blacklivesmatter – Education is Discipleship

¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. – Romans 12:15

¹²Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. – I Corinthians 12:12-14

Last week in Sunday School, our class talked about the violent deaths of black civilians and police officers over the past couple of weeks and what, if anything, our response as Christians should be.

Almost immediately, we ran into a very specific impasse: we have had and will have a very difficult time relating to something that is so outside our socio-economic bubble. Our class is made up of mid-30s, fairly affluent, educated, white couples. While we have our political or even theological disagreements, we are much more like each other than we are not. The deaths in Baton Rouge, St. Anthony, and Dallas are beyond our ken. While we know that the best thing for us to do would be to listen to someone whose experience is not ours–to hear a cop or a minority speak about their experiences and vulnerabilities–we didn’t have that option in our class on this particular Sunday. Continue reading “Rejoice and Weep”

We happened to read and talk about Othello the same week we celebrated the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. While the play’s early (white) audiences may not have reacted to the play’s racial dynamics, I cannot, in 21^st Century America, read Roderigo, Iago, and Brabanzio’s descriptions of Othello and not think of our nation’s own conflicted relationship to black men and women (#blacklivesmatter). This is a play that asks us to balance the duties of individual and social responsibility. We can lay blame for what happens to Desdemona on Othello alone or even extend the blame to Iago (whatever his real motivation is). But what responsibility does the larger society have for enabling a world where Othello associates the color of his skin with sin? Continue reading “Wrestling with Othello”