“I can’t breathe.”
Those words from George Floyd as he gasped for his mother with a knee on his neck have haunted me. Just like the video of two white men chasing down and shooting Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia while he was running. It’s unfathomable that these things are happening in our country in 2020.
As we’ve witnessed the response play out in cities across our nation, including my own, it makes it clear that white Christians are in need of a wake-up call.
Several weeks ago, we had a tornado warning at our house close to midnight. We had to quickly get our kids up out of bed and go to a safe place in our house.
My 6-year-old son is a hard sleeper. Waking him up in the middle of the night is next to impossible. You can pull him out of bed, and he may even open his eyes to look at you, but he’s not awake. He can stumble around his room, but he’s not awake.
It wasn’t until my wife started clapping in his face that he seemed to snap out of it and become coherent.
To my white Christian brothers and sisters, it’s time to snap out of it. We’ve been asleep. Over the past few years, some of us have opened our eyes. Even stumbled around like we are trying to appear awake.
But, we are not all there. What we are witnessing in our country should be our jolt–our clap in front of our face–to stand for what’s right and denounce what is evil.
As a white Christian, I admit, it’s hard to even know where to start. It’s easy to post a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote on social media and let the world (or at least our small little slice of it) know where we stand on racial issues.
It’s much harder to know how to represent Christ and follow the prophet Micah’s urging to “seek justice,” “love mercy,” and “walk humbly” (Micah 6:8) in real life.
Advocacy is important, and I think our African-American brothers and sisters need to see us posting these types of messages. But, it’s simply not enough.
In my own personal soul-searching, I feel there are a few things that I, as a white Christian, can and should be doing during our current racial crisis.
Article originally published by Brent Rinehart on Crosswalk. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
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