“OK, so I just don't know how you have been able to get to the point you have with so much dead weight attached to your company.”
Capt. R.E. Ludlow pulled the color wheel out of his pocket that he kept for frustrating conversations, and moved his fingers methodically from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to violet … cooling down, and then doing it a second time because there had been times of his life in which he had thought the same way about the Trents, Gonzalezes, Duboises, and Stepforths.
This modified his answer wih compassion.
“I am going to put this in eternal terms, since we used to go to church together as children, Frank. The church of white supremacy is not my temple, and it ought not be yours either, since Christ clearly came to save all kinds of people and bring them on equal terms into God's family. That's John 1:12. Go read it, and we'll talk again when you have.”
Eleven-year-old Velma Trent overheard this and went to talk about it with her father's mother, Gladys Jubilee Trent, called Grandma Jubilee by Velma and her friends.
“OK, baby; pull up John 1:12 on your phone before you wash up, and we'll talk about it when we are getting our food.”
So Velma did, and then got with Grandma Jubilee when going to get food.
“So, Grandma, how many Christians are there who have not read even to John 1:12, and don't know that the Lord saves everyone He saves as adopted children of God, and that God the Father is therefore no racist?”
“A lot, which is why Capt. Ludlow's answer is so brilliant,” Grandma Jubilee said. “When you meet people dedicated to making you less than, you know that they are not worshiping Christ. They have a temple in which they worship themselves. Racism is a projection of white people's self-worship, but they are not the only people projecting, and that is not the only projection. Sexism is another one Capt. Ludlow would have grown up with except that his mother, his grandmother and their friends your great-grandmother and great-grand-aunts weren't having that.”
“Yeah, that would be kinda hard,” Velma said.
“The point, though, is that you can't worship God and idols – doesn't matter what the idols are, and why, so, what God does is force people to choose, and when people are forced to choose who they serve, sometimes that's the first time they know they can't do both at once. In this country, it's popular to go to church on Sunday and do every tomfool thing the night before and the day after. Folks don't always know they have to choose until they have to choose.”
“But Grandma … it's right there in John 1:12. I mean, I learned how to read when I was three, and I know everyone doesn't start that early, but … it's right there. How are you a Christian and you don't even know the books about the life of Christ like that?”
“Folks running the false temples don't want folks to read, Velma. That's why those worshiping at the temple of white supremacy before the end of slavery made laws so our people couldn't read, because it was right there... but also encouraged their own members not to read, because … well, it's right there. Lofton County was one of the last counties in the nation to enact civil rights so that we could have basic human and civil rights here. Best believe a whole lot of people were not reading up to and after 1974.”
Velma considered this.
“That's actually really sad, Grandma. It's sad if you miss it because you can't read, but it's extra sad that you miss it because you won't.”
“Which is why you and your siblings were taught to read so early, and are always being encouraged, because freedom depends on us being the ones who can and do. We can't count on the ones who worship at false temples to know what God has said, or really the truth about anything. We have to learn and know for ourselves.”
“Right on, Grandma. Right on.”