As I write this post, I sit behind my not one, but two screens, in my comfortably-cooled house, while temps outside rise to 106F. So I guess you could say I’m privileged. The fact that I have a roof over my head, money to pay the bills, clothes for my back, and food for my table is evident of that enough. And while I’ve had my fair share of negative encounters with the police, I can honestly say I’ve never once been in fear of my life.
But I stand with Black Lives Matter.
So why should I, a privileged, white, middle-class male, with no personal experiences to back the BLM movement, feel compelled to make a statement and stand for Black Lives Matter?
Because they do.
As a Christian, God-fearing man, I believe it is my duty to stand up for the oppressed, to speak out for the afflicted, and to take action to act in love.
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 says, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”
While this verse is speaking to believers, the same message holds true. We are one body, and one human race. There is no room to hate a part of the body that we don’t understand, or don’t prefer, simply because we are not that same part. “21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
However, it is one thing to simply acknowledge we need to stop discriminating. That seems painfully obvious. It is another entirely though, to not only be passive in our acknowledgment but to be active in our love and response to such matters.
Colossians 3:14 tells us, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Love is not about being right. It is the opposite of that. It is knowing that even if you are right, even if you are justified, even if you don’t feel like you did something wrong, that you are willing to humble your heart and provide grace, kindness, mercy, and understanding.
We cannot say “all lives matter” and then proceed to ignore the cries of our black neighbors for their missing loved ones. We cannot claim that we are acting out of love when we stand to justify our reasoning, rather than stand to support those being persecuted.
By standing up and making a statement that Black Lives Matter, I am acting out of love. I am acknowledging the painful acts of injustice that have been committed against my brothers and sisters, and I am facing the truth that racial inequality still exists and affects our communities at large. And right now, no one needs to know it more than our black community and those who have been, or are continuing to be, persecuted based on the color of their skin.
I am extremely privileged to not have known such personal discrimination in my lifetime, but I know that standing by and letting it happen is just as destructive as being the one persecuting. Today, it is not enough to be passive in this fight, we must stand up and declare that enough is enough.
Black lives matter.
