Jesus hurts when black people do. . You should try to also.

I am a white 22-year-old male from a small town in South Georgia..Cordele, Georgia. Cordele is an interesting place. The town is divided by a railroad track. On one side is populated by mostly white people, and black people on the other side. On the “black” side of town is where the “projects” are, and many of my white peers and people older than me called it “the bad side of town.” From a young age, I didn’t understand racial divide or realize what a huge issue it was. As I grew older and came to Christ and saw how few black people went to the First Baptist Church I attended I began to see that the most segregated time of my week was Sunday. This began to bother me severely.  Our schools are multicultural, where we shop is multicultural, the TV shows we watch are multicultural, but our churches are not.

Over the past few years, there has been a rising of what is called the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Where there have been many events of police brutality towards black people this movement has become very prevalent to bring attention to just one of the racial problems we seem to have in our country.

As the news broadcasted story after story of young black men being killed I saw a great divide arise among white and black people. I saw in our country a divide created that made me so angry at what our world had become. I saw so many Christians find more importance in picking a side of the divide instead of picking to unite in love. I struggled with this because the majority of the white people I knew seemed to find reasons to excuse the actions of police instead of seeking to find reasons to share the hurt of those who were hurting. Since when is “being right” more important than comforting those who hurt? Maybe the world around us is falling apart, and the world is dividing us so that the church of Jesus Christ can be the anomaly that stands up and says: “WHAT THE WORLD SEEKS TO DIVIDE, JESUS LOOKS TO UNITE.”

Galatians 6:2 writes: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

I pray that I am a man that seeks to bear the burdens of those who hurt. I believe that Jesus emulated and was the human example of carrying the burdens of all people. Bearing the burden’s of Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and any and every race there is.

I have had Black Lives Matter explained to me like this. Imagine you are walking in your neighborhood, and there is one house on fire, and you say “All Houses Matter”… yeah, that’s true, but are you still going to choose to let that one house burn down? I don’t think so. Black Lives Matter . . .because they do to Jesus. The church must quit ignoring the racial issues in our communities. Yes, it will be uncomfortable, and there will be awkward moments, but this has to happen for there to be a change in the world we live in. So let us as followers of Jesus quit looking to be right and looking to win arguments and simply look to unite in love and Jesus. It is when we do this that the world will see that the church and Jesus are for the healing of hurting hearts and the healing of those that are broken and those that don’t understand the chaos around them. So yes Black Lives Matter, because they do to Jesus, and they should to you too. Quit looking to be right and instead look to unite in a love that is so much greater than we can ever understand.  A love that brings understanding to our unique cultural differences and a love that brings together people in a way only Jesus can. A love that created all people differently to glorify God in many different ways.