Any and every solution offered to our land that does not begin with and focus upon the Lord Jesus as the only hope for breaking down dividing walls of hostility – any such action, public policy, legislative agenda, protest, or destruction – will only serve to bring more disappointment, disillusionment, and conflict. Only in Jesus and in God’s people, the Church, is there hope for moving forward together. Only the Good News of salvation in Christ can bring hope, reconciliation, lasting change, peace, and contentment in our deeply divided, angry, roiling current moment. 

What a difference a couple of months can bring! No one, in mid- to late-May, could have imagined we would be where we are by mid-August in the United States. And such confusing times! On the one hand we hear “Silence is violence,” so speak up; but if you say something deemed wrong by arbiters of a new orthodoxy, your speech is declared violent and you’re told “Shut up!” or be “canceled.”

As things were just beginning to explode after Memorial Day, I wrote some thoughts on George Floyd. To my great surprise, these thoughts went a bit viral, as they say. Looking back to those days just ten weeks ago, I have a few more thoughts now – some from a personal perspective, some on the larger cultural moment.

First, the feedback I personally received from the piece in late May was all positive; but, quite candidly, all the feedback I received was from my white friends. My black friends and family members said nothing; which, of course, said something. I heard second hand that some people were hurt, insulted, or dismayed by my thoughts. I have since learned that a couple of the things I said (according to those who determine such things) fall into the category of “micro-aggressions” (e.g., saying there is “one race – the human race” is considered such a transgression). I also heard of an accusation that I intentionally used “coded racist language against African Americans” and that my thoughts were “an example of why systemic racial injustice still exists within this country.”

Sadly, this charge was accompanied by an unwillingness to meet with me to talk about the charge, thus shutting down any opportunity to find common ground – even if it could mean helping me to see an offense and offer an apology. We are seeing way too much of such reactions: a propensity to make accusations against someone’s motives or to interpret dispositions of the heart. As Christians, we are called to assume the very best motives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, until we see clear evidence of a wrongful motive or intent. Our day needs a recovery of the biblical “judgment of charity.” Such a “benefit of the doubt” happens far more readily in face-to-face conversations; it rarely happens through social media.

Second, since I was unaware of any “intentionally coded racist language,” I decided I needed to begin doing more reading and research. Since then I have compiled a document (over 250 pp. and counting) of articles representing numerous perspectives on our racially-charged cultural moment. I am glad to send that collection to you if you contact me. Among things I have learned: being a white male, some believe I should not speak at all about these things. I also learned that according to some, I would not know about my racially-coded language since that is part of what is now popularly described as my “white fragility” and the deeply imbedded racism in White America. Numerous reviews of this movement can be found; but I found Tim Challies’ piece to be particularly clear in comparing historic Christian faith with the popular concept of “white fragility.”

Third, I think we can all agree that facts and truth are now difficult to come by (in multiple spheres of life!). No one agrees, for example, on what constitutes “systemic racism” or if it really exists. (If the foregoing statement constitutes a micro-aggression for someone, please accept my apology. Whether or not you believe there is systemic racism, my point is merely that it’s clear there is not agreement today.) Again, from my Christian perspective, we all agree that injustice exists – it always has and, until the redemption of the world is complete, it always will. A good friend, Jim Fitzgerald, has made a good case that our culture, while historically marred by heartbreaking and deeply entrenched racism, is one of the only cultures in history to care about racism and to take monumental legal and cultural steps to address it. Whether or not these steps have been effective is another subject, but the progress made is dismissed by too many who focus on the deep past. Our current moment sees the secular culture imbibing wholesale a thoroughly anti-Christian form of Critical Race Theory popularized by the Black Lives Matter organization and written out in prose in the book White Fragility.

But in my opinion, this movement creates only further conflict (between the oppressed and the oppressors), offering no hope of reconciliation, peace, or redemption. Only more turmoil, riots, and conflict – which is the fundamental idea behind Marxism. One quite cogent and biblical response to this movement and the book can be found in this article by George Yancey or another in this carefully written and noted piece of research from Tim Keller.

Fourth and finally, some thoughts on the charges that slavery and racism are ordering institutions of America and our culture is irredeemably racist: The Apostle Paul could not single-handedly end slavery and racism in the Roman empire; but (under inspiration from God) he began to reorder social understanding within and relationships between God’s people (see Gal. 3; Eph. 2; and the letter to Philemon). This new way of living, honoring all people as made in God’s image, did not undo slavery in Rome. But it did begin to change things.

Like Paul, America’s Founders were not in a position, as they wrote the founding documents, to end the slave trade or the practice of slavery. But they did write in our foundational documents deeply philosophical statements (consistent with historic Christian faith) that set the course for ending . . . however long it took . . . the practice of slavery in America. And Christians were always at the forefront of ending slavery – think Wilberforce in England and the abolitionist movement in America.

We also know that through the years misguided, fallen, and evil people have fought back against the truth of Scripture – even using Scripture! – by instituting Jim Crow laws, further discrimination, injustice, etc. But I believe we err grievously in judging people from past generations by today’s cultural dispositions. Some 17 years ago Art Lindsley at the C.S. Lewis Institute wrote a piece about Lewis’ concept of “chronological snobbery”. It finds new application and significance in 2020. Remember that just a few years ago Blockbuster stores, cordless hardline phones, and CD recordings were the tip of the technological spear. In 2011 President Obama still held to the idea that “marriage” meant one man and one woman. Things change. The same can be said about what was occurring in America in 1619, 1860, and 1965. One can only imagine what people in 2030 may think about our summer of 2020. As Christians at least, we must cultivate and demonstrate humility with respect to the past, present, and future. We suffer a shocking lack of humility in the judgmentalism of our current moment.

I consider much of American history as an interesting parallel to the “already, but not yet” of Christian faith. Though our salvation has already been secured, Satan has not yet given up his fight and the battles go on with the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Just as there was conflict and death after the civil war, just as some Japanese soldiers held out for many years on Pacific islands after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, so also, there are too many people in America who still hold racist ideas, who say and do awful things. So we say, “Come Lord Jesus!” and in the meantime, “Kyrie eleison!” And we stand with those who seek justice in a manner that honors the Lord God while pursuing peace.

We live in a “not yet” era – but we are coming ever closer through the years despite what some people say. That said, sadly, I consider these current days a terrible set-back in that progress. We are seeing a dangerous turning back from what Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke and dreamt of; and from the work of people like John Lewis and so many others. Identity politics (consistent with Critical Theory) serves only further to divide, disappoint, and depress. One can live in anger and disillusionment, or one can seek light, hope, peace (or as we say at my school, “goodness, truth, and beauty”). Want some hope and encouragement? Watch this!

With that in mind I tell anyone who will listen: Any and every solution offered to our land that does not begin with and focus upon the Lord Jesus as the only hope for breaking down dividing walls of hostility – any such action, public policy, legislative agenda, protest, or destruction – will only serve to bring more disappointment, disillusionment, and conflict. Only in Jesus and in God’s people, the Church, is there hope for moving forward together. Only the Good News of salvation in Christ can bring hope, reconciliation, lasting change, peace, and contentment in our deeply divided, angry, roiling current moment.

May God give His church grace to stand – even if quietly – faithfully holding out this hope to a broken world.

Michael S. Beates is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, is Chaplain at The Geneva School in Central Florida and author of Disability & the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace (Crossway, 2012).