Revolution for New Dirt and New Sky: The unprecedented transformation of the apparent fixed social realities of our world

Natural. Immutable. Established by nature as the sky above my head and the dirt beneath my feet. In my youth, (save the vocabulary), these sentiments characterized my intuitive understanding about the world of black subjugation and poverty. Growing up in housing projects and other communities around Pittsburgh from the 60s through the 80s, this was my presupposed cosmology. As a young adult during the 80s and 90s, I had occasion periodically to peek into the very different socio-economic conditions of the well-off. Most often, they neither looked like me nor lived near me. Also about then, I began learning about and seeing images from Africa—images of abject poverty, rampant famine, incurable disease and ubiquitous death.

Interestingly, the juxtaposition of such experiences seemed, in my mind, to draw a more acute line of disparity between the global black world and the global white world.

There it was again—the pall of apparent black inferiority at home and abroad. Naggingly pervasive and accessible yet, seemingly inscrutable and indomitable. By this time, the question “But why?” was the emerging mantra on my spirit, seeking answers from an invisible and omniscient God. I assumed He knew since no one else seemed either willing or able to say.

Now 20 years later, I’m wiser and more knowledgeable about the world. Ironically, what nagged me about the Afro-global world then is back with a vengeance, only now there’s a difference in me: a tenacious faith in God.

The God of the biblical scriptures won my heart back then as I learned of His intimate involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. That radically transformed my perception of God from a laissez-faire God to that of an imminent and intimate God. This redemptive-historical, Creator-God of the Bible revealed in the person of Jesus the Christ immediately became my personal superhero and I became a die-hard fan.

As the God of the biblical jubilee of Leviticus 25--a divine mandate for redemption and restoration toward just social relations, economics, trade, governance, the environment, and for all things under the sun--I’m convinced that kairos, or the fullness of time, for restoration and restitution is underway by this same God. In other words, we’re at the fullness of time for those of this generation to be change agents for 21st Century liberation and empowerment in the Afro-global and in the larger two-thirds world—an unprecedented dismantling of the last vestiges of 500 years of economic exploitation.

From David’s Psalm 103:6 declaring “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed” to Jesus’ recall in Luke 4:18 that “The Spirit of the Lord is on me…to release the oppressed”—God has always demonstrated His just activism wherever imago dei, or His image in Man, was undermined by the ungodliness of others. He’s the same today as 20 years ago when I first wept over the state of Africa. This is why today I side with God against the current debt crisis over much of the two-thirds world. This is why the Drop the Debt (DTD @ PIT) group that I started at the University of Pittsburgh is so important to the cause and to me.

For me, serving as coordinator for DTD @ PIT, more generally, serving in the global debt cancellation movement is a direct outworking of my commitment to the Christian worldview as revealed by God in Scripture. In this, I co-labor with God in redemptive history by helping to give voice to justice—in this case, the realization that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

For those of us who hold an unshakable faith in this invisible-but-made-manifest, Creator-God; those of us who view all things under the sun through lens of His perspective; who appraise all things by the wisdom of His insight—this movement to dismantle and transform the mechanisms of oppression in our world IS part of God’s redemptive history and you and I are actors on His historical stage, shaping and directing the outcome of the grand story of the world.
In this, I envision us co-laboring with God to recreate a new sky above our heads and new dirt beneath our feet. In this, we literally serve the advancement of God's Kingdom agenda toward the consummation of all things and the ushering of the New Heavens/New Earth of Revelation 21--maybe not in our lifetime, but inevitably, and not too soon.

Maranatha!