The Black Lives Matter protests, is a strange and staggering thing. I’ve observed, listened, read, watched and obsessed. The contradictions and paradoxes aren’t new, but nonetheless, there’s a need for it to be spelled out.
Of course police brutality is repulsive. It instills fear and anger in people for not being able to trust those in power who are meant to protect and serve. So is looting and violence under the guise of an otherwise noble cause. Racism is hate, no matter what form it takes and goes against our human fabric and design. But so too are humanist and secularists who protest, desiring justice without looking at their own crimes. How can anyone petition for justice when they have not addressed the injustice of sin in their own lives, unaware that those personal defects affect everyone around them?
This makes no sense.
How can they expect to fix their own problems rooted deep in their character core when they have not confessed? And then expect to weigh in on the world’s problems? Do they not know this makes them untrustworthy?
Our motivations will not be laid bare here. How can it? We are incapable of knowing hearts? But make no mistake, our motivations will be laid bare. All of us will one day stand on our own, without our herd or our tribe, in front of the Cosmic Court to give full account.
The events around BLM are alarming. It is like watching aliens who have invaded our planet and possessed the bodies of the picketers. Why? I will tell you why.
I’ve always belonged to a Christian Church where people with different skins are treated as kin. I’ve been privileged to have seen all races mixed with both rich and poor eat and pray together, willing to share in each others gifts. I’ve seen the marginalized, lonely and jobless taken under wing by brothers and sisters in the faith, even in this week. I’ve seen those struggling with same sex attraction treated with love, compassion and care, without the patronizing empathy which the world gives them for the purpose of negating the words of God to see us ALL renovated. Jesus did not condemn the whore, but he did expect her to change. (John 8:11)
I’ve relished in the peace and relied on the forgiveness readily extended by otherwise remarkably flawed individuals. On two occasions I myself was expelled from Church, but as God as my witness I have never held my conflicts against those individuals nor have I stopped going to Church. The devil would have me cut off my nose to spite my face but I will NOT justify myself.
I have found and still do find Church a place of excellent human beings. Struggling individuals that on occasion exhibit such marvels in character, that it can only be explained as supernatural when compared with all the hate and confusion prevalent in our world.
In light of this view from inside all the many Churches I’ve attended since I was a child, I find myself waiting for the world to catch up to what is already practiced in the most powerful institution to affect sustainable long-term human behavioral change for the better. Detractors with their inferior, sinister and self-aggrandizing agendas will object to this assessment ofcourse.
We are often shocked at what happens in our world, partly because we’re shocked at being shocked, and partly because we cannot believe all this stuff is still going on? Haven’t we moved on already? Haven’t we licked this already? It appears I am one of those deluded optimists shocked for being shocked. Having spent decades traveling, I’ve come to realize how narrow our secular worldview is. Injustice and corruption occupies almost one hundred percent of the world’s populations. And yet in all those countries everyone keeps employing an external locus of control, blaming everybody and everyone except themselves.
What has given me comfort while observing all that is unfolding in our world, is that the Bible – the infallible and timeless Word written by an Almighty God – is absolutely correct on all accounts when it says that power corrupts, which is why we are admonished to treat everyone better than ourselves (Philippians 2:3); that nations do not know the way to peace, (Romans 3:17) which is why we rely on the teaching of Jesus Christ the prince of peace; that although people put on a good show they do not know what justice looks like nor can they accurately define it; that people mostly protest to make themselves feel better because they don’t know what to do with the perpetual guilt that resides in them, that stink they can never wash away so they focus on attempts to change society around them, instead of changing themselves, oblivious to the reality that the core in their character requires supernatural intervention. People also protest because they want to be heard more than voice their allegiance to a cause. If it were not so they would not resort to heightened emotions or violence. It is the only way they can justify their existence without God. It is the only way they can say that they matter.
The Bible is absolutely spot on when it teaches that the world quite readily points the finger at the splinters in they eyes of others without looking first at the planks in their own eyes (Matthew 7:3), and in the process they perpetuate this ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality which is really just another form partisan prejudice that revisits us with each generation like its groundhog day.
The Bible is emphatic when it speaks of idols that take many forms vying for our highest good. From gender, to materialism, to race, sexuality and even religion are treated as idols, and that no matter how much people give to their idols, they are never satisfied. They cannot see that they are enslaved to their idols who, as the book of Hosea writes, turns them into metaphorical prostitutes – allegiance to the highest bidder and loudest voice. Scripture as well as history attests to this. But to a generation wired for instant gratification idolatry remains a foreign unfathomable figment.
The Bible remains the most reliable source to dissect and explain our troubles. King David wrote that nations rage for nothing (Psalm 2). Paul writes that authorities do not wield the sword without reason (Romans 13:4). Democratic authorities do not act on innocent men and yet the world ignores this. They’d rather choose the voices that confirm their biases. Biases which are shaped and informed by their greatest pleasures. They do so daily.
Is this really how our world defines justice? Based on pleasure? (James 4:3)
We will never know justice if we all have our own standards for justice instead of a higher, more magnificent standard. The Bible warns that there is a way that SEEMS right to a man that ends in death (Proverbs 14:12). That people are wise in their own eyes (Proverbs 3:7). That the wicked, those who are the prideful among us, see God as an oppressor, while the righteous, those who are the humble among us, who are poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3) and who themselves have set their eyes on least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19), see God as liberator.
In all this, the Bible is correct.
Five sisters went to Moses seeking justice (Numbers 27). Moses consulted God on their unique predicament. God responded that they were correct and told Moses to give them what they asked. God loves justice. It is what defines Him. But we have to ask Him for it, otherwise we’re just another generation who live and die having tried to knock the earth off its axis. Tantrums as the only alternative is a pathetic substitute to prayer. The only way we can make a real meaningful difference in the world, is to take it before God. Neglect it at your peril.
I myself will NOT succumb to emotional blackmail for any cause, even if the cause confirms my own biases. I will NOT be defined by those who are perishing (I Corinthians 1:18). I will be defined by the One who lives forever. I will NOT protest and I will NOT petition, unless it is before my God. It doesn’t matter what people do because the world belongs to God and no plan of His can fail. A plan that is already laid out in the scriptures and the prophecies. God has seen the future and has told us how it will unfold. Everything, and I mean everything that happens today, goes towards that plan.
So what do we do?
Our only responsibility is to understand the times we are living in. Jesus rebuked his audience because they did not understand the times they were living in. Here I will speak plainly.
These are the times before judgment, where we have been shown leniency and grace for our many repulsions and convulsions. For our silence and our violence. We are to repent of our personal sins and seek to do what is right in accordance with the scriptures.
To put it bluntly; this life for us all is an INTERVIEW WITH GOD, whether we like it or not. It’s too short to be anything else. Do well in the interview and we get to live forever. Stuff it up and we don’t. Our choice.
Because of this abundant and divine grace afforded us, we are to then effectively reciprocate our love and appreciation towards God and our neighbor. Who is our neighbor? Everyone (Luke 10). To love everyone and conduct ourselves in a manner which demonstrates that ALL LIVES MATTER, just like churches have been doing since antiquity.
And so we wait for the world to catch up.
These are the times of iron an clay (Daniel 2). Either the authorities are heavy-handed (iron) and the people are oppressed (clay), or the people are heavy-handed and the authorities are suppressed. Either way iron and clay can never bond. Without God nations are fragmenting into smaller tribes which gives rise to a soft despotism on its way to totalitarianism. As much as humans think they can rule themselves history proves that they can not.
This all meant to happen. It’s all going according to plan.
It was predicted and foretold in scripture. These are the times of iron and clay, opening a way for a man who will capitalize on the fragmenting and disunity of nations by promoting a direct allegiance with Satan to persecute anyone who does not conform to these new standards. Details I will not go into here.
All I will say in conclusion, is that the old testament opened with Abel’s blood crying out from the ground for justice, while the new testament opens with Jesus’s blood crying out for mercy from the cross. For a third of the world’s population mercy define these times.
For the rest, as it currently stands, not so. (Malachi 4:6)
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