We are all created in the image of God.

No human being is greater than any other human being.

No human being ever has the right to treat another human being as anything less than the image of God.

If you are White, Black, Asian, Inuit, LGBTQ+, if you have learning disabilities or physical disabilities, if you have different beliefs to me, if your culture is different from mine, if you have different views of the world go me, you are still the image of the living God.

Violence against another human being is never, ever, ever OK.

Oppression of another human being is never, ever, ever OK.

Persecution of another human being is never, ever, ever OK.

To treat a human less than the image of God is to abuse God himself. To do it in his name is utterly disgusting.

To support a system or party or regime that does this is totally at odds with the God of the Bible, and if you think that he endorses that, then you have missed the entire point of his story.

Right now, in the West, Black men and women are not treated as the image of God, equal to all others. If you can support anything or anyone who treats the image of God with such disdain then, honestly, I do not know how you can claim to be a follower of Jesus. 

While any part of our community is systematically treated as less valuable than the rest then we cannot claim that all lives matter. Until the injustice is addressed and black lives matter then we cannot say that all do!

And if you think that Jesus was white then you are seriously to be pitied.

I do not know what else to say.

It seems so obvious that I honestly cannot believe it needs saying, especially to anyone who claims to know Jesus.

End note.

If you have not seen it, I recommend this film, Just Mercy. It is based on the book of the same name by Bryan Stevenson, and confronts institutionalised racism in Stevenson’s autobiography of his time as a black lawyer working with death row inmates. This book tells the true story that encapsulates the injustice which is the reason for the anger of this moment. 

I had to write a review on this, in the light of the powers and principalities and how they infect the systems and the lives on individuals. It was part of the ‘Prophetic Voices for a Just Society’ course for my MA, which can be read here.