Brunswick, GA 2020. Minneapolis, MN 2020. A father & son duo hunting down a man of color. A police officer’s knee on the neck of a human being. A conflicted and compromised legal system. Four against one in handcuffs. GBI investigating the merits of the case. Bad International coverage in both cases. Two very long months of waiting for action. Only one policeman arrested. And then the video release. These seemingly senseless, rash, and nearly covered-up murder of Ahmaud Aberry & George Floyd has caused a deep sadness to settle into my soul. Despite my best efforts to hold it together, I found myself, your black pastor, deeply troubled. You may be thinking, “Pastor, what took you so long to respond to such horrible situations; especially justice issues such as racism?” Well, to put it simply, the depth of varying emotions has forced me to slow down to listen to both the voice of God and my own heart. Being a person of color, these events have hit me extremely hard, unlike any other time in my life. As such, it has been nearly impossible for me to look at these scenarios in an objective way; it is hard to separate myself from Ahmaud’s & George’s murders because those scenarios could have been me.

It’s as though these traumas are happening to all black people. I have been, without a doubt, angry, depressed, full of sorrow, fearful and anxious, and many other emotions found on the ‘emotions wheel.’ I have been on the verge of tears several times over the past few weeks. Initially, I wasn’t really sure why, or maybe I was trying to ignore the growing story that has been placed before us on social media. I think, in some ways, I was trying to ignore them or maybe trying to suspend judgment until more details became available. However, as we all have been exposed to more information, the reality of these avoidable acts are too much to keep in the background of my mind and emotional life. The wave of emotions that have swooned over me has a range that I simply cannot share with most people. Yes, like many other people of color, I am sick of the hypocrisy that exists within our country and the false narrative that they paint about black men (and black people for that matter). Doesn’t society realize that narratives can go several directions and that they often go in a negative direction for the black man?

At times, my flesh wants to lash out at my Anglo brothers and sisters so that they can hear the narrative that minorities have about them. But of course, that negative narrative would probably not be any more true of most Anglos in the same way that it’s not true of the majority of Blacks. Or Latinos. Or Asians. Etc. Etc. It is this type of emotional and rash thinking that has caused me to pause, grieve, and process my experience through the lens of the Bible and the people of God. In response, I have been amazed by the power and influence that distress and trauma have upon the human soul. Just today, as I was reading Isaiah 9, I looked at the use of the term “darkness” in that passage. The word is not in reference to physical darkness, or even spiritual darkness, but more so to emotional darkness as a result of intense distress. It is a distress that Judah and Israel were about to face with the attacks of Syria and Babylon. In a similar way, as I have been trying to work through the emotions of the past couple of months, I have found that the “distress” of these two cases, on top of COVID-19, has created a veil of emotional and spiritual darkness in my life. The pain and sorrow of the heart and mind make sealing oneself from God and others very tempting. Instead of coming to God with all of my emotions, I am finding that I tend to cut myself off from God. Instead, I construct a vault which I think will protect me from the pain that He and others may cause. Instead of being perceived as a God of comfort, He becomes a presence to be avoided or feared.

Without a doubt, these experiences show me that I can err in not trusting anyone, including my own church family or God. The only thing that I really trust in those moments is myself and my tendency to anesthetize myself with something… anything. However, as one may surmise, this closing off of oneself to God and others quickly becomes the devil’s playground. One is left in isolation with one’s own fallen thinking, emotions, and the world’s broken views on what is the cause and solution of the tragedies of our society. This, my friends, is a breeding ground for misinformation, misinterpretation, and misguided ethics. This is the realm where many people of color live, both Christian and non-Christian alike; they’re trying to save themselves from the trauma, fear, and anxiety of racism and other prejudices. And unfortunately, most of us live in this psychological space alone, unable to share our pain with the majority culture for fear of having our experiences minimized or delegitimized. Many are left in a fog of shame for what we have experienced, and most certainly for how we have been told to interpret them. With no place to go with these traumas, heartaches, fears, anxieties, and wounds, we begin to escape into resentment, anger, rage, suspicion, defensiveness, isolation into our cultural ghettos, code-switching, and self-diminishment of the Image of God we’re created in… just so we can fit into the majority culture.

Therefore, we find ourselves in a prison of deep woundedness and self-limitation due to our trauma and our own false beliefs about our worth as fellow image-bearers of God. Why do I share this bleak and momentary picture with you? For sure, it is not a complete picture of the African-American experience. But it is a close approximation of where many black Americans are living mentally, socially, relationally, and emotionally. I share this to give everyone at Ponce Church an idea of what many in the black and minority communities of our city are trying to overcome. As I have tried to think of biblical parallels to our current scenario, the ones closest to this description all reflect the theme of oppression; in particular, of God’s people going through the repentant and restorative process of recovering from the effects of their physical and spiritual captivity.1 With these various narratives in view, a few questions came to mind: How would a fellow traveler come alongside an oppressed person to help them? What would one say? What would one do? These are a few of the questions I hope we can delve into together as we seek to understand how the Gospel informs how we engage those who are working through their past and ongoing oppression.

All this to say, though the confusion is profound for a lot of us, including me, Jesus is GOOD. He is the Man of sorrows (Isaiah 53), one we can relate to in the midst of everything going on. “… A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice (Isaiah 42). Stay tuned…

Exodus 2-3, 12-34; Deuteronomy, Joshua; Judges; Ezra; Nehemia; the Gospels, and the 1 Epistles—These each reflect the various captivities: Egypt, Babylon/Persia, Rome, and ultimately our slavery to sin and the evil one.