Racism Not Defeated by Education or Rules

REDEMPTIVE POWER OF GOD

Continuing with the model provided for us by Alcoholics Anonymous, the second step of the process is to admit our helplessness to control this disease and our dependence on a higher power. While education is important, we cannot educate ourselves out of racism. While laws to protect the community are important, we cannot legislate the end of racism. The history of racism makes it clear that racism will not be defeated by human agency alone.

Our hope lies in the redemptive power of God that has been revealed in the cross. The cross revealed that God is not defeated by evil and can use the experience of evil redemptively. Not even racism can defeat God’s reconciling purpose for humanity. If racism is our cross, the rebellious act by which we defy the intention of God, our hope is that God can use this cross as part of God’s redemptive purpose.

It is important to emphasize that this is not an attempt to justify the evil of racism or to suggest that it is good in disguise. Evil is evil, but God is neither restrained nor defeated by it. As Christians have learned through the ages, however, we must turn and face the cross if we are to experience its redemptive power. “Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon you? It is my treason, Lord that has undone you. ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied you; I crucified you.”^[i] We not only do not need to deny the corporate history of racism in our nation and in our church and the ways that we have benefited from it, but it is important that we turn and acknowledge it for our own salvation.

IDENTIFYING THE PRIVILEGES

By identifying the types of privileges that have come to us by virtue of our being white, we can share in the search for the signs of God working redemptively in those very areas. It is not the pattern of God’s saving work only to speak through the pure in heart; frequently, the opposite is the case.  Jesus’ followers held clear prejudices. “The disciples rebuked those who brought the children for Jesus’ blessing (Matt .19:13). They were surprised to see Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman (John 4:27). These same twelve beseeched Jesus to send the woman of Canaan away when she sought healing (Matt. 15:23). Prejudice toward children, Samaritans, and Canaanites influenced the disciples’ response in each instance.”^[ii] Yet Jesus worked through them to heal the oppression of prejudice. It is easy to demonstrate, through the history of the church, that we continue to be filled with prejudice. When Jesus is quoted in Luke as saying, “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost,” it is important for the church not to shy away from the truth that Jesus is referring to us.

SPIRITUAL RFEPARATION

If the process of confession and forgiveness between Black and White congregations takes place, God can then liberate them to seek signs of God’s redemptive power at work in the whole Body of Christ. Economic benefits and societal acceptance, for example, are strengths that can be utilized for the good of the whole. Could not such economic privileges, political power, managerial abilities, and shared theological truths contribute to a strategy by which the structures of racism in the larger society might be confronted?