How do we know need?

In Perry Yoder’s book Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation, Justice, & Peace, he speaks of salvation as physical liberation. His economics of shalom are based on need and contrast significantly from wealth economics that prize exchange for gain and value hoarding and having more than others.

But what is need? What would represent shalom justice?

Early on Yoder points out that God’s shalom justice doesn’t make sense separate from God as creator. I think that ultimately what we need is that which would allow us to exercise our God-given gifts and live out what we were meant to be. Malnourishment, inadequate education, and disease brought about from economic poverty clearly keep so many in our world from being the full part of Christ’s body here on earth.

Yes, some of this is because of personal sin. But more often than not it is the sin of an oppressor, not just the sin of the oppressed, that bring about this disenfranchisement.

Those of us who live with more than enough and who do not follow the Biblical call for redistribution through gleaning, jubilee, and sacrificial giving bring about this disenfranchisement.

Those of us who gain privilege through unjust laws that reward the rich at the expense of the poor bring about this disenfranchisement

Yet how many times have I spoken of being the hands and feet of Christ to bring charity to the poor. Perhaps I need to be Christ’s hand because through my life choices and unjust laws those who were called to be hands instead have severed limbs. So I who was called to perhaps be a knee instead serves the role of another. And as a result sin continues to disrupts God’s new kingdom.

Perhaps I need to return to being a knee, working to provide a blow to the groin of unjust laws and practices so that everyone can fully exercise their gifts and live in shalom.

Dealing with Windows 8

The Dell Inspiron 14z laptop I bought for Angie in January when hers failed while I was on the road came with Windows 8. Angie worked hard to adjust to the new OS, but it was obvious it remained very frustrating for her several months later. And I must admit I found it unfriendly. It was never clear when things might be on the desktop or in the new tiles interface. Sometimes while moving the mouse you’d end up switching apps. It wouldn’t be clear how to switch back. Things would take more clicks than it should – a fine example was the lock screen that you needed to click on first to get to the login screen to wake up the computer after it went to sleep. Angie uses Libre Office to create text documents, a web browser, and a java app to do billing with the State of Illinois. That last app doesn’t work with Linux, so replacing Win8 with Linux wasn’t an option if we wanted her to keep getting paid for her job. That the laptop came with the 64-bit version of Windows 8 Home meant that legally we couldn’t downgrade to Windows 7. So this left me trying to at least tame some of the worst problems. Oh, and one other problem was that the trial version of McAfee that Dell ships had expired but was keeping Windows Defender from running, and me from hesitating to install the Kaspersky that we had purchased for her old laptop.

Step 1) Install Classic Shell. This free program gives you back your start button and a classic toolbar and status bar for Internet Explorer.

Step 2) Disable many of the gesture options for the Dell trackpad (under Control Panel -> Mouse). I wonder if the trackpad was sensitive enough to see 3 and 4 finger gestures which switch between apps, for instance, even when we thought we were just using a single finger to move the mouse around the screen.

Step 3) From the command line use “appwiz.cpl” to remove McAfee. Then download install Kaspersky.

Step 4) From the command line use “regedit” to disable the lock screen. The relavent key is found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization  In my case, that key didn’t exist, so I needed to create the new key, double click on it, and change the value from 0 to 1. I found the directions to do so here.

Just those few steps have really cleaned things up. Looking back they seem so simple. Why it took me the better part of the afternoon (after spending the morning creating all the restore DVDs) is an indication of how obfuscated Windows and Dell have made these steps. They have a market incentive for me to pay for McAfee instead of spending almost an hour figuring out how to get rid of it. They have a market incentive to drive me towards tablets and captive portals. That is, they have a clear incentive to take choice away. May these instructions help bring back choice.

Salvation, Atonement, and Shalom Justice

In his book Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation, Justice, & Peace, Perry Yoder traces the concept of salvation throughout the Bible. In so doing, he states:

“… we found a view quite different from our usual understanding of salvation. We often regard salvation as a spiritual, internal, and otherworldly transaction which has to do with God and the person’s relation with God. It has little to do with the actual physical life and circumstances of the individual. This contrasts sharply with what we found stressed in the Bible: salvation as material and political deliverance — salvation as liberation.”

Over the centuries, the church has developed several theories to try to interpret what happened through Jesus’s life, death and resurrection to bring about atonement, or reconciliation to God. It is in these theories that Yoder suggests we have ended up too often dismissing the deeper ramifications of Jesus’s history on Earth.

After reviewing the three most common theories of atonement, Yoder proposes a traditional view of salvation, one that follows from the first major act of salvation when God liberated the Israelites from the Egyptians and the intervening lessons from the kings and prophets. This traditional view does not replace the other theories of atonement but supplements them, emphasizing the messianic view of Jesus.

Salvation is a continuing story of liberation from bondage. Sin was but one bondage. Physical ailments, physical poverty, and oppression were other forms of bondage, and indeed, ones that consistently were especially emphasized in the old testament and also in Jesus’ earthly ministry. It was how he regularly indicated others would know he was the messiah.

“As a result, what Jesus, as the messiah, taught and did was not just a filler to take up the time from his birth to his death.”

“[I]n living out this good news as well as proclaiming it, Jesus clashed with the dominant values of the elite.”

“In this clash, Jesus struggles from the beginning to the end of his ministry with the question of means.”

“Jesus submits, suffers, and dies on a cross rather than try to impose the messianic order by military or political means.”

“God, however, raised him from the dead as a sign that Jesus’ way of suffering love resulted in victory over the powers of evil and oppression.”

“Furthermore, since, in his death, Jesus absorbed evil, God’s power is shown in the absorption of evil.”

Ultimately, Jesus’ death on the cross was the closing act of a work of salvation, liberation from bondage, that began in Egypt. But in His final words, “It is finished,” He was not sighing in defeat but stating that the act was completed positively and appropriately. Through His choices in the desert and at the cross to forego military or political means to bring into existence God’s new kingdom, He changed everything.

Yesterday was Good Friday. For those who witnessed Jesus’ death, that day and the day following were the darkest days in His disciples lives. Last night at our tenebrae service, we left very somberly as symbolism and staging were used to help us feel some of that darkness ourselves. But we know the ending of the story. On Sunday, Jesus arose. We know that in his life, death, and resurrection not only do we have the closing of one act, a completion of atonement, but we also have the start of a second act, the start of God’s new kingdom. Today we live in a time when the old kingdom, one of ongoing sin, of rejection and imperfect understanding of God’s perfect plan, continues. But we also have the hope that one day Jesus will return to end this second act, and usher in the final act in which we live with full understanding.

Still, in this second act we are able and called upon to be shalom makers. Yoder emphasizes that this is about liberation now, a liberation that follows the historical tradition of physical salvation. We are charged to care for the poor, the widows, and the orphans. We are charged to fight on behalf of the oppressed. We are charged to look after the alien among us. We do this through gleaning laws and through the year of jubilee. We do this by not charging interest on loans, and by giving to anyone who asks of us. That is, we do this by redistributing from those who have an abundance to those who have need. Nor are these acts to be based on merit. We are to live and forgive as Jesus lived and forgave. Never merit, always grace.

Jesus’ life was an ongoing example of these principles and laws. His first words in the temple were along these lines. His every action was consistent with this. His death occurred precisely because these acts challenged the values of the elite. And His call for us to go and make disciples is a call for ourselves and others to follow His example in all these things!

As I reflect on this Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, I wonder how my neighborhood would be different if I consistently went beyond simply professing belief in Jesus, and instead lived as His disciple.

Lessons we learned from Frank

We took ski lessons from Frank C. while at Copper. Here’s a few lessons we learned from him as he tried to help us ski with “Elegant Power” down the steeps. This is mostly so that I can remember next year when we come back to ski again, but if anyone else benefits, yay!

1. Keep your body facing down the fall line
2. Hold your hands forward in the same position as you would holding a bike handlebar
3. Use your hands to steer, pointing where you want to go
4. Roll your ankles to turn carving skis
5. Use flexion extension to speed your feet movement
6. As you complete the S of your turn, roll your feet to begin the next turn to keep a steady flow
7. Use the mountain, not your muscles

Living with Privilege

Privilege is the unearned benefits and advantages assigned to certain identity groups that come because of institutionalized oppression. White privilege is the particular form of privilege that has been intentionally developed in the United States to resolve the conflict between a constitution that states “all men are created equal” and the oppression of native Americans and African slaves. But it is one that continues to evolve as the context changes. For instance, following emancipation and the rapid success of newly freed blacks in farming and trades, Jim Crow laws were formed. The creation of industrial suburbs like East St. Louis saw municipal governments without social contracts but instead with a mandate to maximize profits for their partner industry. Even as the civil rights movement began to have concrete success, redlining laws and cultural pressures kept people of color from owning homes in most suburbs (for instance, Ernie Banks in Gurnee). Or consider the laws and practices impacting migrant workers today. Consider, too, how today’s global economy allows us to benefit through the sweatshops and environmental degradation of foreign lands. But also consider the many stories of how small acts in stores, by the law enforcement and the legal system, in the workplace, and in our community gathering places give access, influence, and benefits to some ultimately at the expense of others.

Ronald Sider, in his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, points out that God repeatedly sends strong warnings to his people who live at ease when they gain wealth by oppressing the poor through laws, influence, and practices (for instance, Amos 2:7; Amos 5:10-15; Amos 6:1-7; Isaiah 10:1-3; Psalms 10:2-18; Jeremiah 22:13-19; James 5:3-5). In Race and the Christian: An Evening with Piper, Keller, and Bradley (available online at: http://www.crossway.org/blog/2012/04/video-race-and-the-christian-an-evening-with-piper-keller-and-bradley/ ), Tim Keller (minutes 25:56-42:41) speaks of corporate evil – how from Adam and Eve on throughout the Bible guilt goes beyond the individual to the corporate body, just as grace comes from One to all. Exodus 34:6-7 speaks of how God is slow to anger, forgiving iniquity and sin, but does not clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the father on the children, and children’s children to the third and fourth generation. Katelin Hansen, in her recent Red Letter Christians blog post (http://www.redletterchristians.org/christian-rhetoric-in-understanding-racism/) suggests: “It’s terribly difficult to break out of generational sin because of the subtle, cultural habits and norms that are passed down from parent to child.”

I believe that there are two key advantages in using white privilege instead of racism when considering the particular form of institutionalized oppression that is part of United States history and that continues today. First, embedded within it is the concept of corporate evil. In their book Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith provide a breadth of evidence of how difficult it is for white people, and especially white conservative evangelical Christians, to move from an understanding of race as individual sinful acts that will disappear once people come to Christ to seeing it as a systemic issue that requires reform of culture and laws. Inherent in the definition of white privilege is the concept of institutionalized racism. Second, white privilege changes the emphasis from helping people of color who have a problem to white people needing to first take the log out of our own eye. Frances Kendall uses the first half of her book, Understanding White Privilege to define that log and the barriers to clearly identifying it. One motivator for her to enter into this lifelong journey came through intense conversations with woman of the National YWCA. On several occasions Kendall was told by women of color that the white women students needed to go away and figure out what it meant to be white, to work on our own racism, and then to report back.

Responding to White Privilege

As Christ followers, we recognize that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God, and that we are justified by grace as a gift through the redemptive work of Jesus (Romans 3:23-24). Because of our hope that some day we will see Christ as he is and that we will become like him in full, we work now to purify ourselves, just as he is pure (1 John 3:2-3). Acting out of hope instead of guilt is foundational. Acting out of guilt significantly contributes to paternalistic actions. In The Construction of Masculinity, Michael Kaufmann suggests: “Guilt is a profoundly conservative emotion and as such is not particularly useful for bringing about change. From a position of insecurity and guilt, people do not change or inspire others to change.” Hope of one day being like Christ and beginning the work of purifying ourselves now completely reframes this into an activity of profound importance. The question becomes, what can we do to purify ourselves to be more Christ-like? The following is a partial list of ideas I’ve identified from several sources, including chapters six and eight of Understanding White Privilege, Jamie Utt’s blog post “How to Talk to Someone About Privilege Who Doesn’t Know What That Is” (http://everydayfeminism.com/2012/12/how-to-talk-to-someone-about-privilege/), Divided by Faith, and the video “Race and the Christian.”

1. Commit to a lifelong journey of critical self-reflection. It took us generations to become adept at using our privilege and it will take a great deal of work to learn to identify and use differently those privileges. Listening with a willingness to be influenced, temporarily suspending our reactions and assumptions, and using inquiry to draw out the inferences and assumptions of others and ourselves serve as useful tools in the process. Tim Keller remarks how nonwhites want Christian leaders to surprise them even just a little by knowing a bit more about what it is like to not be white.
2. Invest in authentic relationships across difference. Many have indicated this is a key way that people begin to see institutional racism. Friendly chats don’t count. The relationships need to bring us into awareness, if not direct contact, with the person’s network of relationships. This generally requires moving outside of our familiar and comfortable places. But it doesn’t require us to travel far nor does it require something as formal as an accountability partner. One of my relationships began when I took time to begin visiting a minority-owned ice cream shop and later took up the offer by the owner to learn a card game he often plays.
3. Expect to make mistakes – take the initiative to create space for correction. This can be practiced in our individual interactions, in our small groups and committees, and in our church and workplace. Many times people of color are put in the uncomfortable position of considering whether to take a great risk to point out that privilege is negatively influencing an interaction or activity, or to let it slide and be further marginalized. If we put on the table at the onset of engagement across difference the recognition that there is a difference in privilege and power, and if we ask for help in identifying times when we use our privilege in ways that disadvantage or silence, we create opportunities for learning and growth. But recognize such discussions can often be uncomfortable. We need to become accepting of that discomfort to truly grow from the moment.
4. Recognize it is a conversation of action, not character. Tobias Winright points out in his blog post “Gandalf, Gollum, and the Death Penalty”, that as people made in God’s image, human dignity is something inherent, not something gained or lost by what we do (http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/01/gandalf-gollum-and-death-penalty). We are children of God – that defines our character. Still, we do sinful things. When people hold us accountable for those acts, consider that they are challenging our actions, not our character or dignity. A conversation of action helps us to repent of sinful deeds, check our privilege, and undermine the system that hurts us all.
5. Refuse to participate in oppressive systems when possible. For instance, simply choosing to send our children to schools with diversity, whether a public school or a private school that prioritizes diversity, instead of an elite private school lacking diversity can be an act of resistance.
6. Become an informed and active participant in the political process. Both conservative and liberal politicians have been active players in creating systems that are oppressive and that rob people of their dignity. Indeed, Kendall has found that often liberals can be the worst offenders. Using our positions of privilege to influence positive change for more just laws is not just a helpful way to harness our privilege, it is specifically what the prophets throughout the Bible call us to do.
7. Consider partnering with nonwhite agencies and organizations to bring about change. But this is not about rescuing. For instance, I came across one author who suggested the surest way to a multi-racial church is for we who are white to go to a black church and just worship. Don’t suggest ways we think our gifts can benefit them. Just worship. Eventually they’ll ask us to use our gifts in ways the existing church leadership would find helpful. We need to follow their lead and do everything we can to avoid taking control.

Please consider commenting to this post with suggestions for revising or adding to this list!

Understanding White Privilege by Frances Kendall, Chps. 1 & 2

I’ve been reading through Frances Kendall’s Understanding White Privilege as part of a Christian formation class at Twin City Bible Church.  Here are my notes and excerpts from the first two chapters of this excellent book that especially caught my attention.

In the prefix of Understanding White Privilege, Frances Kendall states: “The book provides a much-needed context for understanding the ways in which whiteness and white privilege systemically affect how white people and people of color – African Americans, American Indians, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Latinas/os – are treated and interact in and out of the workplace (page xi.)”

“White privilege is an institutional, rather than personal, set of benefits granted to those of us who, by race, resemble the people who hold the power positions in our institutions. One of the primary privileges is having greater access to power and resources than people of color do; in other words, purely on the basis of our skin color doors are open to us that are not open to other people (page 63.)”

Whose problem?

During intense conversations with woman of the National YWCA, on several occasions Kendall was told by women of color that the white women students needed to go away and figure out what it meant to be white, to work on our own racism, and then to report back.

“Racism in America is a white problem. It is woven into our institutions and our culture. We must all recognize how we benefit by racism and are caught in its web. Whites can and must change! Change themselves, their institutions, and their culture…

We need to look at ourselves.  We need help to understand how we as a people through history have used others for our own ends. We need help to look, without fear, at the meaning of our own lives. We need help to understand that our own worth and power is not lost in a just distribution of power. The emotional weight that racism produces in whites blinds us from a vision for the fundamental changes we must work for and which will, in fact, free us all (page 10).”

“My experience with language surrounding the issues of racism, privilege in general, and white privilege in particular is not that we who are white don’t understand the definitions of words and phrases, but rather that we resist acknowledging the existence of the concepts in our world (page21).”

“It is important to note that in the United States, while any racial group might view itself as superior, only the white group has the power to institutionalize that belief into laws, policies, practices, and culture and to subordinate other groups based on that institutional held power (page 21-22).”

Why are we doing this?

“Why would we explore what it means to be white? Or perhaps: Why wouldn’t we? If we want to work in open, inclusive, just organizations, if it is important to be congruent in our stated values and our actions, if we want our organizations to thrive, then why wouldn’t we do whatever is necessary to understand how to reach those goals? (page 20)”

“If we do not work to change ourselves and our systems, we continue to be complicit in the oppressions of others whether we mean to or not (page 23).”

“Because we see ourselves and our ways of doing things as superior to everyone else, we have very little knowledge or understanding of other peoples – their religions, their governments, their ways of doing things, or their belief systems. I resist saying ‘culture’ because that’s often what we focus on about other people – their food, their dances, their ‘costumes’ – and we are apt to see these as exotic, weird, quant, foreign. Different from ours (page 23).”

One page 32 Kendall notes that race is a central part of who we are as a nation.  There is a cost to not keeping race and white privilege as a regular part of conversation as we loose a critical lens through which we can interpret situations. On page 39 she states: “I work with a primary assumption: until we as white people are clear about what it means to be white, the issue of race in this nation and in the colonized world can never fully be addressed. We must know about ourselves before we can learn fully about others.”

Kendall spends some time reflecting on the financial benefits of a “racial contract”. Clothes manufactured mostly by people of color globally at low wages, and loss of jobs by people in the lower classes of the US, many of whom are people of color, because of the offshoring of jobs are but two examples.  Further, Kendall points out the loss of knowledge and skills needed to work in a global marketplace when elite schools do not have diversity that could inform the students on working across culture. Kendall goes on to discuss the emotional costs for whites to ignore the negative impact that our white supremacy has on the rest of the world.  Ultimately, we can only survive by anesthetizing ourselves. “I think that most of us who are white don’t even know that we’re not whole. We feel like something is missing, but we’re not sure what. Some sense of ourselves as whole human beings is not there, because for us to be whole and present every day means that we have to re-member ourselves, and that is painful (page 38).”

“In the end, those of us who are white can’t choose not to get the privileges we are granted, but we can choose how to use them to make personal and system changes (page 38).”

“I wonder what would it be like to feel that all others are as valuable as ourselves? What if we believed in the humanness of each person? What if we understood that each of us is connected to all others – that if others aren’t able to thrive, we aren’t either? (page 40)”

Race, White Privilege, and the Christian

Those who would learn to serve must first learn to think little of themselves … Only those who live by the forgiveness of their sin in Jesus Christ will think little of themselves in the right way. They will know that their own wisdom completely came to an end when Christ forgave them.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Last week I came across a video recording called ”Race and the Christian: An Evening with Piper, Keller, and Bradley” (available online at: http://www.crossway.org/blog/2012/04/video-race-and-the-christian-an-evening-with-piper-keller-and-bradley/ ). In it, John Piper begins the evening by presenting the biblical basis for how we are ALL created in the image of God. Every one of us, all of us around the whole globe, are to live out the worth of God, the beauty and goodness of God. He designed us so that He and only He would be our supreme happiness – knowing God, trusting God, being near God, reflecting God, is our God-designed appointment – all the people, every people, all the ethnic groups have that as our core. Not a single person on this planet fulfills that role. We have all sinned and exchanged it for images, especially the one in the mirror. In so doing, we belittle our God and commit treason against our King. But God has forgiveness us through his grace. We are new creations. In a nutshell, this both explains racism and condemns it.

Tim Keller next discusses racism and corporate evil: a white guy’s perspective. He uses a number of major incidents within the Bible to illustrate what is so hard for especially white, western Christians to understand – that at its core Jewish and Christian faith is based on corporate success and guilt (corporate meaning something shared by all the members of a group). Using this as a basis, he discusses how our individualistic approach to race is unbiblical and ultimately inadequate to address the sin that it represents.

Anthony Bradley concludes by talking about the value of self-confession, and how we need more people to go through this work of confession. He goes on to speak about how we need to begin dialogs with black pastors and theologians, to listen and think differently, if we are to move forward. But we can’t have a complete discussion about race and sin until we have discussions about white privilege and micro-aggressions.  Finally, Bradley poses the question, what next? The world is watching what we do with this new knowledge.

I encourage everyone to watch both the main presentations and the question and answer period that follows.