Days of Our Present Horror

It has become so commonplace that we awake to the same news virtually every day.  

We expect it.  

Black people  have good reason to be afraid.  

My God!  Last week a baby lost his life at the hands of police.  He was 13-years-old.  

An officer in the U. S. Army filed a law suite against the state of Virginia.  He brought video.  The policeman who stopped him back in December sounded and appeared out of control.  The soldier had the good sense to stay in his car with hands visible.  Still, he was pepper sprayed in the face.  

How does this go on hapening again and again?    

A significant part of any answer must recognize that something baked into law enforcement today acts as a delivery system of  horror  The fear arises every time a traffic stop occurs or a young black kid walks out in public after dark wearing a hoodie.  The atmosphere is super-charged by blackness and a standard set of false assumptions that have become all but universally and automatically applied by the police to black people to one degree or another.  

Whlle a member of a predominately Black church here in Dallas, we offered a Sunday School class series that taught our youth how to interact with police when encounters occurred.   We regarded the class as life saving necessity. 

That's sick.  

It is as if we inhale racism as a nation.  

Our current situaiton goes beyond systemic to metastatic even for those of us who fancy that we've made progress, that we've moved beyond.  But, then the horror returns.  

Can it be that we need racism to persist?  

The late James H. Cone argued in his classic book, God of the Oppressed that "Jesus is black."  Think about that for a while.  Allow the implications to settle in.  Finding God today seems a real challenge.  Cone's road map contains possibilities that few of us have considered.  The theological construct woven in this comparision contians the therapy we need, especially in faith communities.  The faith we so eagerly share must contian fierce commitment to anti-racist lives, organizations and actions.  Leaders need to present a radical message to congregants that equip them for encounters that lead far too often back to the horror we dread but find completely unsurprising.  

At one level it is not that complicated.  

Stop killing black people!