Should we support Black Lives Matter?

​As Christians, should we support the organization Black Lives Matter?

There are many voices out there today on the recent Black Lives Matter stuff that I’ve debated writing on it at all for our church. Surely, there are better and more articulate articles out there than this one. However, the more we see the fruit of this organization and the more we know about the basic tenants of their belief system, the more grieved I am over how much influence they are having even among churches and see the need to expose some of their true agenda to help give clarity as you decide where to stand and what to think. By now, much of this may already be old news for you (or maybe you still think BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management!), but I want our church and every believer to be wise about how they approach everything going on and to be aware of just exactly what this organization is all about.

At first, the BLM movement can seem like a noble cause. What Christian doesn’t believe black live matter? All lives matter… Every single created being in every stage of life matters. And who doesn’t want justice more than believers? We desire perfect justice. God tells us to walk with Him, loving justice and doing justice (Micah 6:8). However, whether or not to support BLM is not that simple because even though the name “Black Lives Matter” is good, the overall agenda behind it isn’t. True justice must be coupled with righteousness and the agenda of this organization is ultimately not righteous. It’s at odds with the gospel and contrary to God’s creational order.[I]

Albert Mohler said, “During a particular moral and historical context, it is not wrong to say something emphatically directed, like “black lives matter.” Just consider, as an example, Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 40s. The Nazi Party adopted a deadly antisemitism that led to the horrors of genocide during the Holocaust. At that time, to say that “Jewish lives matter” would not only have been right, but would have been morally urgent and necessary.” Fast forward to America in June of 2020. Today, there are very real and urgent moral concerns about the lives and well-being of black Americans. It is not wrong in our context, therefore, to say “black lives matter” as a sentence. But it’s not that simple.” Albert Mohler makes the point in his article that you can access below that we should support the sentence “Black Lives Matter” but not the movement. 
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Jesus said that the whole Law and even the entire OT can be summed up by two commands: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. There are no greater commands then these. John MacArthur pointed this out yesterday in his sermon on “How Christians Should Respond to the Riots”, that some Christians out of a genuine love for their neighbor have begun pairing themselves with this organization. But since this organization does not give themselves to the first command of loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, they cannot properly love their neighbor through it once they know what BLM is really out to revolutionize.


If you check out their website and research what Black Lives Matter believes, it doesn’t take a lot of work or an intellectual expert to realize that Christianity doesn’t mesh at all with BLM’s agenda and is in fact, diametrically opposed to God and His desires for man and society on many levels:

• BLM desires to disrupt and dismantle a biblical, God-designed family structure.

Their website says, “We dismantle the patriarchal practice… We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable….We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.”
 
One of the main reasons we are in this mess to begin with is because the fathers haven’t stayed in the home in the first place and the nuclear family has been disrupted. The nuclear family (husband, wife, children) is the best and healthiest place for children to be raised. It is how we were designed and time and trial has proven that over and over. This BLM organization would have kids raised by “villages” – probably referring to likeminded Marxist state-communities they want to create.
 

• BLM embraces and promotes the sexual revolution.

The website reads, “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).” And, “We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender [those whose identity matches with their gender at birth/biological] privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.” [brackets mine for clarity]
 
As believers, we have to stand on God’s precepts and principles and promises. And we know that homosexuality, transgenderism, or transvestitism is an abomination to God according to the Law (Dt. 22:5) because it goes against the creational order He intended. God created us male and female. His design for marriage  is between one man and one woman and procreation is only possible that way. Christians seek to restore people from this error so they experience the blessings of doing things God’s way, and not affirm a self-destructive lifestyle.
 

This organization wants to completely revolutionize our society in an unbiblical way and they will slanderously bully anyone who doesn’t align themselves with their movement (i.e. calling them racist, even if they’re not). They make it clear more than once that they are seeking much power and political power on their website and they will use their power to stand against not just injustice, but apparently against morality, conscience, the faithful Church, God, the biblical family structure and biblical marriage. It has a culturally disastrous agenda and going down this path will do anything but lift up a culture.[ii] It can only bring about temporal and eternal destruction – more oppression and more violence and more despair. As far as I can tell, this organization would have our nation resemble an atheistic and godless culture that depicts society similar to the way it was before the Noahic flood, or Sodom and Gomorrah. The only thing standing in their way is the authorities that exist and have been established by God (something God instituted immediately after the flood in Gen. 9:6) to be a minister for good (Romans 13:1-7).
 
There are only 3 institutions that keep a society sane and they are the family, the Church, and the government. This organization rejects all 3 institutions as God would have them properly function. It operates under a spirit of lawlessness.
 
I want to point these things out to you because even though the message that “Black Lives Matter” is obviously something good, the overall agenda is not. This is clearly not an organization we should be supporting once we know the overall agenda. It is not possible to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor by supporting this socially and spiritually destructive organization. It affirms many things contrary to God’s design.
 
So just keep preaching and living the same old good truth of being in the world but not like it. Love your neighbor God's way. Let your neighbor know Jesus loves them so much that He died for their sin so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). We love everyone and want to reach everyone with the gospel, just like Jesus did when He ate with the sinners and the tax collectors. Speak and live so that it reflects grace and truth.
 
Pastor Justin
 
For a good article by Albert Mohler on this topic:
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/06/65132/
 
For a good sermon on this topic:
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-81


[i] Albert Mohler, Black Lives Matter: Affirm the Sentence, Not the Movement, accessed 6/19/20, https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/06/65132/
[ii] John MacArthur, How Should Christians Respond to the Riots?, accessed 6/18/2020, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-81