FutureChurch

I've always wondered why white South Africans, particularly Christians, didn't live more differently during Apartheid. I keep on hearing about "small things" that people did, and they seem...small.

Steve Biko continues from my last post:

"A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up "what can I do?". If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - "but that's unrealistic!". While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege - will always put him miles ahead of the black man. Thus in the ultimate analysis no white person can escape being part of the oppresor camp."

If you are white and South African and are wondering why I'm talking about race, and what is all this fuss about anyway, ask yourself the following question: Are you Proudly South African? (I hope so!)

Now ask yourself this question: if you were to hear two white people talking about someone whom they've hired to do the garden work (a "horticultural consultant" as my Dad says) and they refer to that person as an "African" - what colour person are they referring to? Could that person possibly be white?

So, my white South African friend, can you be proudly African? Can you be white and African? Can someone else rightfully refer to you as African? And to say that on the street and have a bystander know that you could be any colour under the sun? These are questions I leave with you.

So back to Steve Biko's quote. We all know that the individual white Christians in the previous generation - by and large - did very little against Apartheid, simply because they weren't suffering under the system. And at the same time, they claim, "I didn't oppress anyone." While Biko may agree with that, he does say that they are part of the oppressor camp (which is an important distinction, but not very comforting).

The huge million Zim Dollar question for me is, doesn't Christianity anticipate this and prepare us for it? Doesn't it know that there will be a time when Christians will be part of a system which oppresses others, and so build into its very structure a way to ensure that this doesn't happen? Where is the call against oppression in Scripture?

Well, (of course) it's all over Scripture! There is a radical call for the structure of society to care for the weak, the poor, the orphans, the widows - everyone who has been handed a raw deal. You cannot read your Bible and miss it!

But white South Africans did. And I don't know why. Can somebody help me understand this?

And to come back to the point about Christianity building, if you will, deconstruction (!) into its fabric: well, there's a thought! Deconstruction is the enemy of truth - it's relativistic nihilism, a black hole of anti-Christian thought! How could deconstruction possibly have anything to do with Christianity?

Tune in, some time, some place, next week, for the next exciting installment...

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