It\u2019s 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not 1526.1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not 1863.2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not 1968.3<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s 2017, people, and we have just witnessed a grotesque manifestation of racism coming out of the shadows to flex its emaciated muscles in the mirror of its deluded sense of superiority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Charlottesville incident is revelatory. It shows us that there is a fomenting racism, boiling just beneath the surface with violent impulses, trying to climb out of its slimy hole to repeat past horrors that many of us imagine are impossible in our \u201cenlightened\u201d modern times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a member of the body of Christ, and of the larger human community, I cannot help but express myself on the matter. Quite frankly, I am outraged and saddened and sick to my stomach by the escalating pattern of open racial hatred we are seeing across American. Hardly a week passes that we are not confronted by some heart-rending display of racism, and now Charlottesville has confronted us with what we\u2019ve tried not to believe\u2014that this monster, so far from being composed of a few misguided individuals, is a grassroots movement that has been organizing itself behind the scenes, determined to mobilize as a unified political machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026they did not look like a bunch of unbathed, toothless, backwoods lunatics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Please pause to soberly consider what just happened. A cohort4<\/sup> of Americans\u2014numbering between 1,000 and 1,500\u2014came together to publicly \u201cdemonstrate\u201d that they believe white people are superior to all other \u201craces\u201d and that they plan to \u201ctake back\u201d their country and \u201cmake America great again\u201d by either ruling over or expelling all non-whites. And when they came out of the shadows, they did not look like a bunch of unbathed, toothless, backwoods lunatics. Most of them appeared to be average, educated, employed, articulate people we rub shoulders with in offices, banks, and grocery stores on a daily basis. A chill travels my spine as I write the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, for starters, and at a bare minimum, white people of good conscience need to step into the public spotlight and let their voices be heard explicitly repudiating the wicked notion of \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d and affirming the equality and dignity of all human beings regardless of skin color. And if that does not happen, the reprehensible ideology of racial hatred will continue to gain adherents and momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody is quite sure of the source, but someone once articulated a most crucial truism of social justice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t really care who said it. All truth bears witness to itself by its self-evident quality. But best we can tell, this vital insight was extracted by some anonymous person as a loose and excellent paraphrase of a letter written in 1770 by the Irish political theorist, Edmund Burke. The larger thought is worthy of our attention:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other\u2019s principles, nor experienced in each other\u2019s talents, nor at all practiced in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business, no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them, it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection (with others), the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it (that is, out of connection with others), the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens (bent on evil). When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Allow me to summarize Burke\u2019s point in modern terms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good must be more unified, better organized, and more deliberately activist than evil, or else evil will gain the upper hand and suddenly surprise us with its strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhite supremacy\u201d has its origin in the deepest, ugliest, heinous depths of Satan’s twisted psyche\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is not sufficient for believers in the Christ to simply despise racism privately in their hearts. Our positions must be forthrightly proclaimed through whatever mediums of communication we each have at our command. Silence is not an option. With straight talk we would all do well to contemplate, Ellen White, more than century ago, expressed how serious a matter it is to remain silent in the face of evil:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf God abhors one sin above another, of which His people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case of an emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal to the very worst type of hostility against God.\u201d6<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n And make no mistake about it, this thing we are faced with is a \u201creligious crisis.\u201d Before it is political or social or economic, racism is an egregious violation of the heart of God and the gospel of Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So let\u2019s talk straight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a word for the white supremacy movement: evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhite supremacy\u201d7<\/sup> has its origin in the deepest, ugliest, heinous depths of Satan’s twisted psyche, and those who subscribe to the vile notion are aligned with \u201cspiritual wickedness in high places.\u201d8<\/sup> \u201cWhite supremacy\u201d should not be trivialized or normalized or dignified by even allowing those who represent it to explain it to us as if it were merely a perspective or an opinion that deserves a hearing and with which we might co-exist. The very idea that any one race is “superior” to any other is nothing short of diabolical,9<\/sup> and any white person who fails to stand unequivocally against it is complicit in the evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For followers of Jesus, all of this would seem to be elementary. And yet, as the racist rhetoric has become more public over the last couple years, I\u2019ve been shocked by what I\u2019ve encountered as a white person when in the company of white Christians. On a number of occasions I\u2019ve found myself in conversations with white people of my own denomination in which racist sentiments have been verbalized as if searching for a green light of agreement, and when I\u2019ve revealed my offense at such talk an awkward backpedaling ensues with the empty assurance, \u201cBut, I\u2019m not a racist, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apparently, there is a lot more racism lurking in the shadows than we\u2019d like to believe, and Charlottesville reveals that the monster is just waiting, yanking violently on its chain, looking for an organized movement through which to express itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026there is a lot more racism lurking in the shadows than we\u2019d like to believe\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So this is me, Ty Gibson, telling everyone within the hearing of my voice exactly where I stand. I\u2019m \u201cAgainst the Wall\u201d10<\/sup> of racial separation and injustice wherever it raises its ugly head. And I believe that every one of us who know the heart of Jesus should consider it our moral duty to speak up in favor of racial equality and against racial walls. This is a call for each of us to deliberately make known within our circle of influence exactly what our position is so that those who sympathize with \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d find no friends for their demonic cause anywhere they turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlottesville is a brutal wakeup call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wake up, people, wake up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because \u201cthe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s 2017. Not 1526.1 Not 1863.2 Not 1968.3 It\u2019s 2017, people, and we have just witnessed a grotesque manifestation of racism coming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/A_Brutal_Wakeup_Call_2.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-2Pp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13566,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions\/13566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}