Thoughts on critical race theory (part three): Who do we choose to believe?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

This is the third post in a series about critical race theory.

You can read the first post here and the second post here.

In this post, I will only use the words “critical race theory” three times (and you already read two of them).

That is because critical race theory is not the point of this post.

Nor is it really the point of what cable news, social media, or talk radio have to say about it.

What is the point?

Read on and decide for yourself.

Let’s start with this: You have an opinion.

How did you let it form within you?

What information did you choose to let in?

What information did you choose to believe and keep?

In this post, I ask you to think about who you choose to believe and what you choose to do with those beliefs.

I will show you what I mean by telling you two true stories.

The first story is about “Jody,” a sister in Christ whose friendship with me goes back to elementary school.

Last year, Jody “canceled” me. Cut me out of her life. Ended our friendship.

Why?

It happened in the summer of 2020. #BlackLivesMatter was all over social media. Some of my friends were for it. Some of my friends were not for it. Many of my friends had nothing at all to say about it.

Jody seemed to form an obsession with #BlackLivesMatter. I checked and found that on some days, she posted something about it almost every ten minutes! She mostly shared clips or memes from politicians and pundits.

As a rule, I avoid “talking” to people on social media. For Jody, however, I broke that rule.

Jody posted that Black Lives Matter was raising an army to invade small towns and suburbs. She posted that Black Lives Matter wanted to kill all police. She posted that Black Lives Matter wanted to overthrow the United States and set up a Communist regime. She posted that Black Lives Matter wanted to kill white people and plunder their homes.

I sent Jody a private note. I asked her to tell me where she got her information. Who were her sources and why did she trust them?

That note started a series of private messages that Jody and I wrote to each other over a couple of weeks. I asked Jody lots of questions. I wanted to give her every chance to talk about her point of view and how she formed it. I wanted to understand her (and I wanted her to feel understood).

To my surprise, the more questions I asked, the angrier she got.

After a few notes back and forth, Jody stopped writing about Black Lives Matter and just wrote about black people instead. She moved on from rumors of Communist overthrow and suburban invasion to things like:

“They (black people) don’t want to work.”

“They just want handouts from those of us who work hard.”

“They sleep around and do drugs and then they want to blame white people for all of their problems.”

“They hate America. They want to destroy this country.”

Jody’s words shocked me. She is a devoted mom, a devout Christian, and is one of the sweetest people when you meet her.

I tried to be gentle when I pushed back. I asked Jody to show me proof that these things are true. The only proof she could give me was what she heard from the politicians and pundits she followed and her experience with one black woman she knew of from around town.

I lost patience.

I begged Jody to remember her Christ and her Christian faith. I begged her to remember that 44 million of her fellow Americans are black and that 35 million of them share her own Christian faith.

“Jody,” I asked. “Do you know that when you say things about black people being immoral or lazy or violent, you are talking about millions of your own brothers and sisters in Christ? How do you think the Lord feels about that?”

Jody never answered. She “unfriended” me and we never spoke again.

How did such a sweet Christian woman become a vessel for such bigotry?

It comes down to who Jody chose to believe.

Who do you think she chose to believe?

Here is another story.

One Wednesday night, I went to Bible study at the suburban Church of Christ congregation where I am a member. “Al,” one of the elders of the church, walked in at the same time. Each of us sensed that something was troubling the other. We went into the empty auditorium and sat on a pew.

Al was (and is) one of the most admired, beloved, and respected leaders in our church and community. He is successful in his career and well off. The three words people use to describe him are “gentle,” “loving,” and “wise.” He is a mentor to men and women and a role model to children. I think that if you took a survey of our congregation, he would surely be one of the people who our members say is most like Jesus.

Al also happens to be black.

As we talked that night, he shared that he was hurting.

He said something like this:

I thought that the respect and trust that the people of this church have for me meant that they would believe me when I tell them that discrimination and prejudice against black people is real and still a part of life for us. I was wrong. Some people in this church will believe anything I say about the Bible or living the Christian life or raising their kids, but they will not believe me when I talk about my own experiences as a black man. Why do they think that I would lie to them? It hurts.

I wondered: If Al’s brothers and sisters in Christ do not believe him, who do they believe instead?

I thought of Jody. Al is everything she claims a Christian man should be. Would she believe him if he told her about his personal experiences as a black man? What reasons could she give to not believe him?

What do you think?

This teaching from the Bible comes to mind:

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Letter to the Philippians 2:1-5a).

What is being of the same mind, looking to the interests of others, and regarding others as better than ourselves, if not simply believing our own brothers and sisters in Christ?

If our black brothers and sisters in Christ have been telling us for generations that life is different for them and that that difference sometimes comes from an unfairness that seems to be built into society, what reason do white Christians have to not believe them? When our black brothers and sisters in Christ tell us they are hurting and tired from experiences that are unique to them in our society, what reason could we give to say that they are not telling the truth?

In the current climate in our country, many white brothers and sisters in Christ also want the benefit of the doubt from their black brothers and sisters. They feel like life is hard and often unfair and they are doing the best they can to take care of their families and themselves. They often feel like the world is painting them as racists just because they are white. Or that, because they are white, the world says that they don’t deserve to have the things they believe they earned through their own hard work.

Black or white, we are all part of the same sick, sinful world.

The antidote is to refuse to let that world tell us what to believe about each other. The Christ calls Christians to listen to, and serve, each other. What the politicians and pundits say about our brothers and sisters in Christ has no place in the church of Christ.

We must not have the mind that the world gives us; we must have the mind of Christ. We must choose the mind of Christ and then we must do the work to make the mind of Christ among and within ourselves.

We must believe each other.

This is the Way.

Grace and peace.