The summer before my Sophomore Year of high school (1998), a black man named James Byrd Jr. was murdered by three white supremacists in Jasper, a town 90 miles from my house. Mr. Bryd’s lynching-by-dragging made national news. The men who murdered James were the first to be sentenced to death for killing a black person in Texas history.
When I saw James Byrd’s story on tv, I didn’t want to watch, nobody did. It’s hard to look at evil. But as the reporter spoke, I stood there and took it in, remembering something my dad told me a few years earlier.
We were in a movie theatre in Beaumont watching “A Time To Kill”. It’s a crime drama set in Mississippi starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey. The story is about a ten-year-old African American girl named Tonya who is abducted, raped, and beaten. The men try to hang her but the rope breaks, so they dump her in a river where miraculously she survives. The men are arrested but will likely go free, so Tonya’s father goes to the courtroom and opens fire killing both of them. Hence, A Time To Kill.
Later in the movie, when Samuel L. Jackson is on trial, his lawyer Matthew McConaughey walks the jury through what happened to Tonya, and it’s impossible to watch, so I turned my head from the screen. I remember my dad leaning down and saying, “Son, don’t look away.”
My dad knew where we lived, and he knew how important this was.
I grew up in Hull, Texas. There were 53 people in my graduating class, 13 of whom were African American. We played sports against all-white schools. Those environments were hostile and hateful because guys on our team didn’t look like guys on their team. The racial slurs we’d hear at the bottom of a football pile hit different because we were invested. In our little town, my black friends and white friends didn’t just go to school together, we grew up together, had sleepovers and pool parties and campfires. That was normal. But in those moments, under a pile of shoulder pads and helmets, you’d hear the brutal fact: Our worlds are different. My black friends lived in a different world. And as much as I wish it wasn’t so, it was, and I need not look away.
The list of recent (and historical) evils done to African American’s is staggering. The video of a white officer with his knee on a helpless black man’s neck for 9 minutes is equally soul-wrenching and symbolic. You want to reach through the screen and push him off. You want to scream: That’s the image of God you’re holding down. That’s a child of God you’re suffocating. It’s unbearable, but not unbelievable. Our feeds provide us with wave upon wave of senseless evil, just when one story crashes to the shore another builds in its place. The waves have to stop. But who has the power to change the ocean?
For the last 13 years, I’ve lived in Pullman, a safe, comfortable, educated, primarily white town in Eastern Washington. I pastor a church filled with wonderful, sacrificial, good-willed people, but most days our context keeps us out of harm’s way, or so it seems. But the wave of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Christian Cooper, and George Floyd hit different. They didn’t just reach the shore, they brought a riptide that is pulling us all into the ocean. No matter how far we are from the story, we’re in it now, as we should have been all along.
I’m not sure we know the best way to move forward, but here are a few ideas: Search your heart, humble yourself, and use your voice.
Our hearts are the epicenter of evil, filled with the sins of superiority, prejudice, and bias that we must root out. God’s workmanship is being defamed and destroyed and before it happens in the streets it happens in our hearts. Repent. Pray, “search me Oh God and know my heart” and repent again.
We need to humble ourselves and get educated. Read and study and see what it’s like in the world for minorities. We have so much to learn and shouldn’t let our pride get in the way. Humble yourself, seek out teachers, enter in, and listen. Diversify your authors and preachers and podcasts. The more we learn the more we can help.
And use your voice. Some of us should become lawyers and start non-profits and volunteer and call our Senators. And we should all vote and fill out the census. And use your influence now. Stop racists jokes now, start conversations now, build bridges and show empathy now, and don’t just hope for peace, make it.
Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers. But we can’t make peace if we don’t accept the fact we are in a great conflict. Discipleship to Jesus means learning to love what he loves and hate what he hates and want what he wants. Surely we have a long way to go, but surely He will carry us along. He is after all the great peacemaker.
By God’s grace we will see change in our day, but only if we engage. So I say to you what my father said to me:
Don’t look away. Your neighbor can’t breathe.
Don’t look away. You are your brother’s keeper.
When another story adds another wave, don’t look away.
When injustice in another place finds its way to your screen, don’t look away.
If we look away with our eyes, we will look away with our hearts. And if we look away with our hearts, evil will take more ground.
Our time is short, let us grieve and mobilize, all the while knowing: There is One who has the power to change the ocean, and He will have His day. Come quickly, Lord.