Tell me how civilized is a world where the killer thrives
darker victims villainized, and authority’s ill advised
The snake and his venom is all in us, no immunize
We need a Jonah
we Ninevized…
–Trip Lee, “Billion Years” ft. Taylor Hill
In Laments in Midlothian, I tried to cover some of the factors that contribute to the systemic and disproportionate abuse of black American citizens at the hands of law enforcement. The writing was birthed from observing the pain of loved ones of the deceased, and shifted focus to the spiritual wickedness in high places that rejoices in that pain, and provisions for its occasion.
A Christ-centered, Biblical worldview can help us see how that wickedness in high places becomes localized to exist at the personal, micro level, trickling down from the macro.
That one time I was in a lions’ den gave me a picture of how a feeling in the air gets internalized and infiltrates a society (through the rumbling growl, and the roar…).
A few years ago I went on a behind the scenes tour with a small group at a zoo. We were able to go into the lions’ den and see the lions up close. We were in the same room with them, separated from the lions by the bars to their enclosures, and the space between the line we could not cross, and those bars.
There was a young female, an older female, and a male.
The male was around five. The male was big, and territorial. The male was growling. Growling constantly. And that growl felt like thunder, close thunder, that was rumbling in the room with us.
The white walls fed the sound back to us, eagerly, as if we were hungry for it, or the context itself wanted -no, needed- to be rid of it. Supersaturation.
Interspersed between that growl, the lion occasionally roared. The zookeeper explained that the lion would usually growl and roar at men. The lion proved it. Every time I, or one of the other men with us spoke, the lion roared, drowning out our voices.
The lion couldn’t get to us from behind those bars, but when that constant growl became a sudden roar, like a flash of lightning blindingly close, against the backdrop of heard-but-unseen-thunder-behind-clouds, we would stir. My heart would beat faster. I feel like, even when I attempted to speak, I could feel that growl before the roar, in my chest, in my lungs, affecting my voice.
I knew that the lion’s body could not get to my body, but it felt like, as long as we were under its growl, that we were physically beneath its presence, like it had a paw on, or hovering right above us.
When we finally left the den, and the shaking around us stopped, I could still feel the vibrations.
As I was brainstorming and drafting Laments that experience came to mind, but was mostly underplayed in the poems, getting just one line in IV. Because The Screwtape Letters covers that spiritual enemy perspective so well, I went with a visual from that book, but there was another that I also had on my mind.
Frank Peretti’s 1986 novel This Present Darkness includes a character by the name of Baal-Rafar, who was a fallen angel, known as the prince of Babylon in times before. I think Peretti described Rafar as having leonine features. That image was a lot closer to what I was thinking of when I introduced the snickering, rejoicing prince. As I moved into the commentary foreword, I embraced this imagery even more.
I think it is so appropriate. Remembering that our enemy goes about like a roaring lion is powerful. And it works. The significance of the roaring should not be understated. Based on this scripture, the power lies first in the voice, not in the teeth or the claws, but the roar. Satan puts his voice into the air, into the society, to the point that it just gets into us, and we internalize lies and act out accordingly.
The discriminatory patterns and practices of the law enforcement system in this nation and the injustices meted out by some of its operatives are manifestations of brokenness that comes after internalizing that lion’s voice.
And that voice, in so many ways, vocalizes out of fear. That fear gets into the lungs of culture, and affects the voices of those who would speak. It gets to a point that, some people sound like the lion. They feel its thoughts, and begin to repeat them, often driven by fear.
Because the lion is afraid.
Because there is another Lion.
And that Lion has a rumbling in His chest too.
And the lesser lion fears it, is intimidated by it, hates it, and whimpers.
There is a huge contrast between the little, wicked lion who roars, and seeks to devour (and those that hear and heed its voice, and would tear down and devour in kind), and our Lion of Judah, who looks for those HE can breathe on and heal and bring wholeness to and strengthen (and those that hear and heed HIS voice), and would build up.
I’ll touch on these topics again going forward –the lowly lion’s fear, and how that fear has led to legislating justifications for injustice against black citizens, and how this helped bring about the Laments in Midlothian, and ultimately our Lordly Lion and HIS love for the victims of this unjust system, those that build and maintain it, and those broken and maimed by it.
Song: “Billion Years” by Trip Lee ft. Taylor Hill from the Waiting Room Mixtape (Reach Records, 2016)
Visuals: White lion image from Pixabay, other image sources captioned.
Festival of Booths 