The Human Condition

“Why would we think there could be a winner, when it just might be the sinner in control?” – The Republic Tigers

Have you ever looked up the definition of the word “outrage”? It is defined as a reaction of surprise, anger or disgust to a grave moral offense. There is no shortage of outrage today as we’ve had front row seats to the unlawful murder of a black man at the hands of a white police officer. The people who are outraged are telling others if they aren’t then they are the problem. But outrage is not what I'm feeling right now. Not because I don’t care. I do, greatly. It's just that the word does not capture what is happening within my heart. Let me explain by recounting a true story.

Years and years ago, a man and his wife were traveling out of town. They came from a small community where everybody knew everybody and had gone to visit the wife’s father in another small town that was about two days travel time from their home. I should mention that geographically where they lived was in an area of small towns that all bordered each other, so most of the individuals in this area tended to be of the same ethnicity and race, with some exceptions.

On the day that the man and his wife set out for home, they had been traveling for a full day and the wife wanted to find a place to rest for the evening. Upon doing so they realized all the hotels were full and nobody had a vacancy for them to stop and sleep. The owner of the last hotel they had inquired in took pity on them and offered a room at his own home which they gladly accepted. In small towns like these, hospitality like this was customary.

The man and his wife had just begun to get settled in for the night when they heard a very loud commotion outside of the hotel owner’s house. They followed behind the homeowner to the front door and when it was opened they were greeted with a mob of men, locals from the town, who had all been drinking heavily and had seen the man and his wife come into town. These men had bad intentions and stated plainly that they wanted the woman. The homeowner tried to reason with them, begging them not to do this evil thing they wanted to do, but they would not listen. They outnumbered the homeowner and the husband and easily busted the door down, grabbing the woman and taking her for themselves. The woman was raped all evening until dawn at which point they let her go, and she stumbled back to the doorstep of the homeowner and collapsed. When her husband found her, she was no longer alive.

Grief stricken, he took her body home to their tiny town where he told his town leaders and friends what had happened. Outraged, they mobilized their citizens as well as thousands of others from nearby areas and made their way to the place where the injustice had taken place. They rioted, burning down buildings and demanding to know where the men were who committed this atrocity. As their anger grew, they slaughtered everyone there. Only 600 people remained when they had finished.

This crime happened over 2,000 years ago, you can read about it in The Bible. You may be asking yourself, so what? What does that have to do with today? What does this have to do with racial injustice? Shouldn’t something like this be avenged and isn’t outrage warranted?

When we peel back the layers of outrage, at its core the base emotion is shock. Shock that this happened, shock that those we are supposed to be safe with are the ones committing these horrors, because we expected better than that. The parallel I am trying to draw here between the story of the man and his wife and our current circumstances of racial inequality is that humanity has always been this bad. They have always been capable of inflicting unspeakable acts on one another without a second thought and many times, enjoying it. Enjoying the power over another human being and abusing it to the most terrifying extent. We see this every day in our prejudices and hatred towards other races and genders as it trickles down to the significant abuse of our children - of all races, genders and ages - by the powerful elite.

I can’t feel rage when none of this is new – that would imply that I have been blind the whole time to these issues. The depravity we have proven that we can sink to has no limitations and I’ve been aware of this for some time now. We need only to look back on the history of humanity to see this. Our bad deeds outweigh our good every single time – it is the human condition. We are sinful. This devastates me. It does break my heart. It does cause me to grieve, and wish, like everyone else, that things were not this way. It pains me to know that my brothers and sisters experience any oppression, for any reason, at any time in their lives.

In Scripture, a servant cries out to God in the same way that we do, saying, “How long, O LORD, must I call for help? But you do not listen! ‘Violence is everywhere!’ I cry, but you do not come to save.” (Habakkuk 1:2) Times of the past are no different from the times of the present, and many are asking where God is at in all this. But if you think about the headlines of the last four years or so, what is the common denominator in them? Powerful men abusing women are being ousted, the wealthy trafficking the young and vulnerable are now being named, and a nation that claims to be a melting pot is actively oppressing its own on national television. What has been done in the darkness has now come to light, and God is not only here but shining that light on our sin to tell us to wake up. The question is not whether our outrage is justified but whether it is enough – and the answer to that is no. It’s not. The change begins within our hearts.

The last act of Jesus before he died was to bring himself down to the ground and wash the feet of his disciples. In this he modeled for us what it truly meant to love, to lead, and to serve. The King of Kings was not above this representation of humility, and neither are we. Whatever position or privilege you were born into requires you to serve and love in the same way, to drop down to the ground with those around you who have been tossed there, to stand with the oppressed, wash their feet, and wipe the tears from their eyes. Hold hands with these image bearers so they know that not only are you are there in their pain, but so is the Lord. In this we show that while we are sinful, Christ overcame our sin on the cross and so began the work of transforming his people – all of them. There is hope if we anchor ourselves in Him, clinging to what is good.

"If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." 1 John 4:20