Apparently, best-selling evangelical author, Max Lucado is writing editorials for Fox News. He recently wrote a piece entitled “What is the Answer to Racism: This profound yet simple promise.”
While I know that his numerous books have been helpful and encouraging to many Christian people, his advice on overcoming racism illustrates why evangelical thinking is a dry well when it comes to promoting the public good in society.
Here is an excerpt. I have a brief analysis at the bottom.
Recent racially charged incidents including the tragic death of George Floyd have stirred ensuing riots and torn open the rawest of wounds – racism. Judging a person according to skin color is an ancient sin. For that reason, God gave this ancient solution.
In the earliest words of Scripture, God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth” (Genesis 1:26).
Embedded in these words is the most wonderful of promises: God made us to reflect his image.
No one is a god except in his or her own delusion. But everyone carries some of the communicable attributes of God. Wisdom. Love. Grace. Kindness. A longing for eternity. We are made in his image.
There you have it in a nutshell. Evangelicalism’s basic problem — individualism.
And this individualism keeps evangelical leaders speechless on matters of systemic evil, problems that require changes in such things as law, government, and public policy.
Lucado invites his readers to believe in Christ — and I hope many will — as if that is all that needs to happen for the world to be a better place. But calling more individuals to repent and convert offers nothing to relieve the racial distress facing black communities today. Such global transformation won’t happen until Jesus returns.
Besides, a good number of people in the African-American community are already in Christian churches looking for Jesus to come. And they still can’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods when the police drive by.
What does Lucado have to say to them? “Keep praying for the cops to repent so they’ll quit choking your husbands to death”?
I don’t think so.
Revving up the evangelistic engines is great for addressing personal salvation more broadly — something every church should do — but waiting for society to change one soul at a time is a counsel of despair for people suffering beneath a corrupt system of racial discrimination right now.
Besides, a good many of the people who serve the corrupted ends of our corrupted systems of government and policing already profess their Christian faith even as they dutifully play their assigned role in the rotten machine of systemic discrimination.
I wonder how many of the cops who are mistreating demonstrators across this country would tell Mr. Lucado that they have already “asked Jesus into their heart”? I’d wager a good number of them.
Life is not that simple.
When society needs both/and solutions to its problems, too many evangelicals offer nothing but one-sided answers to complicated questions. And this is our great failure. It is a failure of spiritual maturity, a failure of intellect, a failure of compassion, a failure of cultural acuity, and a pathetic expression of down-right laziness.
