Loving our Aboriginal Brothers and Sisters

Love Everyone

Love everyone!

This is one of those Biblical concepts which in theory, sounds quite easy, but in practice, it proves a lot harder.

In my scripture class, I recently taught a lesson on the Good Samaritan, and the big idea for this lesson was that we need to care for everyone even the people we don’t like.

Now the thing is, in the classroom, this idea is easily accepted.

That is, until one bright spark in the class must have thought about something that had been in the news lately. What about the Russians. We don’t need to care about them because they’re bad.

I always love moments like these, because you can see they are thinking through the issue and realising where it might not quite work.

And so, I tried to make this a point for the class to think through. I asked the question to the class - ‘so what do you think? Should we love and care for the Russians?’

The class though about it, and they came to the answer themselves - well, yes, we should love and care for them. It’s not your everyday Russian that’s causing havoc in the world - and so they should also be loved and cared for.

But you see, sitting in the classroom, talking in theoretical terms about helping the Russians, is something that’s easy to talk about - particularly when you’re a school student in Tanilba Bay and have almost no opportunity to do anything that could help a Russian anyway.

The reality for these students, however, is that where this gets really hard, is not in loving the Russians - but in loving that classmate who is always annoying them. That person is always going to be much harder to love then the theoretical person on the other side of the world.

And the reality is the same for us. It is much easier to hold to the Christian value of loving everyone when we think of it in terms of people we don’t even have anything to do with.

Take for example those in the LGBTQI community. We might use the line - love the sinner, hate the sin. Which might be a helpful little way of thinking about it, but the reality is, when we’re actually faced with a situation where we need to love them, we will often find we don’t really know how to show them love. It’s a lot easier in theory then it is in practice.

We could actually make the argument for lots of different groups. We know we’re meant to love everyone, but some groups we struggle with more than others.

This morning, however, being the end of NAIDOC week, I want to think more specifically about how we can love our Aboriginal brothers and sisters in a Christ like way.

Now, if you follow the teaching of scripture that we should love everyone, then you’re not really going to be able to object to this idea. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Christian who openly says we shouldn’t love our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.

That being said, I have heard a whole range of reasons from Christians as to why there is no need for us to give specific attention to caring for them.

So my intention this morning, is to raise some of the concerns I’ve heard from various places, and use the Bible, to investigate those concerns and consider whether they can stack up with the biblical notion of loving everyone.

Reverse racism?

So, the first reason I’m going to consider this morning, is based around the criticism that if we single out Aboriginal people for special treatment - isn’t this just a form of reverse racism?

We can put a biblical spin on it by recognising that we’re all equal, therefore treating any group of people as more special than another, will go against this principle.

After all, the bible verse many might turn to to counter racism could be Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

So, if we’re going to get rid of racism, shouldn’t we get rid of the distinction at all and just treat everyone the same?

It’s an interesting argument, and it might even just hold true if you could argue that everyone starts on a level pegging.

You see, if you look carefully, the Bible actually doesn’t teach that everyone should get the same treatment. In fact, even that Bible verse I quoted before from Gal 3:28 didn’t say everyone should be treated the same… it just said that all people, regardless of race, gender or social status, have the same access to God.

The Bible actually teaches that we should give better treatment to the vulnerable.

Take 1 Tim 5 for example. Paul instructs the young Timothy on the ways he should give special treatment to the widows. Now you could argue, but why treat widows any different, after all, aren’t they just equal in the sight of God? The answer of course is that we treat them better because they are equal in the sight of God.

If someone needs help, we help them - that’s whats showing love is all about.

So the question is, are Aboriginal people at a disadvantage?

Well, let’s look at the governments “Closing the Gap” report. This is a report which dates back to 2008, but unfortunately, hasn’t really done what the title suggests.

The gap refers to issues such as life expectancy, infant mortality, health outcomes, and education and employment.

The data shows that indigenous child mortality is about twice that of non-indigenous children.

Life expectancy is about 8 years less than the non-indigenous population, and if you were to go to remote areas, it’s even lower.

As for education, the stats show that for all ages, school attendance is significantly lower for the Aboriginal children.

Now, even though this is the case, there has actually been improvement in numeracy and literacy levels, However, about one four Aboriginal students don’t meet national minimum standards in reading, and about one in five don’t meet minimum standards in numeracy.

And in terms of employment, there are still far fewer Aboriginal people in work compared with the non-indigenous population.

Now of course, there is a whole discussion to be had as to why this gap exists, and people have explored those issues, but in some ways, the reasons shouldn’t effect the fact that there are people around us who start life with a disadvantage, and our Christian response should be to love them and do something about it.

So if there are times when Aboriginal people get treatment not afforded to the non-indigenous population, this is not a reverse form of racism, this is an attempt to level the playing field, and it is entirely in line with Biblical principles.

Not my problem, I didn’t cause it

Okay, so let’s take for granted that there is a need to care for Aboriginal people - but the next reason I hear is: what’s this got to do with me? I didn’t cause it. It’s not my problem.

Now, such a logic might just fly - if we didn’t have the example of the love of Jesus.

You see, this is where the passage we read earlier comes into play.

The passage started with the words: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God”.

And it goes on to explain this love. It says: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”.

You see, the problem with saying - ‘it’s not my problem’ - is that it fails to recognise how God’s love works.

God’s love goes far beyond the idea that - well, as long as I don’t cause any more harm than I’m okay.

God’s love says, not only am I not going to cause harm, I’m actually going to go out of my way to undo harm, even if it’s caused by someone else.

If there are people in your community that are disadvantaged, then you really need to think about how you can help them.

And we know there are Aboriginal people in our area. Last week I quoted the statistic from last years census. On the Tilligerry Peninsula, we have 7.9% of the population that identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the census. We have quite a few even in our own church congregation.

So we can’t just dismiss this as - ‘not my problem’ - there is a problem, and we need to think about how we’re going to engage it.

They’re causing their own problem

The next reason line of reasoning I’ve heard which enables a softer approach to this issue is… “Aboriginals are causing the problem themselves” … “They are their own worst enemy”.

We might consider crime rates amongst the Aboriginal population, or perhaps problems with alcohol or the like.

It can become a convenient way of thinking. Because if we can convince ourselves that their bringing it on themselves, then we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility to do anything.

So the logic can go - once they sort themselves out, then we’ll consider what we can do.

However, there are a few holes in this logic.

The first hole in the logic being a theological one.

Perhaps you might be familiar with the powerful verse in Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

If we’re to love other because Christ first loved us, and our love is to resemble that of Christs - then we have to take a similar stance. We don’t love people once they get everything together. We love them as they are.. as people created in the image of God.

Sure they are fallen - but what about yourself? God redeemed you, as fallen individual. So we can’t dismiss a group just because there are problems among them. In fact, we help that group because they have problems.

But the other hole in that logic is found when we consider the reason for many of these problems.

Now, I suppose there are studies out there that have explored this, but I don’t think that it’s too hard to see that if you start breaking up families and dismantling whole cultural system, including language and rites of passage, you’re going to start creating generational problems. And if we look at Australian history following white settlement, we find a range of horrendous policies that did just that.

We can argue that the worst of the policies are behind us, but the effects of these past policies live on. Think about it. If problems are introduced in one generation, the next generation start with an immediate disadvantage, which will keep flowing to subsequent generations.

You get a few generations after the initial problems were introduced, and it would appear the problems are their own - but they started with a handicap.

So using the excuse that it’s there own fault just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t cut it because we’re to love them anyway, and it doesn’t cut it because there’s more to the story than what would first appear the case.

The hidden agenda

But there’s one more excuse I want to quickly address.

You see, in 2020, you might remember a series of events which led to numerous Black Lives Matter movements - starting in America, but also making quite an impact here in Australia as well.

The Black Lives Matter movement here in Australia tried to highlight many of the injustices that still exist against Aboriginal people today.

But as this was going on, people started noticing that among the leadership of the movement, there was a significant amount of Marxist ideology.

As a result, I saw some Christians dismissing the whole thing because there was a hidden agenda.

A similar thing happens when it comes to giving Acknowledgment of Countries at the start of meetings. Some people dismiss it as part of a woke agenda.

The reason I raise this is because we have to be careful not the throw the baby out with the bath water.

I suspect there are probably people promoting justice for Aboriginals in conjunction with other unhelpful ideologies, but there is something deeply wrong when we stop working for justice just because we want to distance ourselves from the hidden agenda. It doesn’t have to be a choice, you can stand up for Aboriginal people and against other hidden agendas at the same time.

How do we show love

Okay, so I’ve looked at four reasons people might give to avoid helping our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.

But what does it even look like for us to show love to the Aboriginal community.

In fact, this could perhaps be a fifth reason. We don’t know how.

Sure you could be nice to the Aboriginals that you know -but somehow I think we need to do more than just being pleasant.

You see, in the passage we read earlier, 1 John 4:17 says: “…in this world we are like Jesus”.

Well, to be like Jesus means more than just being pleasant. It means making a difference to the world around us.

But of course we can ask - but how can I make a difference? After all, I spoke of some of the outcomes of the closing the gap report earlier. We’re hardly going to make a difference to health, educational or employment outcomes by our own individual efforts. So what should we be doing?

Listen

Well, I want to suggest that a good place to start is to actually listen to them. If you think back to the government policies of the past, a common theme that ran through them all is that the white people in government thought they knew best. You could probably argue that many of them actually thought that what they were doing was for the best, but it would certainly seem that they didn’t take the time to understand who they were and what they thought was best.

Now none of us here are in government. We’re obviously not making policy, but yet, by listening, we can start to actually see where some of the problems lie. We can then help be a part of allowing the Aboriginal voice to be heard.

We need to listen, because sometimes we realise that many of the assumptions we have made are actually wrong.

One of the things I love doing is hearing the stories that Uncle Neville has to say. We can sometimes be inundated with negative stories about Aboriginals, but listen to Uncle Neville, and you’ll hear the positive stories. He’ll tell you all about the successes that are happening.

And while you’re listening to Aboriginals, let me make a suggestion. On SBS on Demand, there is a documentary series called “First Australians”. It’s free to access, as long as you have the internet. This is a series made by Aboriginals, and it tells the history of Aboriginal people from their perspective. I watched it quite a few years ago now, and I learnt a lot of things I never previously knew.

You see, one of the things that Aboriginal people are called for, is truth telling. By acknowledging what actually happened in the past in an honest way, we can then allow a process of building a better relationship.

We can be a part of changing the attitude of society.

But it should be our Christian values which are driving this.

Now when we take an honest look at history, unfortunately, we’ll find too many examples of Christian churches being among the offenders of some of the atrocities we find.

However, there are also examples of Christians who understood the love of Christ like we find described in 1 John 4. There are examples of selfless Christians.

Today we can do the same thing. We can use those excuses I looked at before, or rather, as believers, we can become the salt and light of the world, and start to show that there is a different way of living.

In fact, we really shouldn’t have a choice.

Look at verse 20 with me. It says: 1 John 4:20 “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

It is foolish to think that somehow you can love God, and yet ignore the needs of those God loves.

Conclusion

The reality is that this is not just a problem in the past. There is an ongoing problem, and for many people, maybe even most, they are just too happy to ignore it.

If we keep it out of mind, then we don’t have to do something about it.

As a believer, that can’t be the attitude. We need to do better.

Today is the end of NAIDOC week. The theme was to “Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!”

As believers, we should be at the forefront of this. Jesus has shown us the example of how to love. He’s shown us that we need to stand up for those who don’t have a voice of their own.

He has shown us that we are to make a difference in the lives of those who need it.

In our church here, we have the vision to be a church that Love, Shares and Serve.

And this fits right into this idea. Eight percent of our population identify as Aboriginal, so what are we doing to love, share and serve them?

As we read in verse 21 of our passage this morning: 1 John 4:21 “And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”

Let me pray...