I honestly have so many emotions these days that one word or maybe even one language can encapsulate the way I feel about the not-so recent rise in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes. I don’t think this is a statement from me or an official, immovable stance I have because I am still deciding on my own thoughts. It’s more complex than “hating Asians is bad” and “I am a human being, isn’t that enough to treat me with dignity and respect?” and “Leave our vulnerable elderly people alone.”
The People Who Need To Hear This Will Not Listen:
I don’t know if it’s wrong of me to believe that a majority of the people who are capable (usually the white old men in power, police officers, government officials) of doing what needs to be done to bring justice don’t do what they are tasked to do. They will deal with people in a way that benefits their pockets, their racist, sexist, hateful ideologies, and they will help the people they believe are people.
We are coins jingling in their pockets.
Something for their enjoyment, pleasure, and use.
This goes for any groups that suffer: you are not in ownership of your personhood to them. It’s nothing new, sadly, and our pain of crying out ‘hear me, I am a person’ will fall on their deaf ears. If they are our hope, we will never meet justice but disappointment after disappointment as members of our community have their life choked out of them before our eyes.
As I hurt with my community, I read through Psalm 58. It’s a psalm of injustice done to us by people who have the power to stop our pain. Their hearts are full of evil and hands full of violence. They are liars. They will call someone’s hate crime a “bad day”. They will tell you to shut up, sit down, and go back on their shelves until they want to be hand-fed our blood, sweat, and tears. God, I pray that You would enact full judgement and wrath on these gods who make their thrones on the broken backs of Your people. We are not crying out to a void of silence, You are watching us, hearing us, crying with us, Lord, You know that it would be better for them to never be born than to face You.
To be honest, I struggle with the idea that ‘The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance’ he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked’ (v. 10). God is not only love, God is justice. God is love and justice perfectly enacted and embodied. I am encouraged to believe that it is God’s full right to punish the wicked rulers. As Maclaren, an English minister, said “If it is right in God to destroy, it cannot be wrong in His servants to rejoice that He does. Only they have to take heed that their emotion is untarnished by selfish gratulation, and is not untinged with solemn pity for those who were indeed doers of evil, but were themselves the greatest sufferers from their evil.” (Maclaren)
I am also called to not be happy at their destruction because of my own sense of justice being done. I am humbled to be glad in God’s will and glory being magnified through the destruction of evil. I am reminded to have pity for them because I also was in the same chains of judgement, only freed through the blood of Jesus, I did not earn this merit and I will never be able to earn it. So I pray that our leaders would allow God to change their hearts, repent before it is too late, but if they don’t, I will rejoice when God’s justice reigns over every living being including myself. It makes the gospel that much sweeter, more important for me to share, and it makes hope that much more real in the midst of the darkness we live in.
What is my own part here?
I can’t change anyone’s heart. I can raise awareness. I can make 50 Instagram story posts a day. I can donate to millions of programs and systems. I can and want to do great things that help my community and other communities gain their voices, but I need to start with myself before I go out.
My heart needs to be in the right space for work. God needs to be the One centering my justice, my anger, my hope, and my pain. There are no quick fixes, and if I do not have love, if I do not have God present and forefront on my mind in this fight, it is all worthless. It is selfish even if it’s for the empowerment of an abused group. It is prideful. It is messy and mixed in with my own agenda. It is not fueled by righteousness but by vengeance: blood for blood.
So, I want to humble myself before God and ask God to reveal the wrong motives I have, the racism within me towards others, and maybe the passivity I have too. I feel like I cannot own my anger, I feel like I have no right, and that I am helpless to change anything. Correct and readjust my mind and heart, God. Take the lead in our fight as our King.
I want to be outspoken when I see injustice enacted on others regardless of their identity or reason. I want to listen to the experiences and pain without my own bias. I want to correct my family members’ racist ideologies no matter the response I receive. I want to be a light in this darkness because that is God’s purpose in placing me here, in placing all of us here, it is a sign of His faithfulness that the remnant would remain in Him and bring heaven upon earth through His love, peace, and justice.
Still struggling
To God: I'm confused. I don't know my part in this fight. I hate that people are so evil, and I understand why You wanted to drown the Earth. I understand a small piece of how grieved You were to see the murders, rapes, rampages, and abuse of Your beloved creation. I hate that I am so weak, and that I am part of this evil too when I choose myself and the world. Help me understand who You are first and foremost so that I don't feel outmanned, outgunned, and overwhelmed. I have You. I am not alone. My community is not alone. Teach me to know Your heart and then what You want me to do to show Your heart to others.
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