**Warning: This post may contain explicit content, (especially if you are White, middle class and/or Republican).**
I am sick and tired of f***ing racism.
As we ponder the emerging nature of Christianity in our culture, it is amazing to me the number of racists in our churches. As I browsed the evangelical blogosphere, I saw no less than three different "Christian" bloggers, using racist slang and speaking out against people of different races. One blogger in particular, spoke of an Evangelical, Conservative black thinker as "vulgar, perverse and unworthy of the name of Christ" because he was black. This sickened me. As I am posting some of Anthony's thoughts on the blog, it was especially relevant for me now.
Colossians 3:11 says:
"9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all."
We who are called out of God, we must lead the way in reconciling different races, cultures and subcultures. Those of you who know me personally know my heart for the hardcore music culture. As a whole, the American church is miserably failing to reach out across the boundaries of culture, race and class. We must embrace the power of the cross to reconcile each and every class, race and culture to a saving knowledge of Christ. Only when we recognize that Jesus Christ came to redeem people from all races, and that he was in fact not a white guy with shiny brown hair, can we truly reach out to other people.
Anthony made a good point over at his blog.
"The last time I checked (and I'm no expert) Jesus was a Jew from Palestine. This Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, fully revealed the plan of God, defeated Satan, liberated his people, gave them the Holy Spirit and continues to make intercession for them. The Jesus from Nazareth brings his people into his redemptive mission to redeem the whole creation. So are we to think of Jesus as the man that we want him to be or the man that he actually is?"
This is my challenge for you today: How are you reaching out to people who are different from you? How are you expressing the love of Christ to those for whom Jesus died, even if they are different than you?
The blog will be picking up with Anthony's next talk soon.
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The Vision?
The vision is Jesus: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? They are an army.
And they are free from materialism. They laugh at the markets.
They hardly care! They wear clothes like costumes:
to show and to tell, but never to hide.
They know the meaning of the Matrix; the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults break and cry.
It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might win, one day
the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrades at arms.
The tattoo on their backs boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And this generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears
Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
Material clothes matter not
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives,
swap seats with the man on death row;
guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.
Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?
Here come the frightened and forgotten, with fire in their eyes.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
2 comments:
As a white middle class republican...I think...well...not all white middle class republicans act in such a manner...and I agree...and I'll get on my soapbox...I really get frustrated with racism aswell...but...not all of us are running hard with a Derek Webb song...
considering I'm not Republican (I will not get on that soapbox) I can run with a dwebb song if i want...
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