For a brief moment after the murder of George Floyd, I had the sense that our country was coming together. But things have definitely shifted. I don’t know about you, but that video required me to see things I didn’t want to see. It exposed me to the reality that the injustices I desperately wanted to believe were in the past are actually alive and well in the present.
It brought me face to face with myself in relation to the three words:
Black.
Lives.
Matter.
It required me to stop avoiding the confusion they have been creating inside of me.
So here I am, navigating my own confusion. At the same time, angry voices swirl all around me. They are from the mouths of people I respect on both sides of the issue (culture war). As you know, it’s been intense. When I process threads on Facebook, I get a picture of us playing tug of war with black lives. We say we are fighting for them, each in our own ways…but it feels like we might tear our black friends apart. We might be sacrificing real people on the field of battle. It feels like the fight is not even about black lives anymore.
What I’m sharing is my own journey with the three words: Black Lives Matter
I’m doing it even though I know that …
… it will prove to some of those who live around me, that I am one of those people (evangelicals) they have always suspected I am,
… it will create concern in others (evangelicals) that I am no longer who they thought I was.
I share my journey in the hope that engaging together, we might influence each other along the way.
I share my journey because I really want to be a bridge, and maybe sharing the journey together IS the bridge.
The hard part of being a bridge is that you actually have to touch both sides while extending across the risky middle ground.
These three words have dotted the landscape of my life for the last four years. More recently, they’ve dominated.
I don’t go out for a walk without seeing them in my neighbor’s windows. In the beginning, I received them as a slap in the face, an unfair accusation against me and others like me. They often come as part of a list of statements that starts with “In this house… or in this city we…”
They scream out, “We actually care about black lives and you don’t. You white Christians say you love people but you don’t. Liberals are the only ones who actually care about people.”
My own heart knows, and my experience with others tells me that this implied accusation simply isn’t true. I think I was mostly frustrated because I wanted those words in my own window, but not as the political or social statement it has become. I just wanted to identify my heart with the most pure meaning of those three words My false accusers make me feel like I can’t.
I began to realize that the words:
black lives matter
are actually begging questions that go beyond the worth of black lives. As a label for a political movement, it now includes questions about, among other things,
the dignity of women, and LGBTQ rights.
What about the lives of the LGBTQ community?
When the rainbow became a symbol for this community, it felt like a takeover of a universal sign of hope. It had one message and was off-limits for use by anyone other than for LGBTQ issues. Then it became a social/political line in the sand forcing me to “choose sides.” I didn’t want to choose because I didn’t want to abandon either. But I’m on the side of love, and love is on both sides! The line drew up sides between so-called “biblical morality,” and so-called “secular morality.” There was no place for a person who believes that to love God IS to honor people with or without full understanding or agreement.
What about the dignity of women?
For too long a patriarchal society has demanded women deny themselves and fall in line with the duties of childbearing, homemaking, and the sexual pleasure of men It was required that we carry huge weight, without a voice. Was that really the intention of God? Were we meant to be seen and not heard? Were we given a free will and the ability to reason without holding the kind of dignity those same abilities offered men?
What if a Christian actually does care about honoring women and members of the LGBTQ community? What if the healthiest perspective is the one having discovered it doesn’t have to be one or the other? What if we are sabotaging ourselves when we don’t deeply respect both from the deepest level of our being? What if it all matters too much for us to divide and fight?
All of this reminds me of King Solomon’s ruling between two women, both claiming the same child. Splitting the child only brings death, while making the decision to keep the child whole might mean sacrificing part of oneself. His ruling was designed to flush out the truest love.
It leaves me knowing and not knowing.
From this blip on my journey, I have full freedom and deep conviction before God to embrace and to own these three words:
Black. Lives. Matter.
and the message they bring to my heart, in spite of anything they might mean in our volatile social/political climate. I am falling deeply in love with the goodness of black skin and all that it means to the God who gifted black skin to the world. I am allowing my soul to marinate in the pure and inherent significance of black lives. I long to be changed in my insides. I am so much less concerned about what happens in the United States of America than I am about the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven rising upon this earth. (I think my God is too.)
From this place in my journey, I am not free from wrestling with all of this. I still find all kinds of resistance rising up in me when I listen to what feels like nothing more than fighting words coming from both sides in a determined effort to be right, and to prove others wrong.
What I am most concerned about is the way the church seems to be fighting against the world we live in and our fellow humans. That is not our calling.
- It feels like “truth” has become about prescribing and enforcing one brand of morality on a culture, rather than offering the essence of truth’s heart, which I believe is love. If God is love and God is holy, then maybe love is the deepest form of holiness. The kind of love that is dignifying, patient, and kind. The kind of love that reflects the kindness of God so fully that it can be felt by those who share life with us on this earth, especially those on “the other side.” Releasing ourselves from responsibility for other’s reactions to our “truth,” we seem to take pride in creating more fight…a deeper divide.
- It feels like we have taken on the role of judge, without even noticing that the pride fueling our judgment just might be more detestable than what we define as the immoral behaviors of others, their lifestyle choices, their identities, or their political views.
Where we all find ourselves.
We all have to wrestle with the question, “Does my black life matter to you?” Could it be any more important that we face it?
What is triggered inside of you when you own that question? What kind of resistance rises up inside of you with the words “black lives matter?” What is it really about?
Maybe like me, you will find yourself wanting to take back your freedom to care for the lives of real people and to bring the heart of God to bear on our world.
Maybe like me, you want to let God be God and do the work of God among us, while we do the work he has given us to do.
Where can we all begin?
Regina’s words offered a start: 1) Proximity, and 2) Empathy. These are rising up as an answer to the desires in my heart.
There will be no empathy that lasts if there is no proximity. I choose proximity, period. With my fellow humans who are black, as well as my fellow humans who land on either side. I choose to stay authentically in the discomfort of all of it. I do so on purpose because I believe that either everyone matters to me, period, or no one actually matters to me.
A friend of mine actually started a YouTube channel for me several months ago. I think it’s time to start using it. I want to share more specifically the words of the Bible that are influencing a change in me (for those who think I have wandered from biblical authority in my life), and for those who find themselves curious about why the words of that book matter to me so much that I could never walk away from them.
Mentioned in this episode
If We Matter | Episode 37: Does my black life matter?
If We Matter | Episode 35: African American Bridges
Resources
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