So here we are again. It’s 2018,and some 60 years since the civil rights movement took off in the south. We watched in horror on black and white tvs as buses of “freedom fighters” were blown up. We also saw black school kids bombed in their own schools, and a southern sheriff sick attack dogs and fire hoses on protesters. And today? Today we have a well known “comedienne” making monkey jokes, and a world wide coffee chain giving sensitivity training on race to its employees.The president of a famous pizza chain has had to retire for using the n word. People are caught using racial slurs all the time, and a banner was even waved at Red Sox stadium in Boston calling racism a good American tradition. And let’s not forget police brutality, which has seen a resurgence. It is well known that a cop can “pick off” any unarmed black man he pleases whenever he wants and claim that he “felt threatened”. And racism is not confined merely to America’s abysmal racial legacy. There is also the horrible fact that Europe today is starting to closely resemble Nazi Germany in the 1930’s . And the propaganda is a near carbon copy of the stereotypes the SS put out before Hitler rose to power.
It is high time that we held up a mirror to our society and stared right into it- and then began to acknowledge the obvious and horrifying facts. As a civilization we have learned nothing from history. We have learned nothing about the depravity of human nature. Subsequently, we have learned absolutely nothing of our need for complete dependence on and recognition of God and His sovereignty in our lives.
As pastor of this church, it is my duty to lead people to the life saving power and freedom that truth will bring to their lives. It is the truth that sets us free, the truth centered in Christ, the Son, in whom we are “free indeed”. Our agent at this truth is the Holy Spirit. His power cleanses us, guides and delivers us and ultimately gives us victory in all things. Jesus calls us to be completely transformed and changed through an act known as being “born again”. When we look at an evil so insidious and entrenched in our psyche as racism, it becomes clear that the only cure for this spiritual and terminal disease is the born again experience.
One of Jesus’s more mysterious teachings was that “if your eye offends you, pluck it out. For it is better to enter heaven maimed then to have the whole body cast into hell”. I believe that with the issue of racism, the meaning of this passage becomes crystal clear. In regard to the issue of racism, Christ tells us that if this is in any way a part of your psyche, then it has to be ripped out and thrown from you. if you have any baggage from your past that puts you at peace with racism, than it has to be ripped out. If, like myself, you grew up with fond memories of a southern experience where segregation was normalized and black people were respected only when they “kept their place”, then you must come to terms with these realities. There is absolutely no place for the tolerance of racism in the body of Christ. It is the supreme violation of the greatest commandment of all to “love God with all your heart mind and spirit and your neighbor as yourself” The apostle John gives us a chilling warning that if we do not “love the brethren” then we “abide in death” He then equates anyone who hates his brother with a “murderer”.
Veritas Triumphant Church is dedicated to seeing all people saved and born again in the Spirit. There are many strongholds of sin which we, as spiritual warriors, must contend with and fight directly. Racism is a scourge on all of humanity, but a particular plague like no other on the USA. It keeps resurfacing because it never went away, fully. Just like anti-semitism, it seems to metastasise and spread with renewed vigor. Right after you thought you had it defeated, it rears its satanic head again. It almost destroyed this country in its early days, and remains as evil and disruptive a force today as it was back then. If we ignore it, or gloss over it, or rationalize or excuse it in any way, then we are complicit with evil. The only proper response from white people is to hang their heads in shame, repent, and ask God and the offended for forgiveness. Then to pluck this evil out and cast it far from you, and finally be truly set free , delivered and born again.