Dan Berry • May 05, 2026
James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Put simply, he’s saying this: avoiding problems never fixes them—but facing them at least gives you a chance.
Most of us know what it’s like to avoid something. Maybe it’s a hard conversation, a mistake we made, or something going on in our life that we’d rather not deal with. Ignoring it can feel easier in the moment. But deep down, we know it doesn’t make the problem go away—it usually just makes it worse. What we don’t face tends to stick around and get smelly.
Baldwin is also honest about something important: just because you face something doesn’t mean it will change. That can be frustrating. You can do the right thing, have the hard conversation, or confront a situation head-on—and still not get the outcome you hoped for. It’s here we have to pause, move through our disappointment, and find the value in our steps. Facing something gives us focus. It gets us out of denial and into what’s really going on.
On a personal level, this shows up in how we grow. Change starts when we’re willing to be honest with ourselves. It almost always starts out ugly—having to admit where we’re wrong, where we’re struggling, or what needs to change. But until we do that, we stay stuck.
Growth doesn’t begin with perfection—it begins with honesty.
This idea also matters in bigger areas like relationships, communities, and even issues of justice. Real change has never come from ignoring problems. It comes when people are willing to say, “This isn’t right,” and then actually do something—get involved. That takes courage, because facing truth can be uncomfortable and can cost you dearly. But it’s the only way forward. The first steps can be the most painful, but at least we’re moving.
There’s also something deeper here. Facing the truth—about ourselves or the world—takes humility. It means letting go of excuses and being willing to see things as they really are. For many of us, that kind of honesty is tied to faith: trusting that truth, even when it’s hard, leads somewhere good.
In the end, Baldwin’s words are a challenge. We may not be able to fix everything we face, but we can choose not to run from it. And that choice—to face what’s real—is where change always begins.
When it comes to justice work, we are facing an overwhelming pushback that has stopped a lot of us in our tracks. My challenge today is for us to be honest about what is or isn’t happening in our journey. Reexamine what is going on in our lives. If we need to recommit, find our footing, and take those first steps again, let’s do it.
You are so valuable to all of us at Brownicity, and we want to say how much we love you and are grateful for your desire to be a part of our calling.
He has pastored for forty years in Iowa. After pastoring in predominantly white spaces for several years, he began to realize the need to bring about racial healing in the body of Christ. For the last 30 years he has worked to bridge ethnic and cultural divides, a work that has led him into confronting the churches complicity in upholding systems of racism.
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