This article was originally published at Mbird.com and has been republished here with permission.
The question is not whether race matters to God, but how it matters.
I grew up in northern Minnesota, where my Korean-American family definitely stood out in the land of blond-haired and blue-eyed Scandinavians. As a result, I developed an overriding concern to fit in, to be like everyone else. Not surprisingly, I was less than successful, as illustrated in one particular event from my childhood.
I was in second grade, and had just gotten a call from my school that the test results indicated I needed glasses. That was a time when glasses were not cool, and simply wearing them sentenced you to the farthest corner of the cafeteria with the other losers. For many kids of my era, this would be a moment of distress, weeping, and gnashing of teeth for being officially consigned to “four-eyes” status.
My reaction, though, was the opposite. I was ecstatic. I started dancing around the house, barely able to contain my excitement (and for those who know me and my generally reserved nature, the thought of my dancing in excitement is likely unbelievable enough on its own). The reason I was so happy was because in my eight-year-old mind I thought, Now I will be able to hide my eyes! People won’t be able to see that I have these small, slanty eyes, and they will stop making fun of me.
Needless to say, I was proven wrong. I was stuck with both my eyes and my glasses. I can’t remember most of the incidents that prompted my misplaced victory dance, but I do recall thinking that my day of salvation had arrived because now I would be able to be like everyone else. My hopes were soon dashed, but throughout my childhood, I never stopped wishing that things would change, and I never stopped trying to fit in.
I’ve heard people say that because we are all one in Christ now, race shouldn’t matter. I disagree. Race does matter. It impacts how the world responds to me and therefore how I see the world. Moreover, it is very much a part of who I am because it is how God made me. We may all share the same Spirit, but in the body of Christ we are very different. Scripture is full of references that talk about how God knows us individually. I was known by God even before I was born (Jer 1:5), as he is the one who secretly knit me together in my mother’s womb (Ps 139:15-16) and has even the hairs of my head numbered (Mt 10:30; Lk 12:7).
Racial distinctions are a relevant topic in the New Testament. While the apostle Paul declares the Jews and Gentiles as “one” in Christ (e.g., 1 Cor 12:12-13; Gal 3:28; etc.), he also affirms the ethnic identity of Jews and gentiles. For example, at the Jerusalem Council he tells the Jews that the gentiles do not have to adhere to Jewish tradition to follow Christ (Acts 15). In Romans 14 he chastises the gentile believers for looking down on the Jewish believers who want to continue adhering to food laws. Natural enemies with a long history of hostility toward each other, they were now called to be in community together, with Christ as their “peace” (Eph 2:14).
But while race matters, my individual identity is not the sum total of who I am, for I am very much a member of a larger community with its own corporate identity. I belong to my natural family, the family of God, my country, and so on.
The truth is that we don’t need to choose between our individual identity and being part of a greater community. Nor is one aspect necessarily more important than the other. Instead, I can ponder the mysterious way God made me both a unique self and a self in community. Carl Trueman says this is the “quintessential problem of identity in the modern era,” that is, “how can I simultaneously be myself and belong to a larger social group?”1
Today we are preoccupied with the question, Does race matter? The better question may instead be, How does race matter? Does God have a purpose in race and ethnicity, and could that purpose even be a key to what unity in Christ is all about? I doubt these questions have easy answers — there rarely are easy answers for these kinds of things. However, I suspect the solution lies somewhere in understanding what it means for a person to be created and loved by God. I am important to God individually in all the ways he has made me. At the same time, I am a part of various communities. I am a member of the human race and also the family of God. Because of this, we are all called to live together and love one another.
Grace and Our Imperfections
There is great comfort in realizing that God knows us fully (1 Cor 13:12; 8:3). He accepts us because he is the one who made us the way we are. But the flip side of this marvelous truth is that humans cannot know each other fully. We are the created, not the Creator. We do not have God’s knowledge, and we certainly do not have God’s patience and mercy.
This is where misunderstandings arise, among other things. We stereotype. We project. We misjudge people. We assume ill motives. We fail to see each other’s humanity. We become ever more separated from one another, in big ways and small.
I spent five years in northern Indiana attending graduate school. One day my mother and I were out shopping in Amish territory. A popular attraction for tourists who visit the area is purchasing Amish quilts, and we wandered into a store where the person was selling some high-end quilts. If that sounds like an oxymoron for something associated with downhome simplicity, it did to us as well. These beautiful and intricately patterned quilts were not the kind you put on your guest room bed. They were typically intended for wall display, and the prices ran into the thousands of dollars, even thirty years ago.
The owner seemed particularly interested in us. As soon as he saw us enter the store, he abandoned the people he had been talking with and made a beeline straight for us. With great detail and enthusiasm, he described how special the quilts were. I was imagining an Amish sweatshop with rows of women in plain dresses and bonnets toiling away so he could make his big bucks. I noticed that even as new people came into the shop, he ignored them, continuing his energetic presentation to my mother and me. We finally got him to leave us alone by telling him we’d like to look over the store on our own, and my mother asked me why he had paid so much attention to us. Guessing, I told her he probably thought we were rich Japanese tourists willing to pay an exorbitant sum for a designer Amish quilt. I was correct. As we were leaving, he once again abruptly broke off from talking to another customer to give us an exuberant overhead wave from across the store, loudly shouting, “Sayonara!”
We dislike stereotyping, when someone assigns characteristics to another person just because they are members of a certain group. We know it can be harmful and hurtful. But I am also hesitant to reflexively judge people for it because the reality is that I do my own stereotyping. In fact, we all do it.
A couple years ago, my stepdaughter and son-in-law moved to Nashville. As soon as they settled into their new city, they began dropping subtle hints.
“Wouldn’t you like to be close to your grandchildren? You could come over all the time!” “The house next door might be for sale. You should buy it!”
Being fairly astute people (this is what higher education does for you), my husband and I realized they wanted us to move to Nashville. While it was a very attractive idea for us to be closer to them, one of my first thoughts was also, “But you live in the South.” Thinking about moving to Tennessee gave me visions of people staring at me and calling me a “chink” everywhere I went. I felt a nervousness and dread that I hadn’t experienced since childhood. But we took the plunge and made the move, and so far, things have been … well, just fine. I had to adjust my own preconceived ideas about people in the South. Some expectations have proved fairly accurate, such as our neighbor who invited my husband over for some homemade banana moonshine (the banana part not withstanding). But I haven’t encountered stares or comments and have rather enjoyed how friendly people have been.
It was easy for me to stereotype an entire region as backward, ignorant, and racist. But living here and meeting real people has proven me wrong, at least in the area we are living now. And if I look over my life, I can find countless times when I have made assumptions about people with varying levels of accuracy. I was quick to assess that store owner in Indiana as a “non-Amish” person taking advantage of the hard-working Amish quilters — even though I knew nothing about him personally.
To be fair, I have to be willing to give grace to others when I am stereotyped or judged incorrectly because I do it too. In fact, Paul implies this need to be careful of our personal posture toward others in Romans 2:1. While he may not have stereotyping precisely in mind, he warns us about harshly judging others when we have similar sins in our own lives: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”
If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that what I have accused some people of doing to me, I’ve done to others, just in different ways. This realization can have the convicting impact of short-circuiting my impulse to criticize and condemn those who stereotype me because I find the mirror turned around on myself. This has led me to ponder how this tendency reflects a human problem and not just a racial problem. It doesn’t excuse horrible behavior, but I wonder if there is a real difference, or maybe a continuum, between an innocent human mistake and malicious intent, and how this difference matters.
We need to make some generalizations simply to function in the world. As Leonard Mlodinow describes, “Thinking in terms of generic categories such as ‘bears,’ ‘chairs,’ and ‘erratic drivers’ helps us to navigate our environment with great speed and efficiency; we understand an object’s gross significance first and worry about its individuality later. Categorization is one of the most important mental acts we perform, and we do it all the time.”1 This means that in some sense we must categorize. The greater issue seems to be how we use these categories, particularly when we apply them to people. It seems there is a difference between someone who knows how to get beyond the broad categories and see the individual, and someone who cannot, or even more so, someone who uses categories to cause harm.
We all make inaccurate and unfair judgments of others, but the intent is not always the same. The temptation is to react harshly toward the one who makes a generalization, even when done innocently. It is also very difficult to see how much we all categorize, generalize, and stereotype. A good starting point may simply be to admit that we are all subject to human limitations and consider how we can give grace to one another as we do our best to make our way in the world.
Grace and Community
Unity built on difference is not easy. It is much easier to get along with people who are like me. Unity built on sameness demands little of me. It keeps me out of uncomfortable situations and does not challenge me to give up my belief that my perspective is the only one that matters. But the reality is that we are different, even as we are called to be one.
I find this truth easy to say, but much, much more difficult to live out. I suspect that most of us believe the same thing. Although justice concerns have dominated discussions on race, my focus here is our everyday relationships with one another, for Christ has called us to live together. In relationship, our differences and limitations provide infinite opportunities for misunderstanding, and our natural inclination is to descend into condescension, suspicion, bitterness, and hostility. In making Jew and gentile into one body (1 Cor 12:13), Christ challenged his followers to grow in humility by letting go of former personal antagonisms and valuing the other even above themselves (Phil 2:3).
Perhaps this is a purpose of grace when it comes to race: to live together in an imperfect community and to love imperfect people. After all, our failures and limitations are the basis for Jesus’s coming to us, to love and save those who could not save themselves. We were created to be with one another, as wondrous and unique people called to live together despite all our weaknesses and limitations. Although differences often lead to conflict, sometimes even to violence, the love of the believers for one another can instead be a reflection of the One who set the example of humility and grace by dying for our sake.