Based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, we can see that racism is rejected by God. Based the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, we can see that racial reconciliation valued by God. Today, it is considered indisputable among theologians across denominations that Christians should be deeply opposed to racism and deeply committed to racial reconciliation. However, evangelical Christians in the United States today are some of the people least likely to think racism is a real problem, and only 13 percent support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Why are the people who should be opposing racism the most seemingly the least likely to admit their own sins of racism?
Even at this very question, some of us are probably feeling a little offended. Maybe some of us think the question is a little unfair. After all, how can I admit something I don’t do? I realize some other people are racist, but I’m not one of them.
Hear me out though.
Part of this issue is linguistic. For many of us, we have a definition and picture of racism that is set up to make sure that we don’t apply. Racism in its most ugly form is the belief that race is in some way real, and that some races are superior to others. So racists then are those people who wear white sheets, people who use the n-word, and maybe even the police who shoot an unarmed black man. So if I’m not those people, therefore I’m not racist. This though, is merely explicit racism, it’s intentional racism. It’s the kind of racism that society has now stigmatized so much that is no longer acceptable display.
That’s a good thing, but the unintended consequence is that when talk about other kinds of racism, institutional racism, cultural kinds of racism – we assume that anyone who admits to any kind of racism is the moral equivalent of an explicit racist. So let’s be clear, there are different degrees and forms of racism. The kind that most of us, including myself, struggling with is not vocal support of white supremacy, or whether we use the n-word, or whether we’re intentionally racist. What we’re more likely to struggle with is to what degree we participate in these systems and institutions, which regardless of the intentions involved, defend the advantages and control that white people have over racial minorities.
Now, even then, some of us are still recoiling at that statement. Some of us honestly don’t believe that we practice any type of institutional and cultural racism. Yet this is why we can’t avoid this accusation. Allow me to get really Presbyterian here for a moment, or at least summon up the fifth century theologian Saint Augustine. Presbyterians and a number of other Christian thinkers have historically believed in this doctrine called total depravity. Now, total depravity doesn't mean we're horrible people. Rather, this doctrine simply reminds us that sin has infected every part of lives. There is no part of my heart or mind that I can claim is immune to sin.
If this is true, and if you live in a culture that has racism in it, then it reasons that none of us can escape being infected by the sin of racism. Even if we’re not aware of it, we can be sure that it has infected our hearts and minds in some way.
All the institutional advantages we have as white people, all the breaks we get as white people, all those privileges we get that we don’t even realize are privileges because were not even aware people of color don’t have them. We benefit from these things. We don’t have to be intentionally racist. Our complicity is enough. And we’re complicit because we don’t know, or we don’t care – or if I’m being honest -- I don’t care enough to know.
But even then, I still don’t want to admit my ongoing struggle with racism, and I imagine you don’t want to as well. Why? Because the problem isn’t just a linguistic issue, it isn’t just issue of total depravity. There’s one more dynamic at play. In The Gospel of Luke 10:25-29, we read about this encounter Jesus has with a religious lawyer: Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Luke provides a profound insight to human nature here. The lawyer is a bit put off by Jesus’ frankness. So when he asks, “Who is my neighbor?,” it’s not for clarity. It’s because he wants to justify himself. Why? Because the need to feel justification is a universal human need. All us need to feel justified. We need to feel justified, and we will argue at such lengths – even arguing with Jesus – to feel justified because the alternative is so terrifying. To be not justified is to be guilty. To be not be justified is to be exposed. To not be justified is to be condemned. Guilty, exposed, condemned – in front of our friends and our critics, in front of the people we respect and the people we fear.
The systems of this world, and most people, can often go no further than this. After all, how can we expect someone to let go of their need for justification and to stand guilty, exposed and condemned before others? That is a painful, often too painful, of a process. For the few non-Christians who I do see go through with this regarding racism, they often quickly resort to making their newfound anti-racist views a new source of self-justification for themselves and a way to condemn others. But if you’re a follower of Jesus, you have good news in the gospel message. How can the gospel provide the power to overcome the racism in me that I might be reluctant to admit?
The answer is that the Gospel frees us from constant temptation to self-justify. In Romans 8:1-2, God tells us through Paul that, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
We are free from the struggle to self-justify because we no longer fear not being justified in front of people. The guilt, the exposure, the condemnation –
is removed for those who are in Christ Jesus. Exposed on the cross, God knew your sin, including your racism, and absorbed that guilt. Your total depravity condemned the one who was totally innocent. Yet God didn’t do this to hold it against you, he did it free you – to remove your guilt.
What’s more, God is the one you should ultimately respect. God is the only one should ultimately fear. It is this God that has said that even though you are sinner, you are not condemned. You are justified by the substitutionary life and death of Christ. You don’t need to worry about the opinions or judgments of anyone else. Romans 8:32-33 assures us, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”
If you believe this promise from Scripture, then we are free. We are free to admit that we are confused by institutional racism. We are free to admit that often aren’t even aware of when we are being racist. We are free to admit our sin before God and people, but with the confidence that we are forgiven and that Christ is already interceding that we might change.
With that assurance, we experience the power to confess and overcome the sins of racism. We are freed from the need to spend all our energies self-justifying, and we can instead spend of energy repenting, listening, learning. We can begin demonstrating in our community what Jesus did for our relationship between us and God, and that’s reconciliation.
To be sure, this is no short process. Racial reconciliation is a long, difficult road that I realize I have just begun to walk. Yet that road begins though when we take hold of the promise that the Gospel frees us from self-justification by giving us Christ’s justifying work. By the power of the Gospel, let us together repent of our racism and become a faithful and bold source of reconciliation.
