Empathic Wisdom Series, Week 4: A Modest Recommendation for Radical Transformation
This is the fourth and final article in this 4-part series intended to explore the role that empathy plays in our calling to follow the way of Jesus. The further we move along this journey, the more we discover about ourselves and the beauty of God.
I grew up in Maryland. One of the weird (we like to think of it as unique) characteristics of being a Marylander is that you tell people where you are from by identifying the county you live in. Like residents in Chicago or New York identifying themselves by their neighborhoods or boroughs, Marylanders tend to think of each county as having a distinctive flavor and identity. I grew up in PG County (Prince George’s County for those not in the know). PG County is known for a great many things, the first of which is being home to a historic number of incredible basketball players. (Check out the awesome documentary, by hometown hero Kevin Durant, called Basketball County to find out more). Another unique thing about PG County is that it is home to one of the wealthiest concentrations of African Americans in the country. There is beautiful diversity in PG County, much of it related to its proximity to Washington D.C. and its very interesting history.
Growing up there, I had no idea any of this was unique. It was perfectly normal to live on a street with a mixture of Black, Hispanic, Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi, and White families. Classmates from across the world were a regular part of life. This diversity didn’t magically make it a place free from conflict, racism, class struggles, or segregation, but it did normalize interactions with people outside of my racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. These interactions shaped me in ways that it took me years to understand.
Unintended Consequences
My parents didn’t move us to PG County in pursuit of any of that. My dad worked for the government, and he just moved us close to his work. This decision, however, had an incredible impact on my view of others, especially those who didn’t look, sound, or live like my family. I grew up trying food from a wide array of cultures.
Conversations exploring the religious beliefs of my friends and neighbors were as frequent as playing basketball together. Learning to pronounce unfamiliar names and accents showing a multilingual heritage were normal, not exceptional social efforts. Sitting at the lunch table with classmates who were fasting during Ramadan, watching friends celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, spending time in large groups where I was the definite ethnic minority, all of these were beautiful unintended consequences of where I grew up.
Understanding the unintended consequences of my experience with diversity has made me very interested in the unintended consequences of growing up without diversity. What effect does homogeneity have on our view of the world and others?
The evangelical church in America, especially over the past 75 years, has intentionally been built on homogenous growth principles. Popularized by the first wave of megachurch pastors and church growth experts, these principles encouraged churches to move out of urban centers into the suburbs, and to create cultures that were attractive to the growing middle class. Whatever the motives, the dominant form of evangelical church became large, majority white, and wealthy. There have been a host of unintended theological and missional consequences to this new reality. Some of these changes show up significantly and clearly when it comes to ethical questions around social issues that affect non-white populations in higher percentages.
“Sitting at the lunch table with classmates who were fasting during Ramadan, watching friends celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, spending time in large groups where I was the definite ethnic minority, all of these were beautiful unintended consequences of where I grew up.”
Today in America, white evangelicals are the most likely group to be pro death penalty, to be against U.S. responsibility to accept immigrants and refugees, and are much more likely to own a gun than the average American. Why is there less diversity in the evangelical church around these issues than there is in the culture around us? While all of those are complex issues that each deserve a great amount of study and dialogue, I would offer that the dominant evangelical beliefs surrounding these issues is an unintended consequence of homogeneity.
Jesus Led His Disciples Into Encounters With The Other
Jesus was an experiential teacher. The Gospels contain sermons and stories Jesus taught his disciples and the crowds that followed him. Most of what is recorded, during the three years of Jesus ministry, however, is an experiential learning journey for the 12 disciples. Jesus gathered a mixture of men, of seemingly various ages and backgrounds but from the same general area of Galilee. They spent time moving about in Galilee, encountering a wide array of people there, but also traveled out to the wilderness to spend time with John the Baptist and his followers. They traveled to small towns and urban areas. And most significantly Jesus took them on a journey that expanded out, moving into areas where they were the ethnic minority.
All the while, Jesus pushed his disciples to see the humanity of the people they encountered and to grasp the good news he came to offer them. This was challenging for the disciples. They had no idea what the good news was for a Samaritan woman. The disciples struggled to know what to do with a large crowd of hungry peasants far from home. What hope did a group of Jewish men from Galilee have to offer a Syrophoenician woman whose daughter was battling an evil spirit? What salvation did God have to offer tax collectors, lepers, beggars, prostitutes, and all those cast out of society because of their sinfulness? Could the disciples see the humanity in a man left chained in a cave because of his battle with evil? Could they see how the love of God extended even to their oppressors? Could they see the inherent hypocrisy of the temple industrial complex?
In each of these encounters, crossing social, religious, moral, political, ethnic, and socioeconomic boundaries, Jesus brought his disciples to a place where their encounter with others would lead them to expand their understanding of God and themselves. Jesus was reshaping them for what was to come. It was these leaders, after Jesus’ ascension, that would need to help the largely Jewish early church expand its mission outwards into diverse cultures. The more the church expanded outwards, from Judea into the rest of the Roman Empire, the more God’s plan for salvation was revealed, and more beautiful and diverse the church became.
A Modest Recommendation for The American Church
I would like to offer a modest recommendation for the American Church during this time of polarization and animosity that is dominating not only our country by the church itself. Jesus always calls us to move outside of ourselves to discover the beauty of the good news. God has designed the church as a community that transforms us as we enter covenantal relationships with unlikely people.
It is in the reconciling work of learning to love one another, as God loves us, that we become the God-intended version of ourselves. If we are not in covenantal relationships, but instead only have peripheral relationships with other Christians, we are missing out on the primary mechanism God has designed for our transformation and healing.
We cannot love or be loved at a distance. If all our relationships are with people who look, think, believe, act, and vote like we do, we are missing out on vital transformational experiences. We learn something new about God and ourselves when we learn to love those who are, on the surface, dissimilar to ourselves because what we discover is the shared humanity below the surface.
“God has designed the church as a community that transforms us as we enter covenantal relationships with unlikely people.”
So, here is the modest recommendation; follow Jesus into a life that is shared with those who are dissimilar from us. A life without the diversity of understanding and the learned wisdom of empathy that comes from crossing cultural barriers and wading through the discomforts of getting to know and understand people dissimilar from us, is a life that is missing out on experiencing the fullness of God. The love of God is intimate, up close, and incarnational. We cannot love at a distance. We cannot know at a distance. The longer we live in homogenous communities and isolate ourselves in online echo chambers the longer we will miss out on knowing the depths of God's love for humanity.
Start your empathy journey by exploring Ideos Institute’s The Way of Empathy as a spiritual practice that can help you better love God and love your neighbor.
