Love thy enemies? A reaction to the Charleston shootings

This is perhaps the most difficult blog post I've ever written. I feel powerless and so, so sad about the state of race relations in my country. I wonder if I even have the right to comment on it, yet I am compelled to speak.

White privilege.  Racism.  #blacklivesmatter.  These words are all over my Facebook and Twitter feed; I cannot ignore the issue anymore.  Wednesday of last week, I went to my church to check in at the resale shop, to visit with friends, and to hang up a sign advertising our Vacation Bible School.  Wednesday of last week, a group of people went to a Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC for worship.  Nine of them didn’t leave alive.  They were gunned down by a man who told them, “You are taking over our country.  I have to do what I had to do.”  He hated the church and the people in it because they were black.

The news is full of the same rhetoric as before.  "It’s one crazy person with a gun.  It’s about mental illness.  What can we do?  If they would have had guns in the church, this wouldn’t have happened."  Really?  Then, we have the same other rhetoric, the shrill, desperate voices asking the holders of power and privilege in this country, the middle-class and upper-class white people, to be honest, to talk about racism, to talk about violence, and to listen.   I am listening, friends.  What can you tell me?

How can I help?  I am stricken by these events.  I am listening and begging for answers, because I don’t understand how to help the problem.  I grew up in a predominantly white area, I live in a predominantly white neighborhood, worship in a predominantly white church, and work in a school with a predominantly white staff.  Of course, I believe I'm not a racist, but I benefit from my pale skin and blue eyes, from my middle-class upbringing, from a society built upon the backs of slaves and oppressed minorities.  I bear the guilt by virtue of my lucky birth.  When I interact with the police and other law enforcement, I meet respect and helpfulness, not suspicion and fear.  My children will not be called “thug” or “ho” based on the color of their skin.  My male children will not have to learn how to submit to the police in order to stay alive.  As a white person in a white-dominated culture, I cannot truly understand the struggle of minorities.  I cannot get out of my own skin to experience it.  How does a privileged white person address the racism that is pervasive and corrosive in our culture?  How am I complicit?  How can I help?

I feel powerless and sad, and I'm not even a direct victim of this particular atrocity or the terror of racism. What right do I even have to feel powerless and sad? Perhaps the fact that so many people are finally outraged about this issue means we will finally give it some honest attention. I will think about it, talk about it, and write about.  I will educate myself further on racism in this country.  I will pray.  That’s the hard part; what am I supposed to pray for?  I want to pray for vengeance for the victims, for justice for the murderer.  I want to pray for God to step in and lead us into a just, merciful society where people are not so fueled by fear and hatred and wrapped up in violent delusions that they pick up a gun and take innocent lives.  I want to pray like a pagan, to bargain with God that if I make the right sacrifices and say the right invocations, God will solve the problems of society.  I want God to fix it.  But, I don’t worship that God.  

I worship Jesus Christ, the God who died in fear and despair, an innocent victim to people fueled by fear and hatred. I worship the God who walked through his human fear into a supreme sacrifice that saved the entire world.  I worship the God who was lying down with the victims, holding the wounded and grieving in his arms while they wept. I worship the God who tells me to love my enemies--my enemies, for Christ’s sake!  Ah, there’s the rub--in my swearing lies the answer.  I am to love my enemies for Christ’s sake.  I am to love the people falling victim to violent delusions, the people falling victim to racist dogma and hate speech, the people so fearful of losing control of their lives that they kill the scapegoats they blame for their inadequacies.  I am to love the people in thrall to neo-Naziism, people who fear and hate my friends in the LGBT community, people who believe that black citizens are taking over this country. I have no idea how I am supposed to do that.  Love the bigot--hate the bigotry?  Love the person, hate the hateful idea?  Love people while you vehemently disagree with what they stand for, when it threatens your idea of society, when you desperately want them to change their ideals? Love them, while you strive to silence their hateful beliefs? Love myself, as I benefit from the circumstances of my birth while others struggle because of theirs?  How does that work?

It is a fearful time and a very fearful thing to try to love in the midst of all this fear and hatred.  Jesus Christ tells us that love is the only weapon we have in the face of fear and hatred.  Good God, I do not have the strength for it!   Good God, though, the strength will not come from me.  The strength to love will come from the Holy Spirit, from the grace of Jesus Christ, just as the families of the victims forgave the shooter.  I have faith, not in my own strength and goodness, but in the strength and goodness of the Lord, in the strength of repentance and forgiveness for my own sins, that God will break my heart open and find the love--to love my neighbors of all colors and types, my enemy, and myself.