On June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, the last of the slaves, living in Galveston, Texas, were finally freed, and that was cause for great celebration! Those of us who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ need to do some serious thinking about what Juneteenth is all about. We need to take off our Conservative and Liberal lenses and try to evaluate the issues concerning Juneteenth from a Biblical perspective, asking the Holy Spirit to give us discernment. We cannot allow the pre-packaged categories of Conservative and Liberal to do our thinking for us, for our identity is neither Conservative nor Liberal, and our allegiance is neither to Conservatism nor to Liberalism. If we are to be consistent and authentic followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, living out an authentic expression of New Testament Christianity, then our identity must be that of being apprentices of Jesus Christ, and our allegiance must be to Jesus Christ alone, not to a political ideology that we may find attractive. I therefore offer the following as an attempt to be neither Conservative nor Liberal, but Biblical. I am trying to ask the right questions and to seek Biblical answers. I know the questions are complicated, and I don’t have any simple solutions to offer, but I do think that we need to dig into the discussion somewhere if we want to respond to Juneteenth in a way that is appropriate to being apprentices of Jesus Christ, so this is my attempt to start the discussion. If you think I am off, I welcome your critique. Let’s talk about the situation in which the Hebrew slaves found themselves on the day when they were released from Egyptian bondage. They were free, joyful, able to worship and serve and obey God without Egyptian interference, but they were also unemployed, unskilled except in doing tasks that no one else was willing to do, living among a people who were used to thinking of them as their own personal property. Suddenly, the whole society had changed. The Egyptians had to learn how to function without their Hebrew slaves. The Hebrews had to learn how to function without their Egyptian masters. Thankfully God got them out of there quickly, split open a sea for them, gave them Moses as a leader, gave them the Ten Commandments and the entire Law of Moses, a whole sacrificial system, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, manna, quail, water from the rock, not to mention His Presence in the Tabernacle. God had a solution that saved the Hebrew people from a lot of chaos that they would have otherwise experienced had they stayed in Egypt. Much chaos was averted because God quickly removed them from the situation. The Hebrews were freed, the angel of death had passed over their homes, and that was cause for great celebration! The Egyptians were judged, the angel of death had not passed over their homes, and the sorrowful consequences were great. Now let’s try to imagine what would have happened if the freed Hebrews had stayed in Egypt— no longer as slaves but as free men and women, still living within the society that had previously enslaved them. That makes the situation far more complicated! While the Egyptians are trying to learn how to survive without their slaves, the Hebrews are trying to learn how to survive without their masters— and both groups are trying to learn different lessons in the same place and at the same time! It would have taken many generations for everything to get sorted out. Even after several generations, it’s easy to see how the Egyptians might think that everything was now OK while the Hebrews would feel that there were unresolved problems that still needed to be addressed. Now let’s transpose this situation into our American context. The Civil War had been fought. Slavery had been abolished, but freed slaves were living in the same society as those who had previously been their masters, and racism and prejudice did not suddenly disappear overnight. Jim Crow laws kept the old patterns of racism and oppression going. Eventually the Jim Crow laws were abolished, but the old patterns still persisted, perhaps in more subtle ways. The Civil Rights Era made some more progress, but some of the old patterns still persisted. When we talk about institutional racism, we are saying that the problems have not yet been resolved; the old patterns still persist, not only in the hearts of people but also in the structures of our society. Becoming defensive and dismissive of the whole concept of institutional racism is very much the wrong approach. The right approach is to listen, listen, listen to those who are still being ground under the wheels of institutional racism, listen to their stories, listen to their pain and frustration, and then listen for the voice of God. If we listen, we may just hear and understand. It is possible for a society to repent corporately. Didn’t the people of Nineveh repent at the preaching of Jonah? They even put sackcloth on the animals! (see Jonah 3:8). God holds societies accountable, not only individuals. If a society can repent corporately, then a society can sin corporately. We can’t begin to dismantle systems of racism until we are willing to recognize that racism exists, both on an individual level and on a systemic level. When we acknowledge, then we can confess, repent, and take action. If those in society who don’t know God can’t or won’t repent, then at least the Christians living among them can and should repent— even if they are not personally guilty of the sin of the surrounding society. Didn’t Nehemiah confess the sins of his people, even though he personally was not guilty of the sins that they had committed? (See Nehemiah 1). We can’t take steps to remedy the situation until we admit that the situation exists, and that we are probably in some way complicit with the sins of our nation. If we have seen the problem and have done nothing about it, or if we have refused to admit that the problem even exists, or if we have refused to ask God to shine his searchlight into our own hearts to reveal to us any traces of prejudice or racism for which we must repent personally, then we have been complicit. To gain some perspective, let’s compare our response to the issue of institutional racism to our response to the issue of abortion. If we who are pro-life Christians are willing to confess “the sins of our nation” regarding abortion, then why are we not willing to confess “the sins of our nation” concerning slavery and the ongoing ripple effects of the sin of racism? Why the inconsistency? Are we putting political ideology over Biblical teaching? I see no other explanation for the inconsistency. As followers and apprentices of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is our task to wave the flag of surrender. We need to be willing to face both the ugliness of our own heart and the ugliness of our societal structures. We need to throw away both our tendency toward defensiveness and our tendency toward hiding behind political ideology. We need to come clean. We need to beg God to show us what He wants us to do, and we need to beg God to give us the ability to do and be what He has called us to do and be. There is no place for trying to preserve our own sense of righteousness, and there is no place for trying to preserve a sense of how great our nation is and has always been. There is no place for these things in the life of an apprentice of Jesus Christ. Now let’s talk about what is commonly called “institutional racism”. We know from the Scriptures that every human being is a totally depraved sinner. If we human beings are all sinful, then it stands to reason that everything we build will be corrupted by sin. Sinful men and women build sinful structures, because the sin that corrupts our beings also corrupts all that we build and do. That’s why our world is in the mess that it’s in. That’s why we have conflicts, violence and war. Would we expect sinful human beings to build sinless structures? If we as a fallen human race have an inclination toward prejudice and racism in our hearts, if our sin nature inclines us to suspect, even in very subtle ways, that those who are not like us are probably in some sense inferior to us, and if our first inclination is to protect ourselves, not to glorify God by loving and serving each other in the self-sacrificial ways of love, then it stands to reason that we will build structures that will reflect and are corrupted by this sinful inclination, whether we do so intentionally or not. So why are some Christians trying to say that institutional racism doesn’t exist? When people speak of institutional racism, rather than disputing them, we should high-five them and congratulate them for finally catching up to what the Bible has been teaching for millennia. What an odd situation we have here. Secular thinking is recognizing the effects of what we Christians call “sin”, and many Christians are denying that these effects even exist. Instead of denying their existence we should be saying “Yes, racism is real, both in our hearts and in our institutional structures. It’s sinful, there is no excuse for it, Christ died for that sin, and it’s a sin of which we must all repent continually, asking God to search our hearts and reveal to us our wicked ways, both as individuals and as a society”. I fail to see how the concept of institutional racism contradicts Biblical teaching. We never sin in a vacuum. The consequences of sin affect not only the sinner and the one sinned against but also many other people in the surrounding society. Sin has ripple effects that go farther and wider than we ever realize, and sometimes the ripple effects of sin last for many, many generations. The term “institutional racism” is a secular attempt to label what the Bible describes as the effects or consequences of sin. If we’re uncomfortable with calling it “institutional racism” then let’s call it “the multigenerational ripple effects of sin”, but whatever we call it, let’s acknowledge that it exists. If we refuse to admit that institutional racism even exists, then how can we ever appropriate the Biblical solution of the cross and the resurrection and confession of sin and repentance and faith, coupled with the injunction of Micah 6:8 to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”? The secular world admits that there is a problem but doesn’t have the solution. Christians have the solution, but some Christians don’t recognize that the problem exists. Sounds like some deception is at work here. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”. (Psalm 139:23-24) “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (1 John 1:8-9) We celebrate Juneteenth joyfully, for the freeing of the slaves is certainly worthy of joyful celebration! As we celebrate, we also need to ask God to show us what work still needs to be done, both in our hearts, and corporately as a society. We need to listen to and learn from each other. We need to ask the Holy Spirit for discernment. Those who are not the descendants of slaves need to try to understand what it’s like to be the descendent of slaves, to listen to them with an open heart and mind, and to gain their perspective on the work that still needs to be done to rid our society of racism and its ongoing ripple effects. We need to have more honest conversations with each other, and we need to be willing to listen with an open mind and heart. We need personal, ongoing repentance of our own sins of prejudice and racism, no matter how subtle, as we ask God to search our hearts. We need to ask God to enable us to examine our society from His perspective, to more accurately discern how the sins of yesteryear have set into motion policies and practices that still exist today and that still need to be addressed. We who are Christians are called to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world”, but we cannot be who we are called to be in an authentic way if we insist on letting our political ideologies do our thinking for us. We have the Bible. We have the Holy Spirit. God will show us the way forward, but we must be willing to repent, and we must be willing to put aside our own perspectives and to ask God to show us His perspective. We need to be willing to do this not as Conservatives or as Liberals but as children of God. To those who are the descendants of slaves, I rejoice that slavery has been abolished! I want to do what I can to help complete the work that has was started on the original Juneteenth, as God enables. Many of us who are not the descendants of slaves want to be your allies in the ongoing work, not just celebrate a holiday in a way that probably misunderstands and misrepresents what the holiday stands for. Forgive us for celebrating a holiday without taking the time to think through its implications. Let’s work together to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”. With this understanding and with this commitment, I hope we can now say in a way that is both honest and authentic, Happy Juneteenth!
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