If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
I could hide.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
at the house of God,
as we walked about
among the worshipers.
15 Let death take my enemies by surprise;
let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
for evil finds lodging among them.
16 As for me, I call to God,
and the Lord saves me.
17 Evening, morning and noon
I cry out in distress,
and he hears my voice.
18 He rescues me unharmed
from the battle waged against me,
even though many oppose me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
because they have no fear of God.
20 My companion attacks his friends;
he violates his covenant.
21 His talk is smooth as butter,
yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
yet they are drawn swords.
22 Cast your cares on the Lord
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.
23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I trust in you.
Who can I call “friend” when friends begin to feel like enemies?
If the neo-Nazis out in the streets were to insult me, I could endure it, for I already know that the unabashed white supremacists who have shown their faces in Charlottesville, in Durham, and in the Bay Area despise me and my people whom have darker skin.
If a man were threatening to strike me with his hands or with dehumanizing words because of his fear of me and my love of self, I could hide because I have endured this violence before and have come to expect it. I am used to men’s misdirected and uncontrolled anger, whether in my family or in public spaces, like the streets, at university or in my inbox.
But it is you, someone who is supposed to be like me — someone who professes to be on my side– who is starting to appear to me like an enemy. You seem to prefer your own comfort than to make sure I can live free from fear of state sanctioned violence. How can I call you a friend? How am I supposed to take seriously the claims you make that you love me?
You who claim to be my friend. You who I had used to go to church with: Remember when I used to go to church with you? And we would eat lunch or dinner after service? And you told me that you believed in my leadership, that I am powerful? That I reflect the image of God?
In the fellowship hall, you would say that you were happy to see me, we would laugh together among our peers who also profess to love God, too.
But now in your silence you go about carefree with your white life, your white problems and your carefree dates at the local brewery. You tell me that there are better ways to fight white supremacists than what I have asked the ministers to offer to our parish. You tell me there are better ways, because you do not trust what those who are ACTUALLY affected by white supremacist violence are telling you to do. You continue to choose “studying” James Cone, Michelle Alexander, mujerista theology and womanist theology in your white small groups because you’d rather tell me “not yet” and that there is a purpose for your studying. You’d rather keep “studying” forever than to eventually change policies that hurt the people of color that you call Sibling in Christ. As if “studying” keeps you from taking concrete actions. You continue to start your own organizations with your blind-spots than to take the leadership of immigrants, Black Lives Matter organizers, and trans women who are fighting for their lives and know about their own needs better than you do. You believe that you know better. You refuse to acknowledge that your “knowing” better than the least of these is what got us to this dangerous political climate.
I see evil living in your home, in your homogeneous, fake-progressive places of worship– this evil of complacency. I see you enabling white supremacy and patriarchy, because you are too afraid to confront the injustice and patterns of dominance in your sphere of influence. You think that the problem of white supremacy is only the problem of of Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and Skinheads in Berkeley. You think the only misogynist to worry about is Trump. You excuse the misogynistic “jokes” from your pastor and friends. You cannot see the ways that you hurt me and my peers on the margins of society and neither do you care enough to see.
You shut yourself out from a healthy communion with me and those who suffer from state and policy violence, and it makes me wonder if you want to shut yourself out from the Kin-dom of God? Are you choosing to live in the realm of the dead? Or are you willing to sell yourself to the devil for the fleeting and empty promises that whiteness and patriarchy offers? Don’t you know that your silence and inaction in the face of injustice is killing your soul?
God! I cannot depend on those who say with their lips that they love me! So, I must call upon God for who else is there to turn to? Every single day, I feel afraid. I have too much anxiety to leave my home. Too much anxiety to face the world and to do my daily tasks. Sometimes too anxious and too depressed to eat, because the world around me despises and fears my existence. But I praise God, because God has brought me this far despite the violence of the white and patriarchal Church.
God saves me because the ways of dominance and the promises of Empire never will.
There are too many who say that they love God, but they unknowingly hate the marginalized. They hate those who are crushed by the weight of Empire. They do trust the instruction and wisdom of the poor, the trans person, the black woman, and all those who are hated by society, because they do not fear God. They continue to elevate and center the powerful of this earth instead.
My fellow Christians attack me and those on the margins whom they claim to love and wish to protect. They silence us, because the truth of our lives and our pain sound too harsh to them. They use words that are smooth like butter, writing declarations of their condemnation of white supremacy for their organizational and church websites. But their words feel like swords — they inflict wounds on me when their smooth words are followed by no commitment to me and those others among me who are suffering.
God will show them how wicked all of this posturing, apathy and inaction is. God will show that there are consequences to their lack of humanity towards the marginalized of this world. Those who turn their backs on the undocumented immigrant, the trans person, the black woman — they have blood on their hands and cannot be called friends. They are thirsty for blood, though their smooth words would say otherwise. In this way, they prove that they are deceitful and cannot be trusted.
I trust that God will take care of this wickedness. And I trust that God will help me through another day, for God is my friend when the Church is not.
The Generous Pine 