The final post in the "Perspectives on Privilege & Racial Reconciliation" series comes from my dear friend, Joy Becker. Joy authentically shares about her journey with privilege through her own story and life. Her vulnerability, relatability, and humility will draw you in and challenge you to reflect on your own journey regarding privilege and racial reconciliation.
I prefer when my writing culminates into a complete thought,
when stories and anecdotes sit with me long enough to reach a finish line. I
tend not to hit that Publish button until I've drawn a conclusion, tidied
things up, and feel a sense of a closure.
Today is different.
There is no sense of closure because I'm just beginning this
journey. I have so many conclusions spinning in my head I hardly know what to
do next. I'm in the midst of so much learning and thinking and questioning; it
is terrifying and thrilling. There are days I'd like to rewind the clock to
before I wrestled with privilege and injustice. I’d like to unread and unlearn
information that has left me wondering how me - this affluent, white,
stay-at-home mom in the suburbs of Cincinnati - can possibly be part of
reconciliation. Other days I want to shake myself because I spent so many years
missing it, looking right past it.
In the spring of 2016, I began reading the book Seven. Oh, to this day, there are times I wish
I could unread it. God knocked the wind out of me within the pages of that
book, awakening me to the intensity and responsibility of the privilege I was
born into.
Up until that day, I had thought very little of privilege and
what it looked like in my life. I suppose when privilege is your norm, it is
easy to miss.
But soon I saw it everywhere.
I saw privilege when I opened my fridge, stared at shelves
full of food, and ordered pizza because I didn’t feel like eating anything we
had.
I saw privilege when I put my contacts in each morning because
I’ve had resources to correct my failing eyes for nearly 30 years.
I saw privilege when I handed in my letter of resignation,
voluntarily leaving my job to stay home with my children.
I saw privilege when I was pulled over for a missing headlight
and never considered a police officer might treat me unfairly.
I saw privilege when I freely disagreed with colleagues and
never thought twice that my race would be the backdrop for how others
interpreted my words.
I saw privilege when our president was elected because as much
as I hate how he speaks of the oppressed, I knew my day to day life would not
be much different.
God put a fire in my gut the week I read that book, a restless
stirring I haven’t been able to shake. I can’t stop reading and talking and
asking questions. I can’t unlearn that I am in the top 1% of wealthiest people
in the world, practically drowning in resources. I can’t pretend educational
opportunities are the same for all children. I can’t ignore the hundreds of
thousands of refugees who are desperately trying to come to America, and yet
live such isolated lives once they are here. I can’t unsee the hate-filled eyes
in those videos of Charlottesville.
This is my messy beginning, my shuffling along, fighting my
way through the weeds, with my hands outstretched, asking God, "What now?
What can you do with the hesitant offering of a woman prone to wander, resist,
and cling to privilege? Can you dig it out by its ugly roots? Can you keep
forgiving me? Can you make reconciliation my heart’s cry rather than an item on
my to-do list?”
*****
During the past year, I have looped through a cycle of
emotions regarding the abundant advantages in my life.
I am ignorant.
I am overwhelmed.
I am disgusted.
I am paralyzed.
I am afraid.
I am humbled, forgiven, and obedient.
Repeat.
Those first five stages are fruitless at best; sinful if I’m
honest, and I need to deal with them as such. I need to call out the sin in my
life.
I am ignorant. That is sin. Ignorance is choosing foolishness.
It is looking away from truth and ignoring the mind God gave me for learning
and questioning and engaging. Ignorance is choosing oblivion to global and
national crises, excusing myself because it's too sad, it's too hard.
I am overwhelmed. That is sin. I am looking to my own ability
to solve injustice rather than following the lead of Him who came to change the
world through servanthood. I am sinking into defeat, rather than clinging to a
God of victory. Nothing is impossible for Him, and to be overwhelmed is to
disregard the power of the Holy Spirit who is alive and active in me.
I am disgusted. That is sin. The Lord needed to bring me to a
place of disgust, a harsh realization of my abundant privilege. But to stay in
that place of guilt, apologizing for all I have, is to forget the One who gave
it to me. He did not accidentally place me in this life at this time in
history, and He is not interested in my apologies for living in America, for
being white, for being educated, or for succeeding in a career.
I am paralyzed. That is sin. The reality of injustice is so
thick and so heavy, I get lost in it. And then I do nothing. I stay in my
neighborhood and in my home, with my conveniences and luxuries. I hang out with
people who look like me and think like me. We talk about how thankful we are
Jesus came to do all that messy work, but disengage ourselves from real action.
Pretty soon, doing nothing in my norm.
I am afraid. This is sin. Fear will lie to me every time,
coaxing me to believe injustice is too much for my God. Fear tells me I will
fail if I seek reconciliation. Fear tells me I will say the wrong thing and do
the wrong thing. Fear tells me I will put myself in danger and be in over my
head. Fear tells me I will upset people and annoy my friends. But God did not
give me a spirit of fear, and to believe otherwise is sin.
I am humbled, forgiven, and obedient. Confronting my own
selfishness is miserable, but once each of those daggers have been humbly laid
down, I can claim Christ’s forgiveness and move on to obedience.
The Bible tells me to feel the pain of others. Be wrecked by
injustice. Be burdened. The Bible tells me to pray, and not just on the days
after horrific events like Charlottesville, but to get on my knees every day,
crying out for the broken and forgotten, repenting from my sins and the sins of
this nation. The Bible says to be faithful in prayer, be persistent, keep
bugging God to shake my soul and not look away from oppressive systems that
have handed me a life of advantage.
This doesn’t have to be an either/or approach. I can carry on
with my daily life and remember the
marginalized around me. I can write on my blog about eating dessert in the bathroom, and I can write about racial
reconciliation. I can take my children to our community pool where they see
dozens of children who look just like them, and
I can take them to a church where they are the racial minority. My husband and
I can celebrate special occasions at overpriced restaurants, and we can volunteer with the Cincinnati
Refugee Resettle Program. I can go to the gym to teach Zumba classes, and I can learn to correctly pronounce
the names of the colored women in my class, not just the white students. I can
talk with my girlfriends about curtains and crockpot dinners and playdates, and we can talk about teaching our
children to stand up for others. I can read Real Simple magazine and I can read about how to love my friends of color well. I can
pray with my children for God to heal their owies, and I can pray with my children for God to awaken their eyes and
hearts to those who need love.
This isn’t a checklist. It isn’t more to add to my plate. It
isn’t one or the other. It is awareness. It is courage. It is a transformation
of my heart to move past the years I spent desiring peace and wishing well to
those on the sidelines.
Jesus spent His life on the bottom rung of the ladder. He
surrounded himself with the powerless, the outcasts, the bottom dwellers, the
marginalized. By his own choosing, He never made it up past that bottom rung.
But I was born on the top rung; I was born into a life so far from Jesus.
White. American. Middle class. Educated. Excess everything. It is a life so
many long for, but it is a life that has proven to be my greatest hindrance in
knowing the true Jesus. It is so far from the Savior who said He was “close to
the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18) and that “the highborn are but a lie” (Psalm
62:9). There is such a distance from me and the man who constantly cared for
the widows, the orphans, the poor, and the needy. It is so much harder to “seek
justice and encouraged the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17) from up on this top rung.
It’s ironic how you can read something a dozen times and
always hope someone else is taking it to heart. How did I miss it?
In every corner of the Bible, God is screaming, begging,
pleading, urging me to love mercy and justice, to care for the last and least.
If I’m going to believe the Bible is the Word of God, then it seems God is
obsessed with social justice, and He asking me to stay engaged and join Him.
This is my messy beginning.
*****
It has been a joy to share our hearts with you over the past
month. The four of us have each been challenged, convicted, and inspired. We
have each prayed earnestly for our readers, and for ourselves asking God to
shake some souls and spur on conversations that would bring Him glory. We would
love to end this series by praying for our nation, together pleading with God
to heal and restore.
Oh Jesus,
We come before You with our mess. We acknowledge our sin and
repent from it. We need You to do your thing. We need your power to bring
change because we know we are powerless without You.
I pray, God, that You would heal our nation and bring us to
racial reconciliation. I pray that our hearts and minds would be changed and
that change would lead to action. May our hearts break for the damage white
supremacy has caused in our nation - that we would see it for the sin it is,
and commit to not being complicit in it. I pray we would move outside our
comfort zones, invite people into our homes that don’t look like us, and build
relationships in an effort to reconcile.
I pray America would become comfortable with being
uncomfortable and no longer shy away from our horrid past. I pray we would know
that racial reconciliation is not simply a good option; it’s important to You.
May our hearts remain pliable for You to mold and change; performing open heart
surgery if necessary to make us into a people that not only embodies the ethos
of reconciliation, but the life style. May our days be less comfortable and more
courageous. May our love for You, Jesus,
cause us to actively love our neighbors well.
I pray we would lay down our privilege to serve and to see. I
pray we would open our hands and our eyes. We are in need of Your grace and
Your grit to do and hear hard things. Lead us, Jesus. Please do exceedingly
above what we ask.
Amen.
Chains fall
Fear bow
Here, now
Jesus, you change
everything
Lives healed
Hope found
Here, now
Jesus, you change
everything
Lyrics from Holy
Ground
Joy Becker is a wife and mama living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She recently resigned from a twelve-year career as a literacy coach and first grade teacher to become a full time stay-at-home-mom with her two young darlings. She is a lover of new notebooks, October, and goat cheese, and a hater of traffic, scary movies, and overcooked asparagus. You can peek even further into her love for Jesus, food, motherhood, and friendship over at 44 & Oxford.
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