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Ephesians 2:16 and 3:10

I am a middle-class White woman. I haven’t always been middle class, but I have always been White. My father left when I was young, and I was raised in Southern California by a hard-working single mother who struggled to make ends meet. I was blessed with friends of many cultures, stories and colors. But I didn’t know …

I wonder, now, how I didn’t see it. How many times have I missed seeing people, really seeing them, through a lens I hadn’t known I needed?

The following is a collection of thoughts about a subject I have begun to learn; through conferences, conversations, reading and, honestly, simply paying attention and listening. There are times when my heart has felt broken wide open, yet my eyes are still squinting to see more clearly and my ears bending to hear beyond what is familiar.

I share this with much apprehension at the responsibility of it. And of how much I still get wrong.

As I listen for understanding to voices unlike my own, I keep saying to myself that “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.” I have had the luxury of not having to know things; of not even having to think about some things. If I have my eyesight, or my hearing or all my limbs, I don’t have to think about what challenges I would have without them; how I would navigate life without them. I have the advantage, the Privilege, of not having to think about such things. Maybe that is much of what Privilege means, really – not just that I might have had more advantages in life, though that may be true as well, but that I have had fewer disadvantages. 

If you are White like me, please sit with me a minute in this and hear me all the way out. This is not a lecture but an invitation. Our defensiveness against the word Privilege, and what we assume it implies and accuses, will blind and deafen us to realities we will reject simply because they are not our reality; insulate us from the challenges facing others that we never have to think about navigating ourselves. As a White person, the only thing I have to worry about when I get pulled over is how much money my ticket is going to cost and how late I might be to wherever I was going. There are so many prayers for my kids I have never had to pray, instructions for their safety I have never had to give; things I have taken for granted, never had to think about, like how Band Aids match my skin, or how “Nude” is a color, but it’s the color of my skin. Or which stores, if any in my town, carry the products I need for my hair or make up. That I am more likely to be assumed innocent, educated, affluent, safe. Not angry. I don’t often have to wonder whether I will be welcomed at church, or most anywhere for that matter.

It’s easy to not care for what I have had the luxury (the privilege) of not seeing and dismissing what I don’t understand, or don’t even try to because it doesn’t affect me. How many opportunities I have missed for empathy and compassion; love for “the least of these.”

A blind spot, by definition, is to not see something that is there. Not that I am not looking, but that something is in the way of my seeing. What is in my way is actually invisible to me, hidden, which is why I don’t even know it’s blocking my view. But just because something is hidden from my view doesn’t mean it’s not there. If I am not willing to take another look, turn my head a little farther, crouch down a little lower or stretch a little higher, to walk in another’s shoes, then my blind spot renders me captive to my own lack of awareness, my ignorance.

I have been seeing people of color through the eyes of my own experience, not theirs. If I deny my whiteness as a potential blind spot, choosing to keep it hidden from myself, then I will naturally, unconsciously perhaps, be dismissive of the experiences of my brothers and sisters of color. And simply not see. I get to choose whether to see. They don’t. It is never hidden from them, their color nor mine. Unless I am willing to not simply rely on what I already know, or think I know, but become willing to see through the lens of history and experiences of another then I will never see. Nor grow. Nor love. If White and Western, because they are normative, are my default settings, then I will surely miss seeing, encountering, the expansive beauty of an even more magnificent God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – through the eyes of race, culture and ethnicity, and the diversity of “tribes, tongues and nations” … far more spectacular than anything my eyes could ever behold through the singleness of my vantage point.                       (2 Corinthians 5:16-21 / Revelation 5:9, 10).

If the willingness to be inconvenienced is the ultimate proof of love … then our current systems, power structures, how we define value or ascribe importance, hiring/immigration/asylum practices, and the language we use to describe or evaluate a person, must be challenged by voices we invite to the table that are different from our own. Without that, our actions will never be aligned with the love of Christ and the unity He requires. Otherwise, “Christian” is just another overused or useless term that really doesn’t mean anything. If we want it to mean what it really means, we have to be willing to be inconvenienced on behalf of others, because of Christ. This is a responsibility that comes with my Privilege, and as a Christ-Follower I am to steward it well. (Luke 12:48/Ephesians 4:1-6).

We have to begin where we are. If I am going to live honestly and with integrity I have to know where and who I am.  First, admitting there are things I may not know is the only path to learning anything. Also, I am White. I am also, for the most part, Conservative and Evangelical. These are my lenses. We all wear them. Without naming our own and being intentional to borrow the lens of another, I will inevitably judge others, and they will judge me, based on a truckload full of assumptions, suspicions and conclusions drawn from labels, language, misinformation and appearances. And many times, we will be very wrong. (Mark 7:1-4 / John 7:24).

My singular lens is something like looking through a keyhole believing that I can see the whole room. I cannot. I need to open the door and step in.

I am incapable of affirming the sufferings of people of color unless I humbly admit that I have not been affected by this life and the fallen-ness of humanity in the same ways that they have: That I have enjoyed concessions and benefits (privileges) granted me simply by my whiteness that they have not. Acknowledgment of this is where I can begin to listen. To love. “This is who I am … tell me who you are. What is it like to be you?” (1 John 4:20)

While at a conference on racial reconciliation a few years back, I felt as though my mind could hardly contain all that I was learning, but I was also having a difficult time containing my emotions. Partly, I felt a sad regret about all that I had not understood until now, and that I have so much more to learn, and act upon, and less time to do it in. But I also wondered how many opportunities I have missed to really see someone, to love them better … I was also humbled, mixed with a bit of shame, that in the face of my ignorance – and generations of people just like me who don’t know what we don’t know – I was met with a most undeserved and generous grace that was being extended by literally every person of color I encountered. This compelled me, compels me now (2 Corinthians 5:14), to want to “know more and then do better,” (thank you Maya Angelou).

I can no longer dismiss what I don’t understand or have been blind to. I need to be willing to risk and ask and then lean in and listen: Listen to a story full of experiences not like my own and whose truth I don’t get to question simply because it doesn’t match my own. And whose expressions of hurt, by whatever means they express them, are deeply rooted in a history of experiences that I cannot understand because I haven’t lived them. And therefore, am not entitled to judge them. If I fail to hear the heart behind the words and the hurt beneath the anger, then the only story I am really listening to is my own.

If I love and serve a “Suffering God”, Jesus, who was “despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), why would I not concede that those who are well-acquainted with rejection, loss and suffering might actually have something to teach ME about Christlikeness?

I continually process my experiences, conversations and readings, and choose to let them disturb me, trouble me, so that I will not grow complacent. I am reading books and articles that I wish I had read long ago, and am seeing history, culture, and even the church, through a clearer lens I didn’t know I needed. With White as majority culture and normative, I will naturally have hidden biases that I must allow to be exposed and challenged. And that as a white person in this country, most, if not all, of the seats at the tables of dominion, doctrine and decision are reserved for me (or at least my white brothers), and not for my brothers and sisters of color.

It takes courage to say that we don’t know what we don’t know and to be vulnerable learners of the lessons of others. As one human race, all bearing the tangible image of the invisible God, we must respectfully, and in genuine humility, engage one another on this issue. It is far too important not to. And not just because for people of color it is good to be seen and heard, but that for those of us with the privilege of whiteness (yes, it is actually a thing) it is good to see and hear. If we are to succeed in anything, we must be willing to risk failure. If we let shame prevent us from identifying and acknowledging our failures; seeing, learning and growing from them, then that is the most insidious failure of all.

We can lob word-grenades at each other from our respective fox holes of religion, race, ideology or even experience; or we can climb out and meet on the middle ground of compassion, humility and kindness where the white flag of friendship is planted and surrenders itself to unity and peace. (Colossians 3:8-17).

Just a few remaining thoughts … The Civil Rights Movement “changed laws but not hearts.” Hearts will be changed as we connect in an environment of hospitality; and not the fine china and white linen sort of hospitality, but of sharing stories and struggles, meals and messes; of putting on the lens of another, seeing with the eyes of our hearts; turning strangers into friends. (Acts 2:42-46). There is no way to love except through love. And real love costs us something (John 15:13). It should cost us something if we are Believers, Christ-Followers (2 Samuel 24:24). Christ’s love for us cost Him everything. His shed blood flows identically through all of us, for all of us; each uniquely and colorfully created one of us. Each bearing the image and likeness of the God who created every beautiful one of us.

Hate is not necessarily defined as wishing someone ill-will, but more like separating ourselves from them. Making them “other.” Most words, even good words, ending in “ism” will naturally alienate and isolate those who do not adhere to its principles and parameters, no matter how flawed they may be. This separation from each other is a blatant denial of the love and unity of Christ. The full magnificence of His glory is only reflected through the prism of color, custom and culture displayed by every “tribe, tongue and nation”, unified in love, worship, and service to the One who uniquely created each one. (Revelation 5:9, 10). To say that one is, or should be, “color blind” is to reject the vibrant magnificence of the creativity and intelligently wise design of God for Humanity.

Love asks, what am I willing to spend of myself for others? To advocate, befriend, be taught. As followers of Christ, in response to His love for us, should we not lead in the ways of love and be the most generous, fearless, sacrificial, humble, gracious and most fierce defenders of the inherent value and dignity of all human beings, not despite our differences but because of them. Each of us bear the image of the unseen God so that the world may see Him. (Ephesians 2:13-22)

I deeply regret that I hadn’t engaged more fully with this issue much earlier in life. So many friends of color I could have asked, listened to, learned from, grieved with, fought for. I really didn’t know what I didn’t know. I still don’t. I have so much more to learn and so many more stories to listen to and truths to take in. I know that I am not personally guilty of the atrocities, pain, and injustices that my brothers and sisters of color have suffered for far too long, but I AM responsible to use my privilege, my influence, my voice, my heart, my hands and feet to love them as Christ does: to take the baton from those who are exhausted from running this race and to run on their behalf. (John 15:13 / Matthew 25:40-45). I am to grieve with those who grieve over injustices. And not just in sympathy, but in solidarity and compassion that says, “there should be no justice for me unless or until there is justice for you too.” (Romans 12:15). To challenge the status quo, power, privilege and language for the sake of people of color who have been beaten down by them; stripped of dignity. Ignored, neglected, rejected. Unwelcome. Othered.

I confess that I really didn’t know what I didn’t know … In stewarding – taking seriously the responsibilities – of my privilege and what I now know, I bring the realities of heaven to bear on earth; one Body reconciled to God through the cross. One Body. One beautiful, magnificent, colorful, diverse, image-bearing, radiant Bride and Body of Christ. (Ephesians 2:16)

I don’t know what God looks like, but I know He’s not American nor white.