racism – Cultivating Faithfulness

Enjoy your 4th of July BBQ, but don’t swallow the bones

barbecue bbq beef cook out — Photo by Francesco Paggiaro on Pexels.com

This weekend me, my friends and neighbors are going to BBQ and blow up things. My social media feed will be full of American flags and Happy Independence Day GIF’s and memes.

I enjoy a good 4th of July celebration. Fireworks are nostalgia for me. Growing up in a small town of log truck drivers and mill workers (my dad one of them), the 4th meant BBQ’d chicken, which my dad joked was a burnt offering. It meant parking alongside the road up the hill from our fair grounds to watch (for free) the explosions in the sky.

As my sons entered their school-aged years, I began searching for stories and lessons from history that would help my sons know more about their country than the suburban white culture they lived in was teaching them. My mom tried to do the same for me, taping images of babies from various ethnicities to the wall next to my crib. As I began my search for more diverse material to inject into my kids’ senses, I began to learn what I was never taught growing up.

I learned that the White House had been built on the backs of African American slaves. I read Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass and shuddered. I learned about the National Great Blacks In Wax Museum and the black American’s who had suffered and died to access the freedom this nation sings. I discovered William Wilberforce, John Newton and Hannah More. And so I began to realized those hot summer night, 4th of July grilled meats sure tasted good, but they didn’t help me realize I’d been swallowing the bones of my American freedom my whole life.

Yesterday I listened to a podcast with Dr. Walter Strickland. Strickland discussed his book, For God So Loved the World- A Blueprint for Kingdom Diversity. Strickland described the African American Christian community bringing to Christian theology a Berean-like practice that chews the meat of the gospel but spits out the bones of errant tradition. Strickland pointed out this Biblical practice has been part of the African American Christian way from it’s inception. Why? Because if African Americans had swallowed whole the Christian faith they were force-fed as slaves, they would have rejected it all together. The gospel the slaves learned and embraced was filled with a bunch of dead boned theology that their slaveholders used to defend slavery.

The Africans who were enslaved in the U.S. and on whose backs the U.S economy and government structures were built, were able to chew the meat of the gospel that Christ died for their sins to reconcile them to God and spit out the bones of the evil of their slaveholders. How can I do any less?

In Fredrick Douglass’ now famous speech What to the slave is the 4th of July, the former slave eloquently lays out the irony and wickedness that young America was willingly blinded to. He pointed out how our father’s thought it right and noble to seek independence from Britain’s crown, and celebrated their victory in gaining this freedom, while chained to the dark-skinned men, women and children they denied this freedom too.

“You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and
that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country…. ” (What to the slave is the 4th of July, 1852)

But even Douglass, so freshly scarred and wounded in a time of open slavery, was chewing the meat of the virtues America ironically violated in their slave holding, while spitting out the bones of our country’s wickedness.

“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.” (What to the slave is the 4th of July, 1852)

I love America. I love her diversity. I love that she has an ethic of hard work and human rights. I love that she invites the immigrant and the poor. I love the bravery of those who fought and died for her. But those very appetizing traits have come with centuries of splintery bones we all too easily swallow in our fourth of July nostalgia. Tomorrow I’ll eat barbecued chicken and cherry pie. I’ll light up some store bought fake fireworks and sing our national anthem. But I want to celebrate with the wisdom of the men and women who perhaps sang the greatest anthem to come from America’s freedom- the cries of former slaves who discerning wisdom from above, took the meat from America’s declaration of independence and spit out all her bones.

What this Christian white girl is learning as I listen

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Im listening. I’m learning.

I’m learning that the heroes of my American Christianity held out the gospel with one hand and the chains of their slaves with the other. I’m learning that the history I’ve been taught has left out a lot. As a result, I have believed a whitewashed narrative that made the wickedness my country’s greatness was built on look like noble American Christian bravery.

I’m learning at the least, the American church has turned a deaf ear to racism and at worst has preached and practiced it as Biblical. I’m learning that there are structures and practices in American government and in the church that have marginalized the lives and worth of black people.

I’m learning that my black friends are tired. Tired of trying to explain why. Tired of my passivity and ignorance. I’m learning that I don’t know what I don’t know.

I’m learning that I resist listening to people I can’t help, don’t understand, disagree with or feel uncomfortable around, and that in refusing to listen, a part of my heart has grown cold. My refusal to listen has increased my comfort and decreased my compassion. My refusal to listen has let the lies that have propped up my white sons’ insecurities go unchallenged. And because I haven’t listened I haven’t learned. And because I haven’t learned my neighbors have not experienced the hands and feet of Jesus that come with the hope of his gospel.

I began by listening to my Eritrean American friend, and fellow nurse. She told me in an aisle at the grocery store about her thankfulness for what she sees as God’s protection on her life and her family these 20 past years in America. I listened as she asked how my police officer husband was doing and told me she was praying for him. I listened as she told me she is afraid for her black sons.

And then I listened to my white teenage sons spout off support of President Trump. I asked questions and challenged them to explain what they supported about Trump. As a mother and a Trump detractor, my skin crawls thinking that in their teenage insecurity, my white sons might be drawn to and impressed by the machismo of the Trump presidency. I want to take Trump down in their minds with a lot of bad words, but instead I listened, trying to understand why they are where they are in their thought process. Then I told my sons we were going to listen to the Color of Compromise together. We sat, listened and began a dialogue.

I listened as the administrators of the Be the Bridge group I joined asked me to be quiet for three months on their social media group and do the work they provided me to learn. It’s an act of repentance of my ignorance to do the work of hearing from my black neighbor’s perspective.

I listened as a white, mentally-ill homeless woman told me how she got where she’s at and why she feels so stuck. I listened as she told a story of a lifetime of abuse, rejection and poverty.

Then I turned off the social media and listened to Moses and Job and Isaiah and David and Daniel and Jesus. I listened as the Spirit of God began stirring a fire in me. The cold places of my passive heart began to warm with compassion and conviction. The notes section of my iPhone are filled with quotes from scripture all telling me, “I am the God who saved you out of slavery to the sin of cowardliness. I am the God who lowered himself taking the form of a servant to lift you up and make you a child of God. Turn from your ignorance, your passivity, your cowardliness, your silence. Learn to listen. Learn to speak. Speak the truth in love. Love your neighbor and your enemy.”

I listened to God tell Cain, “Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground” and Job’s friends tell him all the reasons he was wrong about why he was suffering. I listened to Job tell me to stop being a miserable comforter to my black friends.

I listened as God called Moses to go to the government structure enslaving his people and insist that they let them go. I listened to Isaiah and the prophets pleading with me to learn to do good, love mercy and work justice. I listened to David declare the heart of God for the widow, the oppressed and poor. I listened to Daniel confess and repent of his sins and the sins of his fathers.

I listened to Jesus declare that I must love others, including my enemies and those who see me as an enemy, just like he has loved me. I listened as he and his apostle’s declared that love born from his Spirit in me will not only declare the gospel but extend a healing hand and care for the physical needs of the people around me.

And I listened to my pastor call for me to examine myself to see, am I a Jesus person? Do I believe Jesus makes me righteous and do I love my neighbor by speaking the truth in love and, “disadvantaging myself to advantage someone else”?

I know, like any work of the Spirit of God in me, this must be an enduring work. Listening must become a practice. A rhythm. Speaking the truth in love must become a discipline. Working justice for the oppressed must become part of a gospel-driven, “long obedience in the same direction.” Saying and believing black lives matter and living a life that repents of the racist thoughts and beliefs that have become an ingrained part of the narrative that has kept me quiet and ignorant for so long, must become as daily as breathing. Something my black neighbors have been fighting to do for generations in this country and in the church.

Lord help me. Help me to be a listener. A learner. A repenter. A servant. A lover of my neighbor and my enemy. Help me to boldly declare the scandalous gospel that saved me and boldly decry the injustice that your gospel and your kingdom are driving out. Please call my sons to be men who chose the sufferings of Christ over the riches of this world and lay down their lives for others.

Suffocate Death

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Lord, it’s too much
Too much evil
Too much death
Too much weight
Weight my chest can’t bear

I know you say, “Bring it here”
But when I try
I can’t lift it
I can’t speak it
It can’t stay this way

I don’t know how to
Open my mouth and say
All the pain we’re bearing
All the loss
Loss of heart

We’re tired, Lord
I know, my strength is small
Where can I go?
Out here?
Here in my backyard?

The air is still hot out here
Still hot from the fire in the sky
Still thick and heavy
Like a weighted blanket, smothering
Smothering me and my friends

I can’t…
Oh God don’t let us go crazy
Don’t let death win
Don’t let our love grow cold
Cold and hard and numb

It feels like death is winning
It feels like evil’s foot is pressing
Power is crushing
our necks and we can’t…
Can’t breathe

Where are you?
Are you here?
Are you a bystander?
Are you here on the ground?
Ground down fine like dust?

You are with us?
Us dust
Will you raise us up?
Up with you to heaven?
Heaven here, your kingdom

Rise up, Lord!
Raise us up!
Crush evil’s head!
Suffocate death!

On vacation while the world burns

Photo cred AZcentral.com

I am so torn tonight. I’m on vacation, watching the world burn on Twitter and Facebook. The vile speech, the violence, the defensiveness and accusations… it’s breaking my heart.

I want my sons to be compassionate. I want my husband to be safe. I want my black neighbors and friends to be heard and loved. Words feel so inadequate.

Tonight I told my sons, there’s only one way for peace and reconciliation to come in this country… or anywhere. And that’s through Christ-like love. Only love is stronger than evil. Someone has to lay down their life for their accuser. Someone has to serve someone who betrays them. Someone has to listen. Someone has to bear another’s burden. Someone has to love their enemy.

Peace won’t come through me writing a short blog post. Or sharing other’s more thoughtful posts on social media. It won’t come through being defensive of my husband. It won’t come through trying to explain my point of view. It will only come if I am willing to absorb the pain and burden of another. If I’m willing to turn my cheek. If I’m willing to serve one who despises me.

Jesus modeled this for me. He’s the author of this kind of love. And he’s empowered me to live this way.

An online friend wrote on her Facebook today that she always wondered what she would have done if she lived in the time of slavery in America. She wrote, “Now’s my time.” Now is my time too. I’m white. I am very privileged. I do not take offense. It’s time for me to listen. I almost want to go where those protesting are, just to listen.

The mis-education of a small-town white girl

black and white girl whitespace jacket — Photo by Craig Dennis on Pexels.com

I pulled back the blankets exposing his contracted arm and dark chest. He turned his greying head away from me. I told him my name and what I was about to do. I would bath his arms and upper body, then his lower. I’d help him get dressed and sit at the kitchen table where some nice lady had just made him a meal. I tried to sound chipper and draw him in.

“What’s your name sir?” I asked while preparing the water.

He muttered his name. I asked nervous questions and he gave gruff answers. He had been a pastor and lived in Phoenix a long time.

The tension was thick. My pale hands in transparent gloves on his deep umber skin, I could feel his bitterness, his skin crawling back, his brow furrowing deeper with every warm, cleansing stroke. The poison, eating at him from the inside burst through when I reached his unpresentable parts, “It’s about time you white people do for us what we’ve done for you for centuries!” I was taken back. “Do you want me to stop sir?… I’m sorry.” I was ignorant of the pain my darker-skinned patient was bearing.

I was raised in a small town in southwest Oregon where the majority of folks are white. When I was an infant my mom placed pictures of black, Hispanic and Native American babies along the wall by my crib. She wanted me to know what babies looked like outside of our small red-neck town. When Cabbage Patch dolls were the craze, she bought my sister and I black Cabbage Patch kids. She tried her best to give us broader ways to think about people within the limits of our little white county.

The first time I met a black person I was in sixth grade. We had moved to Fairfield, California where my dad took a job as a long-haul truck driver, after being laid off from pulling green chain at the mill. One of the girls who quickly befriended shy-and-pale me was a pretty black girl whose name my 44 year old brain does not recall. I remember thinking she was beautiful and she made me laugh and taught me how to break dance- which I never could do. She laughed at me and I crumbled into laughter too. I never thought once that she and her family were bearing a burden different than me and mine.

That same small-town white girl wearing scrubs, gloves and a pony tail, was shut in a room with a man burdened by years I had never seen nor heard. At 19, my mis-education was being exposed. Christ in me, barely a babe breathing his grace, compelled me to say, “I’m sorry.” I was sorry. I didn’t directly do anything to harm the man, but I bore the DNA of those who had lynched and enslaved his kin. I remember wishing in that moment that I could somehow ease his pain. I hated it for him. I wanted him to know a white person who would take the lesser place and honor him.

After some time the man who wouldn’t look at me the day I arrived started talking with me. He told me about his years in the pastorate and the poverty he watched destroy so many young black lives. I remember one conversation at his table after I had helped him get bathed, dressed and lifted to his wheelchair. I don’t remember what brought it up but I said, “You are my brother in Christ sir. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re black or white or purple.” I was so ignorant. I thought being color-blind meant being free of prejudice. I remember he shook his head- this white girl still didn’t get it.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” I’ve alway thought that meant loving those you see as an enemy. But I think it also means loving those who see YOU as an enemy. I look back on those days as a home health aide in a metropolis of people from all over the world and see how little I knew. I still know little. I’m just more aware of my ignorance. Thinking back to my days in the home of that burdened black pastor, maybe God placed me there to bear a tiny scourging of pain for injuries I did not cause. But surely there he began giving me eyes to see how blind I was. I think that’s what’s needed right now. People like me, ignorant white folks who think of themselves as free of prejudice, who feel defensive because they think they’ve done nothing wrong and yet are being pointed out as the embodiment of racist, privileged and blind culture, need to humble ourselves and love those who may see us as enemies.

At last year’s MLK 50 Conference, Feat LaToria, Lauren Chandler and singers from the Village Church in Texas sang these lyrics:

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Lookin’ through my own eyes.
Now I know, what I didn’t know.
Help me see.
Help me see through your eyes.
I will walk with you.
No matter what it takes.

Most of us will never stand on a stage and sing in hopes of healing wounds. But we can start listening without defensiveness. We can walk with or wash the feet of those who bear a burden we have never known.

The needy in the American Church won’t always be forgotten: Meditation on Psalm 9

When I was pregnant I noticed everyone who was pregnant. When I had a 1969 Volkswagen bug, I noticed everyone with a classic Bug. And today, when the fire in my belly is still burning from the issue of abuse and the message Christian leaders like Paige Patterson send women, I’m noticing every message in my morning readings of scripture that speak to God’s love of justice, defense of the oppressed, and promised recompense for those in need who seem to be forgotten.

Psalm 9 is what I’m listening to this morning. Like David, I’m overflowing with thanks to Jesus for how wonderful he is. What he has done, how he lived and set an example for us, how upside-down wonderful he is compared to us who are so messed up. I see Jesus, and then I look at the church in America and Jesus’ men stand out like food lights in a very dark place. Jesus came to the people who claimed to worship God, and the didn’t recognize him as God. Jesus is still coming to the people who claim to worship him and he’s cleaning house!

Jesus is maintaining the just cause of his people who are often oppressed and shushed by people who claim Jesus but live blind to their oppressive ways. He judges his people with righteousness. He doesn’t ignore their sin. And he doesn’t condemn them for it either, he deals with it. He calls them out on it. He exposes it and gives them hope for repentance.

The needy in the American church won’t always be forgotten. And I feel like with the recent exposure of racism in the church, abuse in the church, misogyny in the church, sexual immorality in the church and how we’ve strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel in our religious-right stance, neglecting the weightier things of mercy, faithfulness and justice, Jesus is showing the needy he hasn’t forgotten them.

“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God…” (1 Peter 4:17)

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.” (Hebrews 12:7)

Jesus, you are good. And your men and women in this land are those my heart delights in! You have swept my house, exposed my sin, offered me your hand and drawn me to repentance with your kind, just, merciful and faithful dealings with me. Have your way with me Lord. Have your way with us here in the U.S. May your name be exalted in us as it should be!