Let My People Go
george floyd, the exodus, & white peopleʼs sins
I wrote this piece in the days following George Floydʼs murder six years ago. Unfortunately it is just as relevant today as it was then.
Sermon time for my fellow white people. Settle in, I’m gonna get preachy.
Exodus is about God’s fierce determination to free his people from bondage no matter the cost. As the parable goes, Moses asked of Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” Pharaoh was unmoved. So God sent plagues upon Egypt, each more severe than the last, to convey the message more forcefully. Pharaoh was still unmoved. Eventually God killed the firstborn son in every Egyptian family, including Pharaoh’s own child: finally, Pharaoh relented. He would not be moved until violence befell his own child. The Israelites fled. But soon thereafter Pharaoh’s heart is hardened again and he sends his army to re-enslave God’s people. As we all learned, God then parted the Red Sea to save the Israelites and doom the Egyptians.
According to biblical scholars none of this actually happened—there is no archaeological evidence of the exodus. And yet many evangelicals who will enthusiastically declare the historicity of the exodus—and even defend God’s use of mass child killings to liberate Israel—are also complaining about the protests in Minneapolis related to the horrific police murder of George Floyd.
“Looting is unacceptable.”
“That’s not the proper way to get the message across.”
“They are so angry.”
“Violence never solved anything.”
“Not Target!!!”
Let me get this straight: it’s permissible for GOD to riot in the criminal extreme to compel action—frogs, locusts, blood rivers, child murder!—but it’s not permissible for Black people to protest & destroy some merchandise & overtake a precinct for a similar purpose? (And let’s be clear, white people riot too, but without consequence). And it’s okay for GOD to do WHATEVER IT TAKES (including killing!) to get the liberation message across—but it’s not okay for Black people to be righteously enraged & speak “the language of the unheard” (MLK on rioting) because their CHILDREN GET MURDERED IN THE STREET on the regular, and no police officer is EVER held accountable, and white people refuse to fucking listen?!
How can a white evangelical Christian assert that the exodus absolutely happened the way the Bible says it did, and that God was totally justified in taking batshit extreme measures to save his people from their oppressor, and then in their next breath criticize Black people for taking FAR LESS extreme measures to save themselves from their oppressor?
I’ll tell you how: white evangelicals—and all of us who were taught by them—are confused about who they are in this story. White evangelicals have wrongly identified with Israel, but they/WE are not Israel. We are Egypt. We’re not Moses in this metaphor; we’re Pharaoh! We are not Israel—we are Babylon. We👏🏻are👏🏻not👏🏻Israel—we are Rome.
The persecution complex must go because we are not the persecuted, but the persecutor.
White evangelicalism’s belief that the Bible centers them is a huge part of the problem and a major driver of white victimhood. We’ll bitch about a stupid Target burning and say that wearing a mask is infringing on our rights, all while Black men and women are constantly getting murdered by police and dying at significantly higher rates of COVID-19 than white people are.
By reading our Bibles with our white selves at the center, we co-opt the liberation message that was NEVER ABOUT US and convince ourselves that we need saving from the marginalized, when in reality the marginalized need saving from us.
And here’s the hard truth: just because you’ve disavowed white evangelicalism doesn’t mean you don’t still have it’s poison inside you. The poison of white evangelicalism is white supremacy, and it’s much deeper and more more insidious than alliance with white evangelical doctrine. Deconstructing the doctrine is not enough. We must deconstruct white Jesus. We must deconstruct colonization. We must deconstruct white supremacy & the dolls nestled inside it: white privilege & white fragility.
And then we must keep going. We must learn to resist the tempting idea that we’ve ever completed the work. That’s a lie, and a very dangerous one.
Fellow white people—we will always be the Pharaoh in this story. Maybe we “get it” much more than we used to. Maybe we are quite aware that we are the oppressor and not the oppressed. But tossing out whitemalegod or a whitewashed Bible (that’s what inerrancy is—white supremacy exploiting sacred text) is far easier than plucking off all the bad fruit those things plant in our souls.
Let’s never stop asking: how is my heart hardened? How am I failing to listen? How am I unmoved by dehumanization until it gets too close to home? How am I moving to re-enslave Black bodies? How am I centering myself as a Moses instead of meditating on the truth that I am Pharaoh?
You know who gets to identify with the exodus message of liberation? The Black community. THEY are Israel. THEY need freedom from bondage. THEY get to say LET MY PEOPLE GO.