Tone Deaf

I just watched a sermon on YouTube from a church I used to attend... and I'm heavily debating whether to post the link to it... and what I'm surprised about the sermon I just watched is how out of touch with the struggle African-Americans are going through. You ever watch a sermon and go "You know, that... that really doesn't help."? That's what happened to me. You know what? We as White American Christians cannot look at what happened to George Floyd and what happened in the riots and say "These are both evil." That's a load of crap! Can't we empathize with our African-American brothers and sisters? Can't we at least try to understand where all the anger is coming from? And if we got honest, it's not really about one African-American man being executed by the police. The real problem is that this sort of thing has happened many times and just keeps happening. We as the White Christian community in the United States need to be able to not come across as tone deaf. You know what? If White Americans were regularly dying in police custody, I bet that the sermon this person gave would have been radically different. We White people really have very little understanding of what it means to be in a constant, low-level amount of danger from the police. I'll admit, I can relate a little. Over the course of my life I've been pulled over by the police many times for low-level infractions. Either I didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign, or I didn't turn my turn signal on to return to the right lane (I was in the lane of oncoming traffic, so... I think it was a foregone conclusion that I was returning to the lane I was in, but... whatever) or I was speeding... the police have pulled me over many times over the course of my life, and I've come to hate the police because of it. However, I have NEVER felt like my life was in danger. I never felt that one wrong move and I could get killed. Don't get me wrong, I always took getting pulled over seriously, and I always endeavored to do what the officer said, but I never thought in the back of my mind "you know, if I say the wrong thing it could get me killed." See, that's where I can't understand the plight of the African American.

We need to get something straight. There's a reason why the protests happened. And while some of the rioting and looting is actually done by White Supremacists, trying to make Black people look bad, I'm fairly confident some of the rioting and looting is caused by angry African Americans. We got to understand something. We don't know jack about what it's like to live in this country in true fear of dying to the police. We don't know! We, as white people, have to at least try to empathize with what is going on in our country. You know, we can't really relate to the kind of frustration that Black people feel about life in this country. Our failure to empathize with the Black community does not help in bridging the divide between us and African-Americans. We've got to do better. We've got to try to understand what our Black brothers and sisters are going through. And for all the tone deaf sermons that happened this Sunday, I'm sorry... I wish I could get it through everyone's head that there is no moral equivalence between what happened when a police officer executed a man who had not been convicted of any crime and the riots that happened afterwards. We White American Christians can do better. We at least have to try. To my Black Christian brothers and sisters, I'm sorry about what happened to George Floyd, and all the other African-Americans killed in police custody and elsewhere for no apparent reason except that they were Black in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope, that the police get better at screening applicants for White Supremacy, in the hopes that White Supremacists will no longer get hired by the police. And may God grant you the ability to help us White Christians better understand your plight.