The black community takes great pride in being rooted in faith. Our belief in God’s omniscient grace has brought us through slavery, civil rights abuses, domestic abuses, black on black crime, and all the ills, public and private, that have plagued our community. But we have often used that faith to the detriment of ourselves and the people we love. We use God as a crutch, a scapegoat to absolve us of the responsibility of taking what may be controversial action on our own behalf. “Just put your faith in Him and he’ll take care of everything.”
In this election year, to my friends who believe that we do not need to take part in the political process, that we can just leave everything to our belief in God, I respectfully submit that you are wrong. You know the story of the three vessels sent to save the believer from flood rains. He allowed each one to pass him by because he was waiting for God himself to come to the rescue. I believe that God has allowed us to be the vessels that make miracles happen. God has given us a brain and a voice, and if we sit upon those talents, as we do when we perch on the sidelines waiting for God to take care of all our problems, they will be taken from us.
In slavery we were kept uneducated. We were beaten for speaking up or wanting to better ourselves. I do not agree that we need to be as aggressive as some of us are right now in making our voices heard, but I understand that righteous anger. Personally, I remain a believer in centrist, civil dialogue. But wherever you choose to place yourself in the discourse, please understand that simply trusting in God and not taking actions you have been blessed with the right to take, rights which in another time or another country you might not have had, will support your aspirations for a better life exactly as much as digging a hole and burying your talents in the ground.
Calibe Thompson is a television producer and personality, public speaker and author. Watch her Mon at 10:00PM and Tues, Thurs and Sat at 9:00PM on South Florida’s BECON-TV (Ch 63 / Comcast 19), and follow www.facebook.com/misscalibe.
