Race and Grace in a Broken World

UPDATE 12/4/2014: Last night was our first Chi Alpha gath­er­ing since the Fer­gu­son non-indict­ment — the same day as the NYC non-indict­ment. As a pre­lude to the ser­mon, I gave a more com­pre­hen­sive take on race and the gospel. If you’re inter­est­ed, check out the first few min­utes of xastanford.org/sermons?sermon_id=52

I emailed this to the stu­dents in my min­istry ear­li­er today and they seemed to find it help­ful. I share it in the hope that it will also prove use­ful to you.

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I know many of us are reflect­ing on racism and jus­tice this week. As a fol­low­er of Jesus, I encour­age you to remem­ber that the jour­ney Chris­tians are on is a jour­ney along­side “a great mul­ti­tude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, peo­ple and lan­guage.”

Why should we remem­ber that fact? Because it reminds us that racial uni­ty is one of the out­comes of the gospel. Christ brings peo­ple togeth­er by draw­ing them to Him­self.

So I urge you to think in a Chris­t­ian way about these issues. Here are some resources to stim­u­late you.

IF YOU WANT TO ENGAGE WITH SOMETHING BRIEF

If you are won­der­ing where the church has been in the midst of all of this, the answer is front and cen­ter. I men­tion this because it is fre­quent­ly over­looked:
http://www.getreligion.org/getre­li­gion/2014/11/25/what-role-did-cler­gy-play-dur­ing-fer­gu­son-chaos-if-you-looked-for-them-they-were-there

Thabiti Anyab­wile has some use­ful things to say in this eight minute video. He is speak­ing before the grand jury’s deci­sion was revealed. If you want to read more of him, he blogs at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/.

White Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar will find Ed Stet­zer’s thoughts help­ful —  http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/november/deci­sion-in-fer­gu­son-how-should-evan­gel­i­cals-respond.html

IF YOU WANT TO DIG DEEP

If you have more time this Thanks­giv­ing break and want to go beyond read­ing an arti­cle or two, pick one of these books and dive in:

• Blood­lines: Race, Cross, and the Chris­t­ian (John Piper) [like many (all?) of Piper’s books it is free on his web­site as a PDF — http://www.desiringgod.org/books/bloodlines )
• From Every Peo­ple and Nation: A Bib­li­cal The­ol­o­gy of Race (J. Daniel Hays)
• Divid­ed by Faith: Evan­gel­i­cal Reli­gion and the Prob­lem of Race in Amer­i­ca (Emer­son and Smith) [this book is quite crit­i­cal of the church — it is painful but help­ful read­ing]

May you have a blessed Thanks­giv­ing, and may the Lord con­tin­ue to heal this bro­ken world.