Our pastors have been preaching (Zooming?) through Matthew 18 during this time and some key elements from this passage have struck me as particularly pertinent to the British church as we seek to love one another more deeply and follow our Saviour more wholeheartedly, even and especially within our different cultures and skin colours.
So here are four ways I think Matthew 18 enables conversations about race (and other awkward things).
1) Matthew 18:1-4 - "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
We enter into God's kingdom as little children. At the time Jesus lived on earth, children had very lowly status. When He says we are to enter God's kingdom as children, that means humbly, knowing that all we bring to the table is our brokenness and our sin, knowing God will forgive us and make us new. Our salvation is all of Him. This means that by professing to be a child of God we are in our very essence acknowledging our faults and our need to be forgiven.
How does this relate to discussions about race?
It means we come to them humbly, ready to hear where we are at fault and where we need to change. If we have led privileged lives, perhaps without realising it, we look at those lives with eyes that are ready to be opened in new and uncomfortable ways. We must be prepared for our pride in our achievements and our sense of self-made success to be viewed through the lens of the privilege we never knew we had. It means that we are ready to listen to brothers and sisters without waiting to tell them our opinion. It means we are willing to hear their experiences and lives without assuming we have the correct, balanced view.
We have already come, humbled, to our Lord and Saviour, confessing our need for forgiveness and repenting. This is who we are and what defines us. Yet how often we bristle at any hint that we may have sinned. We can let go of this and allow ourselves to face the music and self-reflect without fear - for God already knows the fullness of our fallen hearts and has accepted us and loved us.
2) Matthew 18:10-14 - "See that you do not despise one of these little ones... if he finds [the one sheep], truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray".
Our Heavenly Father rejoices deeply over every soul that comes to him because we are precious to Him. We belong to Him and are in his family. This is our identity as Christians - we may be white British, Indian, African American or Chinese - but if we are Christians our identity as God's children is the ultimate identity. That does not wash over our ethnicity, but it does underpin it, and for someone like me who is mixed and struggles with how to reconcile the different parts of my heritage, it's amazing news. I do belong and I do have a family, regardless of how disparate my earthly family may be!
Because our identity is firmly and unshakably rooted in our salvation in Jesus, when we are interacting with issues of race, we do not have to feel threatened. Hearing the British Empire criticised or reading Churchill's not so popular opinions, you don't have to feel outraged and defensive that your nation is being criticised - because we know that our earthly nations are not truly home - that is the "heavenly country" that is infinitely better. Closer to home, if you are starting to feel the fringes of embarrassment and indignation when you sense your identity as 'white' or 'British' being threatened, you can push into our safe place as God's children and allow ourselves to listen and learn without leaping to your own defence.
3) Matthew 18:15-20 - "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone."
The Gospel may unite us all in Christ, but it doesn't serve as a perpetual whitewash for ongoing sin. The New Testament is very real about the sinful nature and its persistence in this life even after we have been born again, and it's adamant that sometimes this sin should be gently exposed and the brother or sister brought to repentance. Racism is a sin, and its evil should not be softened or tucked under the carpet by the church. If we are saved, we sign up to be on the receiving end of this, as well as to go, and show our brother their sin, on occasion. In the British church, this isn't our forté. Our "stiff upper lip" culture often means that conflict nestles just under the surface without ever being resolved in a healthy way. As the church, we must be different. Unity does not mean pretending we agree about everything. It means that we die to self in order to preserve unity in Christ, putting our pride below the purity of the body of Christ. To show our brother their sin, or to have our own sin pointed out to us, both involve dying to self to preserve and nurture true unity.
In the context of race, this sin may not be as serious as overt racism. It may express itself in other more covert ways. We must be ready and willing to accept that sometimes we won't even recognise these in ourselves and receive loving rebuke with humility.
4) Matthew 18:21-35 - "I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"
These verses were preached after a very turbulent week of protests following the murder of George Floyd. I was reeling and desperately trying to work through the torrent of anger, grief and indignation flowing through me. This passage was so timely. Our pastor explained that the amount of the debt the servant owed equated to millions, almost billions, of pounds - unpayable - and yet the Master wrote it off. The servant then goes and chokes someone who owes him a tiny fraction of this amount. The significance of the word "choke" was not lost on me, literally days after George Floyd died choking for air.
Our Father has forgiven us much. He has forgiven us for more than we could ever do to one another. Our sin put his Son on the cross. And he has forgiven us for that wrong. How can we, then, fail to forgive one another?
The topic of race and ethnicity can be a thorny one. It is rife with pain and hurt that stretches back lifetimes and centuries. Oppression that is rooted in history is not easy to dig up. But God calls us to forgive: to forgive those who have contributed, even unwittingly, to the problem. He enables us, by his grace, to forgive those who hurt us now by their silence or by their words.
Forgiveness is costly. Forgiveness does not ask us to sweep anything under the carpet. In forgiving, we are at liberty to acknowledge the pain and hurt, and decide to take the hit, to absorb the pain and in doing so be free of bitterness.
Forgiveness does not magic away consequences; and there are many consequences of racial oppression that we need to work through as churches and as nations. But knowing that we have been forgiven our great debt to the Creator of every living human being, who made us all in his image, changes the course of these consequences for us as brothers and sisters. We are set on a path of grace, to walk in the footsteps of the God-man who stayed silent as a lamb before the slaughter even when facing the most heinous injustice the universe has ever seen, in order to save his people and glorify his Father.
I have found these truths to be healing and I hope you do too. I have applied them to the subject of race here, but in actuality these encouragements can season any conversation with grace and love. I'm all too aware there are many occasions when I have not lived up to these saving truths - praise God there is grace still then! I pray that the Holy Spirit would cause us to rest in them more and more, and that in doing so we may truly be a church that is not afraid to go to the difficult places in order to become more united, more forgiving, more humble and more Christ-like.
Thank you so much for this! May I share this with my church ?
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading - yes indeed.
DeleteBec,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to set down so clearly and moderately issues that I know have troubled you deeply, and to make a careful application of the Biblical principles you have learned from these verses. As you have shown, there is much there to apply to the issue of relationships within the Body of Christ between those whose ethnicity and culture differs, and there may also be applications to the 'outside world', though those devoid of the influence of God's Spirit may not readily agree with our reading of human nature!
I was pleased to see your use of the word 'heritage' because much of the misunderstanding and indeed prejudice many people feel towards those of a different skin shade and facial features arises more from the cultural background and social practices of some ethnic groups who share a long independent social history, often arising from the original society living in very different parts of the world, with different opportunities and social development.
I put it like that because whilst the shade of skin colour and common 'ethnic' facial features are determined by the small variations in the genome shared by all human beings, those genetic variations do not determine culture or heritage, or the social, and indeed religious beliefs and practices that have become common within certain societies who share a common ethnicity.
The prejudice we term racism may arise in some from misinformation or hearsay about such social or religious behaviours which, being very different from the experience of the 'racist', are disapproved of, or even condemned, and are then attached to everyone who shares those ethnic characteristics.
The wide variation in such culture and heritage even within those who appear to be the same ethnically, shows that such things are not genetically determined, which I know you understand, but so many do not. For example, the official ethnic group 'south Asian', which not only encompasses national distinctions - Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Indian and Pakistani, which in themselves inculcate quite different ideologies - but also religious distinctions - Christian, Roman Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Seikh and Muslim, and other minor beliefs - and even regional variations.
For now I will close my comments with a suggestion that there are at least two separate prejudices which need to be challenged: on the one hand, the plain prejudice against those who do not look like us simply BECAUSE they do not look like us; and the prejudice(s) against cultural and social practices that are different to our own. The latter certainly chimes with your comments about those who have had 'privileged' upbringings, because there is a great deal of prejudice amongst such people towards the less privileged, who look the same ethnically, but who behave very differently because of their background and heritage - hence Pygmalion!
If this sort of commentary is helpful, I am happy to say more, as your ideas deserve development.
Paul
Hi Paul, I've just seen this comment. Am I to presume this is Paul Severs and not another Paul? :D
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful comments. I think it is helpful what you say about the prejudice against skin colour and the prejudice against 'different ways of life' / culture. Unfortunately these two sometimes meet and plenty of people are prejudiced against brown and black people for the way they look and their perceived 'culture'.
Indeed, genetically there is so little between us. 'Race' is a human construct, created by powerful people in order to divide and conquer. Sadly, we are left with the realities and consequences of these constructs now.
There is a difference in the experience of people who are from different cultures but look 'white' (e.g. Jews, Polish immigrants, etc. although they also face terrible prejudice and racism at times) and the experience of the people who look visibly non-white. I know this from experience. The pain this can bring to all these groups of people needs to be acknowledged and for too long has been left unacknowledged by the church, perhaps for fear of dealing with it clumsily, but probably more often than not because white people don't share this experience much of the time. The church also needs to look at what we can do to be culturally prophetic voices in proclaiming the dignity and image-bearing nature of every single human being - just as we need regain our prophetic voice when it comes to many counter-cultural issues. This blog aims to encourage us all to become more fluent in talking about any difficult issue and in doing so draw closer together in love and in our shared identity in Christ, for which I am so grateful.
Bec
Hi again, one thing Lockdown and self-isolation as a vulnerable sort of chap has led to much watching of the great plethora of excellent messages available from over the pond, and one set I watched was a very recent and socially distanced Ligonier Ministries conference on "God's Image Bearers", with the likes of Sinclair Ferguson speaking. Here's the link for any sleepless nights!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30acyfm60fWrpnzBwPzXwUTRdrw5DyKH