writing the journey
Loving your neighbor does mean holding them accountable to our common principles and common humanity, and it does mean that there is a time when the consequences of violence and terror and destruction will be paid by those who commit the acts.
Warning your neighbor away from the actions is a way to show love by warning them away from the consequences.
Seeing change in people will take time, sometimes far more time than we have patience for.
We have the Constitutional right to peacefully assemble, to petition the Government to listen to and respond to our grievances, and the right to say what we will without prohibition. (James Madison, primary author of the First Amendment
We just do not allow Black people in America to just exist. To be. To be learning and growing. To make mistakes and then figure out the way forward. To be children who are innocent and who love fun, who are mischievous and scared and reluctant to admit they’re scared. To boast and exaggerate, to hide and crawl away. To try new things and even reject them. Or to discover their talents and pursue their interests to become fulfilled in life.
Jim Crow is an evil, yes, and many of us have a social response of “that’s so terrible.”
But we do not want to admit how terrible it was and is again.
We are a country of people proud to be Americans but so ashamed of our actual history that we erase it and suppress it from being taught and learned and seen.
Some seventeen years ago now a man I didn’t much know but with whom I sparred asked a question of me that changed the course of my life: “You do know that I’m Black?”
Yesterday I was talking with my Haitian friends in Haitian Creole for about an hour as we were planning how to set up our class to teach Haitians how to speak American English. Per my request, they talked a little more slowly and with fewer idioms than usual (although they did throw in an idiom that I got right away with my brain rapidly connecting the imagery with cultural aspects of Haiti, and man did that feel good that I did that!).
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
I wanted to reflect upon what I learned this year, and also think of how my knowledge will affect my choices and behaviors in the new year…
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
Well, I will continue my journey. It’s been a wonderful adventure that not only has helped open up a language and a culture and a people I never knew before, but also has changed me in how I see the world and understand those who live in.
If you see Haiti and you have the urge to “help,” I would suggest that Haitians don’t really need you to come help them. Haitians, like all humans, have great intelligence, drive, creativity, and their own sense of self-worth. If you want to help, find and support Haitians who are doing that work. It doesn’t give you a place to be centered and it won’t provide photo opportunities of you “helping” Haitians.
But it will help Haitians by letting them do for themselves.
How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?
You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are “respect” and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.
Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?
That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right?
But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”
This kreyòl version is blunt: “Lè Josèf leve nan dòmi an, li fè sa anj Senyè a te di l la. Li marye ak Mari. Malgre sa, li te tann jouktan pitit la fèt anvan l te antre nan zafè sèks ak mari. Li rele pitit ki te fèt la Jezi.”—“When Joseph woke up from his sleep, he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He got married to Mary. Despite this, he waited until the child was born before entering into sex with Mary. He called the child that was born Jesus.”
What better way to find connecting with people than to learn their language well enough to listen to them, understand, and reply in their own language with the full context of their culture?
There were some who could eat right at the altar of sacrifice and restoration with hearts so hard that they would deny food to their own brothers and sisters in community because “well, if they wanted to eat, they should have brought their own.”
If you want to build your faith up so that you honor Jesus and you draw people to Jesus in your lives, might I suggest you do it the way that Jesus did?
Perhaps white people’s thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren’t enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.
White people, do not go into Black spaces to help change the conversation or add your very important opinion. It is just not the time and place for that.
Wyte people can’t be accused of bias or wrong unless there is exceedingly overwhelming “proof,” and even then we will go down fighting and insisting that we were not wrong
The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.
For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.
The history of the church is our confidence in rightly understanding until we realize how terribly wrong we’ve misunderstood everything.
You will not find this to be the “answer book.” It’s not designed for that. This is a book that invites us to join in the community, in the discussion, in the journey.
