A Christian Course on Racial Reconciliation?

The initial impetus for my journey into writing was watching the confused Church mishandle encroaching cultural phenomena and unthinkably allow pagan thought and secular rhetoric into her house.  This should never be.  The Church has been endowed and infused with the mysteries of God, life-giving eternal wisdom, and the revelation of things hidden.  Possessing these supernatural treasure troves, the Church is supremely fitted to expose every wrong thought, discern every lie, and dismantle every deceptive system foisted by dark forces that mean deadly harm.

Tragically, when the Church neglects her heavenly assets, she aimlessly gropes to decipher the world's problems by employing the world's solutions.  The result?  I watched pastors readily close down their places of worship and Jesus-shame people into taking the vaccines.  I watched arrays of Black Lives Matter placards sunk deeply into church yards like rows of poppies in Oz.  I watched Bibles and liturgies stripped of gender-specific language in an effort to affirm and ally with those who misunderstand gender.

I watched pride paraphernalia transform church buildings into fleets of Crayola clipper ships.  I watched Sunday morning presentations celebrate Juneteenth, yet no peep was popped when Roe was overturned.  And today, I am watching preachers conspicuously contort themselves to muzzle their mouths from speaking about the upcoming election.  

To withhold thoughtful sermons pertaining to politics, culture, and voting is to send weakened sheep into packs of hungry wolves.  While a biblical worldview is a long-held and revered quest within the Church, we see on today's battlefields of tripwires and land mines that a biblical worldview alone renders too many believers impotent to transform the environments around them.

One prominent example:  Before Speaker Johnson took the gavel, believers everywhere lauded him for his biblical worldview.  But is a worldview sufficient for dispensing the leaven of the Kingdom into dark places?  Why on God's good earth did Speaker Mike speedily capitulate and actively garner votes for some of the most destructive spending bills of Biden's reign?

While a biblical worldview is valuable for personal learning and formation, it takes Kingdom character to carry that understanding into a dying world and effectually release the power of God everywhere we go.  Why?  A Biblical worldview is forged mainly by what we know and believe, but Kingdom character is forged by what we do.

Acquiring the leaven of the Kingdom is effective only if injected into the whole batch of dough.

So when I learned a local church was offering a Racial Reconciliation class, I signed up immediately. Here was a chance for the vibrant power of the Kingdom to provide a transcendent experience rich with revelation that neither mimics nor parrots the pagan antiracist propaganda that is taking root in our country. 

While I genuinely hoped it would be a refreshing change from the run-of-the-mill huckstering I've studied and experienced in-depth, I had a hunch I might become a spy in a foreign land of mission impossible.

Keep in mind, in today's racially manipulated landscape, particularly since George Floyd died, it is no longer sufficient to not be racist.  Instead, we are scolded to be antiracist.  

In the most simplest way, a not racist is a racist who is in denial, and an antiracist is someone who is willing to admit the times in which they are being racist

~ Ibram X Kendi, Author of How to be an Antiracist

Kendi is a thought leader in the racial reconciliation space today. Catch what he is asserting here:  According to Kendi's definition, everyone is racist.  To claim you are not racist is to be in denial of your racism, and to claim to be an antiracist is to admit you are racist.  This is a classic Marxist construct.  You are pronounced guilty not because of anything you've done but because of the collective you are assigned to.  

Comparatively, imagine if unblemished faithfulness to your spouse was deemed wholly insufficient because your fidelity was secretly steeped in unconscious denial.  It is, therefore, not acceptable to not be an adulterer; you must do the work and become an anti-adulterer — But in either case, you are still a dirty adulterer.

As I filled out the online course registration, it asked for my gender.  When I clicked on the dropdown list, my warning systems went on high alert: There were more than two choices. "Your mission, Keith, should you choose to accept it . . ."

Although it is a seven-week course, I learned everything I needed to know in the first two weeks.  Instead of this Christian course thoughtfully approaching a crucial cultural topic with the mind of Christ, it was a patently racist voyage into the same predictably tedious emotional manipulations used by the antiracists.  But for virtuous adornment, it was loosely wrapped with perfunctory prayer and packaged with mangled scriptural references.

Who’s Voice Is This?

I have read many of the leading books on the topic, including Kendi, DiAngelo, Coates, and Baldwin. I have also talked with friends who don't look like me (a phrase the course relished using) and consumed countless hours of online content. So when this course's leaders embarked on using the activist's lexicon without codifying clear definitions, my spirit didn't hear the voice of the Shepherd, but instead, it was the voice of the stranger.

His sheep follow him because they know His voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

~Jesus in John's Gospel, Chapter 10

Whiteness. White privilege.  White supremacy.  White Christian Nationalism.  White Jesus and black Jesus. Systemic Racism.  These wildly emotive labels should be marked Handle With Care and bound with Use With Extreme Caution tape.  Instead, we are constantly crop-dusted with these inflammatory phrases by our politicians, the press, corporate media, Hollywood — And now the Church.

One of the primary leaders boldly embodied the full spectrum of white guilt.  He told us more than three times that he was dating a black woman who refers to him as a "stupid white man" and shared that he grew up with a "stupidity of whiteness."  He then rolled up his sleeve to show us his Black Lives Matter tattoo and referred to me as his "fellow caucasian."   

Stranger's voice or Shepherd's voice?

The leaders continually promised us that our personal care and safety were of the utmost importance. If at any time we became uncomfortable or emotionally triggered, which inevitably was the goal of every session, we were told to turn off our cameras and walk around for a while. I admit I was uncomfortable and triggered most of the time, but not for the reasons they hoped.

A repeated theme was showing us carefully edited videos of poets, artists, musicians, and historians who boasted of their victimhood, freely harangued white people for their culpability and complicity in structural racism, and repackaged history in a manner designed to deracinate any good roots from our nation's formation.  They showed us racially-charged clips from the '50s and '60s that anyone would deem reprehensible.  However, without building a bridge from then to now, these clips were seamlessly presented as if to represent America today.  And this is the problem with progressivism:  Progress is rarely recognized and never applauded.

Next, they presented a roundtable of business experts who discussed racial reconciliation in the workplace.  Upon hearing my critque, some might say it was merely a misrepresentation of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  But the fact is, DEI, by design, is dangerously divisive and inherently racist.  

One black business expert on the panel confidently spouted, 

The days of focusing on technology and skills are over.  The goal now is to hire people who don't look like you in order to make your employees uncomfortable.

They should have named this session: To become successful in business, you must be antibusiness.

I shared that I am a small business owner, and my entire staff doesn't look like me. Further, I explained that I didn't hire them for diversity; I hired them because they are the best in their field. The crickets must have had their legs removed by dint of the prolonged silence.

Eventually, one participant asked what industry I am in. When I said Banking Technology, she flippantly said, "Oh, well the banking industry is predominantly white men." 

When I explained I've been in banking for over 35 years and assured her that the majority of its workforce are women, she snickered as if I was telling a tall tale to hide my misogyny. 

Behold a Christian course endorsing the stranger’s voice.

Rightly Handle the Word of God

Similar examples of acceptable white racism are endless, but I became most uncomfortable when holy scripture was refashioned in desecrating ways.  A reflection on racism was crafted using the shortest passage in the Gospels: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35).  According to this course, Jesus did not weep because his friend Lazarus died or his closest friends continued to lack faith.

No, this famous scene at the tomb was a lesson in empathy.  You see, the people who gathered at the scene were from various backgrounds and races.  Even though the passage only mentions that Jews were there, we were told there were people there who didn't look like Jesus.  So when Jesus wept, he showed us how to be similarly empathetic and identify with the pain of people who don't look like us.

Next was the famous story of Zacchaeus.  Even though this notorious tax collector was a Jew swindling his fellow Jews, a new narrative emerged.  When he repented of his evil ways and promised to repay four times to anyone he cheated, we were told this is how we can all disrupt and dismantle systemic injustice.  But I thought; Zacchaeus did not repent for collecting taxes.  His repentance was profoundly personal and cost him a great price, as he committed to giving half of his possessions to the poor. But somehow, this famous passage now landed on systemic injustice and reparations.

The same techniques were used for other scriptures, especially passages that mention the plight of the oppressed.  But the gravity and specifics of the oppression often seemed hard to nail down once you pressed in.

I can still smell the stacked skeletons in the Rwandan Genocide Memorials.  I can still see the scarred faces of rural pastors in India who are regularly beaten and dragged out of the village limits.  I can still hear the distorted sound systems in the bars where we rescue trafficked girls in the Philippines.  I’ve seen systemic oppression up close and we should all thank God we have to look so desperately hard for it here in America.

When I shared my protestation for how scripture was being used to bolster modern-day constructs of oppressed and oppressor, there were no takers for a thoughtful discussion.

I could continue with endless details, like when a participant shared how he was emotionally triggered when he saw a MAGA hat in his friend's bedroom.  The collective gasp and ensuing sneers from many in the group revealed that those who readily embrace Marxist views on racism can't imagine why a fellow believer thinks America was ever great.  

And I do not use the term Marxist lightly.  One clip of a racial protest in the course highlighted The Party for Socialism and Liberation. Founded in 2004, the PSL is the Communist and Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States.  No spiritual house should casually promote such a clip.

His House is a Spiritual House

But the true heartache of the whole experience was that, once again, I was watching the Church relinquish her sacred competencies and embrace deeply divisive secular collectivism.  

Suppose an individual was raised to believe some races are superior or inferior to others. In that case, we invite The Holy Spirit to reveal, remove, and heal those sinful instincts and seek forgiveness for wrongs committed.  But that's not what this course is. This course was built on a myriad of assumptions, assertions, and propositions that bypass the individual and fixate on group identity.  The Church should know better.

The Apostle Peter tells us the Church is made of "living stones built into a spiritual house." (I Peter 2:5). "Spiritual" denotes the indwelling and outwardly manifested presence of The Lord, the engagement of the Gifts of the Spirit, and surrenders every thought captive to Christ.  A spiritual house is the polar opposite of a natural or carnal experience.  

Above all things, church leaders should vigilantly work to build communities of faith that are spiritual and fiercely guard against anything or anyone that fosters carnal thought and action.

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

~ The Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 2:12-13

God intends the Church to be a spiritual house built upon the language and wisdom of the Spirit.  But when we swing wide her doors and welcome the wafts of worldly wisdom infected with the political spirit, we risk ignoring one of Jesus' most vital warnings:

Watch out!  Beware the leaven of Herod!

Author’s Note: This course was conducted by a third-party firm and was not created by this specific church. My intention is neither to call out the sponsoring church nor the training firm, but to warn us all that we must carefully discern what the Church allows in her doors.