The Heart of the Matter

Could we please stop with the anti-black, anti-white, anti-cop, anti-President mindset?

We need to be anti-evil.

WE are not each other’s enemy. Yet we have all of our weapons drawn and pointed at each other while the hate, division, and destruction only grow more rampant. This makes our real enemy extremely happy.  We seem to be doing the work for him.

What if we were to stop aiming at each other and turn our weapons toward the true enemy of us all? “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” –Eph 6:12

God created us to be his family—together, unified.  This made Evil jealous and he started with a lie, which man followed and because of that sin, man was separated from God.

Evil divided the family. And he has been doing it ever since.

As the divided family multiplied and began to fill the earth, some settled in areas where the sun was harsh and their skin began to darken.  Others wound up in areas far from the Equator where the sun was less strong, and their skin lightened in response to less exposure.

Same family, different skin tones.

Look within your own home. Has Dad’s skin darkened from years of construction work?  Is Susie getting a really good tan going during this quarantine, while mom is looking a little pale as she balances all that is on her plate, leaving no time to relax by the pool?

Same family, different skin tones.

Do you hate Dad because he has darker skin?  Do you mistreat Susie during the summer months? Does Mom feel superior to all the rest? Of course not.  Because the heart of a family is the heart, and its color never changes.

But Evil is evil and will use anything to divide the family.   And so he did the same thing he originally did, and began to whisper lies that a person’s worth was based on the tone of his skin.  Again, people believed the lie and just as man originally moved about filling the earth, this lie moved about filling the heart.

And those hearts became hardened, getting more stone-like throughout the generations until his lie became their truth.  They had been deceived, and the deception blinded them to the oppression and mistreatment, and so they raised their kids to believe the same.

I am a child of the ’60s. These lies were given to us as the truth.  I remember a day my mom came to pick me up at school. I was in third grade and was having a great time with my dark-skinned friend Helen, going down the slide and romping on the playground.  On the way home my mom said I was not allowed to play with her. I did not understand, and although I did not stop hanging with Helen, I made sure we were not together when Mom would drive up.  Because it was clearly communicated that being friends with her was wrong.

I also remember spending a lot of time at the Hayden Burns Library in downtown Jacksonville as Mom did her genealogy research.  We often made the drive from Middleburg and it never failed that as we pulled onto the exit ramp of I-95 to get onto Union Street, I would hear the words “Lock your doors” echo in the car. Every time, just to enforce the idea that the rest of the world was safe, but as we approached the area of town where the people of color milled about, we needed to take extra caution.

As I watch the events unfolding across this country, I have shed many tears.  As I wept two nights ago seeing businesses burn and people being beaten and sprayed, I cried out to the Lord, “What can I do?”  And I heard, “What have you done?”  And there, with tears spilling on the carpet, I confessed and repented for every ugly word I’ve ever said and every racist joke I ever told. Most of it is so far removed from my present-day mindset that I don’t even recall the particulars. But I know that in my youthful ignorance and in my quest to be the funny one, the “N” word has passed over my lips. More than once.

It so grieves me to say that.  I think of the many brothers and sisters of color whom I now love and could not imagine my life without, and I cannot even put into words how it makes me feel to think that something I once uttered could cause them pain. I am so very sorry.

I said before that the lies harden the heart.  Therefore it is the truth that softens it.  It is the truth that will set you free—free from the Deceiver’s lies.   God’s promise in Ezekiel is that “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

That heart of flesh allows you to see the entirety of man as one family.  And it is as that one family that we need to come together and aim our weapons at the true enemy, who is Satan and his powers of darkness. Because his main goal is to divide us. And he will use any tactic necessary to accomplish his goal. I have ministered to women of every shade, and I can tell you that the issues of abuse, abandonment, neglect, and rejection are prevalent in all races. Satan doesn’t care what color your skin is.

Unless he can use it as a weapon to create a gap.

As I read back over this, something else was brought to mind in answer to the “What have you done?” question.  A couple of years ago I was at a women’s conference for several area churches, when a sister of color—whom I’d never met before—stood up and relayed her story of having gone to a new, predominately white church where she was greeted with smiles and handshakes. But when she got home, she found a note in her purse that read, “Perhaps you would be more comfortable at another church.”  My fleshly heart was so pricked that it was all I could do not to stand up in the middle of the auditorium and apologize to her.  As God would have it, I met up with her in the lobby after that session, and while unable to speak coherently through my tears, I simply hugged her and whispered, “I am so sorry.”

When we know better, we do better.

We need to do better.

We need to do better because hearts of every color are breaking. The heart of a mom who fears for her son’s life whenever he leaves the house.  The heart of the policeman’s wife as he gets in his car to go toward the violence and chaos to uphold his pledge to serve and protect. The hearts of the couple who lost the business that they had spent their entire lives building.

And the heart of God who loves all of his children without exception.

We need to do better.  And it begins with looking within ourselves to the heart of the matter.

And what is that? What matters to the heart?  Maybe we should ask the one who created it.

Someone did ask Jesus that, and this was his reply:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Hate and discord have driven us apart long enough.  I pray that we will allow love to bring us back to the family we were intended to be.

May God bless each and every one of you, and may his peace saturate you, as you demonstrate his love to your neighbor.