Raise your hand if you woke up sometime in the last 3 months and thought you were in the midst of a strange movie.
I’m just 37 years old and I can’t recall a time where our world has ever felt this chaotic, fractured, and painful.
Most recently we’ve heard of way too many stories of black people being killed by white people.
KILLED. Like, they were here one minute and gone the next. Families forever changed, eternal plans sealed.
When did that become just another news story? When did we become a society that WATCHES death on the screen and says things like “Let’s just wait and see what the facts are” without shedding a single tear or imagining what it might be like to be the mom of the person killed? Or to have been the person in those last moments, KNOWING you were going to die and going out with the terror that your death was not a peaceful one of old age, but one at the hands of your fellow humans.
Basic empathy seems to have vanished on a very large scale.
Do you know that there are several diagnosable psychiatric disorders that are characterized primarily by the inability to feel and experience empathy? And to think that we are dealing with it on such a widespread basis, sends a shiver up my spine. When we are no longer able to weep with those who weep, we are on dangerous, sinking sand that will always lead to suffering and death.
Jesus said “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save it”. He gave up his own body and his own life so that we might live. And yet, many of us (Christians) are quick to condemn and blame the possible actions of the dead person while defending the actions of the ones who did the killing.
Does that seem like a massive problem in our orthopraxy to anyone else?
When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, do you know what he didn’t do?
- He didn’t include the beat up man’s criminal record
- He didn’t NOT tell the story because there are lots of other people suffering in the world, so why highlight this guy?
- He didn’t give a pass to the other religious guys who passed the guy by because dealing with this man’s pain would have been uncomfortable and terribly inconvenient and most certainly would have NOT meshed with their religious system of the day.
Sound familiar?
Probably not so much, because really, we as the ones who have the power to help have not often responded as the Samaritan. More often we have been like the religious guys, steering way clear of the dirty situations, so we can carry on with our more important issues, you know, like making sure our lives and our churches and our priorities are untainted by all these filthy problems on the margins that really don’t affect us if we keep enough distance.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
So, why does this matter and how do we fix it? I have been pondering these three things:
1. Proclaim the Good News:
What is the Gospel?
The gospel has been unfortunately boiled down to an oversimplified individualistic message as a means of securing blessing in the present and a home in heaven for our eternity.
There has been much emphasis on what happened at the cross (rightfully so), but without as much emphasis on the ushering in of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus, in Matthew Chapter 11 is asked by John, who is in prison “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Jesus replied: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”
In this story we see the message that Jesus came to offer HOLISTIC healing and redemption. So often we forget that if Jesus has in fact called us into relationship with him, we are inseparably linked with him in this gospel reclamation of the world. Gospel means “Good news”. How are our lives preaching good news to the poor if we hear them say they are in pain and are being oppressed and our response is “No, you just aren't trying hard enough! This is America, the land of opportunity! Racism doesn’t exist anymore! Make better choices!”
Rather than being merciful, we tell people that their lived experience doesn’t actually exist because we either don’t understand it, or aren’t affected by it.
But Jesus says: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy”
I want to experience the mercy of God. I HAVE experienced the mercy of God, therefore it would be so unfair of me to withhold that mercy from others!
2. Hear the Oppressed
Proverbs 31: 8-9 says:
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy
In order to speak up, we must first choose to hear.
There seems to be a widespread refusal to even listen, much less hear.
Why do we refuse to hear? I know that when I don’t want to hear about suffering, it’s usually because if I look and listen and refuse to look away, then I am going to have to do something about what I’ve seen and heard. Sometimes that requires me to give something up or be uncomfortable. In America, we’ve made IDOLS out of comfort, so anything that confronts our comfort, we demonize. We elect whichever party we feel will provide for our comforts and our power, while ignoring those who have neither comfort or power.
That old saying “The truth hurts” is so applicable here. We, as white people, have the privilege of not hearing because it doesn’t affect us. We get to choose whether or not the truth that hurts will ever make it into our consciousness. Our black and brown and native brothers and sisters don’t get that choice because these painful truths are woven into the fabric of their history and modern reality.
As followers of Jesus, the onus is on us to HEAR.
3. Revere the Imago Dei
"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Jesus tells us that how we treat people is how we treat him…specifically, how we treat the “least”. Who are the least? Well, in the context of Matthew 25, they are those in need. Right now we say Black Lives Matter because right now, Black Lives are the ones who have been squashed into positions of being the “least” for centuries in our country. They have been disenfranchised in ways that make my heart hurt. I listened to a story of one man today, who’s grandfather, after serving in the US armed forces, was not able to access the benefits of the GI bill, because when he went to try to purchase a home with his benefits, he was told by the lender “We don’t lend money to n*ggers”. This is an affront to the Imago Dei in that man. The image of GOD is stamped into every single person, and it is on us, as believers, to lead the way in honoring the image of God in every single human in every single situation.
Until we can do that, we will not solve the problem of racism and oppression. We will just find new and fancier ways that are more politically correct, in order to continue oppressing people that our dark hearts somehow deem as less worthy than ourselves of dignity and worth.
There is soooooo much grace available here. If you are just starting to be awoken to the plight of those around you, Jesus is smiling at you, with eyes full of GRACE and not judgment. It’s never too late to change your mind and allow Jesus to give you a mind more like his. That’s the essence of what it is to follow Jesus. A life of ongoing repentance (a literal turning around of the mind and heart) and being transformed by the renewal of your mind. God’s truth is the highest truth, and it's available to anyone and everyone today. Don’t wait! Be reconciled to God and be a reconciler of people. He has given us this great ministry of reconciliation, and though it’s not easy, it’s worth it.