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February 24 - March 9, 2023
We represent Jesus well when we draw near to other believers, regardless of differences. This is how we show unbelievers Jesus’ heart. And this is how we invite them to join us in following him. We need to be reminded of Jesus’ words: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that’s what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross. Discipleship is crosscultural.
If we interact with other groups at all, we usually do so at a distance and with at least a hint of suspicion.
the more we spend time with people who are essentially identical to us, the more we become convinced that our way of relating to both Jesus and the world is the correct way.
Social psychologists call this phenomenon group polarization. In the absence of diverse influences, homogenous group members tend to adopt more extreme and narrow-minded thinking as time passes.
The more we interact with a person, the more familiar we become with them.
The more familiar we become with them, the more we like them.
Being reminded of Christian identity leads people to love their fellow group members well, but hate those who do not share their core values, attitudes and experiences.
the unified church is the vehicle through which the kingdom of God is powerfully communicated to the world
Leaders hoping to build diverse teams should be aware that in order to fully utilize the wider range of resources and increased learning that diversity offers, each member of the diverse group must be of equal status.
The more we interact with those who are different, the more we can respond to the needs of those who are different.
we aren’t sure what the social cues are for when we are supposed to laugh, smile, look away, speak, be silent, stand, sit, eat, not eat, arrive, leave, be on time, be
late and so on, we are constantly trying to figure out what’s expected of us and what certain words and actions mean. The result can be fatigue, anxiety, stress or anger. Once we can see patterns and create categories, our stress levels subside.
By simply categorizing, we often create subcategories that detract from the more important, all-inclusive category of the body of Christ. Before we know it, whether people are pro-life or pro-choice, Calvinist or Arminian, or black or white is more important than whether they are part of the family of God.
Further, these subcategory distinctions may start out as mere
descriptive labels (such as pro-life or pro-choice), but they often deteriorate into value labels (Right Christian and Wrong Christian...
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When it comes to groups getting along or not, what we think of them is just as important as what we think they think of us.
When we adopt a unique group identity and surround ourselves with similar ingroup members, we essentially create our
own alternate universe in which we believe that the standards, ideals and goals of our ingroup should become the new “normal”—not only for our specific subgroup but for the entire larger group, including the outgroup.
Participants] resisted information purely on the basis that it was derived from a category of person to which they did not belong.”
Social identity researcher Richard Crisp found that participants who were asked to think of shared characteristics between the ingroup and outgroup were more likely to rate outgroup members more positively.
This research suggests that if Christians focus on similarities between themselves and culturally different Christians and keep in mind that their identity as Christians is more important than other cultural identities, then they should naturally begin to like culturally different Christians.
“Your evaluation of your soul, which is drawn from a world filled with people still terribly confused about the nature of their souls, is probably wrong.”
“The people we immediately, instinctively like, and find it easy to get on with are the people who give us the respect we consider we deserve. . . . In other words, personal vanity is a key factor in all our relationships.”
Our identities tend not to overlap across cultural lines, and our commitment to Christ is not holding us together. Instead, our need to feel good about ourselves often comes at the expense of commitment to each other.
“You don’t need to change how they see [differently abled] people. You need to change how they see themselves.”
We need to adopt the belief that to be a follower of Christ means to put our commitment to the body of Christ above our own identity and self-esteem needs. We’ve coped with our divisions long enough. It’s time for us to discover our true identities as members of the family of God. It’s time for us to rally around this identity, overcome our divisions and change the world. In sum, it’s time for us to change the way we see ourselves.
To the extent that culturally different members of the body of Christ are included in our identity and ingroup, we’ll resist the urge to ditch them when the going gets tough or in order to save our self-esteem.
we tend to go on the defensive when it comes to protecting our group identity just like we go on the defensive when it comes to protecting our individual identity.
positive group identity. Essentially, our defensiveness disables our ability to humbly receive correction and instruction.
Research conducted by Fein and Spencer and others suggests that those who derogate other groups are doing so at least partly because their identity is threatened.
In our quests for identity, we seem to have drifted off course, gaining identity and esteem from less meaningful groups rather than forging on toward our truest identity as members of the body of Christ.
Over the last century, Western moral standards have drifted further away from traditional Christian and biblical standards, Christians are often portrayed as bigoted or dumb in the media, and public education has become increasingly secularized. As a result, many Christians have adopted a defensive stance toward those who pose a threat to their identities, both Christian and otherwise.
as diverse people united in Christ.
I knew that if I affirmed my identity as a member of the body of Christ, affirmed my belief that Christ is the head of the body (and not me or anyone else) and affirmed the truth that all others in the body of Christ are connected to me, I would be better able to listen humbly without thinking that I know everything there is to know about gender and Christianity and without desperately needing to boost my self-esteem by derogating Famous Pastor.
I believe that I am called to remain connected to the body of Christ, even if that means enduring such pain. But I don’t have to do it without protection. Affirming my identity as a member of the body of Christ and as a bearer of the imago Dei could effectively buffer me from pain.
Culture is our modus operandi—anyone tracking us can see the cultural fingerprints that mark our religious beliefs and practices, but we lack the awareness to see it ourselves. All the more reason to develop crosscultural relationships with people who don’t share our blind spots and can offer much-needed perspective on our culture.
The Christian from the collectivist culture often says, “Your people did this to my people,” whereas the Christian from the individualist culture often responds with, “I’m not responsible for what my grandparents did.” The collectivist’s socially oriented faith includes the possibility of social guilt and requires that individuals who are connected to oppressors be responsible for sins of oppression. However, the individualist’s individual faith only
knows individual guilt and is offended by the idea that one person can be held responsible for another person’s actions.
Well-rounded Christian faith involves both individual and social responsibility.
Research suggests that diversity initiatives are doomed to fail among Christian groups that idolize their cultural identities.
creating a common group identity is the key to overcoming the divisions caused by categorizing, identity and conflict processes.
(Acts 15:12). After being reminded of their common group membership, the two groups were finally able to listen to each other’s unique cultural perspectives.
Soon after that, they reconciled, reached out to the new Christians in unity and decided to cut them some slack.
This is a tall order that requires a real and fierce conversation on the elephant in the church: privilege and power differentials.
For some reason, high-status people (in my experience, particularly white men) have a hard time seeing and admitting that they are in fact high-status people who enjoy privileges that aren’t afforded to lower-status people. Even more troubling, I’ve found that many white male pastors and seminary students have an even harder time admitting that these privilege and power issues exist in the church and are even perpetuated by the church.
Many people of color who attend predominantly white churches and Christian colleges and seminaries talk about feeling explicitly welcomed by the majority group but implicitly excluded and disempowered.
To put it bluntly, if you’re not willing to do the uncomfortable work of addressing and eradicating power and privilege differences in the church and beyond, you shouldn’t bother with unity and reconciliation.
the primary problem is that our identities are too small. We tend to rely most on our smaller, cultural identities and ignore our larger, common identity as members of the body of Christ.
South African archbishop Desmond Tutu insists that for forgiveness to occur, both victims and perpetrators must adopt a single, common identity.
