Our Response to Racial Injustice

At agape, we often take several days before we respond to current events on social media. This is not entirely unintentional. We always try to do our best to make sure that our responses are well considered and clearly articulate our thoughts and feelings on contemporary issues. We also do not want our voice to be lost in the den of clamoring voices fueled by emotion, rather than tempered with reason. Our delayed response by no means indicates that we don’t care. On the contrary, our entire purpose is to facilitate growth and healing and change. We walk alongside people daily, who are tormented with grief, anxiety, fear, injustice, and tragedy of all sorts. We weep with those who mourn. We kneel with those who protest. We stand with those who seek change. And our hearts break for all who suffer. 

Our souls are burdened by all of the suffering and the wickedness of a fallen and broken world. We seek, sometimes in small ways, to make a difference in peoples’ lives, and we desire to speak hope and comfort to those who are afflicted. We strongly repudiate institutional racism. We abhor injustice and abuse of power, at any level. We grieve over the tragic loss of innocent lives. It is very clear that among the myriad of wrongs and evils that plague our society as a whole, that there is profound and irrefutable evidence of social and racial injustice. We know that the seeds of every evil lie in every human heart and that clearly people are capable of all kinds of evil. Be it murder, theft, violence, gossip, malice, selfishness, or any other of the many ills that pervade human kind. 

Addressing racial inequality, particularly as pertaining to the law, is necessary and way overdue. As much as we would like to believe that things have been improving in that area, and in some ways we believe that it has, it has been way too slow and inconsistent and it has not been addressed with the vigor that it demands. The tone of our nation, for way too long, has been divisive, whether it has been on political lines, racial lines, economic lines, and indeed, even with regard to religion. Companying that division has often been hatred, bigotry, hostility, and mischaracterization. The fruit, or product, of these things is obvious. We join others in our prayer for unity and desire for healing and profound social change. Institutional changes are clearly necessary, but moreover, profound changes of hearts and minds are even more necessary. It does not diminish the demand for legal and institutional reform, but on all sides and from all quarters, we believe that love, truth, justice, grace, mercy and tolerance are not in any way mutually exclusive and those require changes from within. 

We desire, as God allows, for us to be the instruments of change and healing and the bringers of that peace, in perhaps some small way. We wish to join others in prayer and effort toward that end. Again, our hearts truly break for those who have suffered loss and / or persecution. We stand with those calling for change. We pray with those praying for healing, peace and unity. And we pray that, as Ghandi said, that we can be the change we desire to see. We bid you all God’s peace. 

— Darrell Provinse, Executive Director & CEO