Proactive, Not Reactive
by Luke McConnell
Over the past few months, this space has been filled with awareness and calls to action on racial issues. Last week, Makenzie wrote an inspiring take on how we are to deal with racism as believers. Last month I wrote about the need to ensure our children have a healthy view of race. Carisa wrote a moving piece about the racial injustices within our criminal justice system. And back in June, Willie gave us the perspective of an African American man, and how we can change for the better.
If you haven’t read any of those articles, I highly encourage you to do so.
I’ve been so encouraged by our staff’s response to the issues facing our country, particularly because each of us has spoken or written about this issue from different experiences or areas of expertise. I hope you have taken notice and spent some quality time grappling with this, searching your heart for how you can change and address this issue in your own life.
If you’re becoming tired of seeing racially-focused articles each week, I’d encourage you to look in the mirror and ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. Is it because you don’t think you have an issue with racism? Is it because you don’t think there’s a racial problem in our country?
The fact is there is a major racism problem in our country, and there is a lot of work to do. A major problem is our passivity. Reminders of this are not unnecessary and are in fact, very much needed.
I recently read the book titled Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It details his formation of the Equal Justice Initiative around the story of a client who was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. It speaks to the problem of mass incarceration as well. At the end of the book, I felt more educated about some of the issues plaguing our justice system.
And then I thought, “Why wasn’t I seeking this information out before?”
Why have we as believers become reactive to injustice instead of proactive? The Bible doesn’t portray Christianity as a reactive religion. Jesus routinely went straight to those on the fringes of society. He didn’t need to be made aware of the problems—he sought them out in the everyday societal norms.
We see the pattern continue in the early church. In Acts 6, the disciples recognized a problem of injustice developing with widows in the food line and immediately appointed people to address the issue. Proactive, not reactive.
Waiting around for society to practically be screaming at the top of its collective lungs about injustice before we take action is not the way we should live as believers. There are systems in society set up for scrutinization of how fairly they serve the public. Clearly, our justice system fails to do that. I also read an article last week about a study that showed home appraisals for African American families to be 23 percent lower on average than a similarly-sized home of a white family. There is injustice in housing. We could show this on many different levels.
What I’m saying is we shouldn’t wait on a license to care. By definition, believers care about these things. Does it take work to find out the criminal justice system is extremely flawed? Yes, it does. But that’s no reason to sit back and wait on the cries of injustice to reach our ears before we act. We should learn about these issues well before the call for action becomes a cry.
If “I just didn’t know,” or “I wasn’t aware,” were acceptable excuses, we wouldn’t need the warning Jesus gave in Matthew 25 when he taught the parable of the sheep and the goats. Clearly, lack of awareness will not be tolerated as an excuse when we stand before Jesus.
Are there situations as believers when we can only react? Absolutely. For example, I fully anticipate Whiz Kids will shed light on a whole host of issues we can address as a church. The kids we will be reaching will come from families that have experienced a lot of poverty and trauma. It’s impossible to anticipate those needs, so we act on them once we become aware they exist. I’m very excited to see how our church fills those needs as we hear about them through this ministry!
Church, let’s be proactive and not reactive in our fight against injustice. Let’s not act because society told us to. Let’s seek out injustice and act against it because our identity in Christ demands it.
Author Bio
Luke serves as the Cube Director at Council Road. He previously worked at Channel 9 as a sports writer and an account executive. He also serves as the play-by-play voice for Southern Nazarene athletics. He graduated from OU in 2011. Luke and his wife, Mary, have been members at Council Road since 2012. They have two-year-old twin boys, Jackson and Cameron. Mary teaches third grade at Wiley Post Elementary. They also serve in the Student Ministry and help lead a home group.