Over the past few months, years really, terrible atrocities have filled the media to the point where it’s become no surprise to wake up to mass shootings, police brutality, officer deaths, religious executions, and much more. So often the news is filled with stories of death as a response to enraged hatred that it’s almost expected rather than appalled – and I’m left to wonder what’s become of this world we call home, left not knowing how to respond.
I don’t know what the practical answers to inequality, entitlement, systemic injustice, institutionalized racism, and hatred are. I don’t know the full depth of the pain people across this country are feeling today, and every day, because of these things. But I do know that when we fail to speak truth – when we fail to proclaim love and hope, and fail to seek peace and justice – we let the words of the few become the focus of many. We allow for terror, and fear, and hatred to prevail when we give strength to ideologies and misconceptions that are built on retaliation and destruction rather than on reconciliation.
There is so much in this world that should grieve our hearts, yet instead of feeling hurt, we act out our hurt. Rather than acknowledging our pain, we inflict it on others. Neither hate nor blame will lead to the justice and peace that we all want – it will only move us further apart. Yet anger is easier than grief. Blame is easier than real accountability. And violence in response to violence is not the solution to the problem.
We’re kidding ourselves if we think we don’t have a race issue in this country. But we’re also quite disillusioned to believe that it is a simple issue of black versus white, or believing that stereotypes are hard and fast rules. Our country has become increasing entitled, lazy, arrogant, and impatient. Black, white, whatever – people want to do less, for more money, and higher accolades. People blame gender, race, religion, and sexuality upon dismissal rather than job performance. And all too often, when we have seen only division, we seek to blame only the differences between us and take justice into our own hands believing the world is against us. Any minority has felt this way. Marginalized. Forgotten. And unloved. Leaving the majority as the bad guy, and perpetuating the divisions among us.
But is not up to Black Lives Matter, nor any movement led by and for communities of color, to make space for or articulate a vision for white people. Nor it is the space of white people to articulate the vision for communities of color. Until we can move past seeing people in the lenses of “us” versus “them” things will never change. Until we choose to actively love one another as the Creator loves us – deeply, fully, and unconditionally – our society will remain the same. And as long as we keep killing one another for the sake of our causes, love will not prevail. We have a choice of how this world will be, and if we continue to choose darkness, we will continue to live shadowed from the light.
