I Will Love

In the past few years, I've found myself defending being a Christian. I've had people ask me how I could be a part of a religion that has historically oppressed people who look like me. My own father was ashamed that I could worship a God that was forced upon my earliest ancestors and used to justify their eradication and enslavement. Our people, he explained, worshiped the air, the trees, the rivers and the lakes, and those who were just beyond the veil.

In post-Trump America, Christianity, especially in the Bible Belt where I now live, looks a whole lot like Jim Crow. My faith is somehow supposed to be tied to my politics and the churches I'm to choose from are as segregated as the diners my grandparents entered from the back door or the window reserved for "Coloreds."

All of my life, I've been forced to look upon a white, blued-eyed Jesus and suspend my understanding of what people from that part of the world actually look like. What I find most interesting is that I'm also asked to conveniently ignore Revelation 1:14-15.

I've witnessed missionaries assume that they were the ones to bring Jesus to the black and brown people, ignoring the fact that Jesus was already there! I've seen more white Saviors than I can stand!

Too many times I've squirmed in pews when the preacher spewed hate from the pulpit and put the God I know in a little bitty box. A God and His son who somehow only are supposed to love Americans, white Americans. Wait, white American Republicans! A God who somehow loves men more than He loves the other half of His creation!

But here I am. Left with a broken heart, but one that still loves Christianity and humanity. I refuse to weaponize Jesus or be a gatekeeper to His love and forgiveness.

I will continue to draw deep comfort from the stories of the Bible that show me ordinary people who were able to do extraordinary things because of their faith. I will do just as they did.

I will love.

I will love.

I will love.