Church and Race Intro - take 2
By Charles Kolstad
Date Posted 3/22/2021
Before I begin, I’d like to mention my disgust at the violence against the Asian community that has been reported. The murder of seven sisters in Atlanta earlier this week is beyond atrocious, not to mention the random physical and verbal attacks in our communities on fellow image bearers. This is too much to ignore. I lament that I haven’t acted against this evil, but I now desire too. Fellow readers, if you know of any opportunities to stand against this racism or support our brothers and sisters in the Asian community, please send a message in our contact us form.
I took a long while off from writing anything, but I think now is a good time to return. Over the last couple months my focus has been mainly on work and side projects. I’m taking steps towards starting a sort of part time freelance career that I hope will benefit locally owned businesses, especially businesses that are owned by people of color. I enjoy writing, it feels therapeutic to me, but during this break I can’t say that I missed it.The process of organizing my thoughts and putting them on paper (or word doc) is a little like working out. Stretching, pulling, and lifting to reach a goal that I’ve set in my mind is like walking through the valley of death, but the benefits are immediate and are always felt before they’re seen. Every heavy exhale after pushing through an extra mile or set is like a praise to God. He is with me. I’ll keep this reminder in my heart as I push myself in these blog posts I write.
My strategy is to review videos I find on YouTube of Christians taking on the issues of race in our society. I talked about this in one of my previous posts titled Church and Race Introduction. Since it’s been so long since writing, I’m going to start from scratch with a new rule that I’ll probably break eventually. No reviewing videos that are more than an hour long. This is so I can actually finish what I start.
Here are some things I hope to accomplish by doing this.
- Absolute transparency.- I want to express my thoughts fully, no matter how wrong, controversial, offensive, nearsighted, or even blasphemous they are. I want you, the reader, to call me out on every fallacy as well as every truth that is not expressed properly with the love of Christ. I’ll be wrong a lot and we’re allowed to disagree, Amen! I promise I will do my best to consider and respond humbly to correction. May it be the will of God.
- Growth.- Going back to the work out analogy. It is very easy to cut corners or count a half of a push up as a whole one. A good personal trainer will not allow this. I’m counting on you, the #HeartsBrokenEyesOpen community to be my personal trainers, and help me grow in my faith and ministry.
- Good ol’ content.- Over the last 10 or so months I’ve been in environments where someone would ask me a really good and challenging question. Sometimes in those instances the Spirit would take over and an amazing response would somehow leap from my body, shocking even me. Other times, I totally tripped over my own awkwardness and delivered an answer that is maybe acceptable in a really C- or D+ human way. What’s good about writing is that it gives me time to think about my response. God bless the soul that created the backspace button. I’ll still need the Spirit to create anything of real value, but I’m hoping that blogging will turn my C-, D+ responses into a solid C, maybe even a C+ response.
- Consistency.- I’m not sure how often I’ll have some new content to share, but I hope to be consistent. I’ll try bi-weekly at first. If that gets to be too much, or if this goal begins to become a higher priority than the previous three, then I’ll try monthly. I’ll keep recalibrating until we find a - sweet spot - where I’m able to create something I’m happy with and you the community have enough time to consider, engage, and challenge.
Satan hates when lights begin to shine on his strongholds. It is to the devils dismay when children of God no matter if they’re Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic, Black, White, LGBTQIA, Man or Woman, Old or Young, Democrat or Republican, Progressive or Conservative, American Nationalist or Critical Race Theorist, come together in the pursuit of truth. I’ll repeat it, I’ll be wrong a lot and we’re allowed to disagree, Amen! What we can not be is dormant, so please join me.
Charles Kolstad is a mixed (half black & white), male. Husband, father, software developer, and loved by Christ. He loves Minnesota and loves people… and the Timberwolves. Pretty much just a normal guy!