When The Dream Becomes Reality

I don't post much here anymore, mostly because of time and priorities. But today is a day that deserves a post. It won't be long, but it is important.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the, "I Have A Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King in Washington, DC at the Lincoln Memorial. Fifty years later, as we watch the news, we wonder if King's dream will ever become reality. But it has. Not completely, but it has.

On a widespread basis; on a macro-cultural basis, it is pretty easy to win an argument that Dr. King's dream has not been realized. In the speech, Dr. King said, "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." While this isn't Georgia, that very thing happens at my office every day. It happens at other small businesses, corporate offices, golf courses, coffee shops, and churches, all over this country, every day.

I'm not saying all is well and there is no more work to be done. The work of cultural change will never end. There will always be racism. (Why? Because the only realistic model for change is the Judeo-Christian ethic, found in the Bible, that we are made in the image of God, the imago dei, and thus all deserve equality under the law and within a culture...and there are a lot of powerful people in the culture that hate the Bible.) Racism is sin, and we can no more banish it than we can banish lust or greed or avarice of any kind. Until the onset of eternity, when all sin will be cast into Hades, we'll have these things with us. But that doesn't mean we can't be thankful for God's common grace and His specific blessings on those who repent of that sin and walk in fellowship with fellow believers of a different race or culture.

This nation isn't perfect, but it is certainly a lot better place than it would have been without Dr. King and his dream.  Let us celebrate that, if not in a big cultural way, in a local way, by sitting together at the table of brotherhood.

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*Here is a transcript of Dr. King's full speech.  If you've never read it, take the time to do so now.  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/27/transcript-martin-luther-king-jr-have-dream-speech/

Why Do We Try to Change the Culture?

The idea of cultural change is not new among Christian believers.  Exactly how the change should be pursued and implemented is a source of constant debate, however.  But at least we mostly agree that cultural change is something that should be pursued in the midst of a pagan-cultured world.

Racism is one of the cultural changes that most people agree about.  Yes, there are still fringe groups on every side of the issue who don't want change, or even want change in the wrong direction, but these are even less than a minority report among Christian believers. I've recently been thinking about the 'why' part of this change, and trying to re-orient my thoughts about it (as I've done with my thoughts on a lot of cultural issues) around the idea of gospel-centeredness.

To summarize my thoughts, I think I can safely say it this way: The reason we need to change the culture of subtle racism within the Church is not because it is mean to ___ people (fill in the ethnic/racial group of your choice, black, hispanic, or any other group), or because it is insensitive, or because it is illegal; rather, because it is sin.(1)

I firmly believe that we ('we' as in Christians, or 'we' as in Americans) have no moral right to force people out of their racism, whether that racism be thoughts or words. In fact, I don't think we can. I still think the first amendment got it right, and without the first amendment we are left with things like blasphemy laws, which destroy freedom at every turn. I do think the government has a right, and a duty, to make sure that racism is contained to the areas of thought and word, and not allowed to become deed.  Behavior is within the purview of government enforcement. Unfortunately, our government seems to regularly lose sight of these facts, opting instead of enforcing behavior to trying to implement and enforce laws against the way people speak, or even think, about racial issues. These attempts will always be counterproductive and even dangerous. But that's for another post.

Where we as Christian believers do have a moral right, and indeed a moral obligation, is to speak out against subtle(2) racism in the church. If we can refocus our thinking on racism from a so-called social-gospel issue (i.e., we shouldn't be mean to blacks because of what they suffered under slavery or under poverty) to a real gospel issue (i.e. we shouldn't think, say, or do racist things because it is a sin against God's image-bearer, and thus against God Himself; and more importantly, we should joyfully share the gospel with everyone), I truly believe we could almost eradicate racism in the church in short order.

Now, I understand that this kind of argument carries no water in the secular cultural world.  That's fine; it doesn't need to carry any. We can't control what a pagan culture thinks, says, or does. But we can control what we believe as followers of Christ by staying always focused on Scripture and a scriptural basis for our attitudes and actions. And if we succeeded in eliminating racism (practically) from the church, we would make a much larger impact on a pagan society than many would think. The parable of the wheat and the tares tells me we can never fully eliminate racism, or any other kind of sin, from the visible church. Jesus will take care of that at the end of the age. But we can certainly minimize it.

Why should this practically matter to any of us? For one, the local church would be much more effective in local ministry if the subtle racism were to be tossed out the back door of the meetin' house. Take a look at churches in racially-diverse neighborhoods.  It is hard to find very many that really look as diverse as they should. And if they don't, they are not ministering to the folks that live around them as well as they ought to be. Until we do something about the attitudes within the church that keep this the status quo, our churches will continue to fail to look like their surrounding communities. Someone will automatically argue that their church isn't racist. Other than a few weird sects, I agree that most churches are not overtly racist. But the subtle racism is still there.  Walk into any one of about 70% of the churches in America and see if the church looks like the community where they are found. If it doesn't, there is something wrong.

We can't force this to happen. R. C. Sproul is fond of the saying, "A man convinced against his will is a man unconvinced, still."  I agree.  By attacking racism as the sin that it is, rather than (only as) an issue of civil rights or of moral decency, we move away from the current platform of coercion (which seems to have too many illegitimate grandchildren) toward a program that changes the hearts of the people. I've heard quite a few folks say that only the gospel can save our culture. This is a bit vacuous of a phrase until it gets some shoe-leather, and once we get practical, it is not so difficult to see the inherent truth in the statement.

Then the question-behind-the-question looms:  Is our culture worth saving?

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(1) Why do I call it sin? Read 1 John chapter 4 if you need scriptural support for this proposition.

(2) What do I mean by 'subtle racism'? This isn't the kind of racism that says, out loud, "I don't like black people" or "I don't like white people." It is the kind of racism that seem to be built into every fallen human heart, where we don't want to associate with people that don't look like us.

Courage

I don't know Rosa Parks.  I may or may not have liked her as a person, though by the accounts I've read, she was quiet and kind. She may or may not have liked me either.

But one thing I do know: her level of courage is to be admired and never forgotten.  We raise statues and monuments (and rightly so) to men who show this kind of bravery in battle.  And it is fitting that monuments have been raised in honor of Ms. Parks, for the same kind of bravery.

But her bravery has a bit different edge, for she had no guarantee that anything good would ever come from it.  In the culture and time in which she lived, her actions (as should would have known well) might have resulted in nothing more than her death or the death of her family members. But like the soldier in combat, she knew that what she was doing was the right thing to do, even if it cost her dearly. It takes some effort to put ourselves in her place, mentally.  We can't really begin to understand the threat level she faced, or the fear that one has knowing that the 'system' would not support us at crunch-time.  She knew what the system was, and she knew the risks she was taking and what it could cost her.

There is a good summary of the events that made her famous over on the Gospel Coalition blog, which are there because this week would have been Ms. Park's 100th birthday.

I don't know what it was like to walk in her shoes at the time and place where she lived, but I do know that I can appreciate her courage. And I know that she deserves a place among the greatest who have sacrificed so much to make our country one where Justice can be respected. As we face political issues that threaten to throw away some of that hard-earned justice, perhaps we should look not only to Lincoln and those like him, but also to Ms. Parks and those like her.  Perhaps we can get some of the courage we need from the unlikely heroes in our history.

Happy birthday, Ms. Parks.

Why Is My Church So White?

Here's a very moving post from the Gospel Coalition blog...it is worth the read.