Saying What Can't Be Said (from the archives)

June 17, 2020 - I’ve been confused, shocked, disheartened, and appalled at what I’ve witnessed over the past three weeks. From the initial incident of George Floyd being killed by police officers, to the rioting and looting, to the media fomenting rioting and looting, to my neighbors condoning rioting and looting. Voices must be heard you see, and apparently destroying property and stealing things is now a socially acceptable form promoting “social justice”.

I’ve been informed multiple times over social media that, due to my family origins and the density of melanin in my skin, I must be silent – to Listen and Learn. But when I see what’s happening in our nation and the misguided direction we’re heading; I can’t just stand by silently and watch it happen.

My argument here is by no means meant to diminish legitimate feelings of resentment, anger, and pain for anyone that has been mistreated or subject to injustice due to blatant racism or unintentional ignorance. We should never ignore unfairness, or cease in our pursuit of making our nation better. Instead, my point is that the prescriptions that I’m seeing promoted by our “leaders”, academic elitists, the media, and even our churches are just more of the same of exactly what we’ve been doing to effect change for the past five decades. Perhaps it’s time to consider a new approach?

A Little Background

Since 1964, the US has spent well over $23 Trillion dollars on “fighting poverty”. These Great Society programs were supposed to be a means of making our society more “fair and just”. The government created massive bureaucracies whose sole purpose is to eliminate poverty, keep people housed, and “level the playing field”. By any objective measure, these programs have been an abject failure, and they have been especially devastating in urban communities with a high proportion of traditional minorities.

Similarly, for the past 50 years, our academia and media culture have been steeped in various forms of social theories that were supposed to bring about a new enlightenment, and achieve equality, peace and justice for all. These movements typically involve various types of victim-oppressor narrative and have included, Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, of which the current Black Lives Matter movement is a part. The common values among these various social justice movements include:

• Classification of groups of people based on appearances, preferences, and beliefs.

• Focusing on group privileges (“power”) and disadvantages (“oppression”), rather than the rights and responsibilities of individuals.

• Promotion of Marxist ideals, and condemnation of free markets and capitalism.

• Enhancement of governmental power and authority to enforce equal outcomes.

• Denigration of the United States as a historically unjust and imperialistic society.

These ideas have been relentlessly taught in our schools, promoted in media and entertainment, and legislated by our progressive government officials as the means of transforming our society into a better place. And yet, after five decades of moving in this direction, we find ourselves here in 2020 in an unprecedented period of civil strife and social unrest.

Government as the Solution

First of all, let’s talk about the efficacy of government agencies. Government agencies don’t do anything well. Having spent well over $23,000,000,000,000 on solving the problem of poverty and inequality in America, how well have we done? The middle class in this country is currently shrinking as the divide between the wealthy and the impoverished grows ever wider. Even the simple things, such as registering a vehicle or maintaining a license to operate a vehicle become time-consuming exercises in frustration and epic levels of crappy customer service. How can we expect that by increasing the size and scope of our government, that our society will actually improve?

The results of our war on poverty have been a massive increase in the number of broken families and fatherless children; 72% of black children born to unwed mothers, multiple generations of people have become completely dependent on government largesse and largely unemployable, and overall poverty levels are at very nearly where they were in 1964. These programs and policies incentivize behaviors and choices that are detrimental to the long-term wellbeing of the communities they purport to serve. In the wealthiest and most diverse nation in human history, we have established a system that has trapped a growing number of people in a cycle of dependency and resentment. Hopelessness and despondency have replaced the American dream as the politicians that they depend on offer nothing but empty platitudes and more of the same ineffective programs. But it’s never enough, and it never will be enough.

As the government has taken on more responsibility for providing economic support and social services to people in need, the Church has stepped away from its responsibilities to help the oppressed and care for the “widows and orphans”. We have abdicated our mandated role as the body of Christ, and have failed to care for those in our society that are the most vulnerable. Since the government is taking care of it, we can focus on other things!

One of the ironies here is that those that are pining for more governmental authority and government intervention to achieve “equality”, are the some of the same individuals that are denouncing systemic oppression. In other words, the solution they desire in order to fix the system empowers and enlarges the very societal structure that maintains the current system.

Promoting Tribalism Instead of Unity

Over and over again, we’re told that, “we need to have a conversation about race in America.” I have two responses to this; 1) In our current climate it’s never a conversation, it’s the same lecture over and over again, and 2) When has the conversation stopped? In academia, in news media, in entertainment media, in our children’s schools, in our text books, and now in our churches, the social justice/victim-oppressor narrative is relentlessly promoted.

The first tenet of this narrative is that we must categorize people and classify them into easily understood groups. Usually based on superficial qualities such as race or ethnicity. It’s best that the little Venn diagrams that we create under this theory never include any overlapping circles, so that we can clearly illustrate the victim-oppressor relationships without having to think about individual human attributes such as character, decision making, wealth, heritage, upbringing, education, etc. In other words, intersectionality allows us to stereotype. We don’t typically call it stereotyping because that has negative connotations, but the result is exactly the same. We categorize people with similar superficial attributes, usually skin-tone, in order to label and understand their victim-oppressor relationship to groups of people that we’ve categorized with different superficial attributes. Somehow, more of this is supposed to result in “racial healing”?

Far from improving relationships between members of “disparate” groups, intersectionality has exacerbated problems. The predictable results of these decades of lectures and learning about the importance of our superficial attributes are tribalism, resentment, division, guilt, shame, and isolation from one another.

In addition, intersectionality is antithetical to our foundational Christian doctrines. Intersectionality offers no redemption and has no room for forgiveness. It promotes retribution and reparations based on race, religion, and ethnicity. It’s about the raw exercise of power to transform our society and right perceived wrongs, by force if necessary. Human salvation and redemption are based on our individual acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and our individual relationship with our Creator God, through his Son.

Endless virtue signaling, proclamations of penitence, confessions of group-guilt for sins that were committed by folks long dead, denunciations of white privilege, and ever more extreme demonstrations of wokeness offer no solace or solutions to those who continue to be trapped in a multigenerational cycle of hopelessness. Healing can only occur when we engage one another as individual humans that are ALL created in the image of our God.

An Alternate Approach

Instead of spending more money to expand failed programs and more effort to promote the same failed theories of social justice, what if we tried something completely different? What if the Church stepped back into the role that it long ago abdicated and started serving the poor? Not as one of the many little ministries that we offer on our vast and shallow menu of programs, but on a massive scale because it’s a natural result who we are, through Who we serve.

Real societal change is far more likely to be achieved through the efforts of passionate individuals that care deeply about real justice, than it is through creating more bureaucracies whose primary objective is to increase their budgets and keep their jobs. The Church is full of passionate people on Sunday mornings, but then we meekly go about our own business for the rest of the week.

The fully-God Jesus shed his deity and became a man so that He could engage humans at our level. As Christians, Jesus is the one that we claim we want to emulate. Jesus did not start programs. Jesus did not preach social justice theories. Jesus directly engaged people where they lived, as they were, with love, compassion, directness, and a single path to redemption before God.

We need to engage people where they live. We have the message that breaks down barriers, that brings light to dark places, and offers hope where despair reigns. In all of the craziness that is 2020, what a perfect opportunity for the Church to make its presence felt.

Unfortunately, we’ve chosen instead to feature tearful apologies, hold “hard conversations”, and empathize with those that want to “burn things down”. It’s very disappointing and the results are entirely predictable.