and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. --John 8:32 NRSV
You have probably heard the expression “the truth shall set you free” which is spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John. For many American Christians, the “truth” Jesus speaks of here is an individual ticket to heaven which has nothing to do with the here and now or wider social issues. This is bad theology and bad interpretation of scripture.
Jesus is indeed talking about a “truth” that will save people from sin, but as John makes clear from its opening words, the salvation offered in Jesus Christ is for the world not just individuals who say the magic words of a prayer Americans made up centuries later. Jesus speaks of an “eternal life” beginning in the here and now as people who understand who Jesus is have their lives and the world around them transformed. Who is Jesus? For John, Jesus is the message of God’s love for the entire created world, a love which is radically inclusive of all people.
The truth of God’s saving love exposes the lies of sins which oppress, exclude and destroy. We are in a truth-telling moment in our society, and the lies are being exposed which many of us were taught as history. We White folks were sold a sinful lie for our history, and now our reaction to God’s truth will determine whether we are free from these sins or not.
In the past few days, Tulsa, OK has commemorated the 100-year anniversary of the massacre of African Americans at Greenwood nicknamed “Black Wall Street” because of the wealth Black people were accumulating there. I was raised in the Midwest, an easy drive from Tulsa, and I had never heard the story of this massacre until a 2019 TV show about superheroes included it in its narrative. Likewise, I never learned about Missouri being full of “sundown” towns where African Americans found in them after sunset were arrested and even killed. I grew up in St. Louis and Kansas City but never learned about housing segregation and redlining which divided the cities and allowed White people to accumulate generational wealth and denied the same to Black people. I wasn’t taught these things. Were you?
Similarly, I learned in school about “race riots” in the sixties, but I never learned about White riots in which Black people were massacred like Wilmington and Rosewood. I learned that the cause of the Civil War was “States Rights” rather than slavery, even though slavery was explicitly mentioned in the articles of secession of southern states. I learned that George Washington’s teeth were made of wood and never that his false teeth came from the actual teeth of slaves. I wasn’t taught these things. Were you?
Now that I am learning the truth about the racist history of America, I have a choice. I can allow this truth to free me from the sins of racism and the lies of a “Whites Only” creation of history or I can remain a captive of sin. Even now, sections of White America react to these truths with anger and even violence, as if they are the true victims of a new history being written. This is a lie that holds White people captive to sin. The real victims are the named and unnamed non-White people who were on the receiving end of economic, social and physical violence for generations.
As a White man in America, I was taught the Civil Rights era solved all problems of racism in our country. That lie has kept me captive to a sin I did not create but rather was born into. It is up to me to choose whether the truth will set me free or if I will reject this new work of God’s radical inclusive love for the entire world. If you’re White like me, then it is also up to you.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples
