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by Rod D. Martin
Tuesday June 11, 2019
Some thoughts (which I originally posted on Twitter) about this afternoon’s Panel on Racial Reconciliation at the Southern Baptist Convention. Note that this is from the day before, not after, the passage of Resolution 9.
Three things I did not hear from the Racial Reconciliation panel:
- Any usable definition of the problem we’re called upon to solve.
- Any solution that wasn’t overtly subjective.
- Any hint of forgiveness or, well, reconciliation.
It was cordial. But it was very “woke”. Pointedly, self-consciously so.
I mean no disrespect to any of the panelists by that. Quite the contrary. I’m glad people are being heard if they believe they haven’t been. But I’d have hoped for something more usable, not to mention Biblical.
As it is, it’s completely understandable why many think they’re just being beaten over the head with Democrat politics. I’m hopeful that’s not J.D. Greear’s heart. But no objective person could listen to that panel and not understand why many see it differently.
We were literally just told that while certain panelists can be “understanding” toward those who “felt the need to vote for Trump”, they are “hurt” “even more” if we defend his actions in office.
They might as well just say what they clearly mean: that failure to adopt Democrat beliefs is racism.
Me? I think politicians who advocate murdering infants, even after they’re born, actually are full-on wicked. Not “flawed”. Not “lacking character”. Enemies of God.
And I’d like to see some repentance for supporting such Molech worshippers, from far too many of our friends.
I think rejecting the evil of child murder “trumps” how our brothers may or may not make us feel. I think the same could be said of the abolition of religious liberty in the so-called “Equality Act”, and the teaching of “gender fluidity” to kindergarteners. And so on.
But I also think the panelist who said it’s wrong to say we “don’t see race” because he feels that invalidates a part of who he is, while I understand and respect him and his point, would have benefited from discussing rather than just instructing, on a panel that seemed to have only one point of view. It would have been good for his point to interact with this Biblical point: in Christ “there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free.”
The two points are not mutually exclusive, of course. But one of them, the one plainly stated in Scripture’s text, went completely unaddressed and if anything, contradicted.
If actual racial reconciliation is to come, (1) it can only be based on that Biblical idea, that we are all one in Christ through adoption by the Father and thus also one with, and reconciled to, each other.
There’s no other way.
But also (2) We’re going to have to be honest and say that everyone’s hurt feelings, no matter how valid and no matter how much we genuinely want to help each other past them, are inconsistent with “turning the other cheek” and “forgiving seventy times seven”.
When are we going to love our neighbors as ourselves, enough to expect each other to put Christ’s teaching first? Because I’m sorry, but the very idea of the “micro” in “microaggression” is diametrically opposed to the way Jesus taught us to love one another.
We must bear one another’s burdens, not find ever-tinier reasons to take offense, and ever-older causes for grudges.
That is, in a nutshell, the difference between Intersectionality and Christianity: one preaches alienation, the other reconciliation. No matter how well meaning, “Social Justice” will not bring reconciliation because it cannot. It requires by its very nature a never-ending cycle of finding fault.
Our faith is about forgiveness, not fault finding.
We must repent of course. We are all guilty of unending sins, and slights we don’t even realize.
But it’s forgiveness that brings reconciliation. And until we’re honest about the need for that painful two-way street, there will be no reconciliation, no matter how many panels we have.
— Thoughts From the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention originally appeared on Twitter and then as a Facebook post by Rod D. Martin.
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