No Longer Color Blind

Maybe you’ve heard the song, “Color Blind,” by Michael W. Smith. Some of the lyrics are these:

There’s not a world of difference
Out in the world tonight
Between this world of people
Red, Yellow, Black and White
But instead of riding a rainbow of love
We still are fighting with prejudice gloves
Of anger
With something to claim
But nothing to gain so

(CHORUS)
Why can’t we be color blind
You know we should
Be living together
And we’d find a reason and rhyme
I know we would
’Cause we could see better
If we could be color blind
It’d be so fine
To be color blind
To open our eyes
And see color blind

“Why can’t we just be color blind?” This was my attitude towards race for a long time. I came to the States from Taiwan when I was twelve. As someone entering from a different culture, I had a lot to learn, and I worked really hard to fit in. Besides, I was in middle school and soon to be in high school, a time when everyone wants to fit in. I resisted being told I was different—why would I want to be different from everyone else around me? I convinced myself that I was just like everyone else.

When I was a freshman at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland), I started attending an inner city church called Faith Christian Fellowship. I met all kinds of people there. In the I-V chapter on campus, I heard a lot about the importance of racial reconciliation, but I admit that it really didn’t click for a long time. Sure, I knew that there were racial tensions in inner city neighborhoods, but that didn’t have anything to do with me, did it? I’m not racist; I have friends of all colors, and we all get along just great.

Or so I thought.

During my four years at Hopkins, however, God taught me the hard way that I really wasn’t just like everyone else. I found myself running into a lot of misunderstandings with close friends and roommates of different cultural backgrounds, and sometimes it got ugly. I didn’t know it then, but over time God showed me that a lot of these conflicts came because we had been raised in different cultures. Although we have much in common, as the Michael W. Smith song says in another verse, “’Cause he has a heart/ Like you have a heart ,” our cultural heritages are deeply ingrained in us and define much of who we are. It showed in the way my roommates and I interacted with each other, the way we thought about things and the way we made decisions. This was something I’d never recognized before. As I talked to God about the ways my friends had hurt me unintentionally, I realized that although we looked racially reconciled on the surface (we would have made a great promo photo for the school’s diversity), we weren’t truly reconciled. We never talked openly and honestly about issues of race. Truthfully, I knew very little about the cultures of my friends beyond what they were called and maybe a bit about their food. Essentially, I really didn’t know my friends as whole people. Similarly, my friends only saw the “American” side of this Chinese-American girl named Rachel.

Being color blind is a well-meant attempt to address racism and prevent the wrongs committed in the past from being repeated. But it also denies people who they are and the reality that people with different cultural backgrounds often have very different experiences in life. It also excuses us from really getting to know each other as whole persons when we say, “Race doesn’t really matter; I’m color blind! I see everyone as the same.” The same as who?

As Americans, we value political correctness, but as Christians we often forget that God values culture. The Word of God was spoken through people set in specific places, cultures and periods of time. Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh in a specific culture, specific religious history, specific time and space. There is no such thing as an acultural gospel. Racial reconciliation is much more than just a call to get over our differences. It’s much more than a call to be color blind. It’s also about God redeeming culture and celebrating the way he has made us.

The God of Diversity
In the beginning God brought incredible, amazing diversity into a world that was bleak and formless, and God saw it was very good. Revelation 5:9 tells us that with his blood, Jesus purchased people for God from every tribe, language, people and nation. Revelation 7 paints an incredible picture of a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language in the world’s biggest worship service. It’s not a big, gray, faceless mob—each group is there—Black and White, North Koreans and South Koreans, Japanese and Chinese, Indians and Pakistani, Jews and Arabs, Hispanic and Native American. Picture it! It’s amazing—all those people are waving palm branches and crying out “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

When the kingdom of God is established, we will continue to enjoy diversity of language and ethnicity. The people of God come into the kingdom as one Bride, but they will also come as nations with their respective ethnic identities. By choosing words which identify distinct groups of people (languages, tribes, peoples) to describe the worshiping whole, John emphasizes that cultural distinctiveness exists even in the fully realized Kingdom. Do you realize that your ethnicity is God’s gift to you for eternity? That means in heaven I’m going to be Chinese-American, Dominica will be African-American and Steve will be European-American. God obviously thinks very highly of the diversity in his people to make it even more lasting than the institution of marriage!

Not only people, but cultures—the splendor, glory and honor of the nations—will be brought into the Kingdom’s holy city, the New Jerusalem, according to Revelation 21. Each culture will contribute to the richness and beauty of the Kingdom and bring worship to God. Race will no longer be a cause of division or shame, because the Lord will bring full redemption. “Nothing unclean will enter it” (Revelation 21:27); instead, the worship we bring to God is made even more glorious because of the diversity of worshipers bringing their very best gifts to Jesus, the bridegroom.

I have been learning what it means to bring to God my gifts of culture and language as an Asian- American woman, specifically Chinese-American. God has created us to be rich people; we need to recognize that God does not create junk. Each culture has its own riches, and its own sins as well. Just as individuals are affected by sin entering the world, so are our cultures, and therefore each culture falls short of God’s glory in its own ways. We all bring cultural brokenness to God’s family dinner table, just as we all bring gifts from our cultures. For example, an Asian American may come to God the Father and think that the only way to please him is by working harder, because many of us have grown up hearing, “Work harder! Your cousin Susan is getting straight As; why aren’t you?” On the other hand, we also tend to have a high value for community, something that is very much on God’s heart. The redemption of culture is what God desires. Only through Jesus can we experience real healing and then be able to celebrate who God has made each of us to be.

So where does this leave us? You might be thinking, “All this sounds nice, but what do I do with it?” I said in the beginning I had friends of all colors, but we never talked about race. The first, biggest and hardest step in the journey of reconciliation is to talk to each other. Have intentional conversations about the culture that is a part of you. Listen to each other and ask honest questions. Provide a safe place for discussion, both physically and emotionally.

This isn’t easy. All of us come to the conversation from different places. Perhaps you’ve never really thought about race very much. Perhaps you are saying, like I did, “I have friends of all colors; I don’t need to talk about race. It’s not really an issue for me.” Or maybe you’re thinking, “Why do we need to talk about race? Can’t we just put the past behind us?” Or perhaps this is something you’ve been forced to think about all your life, and you’ve seen too many injustices that haven’t been made right. Racial issues involve painful realities for you, and the wounds aren’t healed.

It’s risky when you talk honestly. You may get hurt, you may get angry, or maybe you’ll say something that will hurt one of your friends. That’s been true of my own experience as one of the few minority InterVarsity staff in our area and region. As I talk with other people about matters of race, there have been times when people don’t understand where I’m coming from, and sometimes it’s easier just not to talk about it. But as my friends and I have kept wrestling with these issues and asking questions, I’ve learned more about myself and my friends have learned more about me—and we’ve all learned a lot about God’s grace as he brings healing to places of brokenness. I still have questions, and I’ve only begun the journey. For one thing, there is still much I don’t know about my friends. (Just because I’m a minority doesn’t mean I understand the experiences of my Black and Latino brothers and sisters.) For another, while I know that division breaks the heart of God and I am called to the ministry of racial reconciliation, how do I fit into the picture as an Asian-American woman in what is often seen as a Black and White issue? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I do know that God is committed to his people becoming one and he will teach us and speak to us by his Holy Spirit and through each other.

When we begin to talk, we need to be ready to listen to our friends’ perspectives. Inevitably, when something they say doesn’t jive with our own experiences, we must recognize that our experience is one of many and that we tend to think our own experience is “normal” or that it reflects reality better (this is what Cornel West calls the “normative gaze”). We can ask clarifying questions, and be willing to try to understand their perspectives and experiences without squeezing it into our present understanding. We can treat their experiences as valid even if they do not currently match our understanding. Most importantly, we must give room for their experiences to reshape our understanding. This is a complex issue and there is often more than one right answer; we need to learn to be more comfortable with complexity and live with necessary ideological and experiential tensions. When we disagree, let’s assume that the other person(s) have rational and intelligent reasons for differing positions and feelings. Let’s wait to react until we’ve taken time to hear them out.

More than talk
Even talking isn’t enough. If you’ve never really experienced the vulnerability of being a minority, I strongly encourage you to step out and try to put yourself in that place—and I don’t mean missions trips. As long as we think we are in charge or that we are the primary ones with something to offer rather than being the learner, we will never share or understand the experience of our brothers and sisters. Talk with your friends who have had the minority experience and ask them how you can enter their world more fully or “go on their turf.” There will be no reconciliation if only they, and not you, are ever expected to cross cultural lines.

We also must be willing to include in these conversations and experiences issues of justice. Systemic justice (meaning that everyone has adequate provisions and dignified opportunities) and reconciliation go hand-in-hand, whether in biblical times or today. “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:16) Reconciliation without recognizing and taking into account the issues of justice is patronizing and invalidates de facto the very real experiences of people who have suffered injustice.

Sometimes I have asked myself, “Is it really worth it?” It all seems like so much work and pain. As a campus staff worker with InterVarsity, I experienced the frustration of “starting from scratch” with each new class of freshmen in these issues. Yet after experiencing the power and mercy of God tangibly through many of these deep cross-cultural conversations and relationships, I am more convinced than ever that I don’t want anyone to miss out on this amazing adventure. Think of all the new ways we will discover to understand and engage with God and gain his perspective when we make room for ourselves and others to be wholly who God made us to be. Enjoy the journey!

Rachel Lei was on staff for three years at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Currently she is a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Rachel credits senior Asian-American staff and others for her understanding of the worshiping community in Revelation 5-7.