:CCO's Cross-Culture Exchange:

These past several months I have had the opportunity to speak at several college ministries on campus about the issue of racial reconciliation and racial justice.  With the exception of one predominately African-American group the students were all white.  As I walked through the various student unions or gathering places I observed blacks sitting together amidst a sea of white students. I would summarize the general response of students to my biblical and cultural challenge for racial unity as one of indifference at best. However, a few questioned the need to address the issue at all, oozing out as an inherent political and cultural position.

In Mark Noll’s book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, he writes about the resentment from southerners over abolitionists call to Christians to deal with the sin of slavery.  The response from many churches was that it was not their responsibility to change the status quo but only to save souls.  That indifference only served to reinforce the culture of slavery in the South. 

If the Apostle Paul were alive would he have said the same thing to the churches in the South and to our campus ministries today, as he did to Peter, that they were not following the truth of the Good News?  Peter had stopped eating with the Gentiles because he was afraid of what his Jewish homeboys would say.  His ‘hypocrisy” had caused others to do the same thing – the separation of Jewish and Gentile Christians had become a cultural norm. 

As Christians we are called to be change agents wherever we see the truth of the Gospel not being followed.  Racial separation and injustice may be a cultural norm but it is not a kingdom value.  It is always more convenient to maintain and follow the status quo but it rarely glorifies God.

Richard Lovelace once wrote that people who are insecure in Christ will often “fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns and their culture as means of self-recommendation.”  Ouch!  How often, when I begin to lose confidence in my ability to live and minister in my multi-cultural community, I clothe myself in the pride of being a white Anglo-Saxon protestant.   In these uncertain financial times people are putting on the armor of their respective political party while throwing salvos at the other side.  The mega church has thrived on the pride of people’s identity being wrapped up in their membership in a successful church.  Anxiety and insecurity can lead to the hubris desire of asserting the righteousness of our own group and criticizing others. 

All of this reeks of the tower of Babel – “a time when the whole world spoke a single language” and “began to take advantage of their common language and political unity”, (Genesis 11:1, 6).  The people were striving for a unity that would give them security and make a name for them.  While Jesus tells us that unity will be the major way outsiders will know God sent His Son, it is a unity of Christians who are different from one another – culturally, racially and economically – that contains the true glory of God. God confirmed this at Pentecost when H e began to reverse the curse of Babel by showing that His Holy Spirit can overcome the linguistic and ethnic barriers we erect. 

For ages people have retreated into the security of familiar customs and cultures and have regarded differences as something to avoid.  These prejudices and preferences according to Tim Keller are a “form of self-righteousness, a way to feel acceptable and worthwhile on our own merits”.  We do this when we begin to convince ourselves that our race, our tradition or our politics are superior to others.  If we are to really embody the gospel to the world around us we must have a bias towards being multi-cultural. We can only do that when our security and identity is fully in Christ and not our cultural heritage.

Have you ever walked into a meeting or social setting with strangers and immediately began to imagine where you are on some fanciful ladder of comparison?  I have – I think men are especially susceptible to this.  Well, Paul teaches that I am to count others as more significant than myself (Philippians 2:3 ESV).  Yes even those who are uneducated or jobless, too young or too old, too different or too disagreeable, are to be counted not just as equals but as more significant than me.

Paul’s point is not what others are but what you count others to be.  And the focus in not on how well they read or how much money they make, the color of their skin or their political views, the focus is: Will you count them as worthy of your friendship, encouragement or help?  Not are they worthy of your investment of time and energy but will you count them as worthy?  Will you take thought not just for your interests but for theirs?  Will you encourage, take the time to get to know them, help them and build them up.  Will you stop your daily pleasures long enough to show interest in them?

And how does this other-oriented commitment come to pass?  Verse 3 says, “In humility count others more significant than ourselves.”  It comes from humility.  Literally: “lowliness.”  This is the great opposite of a sense of entitlement.  Humility is the opposite of “You owe me.”  Paul said, “For I have a great sense of obligation to people in our culture and to people in other cultures, to the educated and uneducated alike” (Romans 1:14 NLT).  In other words, they didn’t owe him.  He owed them.

Why?  Why are we Christians to have a humble sense that we owe service to others?  Because God so loved us that he gave his only Son.  He treated us as worthy of his service, when we were everything other than worthy.  He counted us as greater than himself.  That is where our humility comes from; this overwhelming act of God’s grace, this moment-by-moment grace promised for eternity.

Now imagine how different our world could be if we actually counted others as more significant.  Maybe a more civil political discourse, a less segregated Sunday morning church, a more multi-cultural campus ministry, just imagine the possibilities.  God did imagine it, that is why he sent his Son.

Since the election of our first Black President, some in the media have wondered if we have entered into a new era of holding hands across racial barriers and singing “kuumba ayah”.  They have popularized the term “post-racial” which at the very least is asking the question, “has America moved past the issue of race and racism?”  However, maybe a better question is whether there should ever be such a thing as a ”post-racial” society if the picture of our heavenly future is one of a crowd so large that it cannot be counted, made up of all nations, tribes, peoples and tongues.  (Revelation 7:9)

Let’s first consider the continued racial incidents in our country to see if the issue has begun to disappear.  A few years ago the Southern Baptist Convention published a Vacation Bible School curriculum using the name and theme of “orientals” and a Barnes and Nobles book display featuring a book about monkeys was placed in the middle of a display of books about the Obamas.  Just recently a hangman’s noose was discovered in the library of San Diego State University and here in Pittsburgh three White policemen beat a Black honor student from the Creative And Performing Arts school claiming he had a gun  – no gun was found.  While these occurrences do not necessarily represent the attitudes and actions of an entire college,  national book store, denomination, police force, or the dominate white culture, we can not ignore the pain and the exclusion felt by the minority groups represented in these incidents.

I don’t know about you but I am not feeling the post-racial thing.  I fear that for some “post-racial’ is a hope that minority groups are finally assimilating into our White culture.  Regardless of our political leanings we can feel good that we have moved to the place of electing a Black President but let’s be careful not to be lulled into a sense of complacency because we still live in a world full of ethnic divisions and racial prejudices.  We must not only acknowledge that America is made up of citizens from every culture and ethnicity but that God plans to populate heaven with His multi-ethnic salvation.  If God’s heart reaches out to the whole world then our hearts need to as well, especially when He continues to bring the world to our cities and our college campuses.

So should America be striving for a post-racial world and what would that look like to you?  Or should we as Christians be working towards diversity and inclusion while fulfilling Jesus’ mandate to make disciples of all (ethnos) nations?

In my neighborhood if I observe a young hooded black man with a cell phone exchange something through a car window, there is what I call a sensible probability that a drug deal just went down.  I could be wrong but …  However, if I then form a judgement that all hooded black men with cell phones are drug dealers I have crossed a line into a sinful prejudice.  That line is not always clear but never the less it is a real line and God sees it even if we don’t.

Even Nathaniel crossed that line when he posed his rehetorical question about Jesus – “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  Nathaniel had taken a sensible probability that the Messiah cound not come from Nazareth and turned it into a sinful prejudice based on his negative veiw of Nazareth.  He didn’t ask if the Messiah could actually come from Nazareth, he questions whether anything good at all can come from there.

Philip doesn’t argue with Nathaniel, he simply says, “Come and see.”  In other words give this man a chance, judge him by his glory not by his group.  Or as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Judge him by the content of his character not by the color of his skin’, nor by his economic status, his educational level, or his external appearance.

I must acknowledge the great strides that have been made towards Dr. King’s dream but even with the election of a black president it has also highlighted how far we have to go.  For the most part our Sunday mornings are still segregated and so are our campus ministries because there  remains in our deceitful hearts a remant of sinful prejudice.   So here is what I suggest: get to know others as individuals not as representatives of a group, take a risk to stand against negative stereotypes and repent when our sinful prejudices are revealed.   Nathaniel did declaring, “Teacher, you are the Son of God.”

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

Out of the starry night comes a weary traveler pulling a tired and unwilling donkey. Upon the donkey sits the man’s pregnant wife, more tired than the beast. A brief conversation ensues in the dimly lit doorway of the Inn, as an expressive but sympathetic innkeeper says those famous words: “No room!”

It has always been that way for God.  Adam had no room for Him when he chose to eat the forbidden fruit, David had no room for Him when he chose to lay with Bathsheba, the priests had no room for him in the Temple – you can’t overthrow the tables of the high priest’s concession stand and expect to have the hospitality of those in power.  There is little room in our world today for someone who cares nothing for prestige, power and possessions.

This is a continuing story for me.  How often have I looked Christ over and listened to what he was teaching me and then said: “No thank you! I’ve got no room for that!”  We make a public holiday of his birth but there is not much room for him down in the deep currents of life; in the highways of human activity, in the gates of government decisions, in the centers of commercial finance and the significance of social gatherings.  Our world has no room for a God whose concern for the outsider and the outcast doesn’t seem to belong in our culture of comfort.  Yet as the years roll by, we can’t get rid of the haunting realization that Christ is the one who does belong. We are the misfits whose ugly passions and unholy lives are out of touch with reality. We are the strange ones with distorted images of what life was meant to be.  It is Christ who makes room for us in His Kingdom – inviting us out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.

We will never find room for Christ we must make room for him.

Researchers at the University of California produced a study showing that people and their dogs often look alike.  In the study, a panel of student judges was able to match 16 out of 25 purebred dogs to their owners.  The reason for this, researchers say, is because dog owners tend to choose a pet bearing their resemblance in some way.

The study identified similarities between pets and people as physical characteristics or personality traits or both.  Happy, outgoing, and affectionate dogs tend to be owned by warm and friendly people.  Hairless, pop-eyed, pug-nosed pooches are owned by… well you get the idea.

I wonder if we stood in a group of people from all religious faiths and belief systems, would a panel of judges be able to match us up with Jesus?

In 1900, 75% of all Christians were white people living in Europe, North America and Russia.  Now nearly 60% of all Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  As God graciously brings people from those cultures to our cities and college campuses will they be able to match us up with Jesus?

Jesus modeled a godly life for about thirty years, preached to a few thousand people, promised those who believe in him that they will live forever, died for our sins, burst from the tomb three days later, then gave the Holy Spirit to 120 frightened followers to finish His work here on earth.  Jesus’ whole plan to change and save the world depended on a ragtag bunch of fisherman, ex-prostitutes and tax collectors.  With the help of the Holy Spirit I think they did a pretty amazing job!  But how about you and me?

Everything in me wants to move upward. Downward mobility with Jesus goes radically against my inclinations, against the advice of the world surrounding me, and against the culture of which I am a part.

Henri Nouwen

Mother Teresa when asked about her call to the poor said she wasn’t called to the poor but she was called to follow Jesus who led her to the poor.  As we follow Jesus on our college campuses I am convinced He will lead us to the “others”, the outsiders, the minorities, those different than us in culture and ethnicity and in the process we will rediscover a greater expression of God’s Kingdom whose joy will transform us and others.

Jesus’ tells two very short parables in Matthew 13:44-46.  One is about a field hand, the other about a merchant.  The first is probably a peasant working for a wealthy landowner and while plowing the field he turns up a box of coins.  So the field hand sells everything he has in order to buy the field containing the valuable coins.  The discovery of the valuable coins causes his actions.  The merchant is probably a man of more significant wealth as he is in the business of buying pearls.  But he too invests everything he has in order to possess these pearls of great price and his discovery, likewise, causes his actions.  Jesus says that both the coins and the pearls are like the Kingdom of Heaven and the discovery of it caused the men to act.  They were literally carried away by their joy.  Fredrick Dale Bruner in his commentary on Matthew says, “The point, expanded, is this: joy is the engine of change”. [1] The discovery transformed the lives of the peasant field hand and the wealthy merchant forever, having sold everything to buy the new reality.  Neither the field hand nor the merchant was told to do anything, the treasure tells it all.  The discovery of God’s Kingdom brings joyous responses not joyless duties.

However, the joy of the discovery is diminished when the true multi-cultural nature of God’s Kingdom is not revealed.  When our ministries remain homogenous (the same) and exclude the heterogeneity (the other) of God’s Kingdom we hinder our mission of transforming college students.  Cross cultural ministry actually enhances the transformation process by discovering a fuller picture of God’s multi-ethnic Kingdom.  We need to rediscover a new reality of God’s Kingdom on our college campuses; a reality which opens the door to change our world, students and us.  It is a reality found in scripture and the person of Jesus and experientially when divergent sides of God’s people seek it together in the power of the Holy Spirit.