Antifa Lives Matter

“Racism isn’t a bad habit; it’s not a mistake; it’s a sin.

The answer is not sociology; it’s theology.”  Tony Evans

I grew up in a racist culture. Looking back I’m ashamed to admit this but I was a racist and I didn’t have a clue that I was. Racism was the norm, even though I was in a “Christian” culture and part of an evangelical church. It was a sin and the result of both spiritual blindness and hardheartedness.

  It’s been so long ago that I can’t remember when God changed my heart. I do vividly remember many years ago listening to John Piper preach during Moody Founders’ Week and share his own journey out of racism. Like me, Piper was born and raised in the south. I sat there and wept quietly as I listened as he shared his own path to spiritual freedom from the sin of bigotry. His journey was very similar to my own.

  Please understand, I don’t struggle with “white guilt.” It’s worse. I struggle with “white church guilt.” As a child, the church I grew up in was very missions-minded. In the 1960’s they were giving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to missions, but somehow in their understanding of the Great Commission and reaching the ends of the earth, they missed that it included “Samaria” – the world right next door.

  It was heartbreaking for me later to learn that an African-American pastor that I greatly admire, Dr. Tony Evans had sought to be a member of my church and was declined simply because of the color of his skin. At the time he was attending Carver Bible College, a Christian Bible college for African-Americans in Atlanta that my church, that same church, financially supported, as long as “those people” kept in their proper place. 
  Racism is evil! Yet, a lost world will not be able to solve it. New laws and new systems will at best bring about external conformity. Only Jesus Christ can change hearts and bring about transformation from the inside out.

  Please understand. We do need laws and programs to protect and help minorities and the disenfranchised. Racism though is first a heart problem, not a skin color issue.  

  When communities and neighborhoods changed and minorities moved in, it was a time of “white flight.” Churches often followed their members to the suburbs and I understand that. What was wrong and where I believe that the Church failed terribly, is that we didn’t leave anything behind. Because though the ethnic make-up of the people in those neighborhoods that were left had changed, there were still people who needed Jesus in those neighborhoods. It may not have been “safe,” but Christianity has never been about being “safe.”

  Study the book of Acts and you’ll discover a pattern of missions that lines up with Jesus’ command to begin with Jerusalem – cities were a priority. Yet, perhaps because of our obsession with quick growth and “bodies, bucks and buildings,” the American Church has focused on the suburbs.

  History shows that wherever the gospel has gone, poverty and crime have decreased and education, health and social harmony have increased. Instead of wringing our hands and shaking our heads at the dire straits of our urban areas, we need to repent of our lack of compassion and mission. God loves the city and His people are to love it, too!

  Our enemy, Satan, loves division among God’s people. The Church that is to be a united army for the Lord reaching the lost is dividing over the non-essential, yet missing the non-negotiable. It’s dividing over black lives matter, blue lives matter, all lives matter. The Bible is clear – God loves everyone and Jesus died for everyone. That means that Antifa lives, looters lives, even white supremacist lives matter. And while we’re bickering in the back seat, our cities are dying without Christ. Jesus died on the cross for the whole world – for Antifa and cops…and everything in between. The gospel doesn’t allow us to discriminate on who matters, who we’re to love, and who we’re to seek to reach with the gospel.

  Many believers need to read a short book in the New Testament, Philemon and see how God reached into a Roman prison cell to rescue a prisoner named Onesimus and revolutionize his life with the gospel. Our gracious God is still reaching what we too often file in the “unreachable” category.  

  What can we do? In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus told us, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

  We need to pray and pray earnestly. This is a God-sized problem. Too often we come with a new program or funding or look for governmental intervention. Because racism is first a heart problem, the gospel is the only cure. It’s our problem because we’re commanded to be gospel-people and gospel-driven. We’re to bring Jesus’ light to the darkest places. It’s time to light a candle and stop cursing the darkness.  

  We need to volunteer. Jesus said there are already laborers, but they’re not out in the field. I’m so thankful for those who are, like our missionary, Tom Kubiak, who is planting his 2^nd Chicago church, this one on the south side. Dr. Tim Keller’s call for church planters to come to the cities is finding open hearts. Many are returning to our cities to make a difference.

  We need to financially support church planters. God is raising up a generation who are willing to go and plant churches in our cities. Let’s pray that the Lord will touch some in our own church who will go to one of our cities and invest their lives, making a difference in eternity. The fields of the world are crying for laborers and so are the fields of our inner cities.

  We must love the neighbor who is near. It’s easier to care for those you never interact with and make a stand for them. We’re commanded to love our neighbor – period. We are self-deceived when we say that we love our black “neighbors” that we don’t know, yet hate those near us. You can’t love someone unless you first know their name. Jesus doesn’t qualify that love with their ethnicity, political party, or behavioral choices. We’re commanded to love the ones for whom Jesus died – that’s everyone.

  In 1955 Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian – five missionaries willingly gave their lives and were martyred by the spears of the Auca Indians. Their sacrifice became the catalyst of a new missionary movement. American Christians left the safety of home to go to the fields of the world. Please pray that as we have seen the tragic deaths and fires in our cities, that this will ignite a Holy Spirit fire in us, in our churches to reach our cities with the gospel. That’s how we will have true and lasting change. It’s time for the Church to be the Church! It’s time for us to take the Great Commission seriously!

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