One Nation (part two)

That (part one) is the lesson I had been shown in my study of the Bible. And that was the lesson I was teaching my Confirmation Class in my dream. It was at this point that two strange things happened. First, the 8th graders were suddenly adults. And second, I started teaching them something I had never thought of before. I began telling the class that here in America, we have people from every nation on earth. God has formed this country for the exact opposite purpose he had in Egypt with the Israelites. We have been established to learn how to live as “One Nation Under God” with love and honor, peace and justice, mercy and forgiveness, for every person of every nation on the earth.

Now George Floyd’s murder seems like ages ago, and yesterday at once. We have seen civil unrest ranging from peaceful protests to angry, destructive mobs. Most of the protestors seem to be saying the same thing: stop racism.

And this is just the latest flashpoint. Lest anyone think this is an isolated incident, we have the Ahmaud Arbery murder, who was apparently targeted for “jogging while black”. Or look up the near-fatal beating of Daquan Jones in Des Moines on May 19 this year. And the Coopers, the one white woman calling the police on the black man with the same last name who had the nerve to tell her to obey the leash laws she was flouting in Central Park, New York. That is at least four incidents in the space of a month that are varying degrees of horrifying. That is not counting the innumerable instances that could have turned much uglier. A friend of mine told me how her brother rear-ended a car at a stop light in South Carolina recently. He got out of the car, as did the African American man he had hit. A policeman happened to be nearby and demanded of the black man how fast he had been driving in reverse when he hit the white man’s car. The policeman then told my friend’s brother to drive away or he would issue a summons.

This is not to look past the thousands of incidents involving other races. Asian-Americans are being particularly targeted these days because of some people’s repeated use of the term “Chinese virus”. Jews are being targeted by neo-Nazis. There seem to be more KKK marches than at any point I can remember in my lifetime. Hate seems to be rising.

I don’t know what to do about my dream. But I can no longer be silent about it. The rapper Lacrae said recently that “we are all image-bearers”, that is, we are each made in God’s image. And we are each made by God, knit together in our mothers’ wombs.

Considering that, doesn’t it need to start with loving our neighbors?