In seminary, I learned to love the Bible’s myriad attempts at changing me. Churches roll with this agenda, as they should, spending the majority of their time, energy, and other resources inviting people to be the best version of themselves that they can possibly be.

But, as anyone who’s tried to make these changes can attest, there are barriers – roadblocks that stand between us and a better rendition of us: anxiety, anger, pride, selfishness and a myriad other internal things that rob us of a better, more peaceful, much more hopeful life – the kind that God wants us to live and the kind that’s required if we’re to truly follow Him.

For our purposes this morning, let’s refer to these barriers as “personal injustices.” After all, if I deliberately tried to stand in the way of a better life for you, you’d call foul. Much more so if I stand in my own way. Silly, but we all do it.

As such, let’s refer to the agenda of most churches in America as “The Gospel of Personal Justice.”

You can tell where I’m going with this, but hang with me.

It’s a good agenda to be sure, and what’s more, again, a Biblical one, worthy of our undivided attention, as well as it’s frequent sermon appearances. Rest assured that the churches that pull no punches here are good at what they do, assisting many into the next level of a good life.

Without it, I doubt that I’d still be married, and it’s possible that I wouldn’t be alive.

But the Bible also calls us into the brokenness that exists outside of ourselves – to step into the places where people are hurting and/or being hurt. Human brokenness is everyone’s brokenness, and everyone’s responsibility to engage. Scripture’s focus here is just as repetitive and annoying as it’s focus on personal justice, calling us over and over again to take the healing/peace/hope/justice we’ve experienced on a personal level, and the strength that goes with it, out into the world to bring as much justice into it as God has brought into ourselves.

So again, for our purposes this morning, let’s refer to this as “The Gospel of Social Justice,” though, to many, this is an inflammatory cultural buzzphrase crafted by people of questionable, possibly communist/Marxist/terrorist political leanings – definitely not an agenda any self-respecting Jesus follower should be found supporting.

To the Bible, social justice is a simple concept, calling the people of God to march victoriously into dangerous, frightening arenas where people are treated unfairly; people who don’t have enough, who are in a tough place that they can’t get themselves out of – not because they’re weak, or because they lack power, intellect, or motivation, but because the systems they suffer under have grown too big.

The removal of these requires a mountain of people.

Systems like this were prevalent in Jesus’ day, as in other ancient cultures, where there was a huge gap between those with power and money, and those without. Those without could work their fingers to the bone, armed with all the skill and motivation a person could muster, but never rise above their station. There were systems in place, ensuring that the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich.

Jim Crow America had similar systems, aimed solely at keeping Blacks in their place. Sure, there were a few exceptions where one might manage to rise economically above the mean (those were exhalted by whites as examples of a fair system), but for the most part, the bar was set, and few could rise above it.

I don’t know any white Christians who would argue that these systems of long ago weren’t real, and that, were they to exist today, God’s people should bulldoze them with all the power we possess.

But I do know a ton of white Christians who believe that those systems don’t exist today, that the cries of injustice coming from the Black community aren’t anything that we have to pay attention to. So we find different ways to dismiss their indictments, sometimes villifying them with accusations of laziness, entitlement, and, especially of late, terrorism.

If someone takes our pulpit and tries to convince us that racial injustice actually does exist, we’ll get mad at them too.

This is disturbing as it hearkens back to a problem in the Old Testament that Jesus addressed.

There’s an episode in the life of ancient Israel, according to multiple places in the Old Testament, when there were too many systems, too many barriers for the poor and marginalized, too many ways that kept everyone in their place. So, God sent upstanding, respected, influential people from different communities to send a harsh, direct, in-your-face “knock it off!” message.

Today, we refer to them as prophets.

The most well known of these would be the prophet Isaiah, who warned of the destruction of the entire nation if they didn’t get their act together, specifically with regards to justice on a social scale. Following are a few quotes from his message:

“For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing.” ~ 61:8-9

“Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. 17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” ~ 1:16

“Your rulers are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.” ~ 1:23

“The Lord takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people. 14 The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people: ‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.” ~ 3:13

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. ~ 5:7

“Therefore my people will go into exile for lack of understanding.” ~ 5:13

It’s a well documented, historical fact that the nation of Israel, both the Northern and Southern kingdoms, were all but razed to the ground, and its people carted off to live somewhere else, as Isaiah warned. For those of us who believe that the Bible is an accurate representation of the story of God’s people, we’ll have to agree that social injustice makes Him really angry, maybe more so than anything else.

This seems dumb to me. If God cares so much for poor people and/or people who are being treated unjustly, why doesn’t He do something about it Himself? Or, if He wants us to do it, why not just come down as a 20 foot giant with lightening bolts shooting out of his nose, commanding all of humanity, believer or not, with a voice that shakes the mountains?

The other side of my understanding knows that God doesn’t want us operating out of fear, scaring us into submission. He wants the world to operate under the thumb of compassion, mercy, generosity, and the unconditional love of people that He possesses. That doesn’t happen without freedom. And fear is never freedom.

In Isaiah’s case, the people who failed to listen failed to see the injustice he was referring to.

It’s easy to understand why they chose to ignored him.

I imagine that the poor/marginalized/fatherless/widowed crowd heard him loud and clear. They were on the business end of it all. But the people who had the power to change things also had much to lose at the prospect of bulldozing their myriad systems. And, because rich and powerful people tend to segregate themselves from the poor and powerless, the right conversations, and the data points that go with them, where nowhere to be found.

Today, we’re in the same boat. A large number of people living under the thumb of similar systems are crying foul, while a large number of people who a) haven’t experiened the dark side of these systems and b) are too segregated from the people who have, find different, creative ways to dismiss them, many I’m sure resemble the different, creative ways that God’s people dismissed His prophets of long ago.

But if what we’re experiencing today is an analog to what happened back then, shouldn’t there be prophets? Where are they? If such a grave injustice is being perpetrated, and if God hates injustice so much, wouldn’t He send someone to warn us, or at least try to turn us around?

The voices crying “foul!” are spilling over from the Black community, now eminating from white religious leaders, politicians, and activists. Are these our prophets? They seem to fit the mold:

• • ignored and villified by God’s people.
  • speaking out about injustices perpetrated against people on the wrong end of a power imbalance.
  • making good, otherwise peaceful Christians really angry.
  • you don’t have to listen to them if you don’t want to.

This entire ordeal reeks of Isaiah’s situation, compelling us to at least consider the idea that God is initmately involved in America’s current racial justice movement.

So, should we be talking about this from the pulpit?

Many pastors and leaders will take a pass. The “Gospel of Church Growth,” one that needs no introduction, tends to trump everything these days. Who wants to preach a message that’s currently making so many white Christians angry, one that’s sure to clear the pews and impede our progress?

Of course, if this movement does have God behind it, pulling the strings, moving hearts and minds, etc., we have every obligation to join in. And if our people are angry about it, we’re compelled to lead them into a peaceful submission. We were under the same obligation during America’s slavery episode, Jim Crow, etc., but far too many pastors said no, unwittingly involving themselves and their congregations in a counter movement, resisting the very hand of God.

Either way, to relegate the Gospel of Social Justice to the arena of mere politics, or to find other creative ways to excuse ourselves from it, is to ignore the Bible’s focus on justice in general, both personal and social, for there is no personal justice without social justice, and no social justice without personal justice.

As I listen to some of my seminary professors warn us of the evils of the Gospel of Social Justice, as I watch local pastors avoid the issue entirely, or pay a little benign lip service to it, and as I reflect on all the Biblical accounts of God showing up with a message of justice and fairness that His people ignored, I’m compelled to see His hand in this current movement, and the presence of the other guy in its resistance.

And as I consider what God did to his nation for their systems, I’m worried about what He’ll do to us for ours.

And sadly, in Denver, and everywhere else I’ve lived, I have two choices when it comes to church – I can attend one that’s great at personal justice but weak on social justice, or I can attend a church that’s a glorified social justice organization, weak on just about everything else. How did our ecclesiology become so polarized?

Regardless, people flock to personal justice churches because, to them, that’s the gospel that matters most. The same holds true for what attracts people to social justice churches.

We need both.

Is God a boy?

The Bible suggests that He’s not genderless, nor is He male or female.

“He’s” both.

Torah’s account of creation suggests that Adam and Eve were together made in the “image of God:” it takes male and female to fully represent. As such, in scripture, one gender is not exalted above the other, nor are they considered to be the same. Both are given equal weight – an even share in the reflection of God, and equal, though sometimes different roles in His overall endgame.

In this story, God says, “it is not good for Adam to be alone,” then creates Eve. This is sometimes translated as “Adam is lonely and needs a girlfriend,” but there’s something much deeper afoot than Adam’s social life, or some unmet sexual thing.

Eve is next described as a “helper,” but we’re compelled to use caution with our interpretation here since humanity has such a long and disturbing history with regards to gender. What kind of help was Eve supposed to offer? The two were only given three commandments after all: don’t eat from the wrong tree, take care of הָאָרֶץ (ha’arets – Earth. land, ground, etc.), and make people. Adam doesn’t need any help with the first, but the other two are impossible to accomplish without someone else.

So Eve comes along to play the missing role, but not as some assistant whose main task is to make sure that Adam gets his morning coffee. For whatever reason, God wants הָאָרֶץ to be crawling with people, and He doesn’t want Adam to do that by himself. She is created as someone who, among other things, will be much more heavily invested, but nowhere does it say that this is her only vocation any more than making babies is Adam’s.

The two were called, together, to fill Earth’s humanless void, and, together, live as the fullest representation of God to be found in the universe, all the while choosing to operate under His authority.

This marks a big shift in scripture, by the way. Up until this point, God has created everything by Himself. Now, humanity and God will partner in all further creation. From this point forward, God doesn’t do anything alone, always enlisting the “help” of humanity – men and women – to further His purposes. It’s fascinating, and fringes on the irresponsible if you ask me.

A few thousand years later, St. Paul came along and ruined it all, teaching, very basically, that a husband is the “head” of his wife, just as Christ is the “head” of the church. That’s a literal translation of the ancient Greek, and there is no evidence that his words were somehow corrupted as the New Testament was copied/duplicated/restored over the next two thousand years. The guy who spread the Christian church farther than anyone in history actually said this.

For us folk who believe that the Bible (including Paul’s teachings) reflects the mind, heart, and will of God, this is extremely counter-cultural, and problematic for a guy whose wife was accepted into every Ivy League college in the country. Did Paul mean to say that the man is the boss of his marriage? That women should always be subservient? That’s how the church has interpreted it for most of its existence. It’s only recently that theologians have made attempts to reconcile this with the idea that men aren’t more important than women.

Others have used this as an excuse to ignore Paul entirely.

Let me pause for a moment and make it clear that no ancient Jewish person needed to hear “a man is the head of his wife.” That’s something they already believed. This reads as someone who’s about to say some difficult things, connecting first with his audience via common ground before introducing hard truths, such as the following:

“Husbands and wives should submit to one another.”

When a philosopher/theologian/prophet says two seemingly contradictory things, we should see it as an invitation into a deeper, albeit a much more complicated, most likely uncomfortable truth. In the same breath, Paul declared that a) man is second in the marriage hierarchy only to God, and b) that he should submit to his wife.

We should also note the legion of other places that Paul wrote about the equality of everyone – that nobody is above anyone else. Jesus himself took the lowest of the low and unleashed them to turn the world on its head. The Bible, in general, never exhalts one group of people, or one gender, over another.

But Paul’s thoughts on male leadership tie in nicely with an American cultural facet commonly referred to as “toxic masculinity;” the idea that male is the strong gender, the overcomer, the warrior, leader, winner. It gets toxic when “being a man” becomes more important than being a good father, or a good husband, a good president, etc.

As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time counseling men and marriages, I can attest to the fact that toxic masculinity is a problem in our culture, straining our relationships with a view of manhood that isn’t realistic, and super hard on everyone around us.

There are many others who believe that it’s not a thing.

In January of 2019, the Gillette razor company reworked their slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get,” into an introspective commercial that suggests an alternative to toxic masculinity, should it exist, offering a montage of men engaging the brokenness that allegedly attends our gender. Folks ripped the ad on social media, and the company, accusing Gillette of attacking the male gender and focusing on the worst things about us.

In a recent episode of “Good Morning BBC,” two men and three women debated the in’s and out’s of the ad; the women arguing in defense, appreciative of what Gillette tried to communicate, while the men argued against it, reducing it to a sexist attack, talking 85% of the time, frequently interrupting, totally dominating the discussion.

That’s what toxic masculinity does.

For a few different reasons, I’m not a fan of the Gillette company, but I appreciate a thoughtful montage of men engaging American maledom’s broken places. It’s easy in today’s world to be confused about what it means to be male, and what our role in this crazy place is. When someone brings a little encouragement, I’m all for it.

Part of our confusion stems from the growing belief that gender isn’t real, it’s merely an ancient cultural construct that modern people should try to move beyond. As you might guess, this doesn’t land for me. It might be that I’m old and growing tired of America’s breakneck cultural revisions, but there are too many consistent physiological differences between male and female to ignore.

You can be sure that there’s some ancient cultural junk, still alive and well, born from the many broken ways that humanity has tried to live with the tension that these differences create. For most of our existence, men have considered women to be “less” in a variety of ways, leveraging their physical strength and aggressive tendencies to create what is still a very androcentric world. We’ve grown beyond that, to a degree, but continue to live with a multitude of inequities and broken beliefs that have left women disadvantaged on many levels.

That might be why it’s un-PC to mention the differences between us, especially if it’s suggested that men are “better” in some arena: it smacks of the old garbage that’s been festering on our doorstep for so long now.

There are many other things that complicate any distinctions between male and female that we might want to make. Our culture’s openness to alternate sexual orientations, transgender, gender fluidity, etc. all seem to suggest that the traditional idea of gender is written nowhere in stone.

So it’s understandable that any discussion about masculinity in a way that differentiates it from feminity can be seen as a nod to the outdated idea that men and women are different.

Nonetheless, according to this blogger, toxic masculinity is a thing, and can be found rooting around in so many of our marriage problems.

I’ve struggled here, especially in the early years of my marriage. As a Southern born-and bred Evangelical, and a student of the Bible, I firmly believed that the buck stops with me, all the while far less qualified to run our household than Elaine. As such, for the first parts of our marriage, we had some epic battles over who the boss would be. We’ve since worked through much of that (another story), but I still feel the pull to “be a man” when things get tense between us.

I can also tell you that, for me and all the other men struggling with “be a man,” it’s not about some cultural phenomenon constantly whispering in our ears.

It’s about identity.

We don’t get sucked into this current because of the sheer force of it, we get sucked in because so many of us struggle to find something inherently valuable about ourselves. We feel good when we succeed, or somehow distinguish ourselves above a group of peers, typically male, but we tank when things don’t go the way they’re supposed to.

When we fail, we’re not someone who did their best, took risks, etc. We see ourselves, down to the core of everything we are, as failures, whimps, weaklings.

So we live from mountaintop, to valley, to mountaintop, scratching and clawing for anything that might help us feel good about us. Instead of the peace, hope, and comfort that the Bible calls us into, we set our sails for troubled waters, a bucket of chum for the cultural voices that want nothing more than a lethal chunk out of our true selves.

A friend of mine once said, “If you don’t know who you are, you’ll spend your life listening to people who have no business telling you who you are, tell you who you are.” He actually began with, “If you don’t let God tell you who are..,” which forever changed the way I approach God, and life in general, but that’s another story as well.

Either way, the power of toxic masculinity has more to do with the weakness in how we view ourselves than anything else. And you can rest assured that people who enter into marriage with this brand of brokenness will find much trouble.

I speak from experience.

For men, regardless of toxic masculinity’s roots, the trouble comes in two forms that represent two extreme expressions. When things are unhealthy, you’ll find him angry, aggressive, and dominant, or, at the other extreme, and much more common among Christian men, passive, checked out, repressed, “easy going.”

For all of us men who are left scratching their heads wondering what in the world Paul meant with his words about “headship,” toxic masculinity answers that question well, with all manner of predictable behaviors (above) that leave her feeling unwanted, undervalued, and unloved.

To that, Paul offered a bit of marriage counseling that you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else in antiquity:

“husbands, love your wives.”

He didn’t say that because loving her is his unique roll, or that love isn’t important for both genders. He said it because men and women show up differently in unhealthy relationships.

For me, for whatever reason, love is typically the first thing to go.

That’s how it’s been for Elaine and I, and for every difficult marriage, without exception, that I’ve counseled.

Note that Paul didn’t command me to claim the role of “head” over my wife, reminding her over and over again who the boss is. He was speaking directly to wives when he talked about heirarchy. He told me, speaking clearly as one can, to do one thing, and added that it’s supposed to look something akin to the way Jesus loved us, and how far He took that love.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her.”

Toxic masculinity has a different commandment for me, one that takes out the sacrificial love part, while overly emphasizing the idea that I’m the captain of this voyage, the winner, the dominator. If my wife should attempt a coup, toxic masculinity says “get louder!” or completely back off and find some other way to win, or at least feel like I’m winning.

And so, for the first years of my marriage, I almost completely ignored the Bible’s expectation here. When I finally decided to embrace it, I found myself confused about what love looks like in a marriage.

Thanx to the many churches I’ve been part of, I’ve never lacked an example. Over the years, I’ve befriended many a fellow who’s managed this kind of love, who also enjoyed its many happy returns. I also know some men who read “love your wife” in a much more passive way, always agreeing, always doing nice things, whatever it takes to stay out of trouble, etc. But that’s not love. There are times when love pushes back, fights, calls things out into the open, etc., but the endgame isn’t some screwed up manliness goal. Love does whatever is required to take the relationship to the next level, and that doesn’t happen without conflict and the courage it requires.

I’ve also come to understand what it looks like when Elaine is feeling unloved, a barometer of sorts that helps gauge how my end of the relationship is going. The behaviors that signal a need for deeper engagement on my part are similar to the way I’ve seen other women respond when their husbands are losing the plot, all suggesting, again, that men and women tend to show up differently.

Either way, countercultural as Paul’s words are, I’ve been given one simple commandment to redirect me when I’m feeling like things aren’t going well, or when I feel disrespected, or betrayed, or the legion of other negative things that come part and parcel to close human relationships.

Now, in this 20th year of life with her, “love your wife” means something very specific to me, resulting in a list that I can turn to when my selfish proclivities, or my poor identity, and/or the toxic masculinity sharks come calling.

I’ll share it here:

1. 1. 1. 1.  Have one weekly business meeting where we talk calendar, money, marriage, tension, and kids.
         2. Set aside at least one day a week where we spend a few hours together, sans kids, and talk. This one’s hard for me as I’m not a verbal processor, but a beer and good walk together loosens up my mind a bit.
         3. Develop a growing understanding of what makes her feel loved, what helps her get through the week, and what I can do to help her see her true worth.
         4. Develop a growing understanding of what it looks like when she’s not getting what she needs from me.
         5. Show up in healthy ways when we fight, making sure that I speak my mind, or circle back around to the issue later if I get scared in the moment and hide. 
         6. Have a go-to person(s) that I can process things with when I feel stuck. 
         7. Engage our family’s problems, challenges, and opportunities.

          

   There are places where I lead, areas of our relationship where I’m more at ease, more qualified to take the helm, and there are places where she’s much more capable. Over the years, we’ve grown more comfortable submitting to each other in these arenas, and have a much easier time making big decisions, working through tension, and enjoying our relationship.

   Given Paul’s commandment, I’m to pursue all of this regardless of whether or not she’s holding up her end of the bargain, or failing to respect whatever it is about me that she’s supposed to respect. Even in the worst of times, the above list, and all future ammendments, stand.

   As a Christian, I’m compelled to embrace and articulate love at an unconditional level, based solely on the character of God and the commandments of scripture. Of course, that’s not always how I show up. I’ve gotten better at aligning my life with these values, but the force of unhealthy manhood is strong with this one, constantly pulling me away from God’s general trajectories, always whispering in my ear that life will be much more fulfilling if I can somehow manage to get my own way, or dominate things, win, prevail, etc.

   You’ll find much missing in my thoughts above. What about toxic feminity, or Paul’s words to the wife, or Gay married relationships? These are merely my reflections, not intended to be an exhaustive review and commentary of every marriage issue know to humanity. I could however spend another month working through all of this, but will need to lay down my quill and move on to some of the other marbles that are rolling around loose in my head.

2. But I do hope that you’ve found this helpful. If you’re struggling in your marriage, or anywhere else, please feel free to contact me if you need to talk.Peace.

There’s a growing rift in the way we posture ourselves toward racial justice, but many from the white Evangelical camp remain true to a long-standing culture of resistance; each time America takes a step toward racial healing, we stand in defiance. A great many Bible-believing Christians opposed the abolition of slavery, and were the cross-section of America most likely to resist the end of Jim Crow. Today, as Black Lives Matter gains momentum, as our cultural lexicon gets a much needed overhaul, and as police brutality and the graven images of slavery’s defenders are under threat like never before, white Evangelicals resist, parroting our antebellum forbears, worried that our religion and our way of life are in danger.

As an Evangelical of 30 years, and a seminary-trained former pastor, I’ve lived in this culture for most of my adult life. I can tell you that we’re good people, trying our best to understand the scriptures and how to apply them, asking difficult questions about our role in a world that is so rapidly changing. We give billions annually to help the poor, and pray non-stop for our country and its leaders. It might be surprising to hear that we care deeply about justice and equity; none of us would say that something like mass incarceration is OK.

But, like any large group of people, we operate under powerful conventions that influence our grasp of politics, and our role in the greatness of America. Our orthodoxy and orthopraxy are deeply enmeshed with a white, straight, conservative way of thinking about God that tends to leave us oblivious to the goings-on of the outside world, suspicious of anyone who doesn’t look, act, or think like we do. From this vantage point we process the death of George Floyd, the protests that have sometimes turned violent, Colin Kaepernick, Donald Trump, and the growing, nearly worldwide accusations that our beloved country has a very serious race problem.

As any pastor who’s tried to change things can attest, this culture isn’t easily moved; it’s just as much a part of our religion as Sunday morning service. And we’ll get frisky when someone tries to mess with it, so it stays intact. In the interest of “church growth” and all the other fish that need fryin’ we choose not to kick this particular hornet’s nest, convinced that one day it will kick itself. As such, we’ve chosen to live with four facets of Evangelical culture that all but guarantee our continued, unfortunate posture.

Segregation

While Evangelical churches in America are more racially mixed than they’ve ever been, that’s not saying much – we haven’t strayed far from where we were in the ‘60s. But white-ness isn’t a sin, and our scriptures don’t condemn us for congregating according to color. When we walk into a Sunday morning service packed with mostly-white worshippers, we’re uncompelled to consider that something might be amiss.

One of segregation’s most egregious fouls is that it insulates us from non-white conversations about race. We’re not victims, and by ourselves could never grapple with what it’s like to be one. Our only shot at a deeper understanding is to have personal encounters with non-whites who live on the other side of this struggle so that we might “experience” the abuse that otherwise escapes our notice. But, because segregation places a great distance between us and them, our perspective goes unchallenged.

We’re politically segregated as well, equally distant from data and media outlets that might invite us into a fuller picture. To us, more than ever, non-conservative voices sound like the insane rantings of an evil despot, dead set on destroying the country we love. So we limit ourselves to the conserative side of the story, one that affirms and secures our status quo.

While we are, again, just as serious about justice and equity as anyone else, our many forms of segregation keep us at arm’s length from the truth, tied to a whites-only story that blinds us to the problems we would bulldoze if we thought they were real. We can’t engage the racism we can’t see, and refuse to question the limitations of our own perspective, much less consider the strength of anyone else’s. So we sally forth, convinced that there’s no such thing as mass incarceration, no reason to protest, and certainly no reason for those protests to turn violent.

Self Preservation

We’ve lost nearly every political/cultural battle we’ve engaged: divorce, sexual promiscuity, abortion, gay marriage, who’s a good president, how to act in a pandemic, etc. In each campaign, we’ve not hesitated to condemn the naughty people, garnering for ourselves a reputation of self-righteous, judgmental, irrelevant prudes.

Now, more than ever, the only people who’ll listen to us are us.

And that’s frightening.

We’ve lost our voice, our seat at the table. What will we lose next? During this pandemic for example, the government has made unprecedented attempts to control our right to worship indoors, leaving many of us in fear that more control is coming. Isn’t it time to fight back?

Equity frightens us as well. The idea that Blacks in particular might soon enjoy the same power, voice, financial resources, and privilege that we do is just as reprehensible as it was to our comrades who opposed abolition and Civil Rights. Equity isn’t progress, it’s loss, added to the loss that we already feel, and to our fear that more is coming.

Despite the Bible’s plea to approach all of this as if God were on our side, we’ve taken a defensive posture. Now, egged on by a not-so-Evangelical president who’s convinced us that America is under threat of internal attack, we’ve set our collective face against any opinion suggesting that America has a race problem that rivals Jim Crow, obviously born from yet another mindless, liberal, nation-damning agenda.

As one of the most powerful political forces in America, we’re a bowling ball thrown in the wrong direction, posing just as much of a threat to our country’s greatness as anyone else, poised again to be on the wrong side of a righteous movement.

If It Doesn’t Shock Us, It’s Not A Problem

To many in my camp, thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, racism in the US is at best a wounded animal; still alive, sort of, but not the deadly beast of long ago. Thanks to Dr. King and his followers, great violence was done to the overt expressions of Jim Crow America; no more lynchings, legalized segregation, voting restrictions, etc. We’ve since disavowed the white hoods and their nationalist cousins, now living in what many consider to be a “post-racial” America.

We’ve come so far, and find ourselves befuddled when Black activists and protesters air their complaints, sometimes violently. What more could they want, another skyscraper on top of the one we’ve already built? We expressed a similar exasperation in the late 1800’s, unable to parse the negative sentiments of America’s newly freed citizens. The institution of chattel slavery had been obliterated at great expense to the union that was nearly obliterated with it, and Blacks had the audacity to expect more.

But the Jim-Crow-era expressions of racial injustice didn’t go away, they changed their clothes, learned to blend in a bit better, now showing up in far less shocking attire than something like a whites-only water fountain. A much more sophisticated, systemic racism has slipped under the radar, unfettered to begin its next iteration, transitioning without a hitch into things like wage disparities, employment bias, education and housing inequity, racially motivated police brutality, mass incarceration – a multitude of further perpetrations that have left our Black brothers and sisters disadvantaged, traumatized, and angry.

But we don’t see it. Today’s racism doesn’t look like it’s supposed to. Whatever problems exist today aren’t so bad that professional football players have to kneel during our beloved national anthem, or members of the Congressional Black caucus have to sit in protest while unemployment numbers are hailed as a success by clueless white politicians. You can imagine our disdain for any protest that turns violent.

When racism does manage to look like it’s supposed to, as it did in the death of George Floyd, we’re appalled, but easily dismiss it as a one-off sort of proposition; we shouldn’t blame the entire police force for one man’s racism. The Black community claims that there’s something else afoot, but we don’t listen.

Racism?

Nowhere does our problem show itself more clearly than in our posture toward Blacks when they attempt to invite us into their struggle. There are many reasons why we dismiss them, and many creative methods we employ to do so, but in order for our ears to open, we would have to give them some level of authority.

We don’t do that.

The spirit that called them “slave” is alive and well, driving the brunt of our defiant posture. If Blacks want to talk about Jesus, Bible, morality, or any other beloved pearl, we’re happy to listen, but give them no voice whatsoever when they try to talk about race.

Our bias also shows itself in our fragility; the topic of personal racism truly puts a bee in our saddle. Some faith communities are beginning to broach things like systemic racism, or social justice in general, but few from my camp are asking, “are we racist?”

It’s insulting, a personal attack, so we respond in kind when someone tries to broach this with us, accusing BLM and other protestors of terrorism, defining their movement by it’s weaknesses, categorically failing to understand the problems that drive their activism.

As any pastor worth her salt will tell you, the place where people are the most fragile is the place where they’re the most broken, but questions that threaten to clear the pew are rarely hailed from the pulpit, important as they might be.

There is no shortage of voices claiming that racism is a problem among people of faith. A growing number of these are white Evangelical authors, scholars, and pastors, added to the Black leaders who have been vocal about this for years. As someone who’s spent the majority of his adult life in church leadership, I can attest that this is a big problem, though I’ve only just begun to come to grips with it.

A few years ago, over lunch with the lead pastor of one of the biggest, predominantly white churches in the Denver area, I broached the topic of personal bias and the growing claim that an estimated 30% of white Evangelicals in America might be racist.

“It’s more like 50,” he said.

But that’s hornet’s nest is best left alone.

I don’t mean to characterize my brothers and sisters as a mindless swarm of bigots. I have personally experienced a mountain of transformation in the churches that I’ve served, and would be a different person today were it not for the leaders and friends who’ve invested in my life. I’m also struck by the positive impact that faith communities from all different departments have had on our country. We have so many times shown up as the ambassadors of peace, compassion, mercy, and reconciliation.

The church’s weaknesses don’t exist at the expense of its strengths, and vice versa, but we do have a problem.

And I mourn the various ways that it keeps us on the bench and beyond, the one place Jesus told us not to sit, especially when things are about to change.