Recently, a group of colleagues and I were asked to reflect on whether we thought racism could ever end. Out of that conversation came the idea that many Christians do not believe it could. Not that it would not, but that it could not.
As a pastor, that's disheartening. If we say something is impossible, we're likely to stop worrying about it. We learn how to live with it and maybe even stop praying about it. That leads me to wonder what kind of faith do we think God gives us. Many Christians pray "the prayer Jesus taught us," asking God to deliver them from evil.
Is our deliverance only an escape?
The biblical story assumes there are spiritual forces of evil. It names injustice, violence, and sin honestly. Again and again, though, God’s people are invited to see a future that does not yet exist. It's the paradox of now and not yet.
That kind of imagination is not naïve optimism. It is hope. As an act of resistance, hope insists that the way things are is not the way things must always be. Hope believes God is still delivering people from sin, from systems, from identities we’ve been told are unchangeable.
As a United Methodist Christian, my baptismal vows promise to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and reject the evil powers of this world. Accepting those vows is more than reciting tradition. We are declaring that evil doesn't last against God. We're not renouncing something that’s unbeatable. 
If we no longer believe God can deliver us, those vows lose a lot of their bite. But if we believe God is still at work, still calling light out of darkness, then hope becomes faithful obedience.
The question isn’t whether something like racism is real or powerful. It is whether God’s redemptive work is finished. Our faith says it is not.
Stay blessed...john | 
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