"Only Believe" - Jesus, the Little Girl and the Woman with the Issue of Blood

This double story appears in three of the four gospels.  Matthew's version (Matt. 9:18-26) is an abbreviated version.  Luke's version (Luke 8:40-56) and Mark's (Mark 5:21-43) are similar, but I will print Mark's here as it shows the most detail:

When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”
Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them,“Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Two females, one the privileged daughter of a prominent synagogue leader, the other an impoverished and ill woman who had spent all her money on doctors and whose impurity made her an outcast among her people.  The privileged girl takes no active part in the story; she is ill, and later she dies. When Jesus touches and speaks to her, she rises and is given back to her parents.  In keeping with the propriety of the day, the man to whom the girl belongs-- in this case, her father-- acts for her in public places.  Thus it is not just the girl who is juxtaposed to the hemorrhaging woman, but the girl's respected and influential father.

The woman, however, has no man to act for her.  She has been ritually unclean for so long that it is likely her husband divorced her long ago (see Lev. 18:19).  Where Jairus is at the center of the religious community, this woman has long been outcast from it. Jairus boldly and publicly calls on Jesus for aid on his daughter's behalf.  The woman must take action for herself, but she dares not do it openly. As I have shown earlier in this "Jesus and Women" series, respectable women did not cry out after rabbis on public streets.  Furthermore, unclean women were not supposed to push through crowds of people, as this article on Jewish Laws on Women's Purity in Jesus' Day explains:

According to the Bible, a woman is impure for seven days from the beginning of her menstrual flow (Lev. 12:2; 15:19). Anyone who touches a menstruous woman becomes unclean until evening (Lev. 15:19). Whoever touches her bed or anything she sits on during the week is unclean until evening and must wash his clothes and bathe with water (vss. 20-23). . .

Josephus states that women during the menstrual period were not permitted in any of the courts of the Temple (Against Apion 2:103-104; War 5:227). The social separation of women during their menses is further emphasized in the Talmud.

WomenintheBible.Net provides more detail:

Strictly speaking, she should not have been among other people. According to the laws of ritual purity, she should have been at home during her menstrual period, living quietly (see Leviticus 15:19-31). These laws worked very well for healthy women who had a menstrual period of five – seven days. It was a time out for them, when they were relieved of their normal duties and could rest.

But the woman in this story was not healthy. Her menstrual flow had lasted twelve years, so the purity laws had become an impossible burden for her. She could not go out, she could not touch members of her family, she could not enjoy a normal life, and she was constantly debilitated.

Jairus' daughter has been alive for roughly the same amount of time as the woman has been suffering: twelve years.  Twelve is a number representing completeness in the Bible; it is when a child comes of age, and here it brings a crisis and a turning point for both the young girl and the older woman. Though the two do not meet, their lives are intertwined by these events and by the way their narratives are told as an intercalcation.

This Biblewise article explains "intercalcation" as "a literary technique used by the gospel writers to enhance both stories, providing larger insights and lessons. The 'story within a story' is called an intercalation or a 'sandwiched' story."  The article's detailed comparisons are worth noting:

It becomes clear when they are told together that they belong together. There are too many verbal links to suggest otherwise. The daughter was twelve years old and on the brink of her womanhood. The woman had been hemorrhaging for twelve years and had become unclean and cast off because of her womanhood. The disparity in status and stature of the main characters cannot be overlooked. They are exact opposites. One was important and influential, a ruler in the synagogue; the other was an outcast with no standing in the community. Jairus was named; the woman was not. He had a family, a place in society; the woman had “lost all that she had.” (She’s probably homeless.) But there are some similarities, too. They both humbled themselves by falling at Jesus’ feet. They both had a great need. Jairus asked that Jesus come and lay his hands on his daughter; the woman wanted but to touch his clothes. They both believed that Jesus was the one to help them, but they came from opposite ends of the social spectrum. . . . 

Mark's version is significant not least because it gives us a very unusual glimpse into the inner life of this woman.  She thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed" -- and then she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.  In every way the reader is encouraged to see this woman, this silent social outcast, as a feeling, thinking human being.  Desperate for healing but mindful of the social mores, she intends to slip in and out of Jesus' life unnoticed by anyone.  In the process she becomes the only person who obtains healing outside of Christ's voluntary will.  The agency in her story is not His, but hers.

But when He feels power go out of Him, Jesus is determined to see and hear the invisible, voiceless recipient.  At this point the woman seems to become afraid that she has been too bold, but she is also brave.  She doesn't slip away in the crowd, but comes to Him and confesses.  "Daughter," He tells her (did she find it odd to be called so by a man who was at least her own age, if not younger than she?) "your faith has healed you."  The respect He gives her is as plain as His compassion.

During this exchange, the powerful and influential synagogue leader has had to stand and wait.  And while he waits, time runs out for his little girl.  He must have felt a kind of despairing impatience, waiting for Jesus to be finished with this interruption, but the texts do not record him as protesting.  If he thought his problem was more important than that of this lowly woman (who, though suffering, was not at the brink of death as his child was!) he doesn't say so.  I sincerely think I could not have been so patient in his place.

And it seems he's going to lose out because of it.  A messenger approaches to say it's too late.  His daughter has already died.

Jesus now allows Jairus' problem to interrupt his final interchange with the healed woman.  He is still speaking to her when the messenger comes, but He stops to hear what the messenger will say.  Then, with the same compassion He showed the woman, He tells the bereaved father not to be afraid, but only to believe.  And then He raises his daughter from the dead.

The Biblewise article interprets it like this:

In putting the stories together, Mark shows that there is no limit to the good that God can do. One is not healed at the expense of another. Those choices do not have to be made -- either/or, one wins/the other loses. Jesus demonstrated that God is present and caring for everyone – rich or poor. One is not more important than the other.

Most of us tend to err on one side or the other-- we give more weight to the concerns of the privileged and powerful, or we tend to despise them for their privilege while we focus on the marginalized.  But a sick child is a sick child, a bereaved father is a bereaved father, and a suffering woman is a suffering woman-- alike in their humanity no matter who they are. Jesus saw and cared about all three.

Now that she has died, Jairus' daughter is also unclean, and anyone who touched her would become unclean (Numbers 19:11), just as anyone who touched the hemorrhaging woman would become unclean.  Paula Fredricksen's article on Boston University's religion page shows that in general, Jesus as a practicing Jew would have followed the purity laws, and that the purity laws were about ritual cleanness for the worship of God; they were different from the moral laws about sin.  Being or becoming ritually unclean was not about sin, and of course people naturally incurred ritual uncleanness (through marital sex, childbirth, funerals and the like) in the course of their lives.  But uncleanness was something you'd generally incur through contact with family members and close friends; you didn't want to have to go to the time and trouble of undergoing a cleansing ritual for a stranger.

Jesus, however, touched unclean strangers frequently, in order to heal them.  And as David deSilva points out in his book Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity (pp. 284-285), something astonishing happened when Jesus touched an unclean person: rather than their uncleanness being transferred to Him, the person was healed by Him, thus becoming free of the source of the uncleanness:

The leper is perpetually unclean, but Jesus nevertheless touches him and makes him clean. . . The Gospels thus present Jesus encountering a stream of ritually impure and potentially polluting people, but in the encounter their contagion does not defile Jesus; rather his holiness purges their pollution, renders them clean and integrates them again into the mainstream of Jewish society where they can reclaim their birthright, as it were, among the people of God. 

The hemorrhaging woman and the dead daughter of Jairus thus both encounter Christ from the same place, regardless of the disparity in their social positions.  Both are unclean and thus outside of society.  Jesus' touching the girl and being touched by the woman restores both to the community. The purity laws, Jesus seems to be implying, should not be used as a justification for creating outcasts.

David deSilva elaborates:

Jesus' healings of the diseased and encounters with 'sinners' are immersed in issues of purity rules and pollution taboos in which we see Jesus consistently showing a willingness to cross the lines in order to bring the unclean ones back to a state of cleanness and integration into the community. . . [W]hen Pharisees, who seek to preserve purity through defensive strategies (abstaining from contact with the unclean or potentially unclean), challenge his eating with sinners and thus inviting pollution, he quotes Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice". . . The holiness God seeks, according to Jesus' understanding, entails reaching out in love and compassion. . . .

Mercy trumps sacrifice because (as I mentioned a few posts ago) people are more important than things.  The Christian faith as Jesus taught it was about inclusion not exclusion, not about keeping "pure" through ostracizing others, but about reaching out to others in love.  As Fred Clark at Slacktivist pointed out this week, if the end result was that we as Gentiles could be included in the people of God, who are we Gentiles to turn around and exclude one another? 

Jesus showed us the way through this story of a sick child, a desperate father and an I've-got-nothing-left-to-lose woman.  He didn't treat people as better-than or less-than.  He treated them all as people.  He didn't do us-vs.-them.  He only did "us."  And no one escaped His notice-- not even a woman who tried her best to do so. 

Christianity should be about going and doing likewise. 

Another Take on the World Vision Question

Last Week I wrote about the controversy revolving around the international Christian charity World Vision and its decision, quickly reversed, to employ same-sex married Christian couples.  I wrote about the issue in terms of real, living children overseas who have developed long-distance relationships with their sponsors, and I will not back off my stance that breaking off such a relationship once it is formed is wrong. Regardless of the fact that the child will still receive World Vision benefits through his or her community, Christians should not abandon or reject kids they have started a relationship with, even if it's a very long-distance one.

But Rod at the Political Jesus Blog has added an important perspective to the discussion that needs to be taken seriously.  He asks the question: Are African, Indian, South American children being used as pawns in the White Culture Wars?  

The thing is that in focusing on the gay-marriage issue here in the United States and fighting among ourselves over it (with non-white children overseas caught in the middle as both sides accuse each other of not doing what's best for those kids) Christians in the white majority culture on both sides of the issue may be blind to our own self-centeredness.  And we seem to be missing the bigger question: Are World Vision and other Western-created charities actually the best way to give to poor children in other nations?

The problem is that as white American Christians, we have a weakness for falling into what the By Their Strange Fruit Blog calls a "white savior complex":

The 'white savior complex' is a perception that white folk have that they are the benevolent benefactors of helpless 'others.'. . The 'white savior complex' is particularly strong when it comes to white aid in Africa. . .Often church missions have a concept of the 'poor starving children of Africa' and very little understanding of the self-empowerment and independence that can thrive in our absence.

As Rod at Political Jesus put it:

Both sides (in their blog posts), were more than eager to press this story as one where we had to “save the children.” At no one point were the problematic practices of World Vision, its advancement of White Saviorism through its advertisements or its questionable method of “child-sponsorships” (but not really child-sponsorships) ever put under scrutiny. . . African and other nations populated by darker skinned people are represented time and again as the passive recipients of white benevolence. This “help” however, is just a re-hashing of old Western-style colonialism brought to those countries by missionaries. [Emphasis in original]

 To be fair to World Vision, they are aware of this weakness and have published an online paper about improving their accountability in this and other areas:

A related mistake is to ignore our ‘inbound’ accountability to listen and learn from the poor. The good news of Jesus implores us to seek only the best for the other. Ministry approaches which breed dependency, or which are patronising, or paternalistic, or which treat the poor as our “clients” diminish the Good News. All parts of our global family must be respectfully and sensitively engaged.  It has been wisely observed that “The Christian gospel has sometimes been made the tool of imperialism and of that we have to repent.”

Other Western Christian charities, such as Kinexxus, seem to have done their homework on this issue and are striving to overcome it:

Mission organizations and humanitarian agencies that operate from the same misguided assumptions that Africans are too poor or incapable of doing anything significant to bring about development to their communities only reinforce a receivership mentality. They come to Africa with a heart of compassion and noble intentions to alleviate the suffering of an impoverished people. But if they don’t take the time to understand the community and cultural worldview they are entering or attempt to learn even simple greetings in the local language, these well-intentioned “do-gooders” run the risk of rushing in and unconsciously imposing their will – utilizing material resources to gain control so they can make their project “happen.” The results will be short-lived and often counterproductive. The local community will not own the project, nor will they feel any obligation to maintain it.

Still, as I've been looking into this matter, it seems to me that for those who have not already committed to a relationship with a sponsored child (who need to keep that commitment), the best way to help impoverished people on other continents is to help those churches and other charities that are indigenous to the countries in which those people live, who already understand the issues and problems unique to those regions, and to whose knowledge and expertise we ought to be deferring.

As By Their Strange Fruit goes on to say:

The 'white savior complex' is basically based in pride. It reveals an attitude of superiority and paternalism, . . .Rather than perpetuate the myth that white folk are somehow the world's saving grace, we need to empower others to take the lead.

And of course, when indigenous charities and churches already are taking the lead, the best we can do is get on board to help them.  

For instance, we can contribute to the African Independent Churches that are local to countries we want to help:

Even though the denominational, ritual, and linguistic diversity of these churches makes it difficult to analyze and classify, the common thread uniting all of the Christian churches is that they were all established by African initiative rather than by foreign missionary agendas. Even though many of these churches have traditional denominational names and relationships, they are not defined by these traditions. These churches emphasize that they are established and led by Africans. In addition, all AICs place emphasis on the biblical warrant to include African cultural norms into their modes of worship, theology, and practice, though to varying degrees.

A link to the webpage for contributing to African Independent Churches is here. For those who want to help poor people in the Western hemisphere, there is a Pasadena-based ministry which specifically empowers indigenous church leaders in Latin America: Latin American Indigenous Ministries.  Or we can contribute to secular charities whose founders are native to an area we want to help, such as the Wayuu Taya Foundation, which empowers and aids indigenous Latin American peoples in many countries, or Alaffia, which is involved in communities in West Africa.

It's important to develop the humility to see that other people groups are quite capable of helping their own poor, and that God has already provided for leaders there.  Sometimes we white Western Christians aren't meant to be the team captains, but the water carriers; not the heroes, but the sidekicks.

But one thing we want to try hard not to be is the villains.  And historically, too often that's exactly what we have been.  We've got to open our eyes to this and work on breaking the cycle.

The key with overseas charity is to stop talking and begin listening-- to stop trying to teach and open ourselves to learn.

Perceptions of Racism: Why We Need a Double Standard

This image has recently been displayed on Facebook, and I want to talk about it this week:

You can view a portion of the incident on CNN here. The Huffington Post also published an article detailing what had happened and some of the reactions to it:

As some people at the Missouri State Fair see it, the rodeo incident last weekend in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama and played with his lips as a bull charged after him was neither racist nor disrespectful. It was a joke, they said, overblown by a news media that’s hypersensitive to any possible slight against the nation’s first black president. 

The rodeo incident and the clown at the center of it have become the latest illustration of racial divisions that continue to surface nearly five years into Obama’s presidency. . . Democratic and Republican elected officials in Missouri quickly condemned the incident, saying it was offensive and inappropriate. . . .

But there has also been a backlash on the right, with conservative radio talk show hosts and writers dismissing the act as a joke no different from jabs aimed at other presidents. Moreover, they said, the president’s supporters ought to learn how to take a joke rather than seeing everything as racially motivated.

There is a long history of mocking politicians at rodeos, and clowns have donned masks of other presidents as part of their acts. But James Staab, a political science professor at the University of Central Missouri, said last week’s incident “goes beyond the pale — they’re talking about physical injury and racial stereotypes.” 

To be fair, there is naturally going to be a difference in the way a rodeo clown dressed as a Democratic President is treated by the conservative, rodeo-going crowd of Missouri, compared to the way they would treat a rodeo clown dressed as a Republican and fellow Southerner like George H. W. Bush.  It's not surprising that the crowd demonstrated more verbal animosity towards the Democrat, and race may or may not have been a factor in that.  But that's not really what the problem is with the Facebook meme.

I also don't think it's all that helpful to focus on whether the Obama clown depiction was "racially motivated," as the Huffington Post puts it.  It's difficult and often unproductive to try to determine what people's motives are in a situation like this.  But there is an issue.  And the issue, as far as I can see, is not so much about what motivated the incident, but about what actually happened.

You see, I'm not talking about racial motivations, but about racism.  I think these are actually two things that overlap, but are really not the same.

I do think the Obama mask is racist, even though there was a similar mask of Bush that obviously wasn't.  One reason I think so is the simple fact that the Obama mask overemphasizes certain stereotypical characteristics associated with black people, such as large white teeth, in a way that simply doesn't apply to the Bush mask.  Another reason is that depicting African-Americans as clownlike and stupid is a historical practice of the dominant white culture in the U.S., and as such, it isn't funny when we do it today.  Based on our history as a nation, there are ways you can lampoon a white man that you can't lampoon a black one-- because the scars are still there, and this sort of thing isn't going to help heal any of them.

But there's more to it even than that.  

I want to talk about institutional, systemic racism-- the kind that isn't about "motivation." The kind that people participate in without intention, and often without even consciousness of doing so.  The fact is, that it's quite possible-- even easy-- to participate in systemic, institutional racism without in the least intending to be racist.  All you have to do is go along with the status quo.

That's not to say that there is never any actual, deliberate, racially motivated animosity towards our current President.  I'm sure sometimes there is.  But when it comes to racism, it's quite possible to participate in it without deliberate racial motivation at all.

Back in 2009, blogger Rod at Political Jesus identified a particular characteristic of conservative evangelicalism, which he spoke of in terms of sexism, but which easily apply to racism as well.  He said that conservative evangelicalism has

a highly individualistic view of sin–an idea that individuals alone are judged according to their sins and actions. . . 

[Thus they] discredit any theological notion of corporate sin, and therefore discredit the claims of [persons experiencing systemic injustice] since institutional sin does not exist. If institutional sins such as institutional sexism does not exist, then [such] claims cannot be explained except for anything but a “conspiracy theory.”

But this is not about a secret plot that a few people claim exists.  This is about real events that happen, real ways that people get treated, which are not part of any conspiracy, but just a factor of our ongoing social structures. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as institutional, corporate sin, and systemic racism is one of them.  If sins were only individual, why would Jesus speak as He did in Matthew 11:20-24?

Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. . . And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

An article in Watchman Magazine Online by Marc Smith explains a little bit about what might have been the corporate sin of Capernaum:

Capernaum was located in a very advantageous place (Matthew 11:23, "And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven..." This reference the Lord makes might have had to do with the attitude of its inhabitants more than any other factor.) in that it was on a crossroads of primary importance, being along the Beth-shan, Damascus highway. The presence of Roman soldiers at Capernaum (Mark 8:5-13) illustrates the importance of Capernaum's location. (Emphasis in original)

If Capernaum as a city could have been considered guilty of corporate pride by Christ, how can we say there is no such thing as corporate sin?  As long as we look at sin as only an individual thing, we will probably fail to see that we may be participating in systemic societal sin, simply by remaining blind to it and thus just going along with the way things are.

So what does systemic racism look like?  How does it relate to the way the Obama mask is perceived, versus the way the Bush mask is perceived?

This article on white privilege details several differences between being a white person and a person of color in America.  I think one aspect in particular applies here:  that in ways a white person will never experience, a person of color is viewed less as an individual and more as a representative of his or her entire race.   Here are some examples from the article, detailing conditions which people of color cannot count on, but which white people often take for granted:

I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

White people in our culture (and particularly white men) are usually looked at as individuals.  White is normative; white is the default.  You don't get noticed for being white in our society.  You aren't considered primarily as a member of a group known as "whites."

What this means for the rodeo clown mask incident (as my husband so pithily pointed out the other evening), people in general aren't going to look at the Bush mask and say, "Oh, look at the funny white man."

But  that's not the case with the Obama mask.  When people look at the Obama mask, the tendency, learned from our culture and passed down generationally, is to see a mask of a black man first, and of a man named Barack Obama second.

What this means is that we can't put a rodeo clown in an Obama mask without its being seen as a mockery, not just of our President, but of the entire black race.  Even if we don't intend it to be seen that way.  Even if that's the last thing on our minds.

Is this fair?  No.  But it's the way things are.  So to get offended when people say, "That's racist!" is to continue to walk in the privilege of not having to notice that it's not the same to be black in our country as it is to be white. 

I think it's important as a white person not to take this too personally.  To have someone point out that something we're participating in is racist, isn't necessarily an indictment on our character.  Instead, we can see it humbly, as a time to learn to let go of privilege.  It's time to learn to see through the eyes of those our race has traditionally and repeatedly othered.  We need to understand why the Bush rodeo mask and the Obama rodeo mask really aren't the same thing-- and why it's not hypocrisy to say so.

As white people, we tend to want to ask, "Then is the only way to not be perceived as racist, to treat people of color with more consideration than we treat ourselves?

Well-- yes.

Because we can't clean up a mess by pretending it's not there.  We can't just say, "As long as I'm not making a new mess, it's ok."  We can't just say, "I wasn't the one who made that old mess, and it's not my fault or my responsibility."  That doesn't matter.  We inherited this mess of systemic racism that's been here all these years, and we have to roll up our sleeves and bend down to work on cleaning it up. To pretend it isn't there ends up just being a way to leave it in place.

And that means that, until black and brown people are really free from institutional and generational racism, there has to be a double standard.

It's the least we can do.  Isn't it?

Weeping with the Parents of Trayvon Martin

With so many people blogging and so many news articles about Trayvon Martin and the George Zimmerman trial, I've wondered what I could possibly add that hasn't already been said.  But I'm a mother of teenagers myself, and I know Trayvon Martin's parents are weeping.  I must weep with them.

And in solidarity with them, and with parents like them everywhere, I must stand up and respond to the voices who are saying "This wasn't about race."

Actually, it was.  It is.  I'm not going to weigh in on whether George Zimmerman should have been convicted or not; I have been a member of a jury before, I think the jury did the best they could to arrive at the best verdict they could come up with given the instructions they were given in the criminal trial process.  But to say this incident, as it arose, as it progressed and as it horrifically concluded, was not about race, is to speak from the luxury of not having to live as Trayvon Martin and his family have always lived: in a world where, like it or not, race is what it's about-- on a daily basis.

Blogger Caryn Riswold puts it like this in her article "I Am Not Trayvon Martin":

In the months leading up to the trial of George Zimmerman, #IAmTrayvonMartin became a popular hashtag, a way for people to show support, empathy, solidarity. I think it’s important for me and all white people who work for racial justice to say: I Am Not Trayvon Martin. Like [other middle-class white people] . . . I generally perceive law enforcement to exist in order to protect me. I will not be hunted down on the street because of the color of my skin. I will not be suspected of stealing the nice car I might be driving or trying to get into. I have never been followed in a store by a clerk who is afraid I might steal something.

Understanding this is a base level of awareness of white privilege, necessary in order to dismantle the system that declares open season on young black men.

As a white person, I need to step away from the luxury of not being required to think about this.  If I'm going to follow Jesus, I need to follow "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That means trying to see through their eyes.  It means trying to understand what my life would be like if I were them.

White privilege is "an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious . . . like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."  Certain realities that I take for granted in my life-- realities that make my world easier for me and my children to live in-- simply do not exist for the person of color who might be walking down the street next to me.

White privilege means my son, if he goes out to get a snack in the evening-- even if he's wearing a hoodie-- will not automatically look over his shoulder.  No one has ever told him-- or had to tell him--that his very presence might be perceived as a threat.  If a policeman or someone in a neighborhood watch stops him, he might be startled or even nervous-- but he has no ingrained expectation that the confrontor is already most likely set against him, or that harm to him might result.

So I'm trying to think what it might be like to be Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon's mom.  Could I even let my son have the freedom a teenage boy needs as part of growing up, to leave the house and hang out with his friends, if I knew what Sybrina knew?  If I knew that the assumptions people were most likely to make about my son were not that he is probably peaceful and law-abiding, but just the opposite?

If I knew that my son also knew this-- knew that the deck was stacked against him before he even walked out the door?

That he might become wary and defensive as a result?

That his very wariness and defensiveness were most likely to be interpreted as dangers?

Blogger Libby Anne has written a piece on George Zimmerman and Race in America, in which she pulls together the results of a group of studies that make it clear that Trayvon Martin was no isolated case.   That there is a "subconscious but measurable preference to give white men the benefit of the doubt in these ambiguous situations."  (Sociological Images: Who Would You Shoot?)

That "[w]e are already biased in favor of the white defendant and against the black victim." (Sociological Images: Stand Your Ground Increases Racial Bias)

That "[a] finding of “justifiable homicide” is much more common in the case of a white-on-black killing than any other kind including a white and a black person." (Ibid.)

And this is exacerbated by the recent Stand Your Ground Laws which were in effect in the Martin-Zimmeran interaction, in which "a misinterpretation of physical clues could result in the use of deadly force, exacerbating culture, class, and race differences" resulting in "a disproportionately negative effect on minorities, persons from lower socioeconomic status, and young adults/juveniles."

What would it be like for my family, to have this be our reality?  And how can we so confidently say, having never experienced this reality, that Travyon Martin's death was not about race? 

As MSNBC's Analysis states: 

Many legal analysts, convinced that the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove its case, had predicted the acquittal even before the trial began. Reasonable doubt, they said repeatedly. The state must persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

But reasonable doubt is an elastic standard, and it seems to work in favor of whites much more often than it does blacks. It is hard to imagine that a black “neighborhood watch volunteer” who pursued and killed a white kid under the same circumstances would have walked away a free man.

So I weep with Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton.  And I hope that somehow I can come alongside them to work for a different reality.  Because, like it or not, their reality is my reality. "No man is an island," John Donne famously said.  White privilege might give me many a free pass through situations that undermine my brothers and sisters of color, but those situations are part of the world I must live in, whether I blind myself to it or not.

An article in The Atlantic called "Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice" put it in a nutshell for me:

The injustice inherent in the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was not authored by a jury given a weak case. The jury's performance may be the least disturbing aspect of this entire affair. The injustice was authored by a country which has taken as its policy, for the lionshare of its history, to erect a pariah class. The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman is not an error in programming. It is the correct result of forces we set in motion years ago and have done very little to arrest. . . You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen.

This is the nature of American justice.  And it is deeply, fundamentally unjust. And because of it my son is safe, while Tracy and Sybrina's son is dead.

How can I keep from weeping? 

"In God We Trust," Prayer in Schools & Manger Scenes: Why We Shouldn't Fight for Them

According to many Christians in the United States today, such as Benjamin Hart, president of the Christian Defense Fund, there is "a relentless assault on America's religious institutions and traditions by our educational system, the courts and throughout our popular culture."  The authors of One Nation Under God: America's Christian Heritage state in their introduction:

"[O]ur schools have been wiped clean of Christian influence, [and] efforts are underway by anti-Christian legal groups to completely "sanitize" our nation of any Christian references by,

• Removing "In God We Trust" from our currency.
• Ending opening each session of Congress with prayer.
• Ending Christmas as a national holiday.
• And eliminating the rank of military chaplain from our armed services."

It is interesting that according to Charisma News, this perception among Christians is largely limited to evangelicals, with other groups tending to believe that Christianity is simply being asked to share the public square:

"The findings of a poll published Wednesday, reveal a 'double standard' among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture.

While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, 'they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,' said Kinnamon.

'They cannot have it both ways,' he said. 'This does not mean putting Judeo-Christian values aside, but it will require a renegotiation of those values in the public square as America increasingly becomes a multi-faith nation.'"

But there is another issue which neither of these positions really takes into account.  Are such things as public prayers, public display of nativity scenes, the posting of the Ten Commandments in our courthouses, and putting "In God We Trust" on our coins-- all these outward symbols of Christian religious faith-- really things that Christians should spend their time crusading for in the public arena?  Do they even represent the Christianity which is demonstrated and embodied by Jesus and taught by Paul, James and Peter?

Or are they part of something else?  Something called America's Civil Religion?

Here is a definition of the concept of "civil religion" from the above-linked article:

"[T]his concept made its major impact on the social scientific study of religion with the publication of an essay titled "Civil Religion in America," written by Robert Bellah in Daedalus in 1967. . . Bellah's article claimed that most Americans share common religious characteristics expressed through civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals that provide a religious dimension to the entirety of American life. . . . Bellah's definition of American civil religion is that it is "an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation," which he sees symbolically expressed in America's founding documents and presidential inaugural addresses.  It includes a belief in the existence of a transcendent being called "God," an idea that the American nation is subject to God's laws, and an assurance that God will guide and protect the United States. Bellah sees these beliefs in the values of liberty, justice, charity, and personal virtue and concretized in, for example, the words In God We Trust on both national emblems and on the currency used in daily economic transactions. Although American civil religion shares much with the religion of Judeo-Christian denominations, Bellah claims that it is distinct from denominational religion. . . [T]he civil religion thesis claims that civil religion exists symbolically in American culture. . . civil religion is a distinct cultural component within American society that is not captured either by American politics or by denominational religiosity."

The article also points out that "the case [has been] made that civil religion constitutes a set of platitudes that substitute for either serious religious or serious political action."

It seems to me that "In God We Trust" on our coins is just such a platitude.  And most of these other things that we think are so important, are really just outward symbols and practices traditionally associated with white Protestant Christianity, which comprise a civil religion--and civil religion is by nature and definition an outward, social thing.  America's civil religion is about the hold of these traditions on the public expression of faith in our nation.  What it isn't about is heart change within human beings-- or, as far as I can see, about following Jesus or seeking the kingdom of God at all.

This, of course, leads to the questions: What does it mean to follow Jesus? And what is the kingdom of God?  I would agree with those who would protest that the Christian religion is meant to be a thing lived in public, not just about personal piety, and not just about going to heaven when we die.  The kingdom of God is about how we live on earth.  But-- and this is a big "but" -- It's not a human kingdom.  When Jesus preached the kingdom, He was making a radical political statement in His day that God is king and not Caesar.  But He also made it clear (by refusing to let them crown Him king, among other things) that He had not come to simply replace one earthly kingdom with another.

N.T. Wright's book Simply Jesus puts it this way:

"Now there is a completely different way to live, a way of love and reconciliation and healing and hope.  It's a way nobody's ever tried before, a way that is as unthinkable to most human beings and societies as-- well, as resurrection itself.  Precisely.  That's the point.  Welcome to Jesus's new world. . . .

The resurrection of Jesus doesn't mean, 'It's all right.  We're going to heaven now.'  No, the life of heaven has been born on this earth. . .  God is now in charge, on earth as in heaven.  And God's 'being-in-charge' is focused on Jesus himself being king and Lord."

The kingdom of God is about God reigning on earth, in and through the Person of Jesus Christ.  But Christ doesn't reign the way human kings reign, or even the way democratically elected political leaders reign-- through making and enforcing laws.  Laws exist to control outward behavior.  But Jesus primarily taught about His kingdom in parables, so as to reach the hearts and not just the behavior of His hearers. The kingdom of God, Jesus said, was like "yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough." (Matt. 13:33).  It is like finding a pearl of great price hidden in a field, and selling everything you have to buy that field (Matt. 13:45).  The kingdom of God is a seemingly insignificant thing, like a mustard seed (Matt. 13:31), that grows up to become the source of strength and life and peace.  The kingdom is something that happens on the inside of human beings when they come into contact with God, which then begins to make a difference in the world outside.

Following Jesus, He told His followers, is about being servants, not rulers (Matt. 23:11).  It's about taking up a cross (Luke 9:23), about laying down your life-- not about acquiring power to make other people do things-- no matter how much we believe the things we would make them do would be good for them.

However, America's civil religion is not about crosses-- except to put on display on the tops of hills and bluffs, so that people end up arguing about whether they should be displayed there.  America's civil religion is about putting "In God We Trust" on our coins-- not about giving away our coins to others.  America's civil religion is about putting nativity scenes in our parks-- not about contemplating the Incarnation and letting it astonish us afresh every Christmas morning.  Ultimately, America's civil religion is an outward thing, not an inward thing.

Gregory A. Boyd, in his book The Myth of a Christian Nation, says:

"We end up wasting precious time and resources defending and tweaking the civil religion-- as though doing so had some kingdom value.  We strive to keep prayer in the schools, fight for the right to have public prayer before football games, lobby to preserve the phrases 'under God' in our Pledge of Allegiance and 'in God we trust' on our coins, battle to hold the traditional civil meaning of marriage, and things of the sort-- as though winning these fights somehow brings America closer to the kingdom of God. . .  Now, you may or may not agree that preserving the civil religion in this way is good for the culture. . . But can we really believe that tweaking civil religion in these ways actually brings people closer to the kingdom of God, that it helps them become more like Jesus?" 

Now, it may be as Boyd says, that preserving the civil religion does have some value to the culture.  But is it really under so much threat as the Christian Defense League and other such organizations believe?  Have our schools indeed been "wiped clean of Christian influence"?  Does America really forbid prayer in its public schools?

In fact, no.  Actually, the United States' federal laws are fairly nuanced and balanced, and are not designed to restrict the freedom of children -- or even teachers-- to pray while at school.  As AsktheJudge.info points out, the only thing United States' law restricts is the power of school boards, administrators and teachers to lead prayers, to write prayers for children to recite, or to compel them towards religious feelings through a moment of silence.  It is not prayer which is restricted; what is restricted is any sort of external compulsion to pray.   But external compulsion has never been what Christianity is about in the first place-- it is only part of the civil religion.  And to the best of my knowledge, civil policies that compel students to pray for a minute or so at the beginning of class, or at the opening of a sporting event or a graduation, may make us feel good about ourselves as a supposedly "Christian nation," but they do nothing to change hearts or advance the kingdom of God.

Greg Boyd again:

"For example, does anyone really think that allowing for a prayer before social functions is going to help students become kingdom people? . . . Might not such prayer-- and the political efforts to defend such prayer-- actually be harmful to the kingdom inasmuch as it reinforces the shallow civil religious mindset that sees prayer primarily as a perfunctory religious activity? Might it not be better to teach our kids that true kingdom prayer has nothing to do with perfunctory social functions, that true kingdom prayer cannot be demanded or retracted by social laws and that their job as kingdom warriors is to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17) whether the law allows for it to be publicly expressed or not?

In other words, rather than spending time and energy defending and tweaking the civil religion, might it not be in the best interests of the kingdom of of God to distance ourselves from the civil religion?" [Ibid., emphasis in original.]

So if we as Christians want our children to be free to pray Christian prayers in school, is it such a high price to pay to agree that they should pray on their own time, before classes or at lunch or recess, so that kids of other religions aren't forced to pray our prayers-- just as we don't want our kids to be forced to pray Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim prayers?  Is a public prayer by a teacher really so essential to our kids' faith?  Or could it actually be detrimental, as Boyd says?  Isn't private, heartfelt prayer on the playground better than external, get-it-over-with prayer in the classroom?

It seems to me that the Christian-like trappings of America's civil religion are really only symbols of the privileged place that has traditionally been held by white Protestants in our culture.  Changes in the hold that these traditions have on our culture are not signs that America is falling away from God, but only that it is becoming more inclusive of all expressions of religion and non-religion, in an increasingly diverse society.  And if we're going to promote real religious liberty, we're going to continue to attract more and more diverse sorts of people to come to our nation to live, work and worship.  Is religious freedom worth it?  I think it is.

So.  My fellow Christians, how do we best follow Jesus?  Should we defend human traditions as if they were the commands of God (Matt. 15:9)?

Holding onto privilege is sort of the opposite of laying down our lives or taking up our crosses, isn't it?  So why are we so anxious to keep and defend outward symbols and practices that ultimately have no eternal value?

I say let's seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, as Christ taught (Matt. 6:33).  I say it's better to allow diversity free expression within American culture, and to work for God's kingdom than to fight to keep our own.

No matter how "Christian" our civil-religious kingdom looks on the outside. 

Abraham, Revisionism and "Privilege Distress"

I've been reading an amazing book:  Abraham by Bruce Feiler.  As the book jacket describes it, "Abraham stands as the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims. . . Bruce Feiler set out on a personal quest to better understand our common patriarch."  The book explores how each of these three related world faiths views its father Abraham-- where they are similar, where different, what parts of his life they stress, and why.  Feiler is Jewish, but he treats each of the three faiths with fairness and insight, uncovering commonalities and revealing along the way the shared humanity of three kinds of believers in one God.

The biggest eyeopener in this book, for me, was a trend Feiler uncovered in each of the three faiths: Abraham lived prior to Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but each group, at certain points in history, has done what it could to claim him for its own, to the exclusion of the other two.  Jewish interpreters  painted him as knowing and observing Torah long before it was even written.  Muslim interpreters claimed that Ishmael was actually the favored son and Isaac a mere interloper.  Christian interpreters claimed that Abraham knew by special revelation the gospel of Christ.  As Feiler puts it:

Abraham has been transformed so wildly by his own self-proclaimed descendants that he bears little resemblance to the portrait now left to fade in the Bible.  The biblical story itself. . . manages to convey a more general message of God's grace than. . . the portraits Abraham's supposed spiritual inheritors were busily creating. p. 154-155.

Revisionism. We humans are prone to it.  We look at history, a piece of writing or a set of facts, and we ignore what we don't want to see and overemphasize what we do want to see, in order to make our viewpoint stronger and opposing ones weaker.  Bruce Feiler interviewed Rev. Petra Heldt, head of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Jerusalem, and came to this understanding:

"If you look at history," she told me, "each religion, at different times, for different reasons, tried to establish itself as the dominant religion.  Claiming Abraham for yourself is just one way to establish your authority." This power grab usually occurs at historical turning points, she noted.  For Jews it was after the Second Temple was destroyed and they had to buttress their sagging identity.  For Christians it was after the fall of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, when they lost their political protection.  "It's a psychological need triggered by political circumstances.  You use your culture to establish your triumphalism because your political power may be waning.  You want to show that you've always been there.  Abraham is a great way to prove that." p. 156.

This idea rang a bell.  I immediately thought of a similar pattern that's occurring here in the United States today:  the insistence by the Christian Right that America was founded as a Christian nation. The Shades of Grace website has good examples of this argument, providing selected quotes from the Founding Fathers intended to prove that the United States has belonged to Christians and Christianity from its inception.  But a quote such as this one from John Adams:

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

-- should be balanced by what he wrote in the Treaty of Tripoli when he was President:

As the government of the United States of America is not on any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of of Musselmen (Muslims), - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

(quoted on Democratic Underground.com)

It seems to me, when these two quotes are taken together (along with many others), that many of the Founding Fathers believed Christian principles lay behind the founding of the United States, but they did not consider the Christian religion to be America's national religion.  In fact, there has always been a tension in my country of birth between its ideal of providing a haven to people of all faiths, and its historical tendency to privilege Christianity (this due largely, I think, to the dominance of European whites in its leadership from its inception).  As David Lose put it in The Huffington Post:

[T]he United States has always been home to a multitude of faith traditions and, indeed, was imagined from the beginning to be a religious haven. . . [But] those who support the notion of a "Christian America" can convincingly argue that the de facto stance of this country has been to privilege the belief of, if not simply Christianity, at least what's often called "the Judeo-Christian tradition" because of its central place in this nation's evolution.

In fact, the more pluralistic the United States now becomes, and the more it gives a voice and a place to religious and non-religious minorities, the louder the voices seem to grow that want to make it clear that Christianity is the dominant religion in America-- the one that has "always been there," just as Feiler's book describes in the Middle East's struggles over ownership of Abraham.  "This is a Christian nation" is a way of saying, "We Christians are America; it has always belonged to us, and we can take it back."

What is the proper response to this?  Do we mock and ridicule those who want to shore up their power and influence in this way?  Does an us-against-them mentality (even in response to that mentality in others) do any good? Is just saying "they're wrong"-- even if they factually are-- helping the situation?  Bruce Feiler, exploring the roots of Abraham in the turbulent Middle East, sees another way.

I needed to believe that loving God, that being prepared to sacrifice for that belief, and that [also] believing in peace had not somehow become incomprehensible. . . We can, like Abraham, leave behind our native places-- our comfortable, even doctrinaire traditions-- and set out for an unknown location, whose dimensions may be known only to God but whose mandate is to be a place where God's blessing is promised to all. p. 215-216.  Emphasis added.

I was very interested to read this article on the "Weekly Sift" blog called The Distress of the Privileged.  It largely echoes the historical principle Rev. Heldt found in the conflict over Abraham: when a group's political power is waning-- even if as a result of a call to fairness in sharing power with other groups-- the group experiences that as a painful loss which it must try to remedy.  Ignoring the pain of others-- even of the privileged-- is unfair in itself, and counterproductive:

As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

If you are one of the newly-visible others, this all sounds whiny compared to the problems you face every day. It’s tempting to blast through such privileged resistance with anger and insult.

Tempting, but also, I think, a mistake. The privileged are still privileged enough to foment a counter-revolution, if their frustrated sense of entitlement hardens...

Confronting this distress is tricky, because neither acceptance nor rejection is quite right. The distress is usually very real, so rejecting it outright just marks you as closed-minded and unsympathetic. It never works to ask others for empathy without offering it back to them.

Doug Muder, the blog author, offers a different alternative to the scorn and contempt which is the most common response to the Christian Right by those it is challenging.  He says:

Ultimately, the privileged need to be won over. Their sense of justice needs to be engaged rather than beaten down. The ones who still want to be good people need to be offered hope that such an outcome is possible in this new world.

I used to be part of the Christian Right.  Many of my friends and fellow-church members still are.  And they are good people who believe in love-your-neighbor, and who do have valid things to say to and about the American political process. I don't think the answer is to shame them or treat them as the enemy, which they certainly are not.  These are people who help me when I'm in distress, who hug me when we meet, who laugh and cry and pray with me.  The answer is to do unto them as I would want done unto me-- to listen, to hear their real distress, and then to appeal to their sense of justice and their principles of Christian love.  It is possible, as Muder points out, for a privileged person like me to do this (I know, because I've been trying to do it):

[S]he could learn to be a good guy by the lights of this new society. It would be hard. [S]he’d have to give up some of [her] privileges. [S]he’d have to examine [her] habits to see which ones embody assumptions of supremacy. [S]he’d have to learn how to see the world through the eyes of others, rather than just assume that they will play their designated social roles.

Bruce Feiler ends his study of Abraham this way:

At the start of the twenty-first century, the idea that one religion was going to extinguish the others was deader than it had been in two thousand years-- and possibly ever. . . A new type of religious interaction was needed, involving not just swords, plowshares and the idea of triumph but conversation, interaction, and the idea of pluralism. . . Fourteen hundred years after the rise of Muhammad, two thousand years after the ascent of Christianity, twenty-five hundred years after the original of Judaism, and four thousand years after the birth of Abraham, the three monotheistic religions were inching towards a posture of open-- and equal-- deliberation.  This state of affairs set up a new question for the faiths to ponder: Can the children of Abraham actually coexist? p. 196, emphasis in original.

Feiler goes on to paint the last picture in the Bible from Abraham's life:

Finally, in Genesis 25, verse 7, Abraham dies . . . At Abraham's burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier.  The text reports their union without comment.  "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah. . . in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites."  

But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished.  Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims.  They are brothers.  

The fact is that we're all human, and all prone to the weaknesses of humanity.  If some of us revise history in an attempt to strengthen our challenged assumption that our rightful place is in the center of power, this isn't anything that the rest of us aren't capable of doing, or have never done.  Jesus talked about forgiveness, about not judging one another. He talked about doing to others what we would want done to ourselves.  He talked about giving being greater than receiving.  

He talked about seeing one another as brothers and sisters, and that what we do to "the least of these" is what we do to Him. 

I think in the long run, these things will be the answer.