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July 6 - September 26, 2020
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”10 It’s this sort of permanent attitude that brings freedom.
The magistrate never apologized for his statements, even after being challenged by many people of all races in our country. Maybe he couldn’t see how painful and harmful his statements had been to the victims and to those listening. Maybe he couldn’t understand how true forgiveness, reparative forgiveness, can be experienced only when we first make space to feel the weight of grief, mourning, and lamentation and then, in the face of all of it, offer forgiveness. Maybe he couldn’t see that so many of us needed time.
And though she hadn’t participated in these atrocities directly, she’d learned to take a more communal view of sin.
structural privilege.
Maybe you need to confess to having stereotyped or hurt others, whether through overt acts or silent complicity.
Forgiveness is a healing balm. It’s the way to freedom, the way to peace.
Name a time or two that you refused to extend forgiveness to those who hadn’t asked. What was your reasoning?
I still have a hard time with for giving my abusers
List three reasons forgiveness should never be demanded.
Removes the time for grief and processing
Will likely not be heartfelt
The demander has likely not repented or confessed
Confession of sin by the perpetrators and forgiveness of sin by those who have been sinned against are both indispensable in the process of racial reconciliation.
We confess that a structure of racial oppression was formed at the beginning of our nation’s history, a system that, instead of being eradicated, has been adjusted to be palatable with the changing times.
Lord, we confess as a church that we have modified the meaning of the gospel to justify our lack of effort to pursue justice for the oppressed. We have altered the nature of the gospel message in order to remain focused on our personal piety at the expense of caring for the needs of others.
Forgive us for how our neglect of the true gospel of Jesus Christ has allowed a system of injustice to flourish and thrive.
William and Samuel Venable. After William’s death, Samuel became a key leader in the resurgence of the KKK, and on Thanksgiving of 1915, fifteen robed and hooded men of the newly formed Klan met atop Stone Mountain.
Venable School on 14th St?
All sorts of people from various denominations had come together to deconstruct the myth of race and the division that myth brings.
engaging in active repentance.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of
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This change of trajectory, this about-face, is what we call repentance.
we tend to have blind spots about the sin of racism in our own lives.
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
Godly sorrow produces a change of heart, a readiness to move forward in making justice.
There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege, to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other. I am your fellow man, but not your slave, Frederick Douglass
America held down non-White communities through systems of oppression, through police brutality and underfunding of educational systems. Ultimately, the government jailed those like Dr. King who fought for civil rights, and in many places, violence inflicted by authorities led to the death of nonviolent protestors. Even today, governmental powers continue to take the lives of unarmed Black and Brown children, as well as women and men, often without repercussion.
Notice the prime minister’s recognition of Canada’s abuses, how he named them, even confessed governmental cooperation with the church in its atrocities.
At no point in this apology did the prime minister offer any excuses,
(Repentance always leads to action, as we’ll see in chapter 8.)
in stark contrast to the nonaction of the United States, where the government (and most American churches) has never made a formal confession and apology, where the government has never attempted to make wrongs right. Instead, the United States has tried to erase and change history and minimize the horrific atrocities against slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. In other words, the United States government has never formally admitted its sins and changed directions.
true repentance must couple words with action.
Acts like asking our governments—national, state, and local—to openly repent of their part in enforcing Frederick Douglass’s enslavement, the disruption of Native American families, the enactment of Jim Crow laws, the separation of migrant children from parents at the border, and the continuation of systemic advantage.
Acts like asking our churches to take a critical look at their history, identify the specific ways they engaged in perpetuating racism, name those ways, and repent. Acts like passing the microphone to a person of color and actually listening.
The pastors wanted to ease the tensions, bring the community together, acknowledge the hurt, and pray about the anger, frustration, and distrust the community was experiencing.
We repent of the apathy that has caused so many of us to sit on the sidelines and just watch in a bewildered state.
How could repentance be controversial?
White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White.19
What is your greatest hindrance or barrier to recognizing your own sin? How can you overcome it?
Wanting to know my whole history
A. W. Tozer wrote, “Repentance is a wound I pray we may all feel.”20 What do you think Tozer meant by repentance being a wound?
It hurts to change something we find so familiar, to leave something so comfortable, to do something so brave
In what ways might self-preservation or personal pride get in the way of your moving forward in racial reconciliation and repentance?
Self preservation. Always. I am afraid of what these actions may mean, may do; who I may lose or offend; how I may fail.
What is one thing you can do to make sure these conversations we’ve been having about race don’t stop with this book or this study?
Talk and TAKE ACTION as a married couple.
Pay attention and raise our kids well.
What tangible acts of repentance do you need to make?
DISCUSS: Individual and together as a family
And as I read, I was amazed (and increasingly infuriated) by how many people were more upset about the Declaration of Independence being flagged as hate speech than they were about the offensive statements found in it. Had they considered the language? Had they considered the context of the founding document?
I considered the Declaration, the way it’d always been half taught in school. I considered those comments. Should we be surprised that white supremacy has been so difficult to root out in our country?
To make matters worse, in one of the most awful acts of revisionism, White men created a new American history, complete with literature and art and film, that portrayed Native Americans as savages. We were only defending ourselves, they said. We were the good guys, they convinced themselves.
Why? Because they weren’t seen as fully human. They weren’t seen as having been created in the image of God.
Why are most people so resistant to naming the truth? And if they’re resistant to naming the truth, what hope do we have of recognizing the wrongs of our past and righting them? What hope do we really have of racial reconciliation?
Reconciliation requires truth telling and empathy and tears. It requires changed perspectives and changing directions (also known as repentance). But ultimately, that change of direction requires righting the wrongs perpetrated.
we’ve added to the framework for bridge building. We’ve seen how recognizing the truth is the first step to racial reconciliation. We’ve also seen how acknowledging and lamenting the truth are crucial to reconciliation. We’ve discussed the importance of working through shame and guilt. We’ve talked about how necessary it is to confess as part of our practice of justice. We’ve explored the healing power of forgiveness and the crucial role of repentance,
Making wrongs right or, in more contemporary terms, making amends or reparations.
Terms such as reparations, affirmative action, white privilege, and Black Lives Matter are nonstarters for so many folks, in part because they disrupt the listener.
Often, unjust events feel historically distant and disconnected from us. We didn’t personally land grab or enslave folks or lynch anyone. So why should we have to make reparations?
So reparations and repentance are inextricably intertwined, and those who’ve inherited the power and benefits of past wrongs should work to make it right for those who’ve inherited the burdens and oppression of the past.
More conversations on “why” are important here. Especially biblically.
note just how concrete Zacchaeus’s reparations were: they consisted of tangible, measurable actions that improved people’s circumstances.
