Calling All Ministers of Reconciliation
If there was ever a time to value being “ministers of reconciliation” it is now. A race wound is again gaping and it has become further complicated by the behind-the-scenes agenda to surreptitiously exploit the race wound towards a political end. In this post I would like to help us navigate being “ministers of reconciliation” while not feeling like we are bowing to an agenda. The “minister of reconciliation" term comes to us from 2 Corinthians 5:19:
“that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed TO US THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION.”
We know the primary application is that men/women be reconciled into a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. However, the ministry of reconciliation has also to be seen as being reconciled to God’s just ways on earth. So for us today the question becomes, “How do we advance reconciliation in this racially-adverse climate?”
1) Recognize and Embrace the Assignment: Apply it to the Race Issue
The first step for each of us who are believers is to recognize and embrace that we ALL have this ministry assignment. Jesus reconciled us ALL to the Father that we might have eternal life AND an “abundant life” reality on earth. He has now asked US to continue with His work of reconciliation, and a big key is “not counting men’s sins against them”—rather than joining in agreement with "the accuser of the brethren”—Satan. "Ministers of reconciliation” understand that Satan is always at fault—but do as Jesus did and say, “I’ll take the blame”—thus becoming “ministers of reconciliation.” A working definition of “reconciliation” is “the action of making one view or belief compatible with another.” It also means “to restore friendly relations.” What if we ALL worked towards this?
2) Recognize and Embrace Your First Identity: “I belong to Christ”
Know right up front I am not calling for “color-blindness.” You were by divine design given your race, your gender, and your generation. God knew the set of challenges and advantages that it would place before you to be black, white, brown, male, or female, as well as the generation you grew up with. Rather than feeling picked on, if you don’t like the mix, understand that the more “handicapped” you seemed to have been born, the more “chosen" and trusted you are by God. It is more a sign of favoritism than anything else. If you read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 you understand “God has CHOSEN the weak, small, foolish, despised—to shame the strong, wise etc.” The more “handicapped” your birth status the more glory is destined for and through you, as you remember to live through your first identity.
So we don’t want “color-blindness,” nor “gender-blindness,” but want to recognize God-intent behind it. Yes, JUSTICE should be “color-blind” and “gender-blind” and “generation-blind”—but that is as far as we want to apply it. In Galatians 3:26-28, our primary or first identity is established;
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for YOU ARE ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS.”
In order to be a “minister of reconciliation” you cannot FIRST be black, white, brown, male or female, baby boomer, Millennial, or Gen Z. Those classifications are important and by divine design, but they were never to be your FIRST identity marker. However, once you chose to operate from, “I belong to Christ,” your next identity marker is of utmost importance. It identifies exactly where you can be expected to be a reconciler and bridge-builder. This is so key to understand.
3) Why I Presently don’t Publicly Endorse Candace Owens Videos
Now I am getting down to where the rubber hits the road and everybody hang on. Candace Owens is a brilliant, young black female who has a very large following and is quite well-spoken. I don’t frequently listen to her but her message is primarily to the black community. Her goal is empowerment for the black community, and in doing so she goes after many prevailing mindsets that she feels hold them back. She is very well-liked, especially by conservative whites, both for her conservatism and for removing some of the blame/guilt/responsibility whites feel as it relates to the race issue. So, though Candace has a growing following among the black community, she also has many enemies in the black community. She has them taking so much personal responsibility for all of their outcomes (based on her own life story) that it seems to leave NO justice matter to address. “Systemic racism” either doesn’t exist, or there is not enough of it to prohibit you from overcoming it—and so her message is not so popular with many who have felt the racial discrimination.
For a white leader with some following, such as myself, it becomes inappropriate or at least "non-reconciling" for me to champion her message, as it leaves unaddressed and unattended the responsibilities whites have in the race issue. Note that I truly feel “I belong to Christ” above being white, male, or anything else. I was born and raised by missionaries in Peru, South America my first 18 years, and so I probably think more Latino by instinct than anything else, and Spanish and English are equally my first language. We also have a black son, our first grandson is bi-racial, I have performed 3 intra-racial marriage ceremonies in my extended family, and have nieces and nephews that will grow up being considered black. Our huge family reunions look like the United Nations, as we also have Latinos and Chinese and their ensuing mix populated among us. All that probably helps me feel multiracial and to quickly identify with challenges that come to the respective races. It also goes into why I said “Oh No!” when the Lord showed me a vision of Donald Trump winning the presidency many months before the election. I had specifically taken some offense to the way he had come across to Latinos. But since I belong to Christ first—as soon as He told me this was His chosen leader for our nation, I came into alignment with Him.
If you are catching this then, the best way I can become a “minister of reconciliation” between whites and blacks is not to tell blacks what they should do and how they should think. It is still a white man telling black people what to do, and that rarely/never works—as a black person is always right when they say, “you haven’t ever been black.” When we represent Jesus, we own up to whatever we can from our secondary identity (black, white, etc), and furthermore, we challenge those of our same secondary identity how to do what we can to heal the racial divide. My way of being a reconciler is to listen to blacks (and yes I know we have Native American, Hispanic, and other minority matters to work through at another time) and to seek to understand. I have gone beyond that and done some real research into systemic racism and discovered that it is identifiable and real. I shared some of that on a recent post and the research is quite compelling. The race hurdles blacks have to overcome in order to succeed are real and substantial. Just because Candace Owens showed the amazing fortitude she did in order to achieve, doesn’t mean we want to leave society as is with so many serious and unjust hurdles for blacks. You shouldn’t have to have the resolve of David the giant-killer in order to succeed. Though we are doing better between our races than we ever have (particularly among Millennials and Gen Z’s) there is still a good ways to go, and there are still some major disadvantages in the natural to being born black. As I noted earlier, the disadvantage is only in the natural—as spiritually you probably have been given more to offset the natural disadvantages. So hey everybody, what do you say to us shocking the whole world and being the generation of sons and daughters of our King who truly live for Him and respectively do our part to overcome the racial injustice and racial divide? “That the world might know.”
-Johnny Enlow