Good Samaritan
Week 3 Guide
Week 3
Lay down: social media
Pick up: read and discuss Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Social media is one the primary distractions of our 21st century world. This week, we set it aside in order to more thoroughly engage with God and one another in vitally important conversation about race, reconciliation, and justice. Use the time created by fasting social media to read Martin Luther King’s brilliant piece: Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Be sure to discuss what you’ve read with your family, your friends, and/or your house church.
Lent 2021 Fast – Week 3 – Social Media
Social media is one the primary distractions of our 21st century world. This week, we set it aside in order to more thoroughly engage with God and one another in vitally important conversation about race, reconciliation, and justice. Use the time created by fasting social media to read Martin Luther King’s brilliant piece: Letter from a Birmingham Jail (which you can find for free on Google). Be sure to discuss what you’ve read with your family, your friends, and/or your house church. As you read, ask yourself these questions:
What concepts were new or unfamiliar to me?
Were there any elements of the letter that spoke to me, that were especially powerful?
Were there any ideas that I found myself wrestling with or even disagreeing with, anything that was especially uncomfortable?
Apply the lens of our justice series to the conversation. How does this letter illustrate a biblical definition of justice: a radically sacrificial preference for the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed?
Discuss your answers to these questions and any other thoughts you might have in community.
If you want to explore this theme of racial justice further, here are some other books to read:
The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley
Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison
America’s Original Sin by Jim Wallis
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
For Families with kids
Parents, most of your children will not have social media to “lay down” this week but you can ask them if there is a favorite show they love to watch on television they would be willing to forego this week. Then, purchase the book, The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights by Carole Boston Weatherford and, in place of the time it takes to watch the show, begin reading the book together. The book shares the powerful free-verse poem that traces the African American journey from slavery to civil rights. It shares how since the earliest days of slavery, African Americans have called on their faith in the struggle against oppression. Take time after reading to discuss their strong faith and challenge your family to rely on God as you fight for justice today!