A Little Essay To My Christian Brothers And Sisters & My Woke Friends.…

The harm slav­ery has done to Black peo­ple is both immea­sur­able, and incal­cu­la­ble. There are many things that con­tin­ue to plague peo­ple of African ances­try that may direct­ly be linked to slav­ery, not just those of us who are descen­dants of enslaved Africans, but those who live on the African con­ti­nent who are the descen­dants of Africans who lived under European occupation.
Nothing has been used to dis­tort real­i­ty for African peo­ple than the con­cept of reli­gion. Still today it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get most of our reli­gious broth­ers and sis­ters to under­stand that believ­ing in a sov­er­eign God does not mean sit­ting around wait­ing for him/​her to burst through the clouds to save us from what­ev­er ails us.
My Pastor the Reverend Dr. Jesse Voyd Bottoms speaks to this truth that I have always believed in,” If pray­ing is all you do, it is not enough”.

It is a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that is borne out through­out the Bible. (Philippians 4:13)¹³ I can do all things through ^[a]Christ who strength­ens me.
James 2:14 – 17, What does it prof­it, my brethren, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? ¹⁵ If a broth­er or sis­ter is naked and des­ti­tute of dai­ly food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are need­ed for the body, what does it prof­it? ¹⁷ Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
You get the pic­ture I suppose?

How then as Christians are so many of us Blacks still con­found­ed when it comes to this issue when it comes to what we need to do to effect change here on earth and in our own communities?
Why are we still look­ing up into the skies in the hope that the great cre­ator of the uni­verse is going to burst through and sweep us up and all of our trou­bles will be over?
Exodus 14 v 13 – 16,¹³ Moses answered the peo­ple, “Don’t be afraid! Stand still, and see what the Lord will do to save you today. You will nev­er see these Egyptians again. ¹⁴ The Lord is fight­ing for you! So be still!” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you cry­ing out to me? Tell the Israelites to start mov­ing. ¹⁶ Raise your staff, stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide the water. Then the Israelites will go through the sea on dry ground.

This issue of racism is noth­ing new, over two thou­sand years ago Yeshua was cru­ci­fied by the Italians, with the help of Jews who saw him as a threat to the estab­lished order.
Struggling under the weight of the cross he was forced to car­ry after being bru­tal­ly beat­en and bru­tal­ized, not a sin­gle per­son helped to car­ry the cross as Yeshua strug­gled with it, until of course, they saw Simon of Cyrene a black man who was pass­ing through, he, they forced to car­ry the cross.
Luke 23:26 And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was com­ing in from the coun­try, and laid on him the cross, to car­ry it behind Jesus.
Matthew 27:32 As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They com­pelled this man to car­ry his cross.
Mark 15:21 And they com­pelled a passer­by, Simon of Cyrene, who was com­ing in from the coun­try, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to car­ry his cross.

The moral of the sto­ry is that not a sin­gle one of those Italian sol­diers saw fit to help Yeshua or to force any­one else, but anoth­er black man to help the black Yeshua with the heavy piece of tim­ber, that they had forced him to car­ry after beat­ing him mercilessly.
If we as a peo­ple have learned noth­ing after thou­sands of years of these things hap­pen­ing to us, when are we going to learn?
If we refuse to acquaint our­selves with the real­i­ties sur­round­ing us, and if we refuse to read any­thing, and if we con­tin­ue to engage in the prac­tice of prayer with­out works, a hun­dred years from now our chil­dren, grand chil­dren, and great-grand­chil­dren, (if they sur­vive) will be fight­ing these same fights that we should have ended.
If we who call our­selves Christians con­tin­ue to believe that the Lord God Almighty sanc­tioned peo­ple own­ing peo­ple ‚then we deserve to con­tin­ue being slaves. If we con­tin­ue to be sanc­ti­mo­nious, sac­ri­fi­cial lambs to the slaugh­ter, because we believe in the hog­wash that we must hum­ble our­selves in front of our ene­mies and turn the oth­er cheek, then guar­an­teed we will be a sac­ri­fice on the burn­ing altar of stupidity.

As long as we believe that we have an oblig­a­tion to con­tin­ue to love our ene­mies, even as he uses his sword to slaugh­ter us, then we deserve what­ev­er else he dish­es out to us.
Much has been done to use reli­gion to pre­vent Black insur­rec­tion dur­ing their enslave­ment and to con­tin­ue to keep blacks from ever get­ting to real­iz­ing the lies about white superiority.
I am not here to tell you what to believe, nev­er­the­less, if you believe that the very same peo­ple whose ances­tors enslaved and mur­dered yours, and are to this day opposed to you hav­ing the most basic of right and dig­ni­ty that they sum­mar­i­ly enjoy, are deserv­ing of your love and devo­tion, then do you.
Watch and pray, that’s scrip­tur­al. All through­out the Bible the GOD of the right­eous, waged war on the ene­mies of his peo­ple, and destroyed them.

Has that God sud­den­ly reversed him­self and requires us to sur­ren­der our lives in hum­ble sup­pli­ca­tion and feal­ty to those who oppress us? If you believe that you are still a slave.
Some of you Christians are so right­eous that you can­not even talk about any­thing but Church, you do not pay atten­tion to your kid’s school hap­pen­ings. You do not vote in school board elec­tions, you have no idea who rep­re­sents you in state­hous­es and in the Congress, then you com­plain about not vot­ing because “nobody ain’t giv­ing you any­thing.” That is the rea­son they dump their mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar jails in your com­mu­ni­ties with­out even con­sult­ing you.

That is why they build bus depots in your com­mu­ni­ties, so that your chil­dren may ingest the putrid diesel fumes, mak­ing them expo­nen­tial­ly more sus­cep­ti­ble to asth­ma and oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases. Don’t even men­tion noise pollution.
When you do not vote and stay vig­i­lant, they poi­son your water, they demol­ish your com­mu­ni­ties and build inter­state high­ways and pay you noth­ing for your land. When you refuse to vote, they put police in place to bru­tal­ize and kill you, because they fear no consequence.
Why is it that you pay tax­es just like every­one else, yet your chil­dren’s schools are ver­i­ta­ble fortress­es, manned by armed police ready to gun them down, no books, co com­put­ers, while a cou­ple of miles into the sub­ur­b’s their schools are peace­ful oases of tran­quil learn­ing, staffed with car­ing teach­ers and equipped with every tool need­ed to aid the learn­ing process?

Do you still want to talk about not voting?
Why do you think they are going to such lengths to take that right away from you? I am speak­ing to you so-called woke peo­ple who sit on your rear ends and point to flaws in can­di­dates, knit-pick­ing any lit­tle neg­a­tive you can find in them as if you are per­fect, then use social media to encour­age oth­ers not to vote or get involved in the process.
Who are you help­ing in that process, except to make your­self seem smart, when you are real­ly demon­strat­ing just how unlearned you are?

Yeshua him­self told those who would trap him into speak­ing out about the Roman Government,“ Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21.
It was by far more than an attempt by Yeshua to avoid the entrap­ment, but a guide to Christians that they have an earth­ly duty to pay atten­tion and be attuned to earth­ly hap­pen­ings, and to be con­ver­sant of the issues that will affect our lives.
All of those peo­ple who fol­lowed Yeshua, includ­ing his dis­ci­ples fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that he would return in their lifetime.
He was cru­ci­fied more than two thou­sand years ago.….….….. He is com­ing back, make no mis­take about that, but there is a lot of time between God’s time and our idea of time.
And in between those two con­cepts of time, there is a whole lot of liv­ing and suf­fer­ing left to happen.

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[“I do get a sense some­times now among cer­tain young peo­ple, and this is accel­er­at­ed by social media, there is this sense some­times of: ‘The way of me mak­ing change is to be as judg­men­tal as pos­si­ble about oth­er peo­ple.” “And that’s enough.” “Like, if I tweet or hash­tag about how you didn’t do some­thing right or used the wrong verb.” “Then I can sit back and feel pret­ty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
“That’s not activism. That’s not bring­ing about change”. “If all you’re doing is cast­ing stones, you’re prob­a­bly not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”] (Barack Hussien Obama)

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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