It may have not been ‘racism’ after all

Most of you have seen the memes “Stop Asian Hate” in reaction to the shooting deaths this week of a number of women, a majority of them of Asian descent, who worked at massage parlors in the Atlanta area by a Robert Aaron Long. A clear case of racism, given that the South has always grappled with this subject and especially since former president Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus?”

I’m not so sure. It seems to me that his crimes were more “religious” in nature.

It turns out that Long had been very active in a Southern Baptist church, that denomination at the forefront of the evangelical movement that has helped to define American Protestantism over the last half-century. And that movement has always had an emphasis, perhaps an overemphasis, on sexual sin, an issue because Long has admitted to what he called a sexual addiction and, according to a story in The New York Times, had actually visited two of the spas he shot up.

Those of us who are steeped in evangelical culture have consistently had the potential destruction by sexual sin drummed into our heads as something to be avoided at all costs. Part of the problem with such a mentality is that it actually, and wrongly, makes women responsible for men’s behavior, specifically their inability or unwillingness to change it.

While I understand that idea of “capturing every thought” under the aegis of Jesus is optimum, it’s not a guarantee that things will happen right away and the struggle may continue. Ironically — and here’s why I referred to the overemphasis on sexual sin — the more you focus on such sin the less you focus on Him.

And that may have been Long’s initial problem. (He may have found himself consistently attracted to Asian women, the only connection to race I see here.)

But there’s something else that’s often left out of the discussion: Love, αγαπή in the Greek, for the other person, which would clearly be an outgrowth of love for God.

For me, it’s been less about avoiding temptation than “How could I as a Christian be so selfish as to want to ‘do that’ to her?” You see, one thing I’ve been privileged to learn over the years but rarely addressed in such circles is that women and girls also have sexual desires, though they manifest themselves differently (and for that reason it’s never been a big deal) — one woman I had dated about two decades ago joked about “cold showers” for herself.

Then, over the past 10 to 15 years I’ve been blessed to learn how to relate to women in a safe, healthy, God-honoring manner but still as women, often through partner-dancing. Since evangelical culture promotes male leadership in cross-gender relationships, I’ve found it more comfortable to do it that way and still grow as a man, my sexuality becoming more integrated into my total persona as opposed to an alien force working against me.

Let me state without reservation that Long, in shooting those women, violated not only the Word of God but also the laws of the state of Georgia and ought to pay for what he did. And as such, his failure was connected to failing to loving others as he would want to be loved, the second of Jesus’ two great commandments.