An abundance of issues may be (and have been) extrapolated from the Ferguson calamity, never minding the few predominant ones immediately arising from this event. And one of the topics is, of course, race and more specifically black on blue or blue on black contact (blue is Law Enforcement if you are unsure) and the various points of either conflict or potential conflict (real or imagined).
Among Christians in the Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist world, the Ferguson matter has been written about and discussed like a slow train wreck. Thabiti Anyabwile, a member of The Gospel Coalition, has lost himself, as it appears to me, to racial narcissism in transcribing a number of recent posts which are absent of any consistent objectivity. Ultimately, as I read, he simply reduces the matter, in essence (along with the larger considerations of race, Christianity, theology and socialism), to emotionalism and racial sentimentality while formulating what arguments he does make with a very selective use of the information available. You can read about it here.
In another place you can scan a classic example of a man whose whiteness has him groping around in the dark (pun intended for those of you able to handle it, if not, pretend it doesn’t exist), flailing away at ghosts either he has invented or has received via a large body of racial political correctness always looming over such matters. It got so bad at one point he simply quit permitting comments because he attempted to set up codes for who should say what and how they must think about the issue and on and on, never minding the flood of objections to his clearly patronizing piece. He is able to be found here and is worth checking out if not just to learn how the disease of racial political correctness and false white guilt infects someone's thinking resulting in a catastrophic inability to discuss such topics objectively.
I could continue pointing to all the wrong steps but that is not necessary seeing they are quite apparent in the online world of Christendom. What is difficult to find however, is an honest and frank assessment of the relative Ferguson issues among Christians.
The Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist world of Christianity, as I see it, is so afraid of being labeled something or so busy with self-aggrandizing patronization and so fixated on crusadershipism and racial campaigns of sensitivity that nothing real may be said, that is, nothing that can possess solutions. Because in order to offer solutions the problems must be identified and as long as we tippy-toe around the problems, restricting speech either by code or by assigning to various racial groups what they may and may not say and how they must say what they do say, we are left with nothing but gusts of wind in every direction.
Nevertheless, all is not lost. I cannot recommend in any greater way that you go to The Gospel Coalition and read what Pastor Voddie Baucham wrote. His article (click on the article title and it will take you to his essay), Thoughts on Ferguson, is a tremendously conscientious and practical approach to the issue(s) of race, justice and law enforcement which have emerged. You will not regret the visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment