So many look away. They can’t stand the thought of people rioting in streets, anger, frustration or the world in upheaval.
They have taken The Word that divides bone and marrow, soul and spirit, and stuffed it in some plastic bag, as if it need “protection”…
When the Word is more powerful than a double-edged sword. The One they say they worship turned the entire world upside-down. He shattering pyramids of prestige, leveling the playing ground through grace.
So why do so many try to stuff Jesus back in sheltered temples, claiming His mantra of “just love” means just passive acceptance of whatever the world regurgitates.
Doesn’t real faith take action? Real obedience to Jesus mean we live the opposite of “safe”?
Worse yet, why do these same “safe Christians” urge others to quiet the noise, silent their voices, and turn from all evil for the sake of “getting along”.
Jesus didn’t just “get along”. He gave His life for His cause.
Evil, sin, injustice, prejudice, hate? They are like cancer growing. On the outside, they aren’t seen until they have visibly brought destruction. While inside, they fester, grow, poison and take over everything in their path.
To leave a cancer-patient the way they are; without treating, discussing their cure or helping in any way at all, isn’t loving….It’s cruel.
Ignorance isn’t bliss. In fact, quite the contrary.
And yet, we take evil and try to tuck it away, somewhere far from our small communities, carefully selected religious organizations, eyes that stroke egos with “peaceful”, protective, plastic thoughts.
Christians can put up walls where Jesus came and tore down the veil.
He connected worshipping and sinners, the redeemed to unbelievers, and a sinful world to the grace of Jesus.
Don’t we become like the Pharisees without even knowing it, when we think we are good and everyone that doesn’t look or act like us is “bad”?
God says quite the contrary. He demands justice, active kindness and compassion to the least of these. He calls us out of our captivd-shelters, into the world with boldness.
Hosea writes to the religous, as if from God himself, “The more they increased and multiplied [in prosperity and power], the more they sinned against me.” (Hosea 4:7)
“People without understanding shall stumble and fall and come to ruin.” (v.14)
And yet, do we beg for wisdom? Do we ask for grace? Do we humble ourselves so that we might love tangibly, practically and even messily, as He modeled?
He Was Born on Mother’s Day
February 23rd, 2020, a young African American man was jogging down the street. A man followed behind him with his car and a gun he loaded. As the man kept jogging, He came upon two gigantic men, a father and son.
The father stood in the back of his pick-up truck, with a loaded riffle, while his son stood on the ground, trying to stop Ahmaud Arbery from jogging by.
It was visible in the video leaked almost two months later, that the large bearded men wouldn’t let Arbery pass. If Arbery turned around, he’d face the car following him with a loaded pistol.
So Ahmaud tried to jog around the truck to the right. That is when the son shot his gun three times, killing Ahmed in open daylight.
Ahmaud was unarmed. The father and son weren’t arrested.
The crime? The 911 call said, “A black man was running”.
As a mom to an African American daughter, I have seen my share of discrimination. I cannot, nor will I ever shrink from the reality that hate and racism is an evil that still exists today.
Yes, hiding would be comfortable, passively just claiming “Let’s just love everyone and let them be”. And to be honest, I’d probably keep more friends on Facebook.
But love was never passive, weak, heartless, or accepting of premeditated evil.
Jesus didn’t turn a blind eye to sin or oppression, sickness or situations that oppresseed other people, abused or discriminated against any group of people.
Ignoring evil might be easier. But friends, there is nothing about it that is right or God honoring.
My 93-year-old aunt used to live in Florida. When she was alive, I remember her telling me she witnessed decapitated heads from black people rotting on rod iron posts in Florida.
Can you imagine? The thought fills me with SUCH righteous anger.
But worse than that? In the South, white people…even Christians…sat back and watched hate exist. They called themselves “good” and yet, did nothing, letting this kind of evil become common or “normal”.
Still, why do we tolerate such demonic evil today?
Isn’t it when we know better, we do better? Hasn’t this melting pot called America proven to us, love comes in all shades and skin colors?
Even Lisa Harper, the well-known, world-wide global Bible teacher and speaker, encountered racism and a real life chasing while her adopted Haitian daughter rode in her side car.
They could have died when they crashed. (Read her story here, as Lisa described this awful experience)
Still, we wait for hate to surface like cancer before we even wink at it? Then, when we respond, we feel bad then move on without teaching or learning, growing or explaining the real world to our children?
Why don’t those that professed to be Christ’s, call the next generaton to stand up to hate or have compassion for those who might look or act different?
Yet, didn’t Jesus preach, reach and heal those in the margins first and foremost? Weren’t the religous unreceptive to a grace that was offered to all, unmerited?
Didn’t Jesus come for the sick and call us to love all of His children?
The Mirror
Maybe it’s us that’s broken? All of us in our comfy houses, ignoring evil and then playing church, because, well, our lives seem “nice”, so why “rock the boat”?
Do we fear man or God? Do we seek His pleasure or ours? Do we want our own egos and approval? Or are we like Jesus, living and speaking for the most humble in our amidst?
“The people without understanding will stumble and fall and come to ruin.” (Hoseas 4:14) “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (v.6) “Knowledge”, being a personal and experimential understanding of the true character of God.
God’s love moves TOWARDS the poor, the marginalized, the orphan and victims. Genuine love speaks up against true injustice. It doesn’t shrink back because we fear what others might think.
Love gives and keeps giving…Even if our lives themselves feel emptied and depleted.
This mother’s day, a mother won’t have her son. She will sit at home and wonder why three grown men, tracked down her son and shot him to his death in broad daylight, then were allowed to go free for two months after.
She will ache as she reads her sons obituary, one that reads, Ahmed was“Humble, kind, well-mannered.”
His only crime? The color of His skin.
I don’t want my African American daughter to live in a world that is small or indifferent. I want her to know a land of radical Christians who love with unapologetic fervence and aren’t afraid to speak truth.
These wild, God-love people, won’t require HER to change…but themselves….looking in the mirror at their white, indifferent and plastic-wrapped societies.
Lisa Bevere said it best in her bold exposition to the church. (Watch it, here)
If we are the church, then we can’t remain stagnant, silent, or comfortable in our little, self-made worlds, because somehow we think it might be easier.
We are called to rise and decide to really love, speaking up for injustices like Ahmaud’s, teaching our children to love with action…
Not safe. Not comfortable. Not complacent. Not silent. But radical, bold, fearlessly, and extravagant….
Because isn’t that how Jesus loved us?
“There is [now no distinction in regard to salvation] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you [who believe] are all one in Christ Jesus [no one can claim a spiritual superiority].” (Genesis 3:28)
