Some years back, my husband and I and our Zambian 'son' decided to have some fun and put our three arms side by side and compare my very 'white' skin with my husband's more slightly olive skin and our son's very dark brown skin….hence the photo above.
We enjoyed comparing differences on the brown spectrum of skin colours….we were not colourblind!
She was not colourblind!
Yet living in Africa where almost everyone around me has brown skin, I often completely 'forget' that my skin is a different colour from theirs. I can't see my own face, and around other brown faces, I don't 'feel' different.
I kind of feel colourblind!
Yet the little children across the lane look over their boundary wall and call out 'lekgoa' (whites), because they can see we are different in appearance.
They are definitely not colourblind!
Then I click on YouTube and a recommended video comes up about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan's interview with Oprah Winfrey where they express how distressing they found it when before little Archie was born, supposedly a family member wondered about what colour skin tone their baby might be.
They did not want any discussion of skin colour and interpreted any such mention as somehow derogatory.
In this era of 'CRT' - Critical Race Theory, and people all over the place claiming racial discrimination and 'hate' against 'people of colour', based on an idea of 'white supremacy' should we 'forget' about colour differences and ignore them or should we be noticing them or what?
There is so much that can be said on this topic and we seem to be surrounded by it, but it came to my attention again in the last couple days with the use of the word 'colour-blind'.
Well known African -American Bible teacher Voddie Baucham was recently posted on YouTube saying that it is an affront to God to be colourblind, and to choose to ignore colour differences is to ignore God's creation of variety. I see his point. We should be able to enjoy and give thanks for the different colours of roses and of people's skin.
Then to confuse the matter further, a local well-respected Motswana Pastor here in my corner of Africa preached last week on what we can learn from the Day of Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit. One of the things he raised was that the Spirit was to be poured out 'on all flesh', not just green flesh or white flesh or purple flesh or black flesh' but all flesh. No people group is excluded or preferenced. He then explained this by saying the Holy Spirit is colour-blind!
So what do we make of all this? On the surface it looks like a messy soup of contradictions and confusions!
But come with me as I see to take a closer look as to what might be going on here and what it means for being a 21st Century Christian.
1. Global Dynamics
Maybe to the greatest degree in all history since Babel, we live in a world where people of multiple ethnicities and languages are living together in some places. While African rural centres may still be strongly one ethnicity, even African cities are more multi-racial than ever. In a large international church even here in Gaborone we used to attend, there were 38 countries represented - and probably even more languages/tribes. We are no longer ethnically insular, or ethnically 'separated'. Differences are being forced closer together and for longer time. Things that we tolerate on a short-term basis can be harder to endure or assimilate in the longer term.
With skin colour, in years past a person would usually only see others with the same skin colour. Daily life was with people who felt, thought and spoke and looked like you did. But now we have speedy aeroplane travel and extensive immigration of people from one part of the globe to another. We are more and more aware of 'differences' the longer we mix this way.
2. Loss of a God-perspective
- *Our world - particularly the Judeo-Christian influenced Western World has increasingly rejected God as the Genesis Creator. Instead secularism, evolution and promotion of self and individual 'rights' have proliferated. So rather than having a 'God-view' of how to interpret and live in our world, a human 'limited-sight' view permeates society.
- *Not only this, but instead of having faith and hope from outside of ourselves and this world, in a secular world we are limited to what we can get from ourselves and others around us within this world. Our vision is faulty, we walk in darkness, and our hope for the future rests on what human reasoning can work out to try to 'solve' the difficulties we think we see.
- *Furthermore, we then also have no source for explaining skin-colour differences other than evolution's 'survival of the fittest', where life is a fight for supremacy.
- *On top of that we have a natural sin-bent tendency to interpret life and other people's input not as something to give thanks for, but that which might threaten our 'identity' and 'value' or 'significance' or 'dignity'. We move from forgetting self and loving others as our highest goal, to protecting self and attacking others as highest on our automatic radar.
- *We forget that on a global scale, single groups of one dominant colour are a result of Babel and the in-breeding of groups formed by a common language. Originally before Babel we would have been a multi-coloured bunch all round. We just have to look at the fact that twins can be born as one white and one dark brown, to parents who are both mid-brown. So originally before Babel, as people intermarried all shades of melanin would have been present all over the place - colour wasn't one group as opposed to another group, it was the variety of being human….not so different to ranges of hair colours and eye colours in my fellow 'white' Australians. (mind you to say 'white' Australian is also still a 'range' of 'white' - my husband would be classed as 'white' but put his arm next to mine, and then I am white and he is not very white at all!)
- *In the CRT we also have seen a large amount of victimhood - of believing one is oppressed by oppressors - of blaming others for life's difficulties and feeling that others are always out to humiliate, degrade or inhibit you. Whether real or perceived all difficulties might legitimately feel part of our experience, but instead of being able to entrust everything to God, finding rest in him and being busy seeking to honour others in a godly way, we believe others are deliberately depriving us of honour/dignity and so we devote ourselves to grabbing honour for ourselves in a 'fallen' way because we believe our life depends on it. And we do this without even realising what we are doing.
- *Loss of a God perspective, also brings a lack of contentment with how God has made us. Those with lighter skin want to tan it, and in my part of the world those with darker skin spend their life putting on lotions to lighten their skin and avoid the sun that makes their skin darker.
- *Loss of a God perspective, also exhibits a lack of willingness to forgive, move on and leave it to God's eternal judgment, and becomes more insistent on justice now, revenge now, and fighting back.
3. Words don't always mean the same thing.
Just because someone uses the word 'colour-blind', it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing when someone else uses the same word, and we must be careful to discern and recognise this so we don't argue past each other. Defining terms is important. Colour-blind used to only mean that someone had a medical condition that meant they couldn't differentiate between blue and green. But in current language, it has all kind of other connotations.
So on the one hand we might need to be colour-blind when talking about whether or not the Holy Spirit is given based on a person's skin colour. But yet we might need to say we should not be colour-blind to the beauty of what God has given us in creation from Roses to underwater corals or a bird's feathers…and of course the melanin in our skin.
So we need to be clear about our terminology if we want to discuss this sensibly and calmly.
4. We are confused about honour and seek for honour in the wrong places
Once again, we come to a root issue of honour.
(- if you are in any doubt as to whether or not CRT has anything to do with 'honour', just think about the use of the term 'white supremacy' - supremacy tells us that this is an issue of who is 'on top'…ie who is believed to have the honour. This is about honour competition.)
Since we were born and created to seek honour from our creator and give honour to our creator, when we fail to do that and try doing 'honour' other ways, we only get ourselves into a big mess….and isn't our world in a mess just now!
We remain honour hungry people - not least seen in things like the 'respectful relationships' program being promoted in Australia at the moment (the program has serious problems as explained here in this video, but the title wording is key in understanding what people are seeking).
We end up wanting honour from others, and we fight for an honour we think is up to us to gain and preserve. When others don't give it the way we want it, we see others as a threat to our very existence and 'dignity'. We constantly suspiciously suspect others as potential degrading and humiliating honour thieves. We see honour as a constant competition in a zero-sum game. Yet while we see any 'good' shown to others as essentially taking honour we think is our 'right', we forget that when good is shown to us or we try to snatch honour back, others are going to feel that their due honour is being sacrificed for our benefit. It becomes a very selfish and self-obscessed search for a level of dignity that we will never find in what this world offers.
In the family of honour words, remember 'dignity' is just another word for honour - especially the inherent honour rooted in our basic existence and personhood as human beings.
When we link our basic honour as equal human beings to an ethnicity or gender or ability or lifestyle, we set ourselves up for pain - especially when they are not in accordance with the Creator's plan. But true equality of personhood of all human beings who have had a heartbeat on this planet, is only possible on the terms of the One who created each heart-beat.
*just an aside - this article shows that even on a national level the same victimhood mentality that refuses to let go of past hurt and humiliation (shame - lack of honour) and sees every criticism as an attack, is what is driving a present nation in our world in its quest for global supremacy.
5. True honour is only found one way.
We won't know or experience real honour and 'solve' our 'colour' or 'race' problems, until we come to understand that true honour is only found in the One 'author' and 'source' of honour, who we should then honour... He who embodies honour and assigns and lavishes honour in the first place is God the Creator, and it only comes through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Only in Christ is there more than enough honour to go around, for everyone, forever….where we can all grow from one degree of glory to another without loss of glory to anyone else.
This world's CRT race problems, from where we have seen the 'hate speech' ideology, the BLM ideology, the 'racial discrimination' ideology the CRT ideology and much more, all stem from a mis-place honour problem.
True honour brings the freedom to enjoy the variety of the Creator's paint pallette while also seeing everyone as equal human value. We don't have to 'identify' with a certain earthly group and suppress all other groups we disagree with, in order to experience true honour and dignity.
True honour doesn't have to fear what other people think, because true honour is grounded in God and his assessment of us in Christ. Without being in Christ, we will try endless means to try to satisfy our craving for approval, acceptance, value, significance, dignity….in other words - honour. But they will all let us down. Unfortunately, the more such options let us down the more desperate we will become to protect and defend whatever we next put our hope in.
6. So what now?
Many would say, the world needs truth, not actions and re-actions based on people's 'feelings' of being hated, discriminated or demeaned.
And yes truth is needed.
BUT truth about what?…..
It needs the truth about honour.
The world is desperate. They are running out of 'lies' about honour which Satan has in his 'lie-box' of options. Nothing is working. Nothing is satisfying the craving of the hearts of men and women. And desperate people don't think rationally, they think emotionally. We then tend to react with passion rather than respond with reason.
But….this does not mean this is a situation of saying people's false feelings of needing dignity should be countered with just the truth that they are 'wrong'. But rather it is a situation that they need to know there is truth to be found about how to interpret their feeling of a need for dignity/honour, and that the lie of false honour options in this world will never satisfy.
People need to know there is a greater honour, and that God created them for a greater honour.
The world needs to realise there is an honour bigger than tribal or ethnic or lifestyle or gender identity.
It needs to know that all these or any one of these do not define our human identity or give us ultimate honour.
They need to know that in Christ there is a greater 'group' identity that transcends and directs all interpretations of the 'felt-identities' of this world.
They need to know that when we ignore the right way to honour each other, we end up dishonouring each other (eg. if we ignore the fact that dark skin colour makes a person absorb less Vitamin D from the sun which has detrimental health effects but dark skin helps prevent skin cancer which has positive health effects, and lighter skinned people with less melanin while making more Vitamin D, are at higher risk of skin cancer. When we ignore either situation we can put the health of others at risk).
They need to know that this greater honour and identity was and is ruined by sin, but is offered to us again in Christ. What we spend our life searching for - dignity and significance - is the right thing to search for, but it can only be found in Christ.
They need to know that honour in the eyes of others in this world is fleeting, but honour ascribed to us in Christ is forever and can never be lost. In a world overwhelmed by uncertainty, it's safe, secure and assured.
AND ….We as believers need to live in the light of the truth of true honour, and present to the world an honour so great that it is 'out of this world' and thus can bring what nothing in this world can bring. Only such an honour will bring the freedom and joy of being able to give thanks for our privilege of being part of God's creativity in colouring our world. Only then can we be both colour-blind and colour-aware at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment