I hate racial slurs. They make my skin crawl. I do not use them or allow them in my presence. Yet, even living in a non-homogeneous home, I have heard them.

Frankly, I do not respond very well.

Has this happened to you?

After a lifetime a modeling acceptance, respect, and racial justice, you hear a kid you've raised using terms on the phone or video game to refer to people that you would have never allowed to be used – terms that would gotten you in serious trouble as a youngster.

Immediately,  you intervene and the conversation gets very serious.You are horrified."Where did you learn this? Why did you say it? Don't you know that … ?"

Let me say, it is not just race, but characterizations of people with disabilities or other identities.

The truth is that the child or teen could have learned it anywhere — but it came out of the culture, free-floating, peer-driven, sin-infested.

I know know some kids get it from their parents. I am not talking about them.

Nor am I talking about those fully infected with bigotry.

I am talking about culture and communal sin.

Everyone wants to fit in, especially kids. The warped nature inside of us demands that, in order for us to fit in, someone must be excluded. We pick pick those folks that are most vulnerable or under-represented and exclude them.

That is the root of systemic racism, class-ism, and every other form of exclusive-ism.

One group benefits; the other pays.

When it emerges with all of its ugliness, we want to sort it out individually by determining who is or is not a racist or some other form of "exceptionalist."

For instance, a recent event in the news shows young people taunting an older man. Other footage is introduced to suggest he provoked it. Still other footage indicates that he did that after a prior provocation. Still other reports claim it was all a media set-up.

Now people are defending by attacking the older man and the younger man, trying to determine their motives or culpability.

I suggest that it is not the point and somewhat regret seizing upon that incident to make the point as if it depended on one anecdotal incident.

The issue is not who is and who is not.

The issue is that it is.

Racism is systemic. The language, assumptions, attitudes, systems, patterns, biases, and emotions are out there and even land in good homes where tolerance has always lived.

I am far more concerned with the environment where it can happen and when it does, with the sides we choose to defend, ignore, or condemn.

That does not exclude our need for self-examination and personal repentance.

In the same way, I don't want to see some kids become the symbol of the sin and get locked into it as their identity. Kids all have a lot of growing to do and can change quickly with perspective.

Nor do I want to see a respected elder defined by a moment.

I really do not want to talk about the people. I want to talk about the environment where this can happen.

One draw-back, theologically, is the rugged individualism thread that runs through our interpretation of sin, redemption, and forgiveness and focused on the individual heart. I do believe in that theology, but not only in that theology.

Many, who are not personally, or individually, consciously, racist, still drink from the common wells of racism and participate in its systemic evil.

Corporate sin infects corporate thinking and acting.

That is the opportunity for conversation that memes sometimes introduce.

It is unfortunate that we have to get stuck on the circumstance and I take my share of responsibility for that.

But the question remains: What kind of culture do we want to shape?