It's hard to express the way I feel right at this moment about the death of George Floyd. There's no question that was an injustice, as much as any of the multiple numbers of similar events that have taken place in this country, both recently and throughout its history. The fact that several other similar incidents have occurred in a short period of time, Armaud Arbery, Breona Taylor, along with the current restrictions related to coronavirus helped magnify the feelings. For all our claims of being a country founded on Christian principles, the racism and unequal treatment of people of color are one of our biggest moral failures.
The infant Christian church and its apostles confronted the racial, religious, cultural, social and economic divisions that were at the very root of the problems of humanity and built a church that bridged some of the deepest and widest chasms of human prejudice and bigotry that existed at the time. In the descriptions left behind for us of those early Christian congregations, we see places where Jews came together for worship with Samaritans and Gentiles, where slaves worshiped in the same room as the wealthy because those who followed Christ set aside their old identity in favor of a new one which brought about a spiritual transformation that completely changed people.
The early church, as described in Colossians by the Apostle Paul, is the only institution--I'll use that word here for the purpose of clarity--in human history that has successfully brought people of different racial, ethnic, social, religious, cultural and language backgrounds together in a spirit of unity to accomplish the common purpose of testifying to salvation in Jesus and to glorify God. While it is unfortunate that throughout its history, the church collectively hasn't maintained this posture of unity in diversity, there are plenty of individual local bodies that have succeeded at it.
In that renewal, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free but Christ is all and is in all. Colossians 3:11, NRSV
The early church was unified because its members were completely submitted to the presence of God through the Holy Spirit and had been through a life-transforming experience when Jesus became their savior, and they were transformed. Their purpose in life was changed. But a unified church was a threat to that which had caused the lack of unity, the prejudice and bigotry on which many people thrived. The church endured more than two hundred years of horrible persecution and death at the hands of the institutions that profited off bigotry and were threatened by the kind of unity the church displayed. But for the most part, it succeeded in bonding together and outlasted the persecution it endured, eventually reaching most of its neighbors with the gospel of Christ and ended the persecution, not by rebellion or violence, but because their endurance through the most horrific persecution was a powerful testimony of their faith.
The circumstances in which I have been raised and under which I have lived my life do not permit me to understand the feelings and emotions that are experienced by people of different racial backgrounds and skin color than me. I am grieved and I am very sorry when I see things like this happen, but I know that I don't experience them in the same way that those of a similar lifestyle and cultural background do. I have no life experience that leads me to an understanding of what life has been like for those who have experienced the walls of bigotry that have been put in place by racism. So I have to trust those who do. I believe that the church has within its power the ability to take the lead and be the place where people really see change happen because God has moved through his people. So my prayer is for God to make me into a peacemaker.
I can't relate to the reaction of those police officers, either. Other than the boy scouts, I've never been in a uniform. Police officers are among a small group of people among us who see our society and culture at its worst most of the time. Though I have worked in a career field where you do not always see people from their best side, I can't relate to being in a place where most of what you see and experience is bad and in which much of your training involves strategies for dealing with all of that without causing a bigger problem. I know enough police officers to know I haven't yet met one who is not as equally horrified as I am by what this Minneapolis police officer did and who would never do anything like that if they found themselves in a similar situation. Nor should the thousands of peaceful protesters be indicted by the actions of destructive anarchists taking advantage of a situation.
But here's the bottom line. The church has the capability to bring about healing, unity, and lead people to a transformed life. Humanity is not capable of resolving its own problems. It requires the intervention of its creator God and his church is the only institution in our society capable of addressing the problems and bringing about a lasting solution. The question is whether the church in America is now in any kind of position to bring about spiritual change. It can't accomplish its mission and purpose while it is overly involved in and aligned with secular politics which breaks down the level of trust and fosters dependence on worldly, not Godly power.
We could experience a real revival of the church in this country if we trust in God's power to break down all of these barriers and unite people regardless of their differences. Or we can watch the decline that we are now experiencing at an accelerating rate lead us into extinction.
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