A Call to Biblical Activation

RALPH ENLOW

Two weeks ago today, video surfaced of George Floyd’s agonizingly slow, suffocating death under the weight of neck-kneeling Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, abetted by three other police officers implacably rebuffing onlookers’ pleas and restraining bystanders’ attempts to intervene. We are all too aware of the subsequent torrent of astonishment, incredulity, and outrage that has spawned mostly peaceful protests punctuated by violent behavior and inflammatory rhetoric that both social and broadcast media outlets have been eager to amplify. Mounting outrage over Michael Brown, Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean and others has once again boiled over into street protests. As the late Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently put it, “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Two Weeks of Soul Torment

In the days since I learned of the incident, I have been heartsick. My underlying sense of dislocation, isolation, and incapacity under the weight of personal grief over the death of our 5-year old granddaughter, career transition, relocation, and COVID-19 pandemic restrictions has been compounded by deep disturbance of soul, of sleeplessness, of convulsive grief, and of prayerful lament over what seems to be yet more evidence of persistent systemic and structural racism. The fact that I unequivocally condemn the actions of Derek Chauvin and support his criminal prosecution, trial, conviction, and punishment affords me no release. Nor does my steadfast refusal to legitimize violence as a justifiable response offer me a sense of exoneration. I feel I must do more. Sympathetic silence and self-vindication will not do.

I believe such feelings are consistent with the Bible’s teaching about justice and righteousness. In the words of The Bible Project’s Tim Mackie and Jon Collins:

“Some people actively perpetrate injustice. Others receive benefits or privileges from unjust social structures they take for granted. And sadly, history has shown that when the oppressed gain power, they often become oppressors themselves. So, we all participate in injustice, actively or passively—even unintentionally.”

I Have Met the Enemy, and It is I

I find it an inconvenient truth to admit the pervasiveness of racialization—the fact that race matters to people, especially the culturally disadvantaged, and must be taken into account—in my nation, my community, my church, my ministry. I want it to go away, but my bewilderment and regret over racism is compounded by my reluctance to enter into what Jesus did in order to eradicate it:

For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility … that He might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Eph. 2:14-6, emphasis added)

Sympathetic Spectators or Self-Sacrificing Shepherds?

We would do well to follow the example of Flint, Michigan Sheriff, Chris Swanson. Instead of wielding his weaponry and asserting his law enforcement power over distraught and potentially unruly citizens, Swanson walked alongside protesters. Swanson’s self-identification as a Christ-follower is consistent with the Christ-like character of his actions in this circumstance.

Nothing short of costly identification with the plight of my fellow citizens—most especially my brothers and sisters in Christ—has any chance of mitigating the crushing hopelessness and boiling rage so many rightly feel. What will such identification look like? I believe Luke’s Acts 6 account of how the Apostles responded to gentile widows’ grievances concerning food distribution offers useful insight. The Apostles did not merely say, “you are welcome at our table” but by empowering the aggrieved to populate the office of deacon said in effect, “this is your table too; you are co-hosts, co-benefactors, co-leaders.”

A Call to Biblical Activation

I call upon all of us to lament, pray, self-examine, protest (in whatever form and venue may be most appropriate), reach across, initiate reconciliation, and partner in reform. Do this in concentric circles stretching from personal social discourse, campus cultures and structures, and community outreach. If your institution neighbors a majority African-American ABHE member college, why not reach out in solidarity and seek to be a witness to and agent of reconciliation in word and deed? Let us not be passive, but active agents of the reconciliation Jesus bought with His own blood.

As you contemplate these things and discuss them among those who oversee and lead your institutions, I encourage you to read and reflect upon the eloquent and worthy thoughts of such fellow pilgrims as Tony Evans, Russell Moore, John Kingston, Scotty Smith, and Charles Ware.

While we continue to focus upon educating and mobilizing people to announce the Good News everywhere, let us also be known as educators who authenticate the Good News, as we work and wait, new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13, emphasis added).  

Ralph Enlow is the outgoing president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education and chair of IACE’s Board of Directors.