CIVIL REVOLUTION: SERVE WITH LOVE PART 3

Every time we consciously make a self-centered decision, we need to think about how to love our neighbor within the same context we are presently facing, have faced, or may face in the future. It does not have to be to the extreme of a Desmond Doss, in which we might literally risk our lives. Are you hungry or thirsty? How can you help satisfy that same desire for food and drink in your neighbor? Do you desire to live in a safe and peaceful environment? How can you help your neighbor to live likewise? As passionately as you pursue good things for yourself, do likewise for your neighbor. The possibilities to serve are endless. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve…You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”*

My family was on the receiving end of such a servant attitude when I was a teenager in Northern California. “Beware of Falling Rocks!” was a sign many times and never given it much of a thought. I was sixteen, riding in my parents’ car when that sign took on new gravity. A line of cars backed up like freeway rush hour traffic. I got out of the car and walked up the mountain until I could see what the holdup was. A half-mile up the road, the side of the hill had given way. Bulldozers were clearing up the rubble as quickly as possible. A couple hours later our turn came to inch through the pathway, when a worker yelled, “Hurry, it’s starting to go again!” Dad punched it, but not fast enough. One rock tore through the oil pan, trashing the undercarriage. We limped off to a safe spot away from the road. By this time, dusk had fallen over the canyon. When the tow truck arrived, it was driven by a young man not much older than I. Not only did he tow us to the shop and promise to get it fixed by the morning, he called his parents and told them he was bringing some guests home for the night. Outside the town of Eureka, California, we, total strangers, were treated to dinner, a warm place to bed down, and the safety of someone’s home. There was no hesitation on this family’s part to open up their hearts and their home. 

Daryl Davis takes this servant mindset to a Desmond-Doss level by showing his peers how to love those who historically have hated, persecuted, and even killed black men like him. Charlottesville, Virginia, will linger in the consciousness of America as the battleground where twenty-first-century blood was spilled in the war against white supremacy, neo-Nazis, and the Klan. But for decades, Daryl Davis has fought that war in a unique way. He has found that the most effective way to uncover a Klansman is through friendship, often over a meal. Davis has met these hooded individuals at rallies and at their homes in a quest to win them over. He, like Doss, has been misunderstood and treated with contempt by his own people because of his actions, but it has not kept him from listening, speaking, and serving in love. He understands that “We cannot serve others properly – that is, in ways that benefit them instead of [just] us – until we have taken the time to appreciate their potential and their limits, their strengths and their needs…Authentic reconciliation and community are not possible as long as groups of people view each other from a distance. We need to get close enough to see the pain we are causing each other and to listen carefully so that we can make the changes that will and unnecessary pain.”**

Decades ago 58-year-old Blues musician Daryl Davis learned the most effective way to get a Klansman to give up his hood: friendship. Daryl Davis has a unique hobby. In his spare time, he befriends white supremacists. Lots of them. Hundreds. He goes to where they live. Meets them at their rallies. Dines with them in their homes. He gets to know them because, in his words, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me? Look at me and tell me to my face why you should lynch me…Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me…I’ve been called Uncle Tom. I’ve been called an Oreo.” It doesn’t sway him: “I had one guy from an NAACP branch chew me up one side and down the other, saying, ‘You know, we’ve worked hard to get ten steps forward. Here you are sitting down with the enemy having dinner, you’re putting us twenty steps back.’ I pull out my robes and hoods and say, ‘Look, this is what I’ve done to put a dent in racism. I’ve got robes and hoods hanging in my closet by people who’ve given up that belief because of my conversations sitting down to dinner. They gave it up. How many robes and hoods have you collected?’ And then they shut up.”***

Video: Klan We Talk

 

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with.”* “‘The greatest trick the devil ever played was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.’ The Devil. Racism. Another metaphor. Same difference.”** If we truly want to effect change in any relationship, we must be like Daryl and move beyond words to action against the evil in our midst – whatever shape it takes. Effective speaking involves a call and movement to action! “The average white American has ninety-one white friends for every one black, Asian, or Hispanic friend. The average black American has ten black friends for each white friend. Perhaps the most stunning statistic of interracial friendships is this: In the United States where the majority of three-year-olds are not white, up to seventy-five percent of white people cannot name a single minority friend.”*** Daryl seeks to break down these barriers by eating, drinking, and conversing with those considered ‘outsiders’ to his community, while others look on with complete disbelief.

By doing this, the ‘outsiders’ often become the ‘insiders’ or friends. We need to look for opportunities to connect with others in meaningful ways like this as people are more and more isolated from each other. This distance severely limits the cross-pollination opportunities, which began way before the pandemic. If we fail to reach out, we’ll end up singing this hopeless, sad refrain from The Way it Is.

Video: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

 

Music: The Way it Is

 

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*Martin Luther King, Jr, The Drum Major Instinct, Sermon – February 4, 1968, Ebenezer Baptist Church

**Fred Bahnson & Norman Wirzba, Making Peace with the Land, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 78

***Benny Johnson, “This Man Spent Decades Befriending KKK Members. Hundreds Have Left the Group Because of Him.” https://steemit.com/whites/@vric88/this-man-spent-decades-befriending-kkk-members-hundreds-have-left-the-group-because-of-him, accessed 8/22/17

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*Martin Luther King Jr. in Toward a More Perfect Union, Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1995, 242

**Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018, Kindle – location 150

***Derek Thompson, Hit Makers, New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2017, Kindle – location 3231