A correspondent asks me why I don't consider the privileges I enjoy as a white, educated, reasonably affluent United States citizen a "blessing from a generous God."
It's a good question, really, and one I can answer with atypical succinctness:
My sustenance, security, gifts and talents, and necessary possessions come, as all good things do, from a loving, kind God. Any unfair advantage or privilege I take over others because of his graciousness is sin, and if I'm born into an unjust society, it's evident that I'll benefit from that injustice if its structure favors people like me. So I have to reduce, as a conscious choice, the benefit of those unjust privileges to me and work to extend them, with God's grace and for righteousness' sake, to those oppressed.
Living in a white-privileged society isn't God's gift to me; my gift to him is to use my position in it to work for racial, cultural, and social healing in his name.
And no, I don't do it perfectly or even close to it. I'm drinking from the fountain of grace as needily as anyone else.
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