I was both relieved and disheartened about the revelations about the historical lens that Dr. Jennings brought before us on Wednesday. First, on a more surface level, I was somewhat concerned about taking this class when I saw the reading material. We have lots of history books to read, lots of facts. Although I haven’t read the books from our list, my library shelves at home are stuffed with ones that could easily duplicate them. I have taken Colonial American History, African American History: 1865 to the present, World Slavery, Western Women and Imperialism, North Carolina History, and The South in Black and White. I love history, but please don’t give me another course that is a bunch of facts that do not force me to look at myself and my world differently.
According to Wednesday’s lecture, a simple black history or black church class can turn black people into a museum. I want to think that I know where Dr. Jennings is going, but I’m not totally sure, but I’ll take a stab at it. First of all, I must identify that I’m white and that it matters for me to say that I may not fully understand. But I wonder if this experience of the museum is like recent trips I’ve taken down to the Student Health Center.
On one occasion, I sat in the waiting room. I overheard two students talking about their hopes and goals as future medical professionals. “What are you interested in?” One student asked another. “Radiology,” the student answered as they began to share all of the things they found fascinating about the topic. Perhaps it was a day that I was particularly frustrated by having my day interrupted by my medical needs, but I felt a wave of anger flow over me and I deeply desired to start a confrontation with the students.
You see, radiology for me, is personal. Radiology for me means setting time aside for sitting in the MRI with a reminder that I’m getting closer to my grave each day—a reminder that comes from my body that is failing all too soon and from being in a machine the size of a coffin. Radiology for me means swallowing nuclear medicines that require you to tell children and pregnant women not get near you for a specified amount of time. Radiology for me means sitting on a table stripped of my dignity with a foot-long needle injecting dye into my hip joint using only local anesthetic. I wanted to yell and scream at the students, “Before you dare talk about how cool radiology is, you better get on the table and feel the pain first.”
I appreciate that a Doctor wants to get an overview of a patient’s general medical history, but there are days I want to just be accepted for what I arrived there for—on this day, an analysis of a mole. Before I could even begin with my most current dilemma, we spent what felt like an agonizing 30 minutes going over the same medical history that most days I’d like to just forget. And with revelation of a past ailment to the Doctor, she replied, “Oh how fascinating, tell me more about that.” The interrogation and her excitement over my pains and struggles made me a feel like a freak show.
Perhaps that is what it means to make someone a museum. Dr. Jennings said that “historians are often not sensitive to the ideological purpose of telling stories.” I whole-heartedly agree. When it came time for writing my thesis in History, I remember the pressure that was put onto me to keep myself from getting too involved with the story in which I was telling so that my views would not taint it. They would say, “we want just a story of raw facts, but don’t forget to make a persuasive argument.”
The focus on cold hard facts tends to leave folks without a conscience. I’ll never forget my World Slavery class. It was one of the most amazing classes I’ve ever taken, taught by a dynamic professor who genuinely cared about his subject matter. We had deeply explored the ruthlessness of the slave trade and finished up the semester with examples of both contemporary slavery and examples of the legacy of racism and the American slave system. About a year later, I joined with a group of students frustrated by racism that was occuring on our college campus. I saw a kid who had been in my class. I hurried to him to give him a pamphlet, assuming that his superior participation in our class would make him sympathetic to our cause. Within seconds of speaking with him, I saw this intelligent man drop the pamphlet onto the ground and walk off. He didn’t care about the real people on the ground that historical problems affected; rather he wanted the facts for a good grade.
This is a general problem I’m even finding in myself as I hear about things that I have heard time and time again. There are times when the facts stay facts and they do not penetrate my heart and my soul. It is like folks from war-torn Northern Uganda who shared their stories of abuse by the Lord’s Resistance Army. They shared how tired they were of telling their stories only to have folks walk away unchanged. Rather than change in the lives of the Africans who had suffered the abuse, they only saw foreigners turn into NGOs or journalists who told the people’s story for profit.
Lord, help me to not only hear your Word, but to feel your Word. Lord help me to not only feel, but help me to become a doer of the Word.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Universalism vs. Exclusivism
At the outset, Daniel Boyarin’s article, “Answering the Mail: Toward a Radical Jewishness” had me quite enraged and perplexed in his assertion that Paul’s “universalism” and rabbinic Judaism’s exclusiveness represent two poles of racism. My initial reaction is created from a series of questions. How can Boyarin claim that the New and Old Testaments are vehicles of racism? How can the Apostle Paul who argues his status as a first rate Jew and who agonizes over salvation of his people in his letters possibly be labeled as a universalist? How can Jews be labeled as exclusive when it was God who did the choosing?
After my raw feelings settled, I brought the discussion into today’s racial world. After spending four years as a liason for the Black Student Association on my white-washed college campus, I found that you cannot minister to a person until you enter into all aspects of their identity. God has created us as racial people and God did not make a mistake in the uniqueness of our creation. Not only is our race part of our personal identity, but it reflects God images—images of our Creator that reflect back to God. Part of affirming others means affirming the God who purposefully created.
My previous background as a History major and as an Educator has greatly impacted the way that I see ministry. There is a saying in the Education field that “a child doesn’t care how much you know, but wants to know how much you care.” Simultaneously, my History background tells me that you can not care about someone until you know where they come from and to know their history and their social location. In hopes to put this wisdom to work, I intentionally designed my curriculum to be accessible to my non-white students.
A local Christian boarding school advertised as serving “underprivileged, inner city children,” had asked me to spend my first few weeks teaching World War II to my high school students. After a month of teaching what would easily be called “white man’s history,” I set aside a few weeks to get inside glances into the unique experiences of people of color in the U.S. and abroad. I knew I was in trouble by the middle of the day when the school’s Director asked me out for lunch to discuss some things. At lunch I was told that my insistence of teaching racial history was detrimental to the Church and the stability of raising the children because “it was divisive.” She quoted the lines that Boyarin highlighted as typifying Paul’s universalism, “that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male or female…” Her logic denied the status that the children had within our society and that had even been given to them by God—their ethnicity. Her solution was simply to turn them into Christians and throw in some eschatological hope and more than anything, “Christian discipline.”
The issue of exclusivism is also relevant. In college I realized that my encounters in worship had been exclusive as I had only worshipped in a white setting. This exclusivism I felt separated me from the body of Christ that was multinational, multiethnic and multilingual. After spending a year in a Missionary Baptist Church as the only white face aside from politicians on the voter circuit or children who had come along with their nanny, I learned the ambiguity of cross-cultural worship. I learned so much about God from my black brothers and sisters that I would not have had access to in my typically white places of worship. Yet I longed for fellowship with someone who looked like me, someone who knew what it was like to be a white person worshipping in a black church. While in Uganda I had the chance to learn African worship songs. Although I loved these songs which reminded me that the Kingdom of God houses many tongues and nations, I preferred worshipping in my own native tongue and style. Realizing this gave new power to the story of Pentecost where all believers could hear from and communicate with God in their native tongues—perhaps this power was what I was feeling in worshipping according to my own kind and type.
I see the potential problem that Boyarin has identified. However as a Christian who believes in the authority of Scripture, I cannot throw out the Scriptures that can and have been used to create a universalist mentality. Sociologically, I see the importance of creating and experiencing culture with those who look like you. Yet I cannot reject the call to step out of my comfort zone for the sake of the Gospel.
After my raw feelings settled, I brought the discussion into today’s racial world. After spending four years as a liason for the Black Student Association on my white-washed college campus, I found that you cannot minister to a person until you enter into all aspects of their identity. God has created us as racial people and God did not make a mistake in the uniqueness of our creation. Not only is our race part of our personal identity, but it reflects God images—images of our Creator that reflect back to God. Part of affirming others means affirming the God who purposefully created.
My previous background as a History major and as an Educator has greatly impacted the way that I see ministry. There is a saying in the Education field that “a child doesn’t care how much you know, but wants to know how much you care.” Simultaneously, my History background tells me that you can not care about someone until you know where they come from and to know their history and their social location. In hopes to put this wisdom to work, I intentionally designed my curriculum to be accessible to my non-white students.
A local Christian boarding school advertised as serving “underprivileged, inner city children,” had asked me to spend my first few weeks teaching World War II to my high school students. After a month of teaching what would easily be called “white man’s history,” I set aside a few weeks to get inside glances into the unique experiences of people of color in the U.S. and abroad. I knew I was in trouble by the middle of the day when the school’s Director asked me out for lunch to discuss some things. At lunch I was told that my insistence of teaching racial history was detrimental to the Church and the stability of raising the children because “it was divisive.” She quoted the lines that Boyarin highlighted as typifying Paul’s universalism, “that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male or female…” Her logic denied the status that the children had within our society and that had even been given to them by God—their ethnicity. Her solution was simply to turn them into Christians and throw in some eschatological hope and more than anything, “Christian discipline.”
The issue of exclusivism is also relevant. In college I realized that my encounters in worship had been exclusive as I had only worshipped in a white setting. This exclusivism I felt separated me from the body of Christ that was multinational, multiethnic and multilingual. After spending a year in a Missionary Baptist Church as the only white face aside from politicians on the voter circuit or children who had come along with their nanny, I learned the ambiguity of cross-cultural worship. I learned so much about God from my black brothers and sisters that I would not have had access to in my typically white places of worship. Yet I longed for fellowship with someone who looked like me, someone who knew what it was like to be a white person worshipping in a black church. While in Uganda I had the chance to learn African worship songs. Although I loved these songs which reminded me that the Kingdom of God houses many tongues and nations, I preferred worshipping in my own native tongue and style. Realizing this gave new power to the story of Pentecost where all believers could hear from and communicate with God in their native tongues—perhaps this power was what I was feeling in worshipping according to my own kind and type.
I see the potential problem that Boyarin has identified. However as a Christian who believes in the authority of Scripture, I cannot throw out the Scriptures that can and have been used to create a universalist mentality. Sociologically, I see the importance of creating and experiencing culture with those who look like you. Yet I cannot reject the call to step out of my comfort zone for the sake of the Gospel.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Urbanization = Slumization
I'm currently reading "Planet of Slums" by Mike Davis for class. I must say that when I heard lectures about the coming urbanization of the world in the near future, I was somewhat excited because I LOVE city life.
But what I am learning from this book is that urbanization will not turn the planet into a world-wide connected NYC, but rather the world will look more like a shantytown. After spending time in Africa, I have seen first hand the conditions of what this impoverished, slum-like world will one day look like, and it is not beautiful. Africa is beautiful, but slums are not.
As I think about my struggle to decide between going and abroad and being an urban missionary, I'm finding that I may not necessarily have to decide between the two. In the new world in which we are entering, it will be necessary to both cross-cultural and prepared to interact with the poor.
Yet the change from the life of agriculture and industry reinvigorates and supports the notions of universal education. Getting by in the world will be competitive and the children of the two-thirds deserve to be educated when other viable and healthful options are unavailable to them.
But what I am learning from this book is that urbanization will not turn the planet into a world-wide connected NYC, but rather the world will look more like a shantytown. After spending time in Africa, I have seen first hand the conditions of what this impoverished, slum-like world will one day look like, and it is not beautiful. Africa is beautiful, but slums are not.
As I think about my struggle to decide between going and abroad and being an urban missionary, I'm finding that I may not necessarily have to decide between the two. In the new world in which we are entering, it will be necessary to both cross-cultural and prepared to interact with the poor.
Yet the change from the life of agriculture and industry reinvigorates and supports the notions of universal education. Getting by in the world will be competitive and the children of the two-thirds deserve to be educated when other viable and healthful options are unavailable to them.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Limits on Trust and Judgement
We all have those people in our lives who say things that are not true about us. Some do so amongst sincere concern, but through a theological, sociological, or educational lens that betrays us. Their lens may be toxic.
Once you are able to get your bearings and realize that the lens is toxic, the question emerges if you are to go on and discount everything the person says? Perhaps the word "everything" is somewhat strong. But when someone shows the potential to hurt you and/or bring in damaging thoughts, then at what point do you give their view some validity?
It has been helpful to me over the years to remember the Scripture from the Beatitudes that commands Christians to "not give your pearls to swines." The command comes in the context of judgement, so I've found it helpful not to allow perceiving swine to judge me. But like I say, the question remains as to whether framing them as swine should always stand?
Once you are able to get your bearings and realize that the lens is toxic, the question emerges if you are to go on and discount everything the person says? Perhaps the word "everything" is somewhat strong. But when someone shows the potential to hurt you and/or bring in damaging thoughts, then at what point do you give their view some validity?
It has been helpful to me over the years to remember the Scripture from the Beatitudes that commands Christians to "not give your pearls to swines." The command comes in the context of judgement, so I've found it helpful not to allow perceiving swine to judge me. But like I say, the question remains as to whether framing them as swine should always stand?
Friday, August 14, 2009
Uganda Blog
I have created a blog that parallel's much of my trip to Uganda. Some of the post I may re-post here, but I want to post the link so that those who want to follow some of what happed while we were away may do so.
http://ugandapilgrimage2009.blogspot.com/
http://ugandapilgrimage2009.blogspot.com/
On Forgiveness
Yesterday I found myself in an uproar. I was nervous and guilty about underperforming for a job. I was overwhelmed by financial difficulty. I felt burdened and unfit to apply for work-study positions doing menial tasks during precious study hours when I could barely even find enough time to study without that added burden last year. And then, every word of discouragement I had ever heard in the past about not being good enough came bounding back towards me.
After finding my way out of the train wreck yesterday through praying for truth and through being honest with myself and others, I have found that my experience brought up serious issues about forgiveness.
It sounds surprising that my issue over forgiveness wasn't primarily ordered toward myself, but toward those who have hurt me in the past by wounding me with the "you're not good enough" lectures and comments.
When lies come to me, when old wounds that I have forgiven return unexpectedly, I picture that I should say something like a writer once commented that she imagined Adam saying in the garden. When the serpent came up to tell him lies, he should have said--umm, why are you trying to tell me different things about God? Didn't he give me authority to name you yesterday? I feel in a similar place where I should say, "umm lie, didn't I already confess you yesterday, a few weeks/months/years ago?"
Yesterday when I felt inadequate, I found myself rehashing the words of a teacher who said I was lazy when he didn't know my full story. We reconciled and I forgave him. I replayed an older adult correcting my English. I had forgiven that person too. But they all came back.
It makes me wonder sometimes if forgiveness is similar to the soteriological model of God forgiving us. There is a justification-like immediate forgiveness based on who Christ is. But then there is a second tier like sanctificaiton where there is a process to fully reflecting the initial stage. If I have to constantly remind myself of my standing before God when I self-condemn myself or overcongratulate myself, then won't I also need to remind myself of who I have forgiven?
According to this analysis I understand a little deeper that forgiveness may look just as messy as salvation. Just as messy as the Bible's full story about debunking lies of Satan. I'm hoping that next time I hear these voices of condemnation again that it will take me a shorter amount of time to come to the truth by realizing that many of these voices simply need to flee because I've already forgiven them.
After finding my way out of the train wreck yesterday through praying for truth and through being honest with myself and others, I have found that my experience brought up serious issues about forgiveness.
It sounds surprising that my issue over forgiveness wasn't primarily ordered toward myself, but toward those who have hurt me in the past by wounding me with the "you're not good enough" lectures and comments.
When lies come to me, when old wounds that I have forgiven return unexpectedly, I picture that I should say something like a writer once commented that she imagined Adam saying in the garden. When the serpent came up to tell him lies, he should have said--umm, why are you trying to tell me different things about God? Didn't he give me authority to name you yesterday? I feel in a similar place where I should say, "umm lie, didn't I already confess you yesterday, a few weeks/months/years ago?"
Yesterday when I felt inadequate, I found myself rehashing the words of a teacher who said I was lazy when he didn't know my full story. We reconciled and I forgave him. I replayed an older adult correcting my English. I had forgiven that person too. But they all came back.
It makes me wonder sometimes if forgiveness is similar to the soteriological model of God forgiving us. There is a justification-like immediate forgiveness based on who Christ is. But then there is a second tier like sanctificaiton where there is a process to fully reflecting the initial stage. If I have to constantly remind myself of my standing before God when I self-condemn myself or overcongratulate myself, then won't I also need to remind myself of who I have forgiven?
According to this analysis I understand a little deeper that forgiveness may look just as messy as salvation. Just as messy as the Bible's full story about debunking lies of Satan. I'm hoping that next time I hear these voices of condemnation again that it will take me a shorter amount of time to come to the truth by realizing that many of these voices simply need to flee because I've already forgiven them.
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