Nine churchgoers, a forbearing God, a hundred questions, and few answers!

Jun 28, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

---

Countryman – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

By Dennis Nichols         
It isn’t fun writing about race hate (again) and it’s neither cool nor chic. For me it’s even less thought-

provoking than thought-disturbing, partly because it stirs some memories I’d rather forget. And I’m not talking about the admittedly nasty stereotyping and occasional ‘cuss out’ some of us experience in our own country.
What I’m referring to is a more sinister; more innately distorted kind of reasoning – the kind that made the lynching of Blacks in the American South acceptable to multitudes of people not so long ago. And the kind of thinking that apparently led Dylann Roof to execute nine innocent souls in, of all places, a church!
(By the way, what I’m writing here is based to a large degree on the many credible accounts of that horrific incident. But there are some people who seem to genuinely believe that it is just another shooting hoax perpetrated by the US government and the ‘Zionist-controlled media’ to suit their gun-control and war-on-terror agenda. Take your pick)
Anyway, this single act seems to have given a radical new twist to the term ‘premeditated murder’ and a deadlier comprehension of what it could mean to simply be Black in America, in 2015.
Forget for now the fact that the U.S. has a Black president; forget the civil rights ‘gains’ over the past five decades; forget Rachel Dolezal and her wannabe Black persona. (At least her delusion may have stemmed from a good place in the heart) Roof is almost certainly the product, and extension, of a negative, deeply-ingrained and flawed perception that many Whites, and some non-Whites, have of African Americans.
Even so, Roof’s actions, a week and a half ago are weirdly baffling. Why didn’t he charge into the building with pent-up emotion and just spray gunfire? Why didn’t he hold his victims hostage and revel in the power and control he would have exerted before shooting them?
Both of those actions would have still been premeditated, and he’d seemingly planned to

kill himself anyway, so there was nothing more to gain by prolonging his mission. Strange! How could he reload his weapon five times without intervention? And why apparently were no suspicions raised by a sole White youth with a fanny pack (belt pouch) in a Black church on a Wednesday night? So he’s crazy!!
Now for the believers’ 64-million-dollar question – why would our omnipotent, omniscient God, particularly in that setting, allow such evil in His sanctuary?
I cannot answer that, but obviously some people can, for example, Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of renowned evangelist, Billy Graham, who gives an interesting response to a series of ‘Why’ questions she asked herself, and God, in relation to the Charleston killings.
She asks, “Why did He allow Dylan Roof to enter the Emanuel AME Church …knowing what the demonically deranged (not racist) guy was planning to do? Why did He not protect the pastor and eight other church members on June 17th as they met for prayer and bible study? Was God not there that night? Was He asleep? Did He not care? Was He just neglectful? … Why didn’t He prevent it? Why?
She says God’s answer was the same He had given Martha (in the Book of John) when asked why Jesus did not come in time to prevent her brother’s death, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? Lotz adds, “Then Jesus raised (Lazarus) from the dead! Martha did indeed see His glory.”
Had I been there I may have asked her if she thought the same was going to happen

with the Charleston Nine. This would no doubt have been preempted by another question Lotz said she asked of God. She queried as to how He would be glorified through this tragedy, and He seemed to whisper in her heart, “At a time of racial tension, polarization, and even increased hatred, could it be God is giving Emanuel AME Church, as well as other Christians, an opportunity to preach a sermon to the entire nation and even to the watching world? And what’s the title of the sermon? ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’.”
I’ve read and tried to understand what Lotz said. I’ve listened to and read reports which question the sanity of Dylann Roof. I listened to a six-minute Fox News interview with Debbie Dills, the White woman who reportedly tipped off the police after spotting Roof as she drove past him on her way to work. In all of these, there was little discussion on any racial or terroristic underpinning to the crime. God is forbearing, Dylann is deranged, Debbie Dills is the hero, and nine churchgoers are dead. That’s about it folks!
Racism and race hate is real. It’s nothing to be trivialized or euphemized. It hurts, and it kills. Watchdog groups say there are over 900 hate groups in America comprising many White nationalist and a few Black separatist organizations among others. There are more in Europe and other parts of the world. Race hate, it appears, knows no borders. And even trivial slurs can be painful and demeaning.
I remember in 1990 how badly I felt about a seemingly insignificant slight I experienced at New Jersey’s Atlantic City boardwalk. Dressed casually, and after spending two hours in a nearby casino, I had ordered a burger at a café there with mostly White staff and patrons. I was given a chit, and waited outside on the boardwalk for about five minutes.
When I heard my number called I went back in the café to get my burger. The guy who had called the number looked me up and down and said casually, but with a distinctly sarcastic undertone, “You don’t look like Number 47 to me.” I was left speechless, and could think of nothing to say or do except silently show him my chit. He apologized sheepishly, but the deed had been done. I was surprised at how embarrassed I felt although no one else seemed to have noticed the racist put-down.
In another instance, in Berlin three years earlier, I was in a train with a fellow journalist after a soccer match, when a young White ‘Skinhead’ couple dressed all in black and wearing spiked wristbands came into the almost-empty carriage and sat opposite us. The young man took out a large knife and simulated the action on sharpening it on a strap as he fixed his gaze on us, intently and insolently. My female colleague was terrified. I forced myself to boldly return the stare, but felt weak inside, and thankful when a few minutes later, we disembarked at our stop.
Senior pastor and state senator, Clementa Pinckney and eight church members of the ironically-named Emanuel A.M.E. Church (Emanuel means ‘God with us’) in Charleston, South Carolina, had no such luck. It was to all appearances an unpredictable, unprovoked attack. Words of hatred toward Black Americans were spewed. Like Charles Manson in the nineteen-sixties, Roof allegedly wanted to start a race war. He certainly won’t be the last.
A probable and chilling epilogue to the Charleston horror is Dylann Roof’s alleged influence by a White supremacist movement known as Christian Identity which, according to the Canadian-based group, Religious Tolerance, is a body of Fundamentalist Christian denominations that among other tenets, believe that Anglo-Saxon White people are the true Israelites. Jews, Blacks, and other non-Whites are ‘the satanic spawn of Cain’ who will be defeated by the White race at the battle of Armageddon as part of a cleansing process heralding the return of Christ.
The old people say ‘Belief kill and belief cure’ but is the belief in genocide ever justified? And can race hate ever be cured? Legislation to remove the confederate flag from statehouses or to control the sale and acquisition of guns in America can only do so much. It cannot change the heart or renew the mind, as the apostle Paul so eloquently exhorts in the Book of Romans. Why didn’t God intervene and use that one hour in the Emanuel AME Church to touch Dylann Roof’s heart and prevent a massacre?
Like I said, lots of questions and few answers.

---

---