A People of Grace and Welcome to All

This is what's happening in Orlando right now. As I write this, the debate is raging - well, has been raging; I believe they've stopped right this minute for some parliamentary procedure of some kind.

As I write this, Disciples of Christ from churches and institutions throughout the global breadth of our denomination are discerning, debating, and deciding. Their decisions on various topics - from resolutions condemning unfair wage practices or drone warfare, to resolutions supporting the DOJ's promised investigation of the Trayvon Martin incident, to this resolution on grace and welcome - are not binding upon congregations. Nobody will be kicked out of the Disciples of Christ for disagreeing with a decision of the Assembly, and nobody will be forced to comply with a practice that they don't want.

But these resolutions are important nonetheless.

Because Christians are meant to speak for and with those in pain. We are meant to recognize the ways that we - our society, ourselves, and even (especially!) our churches - hurt other people, deny the fact that they are fully human beings made fully in the image of God.

It would be easy to consider this debate in terms of how it affects me, how it affects my congregation, how it affects our image.

But those aren't the most important factors.

It would be easy to consider this debate in terms of a church simply following the rules laid out by God, denouncing evil and celebrating good.

But those are simplistically misleading answers to complex emotional questions, and the fact is--

God is not about rules. Just plain not. If God's highest goal were humanity following the rules set out in the Holy Books, then God would never have given us Jesus Christ. Christ proved by his

life
words
love
death
resurrection

that the God who sent him is best recognized by an all-consuming love for Its creation. An all-pervasive grace that overcomes all obstacles and draws all people to one another, to Christ, to the Source.

That's the only reason I'm a Christian. That's the only reason that I know this God. That's the only reason that I am confident in the future - because God loves, and doesn't stop loving, any and all of the people It created.

As I write this?

As I write this, I learn that the Assembly has passed the resolution, and my eyes fill with tears of praise.

Thank you, Lord, for guiding Your children in the ways of love.
Thank you, Lady, for nurturing our compassion and helping it to grow.
Thank you, Eternal Companion, for never leaving our sides.
Thank you, Friend of the Friendless, for opening our eyes to the people that You have called us to serve.

Disciples, you are not required anything but what your heart tells you, but... Disciples, you are called by name to
welcome
accept
affirm
and love
without ceasing
without restrictions
without barriers

Just love. That's what we are called to do. That's what we've agreed to do.

It is resolved. Let us be so resolved, and act like God's children.

Great Quote from JPII

I ran across this beautiful quote today from the beloved, late, soon-to-be-Saint, John Paul II:

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.” 

Amen!

No, It's Okay, I'm Not Racist! I Get It!

#1 - It's apparently tough for me to keep up a regular blogging schedule. Oops. Working on it.

#2 - I've been thinking lately about race.

Ethnicity. Heritage. History. Color. Whiteness. Blackness. Otherness.

I feel like it's important to discuss these things, to see where we stand on them, and to see the ways we can stop doing damage and start doing good. As a follower of Christ, it's important to, like him and the God he communicates, embrace those considered "other", to find our commonality as humans and as children of God.

I think about it often, the "race problem". Sometimes, it's because of something overt I've seen out in the world - On Facebook or Twitter, on a bumper sticker, spewing from the mouth of some Christian personality on television. Sometimes it's because I've come across some well-meaning but still racist ideology in one of those venues - somebody complaining about racism against white people, or denouncing the existence of discrete black culture as divisive, or denying the inherent racial biases within such social ills as poverty, crime, and drug abuse. Just recently, I saw again the blanket claim that racism is no longer an issue in America. That we are a post-racial society. That we are all color-blind, and that we as a society punish those who see race and judge upon it.

But racism is so not dead that it's the status quo. Every time you see a brainiac of Asian descent on TV, that's a little bit of racial prejudice poking through. Every time you see Jeff Dunham pull out his "Ahmed the Dead Terrorist" puppet, that's pure mockery of people with Arabian heritage, and people who hold the Muslim faith. Every time you see a poor kid of African descent sacrificed upon the altar of white American values, from the Treyvon Martin debacle to every black man who receives a harsher sentence than his white counterpart for a minor drug conviction, you are seeing the powerful and harmful effect that racism has on our neighbors of color.

Every time the world screams that racism is dead - because of MLK Jr., or Obama, or "my black friend", or Kanye West - that's racism at its most cruel and insidious.

You may notice that I'm using really awkward language. As if the Hyphenated-American language wasn't clunky enough, right? Now we have to say things like "of African descent", "with Arabian heritage", etc.
As a young man at my college once called out during a racial-sensitivity-seminar, "I'm just being honest -- if I see somebody who's black, I'm going to call them black!"

Is that an individual being racist? Do you have to use a slur to be racist?

Do you, personally, even have to feel negatively about other races to participate in racism?

When it comes down to it, racism isn't about individuals saying or doing stupid discriminatory things. Those actions are important and horrible, of course, but they're mostly a red herring.

Racism is about the million, billion subtle ways that our

language
behavior
newsmedia
entertainment
institutions
systems

perpetuate harmful myths about nonwhite people, and dismiss their real human experiences, sweeping people under the rugs of their ethnicities.

It's calling a person black, when her name is Susan.
It's thinking a person is smart because of their east-Asian heritage, when his talents and abilities grow and fluctuate over time as they are nurtured and abandoned, just like yours.
It's staring in wide-eyed-wonder as a brown-skinned person prays fervently, assuming that their ethnic spirituality is deeper than your white neighbors' glassy-eyed trudge down the communion line on Sunday, when people of all colors and heritages are flawed, distractable, and pious in their own ways.
It's when we white folks try to speak on behalf of our sisters and brothers of color, denying them the chance to share their own stories, their own experiences, using their own words in their own time. Even when we're "standing up for them", even when we're shouting, "No! It's okay! I get it! I'm not one of those racist white people!", we still reduce our neighbors to nothing more than archetypes.

You are not Susan, you are A Black Woman. I, the Enlightened White Man, will speak for you and fix your plight, in an attempt to purge my own guilt about how my ancestors kidnapped, beat, imprisoned and oppressed your ancestors.

In short, when we reduce a person to their color, or the geographic region where their family originated, we hurt that person. When we consider a person to be black before we consider her to be human, we hurt all humanity. When we hear somebody speak Spanish, and immediately imagine that the person is rich, poor, smart, stupid, evil, devout, lazy, or hardworking, then we hurt God, who creates all people as complete, complex, many-sided reflections of God's complex, many-sided Self.