It is September 2020 as I write this, and the black lives matter movement has quickly moved from a genuine human response to perceived unjust police treatment into an aggressive Black Lives Matter (BLM) political movement whereby many people may fear they could be forced (shamed) into submiting to something much more radical than genuinely feeling compassion for our fellow man.

Such as the bowing of the knee and/or raising a clenched fist. Being associated with the violence the hatred and the rioting.

What are we as Christians to think?

Let's start with what God thinks, and for this I need to tell something of Miriam's story in Exodus chapter fifteen.

When Moses led the children of Israel out from under Pharaoh's cruel rule they came to the edge of the Red Sea. I'm sure we all know the story well. God parted the sea and the Israelites walked through on dry land but when Pharaoh’s horses, chariots and horsemen tried to follow, the Lord closed the waters over them. Finally the Children of Israel were free from his rule.

Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them:

“Sing to the Lord for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.”

Miriam was acknowledged by God as a leader of his people.

Micah chapter 6 verse 4

I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.

So far so good.

What could go wrong? Let's see.

But He did have a problem with Miriam and Aaron’s response to their brother’s marriage to a black woman.

Moses's new wife was not a Jew. Note that Miriam and Moses did not take offence because she wasn't a Jew, but because she was a Cushite.

There is even a strong possibility that his new wife had become a Jew (or became a Jew)

There has been a portion of black skinned Ethiopians with such a long history of devout Judaism that in Israel they are termed ‘Beta Israel’. In 1984 during a civil war in Sudan that caused a famine Israeli forces secretly smuggled around 8000 Ethiopian Jews out of Sudan to live in Israel. The Queen of Sheba who came to visit King Solomon was was the ruler of an ancient kingdom located in the areas called Ethiopia and Yemen today. 

The Bible names Miriam first rather than the more usual practice of naming the man first, because while Aaron was part of this rebellion against Moses, it was Miriam who was at the root of it.

And God's judgement gave her 'a taste of her own medicine'

Numbers 12:5-19
The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them when the cloud lifted from above the tent, there stood Miriam - leprous like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; and he said to Moses, “please my Lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away”

So Moses cried out to the Lord “oh God, please heal her!”

The Lord replied to Moses, “If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back.” So Miriam was confined outside the camp

Miriam had been repulsed by the black woman’s skin so God temporarily made her skin repulsive to others. God’s punishment was also a lesson to her, ‘how does it feel to be judged by your skin?’

When the seven days were up, God healed her skin and she was brought back 'into the fold'

Note however, that Aaron repented and asked Moses to forgive him. From Miriam there is no mention of repentance. Perhaps she still thought she was right?

I will leave the remainder of her story here as it makes the point.

(For those who want to know Miriam's full story I have a written teaching on this site called The Rise and Fall of Miriam)

Racism can be described as an explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively distinguishes or values one race over other races.  John Piper tells of being at a missionary conference in 1967 where Warren Webster, a former missionary to Pakistan, answered a student’s question: “what if your daughter falls in love with a Pakistani while you’re on the mission field and wants to marry him?” and with great forcefulness he said, “The Bible would say, Better a Christian Pakistani than a godless white American!” John said the impact on us all was profound.

Racism has no place in God's Kingdom. He made us all in His image. He will never judge us on our nationality or our skin colour, but only on our heart's response to His offer of salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ.

So what's going on with 'black lives matter'?

What framework do we put it in?

Such things don't suddenly explode out of nowhere. There is always a story.

I'm Irish. I understand this.

To begin with, it's important to understand the power of generational influences.

(I have a written teaching on this site called Understanding generational influences)

Another useful term to explain this issue can be 'generational memories'.

So, like all deep-rooted issues, this is indeed a multi-generational story.

With slavery at its root.

It's worth taking the time to understand this generational journey in some detail so that as
compassionate Christians we can hope to see the issue as God sees it.

It is estimated that between 12.0 to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years.  

The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, since the passage had a high death rate with approximately 1.2–2.4 million dying during the voyage, and millions more dying in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival to the New World.

Most slaves were sold to the European traders by other Africans. They usually bought enslaved people who were captured in endemic warfare between African states. Some Africans had made a business out of capturing Africans from neighboring ethnic groups or war captives and selling them. People living around the Niger River were transported from slave markets to the coast and sold at European trading ports in exchange for muskets and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol. In addition to the deaths already mentioned during the voyages, millions of slaves also died as a result of the slave raids, the wars and during the transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders.

While those held in slavery in their own region of Africa might hope to escape, those shipped away had little chance of returning to Africa. Thus, the Africans arriving in Europe or America as slaves were regarded as almost less than human, and certainly as grossly inferior to the white people. Their value was purely a monetary value.

It is importanat to note that the Islamic world enslaved 28 million blacks over the past 14 centuries, with a death rate of 80-90%.

Non-blacks were also enslaved. Between 1530 and 1780 up to 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa. (C.Hitchens., Jerfferson versus the Muslim pirates. City Jornnal 2007)

In some African nations, slavery still continues. Repeated attempts to outlaw slavery in Mauritania have had little effect. The most recent declaration of abolition, in 1980, has been largely ineffective, with 90,000 black Mauritanians remaining essentially enslaved to Arab/Berber owners. In the Sudan, Christian captives in the ongoing civil war are often enslaved, and female prisoners are often used sexually, with their Muslim captors claiming that Islamic law grants them permission. ISIS enslaved many of the people it conquered.

In Libia, African migrants are being sold for as little as $400. In Nigeria, Islamic extremist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls and vowed to "sell them on the market." He also warned that his group plans to attack more schools and abduct more girls.

Other nations were involved and grew extremely rich through the African slave trade to the New World and to Europe. In particular the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

However the thinking at the time was that 'all men' essentially referred to European Americans

African Americans, indigenous peoples, Irish, Mexican Americans, and Chinese were perceived to be of a lower status than whites.

And so established slavery was not (yet) included in the full revelation of that great declaration.

To our shame many southern ministers had embibed the surrounding slave culture and preached of the white man's 'God given' right to have black slaves, which gave slave owners the confidence to believe they had God's approval for their behaviour. The four founders of the first and oldest educational institution of the Southern Baptist Convention owned fifty slaves.

In 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention issued an apology for its earlier stance on slavery. The issue had split the Baptist church between north and south in 1845. In 2007 the British Baptist Union not only apologised for their part in the slave trade, but went to Jamacia to apologise.

Gradually, over the next eighty years, the views of many in the northern states substantially changed.

President Abraham Lincoln Lincoln personally hated slavery, and considered it immoral.

"If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that `all men are created equal;'
and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another,"

Tensions over slavery had been steadily growing in the United States and eventually seven southern slave owning states left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, and civil war (1861-65) followed between the north (the Union) and the south. 180,000 African Americans served with the Union in the war. An estimated 750,000 soldiers from both sides died.

Although the issue of slavery was an important part of the mix, the main purpose of the war from the Union's point of view, was to re-unite America. The Union won the war and on January 1865, both houses of Congress passed the 13th Amendment - the Emancipation Proclamation - which paved the way for the permanent abolition of slavery in the United States.

Abraham Lincoln said.

"It is my greatest and most enduring contribution to the history of the war. It is, in fact, the central act of my administration, and the great event of the 19th century."

Two months later he was assasinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathiser.

The war had been won on the battlefield but not yet in the hearts of the men who were defeated.

The next twelve years (1865-1877) - known as the reconstruction years - was the futile effort to reintegrate the Southern Confederate states and their 4 million newly-freed slaves into the United States. Confederate soldiers and slave owners perpetrated horrific acts of mayhem and murder on slaves who were now legally free, and also upon their white unionist supporters. Where civil war deaths were mainly on battle fields between willing opponents these years saw outright - and often sadistic murders - on a massive scale.

The Freedman's Bureau in Texas has a register of murders with over a thousand in the one year of 1865-66, with reasons given such as "Black man didn't tip his hat so I shot him." 

The Klu Klux Klan - started in Tennessee by six returning confederate soldiers - was a ruthless secret organization bent on preserving the south's white supremacy at all costs. These robed and hooded men would take people out of their houses or their cabins in the dark of the night, strip them out in a road, make them run down the road, make them sometimes lie on a rock where they would be whipped, where men would line up to whip them. Sometimes they would burn parts of their bodies.

And they would hang them.

Some 2,000 white supremacist massacres and killings are recorded in a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based nonprofit organisation dedicated to combating racial inequality. The survey details nearly 2,000 racial terror lynchings of black men, women and children during the Reconstruction era of 1865 to 1876.

A new study, titled Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence After the Civil War, brings the overall death toll between 1865 and 1950 to nearly 6,500.

The EJI founder Bryan Stephenson said, “We cannot understand our present moment without recognizing the lasting damage caused by allowing white supremacy and racial hierarchy to prevail during Reconstruction,”

The history documentary 'Aftershock: Beyond the civil war' makes for difficult watching.

Laws in the form of “Black Codes.” were passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of black peoples’ lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured black people’s availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished. They were still regarded as grossly inferior to the white people. Their value was still purely of monetary value.

Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites and blacks in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths. Colleges were segregated and separate black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate. Virginia’s Hampton Institute was established in 1869 as a school for black youth, but with white instructors teaching skills to relegate blacks in service positions to whites.

The courageous actions of Martin Luther King - who was inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi - led a march to Washington on August 28th 1963 when 250,000 people, white and black, gathered to hear his famous speech,"I have a dream that one day all could say 'Free at last, Free at last' Thank God Almighty, we are free at last' ( Historic footage) It brought a response from President John F. Kennedy

In a nationally televised address on June 6, 1963, he urged the nation to take action toward guaranteeing equal treatment of every American regardless of race. Soon after, he proposed that Congress consider civil rights legislation that would address voting rights, public accommodations, school desegregation, nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs, and more. 

Kennedy was assasinated in November of 1963, but his proposal culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.

However the passing of this law to ensure African Americans of the basic right to vote had little effect in some parts of the state. Perhaps no place was Jim Crow’s grip tighter than in Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half of the population, yet accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters.

"Voteless people are hopeless people, because they are not even citizens" - Amelia Boynton Robinson

For months, the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to register Black voters in the county seat of Selma had been thwarted, often being met with violence.

In January 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., came to the city and gave the backing of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to the cause. Peaceful demonstrations in Selma and surrounding communities resulted in the arrests of thousands, including King. He wrote to the New York Times, “This is Selma, Alabama. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.”

On March 7th 1965 around 600 civil rights marchers led by John Lewis set out to walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery—the state’s capital—in protest of black voter suppression. Local police blocked them on tthe Edmund Pettus Bridge and brutally attacked them. Amelia Boynton Robinson recalled "They came with horses. They came with nightsticks.” She was beaten unconcious and thought to be dead. The event has gone down in history as 'Bloody Sunday' (Historic footage)

Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute writes,

The campaign in Selma and nearby Marion, Alabama, progressed with mass arrests but little violence for the first month. That changed in February, however, when police attacks against nonviolent demonstrators increased.

On the night of 18 February, Alabama state troopers joined local police breaking up an evening march in Marion. In the ensuing melee, a state trooper shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon from Marion, as he attempted to protect his mother from the trooper’s nightstick. Jackson died eight days later in a Selma hospital.

In response to Jackson’s death, activists in Selma and Marion set out on 7 March to march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. While King was in Atlanta, his SCLC colleague Hosea Williams and SNCC leader John Lewis led the march. The marchers made their way through Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they faced a blockade of state troopers and local lawmen commanded by Clark and Major John Cloud, who ordered the marchers to disperse.

When they did not, Cloud ordered his men to advance. Cheered on by white onlookers, the troopers attacked the crowd with clubs and tear gas. Mounted police chased retreating marchers and continued to beat them....

In the wake of the shocking incident, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Black people attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed. 

Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to “recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws,” a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned away from the polls.

Then on March 25th 1965 Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators, this time guarded by state troopers, on a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery aimed at asking the right to vote for all African Americans and for the end of racial segregation in the South. (Historic footage)

King told the crowd,

“There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes”

Finally, on 6 August, 1965 in the presence of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recalling “the outrage of Selma,” Johnson called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men”

In 1968 King was shot dead.

He was a great man. This list with more than 100 of his quotes reflects thatgreatness in depth.

In 1859 - just three years before the civil war - the first printing of Charles Darwin's book, 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life', sold out in a matter of days, and greatly fueled the idea that the black man was grossly inferior in his evoltionary ape to man timeline theory. [emphasis mine]

In his book The Descent of Man he wrote,

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphouse apes...will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasion, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian [aboorigine] and the gorilla.

One of Evolution's best known advocates, Professor Stephen Jay Gould, wrote in his book 'Ontogeny and Phylogeny'

Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.

In the many years of aggressively apportioning blame for the historical plight of the black man Charles Darwin's truly monumental role is almost totally ignored.

The 'god of this world', whom Jesus said, 'Comes only to steal, kill and destroy' needs Charles Darwin to remain untouched in his relentless war against the Kingdom of God.

As the apostle Paul said in Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, 
against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

So, with such a degrading multi-generational background to emerge from, we need to be compassionately aware of the lack of worth and the lack of acceptance that has been forged deep within the soul of the African American (and other western nations) for some four centuries. (The trading of enslaved people exported from Africa began slowly in 1525 before gathering momentum in the following centuries)

The 1947 Black baby test with young children showed how this generational inheritance made the children believe that black is ugly and that black is bad. Thus, if they are black they are ugly and they are bad.

Despite discrimination laws being finally removed in 1965, the multi-generational effects of being treated as substantially inferior are still deeply embedded, and many black communities, especially the low income communities, suffer with deep cultural issues.

As I write, there is a strong media spotlight on the subject of police discrimination and violence towards the black communities. This is a widely researched subject, sometimes reaching contradicting conclusions.

The channel four factcheck web page has this to say about police discrimination (mainly) amidst the black communities with cultural issues.

Academics have noted that the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match closely the proportion of offenders identified as black by victims in the National Crime Victimization Survey. This doesn’t support the idea that the police are unfairly discriminating against the black population when they make arrests. So why are black offenders – and young black men in particular – over-represented in America’s crime statistics. Judging from online comments, there is a wide spectrum of views on this, from unapologetic racism to militant refusal to blame the problem on anything but historic white racism. [emphasis mine]

However, other studies show that there are police and court issues to be considered in the mix.

Wikepedia's extensive 'Race and Crime in the United States' page says,

A 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that blacks were "3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession," even though "blacks and whites use drugs, including marijuana, at similar rates."[70] A 2020 study in the journal Nature found that black drivers were stopped more often than white drivers, and that the threshold by which police decided to search black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for whites (judging by the rate at which contraband was found in searches).[13] Analysis of more than 20 million traffic stops in North Carolina showed that blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be pulled over by police for traffic stops, and that blacks were more likely to be searched following the stop'

Research also indicates that there is extensive racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system.[7][8][9][10] A substantial academic literature has compared police searches (showing that contraband is found at higher rates in whites who are stopped), bail decisions (showing that whites with the same bail decision as blacks commit more pre-trial violations), and sentencing (showing that blacks are more harshly sentenced by juries and judges than whites when the underlying facts and circumstances of the cases are similar), providing valid causal inferences of racial discrimination.[11][12][13][14] Studies have documented patterns of racial discrimination, as well as patterns of police brutality and disregard for the constitutional rights of African-Americans, by police departments in various American cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.[15][16][17][18][19] [emphasis mine]

So, while there is enough truth in the claims of discrimination by police and courts to demand appropriate correcting changes be put in place, there is also a very real need for the the black community to take ownership of the internal issues that play a serious part in inflaming the issue.

The Citizen produced an article entitled 'Most serious problems for blacks rooted in culture, not racism'.

For several decades, blacks have held significant political power, in the form of being mayors and dominant forces on city councils in major cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, Memphis, Tenn., Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Calif., Newark, N.J., and Cincinnati.

In these cities, blacks have held administrative offices such as school superintendent, school principal and chief of police. Plus, there’s the precedent-setting fact of there being 44 black members of Congress and a black president.

What has this political power meant for the significant socio-economic problems faced by a large segment of the black community. Clearly, it has done little or nothing for academic achievement; the number of black students scoring proficient is far below the national average.

It is a disgrace — and ought to be a source of shame — to know that the average white seventh- or eighth-grader can run circles around the average black 12th-grader in most academic subjects.

The political and education establishment tells us that the solution lies in higher budgets, but the fact of business is that some of the worst public school districts have the highest spending per student. Washington, D.C., for example, spends more than $29,000 per student and scores at nearly the bottom in academic achievement.

Each year, roughly 7,000 — and as high as 9,000 — blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims.

Contrast this with the fact that black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and wars since 1980 (about 8,200) total about 18,500. Young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.

Black political power and massive city budgets have done absolutely nothing to ameliorate this problem of black insecurity.

Most of the problems faced by the black community have their roots in a black culture that differs significantly from the black culture of yesteryear.

Today only 35 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households, but as far back as 1880, in Philadelphia, 75 percent of black children were raised in two-parent households — and it was as high as 85 percent in other places. Even during slavery, in which marriage was forbidden, most black children were raised with two biological parents.

The black family managed to survive several centuries of slavery and generations of the harshest racism and Jim Crow, to ultimately become destroyed by the welfare state...

The obvious problem is that with such highly visible levels of severe cultural breakdown - which according to the above differs significantly from the black culture of yesteryear - there will be a more than average interaction with authority, figures, whether police, courts or social services, and this can lead to the increased perception of victimhood within the black community and at the same time encourage discrimination within non-black communities. Both 'sides' need to determine to actively promote change.

The polite term "cultural breakdown' masks the many experiences that people have had, or have read about others having. (This is the bit I don't like referring to, but it has to be included)

While blacks make up 13 % of the population according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims.

In 2008 the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites and the victimisation rate was six times higher.  94 per cent of black victims were killed by blacks and 84 per cent of white victims were killed by whites.

Thus, while most hate crimes (as you will read later) are NOT against blacks, a prevelant perception is that if a black man enters a lift, a white woman will clutch her purse more tightly. Black men are likely do get this reaction more often than white men. Psychologists have done some studies which indicate that on a subconscious level almost all Americans feel more threatened by black men than by white men. That result applies to Americans of every color. Higher poverty rates among various urban black communities might explain the difference in crime rates, although the evidence is mixed.

Sadly the riots, the violence, the harrasment, the looting and the massive levels of wanton destruction being played out on our screens night after night (as I write) in black community areas serves only to compound and confirm, not contradict, that criminal and violent perception.

But back to slavery.

Slavery was, of course, much more widespread than America.

For instance the French colonies in the Caribbean, in which some 80% of the total population had lived under the slave system since the seventeenth century, underwent a most unusual experience involving the initial abolition of slavery in 1794, its re-establishment in 1802 and then a second, and permanent abolition in 1848.

Most of this history above refers to African Americans. Other nations stories are different in many ways.

Despite relentless opposition, devout Christians William Wilberforce and former slave trader John Newton (2006 Amazing Grace film) played major roles in finally ending slavery in most of the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. This was 30 years before the US civil war.

Those of us who are not black need to be strongly aware of the historical superior view of the white man and the inferior view of the black man that has been forged deep within the soul of the European and American people for centuries. If not in the concious, then the subconcious.

As Christians we need to check deep within us to ensure we are true 'living letters from Christ' and true ambassadors for God in this broken world. That we see as God sees.

Interestingly in 2014, Pew Research showed that while most black Americans trace their ancestry to areas of Africa which were not primarily part of the Christian world, a larger share of African Americans than whites today say they are Christian. Of all major U.S. racial and ethnic groups, blacks are the most likely to identify as Protestant. The story of God freeing the Israelites from slavery must surely have resonated with them and early spititual slave songs included titles such as 'Go down Moses-let My people go'   'Roll Jordan roll"   'Swing low sweet chariot'

Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through non-violent resistance. (Historic footage) As with Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King's non-violent and dignified protests exposed the worst in their opponents.

Speaking of riots and violence and hatred. Luther said,

“In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

However, these are different days to the days of Martin Luther King.

A different leadership has emerged that Luther would be in total opposition to.

The response to George Floyd's death while being held on the ground under the knee of a Minnesota police man triggered a deep emotional response from his community, but this was quickly embraced, inflamed, and led by the Black Lives Matter organisation. (from now on will often be be referred to as BLM)

As the emotional response from the black community and the BLM's organised response both came under the singular 'Black Lives Matter' banner, people found themselves wholeheartedly agreeing with the fact that (of course) black lives matter, but feeling threatened by the aggressive demands to submit to the whole BLM agenda.

Meet Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac. 

She along with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi founded the Black Lives Matter organisation in 2013. It's full name is Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation

BLM's website states,

BLM Global Network Foundation organizes protests against allegedly unjustified killings of African-Americans by police. For the majority who peacefully protest it is mostly about police violence.

Until mid-september 2020 their official website had three options. What We Believe, Our Leadership, Our Co-Founders. These were then removed. (as of mid-September)

“We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise),”

“We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice* that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.”

(*reproductive justice” is a euphemism for a woman’s alleged right to an abortion)

Fox News obtained a lesson plan from the Buffalo public school which,

"as well as including questionable history lessons, advances the political aims of the BLM organisation. They mentioned the example of one lesson plan that “teaches fourth and fifth graders to question the importance of their parents, of their own mothers and fathers. The lesson plan instructs teachers to discuss various … guiding principles with students, including so-called black villages that assist in the, and we’re quoting now, ‘disruption of western nuclear family dynamics and return to the collective village that takes care of each other.’”

Hebah Farrag, of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture interviewed Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac. in 2015. These are the some of the facts that came from that interview.

She is described as 'a queer polyamorous practitioner of Ifà, a religious tradition from Nigeria'.

She grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, but left the tradition at an early age. She watched her mother leave the fellowship several times. “At any given moment, the elders, which were all men, could decide if you were going to be disassociated from the fellowship in the Kingdom Hall,” she recalled. Such an environment left her with a deep sense of shame.

“By 12, 13, I knew that this was not the place for me, but I felt very connected to spirit. So the question became, what is the place for me?” she said. She turned to her great-grandmother, who is from the Choctaw and Blackfoot tribes, and talked to her about her great-grandfather, a medicine man. Her interest in indigenous spirituality led to Ifà.

Wikepedia describes Ifà as a Yoruba religion and system of divination. Its literary corpus is the Odu Ifá. Orunmila is identified as the Grand Priest, as he is who revealed divinity and prophecy to the world. Babalawos or Iyanifas use either the divining chain known as Opele, or the sacred palm or kola nuts called Ikin, on the wooden divination tray called Opon Ifá. Ifá divination rites provide an avenue of communication to the spiritual realm and the intent of one's destiny

She said, "When you are working with people who have been directly impacted by state violence and heavy policing in our communities, it is really important that there is a connection to the spirit world"

In this audio extract from a televised interview Patrisse confirmed that she and her two fellow leaders - especially Alicia Garza - are trained marxists.

Russia is a Marxist nation. So is the People's Republic of China. So is North Korea, Albania, Philippines, Vietnam and Cuba.

When Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died in 2016, the organization published an article on 'Medium' that declared “we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante,” and ended with “Fidel Vive!” (previously online here)

In another interview Patrisse said, “I was trained to believe in an international fight against U.S. imperialism.”

For Karl Marx, the goal was the conquest of political power by workers, the abolition of private property, and the eventual establishment of a classless and stateless communist society. Lenin wrote that it is “won and maintained by the use of violence”.

In 1848 Marx wrote 'The Communist Manisfesto' where he said, "The communists, the vanguard of the working class, would make up the section of society that would accomplish the abolition of private property and “raise the proletariat (working class) to the position of ruling class"

In October 2016 The Will County News published an article based on an Intelligence report on the aims of the Black Lives Movement by Everett Stern a US Senate and Intelligence director. I quote several extracts from the lengthy report.,

The BLM network, organized in 2013, is a front project of the Marxist-Leninist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). The BLM coordinators and co-founders are well known Marxist agitators that work towards the downfall of the United States government. BLM activists represent a significant threat to law abiding American citizens and law enforcement officers.

The outward slogan “Black Lives Matter” is a moving call-to-action, but it is not representative of the organizers’ true anti-American goals or the activity of outside networked groups that have adopted the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Black Lives Matter is being used as a conduit for extreme left-wing politics and a tool to publicize anti-Israeli activity. Private funders are using BLM members as pawns to stoke racial hatred and further their global agenda. Since 2013, BLM riots in American cities have caused loss of life, damage to property, disruptions of transportation systems, and have even required the use of National Guard troops. BLM poses a significant threat to American communities, civilians, and law enforcement officers

Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors Garza have all previously worked at and continue to be employed for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). The FRSO’s published goal is, “…a single, unified, multinational communist party,” ...In January 2015, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors joined other activists in a 10-day trip to the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. The BLM objective during the trip was to publicly draw a parallel between what they defined as Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and police violence against blacks in the United States.

This BLM socialist platform urges the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel and exhorts black institutions to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state. There’s no explanation for siding against a Jewish nation fighting terrorism except anti-semitism.

The events in America triggered similar protests elsewhere.

BLM marches in Britain were mostly peaceful but became very violent in London with over 100 arrests. The BLM (United Kingdom) GoFundMe page outlines similar extreme agendas to BLM (USA) It declares that it wishes to spend cash on developing and delivering strategies for the abolition of the police. It explains that the organisation intends to be ‘guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world’.

On Twitter, @BLMUK endorsed the complete closure of all Britain’s prisons and detention centres, saying they were ‘inhumane, overcrowded and unsafe [and] should be abolished.’

During Black Lives Matter month in the UK, British Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch spoke in the House of Commons of a “dangerous trend in race relations… that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression”. She said "schools that teach pupils that “white privilege” is an uncontested fact are breaking the law" and saying that the government does not want white children being taught about “white privilege and their inherited racial guilt”.

She said, “Any school which teaches these elements of political race theory as fact, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law,”

She added that schools have a statutory duty to remain politically impartial and should not openly support “the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter (BLM) group”.

So, while you can easily do your own research, I trust the point is made.

A genuine emotional reaction to another unwarranted African American death by police in America was easily hijacked, easily inflamed and easily driven by BLM's radical marxist agenda. Riots, violent assualts, harrasment, attemped murders and murder occurred. (As I write: Sept.2020)

A study showed that between May - September when 49 US states experienced riots that BLM was behind 91% of the riots. 7% of which turned violent. In that short time over $1 billion of damage was caused making it possibly the highest insurance payout in history.

The most serious inflaming of the black community is the appearance of a 2,500 armed black militia. Calling themselves the NFAC (The Not F****** Around Coalition)   Their leader 'Grandmaster Jay' said,

"We don't want to negotiate..We are and eye for an eye organistation..The solution is very simple, we follow a declaration of liberation, declaring every African descendant of the slave trade a political prisoner here in the United States. Then after that, the United States has a choice, they carve us out a piece of land out here - we'll take Texas and let us do our own thing - or exodus out of here and somewhere they will give us our own land to build our own nation"

More warlords are not the answer.

Leaders are needed who can inspire the rebuiding of strong family units. Leaders who can inspire educational hopes and ambitions which open the doors to equal opportunites in the market place.  Right up to the Presidency - the most powerful office in the world. Leaders who say no to drugs and guns and gangs. Leaders who model strength, dignity and integrity.

In the absence of such strong visionary leaders, anger, malice, rage and revenge will fester.

The majority of protestors (by far) are peaceful.

There is still a genuine work to be done, and many good hearts everywhere are willing to acknowledge that.

Peaceful dignified protesting makes the point very strongly and without creating divisive condemnation.

Martin Luther King's peaceful dignified protests in America won hearts and minds and got results.
As did William Wilberforce and John Newton's in Britain.

Jesus said, 'blessed are the peace makers'.

Thus, as Christians we need to seperate the aggresive spirit behind Black Lives Matter (BLM) from the genuine historical fears, pain, rejection and general de-valuing of the African American (and other western nations) black man.

And in humility we need to take ownership of the historical fact that the European and American 'white man' has (with many wonderful exceptions) dealt with his brother contrary to what God would demand.

And it's good to confess that.

God will not be offended.

Remember God's strong response to Miriam over her response to Moses' decision to marry an Ethiopian?

Black lives matter, yes.   Black Lives Matter, no.

It would be wrong to end this editorial with the focus only on the painful history of African-American/European slavery.

Slavery is still flourishing in many forms throughout the world.

Wikipedia states,

In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In the industrialised countries, human trafficking is the modern variety of slavery; in the unindustrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.

And of course the rapidly growing horror of sex trafficing.

Matthew 25:31- 46 is worth reading afresh occasionally to ensure our hearts are in tune with heart of God.

It would also be wrong to end this editorial with the impression that most hate crimes in America are against African Americans. Jews in America suffer from the most hate crimes. Then Muslims. Then Blacks.

And Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.

In this fallen, broken and wounded world we must always remember what Jesus has called us to do.

Luke 10:27

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and Love your neighbour as yourself.

The battle all around us is not against flesh and blood, but against the unseen, but very real, dark spiritual powers.

Ephesians 6:12
For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

The apostle John wrote,

1 John 5:19
We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Satan, the 'god of this world' - 'the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience' - seizes every opportunity to aggresively 'shame us' into bowing the knee.

Always using the aggresive binary attack.

If you are pro-life - you hate women!  If you believe marriage should be between a man and a woman - you're homophobic! If you won't bow the knee to Black Lives Matter - you're a racist!   Etc.

Love your neighbour as yourself, but don't submit your redeemed spirit to the spiritual rulers of this age.

There is only One we bow the knee to.

Philippians 2:9-11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

During the second world war very strong enemies were trying to make us submit to their tyranny. Many times it seemed those enemies would win. Moral was often low. Australian artist Clive Upton painted a picture of an allied soldier coming in to a bullet scarred church for a moment before returning to the battlefield. He removes his helmet and bows his knee to His Lord and Saviour. The picture is called 'We bow only to Thee' It hangs in the Canberra war museum. My Father kept many antiques, plus oil, watercolour and crayon pictures that he would buy at auctions. Most were stored in the attic of our terrace home. When I was a boy, around the age of ten, I discovered this picture in a broken glassless frame. I kept it for myself, and today, over sixty years later it hangs on the wall of my office even as I type this. And for several years, every morning as soon as I rise, I kneel and say, "I bow only to Thee"

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