Learning, Thinking, and Praying

Last time I wrote, I talked about how I've sensed God saying, "Let's work on you" in response to the conversation about race happening in our country. In the month since I wrote that, I have certainly seen Him work in me. And, wow, am I praying. I'm praying as I sit down to write this. God, please help me communicate what you want me to say, and let me write from a place of humility.

In the past month, I have read articles, watched movies, documentaries, and YouTube videos, listened to podcasts, and read White Fragility. Because God had still more to teach me, I ended up spontaneously housing a 17-year-old Black girl for the night and getting a peek into her world and then seeing my daughter's mostly Black basketball team called "dirty" by a group of white moms. My learning moved outside of just the academic/intellectual realm and into the practical. God is answering my prayers to open my eyes to new things.

So what have I learned so far?

For starters, a lot about Critical Race Theory, and its parent, Critical Theory. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, as they were to me, I encourage you to study up. CRT is the foundation of much of the response we're hearing today. It's the perspective from which White Fragility and many of today's "must-read" books come from. It provides a ready answer to the heartbreak we feel when we watch the George Floyd video and the yearning Christians have to seek after justice as the Bible commands. It's giving us terms like "whiteness" and "intersectionality" and "privilege" and "antiracism" and "fragility." It is the tidal wave sweeping over our country right now, and it's making us think.

Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, is one of the key spokespersons of CRT. As a white woman, she does a very skillful job speaking to other white people. She knows what she's saying is hard. She doesn't hold back, but she presents her message in a way that shows she knows how hard it is to accept what she's saying. After all, that's what white fragility is--the discomfort whites feel when confronted about racial inequality and injustice. In a mostly tolerable way, she points out that whites are all racist, every single one of us, because we were born into and benefit from a racist system that keeps white people on top and pushes Black people down. She strategically separates morality from racism. In other words, you can be a good person and still be a racist. The CRT definition of racist is different from anything I've heard before. It's not a white person making mean jokes at a Black person's expense or using the "n" word or refusing to use the same bathroom as a Black person. It's everyone who's white, everyone who benefits from the structures that keep whites on the top and Blacks on the bottom, whether they know they're benefitting or not. A white person married to a Black spouse raising Black children is still a racist. The white people protesting as part of Black Lives Matter are racist. DiAngelo argues that it's not a moral term, but simply a reflection of reality.

Her book, filled with stories and examples, brought me new insight. It made me think. It, along with several of the other things I've read and watched, helped me see how my perspective of the world has been narrow. I've seen how I've made quick judgments about people my whole life, how I've believed stereotypes and responded accordingly. One of the most insightful things I heard came from Emmanual Acho in one of his Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man videos. In trying to explain white privilege to whites, he said it's not that we haven't had hardship in our lives; it's that our hardships have not come as a result of our skin color.

So what I'm reading and hearing has made a lot of sense. I have spent good time talking to God about my own biases and repenting of my partiality and prejudice, apathy and ignorance. But something in all this CRT messaging just feels off. It's uncomfortable, yes, but it's more than that. So I kept pressing in and asking God to give me discernment. That's when I discovered Monique Duson and Dr. Neil Shenvi, who brought clarity by holding up CRT to the light of Scripture. At its core, CRT is a worldview. Worldviews answer essential questions like these:

Why are we here and what is our purpose?
What does it mean to be human?
What is our Big Problem?
What is the solution?

My worldview is a biblical one. We are here because we were created by a loving God who wants relationship with us. Our purpose is to know Him, be in relationship with Him, and help others do the same. To be human is to be made in the image of God and deeply loved by Him, so much so that He sent His Son to die for us. To be human is to find our identity in Him. Our Big Problem is sin, and the only solution is Jesus.

I am definitely not an expert on CRT, but my understanding is that it would answer those essential questions this way: To be human is to be made up of several different identities, consisting of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical ability, in addition to other things. What you identify with is what you are. Our Big Problem is oppression. We are all either oppressors or the oppressed. We can be both at the same time. For instance, a white man is an oppressor, but if he is gay or in a wheelchair, he is at the same time oppressed (this is what intersectionality means). At the core of this oppression is whiteness. All whites are oppressors; all people of color are oppressed. Racism equals prejudice plus power, so only whites can be racist. The solution is for whites to sanctify themselves by repenting, becoming woke by educating themselves of the problem, divesting themselves of their whiteness, and repenting of the sin of whiteness. That is our purpose.

CRT is a works-based solution. It has no consideration for grace or the power and necessity of the Holy Spirit. It brings us to repentance before human beings, not before God, when both are necessary and the latter is essential to the former. It does not recognize that partiality is a sin shared by everyone. It forces sides, saying, "There is one way for this to look, and if you're not doing it the right way, you will be silenced and disgraced." Critical Race Theory divides: oppressed against oppressor, us versus them. The Bible unites: "He himself [Jesus] is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14).

I'm not ready to say CRT is evil or completely without merit, though I might get there with more study. But at the very least, a viewpoint that allows no room for white-initiated dialogue between races and forbids tears of repentance (there's actually a chapter in DiAngelo's book called "White Women's Tears") is missing the mark. But its proponents have brought a very important issue to the forefront of our national conscience.

It's bringing racial injustice to the forefront of the church, where it needs to be. Malachi Vincent (see resources below) says that before we can talk about unity in the church, and before we can talk about the world being transformed by the unity of the church, we have to talk about sins that the church needs to repent of. We in the church need to care about this as much as God does. And we need leaders who know they are accountable to God and to Scripture and who recognize that if they're not abiding in Christ, they are capable of nothing. More than anything else, we need leaders with deep humility who will call the rest of the church to humble ourselves and seek racial justice from the God who invented justice. Otherwise, as Monique Duson says, we're going to look to the culture and get swept up in its misguided attempts at reconciliation.

Do we in the church have learning to do? Yes. Repenting? Being agents of change? YES. But let's do it with a biblical worldview. "We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12, NLT). Help us, Jesus, the one who reconciled us to God the Father and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Resources

5 Ways Christians Are Getting Swept Into a Secular Worldview in This Cultural Moment

Alisa Childers interview with Monique Duson

What Do We Do with Critical Theory? from the Colson Center for Worldview

A Conversation About Race and Reconciliation with Francis Chan (three-part series, but I particularly learned from the first of the three videos and from Malachi Vincent, who starts at 7:00 in)