Being a Witness for Christ

The Fourth of July holiday usual celebrations of fireworks, musical performances, parades, family cookouts, and lazy moments by the beach seem to be a mismatch for the current climate of America. Commemorating independence, characterized by “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” as self-proclaimed freedom fighters to the world can come across as disingenuous and even hypocritical when the country is presently coming face-to-face with its own chronic, well-documented suppression of non-white people, and black people in particular notwithstanding Indigenous communities. Irrespective that those whose dark skin I share were excluded at the inception of what red, white and blue patriotism represents, I am a proud American who believes deeply in democracy. Despite attempts by others to deny, demonize, or white-wash my black history to preserve a pathology of inequality, because of what Christ has done for me, and the world, I choose to love. And I am grateful for what goodness is found in America, despite our dark and plentiful challenges.

I am a proud descent of enslaved people whose bodies lay in unmarked graves in Edgefield County, South Carolina, many who were born in captivity and died in shackles. Likely, some of my own drive in life is fueled by stories I heard since childhood from family members and elders in those circles about unknown men and women of the past who gave their very lives for the hope that a better tomorrow would manifest, even if they were long gone when it did. The same poisoned “god” slave owners held over them, twisting biblical truth to justify their own sin, gave these and so many generations of people who looked like me the heavenly-minded fortitude to wade in the water toward freedom. What the oppressor meant for evil turned into Negro spirituals, civil rights liturgies, and defiant marches for justice.

To take a phrase from John Steinbeck book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am “ill with a kind of sorrow” which cannot be subdued or hushed. I grew-up constantly being one of the only black students in my classes. I married a man whose calling to vocational ministry led him to being the first, and to-date only, person of color on the staff of two churches and campus ministries departments at one college and one university. Far from the sterile, curated safety of a media soundbite or story from a book, all of this has provided a front-row seat into the massive lack of racial inclusion and equal opportunity that America developed and has promoted since inception. For people like me, its navigation, much less confronting it, entails a skilled mixture of constant calculation, what sociology scholar and author W.E.B DuBois described over a century ago as the “double-consciousness” of being black in majority white spaces.

These days, I find myself invigorated with righteous anger against a sick echo of deafening silence, specifically regarding the deliberate ignorance and fragility of white people, especially those claim that they, too, have been washed in the crimson blood of Jesus Christ and adopted into the great inheritance of the family of God. I question at times if we have the same Father and am reminded of one of Jesus’ many admonitions: “”Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) But my recurring inquiry to God centers-on how to combat the real threat of hate taking root and calcifying my own heart.

The past few months have taken their toll on my resolve for togetherness, as I cannot shake people’s ability to dismiss the undeniable terrorism heaped upon black people, but then to also hijack the narrative for their own sick benefit. As a Christian, how do I find my way without becoming a bitter, broken shell of who God has called me to be? Many are familiar with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” Of course, white people are not monsters and the origin of racism is sin. But racism is entirely incompatible with Christianity and I am tired of white Christians hiding behind their ignorance, solidarity, and comfort. No matter how you slice it, it isn’t right in the eyes of God and cannot be okay for those who follow God. Period.

Matthew 22:39 mandates that we love our neighbor as ourselves. However, so many believers seem to have warped this truth, at-best displaying quasi-tolerant or cheap acts of pity, steeped in condescending hospitality. You cannot love someone like you love yourself and remain complacent, on the one hand, or approving of their second-class citizenship and brutalization. If we took Jesus’ words seriously, we wouldn’t endorse racially homogenized cocoons of Christians where everyone looks the same, worships the same, and attends the same schools and social events. The Good News is not colorblind because Jesus equally loves all the children of the, world red, brown, yellow, black, and white.

My heart aches for a different script to unfold, where faithful believers stand against oppressive regimes of racial supremacy, boldly in the name of Jesus, instead of somehow romanticizing or justifying sin. Despite its criticisms, the secular society desperately wants to experience the whole Church of Jesus Christ dismantle sermons, ministries, and prayers of neutrality. There is a problem when the people of God begin calling evil good and good evil. (Isaiah 5:20) Our faith requires the unedited, wholesale rebuking of wrong, not cowardly tiptoeing around hard issues in fear of being “cancelled” or rejected. True change is only possible with repentance first, that eventually ends in reciprocity exercised toward brothers and sisters, not allies, in Christ of all different nations, tribes, and tongues.

I pray that a remnant of Christ-followers will opt into Gospel-centered reconciliation, without succumbing to the pressure to opt-out when the work begins feeling unpopular, difficult, lonely, or messy. “This work must continue until we are all joined together in the same faith and in the same knowledge of the Son of God. We must become like a mature person, growing until we become like Christ and have his perfection.” (Ephesians 4:13)