All who make idols are nothing and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame. He and his kind will be put to shame; craftsmen are nothing but men. Let them all come together and take their stand; they will be brought down to terror and infamy.
No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge of the understanding to say…”Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?” He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”
I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in the land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right. Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.
Isaiah 44:9,11, 19-20; 45: 19-20
Still with images of girls and women being yanked around in their swimsuits and viral videos of uniformed crime and salivating mouths over a lie about race in a movement that needed her integrity (much worse than a lie about, say, family health and safety), I pray for AME churches and for the spiritual family that was attacked in Charleston. For the 5-year-old girl playing dead to live her life. She is the future of our Faith, the victim of our ignorance and idols, now a name joining a long history of persecution and dangerous gatherings. She may leave or re-enter the congregation in the years to come based on the white-majority church’s ability to call a spade and spade and do the awkward, slow, and humbling work of getting better.
I pray for the African American followers of Christ–I cannot imagine how my family members, literal and spiritual, ache as the attack resonates with parts of who they are, and blatant racist action is dismissed or not commented on by other believers–especially those leading the Church. I pray that they would somehow be resilient in the face of a white-silence solidarity, the enduring presence of such hatred and the outstanding discrepancies in our approach to the criminal. Minority-culture churches do not have the liberty of being silent and fearful when it comes to these headlines; they do not have the liberty of touting how the Church is color-blind and not color-coded in the immediate wake of these deaths. But it is undoubtedly wounding when these luxuries are witnessed.
And I pray for the grace and discernment to love, to not assign false viewpoints and narratives to people at a glance, that close them in and shut them off. I pray to see my own fear, my own idols, and my own pain, truthfully. Oh, that I, with others from this Bride, would stand with the margins sacrificially, the mourning, breaking away from the fear, parties and self-protection that prior headlines have grown. How can our grief for fallen Christians of color fall along lines in a predictable fashion? How can our grief and anger be so vulnerable to political agendas and the lie that calling this racist somehow indicts all others?
I weep for what it must be like to be a black young person with this news. And to still log-on to Facebook and see the same people, saying the same things or not saying anything, diverting and dodging the R-word when the shooter clearly stated his motive and paradigm.
Tomorrow, that 5-year-old girl could be the girl at the pool, Dajerria Becton. Saved in the sanctuary to be treated like a guilty party, a fugitive somehow, as a teen. If you fail to see the connection and believe me to have taken the “media’s” Kool-aid, ask around. Ask those who are trained from birth to keep their hands in view when they’re pulled over. Ask those who are taught that they must make eye contact with storekeepers and smile whenever they enter a store. Ask those who have a different expectation and definition of respect and power than you do. They will know the dots between one cute, innocent victim of a “tragedy” and one controversial teen in a video being pulled by her hair.
Idols in the church rot it from the inside out. I love this Family the more I get to know it, but it is a costly and conflicted love. It is painful, so painful, to see some of the idols standing tall, grasped tightly in the right hand, when funeral arrangements for saints, shot because of their skin color, are underway. Let’s call this a hate crime, racist and perpetuated by a sinful society and culture that still makes decisions and judgments based on race, armed with many ways to spin racism so we never have to admit to it. And let’s call the Church’s ill-preparedness or sheer inability, especially in the white church, to empathize with our fallen African American brothers and sisters and condemn their predator a sin–an indicator of an idol that organizes an other-worldly organization into categories rooted in the depraved depths of this world. Kudos to those who are re-examining. Who are reaching across the segregated aisles of the congregation. Who have mourned and prayed for their African American church family more than ever before. Who have called this racist, named the discrepancies, and risked public disapproval or awkward conversation.
May the Lord make the fugitives powerful, strong and brave enough to continue gathering, continue seeking and continue claiming their freedom and liberty. May He show the pursuit, the worship, the faith, is not in vain, quickly, through a reconciling Church and a zero tolerance policy of racism from the steeple outwards. We are of the Already and Not Yet. To some it costs their lives; to others it costs the idols in our hands.
Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accused of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their loves so much as to shrink from death.
Rev. 12:10-11
Wide Places 