What did ya learn? (Part 2)

Your twenty-year-old self can look back at your fifteen-year-old self and think . . . what an idiot! You were worried about all the wrong things and an overall jerk. And your twenty-five-year-old self can look back on your twenty-year-old self and think . . . what an idiot! You were worried about all the wrong things and an over all jerk. And so on and so on to where you are now. Point is we’re all idiots! Worried about all the wrong things and kind of an overall jerk.

This couldn’t be truer when it comes to how a large amount of people view the church in America. Don’t get me wrong there are thousands of stories of how churches and individual Christians have done great things for their communities and lives have been changed. At the same time there are way too many stories of how churches and individual Christians have often been worried about the wrong things and were kind of an overall jerk.

Being a follower of Jesus means admitting that you and I are in the position of a learner. Following Jesus requires humility. We don’t know it all. Never will. As much as we might wonder how the disciples didn’t understand Jesus, truth is neither do we. We would like to think that we have Jesus all figured out when in truth we have only domesticated him. We made him palatable to our proclivities.

One of the areas that I learned about in this last year is just how misguided the church has been when it comes to the issue of race. This is especially true for my white brothers and sisters. For many of my white brothers and sisters in Christ reading that last statement might have just caused a mental eyeroll. Yet again let’s remember we have a tendency to worry about the wrong things and be an overall jerk.

A few years ago, I read The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Zondervan, 2008) by Scot McKnight. Basically, McKnight wants Christians to become aware of how we all can pick and choose certain scriptures and or doctrines out of the Bible. This actually leaves us ignorant of the whole of Scripture. Well, duh – right?

The problem is not necessarily picking and choosing. It is the web of concepts, prejudices, and ways of viewing what life is supposed to be about that lock us into certain passages and or doctrines. It prevents us from having a full and rich understanding that the Bible is offering. Thus, when it comes to issues like race and what the Bible says we might not know it all.  We might just be surprised and maybe a bit uncomfortable to discover the depth and nuanced ways the Bible speaks of issues like race.

Like many of you I watched the disturbing video of George Floyd crying out “I can’t breathe”. The killing of George Floyd became the spark that lit protests across America and the world. I wanted to learn more. I got and read Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Through an overview of 400 years of American church history, Tisby—who has graduate training in both American history and Reformed Christian theology and is president of The Witness, a black Christian collective—demonstrates that white American Protestants in both the North and South repeatedly used their theology and church institutions to perpetuate racial power imbalances in the name of Christ.

I won’t go into all the sad history that Tisby puts forth in his book. Please know that Tisby is not out to bash white people or the church. He is, however, offering up a gruesome history of how the actions of white Christians kept black people and black Christians enslaved, separated and denied being a full part of the body of Christ. What he reports actually happened. If we don’t want to go back to normal then may I suggest that you get the book and read it. If getting and reading a book isn’t you then you can find a set of videos called the Color of Compromise by Tisby on Right Now Media and Amazon video.

Not only did I read Tisby’s book I also engaged in conversations with friends and colleagues both black and white.  Read various articles on the issue of race in the context of American society, culture and theology. The picture painted the various articles wasn’t good. We have a lot of work to do in the area of race. I hope you have taken some time to consider what did ya learn in this area from the past year. Here some things that I hope I learned this past year.

1.     There is a difference between listening and waiting to speak. On the issue of race, we all have a lot of listening to do. I have no idea what it is like to grow up as a black person. I don’t have a story in my family when anyone was denied the right to vote based on their skin color. I have never had to have a conversation with my kids about what to do when pulled over by the police. I don’t know what it is like to be distrusted and viewed differently because of the color of my skin. Maybe saying we need to do more listening has achieved the level of slogan or cliché. Yet it is the truth. So much of what happened during last summer was nothing other than reactions to reactions. A lot of yelling, social media comments and judgment but not a lot of listening. We were just waiting to speak not listening. 

 

2.      My fellow white brothers and sisters in Christ. Take a breath. Be humble. Truth is there are a lot of ways that our black brothers and sisters in Christ have truly been mistreated over the years. I am convinced that if there is going to be any kind of reconciliation it will have to come from/start with a movement among white Christians. There is no MLK Jr. this time. When white Christians really want to bring shalom to this issue it will happen. Until then we will remain resistant to acknowledging that there is even an issue at all. We will continue to suggest that we are colorblind when we know we see in color. 

 

3.     Learn some history. I like to consider myself a bit of a history buff. I think I get that from my Dad who liked history as well. One of the things that I learned this last year is that I am woefully ignorant of the history of racism within the church and America as well. I had no idea what Juneteenth was and what it meant until this last summer. Until moving to Oklahoma I had never heard of the Tulsa race massacre that took place on May 31- June 1, 1921. I didn’t know that my own tribe (The Restoration/Stone-Campbell Movement) has an ugly history with racism. I didn’t know that many Northern and Southern churches (before, during and after the Civil War) used the Bible, baptism and positions of power within the church (and outside the church) to continue to treat blacks as less than human. Learn some history as ugly as it might be because it helps us understand how things are now.