Grief. Sorrow. Anger. Confusion: A Letter from WCIU's President
WCIU Journal: Social Justice Topic
June 2, 2020
by Kevin Higgins
WCIU Colleagues, Students, Alumni, Constituents:
George Floyd, Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery.
It just feels like this keeps stacking up. Not that it is new, of course. And how many such events and people never make the news?
Grief. Sorrow. Anger. Confusion.
Kevin Higgins is the president of William Carey International University.
In the aftermath of these events, I have wanted to speak to you all, from my heart, as a brother in Jesus and a fellow human being, as a man who, like I am sure is true for you each, is shocked and pained and perplexed by the events of these days and weeks. I have wanted to speak, but words have failed me.
While on a bike ride in which I hoped God might give me something to say I thought, “Kevin, draw this water from the well of your music soul,” and I began thinking of eloquent words others have already said, expressing things I have thought, but in ways that I could not express so well.
I turned to some lines from the music catalogue I know. Not all the lines are about violence because while violence against African Americans has been at the forefront of the news, and thus of our minds and hearts, it is but one of many areas of injustice and inequality faced by African Americans on a daily basis. So, some of what follows touches some of those other issues as well because it isn’t just one “thing”:
Homelessness
African Americans make up 40 percent of the homeless population despite only representing 13 percent of the general population.
“Shelter lines stretch around the corner, welcome to the new world order; Families sleeping in their cars in the west, got no sleep, no peace, no jobs no rest””
—Bruce Springsteen, “Ghost of Tom Joad”
Prison
African American males are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of white males. This is a song about the Ruben “Hurricane” Carter story. His conviction was eventually overturned after Ruben spent years in prison.
“The trial was a pig circus, he never had a chance…. The judge made Ruben’s witnesses seem like drunkards from the slums, to the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum … no one doubted that he pulled the trigger … And though they could not produce the gun the DA said he was the one who did the deed and the all-white jury agreed.”
—Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”
Violence
I am stepping out of my normal catalogue now, stepping into the world of rap. I spent time yesterday searching rap lyrics attacking racism. I know for most of you rap is not a genre you have explored, but if it helps any of you older white “boomers” like me, Bob Dylan recently said he felt the most articulate and creative poets in the music business today were rappers. I will just say there are powerfully prophetic things being voiced there. I was profoundly moved by some of what I came across. I include here something written and performed in tribute to George Floyd.
“I'm a young black man/ Doing all that I can/ To stand, oh but when I look around/ And I see what's being done to my kind/ Every day, I'm being hunted as prey/ My people don't want no trouble/ We've had enough struggle/ I just want to live/ God protect me/ I just want to live/ I just want to live.”
—Keedron Bryant (12 years old) “I Just want to live”
The fact that this is penned by a 12-year-old African American male is part of what gripped me. I imagined my kids at 12. What if this is the sort of reality they were having to process at that age? I need to put myself into that space and hold that inside of myself, though I can never fully be “in” it, I need to at least allow Jesus, whose heart IS fully in it, to put more of His heart into mine.
False Comparisons
But next, I feel compelled to dispel an objection. I have a brother in law enforcement, and I know there are many, many men and women who go to work everyday as servants to truly protect. I don’t want to diminish that. However, we have an issue in our country, and must face it honestly.
I came across the story of Daniel Shaver today, a white man shot and killed brutally and wrongly by Arizona police four years ago. There have been some since then who point to that incident in an attempt to suggest that, while police violence is a very real issue, it is not a racial issue. Some people go on to point to the fact that the reports of police violence involve twice as many white people as compared with black.
This misses the reality: white people have six times the total population. A white male stands a 1 in 17 chance of facing some sort of jail time, a black male? 1 in 3. (for a fuller discussion of the Daniel Shaver incident, and more data on racially disproportionate violence and incarceration, etc., see
We have issues. Long, deep, historical issues. Which brings me to some of my deeper and more painful questions.
What about the Good News?
Our own history in America reveals how supposedly good Christian people have participated in, defended, supported, and given leadership to the genocide of first nations people, enslavement of Africans, development of a new prison system of enforced labor following the Civil War (check out the movie “13th” on Netflix if you get a chance, segregation, and on and on.
I know that the evangelical movement can point to its involvement in overturning slavery, and in addressing other social ills. But we have to keep in mind that this was done largely in spite of, and in the face of opposition by the majority of white Christians.
In the name of not wanting to divert Christians from the priority of the Gospel, we have a history of evangelical resistance to involvement in issues of justice, race, poverty, gender equality, disease, and more. This shows me that somehow we have embraced a shallow and incomplete good news. Somehow we did not actually listen when Jesus taught us to pray: “Your will be done on earth …. deliver us from evil.”
Ok, so now what?
I don’t know. Yet.
WCIU says its vision includes a world “ripe with wholeness and peace.” This is rooted in the promise of blessing for all peoples in Genesis 12. But our vision statement is rooted even further back in Genesis: “In the image of God, God created them,” and, God “breathed into Adam the breath of life.”
We know that Genesis 3 describes the fracture of the image of God, but that shattered image is restored in the New Adam, Jesus, and this is an essential element of the good news. “The light of the good news of Jesus Christ who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4), is the One who breaks down the dividing walls (Eph. 2:14)
Somehow, we must recover not only a belief in a gospel that results in the restoration of the image of God in all humanity, not just as a theological concept, but in our lived reality. That is, to also allow Him to shape our lives in ways that reflect the reality of that good news having taken root inside of us, which would erase racism within one humanity renewed in Christ.
A key foundational stone in the Perspectives course is that mission is not a duty that we need to obey or motivate others to take on. It is in fact God’s mission, and God’s work of living in and working in us as He participates and we participate together in God’s fulfillment of the promised blessing of all peoples.
I believe we will be called to join Him in some tangible ways. And I trust we will be able to discern them soon.
Meanwhile, that promised blessing touches everything, or, will. So, I turn again to someone else to give me words that say better than I can what I long for and hope for as a result, as God even now is seeding the first fruits of a new heaven and new earth into this broken one we live in:
“Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood
Let me smell of wildflowers flowin’ free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace.”
Bob Dylan, 1962, “Let Me Die in My Footsteps”