As I have been reflecting on the news recently, this little parable has bubbled up into my mind. It's something that has helped give me some clarity of thought:
There was a wealthy man with two sons who decided to take in a poor young man--not out of pity but to work on their property. Though occasionally to the outside world the family would act as though he was part of the family, he was treated harshly, forced into hard labor and punished severely when he displeased them. Eventually, the young man's true parents died in their poverty, and the young man had no home but the cruel place of his masters.
The older son began taking pity on the young man, saying that his father should pay him for his work and that he should be treated less harshly. Eventually, after much internal conflict in the family, the father decided to adopt the orphaned young man as his son.
But the two natural sons did not receive him as a brother. The younger son, who had relied much more on the young man's work than the older son, refused to recognize him as a brother at all, treating him as a slave as much as his father would allow. The older son likewise worked to deceive his adopted brother, making sure that he would lose none of his inheritance to this outsider, even as he relished in being considered the kinder of the two brothers.
Finally, after years of mistreatment and wondering if he could ever truly be part of the family, the poor adopted son came to his father with one question: "Do you love me?"
The father was taken aback by the question. He had taken him in, after all. He had adopted him and given him a home. His time as a mere servant was long ago. How could he ask such a question? The father's reply: "I love all my sons."
"Yes," the adopted son begged, "but do you love me?"
I grew up understanding that "God loves everyone," but when I was struggling with depression in my late 20s, I came to the realization that although I believed that God loved me because "God loves everybody," I really needed to receive the truth that God loves me. It was a great gift to feel God speak into my heart that God truly loves me. If I continued to believe only that God loves all, without really applying that to me personally, it would have been devastating.
That's the problem with responding "All Lives Matter" to the cry of "Black Lives Matter." Generalizing when someone is asking for a personal affirmation is to deny them of that affirmation, just as this father in the parable was doing. We need to affirm and demonstrate that "all lives" really does include "black lives" by saying, yes, black lives indeed matter, and repenting of everything that we have done to make them bring that question to us in the first place.
“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone”
- Ephesians 2:14-20 (ESV)
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
- Galatians 3:28 (ESV)
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