The (Im)partial Church : Episode 15 | Agree on the Problem - Part 1
February 20, 2023
Some Christians don't feel that reconciliation work is urgent. Why is that? How can churches better reflect the multiethnic wisdom of our heavenly Father? Gerard and Janine start a two-part conversation about Barna's Beyond Diversity study. If this conversation inspires further questions feel free to reach out to us at theimpartialchurch@lhm.org.
The (Im)partial Church
Episode 02-05-15
Rev. Dr. Gerard Bolling: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Impartial Church.
Professor Janine Bolling: How is everybody doing?
Gerard: I feel pretty good after the last conversation we had.
Janine: Okay, okay, okay. In case you all missed the last episode, we talked about the difference between conviction and condemnation. Condemnation tells us the wages of sin is death and how we all deserve it. Isn't that good news?
Gerard: Well, yeah, not exactly, because the flip side of condemnation is conviction. Conviction is how God often tells His people that there's a problem that needs our attention and repentance. Instead of condemning us, He takes our debt on Himself and He puts it on the cross with Him.
Janine: We looked at all this through the lens of the story of David and Bathsheba. In this story, we see that David messes up in a big-time way and makes some very dehumanizing choices. He commits adultery. He is led by guilt and gets an innocent man killed. He takes full advantage of the power disparity between himself and all of his subjects.
Gerard: But after all this, God convicts David and through the prophet Nathan, David repents. And lo and behold, God also shows David a tremendous amount of grace and doesn't even give him what he deserves, right? And that's what grace is, getting what we don't deserve. And not only that, but He makes good on His promise to David.
Janine: Ultimately, this story is good news for all of us. It lets us know that even when we royally, pun intended, mess up, our identity is secure in Christ and God is still good.
Gerard: But remember, we can't forget that repentance is necessary. That's why today we're going to hear from some friends again. And then we're going to start to explore some of the reasons why the church can't agree on the problem that we have with partiality and also with equity. This is going to take us through the next two episodes together.
Janine: And you know what? While this may not seem super fun for some of our listeners, we remember that conviction and condemnation are different. We feel conviction because we are children of God. And when we do, it's because He loved us and He created us for more.
Gerard: All that, this is coming up on this episode of The Impartial Church.
Gerard: Hey y'all. I'm Gerard.
Janine: And I'm Janine.
Gerard: I'm the big brother.
Janine: But I'm the older sister, and we are brother and sister in Christ.
Gerard: We grew up in Brookelyn, New York.
Janine: I'm still living in Brookelyn, but I serve in the Bronx.
Gerard: I'm a professor at Concordia University in Texas and a pastor at a congregation in St. Louis.
Janine: It's been said Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.
Gerard: Issues with race and culture still plague our communities and our churches.
Janine: But what can we do about it? Should we see color?
Gerard: Or be colorblind?
Janine: What's our responsibility in bringing about unity in our neighborhoods and in our church pews?
Gerard: It's a delicate topic, but one we must tackle with grace.
Janine: So pull up your chair to the table as we bring Jesus to the center of this conversation of-
Gerard: The Impartial Church.
Janine: Okay. So after last week, we know that we don't have to identify with our sin. We get to identify instead as God's children, as the body of Christ.
Gerard: That's right. I don't really think that we take enough time to think about how great that is. We don't really get what we actually deserve. We talked about that before. We're afforded the opportunity to learn and grow from our mistakes. And as the body of Christ, we have work to do. Martin Luther himself once said, "God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does."
Janine: Quoting the good old Martin Luther.
Gerard: 2KR, yeah.
Janine: 2KR. Okay.
Gerard: Two kinds of righteousness. Yeah.
Janine: Nice. Is that a hashtag yet?
Gerard: Hashtag 2KR, two kinds of righteousness, active and passive righteousness. Right? Remember that?
Janine: Yes. Yes.
Gerard: We're getting into some theology weeds today.
Janine: Theology weeds on the shirt. So when it comes to issues of race though in the church, we often don't quite know where to begin. The issue in and of itself is kind of messy.
Gerard: Yeah, exactly. The world would have us to believe that there is no reality where we could all get along peaceably.
Janine: But for those of us who put our hope in Jesus, we know that God's kingdom is just that sort of place. Let's listen in again to Brookee Hempell from the "Beyond Diversity" study about some common reasons we can't quite agree on the problem, and how to solve it.
Brookee Hempell: There's been a lot of debate about the concept of systemic racism, and I would really encourage people to read up, do their homework. What is meant by the concept of systemic racism is that there have been practices, laws, systems, institutions, things that have happened in our history, and I'm going to speak just of our country right now, that have embedded bias and injustice into the way things are done.
And so when we talk about systemic racism, that concept is very known to people of color who've experienced it, right? It's very understood because you've been on the receiving end. If you haven't been on the receiving end, you may not realize how deep it runs and how much it presents barriers. And so we saw this in our research.
We asked people a basic question is "What do you think is the bigger problem in the U.S. today?" And it was,
"Do you think it's individual's own beliefs and prejudices that cause them to treat people of other races poorly? Or "Is it racial discrimination that is historically built into our society and institutions?" So basically, is it individual prejudice or is it systemic bias? On that, there were huge differences by people's racial group, of course, but even by the age, and Christians and non-Christians think really differently.
Gerard: We wanted to know what the cause of that disconnect might have been. We landed on some problematic myths about the lived experiences of minorities in this country. But Brooke also highlighted something else. She seemed to think that a lack of curiosity and empathy is what has allowed these misunderstandings to persist. We asked how important curiosity and empathy were to charting a path forward.
Brooke Hempell: I think it's foundational. One is because we see that disconnect. So obviously we're not spending the time getting to know each other. But two, because we have a God who sent His Son to live amongst us, to experience what we experienced, to know us as deeply as we know ourselves. So why would we not have that same empathy and curiosity for others, especially people who we call our brothers and sisters, especially if we're talking about people in the church, much less outside the church.
I see it in the data and I just see the Scripture pointing to it. If we call ourselves Christian, we should really want to know each other in the same way that our God desires to know us and know our hearts. It's not really as bad as people say it is, or we're overgeneralizing the issues. But we've been doing this research for years, and we know that that's not the case. These are genuine issues. And the reason we're seeing frustration and unrest is because they haven't been resolved.
Gerard: Based on what we have just heard, it sounds like there are a few fundamental reasons why we have a hard time tackling this problem. First, due to some commonly held misconceptions some of us can't discern that there is a problem to begin with.
Janine: Second, we have a limited view of what it is to be a good neighbor and sometimes we can't discern who our neighbor is.
Gerard: And third, we don't trust what we don't experience for ourselves. But the church ought to have something to say about all of this, and it must be a place where we seek out the wellbeing of our neighbor, even when it costs us something.
Janine: For the remainder of this episode, we are going to discuss ways to combat some of these issues, see what Scripture has to say, and find ways to combat our misconceptions. Overall, we will explore what it looks like to grow in empathy.
Gerard: Well, let's start with our vocational responsibility. It's probably not a stretch to say that in the Genesis account, God makes people stewards of His blessing to be fruitful and multiply, right?
Janine: Absolutely. And for Lutherans, this is referenced in the First Article of the Catechism. Didn't know you were having a confirmation quiz today.
Gerard: Oh, come on now.
Janine: "God gives us all our faculties and none of this is contingent upon our worthiness." Luther goes on to say that it is our duty to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him.
Gerard: That tracks. But what does obeying Him really look like? Jesus tells us that part of the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. And last season we talked about how love requires us to seek the wellbeing of our neighbor. And this ties back to the idea of stewarding the blessing. In order to love our neighbor well, we have to seek the conditions necessary for them to be fruitful and necessary for them to thrive. The first two reasons why it's difficult for us to agree on the problem when it comes to inequity in the church are number one, we have an inability to discern that there is a problem. And number two, we have an inability to discern who our neighbor is.
Janine: That's good. And we've talked about this before. This though, this one, this is it. This is the big one. We can't love them well if we don't know who they are. And in knowing who they are, we learn what issues they face. So, let's ask more questions.
Gerard: Okay. And when we learn the issues they face, we can also live into our vocational mandate to seek their wellbeing. This is the getting to know the other, getting to know your neighbor's situation. And this is the hard stuff, right, the tough stuff for each and every one of us. But we really, just like everything else, have to use Scripture in order to really exegete it.
In 1 John 2, it's put this way, "Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light and there is nothing in them that makes them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister in the darkness, walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going because the darkness has blinded them."
When we think about being a brother or a sister to someone and loving our neighbor, and we think about the church and the relevance in that, I love this light-dark imagery that comes through here from the writer. Because if it's completely dark in the space, I'll stumble around in that space, and I'll stub my toe and I'll not know where things are and I'll knock things over and be clumsy and awkward.
Janine: Almost like a bull in a China shop.
Gerard: Exactly like a bull in the China shop and literally with me because I really would be. We don't have good night vision as Christians. And so when we're stumbling around in the darkness, it's a really hard thing because we're going to hurt some feelings, and we're going to knock some things over, and we're going to do some things that we regret. But when we live in love for our neighbor, we're walking around in the light and we're able to see things a little bit more clearly.
Janine: Absolutely.
Gerard: And it's important to have that discussion with one another.
Janine: Yes. And when you think about the walking around in the darkness, it honestly takes me back to how you used to play that game when we were kids of—
Gerard: What?
Janine: You are telling the person what to do. It's almost like "Simon says," but not.
Gerard: Yeah. Okay.
Janine: The person is just doing what you say. I would be like, oh—
Gerard: It sounds like that's just being bossy, like a bossy—
Janine: I know, but it was a really fun game we used to play and I was like, ohhh.
Gerard: I don't think it was a game. For some, it was reality. For others, it was a game.
Janine: No, it was like when there was an extra, say, Chucky B, who's our mom, right? Brought home a piece of cake from the diner, out with her friends, and we'd have to cut the cake in half. But there's never a way to make equal halves, so you would always get the bigger one, and I would always get the prettier one. And then in order to even that out, you would say, "What can I give you in exchange?" And I would say, "Well, you have to do whatever I say for the next hour."
And some of that included walking in the dark; it included walking upstairs; it included getting water bottles from cars, and just doing all types of chores. But when you're walking around doing something that's really, really unfamiliar, you do need that direction. Right?
Gerard: You do.
Janine: You do need that guidance.
Gerard: And I think about what would it look like if we sought to give each other the better thing, rather than trying to make ourselves get the good thing. If I wanted to give you the bigger piece or you wanted to give me the prettier piece, then things would be different. But we're not wired that way. Right?
Janine: No, absolutely not. It's something you could definitely break free from, but it has made me a really good cake cutter.
Gerard: Yes, I'm glad that you grew in that way. And this is really what the Scripture is begging is how do we actually love our brother and sister, so that we don't want them to stumble and we don't want them to struggle? What do we do? And this is where the educator in me comes out. Yeah. Yeah, it's like being a teacher. This is where the professor inside of Dr. Bowling comes out.
I know that repetition is a great way to get my students to pay attention and to hammer things into their memories. We're going to look back into the story of the Good Samaritan again. But this time we're going to pay attention to talk through what it looks like for the Samaritan to champion the healing of the man who's been robbed. So we'll look again at this story and we'll look at what the other passerby did wrong. Luke 10:30 says, "In reply, Jesus said, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road and they saw the man and he passed on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was. And when he saw him, took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on him. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper.' "Look after him," he said. "And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense that you may have." Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?'"
So again, we're kind of looking through this story again. We've read it a lot. You've read it in Sunday school too, but we're looking from a different perspective. We're paying attention to what it takes for the Samaritan to champion that healing of the man who has been robbed. What inputs, right, grant writing, did he have to put in order to get those outcomes? He used his own money. When we think about that, that's crazy, right? Someone slapping their credit card down on a counter, saying to the innkeeper, "Whatever this guy needs, charge it to me." Can you imagine doing that, Janine?
Janine: Using my own money to pay for somebody else's stuff?
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: It sounds like a regular day in urban ministry, honestly, to me. But it does come from a place of love. And what I think is important about him using his own money is many of us will use our own money one time. You see a person who doesn't have something, you want to get it for them. Easy.
Gerard: Yes.
Janine: How many more of us will use our own money and keep it going? So he not only put his credit card down, he really left his whole tab open. He didn't close out at the end of the night. He leaves the whole tab open and says, "Whatever else he needs. If he needs more bandages, if he needs a bigger bed for more rest, if he needs food, if he needs something special." He already poured on him oil, wine, things that were of value of the day. And he is invested in continuing to pay for it until the job is done.
And so that's really where the different lies. And that's where I see another picture of from urban ministry would be partners, right? Partnerships, people who continue to pour out not just for a one-time thing, but on and on. Which is so important I know to both of our ministries, but also in the story of the Good Samaritan. The other thing that I thought was really a point of reference for this story, when we're talking about issues of race in the church—Who's our neighbor? What the problem is?—has to deal with the verse 33. So it says, "It came or he came to where the man, who had been robbed was and had pity on him. He was moved by compassion." And one of the ways that compassion has been shared with me as a definition point, even in deaconess studies, was with the word "splankna" from the Greek—
Gerard: Yes, Janine. I was just going to say we can get into our Greek. Both Janine and I took Greek together at Concordia Chicago. The word that's used, because I looked it up, is esplanchnisthe. So it literally is the splankna word, which is, definition ...
Janine: It means really literally "bowels." So the Greeks talked about it as a crime of passion, the violence that comes from deep within you. The Hebrews talked about it as really your deepest affection for someone, whatever moves you. So many times, even when we use the words crime of passion, we think of what that word passion means and how it's used often negatively in our society. But passion can also drive one for good, for affection, for being willing to be sacrificial in nature.
And so when we think about feeling compassion for someone, we think about what it means to suffer with them, not to suffer for them. Like, "Oh, my gosh! This man took my card and now he's going to be racking up a bill in this inn, and I don't know what I'm going to do." Rather it's I'm suffering with you. Here's my last; here's a little bit of what I had for myself. Here's something that I would want someone to do for me, and here's what Christ is calling me to do in this moment.
Gerard: Someone once told me about giving when I was first learning about giving and tithing, and this was actually Pastor Schmickie that taught me this. "You give until it hurts a little bit," he used to say, "You give until it hurts a little bit." And so it's easy to give out of plenty, like way plenty. But when you're actually slapping the card down and it hurts a little bit, then it's sort of a sacrificial giving that mirrors the way that Christ has given. You also think to the differences between the people groups. The Samaritan ethnicity is called out because it's different than the man that he helps, right?
Janine: Yeah.
Gerard: So you're seeing a cross-cultural way that someone is helping another person. You mentioned the compassion piece, too.
Janine: Well, I wanted to go backwards a little bit, Gerard, for just a second.
Gerard: Okay, yeah.
Janine: With the ethnicity piece and helping someone who's different, I think so often what happens with us is we almost get afraid to offend them, so much so that we don't even want to take the first step of helping someone, right?
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: So I recognize in my community, a gentrifying community in the northern part of Brooklyn, we have many different cultures all clashed up against one another. One of the cultures that's highly represented here, they do not do well with men interrupting women's space, women interrupting men's space. So from learning that and being here, you learn to take a really wide gap on the sidewalk when you see people who belong to this ethnic group because it's respect for them.
But you learn that only by living among and asking these questions and finding out. With the Samaritan, or sometimes in our own life, when it comes to dealing with others who are different than us, we worry so much about that ramp up of, "Well, what if I say something offensive? Or what if the way I'm dressed is offensive? Or what if I don't bow low enough? Or what if I go in for a handshake and they really wanted a fist bump?"
We really have trouble navigating that piece because it is different. But what this story teaches us as well is that when we come from that place where God's calling us to be and who He's calling us to be, for those He's still trying to reach, we get that boldness to go out in the Name of Christ and do His work for the Kingdom.
Gerard: Yes, amen. I think that boldness is emboldened within us and it sort of bubbles over. It's the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do, it says in the Scriptures. He bandaged him up and he asked for the care. We talked about the fact that the credit card is slapped down, but the intimacy of bandaging someone up and helping them, that's a different kind of intimacy when you help somebody.
I remember when we were very young, we saw a guy have a seizure in the hospital. Our mom is a nurse and a guy had a seizure and he fell down the steps, and our mom ran to help him as he fell down the steps. And she actually had to put hands on him and move him to the side and make sure that his tongue didn't get swallowed, and all that other. I knew that that's what she did for a living, but the intensity of that moment to see her actually do it, there's intimacy in that, in helping to save someone in that way. And that mirrors the intimacy that Christ has with us, in saving us. Saving us was personal for Jesus and He was invested in it. And this was the same thing for this Samaritan man with this individual that he comes by to.
Janine: Absolutely. It was personal. I like the way that you said that, much like the great Michael Jordan took that personally.
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: Right? And did something about it.
Gerard: Yes.
Janine: None of this is new. Nothing is new under the sun as we hear in Ecclesiastes. And we've talked about the parable of the Good Samaritan before on this very podcast. But the thing to pay attention to, the thing to pay attention to rather than the title of the story, where it comes from, how many times we've mentioned it, is who tells the parable. In this case, Jesus tells the story. And we know that when Jesus teaches, He's going to ask a lot of questions. Nobody's falling asleep while Jesus is teaching. So He's going to ask a lot of questions and He's going to engage his students.
Gerard: Yeah. In other words, the story isn't just happenstance. Jesus means for us to abstract out some lessons. This parable is a source text that teaches us exactly how Jesus wants us to act as His body.
Janine: But Gerard, don't you want to talk about the third reason we can't agree on the problem?
Gerard: Oh yeah, sure. Why don't you introduce it?
Janine: That was super smooth. So, in the world that we live in, it seems that we're always concerned with being deceived. No one wants to be had. No one wants to get got. We can all blame it on the MTV show, Catfish, from three years back. You catfish somebody, it means that you're looking for a certain person. They show up in real life and you're like, "This wasn't the videos or the pictures that you sent me." Right?
Whatever the reason is, we really just can't trust the way that we used to because of the ability that people have nowadays to create deception. And so the third reason we can't agree on the problem is because we lack trust in the lived experiences of our brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact, in a 2021 New York Times bestseller, psychologists, Adam Grant details ways that our brains sometimes fight objectivity.
And he says this, "In psychology, there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias, seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias, seeing what we want to see." So first, confirmation bias, seeing what we expect and desirability bias, seeing what we want. These biases don't just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can contort our intelligence into a weapon against truth. In the book, Grant also talks about how even really smart people have a hard time being objective when the facts don't support their presuppositions.
Gerard: So what would happen if instead of banking on our own biases, we let our faith lead our actions. Scripture admonishes us to lean not on our own understanding, but in all our ways submit to God, that He would make our path straight. And God is clear about what He wants from us: we're to champion the vulnerable amongst us to steward His blessing and to seek the wellbeing of all people. I'm not sure if this analogy is going to work for everybody, but this was helpful for me. You know when you have an itch on your back?
Janine: Absolutely not. I've never had an itch on my back.
Gerard: Everybody has had an itch on their back.
Janine: Yes.
Gerard: And when it's at that right spot, that real annoying spot that's down low in that middle back range.
Janine: Yes.
Gerard: You just can't seem to reach it. And when it happens for me, actually, I have to ask my wife to scratch it for me or somebody else to scratch it for me. Because my wife cares about me and she doesn't like to see me in discomfort, so she helps me out. But Lorenda doesn't just scratch all willy-nilly. She listens as I describe exactly where the itch is located and that is the place that she scratches.
Janine: So you're itching your back and she's scratching it.
Gerard: Yes. So I can describe where the itch is because I'm the one experiencing the discomfort.
Janine: Okay.
Gerard: And as someone who cares about me, it's important for my wife to hear me and to hear where I'm asking her to scratch. And this requires that she trusts my testimony of what's happening and where I need it scratched.
Janine: Okay, pass the bullet. I'll see where you going. Okay.
Gerard: See where I'm going—
Janine: So now I'm tracking with you. As members of the body of Christ, we need to trust the testimony of other members because we share a goal.
Gerard: Yes. See, I know that Lorenda has my best interest at heart, and we're married; that's the vow that we took. And as such, I know that she has good intentions for me. And she may not immediately know the spot to scratch in, but she wants to know where it is so she can relieve that discomfort. And so to solve this issue, there has to be a mutual base of trust.
Janine: Ultimately, God is calling us to be selfless. And it works when you think about finding the things that bother your neighbors and tending to that need where you can. So just like you mentioned with the back scratching, you have an itch. I can scratch it. When it happens to me, probably be reciprocated, right?
Gerard: Yeah. So what are the itches of our neighbors? What are the things that bother our neighbors and how can we scratch them? How can we show love and bring about a thriving environment? What does it look like to listen long enough to find out exactly where it itches before we pull our claws out?
Janine: Next episode, we will discuss biblical literacy as well as the inerrancy of Scripture and why this is such a valuable tool in discerning how God leads His people. But as we head home for this week, we're going to have to read a verse. We're going to have to do it, right?
Gerard: Let's do it.
Janine: We read the Bible on this podcast, right? So it comes from Philippian 2. For some context, the church in Philippi is one of the first churches that Paul plants. It was a territory of the Roman Empire that had a large group of Roman soldiers. And it wasn't the most supportive of the early church.
After all, the church was supporting a different kingdom, that in many ways was at odds with Caesar's kingdom. So when writing to this church from prison, Paul says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."
And so that verse really shows us from Philippians what we should be doing. I always have struggles with verses like this for a couple of different reasons. But Gerard, why don't you tell us a little bit more about that Kingdom that Paul is speaking of, because he's not talking about the same kind of kingdom that may be familiar to some of those people in Philippi.
Gerard: Yeah. The Kingdom that Paul thinks of is the one where we're to count the needs of others more highly than our own. We're to look at the interests of other people more than we look at the interests of ourselves. And this is a full stop for us, because what it means is we have to stop being so selfish and start looking to serve a little bit more. In Jesus' upside-down kingdom, we look out for one another. When we don't see a need immediately, we are open to seeing the need. When we seek first the kingdom of God, we seek to serve others. And like the story of the Good Samaritan, we don't even need others to look like us, right? We weep with those who weep and we allow our suspicions to take a backseat to our servant hearts.
Janine: Today, we tackled the first three reasons it's hard to agree on the race issue in our churches and communities. The first one, we can't discern what the problem is or that there is one. The second, we can't discern who our neighbor is. And then the third, we have a lack of trust due to the lack of believing other people's shared experiences, particularly their shared lived experiences. Right?
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: When we take a 40,000-foot glance at Scripture, we're able to see that as Christians, we come to this issue with different eyes than the world.
Gerard: If we look back a few episodes, we see that conviction serves as a reminder of how God wants His people to act. It's not a death sentence, quite the opposite. As God's children, our identities are secure in Him. Tune in next week as we explore a few other things that complicate the matter in hopes of discerning a way forward.