Am I a racist?

Then you will know (Joel 3:17) 
Am I a racist? Well, I think the question needs asking because I'm not sure many of us ever really face up to it. Let me give you an easy example. I am sure that President Trump would answer No but look at the evidence. When white people in combats were protesting about the closure of their businesses and the difficulty of getting a haircut, he defended their rights. When people of colour were protesting about the murder of an innocent man by the police and their lack of access to education and opportunity, he called in the army. It doesn't make him a racist but the evidence is not in his favour.
Am I a racist? Well, none of my closest friends are people of colour. That's not a deliberate choice. I went to an all white school and an almost all white university. I spent most of my working life with the sons of the wealthy from all around the world but my colleagues were almost universally white too. None of this makes me a racist but I think it removes any wriggle room. 
So, am I a racist? This week as I have read Joel, I have become concerned that I have missed something of what God is saying. I have softened all that judgement. I have written of a God who does not send calamity to punish people. I have smoothed over the endlessly repeated passages of woe to the wicked who have oppressed God's people. And I began to wonder if I have read it from the side of white privilege. If I were a person of colour in the US what would I have seen there? A cry for justice. The hope of divinely ordained pay back. When the courts of the earth fail you, then the only place to turn is to the courts of heaven, and God promises that he will not let you down. Justice will be done on the wicked and that right soon. And unless I feel the full force of that promise and that hope, then I cannot claim to be on the side of the oppressed. Unless something within me shares in that rage and despair at a system that has failed to provide justice over and over again, I cannot claim to be free from the taint of the oppressor. It may be that having gone there, I may see the other side, the light of the cross, the offer of forgiveness, the new way of peace. But unless I learn to travel that journey, I am not sure I can ever properly claim to share the vision for a better way.

Flowers in the church porch

Location: United Kingdom

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