WHAT DO I DO…

when I see the portrait of Ex-Pres. Obama commanding center-stage above his mantel, and my rage demands angry words…

when I know that my Black brother adores him as a Saint, while I cannot…

when he is convinced that I must be a racist, and I think the same about him…

when words of reconciliation flee away taking trust by the hand in its flight…

when we find we live in different worlds, he fed on the knees of CNN and I on FOX…

when mutual discomfort seems to be our only remaining glue?

What has happened to our common meals?

Did we not know what we were eating?

Should I remove his name from my address book and spit him out of my mouth?

Where is our common language, the verbs, nouns, and adjectives that had been our nourishment?

Why can we now only share discomfort, mutual suspicion, and moldy bread?

He wants from me the very thing that I cannot give him – agreement.

I cannot tell him I like salmon, when it nauseates me.

I cannot laugh at what he laughs at and cry when he cries.

But there is something greater here – Jesus our Lord.

I cannot see through the fog, but He can.

I cannot change my feelings, but He has created and sustains this world.

I cannot find hope, but He is Hope Himself.

I do not have the answer, but Answer is His Name.
I have exchanged flight for courage, but He counsels trust and patience.

·       Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. (Proverbs 3:5-8)

THE CURE FOR RACISM

My wife and I attended a Jesus for Muslims meeting, where we saw a Jewish believer embrace a Muslim believer in Christ in love. However, there were no indications that they had attended Jewish-Muslim reconciliation conferences in order to first iron out their differences. Perhaps they understood that what they now shared in Christ took precedence over any ethic or historical differences.

We were thinking that if they had tried out the reconciliation venue that their different perspectives would have just exacerbated the raw feelings and divisions. Instead, it appears that their love and unity were a product of the overwhelming glory of Christ and the forgiveness that He had granted them. It was apparent that it was this forgiveness that had liberated them from both sin and their overriding sectarian identifications.

This made me think about other racial divisions – Black and White – we encounter, even in the Church. For the sake of Christ and the unity He had prayed for (John 17:20-23), I had wanted to thrash out these differences. However, I have been meditating on some verses that are leading me in another direction. Paul had counseled that our conversation should promote love rather than:

·       To devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the STEWARDSHIP FROM GOD THAT IS BY FAITH. The aim of our charge is LOVE that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into VAIN DISCUSSION. (1 Timothy 1:4-6; ESV)

Will discussions about race promote unity or division? Do they fall under the category of “vain discussions?” Elsewhere, Paul warned against “unprofitable” “foolish controversies”:

·       But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him. (Titus 3:9-10)

Will the attempt to reconcile our differing opinions on race “stir up division?” I have seen and heard about too many failed attempts. They had resulted in the very thing that Paul had warned us about – division. This doesn’t mean that these issues aren’t very real and sincerely held. They are! However, it doesn’t seem that thrashing them out can lead to unity.

I had agreed to be a panelist for a discussion on “Racial Reconciliation in the Church.” However, I am rethinking this tentative commitment. If it creates quarrels, it violates the council of Scripture:

·       As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but NOT TO QUARREL OVER OPINIONS…Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:1-4)

I am convinced that God is able to make us stand together in unity even if we avoid certain contentious and divisive issues. It has become clear to me that as we move towards maturity in Christ, we also move towards unity with one another. How does this happen?

·       Rather, speaking the truth [of Christ] in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

Perhaps growth and unity doesn’t depend on resolving all of our peripheral issues. Perhaps love and unity are better served by keeping our eyes and hopes on Christ alone. (Of course, present problems in the Church have to be addressed and resolved – Acts 6:1-6.) I don’t see how this strategy can fail us.

RACE – ITS PROBLEMS AND ANSWERS

For all of us who care deeply about love and unity within the Church, race remains a hot issue. Many solutions have been offered – affirmative action within the Church, shaming seminars for perceived racists, adopting a color-blind mentality, and various forms of “mea culpa,” even for those who have not committed a known racist act.

Christena Cleveland, associate professor of reconciliation at Duke’s Divinity School, answers with a full-color-broadside:

·       “Jesus is not white. The Jesus of history likely looked more like me, a black woman, than you, a white woman.” (Christianity Today, April 2016, 36)

However, this assertion of color elevates color to the level of the Gospel itself. It degrades worship to physical appearance. However, Cleveland does have a valid point. In general the Church has elevated color, along with its false and divisive assumptions about Jesus’ appearance. The Church has hosted pictures and made movies showing a white Jesus. Consequently, these images have served to unbiblically influence our worship, causing us to visualize Jesus. However, there are scriptural warnings against this very thing:

·       “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Exodus 20:4; ESV)

Do we have scriptural permission to physically imagine Jesus? According to the renowned theologian, J.I. Packer, we do not:

·       How should we form our thoughts about God? Not only can we not imagine Him adequately, since he is at every point greater than we can grasp; we dare not trust anything our imagination suggests about him, for the built-in habit of fallen minds is to scale God down. (Growing in Christ; 243)

·       Hence, the second commandment, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything.” This forbids… imagining the true God as like yourself or something lower. God’s real attack is on mental images… If imagination leads out thoughts about God, we too shall go astray. No statement starting, “This is how I like to think of God” should ever be trusted. An imagined God will always be more or less imaginary and unreal. (244)

The 2^nd Commandment prohibition pertains to making any likeness of God, knowing that these likenesses will encourage us to worship through the use of images and imaginations. It was for this reason that God didn’t visually appear to Israel at Mt. Sinai/Horeb:

·       “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female…” (Deuteronomy 4:15-16)

We are not to worship God through the images of our imagination but through His revealed truths. Although the imagination can be used profitably in other areas, Scripture never gives us the freedom to use imagination in worship, as Jeremiah warned:

·       This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts [“walketh after the imagination of his own heart;” KJV] they say, 'No harm will come to you.'” (Jeremiah 23:16-17; Ezek 13:2; Luke 1:51)

And this did not seem to change with the advent of Jesus. Instead, He insisted that worship must be a matter of spirit and truth, not image and physical appearances:

·       “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him MUST worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24)

Therefore, Cleveland correctly explains:

·       While Christ the Lord transcends skin color and racial divisions, white Jesus has real consequences. I all likelihood, if you close your eyes and picture Jesus, you’ll imagine a white man. Without conscious intention or awareness, many of us have become disciples of a white Jesus, Not only is white Jesus inaccurate, he also can inhibit our ability to honor the image of God in people who aren’t white.

When physical appearances become associated with worship of God, God is demeaned and humanity is exalted, or at least certain segments of humanity.

Cleveland also laments that “many well-meaning Christian ministers” have reached out to people of color “without truly seeing them as equal.”

This indeed is lamentable. Culture and color can never be the basis of unity and love in the Body-of-Christ. Although this should not become an argument for color-blindness, we must be careful to not elevate color, culture, or ethnicity.

Instead, there are powerfully compelling biblical reasons to affirm our essential equality before God. Paul had confirmed our common brotherhood before the classist/racist Athenians:

·       “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth…” (Acts 17:26)

Paul also affirmed our ultimate unity in Christ:

·       For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:27-29)

This is a unity that transcends color, accomplishment, education, and any other distinctions that the eye sees. It is an essence and a relationship that dignifies-to-the-max anyone who has received Christ.

And how should we view the redeemed of the Lord? Jesus has given us many portraits of His redeemed:

·       “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matthew 5:13-14)

Paul often echoed the same truths:

·       For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:5)

Cleveland concludes by asking us to examine ourselves:

·       Those who still perceive a white Christ must ask whether they can and will worship a dark-skinned Jesus.

Better yet, we must ask ourselves if we are worshipping God in the way that He wants to be worshipped – in spirit and in truth.

I am not at all suggesting that we should ignore the feelings, experiences, and cultures of marginalized peoples or to make believe that these differences do not exist. Instead, I am suggesting that we major in the majors.

Deliverance came to me, not by affirming my ethnicity and the pride I had derived from my Jewish identity. In fact, I had majored in this pride to my great detriment. Instead, I found freedom from my debilitating feelings of insecurity and inadequacy from the new “ethnicity” I had been given by my Savior:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Consequently, it is all about Jesus in whom this inadequate soul is buried for all eternity!

The Tough Work of Love and Racial Reconciliation

It is difficult to overcome barriers - racial, religious, and ideological. We generally want to be validated – to hear things that support our feelings and worldview. This is even more true when accompanied by deep and enduring hurts.

Recently, I challenged a dear brother who is involved in Jewish evangelism. In his newsletter, he wrote:

• Antisemitism has one cause – Satan.

I responded:

• Understandably, you do not want to blame the victim or give additional ammo to the anti-Semite. Nor do we want to give needless offense to the Jewish community and to further alienate them from the Gospel by suggesting that they have played a role in bringing misfortune upon themselves. Nevertheless, we cannot leave out the fact that the Jews have been in rebellion to their God to this very day, and this rebellion has removed God’s protection and left them vulnerable to Satan.

I argued that we cannot leave this important factor of repentance out. The Prophets of Israel certainly didn’t. To leave out the need for Israel’s repentance is also to leave out God’s plea to the Jewish people to return and be healed. Ultimately, to leave this out is to leave them in a state of alienation from their God.

I don’t think that he appreciated my response. Nor would the Jewish people! No one wants to hear censure. I can even hear my mother saying, “We’ve suffered enough!”

But what does it mean to love? To tell people what they want to hear or what they need to hear? A dear Christian sister, who has devoted herself to the needs of disenfranchised youth, mostly of color, explained how she was able to meaningfully enter into their lives through listening and empathizing, and I commended her for this.

She related a story of her taking her youth group to the white residential area where she had grown up. She was understandably horrified when a white person asked them what they were doing there. The youth also were deeply hurt. At this point, what would love require of her? To affirm their worldview:

1. That African Americans remain victims of a racist exclusionary system built on white privilege, or… 

2. That this nation has made tremendous strides. There are no longer any Jim Crow laws. All are guaranteed equal rights and equal access to the courts, elected office, the vote, and education. However, racial stereotypes remain in the hearts of many on BOTH sides of the divide, for understandable and also sinful reasons. Therefore, we all must examine ourselves, the way we see things, and the things that we might be doing to perpetuate the divide. We must all take responsibility to repent of our own sins and to walk in love. With the help of God, we are not merely victims, but individuals with dignity who can make a difference. 

Which course should the sister have taken? Should she have reinforced the worldview of the youths that they are still victims and are purposely being excluded from American society – a worldview which would inevitably provoke their anger and hostility?  Or should she have challenged this worldview with a more productive and possibly more accurate perspective? Should she have said:

• This has to be painful, but most whites are no longer that way. We should even try to understand the concerns of the ones who do discriminate. Many whites are aware of the hate directed towards them by African Americans. They are also aware that they have become victims of black-on-white-crimes, which far exceed white-on-black crimes. They are also aware of the many white women who have been sexually assaulted by black men. Meanwhile, there are hardly any white men raping black women. 

This is probably not what her youth would have wanted to hear, but it might have been what they needed to hear. Scripture warns us that:

• Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. (James 1:19-21)

What will win respect for the African American? What will bestow dignity upon them? Not hatred, not anger, not unforgiveness, but patience when wronged:

• For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (1 Peter 2:19-21)

This applies to all of us! It also pertains to the white shopkeeper when African American youth enter his store. For Christ’s sake, he must greet them as fellow human beings, bearing the image of God and not the image of a potential thief. He must treat them with the dignity, for love “is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs… It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:5-7)

  

However, this isn’t even my primary concern. Instead, I am deeply grieved at how the embrace of the first worldview – the victimization narrative – has impacted the Body of Christ with anger, alienation, and a deep distrust for people of other races. Likewise, I am disturbed by any narrative that separates us.

I grieve for the church - its wounds, divisions, mutual suspicions - the walls we build. I too have been hurt and have built my walls! However, it is through unity in this Body that we can tear down the walls and impact the world for Christ, as Jesus prayed:

·       "My prayer is… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23) 

Love and unity are not options. As His children, we must pursue these! If we are not pursuing love, we are not pursuing our Savior!

I long to see us touching the lives of one another in love for the sake of Christ, even for the sake of this blind world, so that they might know our Savior. But how inadequate we are! Let us pray that the Lord will equip us with His love unto love!