But the Christians perpetrating this violence didn’t notice the similarity between the cross of the Lord they worshiped and the crosses they created out of lynching trees. For decades, Western theologians were unable to see Jesus in the bodies that swayed from those trees, the victims who were killed to satisfy the fear of the masses. This omission, this obvious and terrifying lack of understanding haunts me. I myself did not and could not see the connections between people experiencing racial terror in my own country and the Suffering Servant I claimed to follow. I couldn’t see it, that is,
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