Pity the Poor Billionaire

Dear Evangelicals:

The first picture on the left was painted by American artist and icon, Norman Rockwell. It depicts young Ruby Bridges being escorted by federal marshals to her first day at an all-white school in Louisiana.

The second picture was tweeted by Bree Newsome, who became a national hero when she climbed the flagpole in front of the statehouse in South Carolina, and removed the Confederate flag. It is an editorial cartoon by Glenn McCoy of the Belleville News Democrat. It depicts Betsy DeVos, a white, adult billionaire, and the recently-confirmed Secretary of Education, imagining her to be the victim of persecution as terrifying as that experienced by little Ruby Bridges.

The first word that came to my mind was one you evangelicals generally apply to the American and allegedly-unbelieving Left -- "whiny".

Blacks who dared to claim rights equal to those of whites were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and murdered. Their homes and churches were burned and bombed. To you, a mere difference of opinion and the healthy, peaceful exercise of dissenters' Constitutional rights is just as oppressive and terrifying.

Wow.

That sickening realization reminded me of the quote at left. The truth is, you, and most other political and social conservatives, don't really believe that the oppressed people of this country are all that oppressed. You call them "whiny" in the wildly-dysfunctional belief that they're exaggerating, or worse, faking altogether.

No.

It's way past time that you yanked the beam out of your own eye instead of bellowing about the speck in someone else's.

A History of White Delusion

A History of White Delusion

Dear Evangelicals:

At left is Dr. Brian Williams, the Dallas, Texas trauma surgeon who fought valiantly to save the lives of the police officers who were gunned down in Dallas just a couple of weeks ago.

Dr. Williams is a man who pays the tab for police in restaurants on a regular basis, even though, during so-called routine traffic stops, he is spread-eagled on his car, and otherwise abused. But all you can talk about is how you're stifled by affirmative action. In fact, fully half of you say that white discrimination is a huge problem.

The statistics cited in this article show that the opposite is true, that blacks in this country face overwhelming prejudice, despite affirmative action, despite Barack Obama's history-making presidency, despite the fact that the Bible commands Christians to weep with those who weep, and refuse to set our minds on high things, like our "rights".

And all you can do is complain about how bad you have it. Not too Christlike, is it?

Have you really lost sight of what Christ's sacrifice means to you -- if you ever knew in the first place?

For those who still have a dim memory of the cataclysmic changes His sacrifice worked in your lives, is it really so hard to imagine how you could change the lives of black folks for the better by your own sacrifice? Is it really so hard to imagine that that's what Jesus meant by dying -- and coming back to life?

There's a message in there somewhere, evangelicals, if you'd only hear it.