Category Archives: MLK Day

Confessions of a white evangelical woman

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I guess the people that decide such things would categorize me as a white evangelical. Depending on what you read or who you ask, in our current social context, that might sound like I’m a Trump-voting, Religious-Right, conservative Republican.  I’m none of those.  But I am white, and I am a Christian- by the amazing grace of God in Christ! I guess I am evangelical in the sense that I believe the good news that Christ died for our sins and I love to tell others that good news in hopes that they might come to their senses like I did and follow Jesus. But in the social context that seems to connect the idea of being a white evangelical with being a bigoted, Christiandom, Culture Warrior  I want to be a light on a hill, driving out darkness and helping others see.  If I want to be a light, I first need Jesus to heal my blindness.

My pastor recently said something like, “Blind spots in a Christian’s life are not areas they struggle with.  Those are just usually areas where they don’t want to repent of sin.  Blind spots are just that. You’re blind to them. You don’t know they’re there.”

If I’m going to be aware of my blind spots I’m gonna need someone to point them out to me.  When it comes to being a white Christian in the U.S., I need my black, Latino, Asian, Indian and Native American friends to show me where I’m blind to my lack of love and burden-bearing with them.

MLK Day is one of those holidays where I feel haunted.  I feel a perpetually, present gnawing in my gut to get at what’s dividing me from the people of color (POC) in my life. Honestly didn’t think anything was.  But the more I hear the news and see the Twitter posts of Christian POC who are living with the history of the U.S.’s oppressiveness towards them, the more I realize I am not bearing this burden with them. I have no idea how they feel.  But I want to.

Dr. John M. Perkins said, “There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You’ve got to feel their need.”

I wrote a post awhile back after hearing a radio broadcast on NPR about the African American wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland.  In that post I talk about my desire to listen to my black neighbors, co-workers and friends and to not be quick to say something to defend myself or make things sound better.  I just want to listen.  I want shut my mouth and enter into the pain of the people upon whose backs this country was built.

I never used to think about racism. I think about it a lot now.  I hear our President.  I see my elderly, white patient’s stand-off-ish reactions at work to the Nigerian doctors and Eritrean nurses who care for them.  I go to church, and I see mostly white people.  I go to the gym down the street and the grocery store and I see very few white people.  I drive through El Mirage, which is predominantly Hispanic and I see no grocery stores.  No kids playing outside.  No church.  I long to have personal relationships with POC where I can bear burdens with them.  I long for my church to be multiracial so we can be a more accurate sampling of the Kingdom of God which is made up of people from every tribe, tongue and nation.

So what am I doing about it?  I am blessed to work with doctors and nurses from all over the world.  There I have formed some professional relationships and early friendships.  But I want to go deeper.  I want to bear burdens.  I had coffee with a brilliant Nigerian nurse I work with a while back.  We talked about racism, being Christians, marriage, temptations we deal with… it was good.  But I know I need to go further. I’m praying about it.  Asking God to show me how I can be a minister of reconciliation to my Hispanic, African, Asian, and Native American neighbors.

On the way home from the gym I listened to this YouTube playing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s sermon: Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool.  In his sermon he compared America to the fool Jesus spoke of in Luke 12:13-21. He was right.  And the spirit of America, where we build barns to store more of our wealth, has affected me too.  I have grown up in America as a white evangelical where the themes of being a conservative republican were preached as equally as the need to read my Bible and go to church.  I have never known oppression because of the color of my skin.  But I’m beginning to see the people around me who have grown strong under the oppression of America’s foolishness and I am emboldened by their strength to confess my blindness and follow their lead in speaking the truth in love- boldly, humbly, despising the shame of the fool.

 

 

Why I took my boys to see Selma

I took my kids to watch Selma today.  Every year on MLK Day I purposefully talk with the kids about Martin Luther King Jr.  I set out to rescue the day from the “just another day off school” it could easily become.  Selma helped me do that in a big way today.  But I didn’t just take them because today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I took my boys to see Selma movie for a four reasons:

1)  I want to be purposeful about talking to my kids about history and social and moral issues.  History is what they’re living and history is what they’ll learn from and repeat or change.  And the social and moral issues of life will confront them unless they move to the Alaskan wilderness alone or hide in the basement playing video games for the rest of their lives.  I pray neither of those options will hold any draw for them.  The truth is, even though most of us don’t live in either extreme it’s easy to hide from social and moral issues.   I don’t want my kids to hide.  I want them to shine.

2) My boys are about as white as white gets.  Blonde. Blue-eyed. Freckled-faced and have never been called a racial derogatory term in their lives.  They have no idea what it feels like to have a “people” who’s history is full of not-too-distant slavery and segregation.  They have no idea what it feels like to live in an era when segregation was commonplace.  Neither do I for that matter.

3) Dr. King demonstrated the kind of gutsy submission I want my boys to have in life.  I want them to be characterized as a Christian should be: as a submissive person.  Submissive as Christ was.  Submissive to authority.  Respectful of those in leadership.  Obedient to the law.  Yet, like Christ, I want them to be willing to suffer when they have to stand up and against unjust laws.  In a interview on Meet The Press after the march from Selma to Montgomery Dr. King was asked how he could justify going against a law that forbade him from marching when he himself proclaimed to be a peaceful, non-violent protester.  King’s response is spot on:

There are two types of laws. One is a just law. One is an unjust law. I think we all have moral obligation to obey just laws. On the other hand, I think we have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly, not uncivilly, and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty. And any man that breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty, by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law, is at that moment expressing the highest respect for law.

Oh that we as Christians, even me and my sons, would be so changed by the goodness and grace of God and the excellence of his ways that we would be model citizens and when we must break a law that our conscience tells us is unjust, we would do so openly and cheerfully and lovingly and civilly and willing to accept the penalty and thereby express the highest respect for the law.

4)  Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission and stand is a powerful and inspiring way to point my boys to Christ.

Dr. King’s stance against the moral evil of racial bigotry and segregation, and for the moral good of all human beings to freely live in their society, share equal access to that society’s economy, politics and social aspects as people created in the image of God no matter the color of their skin is important and life changing because it’s right!  There is a right and there is a wrong.  There is evil and there is good. There is sin and their is righteousness.  God through Christ showed us what righteousness is.  We human beings demonstrate over and over again what sin is.  Out of our hearts comes all kinds of evil.

Forcing people with dark skin to eat in a different part of a restaurant, go to a different school, drink from a different sink; beating peaceful demonstrators for respectfully standing against legislated evil; preventing black people from voting… and the many more evils that were accepted as right by our society is deplorable.  It should never be.  But even when that evil is eradicated from the planet other evils persist.  The killing of the unborn.  Human trafficking.  Child pornography.  Violent and oppressive governments.  Child abuse.  Domestic violence.  And the list could go on and on.  All these are evils that have come out of the human heart.  Dr. King pointed us to the One who’s glory is the only cure for it: Christ.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches were prophetic and jarring.  He often quoted from the Bible in his speeches.  One from Amos really struck me in the movie today, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  It’s righteous, God’s righteousness, Christ’s righteousness that will make things right.  In our lives individually now, as much as can be this side of His kingdom come.  And one day, on that great and glorious day, fully when we see him face to face!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  His glory is not merely racial equality and it is not less than racial equality.  It is massive.  It is transforming.  It is the right we long for.  And He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  All that evil.  All that has poured out of our hearts for generations and has done horror upon horror to each other and this world and ultimately has spoken enormous slander of God’s name whom we bear as creatures made in his image.  His wrath is coming against all that evil that we have done.  And there is only one place to escape His wrath- His Son.

Christ did ultimately what King was a small shadow of.  King suffered the evils of men to stand for what was right.  Christ suffered the evils of men and the wrath of a righteous God against all those evils (to which men have held dear) to save us and make us right.

The hope for the black man and the white man, the Chinese woman and the Arabian woman, the African child and the Iranian child is the One who created them and died to redeem them all.  Only His Kingdom come and His will be done will bring the ultimate of what Dr. King sought.  Freedom.

Quieted,
Sheila