Opinion

I will love by resisting the institutional sin which suppresses the votes of those on the margins. I will love by resisting the institutional sin designed to keep the White House white.

We’ve seen a lot of hate over the last few days. Too much hate, too close to home. Sights and scenes that remind us of previous chapters in our nation’s history and all that still remains broken in our neighborhoods and in need of healing in our world.

Continually ruminating on our hurts and peeves creates a spiritual toxin which accumulates over time. The brain keeps sending and resending negative messages.

Decrying white nationalists is an ethical lay-up for which no white person should feel the slightest hint of self-congratulatory pride. To concretely repair racial injustices and facilitate socioeconomic advances for persons of color is the more difficult work to which we can commit ourselves.

What we read in these stories are perspectives of faith by people of faith who were every bit as fallible, flawed and finite in understanding as we are.

People of color did not create racism, yet we are often looked to for the solution to end it. It’s not my responsibility to end the power and privilege of white people. And even if you think it is our responsibility, we cannot end it because more times than not, our voices are muted as soon as people see the color of our skin.

North Americans are increasingly likely to attribute success not to luck, but to talent and hard work. Increasingly, we believe that we “make our own luck.” That’s a problem.

The courage and faith displayed by people of color as the literal flames of racism burned around them is a call to repentance for all white people for our complicity in systems that perpetuate these sins. But it also signals a hope for a church afflicted with and inflicting white supremacy.

With our mouths we will give you great thanks, God, for you stand at the right hand of the oppressed, and through your oppressed body comes our liberation.

The great divide in our country is not between the secular left and the religious right; it’s between white evangelicals who vote Republican and non-white evangelicals who don’t.

We have to understand that justice depends on people telling the truth. Lies are matches that destroy forests that have been growing for decades. Lies turn harmony into hatred. Lies makes us forget how good honesty is.