Open Letter to My Black Friends

A Blog on Black Lives Matter by Katie Hawkins

To you, my dear friends,

I didn’t think adding my voice to the stream of commentary out there would be of any real value, so I haven’t said much about the atrocities taking place in our country today. But I realized that maybe there would be some value in telling my friends how much I care about them and am concerned about their pain over all the injustice.

 So at the risk of sounding ignorant, simplistic, or naïve, I speak up.

When I hear black lives matter, I think, of course they matter. Who would think otherwise?

Black is beautiful. Who wouldn’t agree when you can clearly see how God made people of all different colors and each are beautifully and wonderfully made? Ethnicity is sacred, bestowed on us by God. Who dares to tell God that some are better than others?

Right now, though, I wish I were a woman of color because I want to be one with you!  I feel so helpless being this old white woman who can only guess what you’re feeling. If I were a woman of color, you could look into my eyes and know that I know.

And if you think that sounds odd or farfetched I assure you I mean it. As a young girl growing up in a small town in Wisconsin I was never exposed to people who were prejudiced, until of course I started reading books and watching movies. I remember seeing the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton.  She (white woman) brings him (black man) home to introduce him to her parents as her fiancé. We asked mom what she would do if we wanted to marry a man of a different race. Her response helped shape me.  She said, “Honey, if you bring home a man as kind and personable and smart as Sidney, I’ll rejoice for you!”  In other words, we were taught very early on that it’s character that matters, not color.

Around that same time in my life I started reading books about the Holocaust. I was so shocked and appalled at man’s inhumanity to man. I couldn’t believe such evil existed in the hearts of people. I remember reading Leon Uris’s book Exodus about Jewish people settling in the new nation of Israel. With everything in me, I longed to be a Jewess. I truly wanted to move to Israel and live on a kibbutz and be one with them. Help them settle. Wear their pain and purpose. I couldn’t because I was a teenage, white, Catholic from Wisconsin. That grieved me.

Obviously I can’t change who God made me to be physically nor the place He has set for me in this world. But I can decide to stand wholeheartedly with anyone who is treated poorly by others. I can pray, I can love, and I can speak up. I can also offer hope in the fact that Jesus Christ came to make us all one to restore that lost image of God in mankind by redeeming the hateful sin that marred it in the first place. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that in Christ there is no longer male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, slave nor freeman. We are one. Thank You, Jesus!

 And if anyone calling themselves a Christian thinks otherwise, I beg you to get on your knees and repent. Jesus is love. You can’t claim to be His follower and tolerate hate within your own heart for anyone. And yes, that includes the police and the rioters, too. My friend, Portia, who lives in Minneapolis told her young boys that they needed to pray for the policeman who murdered George Floyd. That policeman committed a crime; he’s a broken man who did an undeniably evil thing, but God says, “Love your enemies and pray for them.”

A way forward through these perilous times might be illustrated by this story John Mark Comer wrote about in his book, My Name is Hope. It’s about a man in the worst of human conditions, offering beauty and hope to others in the same situation. “The French composer, Oliver Messiaen was captured by the Nazi’s and put in Stalag 8-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp. While in prison, facing a brutally cruel lifestyle, he spent time reading the four Gospels and Revelation. As a follower of Jesus, he was somehow filled with hope for the world, right in the middle of hell on earth. When he realized there were three other famous musicians in the camp, he found four instruments: a cello with a missing string, a beat-up violin, a well-worn clarinet, and a piano with keys that stuck together. With these he composed an incredible piece of chamber music. The New Yorker later called it “‘the most ethereally beautiful music of the 20th century.’” The musicians first played it in January, in the freezing cold, right in the middle of the German POW camp, to hundreds of prisoners and guards. Messiaen later said, “‘the cold was excruciating, the Stalag buried under snow, the four performers played on broken down instruments, but never have I had an audience who listened with such rapt attention.’”

So, could we Christians be like those musicians? We might only have broken instruments to play being that none of us are perfect like Jesus, but could we play the tune our Great Composer arranged? The melody that says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The harmony that adds, “all men are created equal in the sight of God.” Let’s play it and sing it right now as I feel like the audience might finally be paying attention.

I love you, dear friends, for who you are created in God’s image for His glory. Together, as one, we’ll make some fine music!