Pastor and “beloved community” organizer Leroy Barber explains the importance of overcoming barriers to healthy relationships with people whom we perceive as different from us.
We humans … are made in the image of that triune God. And while the imago Dei in us has many aspects, it’s clear that we are relational beings…. We cannot help but function in community, and when we’re not in community, we suffer consequences. We were made to be together, and that’s by God’s design. Human flourishing requires that we establish, mend, and maintain relationships with other people.
Jesus exemplified and taught that those loving relationships ought to cross culture’s artificial boundaries of politics, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and socioeconomic status. But in our world today, we have become adept at erecting and fortifying these barriers. We live in the most individualistic society in history, and when we do interact with others, we do our best to make sure that those people look, talk, think, and behave just as we do. These tendencies may keep us in our comfort zones, but they are antithetical to God’s will for us. They are the enemy of God’s plan of redemption and relationship, and they keep us distant from one another and ultimately from the one who created us. [1]
CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies how “contact bias” causes us to distance ourselves from people who don’t look, think, or act as we do.
When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Think of the child who is told by people [they trust] that people of another race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, or class are dirty and dangerous.
You can immediately see the self-reinforcing cycle: those people are dirty or dangerous, so I will distrust and avoid them, which means I will never have sustained and respectful interactive contact with them, which means I will never discover that they are actually wonderful people….
On page after page of the gospels, Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. Instead, he incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, and even lays down his life for the other. [2]
Barber concludes:
Is it possible for us to see each other the way God sees us instead of through our biases? The truth is that God doesn’t see people the way we do, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves and others that our way is the Creator’s way. In God’s eyes, each and every person is a bearer of [God’s] image. Each is a special creation, each is loved, each is in need of God’s love and forgiveness….
As ambassadors for the kingdom of God, we need to begin to see others as Christ does—as people in need of the same divine love, mercy, and grace that has been extended to us. [3]
References:
[1] Leroy Barber, Embrace: God’s Radical Shalom for a Divided World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2016), 51.
[2] Brian McLaren, Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself) (self-pub., 2019), [45, 90]. Available from https://brianmclaren.net/store/.
[3] Barber, Embrace, 52.
Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Alma Thomas, Snoopy—Early Sun Display on Earth (detail), 1970, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian. Alma Thomas, Snow Reflection on Pond (detail), 1973, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian. Loïs Mailou Jones, Jeune Fille Français (detail), 1951, oil on canvas, Smithsonian. Click here to enlarge image.
We accept the breach as an invitation to repair: piece by piece, thread by thread, we heal together.
Story from Our Community:
We have the most beautiful pine tree in our front yard. She is old, tall, and magnificent. Three years ago, my 24-year-old son passed away. Amidst the deepest grief, I felt drawn to lay down under that tree and gaze through her branches at the beautiful blue sky. Somehow, when I did this, I felt peace and healing. In some strange way, I believe that that tree called me so she could heal me. I feel very connected to her to this day. And at the same time, I feel very connected to God when I am with her.
—Dolores C.
