“The reason the world is divided is because the division lies within us.”
It happens every time I go home. I see my (white) people at the local Wal-Mart dressed in not so desirable clothing and walking at a slow pace and I judge. Growing up on a farm in rural PA in Bumpville, we always had a name for people who grew up in trailer parks….trailer trash, or worse, white trash. The worst part is that I don’t even know where it comes from, it just happens. Why? Because I have a false self that loves to categorize and look down upon others to make myself feel better. (the irony is that I’m sure we got judged by people for living on a farm….)
For years I have been wrestling with how emotional health and race intersect from a Biblical perspective, and then the Father gently led me to Colossians 3. For a few months I dove deep into this text, to study it in the original context, and see the ways in which it applies to the journey from the false self to the true self in Christ.
In this section Paul says, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Verse 10 jumped off the page for me, “and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Here Paul is talking about how Christ has given us a true self through repentance of our sins and placing our faith in Christ. This is why he begins the third chapter, “Since then…”
But context is everything as we engage the Bible. What’s happening in this section of scripture? What happens as a result of the new self in Christ begins to live through us? Paul’s next words are HUGE, “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Paul is making the argument that because of the new self in Christ, we no longer can categorize or distinguish people or groups.
But, what we fail to miss in this text and argument (and what Paul deals with a lot in his letters), is what the false self or old man does to different people groups. The false self in us categorizes and makes distinctions in order to control, manipulate and have power over.
One of the manifestations of the false self is that it is a distinction making self as Robert Mulholland unpacks in his book, The Deeper Journey. He describes the distinction making self as, “Our false self is characterized by a need to categorize others in ways that always gives us the advantage. Since our false self is a way of being that positions us “over against” all others, others must be evaluated and labeled in such a way as to keep them either inferior to us or affirming and supportive “equals.””
This is unfortunately true of me as I still struggle with the "false self of ism’s” that likes to categorize and control people and drives me to my need for Christ's forgiveness. Because of the way sin has structured our society, I have racism, sexism, classism and cultural superiority within me. As Pastor Ethan Seifred at Refuge Church said, “Humanity is trapped in an endless cycle of internal conflict and external chaos.”
I’ve been on this journey for fifteen years seeking Christ to live out the new humanity across color, class, culture and gender. When I am living out of the false self, it’s amazing and greatly troubling what comes out of me that profiles, classifies, categorizes, or puts others down. There are many pastors, ministry leaders, and business leaders who genuinely love Jesus who struggle with the same thing.
This is why the response, “I am not a racist”, misses the point when it comes to conversations of race and racism. A core doctrine to the Christian Church is the doctrine of original sin. We’re born into the doctrine of original sin in a country founded upon a thing called white supremacy, and so we’ve been conditioned from the start. We all have biases, prejudices, and racist tendencies, why? Because we are born into sin and have been shaped to see others in certain kinds of ways.
A close friend, Renee Bryan, who’s a follower of Jesus and a Licensed Counselor who’s African-American put it like this; “From a mental health perspective, systemic racism and emotional health remains easier to not look at because when white evangelicals begin to truly look at the history and present issues, it will unearth so much wickedness and evil which then forces people to look at themselves individually and collectively. This also forces people to look at how they are currently contributing (whether they consciously know it or not) to the oppression of marginalized populations. Who wants to readily look at that!!! Hence you see the self-preservation and pie in the sky thought processes occurring in order to soothe the conscience.”
In order for us to really heal as a country and church, we need surgery to remove this cancerous sin in us called “isms”. It’s in all of us. Let’s not ignore that, but the good news of the gospel is as Paul says in Romans 2, “not realizing that God’s kindness I intended to lead you to repentance.” It is God’s kindness that he allows us to look at this evil that’s been lurking beneath the surface of our lives and face it. We can only gain access to this new humanity when we choose to face the evils of our culture and the evil that’s inside each of us.
May Christ continue to reconcile all things, including the division that lies within!