reconciliation – Sheila Dougal

Confessions of a white evangelical woman

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.

we need to listen. and shut our mouths.

The other day while driving to my oldest son’s baseball game, this story came on the radio. It’s about the producers memories of going on a tour of The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She recalls with audible disturbance, the traumatic memory she has from her school tours through the museum which depicts lynchings and a slave ship as well as segregation and slavery. Its one of the few times everyone in the car was silent. Three white males in the car 47, 14, and 12. And myself a white woman. It really hit us all. My pubescent sons’ mouths were gaping and at one point my youngest announced, “This is horrible! Why would people do that?” I turned the volume down and asked the boys to imagine that they were born and raised in a country where in recent history white people were segregated, lynched, abused, treated like animals and made to be slaves? That’s the history that my black friends in the U.S. live with.

People like me and my husband and sons we have no idea what that feels like. That’s what “white privilege” means. It doesn’t me we get a hand out or hand up. It means we don’t live with a history of oppression against people who look like us in the country we call home.

I know folks are upset about NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem. And I know people are quick to defend police officers (so am I… I’m married to one). But we white folks need to listen. We need to listen to stories like this. And to the stories of our black neighbors and co-workers and friends. We need to listen. And shut our mouths. We may have good arguments. But especially those of us who call ourselves Christians need to put our hands over our mouths and listen.

I have nothing but respect and prayers for our veterans and military servants. I love my country. But my country has a history of sinful oppression of people of color. What we hear in the news and see on T.V. and post in our social media is not going to stop the blood of the slaves from crying out in their descendants. We need to lay down our lives and listen. We need to stop being Job’s friends to those who are bearing a bitter burden. We need to love our black neighbors. And give our lives for their restoration to wholeness.

This is the way of Christ, our God and Savior who wasn’t white. This is the way of the God who calls peoples of every tribe, tongue and nation to be his children. This is the way of Jesus, who drove out the proud money-changers and proclaimed, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations”? And you have turned it into house of robbers!“

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” -2 For. 5:18-19

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger… -James 1:19

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Rebuilding Ruins

In a job interview recently I was asked what I thought my three strengths were, along with my three weaknesses. I named for her two and then I told her the third: organization. But, I told her I actually only saw that as a strength because it really is a weakness that I fight to be “strong” in. People I work with now often comment about how organized I am and I always chuckle and think, “If they only knew how unorganized I feel!”

One of the ways I strive to be organized is list-writing. Even that fails to help me if I don’t look at it often. I’m always working to keep structure and order and organization to my day. I tend to drop off into the pit of procrastination and fall off the cliff of good intentions often. Spiritually I have to remind myself often, even make lists, or write out in some way truths, lest I stop swimming upstream and relax my run in the race of faith in Christ and begin drifting with tide of the current zeitgeist in which I live.

I don’t know what turned me on to reading Piper… I think I read a blog that mentioned a book a couple years ago. But recently I’ve been really feeding on the encouragement and scripture coming out of the Desiring God blog. I found these three lists last week. I want to print them and frame them and read them every morning!

1. Ten Resolutions For Mental Health: My mind is like the ruined, but in process of being rebuilt Jerusalem of Nehemiah’s day. Sin’s damage on the mind has manifest itself very obviously in my family genes and it hasn’t skipped its warping effects in me. If you see me and think I’m organized or any mentally healthy thing, say, “It’s a wonder! It’s grace!” Because that’s all it is! And my work isn’t in earning that grace for my mental health, my fight is believing the truth that his grace brings to my mental health! That’s why I need to read these truths often and medicate my synapses with the Word of God!

2. Ten Big, Daily Reminders: Reading this and the one above encouraged me: I am not the only one who’s mind is threatened every morning with forgetfulness. If I don’t stop and remember, in this convenient life I live, like God told Moses, I’ll forget, and drift, and meander, letting life’s current take me wherever it will. I don’t want to grow unbelieving and numb to the truth.

3. Seven Things to Pray For Your Children: At my kids’ school they don’t give A, B, C, D and F’s. They give Exceeds, Meets, Approaches and Falls Far Below. These “grades” show where they test compared to the state standard. In prayer, I fall far below. At times I am moved and have “fervent and effectual” prayers. But most times my prayers are groans, and moans for help and cries. Real tears and no words and hands in surrender and knees bent weak. My hands fall down and my feeble knees are about to give way and then I read something like this article and I feel my Arron has come to lift my hands and my feeble knees have been strengthened.

Sometimes I hear, in my own mind, what others might ask or say about the decisions I’ve made regarding my marriage. I think some might wonder why. Some might write me off as weak-minded or “codependent”. Some might think I’m doing my “religious duty”. Some might just scratch their heads and think I’m crazy. Some might think I’ve made the wrong decision. Some might think I’ve made the right one. Others might think either way would have been right. I stand facing the accusation that either way I would have been and will be wrong. I’m sure these “some” and “others” are mostly the fiery darts of the enemy of my soul making their way into my ruined and burned down mental walls, trying to keep me from building up my faith by the grace He supplies for His glory. And so I stand as I write this not aimed an any person but rather a taking up of my sword in one hand and my building tool in the other, pressing on to work with the power supplied me in Christ to bring him glory.

Sword: As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.- Genesis 50:20

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. – Romans 8:28-29

“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.And he said, ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.” – Matthew 19:4-6

My heart rejoices in the LORD! The LORD has made me strong. Now I have an answer for my enemies; I rejoice because you rescued me. No one is holy like the LORD! There is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. “Stop acting so proud and haughty! Don’t speak with such arrogance! For the LORD is a God who knows what you have done; he will judge your actions. The bow of the mighty is now broken, and those who stumbled are now strong.- 1 Samuel 2:1-4

Building tool:

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.- Proverbs 14:1

It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. – Psalm 119:72

In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands. Then, even if some refuse to obey the Good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives. Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes.You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They trusted God and accepted the authority of their husbands.For instance, Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master. You are her daughters when you do what is right without fear of what your husbands might do.- 1 Peter 3:1-6

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 3:13-14

Quieted,

Sheila

Shadows and Mysteries

I was at a county courthouse today. Not a place I usually spend any time. In fact, except for filing for a legal separation almost exactly two years ago today, I’m never there. Today I was there to file a motion to vacate the order of legal separation.

In that quiet, rigid building I felt like a cloud about to pour out its rain. I didn’t cry until I got to the car. In the building I felt like a little girl following the instructions of a tall police man or principal at school. I did what I was supposed to do to make it right, legally. While I was waiting in line, I overheard a silver-headed woman say with a smile to the silver-headed man sitting next her, “Now’s your chance to back out.” I figured they must be there to get a marriage license. A few minutes later, when they were called to the window, I heard the woman say, “Yes, we’re here to get a marriage license.” The man next to her looked eager and content.

I believe marriage is a mystery and a shadow that speaks of more than two people in love. In fact, I believe all human relationships are not about the people involved… they are about God. They reveal something about the One who created them. The marriage relationship is about God in a very special way in that it reveals the mysterious relationship God the Son has with His Called-Out-Ones.

What we do at the courthouse is a way of honoring marriage. Its not something we can just… do. There’s an appeal to authority involved. In some places that’s the county courthouse, in some places its the patriarch of the family, or a tribe leader. If there’s an end to be made to the marriage, there’s a difficult process involved. I’m glad there is a heavy fee and a lot of legal paperwork involved in separation and divorce. I don’t say that to pour salt in the wounds of divorce or separation. I have those wounds. I’m just saying, the fact that its legally a hassle and costly is just a little bit of evidence that marriages aren’t meant to be torn apart. Because that’s just what happens… you get torn apart.

I wish I could take back the past 3 years. I’m so eternally thankful I can have full confidence that Christ has already bought it back for me. For He works ALL things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, that He might conform us to the image of His Son. (Romans 8:28-29 my paraphrase)

Marriage is His. I want to magnify Him with it! I may not get to keep it, but on my part I want to build it up for His glory.

So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. -Matthew 19:6

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.- Ephesians 5:32-33

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. -Proverbs 14:1

Quieted,

Sheila