I promise this will be the last time the Urban Exile post about race and racism is referenced here.  However, yesterday I read two insightful comments on this post that ought to be highlighted.  Karen, who is the resident expert on the Orthodox Church around here, writes,

In Orthodox spirituality, it is understood that no one fully believes Christ who has not yet learned to love even his enemies from the heart as he loves himself (or as Christ loves us). That is not to say that the average Orthodox are necessarily any more fully believing than the average evangelical in this regard, only that in Orthodoxy, those of us who are still in process of being saved (in terms of our sanctification) are reticent to pronounce ourselves “saved” as an a priori fact based merely on jumping through some sacramental hoops and/or assenting to specific dogmas.

And over at Out of Ur Kim Whetstone summarizes what I was attempting to say better than I did in the first place.

Talk is tiresome at times. It is exhausting and painful at times. However, when sinful Christians who are reconciled to God and learning to receive His grace and truth in all areas of their lives, including their brokenness, “talk” authentically and deeply, there is a chance for talk to become action. When this talking is done as an act of worship to God and out of love for one another, there is a chance for transformational action that is fueled by the Holy Spirit. Men and women or social agendas do not invent this authentic transforming action, but rather it is the act of God’s creation (us) entering into God’s work of redemption and reconciliation in the world around us-us seeking Shalom. It is here that we see justice as truly as we can on this side of heaven. These conversations do matter.

As always, thanks for the comments.