Honor Outcry: What Racial Outrage Reveals About the Human Heart

George Floyd, you were caught trying to buy a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill, according to the news reports. As you placed that bill on the counter in hopes of getting one more drag from a cigarette you had no idea you stood on the razor-fine edge of a precipice, your life an inflection point for an entire nation. You had no clue you would soon ignite an honor outcry. I wonder if you’d known, if someone asked if you had it in you to change the world, what your answer would have been. 

Not many of us think we have the power to change the world. World-changing, history-defining moments often happen in an unplanned instant to common people.

Our nation is groaning like a woman in the blind pain of childbirth. We cannot bear the agony any longer. It is time to push, to rip ourselves in two if necessary, in order to bring new life into the world. We cannot go on as we are. We will bring new life or die trying.

Racial outrage is sweeping across the nation as a thinly bandaged wound is ripped open once again. For those who are brave enough to draw near to its gaping horror, there is something to be learned: the human heart is crying out for honor.

I wonder, George Floyd, did anyone ever tell you that you were made in God’s image, precious to Him, created with immeasurable worth, value equal to that of every other person of every other race? Did anyone ever sit long with you and listen to your heart? Did anyone of the white race ever open the Bible with you as an equal and look to its words together with you for hope and strength? Did anyone ever take your hands in theirs and pray weeping prayers in Jesus’ name for healing, forgiveness, justice, and hope?

I used to think if I explained to my black brothers and sisters that I, too, had suffered, they would feel better.

I told them the story of being born to a white teenage runaway in an all-black hospital in the segregated South. In that summer of 1971, the white hospitals in her area would not admit my mother, a white girl in such shameful circumstances, no matter how close and violent her contractions. But the black hospital ushered her in without question and there I was born, the only white baby in a long row of African-American newborns.

My mother in her youth and naivety marveled that with my dark curly hair and olive skin it was actually difficult to tell me apart from the other babies. In the all-white rural community she’d run away from, she had never seen a newborn African-American baby. She did not know the softness of their black curls and the paleness of their smooth skin moments after birth.

As she stared at me for the first time nestled beside a long row of beautiful, perfect baby humans, she had no idea she was beholding a Truth intrinsic to all humanity: 

Our beauty is indistinguishable to the One who made us and loves us. We were all created by God in His image, with equal value, equal honor, made to matter. #honorinsteadofshame #icantbreathe Click To Tweet

That original honor bestowed on humanity by the Creator was stolen by belief in a lie. The first lie to the first man and woman was a lie about honor. When the serpent whispered, “Did God really say…” he was challenging not only what they believed about God but what they believed about themselves (Genesis 3:1).

With the first human choice not to trust God, shame entered the human heart and began its malicious work of identity theft. We no longer knew we mattered. The chase began. Humanity has been pursuing its worth ever since.

The Messiah Jesus came to restore that honor to every person who would believe in Him. His job description can be found in Isaiah 61:7:

Instead of their shame, my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

Jesus came to restore the honor that was lost. He gives honor instead of shame.

Shame says hide. You are bad. You’ll never change. The situation is hopeless. You are a hopeless case. So go ahead, lie, steal, destroy, rage.

Honor says you matter. You are valued. You have great worth. You have hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). You are loved with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). No matter how you say your name, what language you speak, what words the world uses to describe your skin color, the texture of your hair.

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.

Galatians 3:26-29

But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, the one who made both groups into one and who destroyed the middle wall of partition, the hostility…

Ephesians 2:13-14

The last black friend I shared my hospital story with never spoke to me again. She was not hostile. She just quietly disappeared from my life. I wondered why, and I doubled back my efforts to somehow, someway, show the African-Americans in my life that I wanted to help.

Then circumstances arose in my personal life which demanded my full attention. I was removed from everything else for a season as I sat by my teenage son’s hospital bed and prayed for him to live after he was critically injured in a fire. Day after day my husband and I unwrapped his bandages as our son screamed in pain, causing unstoppable tears to stream down our faces as we cleaned the third-degree wounds and applied medicine, rewrapping each one in clean dressings. 

I thought to myself,

If a physical wound this deep takes this long to heal, what of the wounds of the human heart?

It struck me how impatient I have been with the wounded hearts of those around me. With my own wounded heart. In my haste I have slowed the healing process, exacerbating the woundedness instead of patiently, steadily, gently tending it.

One early morning as I held vigil at the hospital I received a phone call from a young man who has become like another son to me and my husband. He wanted to make the long drive to visit us and asked if there was anything he could do or bring for us. We had been away from our daughter for weeks at that point and were longing to see her. I asked him if he could bring her to us. 

He grew very quiet.

Are you still there?

Yes.

Another long pause.

With emotion, he finally answered.

I would be honored to bring her to you. Thank you for letting me do this for you.

I was puzzled by his response. We trust him implicitly. He is like family to us. We have lived messy, beautiful life together and I gave no thought to entrusting our daughter to his care.

I didn’t question him about it. I let it go because we were all very emotional under the circumstances. I assumed his emotion was due to the pain we were all feeling as we prayed and hoped for our son’s recovery.

A few days later he arrived with her and there were many tears as we all embraced and comforted one another. It was not until some time later that our sweet friend shared his heart with us. He is Puerto-Rican American, a self-described man of color. 

When I asked him to bring my blond-haired, blue-eyed, white daughter to us in a city over an hour away, I did not consider that I was asking him to be courageous. That I was asking him to face his fears and take action as the person we saw him to be: loved, worthy, equal, someone we completely trusted to bring our precious daughter to us. Someone she loves and completely trusts like an older brother. 

Not a man of color who might be seen by some as suspect driving on an interstate highway with a pre-teen white girl in the back seat. 

His courage never even occurred to me in my white blindness until he helped me see.

Thank you for helping me see.

My heart broke as I saw through his eyes. As I witnessed the impact our mutual love and trust had on him and on us. Our relationship. On my own heart.

I had the tremendous realization that my friends needed not to know I had suffered too, but they needed to be heard. To be loved. To be treated as an equal. A person with equal value, love, and worth. Both of us humans created and loved by God, instilled with equal value by our Creator.

I have lived the majority of my adult life among people of color. But I have only recently begun to understand the depth of the wound so many carry, the reality of the injustice that still exists, the common need we all have, in every color, to know we matter. 

We humans are equal in our need to have our shame removed. Our honor restored.

We are equal in our need for a savior.

There is one God and one mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). His name is Jesus, and this Jesus of the Bible is no racist. He gave his life to restore your value and mine. #honorinstead #GeorgeFloyd Click To Tweet

He sacrificed his life to stand us upright before a holy God. To make us clean again, every one.

This is the Jesus I proclaim, and He is the Jesus of the Bible.

This is the Jesus who rescued an outcast white baby born in a black hospital from shame and gave her honor instead.

This is the Jesus who knows the depths of the wounds each of us carries and gently, patiently, helps us heal.

This is the Jesus who wept as he looked across the city of Jerusalem, torn apart by racism, injustice, religious hypocrisy, and broken sinners and longed for them to be gathered and comforted. This is the Jesus who weeps over Minneapolis, Atlanta, Charlotte, and New York today.

This is the Jesus who is our hope today as rage sweeps across America, revealing the human heart cry for honor. And it is through faith in Him that together we can overcome the outrage.

Let us proclaim the real Jesus. Real hope. True honor. For every race.

@audreycfrank