I have noticed that everyone has been over-reacting to the tidal wave for racial violence hitting the United States. Why do I say, “Over-reacting?” Police killing someone in cold blood, though it does happen and may have happened, may indeed be rare. However, it is not rare for there to be racially motivated violence.
Cops are shot all the time by black suspects during routine stops, so often it does not merit national mentions in the news cycle. Black men get profiled regularly. Cops kill unarmed men of all races. White people living in black and Hispanic neighborhoods routinely get intimidated and physically assaulted until they move out. Kids get beat up of every race for merely being different. And of course, blacks and Hispanics are the victims of racially motivated violence too.
None of this is ever going to change, because people do not change. We got rid of segregation with Brown versus Board, but elite schools now segregate students based upon race to “empower” them and self-segregation is beginning on college campuses. White men used to lynch blacks and Italians, but the mass shooting of white cops in Dallas and other racially motivated violence shows that lynching exists, but by another name. Hiring and admission practices used to take qualified blacks, Asians, and Hispanics and deny them positions that they earned. Now, schools still have racial quotas, but they limit the amount of Asian and working-class white students. Black and Hispanic applicants to the New York Fire Department failed the civil service exam (with scores as low as 25 percent) while white men with seniority have been laid off to maintain recently hired racial minorities.
We are no more enlightened now then we were then, as man has always acted like an animal and always will act like an animal.
Am I writing this to complain as an angry white man? No! To do so would be to miss the whole point.
The Scripture says:
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc 1:9).
Nothing will ever change. There will always be racism. There will always be violence. There will always be injustice. There will always be rich and poor.
So, stop trying to act like street demonstrations are going to make a difference. Stop your hashtagging, your call-ins to talk radio, your voting for candidates if you think any of these things really are going to make a difference. None of this will change anything, because men cannot change…but….
There is one surefire way to change man. It is not via Supreme Court decision. It’s not by looking at all of the hypocrisy you see in the above and being careful to take the middle road. It’s not by electing Trump or Hillary. It’s not with education.
It’s with the Gospel. Men are dead in sin. There is none righteous, there is none who seeks for God. Not a single man will do what is right by his own standards, as men ignore their own conscience, let alone universal ethics. But the Gospel changes all of this.
The Gospel forgives wretched sinners like us. Christ came, lived a perfectly righteous life we could not live, and died in our place on the cross paying the full penalty for our sins. For all those that repent and trust in Christ there will be no condemnation, but rather a seal of salvation that cannot be taken away, the Holy Spirit. In Christ, you are a new creation, no longer a slave to your old ways of sin, but producing fruit such as love, patience, peace, and kindness by the prompting of the same Spirit. All those with the Spirit produce His fruit.
And so, it is by converting men to Christ that we change the world. As for men without Christ, expect more of the same. The racism, violence, and injustice won’t ever change because men cannot change apart from the grace of God. So, stop getting so self-righteous and indignant. Want to make a difference in this world? Preach the Gospel.
First, if you look over a longer time period than you must be referring to, things have gotten a LOT better. When I was a child, black people were still getting hung from trees. When I was a teen, police routinely beat non-violent protesters with clubs, set dogs on them, and used fire hoses and tear gas without any pause for negotiation.
Second, Christianity can equally be a source for inspiring pacifism, social justice and radical inclusivity, or for xenophobia, sexism, homophobia and conspiracy theories. You had better choose your church carefully. Though you were writing about the Gospel itself, that message is firmly under institutional control, disseminated and interpreted by a variety of sects that disagree with each other’s views about what it says and means.
I still see people getting shot in cold blood for their race. Being that the murder rate is essentially the same now as then, people still get killed for their race they just don’t call it lynching. But yes, racism is less in some ways (marriage for example) but can be arguably worse than others (I mean, I don’t think at any time people actually justified the killing of police officers for their race.) http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html
The murder rate has gone down every year since 1980. In recent years the rate of decline has slowed, but it’s still less both in total number and in rate. We have more ways of seeing crimes happen with immediacy, cell phones and body cams etc. and it promotes the illusion that things have gotten worse.
Murders are always terrible though, and it isn’t much comfort to the families of victims to tell them it’s statistically unlikely. We need to continue to work on racism, and on crime, because less isn’t “none”.
Again, my concern is the Gospel, men have ebb and flowed. Maybe we are better than the Nazis right now, but I see no reason to believe things will take a progressive direction until we have utopia on Earth.
Of all the talk of figures and statistics should the US government not actively log incidents where police kill or are killed? The lack of transparency helps no one. All we get is a state of ambiguity where anyone can make different conclusions.
Btw you could start with takeling the availability of guns in the us, but I know how hot that topic gets.
I don’t see that issue as one that Christians have to take one side on, though I think smart, informed people have only one view 😉
“It’s with the Gospel. Men are dead in sin. There is none righteous, there is none who seeks for God. Not a single man will do what is right by his own standards, as men ignore their own conscience, let alone universal ethics. But the Gospel changes all of this.”
If people don’t accept the Gospel (hard), and don’t interpret it “as they should” (harder — no matter what that means, because it really means nothing institutionally), then your hope is worthless. You said it yourself — things will never change. If things will never change, people will never change and will never accept the “Gospel” according to your own view. You have such a low opinion of humanity, you’d better stop hoping that people can be charitable at all. But hey, yes, they can. The message of JC just makes it easier for them.
“There is none righteous, there is none who seeks for God.”
That includes you and me, then. So absolute! Saint Francis of Assisi’s example, among thousands of others, contradict your view. Oh, I forgot, you don’t believe in sainthood. Just a parroting of Protestant clichés and words of order.
“Not a single man will do what is right by his own standards, as men ignore their own conscience, let alone universal ethics.”
Again, your philosophically unsound and unfounded absolute assertions about a degenerate state of nature (or should I say “state of sin”?). I have met many people that did and still do “what is right by their own standards”. The Buddha, for example.
And Saint Francis of Assisi never sinned? Sure…
I agree with most of your article, and I too have trouble believing that race relations will truly improve permanently. You are missing quite a bit of context in terms of racially motivated violence. The Dallas sniper shot police in response to his increased awareness of police brutality. When black people shoot police, there are always consequences for those crimes, unlike in cases of police brutality (which has indeed existed since the institution began). Self segregation happens because of white social exclusion with a history of being the original segregators and then being, sometimes violently, resistant to integration. I attend a pwi and despite being intentional about forging diverse friendships, having an org expressly for black students has been a lifeline on a campus where the majority of students treat you like you’re invisible and don’t make the slightest efforts to understand or be aware of the historical and social contexts in which they live (if they’re not outright racist).
Maybe… if whites did try to educate themselves from more diverse perspectives of how things got this way, (white flight, redlining, prison industrial complex, even microaggressions), maybe if they were more outspoken about ending the cycle of racist hate before it fuels more…
Nah, people will never change.
“White men used to lynch blacks and Italians”
Yesteryears FAKE NEWS is today’s FAKE HISTORY. Nothing more to it. It never happened.