Change The Story

The Lord has taken OneRace and the church in our city on a Journey into His heart on issues of race this year. The major themes on this Journey have centered on knowing, owning and changing the story for future generations. This is part three of a three-part blog series related to those major themes: Know the Story, Own the Story & Change the Story. 

Change The Story 

In the 400th year of Egyptian enslavement, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites: Moses.

In the 400th year of silence between testaments, the Lord raised up the ultimate deliverer: Jesus Christ, The Righteous. The One on whose shoulders a new government would be borne. Jesus, the progenitor of salvation. The One who brought reconciliation between God and man and made provision for brother and sister to be reconciled into one.

At this 400th year anniversary of chattel slavery entering the colonies, later to become the United States of America, we are believing for the Lord to raise up a new kind of deliverer: The Church. The Church standing on the Gospel, boldly declaring the truth therein, that God has created all people in His image and in his likeness. This means we all have inherent, equal worth. The Church rising, using her governmental authority as the ekklesia, proclaiming truth to the world. God, through his son Jesus, has provided a means for us to be reconciled to Him and to each other. It is indeed the Father’s desire for us to be one, a diverse beautiful family.

Know, Own, & Change 

In Knowing the Story of our collective history, this should drive us to lament the past 400 years of racial terror. Better understanding the church’s complicity with racism and supremacy, for the believer, should start a journey of accountability and reconciliation.  

Secondly, we must Own the Story. Lament should be the church’s response to Knowing the Story. This should produce contrition of heart and beg the question of individual and corporate responsibility, concluding with us on our knees in repentance. 

The final piece of this journey of transformation is Changing the Story. It was the prophet Amos who exclaimed to the nation of Israel and the nations more broadly what the Lord desires, righteousness and justice: 

Amos 5:21-24

21 “I hate, I despise your feasts,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them;

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

    I will not look upon them.

23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;

    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

24 But let justice roll down like waters,

    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Fruit-bearing Always Follows Repentance

The passage in Amos can be summed up in this simple statement: fruit-bearing always follows repentance… Thus, there Changing the Story! At the heart of the message to Change the Story are righteousness and justice. I believe the two are inextricably bound, but one, more often than not, is neglected by the church: justice. 

I love what our mentor and champion, Dr. John Perkins, says about this, “Justice is any act of reconciliation that restores any part of God’s creation back to its original intent, purpose or image. When I think about justice that way, it doesn’t surprise me at all that God loves it. It includes both the acts of social justice and the restorative justice found on the cross.”

We must pursue justice. Now, before we can move forward with this idea I think we need to provide some language and background. In Amos’ context, the nation of Israel, by in large, was oppressing the poor and the righteous. They were behaving in an immoral way, such that father and son were sleeping with the same woman and bowing down to the altar of other gods. God is always displeased when our behavior misaligns with his standard for holiness, and so it was with the nation of Israel. Thus, Amos forth tells of these evils and how the Lord disapproves and how He desires for the nation to practice holiness and justice, rectifying the wrongs this community was complicit in. 

Justice in Practice

This must be the same approach for us. We practice justice in multiple ways, but there are two I’d like to highlight:

1. We, like Amos, must become proclaimers of the Lord’s heart for justice. It is not enough to silently agree. I believe the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it this way, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.’  We must be vocal proponents for justice, which is synonymous with Changing the Story. 
2. We must practice justice. In our various spheres of influence, there is so much good and change we can affect. We must act justly. No one is rendered helpless in the fight for racial unity. No. We must leverage our positions for the greater good. Perhaps you lead a church. See to it that you create an environment that all nations are welcomed. Build a staff that is as diverse as the community in which you exist. This, too, is justice. It’s seeking to right the wrongs of the past. Another way that we can go out into the public square and do good, is by being great advocates in our respective communities, holding pastors, leaders, politicians, etc., accountable to the Biblical standard on any given topic. This is our fight; we must sign up to do our part.

Dr. John Perkins continues, “Justice is a process, and change takes time, but I believe we ought to dream big dreams and make big statements as we pursue those dreams.” Amos didn’t tell the people that God wants justice to trickle through their society. The New Living Translation uses the phrase “mighty flood of justice” to describe what God wants to see (Amos 5:24). One thing we learned in Mendenhall is that once floodwaters start rushing through a place, there’s no turning them back with human strength.” 

Together, we can Change the Story. Together, we can raise the prophetic conscious of the church back to the Father’s standards. But, we must all do our part. Change is never easy and should never be pursued lightly. The road is long and the fight is great. There are many social injustices that plague society and systemic issues that must be addressed. This can seem like an insurmountable struggle, but I’d like to remind you of the words of the apostle Paul: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Together, we can change the story for generations to come.