As a Christian, What's My Role in Fighting for Racial Justice? Part 1

By Ben Wenzl, Resonate Monmouth

It’s no question that we’ve found ourselves living in the midst of what will likely become one of the most prominent cultural moments in history.

In May of this year, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after a police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes as he lay face-down and handcuffed. The greusome video that captured the scene went viral. What was exhibited in the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery (just weeks prior) was only exacerbated. Protests began sweeping the nation immediately. Many have argued that this has become the next generation’s civil rights movement. 

What creates a confusing reality for us in the midst of this cultural moment is that there are a myriad of voices screaming from varying vantage points, especially as things have been hyper-politicized as we’ve arrived at November. Protests are met with counter-protests. Anger, violence, and outrage in many ways, have become the norm. Some voices demand justice be served. Some voices demand that we ignore the list of recent and historical evils done to black people in order to “move on.” 

Even inside the Church, there’s pointed disagreement. Some church leaders may advocate that Christians should abandon orthodox faith and fight for social justice at any and every cost, to make up for past failure to do so. Other church leaders may advocate that we should carefully avoid engaging issues of social justice all together and just “preach the gospel.” 

So among all of the noise, how should we think? How should we engage? Do we even engage at all? 

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, what is my role in fighting for racial equality in America? Before we get to the how of engaging the world around us, we must remember who justice comes from - the Creator of the world.

Our Role is to Remember Who God Is…

As blood-bought citizens of heaven, whenever we’re confronted with social issues and how to think about them, we have to begin with God - his design, his wisdom, and his ways - primarily revealed in his Word.  As the Church, we have access to an objective and illuminated true north that should guide us to stand in stark contrast to our neighbors who don’t yet know Jesus (Matthew 5:13-16, 1 Peter 2:11). We must begin by looking to God - who he is - and in light of who he is, who we are. 

In this, racism is a blatant issue for two primary reasons. We see the first when we look to God’s design for humanity in our origins and our future. 

In the beginning, the one eternal triune God creates humans in his image (Genesis 1:26, 27). The one human race had a chief purpose of enjoying God and ruling over the rest of creation as they submitted to his loving design. We can begin to understand that because of the imago dei (image of God), every single human being has innate value. 

However, man rebels against God’s loving design, and sin contaminates the entire human race. Where God intended for there to be human flourishing when his image bearers loved him supremely, the opposite ensued as image bearers loved things other than him supremely (see Genesis 4:7-8). Even so, God makes a clear promise to one day destroy the enemy revealed in the garden (Genesis 3:15). God ultimately fulfills his promise in the person and work of Jesus Christ (1 John 3:8). 

In the final pages of the Bible, the Christian gets a snapshot of his or her glorious future. In John’s Revelation, we get a taste of the new heaven and new earth. Here, scripture is explicitly clear that every tongue, tribe, people, and nation will make up the eternal people of God who will forever exalt the Lamb that was slain. Our resurrection bodies will keep their ethnicity (Revelation 7:9). The Son of God is so glorious that nothing less than the culturally and ethnically diverse nations would suffice as his chosen Bride. This chapter of Revelation will not happen until the Church is diverse. When she has every tongue tribe and nation represented, then she will be complete. The differences display the beauty and worth of Christ, and should further propel us to give our lives to the Great Commission - for the glory of God alone. 

First, racism is wicked, sinful, and evil because it undermines God’s design for humanity as a whole, revealed in our origins and our future. If the character of God is revealed here in the design of God, we can see that racism is clearly against the heart and desire of God. 

Second, as disciples of Jesus, we must understand that at its core, racism is an issue that only the gospel truly addresses. 

...to remember the justice of the Gospel

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28). 

Here, the Apostle Paul is not advocating for a theology of “colorblindness” - saying that ethnicity is unimportant once someone enters the Kingdom of God. Rather, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, is making a chief identity statement about those who’ve been purchased by the blood of Jesus, in response to false teaching that had spread through the church.

Before any of us trusted Christ, we fumbled around with our identities, seeking to find our “true selves” by whatever means we could. Whatever might earn us significance from others or our idols would be what we’d run to for meaning and satisfaction. However, without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the human heart always becomes proud once we grip onto an identity that we’ve created for ourselves. This is what Paul is addressing in this text. 

There’s absolutely no room for pride, arrogance, exclusivity, or superiority when it comes to belonging to Christ. Why?

Because you were saved and adopted by grace. The disciple of Jesus is justified by faith. The gospel says that we were all outsiders and dead in our sins (Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:12), and yet, at our worst, God made a move to invite us to become insiders - to become new creations - by way of the cross and the resurrection. 

There’s no room to boast in something that may be true about you - even something so obvious as the color of your skin. Something is even more ultimately true about you - namely, that you’ve been purchased by Jesus. 

At its core, racism says that if you have an ethnicity that is different from mine, then I am superior to you. Throughout history, this has been a significant and grievous issue. Anyone who falls into the sin of racism ultimately because of pride, will seek to devise ways to feel more powerful, more acceptable, and better than others - and they use their racial characteristics to do so. In this, racism is another form of self-righteousness - something that the gospel of Jesus alone addresses. 

Again, we must land where the Bible lands when it comes to the issue of racism and racial injustice. Racism is wicked, sinful, and evil, because it is a form of self-righteousness, revealing that it is a gospel issue at its core. 

As ministers of this gospel of Jesus, we should not passively disengage from brokenness around us, but enter into what’s broken, seeking to be for our cities and communities (Jeremiah 29:7). As Christians in America, we should absolutely advocate for racial equality - for reasons that supersede any political agenda or humanistic theory of justice. Once we cling to this gospel truth, then we can engage and discuss how to fight for racial justice, which I lay out guiding principles for how to engage in part two of this blog post, coming later this week