George Floyd: The Root of Racism and Responding to Hatred

            This past week presented itself with a dichotomy of events for me.  On the one hand, I celebrated life and birth – that of my new niece who made me an aunt for the ninth time and also that which happened five years ago to usher one of my charges as a nanny into the world (though we have no biological connection, she may as well be considered another niece).  On the other hand, I was sickened as I saw the footage of a precious life being senselessly, mercilessly, and unjustly snuffed out by a man whose very job was to serve and protect.  The murder of George Floyd has shaken our country and put on display for all to see the deep-seated racism and ungodly hatred that has reared its ugly head ever since the first murder of Abel by Cain.  This evil is not new, but that does not make it any less abominable.

The Root

            Racism is an insidious wickedness that is grown from more culturally palatable sins to which we are all much more apt to admit guilt: selfishness and pride.  God very clearly instructs us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to (Romans 12:3) and in Christ-like humility to consider others as more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:3-5).  These instructions are to guide our attitude and heart toward all people regardless of how they may be different from us, but this way of thinking and acting is not innate.  We need the instruction because our natural tendency is to care only for self and to live as if our importance and needs exceed that of all others.  Observe any toddler (or any adult who never learned the lesson that the world does not revolve around him or her), and you will know this to be true. 

The crucial teaching that one individual is no better or more valuable than anyone else must be ingrained from an early age.  All human beings are made from the same dust, bear the same image of God, and will one day answer to the same God for their actions.  We were all made by the Creator in His likeness; therefore, our lives all have value regardless of what we have done, what has been done to us, or what our background is.  On judgment day, we will all stand before God as sinners equally deserving of Hell (though we are equally valuable, we are also equally guilty of sin).  The man or woman who looked down with haughty condescension on someone else will stand next to the murderer and the rapist, and we will all fall short of God’s standard of perfection.  Only those of us who have trusted in Christ’s death and resurrection for salvation will know that even though we have given Satan more than enough legitimate ammunition to accuse us and secure our condemnation in Hell, we will be allowed to dwell in God’s presence forever because we accepted that Jesus already paid the steep price of sin for us.  Jesus is the only difference between the person who will spend eternity in Hell and the person who will not, and He is the only one who is worthy to be considered better than anyone else for any reason.

            However, our culture preaches the exact opposite of this message.  It screams that our value is based on what we do, how we perform, what we look like, how much money we have, or how much power and influence we have.  It encourages us to chase our own dreams no matter the cost to anyone else, to live for the approval of the elite instead of fearing God, and to accumulate as many experiences and as many possessions as we can for ourselves instead of sacrificing for the hard work of real, deep, and lasting relationships.  It elevates self-esteem, personal goals and desires, and achievement over the Word and will of God.  God’s very existence is denied, which in itself leads to injustice (Psalm 53:1).  Embryos are disposable, but animals and recyclables are not.  Each person determines his or her own truth and what is best for him or her.  Everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes.  All morality is relative until it is not.  “Mistakes” and immorality are entertaining and comical until they are not.  We are groomed by the culture to live in constant comparison and judgment and to be the best or be nothing.  How is it any wonder that racism thrives in such an environment?

            In saying all this, it is absolutely critical to remember what is going on beneath the surface.  Our war is not against flesh and blood.  It is not against all authority figures because of the inexcusable actions of some.  It is not against government officials who turn a blind eye, against the rioters in the streets, or against any other human being.  This war began in the Garden of Eden when two people chose to listen to their own wisdom and will over that of their Creator.  Sin and selfishness entered this world because of disobedience, and disobedience breeds more sin and selfishness.  Satan and his legions are deceptive, divisive, and cunning.  They know where we are weak and where we can be manipulated.  They take advantage of our blind spots toward the wickedness and prejudice in our own hearts, and they exploit every opportunity to turn us against each other and against our Creator.  When we disobey God and walk in our own wisdom and will, carrying out our own vengeance and sense of justice, we are playing into their hands and fighting on the side of the very thing we despise. 

Our Response

So, what do we do with all this?  How do we respond so that we are not just contributing to the problem?

1. Grieve Injustice and Abhor Evil

            This isn’t the way things are supposed to be, and it’s okay to not be okay with it all (check out my previous post for more on this). It’s okay to be angry at sin, so long as we do not allow that anger to drive us into sin. It’s okay to be disturbed by the heinous deaths of George Floyd and of many before him. It’s also okay to be appalled at the fact that those in authority can be so corrupt and abusive. God is grieving alongside us, and He is pointing us to a better way and promising us that in the end, His perfect justice will be executed.

2. Stop Biting and Devouring

            In our righteous outrage, we cannot turn on each other or to our own devices. Violence and destruction only serve to fuel more hatred and division. Wickedness reaps injustice, and trusting our own deceptive hearts and instincts leads to further upheaval (Hosea 10:13). “Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted” (Habakkuk 1:3b, 4). Bringing about lasting change in ungodly behavior cannot be accomplished through force – the heart must be changed.

3. Examine Your Own Heart

            Regardless of what happens to Derek Chauvin through our justice system, he will one day have to stand before God and give an account for his actions. Justice will be served. Even so, the present consequences of his actions are reaching much further than just himself. Innocent people are dying and losing homes and businesses to looting and riots. Sin rarely ever affects only the sinner. It affects everyone around us. This is why it is so important for us to regularly examine our own hearts and to ask God to reveal anything in our hearts to which we are blind. We desperately need to keep short accounts with Him (recognize our sin and agree with what He says about it right away) and to abide in Him (dwell in His presence and live each moment under His direction). No one is immune to the attitudes that develop into the atrocities of racism. As one of my friends recently pointed out on a Facebook post, “Racism occurs here locally every day. It may not take the form of lynchings or murder in the streets or yelling at people of color, but it is engrained. You can hear it in the way you talk about non-white people. You can hear it in the silence by the local church….” We have to evaluate and guard our hearts against pride, lies, prejudice, and selfishness and cling to the truth on a regular basis.

4. Love and Honor People

            We absolutely have to stop de-humanizing, demeaning, and hating people. Instead, we must learn to love and honor all people (Romans 12:10). “The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:10, 11). God is love, and if we need an example to follow to learn how to love well, we need only to look at Jesus.

            Most of us don’t struggle with understanding love as much as we do honor. In fact, we often fail to honor those we love most, much less those we don’t like, don’t agree with, or don’t connect with. In a culture that applauds irreverence and defiance, honor is a foreign concept to most of us. To put it in childlike terms, we are called to treat other people as special and important. We are to treat them with respect and dignity (even those whose actions don’t necessarily warrant such treatment) because of Whose image they bear and because of Whose blood was shed for them. A quote from C.S. Lewis delves a little further into this idea of honor: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption” (The Weight of Glory).

5. Humbly Accept & Extend God’s Grace & Mercy

            As we learn to see ourselves rightly (as sinners who are all valuable, but not better than anyone else), we will see our need for God’s grace and mercy in our feeble attempts to learn to love and honor all people well. We will have to war against sin from within and without until the day we die (or until Jesus returns for His Church). All of us fall from time to time (sometimes daily or hourly), and we need His grace and mercy to get back up again. We need to remain humble in our recognition of that need and be willing to extend that same grace and mercy to others when they fall short.

6. Trust and Obey God

            God is the only one who is perfect in love, in truth, in goodness, and in justice. He is worthy of our complete trust and devotion, and we must trust and obey Him as He leads us if we want to help reflect His light to the world instead of contributing to the darkness. Following our own hearts and our own ways will only lead to more death and destruction in the end.  Use your voice and the platforms God has given you to help affect change as He leads.      

7. Pray

            Raise your voice to the only one who can transform hearts. Plead for our nation as a whole to turn toward Him and to view and treat all people as He views and treats them. Ask Him to teach you how to recognize and celebrate the beautiful diversity and unity of His creation. Pray with fervency and urgency for change – for His kingdom to come. Ask Him to hold authorities accountable for their abuse of power. Beseech Him to draw near to the brokenhearted and to be a safe refuge to those who need protection. Ask Him to search your own heart and to reveal any wickedness within you.    

Final Thoughts

Peace on earth will not be realized until Jesus comes back to establish His righteous reign.  For now, sin and Satan have been given time to run their course – not because God is slow to bring about His promises, but because He is allowing time for more people to be saved (2 Peter3:9).  During this present time, the glimpses of that future peace will only come through living the way God tells us to live – by loving God, and loving others as we do ourselves.

Additional Verses to Consider

1Samuel 16:7

Acts10:34, 35

Acts17:26

Romans12:9-21

1Corinthians 12:13

James2:1-13

Revelation 7:9, 10

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The In-Between: It's Okay to Not Always Be Okay

            Sometimes it’s okay to not be okay.  Through the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve seen others go through the same cycle I have gone through countless times during our infertility journey.  It starts with a trigger from the circumstance that drags up an uncomfortable emotion – often sadness, doubt, fear, or anger in varying degrees.  We don’t like to sit too long with any of these (whether they are coming from within or radiating from someone else), so we often try to fix them or eliminate them as quickly as possible.  If that doesn’t work, then we bury them deep down under layers and masks of self-deluded okay-ness and try to deny that they are even there.  Next, we feel guilty or ashamed (and those of us who follow Jesus also tend to think we must be really bad Christians) for feeling this way at all.  Finally, we either give way to despair or muster up all the manufactured faith, love, joy, and peace we can to try and make everything all better.  But we wake up the next morning, and it’s still not all better.

            The freeing truth is that there is a reason why we feel so unsettled when things aren’t the way we know they should be.  I first wrote about Lysa Terkeurst’s book It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way and her teaching through the “two gardens” in my post titled “Giver of Good Gifts,” and it is a message that has stuck with me over the past several months.  We are living in a sin-mangled space between the perfect Garden of Eden that is imprinted on our hearts and the hope of the new heaven and new earth that are to come.  A heart that is soft toward God is still bothered when things aren’t as they should be because it is aware that there is something far better!  Knowing this frees us up to let ourselves feel and name negative emotions and to find healing as we allow God to guide us through the various stages of grief over the devastating effects of sin.  He doesn’t want us to brush past our feelings or cover up the state of our hearts with forced or feigned joy and peace.  His Spirit will produce those things genuinely (and repeatedly as needed) as we walk with Him in transparent and surrendered dependence, even and especially when we don’t understand and don’t know how to deal with what’s going on in our circumstances.          

            One of the most debated questions in regard to our circumstances is why God allows bad things to happen in the first place, particularly to those who love Him and have believed in His Son.  We get that sin has consequences, and we can accept that fact more easily when we see a direct correlation between our own sin and our own consequence.  However, we really have a hard time stomaching horrible circumstances when we don’t have a specific personal sin (or the sin of another) to blame.  There are many reasons why God allows suffering and sorrow into our lives (see “When Life Isn't Fair” for a more extensive list), but the one that God brought to my attention recently was through another book – Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches by Russell D. Moore. 

In Chapter 2, Moore describes the adoption of his two boys from a Russian orphanage.  One of the chilling scenes he depicts is that of a nursery full of silent babies who no longer cried because they knew no one would come to meet their needs.  When he was finally able to take the boys home out of that terrible environment, the transition to a safe home proved to be unexpectedly difficult.  As wretched as the orphanage was, it was all that the boys had known in their short little lives.  Not comprehending the loving home that awaited them, they reached back in fear and confusion for the orphanage.  Later, Moore draws from those experiences to explain some truths about our own spiritual adoption: “But we get too comfortable with this orphanage universe.  We sit in our pews, or behind our pulpits, knowing that our children watch ‘Christian’ cartoons instead of slash films.  We vote for the right candidates and know all the right ‘worldview’ talking points.  And we’re content with the world we know, just adjusted a little for our identity as Christians.  That’s precisely why so many of us are so atrophied in our prayers, why our prayers rarely reach the level of ‘groanings too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26).  We are too numbed to be as frustrated as the Spirit is with the way things are.”

While there is so much more I could share and discuss from that chapter, the main thing that impressed on my heart was that sometimes I need to suffer in order to remember where my true home is.  Sometimes I need to hurt in order to stop clinging to the things of this world so tightly and to long for my glorious eternal home with my loving Father.  I don’t want to live a comfortable and pain-free life that makes me content with this pit of sin and numb to its atrocities.  That is not to say that I should seek out pain and suffering, but that I can learn to endure it and even give thanks as it comes because it reminds me that this is not my forever home.   I have a good Father who is going to finalize my adoption and take me home one day. 

Until then, I need to allow the discord between what I know and what I see to drive me into His loving and understanding arms. He reminds me that there is coming a day when there will be no conflict between the two. He releases me to let the tears fall with the reassurance that He cries with me – even though we both know how the story ends. I need His Spirit to continually strengthen me and to teach me how to trust Him and navigate through this time between the two gardens. It may feel like it will never end, but His Word promises that this life is only a breath compared to what is to come – and then everything will finally, forever, and truly be more than okay.       

Passages to Read

Revelation 21:1-7

Isaiah 65:17-25

Romans 8:15-25

I did a new thing….

As all of these thoughts were rolling around in my head over the past couple weeks, a short conversation with a friend was born out of them.  That conversation sparked the first verse for a song.  Now, I’ve tried writing original songs before, but I have never been successful at getting more than a snippet here or there – a verse, an instrumental motif, etc.  This one came so easily.  Don’t get me wrong – it was still work, but I never felt stuck like I have at other times.  Sharing any type of personal art is a vulnerable thing, but I hope that what I wrote will encourage some of you as you walk through uncertainty and sorrow and draw your hearts near to the tender compassion and the firm, but gentle leading of God.     

The In-Between

Rev. 21

Verse 1

God, I know you’re here

God, I know you’re enough for me

So why this ache

That says this isn’t how it’s s’posed to be 

Pre-Chorus

In a world I wish were black and white 

All I can see is this hazy gray

Help me once again to see the day

Chorus

When all my tears will be dried up

And my sorrows fade from memory 

I’ll dance and sing, wrapped in your love,

In the light of your majesty

When the pain of this life is no more

And death’s death is our victory

All will be right, and new, and bright 

We’ll be with You for eternity

Help me trust through the in-between 

Verse 2

Lord, I know what’s true 

I know what you’ve done for me

Still I wrestle with

What I know and what I see  

Verse 3

And I know You’re good

That You command the wind and sea

Please take this fear

And clear away my heart’s debris 

Pre-Chorus

Chorus

Bridge

The discord of disappointment 

Wages war against my soul 

Yet, the fact I know that something’s wrong

Tells me this world is not my home

Chorus 2

Where all my tears will be dried up

And my sorrows fade from memory 

I’ll dance and sing, wrapped in your love,

In the light of your majesty 

When the pain of this life is no more

And death’s death is our victory

All will be right, and new, and bright

We’ll be with You for eternity

Help me trust through the in-between 

Let this home etched in my heart come quickly

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Needles, Blessings, and a Resurrected Savior

            Early on in our infertility journey, I read that I needed to get over needles fast.  Whoever wrote that encouraging little memo wasn’t kidding.  My doctor recently switched me from oral progesterone to at-home intramuscular injections.  Combined with monthly blood draws and weekly acupuncture, that puts my pokiest week topping out at roughly 18-20 needles in the span of 7 days literally from the top of my head down to my ankles and everywhere in between.  My acupuncturist even started needling my belly recently, which is just a delight, let me tell you.  

            While I eagerly look forward to the day that I’m no longer a human pin cushion, this season hasn’t been without it’s blessings.  For example, I have a good nurse friend who is taking the time to come administer my progesterone injections (having my husband give them was an option, but I wasn’t too keen on that idea.  He keeps reminding me he gave them to pigs when he worked on the hog farm and that pig skin is the most similar to human skin - thank you, Mythbusters - so, he’s not entirely inexperienced.  Somehow that still just isn’t overly comforting to me).  Anyway, my friend prayed for me as she gave me my first injection while my husband stayed nearby with Nika (who is essentially my emotional support dog), and I was again reminded how very much I am not alone in this.  I know that someday my own joy will be shared (and amplified as a result) with so many who have walked alongside (and sometimes carried) us through this, regardless of how God chooses to glorify Himself through it in the end. 

            I have also been more aware than ever of how I am crossing paths with people I wouldn’t have and in ways I wouldn’t have had my story been unfolding differently.  I am familiar with all of the phlebotomists at our hospital.  I see my acupuncturist and the girl who runs her front desk every week.  In the time we have been trying to conceive, I have had the gift of being a nanny to three beautiful kids in two separate families and of getting to love them and watch them grow.  I had the time, mental clarity, and energy to give careful and thoughtful counsel to the teenage girl who reached out unexpectedly for guidance the other day.  I have more of myself to give in youth ministry (and ministry in general) during this season.  

            Pain and suffering are not the worst things.  Struggles and trials are not the worst things.  In fact, all these things teach, grow, and refine us and bond us to others in ways that nothing else can accomplish.  They help us know Jesus just a little better and become a little more like Him, for he suffered more than any of us will ever have to.  He did so on our behalf.  He provided the way to escape the most intense, thorough, and final pain that any human being will ever experience.  He took it on Himself, and all that He asks is that we trust Him.  We will still experience disappointment and deep hurts in this life, but if we trust Him, we know that the glorious end of our own story will completely overshadow the heartaches of today.  I have had hope through infertility, through marital heartaches, through job loss, through seemingly constant life upheaval, and yes, through the caronavirus because I know the One who died for me and whose love was unequivocally and incomparably demonstrated by that death.  I also know that He is alive and that anything He allows into my life can be used for good.  The grave could not hold Him; neither will it hold those who believe in Him.  And I know that ultimately I’m not the end of my own story.  He is.  

“Sing to the Lord all you godly ones!  Praise His holy name.  For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime!  Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:4-5 NLT).

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