The Violence We Carry
Back of album for Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar (2022)
Kendall Dooley is a community development practitioner, scholar, and co-founder of BLK South, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reclaiming and revitalizing historic Black neighborhoods in the South. With a background in Criminal Justice and Missional Theology, Kendall brings a deep commitment to improving the quality of life in under-resourced communities through holistic development, cultural preservation, and creative place-making. His work is shaped by his passion for justice, Black history, and fostering spaces where communities can flourish on their own terms. Learn More
After a long summer of reverse migrating to Durham, buying a home, getting settled, and beginning programs in the community, we’re finally bringing back our weekly reflections. These reflections are a space for us to pause, take stock of what’s happening in our world and in ourselves, and listen for the wisdom that God is offering through art, story, and one another.
The founder of Neighborhood Ministries where I previously worked in Phoenix values artist and claims that artist are the prophets of today. They are people who can see what is really going on in the world and express it in their art. I often go to music myself to heal and contemplate on the world we live in.
Perhaps for us today we can learn something if we listen to our black and brown hip hop artist.
In Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album titled Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers Kendrick confronts mental and emotional health and the long and hard process of doing the inner work on yourself to be healthy for yourself and those around you.
In his song titled Father Time Kendrick sorts out through the song how hard his father was on him growing up, and the lack of space he had to share his emotions with his father leading him to repress his emotions. He raps about how his daddy issues led to a foolish pride that became what he saw as masculinity. The song is like a confession he tells to his therapist. How lessons from his father communicated to him that he is not allowed to be tired, not allowed to feel pain and that your ego is what never allows you to reconcile with someone. He admits to negative and unhelpful beliefs he has picked up from his father, but also admits that this is a generational problem since his father grew up in an environment that led him to be that way. It’s almost like this way of being that his Father instilled is in him and has been in his family for a long time.
Is this the type of relationship we imagine Jesus to have with the Father? If Kendrick’s relationship with his father resonates with your view of God, then perhaps we are carrying something within us that does not reflect the Father Jesus is speaking about here.
America, and our churches too, have inherited something from our fathers. Oppressed and harmed whites traveled overseas, seeking to unjustly colonize new lands through violence in pursuit of their dreams. White Puritan men held the entitled belief that they could physically bring God’s kingdom to earth by any means necessary. The hypocrisy of our country’s founding fathers is evident: they enslaved Black Africans—my ancestors—while simultaneously professing Christ. And the John Wayne figures of American culture merged Christianity with a rugged masculinity that glorifies both God and guns.
“Our fathers” passed down practices of patriarchy and racism that remain embedded in our country and in many of our churches today. The violent and unjust acts we witness in our world are symptoms of this illness, hidden beneath the mask of American exceptionalism. Yet, as Kendrick’s song suggests, this history reveals a generational problem—our fathers themselves were shaped by environments that taught them to harm others.
Just as Memorial Day calls us to remember those who died while serving in the military, I sometimes long for a day of lament—at least within our churches—when we would remember the sins of our land and the harm inflicted on marginalized people.
We would be unwise to believe that none of these harmful practices remain in us, especially if we refuse to acknowledge them. It is often easier to see the violence in others than to name it in ourselves.
So the question is: when and how will we heal?
The community of believers in our country must do the inner work together—identifying what is within us, naming harmful practices we carry, and learning how to heal from both the harm we have endured and the harm we have caused.
When we experience pain and trauma, when we feel grief, it lives within us—embodied in our very flesh. A helpful practice is mindfulness: becoming aware of what is happening in us emotionally and physically, and paying attention to what occurs in the space between ourselves and others. From birth, we are dependent on others to help us navigate distress. What might it look like to depend on those who are different from us to assist in our healing?
The harmful beliefs we have are carried in us as well.
As much as we may want to keep the focus on the violence of our fathers, our nation, or our churches, the harder and more necessary task is to recognize the violence that lives within us too. If generational wounds are carried in our bodies and communities, then so are the patterns of harm we’ve internalized. Healing requires more than naming what others have done; it demands that we tell the truth about what we ourselves carry, confess where we perpetuate harm, and choose a different way.
