Leviticus 04 – Do the Best You Can Until You Know Better

²⁷ “‘If any member of the community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, when they realize their guilt ²⁸ and the sin they have committed becomes known, they must bring as their offering for the sin they committed a female goat without defect. ²⁹ They are to lay their hand on the head of the sin offering and slaughter it at the place of the burnt offering. (Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

Do The Best You Can Until You Know Better

The first thing that came to my mind reading this chapter was one of Maya Angelou’s more famous quotes. You’ve probably heard it: “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better.” I like to think I’m a pretty smart person: I was 11th out of 400-some in my high school class, and missed graduating college with summa cum laude honors by two hundredths of a point. I’m also prideful and a little bit vain. All this to say, it was personally very embarrassing to realize I was not only participating in but also benefiting from lopsided and harmful phenomena like structural racism, to name just one. How could I, as such a “smart person,” miss something so obvious? How could I have committed such unintentional sins? I didn’t know what structural racism was fifteen years ago. I didn’t know there were anything but binary pronouns five years ago. I didn’t know I was sending plastic microfibers into the watershed every time I washed my yoga pants two years ago. But now I do know, and instead of getting defensive, I’m trying to do better.

America, as a whole, has a lot to atone for – from both intentional and unintentional sins. We are waking up, starting to know better, and now we have to do better. I read an analogy regarding sexist and racist actions. I forget where, but this medium article is the first that popped up in Google when I looked for it and does a good job going into the analogy in depth. In short, though: when one person steps on another’s toe, they remove their foot as soon as their attention is brought to it and apologize. There is no arguing about whether or not the step-ee’s pain is real or what the intentions of the stepper might have been. The stepper might be embarrassed for stepping on the other person’s toe, but the stepper’s feelings do not become the focus of the incident, nor does the stepper claim some first (or equal, or higher) right to the area of ground where the step-ee’s toes are.

Fellow white people: I think this is an especially good analogy to remember whenever you feel yourself getting defensive, or feel the urge to say something along the lines of “but not all white people…” Listen, the people I love most in the world, my husband and my kids, are black. You don’t get a much more intimate look at race relations than that. And even I have to remind myself sometimes that this isn’t about me, personally. And even I get it wrong, sometimes, too. And it’s embarrassing. But again, this isn’t about me. If we remember this metaphor in every arena where we may have unintentionally sinned but now know better, it may help us to actually do better. It’s time to start atoning.

The Parenting Analogy

Atoning is such a loaded word. But I want to go on the record as saying that atonement doesn’t have to be a punishment, it can be a beautiful thing! Let’s get back to our actual Bible reading here. It lays out the proper sin offering for unintentional sins. I’m sure this is a chapter that many have cited making the case against God. What sort of deity gets angry with you for committing a sin without knowing? And then you have to atone for an unintentional sin with an offering? It sounds like you’re being set up to fail, and sounds like a good way to instill paranoia in generations of people.

But remember, God is our good, loving parent. And if you look at the sin offering in that way, it’s just a good parent doing good parenting. There are lots of things my girls do without malice that are still not “right.” Like toddler-sized versions of unintentional sins, if you will. For example, my youngest started plugging her ears during grace at the table. Who knows why she started doing that, but it’s rude, so I corrected her. Now she knows it’s not a thing to do. We’re still working on picking noses, uncovered sneezing, and not wanting to wear a mask in public. My girls do these things out of ignorance, not malice. But their actions can have a real impact on public health, so I’m teaching them not only to know better, but to do better. Collectively, as a country, we are being called to do better on many fronts, from COVID prevention to Black Lives Matter to global warming. We have sinned, even if we didn’t know it. And maybe it wasn’t even us, but our leaders who have sinned. Regardless of blame or intention, we now have been made aware of these myriad of errors, and we must atone.

Additionally, I want to point out God is not angry. Yes, there is lots of talk of “doing something forbidden” and “guilt,” but there is no mention of God’s anger. Much like I’m not angry when my five year old picks her nose. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to make her stop, and probably make her go wash her hands. Just like with my girls, this sin offering is part of the learning process.

Finally, I want to point out that the sin offerings described here are practically identical to earlier offerings qualified as “an aroma pleasing to the Lord. This chapter doesn’t use that exact terminology, but I don’t think it’s too far a leap to say that God is well pleased (perhaps even proud of us?) when we recognize our wrongs and correct them. We please God when we make amends because we act as Xyr agents in the world when we do so.

Growing in faith and action

If we stop pointing fingers, saying “it wasn’t us!” or “I’m not like that!” If we stop being defensive and actually buckle down and do the work of atoning, look at what we stand to gain: a healthy planet, a healthy populace, equality among all people, and so much more. These are lofty goals, but the road to all of them starts by knowing better, and doing better. Let’s not let fear or ignorance stand in our way. Growth can be scary and uncomfortable – remember being a teenager? But would you really want to be proverbially stuck at twelve forever? Sure, not having to pay taxes or make dinner every night was nice, but just think of all the things you’d miss out on, stuck as a pre-teen. Let’s grow! Let’s learn! There’s literally nothing to lose, but there is everything to gain.

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Ecclesiastes 04 – Do Not Turn a Blind Eye to Modern Lynchings

I saw the tears of the oppressed—
    and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
    and they have no comforter.
² And I declared that the dead,
    who had already died,
are happier than the living,
    who are still alive.
³ But better than both
    is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
    that is done under the sun.
(Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

There is so much to write about in this chapter, so much I was hoping to share with you today.  But given the recent arrests of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers, I don’t want us to think our work on that subject is done. We need to sit with some hard truths instead, and I want to share some powerful words from an anonymous source, republished with their permission:

 

Ahmaud Arbery was lynched on February 23, while out jogging on the outskirts of Brunswick, GA. Today, to celebrate what would’ve been his 26th birthday, #IRunWithMaud.

And yes, I said lynched. Maybe some of y’all thought lynchings had gone the way of Jim Crow laws. They have not.

Merriam-Webster defines “lynching” as “to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission,” with the following usage example: The accused killer was lynched by an angry mob.

That’s what happened here. The two men arrested for Arbery’s murder, 64-year old Gregory McMichael and his son 34-year old Travis, claimed they believed he was a robbery suspect. That the father was once a police officer doesn’t add support to their claimed justification for stalking and gunning down Arbery; as any student of American history knows, in many if not most lynchings of black people, law enforcement was complicit, either as participants in the lynching or observers who prevented the victim from being saved. And in nearly all instances, accusations of crime, nearly always against whites and nearly always either overblown or entirely baseless, were the predicate for the lynching.

Between 1877 and 1950, only Mississippi saw more lynchings than Georgia. During that time period, 589 people were lynched in Georgia–that we know of. The vast majority were black, and nearly every person complicit in those lynchings was white. Again, many had ties to law enforcement.

Georgia was the scene of some of the most gruesome lynchings on record. Take, for example, the April 23, 1899 lynching of Sam Hose near Newnan, GA. In his remarkable book “At the Hands of Persons Unknown,” Philip Dray reconstructs from contemporary reports the chaotic scene, a festival of death to which crowds of Georgians traveled by horse, by train, and on foot from as far away as Atlanta. Here’s Dray’s description of the lynch mob’s treatment of Hose; those with weak stomachs may want to skip it:

“The torture of the victim lasted almost half an hour. It began when a man stepped forward and very matter-of-factly sliced off Hose’s ears. Then several men grabbed Hose’s arms and held them forward so his fingers could be severed one by one and shown to the crowd. Finally, a blade was passed between his thighs, Hose cried in agony, and a moment later his genitals were held aloft.”

After being so mutilated, Hose was soaked in kerosene and set on fire while still alive. His last words were reportedly “Sweet Jesus.” His charred remains, photos of which survive, were then set upon by the crowd, who fought to wrench free pieces of his body as souvenirs. Civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois, who visited the town soon after the event, was shocked to learn that Hose’s knuckles were for sale at a local grocer’s shop.

Hose’s alleged crime? Murdering his white employer during an argument over wages, and allegedly raping his wife. The rape allegation was added later, when the mob needed justification to deny Hose his right to a fair trial for the killing. Rape and attempted rape would be a frequent justification for lynching over the years.

The Hose lynching wasn’t even the most vile and disturbing one to happen in Georgia. That dishonor would go to either the Mary Turner lynching in Lowndes County, or the Mae Murray Dorsey lynching in Walton County.

On July 25, 1946, Dorsey, her husband, and another couple were stopped by a white mob, beaten, tied to an oak tree near the Moore’s Ford Bridge, and shot numerous times. Dorsey was seven months pregnant at the time. After the smoke had cleared from the shooting, one of the mob cut the fetus from Dorsey’s body.

Somehow that’s not even the most revolting, disturbing lynching of a pregnant woman in Georgia. That would be the Mary Turner lynching. On May 16, 1918, a 25-year old white farmer named Hampton Smith was murdered in Brooks County. Over the following weeks, at least thirteen black citizens were murdered by white mobs seeking revenge for Smith’s death. One of those victims was a man named Hayes Turner, who had threatened Smith after Smith struck Hayes’s wife, Mary.

After her husband was lynched on May 18, 1918, Mary publicly denounced the lynch mob and swore that she would have them arrested for their crime. So the mob came for her next, despite the fact that she was eight months pregnant. Again I’ll rely on the description of the scene given by Philip Dray, based on contemporary reporting and eyewitness interviews–and again I warn those of you with weak stomachs:

“[B]efore a crowd that included women and children,” Dray writes, “Mary was stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground, gave a cry, and was stomped to death.”

Why am I sharing all this gruesome history? Simple. Because what happened to Ahmaud Arbery was the same thing that happened to Sam Hose, and Mary Turner, and Mae Murray Dorsey, and hundreds of other black people in Georgia. Groups of angry white people deemed a black life to have no value, and decided they would end it. Just like the murderers of Hose, Dorsey, and Turner, Arbery’s killers probably figured they’d get away with it. And for a while, they were right; the Glynn County District Attorney directed police officers on the scene not to arrest the McMichaels, even though they believed they had probable cause to do so. 589th verse, same as the first. And Georgia’s not the only state with such a hate-filled history; I’m writing this about a two-hour drive south of where Jesse Washington was tortured, castrated, and slowly roasted to death near Waco City Hall while the mayor and chief of police looked on.

Facts like these are the reason groups had to be formed to remind us white people that black lives do, in fact, matter. Facts like the ones I’ve laid out above are the reason Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid knelt during the National Anthem of a nation where such acts of evil were permitted, and not punished, and where numerous attempts to make lynching a federal crime were defeated. (In fact, one can easily argue that none of the perpetrators of the acts I’ve described above suffered a fraction of the consequences Kaepernick has suffered.) Facts like the ones I’ve laid out above are the reason so many of us need only look to Donald Trump calling the racists who marched on Charlottesville “very fine people” as the final proof, if such were needed, that a racist sits in the White House.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: America has a race problem, and it could end up being the death of us. If you don’t believe me, go read Dray’s book. Go read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” Go read Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped From The Beginning.” Go read Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law.” Go read any collection of writings by Dr. King, or Du Bois, or Wells-Barnett. I could recommend countless books to enlighten y’all who need the enlightening.

Again, America has a race problem, and it could be the death of us. As Kendi points out, it’s not enough for us to not be racist. We need to be anti-racist. That means knowing our history, and understanding where we are now. It means calling lynching by its name when we see it. It means demanding accountability for such awful crimes against humanity. It means understanding why Kaepernick knelt, and understanding that he’s far from alone in his sentiments. And it means standing with people like Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile and Eric Garner and Sandra Bland and the thousands of other black men and women who’ve met violent, early ends for the sole reason that they were black in America.

 

If you have been moved by what you have read, I encourage you to consider donating to support a Legal Aid society near you (this link takes you to the one in DC), which helps those most at-risk in the legal system receive effective representation.  I also encourage you to support the Black voices speaking their truth right now.  There are many, but some that I follow are Rachel Cargle (and the Loveland Foundation), D. Danyelle Thomas of Unfit Christian, and Christena Cleveland – who is included in the upcoming anthology A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South, which can be pre-ordered at the link.  My wonderful husband Chris Newman of @sylvanaquafarms also writes incisive prose about the intersection of race, farming, food, and privilege.  There is a crowdfunding page published by Crowdpac for Ahmaud Arbery’s family, but at the time of publishing they have yet to be personally affiliated with it, so I am watching to see it receives their stamp of approval before donating to it. And as always, God vs. The Patriarchy can be supported via several options at the Support tab, to the left.

Job 18 – Gaslighting with Bildad

⁵ “The lamp of a wicked man is snuffed out;
    the flame of his fire stops burning.
⁶ The light in his tent becomes dark;
    the lamp beside him goes out.
(Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

Sometimes, wicked men do prosper

Bildad fully shows his willful ignorance here.  We all know that the “bad guy” doesn’t always get his comeuppance, that very often the wicked do prosper while the good and innocent do fail.  I don’t know why this is, but it is undeniably a part of life today, and I’m sure there were examples of this back in Job and Bildad’s time as well.

To wrestle with why God allows wicked men to prosper is going to take more than one blog post.  I have no clear answer and it is one of the biggest challenges I face in remaining faithful.  In my post on Destiny vs. Free Will, I shared my thoughts on God creating a framework within which we can make our own choices. It’s like children being contained on a playground or an artist painting wet-into-wet in watercolor:  there’s a basic structure within which all actions are contained, but what exactly is going to happen is spontaneous.  Perhaps, then, the wicked prospering is like the bully on the playground, or making a bold brush-stroke that bleeds into a more delicate element of the painting.  Neither of these are perfect examples because it implies God isn’t looking or God makes mistakes, and I, personally, don’t believe that can be true if God does exist.  Like I said, this is something that challenges me.

Don’t be a Bildad

What I do know, however, is that Bildad’s response is about as useless as can be.  He meets Job’s hurt with anger, then offers empty platitudes and turn a blind eye to the realities in the world. Basically, Bildad is gaslighting Job. (Gaslighting is when you pyschologically manipulate someone into questioning their own sanity.  There are some subtle and many appalling examples if you do an online search.)

Don’t be a Bildad.  It can be hard not to get defensive, but if you are in a situation where someone becomes angry about something you feel doesn’t apply to you (institutional racism or sexism, xenophobia, bullying…) please resist the urge to deny or to argue.  Just because you don’t do something doesn’t mean it never happens.  Recognizing someone’s hurt is the first step in healing.  It can be humbling, and even awkward, to listen to someone enumerate the ways in which they have been wronged and realize that maybe you were actually part of the problem.  But even if you truly weren’t, you may learn something you didn’t know before, and be able to spot – and stop – gaslighting the next time it happens near you (or to you!).

Bildad doesn’t know the big picture, and is speaking out of arrogance and ignorance.  If he did, I bet he would be a lot more consoling to Job.  And truly, isn’t it best to err on the side of love?  Even if Job was in the wrong, I don’t think God would have held it against Bildad for trying to offer him comfort. I know that’s something I could do a better job of remembering in my own daily interactions.  Sadly, I expect that as the election season (and vitriolic rhetoric) ramps up alongside the spread of the corona pandemic, we will see more examples of biases coming out: more discrimination against anyone who looks even vaguely Chinese, wariness of foreigners in general, and possible old racial stereotypes of non-whites being “dirty” and, in certain minds, more likely to spread infection.  BIPOC, or anyone that looks like they belong to those groups, are going to be facing a lot in the coming months.  If somebody comes to you with a story of discrimination, please believe them.  Do not turn a blind eye to the injustices of the world, as Bildad does.  To listen is to err on the side of love, and we’ll need a lot of that this year.

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