Lament for 12 Years a Slave

There have been a lot of articles and blog posts circling the internet about "12 Years a Slave". I don't want to just be adding noise to the conversation (if interested, this article and this post are very much worth reading), but I was moved by the movie, and want to explain more of that here.

I've thought a lot about Patsy after I saw "12 Years a Slave." For those who haven't seen the movie, her story is one of the most powerful in the film and the filmmakers did not shy away from showing the intense brutality she experienced by her slaveowners.

The most difficult scene of the movie for me to watch came towards the end when Patsy, a friend of the main character, Solomon Northup, is found to be missing on the plantation. She comes back with a bar of soap in her hand and the slave owner immediately grabs her asking where she went. She explains that she felt dirty and just wanted a bar of soap to take a shower. The slave owner then forces her to take off her clothes and be whipped repeatedly and harshly until she is barely conscious. Even worse, Solomon is the one forced to issue this punishment -- at one point with a gun pointed to his head because he wasn't beating her hard enough.

Dignity is stripped from Patsy in that scene. It was stripped from her throughout the movie as she is beaten and raped, but in that scene a woman who was trying to get a bar of soap to clean herself is punished mercilessly at the hands of her own friend and confidant. It is gut-wrenching to watch.

In the next scene, we find Patsy's fellow slaves tending to her deep wounds (which seemed unlivable to me). She is moaning and crying while her friends lay clothes and soak up the blood dripping from her back. It was in that scene that I thought differently about these words:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; 

on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned

....

For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered 

the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. 

Every warrior's boot used in battle 

and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. 

....

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, 

and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called 

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

....

He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, 

establishing justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. 

((verses from Isaiah 9:2-7))

Patsy knew darkness. She knew the weight of the yoke of slavery, and the rod of the oppressor. Her wounds spoke loudly to me of this fact: that it is crucial for me to know her story in order to better understand who God is as a liberator of the oppressed. 

As a white privileged American, I realize that as hard as these stories are to watch, they are crucial to hear and to see. Even more importantly, as a person committed to following Christ, I must know these stories and my heart must break over them. As much as a I celebrate Christ-followers who were abolitionists and fought for the freedom of slaves, I must equally mourn and repent of the many Christ-followers who fought to keep the institution of slavery alive for so many years.

One of my favorite authors, Soong Chan Rah, wrote a book that has influenced my thinking on the purposes of the Church and overcoming racial divides, specifically within the U.S. One of the biggest challenges to me in his book was the task of corporate lament: what does it look like to be a community that mourns not just over individual sin, but over systems of sin? What does it look like to grieve the many lives lost in the course of my own country's history (let alone the history of the world)? The question can take us through many awful time periods of U.S. history: from the genocide of Native Americans, slavery in the 18th & 19th centuries, discrimination throughout the 20th century, and today's racial profiling and inequality (just to name a few things). I'm convicted by this question -- and compelled to pursue it because I believe in a God who loves justice and whose heart beats relentlessly for his "kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven".

Maybe the first part of corporate lament is listening to these stories: watching the movies and reading the books. The next steps are probably life long and I will never have them figured out, but I want to pursue the questions and I want to pursue joy with lament, thanksgiving with repentance. Yes, it's a paradox, but I believe it's a paradox worth fighting for...and worth fighting to better understand.