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A few showers during the morning with numerous thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 77F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..
Tonight
Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 58F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Bless my little Lutheran heart, it has taken me almost all of my now 35 years to feel like I have a thing or two about which I might could actually testify.
We Lutherans like to put “evangelical” in our denomination and church names, but we have never been as good, on the whole, about putting it into our daily practice. You may have heard some version of the old joke, How do you tell an extroverted Lutheran from an introverted Lutheran? The extroverted Lutheran looks at the *other* person’s shoes.
That may be a slight exaggeration, but to move a born and bred Lutheran, like myself, to testify can require some overwhelming and undeniable work of the Spirit in our lives. For me, this has happened in my relatively recent awakenings surrounding race.
As a well-meaning (if I do say so myself!) white guy, it has come as both shocking, but also freeing, to begin to learn more about this force in our world that tends to draw me away from God.
Notably — and symptomatic of the problem — it was not until my 23rd year of formal education that I learned some rather fundamental realities about where I am located in the story of race. I heard, for the first time, that race is a myth. A myth is a story or construct that is created to communicate meaning. So, myths absolutely matter and are effective, but the “truth” they convey may or may not be genuine.
The myth of race is real, but it is not true.
Race is a sinful construct, not a Godly one. The creator(s) of race was not God, but us. And by us, I mean “white” people in particular. As Europeans set out to explore and colonize the world half a millennium or so ago, it became convenient to consider themselves “white,” and those they encountered something “other.” A hierarchy of human worth soon developed based on arbitrary physical characteristics. “Whiteness” provided permission for Europeans to rationalize the dehumanization of “others.” This helped us to justify our often atrocious treatment of the children of God we encountered in other corners of God’s world, usually in pursuit of accumulating astronomical worldly wealth and power.
God did not make me “white,” in other words. God did pick a particular skin tone for me, but God did so without any more intended meaning than when God chose the color for my eyes or drew the curve of my smile. Our Creator just happens to be a good artist who likes diversity. We are the ones who have come behind and drawn divisive lines right through our Divine Artisan’s creative palate.
The inimitable Bryan Stevenson observes that, while many things have changed over the years, the baseline narrative of racial difference continues today. And from that narrative of difference, insidious manifestations of racial inequity continue to be birthed and sustained. This is no coincidence, of course. These, in fact, are the very reasons that race was ever made.
My own learning has not just been theory. I have had to come to terms with real sin that resides in my own being. I am acutely aware today, that when it comes to race, I have not dodged Satan’s contagion. An implicit association test offered by Harvard University pulled no punches: I have the “highest possible” implicit bias in favor of white people over black people.
Even a product of anti-racist parents, like me, has not avoided this world’s temptation to subtly accept my racial “whiteness” as default, central, and even supreme.
But what happens when I am bound in ways that make me see my neighbors as somehow (even subtly, subconsciously, and slightly) less than me? It turns out my perception has no bearing on my neighbors’ actual humanity. It has a bearing on my own. The one being dehumanized is me.
It is I who have become somehow numbed, even deadened, to the true treasures of God all around me. The ones with names and faces. And hence, I might could even testify. There is so much more I might say about this God of ours who comes to us in Christ, who meets me in my sin, loves me where I am, and never gives up on telling me a better, truer story. I believe it’s the kind of thing that might just mean my own revival.
The Rev. Richard Goeres is pastor of Macedonia Lutheran Church, 421 W. Front St., Burlington. Contact him at pastorgoeres@macedonialutheran.com.
