Post-Election Sticks and Stones: Lessons on Words after the Trump Election

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James 3, Trump

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Nonsense.

“The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” James 3.6. Good sense.

 

It’s just been a few days after Trump’s close victory in the US election. The reactions range from jubilance to outrage. The reasons for such reactions are many and complex. I’m only going to deal with the aspect related to the above quotes. One immediate impact is racially targeted crimes, aka hate crimes. Already, more than 200 racist incidents have been reported (not counting unreported ones, of course). Such incidents have shown that racism has always been there in the underbelly of America, but so many are shocked because they never saw that underbelly. Some are still in denial.

Most elections in recent years have an edge of nastiness and mud slinging, but the Trump campaign was trademarked with xenophobic and racist rhetoric. I heard one friend say, “It’s just rhetoric” because it seems Trump has reneged on many if not most of his promises. Is it just rhetoric though? Even if it is, is it true that “words will never hurt me.”

Evident from all the racist incidents, words do indeed transform rhetoric into sticks and stones. Trump had provided the vehicle to deliver bold racism that racist whites formerly couldn’t put into words. In one situation, a class of students chanted “build that wall” (in reference to Trump’s promised wall against Mexicans crossing the border) to their Mexican classmates. Others make jokes about deporting immigrants obviously in reference to Trump’s promise to boot illegal immigrants. These are just words though. Grow thicker skin, they say. But skin can only grow so thick when punches start raining. Apparently, some of these incidents aren’t merely verbal. My friend, a white female, was at the bar chatting with a man who supported Trump. When he found out that she didn’t vote for Trump, he got belligerent. Argument ensued followed by the man trying to assault her. Lucky she learned self defense and put him down. This is in “enlightened” and liberal California. As we recall, Trump is also the same person who longed for the good old days when he can punch someone who didn’t agree with him. Can we place the entire blame on Trump for these people’s action? No, these people are individual who should be responsible for their action. BUT we should place the blame on Trump’s rhetoric for providing the vehicle for these people verbal and physical abuse. Some misinformed people argue that we simply can’t blame Trump for all these incidents. Such an argument is simplistic and unbiblical. Trump’s rhetoric has to take part of the blame.

What some Christians fail to grasp in this election cycle is the biblical truth about words. They’ve subscribed to the false understanding of “words are just words.” Words are NOT just words. The congregation of James was in some dispute, and unqualified people had been using words to cause further chaos. This gave the reason for James to write these words. It seems that our country is in some chaos. Some say that the chaos has always been there, and those incidents have always been there. I doubt if their claim is right. More than 200 racist incidents reported in half a week isn’t just made up my media to get ratings. It’s abnormal. I think Christians need to take what James said seriously. I think we’ve laughed off a lot of Trump’s antics in this election (please don’t bring in Hillary in at this point. I’m just referring to Trump here) because we frankly have a careless view on words. James admonished us to take words seriously.

If James described the tongue as a wild fire, then Trump’s careless words have set our country burning on both sides (yes, I’m aware that some people have beaten up Trump supporters and caused destruction of properties too). If Christian citizens do not hold their own words and their leaders’ words accountable, the result will be unimaginable.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will be the cause of those broken bone (or a national forest fire). Words aren’t just words!

 

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Colin Kaepernick Exposes Our Greatest Problem

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Colin Kaepernick, Colin Kaepernick protest

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you…”

Matthew 7.1-2 (NIV translation)

This verse is part of the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus that is often misquoted because people tend to quote “Do not judge” and then leave out the rest of it.

This week, the media once again focus on Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco quarterback who was a huge star under Jim Harbaugh but whose stardom had dimmed starting last season. During the pre-season, he had sat during the national anthem. He continues to sit at the season opener and will probably sit as long as we keep watching him.

I’m not going to deal with whether I agree with his form of protest in this blog. I at least agree with him that we do have a racial problem in this country that seems to be only obvious for people color (whether brown, black, red or yellow) that isn’t always obvious to some white people. I’m not here to talk about that either. I’ve already dealt with that issue in a different post regarding the Christian context. I’ll only deal with one objection that people often brought up: hypocrisy. The argument usually goes something like this (or in similar logic): Colin K makes millions; it’s hypocrisy for him to just talk about this issue because he hardly knows anything about being oppressed.

The argument redefines hypocrisy in that hypocrisy, in the biblical sense, doesn’t mean ignorance. It doesn’t mean that just because a person has less knowledge about poverty or oppression, he can’t speak on it. Hypocrisy in the biblical sense literally means “to play act” in the Greek language in which the Bible was written. In other words, being hypocritical means to merely talk about someone else without action that matches the righteousness of the criticism. In other words, if I’m morally upright, then I can talk about morality. If I build a good marriage, I can speak on marriage and so on.

So, Colin Kaepernick has already explained in numerous occasions on what he’s concerned about. I don’t need to rehash the issues. Whatever you think of Colin Kaepernick, he isn’t a hypocrite. Quite often, people frame their criticism on  hypocrisy against those who only chase issues but do nothing about them.  Usually, the argument goes something like this. Why doesn’t the black community policed itself? Why doesn’t a critic do something positive about the black community problem instead of talking about it? Herein lies the problem. Colin Kaepernick is doing something about that.

Besides using his influence to raise money for children’s charity, he now vows to donate almost 1/10 of his salary to causes that will rectify the present concern. Now, people are getting petty and start to question what causes he’s donating to. The big plus from this however is that the San Francisco Forty Niners will also donate the same amount to causes that work towards racial issues. So, Colin Kaepernick isn’t a hypocrite. He’s doing this not only as a cost to his own business sponsorship but also to his own pocketbook.

So, before anyone wants to point finger at hypocrisy, I only have one thing to ask. Have you donated 1/10 of what you make to a cause you believe in? If not, Colin Kaepernick, in one fell swoop, just made hypocrites of a whole lot of his critics. Whatever we label Colin Kaepernick, we can’t call him a hypocrites.

I don’t think most critics exercise the same stringent criteria on themselves as on Colin Kaepernick. Jesus was right. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you…

 

PS. In case you wonder, we do donate more than 1/10 of our household income to causes we believe in, both here and abroad. I don’t make millions like Colin Kaepernick, but I’m trying to do my part.

The Multicultural Church is an American Fairy Tale!

“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

Colossians 3.11 (NIV)

 

I was reading the blog of a new Facebook friend Dave Owen the other day. Dave is the president of Pacific Islands University. He was reviewing John Piper’s book Bloodline in which Piper talks about the multicultural church and so on. The context of course is the American (especially Protestant) church.

I’m going to cut to the chase and ask some simple questions. When people think of the American church in the global church, whom do they think of? John Piper, Franklin Graham, Bill Hybels? Yes, that’s the galacticos of American evangelicalism.

Notice the list of names I give are all white middle class church leaders. Now, there’s nothing wrong with white middle class church leaders. But if we want to look at our impact globally, then our intent have been lost in our impact because most people (American or not) think of the American church as the white church. In light of recent election and all the debates about racial divide and white privilege, that’s precisely the kind of impact we have globally. Oh, I know at least one or two readers (at least) will say, “Oh, you’re Asian. You have Francis Chan.” Right! Whether Francis Chan represents me is quite another topic. I certainly don’t “have” Francis Chan. I don’t own Francis Chan. While I appreciate what he says in some of his talks and books, I dare say that Francis Chan isn’t the global face of American Christianity. He isn’t the first name that comes up. His is the afterthought if that afterthought even occurs. His is the name people spit out when someone claims that American Christianity is so white. You can think of your own favorite minority Christian leader for that purpose. That appeal is by exception and not by average. Exceptions are exceptions. Exceptions aren’t the norm.

In reality, our church is the product of our society. Our church isn’t so sanctified FROM society as much as we like to think it is. Think about the photo I posted on there. I know I have an international readership. If you’re non-American, would the first thought that occurred in your mind is that this is a picture of an all-American kid? I bet not. If you’re American, some of you probably have at least entertained the thought of, “I wonder what country this kid’s from?” No, “all-American” wouldn’t be the first thing that popped into most of your minds, if you’re honest with yourself. Let me clue you in. That’s my all-American Sinopolitan (google that word) older kid and his car, posing on the driveway of my all-American colonial house (Georgian style, to be exact). Yep! The photo is very all-American. He was born in the USA (in the multicultural Bay Area), lived in UK and Hong Kong. He speaks perfect English, accented French and Mandarin. He gets all A’s all the time in any class that requires writing simply because his English is brilliant and vocabulary rich. If he were white, one would consider him to be privileged (since he’s multilingual, lived all over the world, dresses like a fashion model, and works for AMERICAN Eagle) upper crest, but he isn’t. Instead, people probably wonder if he immigrated from Asia somewhere. That’s OUR America. That’s OUR church. In America, the church is the spitting image of society.

What can we do as Christians if we want to move towards multicultural church leadership? I would say the solution is simple but not easily executed. Those in power have to deliberately train up and staff the leadership of their churches to be multicultural. When we look at John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist Church, the staffing isn’t really full of the people of color. In fact, the staff is mostly white men. If you don’t believe me, check out their website. When the picture the global church sees is mostly white male, John Piper can talk and write until his face is purple that he values the biblical value of multiculturalism, it won’t amount to the worth of the stuff in the rubbish bin.

Before anyone accuses me of doing church Affirmative Action style, let me be quite clear about what I’m trying to say. The accusers against Affirmative Action usually say that it pushes unqualified people of color into opportunities that should be reserved for more qualified white people. Some may even go as far as saying that the Affirmative Action laws have cast doubts on truly qualified minorities simply because of other unqualified individuals filling positions. These assumptions aren’t application for the church. The days of unqualified leaders are long past. There’re as many good minority church leaders who can preach and write. In fact, many of them are more capable just to compete with less capable whites and still don’t get the leadership jobs. I rarely see white pastors actively seek out or train up people of color to succeed them. Without leadership from people of color, how would people of color be incorporated in our largely segregated white churches?

I’m not saying that people of color necessarily want to or need to (oh, please!) occupy those position of high profile. Many of us are just content to work within our own ethnic groups (e.g. black churches, Asian churches, Hispanic churches etc.). But let’s not write about diversity without any proven action and pretend that the American white church is diverse and that the image we present to the world is that of diversity. To me, as an Asian American, constituents of American evangelical Christianity simply don’t detect the absurdity of their faith: a white church leader who staffs his church with mostly white leaders writing about diversity. What rich irony! The image of the American church comes from the skin color of leadership, not from books written about diversity by people who don’t practice diversity. My friend Dave Owen states bluntly, “It is pretty hard to have diverse disciples without diverse leaders.”

Forgive and Forget? A Hurtful Christian Cliche

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2 Timothy 4.9-11

“Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica…. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you because he’s helpful to me in my ministry.” 2 Timothy 4.9-11

 

Forgive and forget! That’s the Christian mantra to describe the process of forgiveness that isn’t quite as biblical as people claim. I’ve already talked about the the importance of repentance and confession in different blogs. In this one, I wish to focus on the idea of forgetting or forgetfulness. My purpose is to show how forgetting or forgetfulness isn’t always the best policy.

 

On August 13, Pastor Rick Warren writes on his Facebook that God thinks all lives matter as an alternative to Black Lives Matter movement. Thereafter, a firestorm erupted on this thread with an almost unifying voice of condemnation from our black brothers and sisters and almost a unifying voice of support from our white brothers and sisters. A simple appeal to God’s name shouldn’t divide the church, but it does and it has. Why? We no longer hold slaves. We no longer call black folks the N-word. Well, at least most of us who sincerely try to follow Christ don’t. Slavery and mistreatment of blacks are something that belong to a distant memory … at least for some folks, namely the white brothers and sisters who defend Pastor Rick. The same is not the case for the black brothers and sisters who still feel like second-class citizens. That explains the chasm, but it doesn’t explain the spirituality that causes the chasm.

 

The spirituality that causes the chasm is precisely what is wrong with the innocent Facebook post. Such a post is usually posted by a well-meaning person who doesn’t understand that the struggle is real for some folks today. The logic of such a person usually reads something like this. Since I’m not racist and I have minority friends, the world must be a better place already. And since the world is already a better place, why not forget the past, forgive the trespass (since I’m not racist) and move forward to bigger and better things. This logic is pretty much repeated in many posts that defend this attitude of “I’m OK; you must be OK.” It doesn’t work.

 

I remember growing up in the new South (Florida) as an immigrant and many of my classmates told me many racist Ching Chong jokes. Believe it or not, some of them are still my friends today (well, some aren’t). You know why? It’s because I’ve forgiven them. Whether they apologized personally to me or not doesn’t matter because they themselves have moved on to bigger and better things and they themselves have grown into better people. Many of the same folks have grown to be open-minded and mature Christians. So, we remain friends. Forgiveness doesn’t mean I forget those incidents. Forgiveness only means that I don’t hold grudges. When I see parallel incidents happening today, my radar is still up. Why? It’s because I forgave but I didn’t forget. Forgetfulness is spiritually harmful not just to the individual but to the Body of Christ.

 

Just because some people have grown up to be better and become “OK”, it doesn’t follow that everyone and the system that promotes that has been fixed. We don’t forget history. The church’s spirituality to forgive and forget has abused and will continue to injure many a member before someone calls her out. Easy forgetfulness isn’t progress. Easy forgetfulness is folly. It’s the naivety that causes historical terror to repeat itself.

 

As I type this blog, our nation still has a long way to go. Fraternities and sororities in the universities across the nation are some of the most racially segregated organizations. So are churches. It doesn’t matter that Pastor Rick’s churches have members that speak 67 different languages. So what? Some of those churches are foreign churches. Of course, these people would speak the local languages. The problem of Black Lives Matter is an entirely different issue. It isn’t merely about diversity. It’s about the present injustice that can sometimes happen to black folks as we non-black Christians forcefully ask them to forgive past trespasses so that we can forget any historical lesson that can prevent the PRESNT system from abusing more black folks.

 

If we read the writing of 2 Timothy, we must understand that forgetting past wrongs isn’t a biblical requirement. The author pointed out that he didn’t forget those who had abandoned him. He didn’t hold grudges but he also wasn’t naively believing that everything was “A OK.” Nothing is “A OK”. The author didn’t forget, even though he seems to have forgiven Mark’s possible trespasses when he abandoned the Pauline mission. Just because one guy came back to the Pauline mission, it doesn’t mean that other guys didn’t replace him in being derelict in their duties.

 

The spirituality of the Bible is realistic. It isn’t some impossible ideal. Forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting or forgetfulness. Instead, it requires gracious memory that teaches a historical lesson. To forget the historical lesson or fail to identify the present problem is to damage the Body of Christ because when one part is hurting, the other part should advocate for it or risk further injury. The biggest offense that comes from posts like Warren’s isn’t the truth it proclaims, but its failure to acknowledge the pain in the Body of Christ. Such half-truths are schismatic and ultimately will split the Body of Christ unnecessarily via the racial divide.

When Something is Not Your Problem: Revisiting the Good Samaritan

The good Samaritan story is so famous that I really don’t need to repeat it.  A w file back, I saw a sign (from the Facebook page Blue Street Journal) that says, “Privilege is a problem when you don’t think something is a problem because it is a not problem to you PERSONALLY.”   Nothing comes clearer than when I point out the problem of racism (let’s call it a blind spot) in the rhetoric of a white evangelical leader and immediately I get called a racist for pointing that part out.

 

I read the funny sign in conjunction with a blog that says the Asian-Americans overreacted against the Deadly Viper book, a book Zondervan yanked due to racist stereotype.  The same blogger who is obviously white congratulates the writer Mike Foster for moving on from that drama to launch a successful speaking circuit on that exact topic, not so much about racial reparation but about how the writer feels that he’s a victim by AA Christians’ campaign and how Christians are People of Second Chances.  Then, I read further about Mark Driscoll’s recent emergent (notice I threw that word in there) with Hillsong who paints himself as a victim of hate campaign against him so soon after his disgraceful departure from the mess he found called Mars Hill.  One common bond between these narrative is the rhetorical victim switching.  Victim switching in a society of narcissism is big business for speaking opportunities if you’re famous.  The failure of all these people is the inability to see things from those whom they’ve wronged.  Surely, the backlash is harsh. I don’t believe anyone should call up Driscoll to threaten him or his family.  Neither should people threaten Mike Foster and all the rest of the insensitive crew who helped produce that awful spiritual book called Deadly Viper. But let’s face it, you aren’t really being persecuted when you’re making millions of dollars from your mistake. A few angry words aren’t hurting any of these men’s bank accounts.

 

The Good Samaritan story deserves a closer look because many modern privileged people don’t understand it. As a result, they also don’t practice it.  The question that prompted Jesus to tell the story was from an expert of the law who asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  The story frequently gets interpreted in only one way: be a neighbor to another person.  Surely, this is a decent reading, but we fail to grasp the full significance in the story in several ways.  Jesus was answering a person of privilege in his society.  Jesus was also answering the question about the identity of the neighbor.  Who then experienced the answer to “Who is my neighbor?”  It was the victim of the robbery.  He was the only person who could tell who the neighbor was.  Here’s the thing.  We often miss the ironic twist of Jesus because he was telling the law teacher who was privileged to stoop down just a bit not so much to relate to the powerful religious teachers who passed by but to relate to the powerless victim who experienced the kindness of the “other”, the Samaritan.

 

The dire failure in our society AND in our churches is our inability to relate to the point of view of the other.  As a result, we also fail to identity who our true neighbor is.  Instead, we like to think of our true neighbors as those who agree with our convictions and share our same background (whether that background is race, gender or social economic class).  Those who share our background is no more a neighbor as the religious leaders to the injured man. Instead, in a surprising and subversive twist, Jesus stated that the true neighbor was the Samaritan who had nothing in common with the injured man (presumably a Jew coming out of Jerusalem. Who else would be coming out of Jerusalem).  If our faith community leaders also want to use their privileged position to do victim switching in order to further their own agenda, they’re no better than those who walked by the injured man. At most, they suffer minor damage due to their own stupidity. A minor setback in reputation (with no sincere apology) and a little lost book revenue are nothing in comparison to the systemic prejudice that existed within the system they lead.  This is the modern failure to read Jesus’ parable properly and follow Jesus command precisely.

 

Make no mistake about it.  When we look at the cases I just talked about, these people are privileged.  Mike Foster and his white blogger who supported him are privileged because of their skin color.  Why are they privileged?  Instead of letting their repentance sink in, they can take their trespasses against the Asian American brothers and sisters and turn them into their business of speaking tour and a book called Freeway.  Driscoll is privileged simply because he’s got a worldwide audience and sold books as well as built a speaking circuit for millions of dollars of profit.  Anyone who can turn his trespasses and not repent but instead turn them into another money-making opportunity is privileged.  Privilege is when you can afford not to see stuff from the other side of the coin and everything would still be fine and profitable.  Jesus was talking to a privileged person when he spoke about the Good Samaritan.  That’s the aspect many interpreters fail to grasp.  Perhaps, Jesus’ admonition to the teacher of the law needs a renewed look for the modern privileged because Jesus was saying that as a privileged person, he couldn’t afford not to see things from a victim’s point of view unless he wanted to skip over who he real neighbor was, the Samaritan.  Privilege is a problem when you don’t think something is a problem because it is a not problem to you PERSONALLY.

The Good Samaritan: A Conversation with Short Stories by Jesus

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immigration reform, Luke 10, The Good Samaritan

In US immigration reform as well as the controversial Chinese policy in Hong Kong in allowing mainlanders to flood the already overcrowded city, many would find the story in Luke 10 to be a reflection point, but what kind of reflection can result?

 

In A-J. Levine’s second chapter on the Good Samaritan, she talks about the impossibly upside down world of Jesus. In a discussion about the lawyer, she suggests that the lawyer in Jesus’ world would be considered a good guy. He was, in fact, a cultural gatekeeper who would prevent the Jews from sliding into gentile assimilation. Yet, Luke’s portrait was consistently negative.

 

Levine then points out the importance of the main issue Jesus was dealing with “How do you read it?” in looking at the question of eternal life and the Torah. The assumption of the privileged position of the lawyer who could read as opposed to the largely illiterate population comes in sharp focus in this story. In many ways, Levine agrees with Jesus on the importance of loving in view of the Jewish law.

 

In this book, Levine brings out many excellent points. The following are the ones I strongly agree with. First, she sees the victim as any person. Certainly, Jesus didn’t focus on the ethnicity, even though the victim looked most likely to be Jewish. Second, she denies that ritual purity is the issue with the religious characters. She’s totally right because they were getting off works, so to speak. They weren’t heading towards Jerusalem. Why did they have to worry about the man being dead? Third, and most significantly, she cites Martin Luther King Jr.’s interpretation of the two religious leaders being afraid of what would happen to them as they traveled on the dangerous road. The Samaritan however thought in reverse, “What would happen to this man if I don’t stop?” This is a most reasonable interpretation based on the geography and the Torah stipulation of love.

 

The significance of the Samaritan’s ethnicity deserves mention, and Levine surely focuses on that ethnicity. I think she’s right to see the radical nature of seeing someone who’s very much the despised enemy of Israel being the good person in the parable. I agree with her assessment. The Samaritan wasn’t “good”. He’s despised. Here’s where I disagree with her. At the beginning of her chapter, she writes that the whole story isn’t answering “Who’s my neighbor?” Now, I believe Jesus did answer the question using the ethnicity of the Samaritan to do so. I’ve given my readers a key to interpret this story anew. I hope this conversation with Levine helps stimulate further reflection on not only the neighbor being the Samaritan, but also the question of “Who’s my neighbor?”

Experiencing the Post-Apartheid South Africa

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Nelson Mandela's death, South Africa

December 5, 2013 is the fateful day the great man Nelson Mandela died at the ripe old age of 95.  He had been labeled a terrorist by politicians and a liberal by the Religious Right.  I’m sure the historical Mandela was much more complicated than a few simple labels.  Having never met him, I can only share what I’ve experienced in my short trip to the post-Apartheid South Africa.

It was March 12, 2006.  Sitting in my uncomfortable airplane seat with my business suit on, I was flying my 3rd and final leg of my trip to University of the Free State, Bloemfonteine, South Africa.  “Are you Dr. Sam Tsang?” a voice came with a tap on my shoulder.  Standing over me was a very tall European young man, dressed in business casual.  I wasn’t sure how he knew how I looked like.  His name is Mika Hietanen.  He said, “Professor Johan Vos from the University of Amsterdam is sitting with me in the back. Nice to meet you.”  After flying over two days, I felt strangely happy from this unlikely meeting with co-presenters from Europe whom I’ve never met.  The department head of the university religion department had invited us from all over the world to present our findings on Galatians.  I was the lone American.  For the next two days, we would go through every nook and cranny of Galatians from every conceivable angle.  This was the year I published my dissertation From Slaves to Sons.  I was going to enjoy this small gathering of colleagues whose obsession was singularly on Paul’s rhetoric to the Galatians.  What I did not expect was my experience with the real South Africa.

In our forum on Paul, we spoke before an audience of very few blacks.  None of the blacks I met were from South Africa.  I began to inquire why this was the case.  A few of the professors told me that not many South African blacks were educated enough to study for a graduate degree in divinity.  I’m unsure whether this is still the case, but during the time I was there, I met grad students from Korea and quite a number of white students but not many blacks.  During my short interaction with all the local professors, I did not sense any racism. In fact, many of them wanted to help the blacks get into their departments, but sadly there had to minimum requirement to get into a graduate religious program (or any program).

During our two days of discussions, the university facility impressed me.  The lecture hall had every modern equipment and the places where we had lunch were magnificent.    The entire university campus reminded me of some of the prettiest university grounds here in the US or in Europe.  The colonists (both British and Dutch) had created a little slice of Europe in the middle of South Africa.  Yet, when we ventured out in the township after the conference, things looked very different.  As we toured the city, a few of my European colleagues wanted to go “downtown” to get some coffee at the cafes. At least that was what they did in the Copenhagen or Oslo.  Our Afrikaner host suggested that getting off our van would be a very bad idea.  The Europeans could not believe it until we drove near that “downtown”.  When asked whether they wanted coffee, all of them shook their heads.  The poor blacks in that area stared at us as we passed, telling us with their eyes, “You aren’t welcome here”.

After safari sightseeing and tasting all the best of South African cuisine (all generously paid for by the university), my little academic holiday had to end.  This is where I really got the taste of post-Apartheid South Africa.  After I got off the taxi at the airport, I started searching for my passport.  It was nowhere to be found.  I could feel my heart racing and my face turning red as sweat started dripping down my face. In the midst of a mild panic, I tried to figure out what to do.  After all, I was in a foreign country with limited currency and no cell phone to any of the local numbers.  The most logical solution was to borrow the airline’s phone to call the hotel.  The airline was not helpful at all.  In fact, they took their time letting me use my phone, even after I explained my emergency with them.  Of course, all the people at the airline office were blacks.  Finally, I found my passport and it was not in the hotel.  I had it misplaced somewhere else.

At this point, I was already a little bit late.  When I checked my baggage in, the counter service person was extra slow with mine.  I was starting to lose my patience because I didn’t want to miss my flight.  After all, I still had two more legs in the flight to catch. If I were to miss this flight, my other connections would be lost as well.  As a bold American, I finally spoke up to the service person, “Can you please hurry up a bit because I’m running late.”  She politely replied, “Mr. Tsang,  you aren’t going to be late.  I’m moving as fast as I can.”  Well, she wasn’t and the seconds were ticking away into minutes.  To make a long story short, I did barely make it by the skin of my teeth.

This entire episode was puzzling because the service to the local blacks was very efficient and fast.  Only I was getting the “special treatment”.  Upon further inquiry, the local blacks would consider me a white man.  I’m quite used to being the “model minority” in the US but a minority nevertheless.  In apartheid South Africa, the situation was more peculiar.  There were basically three classes of people: the whites, the browns and the blacks.  Yellow-skinned Asians like Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans belonged to the whites.  The brown skin would be the South Asians like Indians and Pakistanis.  The classes were not allowed to marry one another which explained partially why there were so many unmarried interracial couples living together.  Just because the place has abandoned apartheid, the shadow and damage of apartheid is not yet eradicated.  When I found out about the situation, I was much more sympathetic towards the flight of the blacks.  I didn’t realize that I was an unintentional participant in this racial drama.  I didn’t know that although I didn’t occupy a privileged position back in the US, I represented power and privilege to the local South African blacks.  My problem of catching a plane paled compared to what they had to go through in their township and relationships.  There is still work to be done.  Racial reconciliation takes time.

Many of us in the West are under the false impression that everything would be fine after the abandonment of apartheid.  This is far from the truth.  Wounds of colonialism and racist policies have consequences.  Things do not get better overnight, even evident in my own experience in South Africa.  The speech of the university chancellor, himself a South African black, still rings in my head.  He told us to share with our home country that South Africa still has many needs, ranging from AIDS, racial problems, and the lack of education among the poor.  I’m also reminded of the lesson Nelson Mandela taught, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love because love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”  If I knew what I know today when I was in the South African airport, I think I would feel differently.  Lessons on race and love take time and an open mind, not only from the side of the underprivileged but also from the privileged.  May the spirit of Mandela live on.

Lifeway’s Apology for Rickshaw Rally by CEO Thom Rainer.

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Rickshaw Rally; Thom Rainer;

Thom Rainer, the CEO of Lifeway apologizes for the offensive Rickshaw Rally published some ten years ago.  None of the thoughtful Christian would think of Rainer as weak. In fact, it takes a lot of guts and maturity to do this.  We salute him and his organization for doing something towards racial reconciliation.  Good testimony does not come from denying one’s fault or qualified non-apologetic apologies or worse yet, coverup of one’s problem to save face.  Rainer demonstrates how the Body of Christ is supposed to function.  This is what good testimony looks like.

http://vimeo.com/78735039

Even back in March, Rainer was already thinking about apologies for Christians and how the ethics of apology can help bring harmony to the church.  See his earlier post here.  At the end of the day, you either believe or deny our oneness in the Body, not just by doctrine or exegesis but by praxis.

Lessons From a Sunday School Song

Yep, God’s wonderful rainbow. Amen, Kathy.

More Than Serving Tea

Jesus loves the little children.

All the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

After the past few weeks, I’m beginning to believe we haven’t really learned much about one another beyond lyrics.

Imagine the little white child handing the black child a slice of watermelon while trying to speak Ebonics.

Or the little white child handing the yellow child a piece of wood while asking her to karate chop it in half while using an “Asian” accent.

Or the little white child handing the red child a feather while pretending to use a tomahawk and making “Indian warrior” noises with his hand on his mouth.

And all of this happening in front of the church during a Sunday service.

Never mind that so few of us, myself included, attend a church…

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Rebloggged: My essay on being a minority for Missio

My essay for The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture on their Missio blog: http://www.washingtoninst.org/6415/hidden-assumptions-and-minorities-burdens/