Boxed thinking & the history of racism

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Steve Simms

By silencing (and/or ignoring) the history of racism, we hide away the answers that we need to heal our land today. People who don’t want to know the history of racism, will stay confused and bewildered about race.

Race is a historical myth, that was created as an excuse for human trafficking. The truth is: No person is inferior to me. We’re all “wonderfully made,” even when we persistently fail to live up to it.

Racism is failure! It’s the failure to appreciate who a person is as an individual. It’s time to take the lid off of our thinking about racism in America and shine the light for all to see the brutality, cruelty, and failure of racism.

History shows that when color is used to classify and categorize people, prejudice and contempt follow close behind. Then opinions begin to obscure truth. Through and most of American history, people had a legal right to mistreat and abuse other people because of their skin color.

By not calling out the color-based dehumanization of people in the past, we excuse color-disparity in the present. Then we ignore the fact that a person’s ability, character, and integrity have absolutely nothing to do with skin color!

Boxed thinking protects our pride from the fear that we could possibly be wrong. It insulates us from the lessons of history.

Color-based bias is the most irrational form of bias. It’s based on nothing but epidermis tone.

You can’t read a person by his cover. You have to look beyond the skin to truly know what’s within a person’s heart and mind. You can’t effectively evaluate people’s character until you can get beyond the color of their skin.

Humans are many colors
But that’s no reason
For some to mistreat
The others.

If you don’t know
The pain of Jim Crow,
You won’t understand,
What blacks undergo.

After centuries of laws saying, “black lives don’t matter,” people are now saying, “Black Lives Matter.” Let‘s ALL say it!

Reading slave narratives helps heal racism. When I read those books I wept many times. I was shocked to see first hand accounts of the horror and terror of racism told by people who had personally experienced it. It made me see that racism is real and is evil and it made me realize I don’t want it in my heart, my mind, or my behavior. I put extensive quotes from slave narratives in my book about healing racial wounds. Check it out at this link.

“Black despair over white terror . . .” From Ebony Pictorial History Of Black America — a 3-volume set of books that I sold door to door when I was in college.

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Both verbal & physical violence exacerbate problems

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Steve Simms

Arguing about issues isn’t the same thing as thinking about them. We need to think. Are you going to argue and insult people or are you going to think and inspire them? If what you believe makes you act mad and miserable, who’s going to want to agree with you?

It’s hard to break thru barriers that people have built in their head, but humility and kindness sneak around the hindrance and touch their heart. When I’m wrong, I need to lose the argument. If I win it, it only takes me further into deception.

People aren’t “peaceful” or “violent.” Kindness and compassion draw out peace. Making people feel safe, respected, and loved, tends to bring forth their best. However, disrespect and arrogance provoke violence. Making people feel fear, pain, and threatened is a major cause of violence.

Disrespect and demanding the upper hand escalate potentially violent situations. Respect and calmness de-escalate them. Enemy lives matter. That’s why Jesus tells us to love them. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, also said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Turn the other cheek.”

Both violence and kindness change hearts. Kindness softens hearts. Violence hardens them with bitterness, hatred, and revenge. When an argument goes in a circle, it goes no place, at a faster and faster pace.

When you begin to connect with people heart to heart, their defenses come down and you can see and appreciate their humanity. Sometimes the best argument is to show kindness to the person who is trying to argue with you.

If you feel a need to get angry, get angry at the evil hiding within you. Get mad enough to find it, overcome it, and drive it out. I think many people argue, not to persuade others, but because they feel their own opinion is threatened by other people’s views.

Using violence to defend our pride is nothing to be proud about. It has caused far too much human suffering for that. Colliding egos cause consternation. Humbly trying to find the truth restores peace. Just because you verbally or physically bully someone into silence and appear to win a political fight, doesn’t mean that your views are right.

The best protection and freedom from fear isn’t a gun. It’s hearing, following, obeying and trusting the risen Jesus.

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Racism & equality can’t coexist

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Steve Simms

It’s difficult to treat people as equals if you don’t fully and completely believe that they are. It takes courage to admit that you might be wrong, especially when you’re convinced that you’re right.

What’s the matter with race? The concept was developed to legitimize the enslavement of people with darker skin. I believe that skin color means no more than eye color–that it’s decorative, not definitive.

To be great,
Close your heart’s gate
To all forms of hate.

People who are oblivious to racism think it’s crazy to talk about it. You can’t care about people’s plight if you don’t know what they’re going thru. To learn what they’re going thru, ask them, then listen.

It’s hard to deny institutional racism when you listen with an open heart to people who have experienced it. It’s easy to be unaware of systemic racism when it’s not part of a person’s daily experience, but hard to ignore it when it is.

Silence about injustice is cooperation with evil. The Bible calls Christians to “speak the truth in love.” The Bible also says, “Consider others better than yourself.” If we all did that, both racism and violence would disappear.

Search for my timely book: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Kind to Color-Blind.

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Don’t settle for another Jesus than the living, resurrected One

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Steve Simms

The Bible talks about “a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached.” Refuse to settle for less than the living, resurrected Jesus!

If your lifestyle doesn’t follow suit with the Holy Spirit something has gone awry. Spirit-prompted Christians consistently manifest these characteristics: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

When Christians won’t express disagreement, with kindness, peace, love, and patience, we’re refusing to manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. When the body of Christ isn’t producing people who overflow with the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), things are out of whack.

There’s a big difference between catching a wave and hearing a talk about waves. The same with God’s Spirit.

Let the living Jesus
Take over your heart
And heal what’s broken apart.

Allow nothing ungodly to stay in your heart.

Search for my book: The Joy of Early Christianity on Amazon.

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It’s hard to deny institutional racism when you listen with an open heart to people who have experienced it.

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Steve Simms
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Color-blindness ≠ kindness

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Steve Simms

Color-blindness fails to see that Martin Luther King’s dream wasn’t that people not see color, but that they not evaluate individuals by color.

Because color-blindness doesn’t see racial injustice, it doesn’t believe racism exists. Color-blindness doesn’t see that to be more suspicious of a black person than of a white person is color-prejudice.

It’s odd how color-blindness can make us unable to hear people who express pain they have experienced from racial discrimination.

Color-blindness says almost all discrimination is about things other than skin color (clothing, attitude, culture, behavior.)

Color-blindness ignores much of the racial injustice in American history. It doesn’t see it as having any relevance today. Color-blindness is a psychological defense mechanism that helps us avoid discussing racism’s role in America’s past and present.

Color-blindness doesn’t see that without slavery, there wouldn’t have been an American Civil War. Color-blindness doesn’t see why statues of men who fought against America to defend “states’ rights” to slavery, are offensive.

Centuries of color-blindness to the abuse of African Americans has squelched hope. Hope matters. It makes life so much more bearable than hopelessness does. Grab some hope and don’t let it go.

Anger is often used to mask hopelessness. It’s hard to be mad when you’re overflowing with hope. It’s time to see the racism that is robing billions of people of hope and remove it.

For more about color-blindness, search for my book: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind.

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com
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All views in this blog are mine . . .

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Steve Simms

All views expressed in this blog are mine. If they don’t match your views, that’s okay. I could be wrong.

Pride can easily make me blind to injustice. It can cause me to believe that people must have done something to deserve mistreatment.

Never let your opinion or your pride override your conscience. If you push thru your political views and let your heart fill up with disdain for those who differ, you won’t enjoy the “victory.”

Sometimes when I believe I’m seeing clearly, I’m overlooking some important stuff. I need Jesus to improve my vision.

What’s up, Jesus? May we, who say we’re Christians, see things from Your perspective instead of our own.

If we were paid by the hour to procrastinate, do you think we would put it off till later? Wait a while to answer this.

The purpose of Christian preaching isn’t just to inform people about God. It’s also to connect them with the living Jesus so they will obey Him.

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Designer skin — a birth right

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Steve Simms

You’re wearing designer skin. (You’re looking good, because God, Himself, designed the skin you’re in!)

For society to devalue people because of their skin, brands them with something they can’t hide and that sticks with them for life. When skin becomes a “race card,” we have no choice but to carry it all over our body.

If eye color doesn’t categorize people and make them different, then skin color doesn’t either. Let’s be consistent!

I like to think outside my skin color. Human gray matter is much better at discovering truth than human skin color is.

It’s impossible for you to be guilty of things that happened before you were born. Thus we can talk about history without guilt. If we’re unwilling to talk about injustice in history, we won’t be very open to recognizing and talking about present day injustice.

Contradiction? The ultimate insult to the American flag is to take up arms against it. Many who did that are honored as great men. In the sequel to centuries of inequality, Americans will finally celebrate the truth that we are all equal!

To believe that blacks are less moral, less intelligent, less ambitious, or less resourceful than whites is racism.

Not one African, nor even one of their descendants, deserved to be trafficked and enslaved. It was a horrific crime against humanity. Slaveholders didn’t need a vaccine microchip implant. They conspired to control people by dehumanizing their skin color.

The Declaration of Independence didn’t see color. It said, “All men are created equal,” while it was blind to the trafficking of black people. A country where the pledge to the flag says “liberty and justice for all” should welcome efforts to bring injustice to light.

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Some times the status quo needs to go

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Steve Simms

Church tends to use Scripture to support the status quo. The risen Jesus makes Scriptures come alive to challenge our complacency. Talk to the living Jesus. Then listen. He wants to have a conversation with you.

Biblical Christianity is about Christ supremacy–laying down our desires, feelings, & opinions, to follow and obey the living Jesus.

If we’re unwilling to let the living Jesus override our desires and opinions and replace them with His, we’re carnal, not Spirit-led. The risen Jesus has shown me that any evil I see in humanity is also to some degree, lurking in me. Romans 7:18.

The foundation of biblically Christianity is spiritual revelation that comes thru inner interaction with the risen Jesus. It isn’t just a “decision for Christ.”

The risen Jesus and sin can’t live peaceably within you. One or the other gets the upper hand. Saying we love God, if we hate others, makes us a liar. Saying we have no sin, does too. 1 John 4:20 and 1 John 1:8.

Follow the stimulus of the Holy Spirit. Let God’s fire burn within you and direct you daily.

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Suggestions for humans

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Steve Simms

Fellow humans: Let’s treat each other with high regard. After all, everyone of us is a miracle. People who insult people disrespect the human race.

The human race has no subsets. We’re all the same breed. You’re not “different”! When you get to know people, heart to heart, you make the amazing discovery that we’re all pretty much alike.

Dare to be great. Don’t hate or berate people. However, to think you have no bias is a bias, because no human is completely objective and fair in his opinions.

Skin color is merely decorative. To think that it adds or detracts value from any human being is nuts! Let’s simplify things: If you act differently towards people of different skin colors, that’s racism.

No matter the color
Of your face,
We’re all equal members
Of the human race.

Nobody’s any better
Than you or me.
We’re all the same stock,
Can’t you see?

Hearts are red. When we connect heart to heart, we embrace each other as equals.

For the first time in history there’s a worldwide conversation about justice and equality for black people. God’s up to something! Try not to resist or fight against what He’s doing.

Look thru history and honor those who stood for equality. Search for: Off the RACE Track book.

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