As racial tensions in America this year ran high, Jen Hatmaker had to face this question from one of her kids: “Why do white people think they’re so much better than Black people—is it something about us?” This “soul-crushing question” came from her adopted daughter, who is Black. Hatmaker, who is white, Christian, and a mother of five, reassured her daughter that there wasn’t anything wrong with her and that she was beautiful and worthy (“ ‘This is Their Problem’: Jen Hatmaker to Her Black Children on Racism in America,” faithit.com, June 1, 2020).

Yet, as cries have increased around the nation and the world for racial justice and equality, our ability to expose and stop injustice and oppression with the power of God, divine Love, must be recognized as possible today. Everyone we meet, or have yet to meet, must be recognized as beautiful and worthy, and this can happen only as we genuinely realize that each person is a child of God.

Divine Love reveals ultimate reality—a reality that transcends classifications of ourselves or others based on a limited understanding of identity as physical and mortal. It elevates thought to grasp the infinite nature of Love and the fact that Love is, right now, expressed to some degree by all.

When our thought, perhaps unknowingly, holds in view a mortal classification of others, it necessarily limits our understanding of their, and our own, infinite individuality and expression. Mortality is always unjust in its characterizations. It is only when thought moves beyond physical outlines and forms that we find the freedom to see everyone as God sees us—as the completely spiritual children of God. And this viewpoint heals. Definitions of individuality based on physical classifications and stereotypes disappear from human consciousness. This enables us to live the love God loves us with, and to connect more closely with everyone on the basis of being the spiritual offspring of the one God, Love. 

Love lived corrects unjust policies, actions, and behaviors.

The societal stirring taking place is a call to all of us to more deeply connect our habits of thought and action with spiritual truths—with what Love sees and knows of us and everyone. Specifically, it is a call for each of us to live more fully the teachings of Jesus—especially, to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, New King James Version)—and this wisdom from First John: “Let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (4:7, NKJV). 

This practice of love is not simply a comfortable, personal ideal that allows for equality and justice to go unrealized for certain groups of people. Since Love is God, and we are Love’s dynamic expression, Love lived corrects and resolves injustices of all kinds, including unjust policies, actions, and behaviors. Divine Love lived through acknowledgment of spiritual facts and correlated expressions of compassion and grace displaces racism and prejudice. 

According to author bell hooks, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s collection of sermons entitled Strength to Love celebrates love as “a spiritual force that unites and binds all life,” while criticizing exploitation and dehumanization and the violence used to enforce these wrongs. King said: “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality” (All About Love: New Visions, p. 75). 

This practice of love connects us to the world and each other in a way that has power to transform society. It reveals everyone’s real, present, and unbreakable connection with God. As a force beyond human will or desire, divine Love ends aggression and oppression.

Shifting our concept of the identity of man rather than classifying people through superficiality, we see man as the expression of divine Love and divine Soul, having infinite individuality. This lifts the definition of man out of a physical, fleshly identification to an immortal, spiritual, divine understanding of what we really are. From this perspective, we see with the eyes of divine Love, so to speak, and Mary Baker Eddy described this view in the following way: “Love hath one race, one realm, one power” (Poems, p. 22). 

No matter how often stereotypes, ignorance, or bigotry would attempt to pressure us into agreeing with a culture of apathy, violence, or extreme division, this can change as we seek to know a life in Love, God.

Again, as cries have increased around the nation and the world for racial justice and equality, it must be recognized that it is possible to expose and stop injustice and oppression with the power of God, divine Love. Each individual can be seen as beautiful and worthy as a child of God, held in the bond of Love.

Larissa Snorek
Associate Editor