DISSIMILARITY OF LIKENESSES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about the song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

"Jesus loves the little children.

All the children of the world,

Red and yellow, black and white, 

They are precious in his sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world."

I thought about that song as I drove home from a lecture I delivered. I was listening to an audio book of Jame's Baldwin's The Fire Next Time in my car.  

As luck, or providence, would have it, Mr. Baldwin and I share similar testimonies.

He says that in his youth he really and truly believed that Jesus loves everybody, that God loves everybody.  

So did I. So do I. Even more, I believe God wants us to love everybody just as God loves everybody.  Even more, I believe God is love, so love is the underlying nature of reality.

Indeed, I grew up really believing the words in the song I recounted above.  

Here's another similarity. Mr. Baldwin believed that Jesus was white.  

So did I. How could I not? All the pictures of Jesus in our church, in my home, and in our family Bible showed a white Jesus.

However, something went wrong with Mr. Baldwin's understanding of Jesus. He could not comprehend if white Jesus loved everyone, if God loved everyone, then why were black folks cast down in the pit of white America?

Something went wrong with my understanding too. As I grew older, I wondered why Christians sang about Jesus who loved all the children of the world, but they stopped loving those children once they grew up, especially if they were not white.

They were not just unloved. They were hated.

I saw that hatred then. I see it still.

I have seen hatred blaze more since our president was elected. I saw hatred blaze in the fury of a burly, bearded white man on River Street who, when he saw Mr. Obama's name on my t-shirt, said to me, "You voted for that nigger?"

I see that hatred in online comments.  I see it in absurd objections to the good our president has been doing.  I see it in the insane, blind belief that he has done absolutely nothing good.

Not more than three weeks after Mr. Obama was elected, I read a letter to the editor in which the writer proclaimed that President Obama was the worst president in U.S. history.  

What had our president done in just a few days to be worse than the guy he followed? Then, it hit me. He breathed.

Now, if all these haters went to church, and they sang that song, how can they hate so much? How do you, a follower of Jesus, justify a heart filled with malice? Do Jesus and hatred dwell in our hearts as in a duplex? Do they share a wall?

I know, as did James Baldwin knew, that hatred. It can build up for a whole race of people, pass through generations of hate-taught children, and remain insanely blind to every dissimilar one's humanity.

I know it, but never as James Baldwin knew it, never the way he tells it. No race has ever hated me the way he knew hatred.

As one who would make Christ alive in this world, I know that more than ever, we need the kingdom to continue coming among us...everlastingly...so hearts without walls are shared.

Blessings...