I can remember when it first happened—when my dungeon shook and my chains fell off. I had recently went through a horrible experience and felt there was no where to turn, no one who could give voice to my ache, my pain and my rage.

I feared that many wouldn’t understand.

It was some time ago and I was immersed in white evangelical church life. I had been the one selected to lead a group through John Piper’s “Bloodlines” (imagine that) because the church wanted to be more “diverse”. I was probably the first black person to preach there.

That usually came with a badge of honor—the “first” this or that usually means you’re breaking barriers (or so I thought). Then Trump happened. The the shootings of unarmed black people. Then....the white responses in the church I was in.

I was confused.

“How could they be around me and my wife and say this about black people?” “How did they not know us?” “How could they believe this?” “Why aren’t we speaking about this?”

My confusion then lead to deep sadness because of the disillusionment. The questions just kept coming.

No answers.

As if that wasn’t enough, I was teaching at a local Christian school and was called into the office because “I didn’t raise my hand for the national anthem.” It was followed up by the question, “so let us know, what do you think about the NFL protest?”

This is all happening—a type of questioning of my place in the world, my humanity—while my confusion is now turning to rage. A deep seated rage that was trying to give voice to what many people have wrestled with before: being black in a racist world.

“Why you got to talk about race all the time?” “You losing the gospel.” “We (insert white leaders) believe race is becoming too much in your life.” “You got it wrong.” “The civil rights movement solved our race problem.” “I’m not racist.”

Rage.

It was so bad that one day I was in my car driving home and I sat in my driveway and wept—I mean like wept because I felt so powerless, so vulnerable, so unloved, so hated.

Then it happened. My friend Drew said after service one day, “Stew, I got a book for you.”

It was Martin Luther King’s “Where Do We Go From Here?” I was on a quest to give voice to both being black and Christian. Loving and enraged. Honest and hopeful.

I devoured that book. It was as if a new world was happening—it was as if Martin was sitting with me in my tears.

He then quoted James Baldwin “Letter to My Nephew”. I had to read it.

In it Baldwin wrote:

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear.”

“The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope.”

“They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.”

Then he wrote these words that hit me with the sort of mercy, a grace as if Almighty God was speaking, “You don't be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish...”

But I did not. We did not. We are still here. It was at that moment that a fire came over me.

It was then that my dungeon shook, the chains of fear fell off, and the bones began to rumble and the sinews that made flesh black began to come to life. It was not just the question, “Lord, can these bones live?”

No. It was, “Lord, where will these bones go?”

Baldwin was right, “Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.”

I too believed it, so I too needed to give voice to God’s action in the black experience, our suffering, and our resistance.

This world as it is, is not the world as it should be. All of us must give voice to the hope of a better day.

There’s no other way.

I am black, I am Christian. We have been through hell in this country—and still are.

But we’re still here. And that means something.