My Ignorant Racism

I went to Mid-America Christian University for my undergrad. It was a wonderful experience. I love that I went there. They were good to me. Their advertisements are on Revelife a lot (for better or worse). Today, as I was reflecting on racism, being a racialized society, and a divided church, I began to think on my experience in college.

We had chapel twice a week. Each chapel was basically a contemporary evangelical church worship service in terms of structure (announcements, songs, message, songs, dismissal with prayer sprinkled amongst the activities). Most of the speakers were good. Most speakers had a relationship with the school. Most of them were white. One particular speaker was not. He was a very cliche black, overweight, yelling, sweating, pastor. Imagine impersonating a black preacher from the south and you've nailed it. He was great. We loved him. He had passion, he got loud, he made us uncomfortable but it was still safe and it sparked something in us.

When I look back on the experience I grow sad though because I don't believe we truly appreciated him for the reasons we thought we did. I am convinced that we liked him coming to speak at chapel because it was entertainment. We were, mostly, white suburban Christians who were seeing something new. We were entertained. It was like going to the zoo and seeing the monkeys. We were observing something similar to us but different at the same time. We loved him coming into our world, standing on our stage, and doing his thing before us. But only a handful of us ever went to his small church. I went once, maybe twice. It was a wonderful experience. But I did not stay. I did not allow that world to be my world. I kept it at bay. Because it was different, I was the odd man out, it wasn't comfortable, it wasn't what I knew.

Did I recognize those as the reasons I didn't stay at the time? No. Did I recognize why I loved that pastor at the time? No. I thought I understood but I was wrong. I thought my pleasure was innocent when it was quite tainted. We all loved that pastor speaking in our chapel for the same reason we were unwilling to be a part of his faith community. We didn't consider ourselves as the same. We didn't embrace him, we watched him. We were raised to be comfortable, to know the white church, to be consumers and not givers or sharers.

For my part, I repent. I'm sorry. I didn't approach him as a friend, a brother, a body part of Christ. I approached him, naively, as a form of entertainment, less than human. Not because he was black but because he wasn't like I was, and the reason he wasn't like me was because he was from a black community and raised in a culture I never knew and wasn't willing to know. Since then I've entered into the type of communities he was raised and working in. I still struggle with seeing people as I ought to see them, engaging them as I ought to engage them, and forsaking myself the way I out to forsake myself. But Christ teaches me to lose myself and gain a full body of diverse people. In Christ I lose my consumerist and invisibly racist ways and begin to truly value children of God for what they deeply and most truly are. I am theirs and they are mine, belonging to one another, needing one another. I probably need them more than they need me.

What's the point? We have divisions among us that we are ignorant of and in Christ those divisions are brought to light and in our sharing of His death they are crushed. In our resurrection and the sacraments of baptism and eucharist we are unified and we begin to work out our salvation (communal and individual) by practicing Christ's unrelenting love as we see one another as we are created to be (as individuals and communities). May Christ's power break all our divisions. May we allow Him to do what He desires in our lives. May we repent where we must.