Soap Box Time

When one is planting a new church, there is little time for reflection on much else.  All my thinking energy seems to be going into the project.

My younger sister has become accustomed to me venting to her about all kinds of social issues.  Those who know me aren’t surprised to know I have a pretty big soap box.  Passionate… that’s the word.  On the phone with my sister this week, she was a little surprised to hear I didn’t have much to say about the Charleston domestic terrorist attack.  Feeling out of "thinking energy," I found myself saying, I can’t think about the attack because it will put me into a funk, and I can’t afford that.  Yep, my privilege gives me the option of what I choose to care about and what I don’t.  Sad, huh?    

Well, then I watched the president’s eulogy of Rev. Pinckney.  Again my privilege crept in, tempting me to culturally misappropriate the speech… hummm… maybe I could use it at church to study theology around grace (which I thought was amazing in the speech, by the way).  As a white person, I automatically thought I can just borrow that moment and use it how I want, unless I stop and think about how I’m using it.   

So, I figured I better write and get these emotions out that I’m trying to avoid processing.  Here’s me on my soapbox, in you want to read it.

We have a racist wound in this country, and instead of trying to heal it, we like to pretend it isn’t there.  White people just like to throw another band-aid over it, because dealing with it would cost us too much.  But this Charleston attack… this was like ripping the scab off it.  There it is—a gaping infected gash wide open.  And we can choose to look away.  Or we can look straight into it and see it for all its ugliness.

Folks, if you are white—like me—you have advantages.  This society is organized in a way that benefits you and me.  With and without wanting it, we have advantages ALL THE TIME.  And if more of us don’t get more recognition of that, this wound is just going to keep oozing.     

The confederate flag has to come down.  Do you realize it started getting flown at state capitals around the civil rights era as a statement against civil rights legislation, integration, and social equality?  If you are hearing anything different from your media source, get a new source that actually knows history.  While at different points in history it may have meant something else, in its current form, this flag is a statement of blatant bigotry and intimidation.  Lord, help us, seriously.  We can do better.  If a racially motivated terrorist attack on our citizens doesn’t get these flags down, what will? 

As a white person, I have a lot of original sin in me.  (Heck, I probably said something harmful in this post.)  The original sin of privledge requires me to examine my own racist thoughts and tendencies—some I control and some are just handed to me by society.  It requires repentance.  And penance.  Thank God for amazing grace.