Do All Lives Matter?

Recently I read a book called Do All Lives Matter? The Issues We Can No Longer Ignore and the Solutions We All Long For by “Coach” Wayne Gordon & Dr. John M. Perkins, a Caucasian Pastor and an African American author. Friends for over thirty-five years. The two co-founded the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), whose mission is to inspire, train, and connect Christians who seek to bear witness to the Kingdom of God by reclaiming and restoring under-resourced communities.

I’ve come to find out that the best books are found in the bargain books section at Mardel, which range from $1 to $5. I have also recognized that more importantly, the books in this section are the books that nobody wants to read due to the hard truth that lies within them. Mardel’s bargain books section is where I also found Hope Rising: How Christians Can End Extreme Poverty in This Generation by Scott C. Todd, a book I wrote about in my blog called Living the True Fast this past summer. That book was the spark that started One is Enough, a fundraiser to raise money for the kids in Uganda to receive shoes and uniforms for school, but that is an entrusting journey for another blog.

Back to the real reason why I am writing this, do all lives matter? If you were to ask anybody that question, the majority of answers would be yes but it’s also extremely clear that people, including law enforcement, do not treat everyone as if that statement is true and this book attempts to help change the direction in which our nation is headed. John and Wayne both agree that things are getting worse instead of better, and that they cannot procrastinate any longer.

The time for justice is now. The time for proclaiming and living the truth that all lives matter is now. The time for building a culture of peace and respect to replace a culture of violence and hatred is now. In short, now is the time for becoming the “beloved community.”

I picked up this short book on Friday and had it finished by Monday. I couldn’t put the thing down. In the midst of reading it, a part of me was inspired to do something because it is a frustrating subject to think about let alone talk about, while another part of me just wanted to curl up and cry because of the brokenness and hurt shown to me through this book.

Knowing that we can’t do everything, we can fall victim to a kind of emotional and spiritual paralysis that prevents us from doing anything.

The moment my heart broke while reading this book was in the midst of Chapter 2: Listening to Other’s Stories and Sharing Our Own. John goes to tell about his life-changing experience in the Rankin County Jail. In 1970, John was arrested on his way back to Jackson from a protest march and was severally tortured by white police officers. He explains how they beat him till his blood was poured out on the concrete floor and then commanded him to mop it up himself. Then proceeds to tell us that the torture he endured that night included a fork being shoved up his nose.

A FORK SHOVED UP HIS NOSE.

Imagine that: a loved one being so brutally beaten and tortured, then forced to clean up the officers’ mess as if it were your loved ones. Try to tell me you don’t feel sick to your stomach. I must’ve read that paragraph 3 or 4 times, but barely being able to read it because my eyes were filled with tears. I understand that John’s story is almost 50 years ago, but my question is why? In a country where freedom and justice are supposed to be our expectation, why isn’t it happening today? The United States may not be segregated, in a sense, but there surely is racial tension within our nation and as Christians it is our time to rise up. And that is exactly what Dr. John M. Perkins did the night he was tortured. If you were continue reading the chapter, John’s response to the way he was treated will fill your body with chills. First, John grew angry but immediately felt convicted and feared himself that he could be capable of doing just what those white police officers did to him. So he prayed. He asked the Lord if He were to get him out of that jail, he would go out and preach His love and Gospel to anybody he encountered. As John remembered God’s grace in forgiving him for his sins, it helped him find a place for forgiveness for those who hurt him. And that is when John went out. He knew society could change if he did what he could to help and in that, He said,

But I was committed, by God’s grace, to achieving the goal of true freedom through peaceful means based on my belief that all lives mattered and that all people – even the oppressors – bear the image of God.

Church this is what we should be striving to be: demonstrating care and concern for others, bearing each other’s pain just as apostle Paul preached in Galatians 6. It all comes down to mutual love and respect for one another.

Yet somehow, someway, somebody feels invisible. John talks about his star student, Top Cat, and how one day he didn’t come to class for a few days. So he asked what had happened and his other students explained that he was shot dead at the gas station he worked at late at night. There wasn’t news reports, radio broadcasts, or even a memoir in their local paper.

He was one of those nameless and faceless people about whom nobody seems to care and whose life doesn’t seem to matter. Invisible.

This is it folks. Our brother was shot dead and nobody heard about it. I hate to be the one to say it, but where are the people fighting for those like Top Cat? Where are the white people sticking up for the social injustice in our system? Where are the Christians wanting to show society that they’ve got it all wrong? Where are the dreamers like Martin Luther King Jr.? Where are the doers like Abraham Lincoln? Where are the ones with loud voices in a country that likes to silence the truth? Where are all of these people and why aren’t there more of them?

For the convenience of communication, it’s common to use the terms “race and “racism.” But according to any geneticist, there are not multiple races of humans. THERE IS ONE AND ONLY ONE RACE. No matter how different the lightest-skinned person from Europe might look from the darkest-skinned person from India or Africa, our DNA is the same.

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest anything different, while there is ample support for the idea that, despite whatever differences we might have, WE ARE ALL ONE, UNITED AND EQUAL IN OUR HUMANITY. Genesis 1:27 informs us that God created human beings – male and female – in his image.

Despite the perception that one has to be on one side or the other, the overwhelming majority of people in this country – including law enforcement officials and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement – want the same thing: peace and justice in our communities and in our nation.

The Black Lives Matter activist group released a ten-point manifesto detailing what police practices and behavior in America it would like to see changed on July 10, 2016. I’m sure you’re wondering what the church thinks of all the proposals, which are foundational principles that are faithful to Scripture and many of the leaders and participants are Christians. According to the Barna research organization, 94 percent of evangelicals believe the church plays an important role in racial reconciliation. Yet only 13 percent of evangelicals support the Black Lives Matter movement.

THIS IS SO CONCERNING CHURCH. 13 PERCENT OUT OF 94 PERCENT.

Jesus makes a clear point on how we are to gain eternal life in Luke 10:27, ‘”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” But who is our neighbor? Some may say the person that lives directly next to us and some may say our friends, but this book makes a point to explain who our neighbors should be aside from the person across the street from us or in our cul-de-sac.

My neighbors are those who are hurting, who’ve been beaten up, stripped, and left all alone. They are those who’ve been ignored by upstanding citizens and faithful churchgoers. They are those who have been made to feel as if their lives don’t matter. In Matthew 25, Jesus equates helping others with serving him (v. 35-36 and v. 40).

Then if we were take it back to Proverbs 31:8-9, we would realize that these verses should be our guide to help move our nation forward. It states,

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

This is our call. This is our chance. Speak up for the ones who feel as if their lives don’t matter. Speak up for the ones who didn’t get the chance to speak up for their lives because their life was taken due to appearance differences and stereotypes. Speak up for the ones who feel silenced in a country where they are supposed to have freedom of speech. Speak up for the ones who are hurting too much to move, crying too much that they’re forgetting to breathe, and wondering why nobody is fighting for them.

Instead of ignoring or suppressing our pain and the pain of others, maybe we all need to cry more, not less. But we should also be careful not to allow our sadness and grief to keep us from taking action.

We should want to feel what Our Father is feeling for his children. We should grieve every death but we should also go beyond tears. We shouldn’t stop doing everything we can do to make sure the world knows we believe that all lives matter.

A changed heart leads to positive action. But it’s also true that taking action can lead to a changed heart. Wayne and John gave eleven suggestions – several of them interrelated – of things we can do to demonstrate the conviction that all lives matter and they are listed below:

1. Pray and Discuss the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi on a Regular Basis
2. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
3. Build and Cultivate Relationships across Ethnic Lines
4. Strive to Build Friendships with People Who Are Different
5. Listen to the Music of Other Cultures
6. Move into a Diverse Community
7. Allow the Right Books and Movies to Inform and Inspire You
8. Participate in a Discussion Group
9. Support Restorative Justice Policies and Efforts
10. Consider Organizing or Joining a Peaceful Protest
11. Work with the Police and Leaders of Your City or Community

Everyone needs to be doing something to proclaim to the world that all lives matter, while also obeying Christ’s command to love God with every fiber of our beings and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Here are some ways that YOU, specifically, can make this proclamation: march in protest, pray, write letters, blog (like me!), write songs, weep, discuss. Do something.

Simply stated: all lives can’t matter until black lives matter.