From the Pastor’s Heart OP-ED BY DR. ROBERT KENNEDY
As we continue the celebration of Black History Month, I reflect on the phrase “Taking a Stand,” which is often used in the black community to represent resistance against biases and discrimination.
Of interest is that those who are “taking a stand” are, at times, kneeling in prayer posture like Colin Kaepernick. In 2016 Kaepernick reignited the kneeling posture typical to the black community as part of its protestations against discrimination and police brutality. Colin Kaepernick is now a 32-year-old free agent quarterback who hasn’t played in the NFL since the last week of the 2016 season. He spent six years with the 49ers before his peaceful protest led to his firing by the league’s team owners. He has remained a polarizing civil rights activist to this day even though he is no longer granted the NFL quarterback platform. Even the former President Trump of the United States paid particular attention to Kaepernick and those who followed in the “kneeling,” “standing up” protestations.
Former President Donald Trump called Kaepernick and those who began to “take a knee” with him names and asked the owners to fire them. Mr. Trump sought to turn the whole country against the kneeling protesters. But Kaepernick and those who knelt with him did not go away, as the former president has. The former president did not calculate that kneeling as a stand-up protest is rooted in the black community for generations. It has now gone beyond the black community and is continuing to be a force that is unstoppable in the culture. The kneeling, as a stand-up, is a non-violent way of resistance against oppression.
Kneeling as stand-up protest is not new. The story of Daniel and his friends in Babylon records such protests. Read Daniel 1 and 3, and you cannot miss such protestations. Daniel chapter 6 is even more impressive in showing how Daniel engaged in a one-person kneeling protest after Babylon’s fall. The king of Persia took note of Daniel’s pristine character and elevated him as chief among his administrators. Jealousy broke out over Daniel’s elevation.
“How could this little Jewish upstart come to such prominence over us 120 administrators,” they asked? The narrative states that: “. . .the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they could not do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy. He was neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally, these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”
Knowing that Daniel prayed to the God of heaven, a different God than the gods of Persia, they schemed a plot against Daniel, asking the king to pass a decree that every person in the kingdom should pray only to the Persian gods and the king (himself) for thirty days. The suggestion stroked the king’s ego, and he agreed, even to the part of the plan that would coerce everyone to abide by the decree. The plot was that anyone who prayed to or served any other than the gods of Persia and the king should be thrown into the lion’s den. Then the men watched Daniel and found out that he knelt in prayer with his face towards Jerusalem, praying to the God of heaven, three times daily.
The text says: “When Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
Yes, you guess the outcome right. The men reported Daniel to the king, and Daniel was cast into the den of lions. On the night when Daniel was thrown into the den, the king did not sleep. He thought about Daniel all night.
Then as the record states: “At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, ‘Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?’ Daniel answered, ‘May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.’”
Let me fuse Daniel’s story with the kneeling in prayer protests adopted in the black community and state that things do not always work out how the story of Daniel worked out. Sometimes in a kneeling posture, dogs have been set on protesters, water cannons sprayed on them, many beaten with batons, some pepper-sprayed, some arrested, some fired from their jobs (like Kaepernick), others kept out of the Hall of Fames in their sports areas (like Hank Aaron), some threatened and ridiculed by a president (as was the case with the NFL players with former President Trump, and some killed like the people in Mother Emmanuel in Charlotte or like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes, standing up by kneeling is challenging to say the least. But anyone who understands the long history of pious prayer will know that this is the only way that those who wield the sword or carry guns can be beaten. As is said, “A child of God on their knees is like an army.”
I am not saying that we are not to stand up in other ways than in prayer, for I argue with a lot of humility that “God helps those who help themselves.” But what I am offering is that if all who know God will engage without pretense in prayer protest, we will be able to stand against forces of the demons that are encircling us today.
Yes, let us continue to “take a stand” on our knees. Let us not be intimidated even though the devil will “threaten to undo us” as the reformer Martin Luther said. Let us have confidence, and be courageous in kneeling down and standing up to protest. It is time to send up many prayers to the God of heaven.
