Seeking the Face of the Lord in Racial Injustice- Philip Zumbrun

By Philip Zumbrun

My culture seems to be telling me a lot about who I am and how I should feel right now. Sometimes I’m supposed to feel guilty for existing due to being born as a white male in a middle-class family. Other times I’m encouraged in a Rambo-like spirit to never apologize and, better yet, obliterate all who disagree with me. Could it be that there is another way to view my place in our current culture and the movements surrounding racial injustice?

Let us first turn to our most sacred text from the book of Disney: Frozen 2.  In this tale, our singing heroine receives a divine call to a magical forest. The forest is sick. Why? Past injustices that were never healed.

Just a fairy tale, right? Maybe not. Let’s turn to a text that is actually sacred, holy, and true. The first half of 2 Samuel 21 recounts a similar story, beginning as follows: 

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 

This past injustice damaged the land itself. Restoration came as David met with the Gibeonites and eventually gave seven members of the guilty family over to be killed (a harrowing picture – but certainly not the most extreme example of how God deals with sin in the Bible).

The United States of America is crying out in anguish. We disagree about a lot of things, but we all agree that something is wrong. I believe the LORD is giving us a divine call. A pastor friend of mine Michael Lefebvre said it this way:

Today, God is showing mercy on our nation.

When God abandons a people, they grow hard and indifferent to sin. But when God shows mercy, he pricks our conscience so we might repent. The fact that God is humbling our nation with a pandemic, and at the same time stirring our national conscience over one of our besetting, founding sins is a mark of mercy and an opportunity—if the church will exploit the opportunity to witness repentance. 

He then poses a question – who are we to tell God where to bring conviction in a land? Perhaps we would have liked God to bring focus to a different issue or develop events in a different way. Michael continues:

If racial prejudice is, indeed, one of America’s founding sins—and if this society has yet more of this lack of love for our neighbors to confess and repudiate—and if this is a sin that God has said, “Let’s stir the nation’s conscience on this one”—then praise God for his mercy. And let us model repentance for this sin—as well as others—as a church.

We see racial injustice, we see hurt, we see division. I’m learning that rather than giving into the base instincts of fight or flight, instead I should seek the face of the LORD as David did. Prejudice and systemic injustice do not come with easy solutions, but God is using his Word to give me principles to follow:

- All men and women are made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). Never say anything that suggests otherwise, or else I may be cursing God himself (James 3:9-10).

- A meaningful way to love my brothers and sisters in this tumultuous time is rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

- Where I see division, my role is to be a peacemaker (Romans 14:19).

- I should abhor evil (Romans 12:9) and spend more time lamenting over the past and present sins of the nation God has put me in (Psalm 102, Psalm 130, all of Lamentations, Matthew 23:37-39). I should particularly repent of ways I’ve engaged in these sins (Matthew 23:29-36).

Our future as a nation is not clear, but the future of the church is. One day we will stand blameless before God’s throne with brothers and sisters from every tongue, tribe, and nation (Rev 7:9-12). Let us hasten to the day – to God be the glory!
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Philip Zumbrun is an elder at Trinity Park. He lives in Durham with his family.