Galatians 5
13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!
Like everyone, I am very troubled by what is going on in our nation right now. The racial divide that is becoming more and more apparent badly hurts my heart. What is the answer to the problem? Ultimately, as with every problem, the answer is God, truly seeking Him and submitting to His will. Exactly what does that look like for this situation? I don’t know but I do know what it does not look like. It does not look like what is going on right now. And yet it does look like what is going on right now. It’s complicated. I’m struggling to understand it all and I bet maybe you are too.
I am completely blind and so I cannot see the video that everyone is talking about of George Floyd being killed by having a police officer kneel on his neck until he suffocated. I cannot see it but I have had it described to me and it sounds horrific. There is absolutely no excuse for that kind of behavior. I also cannot see the videos and pictures of all of the looting and burning and violence. I have had these videos and pictures described to me as well and they too sound horrific. There is also absolutely no excuse for this kind of behavior. In Gal 5:15, Paul warned “if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!”. He was talking to the Christian church. If this is true of even those of us who proclaim Christ as our master, and it is, then it is even more true for those who do not have His guidance and protection. As we engage in this kind of behavior, we push ourselves further and further from God and, if we aren’t careful, in so doing, we will destroy ourselves.
Back up to verses 13 and 14, where we are admonished to love one another as we love ourselves and, in love, to serve one-another. I am becoming increasingly aware that serving one-another involves truly listening to one-another. As a blind man, I have certainly experienced a great deal of discrimination concerning my disability and so I do understand, first hand, what it is to experience employment and social discrimination. I do understand discrimination better than many. Even so, I have to admit that I have not been good about listening when it has come to complaints about racial discrimination. I have tended to assume that very occasional incidents get blown up by the media and make the problem appear to be much bigger than it really is. Perhaps many who have not experienced it feel the same way concerning disability discrimination. Perhaps that is why it still persists. Perhaps, for the same reason, racial discrimination persists more than I have wanted to believe. Perhaps I need to love more by listening more. Perhaps I am not alone in this.
As I said, I am completely blind. I can’t see shapes or colors and I don’t even have any light perception. One of the things that I do in the speaking portion of our ministry is giving my Christian testimony, talking about the things that God has taught me through the hardships related to my blindness. Occasionally, when I do this, someone will come up to me afterword and tell me that they understand my situation because they can’t see well without their glasses or they are blind in one eye. They will say “I understand completely” and I think to myself “no you don’t”. Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Many of the things that God teaches us through dealing with a particular hardship are universal to dealing with all hardships. That is one way that God is able to use my Christian testimony and the testimonies of other Christians to speak hope and peace into the lives of others, even when their trials are different from ours. However, because you can’t see a thing without your glasses on does not mean that you understand what life is like for a completely blind man. Unless you too are completely blind, then you don’t entirely understand because you can’t.
Similarly, just because I know what discrimination is like from the prospective of a blind man, that does not mean that I know what it is like from the prospective of a black man. I know what it is to have someone say “you are the most qualified candidate we have but there is the whole blindness thing and we don’t know how to deal with that”, sometimes in words and sometimes just through actions. I do not know what it is like to have someone say or insinuate “your skin is black and so you are probably the guy who committed that crime down the street”. As hurtful as disability related employment discrimination can be, I can at least somewhat understand it, from the employer’s prospective, and that does help soften the blow a little. I cannot understand, even a little, someone thinking that someone else is lesser because of the color of their skin. I cannot say to that person of color “I understand what you go through” because I do not. I know hardship but I do not know their hardship and I should not presume to.
Though I do not and cannot entirely know the hardship of another person who is in a different situation, if I love them and want to help them, I should try to. This involves communication, on both sides of the equation.
I said that I cannot see the videos and pictures of all of the things that have gone on concerning this situation but I understand them pretty well because I have had them described to me. My wife knew that I could not see them and so she told me about them. When she explained them and I didn’t understand something she said, I asked for clarification. When I heard someone say something about a video that didn’t make sense to me, I ask her to look at it and explain to me if what they said was correct or not and why they said what they did about it. I knew that I could not understand these images without help and so I was quick to ask for that help. Because of course my wife knew that I could not understand without help, she was happy to take her time to patiently explain things to me. I did not just assume that I could understand without help from someone else. My wife did not berate me because of my lack of understanding and she did not assume that I could not understand. We worked together to achieve my understanding of something that initially only she could understand. Even when all was said and done, I still did not understand as well as she. She could see the images and I could not. However, I had a good enough understanding to form opinions and take actions.
So it is with many things in life. I am coming to understand that this includes race relations. Those on both side of the divide cannot understand the position of those on the other side without actively asking questions and attentively listening to the answers. When those questions are asked, those providing the answers should be patient and articulate, knowing that those who asked the questions cannot help their lack of knowledge. It also should not be assumed that just because there may sometimes not be complete understanding, that does not mean there cannot be meaningful understanding. All of us, on both sides, have got to stop being so quick to think that we always understand the position of the other guy or that he cannot understand our position. We have got to stop being so quick to think we know the solution or that there can be no solution. God is the only one who truly understands everything and we have all got to listen to Him if things are ever going to get any better.
I think, in a way, many people are already listening to Him more right now, even if they don’t realize it. I am only 43 years old (yes kids, only) and so I was not around during the civil rights movement and I was a child during the very end of the implementation of integration so there is much of the relevant history here that I have not experienced. However, concerning my own experience, I can say two things. Race relations are at the lowest point that I can personally remember and there appears to be more people listening on both sides of the racial divide than I can ever remember. I have long felt that another great revival is coming for our nation. I have also been long burdened about the state of race relations in our nation. Perhaps these things are connected.
Mark 12
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
God tells us that His greatest commandment is to love Him with everything we have and that His second greatest commandment is to truly love one-another. Obedience to the second is an indication of our obedience to the first and if we are not obedient to the second then it will interfere with our ability to be obedient to the first. We cannot truly have revival while we are so divided and yet true revival is the only way to end the division. We have a bit of a conundrum, don’t we? But God loves to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. It may be He who is bringing about the increased unity that we are now seeing, in preparation for a great revival, but we have a long way to go yet. We must seek Him.
James 1
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
I would ask you to pray for wisdom from God as our nation moves forward from here. Pray that we will constantly seek His wisdom, that we will have faith in Him to grant that wisdom, that we will heed that wisdom when He gives it, that we will have joy as we pursue understanding and healing through His wisdom, and that we will have the patience to trust in His timing as we watch things unfold. Please meditate on James 1:2-8 and pray that we will exemplify the things contained in His Word there. Please especially pay attention to verses 6 through 8 and pray that we will not be double-minded, that we will not say that we are trusting in His wisdom while still trying to handle things our own way. We have tried to handle it our own way and we have failed. I’m telling you, He is the only hope we have.
