George Floyd is dead, yet his blood mingles with the blood of too many before him and cries out in the voices of those left in the wake of his murder. In times like these, when the undercurrents of anger and fear surface through the cracks opened by blatant crimes, flooding our news feeds and streets with demands for justice, what do we do? Where are those who have the power to bring about true justice?
There’s a terrible urgency in the atmosphere. Taking the time for novels may seem an excuse to bury our heads in fiction to live a story other than the one we are being written in right now. But the art of fiction is the art of truth-telling, where the artistry is in the showing, not the telling. Instead of instructing others on what to think and do, well crafted stories confront us with reality by exposing our own hearts to us through characters and narrative. Because of this, artfully told stories have a way of changing us more deeply than facts and figures ever will. Facts and figures confront us with a truth outside of us. Well written novels confront us with the truth within.
Alan Paton, an author from South Africa, wrote in Cry, The Beloved Country:
Some of us think when we have power, we shall revenge ourselves on the white man who has had power, and because our desire is corrupt, we are corrupted, and the power has no heart in it. But most white men do not know this truth about power, and they are afraid lest we get it...But there is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power. I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power or money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it.
Paton put these words in the mouth of the character Msimangu, a black minister in Johannesburg. Through deftly woven narrative, he shows us a man grieved over the state of his country and his people, ravaged and ripped apart by racism. Paton later describes a moment when Msimangu is commended for a costly act of kindness, “Msimangu said sharply, ‘I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.’” He quickly turned the praise away from himself, as if to hold it, even for a moment, might tempt him to claim a power not his own. However grieved he was over the horrendous injustices in his country, Msimangu never lost sight of the fact that he, too, was susceptible to the seduction of power.
Paton did not write any heroes into this story. Justice did not descend from on high to release the captives or take captive the tyrants. There was no single day to be saved. He did not paint a picture of a proper course of action. Instead, at the end of the book, he simply leaves us with an old man, an odd hope, and no answers. Reading Cry, The Beloved Country will not lead us to escape the issues at hand, but will move us to engage the real problem, the sin in our own hearts.
Another character, the white man killed by the main character’s black son, penned an essay before his death expressing the struggle believers faced in apartheid South Africa. “No one wishes to make the problem seem smaller than it is,” he writes. “No one wishes to make its solution seem easy. No one wishes to make light of the fears that beset us. But whether we be fearful or no, we shall never, because we are a Christian people, be able to evade the moral issues.” These words show us a truth we must face in our own day.
Maybe deep down we are all afraid, because the problem isn’t small and the solution isn’t simple. In fact, I am part of the problem. But as believers, Christ will not allow us to evade the moral issues at hand. While we must act out of love for others, we must remember that the power we have and the actions we take will never address or atone for the corruption in the human heart. We are weak and sinful people. Power in the possession of men with corrupt hearts will not bring about true justice. We must, all of us, myself included, cry against the corruption in our own hearts louder than we rage against the systems under which we live.
So what do we do? We weep. We weep over our own sins, and we weep with those we have sinned against. We ask for the sacrificial love of God to act in us and through us. As one priest from the novel says, “We do what is in us, and why it is in us, that is also a secret. It is Christ in us, crying that men may be succoured and forgiven, even when He Himself is forsaken.” Like Msimangu, we can only hope to be women and men on whom God has put His hands. That is all.
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