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June 4 - June 25, 2016
White lenses are not necessarily helpful assessments, especially when considering that oppressed communities cannot simply trust the ethics of white liberals and progressives but instead must always work out their own ethics while following Jesus and dialoguing with other oppressed people groups.
Rather than look at how our economy deeply and unjustly distributes resources, people often describe poor black people as the source of American economic issues. Poor black people are the scapegoats of America. Who will champion them?
The real challenge in America is whether both white and black people are willing to subversively risk loving black people as though each life were created by God.
Our inability to discern the mold that our lives are unconsciously being formed into, or judged against, doesn’t make that mold any less a reality.
American wealth, power, and respect were built through domination and violence, realities that many conveniently forget or avoid considering.
First, we are told that we must put our very bodies, through action, on the line. Our bodies must become living sacrifices. Our bodies, and what we do with them, actually matter. We are not disembodied souls, and God cares about more than our spiritual lives. God says, Put your body on the line! What kind of bodily life will you engage in? Will your body be aligned with the rituals of American civil religion? Or will you vulnerably place your body in confrontation with the establishment, as Jesus did with his own body when he flipped tables in judgment of the injustice and idolatry in the
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Nonconformity is the message: nonconformity in our bodies, nonconformity in our minds, and nonconformity in our ways of being in the world.
Knowledge that is wielded to align with oppressive power is intellectually unethical in its usage.
What we will find, as Paul did, is that what God is up to looks nothing like what the Roman Empire or America is up to. Empires are not saviors of the world. They are the old patterns that are temporal and that will eventually pass away.
The value of encountering Jesus’ presence in the world is still hidden from most. Yet once we find such a treasure, we will radically realign our entire lives to have it. We will renounce the cheap imitations of God’s goodness found in societal respect and status. Instead, we will become transformed agents who subvert from below the lie of our current social order.
Too many in the American church have perpetuated the myth that this land was built on Christian principles rather than on stolen land and stolen labor. Too many American Christians act as though this land justly belongs to white Anglo–Saxon people, and as the hosts of the land they could expect everyone to assimilate into their world.
The church in America cannot conceive of what it means to live faithfully in the way of Jesus today if it continues to marginalize, silence, and forget Native Americans.
Jesus reminds us that these ways of dominating others—which, as we shall see, often overlap and intersect—should be “not so with you” (Luke 22:26). As followers of Jesus, we are obligated to resist all types of lording over others.
Merely focusing on obeying the law is an intentionally shortsighted and irresponsible posture for disciples of Jesus.
If Jesus’ deep identification with immigrants crossing boundaries into new places for survival doesn’t soften our hearts toward all immigrants, what will?
The whole church desperately needs to renounce all forms of lording over others and all forms of centralizing white normativity. We need to make sure that the whole church can be seated around the table of God together as equals, where only Jesus is centralized and Lord over all.
People have found a way to call themselves Christian, which means to be Jesus–shaped, and still chase after power without thinking twice about it. We disregard Jesus’ teaching on power and how we ought not to use it to dominate others.
The church must become the people who renounce lording over others in all manners, whether white supremacy, patriarchy, or economic domination. Instead, we must turn to the way of Jesus as the pathway to new life.
Some white male theologians and preachers frequently make Jesus sound more like Uncle Sam than the nonviolent, Jewish revolutionary described in the gospel narratives.
Though it is undisputed that Western forms of Christianity have participated in some of the most atrocious and violent acts within church history, the mythic white male figure claims clarity and objectivity in asserting who is in or out of bounds.
Others do “black theology,” “Latin American theology,” “womanist theology,” or “peace theology.” White men, however, seen as universal and objective—as though they hover over culture rather than participate in it—merely do “theology.”
Criticizing the social construction of white identity is often seen as stepping out of bounds of faithful Christian witness. Speaking from a position of power, the supposedly superior white male figure makes those labels stick and further stigmatizes marginalized Christian groups. The mythic white male figure appears apolitical, but in actuality his strategic power moves reaffirm hegemony and shut out dissenting voices. Many people groups, far beyond those defined by racial categories, have experienced such marginalization.
Lording over others demands that people be apathetic to the racialized other. It means gazing on an individual with bias or contempt and seeing something other than someone God found to be worthy to lay down God’s own life for.
Realizing this new humanity in Christ will mean that those that have become accustomed to standing at the center must now step off the table as the social, political, and theological referees lording over everyone else.
We are free to follow Jesus into forbidden spaces we were socialized to avoid, spaces in which we previously believed we didn’t belong. Sharing life together means intimately identifying with people who carry the stigma of varying racial meanings in their actual bodies. Most practically, this can be expressed in regularly sharing life together around the table, as well as in Christian communal disciplines like reading and interpreting Scripture and praying together.
As we follow Jesus into the world, we must join with racially oppressed communities. We must so deeply identify with them that their struggle becomes our struggle. Christians do not merely watch as distanced spectators. We are dropped right into the conflicts of the world, and with Jesus we march right toward confrontation with our own Jerusalem–like establishments, where prophets are killed and power is concentrated.
Regardless, you should take inventory of what is already happening before you make a move. What local or regional churches or organizations are already struggling for racial justice?
Practically, I suggest that Christians from dominant culture change their reading habits so that those on the margins become the main stage. In the church, I suggest intentional group circles that are racially diverse, where stories can be shared and received.
People need to put their bodies in places where they are going to slowly learn to see things that they never would otherwise. The secret that followers of Jesus find along the journey is that the view from below, rather than above, offers a better position from which to see what God is up to.
It must intentionally privilege the voices and perspectives of those in society who are most neglected, forgotten, ignored, and silenced. The community that has visibly flipped things upside down will not define its life by the standards and expectations of dominant culture.
Throughout Scripture, God takes sides. God is not neutral in the midst of human suffering and oppression. It is not by accident that the divine name of Yahweh was revealed while God delivered the Israelites from the slavery and oppression of the Egyptians.
The church is the kingdom of God when and only when Jesus is present in a community that is taking on his form and way in the world. When our community begins to mirror the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for righteousness, then it is there the kingdom of God has become visible and real in our world.
Practically speaking, white Christians especially need to learn about the development of race and white identity in America. Understand how it works so you aren’t its puppet. Don’t be afraid to talk about racism in spaces that will challenge and transform how you think. Read and reflect on who you are and how you have come to understand yourself within our racialized society. Resist normalizing your own experience, but instead seek to explore and expose your own inconsistencies. Most of all, as people surrendered to the Holy Spirit, we must all ask God to reveal those areas in our lives that
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We are not seeking to merely be the church for the poor and oppressed; as we work toward a more Jesus–shaped way of Christian community, we hope to be the church of the poor and oppressed.
Said another way, my hope is that change can happen in America because God has always chosen the most vulnerable and oppressed to shame the strong. And that story isn’t finished being told yet.
We need the narrow way that leads us out. Therefore, a community that follows a pathway out of conformity to white supremacist patterns is needed, as it invites others to join in its experience of healing and deliverance.
Christians who live in the denial of such experiences don’t know that their own transformation is intimately tied to coming alongside and learning from those at the bottom rung of our societal ladder. This is where Jesus has always chosen to be uniquely present.
