Bob Marley once sang, “They say the sun shines for all but in some people world, it never shine at all.” Over the last few months, particularly in light of the genocide in Gaza, I keep thinking about a loud strand of American Christianity that is obsessed with a very particular view of the end times. This understanding of the “end times” is characterized by a specific set of circumstances they believe will happen to them, and as this is largely held in white church spaces, this narrow definition creates a kind of spectre that looks for signs of oppression in the midst of a comfortable life. It is unknown to them, or—even more ironically—ignored that the signs they seek are experienced by marginalized people and people in the Global South everyday.
They imagine that their lives will be oppressed by an antichrist who controls their movement with no consideration of the open air prison that Gaza was before its devastation nor the redlining and housing discrimination that keeps their neighborhoods homogenous. They imagine a time where food will be scarce with no consideration of food apartheid in our own nation or the Gazan children who subsist on bread made with animal fodder. Whatever changes in society that they do not agree with–even though most of these issues have no impact on them personally–become signs of impending doom and the rise of a new world order that seeks to crush all that do not conform. But what if that beast already exists? What about the people who already live in the midst of doom? What about the people whose everyday experiences have already been reduced to survival? How do those with privileged social locations reconcile their fearful eschatology with the everyday experiences of people in Congo, Haiti, and Palestine?
The great Bob Marley sang “so much has been said and so little has been done. They still killing the people and having lots of fun. They just want to be the leader in the house of the rising sun.” There are moments when I believe the term gaslighting has been run into the ground but it is a term that painfully still applies to this deceitful time. A time where people who claim to follow Jesus openly support a man who is morally bankrupt. A time where people claim to be pro-life but strategically resist legislation that protects children from being shot at school. A time where genocide is justified as a means of survival. A time where we are satisfied by our virtue signaling online without regard to its on the ground impact. Brother Malcolm warned us, “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Hatred has given us a perverse certitude; we are so certain our convictions and passions are accurate simply because they are precise. We have no taste for tolerance, no taste for the possibility that our perspective is in need of expansion. No willingness to imagine the humanity in our enemies; we are too consumed with bloodlust. Hatred is something we must actively purge from our souls; the horrors of genocide seduce observer and oppressed alike into its perilous way but we must remember that hatred will not get us free. It imprisons us in a cycle where everyone loses. It is the easy way out when working together seems too complex. Only love can provide a path forward; particularly in a time where peace feels so far from possible.
It is love that will lead us to rehumanizing our enemies. Hatred requires a limited imagination that must make monsters out of our enemies. It endeavors to remove the image of God from the other. This attempt, to undo the Creator’s design, makes monsters of us in the process. While hatred makes us become that which we despise, it is love that allows us to meet our potential. Love allows us to seek mutuality; a mutuality I first believed possible when those catching hell in Palestine were providing those catching hell in Ferguson advice on how to deal with tear gas nearly a decade ago. It is a mutuality expressed by the great Mandela who in the midst of fighting for freedom in South Africa made a point of saying, “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” And the truth is whatever peace and safety Israelis are seeking cannot be achieved on this current genocidal path. Such violence only creates more violence, fear, and hatred.
I have found that brokenness of this magnitude is overwhelming because we cannot solve it atheistically. We are in a crisis far bigger than us, a crisis where this solution lives in co-laboring with God. It is only the divine that can show us how to live with one another peaceably; to study war no more. We are so drunk with bloodlust that we meet cries for peace with violence. Our imaginations are so choked by lust that we can only imagine peace when our enemies no longer exist. It is sorrowful and as Andre Henry reminds us, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Imagine a world where the measure of a nation’s strength is found in the thriving of its least powerful people. Where warmongers were not allowed to politicize tragedies and present genocide as a remedy. A world where Israeli safety is not secured by Palestinian suffering. We must dream of such a world. We must pray and praise God in advance for such a world. The world spoken of in the book of Revelation where God “will wipe every tear from their eyes.” A world where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” We must press into this reality now. Stop the genocide in Gaza. Work tirelessly for peace. Hatred has no progress. Let love have its turn.
The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.
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