What does the Bible say about our different ethnic backgrounds? Where do I begin to talk about race? What is code-switching? How can building cross-cultural relationships help churches to evangelize?
In this interview, Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes talks about her new book, Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead to Lasting Connections Across Cultures, which seeks to answer these questions to help the church have constructive discussions about race. SOLA’s social media manager, Aaron Lee, asked Dr. Reyes about her experiences as an Asian American woman, the fear around the issue of race, and how we can “become all things” for the sake of the gospel.
You can listen to the audio here. Below is an edited transcript of the interview in which the two discuss why Dr. Reyes wrote the book, Whiteness, code-switching, and evangelism.
Aaron Lee: Your book is called Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead to Lasting Connections Across Cultures. I read it and reviewed it on the SOLA website. Tell us about your book and why you wrote it.
Michelle Reyes: I have noticed a question that people keep asking me and that is, “How do we start building cross-cultural relationships? Where do we begin?” There’s also oftentimes a fear. I’ve noticed a lot of conversations begin with that fear of, “I have a desire to connect with people across cultures, but I don’t want to do it wrong; I don’t want to offend people.”
So often that fear is what keeps us from doing anything because we want to do it right, and we don’t necessarily have a roadmap to do it. This is where the seed became planted of writing a book about cross-cultural relationships. I felt like in my life and my experiences as a second-generation, Indian American woman living at that intersection of different cultures and worlds, if I could share my stories and some of the bumps along the road that I’ve had, and if that could be a way in which to encourage and equip people on their own journeys — that’s what I wanted to do, and that’s the genesis of the book.
In terms of the premise itself, the foundation of the book is 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. To boil it down to one of the verses, Paul says “I became all things to all peoples for the sake of the gospel.” In that context, he’s saying to the Jew, I became like a Jew, and to the Gentiles, to those not under the law, I became like those not under the law to win them. After reflecting and studying that passage over and over again, I thought, “If Paul was saying that to us today, it would sound something like to the African American, I became like an African American to the Latino American, I became like a Latino American, to the Asian American, I became an Asian American.”
And then the question is, what does that mean? What does it mean to become all things to all peoples? What is it about ourselves that we need to change or adapt in order to connect with people for the sake of Christ and for the sake of the gospel? So my, my book is going after answering that question.
Aaron Lee: Your book is really deeply personal. You gave a lot of stories about your own life and some awkward moments. Two stories stood out to me: One was when you were having a party and there was curry and another one was a quiet common meeting area that ended up being loud — people can read the book for that. But I wanted to mention it because you’re putting yourself out there in talking about the difficulties and the awkwardness that come with cross-cultural relations. Was it hard for you to put those things into words?
Michelle Reyes: It was a new experience because some of those stories I’ve never shared before and I’m putting my story out into the world. Often I’m the recipient of being stereotyped, misunderstood, or racially profiled, or for that story in the lounge, it’s fellow Asian Americans who want to be controlled.
While I am the recipient of that, I also want to make sure that in these stories, which are so deeply personal, I’m not trying to villainize the other person, but more so like: This is a moment of real life. This really did happen, and this is how I experienced it and interpreted it.
My hope in opening up each chapter with these personal stories is for people to really get a glimpse and a microcosm of what it means to be an Asian American woman in this country. More than textbooks about culture, which are completely important, we need to hear each other’s stories and be able to invite people into each other’s lives and say, “This is how I live, and this is my embodied experience in the world. These are my pains and my hurts.”
We need to hear each other’s stories to see life through each other’s eyes. That’s proximity, and that’s what’s going to cultivate that empathy and compassion to want to change.
Aaron Lee: I want to go back to that Asian American component, but before we get there, you said in your book that you wanted to make certain that the reader understands that Whiteness is not an absence of culture. I thought that was a really important point you made. Can you explain that to our audience?
Michelle Reyes: So there are two layers to answer that. The first is that I’ve had so many conversations with dear White sisters who tell me quite frankly, “Michelle, I don’t think about my culture; I don’t have a culture. As I’m navigating throughout my day, driving or going to the grocery store with my kids, I’m not thinking about what’s my culture or how I’m culturally expressing myself.” So the first layer is having conversations with people who identify as White to say, “No, you do have an ethnic heritage. You just haven’t leaned into it or you’ve been disconnected from it in some way.” You can’t use Whiteness as an excuse to just say, “I don’t have a culture we all have a culture.”
But the second layer to that is that you know, Whiteness that term is a social construct. It’s a term with a historical marker because it was cultivated and utilized during the Atlantic slave trade. It was utilized to describe anything that was not Black, and so there’s an immediate racial dynamic racialization to that term. And when Whiteness is aligned with White supremacy, you see the ways in which these systems of hierarchies that have superior White people and inferior Black and Brown peoples began to develop.
It’s important to understand where these terms come from, which is also why in my book, I encourage people to be hyper-local and hyper-specific about who they are because we will not begin to deconstruct these racialized categories until we can we can begin to move from, “Oh, I don’t have a culture. I’m just some generic White to” to “I’m actually Dutch American or German American or Italian American” and really understanding who we are as cultural beings, valuing it, celebrating it.
Aaron Lee: Something else that stood out to me in your book was the term code-switching. Can you explain what this is to our audience? What’s a good type of code-switching and what’s a bad type of code-switching?
Michelle Reyes: In the book, I argue that to an extent we all code-switch. When people start dating, they’re putting their best foot forward. Maybe they’re changing how they talk or how they behave because they’re trying to impress somebody. You can code-switch when you’re trying to get a job and impress your potential future boss.
code-switching is adapting the way we speak, or act, or even the way we dress to be somebody different. Sometimes that can be good, like putting your best foot forward, if you will. So in many ways, we all do it to a certain extent. But when I’m talking about code-switching in Chapter 4, it’s this idea of Black and Brown people saying, “Just act White. I need to fit in, I need to not stick out, so I’m going to just act white.”
I’m rooting my conversation about code-switching on 1 Corinthians 9 there is commentary there about what it means to be free in Christ. So what I really want people to walk away from that chapter is that we are free in Christ and we are not bound by the world to impress the world, if you will. There are examples where even Paul himself is criticized by the elite because they want him to act a certain way or they want him to talk a certain way. Paul comes from this line of Pharisees taught by Gamaliel, so this guy can speak. He could be like the elite in terms of his eloquence and whatnot, but he cast that aside and said, “I’m not here to have celebrity status; I’m not here to impress; and I’m not here to look good, and get the money. I’m going to be all things to all people, I’m going to speak the vernacular of the peoples to win them.”
So what this means for Black and Brown peoples today is that we are not bound by the rules of this world that says, “This is how you have to act to fit, and this is how you have to act to be labeled cool or popular.” We don’t have to just conform ourselves in White spaces for fear of sticking out and being identified as different. So that’s what I mean when I saw we are not called as followers of Jesus to code-switch — because we are not here to appease men.
At the same time, I do think that there are opportunities in which all of us, but particularly minorities, could choose to code-switch while being free in Christ. I want to be clear about who I’m talking about here: This is not [talking to] somebody who is openly racist or openly abusive.
We can code-switch because there are well-intentioned folks who are just ignorant and will say things that are hurtful. But I know that their heart and their posture is a desire to learn. They want to grow, they want to do better, but bless their heart, they’re really stumbling. It’s moments like that where I am going to speak into this person’s life and adapt my language and adapt how I engage with them, for the sake of Christ to lovingly educate them and say, “Come, follow me. Come on this journey with me.” So there are moments like that where we can adapt the way we speak and the way we behave with folks in a way that’s part of winning them for the gospel.
Aaron Lee: I felt that evangelism was the heart of your book. What are practical steps we can take to connect and speak across cultures specifically for sharing the gospel? What can we do to be proactive for gospel evangelism?
Michelle Reyes: Not to overdramatize the message of my book, but we know it’s really popular right now to be culturally competent, have diverse friends, and things like that. What I’m trying to say is that for us as Christians, there are appropriate and inappropriate or healthy and unhealthy ways of connecting across cultures where our biblical witness is at stake. So the way in which we choose to connect with folks across cultures will either represent Christ to them in a way that’s inviting or in a way that will turn them away from the Gospel.
It’s important for us to understand that the motivation for why we need to check our thoughts, words, and actions and continue to self-reflect about how can I continue to adapt myself to connect with other people in ways that make them feel loved and understood is because this is part of our gospel presentation. In that sense, the way we cross cultures is extremely evangelistic in terms of the practical steps we take to connect and speak across cultures.
One of the things I share in my book is just learning that we’re not the standard. When it comes to culture, it’s not always right and wrong. I think it was my colleague, Richard Lee at AACC, who said, “Sometimes it’s just right or left. That is not right or wrong.” It’s just right or left in the sense that there’s a lot of things that people of different cultural groups do that are just different, whether it’s our appreciation of noise levels or how we treat our elders or are we individualistic or communal, how we understand worship, how I understand God and pray. In different churches, it’s either you’re praying one at a time or everyone’s praying together at same time and it’s very loud. It’s not like a right or wrong thing. It’s just different.
So having a posture first that we are not the standard is huge because this immediately leads to judging, which then often leads to controlling, which can lead to very damaging, traumatic, painful ways of dealing with people.
Second, which could be the other side of the coin, is learning to be okay with feeling uncomfortable. A question I ask in the book is, “How much cultural discomfort are you willing to forbear? I think our witness of the gospel would go for so much further if we learned the times to just keep our mouths shut and not be scrunching up our face or challenging someone — always asking, “Why, why, why” or “What are you doing here? What do you mean by this?” or “I see you as a threat.” It’s just keeping our mouth shut, learning to enjoy the other person, and saying, “I’m going to sit in my own discomfort and try not to lash out in any way because I feel uncomfortable.”
Perhaps those are two sides of the coin — learning that we’re not the standard and learning to sit in this cultural discomfort. Those are two practical ways that will help people will feel loved, and people will see Christ in us if we can do those two things.
Aaron Lee: How can parents or youth group leaders and pastors best introduced these sorts of topics or even start these conversations with students?
Michelle Reyes: I would almost flip the question instead. Topics like diversity and culture are often thought of as one topic out of many, like in Q3 we’re gonna do a cultural study and then we’re moving on. But this is a disservice because it teaches families and children that this is something that we can step into and then step back out of, whereas what I’m trying to show in my book and through my stories is that this is my whole life reality.
I can’t step out of my brown skin. I can’t step out of daily, or weekly, or monthly experiences of being profiled or stereotyped or misunderstood, or being the recipient of racism. The sad reality is that my young children have also experienced these sorts of interactions. A few months back, I was going on a walk with my kids in our own neighborhood, and we were stopped by a couple of women who wouldn’t let us move forward on the sidewalk until we proved that we lived in that neighborhood and told them our address. They didn’t believe that we lived in our neighborhood because of the color of our skin.
My children are standing there listening to this and wondering, “What why is this woman asking us these questions?” My son has been denied medical service at a local medical clinic because of racial mis-profiling, and the list goes on.
All that to say, conversations about culture, ethnicity, and race are daily conversations in our home. Every day we’re talking about our skin color with our kids; we’re talking about the fact that I have Indian heritage and my husband has Mexican heritage. We’re talking about the foods we eat, the things that we’re proud of, and the values and traditions that are part of our families’ cultural narratives. We’re also reading books daily, if not weekly, about skin color, and God’s wonderful idea for diversity on this earth so that my children, both are so proud of who they are and their cultural makeup. That’s what they’re immediately drawn to, and they see it in other children, but in a way that’s positive, affirming, and celebratory.
Particularly for Christian families, that’s the approach we need to take — that this is an everyday, all-of-life type of discipleship. This is spiritual formation for our children. Certainly, the church has a role to play. I’d love to see the church grow in their discipleship of culture and ethnicity, but for Christian families who send their kids to Christian school and go to church and all of this, we have a very unique and important responsibility to begin that discipleship in the home as an everyday rhythm.
Aaron Lee: I want to talk about acts of violence and hate that we’ve been seeing in the media. Michelle, how should we respond to these things? What I really want to ask you is how can we not get discouraged about these things? What’s our right response and how do we not get overwhelmed by everything that happens?
Michelle Reyes: I think one that I’m still trying to figure out because admittedly there is an element of discouragement, right? Anti-Asian racism has existed throughout U.S. history, but it’s been magnified in a unique way over the last year because of COVID-19, the way racism against the Black community has also been magnified in a very unique way over this past year.
Those tragedies just keep happening, wave after wave. It’s like you’re in the ocean, and you’re just trying to get a breath and you finally do, only to just get hit again by another wave. Even this week, and hearing about what’s happening in Minnesota [the killing of Daunte Wright] — that’s where I grew up. I grew up in Minneapolis, and my sister and her husband are still there.
I talked with some dear Black sisters who told me that they’re not even angry. They’re just too exhausted to be angry because of this cycle that doesn’t end. So I’m still trying to figure out how to not be discouraged. Some of that is just a reflection of our broken world and how these evils will not be brought to justice until Jesus returns.
But in terms of how we respond in our home, no matter what, no matter what the racial tragedy is, whether it’s something against the Asian American community or somebody else, we have tried to model and teach to our children, a biblical posture of lament. No matter what it is or who has been hurt, our first response is to go to God and to just make space for our grief.
As awkward and uncomfortable as it is, sometimes we try to have our children see us weeping so that they know the heaviness of these realities. My son found me weeping on March 16 [the day of the Atlanta killings], and having to tell him that people like us, fellow Asian Americans, had been shot and killed. It was one of the hardest conversations to have with him, and he was sitting with me weeping and in that grief.
In biblical lament, the posture is to make space for grief by turning to God with the hope that he will make things right. So if we are to have any sort of way in which to taper ourselves against the discouragement of the world, it is to continue to say “Maranatha,” come Lord Jesus. And we do know that he will one day come and restore all things and bring justice to this earth. Even if these perpetrators are not given due justice in the here and now, justice is coming, and sometimes that’s the only hope that we can cling to in these times.
Aaron Lee: I live in the San Gabriel Valley. This is one of the most populated areas of Asian Americans in the United States, and I understand it’s very different than living where you live or across the nation. So I want to ask you, for those who are comfortable and are in enclaves, can you convince us that it’s worth the trouble to go out of our way to connect across cultures?
Michelle Reyes: I don’t mean to be blunt, but I’ll be a little blunt. On the one hand, being in a cultural comfort zone or being in a monocultural space where most of the people that you rub shoulders with either look like you or think like you — there isn’t anything inherently sinful about that.
We have friends who are church planters in rural Kansas, and there’s not much diversity in that demographic, They have a small church, there are not many people there, and there’s nobody else to go reach out to so they are predominantly an Anglo American church in the Anglo American community. So I don’t want people to feel guilty, just because of the community that they live in.
Now. that’s not always the case. There are sometimes thoughts and intentionality about, “I’m going to live here because I don’t want to live by fill-in-the-blank,” or gentrification processes are also at work and what not. But if you are within your own monocultural space, and you have no desire to leave that monocultural space, then one, you’re going to be living a life of cultural ignorance. You’re not going to have much self-reflection or understanding of who you are as a cultural being if you are not able to engage with people that are different from you.
But in terms of biblical grounds for this, we see both the model of Jesus but also the model of Paul and the apostles. The Great Commission is to literally go out into the earth and make disciples, and that’s what you see from Jerusalem to Samaria to the ends of the earth; it’s this gradual moving out. So you see Phillip talking with this Ethiopian eunuch and explaining the gospel to him, and you see others going into different cities and sharing the gospel. Even Jesus travels to different villages and whatnot.
Jesus is on the move, disciples and the apostles are people on the move, and they’re constantly crossing borders and cultural barriers. We see the life of Peter as an example. Peter didn’t always do it well. He insulted people along the way: “Oh, I’m gonna eat with you. No, no, I’m not gonna eat with you.” And Paul’s said [to Peter], “I need to talk to you about this because you’re offending people now.”
We’re not always gonna get it right. We’re going to make mistakes along the way, and that’s part of the learning process. But I think that biblical precedent of being people on the move is something that we need to learn how to embody in our own lives.
Aaron Lee: I attend First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut. Chinese in our name, right there. If we’re going to take what you’re saying seriously, how can we as a church cross these cultural bridges and even just reach out across cultures? Even though we’re in Walnut, there are other ethnic groups there.
Michelle Reyes: Let me tell you a few things that our church does, and we by no means do this perfectly. There’s one thing we do that feels which feels like a very Asian-Latino thing to do is. So we meet at a middle school, and in our community in East Austin is a historically segregated community with disadvantaged Black and Brown communities. There’s a lot of government housing, projects, and things like that. We’re ministering to communities with gangs and cartels in them as well. So you have to understand how the people in your community would want to be reached out to and how would they feel loved.
We spend time throughout the week knocking on doors and saying, “Hey, this is who we are. Can we pray for you?” We’re just going door to door and praying for people throughout the apartments and the government housing around our where we meet for church.
Another thing that we do is establishing relationships with churches of different ethnicities and doing things from pastor swaps or pulpit swaps, and perhaps a bit deeper, sharing communal gatherings and fellowships where there’s time for prayer for lament where we can hear from people of other ethnicities and cultures. What are the things that they’re hurting in right now? What are they struggling with? And how can you care for each other spiritually?
It’s in the vein of Jesus’ in-breaking kingdom and Mark 1, the holistic gospel that includes caring for each other physically and socially, and emotionally. Each of us and our churches and our congregations need to find ways to rub shoulders with other people and to do it in a way that reflects your community and in a way that would speak love to your community to gather, to pray, to fellowship, to lament, and to eat together.
I cannot stress how important it is to eat together. And it’s not just the monthly or yearly church potluck, but eating and breaking bread at tables. This is where real fellowship and connection across cultures is going to happen.
Aaron Lee: One personal question. One of my sons is adopted cross-culturally. He’s Mexican American. I’m Chinese American. Would you have any advice for me as a parent?
Michelle Reyes: Oh, man, that is a personal question. I love it. It’s such an important question. Within the adoption world particularly, in terms of flipping the script, what I appreciate from my friends who are transracial adoptees is wanting to honor the personhood, the story, and the perspective of the child.
I have so many friends who are Indian, who were adopted from birth from an orphanage in India, and were raised by Anglo American parents here in the U.S. I’ve heard from multiple people how sad they were that their parents never made an effort to help connect them with their ethnic heritage, that their Indian culture was never talked about, and Indian food was never eaten. They never talked about where they came from and what their story was. There were just gaps that they didn’t have anything to hold on to.
Now that they’re mothers and have families and children, they’re trying to, for the very first time, figure out who they are as cultural beings. If I could encourage anything in this conversation, and I’m certainly not a subject scholar in it is, is to lean into your child’s ethnic heritage and for him to celebrate who he is as a Mexican American child and to delight in that. be proud of that, and have that be so integrated into his story and his family.
Aaron Lee: Thank you, Michelle. I am going to take that to heart. I want to respect your time, so we’re gonna wrap things up a little bit. What was the writing process like working with Zondervan? Do you have any upcoming books or any other projects? And then also, what’s your ultimate hope and desire for becoming all things?
Michelle Reyes: I only have good things to say about working with Zondervan. I signed my contract with them back in June of 2019. So as I mentioned earlier, it’s a book that’s been two years in the making. It’s such a joy to finally be in this last leg of the journey.
I have a co-authored book coming out next year with WaterBrook. My dear friend, Helen Lee and I are co-authoring a book together titled The Race-Wise Family: Nine Postures of Healing and Hope. I’m excited about how that book builds upon the book that I’ve written right now because it’s all about continuing to develop cultural identities and grow in our ability to be connecting across cultures, but it’s specifically for parents and equipping parents. How do you create these rhythms for your family? How do you have conversations about things like racism and privilege to what’s happening on the news with your children? So each chapter will lay out a biblical framework for these things, and we will have lists of family activities to do, books to read, and movies to watch.
Aaron Lee: So then what are your hopes and dreams for Becoming All Things?
Michelle Reyes: This is certainly a book that I wrote for the body of Christ. It’s a book that I wrote with the church in mind. I’m hoping that this is a book that will inspire, encourage, and equip both laypeople and Christian leaders alike. Ultimately, I hope that this book will encourage conversations within the church and be a breath of fresh air.
So many Christians have grown in our racial consciousness over this past year, but still don’t know how that knowledge should translate into action. My book is to help Christians translate that knowledge into action.
Aaron Lee: Well, I think that your book’s gonna be a great help for that. I hope everybody picks it up, gives it a read. And, Michelle, thank you so much for this conversation, too. I hope to talk to you again soon about all of these things.
Michelle Reyes: Oh, this was a joy. Thank you for having me.