Myth #1: We have a moral obligation to disrupt conversations about racial reconciliation or justice because such discussions lead to a victim mentality.

There is a narrative suggesting that those urging us to build genuine multiethnic unity in the Church and those advocating for the dismantling of racial hierarchies within the Church and our communities either exhibit or promote a victim mentality.  The Apostle Paul admonished the Church at Corinth to examine themselves before taking Communion because bringing the world’s hierarchies into the Church is a serious sin, not because Paul had succumbed to a victim mentality.   And Jesus inserts a Samaritan into The Parable of the Good Samaritan to convict us of racism, not because Jesus had succumbed to a victim mentality.

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It is ludicrous to suggest that those calling us to build genuine multiethnic unity in the Church and those advocating that we dismantle racial hierarchies within the Church and our communities have succumbed to a victim mentality.  This should be obvious when those advocating for the oppressed are not part of the group being oppressed.  But what about when someone like Dr. King advocated for removing racial hierarchies but was also a member of the oppressed group?  Let Acts 6 be our guide on how to respond to complaints of structural racism.  It was Hellenist Jews who raised the objection that their widows were being ignored.  The Apostles could have reprimanded them for succumbing to a victim mentality, but instead, they addressed the structures and processes that were causing the injustice.

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Does our calling attention to racial hierarchies promote a victim mentality?  Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that we should refrain from talking about injustice because doing so might lead to the victims of injustice embracing a victim mentality.  If that was a concern to the writers of the Bible, it was left unexpressed.  What we do see, time and time again, is the writers of the Bible championing the cause of the oppressed.