Crash

Today, there was a crash. Location: Duke Divinity School, Pastoral Care in Cross-Cultural Perspective Topic: Cultural Diversity and why it's important. White person who doesn't get it, slams on breaks when they realize that there is a world out there that they don't get. And then a group of black people are cruising a little faster than what the average driver is going in knowing/asserting that their world is different from the white world, that oppression saturates even the most assimilated/acculturated person.

And then cRAsH!!! bAnG!!!! bOoM!!!

It was ugly. This isn't the biggest crash I've seen. Some people aim to crash into each other, but a crash that causes friction in the Divinity School? Ouch!

Even though I have a very faint heart (and tear duct) when it comes to race issues, particularly racial reconciliation issues, I deeply understand the importance of being real and not covering up true frustration. It's ok to be angry, ok to feel confused.

However, I think we have a particular calling as Christians to "speak the truth in love." We cannot hide from the truth. And in our anger, hurt, frustration, etc., we are called to not sin. I would also say that as people who find their live in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, that we deeply understand what it means to step down off of our thrones of truth and humbly sit beside those who are struggling to understand truth. If Jesus sits with us and graciously helps us to understand the holiness and truth about God, when he could justly bless us out for not getting God's many acts of self-revelation and mercy; then we are called to sit with people graciously as Jesus did when they don't understand the truth of another world (ie. black/white worlds).

As the reconciler, Jesus acts almost as a translator who because he's both human and man, he can reconcile us to God. He can tell us the things of God that we cannot understand, and as explained in 1 John, he is also our Advocate who goes before us to plead our case to God. When we are trying to understand both the black and white world (and that isn't to say that there are many different worlds), we need both the reconciliation of Jesus, but as ambassadors of reconciliation, we also need a translator. We need someone, or a few people, who can adequately explain what another culture is trying to convey.

My dear white friend today didn't get it, she wanted to get it. She really could have been helped simply by having it explained to her as historical fact. It wasn't her fault that no one taught her black history (and please don't assume that taking a black history course makes you a reconciler, but that it can lay foundational groundwork to understanding a certain culture). But the job of those of us who consider ourselves the culturally assimilated, who can operate in both black and white worlds, can be a bridge or translator so that information can be conveyed in a way it can be understood.

If a legitamately angry black person tries to "educate" an ignorant white person, it can easily be misunderstood, even with the best of intentions. The black person still may be percieved as angry. If a white person tries to talk to a black person about what it means to be white, then they too may be subject to being labeled as "ignorant" and/or "racist." This isn't to say that love and truth aren't enough, but sometimes it helps to have someone who can adequately translate (therefore racist or angry is not what is communicated, but that the language of the different worlds are translated most accurately--not always word for word, but idea for idea).