It was a few minutes past 8 pm on Wednesday. I was locking up after the Women's Bible Study at my church. A block away, an angry young man was sitting in another Bible Study with a handgun. As I left my church and drove safely home, that angry young man opened fire on the members of that church who were pleading with him for mercy.

In the days and weeks that followed, I noticed a peculiar concern emerge in some local Charleston churches. Parents were afraid to send their kids to Vacation Bible School. Others said we needed to beef-up security around our church. After all, if that terrible massacre happened at Mother Emanuel AME, just a block from us -- it could happen at our church too.

No it wouldn’t, I thought. Our church was white. We were in no danger.

The worshipers at Mother Emanuel were specifically targeted not because they were Christian, but because of the color of their skin and anti-racist legacy of their church. That angry young man was not a madman, but a self-indoctrinated white supremacist who acted on his ideology. Never would I, or my church, ever be in danger from someone like that.

“White privilege” is a hotly-contested phrase these days, and others far wiser than myself have explained and debated the concept. Yet even if one is bothered by how it’s thrown around in social media, I had to admit that it’s quite a privilege to realize that your church doesn’t have to worry about being massacred by a cold-blooded racist. I could have felt relief at the relative security of serving in a predominately white church, but instead I felt guilt. Not a generic guilt though. Not some liberal white guilt. It was guilt in realizing that while Christ, who possessed (and rightly so) every privilege possible as part of the Triune God, he gave up all of that privilege in exchange for all the suffering, pain, and danger of living as poor person of color under a brutal empire. The Apostle Paul, in writing to a church in the city of Philippi, said that Christ “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself…”

I considered myself a follower of Jesus, but this was a place where it was clear I wasn’t following well. How had I emptied myself of any privileges lately? In fact, until recently, I was hardly even aware that I was privileged. Yet, my privilege wasn’t the problem. These privileges I had as a white person weren’t earned, they were unearned. I was born into them, and they weren’t going away any time soon. Feeling shame that I had them wasn’t helping anyone either. The problem was that I wasn’t using my privilege on behalf of those who didn’t have the kind of privilege that I had.

I resolved then that I had to take at least one step in moving from a place of comfortable privilege to place of potentially uncomfortable solidarity. If God did this so radically in Christ’s incarnation, how could I not take just one step?

So I began to listen. I began listening to voices of all ethnicities, and not just the voices I agreed with politically or philosophically. I didn’t always agree with or understand these voices, but truly listening meant I had to give up my privilege in assuming my own rightness and tuning out anyone who didn’t think like I did. I invited others around me to do the same. Our collegiate worshiping community in Charleston attended the second annual 1Charleston Great (Co)-Mission Conference, a multi-ethnic coalition of pastors dedicated to healing racial wounds in Charleston. Being exposed to ideas and experiences sometimes completely foreign from their own, there were definitely times when some of our students were uncomfortable. Yet for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Mother Emanuel, we had to humble ourselves and listen.

To be honest, not a lot has changed since, at least not in the ways we tend to measure change in society. There are little seeds of hope springing up though. Women’s Bible Study at my church has developed into a multi-racial Bible Study. Our collegiate worshiping community is asking questions about how we can be more racially inclusive. I’ve seen some closed minds begin to open and some hardened hearts begin to soften – including my own. Maybe it’s not revolutionary, but it’s a start, and I believe it’s faithful to this message of the Gospel that I want to follow.

If we are going to create a society where I can no longer count not being gunned down in my Bible Study as a privilege of my skin color, my faith demands that I need to begin aligning myself -- however incrementally it may be -- with those who don’t have that kind of security. Otherwise, no amount of personal excuses, political justifications or rationalizations about “heritage” will hide the fact that I am betraying a fundamental aspect of following Jesus.

On this somber anniversary of a white supremacist taking nine Black lives, if you are a white Christian and haven’t begun listening to Black voices, please ask the Holy Spirit for the conviction to start now. Please adopt a posture of humble listening and ask how God might make you more aware of the unearned blessings that you’ve been granted, so that together, we can become a tangible blessing to our brothers and sisters -- of all colors.