August 8, 2023
The other night a raccoon got one of our chickens. Blood and feathers and stuff all over the place. No one saw the raccoon, but I am sure it was one.
Why so sure? The raccoon books and articles and experts say so. Raccoons are notorious predators of helpless chickens, chicks and they are also the first poachers of chicken eggs. Foxes, skunks, weasels and the like are bad too. But raccoons, we are told, are the worst.
And we have all seen or read of coons in action. They are crafty, if not devious. With nimble hands and fingers and by clever minds they get into things and places they should not. Chicken coops and clucking hens and squawking roosters are no match.
Raccoons are all alike. Hopeless to change them. Folks even warn off other folks against raising kits for pets. Rascals all. Rogues. Burglars. Tricky, chicken-killing riggers. Raccoons and chickens and the rest of us do not belong in the same territory. Keep the coons in the back of the woods, drinking from their own streams, out of my neighborhood.
***** ***** *****
Why all this ranting, this labelling, this smearing of this species–raccoons? This hateful bias against one of God’s creatures? Why all this admittedly ridiculous raccoonism?
As you might have guessed it is to make a point about another term and “ism” being bandied about today as never before. It is the term, the label racism and racist. This is the accusation made by many when especially “persons of color” are confronted about their behavior. Often the police are called racist in pulling over these people, as if the police only looked at the color of the person, smelled a rat, and immediately suspected foul, and as if the one confronted did nothing wrong, was only minding his own business.
To be sure racism is real. Racism begins in prejudice—a judgment we make of all of a race because of something we read or some experience we have had with one or the other of that race. We all can be prejudiced against those, even all or most of those of a certain color, for example. This is especially true if we ourselves have witnessed, time and again, a certain attitude or behavior of certain people of a certain color. So if we have been punched in the nose once too often by those of this certain color, or have had our watch stolen from our locker by one of that certain color who seemed to think he had a right to it…we tend to think a certain way, even to cringe, almost instinctively and reflexively, if one or a group of that certain color comes our way or we go theirs. For many, this prejudice, which itself is not necessarily wrong, can lead to racism. Racism against any of any race or color is simply a “writing off” of an entire race or color as if the race or the color of people were simply beneath our showing individuals of that race or color any respect, the time of day, or a seat in our just-about-all-white, just about all Dutch church.
As Christians we need to guard ourselves and testify against such racism. And here is how:
Just remember that God is a holy racist—the holy God whose wrath is against all the whole human race fallen in Adam. He is not against just those Adamites who are white, or black, or red, brown, or yellow, or Arab, or Serb, or Italian, or American for that matter. He is against all those of that entire race who hold the truth under in unrighteousness and who live not like humans but foxes, dogs, pigs, skunks, coons…and devils.
Remember too that by the grace of God we are what we are, and if there were no grace, no Savior Jesus, we would all be black as sin; and hellions, in fact, we still are by nature.
Then this: our calling is to treat all in our path with dignity and honor as the humans they still are. Love God…and love the neighbor, Jesus says. Whatever neighbor, of whatever race. Love him. Love her. Love them. Love them with discernment. Love them righteously, and with holy indignation at their sins. But love them.
Love them! Hope for them. Pray for them.
Them. Even those beside themselves who do not know who they are, who God is, what grace is, whose homes are most likely, in our day, broken, whose learning and whose examples have so made them to be the ignorant, irresponsible, what’s-in-it for-me fools they are or appear to be.
Them. They are still human. They were still made, in the beginning, in the image of God. But now they are all lying by the side of the road humans, dead and stinking sinners, wounds within, wounds without, festering, oozing out…life. Or they are on the government dole, lazy, shiftless, purposeless, hopeless. Or on drugs. Or sneaking in at night to kill one of your chickens, or to rape, or to pillage, doing what sinners will do, following along the paths humans pave, the ruts humans rut, to the dead ends humans dead…
Them. Like us. Ungodly ones the like of which Jesus came to save, and now to call through us, to love through us. So that one day it will be us and them together, as many as God has ordained, for the praise of the glory of his grace.
Maybe one can understand raccoonism, even among chicken-raising Christians. But racism? Shame on us. Coons we are all. Or chickens. Or foxes or the like. Taken from the deep tangle of this thicket called humanity. Into the temple and arms of God.
-Rev. Dick
revdick.blog 
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