My Dungeon Shook And My Chains Fell Off

“You can only be destroyed by believing that you are what the white world calls a nigger. I tell you this because I love you, and please don’t you ever forget it.” James Baldwin, writing to a nephew he loved.

These were by no means words of discouragement. This was a man writing to his namesake, a mirror image of his brother; through love he wanted his nephew to understand the context that he was born in. Baldwin didn’t want his nephew to hate himself, hate his circumstances; he wanted him to fight the narrative that had been sold to him through a currency of fear by a cruel world.

So what did the white world call a nigger? James described it as someone born in a society that considered him in more ways than one, a worthless human being. Who was not expected to aspire for excellence but was expected to make peace with mediocrity. Raised in the ghetto; pimps, whores, and drug dealers lined the streets like street lights. What would James Baldwin aspire to be if this was what he was exposed to? He aspired to get an education which his father didn’t see as important, as was evident, the black man educated or not educated suffered the same fate. So what shook the dungeon so his chains would fall off?

I too have been a slave, not to any man but to myself, shamelessly being oppressed and unknowingly being the oppressor. I had just dropped off my niece and my sister at their house. My brother-in-law full of life struck a conversation with me. A trail of stories, like ants, one after the other we found ourselves deep into a conversation about agriculture. I told him about a farm I had visited, and how they were exporting herbs to Europe. I however had quit my interest because the licensing fees were expensive and the cost of starting up was too high. So he asked what the cost of the licenses was, what the cost of starting up was and other fears I had shared with him. I had no concrete answer, all I could embarrassingly master was that the cost was high and the licenses were expensive.

What I was suffering from was a lazy mind and a fearful heart. I had not taken the time to get my numbers right and see what I could do with the resources I had. I chose instead to imprison myself in a dungeon, shackle myself with chains, and not give myself a fighting chance.

“People find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” James Baldwin.

What danger? The white man as well as the next man knew that the narrative that the black man was inferior was not true. To act on what we know is not easy because it shakes what we perceive as reality to the core. And that is what we must do, act!

Once we decide to act, we must be ready for the noise. The noise may come from within telling you that your level of education isn’t good enough, you aren’t eloquent enough even when you deserve to be in that situation, that room. It may come from without, stories about your family being cursed, your race being inferior, or the place you were born into weighing you down. We are not all born into the same situation but we all have an equal chance to fight. To challenge the narrative, by committing, and once we commit is only when we shake the heavens and the earth, and our chains fall off.

What fuels this fight? What gives you the appetite for your portion? Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. “ When we are in the inner cell, our legs fastened to chains, faith is the violent earthquake that shakes the foundation of the prison and breaks the chains.

And I am not alone; I have the Lord Jesus Christ who fights for me. “The trees of the field will yield their fruits and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in the land. They will know that I am Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them.” Ezekiel 34:27.

Baldwin saw what a society of men filled with despair looks like. Those who had resigned to the fate sold to them at a price that cost them their dignity. He refused to give in and is recognised as one of the best writers to walk this earth. He shamed them, those who said his race was inferior by writing articles that provoked thought and shook their narrative like an elephant’s trunk bringing down a tree for dinner.

Life rarely gives us an opportunity to be timid, so we must be bold. We must look deep within us to set ourselves free from any captivity that we’ve placed ourselves in and we must look up into the heavens because that is where our hope is.