I’ve been troubled by black people, especially black Christians, who adamantly protest against the Black Lives Matter movement. They call the movement socialist, communist, an organization promoting gay rights, lesbian rights, and an effort to lead Americans, especially black Americans, straight to Hell for believing human rights more than freedom in Jesus.
They point to the BLM organization’s manifesto that states, among other things: “We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.”
Curiously those critics ignore the next two affirmations: “We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.” And: “We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
White evangelicals love to hear these politically conservative black preachers speak against black liberation. Yet both ignore a young man who was once quoted by a doctor named Luke: “God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God’s year to act!’” Yeah, Jesus was tough like that!
Understand that black Americans aren’t politically or culturally monolithic. We think in as many silos as any other block of Americans. But preachers who express a commitment to full gospel beliefs seemingly ignore Jesus himself who spoke in the temple from a scroll of Isaiah. When he sat down every eye looked at him intently. “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” Did his life matter?
Certainly, we must understand what people are protesting over and bellowing about in marches and speeches. Understanding history and who wrote it, is important in understanding what people are saying and believing. For example, look at one of the greatest sentences ever written and baked into American history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
That sentence opened the second paragraph of America’s Declaration of Independence, a document largely written by Virginian Thomas Jefferson. It’s not a far stretch that Jefferson could have put his pen down, rose, then raped his black maid and beat his black male slaves. Apparently, it wasn’t self-evident that all men and women were created equal in his household nor in the households of any of the men who signed that Declaration on July 2, 1776. But that’s what we’ve been taught ever since because those signers wrote the history and not their slaves. Their lives mattered then just as the lives of their ancestors matter now.
You’d think that during the past 249 summers we might have come to grips with that fact but as long as people are caught up in organizational membership instead of humanity membership we’ll continue to stumble over the most simple things. If all lives matter, then black lives matter. And, if Isaiah and Jesus found the declaration important thousands of years ago, we need to understand that the lives of the oppressed might matter most now.
Let’s go back to the New Testament, the book to which black and white evangelicals have sworn allegiance. Supposedly. In the book of Acts one of Jesus’ disciples, Simon known as Peter, was traveling to see the Roman centurion Cornelius. When Peter arrived, Cornelius knelt to give him respect as an Apostle.
Instead Peter helped Cornelius up and fairly exploded with his good news: “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open.” All lives mattered. Roman lives mattered. Anyone who followed God, their lives mattered. Black lives matter. I can’t understand why this is hard to understand no matter who says it. Jesus. Simon Peter. Or three lesbians from Oakland.
We use a special yardstick when we measure the goals of the BLM movement. Do we use that same yardstick when we measure the goals and objectives of Christian racists who shadow themselves under the Christian Cross? Or pastors who wail against Democrats accusing them of killing and eating babies without a shred of evidence? Or what about those Christians who support a president who “preaches” about Haitian immigrants who eat pet dogs and cats in a small Ohio town; again without evidence? Some of our yardsticks evidently shrink when put in front of a mirror.