Black Lives Matter

 Black Lives Matter. 

God created man in His own image,
Genesis 1:27

Black Lives Matter

If it is on the tip of your tongue to respond “but all lives matter,” stop right there. 

Don’t say it. You’re missing the point. Life is God’s precious gift to be valued always. But for hundreds of years black lives specifically—precious and beloved of God—have been held cheaply in our culture. For 250 years, black lives were used, abused, bought, sold, and snuffed out with impunity in the United States. For the next hundred they were over-policed, underserved, and, yes, still snuffed out with impunity too often. It didn’t end with MLK making a speech as his death makes clear. 

The cry of the streets, what we must understand, is that precious lives continue to die as a result of hunger, the worst of the income gap, poor access to health care, and the actions of bad apples of law enforcement the structure can’t seem to control. Those things are only able to go on because our culture as a whole DOESN’T value all lives as it claims. Our young people are demanding that we stop looking the other way.

Black Lives Matter.

Say it to yourself. Say it over and over until it seeps into your marrow and becomes part of you. Say it out loud until it seeps into our culture and begins to transform it at last.

Black Lives Matter



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Poverty of Spirit

Winter

An Open Letter to the Church in the Face of Abuse Scandals