On February 9, 2017, Andrews University hosted a controversial speaker (Jaime Kowlessar) for Black History month. Jaime is pastor at the Dallas City Temple in Texas.
I am told that many Andrews University students were offended by the strident remarks of the speaker, and the school administration thought it appropriate to apologize. So they did. "This prompted a "PSA Video" (Public Service Announcement) by several black students who asked why it only took the administration one week to apologize to offended 'white' students, but they had never apologized to the black community for decades for "overt acts and policies of racial discrimination by Andrews, both past and present." Thus they are demanding an apology also within a week. ONE week (February 25, 2017).
Once upon a time racism used to be relatively easy to pin down. It was segregated lunch counters and slave ships, it was nooses and chains, it was the oppression of a group of people on account of the color of their skin. Then racism stopped being a set of laws and became an abstraction, first a set of attitudes and then a set of attitudes implying another set of attitudes.
It all got confusing. Bill Clinton was called the first black president, and Allen West was called a racist for bringing fried chicken to a Congressional Black Caucus meal. Racism was no longer about race, it was about promulgating liberalism. Liberalism defines race, allowing white liberals to be defined as black and black conservatives to be defined as white. Thus liberalism is the new race, and it is a category that transcends and encompasses race. Racism became an abstraction, and now is a distraction, especially on political-correct Adventist Campuses.
Most Adventists, black and white, don't understand the switch that has been pulled on them or that the racism being talked about is not the kind that involves a white man hitting a black man, but a debate over what James calls "bitter envying" and the 'rights' of people to become wards of the Federal government, and/or receive special treatment. As if that is our our great need as we prepare to warn the world of the Second Coming of Jesus the Christ. If "all who will live Godly in this present world will suffer persecution", those of us who complain the most disqualify ourselves for the great test just ahead. "He that endures unto the end shall be saved..." (Matthew 24:13). This is not about overlooking genuine abuses, but rather about each of us forgiving one another according to Ephesians 4:32, and to stop looking for ways to be offended.
So the decline of endurance and the unholy union of race and political correctness has turned it into a wholly abstract thing that may still be nourished by fond memories of civil rights marches and the calcified generational bitterness of Black Lives Matter, but it actually means nothing at all. The language of racism no longer has a coherent grammar. Racial accusations are everywhere (including Andrews University), but they no longer mean anything because they have lost even their most tenuous connections to genuine race. This makes people lose all connection to biblical righteousness, as they bring their gifts to the altar of their triune god: Bitterness, Envy, and Temporal Values.
The above video is demanding. It has elements of threat in it. And it accurately represents the thought pattern of a world that is passing away, of a carnal nature awash in the demands of bitterness (James 3:13-18). And like the 'sermon' that sparked it, neither bitterness nor envy come from above. They come from beneath (v. 15). And they become an avalanche that sweeps people away.
Cheerio,
ChurchMouse