Humans in the Hands of a Silent God

Any more, as I hear about the bad and violent actions people take against other people, I shudder.

I held onto a naivete about how “good” people – i.e., those who believe in God – were somehow better, that their relationship with God would guide their feet and their actions. They would see other human beings as just that – human beings – and treat them as they would want to be treated. For Christians that principle is actually in the Bible: “In everything …do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

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But it seems that Christians, and others who have professed a belief in God, have ignored that precept in far too many instances. My awareness of this was probably brewing throughout my youth when I watched some of my Christian friends be mean to others, but it reached a peak when I read about one Sam Bowers.

In the 60s, Bowers was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and he was also the leader of the Mississippi White Knights, a secret division of the KKK. In the 60s, the Mississippi White Knights claimed a membership of over 10,000. The FBI attributed nine murders and 300 beatings, burnings, and bombings to this group led by Bowers. He was the mastermind behind the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964 – Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman – and led the group in 1966 in the killing of Vernon Dahmer, a Black man who helped register Black people to vote. (https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/).

What got to me is that Bowers was a devout Christian. At the time I learned this I did not know – and did not know there could be – a Christianity without Christ and without God. According to reporter Stuart Wexler, Bowers, as well as many others, “embraced a Godless ideology and relinquished God’s grace.” Because of his Christ-less Christianity, he enveloped and embraced parts of the practice of Christianity with which he was familiar, including prayer and fasting – but he led people to pray and fast as they prepared to conduct murderous raids on Black people in the South. (Charles Marsh: God’s Long Summer)

Brutal violence carried out by humans who profess to follow God against other humans is not a rarity. From street murders to domestic violence, to wars – humans murder and maim others and still profess a belief in God. The spiritualist Howard Thurman, noting the ferocity of the hatred and violence carried out during war wrote, “During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even as it has to masquerade under the guise of patriotism.”

people gathering on street during nighttime — Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

It is because of the human capacity to feel and act upon hatred that resides in the human spirit that violence is so common and so brutal. I cannot understand how Europeans who said they loved God were able to carry out genocide of non-white people in the lands they “discovered.” I cannot understand, again, how religious, church-going people were able to brutalize the Congolese under the direction of King Leopold II of Belgium and think nothing of it, nor can I understand how the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II is still regarded as an act of heroism. Neither can I understand how religious people seem to take as a matter of fact – of righteous fact, if the truth be told – the genocide of Native Americans in this country, and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, and I cannot understand why the world deems it to be OK for the Israeli government to be destroying the Palestinians en masse, when it is Hamas they are seeking to annihilate as a result of that group’s terrorist attack on innocent Israelis.

The number of people killed because of violence is staggering. It is estimated that 100,000 Native Americans were forced to walk the Trail of Tears and that about 15,000 of them died. Between 1500 and 1866, it is estimated that 12.5 million Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas and that about 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage. Data shows that about 6,500 Africans and African Americans died due to lynching carried out between 1865 and 1950, and during the Civil War, 620,000 were killed. In World War I, 21 million people lost their lives, including over 9 million military personnel. In World War II, 38 million people were killed, and in the Vietnam War, 3.8 million died. I could go on, but I think the point has been made.

I cannot believe that any of this is OK with God, yet God lets it happen. In our creation, God apparently included a spiritual path toward hatred and violence, a path that allowed us to think that hating and killing what God had created was OK. To me, that means our creation is or was flawed – if we are to believe that our assignment in life is to follow God. If it is OK with God that people bypass the religion taught to us that said God is good and that God requires us to live in harmony with each other, then there is something wrong. We are – or people like me are – looking for a God that does not exist.

Please understand: I am not saying that looking for a God of community and love is the only way to practice religion, nor am I saying that anyone who is looking for that kind of God is successful in meeting that criterion all of the time. We fail miserably as humans. But it seems that a belief in a God that disparages evil and hatred of others, and outright violence – including murder – is a problem. I yearn for a divine intervention in which God says to those who live in violence and hatred “Enough!” I yearn for a God who sits heavily on the shoulders and in the hearts of those who profess belief.

God’s silence in the light of the inhumanity we as humans practice against each other is troubling, more so because those who have no trouble fighting against, taking away the rights of, or murdering those whom they dislike for one reason or another profess belief in that God.

Sam Bowers had prayer and fasting for his murderous lynching crews; people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, stopped while in the Congress building to lift holy hands and pray. In the 18th century, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I would challenge Edwards and say we are humans in the hands of a silent God, one who is permissive of the evil we are prone to practice against each other.

Any more, as I read and study the violence we perpetrate against others, I shudder. My God is silent and unavailable or unwilling to stop our destruction of each other – actions that we take based on hatred, greed, or the lust for power – or of all of those issues. Why the silence, God? Why?

A candid observation…

On Michael Brown and Toni Morrison

When I was a child, I would cry when I was called names. It didn’t seem like anyone else was getting the same treatment, but in victim mode, one seldom sees anyone else’s pain and misery but their own. Continue reading “On Michael Brown and Toni Morrison” →

The Definition of Strength

It has always seemed to me that the common definition of strength is not what it really is.

Many Americans this morning are celebrating that force is being used in the war-torn Middle East. The missiles fired on Syria were supposedly dropped because the administration, specifically, the president, were horrified by images of people who had been hit with a deadly gas.

Then, the Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) was dropped in Afghanistan, killing a some members of ISIS.

Many Americans are rejoicing. They are saying that the moves made by the administration show “strength.” People are saying, “we are back in the game again.”

The game? What …game? Is it really a game that we seem to be on the brink of a deadly war?

Diplomacy, I guess, is a punk technique. In the presence of ISIS, the only way to handle this is to “bomb the —- out of them.” The way of the Empire is to engage in war, to force change by killing innocent people and destroying other countries.

People have been absolutely incensed with former President Obama for not engaging in war. It made him and the United States look weak, they say.

But this new president – this is the Popeye against the Brutus called terrorism. He really believes he can destroy ISIS with bombs.

Meanwhile, he is hurting his own people by proposing budget cuts that affect programs that help the poor, the elderly, and children.

It doesn’t matter, though. He does not see the irony of him and his administration being outraged about Syrians treated badly by their government while his own government is treating his own people badly, under the sanction of the law.

All that matters is that he is showing “strength” in a conflict which seemingly has no end. Americans will run to participate in a war against an idea, and in a war which has such deep roots that not even the strongest nuclear weapon would be effective.

Is it arrogance or hubris that makes a nation “strong?” That seems to be the message. In a world in which so many people profess to believe in Christianity, which touts the formation and preservation of community, the basic Christian message seems to be disposable.

Refraining from force is perceived as being weak. The strong do all they can to maintain power, a mindset which inevitably causes the less fortunate (or “weak”) to be trampled upon. The deployment of force is held more dear than is the exercise of compassion and restraint.

So, this American president is standing on a platform, beating his chest, bragging about his strength. He is Popeye; his “spinach” is the belief that using force means or defines that very strength.

Meanwhile, the huddled masses, here and around the world, will be trounced upon, and nobody seems to care.

So much for strength.

A candid observation …

America Is Not Safe

I have waited to write anything as I have watched the developments in the story of the horrific shooting in Oregon because I had to think.

I had to think, to wonder, what is going on in America, and what I came up with is that America is not safe anymore.

I had been thinking that for a while. I am no longer comfortable going into movie theaters or any public venues, really. When I drive I am really conscious of using my turn signal and watching my speed — which I always did, but with more intentionality now. I think of Sandra Bland, now dead, after she was arrested for <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/us/texas-sandra-bland-arrest/” target=”_hplink”>allegedly not using her turn signal</a>. I think of saying things, writing things, to let people know that if I end up dead in someone’s jail cell, that I did not kill myself. I take time to pay attention to the things I warned my son to take note of when he began driving, because I was afraid for him as a black man in America, a young, brilliant, handsome black man in America whose life is never safe here.

America is not safe — not because of international terrorism or ISIS, although ISIS as a force exists. America is not safe — not because of black on black crime. Yes, we in the black community need to be concerned with the destruction of black lives wherever and however it happens, including in our own communities. The one thing GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said that I agree with is that all black lives matter. There is no doubting that the destruction of black lives occurs in black communities.

But that is not why America is not safe. Black people for the most part do not target and kill white people. Black people, most often go after other black people. Back on black crime is not the reason America is not safe. America is not safe because of white on white crime, because of this tendency of mostly young white men, angry with the world, or angry at their circumstances, and definitely angry at the government, think the way to handle their anger is to go into public spaces and just shoot, or kill masses of people in whatever way they can.

I remember thinking how unsafe America was when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I was angry at them for targeting a building with innocent people — including babies — inside. It’s OK to be angry with the government; that is part of being a citizen in a country, but to just bomb a public space, or to just go into a public space and begin randomly shooting, is a punk way to handle the anger. It is a punk way and it is despicable and it is cowardly.

The coverage of the shooting in Oregon has rung hollow for me. Our politicians are more concerned with holding onto an illogical insistence that “common sense gun laws” will keep people from owning guns. Pro-gun advocates insist that more people having guns will reduce gun violence and deaths from gun violence. It is insane and illogical reasoning, borne out of a stubborn resistance to “big government.

The sheriff of Douglas County, John Hanlin, does not believe there should be any kind of gun control and even suggested that in the Sandy Hook situation, where 20 <em>children</em> were left dead, might be a conspiracy. He posted a piece on YouTube after that incident, saying that “there has been a lot of deception surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting.” He suggested that the grieving parents might be “crisis actors.”

This, from a “law enforcement” officer.

There has been much talk about these young men, mostly white, who go into public spaces and gun people down. They are bad people, the experts say. They are mentally ill.

Perhaps. But the point has been made that people who are mentally ill are more likely to kill themselves than others for the most part. And, the case was made by President Obama, that in other modern countries there are just as many young men who are mentally ill, but we don’t hear about them gunning people down like they do here.

Attempts to explain the behavior of the mass shooters have relied as well on profiles, saying they are angry. Lots of people are angry. They don’t mow people down.

No, there’s something else going on. America’s culture is one of violence; the people from the Mayflower came into this new land mowing people down, specifically the Native Americans who were already here. We are a violent society. One of our core American beliefs is that the way to handle anger and to acquire and keep control of others is by and with violence. Cowboys were violent. Those who settled the West were violent. The debate over slavery was handled with a horror called the Civil War.

The answer, actually, to Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaign of non-violence, was violence. White people actually said that his non-violent campaign was inspiring and forcing violence in return.

America, with its core value of violence, is not safe. These young men, staunch supporters of the Second Amendment, are good, wholesome American citizens, with American values.

That’s what’s scary, and it’s at least one reason why America is not safe.

Fear Produced Ferguson Disturbance

Police are allowed to use deadly force if they are ‘in fear for their lives.” I get that. It makes sense…

Except that when it comes to black people, it seems like police are always in fear for their lives.

Fear of black people is nothing new. Time magazine calls it “Negrophobia,” and defines it as “the unjustified fear of black people.” (http://time.com/3207307/negrophobia-michael-brown-eric-garner-and-americas-fear-of-black-people/) The article talks about phobias in general; they are “extreme aversions,” and they can cause impulsive, irrational, behavior. When I was a child, I had a phobia about bees; if I saw one, I ran. If one, God forbid, was in my car, I was prone to want to stop the car wherever it was and get out and run. My daughter has a phobia about spiders. If she even thinks she sees one, she will grab whatever is near to spray on it and will spray it until it drowns. She even bought a special vacuum cleaner which she kept near her, plugged in and ready to go, so that if she saw a spider, no matter how small, she could get her vacuum cleaner out and get rid of it.

It seems that many white people have…that kind of unnatural, unjustified fear of black people. A friend of mine said he got onto an elevator which already had a passenger – a white woman. As soon as he got on, he said, he could see her tense up. He stayed on the other side of the elevator, so as to try to reduce her discomfort. When the elevator door opened, she darted out …only to run smack into another black man who was getting on. My friend said he thought she was going to faint. Negrophobia. We who are Negroes have seen it and felt it.

In the recent debacle in Ferguson, it felt like fear was running the agenda. Those police officers, wrapped, as they were in riot gear and equipped with military weapons, were afraid. All they saw was a sea of black faces, people whom they do not really regard as people, people whom they have not cared to try to get to know. They saw people who, they believe, are mere brutes, objects, not people, devoid of feeling, emotion and, frankly, human worth. What I saw was a group of frightened white people ready to kill “the enemy,” i.e., black people. It didn’t matter that most of them did not loot and were not armed. They were part of the “enemy camp,” to be feared as much as an Iraqi soldier might be feared in the war over there.

Brandon Hill, the author of the article in Time, wrote, “Phobic people hyperbolize a threat that is not actually present, and trip themselves into aggression.” Police, mostly white, have been given a steady dose of “black people are bad people,” as has been the general public. Many white people still, in the 21st century, have not met and do not know any black people. All they have is the myths, the sound bites and the media depiction of black people as animals, aberrant entities in this nation who, frankly, are bringing the country down. Bill O’Reilly said that the problems with black people come from “the culture.” He is, of course, inferring that black culture is deficient in and of itself, not allowing one iota for the impact of racism, poverty and general oppression on the lives of so many African-Americans. He obviously does not know the culture of this people which has sustained and strengthened them as they have fought racism in every aspect of their lives. He does not know, or care about, black fathers and mothers who work two and three jobs to sustain their families. He does not know about how central faith and God is to this people who have been discarded by the country they helped build. He does not know this culture which teaches a crazy lesson that people are to forgive their oppressors, because that is a central tenet of Christianity.

When my son was little, he was unbelievably cute, and people, white and black, would stop me and comment on the same. I found myself resenting the compliment coming from white people, though, because I knew that as he grew, he wouldn’t be so cute. He would be just another black man. He is now a strapping 6’4″ and has fallen into the category of those to be feared; as such, he is at risk of being approached by and harassed by a Negrophobe.

Fear caused the debacle in Ferguson, not the protesting people. A few bad apples looted, feeding into the “bad Negro” motif Americans have embraced, but the debacle was not caused by the looters. The debacle was caused by frightened white police officers with too much power and too many military-grade weapons. Had the officers treated the protestors like human beings, and not like “f***ing animals” the outcome, the response would have been different.

I know that because I know “the culture.”

If more white people knew the culture, they’d be able to replace the fear with respect …and that would create an entirely different vibe between whites and blacks.

I don’t think the fear will disappear any time soon, though. Negrophobia is an American malady which is probably here to stay…

A candid observation …