Some Thoughts on the Recent Troubles

I have edited this post in a few places at the behest of good friends and pastors who have helped me say things better and help avoid at least some misunderstandings. If one is going to offend people, offend them on purpose - not on accident. I have removed the statistics concerning black and white deaths in section 4 - mostly because they became an unhelpful distraction to the main point I wanted to make there and all the numbers are in dispute (the WaPo has changed their estimates several times in the past 2 weeks without explanation). That whole section needed work so I rewrote a bunch of it in an attempt to be clearer. I took some unnecessary digs at a lot of excessively-white posturing (I’ll just call it EWP) which could’ve been heard (and was) as an attack on anybody who is feeling passionately about these issues or participating in peaceful protests, etc. That wasn’t my intent. Again, I want to intentionally offend the right people and I didn’t aim well enough. Lastly, a number of folks have asked for justifications for a white pastor to say any of this. My answer has been and continues to be that I am a pastor, my white skin doesn’t avail me of the responsibility to help our people, as best I can, to think and live biblically right now.

It has been a week of deep trouble in our nation. It began with the video of the terrible death of George Floyd with his neck pressed against the pavement under a policeman's knee. Marches protesting his death were soon followed by riots, and eventually looting and the burning of Minneapolis. These horrors spilled over into more peaceful protests, followed by looting and rioting in cities all over the country - including our own. People have rushed to speak, to act, to do something in the face of all this pain and rage. With the deluge of hot takes, sweeping moral judgments and diagnoses, it is remarkably important to find space to pray, to listen, to read the bible and to think clearly and scripturally about what's happening in the world around us.

God commands us to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19). On Sunday when I addressed our current troubles, the main word I wanted to speak was a word of humility. That we would be a people who turn to the Scriptures, who hear what God says, who live on the basis of those convictions and not on the basis of anxious pressures laid out for us in news alerts, twitter feeds, or other people’s expectations of us to respond in the *Right Way.

I want us to think and feel carefully about these things. I don’t speak as an expert on racial reconciliation or the history of racial relations in our country. I am mostly trying to speak as a pastor to my people about some things I hope will guide our thinking and acting as a church in this moment.

(1) It's okay to be sad and angry. The impulse to simply and unthinkingly react to pain — our own or someone else's — is an escape and doesn't properly acknowledge the pain at all. I spent a few days wanting to throw up after first seeing the video of George Floyd’s killing. I felt pain and anger and grief all at once. We prayed about it as a family. I felt a hole in my stomach. I didn’t know what to do or say.

*We had a cat when I was young that would spontaneously yelp and go racing through our house. We thought he was playing some sort of game and would cheer him on when he did so. After he died during one of these episodes we asked a vet who told us that he likely had a heart condition and was running from the pain. We often are too quick to speak and react when we should mourn, pray and think. There are times for action. But when our impulse is to move away from pain too quickly and to just start saying and doing things - particularly in anger, there is a very good chance that we will start trying to solve the wrong problems with the wrong solutions. Such things generally lead to sin and harm. A number of Christians are speaking and acting with little biblical thought or contemplation. A lot of Christians are refusing to look at the problems at all. A lot of this is us simply trying to do something with pain and with the shock of seeing another man die. Slow down. Pray. Think. Listen.

(2) We believe the Scriptures. Always. This is just another way of saying (a confessional way of saying) that we listen to and obey God. He defines the world for us. He defines words like justice and sin and judgment and peace. We don't get to define those words, our pain and longings don't get to define those terms, other people's experiences don't get to define those terms. God defines those terms. And so we must be a people who go to the Scriptures and think with the Scriptures. And, frankly we need to learn to examine our own feelings in the light of Scripture. It is not simply that our world's way of thinking is in rebellion against God; our world's ways of feeling are in rebellion against God. And so we should begin here.

The Scriptures command us to speak the truth in love. That necessarily means speaking the truth. In a culture claiming to be outraged by racist sins, one of the most remarkable elements of our current climate is our unwillingness to speak the truth. We are more concerned about saying the "right" things rather than saying true things. We are more concerned about how we might be interpreted or what sort of impression our words might make than we are about being truly helpful and truthful. We must repent of this. Much that is being touted as courage by white Christians in our day is actually cowardice of the worst kind. It is a refusal to say the hard thing and instead to say what every other voice is already saying. Instead of coming to the Scriptures first, listening and praying, and then speaking, many are simply repeating things that everyone else is already saying in order to make sure they are heard saying the right things. Say true things. So here are a few relatively simple true things:

• Murder is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God. If it is perpetrated by a someone in a police uniform that makes it worse, not more excusable. There is clearly enough evidence in this case to charge Derek Chauvin with murder as the state has done. This is appropriate and good and as Christians thinking biblically we should want the charges, we should want a fair and public trial, and if he is convicted during such a trial we should want him to pay the full consequences for murdering someone.

• Burning down an auto parts store because you are angry is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God. Burning down a Somalian refugee’s restaurant is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God as well as a horrible injustice. Attacking people who had nothing to do with the actual sin you are outraged over save for some vague and secular notion of justice and oppression is sin. This is all unequivocally clear in Scripture. If you are a Christian you shouldn't hesitate to condemn what the bible condemns. While it is important to acknowledge and even seek to understand the larger picture of what’s unfolding at this time. None of these things excuse the destruction and sin that has unfolded over the past few weeks.

• Reconciliation requires repentance and forgiveness of sin. This is a powerful and foundational component to our relationships with each other and God. Sins are defined by Scripture, are concrete and namable. However, the blanket act of apologizing for being white or "privileged" or any other characteristic cheapens the deep and important work of confessing sins, grieving them, and relying on the power of Jesus to turn from them.

(3) A great deal of the New Testament is written to fight for and protect racial reconciliation. The New Testament is decidedly opposed to all forms of racism (Col. 3:1-17; Galatians 3:27-29; Romans 2:25-29). The problem for us is that the word racism as it's used in our current secular climate says both more and less than what the New Testament says. So to be clear, the New Testament is absolutely opposed to racial animosity and racial vain-glory by anyone. Malice towards someone on the basis of their skin color is sin. Thinking yourself better than your neighbor on the basis of your skin color is sin. There are white racial sins. There are black racial sins.

Our culture's thinking is dangerously muddled here. Intersectionality, identity politics and postmodern frameworks have become commonplace ways of thinking and they define all social relationships in terms of power and oppression. The bible frames the whole world, including our social relationships in terms of a distinction between creation and creature and the subsequent idea of belief or unbelief and righteousness and unrighteousness. I am created and therefore accountable to my creator. He has given me meaning, wisdom and has commanded all that is good and forbidden all that is evil. Every action, emotion and relationship I have in this world is defined by that foundation. Whatever station I find myself in, whatever power or wealth I have and use should be grounded in that soil and the subsequent narrative that scripture unfolds about the character of this Creator and his work to graciously redeem the world. Replacing this biblical model with the polarization of power and oppressor redefines all the words and therefore purposes we are to pursue. Justice is now fundamentally about power and oppression and not about obedience to God and his law and applying that law to social relationships. Love has to do with the rejection of power and the gifts of God (renamed as privilege) rather than obedience to God and pursuing the good of our neighbor with the gifts that God has given us.

The bible, beginning from a different starting point, is actually far more nuanced. In scripture, I can have power and I can be oppressed. But just because I don't have power doesn't mean I'm oppressed and just because I have power doesn't mean I'm an oppressor. There is in scripture the righteous poor and the unrighteous poor. There are righteous rulers and unrighteous rulers. The fundamental issue is not wealth and power vs. poverty and oppression but righteousness and unrighteousness. Do I obey God's law or not? Using a power and oppression lens to decipher the world and history and people's behavior actually makes nonsense out of much of the bible and the gospel. Subsequently, it is horrifically destructive to people and to societies. It sustains divisions that the gospel destroys and it prevents gospel-wrought reconciliation even as it pursues reconciliation. It is false teaching and should be recognized, resisted and fought against.

We should hate racism, but we must hate it the way the bible hates racism, otherwise we end up treating the wrong problems with the wrong solutions and causing more harm than good.

(4) The Bible commands me to love my neighbor. It specifies what that means in the law and in Jesus' own teaching concerning the good Samaritan. A friend of mine posted recently "Black Lives Matter shouldn't be a controversial statement." I completely agree. It shouldn't be controversial to state that the lives of my black neighbors matter. And if I'm not a hypocrite, then I must care about actual black lives about when, how often and why our black neighbors are killed. Love doesn't just go about like a noisy gong shouting culturally acceptable tropes. Love does the hard work of actually pursuing the good of my neighbor.

So when I see a black man killed in the street by a police officer, I should want to know why - really, why was he killed? I should want to know possible reasons and statistical evidence. If black lives actually matter to me, then I will be concerned about the actual death of black people, actual justice, actual numbers and statistics and stories and real sins - both systemic and individual that should be confronted. Our culture is shouting a lot about systemic racism right now with little talk about the complexity of remaining racism and the cultural complexities of the troubles our black neighbors face.

When we start actually talking about real lives lost - statistics and numbers and percentages - this allows us to investigate things like bias and racism and root causes and trends and that sort of thing. When we explore the history of racism in our country government policies (some which were explicitly racist and others which weren’t and yet were extremely destructive to Black communities) and in the church, it can help us gain a great deal of context in understanding. In other words, we can start to identify real problems that can be, if not solved, worked against. If I see a series of horrific videos over the last few years of unarmed black men being killed by police officers and former police officers, and I care about loving my black neighbor I should want to learn and find out more. Why is this happening and what is actually happening? I might begin by asking how many unarmed black people were killed in the United States last year by the police. I might want to know how that compares to other unarmed deaths in the same year (to help determine if there is and what sort of racist system may be at work in law enforcement). What I'd find is that 41 unarmed human beings (of all races and genders) were killed by the police in the United States last year. (Which, if you think about the hundreds of thousands of tense, anxious interactions police engage in each year and that guns are always potentially involved, shouldn't that lead you to marvel and give thanks to God that we have such a restrained and well trained police force?) I’d also find those shootings have common contexts around any number of different issues. Some of those issues are racial, some are more oriented around poverty and have nothing or little to do with issues of black or white. This isn't to say that there aren't racist police officers. It isn't to say that there aren't problems with police practices and policies which are systemic in nature. Its just to say that the numbers alone don’t seem to support the supposition that black people are being targeted by police and killed. The problem is bigger and more complex than that.

Rather than rushing to explain all of this pain and rage in neat and packaged ways, I have to start asking more questions and relating them to my particular context and my particular neighbors. Why did Derek Chauvin not care about George Floyd's cries for help? Why did the other police officers not step in to stop Chauvin? Maybe Derek Chauvin hates black people (and this is an act of racial malice). Maybe Derek Chauvin was arrogant and powerful and afraid. Maybe he was following police protocol. There are things to oppose going on - potentially even systemic things which allow bad police officers to stay police officers, but we should make sure we are opposing the right things, especially if we're truly concerned about black lives.

Here is why all of this is relevant - If I claim to care about my black neighbors' life but I don't care about why they are actually dying, then I am a liar. These are things that can be explored and considered. Some of these things are the cultural fruits of sinful laws and practices that have decimated the black community. Some of these things have nothing to do with racial injustice at all. But if I care about the life of my black neighbor as Jesus commands me to, then I am going to do more than just rail against some vague racist system - I am going to do the work to understand the complexity of the numerous systems that surround us. If I care about my black neighbor, I am going to care about why actual black people are dying and we are going to do the rigorous and hard work of going to war on the right things and building the right things- and doing so in the right order. And frankly I have to start by caring about my actual neighbors - whether they are black, white, hispanic or whatever glorious race or nationality God has surrounding us with. I have to be concerned about actual people I see at the grocery store and in the park where I take my kids. Some of those neighbors may be black, some may be actual, real racists. And I am commanded by Jesus and empowered by Jesus to love them.

We must abandon sloganeering, prepackaged and unbiblical narratives and do the hard work of discipleship, building communities, and applying the scriptures to every part of our world. Simply shouting "Racist cops" or "Racist police system" is potentially slanderous and potentially allows us to stop doing the actual work of reconciliation and neighboring.

I remember a few years ago a panel discussion around the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the violence suffered by black victims. Several evangelical black pastors were on a panel being moderated by a white evangelical writer. One of the pastors named Voddie Baucham kept pulling the conversation back to root causes of poverty, fatherlessness, and violence/crime within the black community as well as advocating for workable solutions. He was repeatedly shouted down and told he was missing the point (even by the white facilitator) because he was departing from the approved talking points - but he was talking about real problems with real possible (though difficult and slow) solutions. For too long this discussion has only been allowed to happen in a very well-curated space where certain talking points have been permitted and others haven’t. If we’re going to pursue the good of our neighbors - particularly in impoverished neighborhoods and parts of our city, the conversation has to include more.

(5) Lastly, a number of pastors have rightfully pointed out that the gospel is deeply concerned about justice in the world. The gospel is not about some sort of other-worldly salvation. It is God's redemption of the world. The bible tells the story of a God who is and is coming to judge the world - to put away injustice and unrighteousness and to punish sinners. It tells the story of a God who is rescuing an uncountable number of sinners by grace from that judgment through the death and resurrection of Jesus and that through those things he is remaking the world to be marked by truth, beauty and goodness where sin and death are no more. At the heart of that gospel- the very means by which God is killing all racial animosity and all other sins perpetrated by black people and white people - is a call to repentance and faith. To turn from our disobedience, our ungodly preference, and vanity to trust in Jesus our king who atoned - completely - for all our black and white sins. If we are to have racial reconciliation, if we are to see the end of black people being killed and white people being killed, this is where we must go - to repentance and faith in the work of Jesus. And our repentance must be of the kind where real sins (not vague, soft notions of power, privilege or bias, but real concrete, biblical sins) are named and forsaken. Our faith must be of the kind that really believes that all of my sins, and the sins of my Christian neighbor (both black and white) have been atoned for - they have been paid for, by Jesus. There will be justice and reconciliation nowhere else. There are no secular answers to these problems. There is no godless or Christ-less or Cross-less path to real reconciliation and justice. So we should care deeply about these things, but we must care as Christians, as people who believe the bible and think biblically about the world, and as people who seek to obey God completely.

May we pray for and love all of our neighbors. May we pray for the reign of Jesus to conquer all evil and to overcome all stubborn rebellion against his rule. May we be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to pray, listen, and think carefully and biblically about our lives and our world.