”  Don’t see fear (yours or his).  Don’t see just one more felon to lock away.  See him.  See him.  See a child of God, made in the image of God.  If we see young black males this way, the way God sees them, we as a society won’t tolerate their disappearance in the racially weighted “war on drugs.”  We’ll pool our imaginations and come up with ways to end this system of oppression just slavery and Jim Crow ended.  But this time, if our solutions are based in love, mass incarceration won’t be replaced by the next iteration of systemic racism.

In the Genesis idea cited above, the Bible offers a creation framework to Alexander’s conclusion.  In the Gospels, the Bible also offers a redemption framework.  Jesus came to free that imprisoned black kid.  He said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me.  He has anointed me … to free those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).  In ways impossible for a comfortable white suburbanite to understand, that 15-year-old imprisoned poor black kid is oppressed.  And just because we whites are comfortable and just because we don’t understand and just because we are extremely comfortable in our not understanding is no excuse to turn a blind eye.  Because we follow Jesus, we have to be for that kid.  Jesus teaches what love looks like in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and then demonstrates his love by dying for our sins.

We whites won’t be subject to mass incarceration.  We are no better than the inner city black person arrested for felony-possession.  No better.  But our mistakes will bring minimal suffering or none at all.  Yet, our mistakes cut us off from God.  Gossip.  Alcoholism.  Sloth.  Omission (failing to help those who God commands us to help or failing to share money and talents God has blessed us with).  Harsh, hateful rhetoric.  Society does not call these things ‘crimes.’  But, the Bible calls these things ‘sins.’  Sins cut us off from God.  Jesus died a shameful criminal’s death to make it possible for us to be cleansed of our sins.  Jesus stood in the shoes of the convicted felon and he did so that we might have abundant life (John 10:10).

As disciples, followers of Jesus, we are to be as he was and is.  We are to love as he loves.  He loves the millions of black and Hispanic Americans whose lives have been wrecked by mass incarceration.  If we – Christians who comprise his church in America – follow our master’s example and truly see and truly love our black and brown brothers and sisters, we will find a way to help them out of the system of oppression.  The church is the body of Christ.  He has come to free the captives.

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[i] I realize that when I say “all,” that is hyperbole.  This is a short blog.  In her book Alexander details how the convictions of a few whites in the war on drugs help to perpetuate the entire system (see p.204-205).