Why #BlackLivesMatter Is The Biblical Thing To Say
I am a white Christian. And I proclaim that #BlackLivesMatter.
And here’s the thing: I don’t say this statement in spite of being Christian, but because of it.
I don’t even say it to be hip, or liberal, or even a “political” Christian. I say “#BlackLivesMatter” because it’s the biblical thing to say.
It started millennia ago, when a fledgling people were overrun by their militarily-superior neighbors, and forced to walk the long road into exile. Everything they had ever known was being ripped from them, and their tenuous hold on reality began to slip. They were forced to ask existential questions: Why? What happened? Who are we now? Where is our God?
Then they began to do what human beings have done since human beings first emerged from the depths of ancient Africa — they told stories.
These stories — before they ever made it into the collection of stories we know today as the “Holy Bible” — focused on the epic and the minute. They were stories of origins and disasters; of sibling rivalries and immense battles; of sacred promises and stunning love.
And, more than anything else, they were stories of a God who took their side.
It was woven into the fabric of their stories from the very beginning. The first chapter of Genesis tells a story of God creating the cosmos, and human beings were the pinnacle of that epic work — so exquisite that after this crowning achievement, the Divine One had to take a well-deserved break.
Barely a chapter goes by before we see this God take another stand. When an angry kid murders his brother in cold blood, God doesn’t strike him down with divine vengeance — God says his life matters.
God sticks up for another murderer in the foundational story of liberation in the biblical narrative: Exodus.
After flying into a rage and killing a slavedriver, Moses tries to run away from his lie of a life — but the Divine finds him and reveals a Name that was so radical, it’s not even pronounceable.
It has several translations from the enigmatic Hebrew, but one of them sticks out: I will do what I will do. Namely, this action is to tell Moses that Israelite lives matter. They matter so much that God has “clearly seen my people oppressed in Egypt,”† and God will do something about it.
This unique divine character continues throughout the narratives (especially the Torah) that were told, collected, and eventually written down by a people spending generations in exile in present-day Iraq.
God chooses the runt of the litter, saying that among all the children of a local sheepherder, David’s life mattered.
God takes the side of Ruth, a divorced homeless foreigner — and the storytellers firmly placed her within a lineage that reached through the celebrated King David to another king.
God sticks with Job, even after he screams out against the Divine in ways that would leave many modern Christians shuddering at his lack of proper piety.
The storytellers of another marginalized woman, Esther, focus on her using the small amount of privilege she has to save an oppressed people, arguing forcefully that their lives mattered. At one point, her uncle argues for his own life, pointedly warning her that “if you don’t speak up at this very important time,”˚ this people would be exterminated by those with power and influence.
The uncompromising words of the biblical prophets who rail against those with wealth and power are not just some out-there, view — as voices in the prophetic tradition, they speak on behalf of God herself. And they say, unequivocally and unapologetically: marginalized lives matter.
When South African philosopher and activist Steve Biko started the Black Consciousness Movement, affirming, among other things, that black is beautiful, it had its word-for-word corollary in the Bible itself: the sublimely poetic Song of Songs. “I am black and beautiful,” the female voice proudly announces, “like the curtains of Solomon.”•
Thus, in a real way, to be “bible-believing,” as many churches across the American landscape proclaim, is to say without hesitation that black lives matter.
When Jesus of Nazareth — a brown-skinned, marginalized, unemployed revolutionary scraping by in an occupied territory — stood up to inaugurate his public ministry, he specifically chose a piece of ancient scripture that was the very definition of radical.
Jesus’ life continues the work of the Hebrew scriptures — stories he knew by heart as a devout, 1st-century Palestinian Jew — as he refuses to shut up about the poor, the lame, the outcast, the widow…those on the margins. He says, through word and deed, that their lives matter.
His hometown crowd loves his public sermon (according to Luke’s account), until he names that God’s radical grace extends to those we are sure don’t deserve it, and are offended that they’re even named in the first place, in worship of all places, thank you very much. So, they try to throw him off a cliff.
This is just the beginning of Jesus proclaiming that those whose lives have never mattered before do now. It’s also just the beginning of people getting righteously pissed off whenever they hear it from this so-called prophet’s big mouth.
Throwing a party? Invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. Trying to store up more and more stuff for yourself? Tonight, your very life is being demanded of you. Eating well and enjoying your riches? Let me tell you a story about a rich man and a poor one who lay suffering at his gate. Hating on and oppressing those disgusting Samaritans? I’ll keep including them in ways that offend your pious sensibilities. Rich because you think you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, but really defrauded the poor among you? Woe, woe, woe to you. Think you’re good to go because you’ve followed the Law, and now you want to follow me? You lack one thing — dismiss all those privileges first.∞
But, Christians might find themselves asking, doesn’t Jesus/God love everyone? Don’t all lives matter? And the answer is of course.
And.
Saying that black lives matter isn’t saying that white lives don’t — just as when Jesus says that poor lives matter, he’s not saying that rich lives don’t.
What Jesus recognizes is that those with power, privilege, and wealth already matter in their time and place. What Jesus is interested in doing, as he named in his first public sermon (by cherrypicking from the biblical prophet Isaiah), is to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to liberate the oppressed.§
This doesn’t mean that the rich, the free, the seeing, and the oppressors are not also loved by Jesus.
It just means that this radical good news doesn’t always sound good to everyone who hears it.
It’s still good, of course. We simply need to understand the meaning of the word good.
It might take some imagination, but it’s time for white Christians to recognize God’s good news for those on the margins, and say, unapologetically, #BlackLivesMatter.
—
† Exodus 3:7, CEB
˚Esther 4:14, CEB
•Song of Songs 1:5, NRSV
∞Luke 14:7–12 & 14:15–24; 12:13–21; 16:19–31; 10:25–37 & 17:11–19; 6:24–26; 18:18–25 (respectively), NRSV
§Luke 4:18 (referencing Isaiah 61:1–2), CEB
