Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election with eighty-one percent of the white Evangelical vote, politicians and various political movements use any opportunity to quote the Bible as support for their political agenda, whether it supports that agenda or not.
In an opinion article for USA Today Skye Jethani wrote an article titled “Donald Trump’s Bible or George Floyd’s? That’s the choice facing America’s Christians,” Jethani excoriates Trump for using the Bible as a prop but lauds George Floyd as a man who lived by his Bible and whose death has spawned protests.
The Scriptures clearly say God created “man in His own image,” Genesis 1:27 and we are to “honor all people,” 1 Peter2:17. Ergo, racism is completely incompatible with the Word of God and is a sin. But rioting and looting, destroying someone else’s property or stealing it does not promote justice.
Politically motivated people want God on their side, but they are missing the point. We do not manipulate the Scriptures to get God on our side, we study them to discover God’s perspective so we can get on His side.
At the outset of the Civil War a reporter asked Abraham Lincoln if he was praying for God to be on his side. Lincoln replied, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” If everyone was on God’s side there would be no killing, rioting, and looting, because there would be no racism.
After a night of violent protesting in St. Louis, Stephan Cannon and Mark Jackson, both black, broke into Lee’s Pawn Shop. When 77 year-old, retired police captain David Dorn, who is black, arrived at his friend’s business to see what was going on, Cannon shot and killed Dorn.
I fail to see how a black looter shooting and killing another black man promotes the cause of “Black Lives Matter.” Such an act of indifference to life does not honor the death of George Floyd and it certainly does not honor the Word of God.
So Jethani is wrong, as a Christian I do not need to choose between Donald Trump and George Floyd. I choose to go with God’s Word, because I believe all lives matter, George Floyd’s and David Dorn’s.
During a “Black Lives Matter” protest in Hartwell, Georgia, Georgia State Trooper O’Neal Saddler was present to help preserve the peace. The protesters asked him to take a knee to show his solidarity with their cause. In the videotape of the event, Saddler, who is black, responded, “I have much respect, but I only kneel for one person: God, God, God.”
I would consider it an honor to stand beside Trooper Saddler and take a knee with him for the same person, “God, God, God.” Until we all take a knee to obey the will of God racism will reign in this country and white and black people will keep killing one another.
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