Extremist Protests: A Monumental Opportunity

Most people who have been following national news for the past two decades agree that America has become deeply divided morally and politically.  Last week’s violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia sparked yet another angry reaction, this time between white nationalists and those who oppose the notion of white supremacy.  This disturbing series of events poses both a challenge and an opportunity for Christians.

Making history, yet ignorant of its lessons.

The challenge of the Church is to respond in truth and in love because true Christ-followers live in daily awareness of the grace and forgiveness of God.  If the Church is to be “salt and light” (Matthew 5: 13) in this troubled world, Christ-followers must remember both human history and His-story (God’s inspired account of creation, human corruption, and redemption recorded in inspired Scripture).

Ignorance of Human History

Both far-right white supremacists and the far-left opposition (the “Antifa” or “anti-fascists”) are acting as if they are ignorant of the history of America and of Christianity.  Racial discrimination and slavery have been a blot on American history and have involved not only Black Americans but Native Americans, Orientals, Hispanics, et cetera.  American history is stained with blood spilled over enslavement, particularly of African people and their descendants, culminating in the Civil War.  The war opened the way to emancipation followed by another century of slow progress toward federal legislation of civil rights for ethnic minorities in America.

Abraham Lincoln, 186

But street protesters on the extreme right and left seem to recognize neither the costly loss of human life in the Civil War nor the role of Christianity in the healing of America that began under the leadership of men and women on both sides at the end of the conflict.  All Americans ought to re-read Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address including the following excerpt (emphasis mine), 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Memorials are intended to remind us of our history so we can learn from both our triumphs and mistakes. Destruction of memorials to men like Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee ignores how much both men contributed to the unifying of the United States of America?  Although General Lee led the military campaign of the confederate Army of Northern Virginia, he was a devout Christian and was instrumental in agreeing to a rightful surrender at Appomattox, Virginia.  R. David Cox, in The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee (Eerdmans, 2017) writes, according to Marvin Olasky in WORLD, that Lee’s “strong belief in God’s sovereignty… influenced his strong opposition to confederate Gen. Edward Alexander when this subordinate suggested the army “’scatter like rabbits & partridges in the woods’ and begin guerilla warfare.”  Lee challenged Alexander with these words

Robert E. Lee

God has given the victory to the Yankees…As Christian men, Gen. Alexander, you & I have no right to think for one moment of our personal feelings or affairs.  We must consider only the effect which our actions will have upon the country at large...

The extremists of the Antifa who have destroyed monuments to General Lee seemingly wish to erase the memory this man of great integrity.  Lee wrote that slavery is “a moral and political evil” and said he would gladly give up his slaves to avoid civil war. 

Protesting extremists may also be ignorant of 20^th century history.  Prior to the middle of that century, many allied nations fought in World War II to deliver the world from Nazism and Fascism.  They may also be unaware that racism and the philosophy of white supremacy are rooted in a false belief in naturalistic evolution which suggests that humans, particularly whites, occupy the top rung of an “evolutionary ladder” as a result of random changes through mutations and natural selection.  For more discussion of the connection between Darwinian evolution and Nazi Germany’s eugenics experiments aimed at exterminating Jews in favor the Aryan race, please consult a previous article, “World History Without HIS Story.” 

Today, “scientific racism,” the notion that science affirms the existence of racial superiority, is denied by most scientists even though the theory that all of life originated by evolution is still viewed as “settled science.”  Yet, if all humans originated simply by random material processes and not by divinely ordered creation, then our moral standards are baseless and civil law is seen as arbitrary.  The outcome of this logic is evident in the crumbling institutions of marriage and family, the growing disrespect for law and order, and the acceptance of abortion which is partly justified by those who support human eugenics in the tradition of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

Finally, white supremacists seem to be ignorant or have forgotten the great progress of the civil rights movement and the preaching of Martin L. King who said,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Ignorance of His-story, “God’s Story”

Those who are ignorant of human history are in even greater danger if they are ignorant of “God’s story” of the creation and redemption of mankind.  According to the Bible, God loves all of His creation.  His love extends especially to humans of all ethnic backgrounds because he made man and woman in His image with unique rational and emotional capacities to share relationships with one another and with Him.

The Bible has been called “God’s love letter” to mankind.  Beginning in Genesis following the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God promised a Savior Who would one day come and “bruise the head of Satan” the tempter (Genesis 3: 15).  Although the Bible teaches that all have all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3: 23), and that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6: 23a), the good news (“the Gospel”) is that the free gift of God is eternal life (by faith) in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6: 23b).  

Amazingly, God did not simply send His “love gift.”  God came as that gift as prophesied centuries earlier (see Isaiah 9: 1-7) through His own incarnation when a Jewish girl named Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus Christ.  Christ, the Savior of mankind, had been promised centuries earlier when God spoke to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, saying (emphasis mine), I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.  And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12: 3).

God had chosen to reveal His salvation through the Jewish nation, Israel.  To avoid their being drawn away by heathen gods, God warned His “chosen people” not to intermarry with “foreigners.” But, it was never God’s intention to limit his forgiveness of sin to the Jews alone.  The Old Testament records many instances in which God’s mercy was extended to “foreigners.”  Indeed, the human lineage of Jesus beginning from Abraham, includes several ethnic groups.  Two examples are Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute (Joshua 6) and mother of Boaz who married Ruth, a Moabite woman, who became the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:13-22). 

How fitting that the blood of Jesus shed from His cross which takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29; Colossians 1: 20) should have a multi-ethnic lineage.  Yet, as God promised to Abraham, salvation would come through the Jews.  Jesus’ earthly ministry as well as His instructions to His disciples during their training focused on His countrymen and the Samaritans who were half-Jews (John 4: 4).

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, His instruction to His disciples was to wait in Jerusalem for the fulfillment of His promise that the Holy Spirit would come.  He said (emphasis mine), but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1: 8).  The Apostle Peter’s Spirit-empowered sermon on the Day of Pentecost was supernaturally translated into the languages of over a dozen different ethnic groups representing Asia, Mesopotamia, and Africa (Acts 2: 9-11).  Within weeks, one of the original deacons, Philip, was commanded to go to the desert where he met an Ethiopian on his way back to Africa.  The Ethiopian’s conversion likely allowed him to be among the first to spread the Gospel of Christ into Africa. 

Within a relatively few years after Christ’s resurrection, the Gospel had spread across much of Asia, northern Africa, and Europe.  The accounts of the New Testament provide clear evidence that Jesus Christ is Savior of the world, and not just whites or other specific ethnic groups.  The closing book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation (5:9), points to a future scene in heaven in which multitudes of the redeemed are worshiping Jesus Christ, singing (emphasis mine),

Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals;
for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood
men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

God’s aim is that members of every tribe and tongue and people and nation be redeemed from sin through faith in Christ.  The redeemed in Christ are united as one into His body, the Church, by faith in His shed blood.  Therefore, the philosophy of human supremacy based on blood lines or ethnicity is in direct opposition to God’s plan to unite people from every tribe into One (atonement) by faith in Christ’s blood.  To claim ethnic superiority in the Name of Christ, is false, idolatrous, and even blasphemous.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention has written an article published in the Washington Post entitled, “White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church?”  He writes,

White supremacy does not merely attack our society (though it does) and the ideals of our nation (though it does); white supremacy attacks the image of Jesus Christ himself. White supremacy exalts the creature over the Creator, and the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against it. Later Moore concludes,

The church should call white supremacy what it is: terrorism, but more than terrorism. White supremacy is Satanism. Even worse, white supremacy is a devil-worship that often pretends that it is speaking for God.  White supremacy angers Jesus of Nazareth. The question is: Does it anger his church?

How Will Christians Respond?

Although I agree with the case Moore makes for “the wrath of God” against acts of hate, evil, and lawlessness, I question his notion of an “angry Jesus.” I disagree that God’s redeemed people should beangry at white supremacists and the Antifa, or angry at any sinner for that matter.  Granted, the white supremacists and their opponents have seemingly forgotten their history and His-story (God’s story) of man’s creation, corruption, and regeneration.  But, while Christ-followers ought to be deeply concerned, the deep divisions in America and the destructions of institutions and monuments should be no surprise.  For decades, we witnessed efforts to remove spiritual monuments like The Ten Commandments and Christian crosses from public display. Regardless of whether the freedom to display these monuments continues, Christ-followers have no reason to be overcome with evil, but rather, to overcome evil with good (Romans 12: 21).   Yes, Truth and Good will triumph over Error and Evil.

Here we should pause--you and I.  Chew it over and over—“meditate” on what I have just written.  If you are a Christ-follower, meditate on the amazing Truth that you and I are God’s children by faith (John 1: 12).  And, even our faith to believe is a gift of God (Ephesians 2: 8).  By faith, I look through my “mind’s eye” upon the Cross, that monument to the utter depravity of humankind of every tribe and nation.   The Cross of Christ is a monument to the horror of what humans did to the perfect Lamb of God.  Centuries before Christ was slain on that Roman cross, the Prophet Isaiah described sinful mankind (me included) and how “God’s Lamb” would respond to the weight of all human sin (mine included) heaped upon Him on that dark day outside Jerusalem (Isaiah 53: 6-7):

All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. 

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep
that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.

I will admit to responding at times with resentment and anger.  But, when I remember the Cross and the Empty Tomb as two much greater monuments of God’s love, forgiveness, and hope, I can begin to view the hate-filled mob in a different light. 

Granted, some rioters overcome with hate and evil.  But I see others who have joined in the mob with well meaning intentions.  Some of the protesters have the false hope of producing atonement, a “perfect oneness and unity,” that only God can provide.  Perhaps they believe that if they can only get all human pride, hate, and bigotry out on the public square, including all names, symbols, and monuments they associate with them, they can somehow make atonement.  Yet even well meaning efforts to rectify a history of human sin and depravity are an affront to a Holy God.  When people refuse to repent and bow before the Cross of Christ, everything else in human history becomes an unbearable weight.  What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

In the light of the Cross and Empty Tomb, this dark hour can be a time of great opportunity for the Body of Christ.  As the Apostle Peter teaches, repentance and obedience must begin with the household of God (1 Peter 4: 17).  Christians must heed the challenge of Christ’s half-brother, James, who challenges lukewarm and carnal Christians to humbly pursue heavenly wisdom, not earthly, demonic wisdom (James 3: 14-16; 4: 6-10):

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing…

But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

How will we respond as God’s blood-bought children, to the divisions in America, most recently evident in Charlottesville and elsewhere?  When I remember how Christians around the world are courageously responding to hatred and evil, I am ashamed of how I sometimes tend to react.  Then, I remember the verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14 that Christ-followers have been increasingly turning to in recent years.   May these words of be our unfailing guide:

and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.