CIFC's Official Statement: Our Response to Racism
From the recent Anti-Asian assaults to the tragedy of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many others throughout American history, these incidents have exposed the systemic racism, injustice, and discrimination people of color experience on many levels in America. In the past few weeks, we as the CIFC executive board have been lamenting, praying, educating and examining ourselves, repenting, and listening from people of color from our own community.
The topic about eradicating racial injustice and systematic racism is an on-going conversation, not simply a fad. Our Lord created all of us in His own image and shows no partiality. We as Christians are called to be like Christ and to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. (Micah 6:8) As our team ask ourselves how we can support and love our brothers and sisters of color, we went back to our core values, Faith, Love, and Unity.
Faith
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” — Hebrews 11:1
It is easy to get overwhelmed and lose hope by the constant deluge of negative content from the media and the social media, yet our faith is the only thing that can inspire hope during this time. “For we live by faith, not by sight” (II Cor. 5:7). Walking by faith means to have the courage to stand up for the hurting, broken, and downtrodden. Hatred and racism have no eternal life nor a place in the Heaven. Our faith is the assurance of a world where discrimination and brutality does not exist and it can move mountains.
Love
“Do everything in love” — 1 Corinthians 16:14
We as Christians are given two commandments, love God and love our neighbors. “Faith without work is dead” (James 2:26). We as the younger generation are called to rise up and fill the gap between different races. “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isaiah 58:12). If faith is the bridge that will get us to the other side of racism, love is the glue that binds us together in harmony. “Love your neighbors as yourself” is easy to say, yet extremely hard to achieve. But we have to fight toward it, and we can start from listening and sharing.
Unity
“Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” — 1 Peter 3:8
1 Peter 3:8 is what CIFC is about, unity, sympathy, love, tender hearts, and humble minds. Hatred and racism will only polarize us, but compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience brings us together. Following the wisdom of Ephesians 4:1-3, we believe that ‘the bond of peace’ we are running after can only begin to be achieved through the pillars of this verse. We are not only called to fight for justice, we are also called to win hearts. We can not bring down the diving wall and calm the hostility with our own strengths, we have to surrender it to God and learn how to love and forgive one another.
As we have always been, CIFC will keep using our platform and resources to glorify God, fight racism, and bring people together. Different people have different stories and different ways to tell their stories, even among people of color. NYU Office of Global Inclusion has compiled an anti-racism education resource list, we strongly encourage you to utilize it to educate yourself. As of right now, we all need to pray, listen to others’ stories, and make every effort to love one another.
Together For The One
CIFC Executive Board
6/13/2020