The Ax is at the Root
“The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.” Matthew 3:10
Lately I’ve been struck by the image of the tree that bears good fruit or bad fruit. Jesus tells us that the way we bear fruit is to abide in him (John 15). To remain connected in relationship to Christ is to grow in spiritual maturity, to be shaped more and more to have the mind of Christ. This is a pretty common Christian belief rooted in scripture.
Baber ident 300
But there is so much rotten fruit produced in the church. White supremacy has so rooted itself in the church that many of us are blind to its existence. It doesn’t have to be overtly nefarious, it’s as simple as believing that white liturgies and worship styles are the “normal” pattern. A brief study of the history of racism in America reveals how deep the church has been directly connected to the practice of race-based chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and more modern “color-blindness” that refuses to accept the stories of ongoing racism in America. Author of White Too Long, Robert Jones says, “Through the entire American story, white Christianity has served as the central source of moral legitimacy for a society explicitly built to value the lives of white people over Black people.”
White supremacy branches off into other forms of oppression, lessening the value and dignity of anyone other than the straight, white male. A hierarchy is created with the straight white male at the peak, by which his nature is the very moral exemplar for society. This informs views of women, BIPOC people, LGBTQ+ folx, even people with disabilities.
I recognize these sins in myself, and I want to prune back the branches of sin that grow up within me. I want to abide in Christ in such a way that I am set free from the grip of white supremacy. But I think it’s more than a branch. I think it’s like the trunk of the tree, and if I’m going to experience real freedom, then I need to let Christ chop down the tree and toss it in the fire. But white supremacy is a system…it’s a power and principality. How do you eradicate a blight that has infected every tree in the forest?
Is this the meaning of the parable of the weeds and the wheat?
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up [the weeds]?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Maybe I’m mixing my metaphors too much, but I’m genuinely struggling with what it means to be connected to the vine (Jesus), and yet bear the bad fruit of white supremacy and all the other ugly phobias and isms that devalue others. And even if I fix it in myself (if that’s possible), the system still remains firmly in place in most churches. Even if I create an affirming and racially just church, it’s just a drop in the bucket of millions of un-affirming, racist churches. I’m sorry I’m not dropping major solutions on you today, I’m just sharing my own thought process through a difficult but necessary topic.
I also realize that there may be members of my audience who have no idea what I’m talking about. To you, white supremacy is a marginal idea held only by extremists. I’d highly recommend you read The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby, or Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Here’s a helpful definition of what I’m referring to by using the term "white supremacy":
“By ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.” – Frances Lee Ansley
Thank you for bearing with me through the weeds. I pray that our churches will awaken to the sin of white supremacy, that we will not simply prune away a few dead branches here and there, but that we will allow the ax to do its work at the root.