Seven. Seven times my friend has been apprehended, handcuffed, facedown on the asphalt with the police officers’ drawn guns pointing at him. Why? Because he “matched the description” of a suspect in the area. By “matched the description” I mean he is black and he is big. He’s also a pastor, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, and a law-abiding citizen… and he bears the image of God. I wonder, how many times would it take for you to be handcuffed, facedown on the street, with guns pointed at your head to begin to realize that there is something deeply wrong in the system?

There’s a pattern my friend has been pointing out to me for years. When white people see the latest video or report of a black man being murdered, we tend to approach each case with a kind of reserved distance, maybe even skepticism, and we try to ponder the details to make sense of that specific situation. After some time, and perhaps some news articles from sources that reinforce our own pre-conceived notions of the events, we move on. We cannot see the forest for the trees. That is a terrible exercise of our privilege.

But for my friend and almost every other black person I’ve talked to, this is not how they encounter and process these tragedies. Rather, they see themselves, or their husbands, or their brothers, or their sons in the faces of the victims of injustice. And since many of them have been in eerily similar circumstances (seven times even), it’s no stretch of the imagination to do so. It is hard for me to imagine carrying around that kind of burden. 

Like my friend, I too am a pastor. To my white brothers and sisters in Christ, let me implore you and me to follow in the way of our Savior who had compassion for victims of injustice and hatred for the systems and people that perpetuate injustice - even an elementary level reading of the Prophets and the Gospels would show you this. 

So let us lament. Let us cry with our brothers and sisters. Let us cry out to the Lord through tears, “Lord have mercy!” Let us “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression” (Isa. 1:17). Let us repent. Let us empathize with those who live in a nation that refuses to acknowledge the deep scars of her history while continuing to perpetuate systemic injustices that create fresh wounds.

- Pastor Mark Oshman