My Humiliating Gaffe

When I was 23, I sat in a round table discussion on the topic of the conservative tea party events, one of which had taken place in Fort Collins, Colorado where we were living that summer. The facilitator asked us to share our thoughts about why there were so few African Americans attending the tea parties. Some people shared their thoughts and then I dropped this bomb:

“Most of them couldn’t afford to attend.” 

I heard moans and groans from peers around me. These groans confronted my prejudice far more powerfully than words could have at that moment. On impact, I awoke to the reality that I held a stereotype about people of color that I had no idea was embedded inside of me. I was overcome with conviction and embarrassment about a belief I held to be true based on several factors from my childhood. One was an essential doctrine of my childhood religion, and the other was situational. Both of these laid the foundation for diminishing the image of God in people of color. My prejudices created an imbalance of power, upsetting God’s design that all of His image-bearers would flourish by living in forcefully good relationship.

I sat at that round table wishing I could disappear. However, that moment of humiliating exposure seemed to crack open my diminishing beliefs on impact. The African American man facilitating our discussion respectfully invited me to consider a new narrative about people of color. That inciting incident brought about a deep brokenness in me and a desire to see people through God’s eyes rather than through my humanly constructed lenses. 

CHOOSING DISRUPTION

That journey has led me to read books and listen to teaching from people who hold different beliefs and convictions than my own. Sometimes, I feel myself needing to gear up to be challenged both in my theology and perspective as I take the plunge into another perspective. But, it’s important that I continue to expose myself to people who think differently than me,  for it softens my edges, reveals lenses which need replacing with the lens of God, and exposes my assumptions. A mentor exhorted me many years ago to stay in there until my judgment turns to compassion.

And what I’ve discovered is that it requires distance from people to remain in judgment. 

As our nation seems more polarized than ever, I am sometimes shocked by the name calling I hear from people on all sides of the fence. There is an undercurrent of contempt which seems to fuel people in every party. In the fight for social justice, people are powering up. When the government is made to be God, there is no hope of God’s very goodness—where people are living in right relationship without imbalances of power—pervading our relationships or social structures. At the same time, I see an invitation to Christ followers amidst the good/bad splitting of this time. This is an opportunity to live into our convictions in the manner of our King,

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his 

own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing 

by taking the very nature of a servant, 

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross! -Philippians 2:5-8

I see my act of publicly shoving my foot in my mouth during that round table discussion as I launched into my adult life as God’s severe mercy upon me. It awakened me to the priceless value of people and initiated a journey to value the Imago Dei which all people possess.

A SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Take time to evaluate the lens through which you’re seeing others. Have your lenses tainted your ability to see the image bearer in another? If so, you might experiment with replacing cursing with a blessing upon those you’re inclined to judge.