One thing I have learned in greater ways is that my highest responsibility is, first, to my own Eden (my life, my family, my church and my city). By Eden, I am referring to those places where the Lord has placed me to provide intimate stewardship, like Adam was given charge over the Garden in Eden (Genesis 2:15). While Facebook gives us a platform for to reach others it is imperative to not lose the perspective that we, genuinely, advance the kingdom of God by being faithful in our own Eden, first.
I think racial issues, like the current one of a man jogging to his death (how crazy is that!?) has sparked an appropriate outrage against such evil. But the national concern and the prayers that go out for the family and for our nation as a whole do not eliminate the need for us to be faithful in our own Eden. My frustrations of the broader racial issues do not give me a pass on the local racial issues – in my heart, my family, my church and my city. It fact it mandates it! We are not effectively what we can be to the broader world if we are not, first and primarily, what we must be in our own worlds.
The concern and grief over the continued and senseless killing of black men should call us to a greater working for equity and justice on the national level but more-so in our own Eden’s. National justice, in whatever way it can emerge from this tragedy, will do so only as we are faithful to fight for it in our own Eden; and this we should do even when the racial and social waters are calm.
If I will not tend to my own Eden it might prove that any show of outrage is just that, “a show.” The title of “mother” might be legitimately questioned regarding a women who shows no care for her children. So too, the title Christian might also be questioned regarding those who profess it but whose silence betrays little care concerning the multiple injustices that the church is sent to set right! Contrary to the pundits and the pontificators justice is neither a social or political issue. Above all justice is a biblical-theological issue which, when understood biblically, must faithfully be worked out socially and politically with Christ as Lord over both. Those of us who know the Lord of the universe know the solution to the issue: it is Christ’s life lived in and through us (Galatians 2:20).
So the challenge, really, is not who is shows outrage or not. The real challenge is what pastor, church, lay leader, or individual will have the courage to take responsibility for racial divisions and the senseless killing of black men in their Eden – their lives, their families, their churches and their communities? Or, better, “Who will steward their Eden’s for the glory of God on the issue of racial unity and the justice that the gospel demands?”
So, we should continue to post gospel saturated thoughts on the racial issues at hand and the many other justice issues that need to be set right. Yet, as we post, may the Lord help us to be Practicing what we post in our own Eden’s. If we get this right in our own Eden’s – our hearts, our families, our churches and our communities we will have joined the powerful, already enacted, movement of the kingdom of God unleashed on the world in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. This is the ONLY movement that will bring transformation.
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