Black Lives Matter - One More Opinion You Probably Don't Want to Hear
June 22, 2020
CRISES THAT DIVIDE
Chances are, when you were in school someone in your class hit the floor and started convulsing. Nothing brings a class together like responding to a crisis. Someone goes to the office quickly, someone talks softly, someone distracts the majority with hangman, someone actually knows what they are doing and helps the person with the seizure.
When Corona convulsed our world, many leaders were amazing. They swung into response. Well done. It has been quite a convulsion. And many of us have learnt to respond and feel proud of doing our bit. Convulsions like this unite our society. External threats unite us like a terrorist threat.
Unfortunately, some convulsions divide our society. They open up something within us. Mass-refugee movements that start to travel here, #MeToo speaks to our most feral insides, Black Lives Matter which happens over there and then is echoed by resonances within our own society. Now people jump in different directions, knock into each other or sit paralysed. This is the kind of convulsion that divides us. We aren’t going to handle every convulsion together well. There is no avoiding divisions that actually exist or crises that are deeply internal.
I am going write, firstly, what I believe is biblical and beyond dispute for Christians. Then I want to commend to you what I am convinced are some good responses to moments of anger over race-relations in Australia.
MATTERS CHRISTIANS OUGHTN’T DISPUTE
All people are created equal
It is obvious to the point of blind-obviousness that God made every human being in his image. (Gen 1:26) It should be completely clear that all people of all races are equal in human dignity.
This stands us as God’s people against every kind of contemporary racism (from any direction at any time), against the fake-science traditions of some of our Enlightenment thinking that birthed racism in Australia, and against the cultural arrogance of comparing ‘civilisational achievements’ that goes on now even in some very smart books.
Race is a difference is OK to notice, speak of, celebrate, analyse and even laugh about
Race is a created difference within a greater unity and equality. It is not sensible to think of all talk of race, or noting of race, as divisive. God built diverging races and cultures into his world (read Genesis 1-11) and intends this not to be politely ignored but creatively explored. He spreads them out and creatively scatters them. The clear-cut sign that this racial and cultural variety is beloved by God is Revelation 7:9 where the perfect, eternal worshippers look like a postcard for racial diversity.
Therefore, Black Lives Matter. All Lives Matter. Both things are true. But it makes sense to say black lives matter when anyone acts as if they matter less. It doesn’t make much sense to say white lives matter when everyone acts as if they do. Our world needs to tolerate moments of talking about differences, because they are there. This is not a denial of equality, it’s a question of focus.
But this is a very serious way to speak about how God makes humanity-with-many-differences. We are also able to note differences with celebration. Race is part of the tapestry of human difference that births great and myriad languages, art, literature, music and identity-exploring Netflix stand-up series. Yes, we can even laugh at our racial differences.
If this breeds racism, its’ not funny and is the exact stupidity of human sin, not a necessity of God’s design. The design is good, varied and beautiful. Sin is always stupid.
Jesus’ is the healing heart of God’s plan for racial sin
The Old Testament reminds us that one racial distinction was part of God’s plan at one point - again, it was a matter of focus (Exodus 19:5-6). The Jews were to be distinct, so all other nations and races could focus in and see what God’s ways are like.
This was temporary, and OK. It was not a denial of equality, and it was good difference. But it birthed sin too, of course. Ephesians makes it clear that the ‘hostility’ between Jews and non-Jews that grew that was not of God, and that Jesus ‘is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace’. (Ephesians 2:14-15) This unity of races in Jesus flows on to involve sub-races of non-Jews - like barbarians, Scythians and Greeks (Col 3:11, 1 Cor 1:24). Had my culture been old enough, the bible might have also included those uncivilised white folks from the funny little green island.
SOME RESPONSES I AM CONVINCED OF
You might disagree with me on what follows. I am not saying it is as clearly the bibles’ teaching as what I have written above. But I do offer it seriously. It combines some of my reflections on the bible, my personal thinking and experience, including many hours listening to indigenous friends of my family in my teenage years, and more recently as an adult.
Serious, systemic inequality is always ripe for protesting anger
God loves equality. He loves equality. This is not a simple and uniform equality. We ain’t all the same in all the ways with all the same stuff. Sometimes some people have more, some less and it doesn’t matter. He gave an up-and-down unevenness. His equality has differences of gift and opportunity and distribution and attributes. That ‘unevenness’ is just part of a really varied world and is OK. Even beautiful. God loves it when people work this stuff out and share in love and live together.
But systemic inequalities that run with statistical predictability along lines of race because of massive historical pile-ups hurt like hell. They are a bit like hell. Some of these are income-disparity, imprisonment-disparity, and health-disparity. Such inequalities do demand the right anger that echoes calls for justice in the bible. Anger has a home in God’s heart against all sin (Psalm 95:10), a home in psalm-writers hearts against injustice (Psalm 7:6-9), and a home in the prophet’s cries against inequality (Isaiah 10:1-3). So anger can have a home in Christian hearts, and Christians ought to expect that there are times when it should have a home in all human hearts.
Of course, anger should not lead us or anyone to sin, but it is not in itself sin. (Ephesians 4:26) Anger is the right response to the inequalities that God himself hates.
Questions of guilt are complex, but Christians assume in themselves some entanglement with sin
Racial convulsions are the result of immense historical forces. It is all so much obviously bigger than us. But it does involve us. So the question of our guilt arises. This confuses us. My responsibility for something that preceded me and will continue after me feels strange. The bible is clear that we are responsible for our sin, and not others’ sin (Ezekiel 18:1-9). However, the bible is clear that terrible inheritances are passed down between generations (1 Peter 1:18-19). Jesus frees us from the compulsive power of these ways, but it doesn’t suggest we don’t have to exercise some effort not to keep walking in them. I am not guilty of the past, but I am responsible for how I act now. And I do have to speak in some sense as representatives of forebears, who can no longer speak.
I am a Christian with a bible in hand, so while I enjoy forgiveness immensely, I also assume I have some regrettable and complex and deep relationship with sin. Hard to be forgiven if you don’t have something to do with sin! There are the sins I do. (Lord knows I already downgrade many of these obvious regrets.) There are the sins of things not done that should have been done. (Lord knows I usually have chosen not to notice any of these!) Then there is the weird thing of me benefitting from past sins of others without really doing the sin, but also not getting rid of the benefit of past sin (I have no idea what to call this except a kind of bitter privilege and well….sad and confusing.)
The complicated summary is - I am not always guilty in matters of race, but I do have some direct things I am guilty of in matters of race, I am likely guilty of not doing some godly goods concerning race, and I inherit the bitter consequences of others’ guilt around race in a way that could tie me up in useless knots, but shoud more profitably make me sad and eager to do good.
I can live with this sadness. I never want it to leave me. It doesn’t erase all sunny days, or make my life on these lands illegitimate. It just makes my life a little more complicated. You know, like real life is.
Christians can live with the sad complexity of sin - a mix of grieving, repenting, restoring, and sometimes just being confused by the size of it. It reminds me of what they call the American Military-Industrial-Complex. I live among an Iniquity-Industrial-Complex. I’m thankful Jesus is such a great saviour!
Acting is better than shouting, but shouting isn’t ruled out
We have a shout-y culture. And if you don’t shout you can feel like you aren’t in the right. Of course, shouting can make you seem right just for shouting. It can make you self-right, when you simply aren’t - not in your self, or anywhere.
Shouting is not ruled out here. I have already spoken of right protesting anger (if it doesn’t sin). I would like to shout. This blog is a shout. A tired shout, but a shout no less. Here is my shout….
I have enormous sadness in my heart that I had Koori friends who didn’t get through the barriers I did in adolescence. We shared some crimes together very happily, yet the outcomes of all that just seemed so much worse for them. Why are our lives so very different? One was smarter than me and the other funnier. They both had terrific laughs, yet ended up laughing a lot less than me. I hate that.
I hate that I barely know the meaning of the name of my town because we never listened to the people who named it long enough to really learn it. I really hate this.
I am sad that I have a hole in my history you could drive a truck through.
I hate that I am disconnected from land I love in ways that were never necessary but are unavoidable given a history I inherited and didn’t ask for.
I would like to shout about this. I really don’t mind if others do. Shouting is OK.
But Christians tend to quiet action. If you shout, that’s ok. It may even be good! But don’t neglect to act. You work out what that action is. That’s your moment. But Christians always let good deeds speak loud. (Matt 5:14-16)
Always, prayer.
And, of course, we pray. Right now, I’m going to pray. Won’t you join me?
Lord, we have such sadness that our society is so often divided.
We inherit a bitter story that we are confused about, and confused what to do with.
We know we cannot continue in the ways we have gone.
Give us listening ears, open hearts, and lower our self-defences.
We love that Jesus heals all sorts of divisions, including those of race.
We want to live in light of that and be people of reconciling justice.
Whether we shout or march or think or write or just be quietly frustrated that we don’t know what to do,
make us capable in the next moment where we need to act humbly, mercifully and justly.
Amen.