Last Friday, August 11, 2017, a “Unite the Right” rally was held in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally was an occasion for Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and others who align with the ideology of white supremacy to gather and strut their stuff. On Saturday the 12th, a young white supremacist used his car as a murder weapon against those who stood to oppose racial bigotry and injustice.
I’ve heard enough people say that racism is only found among the uneducated to feel that I should point out that Charlottesville is a university town.
The idol of tribal superiority is worshiped by people of every class and in every nation, a serpent that twines in and around human hearts like a lethal adhesion. It can devour a heart, numbing it the way a serpent numbs its prey with venom. It can make a heart so hard that it becomes capable of genocide.
The serpent has left scars on my own heart. I could hate right back. I’ve heard unholy words in my head and I have given voice to them, denigrating the “other side,” the Other Tribe. Each time I step up on the soapbox in my mind, I hear people in the crowd saying, “Oh stand down, White Girl!” What right do I have to speak?
And so I said nothing in church, last Sunday. I thought someone more qualified would.
Forgive me.
When sin broke in it broke us. We were broken like the arms of the swastika, a deadly wheel that kills and maims everyone in its path; the tires of an automobile driven by hate. Hate breaks.
I have a voice and I have a Word that refuses to bruise or break or bend anyone to its own will. My Word broke on a cross to straighten the bent, to splint the broken. North, South, East, West; unbroken lines to realign us with a limitless Love. Lines in the sand around the oppressed, across which oppression dare not step. The borders of the Kingdom.
May Love straighten us out.
Until then, do not be silent. You have the Word. Speak it to the hearts of men and women who have heard the siren call of racial superiority, hearts that are being beaten into weapons to defend an unholy idol. Love is not blind, Love is not afraid to speak the truth. We are accountable to Love for living true and speaking up. That’s how we expand the borders of the Kingdom.
Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. Isaiah 1:17 (emphasis mine)
Beverly
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