From time to time I’ve tried to draw our attention to the racial issues confronting us. I like it when others are doing the same thing: helping those of us who are white to see the other side.

My friend and fellow-Navigator Bill Mowry wrote about what he is learning from two black friends and the prophet Amos. Here’s a snippet:

Dean [an African-American friend of Bill’s in his late 50s] would be routinely stopped as he drove through a wealthy white neighborhood. His wife, who was white, drove the same car on the same streets but was never stopped. I now saw racism through the eyes of a friend. Something seems wrong when people are treated as racial stereotypes.

Clarence was a young African-American pastor in my leadership network. In a casual conversation one day, he said that he just had “the talk” with his young sons. I cracked a joke about the “birds and the bees talk” but he said this talk was on another subject. “I explained to them to that they should keep their hands in their pockets when entering a store. People would quickly accuse them of shoplifting. Black males are not always welcomed in a lot of stores,” he said.

I never had a conversation like this with my two sons. Something seems wrong when people are treated as racial stereotypes. – Bill Mowry, 
https://alongsider.com/2020/07/09/the-walls-are-dissolving/, emphasis mine.

Bill went on to say he started to see God confront these same issues through the prophet Amos:

Then I met Amos, the Old Testament prophet. Amos didn’t specifically address racism. Instead, he indicted Israel’s practice of economic cruelty. He confronts Israel again and again for her economic injustice. Here’s one sample:

Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him . . .you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. (Amos 5:11-12)

Amos challenged me to consider combining issues of justice and righteousness with the Great Commission. He confronted the wall I had built between social issues and making disciples. -Bill Mowry

His whole article is worth the read.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4.1 – 16, ESV)