Personal Responsibility and Systems
Among some of my friends in the face of racism today there’s a call to just take personal responsibility for being a good person. That’s a good start, but they want to deny “systemic racism.”
I don’t think we get a pass as followers of Jesus on not seeing the systems we are a part of. A reading of Revelation in the New Testament is actually meant to disciple us so we can see the systems. Re-look at the use of “Babylon.” We are meant to understand that “powers and principalities” animate our society that includes us.
As to Canada we do have systems that have codified race. Our system was even held up as a model to be copied. I keep hearing folks calling the identification of systems and the codification of race a “liberal” idea. That’s not an idea, it is a reality.
“Canadians were among the most vocal opponents of the South African apartheid system. What’s not so well known is that the South African apartheid system was based, in large part, on the Canadian Indigenous apartheid system.
In the 1940s, when white South African politicians were designing a system that would keep people of different races separate, they came to Canada to study our system: its Indian Act, status cards and reserve system.”
Canada’s persistent apartheid system. Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and senior fellow with Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
These SA politicians in the 1940’s actually came to British Columbia for their learning tour.
So, yes let’s take personal responsibility for our internal beliefs, attitudes and actions that are racist. And let’s keep examining our systems with a new vision of life together. The examination will help us recognize that some policies and structures need to be dismantled. But we are resistant to examining systems if we have benefited from them. We are inclined to attend to our “self-interests.” And here’s why protesting is so important: If we do not accept why remaining at “System R” is untenable we will not exert the will to accept the pain and long journey for change — to move toward “System Y.”
The Lord’s Prayer is a protest prayer. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we express a yearning for a system change.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
A kingdom is a system. Jesus is teaching us to pray. Praying the Lord’s prayer has become so habituated that we fail to let the Spirit of God disrupt us so that we pay attention to why in this world we yearn for Jesus to show Himself as King. But this prayer is not just a yearning for the future. It locates us in the present and in our neighbourhoods where in following Jesus we take up His Cross. The prophetic voice and activity of God’s people is meant to be for a whole-bodied salvation. The Lord’s Prayer is meant to bring us into a life fortified by the Presence and Provision of God in the face of the evil one. If that evil shows up in the systems that we are stewards over shouldn’t we do something with God about it?