An argument can be made that there is an unhealthy level of hypocrisy in the pro-life movement concerning its response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Now, to our western mind the portmanteau pro-life means that the person values life from conception all the way through to the grave. Conception through birth, through life, and so on.
And there’s disagreement on why some of the most adamant pro-lifers fail to appreciate life as much once the person is struggling to pay bills, find lodging, facing eviction notices, in need of healthcare, education, unemployment assistance, and whatnot.
That’s not my argument here. That hypocrisy is evident in these areas and more before all. I needn’t argue the case there.
My beef is with pro-life American and Canadian Christians who use their faith and their freedoms during the COVID-19 pandemic to promote a lifestyle that is antithetical to a God and neighbor honoring ethic. They use their faith and rights to promote unwise habits which lead to the death of others.
“The Christian motive for hygiene and sanitation does not arise in self-preservation but in an ethic of service to our neighbor. We wish to care for the afflicted, which first and foremost means not infecting the healthy. Early Christians created the first hospitals in Europe as hygienic places to provide care during times of plague, on the understanding that negligence that spread disease further was, in fact, murder.”
Again, in his words, understanding that negligence that spread disease further was, in fact, murder.
I am shocked by every news article or tabloid post that informs the general public that another Covid denier, Anti-Vaxxer, and anti-establishment extremist with a Bible in one hand and the American constitution or the Canadian charter in the other has passed away from Covid related complications.
Stone, again, reminds us of just how far Christians and their Christ-centric ethics have come through the years whenever faced with moral or natural evil:
“During plague periods in the Roman Empire, Christians made a name for themselves. Historians have suggested that the terrible Antonine Plague of the 2nd century, which might have killed off a quarter of the Roman Empire, led to the spread of Christianity, as Christians cared for the sick and offered an spiritual model whereby plagues were not the work of angry and capricious deities but the product of a broken Creation in revolt against a loving God.
But the more famous epidemic is the Plague of Cyprian, named for a bishop who gave a colorful account of this disease in his sermons. Probably a disease related to Ebola, the Plague of Cyprian helped set off the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman world. But it did something else, too: It triggered the explosive growth of Christianity. Cyprian’s sermons told Christians not to grieve for plague victims (who live in heaven), but to redouble efforts to care for the living. His fellow bishop Dionysius described how Christians, “Heedless of danger … took charge of the sick, attending to their every need.”
Christians have often been at the forefront of disaster without the push from government entities, without the assistance of political agencies, without funds from wealthy corporations and yet they ventured past the green zone and into the circle of death to assist those most vulnerable, motivated by nothing more than love of God and neighbor.
The history of altruism found within Christian communities is so imitable. Their love for the destitute, the sick, the broken, the diseased, without much care for their own well-being was quite the example to follow. This nonpareil altruistic movement is what attracted so many, to the faith to begin with.
The difference, however, is that something has shifted our Christian witness. We have gone from petitioning for the sanctity of life to petitioning for the rights and freedoms of selfish living, which, in turn, and as a direct consequence of, has caused the spread of the coronavirus in so many communities that could have gone without it if we had been more Christ-like to begin with.
In ancient Israel, in the book of Leviticus in particular, the Jews required anyone with an infectious disease to quarantine away from the camp for seven days or more. Some, having a very infectious disease, would live outside the camp indefinitely so as to preserve the wellbeing and life of both parties.
And somehow, somewhere along with the development of the western Christian mind, this altruistic selflessness has gone out the window, and with it, compassion and empathy for neighbors.
Modern medicine has shown us how diseases work, how they spread, how they affect the body, disrupt certain bodily functions, and from there, how some of them can lead to death. We now know chemists can develop antibodies in the form of a vaccine to counteract the spread of diseases or the damage these pathogens wreak on society.
And one of the mechanisms we have developed over time and learned how to use better is the victimless tool of quarantine; which helps reduce the rate a pathogen transfers from one person to another by isolating and caring for the sick. On top of that, we have been blessed with access to masks, which have also proven to reduce the transmissibility of infectious diseases.
Social distancing and masks.
These are the two crosses we have been asked to bear by our society and even these have become steps on which we tread to cause the death of others.
Distance and face coverings are too heavy a burden for us to carry.
How does that make any sense?
In the onset of Christian monasticism, in the era in which Christian converts would disappear into the desert to seek God, and once there they would form communities that would open their doors to assist and house outcasts. It was there that many relinquished so many rights and privileges just to help their neighbor.
They would give up wealth, give up status, give up work, and yes, even safety to wander through the unknown for days and nights to reach a place where trauma existed, where abused and bruised souls needed refuge, a place where so many had lost family and friends and found a new family and new friends.
Christians for years upon years had given so much from their lives and personal comfort even if it helped someone else just a little.
However, the tides have shifted and today we’re trying to take as much for ourselves and even the little that would have gone to our neighbor and their stability in life as possible.
Had we been asked to give blood, relinquish the rights to our bank accounts, leave our jobs, turn in our citizenship and residency, face deportation and exile for the sake of Christ and the betterment of life of our neighbor we would.
But a vaccine shot, social distancing, and masks are too many steps too far.
Why?
Our pro-life stance is only pro-life when it deals with the rights of the unborn but let us not be challenged to protect the life and well-being of our neighbors who are already here.
Apostle Paul asked the first-century church in Galatia a question that I ask of our generation today:
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? […]” Galatians 3:1 NRSV
He confronted a church that began with the salvific gospel and ended up with traditional legalism. Paul was curious about where and who tricked them out of the gospel and seduced them into a religion of works.
I, too, ask the same question of our fellow western Christian minds today.
“You foolish Americans! You foolish Canadians! Who has bewitched you?”
Who has sapped your Christianity of empathy? Who has taught you to reduce your neighbor to a number on a board? Who has asked you to see dollar signs instead of the elderly? Who has robbed you of love for your neighbor and taught you to believe that minor inconveniences like social distancing and mask-wearing are persecutory aspects of a democratic society?
You’re living with a persecution complex in a hedonist society. You’re more in love with and entrapped by comfort and rights than you are with Christ’s character of selflessness.
If you’re asked to carry your brother’s burdens you not only refuse to lend him a hand but you castigate your brother for being in the predicament they’re in, to begin with. And, at times, you’re the direct cause of their troubles.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2 NRSV
We see so many people pass away from Covid and much of that spread is due to our gross negligence of brotherly and sisterly love.
Christianity has thrived through thousands of years of strife, persecution, famine, war, social ostracism, pestilence, and plagues and we have shown outsiders time and again just how much love God has placed in our hearts as we care for our neighbors.
But something happened. Something went wrong somewhere and we’re too unbothered or too preoccupied or too distracted to stop and think about what and why went wrong.
Stone compares our gross negligence in spreading a pathogen we could have helped combat and stop a year ago, saving countless lives in the process, as gross negligence equal to murder!
And I agree!
There are pro-lifers committing murder. Either as direct agents of death or co-conspirators with it.
When we fail to help our world through a time like this… through a pandemic like this one… we help kill it.
Racism is the new ‘black magic’ and social media has become the arena on which we burn our new witches. If someone braves the allegation of perpetrating a racist act, they’re doomed. Without evidence or a proper trial, ostracization is the only outcome. We condemn the innocent without their having a proper trial. They merit a disgraceful punishment on the chair of public cancellation without redemption. We crucify the accused without a shred of evidence. We then bathe ourselves in the sea of their damnation. All this to appease our conscience. An improper term, hostile gesture, or an unwise choice of hairstyling is all it takes. Innocuous behaviors merit individuals an unwarranted spot on the wall of racist infamy. There they will hang and rot with the likes of Hitler, Goebbels, Wallace, and Jefferson.
Racist Americans are fearful that their cantankerous woke grandchildren will oust them. They presume we have become too unforgiving a generation. A generation that is too quick to judge and too quick to condemn. One that is slow to listen, to understand, and to forgive.
The questions begin to flood the social sphere.
Where can a racist person live out their racist sentiments without the fear of public reprisal and invective? Where can a citizen of the free world express his most heartfelt sentiments? Ideas about outsiders and immigrants? Concerns about national purity without sugarcoating their statements through partisan talking points?
If you are an unfortunate soul struggling with these questions, then you have come to the right place.
James Baldwin was a renowned erudite, poet, author, and activist of yesteryear. He once stated that what gives racism its grip and hold over society is not color alone but power. Here is one of his quotes on power and racism published in The New Yorker on November 9, 1962.
“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived, had no moral ground on which to stand. They had the judges, the juries, the shotguns, the law—in a word, power. But it was a criminal power, to be feared but not respected, and to be outwitted in any way whatsoever. And those virtues preached but not practiced by the white world were another means of holding Negroes in subjection.”
He speaks on the factor that makes racism more nefarious than other evils in the world: power. Without power, racism is but a feeling. It shrieks and shouts in a room that has no ears to hear it roar. It echoes into the nether. It becomes a fork without a handle or a spoon with a hole in the middle of it. Without power racism is ineffective.
Without power, racism is not racist. It is offensive only. I want to instruct my racist reader(s) on where he or she may disseminate his or her racist sentiments. Offer them a place where their ideas can flourish without fears of repercussion.
So, then, where can you be racist or where is it ever acceptable for you to be a racist man or a racist woman?
Before I answer these and other questions you must understand something very important. There are many places where you CANNOT express, live, and move as a racist human being.
Let us explore these minefields together first.
Law Enforcement and Military
You cannot join the police department and/or police academy if you harbor racist sentiments. Nor should you join the military if racism festers in your heart.
These institutions grant you an overwhelming level of authority and power. Remember, racism is most nefarious when it has the power to drive hate forward and wield it over people. No other institution on earth grants you as much immediate access to power as does a badge or a uniform.
You cannot be racist and responsible for protecting and serving a diverse community. You cannot hold racist sentiments while helping diverse communities abroad either.
The power you have under that badge or that uniform can help or tarnish your reputation. Your racism soils the entity you represent. It can further reinforce the idea that institutions are corrupt. This conundrum subsists because you are perverting the badge or uniform without consequence.
Law enforcement and the military do not mix with racism.
Your racist sentiments cannot exist in any of the above-mentioned positions. Your racist sentiments will infect your professional sphere and seep into your work. It will influence your decisions. This is not conducive to the well-being and social health of a diverse society.
Should your racist sentiments come to light, ostracism is your reward.
These positions can create systems, laws, policies, and structures that exploit people. In your hands, they will exploit the vulnerable even further.
Your position has the authority to control law enforcement and military forces. These institutions can then commit all sorts of wrongs under your command.
That does not help you in the long run.
If you want to be a lawyer or a judge while espousing racist sentiments, you will fail. These antiquated prejudices will get you nowhere but a seat on the stage of public scrutiny. The higher the rank within the government you find the higher the risk. If you’re ever ousted, an expedited flight to Switzerland is your only saving grace.
It might be safe to assume you’re a wealthy racist individual. But please avoid this sphere of influence. The greater your influence the hotter the human-sized boiler gets. This new generation has an irrational dislike of high-ranking government officials. Imagine the riot should they find out that you’re a racist government official. A rich one at that! It’s too great a risk.
Please, for your safety, refuse every opportunity to work within this industry.
President, Prime Minister, or Chancellor
Now you’re wondering, is it impossible for a racist man or woman like myself to ever become a leader of the free world? No, it is not. 2016 happened in the United States of America and that end with an insurrection. Exactly. The last racist chancellor who waltzed into the chancellory role managed to cause a world war. We estimate that well over sixty million people lost their lives as a result.
Racism is an unpalatable fashion (fascist) statement for presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors. Racist presidents of yesteryear would celebrate Klan terror. Woodrow Willson selected The Birth of a Nation as the first film to ever play in the White House. This film celebrated Klansmen’s terrorism in the South. The plot surrounded the protection of white female purity from ‘marauding blacks.’ The only black people in the film were white men in ‘black face.’
Again, every time we have a racist national leader we can see a spike in exploitative policies. The people whom they hold the harshest ideas about end up suffering the most. They perish in concentration camps, pogroms, or death camps. They’re relocated to reservations, residential schools, or internment camps. Forced to migrate through the transatlantic slave trade or racist deportation cycles. Experiencing the pains of colonization, cultural genocide, lynching trees, and more.
You wouldn’t want the deaths of thousands of innocent souls on your conscience, would you? Exactly. So please, for everyone’s sake, avoid these positions of power at all costs.
Are you a Christian? If the answer is yes, then, by all holy writ you are not allowed to be racist and a Christian. The two do not mix. I mean, Jesus is a dark-skinned Jew from Israel-Palestine.
Now, if your answer is ‘no’ to that question then this complicates things. You’re now stuck with the conundrum of differing worldviews. Religious systems that may or may not challenge your racist sentiments.
As a Christian, I follow Jesus’s advice on these issues. I am comfortable discussing Christian ethics and values. Time spent studying the life and purpose of Jesus has helped mold my moral worldview. Christianity points a person away from an individualistic lifestyle toward love-centered altruism. Racism cannot exist within a regenerated conscience. Racist sentiments are at odds with the commands of Jesus.
I’m comfortable condemning racism because I’m comfortable with Christ’s love ethic. There’s no room for racism in Christianity. If one is racist they are not Christian. They’re racist-ians.
Now, to dispel racism with Islam you need to converse with an imam or a caliph. If you want to inquire about racism in Buddhism you must speak with a monk. Condemnation of racism in Judaism comes from the Torah. If you’re struggling with racist sentiments as a Sikh you must sit with a guru for advice. In Taoism, you’re at the intellectual mercy of an abbot or a provost. For moral clarity or confusion in atheism, you sit at the feet of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens. I’m not sure any of these blokes can offer a succinct refutation of racism. In a world where social Darwinism is king then some races succeed and others perish.
I’m being crass but at least I’m not a jerk. Yes, I’m talking to you, Dawkins.
Anywho.
Now, back to racism, Christianity, and clergy.
If you identify as a racist individual you cannot, under any circumstance, lead a church. Are you evaluating people by the color of their skin? Listening to the cries of one race over another? Are you willing to segregate your congregation based on race? Do you use pejorative terms when referring to immigrants? Have you recently renewed your subscription to the Klan? The White League? The Knights of the White Camellia? The Knights of the Golden Circle? Was that tattoo you got a year ago a swastika? Does your YouTube video history consist of people attacking refuge migrants?
Congratulations! You’re a racist person.
And still, you’re disqualified from church leadership.
But don’t fret, this is a great thing. A benevolent act of God on your behalf.
What do I mean?
Christianity condemns ethnocentrism; which boasts of cultural or ethnic superiority. It shuns xenocentrism; which wallows in cultural or ethnic inferiority. This faith denounces classism, sexism, and yes, racism. The examples of these misfortunes you witness in history are deviations. Perversions of divine literature, obfuscations of love, truth, hope, faithfulness, and altruism. Abuse of power and the abuse of people made in the image of God, Imago Dei, is damnable.
So, if you don a cassock, stand behind a lectern, and recite a homily whilst racist at heart, you’re a fool. Your only accomplishment is redressing hate with tulips and roses. You’re upgrading your trip to hell from economy to first-class. This is not to your benefit, my dear racist reader.
A healthy hermeneutic and a racist heart are incongruent with the Christian faith. Your theological orthodoxy is rotten if racism sits comfortably in your sermon notes. Your faith tradition is moldy, sick, and broken if racists live unconvicted of their sin while in your church. And in spreading racism to children you’re better off tying one end of a rope around your neck and the other around a heavy stone and jumping off the side of a bridge. Because what else would kids learn from your Sunday school programs? About Jesus? In part, yes. A racialized Jesus, a deity used to promote one race and diminish the worth of others. Grab the noose, minister. Your gospel is poison.
Racism and the pulpit produce structures that denigrate and devastate. From chattel slavery to Jim Crow. Segregation to race-based insurrections. Evil committed in the name of Jesus with the blood of innocent people on your hands.
It is reflective of no one but the devil.
Racism and the church don’t mix.
Management, Professorship, Teaching, and Parenting
Now, this last category is broad. I want to drive home the point that there are far more places where racism is not allowed than places where it is. Fox News is a prime example of where it is not only allowed but where it becomes quite a lucrative endeavor. Fox News is not covered under this category. Fox News is its own category of horrors and filth. But I’ll leave that for another post another day.
Let’s return to our pressing issues.
Are you qualified to supervise a construction workforce? Have you graduated with honors and are now eligible to teach university students? Do you love teaching children about geography, social studies, and biology? Do you hope to someday rear a child into this world?
If your answer was yes to any of those questions you cannot, as a racist, do any of them.
Your racism disqualifies you from them.
What do I mean?
Each of those positions affords you unchallenged power. Unchallenged for some time, I mean. It may take years before your racist antics face repudiation. By then, your ideas may have influenced colleagues, students, and children for decades. Who, unbeknownst to them, believed that racism was normal. That covert racism was okay. That racism was acceptable in the workplace, in school, and at home.
Research shows that racism and power afford us nothing but disaster and death. If you infuse racism into management you’re left with lawsuits and litigations. Racism in higher learning creates incomplete intellectuals. Racism at home breeds hatred and trauma. Cognitive dissonance becomes the method by which your children cope with reality. In the face of overwhelming evidence, they turn to darkness for comfort. You are that darkness and the comfort you give is poison.
You’re sapping your workspace of diversity. You’re corrupting our academic circles. And you’re killing your kids.
Consider the lifestyle of the surviving children of Nazi war criminals. Examine their shame. See how much love they have lost for their parents. Appreciate their courage in denouncing their parents’ racism. See how much trauma they have endured, the extent some of them went to never procreate.
Consider the damage your racism will cause the next generation.
Your children need a healthy environment in which to grow. A racist parent is not conducive to a healthy environment at home.
If you’re granted power in any of these categories then our world has failed you. You will only lend a hand in further indoctrinating and brainwashing our society.
In other terms, you make more disciples of yourself. Devils, in short.
Coworkers may challenge your behaviors but will be unable to confront you because you’re the boss. You’re the HR personnel. You’re the managing supervisor. You’re the CEO! Who’s ever going to question you? So, this category is too risky for your racist sentiments.
And if you think about it, you’re racist because your parents were racist as well. Otherwise, you learned your racism from Fox News.
Kids do not have the know-how to decipher whether mom or dad are full of evil in their hearts. They trust you with their entire existence so what you tell them is ‘Bible.’
And racism, come to think of it, is evil. So if you want to be a good parent you cannot be a racist parent, so, you shouldn’t become one.
Conclusion
So you’re left wondering: Where can I be racist and free? I don’t hate so-and-so but I dislike them in my country. Where can I go to be myself? To be racist without consequence?
No. Not the Republican party, as tempting as it sounds. There’s plenty of that already there but we’re trying to divest that system of its venomous racism.
The answer, however, is crystal clear. You can espouse racism freely as long as you are not in a position of power, influence, authority, or control.
If you have power, influence, authority, or the ability to control anyone, even Mr. Wrinkles; that ugly swastika patterned collar sock-wearing dog of yours, you have failed this test.
You cannot be racist and integrated into society. You will in one way or another influence your workforce. Disrupt your community. Indoctrinate your family. Brainwash your social (media) sphere thus further disseminating your racist nonsense.
The only place left for you, Mr. or Mrs. Racist is that lazy boy in your basement. That place where rats once occupied. The place where hopes and dreams go to die. Where mold grows on the walls and trash is left uncollected. Where rusty pipes are days away from bursting. Where an imminent flood is due. Where no light can reach, where depression festers, and where darkness lurks.
That’s your safe haven. There you can find your sanctuary. Worship your dead racist heroes in that pit of sorrows.
You’re free to lock yourself down there. Free to salute the images of dead dictators ad nauseam. Paint the walls red and black. Pink, even. I hear that’s the new thing now with the Boogaloo crowd.
You can do your ten push-ups in hopes of joining some sort of failed insurgency. Plaster your flags of defeated armies on the wall, because every racist nation ends up losing. It’s history.
And there, from the lowest point of your life, you can be as free a racist as you want to be.
The day you grow tired of blabbering about scientific racism you can come out. When you’re tired of rekindling the flame of Lost Causes, you can leave that dungeon. Once you’re done throwing a racist tantrum you can come out of time out. Rejoin society. Our diverse society.
But remember, you cannot, for fear of public repudiation, live out your racism in public.
The moment you do the fires are burning and the witch hunters are hunting for more wood for their fires.
You are the wood for their fires and you will disintegrate into social oblivion.
If you think they are harsh then consider racism’s legacy.
Do you see the blood? The devastation? Good. Never forget it.
Social ostracization as your only punishment is merciful.
So, if you want to be racist, go back to your basement.
And take your racist leader, Donald Trump, with you.
Christ is a nigger, Beaten and black: Oh, bare your back!
Mary is His mother: Mammy of the South, Silence your mouth.
God is His father: White Master above, Grant Him your love.
Most holy bastard Of the bleeding mouth. Nigger Christ On the cross of the South.
Contempo, December 1, 1931.
Thoughts
An interesting fact about Contempo’s 1931 article is that it references the Scottsboro Eight. This random group of African American boys, two of them as young as thirteen, had boarded a train from Tennessee to Alabama and beyond in search of work. Somewhere along this train ride, the locomotive machine was stopped by police and the eight African American boys present were arrested and accused of rape. Mind you, there were dozens of white vagabonds on the same train cars but only the black teens were taken by local law enforcement officers.
These young men served a combined 130 years behind bars on trumped-up and false charges. The jury was ambivalent on one thing only, should these teens receive life imprisonment as the harshest punitive measure or should they be executed by the state by means of an electric chair.
They were all convicted and years later released.
Some of the teens fled to other states once paroled. Others remained behind bars until they were set free and declared not guilty, their innocence restored. One wrote to governor George Wallace while in hiding in New York State, asking if he was still a wanted man by the state of Alabama. The governor in question was a staunch segregationist who later changed his views and adapted to the new social norm, favoring integration only to remain in office. He hesitantly relented and later granted the falsely accused soul his innocence and pardon.
These teenagers turned men turned beasts and monsters by jailers who beat them blue and black, coercing and torturing false confessions out of them; enduring years of hell in Alabama state penitentiaries, alone, desolate, crazed, raped, bruised, stabbed, horrified by daily beatings at the hands of black Americans gone mad by their state dejected existence and by white Americans who knew nothing else but hatred for blacks. Many served their time on death row, often abandoned by guards and left to rot with their innocence intact and insanity ramped up.
It would have been an easier road to the afterlife if these teens had been lynched by one of the thousands of lynch mobs in the South. The fires, the castration, the noose, the buckshot to the chest, the kicks to the kidney and stomach, the bowie knife swallowed by the neck, and ropes tied around one’s ankles and later dragged by a horse, a carriage, a car, or a truck. The police siren blasting in the distance not in hopes of rescue but as a signal that the lynching has begun so gather your kin and come watch. The public spectacle, the journalists, the pamphlets gone out inviting neighboring communities to come and participate, because there will be souvenirs, you know. There’s always something you can take home. A finger, a toe, perhaps. Maybe someone will take home the genitals of the lynched negro, dry it out in the sun, tie it to a lamppost or let it hang from the porch to welcome visitors. A souvenir indeed. Pictures of a hanged corpse, slumped by its own weight, bloodless, are sent to distant family members the same way we send our family members pictures of our trip to Disney World, Universal Studios, or the Eiffel Tower. Look here uncle Bob, another lynched nigger in the books! I hope the kids are doing well. Give them and your wife, Lisa, our warmest regards.
This miserable sight seems more merciful than decades of imprisonment in an Alabama state prison during the terror of the Jim Crow South.
Quotes
“That thing they had here on May Day what good did it do. Not any at all. I’m still locked up in the cell. Instead of the I.L.D. trying to make it better for me here in jail they are making it harder for me by trying to demand the people to do things. Listen, send me some money. Send me three dollars like I told you in my first letter.” Olen Montgomery, 17 years old at the time of arrest, Letter to his mother after a May Day rally. May 3, 1934.
“My name is Clarence Norris, one of the Scottsboro Boys. I was arrested in Alabama in 1931 and sentenced to the electric chair three times. The governor commuted my sentence to life in prison. I was released on parole twice, once in 1944, and I broke my parole and went back to prison until I got out in 1946. I broke my parole again and I have been free ever since. I want to know if Alabama still wants me.” Clarence Norris, 19 years old at the time of arrest, explaining the reason for his call to Alabama Governor George Wallace, 1973.
“I’d rather die than spend another day in jail for something I didn’t do.” Haywood Patterson, 18 years old at the time of arrest, after getting 75 years, rather than the requested death sentence, January 24, 1936.
“I just got to say I think I am doing well to keep the mind I got now. These people make wise cracks talking about somebody in Alabama to defend us, say I would get out better. They won’t let the New York people come around.” Willie Robertson, 16 years old at the time of arrest, [he said] to a visitor to jail, 1937.
“Please tell all the young mens to try hard and not to go to prison for my sakes.” Charles Weems, 28 years old at the time of his arrest. April 1944.
“Sorry about my last letter — hope it didn’t make you angry. Didn’t mean any harm whatever. only telling you how I felt towards you and what’s more I could not help it.” Eugene Williams, 13 at the time of his arrest. Letter to the International Labor Defense apologizing for a frustrated outburst, December 1936.
“They whipped me and it seemed like they was going to kill me. All the time they kept saying, “now will you tell?” and finally it seemed like I couldn’t stand no more and I said yes. Then I went back into the courtroom and they put me up on the chair in front of the judge and began asking a lot of questions, and I said I had seen Charlie Weems and Clarence Norris with the white girls.” Leroy “Roy” Wright, 13 at the time of his arrest. Roy Wright, to New York Times reporter Raymond Daniell, March 10, 1933.
Conditions Behind Bars for the Scottsboro Eight
Blinded by Fate
“Extremely myopic, and with a cataract in one eye, Montgomery could not see well at all. He was en route to Memphis, looking for work to buy some new eyeglasses, when he was taken from the train and arrested in 1931, at the age of 17. The pair of glasses he had was broken on the day of the arrest and he went for two years without a new pair.”
Of Dreams and Nightmares
“In jail, much of his time was spent on death row, and he was haunted by the executions he could hear from his cell, and began dreaming of his own death.”
The Power of a Pencil and a Bible
“While in prison, Patterson found he regretted skipping out on school. “I held a pencil in my hand, but I couldn’t tap the power that was in it.” But he taught himself to read using a dictionary and a Bible. Patterson was not particularly well liked, by the other Scottsboro defendants ( Clarence Norris swore he would kill Patterson if he had a chance), by other prisoners, or by the guards that ran the prisons. In Atmore Prison, he had to keep perpetually vigilant against physical and sexual assaults. To avoid the latter, Patterson himself became a sexual predator, and kept a “gal-boy.” He lost faith in all things but one: ‘I had faith in my knife. It had saved me many times.’
In February 1941, a guard paid one of Patterson’s friends to kill him. This “friend” stabbed him twenty times, puncturing a lung and sending him to the brink of death. Amazingly, he recovered.”
Shot in the Head
“Patterson was tried and convicted again in January of 1936. Following the swift group conviction days after the incident, Ozie Powell had been imprisoned without a retrial for five years. While being transported from Patterson’s trial back to the Birmingham Jail, he pulled out a pocketknife and slashed Deputy Edgar Blalock in the throat. Sheriff J. Street Sandlin stopped the car, pulled out his gun and shot Powell in the head. Blalock was out of the hospital the same day with ten stitches. Remarkably, Powell also survived.
His mother visited him in the hospital while Powell recovered. ‘I done give up,’ he told her. When asked why, he replied, “Cause I feel like everybody in Alabama is down on me and is mad with me.” He suffered permanent brain damage from the shooting.”
An IQ of 64 and Syphilitic
“Although he made it through to seventh grade in Atlanta, a doctor later measured Roberson’s IQ to be about 64, and his mental age at nine. He could not read or write and had difficulty speaking, and was the butt of many courtroom spectators’ jokes.
Roberson had boarded the Southern Railroad headed to Memphis in search of free medical care for his syphilis and gonorrhea. He was in pain and lying in a car near the back of the train when he was arrested along with the 8 other African American teenagers accused of rape. The cane he used to walk with was thrown away on orders of the deputy that took him into custody.
This painful, syphilitic condition was evidence to defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz that Roberson could not have committed this crime. Judge James Horton agreed that it was unlikely that Roberson could have jumped from car to car as Victoria Price claimed. However, when it was revealed that Ruby Bates had been treated for syphilis herself, Roberson’s venereal disease was cited as evidence of his guilt. Horribly, he was not treated for his condition until 1933.”
Gassed and Airless
“While in prison, Weems was tear gassed in his cell for reading International Labor Defense literature, and he asked his correspondents not to mention any labor actions in Birmingham, Alabama. In October 1937, after some of his fellow defendants were released, Weems was in the prison hospital for tuberculosis. In March of the next year, in a case of mistaken identity, he was stabbed with a knife by the prison mill foreman.
He was paroled in November 1943, and was offered a job in a laundry in Atlanta. He married and settled down into obscurity, keeping his job and his health, although his eyes would persist in bothering him from the tear gas a decade earlier.”
Just Another Black Bastard
“In 1937 Andy Wright was sentenced to 99 years in jail for rape. He wrote a letter to the Scottsboro Defense Committee expressing concern that he and four of the other defendants had had their freedom traded for the four released that year. In Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama, he was assaulted by both guards and prisoners, and spent time in the prison hospital. His continually poor health made it difficult for him to work in the prison industries and further antagonized his tormentors. Wright narrowly escaped an attack when Charley Weems took his shift at the prison mill and received knife wounds intended for Andy.
As bad as the physical punishment was, the psychic punishment may have been worse. By independent accounts, Wright was a good-natured prisoner, but he wrote: ‘A colored convict’s very best behavior is not good enough for these officials here. Every time they open their mouths it is [‘]you black bastard.[‘] When we think we are doing right we be cursed at and kick around and beat like dogs.’
In 1939 he wrote: ‘I am trying all that in my power to be brave but you understand a person can be brave for a certain length of time and then he is a coward down. That the way it is.’ When advised to ‘snap out’ of his depressed state, he wrote: ‘What do you think I am a iron man[?] You all is out there w[h]ere you can do for yourself and get things done and then have a nerve to write and tell me to cheer up.’”
Eleven to One
“At the initial trial, Roy testified that he had seen some of the other defendants rape the two girls, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. Later, he claimed that that testimony had been coerced. His own trial ended in a hung jury, with 11 jurors seeking a death sentence and one voting for life imprisonment.”
Thoughts Concluded
It is in this environment in which Langston Hughes pens this didactic poem, comparing the Christ of Calvary with the black man in Alabama.
Langston was aware that should Christ have walked the streets of Alabama, had Christ been on that train that day, crossing from one side of the state to the other, in hopes of healing some and preaching to others, He would have been apprehended and torn to pieces by loaded billy clubs and filled with buckshot.
Christ would have been a nigger in Alabama. Lightskinned, a mulatto, a colored man whose lynching would have been praised by bloodthirsty locals with Bibles in arms. No different than the lynching He suffered in the outskirts of Jerusalem two millennia ago.
Langston decries the hypocrisy of Southern Christianized peoples who worshipped a brown savior but thought him white man. Thought the Jewish rabbi from Palestine was a white man whose sole purpose in existence was to preserve the sanctity and dominance of white supremacy on the North American plains of Turtle Island.
But in Alabama, of all places, Christ was just another nigger.
Southern Christians were more distressed by the color of their Christ than by the presence of the strange fruits hanging from their trees.
Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed.
Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and needy.
I dedicate my one-hundredth blog post to my lovely wife, Irma.
One hundred blog posts, hundreds of hours of research, and near the same amount of time dedicated to writing and possibly double that in editing alone all pale in comparison to the time spent with my wife.
Every word I dedicate to public knowledge, every thought I manage to scribble onto paper or type into a computer in hopes of producing something intelligible and worth sharing is because my wife has supported me in this effort.
The effort? To clear my mind through journaling, albeit public and communal journaling on things surrounding life, love, theology, and history. It’s my catharsis.
Her intellect has been a point of reference as I grow with every conversation we have on the topics I research.
Thomas Merton once said, “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”
It is disadvantageous to the writer, myself included in that category albeit in the nascent stages of writing, to presume that fame, prestige, and legendary status be the utmost goal in life.
I have found love in this true destiny of which the initial and end goal is love itself.
I have found it thanks to my wife.
Thank you, my love, for being so amazing and encouraging.
Other desires and aspirations, again, pale in comparison.
I have my love, my girls, and my books.
One day, I’ll write my own book or several. Until then I will continue to express that which is stuck and pressing in my heart and mind on here.
And, of course, I have my Christ and He has me. It all works out just fine in the end no matter how it ends.
This gives me comfort.
On to post #101! On to the many things I will cover and we will discuss together.
Thank you for reading these stories, ideas, and thoughts. Thank you for visiting the innermost thoughts and sentiments of a capricious writer.
There are many things the polyglot can learn from the German people but one of them is best left untouched and that is their unnecessarily strident effort to produce unpronounceable multisyllabic words that torture us none German-speaking people.
If you were to attempt to pronounce vergangenheitsaufarbeitung correctly while vacationing in Berlin without being affluent in German you’d most likely end up in the back of a pub, pants missing, and unsure of what day of the week or weekend it is.
Don’t ask.
The term, laughable as it might be, means to work off the past. It’s a term post World War II Germans developed to confront the demons of the Third Reich. The endeavor, first in a communal and later in a philosophical effort to grapple with the reality that the Wehrmacht was a willing participant in war crimes, not just the SS or the SA or the Gestapo, was too much for some German citizens to grasp. Their fathers, brothers, and sons had participated in war crimes against minorities and other Germans who dared resist the Reich’s ascent to power.
What was more compelling was that many if not most Germans saw themselves as victims of Russian Bolshevism to the east and American hyper-Capitalism to the west. Having capitulated in both wars, endured the humiliation that came with the Treaty of Versaille, and now the global rage at their participation in electing the world’s most dejected autocrat, Adolf Hitler, caused German minds to resist guilt and blame.
As Nazi masterminds fled the country for safer havens in Argentina, Brazil, and Washington D.C., German citizens were abandoned by their leaders to face the shame of their national wrongs alone. The allied forces made sure of it by forcing citizens to visit concentration camps where Nazi leaders and soldiers exterminated millions. Those who could not make the trip were forced to sit through hours of footage of German POWs digging up mass graves under the rifle of Russian or American soldiers.
German citizens could not believe that they had elected a government into power that could commit such atrocities and when their one thousand year reign came to smoldering ruins in a short tumultuous twelve years of horror, they were too ashamed, if not entirely shocked, that their good intentions were now considered war crimes and crimes against humanity.
So you can imagine the sudden humiliation so many of them must have felt and how much outrage they must have expelled at the thought that they were equal perpetrators of these crimes alongside Goebbels, Himmler, Eichmann, Goering, and Hitler.
It was easier for some of them to take such an escapist approach because so many of the concentration camps and extermination camps were well outside of city limits. They voted for the removal of the Jews, did nothing to protect them once the pogroms and deportations began, and so, to their knowledge, the Jews simply left Germany to live in the outreaches of the lands belonging to the Untermenschen.
Few actually understood that the ash falling over their homes was that of men, women, and children having been shoved into ovens and burned to crisp.
Millions of German citizens refused to take any blame for these war crimes because they claimed that they had never pulled a lever, sealed a door shut, or pulled a trigger to kill a single Jew or resister.
The unwillingness to admit any fault, feel any guilt or remorse, or apologize was culturally, historically, and nationally endemic to the German mind.
That is why, for years and years after the war many philosophers, sociologists, professors, and other unmentioned entities ventured into Germany, into the schools, the churches, the academic halls, the sciences, the farms, hospitals, and homes to better understand and also educate the German people that they must work out their past.
Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung!
They must work out of it the reality of their participation in order to progress as a nation. Progress without amnesia.
Certain focus groups were put together where Germans, both members of the former Reich, and their children were sat in rooms to discuss the goods, bads, and neutrals of Nazi Germany. Participants could not understand why they were seen as such vile people. How could the world hate them so much when they had never so much as launched a rock at a Jew. Though many felt Jews were inferior they did not exhibit the animosity that SS, SA, and Gestapo militants enacted on innocent people.
Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman
One old lady, as recounted by Susan Neiman in her book,Learning from the Germans, used religious language to understand the ramifications of vergangenheitsaufarbeitung:
“Only a single participant in the Group Experiment expressed the kind of moral reflection you might expect. She was an older Catholic woman, one of the few subjects to use religious language. ‘I take my being bombed out as atonement for the great guilt we incurred toward the innocent. The Americans are right that we murdered more Jews than they murder Negroes in a year. That is the truth. I was bombed out three times. I haven’t done enough wrong in my life to justify that, but I would not ask God ‘What have you done to me?’ There was so much guilt to atone for that a part of the nation must atone for it on earth. Even if our children must atone for it again.’”
How humbling an approach from the old and wise Catholic woman whose willingness to confront the evil of her contemporaries, herself included, condemning it and receiving in that condemnation punishment for it actually set her free to the truth of reality.
This working out the past, as Susan states, is never final and never finished. Not in the sense that one lives with the guilt of their forefathers but that they live and are proud to carry the responsibility of making sure it never happens again.
Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung.
Germany has since accomplished one of the most exemplary multicultural societies in the world. This was previously an unimaginable feat considering the legacy of the Third Reich.
How did it happen? How has Germany advanced so much after two of the most humiliating military losses of all time?
Yes, yes, the nuances are many and we know they had help, financial help from the outside.
That’s a given.
But what is so enamoring about post-war Germany is that with time, decades even, they came to admit their participation in the war and their guilt as perpetrators and co-conspirators of the Nazi regime. Without that initial introspective adventure, I don’t believe Germany would have been able to progress out from Hitler’s shadow. But now they pride themselves on being responsible for the truth so that they never have to sink back to that level of complicity and apathy that got them into the war in the first place.
The truth is that the Germany of old, the Third Reich, was made up of average day-to-day Germans who wanted nothing more than to make their nation better for Germans, no matter the cost.
The price they were willing to pay ended up burning their nation to the ground but we mustn’t forget that from those ashes rose a hope-filled nation. Not hope from dismissing the truth of what happened but of confronting and accepting it.
The reason why Susan Neiman’s book is called Learning from the Germans is that she is a Jewish woman born in Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised in the American Deep South in a time where white Americans would lynch black Americans for sport, out in the open, in front of authorities and judges, who at times would participate in the crime.
Susan makes the claim that the United States of America never experienced this vergangenheitsaufarbeitung because there was no one around to point out to them that hate and racism is wrong.
After the American Civil War, Confederate soldiers returned home as losers. Confederate prisoners of war were released in mass if they simply signed a piece of paper certifying that the Union army was right to wage war against them for owning slaves and that they would now work together to make the country one again.
Easy out, if you ask me.
The same disgruntled soldiers made it home, humiliated, and now broke because their main source of income, slavery, was now outlawed and their former slaves had gone free or runaway while their owners were out in war. These same men launched terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the White League, and continued to murder black Americans for the better part of the next one hundred years.
The Civil Rights movement took the scene in the late 1950s and 60s, and even then, Southern Americans refused to confront the narrative that their cause in the war was evil and that their loss was the best possible outcome for the betterment of the nation.
Americans in the South had not faced their past but had reconstructed their cause as a movement to be proud of. The petition to retain the right to own black people had become a war for states’ rights.
The American Deep South never faced international humiliation that forced them to reconsider the racism in society that spawned the need, or, rather, the want of race-based chattel slavery in the first place. Nor were they pressed from within, by the North, the Union Army to reconsider their literature, their ideas, their social and cultural understanding of prejudice and descrimination so there was no desire nor pressure to confront their wrongs.
In fact, the South never saw their cause as inglorious or pitiful. Theirs was a cause of American ideals and constitutional right to land and property (property being black slaves). No wonder there’s such a chasm of mercy and love in the American Deep South because right after the Civil War a vacuum of power was created as the Union Army dissolved back to the North which allowed for Klan terrorist activity to dominate the Southern plain for the next one hundred years.
A great part of the United States has yet to experience their vergangenheitsaufarbeitung and it shows. It shows by the continual appearance of Confederate flags flowing freely from government buildings. It shows by the various statues dedicated to Confederate leaders, soldiers, and generals still visible from predominantly black communities. It shows when the prevalent idea of the Lost Cause has revised the way Southerners view themselves as victims of an encroaching North instead of perpetrators of kidnapping, murder, and crimes against humanity. Throw terrorism in there as well.
It shows how on January 6, 2021, madmen stormed the United States Capitol building wielding the Confederate flag in the process, as if to say, the South will rise again but what these poor souls fail to understand is that the South never went away to begin with.
No one has ever worked off their past in the United States and much of it simmers to the top when discussions surround reparations or racial equality and reconciliation. The diatribe and visceral vitriol that spews from right-wing echo chambers and the darkweb are just another signifier that the racist sentiments of old are still very much alive.
Is it too late to ask the United States to vergangenheitsaufarbeitung? No. It’s never too late. The better question is who would force it to do this work?
Germany was forced to look at their own blunders, their national sins by the Americans, the Brits, the French and the Russians.
But what nation is powerful enough to turn America’s gaze away from the Orient and toward itself?
Perhaps that strength will not come from without but from within. Maybe this generation has only begun the planting of ideas and the next will water them. Perhaps we’re a generation too soon in considering a revisitation of our past.
I know for a fact we’re far behind Germany in working off our past.
Had America ventured into vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, had they worked off their past shortly after the Civil War, perhaps we would never have heard of Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, James H. Cone, or Martin Luther King Jr.
In fact, perhaps these precious souls would not have been assassinated during the Civil Rights era:
Medgar Evers
James Chaney
Andrew Goodman
Michael Schwerner
Viola Liuzzo
Vernon Dahmer
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nor thousands of innocent black Americans have perished under the rage of white lynch mobs.
Germany has accepted its past. It has accepted the fact that regular day-to-day citizens enabled the Nazi regime to take control of the country and enact the horrors it did. It accepted that its once proud and strong army, the Wehrmacht, was just another murderous instrument of the Reich. It accepted that the German culture and intellectual academies of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s had created the racist Autobahn necessary to catapult the Third Reich into power.
Hitler could have lived and died a miserable life and we would have never heard of the man had it not been for the overwhelming support he had received from the German people. But their desire for land, prestige, racial superiority, wealth, and dominance had clouded their moral compass…. Or had it?
But Germany has come out of that era. The new Germany, or perhaps the same, just sober now, is better. It is brighter and more aware of the venom of racism and ethnocentrism that still brews and festers within its subculture and in certain political circles. This new Germany denounces and condemns the resurgence of every nationalist entity that dares show its face. It has even criminalized Nazi rhetoric and memorabilia.
But in the US, however, whenever white supremacist resurge with rage the president asks them to stand back and stand-by thus dog whistling to the undertones of an unresolved past that, hey, at least here in America, this is still okay.
The resounding issue with the American mind is that triumph has clouded its moral memory. This great nation has won too many skirmishes, battles, wars, and revolutions thus allowing it to believe that these various wins thus makes them morally right. This line of reasoning is dangerous. It makes the 1776 American Revolutionary War as morally defensible as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Just remember that very few, if any Americans were ever held accountable for the My Lai massacre the same way numerous German SS, SA, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht soldiers were tried, sentenced, and executed after World War II.
This refusal to revisit the past or perhaps confront our national complicity in these various atrocities committed by American citizens keeps us comfortably isolated in willful ignorance. We’re too proud to admit fault and too embarrassingly proud about questionable victories.
Hermann Goering
Hermann Goering, a German World War 1 veteran pilot, then Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (high commander of Nazi Germany’s Air Force) and the sixteenth president of the Reichstag demonstrated just how ridiculous it can be to evade the reality of our national crimes when confronted with them. While under trial in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the peace, and conspiracy to commit various other crimes, Goering viewed himself and the Reich’s cause as triumphant in the face of victors’ justice and revenge in Nuremberg.
“In fifty years you’ll be building monuments to us.” Goering states, superciliously so, at one point during his trial.
Many caricatures (such as one pictured here by Arthur Syzk) often played off of Göring’s weight and flamboyance. [Website]
Goering would later be sentenced to death by hanging but managed to escape the merciful fate by ingesting cyanide in his cell. The highest level living commander of the Reich had succumbed to chemical compounds of potassium cyanide in a cold cell.
Suicide was his last self-righteous act.
Goering’s prophecy never came true, thankfully. Not in Germany anyway.
But it did come true, in other ways, and in more prevalent ways, in the United States of America as statues and monuments erected in honor of Confederate dissidents peaked over the Southern horizon by the hundreds not many years after the Civil War came to a close and there they stand to this day.
Why?
Because the United States has yet to work off its sinful national past.
And Other Things
I’m old. I’m much more of a cantankerous old man today than I was yesterday. My health is depreciating quickly and my mind even quicker. My ability to retain information has lessened by half if not more these last few years and it troubles me greatly.
But, in hindsight, there’s much I rather not remember, perhaps much more I prefer to forget. At times, I find myself eerily content with the content that has discontentedly dislodged itself from my mind.
I’m happy with my wife and happy, sorry, I am overjoyed with the beautiful family that I’ve been blessed with.
Should all my memories fade away, and they will eventually, I will be content in knowing that my last thought is that I love them and I am loved by them.
And then all things will gray away and return to black… and then the Light.
Until then I’ll be here picking fights with no one other than my ignorant self and whoever else dares to join the fight.
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Thoughts
Why is Langston Hughes’s poetic prowess in this rhetorical quest to decipher the end of poorly developed or intentionally hampered dreams so enticing?
Were we not aware then as we are now that a dream deferred, a dream ignored, a dream erased, and a dream transformed into a nightmare subsists and barely exists as anxieties under which we are ruled?
Are these not the new authorities that guide our steps and our emotions to the penitentiary of destitution of all hope? Is not a dream deferred the equal of a meal misplaced, a payment deviated from our account, love rejected?
Is not a dream deferred the culmination of anxiety and depression, the twin sisters of misery, playing a dirty, dirty trick on us? Incarnate now in the frontal lobe and later in the metaphysical center of the soul?
Do dreams dry up? Of course.
Can they fester? As does gangrene.
Whence do they run? Away from us, assuredly, as quickly as they can, with or without legs.
Are they as odoriferous as rotten meat? Dreams have no scent as we understand the term but if a deferred dream were to release an odor I am sure it would reek of death. Dreams die too, you know. And deaths stinks.
Can it crust over with sweet enrichment, delivering to the dashed dreamer a pleasant sense of freedom from the responsibility of accomplishing this said dream? No. God no. It is bitter, without the slightest tinge of sweetness.
Will it sag with time, gravity working it below our feet, the feet of the grave, below that yet, under the feet of our planet and slip out on the other side of our spherical abode into the nether world?
Yes, yes. A dream deferred slips into the abyss never to be found again. A deferred dream once dead has less hope of recovery than souls trapped in the mythical purgatory.
Does a deferred dream explode?
Lest we fall back into ignorance we must admit, yes, it does, not as a renewed hope or aspirations from which we derive existential fulfillment but as deprivation of all joy and avaricious which consumes all hope.
A deferred dream is found in the life of the day-to-day moribund worker whose sole purpose is to work and make money and vacation and work again than in the man or woman whose improvised explosive device is close to razing a building to the ground.
A terrorist is a terrorist not because of a dream deferred but because of a malicious dream. Nightmares insatiably malignant transformed in the mind of a dreamer turned killer by sheer indoctrination.
But the standard person whose dream is deferred, delayed, paused or made stagnant by whatever causal ill is more dangerous than the terror of fire, gun powder, and time.
This is because the standard soul who lives dreamless or with a dream unfulfilled believes that this realm of loss of hope is acceptable and normative.
When dreamless souls accept this reality then our world becomes a place where dreams are born only to die shortly after their first breath.
Does it explode?
Yes, yes, it does, but the explosion is moderate, genteel, working its way out of the heart and into the mind, erasing all passion and drive. Ebbing the coolness of hopelessness from one wealth of life, the heart, to another treasure of life, the mind, destroying not with fire but with deference, the future of the soul.
And to the rhetorical questions asked by Langston Hudges, we must admit that one of them, perhaps, intentionally or unintentionally we do not know, is left unasked: what happened to my dream?
This question is one we dare not ask nor do we venture on spending enough time digesting it to muster an answer for it.
For it is more pleasurable to delve into the abstract deferred dreams of others than to confront the concretized reality of our prorogued aspirations.
“Washington, who with our fathers purchased our freedom by blood and violence, are lauded as patterns of patriotism and Christianity. Nat Turner, and his associates, who endeavored to work out their own salvation from an oppression incomparably more grievous and unjust than our fathers endured, were treated as rebels, and murderous assassins, and were ruthlessly hung, or shot like wolves, and their memory is corrupt.” (February 13, 1836)
William Lloyd Garrison
Styron received plenty of heat for his novel on the cryptic phantom of the black Spartacus, Nat Turner.
I advise the reader to pick up the 25th Anniversary Edition where Styron expresses his sentiments on the backlash the book received from disenfranchised black groups who had made a god of Turner whereas Styron had made him a man, who as expected, struggled with rage, lust, and the other mundane things a man of that era might have struggled with. Styron adds almost fifty pages on his understanding of the critique, the analytical part yes, but admits a resolute head-scratching at the mindless distaste for his work from people who never read it.
I had not known that Styron had hosted James Baldwin at his home and even received advice and blessings from Baldwin to venture into this first-person narrative of Nat Turner’s life.
Styron admits the liberty he took in recreating the antebellum world so we could understand the multifaceted grievances Turner might have had against the slave trade.
In reality, we don’t need many reasons to understand why. Nat Turner and a group of seventeen slaves set off to kill fifty-five white people in the antebellum south. Their position in life was the only precursor necessary for their vengeance upon their slave masters.
It is, however, impossible to develop a most accurate understanding of Nat Turner’s life when his confession was undersigned by a white lawyer who had been appointed to him by a court that saw him as nothing more than ‘property gone rogue’ and property worthy of hanging, quartering, and burning.
Either way, it’s an expressive work of art and demonstrably true of the horrors of American history, which, retrospectively, was all deserving of Nat Turner’s insurrection.
Sadly, his bid for freedom is seen and described as an insurrection instead of a revolution. Why? You ask. It’s because Nat Turner failed. Unlike his predecessor George Washington, who fought with the same fervency and won, Nat has been relocated to the forgotten and dismissed recesses of American history where he remains a negro terrorist instead of the black Moses he was for his time.
One cannot help but wonder… what if Nat Turner had succeeded?
The bodies of those executed, with one exception, were buried in a decent and becoming manner. That of Nat Turner was delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh. Mr. R.S. Barham’s father owned a money purse made of his hide. His skeleton was for many years in the possession of Dr. Massenberg, but has since been misplaced.
Drewry, the southampton Insurrection
Nat Turner’s original confession can be found and read in its entirety here. One must remember that Turner’s confession was transcribed and sealed by a white lawyer appointed to him by the court. We cannot rely on the accuracy of this confession because the court and his legal representative were, culturally, societally, and legally structured to work against him. We can only assume that some of what is undersigned and sealed about Turner’s undertaking are true, but how much, and exactly how accurate, we may never know. In 1831 a slave had little to no value other than the work he or she provided their masters and absolutely no rights or freedoms. We must, unfortunately, take T. R. Gray’s account down with us in history, hesitantly so, as it is the only account of this story recorded in history. We needn’t venture far to wonder why Turner’s insurrection was not as well recorded and disseminated through the Americas as was the stories and triumphs of George Washington. Some insurrections were acceptable while others were worthy of the highest levels of contempt and erasure. A military assault coordinated by negro slaves was the most horrifying news any slave owning and slavery favoring antebellum American could ever conceive of. Their worst nightmare came true in the enigmatic phantom of the black Spartacus, Nat Turner.
So it has come to my attention that I have been accused of presentist sentiments in my analysis of history. This accusation arose from none other than my cantankerous second personality, Mr. Critique. And this perturbs me greatly because I did not know, nor was I ever taught what presentism means. This is a result of my being quite the unschooled pupil. I was not aware that presentism is even a thing.
Mind you, outside of the terms many uses I did not even think such a thing existed. On a philosophical level or say, a metaphilosophical level, presentism argues that everything that exists only exists now. The past is gone. The future doesn’t matter because it isn’t present, therefore, it isn’t real, and therefore, even the present that we ascribe to now will become the past by the time we acknowledge it exists thus making that present the past.
It is a cyclical think-hole that I am way too young to comprehend and way too old to study. Maybe not, but not my niche at the moment.
But the presentism I refer to isn’t one that delves between the philosophical aspects of time and reality, of ontological and epistemological arguments, of which, if I am to be honest, I’m not the most interested in at the moment. This is not to say that I think these ideas and thoughts are of little import, I believe they are of great import, and at times boring, but they’re just not things I’m grappling with in the year 2021.
Not yet.
I will in due time. As it stands, as my mind stands today, I’m focusing on the formation of the Christian church, how the church became complicit in one of the most dastardly trades of all time, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. How the church promoted, participated, and benefited from the social construct of race and colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy in the west.
I’m looking into important figures and events.
Later, when I’m wiser, and yes, more humble, it may take some time, I’ll sit patiently and long enough to understand their epistemological arguments for said behaviors.
For now, I’ll recount these events to the best of my abilities through the lens afforded me.
And this is where I run into this new (to me) conundrum of historical presentism.
Historical Presentism
This changes the understanding or rather the application of the term where it removes it from the abstract philosophical approach and becomes an applicable tool by which the interpreter of an event infuses his or her present moral judgments into past events.
Historians pejoratively call this historical presentism.
Usually, this negative connotation is ascribed to people who venture into an event as horrific as slavery.
Now, we all know that slavery is evil and our historians will even venture, feebly so, hesitantly so, to condemn slavery as evil. But historians hesitate to attribute a moral decision on the ills of slavery when they look at it or retell its presence in society former because they do not want to project modern moral standards onto previous generations who ascribed to a different set of moral standards; so they think.
Meaning, because race-based slavery was such a widespread phenomenon in the formation of western society (slavery was a widespread phenomenon in the formation of many societies and kingdoms, not just western) historians want to bring our attention to the reality that it was inconceivable for the western mind to see it as anything other than commerce and trade.
Jus’ ‘nother day ‘n slave ownin’ country is all!
Historians will promote the idea that for the 17th and 18th-century western mind, the ownership of a negro man, woman, and their children was as common then as us owning a VW Beetle, Ford Escape, or a Cadillac Escalade today. They will pull our attention to how people viewed and understood these systems and metrics then instead of allowing us to transport our nascent and more advanced moral standards to a time before us.
This is quite a complicated process and to an extent, I will even promote this particular idea. But only to an extent.
We must understand people within their time. I agree, to an extent.
But… what historians fail to do or willingly omit from their work is that many individuals who partook in the formation of western society and civilization despised slavery as an institution and despised it even more so as a racialized institution. Previously, long before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade began, slaves were comprised of every ethnic group imaginable. Blacks would enslave whites. Whites the not so whites. The lower whites would enslave the yellows. The reds enslave reds. And whatnot.
I’m generalizing here for the sake of brevity.
Because before European scientists ventured to categorize people and classify them by the color of their skin and physical characteristics like hair color, eye color, nose symmetry, and whatnot, everyone was up for grabs on the possibility of becoming someone else’s slave. And even then, slavery had its limits as indentured servants would work under contract for some time and then be graced by the possibility of manumission. Some slaves were paid, albeit not much, for their labor. Others were delivered from slavery unto family inheritances and so on.
Slavery in the former world was brutal and at times humane. Depending on the area of inquiry you will find benevolence or outright disregard for human dignity. None of it, however, was based on race.
Somewhere along the line, a select group of immoral scientists decided not only to invent race, as it is a social construct but also to dignify some races while denigrating others. And, as history has shown, you can see which groups have benefited and which have been exploited on the basis of race over the years.
What I want to bring to our attention is that there is a class of reputable historians who want us to shy away from condemning previous societies for enslaving and owning slaves and also mistreating the same because by doing so we can fall into the all-too cyclical and dishonest loop of presentist historical analysis.
I counter this argument with the fact that many, hundreds, and later thousands, and even later-er than that, millions upon millions of western minds fought in the social, then religious, then political, and finally on the battlefield to eradicate not only slavery but also race-based slavery in the west and in the world.
Being a man of faith; not a good one, and having ascribed to the principles and worldview of Christianity, I have greater reasons to detest the pejorative moniker, ‘presentist’ because I believe morality to be universal and objective and not subjective and mutable.
Meaning, the same Bible that was used by my patristic church fathers in Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and beyond, is the same bible that slave overseers used when they set off to whip the skin and fat off the back of black people in the field.
The same Bible and divine literature that instructed its adherents to love one another, not creating division on the basis of ethnicity, class, sex, geography, language, and etc, in the first century also instructed its adherents in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and now the 21st century to do the same.
Approaching morality from the metaphysical and universal, I can conclusively condemn the acts of slavery as it is presented in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and later in the American Deep South without the slightest hesitance!
Again, I believe that historical presentism is only possible if the historian approaching time in question has a subjective moral framework.
However, condemning the ills of society former on the constant revelation of universal morals is not presentist but truest to the morality I ascribe to, which, to my limited understanding, is coherent with reality as reality is understood to us as a collective.
So, even though I fight against anachronistic tropes and philosophical presentism (contrasted with eternalism or actualism) I am comfortable committing to historical presentism as an agency for good because the basis on which I condemn slave owners, slave traders, and slave murderers are on the same moral book they used to govern their life hundreds of years ago.
Their failure to properly understand that same book is not a fault of mine nor is it a responsibility on my part to excuse their ignorance on the beauties of scripture when it calls us to love one another. In fact, I will go even further to accuse them of not only illiteracy, ignorance, and moral corruption through avarice and pride, but also condemn them of perverting the holy writ and abusing their fellow man, which, our Divine Christ, commands us to die for.
Therefore, I will continue to learn about historical presentism, I will struggle with this idea, and I will also ask myself and the historians who accuse me and others like me of being ‘presentists,’ WHO is it that benefits from this avoidance? Who benefits when we fail to condemn the ills of society former? Who benefits when we’re amoral on something as universally evil as kidnapping, murder, rape, genocide, and land theft?
Who benefits from the Doctrine of Discovery? From Manifest Destiny? From the Monroe Doctrine?
Who?
Could it be that the sentiment leading these same historians to hesitate on condemning these previous figures is the same sentiment that forced slave drivers to whip blacks without the slightest provocation on whether whipping people is right or wrong in the first place?
We’ve yet to truly understand the reach and grip of White Supremacy in our society and I would not be surprised, although there is evidence yet to be compiled in its entirety if this cancer has not already infected the way we look at history.
I presume the virus of white supremacy has infected the academia as we find resistance there anytime we venture onto subjects as tenebrous as slavery in the west.
Especially how we look at ourselves as the triumphant peoples of the Americas, continually so, and rarely, if ever, look at ourselves as the brutes we were. As the children of monsters.
Anywho, go on about your business and I will get back to my research, where, upon my liberties, I will condemn the behaviors of the men and women who sought to enslave and eradicate my people, and by my people I mean humanity, not just black people. In enslaving blacks on the basis of race, little did they know that they had in fact enslaved themselves to the manacles of immorality.
I’m only 28 pages into William Styron’s 25th-Anniversary Edition award-winning book, The Confessions of Nat Turner and my emotions are everywhere.
For those of you who don’t know, or perhaps, better stated, for those of you who were never taught about Nat Turner I must advise that this is no children’s tale. This here, the story of the largest revolt of enslaved persons in the United States of America is not a replicable Hollywood stunt, nor is it something you toss onto a playwright’s lap in hopes that she’ll hire a batch of actors talented enough to emulate such a feat. No. Nat Turner’s story surrounds the life of a spellbinding man who was born into slavery, raised up as a prophet, a dream decipherer, a reverend, an insurrectionist, a hero, and ultimately, the most hated man, sorry, property in America.
In short, Nat Turner led a revolt, a company of some fifty or sixty enslaved men to bring upon their masters and family members the same level of indecency they had endured from birth. They massacred will over fifty men, women, and children, indiscriminately killing them from the darkest hour of the night until the sun was high in the sky.
They killed. Stabbed. Chopped. Shot. Hacked. Strangled. Decapitated. Beat with clubs, weapons, and fists, every white slave owner they could find in their vicinity until their insurrection was stamped out by a local militia.
Nat, the last surviving member of this revolt was eventually apprehended, tried as a terrorist (a neologism yet unknown then but the meaning is clear), and killed by the state.
Turner was coerced by the court, and later, some believe, impressed upon by God to confess, not his sins of a violent revolt because to Turner this was not a sinful act but an act of deliverance and immediate emancipation.
Turner confessed to the step-by-step process he took in eliminating every single slave owner he knew and could find that day.
This document was presented to the court as Bible against Turner and his story spread through the American plains, from the racist abolitionist North to the slave-trading South.
Nat was the Osama Bin Laden of his day.
The problem, however, as there are many problems with retelling or the accurate telling of history is that Turner committed the crime of wanting his freedom at all costs, just as American founding fathers had ventured to liberate themselves from the grips of an imperialist Britain, so Turner sought to wring himself free from bondage.
His insurrection initiated slave patrols in the south. Slave dogs began to roam plantation fields. Negroes were from there on forbidden from learning how to read, write, and also to congregate in numbers larger than three or four, at a time.
Because if one negro can plan and execute an insurrection, what then, might other negroes do?
Had Nat Turner successfully revolted against his masters, mustered hundreds, possibly, thousands of other negroes, and whites, unto his cause, to rid all black men, women, and children from the bondage of slavery, perhaps we would know him as a triumphant liberator instead of an insurrectionist.
Wording matters.
The same way we see Washington, we would see Turner.
But Turner was black. A black slave. Turner was property.
There’s a higher chance you’ve heard of William Wallace, the freedom fighter turned martyr whose story or legend was adapted into a big-budget movie where Mel Gibson brought Scottish knight to the silver screen.
At the end of this violent film, we watch as Wallace, played by Gibson, is stretched over a table whilst in entrails are removed from him as he suffers the gruesome death at the hands of the State. He manages to ring out a shout for freedom just before his life is taken from him with force. This heroic depiction of William Wallace, the enemy of the English state, is etched into our memories as a man who fought to protect his people, his land, and their dignity in the face of an encroaching king.
But Nat Turner was tortured, hanged, and quartered. His shout for freedom came by the same means as that of Wallace but the difference is that Wallace, a marauder, and criminal, an enemy of the state, an insurrectionist murderer was martyred whereas Turner was captured and treated like a dog.
But to the American mind, he was equal to a dog. A dog that turned on its owner and with the help of other dogs managed to kill several dog owners. He was hunted down, captured, humiliated, enchained, violently wrestled from doghood down to vermin-hood, where, as less than human, less than property, less than a dog, he was ripped to pieces and those pieces burned and what was leftover discarded in some undiscoverable place.
The difference between Wallace, George Washington, and Turner is that the first two were white men whose criminal acts have gone down in history as heroism in the face of tyranny.
Turner, having lost his physical battle and the ensuing cultural bone as well, was a devil in the eyes of every white person in America, except, say, William Lloyd Garrison:
“Washington, who with our fathers purchased our freedom by blood and violence, are lauded as patterns of patriotism and Christianity. Nat Turner, and his associates, who endeavored to work out their own salvation from an oppression incomparably more grievous and unjust than our fathers endured, were treated as rebels, and murderous assassins, and were ruthlessly hung, or shot like wolves, and their memory is corrupt.” (February 13, 1836)
Anywho, I’m angry when reading about Nat’s failed revolt. I’m angrier yet at the circumstances that existed that forced Nat to revolt in the first place.
Note: This post is the transcription of a sermon I delivered to a Brazilian congregation circa May 2014 (I was 23 years old then, a child, really). It is more of an essay or, rather, a pensées on the life and legacy of Job, the Old Testament character who endured some of the more painful losses in all of biblical literature. My focus in this sermonette was on the importance of preaching to the self as Job did in his moments of utter hopelessness. Too often we can speak these words of truth to others whilst not believing a lick of it ourselves. That is the focus of this message.
The Ever Preaching Heart
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God. – Job 1:20-22
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lordsaid to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.” So the Lordsaid to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lordand smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. – Job 2:1-10
“We best defend the Lord’s glory by speaking first TO Him about unbelieving men rather than speaking first ABOUT Him to unbelieving men.” ― Sinclair B. Ferguson
Job’s Life
Blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. – Job 1:1
Job’s Life from Gods Perspective
No one like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil. – Job 1:8
Essay
Job was a man who was highly esteemed by his generation due to his piety. Men honored him and respected him. What sets Job apart from stories that sound like his is that Job praised God in the storm. In the middle of his torment, his faith remained and the message of God survived in his heart.
Job preached the word he believed to himself. He ministered that which he had learned and studied and received from God to those around him but also to himself. Again and again, he gave God glory and honor.
We should be no different. Because Job did not curse God, because he did not sin towards God, his life became a message unto the world. His world first and then that of those around him. After his first encounter with the devil’s work against his farm life and family, Job did not deny his faith. In prevailing, God then honored Job in front of the devil with beautiful words. God himself said there was no other man on earth like little old Job.
When we live the message we believe. When we live up to the gospel we are so proud of, our lives become a witness.
We spend so much time trying to take Jesus to people or people to Jesus that we forgot what the gospel really is. It’s not just a sermon from a mountain top, a pulpit, or a lecture hall. The gospel is a new life, a new mentality, a new heart, new desires and passions, new identity. The gospel is the salvation of our souls.
When we understand that our main focus has to be on drawing closer and closer to God and His presence, then everything around us will also be affected and transformed by the Spirit of God.
The time and money we spend on trying to evangelize the world while our own hearts grow dim and dark is ridiculous. Funds here. Missionaries there. “Send them! Send them! Send the young and old! Send the singles, couples, and families! Send them one by one or by the dozen!”
The time has come for us to focus more on living our faith before the eyes of God with integrity and trust, for like Job, when the difficult times come to destroy and turn us away from God, the message we preach to ourselves will impress, maybe transform the hearts of men around us.
Reminding our minds of who God is, what He’s done, when, and how. Being inspired daily by the message of the gospel and acting upon it with faith. Knowing that Jesus came, lived, died, and resurrected for us individually is tantamount to the furthering of the gospel to the world!
How can we preach a message we have not believed? How will men and women from different cultures and ways of life believe that Jesus has the power to transform, to save, to make all things new when we live an old, dead, and ugly life? How will the gospel survive when the vehicle with which we use to carry it is rotten and falling apart. Our hearts, our minds, our bodies, and our words are vehicles that can catapult the gospel from town to town in no time. Yet, we impede the message of the cross because to us the message of the cross has no power. At least we live a life that claims so.
Job, in spite of all that disturbed him, losing property due to natural disasters, marauding criminals invading his land and making waste of his farm life, the catastrophic death of all of his children in one day, his diseased body, and finally the affliction of his flesh and bone, as his wife enticed him to curse God and die. Job did not let go of his God because Job knew the importance of God in life no matter the circumstances. Job so believed in the message of truth that a crumbling world around him did not break his spirit; though he grieved, he did not sin towards God by cursing Him for his personal trials and tempestuous afflictions.
In so doing, Job’s trust in God and trust in God’s words have brought comfort to many. Transformed the lifestyles of many. Given hope and joy. A new day. A new breath of fresh air. A new life even.
When we preach God’s word to ourselves, we are reminded of who God is to us personally. When that becomes the most important thing to us, our lives become a new living testimony to the world. To our families, our neighbors, our friends, our church, our community, and our entire world.
Believe in the message, live it, trust it, let it dominate your entire being and you will be an evangelist, not by ministry, but through life.
There’s much to be said by how many words are spoken, also by how many are left unsaid. We rarely delve into how quickly someone answers a question, perhaps a nervous tick, pride, or presumption are the precursor to these witty remarks. But seldom do we stop or slow a conversation down enough to realize how a question may affect the hearer.
That glazed-over look they have when a question hits somewhere deep, so deep that it causes them a moment of panic and they have to do something or anything possible to swim up and out of the pit of self-realization. Their reaction is to answer the question as quickly as possible because to think about things, especially the thing you had taken this long to learn, is to look weak or to be perceived as an obtuse individual. No one wants to be portrayed as obtuse. That’s too crass a qualification. So a quip, a verbal jab, a cackle, and possibly a crude joke to dissuade the seriousness of the question you were just asked helps you do away with the all-too-real possibility that you have been wrong about something for decades.
I believe I saw this look earlier this week whilst in conversation with a peculiar gentleman. An older gentleman, of course. I did say decades did I not? This sir, this mister, this gentleman I speak of has the given post-military-serviceman look. The military haircut, clean-shaven chin, furrowed eyebrows and eyes stook in a squint as if the sun were always before them. He dawns a bottom down, which he neatly tucks into his blue jeans. Belted, of course. Wears boots, drives a Harley, and also owns a truck.
I once asked him if he had served, if he had spent time in the desert or in a foreign village where the language was indecipherable, the food undigestible, and the living conditions, well, unlivable. His response, after hiding a hint of embarrassment, was no. He reads well and reads much. Consumes literature about soldiers, mercenaries, real and well, half-real military veterans. His personal favorites are navy seal veterans who now speak at veteran conventions, TED talks, police academies, late night shows, and men who have written enough books about their personal traumas at home before the wars and their personal traumas after the war that their lives can be made into Tom Clancy movies for decades to come.
I’m always suspicious of the military types. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with someone who admires the work of valiant soldiers, their sacrifice on the field, and the continued sacrifice to live with trauma once they return from battle. That’s honorable. Although I find American wars ethically and morally questionable. But that’s not the point.
I’m suspicious of the types who idealize the military complex, the ruggedness, the rough and tough stance, the superman, the American boy-turned-man by blood, sweat, and the pure desire to disintegrate the enemies of the state. But I am even more suspicious of the type that has never joined nor served, has not participated in any military drills, national guard, paramilitary venture, not even the local police force. Their admiration for this kind of life, or rather, service, irks me.
Either way, this gentleman I speak of has the look of a healthier and somewhat younger Clint Eastwood. Same characteristics except, well, like I said, healthier and fifty years young, because I think Clint Eastwood is anywhere between 100 to 110 years old at this point. This man I reference looks rugged and tough but is actually quite docile and kind. His words are direct, his attitude astute, his conduct like that of a serviceman, his gait is wide, consuming the hallway as he walks even though he’s quite slim for his age. I presume he works out. He gives off the vibe of someone who would. He’s a gentle soul. Laughs when his face isn’t shut-in. Jokes when in the company of others. He will stop his day just to show me pictures of his granddaughter, which, let’s be honest, is one of the nicest things anyone can do. Anyone who shares family photos, especially of cute little babies with others, is a kind-hearted human being. And he is. I truly believe he is.
But today’s post is a reflection of a conversation that this gentleman and I had earlier this week on the voices that dominate our headspace.
We were discussing recent events, the news, and also the violent overthrow of a statue of a Canadian saint whose legacy is under scrutiny. The statue in question was toppled, spray painted and decapitated with the help of several angry people wielding sledgehammers.
Toppled statue of Egerton Ryerson.
The gentleman was more concerned with this toppling and beheading of a statue than he was concerned with the history of the individual whose statue had been toppled.
Side note: the person in question began Canadian residential schools, where, under the authority of Canada’s government and with the help of local churches with the social support of white Canadians, many indigenous families had their children forcibly taken from them and forced into schools that would erase the savage Indian from their memory along with their cultural identity. This saint would teach these kidnapped children to hate everything about their former life. This is this man’s legacy.
But this gentleman wasn’t focused on the legacy and history of this saint. He was more perturbed by the toppling of statues and severing of metallic heads. This, to his hardened character, was a step too far.
“These people hate people like me. Wealthy white men.” Paraphrasing the gentleman. He points his index finger at his forehead as the last few words fade from his mouth. I have to complete them for him to which he reaffirms. As if the reality of him being wealthy and then white, lastly, a man, are all too heinous a combination that to speak such words in public is dangerous. Thankfully, at least in my opinion, they are not.
This gentleman has studied well, in a professional scope and also a religious one. He has attended and graduated from a renowned religious institution. One we both know well and whose history in academia is envied. He has sat under a very prominent lecturer who our shared religious world respects very much. So, when it comes to philosophy and theology we have a common ground so in this conversation, I dared to approach his fears and agitation from there.
“I need to ask you a question,” I began, trying not to sound too forward as his anxiety over the severed statue head was at its peak. He used laughter to ward it off but it wasn’t working. We both noticed. “While in seminary, say, during your spiritual and vocational formation and throughout the many years of your schooling, how many of the writers, theologians, and teachers that you had read, whose materials you had consumed, were NOT of European descent? You know many books from non-white writers have you read?”
This, at this moment, is where I can see it. Even if for a split second, the tiniest amount of time passes but I see his eyes brighten, decades of bliss are pushed away from the seat of comfort and the reality of blindness and seclusion are made bare on his conscience and I see it.
Hands in pockets, back stiff, and a visible agitation is made clear as he bounces off his feet and responds as quickly and jovially as possible, proud of the answer but still, somewhat unaware of the gravity of his answer.
“None.”
I nod. He nods. I smile. He does too, for a bit, we trade a few more pleasant remarks over our religious circles and culture. He blames the culture. I blame the religious circles for being part of the problem that started the culture-related problem for us. We exchange our salutations and greetings once more, he reaches for his phone to show me more baby pictures, we both smile, and off he goes in military step, drill, and cadence back to the Forsaken Land of Statues of Genocidal Murderers and their Statuette Preservationists.
Racial Catalog and Inventory
This interaction, this conversation between the gentleman and I was another step in my realization of just how anemic some of my white friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and the like are about the subject of race, racism, scientific racism, structural racism, and so on.
In working my way through Daniel Hill’s book White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White, I realized, as Daniel did, that too many white people are unaware of just how much white literature, film, history, wars, triumph, culture, music, cuisine, philosophy, theology, politics, and policies have influenced their thinking.
Like this gentleman I conversed with, he was unaware of just how much of his theological framework was produced and built upon by white theologians, professors, mentors, pastors, deacons, elders, friends, parents, and social clubs who lacked the diversity to help him understand the hostility toward a statue of a man who purposely caused the deaths of hundreds of Indigenous children and destroyed the identity of thousands more through residential schooling.
So, I made a list of the the voices that dominate my headspace. Voices that have influenced me over time.
And yes, having grown within a particularly religious environment I can attest to the fact that I, too, was influenced by a generally Eurocentric body of scholarship and work.
(Note: Allow me to pause here and explain to the reader that there is nothing inherently wrong in studying European folklore, history, literature, theology, and social formation. In fact, it is healthy for one’s educational formation to study European history. There is nothing wrong there. What I am challenging here is Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, or blindness and unawareness of just how much one has been influenced by Eurocentric materials and later finds themselves dismissing other perspectives, usually the perspectives of minority groups. One usually precedes the other.)
So, the books we read in our religious circles were written by European or white American scholars. The religious commentaries we referenced were written by European or white American scholars. The scholastic structures we followed and graduated from were produced and later adopted into our denomination by European or white American scholars, and listen, I’m a black kid from Brazil at this point, unaware, myself, that much of my formation is absent of the voices of people who look just like me.
I hadn’t realized this until recently.
I have had to revisit much of my ‘scholarly’ materials to determine who it was that influenced my thoughts, opinions, both political and scientific opinions, my convictions, and so on. And I found that especially surrounding my religious formation, which, to me is the most important aspect of my life, was formed, built, structured, developed, and advanced by European or white American men.
If I had not been a minority (black and Brazilian), I would have assumed, like the gentleman had, that the decapitation of this statue was more egregious an act than the man whose statue was toppled, racist and murderous legacy.
Chances are I would not even have ventured into who the individual was, why his statue was there, or what he had done to merit the honor of being memorialized. I would have spent more time decrying the iconoclasts than questioning the idolization of the iconophiles who erected his statue in the first place.
Like the gentleman, I would be oblivious to the struggles of minority groups because everyone I know, from my parents, my friends, my siblings, my community, my schools, post-graduate studies, theologians, lecturers, pastors, deacons, ministers, worship teams, accountants, builders, architects, engineers, managers, colleagues, executives, and with the exception of a few cleaners and laborers I happen upon on my way into and out of work, are all white.
Without committing to this inventory of thought formation, I, too, would have never realized just how much of my society has been set up to shield me from its hyper eurocentric or exceptionalist white American inception.
But this is somewhat of a contradiction because being a black man in American (or North America) I was obviously aware of the many horrors and genocides that preceded me in these lands. What troubles me further, however, is how unaware I was about how much of my educational formation had been comprised of Eurocentric thinkers.
Having purposely gone out of my way to listen to women, women of color, black men, Latinos, Filipinos, Koreans, Native Americans and so, has opened my mind to more historical events and perspectives, which, have been and continue to be denied by my Eurocentric and white American circles to this day.
See the correlation?
And this has helped me realize that the proponents of ‘Why topple that statue? What’s next? Me?’ dismissive trope are people who have very few friends of color (or none at all) or little to no influence from minority individuals in his or her life.
And this places a stumbling block in front of them where they cannot learn on the current issues of race, racism, racial equity, history, and so forth because most if not all of the voices that have influenced them up until now have never experienced these wrongs. In fact, the voices that have influenced them have all but participated in the wrongs, in overt or covert ways.
Minorities…
So, if you’re a minority like me and you’re reading this I need you to understand that when you’re in conversation with someone who is hostile to current events and dismissive of our calls for justice, reparations, remuneration, racial reconciliation, a push for more accurate and all-encompassing history books, a need for holding bad cops and killer cops accountable, and the toppling of statues of individuals who perpetrated genocide, understand that the person you’re in conversation with is working from a limited and restricted perspective.
They do not have the language by which to define what has happened. They do not have the empathy by which to understand these wrongs. They do not share the community hurt that it takes for change. They are limited in their understanding and restricted in their emotional capacity.
The only thing that will help them venture out of this circle of Eurocentric and white American bliss is when they befriend people of color who are compassionate enough to teach them and love them out of ignorance.
Hate and violence will only drive them further into their white fog of ignorance. It may in fact rekindle a white superiority complex so, please, what is done must be done from love toward love.
So go befriend that person and over time, time allowing, educate them. Share with them your personal experiences. They will begin to notice, time allowing, that whenever whiteness comes into contact with non-whiteness, Whiteness (with a capital W) customarily wins.
If You’re White…
And if you’re white, please, commence upon the project of cataloging the voices that have influenced you over time. Produce an inventory of the news stations you listen to or watch, what these anchormen or anchorwomen have to say about minorities, whose books you’re reading, music and genres you’re listening to, political sources, and origins you’re consuming and being shaped by.
Are they overwhelmingly white?
100% white?
Fret not. By God’s grace, there is nothing wrong with listening to white voices or in being white. It’s a blessing to be white as much as it is in being non-white.
But you’re holding out on yourself by limiting your understanding of our very diverse world by listening to only white voices.
Go out. Befriend people of color and listen to their stories. Not to challenge them with a well, maybe that wasn’t racism, that was just a jackass being mean, kind of narrative. No. Listen. Sit there and once the story has been told, sit with that reality. Digest it. You don’t need to rush to save, to defend, to even give a response. Your presence in our pain is more important than your perceived solutions to it.
Over time you’ll begin to realize that there is a wealth of voices out there that have so much to offer and add to the white voices you have been overwhelmed by.
Befriend people of color. Venture outside your monochromatic world and community. There’s fear, at first, yes, I understand. But with time you will find that fear of ‘the other’ dissipate and disappear as you realize they are no more different from you with the exception that they have a bit more pigmentation than you do. And sometimes they’ll speak a different language. That’s okay. It’s a beautiful addition to our expansive and diverse world.
Read up James Baldwin’s material. Listen to women of color on the news. Minorities concerning political science and economics. Pick up history books that were written by reliable and competent historians of color who can give you added and historically accurate perspectives on the issues of race and the formation of our western world.
If you’re a religious person, read up on materials written by persons who are not from Europeans or white Americans.
Believe me, you’ve read quite a lot from white Europe and white America and you will do yourself a favor to learn more from others as well.
Put Calvin, Luther, Edwards, and White (I know, given), aside and pick up the works of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Jemar Tisby, Justin Giboney, William Lloyd Garrison (white), Robert Kumamoto, Susan Neiman (white), Edward Ball (white and descendant of a Klansman), James H. Cone, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (who wrote extensively on the horrors of lynchings of blacks in the Deep South), W.E.B. du Bois, Ben Crump, Brian Zahnd, Lemuel Haynes, Kristie Anyabwile, and Anthea Butler, just to name a few.
Diversify your friend and learning pool. Diversify it because it’ll make you more compassionate toward the harms done to your neighbors. Those who are screaming, smashing windows, toppling statues, and beheading them with sledgehammers are exhausted by how quiet their white neighbors have been for decades; whereas others have been complicit for centuries.
What we’re seeing today is the side effect of an exhausted generation. One that has seen and experienced way too much silence and ignorance from their white counterparts who, for the most part, have been at the top of the food chain of western civilization for the better part of the last four hundred years and who they can partner with to make the world a better, less hate-filled place.
But this cannot be accomplished, this step toward progress and reconciliation, if so many of our white neighbors are blind to the problem: willful ignorance and apathy.
We need people on our side who will be more upset about a man whose legacy involves kidnapping, murder, genocide, and coverup than people who are upset with a statue being defaced and toppled.
Please, come out of the bubble of white bliss and into the community of humankind, which, by all standards, is beautifully colored.
You’re colored too. That skin of yours ain’t all white. Pale, maybe. But not white.
Whiteness is a social construct invented by people who wanted to use physical characteristics to differentiate between people groups to enslave some, liberate others, enrich some, and exploit others.
Whiteness is an inherently evil concept. Being white is beautiful.
Join us in fighting racism and dismantling the statues of horrible criminals.
Produce your catalog, produce your inventory, and go out and befriend, learn, love, listen, and grow.
I love you. Most of us do too. We just don’t like your lack of sympathy and your willful ignorance concerning our pain.
Chech out my brief review of my new favorite book – Life of a Klansman: A Family History of White Supremacy written by award-winning author, Edward Ball.
“White supremacy is not a marginal ideology. It is the early build of the country. It is a foundation on which the social edifice rises, bedrock of institutions. White supremacy also lies on the floor of our minds. Whiteness is not a deformation of thought, but a kind of thought itself.” – Edward Ball
I’m in conversation with friends who believe that if they fail to fast for twelve hours straight they’ll lose their blessings. Some have even gone the distance to say they have fasted or abstained from food and drink for days at a time. Draining their body of nutrients and their soul of life a day at a time in hopes of attaining something from God in the process. Their purpose in bringing harm to their body was to convince God, perhaps, that they deserve something great. Why wouldn’t God bless someone who chastises their flesh?
Too often I find myself in these situations as well. What should I sacrifice so that I can manipulate the hands of the Divine to bless me? And, while in the process of attempting to convince Him of my goodness or devout pursuits, hopefully, I won’t fail or give up and thus lose that which I dream of. That which I ask for.
It could be a disease that I hope to be healed of. And an opportunity to write dozens of books and have at least half of them make it onto the NYT bestsellers list. Not that that makes the book any good but it would surely bring in a lot of cash. Perhaps the opportunity of a lifetime to work for the New York Times as a well-paid columnist or for the New Yorker as a go-to writer on observations of a Christianized culture. Perhaps as a writer for The Atlantic on the topic of cheese and watchmaking. I know very little about cheese and a thing or two about watches so I’d definitely qualify for their writing staff. And my mind sets off in hopes of using God, yes, I said ‘using’ because that’s what we like to do. Let’s be honest. Using God to get that which I want. And the problem arises when our means of ingratiating His Holiness we can give in to a state of mind that is not conducive to our spiritual growth or our mental well-being.
A Story
Take for example a person who is praying for a sick family member whose health is failing. This loved one has been diagnosed with a terminal disease of which there is no recovery or solution. Their time on this earth is shortened, their lifespan stilled, and their hopes and dreams are all decimated by this revelation. The Christian person in this family sets off to pray for change and a miracle. They make it their purpose in life to turn these events around because God is a God who operates miracles. And He does. He has.
Therefore our Christian friend places it in their heart to fast for the next six months. They set their heart and stomach to abstain from food three days a week, form water one day a week, and from sexual relations with their spouse for three weeks out of every month.
This in turn becomes a challenge in which the Believer willfully sacrifices pleasures and desires for the sake of pursuing God and a miracle. This isn’t, per se, evil or a bad thing, nor, can we resolutely conclude that such abstinence and ascetic tendencies are good in and of themselves. But either way, our Believer sets off. The first week, no food for three days, no water for one day, and complete abstinence from sexual pleasures with their spouse. All is well. The fervency of prayer alive, the reading of scriptures consistent, and the hopes of a miracle for that sickly family member intact.
As the days progress into weeks our believer is experiencing a rise in faith and spiritual growth where their persistence and discipline have become known to other believers and they commend this effort. Fellow church members join the fast because they see the immediate result of spiritual rededication and they too want to see this sickly family member recover, miraculously so.
Weeks turn into months and our Believers’ appearance begins to change, their muscles depleted, their waist has since slimmed, and their face is somewhat gaunt but their spiritual renewal is at an all-time high. Their bible study sessions beam with radiance and wisdom. Members flock to these sessions as their hopes are again elevated at the possibility that God will in fact bring forth a miracle and heal their ailing acquaintance.
The Believers’ spouse is proud, too, and possibly riddled with shame because they are willing to celebrate this new spiritual journey but feel their sexual needs and intimacy are falling behind. There is a persistence to maintain spiritual growth and also shame in feeling that their physical and emotional needs are not being met. The spouse, albeit in agreement with this pursuit, is divided in heart and mind.
Our sick family members’ health has shown signs of improvement. Their medical practitioner has produced tests and images of cells in remission, health in appreciation, and confidence in their treatment.
Applause and celebratory festivities are in stock but we’re only three months into the six-month fast challenge for a miracle. Our Believer has not given up hope. The Believer stands strong and reassured that God is on their side. Why else would God allow the sick family member to get better? He most certainly hears our prayers and petitions. He sees our sacrifice, our willful abstinence as a sign of commitment. So with great news in tow, the Believer strives for more consistency and dares to increase the level of sacrifice they are willing to endure so that God can come through with an answer.
For the next three months, the last three months that is, our believer has increased their fast from three to four days of out the week. They refrain from consuming water two days out of the week instead of one. And, seeing how the abstinence from sexual pleasures has produced some betterment of health in their sick family member they now abstain from sex with their spouse for the next ninety days.
This, you know, will bring the Believer closer to God because sex is earthly, fleshly, and perhaps, depending on the circles you move in and out of, it is considered dirty.
So our Believer is nearing the finish line of their challenge. All eyes are now on the Believer. They practice their fast with pride. They might even share the news of their fasting with coworkers and friends. Why shouldn’t they know? When the miraculous happens the world will know and people will come to God because of it. The smell of food no longer bothers our Believer, they’re tempted to forgo food altogether, forever possibly. They begin to look down on other believers who are a bit rounded on the edges, those who enjoy three steaks a week, bacon for breakfast and consume wine as a means of enjoyment. Our Believer thirsts for water but is confident and proud enough to forego it when the time comes. What else is sacrifice if not foregoing the self? And regarding sexual desires? That well has all but dried up. The Believer reassures their spouse that this is for God. This challenge, this pursuit, is so that others may come to believe in the Miracle Worker and thus, possibly, be saved as well. So, the sexual repression and sexual oppression within the marriage are at an all-time high. But, sacrifices are sacrifices and if it doesn’t hurt or cause us discomfort and pain then we’re doing it wrong.
Our Believer willingly admits to themself the idea of their want for sexual intimacy but continually shuns the thought of sexual gratification from their mind. They struggle, however, with thoughts of other persons in compromising situations, delicate situations that rekindle more debased desires, wanton desires for others, and this, is somewhat a surprise to the Believer but they keep it to themselves. Temptations are but the attack of the enemy to fault us and interrupt our pursuits, you know.
So, this fast, this challenge is full-blown downhill, a speeding train that cannot be stopped. Our Believer has witnessed a faint harvest of their efforts and cannot be dissuaded to stop, even when their medical practitioner advises against such austere measures of ascetic living conditions. The Believer spurns the medical advice and scolds the physician for not having enough faith.
They see their sacrifice as a call from God, a Divine purpose, an undeniable fact that God works in those who sacrifice the most, and our Believer will not relent.
The sickly family member whose health had improved in the first three months of this six-month challenge is now crippled with stomach pains, vomits blood, and defecates bloody stool. They are rushed to the emergency room where they can be stabilized, watched, monitored, and tested for further findings.
Our Believer gets news of this and immediately thinks the enemy, the Darkest Soul, the Ancient of Evils, the Deceiver, the Nefarious One, the Devil, as we call him, is on the rise against them and their challenge, and their family member who was on the track to a miraculous recovery. They consider this a direct assault on their faith and they are undeterred by this news and they perceive their efforts as Godly and unstoppable.
A visit is made to the ailing family member in the hospital, reassurances of miraculous recovery are made, prayers are offered, tears are spent, hours fly by, other church members visit, more reassurances are made, promises produced, prophetic utterances of longevity, long days of life, and family and dreams are given. Everyone in the hospital is aware of the ten, twenty, and at times forty church members who flood the hospital at any given time of the day in faith that this sick person will recover.
They have seen what a little sacrifice in the life of one member can accomplish so they all set off to fast and sacrifice a little in their own life for the benefit of this sick person.
Days pass, prayers are made, tests are done, and a physician gives the results. The disease is back with a vengeance, treatment has only worked to stall its progression but not deter or defuse it. All that could be done from a scientific perspective was done. The ailing family member will not walk away from this bed as they have all but a few days left to live.
Church members are now solemn but accepting of this final statement. Some linger about their church halls, family gatherings, and private prayer closets still hoping for the miraculous.
Our Believer, our favorite Believer in this story, however, is undeterred, albeit, confused. They sweat under the weight of this responsibility to be the only person of faith left in the family and church community who still believes in the power of the Miracle Worker.
Their stress levels are at an all-time high, there is continued fighting between them and their spouse which only increases in frequency with the unfortunate news.
This stress leaves our believer susceptible to more thoughts of sexual gratifications that can be accomplished through other means, other people. They push these thoughts away but they are more prominent now, more consistent. That other church member would be more understanding of their situation and would possibly be a better spouse, too. Perhaps befriending them in this challenge was the best thing possible. An opportunity to meet someone they could better fulfill themselves with later. It only makes sense that God would allow them to grow closer together as the bitter and bickering spouse distances themselves further and further. It is all making sense.
But for now, the Believer must give their undivided attention and willful sacrifice on behalf of the bedridden family member. More time is spent in the hospital than at home. God understands this sacrifice. More attention is given to the ailing family member than work and bills at home. God understands this too. Our Believer no longer attends church nor do they fraternize with fellow church members because their faith has soured. Rumors are they no longer believe in miracles. You see, their faith, because of their lack of sacrifice, consistency, asceticism, and discipline, has all but waned and disappeared. They’re too busy indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, with their daily meals, suppers, and deserts. They drink as much as they like without any prohibitions.
They give in to one another sexually, and this gives our believer a rise. How could they have so much sexual fulfillment and fruition in a time such as this? News of pregnant church members reaches our Believers’ ears but the Believer shuns it. How could we speak of new life when there is one that needs rescuing?
Joy, happiness, gladness, and gratitude are no longer terms that pass through our Nelievers’ lips. What is there to be joyful for? The miraculous has yet to take place.
Our sickly family member is on the doorsteps of the beyond, their body resembles a corpse, our Believers’ body resembles that of a corpse too, but they’re a bit more animated.
The dying family member calls the remaining family to their bedside to bid all farewell. Many are present, others cannot muster the courage to attend. The hospital limits the number of guests.
Our Believer is firm at their side, still, quietly persistent, fasting, abstaining still, trusting, and knowing God will deliver.
The dying family member shares a few memories of love, joy, and laughter, as many as they can because they are weak. A physician joins the procession only to advise the dying family member to use their words wisely and sparingly because talking will drain them of the little bit of time they have left.
Hugs are exchanged. ‘Get well soon’ balloons are removed from the room but flowers are left behind. Tears are spent and goodbyes are given. As the hours move on so do the visitors. Their hopes have all but vanished and we’re left with our Believer and the recipient of their prayers, the dying family member.
Here, the Believer comes to a crossroad. At this point, as the heart monitor begins to process the transition between life and death, the beating drum of life within a person’s chest that begins to cease, our believer is undecided, perhaps, on how to cope with this situation.
My God is a miracle worker and He hears my prayer!
And our family member succumbs to their terrible disease, expiring on this bed, the same one from which their physician said they would not walk away.
Our Believer is perplexed. Their six-month challenge has been cut short, not because the miraculous took place but because a disease took someone’s life.
Here, we know, is where an unraveling of the self begins to take place.
Questions are made in secret, in the mind, and in the depths of the soul as to what went wrong and where.
Perhaps our Believer should have done five days of fasting. That’s it. Five was the appropriate number. And water? Although it is dangerous to forego water, appropriate hydration for three, maybe four days at a time, but a sacrifice is a sacrifice and our Believer failed to trust God for sustenance. Christ relied on angels for reprieve but our Believer doubted. And doubt leads to missed spiritual opportunities, you know.
And what about sexual intimacy? Here, our Believer, having gone so long without it, begins to believe they no longer need it. Because the relational part of their marriage has all but crumbled, and this a result of their spouse and not their own, the only reason to keep the marriage is for sexual gratification but because our Believer thinks it is not a necessary element of life they forego marriage altogether because what is the point of being married to a cantankerous spouse when one can be married to Christ?
Our Believer has the option of accepting their family members’ death as a result of life. Diseases are part of life, you know. Death too. Or, our Believer can come to the rationalization that this unfortunate loss of life came about as the result of the lack of faith and a lack of assiduous concern for spiritual matters in their personal life.
Our Believer begins to scold other church members because their carelessness caused this death. They leave their church body. They create a new church ministry under the benign name of miracles, wonders, and such, as a means to attract real believers, those who are willing to pay the price for miracles.
They disparage the lack of ascetic efforts of others. Set strict guidelines for fasting regimens. The enjoyment of other benign pleasures like attending sporting venues, playing sports, watching television, catching the newest flick in theatres, and drinking any beverage that is suspect of containing alcohol is strictly forbidden and prohibited in this ministry.
If one is not willing to sacrifice much for God then God will not answer prayers.
Sex is a byword and forgiveness is no longer extended to those who fail with sexual sins. They’re brought to the front of the congregation and shamed for the practices, made to confess in front of all, and then disciplined for the same. Married couples are to abstain from sexual intimacy at our Believers’ discretion. At times without cause and other times without end.
Our Believer is a full-blown critic of simple faith and cannot imagine a life without rigorous sacrificial efforts. Returning to a lifestyle without such limitations and rules would mean returning to a life without miracles and wonders.
We have yet to see any miracles take place in our Believers’ life. They presume that the challenges of running a new minister, of an impending divorce, of critique of their new ways of rigorous living as attacks from the devil so this pushes them further into their disillusionment.
Our Believer is trapped by the fear of letting go and letting God. They cannot allow for such a life without rules, regulations, sacrifice, fasting, and such, because if they give in to a spiritual life based on faith and grace they will have to dissolve the wall of works and sacrifices they have built around themselves.
What then, has become of our Believer?
They are not living by faith but by fear. If one fails to fast, they fail to receive. If one fails to sacrifice time, pleasure, sex, fun, entertainment, family, marriage, and the self, then one fails to receive the grander things of God.
How else might we get something from God if we do not give Him something first?
Therefore our Believer is trapped and blinded by their own desires, which are first were prudent and kindhearted but turned into something destructive and all-consuming because the approach was not to glorify God in all things, win or lose, life or death, miracle or no miracle, but to prove to the self that if we do something for God then God will do something for us.
Our Believer is consumed by fear. Fueled by it actually.
And at this point, there are only two true alternatives left for our Believer. They will either continue into this disillusionment, amassing a following so great, a group of disciples so attracted to this ascetic rigidity that our Believer will begin to think they are a mini-god who speaks for God at a moments notice. There is no medium of revelation. Any reading of scriptures that is not first translated by our Believer is wrong. The congregation and its adherents will then rise in numbers, persistence, and cultish behavior. Any attempt to dissuade them will only strengthen their resolve. Their end is in themselves.
The other alternative is that our Believer will dissolve under the weight of repressed sensualities, commit a number of financial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and sexual deviances and sins, and will be rightfully ousted from their position of power and prominence.
And it is there, in their wallowing and shame that they will have an opportunity to revisit their true faith, one of grace, mercy, love, and trust, or, in their undiminished pride, they will abandon faith and God altogether.
Our believer transitions from belief, to asceticism, to disillusionment, to cultic behavior, and finally, either a rekindling of true faith or a dismantling of all belief.
All this in pursuit of manipulating the Divine.
In Closing
Christians, it is our duty to rely on God no matter what. This reliance is based more so on His character and His essence than on what He can give us or get us through. Mind you, God can and has allowed, even preferred many of His own to face all sorts of ills for reasons known only to Him. Should it be health or sickness, life or death, wealth or poverty, our resolve must be to focus on the essence of who our Creator; how we can grow in His grace and in His knowledge.
It is tempting, yes, to believe that by doing a you can receive b but if b is not in God’s plan for your life then no matter how much of a you do, how much you invest into it, how many friends and family members you have join you in the pursuit to attain b by overdoing a, if it is not God’s will it will not happen.
We become enslaved by the doing of things for God to receive things from God. The drinking or the abstaining from drink. The listening or not listening. The eating or not eating not understanding that Christ has delivered us from these ascetic tendencies because they serve no purpose on the grand scheme of His master plan for our lives.
16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Colossians 2:16-23
This is not to discourage the believer from prayer or fasting for their personal spiritual growth or for a miracle in any and all circumstances, but it is a warning for you to not become a slave of results or to think you can manipulate the Divine for your own selfish needs. To think that you can give enough to change the Divine is foolish.
Men and women have done so in the past, yes, but those were circumstances to help teach these people that God’s character, His faithfulness supersedes all else.
“if we are faithless, he remains faithful” 2 Timothy 2:13
We must find comfort in Him otherwise we live for these fasting sessions, these lengthy prayer sessions, these unnecessarily lengthy bible study sessions, and revival conferences that if we go without we believe we are missing out on something greater when in fact we fail to realize that the greatest thing has already happened to us and for us.
Christ has died to forgive our sins. Restore our brokenness and reconcile us to the Father. He has granted us eternal life and not just that but the power and grace and presence of the Holy Spirit to guide us through this one. Helping and assisting others, all this in the name of Jesus.
I’m being a minimalist here but that’s because I’m short on time, or rather, article length.
Christ is faithful even when we are not. Seek Christ in all things more than you seek to manipulate things in the name of Christ.
Check out my new book review on this phenomenal book that tackles the emotionally and morally charged topic of reparations. It sheds new light on something we’re often too uncomfortable to look at, nevertheless discuss. Co-written by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson.
My reading list for 2021 is daunting and hopeless but that’s the fate of anyone who dares to read and read at length about history. I’ve spent the better part of the 2020 and now 2021 looking into the history of Christianity, say, with a focus on its first 100 years, then its first 500 years, and lately, its first 1000 years, as it spread west, north, east, and south of Jerusalem eventually becoming a multi-national superpower (empire) for good and, and later, for evil.
Either way, I’ve been reading, a lot. Just to get a grasp on how the self-less, self-sacrificing, redemptive and love-centric teachings of the Incarnate Son of God could lead people to commit such heinous atrocities in the name of Christ, wielding sword and shield with a red cross painted on the front in Holy Wars to reclaim ‘stolen lands’, enslave millions, later shipping them across the Atlantic to keep them in bondage on the basis of racial superiority under the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny.
Stuff like that. I’m figuring that stuff out. Much to read. Much to learn. Much weeping and lamenting to do. Much forgiveness to give and forgiveness to receive. Yada yada.
Anywho, here’s what I have on my non-fiction list for the year 2021. Hope there’s something on it you’ll find interesting enough to pick up and read in your free time.
Let me know if you do or if you have anything you believe I should add to my list. Please, only suggest material you (personally) consider the best of the best.
On History, Christian History, American History and Christianity and Culture:
WARNING: This elegy (a mournful or plaintive poem) was originally published on Olivet Theory on March 18, 2021. If it is read out of context it can sound like a virulent harangue lauded unfairly at an inconspicuous adversary. To avoid proof-texting my poem or misquoting me, I advise the reader to visit and interact with the original published post in its entirety for context. Please enjoy.
The life of the negro hangs on the balance of white men fighting to enslave us and later emancipate us. On white men fighting to degrade us and later value us. On white men segregating us and later integrating us. On white men ousting us from high-end communities and later welcoming us back. Preventing our educational growth and later investing in our intellectual wealth. Exploiting and later banking on our success. Warring to mistreat us on the basis of race and later warring to deny the existence of their initial and now continued hatred for us on the basis of race.
Fighting to destroy our faith and later fighting to force faith into us. Doing everything within their power to keep us at the center of their depravity and at the same time the center of their redemption from that depravity.
We are the blemish on their rise to power and the agency through which they will wash their hearts white.
It is a white man’s pursuit to grant all men the right and freedom of speech but it is the white man who waged war and terror on black bodies should they speak of the injustices and evils they have experienced at the hands of white men.
We are forced to hate each other through time by white men and forced to take responsibility for our self-hatred by statistics produced by the same.
Our ghettos go from bad to worse, we’re granted grants and funds, degraded for the same, elevated and denigrated, all, by white men.
There is no freedom under whiteness but at the same time freedom only comes through whiteness.
Our scope of history is white. Our sciences are white. Our institutions are white. Our workforce executive leadership is white. Our bosses, managers, supervisors, and company owners are white.
Our beauty standards and manufacturers are white.
Few care or dare to say that whiteness exists as a result of exploiting everything that is not white.
I say that my thoughts are expressed through the mediums provided us by white men and at the same time, I may be shamed into silence and obscurity by white men.
It was white men who forced my ancestors into slave ships. Convincing my black ancestors that this was the best way to obtain peace, wealth, and posterity. Turn on each other for security, they were told. For wealth. Let us not even speak of the conditions my ancestor’s lands are in today, the state of disrepair and destitution at the hands of white men.
It was white men who ravaged black women and created mixed-raced children in the West. Mixed-raced people were later shunned and exposed to further rape by white men.
The sugar, coffee, tobacco plantations, and gold and diamond mines that so enriched and established western societies were all made available through slave labor on the backs, knees, uteruses, and lives of black people for the betterment of white men.
But where is our reward?
Again, it was freedom from one form of slavery in the field to slavery in the city.
It was the white man who instilled in us a rage so violent for them but one we so continually enact on one another.
How many revolts have taken place, from the first slave ship that crossed the Atlantic to the last? How many uprisings, revolutions, rebellions by blacks against whites, by slaves against slaveholders and we only call them uprisings, revolutions, and rebellions because it is wrong and evil for a slave to step out of the confines of his chains to scream for freedom!
For a maimed, blind, toothless, scarred, burned, tongue-less, earless, disfigured, overworked, malnourished negro to want something other than twelve-hour workdays, seven days a week, every year of his life, for life, however short and miserable that life would turn out to be is defined as rebellious but according to whom?
Whose narrative defines this want for liberty, freedom, and basic decency as a dangerous uprising deserving of a violent squashing?
It is the hegemony, the rule, the status quo, the foundation, and the prolonged devastation from the hands of white men.
Six hundred years of evidence is stacked up against this insidious dichotomy created by the culture that stood and still stands to benefit from creating whiteness and the verdict of humanity whole, humanity colored, humanity black, will come back as guilty.
Guilty of kidnappings. Brainwashing. Raping. Devastating. Liquidating. Exploiting. Maiming. Murdering. Profiteering. Never having enough black bodies to finish your devilish damning God-forsaken work of hell that you fought for half a thousand years to keep and for who and for what?
To think we could just so easily forget?
You’re guilty of willful amnesia. Guilty of ignorance. Arrogance and apathy. Guilty of prejudice, discrimination, and racism.
Guilty on all counts and the charges will continue to rain down upon you until you are reduced to the very thing you wanted to reduce negroes to but have failed miserably in the process.
The Heavens watch and they wait.
This insidious whiteness that permeates will one day cease to exist and the world may return or perhaps progress to a more mundane faction or tribal schismatic system where color isn’t a thing. Where color is just that, color. Not profit nor gain.
The Heavens watch and weigh-in, Whiteness, your time has come.
In the last ten months I have broken down twice, weeping, uncontrollably like a child, as I relayed to my wife how broken-hearted I was. How hurt and ruined, lost in my religion, my culture, my identity, my substance, and existence.
How does one cope with trauma? How does one cope with the nightmares of past abuse? Trauma that if it were brought to light now would ruin already tattered relationships. How does one confront the reality of their identity in a sea of people who deny that identity? Deny the pain connected to the history of that identity. An identity I have come to love and adore more over the years and tenfold more this last year alone.
I’ve witnessed black men gunned down and their execution excused. I watched as pregnant women were catapulted on concrete, bellies full of life, squished violently under the force of men in authority. I’ve watched as black school-age girls, teenagers, little girls, were handcuffed, thrown into service vehicles, and carted off to jail, their parent’s cries for mercy ignored. Watched as young black boys, children, were gunned down for playing with toy guns that I had played with not too long ago as a kid.
Death. I saw death.
Not just that but I saw the compounding trauma of denial within other circles, a denial so vibrant I thought I was going insane.
Perhaps he did deserve to get shot in the back so many times.
Maybe he shouldn’t have fought off that neighborhood security guard who approached him at night and threatened him.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been driving that night.
Maybe she should have just stayed home from school that way that man would not have twisted her arm in so many places.
If he hadn’t had all those tattoos maybe he’d still be alive.
Maybe racial profiling is a good thing. It must be. How else are they going to get drugs off the streets?
If he had been playing with a baseball bat instead of a toy gun, maybe, maybe he wouldn’t have been shot.
If he had been playing with a basketball instead of a baseball bat he would be less of a threat to them.
Maybe if he hadn’t been playing basketball he would not have been perceived as a loiterer, a drug dealer even. They start them young you know!
If they had not congregated for worship in such a racially hostile environment perhaps he would not have walked in there to kill them.
If he hadn’t looked at her perhaps she would not have falsely accused him of rape. His lynching was his fault. There was no need for an open casket funeral service.
If he hadn’t stirred people up perhaps he would not have been assassinated.
If they had just known their place in society maybe their church would not have been bombed.
If he had just not been in the store that day, maybe they would not have had to put their knees on his neck.
It wasn’t the lack of oxygen that killed him. It was his lifestyle.
What Is Going On?
Hearing this from the secular scope of things made it manageable but hearing it from the people I thought were part of my religious community tore me apart.
I set off to critique the history of terror black people have endured within the United States and began a lengthy article on it. I wrote and gathered information.
Maybe if they read this they’ll understand. This is so simple! It’s history! It happened just 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, 1 year ago! It happened months ago. It was all caught on camera then and it is caught on camera now. We can all see the weapons drawn, the knees upon necks, the two seconds between arrival and execution.
It’s impossible to deny. Right?
Therefore I wrote, compiled, erased, continued, elaborated, linked, and confirmed, time and again that perhaps this brief history will inform both my secular and religious friends that we still have a race problem.
I wanted to name the write-up something, say, benign, something that would not incise hostility in the title.
Titling my article: White people, please, read this because it’s still going on!
Is catchy but problematic because I wanted to lure people in with something welcoming.
More so my religious friends. My Christian community.
The people who serve a middle-eastern Jesus. I wanted them to see His color and how others who looked like him and darker were continually mistreated throughout history and still, so, today!
That was it. That was me. Unnecessarily long. But, it got the message across. It got what I wanted to talk about across. We’re called to reconcile this venomous gap and we cannot ignore the reality of harm being done to those we call brothers and sisters in the faith. When you call me your brother in the faith that means you care about what happens to me so you’ll read this.
Right? Right?
So I wrote. Simple. Common sense. Simpleton terms because I’m simple. Uneducated and simple. And I wrote.
Weighing the death of black men and women. Weighing the death of George Floyd. Recapturing his final moments with words. It was impossible but I tried. Failed. Erased it. Rewrote it. Hated it. Struggled through it but I willed myself to make people understand the scene, the horror of it.
I then progressed naturally to events that happened in the not too distant past, the bombings, the assassinations, the lynchings, the killings, shootings, the murder of black people and their white friends as they fought to bring equality between the races.
Roman Ducksworth, shot dead by police.
Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, little girls, their bodies disintegrated by a bomb that exploded outside their church. They and their black family and church members the targets of this bomb.
James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner, civil rights activists unlawfully arrested and later released by the deputy sheriff to klansmen to be lynched, murdered.
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a seminarian who sought to show solidarity with his black brothers and sisters in Christ by attending civil rights demonstrations was unlawfully arrested, later released, and shot dead by a deputy sheriff.
I made the argument that the sentiments that allowed for such nefarious behavior to be exhibited openly back then is still present within our culture today.
I made the argument from scripture from the very divinely inspired words we all read from to point to the fact that our faith, the precursor and final entity of our faith, Christ, would not stand for this evil called racism.
That we must combat it wholeheartedly, not ignoring the need for reconciliation in every sphere of life possible. Mending the gaps we allowed to grow for generations, liberally so.
I finished my article. I was scared. Shaking in my seat. Later pacing back and forth, wondering, perhaps, if they simply read it they’ll understand the pain, the reality, the continuity and fluidity of this evil still present in our midst.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the article. How to share it. When. With whom.
So I asked my wife if she was willing to sit with me as I read through it with her. You know, she’s my proofreader, and this not her choice, of course. Spouses are de facto proofreaders so they usually listen or read through some of the worst material to ever make it to print.
We sat, me, excited as ever to share with her what I thought would be my mini-magnum opus or, better yet, my minimum opus, to my religious community that yes, look, we still have a problem! Let’s fix it together, in heaven’s name, people!
I began, I read, mumbling through parts, faltering here and there, struggling through, fighting to contain my excitement and pride over my work.
And as I made my way through the leaders and people who had lost their lives, senselessly so, to white violence, I reached a mental block where my mouth kept moving but my emotions found no ground.
At the mention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name something caught in my throat so violent-like that I couldn’t catch my breath. My pulse shot through the roof and my mind scattered, unhinged, unable to withdraw from this precipice of loss of control.
I sat and I couldn’t, under the threat of death, I promise to you, I could not go on because as I faced my wife and down at my work I was stuck in a place of utmost grief.
As if Dr. King Jr. and the others mentioned were my family members, they were me, and they, I, had just died. Shot. Hanged. Stabbed. Murdered.
It took so long, under my kind wife’s care for me to regain my composure. I had sweat through my clothes and the air in my lungs fought to stay away. I fought to keep it in. I didn’t know that feeling. Never had I felt it before. Exasperated, frightened, and voiceless I could do nothing at that moment but cry more tears than I had ever thought possible for me to release.
After some time I was able to finally read through my work. Shocked at my reaction. And perhaps, unwilling, at this point, to even publish it because without empathy they would not understand. They just wouldn’t get it!
I published it anyway. With not much import or care given to it.
Information Nation: Rediscovery and Rage
And I began to consume more literature that helped me understand why this world, racially speaking, was the way it was. How did it come to be this way? Why were my faith heroes of the last five hundred years or so such strident supporters of chattel slavery and at the same time prolific revivalist ministers and reformers?
Everywhere I turned I saw their materials in several seminary syllabi, their sermons recited from prominent faith leaders today, their lifestyles lauded at the highest possible stage as archetypes of our great Christian faith. Every facet of my faith was given to me by men who, had I been their contemporaries, would have seen me as property! Their books littered my bookshelf. Their teachings covered my Kindle e-bookshelf. Their dictionaries, their concordances, their teachings of “good doctrines and practices” were on my mind from the start. Their names plastered over conference halls and their work seen as almost divine.
Therefore I sought to read about my church history and secular history.
I invested time and research into this season of my life. Consuming literature about abuse, abusers, narcissists, culture, cultures, systems, systemic and systematic structures, race, ethnicity, ethnocentrism, xenocentrism, the rise of anti-intellectualism, the fear of rigorous thought within religious circles, the fear of modernism, of modernity, oh for God’s sake. An unwillingness to further scientific thought and endeavors was prevalent in these circles. People who promoted dangerous and racist ideologies would later go on to found seminaries and religious institutions, further poisoning the minds of people to hate their colored brothers and sisters. These same founders would later run for office, and when they failed in this venture they would promote others who thought like them. They wanted to take over one of the two political parties within the United States and they have, since the late 1980s, they have.
I thought these issues were endemic only to the North American culture and society until I read further and further into the West Indies stories, plantations, the genesis of rum, and how it was manufactured. Who was forced to harvest it for centuries? Who benefited from it, for centuries, and still does today?
By God.
And I dove headfirst into Brazil’s history, my country’s history with this issue of race and religion. How it began and where. Howcome. How could Christians, protestants, and Catholics alike have supported such a devilish industry? The Nazis would have dreamed of having hundreds of years through which they could operate in their killing fields, under the protection and blessing of the church. They had a mere 12 years by which to terrorize Europe whereas the European empires and colonies did it for hundreds of years.
For some four hundred years. Others, for six hundred.
And in Brazil, I discovered that the transatlantic slave trade began as early as the 1530s. And how Brazil received well over 4,000,000 black souls from the west African coast.
Over 4,000,000 lives, over four times as many as any other American destination.
I was so caught up on how messed up the US was with its black population that I never stopped long enough to think about how the Portuguese, the Spanish. the French, and the British, for a season, treated Africans and their descendants in my country. Only 10% of all Africans forced into slavery went to the US whereas more than 40% were murdered in Brazil.
I discovered, this, new to me, that I could be one of or a mix of four different African nations. Five, perhaps.
Slaves that settled in Brazil came primarily from Angola and later the Congo, Nigeria, Senegambia, and Benin.
So my wonderful ancestors derive from one or more of these nations.
How proud I was. How renewed in inner strength to know that their resilience, their willingness to not die from a heat stroke, a hanging, a shot, or a club to the back of their head had led to my being born in a somewhat free or freer society.
Strange is that Slavery ended in Brazil much later than it did in Great Britain, 1833 and the United States, 1861-1865 (ish).
Brazil emancipated the negro in 1888. My parents were born in the 1960s. Do the math. That’s right.
Because black men and women were joining uprisings and rebellions, tired of their shackles and rape. I mean, who enjoys this?
So the Brazilian sovereign powers sought to amend their laws in 1885 with Sexagenarian Laws that allowed slaves over the age of sixty-five to be released from bondage. A welcoming retirement party, I imagine.
And three years later, they outlawed and banned slavery federally on May 13, 1888, with the Golden Law.
1888.
So as I read these and other things, consuming history, I believe too fast for someone already traumatized by my own experiences with racists and bigots, secular and religious ones, strangers on social media, and familiar faces within the church, I reached another dead-end.
Another emotional block where I read and read until I became desensitized. I was experiencing that same sense of grief I had when I read my article to my wife. But this time I was in bed and I was reading Esi Edugyan’s, Washington Black. A story about a black slave boy who is born into a sugar cane plantation called Faith Plantation located on the West Indies island of Barbados.
There I read of blacks being beat, dragged, raped, maimed, murdered, decapitated, and sapped of their religious hope of a life after death. Subjugated to servitude and then annihilation.
I placed the book down. And other materials I was reading and I wept, I grunted, with tears in my eyes and rage welling up. I tried to put the book down so I could get a few hours of sleep. Rest. Lights off. Kids asleep. The wife was asleep. And here, in pitch-black darkness, I was fuming with rage at how my people had been treated for hundreds of years!
And for what? For what? If anything, if they ever fought back it was retaliatory, not instigative.
So I grabbed my phone, tears running down my face, my heart full, me angry with everything around me, everyone I knew, with no name coming to mind, no face distinctive enough to recognize. I was angry for every black person who was denied their rage. So I did the only thing I knew I could do to ease myself of this anguish and I penned a psalm, a prayer, a poem, a diatribe, a manifesto, in rage and anger, against the Whiteness that had devastated my ancestors and denied the detriment upon their being liberated, and to this day, still, deny the reality our mistreatment.
A Black Uprising Is Retaliatory, Not Instigative In Nature.
The life of the negro hangs on the balance of white men fighting to enslave us and later emancipate us. On white men fighting to degrade us and later value us. On white men segregating us and later integrating us. On white men ousting us from high-end communities and later welcoming us back. Preventing our educational growth and later investing in our intellectual wealth. Exploiting and later banking on our success. Warring to mistreat us on the basis of race and later warring to deny the existence of their initial and now continued hatred for us on the basis of race.
Fighting to destroy our faith and later fighting to force faith into us. Doing everything within their power to keep us at the center of their depravity and at the same time the center of their redemption from that depravity.
We are the blemish on their rise to power and the agency through which they will wash their hearts white.
It is a white man’s pursuit to grant all men the right and freedom of speech but it is the white man who waged war and terror on black bodies should they speak of the injustices and evils they have experienced at the hands of white men.
We are forced to hate each other through time by white men and forced to take responsibility for our self-hatred by statistics produced by the same.
Our ghettos go from bad to worse, we’re granted grants and funds, degraded for the same, elevated and denigrated, all, by white men.
There is no freedom under whiteness but at the same time freedom only comes through whiteness.
Our scope of history is white. Our sciences are white. Our institutions are white. Our workforce executive leadership is white. Our bosses, managers, supervisors, and company owners are white.
Our beauty standards and manufacturers are white.
Few care or dare to say that whiteness exists as a result of exploiting everything that is not white.
I say that my thoughts are expressed through the mediums provided us by white men and at the same time, I may be shamed into silence and obscurity by white men.
It was white men who forced my ancestors into slave ships. Convincing my black ancestors that this was the best way to obtain peace, wealth, and posterity. Turn on each other for security, they were told. For wealth. Let us not even speak of the conditions my ancestor’s lands are in today, the state of disrepair and destitution at the hands of white men.
It was white men who ravaged black women and created mixed-raced children in the West. Mixed-raced people were later shunned and exposed to further rape by white men.
The sugar, coffee, tobacco plantations, and gold and diamond mines that so enriched and established western societies were all made available through slave labor on the backs, knees, uteruses, and lives of black people for the betterment of white men.
But where is our reward?
Again, it was freedom from one form of slavery in the field to slavery in the city.
It was the white man who instilled in us a rage so violent for them but one we so continually enact on one another.
How many revolts have taken place, from the first slave ship that crossed the Atlantic to the last? How many uprisings, revolutions, rebellions by blacks against whites, by slaves against slaveholders and we only call them uprisings, revolutions, and rebellions because it is wrong and evil for a slave to step out of the confines of his chains to scream for freedom!
For a maimed, blind, toothless, scarred, burned, tongue-less, earless, disfigured, overworked, malnourished negro to want something other than twelve-hour workdays, seven days a week, every year of his life, for life, however short and miserable that life would turn out to be is defined as rebellious but according to whom?
Whose narrative defines this want for liberty, freedom, and basic decency as a dangerous uprising deserving of a violent squashing?
It is the hegemony, the rule, the status quo, the foundation, and the prolonged devastation from the hands of white men.
Six hundred years of evidence is stacked up against this insidious dichotomy created by the culture that stood and still stands to benefit from creating whiteness and the verdict of humanity whole, humanity colored, humanity black, will come back as guilty.
Guilty of kidnappings. Brainwashing. Raping. Devastating. Liquidating. Exploiting. Maiming. Murdering. Profiteering. Never having enough black bodies to finish your devilish damning God-forsaken work of hell that you fought for half a thousand years to keep and for who and for what?
To think we could just so easily forget?
You’re guilty of willful amnesia. Guilty of ignorance. Arrogance and apathy. Guilty of prejudice, discrimination, and racism.
Guilty on all counts and the charges will continue to rain down upon you until you are reduced to the very thing you wanted to reduce negroes to but have failed miserably in the process.
The Heavens watch and they wait.
This insidious whiteness that permeates will one day cease to exist and the world may return or perhaps progress to a more mundane faction or tribal schismatic system where color isn’t a thing. Where color is just that, color. Not profit nor gain.
The Heavens watch and weigh-in, Whiteness, your time has come.
I fell asleep shortly after. Mumbling some sort of prayer up to God, not sure if I asked for forgiveness for my feelings, my words, my rage, or if what I felt was a fear of these words making their way on to the screens of the very people who had hurt me. In my fear I wanted to avoid offending them, for having offended me.
I did not know what to do. I slept.
And I awoke, eventually, less angry, more determined to consume more information, more literature, history, diverse and closer to the source of true Christianity; multi-colored and multi-ethnic Christianity. Not the chattel slavery, white supremacy, Christian nationalist supporting Christian culture I was saturated in.
And I want to inform the reader that I do not hate white people, I despise Whiteness with a capital W that has devastated western society. I liken this to my hatred of all things Nazi but my love of all things German. I am able to hate the extreme, the abuse, the evil of a system perpetuated by an identity but at the same time love the people who descended from that ilk.
I despise what the Ottoman did to their innocent, non-combative victims of war but I harbor no hatred for muslims.
If I could clip King Leopold II at the knees with a baseball bat to keep him from maiming and killing natives of the Congo, I would, but that doesn’t mean I hate wonderful Belgians.
I do not hate my white friends, teachers, professors, pastors, leaders, students, youth members, and strangers. I love them.
I hate the system created by a hegemony that stands to benefit from Whiteness whilst at the same time denigrating everything that is NOT white. It kills me. It kills people who look like me.
This not to say that blacks and colored people cannot exhibit racist sentiments and violence toward whites. They can, and have, many a times. In many cases I see it as reactionary rather than instigative. That doesn’t make it any less evil but it helps us understand the dynamics of this violent behavior. Its history.
It’s wrong, nonetheless. Wrong.
That’s why my headspace today, my social media feed, and my conversations are filled with words like, “Deconstruct the evils.” “Understand the history.” “Let’s understand why we think this way or believe this tradition, this music genre, this clothing style, hairstyle, and whatnot is acceptable but my culture is not within Chrisitan circles.”
Talks of abuse and abusive structures. Dangerous power and money-hungry circles. Racist circles. Nationalist and exceptionalist circles. I’m fighting hard to understand my history and to condemn the systems and peoples who worship the systems that my ancestors could never have spoken out against.
I am their voice today. I speak for them. For those who died on African soil fighting for their freedom. Those who died on slave ships crossing the Atlantic. Those who died on gold, diamond, and copper mines, plantations, and expansionist excursions all for greed, power, control, and wealth of others.
Those whose lives were sifted by colonialist brutes and later by robed klansmen and today, modern-day neo-nazis who congregate in our public square and find shelter in our churches.
I stand today, writing, shouting, reading, preaching, and conversing because my ancestors could not.
By the grace of God, I will not stop.
So if you see me share more articles, books, history, and information that better explain who we are as a society today and how we got to where we are, not just the triumphs and success stories but also the abuses and evils, then know, that I am but the voice of one calling in the desert, in the plantation field, in the mine, in the suburbs, come… repent… empathize… reconcile with God and men… and live.
How much time has your church leadership spent on addressing the various historical benefits you have inherited from its previous endeavors?
Does your church revisit its history often? Are there blind spots in your church community history that are too painful to revisit?
If you were to investigate your church’s past, would there be any shameful moments that have since been brushed under the rug?
Hmm…
We seldom acknowledge apostolic creeds, we seldom understand the complexity of power struggles within the early church, the effort that was made to stamp out dangerous heresies, and combat power-hungry heretics. We rarely think of what transpired after the book of Revelation, written by apostle John, and are only reanimated by Christian history when Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, and Graham are mentioned. We enjoy the fruits of our Christian predecessors fought for without giving an ounce of time and effort to acknowledge the evils some of them ignored and the evils some of them promoted.
It is time for the church to openly confront, shun, and confess the evils of Christian history without devaluing the work of these Christian giants who we normally admire. It’s okay to condemn the sins of our predecessors, our forebearers, our forefathers, our leaders who did so much for our Christian faith under the influence of a better spirit but still lived such morally duplicitous lives, whilst endorsing damnable systems that served to destroy the wellbeing and identity of millions of people.
To clarify…
Before my fellow keyboard warriors condemn me of being a deconstructionist and hater of say, history, I must confess to you that I have a dog in this fight. Before I explain why this is so important to me personally and more important to the church, universally, I must state that I value our history, I value the struggles we have faced as a church, I praise God for the men, women, and children who did not recant their faith in Christ when faced with fire, spear, sword, and beasts in the arenas. I am thankful for the courage of so many who gave their lives in hopes of preserving their great faith when questioned by Spanish inquisitors and forced to recant at the threat of death but held their ground and lost their lives doing so. I am doubly grateful for William Tyndale, Joan of Arc, and John Hooper.
I am honored by the sacrifices made by Polycarp, Justin Martyr, from which we derive the understanding of a martyr, a witness. I am in awe of the courage of Ptolemaeus, Lucius, Perpetua, and Felicity. Their lives were not lost without a cause.
I am in debt to the arduous efforts and sacrifices made by the early church apostles and disciples as they spread this great message of hope and salvation into the Roman Empire and beyond it, even, losing their lives in the process. For Stephen, the first martyr for Christ, Apostle James, and also James the earthly brother of Christ. Apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew, Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Jude, Bartholomew, Barnabas, and Simon who gave their lives for the faith and did not recoil at the face of execution.
I commend their courage. The thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children who walked this earth with their heads held high and faced the flames of death, voracious lions, gladiators, Roman spears, Spanish Inquisitors, European crusaders, and the devastating animosity of Islamic conquests.
I applaud them. I applaud their faith under such pressure, fear, starvation, despair, and loss. I admire their honorable conduct when facing struggles against physical and spiritual forces. Their unbending and unshakable faith in the afterlife. Their fervor for the Great Commission and their consistent want for better social structures to protect the poor and destitute, being themselves poor and destitute. Many did not wait for nor would they rely on the force and wealth of government and kings to enact goodwill toward all men but went about it on their own, feeding, assisting, healing, hosting, and delivering many from death at the risk of losing their own goods, favor, property, and lives.
Aye, aye, these are our heroes of the faith and we honor their memory and their sacrifice.
But
And there is almost always a but
But we must also, in the same spirit, openly condemn and without hesitance repudiate the immoral conduct and ineptitude of Christian leaders of the past and those still with us today.
The Dutch Protestant Church and The Nazi Regime
Rene De Reuver, Dutch minister and theologian.
Let us consider the imitable stance of the Dutch Protestant Church who, under the direction and leadership of Rene de Reuver, apologized for and condemned the mistreatment of Jews by the Dutch body of believers during the rise of the Nazi regime. The church assisted in adding despicable layers of anti-semite sentiments to an already inflamed Europe that would later spawn concentration camps within the Netherlands and throughout Europe.
Where the church had the opportunity to criticize the mistreatment of human beings by its government and the neighbor governing body in Germany it instead, because of its racist sentiments, allowed for Germany and Holland to assist in the decimation of the Dutch-Jewish population of Holland. Well over 70 percent of the Jewish community of Holland perished because of the nations overwhelmingly pro-Nazi participation in antisemite violence.
We cannot blame the Dutch church alone for what happened in Europe but the Dutch Protestant Church recognizes its willful participation in one of the vilest and most horrific stages of human history, the promulgation and dissemination of Nazi ideals and subservience to the Nazi regime.
Rene de Reuver states that it was in the Dutch Protestant Church where “the ground in which the seeds of antisemitism and hatred could grow.”
“For centuries a rift was maintained that could later isolate the Jews in society in such a way that they could be taken away and murdered. […] Also, in the war years, the ecclesiastical authorities often lacked the courage to choose a position for the Jewish citizens of our country.” Said De Reuver.
How telling that the church, the one entity that fears no man, no group, no authority or government structure, and has no fear of facing death was the most recreant of all institutions when asked to speak against the evils of the Nazi regime and the mistreatment of Dutch Jews but fell short for want of racial superiority.
“The church recognizes faults and feels a present responsibility. Antisemitism is a sin against God and against people. The Protestant Church is also part of this sinful history.” He added.
De Reuver has stressed the importance of the church in combating this heinous sin that has dilapidated church history and erased generations of Dutch Jews. He states that his church and fellow believers endeavor to combat this sin wherever it is found from now on.
“We undertake to do everything possible to further develop Judeo-Christian relations into a deep friendship of two equal partners, united among others in the fight against contemporary antisemitism.”
The Southern Baptist Convention and Slavery
Southern Baptist Convention 1995 Resolution
In 1995 the first resolution was made by SBC leaders to condemn the church’s participation in and the promotion of chattel slavery in the American south.
“We apologize to all African Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime, and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Said the SBC leadership on the 150th anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“WHEREAS, Our relationship to African-Americans has been hindered from the beginning by the role that slavery played in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention; and
WHEREAS, Many of our Southern Baptist forbears defended the right to own slaves, and either participated in, supported, or acquiesced in the particularly inhumane nature of American slavery; and
WHEREAS, In later years Southern Baptists failed, in many cases, to support, and in some cases opposed, legitimate initiatives to secure the civil rights of African-Americans; and
WHEREAS, Racism has led to discrimination, oppression, injustice, and violence, both in the Civil War and throughout the history of our nation; and
WHEREAS, Racism has divided the body of Christ and Southern Baptists in particular, and separated us from our African-American brothers and sisters; and
WHEREAS, Many of our congregations have intentionally and/or unintentionally excluded African-Americans from worship, membership, and leadership; and
WHEREAS, Racism profoundly distorts our understanding of Christian morality, leading some Southern Baptists to believe that racial prejudice and discrimination are compatible with the Gospel; and
WHEREAS, Jesus performed the ministry of reconciliation to restore sinners to a right relationship with the Heavenly Father, and to establish right relations among all human beings, especially within the family of faith.
Therefore, be it RESOLVED, That we, the messengers to the Sesquicentennial meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, assembled in Atlanta, Georgia, June 20-22, 1995, unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin; and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we affirm the Bibles teaching that every human life is sacred, and is of equal and immeasurable worth, made in Gods image, regardless of race or ethnicity (Genesis 1:27), and that, with respect to salvation through Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for (we) are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28); and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest, and we recognize that the racism which yet plagues our culture today is inextricably tied to the past; and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously (Psalm 19:13) or unconsciously (Leviticus 4:27); and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we ask forgiveness from our African-American brothers and sisters, acknowledging that our own healing is at stake; and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we hereby commit ourselves to eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry; and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we commit ourselves to be doers of the Word (James 1:22) by pursuing racial reconciliation in all our relationships, especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ (1 John 2:6), to the end that our light would so shine before others, that they may see (our) good works and glorify (our) Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16); and
Be it finally RESOLVED, That we pledge our commitment to the Great Commission task of making disciples of all people (Matthew 28:19), confessing that in the church God is calling together one people from every tribe and nation (Revelation 5:9), and proclaiming that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only certain and sufficient ground upon which redeemed persons will stand together in restored family union as joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).”
Beautiful!
The SBC lists their previous flaws, failures, and shortcomings, without losing their fervent love for Christ and the people who are made in His image. There is no equivocation here, these leaders do not vacillate when called to confront the dark and tenebrous history of their parents, grandparents, and beyond. It takes courage to admit fault, it takes grit and an unimaginable amount of time reflecting on the damage their partnership with evil systems caused and how their negligence cost the lives of thousands in America and millions in the Subsaharan tropics thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago.
The SBC admits that their previous involvement in disenfranchising black Americans under the protection of ecclesiastical leadership, the discrimination of black Americans by church laity, and the acceptance of segregation within the denomination as a whole was and is an odious stretch of its history that must be openly condemned. Systemic racism ran through the genesis of the SBC and systematic racism was promoted for its survival.
Not anymore.
Many critiqued the SBC’s apology as too little too late, and its timing quite poor.
“Today racism is subtle. […] It’s corporate, and it’s very difficult to see it unless you are African American. I see it now in our convention in a lot of ways.” Said Willie T. McPherson, director of the Black Church Extension Division.
He informs the SBC and community that this apology was “just the beginning.” And that, “We already know that God will not operate where there is sin. And racism is sin.”
McPherson is hesitant to accept such a late apology by SBC leaders when for far too long black protestants have been victims of racist extremist violence outside the church and later revictimized by protestant clergy when the church was beckoned to lead the condemnation of such acts but fell silent and in other instances would repeat the vitriol of these same supremacists from the pulpit, verbatim.
SBC second vice president and black pastor, Gray Frost reminds us that we can still accept an apology, no matter how little or how late it comes, when it is made out of a genuine posture of repentance and hopes of reconciliation.
“On behalf of my black brothers and sisters, we accept your apology, […] We pray that the genuineness of your repentance will be reflected in your attitudes and in your actions.”
The Impiety of Pope Pius XII and the Nazi Regime
Pope Pius XII
Smithsonian Mag’s Theresa Machemer lays forth a scathing description of how Pope Pius XII either neglected or purposely ignored the calls of the allies to condemn the atrocities of the Nazi regime from his seat of papal power. Theresa states:
“To critics, the pontiff’s refusal to publicly condemn the Nazis represents a shameful moral failing with devastating consequences. In his polarizing 1999 biography of Pius, British journalist John Cornwell argued that the religious leader placed the papacy’s supremacy above the plight of Europe’s Jews, winning a modicum of power—and protection from the rising threat of communism—by becoming “Hitler’s pope” and pawn. Supporters, however, say that Pius’ silence was calculated to prevent German retaliation and ensure the continued success of the Catholic Church’s behind-the-scenes efforts to aid victims of Nazi persecution.”
Theresa makes mention to the ambiguity of the now shameful and repugnant Reichskonkordat, or the Concordat between the Holy See and the Germain Reich signed and promoted by the Vatican under Pope Pius XII’s leadership. This disgraceful agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and Hitler’s death machine focused primarily on the religious freedoms of Catholics, the freedoms to dress in priestly wear in Nazi Germany should one be a priest, and the right to display Catholic icons outside and inside Catholic churches and also the preservation of Catholic worship rights.
Pope Pius had the total authority of the Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic church abroad, and worldwide to condemn the atrocities that were being committed against Jews in Europe but chose to settle for thirty-four articles of religious liberties for the sake of political peace.
Sounds oddly familiar. Sounds American.
Not only was there not peace in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, England, and the world over, but his cowardly stance on this issue will be remembered for generations to come. This failure is to be repudiated since there has been no formal apology on the side of Catholic leadership to disavow and discredit this leader’s cowardice but there are many petitions to canonize the miscreant.
Theresa continues:
“On September 18, 1942, Pius’ assistant, the future Pope Paul VI, received an eyewitness report of ‘incredible butchery’ of Jews in Warsaw. One month prior, Ukrainian Archbishop Andrzej Szeptycki had delivered a similar report informing the pope of atrocities carried out in the Lviv Ghetto, reports Haaretz’s Ofer Aderet.
Soon after, the United States’ envoy to the Vatican asked if it could corroborate accounts of mass killings in Warsaw and Lviv. In response, Vatican Secretary of State Luigi Maglione reportedly stated, ‘I don’t believe we have information that confirms this serious news in detail.’
While sifting through the papers, the researchers also found a memo from a Vatican staffer that warned against believing the reports, dismissing these accounts on the grounds that Jews ‘easily exaggerate’ and ‘Orientals’—a reference to Archbishop Sheptytsky—’are really not an example of honesty.’”
If the church is unable to condemn these aspects of its past for lack of documentation and credible sources I understand, to an extent. But the evidence here is overwhelming, as it was with the Dutch Protestant Church and with the Southern Baptist Convention, but the Vatican has yet to properly condemn its participation in the mistreatment and imprisonment of Italian Jews locally and European Jews abroad, which led to the extermination of so many Jews in the Final Solution. This blood is on the hands of both the Nazi regime and on the conscience of the churches who had the social influence to condemn these atrocities but stood idly by as families were sifted from their communities and gassed in extermination camps.
Scriptural Basis for Admitting Fault, Asking for Forgiveness and Bridging the Gap
“In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, a Mede by birth, who was ruler over the kingdom of the Chaldeans: In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be 70. So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.
I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed:
Ah, Lord—the great and awe-inspiring God who keeps His gracious covenant with those who love Him and keep His commands— WE have sinned, done wrong, acted wickedly, rebelled, and turned away from Your commands and ordinances. WE have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to OUR kings, leaders, fathers, and all the people of the land.
Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but this day public shame belongs to US: the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and all Israel—those who are near and those who are far, in all the countries where You have dispersed them because of the disloyalty THEY have shown toward You. Lord, public shame belongs to US, OUR kings, OUR leaders, and OUR fathers, because WE have sinned against You. Compassion and forgiveness belong to the Lord our God, though WE have rebelled against Him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following His instructions that He set before us through His servants the prophets.
ALL ISRAEL has broken Your law and turned away, refusing to obey You. The promised curse written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, has been poured out on us because WE have sinned against Him. He has carried out His words that He spoke against US and against OUR rulers by bringing on us so great a disaster that nothing like what has been done to Jerusalem has ever been done under all of heaven. Just as it is written in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come on us, yet we have not appeased the Lord our God by turning from OUR iniquities and paying attention to Your truth. So the Lord kept the disaster in mind and brought it on us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all He has done. But WE have not obeyed Him.
Now, Lord our God, who brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and made Your name renowned as it is this day, WE have sinned, WE have acted wickedly. Lord, in keeping with all Your righteous acts, may Your anger and wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of OUR sins and the iniquities of OUR fathers, Jerusalem, and Your people have become an object of ridicule to all those around us.
Therefore, our God, hear the prayer and the petitions of Your servant. Show Your favor to Your desolate sanctuary for the Lord’s sake. Listen, my God, and hear. Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city called by Your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before You based on our righteous acts, but based on Your abundant compassion. Lord, hear! Lord, forgive! Lord, listen, and act! My God, for Your own sake, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”
Daniel, the prophet and dream interpreter to the king of Babylon and later the King of Persia is seen as a righteous man who served God wholeheartedly. He was exiled, or perhaps, kidnapped by the Babylonian army at a young age from his motherland, Israel, and catapulted to the epicenter of Babylon. He was given a new name, without his consent, forced to undertake a new diet, which he declined, forced to worship a different god, which he refused, and given authority to command those who disagreed with him and he did not abuse his power nor his position when given the chance.
He was entrusted with status by kings and royalty, given a seat of power over religious leaders and governers and he did not falter for want of power. The Bible is crystal clear in condemning moral failure, no matter who commits it. But nowhere in the Bible is there a fragment or a shred of dirt on Daniel. The kid turned prophet turned magistrate of both Babylon and Persia was blameless. This does not mean he was sinless but that he was without fault. He was an upstanding guy.
But pay attention! God is at work here!
Daniel, in all his grandeur and excellency beyond kings and servants, did not fail to point out the faults of his forefathers, whose continual sins had brought upon them economic, religious, and militaristic calamity.
Daniel goes on and on about how he is part of the problem that got his people into the position they were in and it shows in how he does not distance himself from participating in this ill but places himself in it wholeheartedly.
We
Us
Our kings
Our leaders
Our fathers
All Israel
Our rulers
Our sins
Our iniquities
This isn’t a process of self-immolation for the sake of communal favor but it is a righteous act of humility before God and people.
Daniel sets off to pray for his nation and the possible restoration of his people to Israel. He sets off to request forgiveness from God for his sins, the sins of his fathers, his people, his kings, and beyond for the sake of clarity and forgiveness.
Daniel set forth an example of humility at work and it paid off. If the reader continues on with Daniel’s story, from the same chapter, they will find that God answered Daniel’s prayer that same day. The Israelites were ultimately blessed by Ahasuerus (Artaxerxes) with the possibility to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the cities walls and later rebuild their temple.
All because one righteous man set off to humble himself before God and pray for forgiveness. Forgiveness not just for himself but for his entire nation. Whatever was left of it anyway.
Take Heed and Concluding Thoughts
The reason I set off to put this particular blog post together is that there is a resurgence of denialism within the American church and its embarrassing history when it comes to the mistreatment of black Americans at the hands of white American clergy and laity.
Far too many of us have believed the lie that when pointing out and condemning the sins of our fathers we then devalue the good they have done, therefore we must not even confront the evil they have perpetrated nor can we confront the lasting consequences of these evils in our society today.
This is foolish and cowardly! It’s pride at work in our hearts!
When the world looks to those who claim to represent Christ they want to see people who reflect Jesus, not people who represent denial, objection, failure to confront sin, failure to admit fault, failure to seek forgiveness of wrongs, failure to apologize, and a lack of humility!
They want to see people who stand tall like Daniel, the righteous prophet who did not hesitate to confess the horrible and demonstrably evil sins of his fathers, rulers, kings, and nation. Daniel saw that his relationship with God superseded his comfort in ignoring his nation’s marred history. He followed the precepts and designations of God who informed a previous king that if a nation, once exiled and banished from the cover of God’s blessings were to humble themselves, turn to him and call out to His name, then He would hear them from heaven and heal them. Heal their land.
Heal their hearts!
“If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves, pray and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:13-14
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
There are many American churches that have yet to grapple with the extent of their participation in the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, antebellum south racism, the sentiments that led to the civil war; where American southerners, who were staunch believers, fought for their right to own slaves and treat black people as property. These same individuals and their descendants formed terrorist militias like the Ku Klux Klan after losing the war and terrorized the black community in the name of God and country. They later enacted Jim Crow laws to further divide and segregate white and black communities, to further impoverish black Americans, and lynch them when they saw fit. Many carried their Bibles into church on a Sunday morning and found themselves warming their bodies by the fire where a negro had just been burned alive. Many condemned civil rights activist and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. as a race-baiting nigger who wanted nothing more than to destroy the fabric of the American society, which consisted of a white supremacist hegemony for hundreds of years and had become the standard of the land. Many believers would later celebrate the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Many would later hide their racial animosity and promote the great white flight into suburban communities which would become safe-havens for white Americans. They would bar black Americans from qualifying for loans to live within the same communities, whose children could not attend the same schools, and whose livelihood would outpace, outmatch, and outdo that of the blacks who were left to live in squalor and misery in government abandoned urban city-center communities.
Many of our American church citizens are living in the comfort of aloofness and willful ignorance, turning a blind eye to the history that separates them, their predominantly white and strangely segregated churches.
We see this when the majority of our predominantly white churches consider themselves culturally diverse and well-integrated not as a result of immersing itself in the communities it abandoned but by allowing the members of those communities to join their churches and adhere to their methods and isms. The culture within the church is predominantly European and anything other than this mode is considered pagan, unorthodox, and possibly unchristlike.
There are churches in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida who gladly display and proudly wave the Confederate flag as a show of their southern heritage whilst ignoring the terror that was caused under that particular banner in the black community in a not too distant past.
I believe that the rift between the black American church and the white American church will only be repaired and reconciled once the children of the offending party irrevocably condemn the actions of their racist forefathers; reduces the symbols, flags, and statues of confederate leaders to ash or pushes them into the darker corners of Civil War museums; and admits that there is still a virulent poison of implicit racism, discrimination, and segregation within their church communities.
Racism is still with us today and it is understandable for us to see it outside the church, as much sin proliferates and spreads in the world without catalytic factors. But to see this particular sin so present and alive inside the church to this very day, which at first was demonstrated with such animus but is now hidden under politics and willful ignorance is damnable and shameful.
We must confess it. Denounce it. Repudiate it. We must acknowledge our part in it like the Dutch Protestant Church has and like the Southern Baptist Convention has to find peace with our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith and answer the call of the Great Commission with a clean slate.
We cannot stand by or stand down like the Vatican of old and the Vatican of now and ignore the failings of our leaders, possibly hiding their faults and failures so as to save face.
Does not the Bible condemn this?
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Proverbs 28:13
So why tarry? Why bicker and fight over the why must we confess the sins and ills of our ancestors when scripture clearly directs the most righteous amongst us to do so, publicly!
I pray as Daniel prayed,
“Therefore, our God, hear the prayer and the petitions of Your servant. Show Your favor to Your desolate sanctuary for the Lord’s sake. Listen, my God, and hear. Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city called by Your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before You based on our righteous acts, but based on Your abundant compassion. Lord, hear! Lord, forgive! Lord, listen, and act! My God, for Your own sake, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”
Because our American church needs to be reconciled. The separation and segregation that stems back hundreds of years, this wall, this partition based on the sin of racism needs to be done away with once and for all for the glory of Christ and the honor of God’s creation.
“In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Colossians 3:11
“For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.” Ephesians 2:14
Until we confess these sins we will remain in Babylon (of the heart and soul), enchained, enslaved, and impoverished without hope, future, or perspective for a resolution to our lapsed race relations.
We can do better, Church. We can do better, American Church. It is time we confess our sins, explicitly and publicly, that we may be forgiven and our cross-race relationships restored.
For if the church fails to spear this mission, the world will, and when the world sets off to accomplish something outside of Christ’s character we are left with an even more broken system. Hence the rise of the Black Lives Matter organization and the embarrassing silence of the church on the issue of race.
Let us mirror the person of Christ and display humility in action. Seek out those who look different than you, who come from a different culture, a different upbringing, and listen to their stories and their brokenness. Bridge the gap, Christians. Do that which you were called to do.
I’ll leave you with the words of Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius as he addressed his soldiers before a battle from the film Gladiator:
“Brothers, what we do in life… echoes in eternity.”
Every year, an average of two million (yep, that’s 2,000,000) love-hungry Americans find themselves at the altar reciting their vows, making promises; that in all honesty, they will not keep and at the mercy of their emotions as they cry through unintelligible, I do’s.
And in the same year, well over one million love-hungry American’s find themselves dissolving their marriage through no-fault divorce proceedings. This is disheartening.
What, then, is my advice to the a soon-to-be-married couple? What could I possibly add to this conversation after six years of being, myself, a married man?
Well, the most wholesome and practical advice I can relay to the uninitiated is this:
Mind your own business.
That’s it. Just mind your own business.
Stay out of people’s lives and keep your marriage gossip proof, baby.
Ain’t no reason you should be dipping your fingers into someone else’s problems, concerns, finances, and marital maturation.
Let them grow in peace. You, develop your marriage in peace as well.
Stop listening to love guru’s who probably live a very duplicitous, promiscuously loose lifestyle and instead, focus on your soon-to-be-spouse. Far too many problems arise in marriage because people want so much to live like, behave like, be empowered by, attain the same level of status like, promote a sense of stability like and be unimaginatively in love like power couples they see on social media or in their community.
Stop it.
Mind your business. Love the person you are coupled with and learn to compromise.
Now that we’ve passed from the first and most important advice I can think of, we can move on to other more practical tips.
This post is not for you. Move on.
The next post you read about marriage may not be for you either. You’re not paying attention.
Just because you’re in love does not mean you should marry that person.
Don’t marry for money but if money is involved, hey, don’t sign a prenup.
If you’re the one with money, produce a prenup.
Is this person you are about to spend the rest of your short life with worth the time and effort? If no, then why are you going through with it?
Debt. It’s the devil’s ingrown toenail. Talk about it before signing your life away to someone who has a $45,000 anchor wrapped around their ankles. Not a break-off, but a must-have discussion. Transparency is key. Debt can ruin families for generations ahead. Be smart. Be economically sound.
Have you had any arguments or disagreements? No? Have them now, before getting married so you can learn how to cope, compromise, apologize, reconcile and grow together before saying your I do’s. Determine if the person you are about to wed is a prince/princess in engagement but a brute/witch post-honeymoon phase by having productive disagreements before getting married. People change when they’re angry. Be careful.
Love is a commitment, not an emotion. Are you willing to commit to a life-long agreement of love, emotional and sexual investment, growth, trials, sacrifice, and more to one person under one institution? Sounds scary? It is. Take it seriously.
Marriage is not a place where you find happiness and fulfillment. If you cannot love yourself first, before entering into this union, you will not love yourself later. Your future spouse cannot bear the sole responsibility of loving you twice over because you fail to love yourself.
Again, disregard my marital advice. I beg you.
Because what works for us will not necessarily work for you.
Whatever works for you, believe me, will not work for us.
But one thing is certain, divorce is ugly, divorce is nasty, divorce leaves scars, but divorce is not the end of the world.
Consider what I just said, carefully.
Divorce is not the best option available if a relationship sours. Remember that reconciliation is possible. Rebuilding a broken marriage is possible.
It requires time, therapy, a willingness from both spouses, sacrifice, tears, love, patience, forgiveness, continual openness, and transparency. A badly damaged marriage is repairable. There are many examples of that in the world.
But, in cases of say, domestic abuse, well, for the safety and security of the abused, it is worth leaving alive and starting life again elsewhere.
Divorce is sad but your life does not end because of it.
To avoid getting divorced, don’t get married. But if you do get married, understand that you are making a life-long commitment. Like 100 years long.
So, for the love of God, please read this article and disregard it.
Go live your life. Learn to love wholeheartedly. Commit to a holy union that brings forth societal stability. One that develops you into a mature individual. Become one with someone.
Keep on minding your business and one day you will find out that your marriage is better, healthier, brighter, and worth having because your nose spends more time in your spouse’s neck instead of in someone else’s tea.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
For more non-advice from your favorite blogger, please visit www.mindyourbusiness.com or call 1-800-URB-ZNES and find out how you can excel in life, love, and marriage.
I can’t imagine how many of us have been hurt by someone we love or at least someone we admire. I can imagine that the most memorably painful blows are dealt by people we love and trust most.
A family member, a spouse, or a trusted friend who mistreated us and never stopped to think of their words or their actions. Never apologized for it.
But why? We ask.
Why would they do that to me? What did I do wrong?
I can also imagine the struggle of dealing with guilt and the disillusionment over whether you’re responsible for the offense you’ve suffered. You wonder if the harm you’ve suffered was because of that one thing you did on Tuesday or the one thing you said six years ago.
You are harassed by someone bent on reducing you to a bag of misery. You are tormented by your mind of it. Paralyzed by the fear of repeating what you believe is the same mistake and receiving the same kind of treatment again, again and again.
This cycle of torture can change how we operate. It can change how we behave without us even knowing it.
I remember working in a firm where majority of the staff treated me with warmth, friendship, and a welcoming spirit. I recall how on my first day one of the staff members of the executive team came up and gave me a bear hug, a gentlemanly smile, and a welcome cheer. The reception could not have gone any smoother, until, that is, a coworker had what I believe, a bone to pick with me.
From degrading my work to reducing me to fodder in front of other coworkers, belittling me in private and dismissing that behavior when confronted led me to believe I was at fault.
Gaslighting 101, amiright?
What was a one time the most favorable work environment quickly spiraled into what I could call a living helll. I would wake up every morning dreading the possibility of making eye contact with this coworker. It took me 25 minutes to drive to work and with every kilometer traveled I felt a sense of panic overwhelm me. Panic would control me.
At one point, gripped by the fear and anxiety of what I look back now and call bullying and harassment, I asked another coworker to cover my post because I could feel my facial muscles tighten, my pulse become rapid, I felt my senses were heightened and I would sweat purfusely. I would sweat through my undershirt and my regular shirt all the way into my winter coat. I could not concentrate, focus, discern my emotions, my current situation because my mind, throughout the day and throughout my tenure there had, to this point, been a living, waking hell where I was imprisoned to this place for my income and survival, whilst battling the idea that I might be responsible for being a victim of bullying tactics. If it must have been something I said, something I had done. It must have been me.
After I asked my coworker for assistance I rushed out of the building for air. I couldn’t retain oxygen as if, I presumed, my chest didn’t want to breathe. My lungs could not hold air and I was losing my mind. I was having a panic attack at work.
I soon thought the pacifist in me would become a warmonger. My Christian upbringing was slipping as I contemplated violence as a form of retribution for what I believed was wrong and deserving of punishment.
Under this constant pressure, anxiety, stress, and trauma I was becoming someone other than myself. I was allowing certain patterns of thought which had not consumed me before, to overwhelm and control me. Whereas in the past I would shy away from raising my fists here I relished the thought. In the past I was always admonished to use my words wisely, in a way that wouldn’t nullify my witness of Jesus but here I welcomed nothing but the thought of destroying a human being with my words.
I cursed in my mind. I cursed in the car. I cursed in the bathroom at work. And one time, on my way home from work, what I thought was an accident had caused a traffic jam so bad it delayed my trip home. My wife needed the one car we owned so that she could head off to her night job. This traffic delay or accident, whatever it was, turned a 25 minute drive home into a one hour and ten minute build up of volcanic proportions.
Once my car reached the scene of what I thought was a construction site, an accident or even police lights was nothing but a delay caused by people who had decided to slow down on our side of the highway to observe a truck that had slid off the road on the opposite side of the highway.
The delay was caused by drivers decided to slow down just to see what happened on the other side of the road.
From that moment on the roads were clear and my realization of how stupid humans can be and how their choices effect those around them, killed me. I drove for the next twenty minutes above the speed limit and I screamed.
I screamed like I had never screamed before. I screamed so much I felt as if my throat wanted to split from my neck, in an attempt to preserve its longevity, but I would not let this hostage escape.
I screamed at the sky, the air, the cars, the road, other drivers, at the truck that slid off the road, (mind you nothing happened to the truck or the driver.) And I screamed so much that my vision became blurry as I drove. This delay made my wife late to work and made me feel like a failure, this justifying, in my head, the bullying I received at work. Maybe I was a failure. Maybe I deserved the mistreatment.
I was someone other that I had ever known. A behavior completely different from the true me or who I believed the true me to be.
All in all, the hurt I was caused and the pain I was made to feel had changed the way I dealt with reality and myself. The way I understood myself and how I reacted to people.
I noticed how snappy I was with my children. How I lacked patience, lacked alertness to my home duties, attention to my wife, and desire to even pray or seek goodness in life.
This constant barrage of stress and attack had changed the way I operated. It changed me.
I thank God for being merciful towards me, patient even, guiding me through this difficult time. My wife, also, understood my problematic reactions even though I could not verbalize them at the time. Another executive branch member came to my rescue to restitute a form or another of decorum, work place respect, and basic human decency in our work place.
With time I came to understand that the pain I was feeling, the hurt, the mistreatment that was directed towards me was not something intentional or natural to the individual responsible for it.
In fact, the person who was hurting me, was also hurt in the past by someone else.
The truism that hurt people hurt people serves us a wholesome reminder that our behaviors are a sign of pain and unresolved hurt in our own lives.
I’ve grown up in environments and settings where young boys and girls were getting into constant fist fights, destroying their bodies with drugs, and living with a promiscuous lifestyle only attained by veteran sex workers.
Young people. Adolescents, teenagers, and young adults. Slaves to hurt they suffered in the past. And I know this because I am still friends with some of them today.
So many of us are living with the pain of hurt and offense that it has changed the way we live and operate.
He states that individuals who are hurt carry a bag of pain with them as a result of these offenses:
Broken promises
Broken confidence
Personal rejection
False accusation
Abuse
And people who carry this bag around their waste, over their shoulders, or buried in their heart tend to be blind to their own behaviors when they are offending others. They become blind to the hurt they cause and become slaves to that willful ignorance. They exhibit these traits:
Walled in by bitterness
Blind to personal faults
Seek vengeance
Bent on destruction
Given to idolatry
We create a god out of our pain and worship it throughout our day. We dream of it and it chases us though our nightmares. We’re slaves to the hurt we have suffered and we are blinded by the hurt we cause others.
Olivet Theory
You can see how the situation is cyclical. Someone breaks a promise and we hide behind walls of hurt and bitterness.
Someone destroys our confidence and we become blind to our own mistakes.
We’re rejected and we want nothing more than vengeance and reckoning.
We’re falsely accused therefore we want to destroy someones character, maybe even their life.
We’re abused and if that abuse goes unresolved, goes without restitution, without justice, without correction then we give in to worshipping our pain and hurt.
We create a god out of our pain and worship it throughout our day. We dream of it and it chases us though our nightmares. We’re slaves to the hurt we have suffered and we are blinded by the hurt we cause others.
Friends, this ought not be.
Again, I’m grateful for those around me who strengthened me, admonished me, encouraged me to seek restitution. By God’s grace I did. By God’s grace I was able to look this coworker, a victim of someone else, and forgive the wrongs done to me.
We fail to realize that so many people are hurt and the pain they cause others they are blind to. They’re unaware because they have built walls, barriers, monuments of hatred, fear, paranoia, and insecurity to protect them from the reality of past hurt.
Until we’re able to understand this we will repeat this cycle until we reach the grave.
And it is true, as Erwin Lutzer writes in his book on When You’ve Been Wronged that reconciliation may not always be an accomplishable goal with the offending party but we may come to terms with ourselves.
We can be reconciled with ourselves so as not to become victimizers, perpetrators of offenses and bullies in our own lives.
We can halt this cycle of hurt by understanding that we can forgive, not necessarily forget but forgive continually, daily, seasonally, and so that we can move on.
This effort, though not an easy one, is doable.
Believe me. I’m living it right now.
Instead of recreating a bloody death scene we can conduct a masterpiece worthy of mention for generations to come.
Olivet Theory
When we’re torn between hatred for someone and forgiving them, we’re stuck in a arena where we are given two choices: wield a sword or conduct an orchestra.
We will either become gladiators who live and die by the sword or we can use our pain by transforming it into a conductors wand to lead an orchestra in tempo, accents, volume and stillness of time.
Instead of recreating a bloody death scene we can conduct a masterpiece worthy of mention for generations to come.
Forgiveness gives us that much power.
As it is true that hurt people hurt people we also know that healed people heal other people.
So here are the questions.
Are you hurt? Have you been hurt? How is that pain, that event, that person affecting your life today?
Perhaps they’re no longer around. Maybe that person was a coworker and the two of you no longer work together. Perhaps that person was a lover who is now an ex-lover. Perhaps a family member you no longer communicate with.
Perhaps they’re in a different country, perhaps in prison or far worse, perhaps they’re dead and beyond the reach of reconciliation but they are not beyond the reach of your forgiveness.
Forgiveness liberates the heart from the desire and the need to re-offend.
It sounds almost impossible to forgive someone deserving of retribution, say, even violence and execution, but we have a justice system for that and if the individual evaded justice here on earth rest assured that they will not evade ultimate Justice beyond the grave.
Forgiveness is a power you and I are able to wield to restore, renew, redeem, deliver, and heal.
Maybe today is the day you can start, yes, start to heal.
You deserve to heal and the people around you need the love you have inside, not the hurt.
Let’s break the cycle of pain and reinstate a cycle of wholesome healing and love.
I hope this post finds you well and I hope you stay well.
You are more than your pain. You are more than that bully. You are more than that offense, that hurt, that pain, that memory and that event. You are intrinsically of far more worth and value than any pain or hurt someone has caused you.
You are loved and you can give love. That’s a cycle we can comfortably promote.
God knows our world needs it.
Godspeed reader. Godspeed cycle breaker.
“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” – Matthew 6:12
Olivet Theory 