Or Our Very Religious and Somewhat Racist Nation
Standing in the entrance of Disneyland, I have often seen small children crying when their parents try to take them through the arches that lead into the main part of the park. At first I was puzzled by this strange reaction to the Happiest Place on Earth until it happened with my own children when they were small.
My wife and I discovered that the children were heartbroken to leave the most beautiful place (from a child’s perspective) that they had ever been. The entrance to Disneyland has flowers, lights, a train, and music they loved. Why leave?
We knew it was better, but they did not. Of course as parents we gently tried to help them let go of the one good place in order to go someplace so much better, but often they did not want to go and so the old good became a bad thing keeping them from better.
I thought of this when it was pointed out to me that our very religious nation, dominantly Christian, has many people that also admit to racism.
Jesus Christ gave two commands: to love our neighbor and to love God. Racism is a horrifying sin against the command to love our neighbor as self. God creates people in His image, so racism is also blasphemy. It is also stupid since it prevents us from benefiting from the great goods that God would bring through other people.
Why then do so many Christians also struggle with racism? There was even a time when they tried to justify it! Of course some people are wicked just because they wish to be wicked. They may say they are Christians, but they are not. They know racism is wrong, but it is the wrongness that attracts them. These are troubled souls and they need more help than can be had from a simple blog post.
Why do good people struggle with racism?
I suspect part of it may be a first love swollen into an idol. The world contains many goods and one of them is love of the kin group. The love of my little family, my town, my kin adds charm to human existence.
Because most Americans love their families and had happy childhoods that were not, for good or ill, in interracial situations, they associate this happiness with all that is good. They know what they know and when growing up begins to push them out of the comfortable nursery and into new situations they react with fear.
The nursery love of those who are like I am is transformed by this fear and love is cast out. In some Americans, I suspect racism is the imperfect love made hateful by childish fears.
Most of us do not wish to be racists, but the terror of the different causes us to react badly. We love what is and for many that is comes with familiar foods, ways of speaking, and physical appearance. The good that was becomes the enemy of the good that must be.
Like the child crying in the anterooms of Disneyland, we fear losing an old good for an uncertain new experience. Things cannot stay the same, however, because change is part of God’s order. Like tattered Christmas decorations hanging on a house in February, what was once lovely can become hideous.
God did not make us all the same. Some goods are general goods, but others are specific to me. There is a great danger when a man generalizes his specific experience and applies it universally. That this way of dong things was good for me yesterday does not mean it will always be good for me tomorrow or that it is good for anyone else.
Of course, the situation is even more complicated by evils that have been done. We are not born into a people without a history when it comes to race. Racial slavery was real and it was not so long ago as cultures go. We still live in the ripples of the Civil War.
Generations of racism and bad government policies regarding race have poisoned the culture that any child enters however good hearted. They cannot simply move from one good to another in many, if not most, cases. Instead, the joy of God’s splendidly varied creation is further obscured for them by the activity of evils that are the fruit of racist policies from the past and from the present. What would be hard in any case is now made doubly difficult because of the ugliness they often encounter as they first leave the comforts of the known.
The small child hears the cutting racial slur. Filthy pop culture teaches them to denigrate difference and react to it with anger. Media from movies to Internet videos reinforce stereotypes and promote further fear.
Our growing up is too often stunted and we live crippled lives. We fear leaving the old good not just because of the natural fear of growing up, but because growing up has so often been made bad and ugly by racists. If we are not careful, we enter into an endless cycle of hatred and smallness that threaten our growth as a people.
The good news of the gospel is that such fear can be cast out by perfect love. We can have faith that, even in this broken world, the goodness of God is fundamental. Things are broken, but the rough places can still be made smooth. Jesus Christ offers universal salvation that is the way of forgiveness leading to love. For a Christian people to live in less than this full possibility is not just a sin, but a great pity. There is joy through the doorway of racial reconciliation. There are greater loves ahead than nursery loves!
Always hopeful and without fear, the American Christian must take Father’s hand to go forward into the bigger world and so begin the joyful task of reconciling what is to what should be.