What is Black Lives Matter?
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social justice movement that began in 2013. In their own words, their organizing inspiration was “rage” and they are a “political home for many people.” Originally, the movement was a reaction to the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida.
Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state.
The three founders of BLM are:
Alicia Garza. Alicia Garza is a social justice warrior, civil rights activist and self-proclaimed Marxist from Oakland California. In 2008, she married her ‘husband’, Malachi Garza, who is a transgender male activist.
Patrisse Cullors. Patrisse Cullors identifies as a queer activist and also teaches Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College in Arizona.
Opal Tometi. Opal Tometi is a social justice warrior, community organizer activist and Executive Director of BAJI (Black Alliance for Just Immigration) defending increased illegal immigration as a social justice cause. In their own words, all three women were/are hotly opposed to the 2016 national election outcome.
What are some of the goals of BLM?
“We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people. We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.
We are guided by the fact that all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location.
We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.
We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence. (To dismantle cisgender privilege means to stigmatize biblical sexuality as somehow oppressive.)
We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
We embody and practice [social] justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.”
As of May 2020, an additional stated goal of BLM is to defund police departments and redirect the money to black communities.”
“The demand of defunding law enforcement becomes a central demand in how we actually get real accountability and justice,” she says, “because it means we are reducing the ability of law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities” (Patrice Cullors).
First, let me say that I agree that all ethnic groups should be treated fairly under the law. All should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty, ever mindful that “rulers hold no terror for them which do right” (Romans 13:3). I am troubled when innocent people are arrested, harassed or killed, just as I am troubled when a police brutality incident is seized upon as an excuse to loot, burn and destroy other innocent lives and property. That is at best evil-for-evil, and at worst malicious lawlessness. The Bible condemns both (Psalm 34:12-16; Romans 12:17; 1 Peter 3:9; Matthew 24:12; 7:23).
If our perspective of law enforcement is reduced to seeing it as harmful, we will inevitably come to regard the rule of law itself as unnecessary, and obedience as merely optional. What will be the result, but an increase in lawlessness? (Matthew 24:12). You’ll have to ask yourself if you can support the things that BLM supports. It’s up to you. As for me and my house—we can’t.
Social justice movements may be popular in the wider culture, but they should not be accepted without first comparing them to the Word of God. Any movement that promotes homosexuality and transgenderism and the “disruption of the [biblical] nuclear family” is selling from an empty wagon. Maybe it’s time to stop buying.
The devastating effects of the destruction of the nuclear family is clearly visible in the black community, who saw a rise from 20% – 70% in illegitimate births from 1960 to today. It is not something to be lauded or recommended to others. Such exportations are the wholesale merchandising of misery. The only biblical solution for the restoration of the family is the combining of father and mother with the stability of love and precept. This blesses children with security and happiness, enabling them to transfer these blessings to their children. If you have been handed a wrong pattern in life, you have the ennobling mercy and authority of God to break the cycle. To do it different (ie. better) than your parents did (Ezekiel 18). Please know, we are not here to condemn you, or make you look bad. We are here to encourage you in any way that we can.
No, we don’t need more fatherless families. We need the Spirit of God to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. I love how the Old Testament signs off with a promise—that our God will do just that (Malachi 4:6).
We don’t need violence disguised as righteousness, and the most mundane interactions reinterpreted through the discriminating eye of the microaggression (Isaiah 5:20). For many, fighting racism isn’t just a cause, it’s become a religion—and all that remains of most major religious denominations. Otherwise neutral institutions are now being accused of pervasive whiteness. Racism has ceased to be an observable interaction between individuals and has become the unseen gluonic binding block of all social matter in America. The religion of racism has now reached its logical conclusion. True to social justice norms, it is no longer the absence of black people, but the presence of white people that is racist. Racism is now declared America’s original sin, and the Church rebranded “systemic.”
White people carry it everywhere with them like radiation. To be white was to have your body and your mind, your thoughts, your writings and even the inanimate objects around you be infected by racial radioactivity. This is the mantra of all diversity & inclusion ‘experts’, most liberal theologians, and a rising tide of culturally inculcated millennials.
Thus, racism is the new witchcraft. Just like Salem's witches, it’s everywhere and in everything. But, if everything is racist, nothing is.
Dear friends, we don’t need this manufactured Weltschmerz. What we need is the most precious Book in the world, the Bible. It will direct our souls to the paradise of God. It makes both black and white acquainted with the will of God—emancipating us from the slavery of fear and pride. It melts away our prejudices with the universal solvent of the love of God.
We don’t need organized attacks on biblical male & female marriage disguised as ‘justice.’ We need the blessing of obedience to God’s design, we need the regenerating fruit of repentance in our lives. I need it too.
To do otherwise is to invite a curse upon the earth.
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“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Malachi 4:6)