College students care about justice and racial reconciliation. On hundreds of campuses across the country students have held rallies and marches in the past week in support of the “Jena 6,” six African-American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, who face criminal charges in a racially charged incident.
Gracee Biskie, a campus staff member working with her husband Dave at Western Michigan University (WMU), offered the students in her Collegiate Black and Christian (CBC) chapter a modernized version of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) to help them understand how Jesus might approach racial reconciliation in modern America. Gracee also shared her own testimony on how God changed her racial perspective.
One day, a senior named Tia–who had really grown in her faith to a mature disciple during her time at Western–questioned a new campus minister at WMU to see if he knew what he was talking about. Tia, thinking this new dude is sort of fishy and thinking his answer will probably be unsound, asks: “new campus minister, what do you think I have to do to show that I really am following Jesus with my whole life?” He answers her with a question; he says “well, what have you learned during your four years in CBC?”
She is impressed by that question so says all the things she’s learned for sure. As a matter of fact, Tia has been so involved in InterVarsity that she quotes the “four loves,” which is a part of InterVarsity’s national purpose statement: “love God, love his Word, love his people of every ethnicity and culture and his purposes in the world.” And just for fun she throws in InterVarsity’s national vision statement to “transform students, renew the campus, and develop world changers.” She adds, “In CBC we are seeking to save our people, equip our people, and send our people.” Tia feels really good about her answer; since she knows she is doing all of these things. The new campus minister responds. “Yep, Tia you got it down. Do these things and you will show the world that you are truly following Jesus.”
But Tia feels slighted. She still feels uncomfortable with this new campus minister; there’s something about his unconventional ways of ministry on campus that is irking her. He doesn’t do things the way Dave and Gracee do, and there is something very unconventional about the students he spends time with. She wonders if maybe he disagrees with her views to love God’s people of every nation and tongue. Maybe he doesn’t understand who those people are. So she asks him “new campus minister, who do you think are the people God says we should love? Our own or others?” He answers her with a story.
He said, “Listen to this, Tia. One day at WMU, a white paper science junior named Sarah was going to visit a friend of hers in French Hall, whose room number she didn’t know. She figured she’d find it so she started on the fourth floor, knowing it was either 406 or 604. Little did she know, the fourth floor was the ‘black floor.’ She felt a little intimidated, but she decided to ask a few black students walking by. They ignored her. Then she began going door to door asking ‘Do you know where John White lives?’ She got doors slammed in her face and started to feel like she was the butt of a lot of jokes. Finally, the last door she knocked on was answered by a group of drunk guys. They asked her to come in. Fearing she’d be perceived as a white person who was afraid of blacks, she went in reluctantly. Unfortunately that night Sarah got raped by 3 different drunk black men who also violently beat her.”
Tia was looking quite perplexed and angry. As a black woman, why was this white man telling a story about her people being violent and horrible? She did not like him already, and now he was truly upsetting her. But she listened intently to see where in the world this kooky campus minister was going with this.
He continued on. “After they raped and beat her, they pushed her body out into the hallway. About five minutes later, Tia’s InterVarsity staff worker Gracee was walking by. She saw her, but when she went closer to investigate, the drunk dudes opened the door and said ‘You gotta problem b____?’ She was intimidated and afraid the same thing might happen to her, so she quickly left.”
“About an hour later Nosa, who was CBC’s president, walked by and saw her. But he was running late for CBC and was hesitant to get involved. He feared if he even touched her, he could be implicated for the crime.
About two hours later, a black janitor who has been cleaning dorms at WMU for over 30 years noticed her. When she saw her, she thought of all the times whites on campus had called her a filthy name. In spite of that, she picked up Sarah, called 911 from her cellphone and accompanied Sarah in the ambulance until they arrived at Bronson Hospital. She went through Sarah’s purse and found her home phone number. She informed Sarah’s parents what had happened to her and where she was. She pulled out all of Sarah’s insurance information for the hospital staff. Once Sarah –who was still unconscious at the time—was all settled in, the old black janitor got in a cab and went back to work, only to find she had been fired for leaving her job without permission. She never saw Sarah again.”
This story left Tia absolutely speechless. Then the new campus minister said to Tia, “So Tia, who do you think showed that they really love God’s people of every nation and tongue.” Tia replied, “That old janitor, of course.”
The campus minister said, “Well, Tia, go and do the same thing that she did.” And he walked away.
Tia was cut to the heart. She knew she did not love him.
Gracee ended the story and concluded the lesson with a challenge.
“Jesus is saying if you really want to love me and follow me, then there is no option but to love and go out of your way to treat people well who do not like you or do not treat you well. And in the case of the Samaritans . . . go out of your way to love people who don’t even believe that you are worthy of being a human. Does that remind you of anything? There was a time –not that long ago- when whites thought of us as only 1/3 human. And this is what Jesus says to that: love them.
This is controversial. And when you are a black person considering all the wrong that’s been done to us as a people—and all the ways we have been hurt by racism—going out of our way to love whites can seem foolish and stupid and crazy and scandalous. I would even go so far as to say that doing what Jesus says in this matter is inconvenient. It has been for me, in a lot of situations.
But the truth is when that Jewish lawyer asked Jesus 2000 years ago, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer was “Your neighbor is not the one who you are supposed to love, your neighbor is not the people who look like you, and your neighbor is not your family. When Jesus says that one of the greatest commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself, your neighbor, my friends, is especially the people who ignore you, who separate themselves from you, who are afraid of you, who you have the most difficulty loving and the people you don’t feel love you. The people in the world who are the most absolutely hardest people in all the earth to love—those people are your neighbors. And for most African American people in America our neighbor–in Jesus’s eyes at least—is white people.
And I am here to tell you right now, if you are black and you claim to love Jesus and to be following him, it is not okay to secretly hate white people, to treat them with suspicion, to randomly hate white people who are involved in the Jena 6 debacle.
What the world is used to is people living tit for tat, crime for crime, and revenge for revenge sake. But the one thing that separates Christianity from every other world religion is grace. And that is something that doesn’t come easy for blacks in regards to the sins of the past.
Grace is our secret weapon and the major reason why Christians have the best shot at eventually making racial reconciliation a reality. The reason why is because having grace on white folks—loving them the way God is so sacrificially asking you to—makes our faith supersede our race. It means making whites family. It’s crazy and scandalous and it’s not something that’s always going to go over well with the homey’s. You will lose black friends in your life. It’s pretty much a guarantee. But this is what it means for us to suffer for Jesus sake in our following him.
When Jesus says to have grace, and to continuously love your neighbor as yourself, he intended for it to be a way of life.
But know this, our having grace on whites is what Jesus said our whole witness and our credibility to the world depends on. We are seen to be credible witnesses of Christ if we demonstrate love to one another, because it brings genuineness to our gospel. How else in the world can blacks and whites in America live out true reconciliation without the power of God? It’s impossible. We need to brag on God a little bit and show the world what our God can do. He has the power that can transform relationships one at a time.
Is this easy? No, it sucks. Is this fun? No, not really. But there are many blessings that you will never experience if you are not obedient to Jesus in what he says is the second greatest commandment, which means “pay attention!”
