by Randy Alcorn
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “Caffeine’s our drug of choice. Give caffeine to a cop and he’ll be your friend for life. Thanks, Herb.”
Ollie and Clarence walked out the door, burritos in hand.
“Clarence,” Ollie asked as they settled in the front seat, “you said Mr. Kim saw two guys, both in red sweatshirts, one short and muscular, fancy car, big weapon. Right?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Let’s go pay him a visit. I’m going to go show him a picture of a Lexus just to make sure, but I think Mr. Kim and Herb are talking about the same guys.”
“So,” Clarence said, “after these guys drop by Kim’s store, they change from red sweatshirts to black leather jackets? Why?”
“I’m not sure. It might mean nothing. It might be the key to everything.”
“But if they were the shooters, wouldn’t it have been awfully stupid to show their faces and this fancy car in a Taco Bell less than a mile from where they were going to commit a murder?”
“Maybe. But don’t rule out something just because it’s stupid. That’s how we crack cases. If people weren’t stupid, we wouldn’t catch them. Maybe these guys don’t know a Lexus with wire wheels sticks out like a sore thumb in Portland. Maybe they had another plan to minimize their risk. Maybe they were Bloods sent to do a job, and they didn’t want to look like Bloods so they changed into black leather before they did it.”
“That fits with what Gracie said. That Bloods did it.”
Suddenly Herb stuck his head out the door, looking around. Ollie flashed his headlights. Herb came over.
“Somethin’ else I just remembered,” Herb said. “I told you nobody knew these guys in the black leather. Well, it just came back to me. Somebody did know ’em. He came over and sat with ’em. I remember thinkin’ they must be big time, because this guy was a ghetto star, wouldn’t be meetin’ with just anybody.”
“Who was he?”
“Rollin’ 60s honcho. The guy that shot himself. Gangster Cool.”
Clarence stared at the painting on the wall. A beautiful seascape with brilliant colors, so real he could taste the salt air. He looked at the name written in the bottom right corner—Dani Rawls.
“Hello, Clarence.” The man’s voice sounded like a thunder clap in this small room. It seemed to bypass his vocal chords and come straight from his thick chest. Cairo Clancy was lighter-skinned than Clarence, large by normal standards, but smaller than Clarence.
“I called you here for a reason,” Reverend Clancy said. “But first, I just want to get to know you.” Clarence shifted uneasily. “I’m glad you’ve been comin’ to our church. I’m sure it’s a real change for you. Tell me what you like and what you don’t like.”
Clancy’s directness took Clarence by surprise. “Well, I like the music. And I like your messages. Not used to services over two hours, though. And it surprises me some of the things you talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Like reading off kids’ names for their school achievements.”
Clancy laughed. “Wait till honor roll comes out. I read every name. I want the kids to know that’s the way to make your rep, not as a gangbanger or a dope-head. If somebody gets a scholarship somewhere, I tell the church about it. If they get a job, we tell everybody. Some people just can’t see takin’ church time to do that, but I can’t see not takin’ the time. The church is a family, and families talk.”
Clarence nodded. “I do enjoy the church, mostly. Friendly folks.”
“Before I started this church,” Clancy said, “I was a young pastor at a Baptist church where folks was nice enough, but … if the 1950s ever come around again, that church will be ready.”
Clarence laughed. “Yeah, I was at a church like that in the suburbs. A few years ago we got a new pastor, and he said, ‘I’m going to lead this church into the twentieth century.’ A couple of people caught him on it and said, ‘You mean the twenty-first century.’ He looks at them and says, ‘Let’s just take it one century at a time.’”
Pastor Clancy chuckled. “Some churches are like the Amish, except they set their time limits at 1950 instead of 1850. Still, you’ve got lots of churches so concerned about being modern and up-to-date that anything old is automatically irrelevant. All they care about is being current with the times, when what people need is to be taken back to something ancient and eternal, the Word of God. Guess we have to find a balance. So … give me some more feedback on our church.”
“I like your sermons, but … they’re more emotional, maybe less theological than I’m used to.”
“Well, black churches are mostly in urban areas, but they’ve still got that rural soul. My people walk on asphalt, but their toes are more at home in red clay. Now,” Clancy’s eyes gleamed, reminding Clarence of his father, “the ol’ black preachers never used the word omnipotent. They just said to their people, ‘There’s nothin’ God can’t do.’ They didn’t say, ‘God is omnipresent.’ Just said, ‘God’s so high you can’t get over him, so low you can’t get under him, so wide you can’t get ’round him.’” He laughed. “Any questions about our church I can help you with?”
“I’ve been wondering how you handle people living in immorality,” Clarence said. “At my last church, it seemed like the leaders turned the other way and ignored it.”
“We don’t tolerate sin here. And I don’t just mean from the pulpit. Man gonna do drugs, beat his wife and children, sleep around, he won’t get away with it. Not here.”
“But what can you do about it?”
“Well, maybe two months ago we got a call that one of our men beat up his wife. I went over with two of the deacons, Harv Jolly and Jim Farrel. You know them?”
“Harv Jolly the linebacker?”
“Yessir. University of Washington, back in the seventies. And Farrel’s a former gangbanger. Two of the most godly guys you’ll ever know. Anyway, they were with me, and I warned this man, ‘We’ll do everything we can to help you, but nothin’ can excuse hitting your wife. Nothin’. You do it again, and my deacons are gonna get you.’”
“What do you mean ‘get you’?” Clarence asked.
“Well, for five weeks he didn’t hurt her—turned out to be the longest he’d gone in years. But one day he hit her again, and one of our deaconesses found out. I got the call, and I sent Jim and Harv to pay him a visit.”
“What did they say?”
“Didn’t say much at all. Just beat the livin’ daylights out of him.”
Clarence looked wide eyed. “Your deacons beat him up?”
“Yessir. He repented too, once he woke up. That man’s been comin’ to church ever since and hasn’t laid a finger on his wife for six months. Ol’ Harv disciples him. They meet for breakfast every Thursday. He’s comin’ along, that brother.”
Clarence stared at Clancy, who talked as if this was normal, as if he were talking about paving the parking lot.
“Okay,” Clarence said, “since you’re asking, I do have another question. The Sunday school rooms are full of posters of black history and black heroes. I see them, and they make me feel good, make me wish I knew this stuff when I was a kid. But still, isn’t there a danger? Doesn’t it teach our children to choose role models just because of their race?”
“I don’t see it that way at all,” Clancy said. “History’s been edited along racial lines, and our kids need to see there’s black heroes along with white ones. Last week I was talking to the children’s group, and I told them about the Isonghee abacus, a bone from prehistoric Zaire with markings showing it was used for calculations. Well, that bone shows the most ancient mathematics don’t come from Europe or Asia, but from Africa. Maybe you don’t think church is the place for that, but I think our kids need to hear it—lots of them have been brainwashed to think they can’t cut it in math class. That’s why we’ve started the Ebenezer School of Ethnic Studies. It’s not just a politically correct gimmick.”
Pastor Clancy stood up and gestured dramatically
. “There’s a pathology of despair among our people. You know the conversations we have with each other that we don’t have with white folk. You know the undertones, the history, the suffering behind it. How can we face the future, how can we face the problems of our communities unless we know what we’re capable of? If a black child realizes black folk have made great accomplishments from the beginning of human history and great accomplishments in America, it gives him hope. If he thinks of black people as failures, it destines him to failure. I want our children to grow up believing they can succeed.”
“I’m with you there, pastor,” Clarence said. “I just think Afrocentrism can be as unhealthy as Eurocentrism.”
“I won’t argue with that—I mean, true Christianity can’t be centered on any culture, it has to be centered on Christ. But Eurocentrism pervades our society. We’ve got to counterbalance that somehow if the descendants of African slaves are going to take their rightful place here. I teach a class called Blacks in the Bible. I open up all these passages people have never thought about.”
“What passages do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, Ephraim and Manasseh are two of the twelve tribes of Israel, right? According to Genesis 41, they were the sons of Joseph and an Ethiopian woman. They were 50 percent black. The fathers of two tribes of Israel were black. Ever seen that in the Bible story pictures?
“Jethro was a Midianite from Southern Arabia, which was occupied by Ethiopians. He was the father of Zipporah, wife of Moses, who was a Cushite, an Ethiopian—says so in Numbers 12. Jethro’s family were believers, proselytes to the Jewish faith. Moses married this black woman, and when Miriam grumbled about this interracial marriage, God gave her leprosy to teach her a lesson.
“Or how about David? His great-grandmother was Rahab, a Canaanite, from the line of Ham, father of the black race. David’s grandmother was Ruth, a Moabite, another Canaanite tribe. By American standards, anyone with black blood is considered black. So, David easily had enough black blood that if he lived in America today he’d be called black.
“Solomon was David’s son by a Hamitic woman Bathsheba, whose name means ‘daughter of Sheba,’ an African. Zephaniah the prophet was a descendent of ‘Cush,’ a black man. And look at the messianic line of Jesus. In his legal genealogy, through Joseph, four women are mentioned—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Now, all four of those were descendants of Ham, the black line of humanity. All of them were black! Jesus’ mother Mary was also a descendant of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. There may have been other Hamitic blood in Jesus too, but as far as we know, there was no Japhetic blood, no white blood. Those who teach that having black African blood in you puts you under a curse must believe Jesus was under a curse—that the whole messianic line was cursed! By American standards, Jesus had enough African blood to be called black.
“This is important to me, Clarence. See, one evening when I was a young pastor I was reading the Bible story books to my daughter. She pointed to a picture of Jesus holding children in his lap. My daughter asked, ‘Daddy, does Jesus love white people more than he loves black people?’ I was shocked at the question. But then I realized that in the pictures, not only Jesus but all the children in his lap were lily white. I didn’t even know enough then to tell her Jesus really had dark skin, Middle Eastern Semitic dark, that along with his primarily Jewish blood he had considerable African blood in him too. I really believe if the Jesus in her picture book had looked like Jesus actually looked, she would never have asked that question. Of course, if Jesus were white, he’d still be my Lord. But he wasn’t white. And it’s Eurocentrism that’s remade him into a white image. I believe our children have suffered from that. No wonder the Black Muslims get away with saying Christianity’s a white man’s religion. It isn’t, of course, but it’s been twisted into looking as if it was.”
“It’s always struck me,” Clarence said, “that the Bible tells us what’s important— like whether or not a person loves God or if he worships idols. But it almost never says a word about people’s skin color. That’s a powerful statement. If skin color mattered, with all the thousands of people in the Bible surely God would say something about their skin color.”
“Let me tell you something else, Clarence. It bothers me when children get taught about those primitive Africans who sometimes practiced twin murder— which was very rare, by the way—but nobody talks much about how the Romans abandoned their handicapped babies to die in the cold. People talk about those few black tribes that practiced child sacrifice, but not about the white Druids in France and Britain that sacrificed humans. What do our kids learn in school about the African kingdoms that were the most advanced in the world when Caucasians in Europe were living in caves and forests? When African countries fight, a lot of people think it’s because they’re just violent ignorant blacks. When Europeans fight—like in colonial wars to conquer people and take their lands and in two world wars and the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia—it’s just a manifest destiny or struggle for democracy. I know people who believe Africans are violent by nature and Europeans are peaceful, when history paints a radically different picture. It shows every race has accomplished many things and every race is capable of great violence and evil. But history gets rewritten. Even in churches, our kids grow up thinking white means good and black means bad.”
“How does that happen?”
“Let me tell you a story. Last summer a church youth group came in here from the suburbs to do five day Bible clubs in our neighborhoods. Great church, terrific young people and I’m glad they came. But they used what they called the ‘Wordless Book’ and showed our kids a black page that meant sin. They sang ‘My heart was black with sin until the Savior came in. His precious blood I know has washed me white as snow.’ Well, one of our kids said to me, ‘Pastor, how come black is bad and white is good?’
“When you read the Bible you see both white and black used metaphorically, for good and for bad. Like in Leviticus, where the white spots on the skin and white pus indicate uncleanness and infection. The infected white part had to be taken care of before the person was clean. In fact, it says if black hair has grown in a sore, then the person is now clean, but if white hair has grown in it, they’re still unclean. So in that case, white represents bad and black represents good.”
“But the Bible does say God makes us white as snow,” Clarence said.
“Sure. But the first time the metaphor ‘white as snow’ is used is where Elijah’s servant sins against God and God judges him by making him leprous, ‘white as snow.’ So there white as snow meant diseased and under God’s judgment. Of course, in Isaiah 1 it means pure and holy. My point is, white is sometimes good, sometimes bad. When Miriam muttered against Moses because he married a black woman, God judged her by making her white with leprosy. Scripture does talk about wearing white robes in heaven, and there white means pure and holy. But people of every color are wearing those white robes.
“Obviously God didn’t create sin, but he did create skin. He created light skin and dark skin. He created black—black hair and black skin. If it wasn’t good, he wouldn’t have made it. But the way our kids have heard the Bible, they’re inferior because they’re black. We’ve got to correct that. If we don’t, who will?”
“I guess kids don’t always understand,” Clarence said, “it’s just a figure of speech when the Bible says our hearts are black with sin.”
“But it doesn’t say that. Isaiah 1:18 says, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’ The contrast isn’t between white and black, it’s between white and red. Of course, even if the Bible did say ‘black as sin,’ it wouldn’t bother me, any more than white being the color of leprosy and pus and infection and disease should bother white people. It’s just that our children are used to associating their skin color with bad. Think about it. The Black Sox scandal. Black Death for the bubonic plague. Black market for something illegal. Black Monday for a W
all Street crash. Darth Vader was robed in black. Even had a black man’s voice. We’ve just got to make our kids think differently about their skin color. Well, I’ve been goin’ on. I’m sorry about that— guess you can see this turns my crank. Anything else you want to ask about Ebenezer church?”
“Here’s one my wife and I have talked about a lot. Politics. White evangelicals tend to be Republican because they’re concerned about biblical and family values and morality, and they’re pro-life. Black evangelicals are heavily Democratic, maybe because in recent decades Democrats have been more sensitive to issues of social justice, racial equality, and concern for the poor. Now I happen to be concerned about all these issues, but I think Democratic policies and programs have hurt the black community. I think it’s safe to say that at your church the members are mostly Democrats, right? I admit, that bothers me, especially on the abortion issue. I care a lot about those suffering children.”
“In my expenence,” Pastor Clancy said, “Republicans tend to be more wise and less caring, and Democrats more caring and less wise. But both parties fall way short. You mentioned abortion. I know white evangelicals who can’t understand why so many of their black brethren seem unconcerned about abortion. Likewise, black evangelicals can’t understand why so many whites are unconcerned about poverty, drugs, crime, racism, and the deterioration of urban America. And why they seem to be doing so little to improve education, employment, housing, medical care, you name it. You and I are advocates of working hard, but we both know white conservatives who have hijacked the concept of self-reliance as an excuse to abandon the truly needy.
“To black Christians, yes, abortion should be on our list of concerns. But it has to take a number, considering everything else we’ve got to deal with. With the mortality rate of our already-born children dramatically higher than white children’s, we tend to say let’s start with the ones already born. White churches are concerned about abortion and homosexuals and feminism. We’re concerned about gangs and drugs and AIDS and homelessness and jobs. Our church gets asked to participate in Life Chain every year. Some of our deacons say they feel like white evangelicals have this abortion fixation and that’s all they care about. They said to me, ‘These people want us to stand next to them on abortion, but they’ve never stood next to us on racism, social justice, unemployment, and poverty. They don’t seem to care about moral issues that are important to me. Why should I care about the only one that seems important to them?’ Well, I took my deacons to task on that, and we do join in Life Chain. But I have to admit I understand where they’re coming from.”
