Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

I started writing this on Saturday, May 30, 2020.  Things are changing very quickly, so please forgive me if some of this feels out of date by the time it is published.  If you read my articles, you know that I spend a lot of time trying to work out my thoughts, but I am sorry it took so long to get this out, given how many have asked me about thoughts – and sorry that I can never seem to flesh out complex thoughts in a meme – it always seems too long.

Thanks to my friends with some insight of color who offered wisdom into this article. 

The last few years, there has been much more attention in America drawn to incidents of police brutality against African Americans.  Many point out that this doesn’t represent any kind of change, but rather new levels of attention to a problem that has gone on for decades. 

I will talk about change before this article is done… which may take me a while… but based on my conversations with my African American friends, this is accurate. 

 It isn’t merely deaths (rightly, those draw the most attention and scrutiny) but a constant and consistent and sometimes systemic sense of harassment of African Americans by those in authority… and most often where authority touches the population, it is with the police. 

 I cannot imagine being a police officer.  These men and women of every ethnicity are making constant life-and-death decisions under pressure and even combat situations and being evaluated by people not under those conditions.  It feels like a setup for some level of failure under the best of motives and circumstances.  In a protest situation, it is even worse!  Police are, by definition, put into a situation to be standing across from peaceful protesters and dangerous rioters and professional rabble-rousers and to not know which is which

 I sympathize with their impossible situation, and I appreciate their efforts to keep us safe under these conditions.

However, what has also become clear is that some percentage of those in authority, including some police officers, are infected enough by racist thought to mistreat, abuse and kill people under their protection through clear intent or negligence.

 

Of course, not all deaths that happen under police action are murder or even manslaughter.  Heck, not all jerks in authority are racist jerks… some are just jerks.  But after so many examples after so many years, the anger is boiling over again and for the last few nights, there have been protests and/or riots in hundreds of American cities.

 I spend a lot of time thinking about things like this because of my roles as pastor and counselor; this is something I have been thinking about for a long time.

 For whatever the value, I want to walk through my thoughts about some of this here.  My prayer is that it is helpful to you in some way.  Right this moment, my other prayers are those of my friend, Pastor Steven D.Young.  “My prayer is for riots not to become louder than the protests.”

Amen.

As a Christian, I know that there is always the chance to learn and grow.  The sanctifying power of the Spirit is real and active.  His Word is living and active.

As an American, I see that change is needed and protests are part of that.  I want the protests to be successful and meaningful and I want to see actual meaningful change to happen.  More on this later…

How do I make sure that I am able to focus on the injustices that demand and deserve my attention right now – even if there are other simultaneous injustices, help me not be distracted from the rightful protest because of the sheer volume of the riots?

How do I demand, fight for, teach about real injustice – which I know exists because of the experiences of my trusted friends, while NOT being automatically assumed to be just another white person rushing to fake support for minority causes with photo ops or cheap slogans?

How do I also avoid being assumed to be on the same page with every political stance of everything on the “black lives matter” webpage? (disrupting the “nuclear family structure”?).

I am not sure, but I am working that out in these pages.