caste, creaming, and others - pt.2

Due to the fragility of the American cultural psyche it seems we have limited ability when confronted with issues of human suffering. Much of this could be connected to the church and its refusal to acknowledge its own history of oppressive behavior.

When the American church endeavors to find her voice pertaining to oppression of any kind she is confronted with the truths surrounding her conspicuous silence on issues concerning the disenfranchised in the past. This usually forces the church into a position where she is fending off questions, which attack the epicenter of her motives and intentions. All of this is indeed difficult but certainly not an excuse, which exempts her from entering in.

For example, how can the church speak out against the suicide bombings in Israel while refusing to speak against the daily terror perpetrated upon the Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces? How can we highlight the suffering in Serbia while neglecting to ever mention The Sudan, or Rwanda? How do we explain our years of silence concerning apartheid in South Africa? This is without mentioning the years of suffering in Latin America, Haiti, and Asia.

Understanding and listing our process of inoculation is one of our favorite past times. The question we have grown extremely adapted at dodging is “Why can’t we consider pain?” This problem is not relegated to a certain sector of our Christian society, meaning this is not simply a “White” problem. The African American and Latino church in the opinion of some, are actually at the forefront of silence, choosing rather to preach the godly pursuit of the American dream. They try desperately, as a diversionary tactic, to convince us that poverty is the indicator of sin in the lives of the oppressed.

Some light might be shed on “the why” as we consider our cultural inability to embrace personal pain without attempting to invert it for the purpose of an Evangelistic commodity. An extremely lucent example would be the reaction of the American Evangelical Church in the after effects of September 11. The now retired Rev. Dr. James Forbes of Riverside Church called the reactions from the Christian community towards people of Arab decent ”Pornographic Patriotism”. Others have referred to it as “Evangelical Nationalism”.

Because the American Evangelical community is in possession of an Imperial theological viewpoint, there was small belief that an attack of that magnitude could ever be perpetrated on American soil. Our belief emanated from our views that we are God’s chosen people called to evangelize the world, within God’s chosen country, which we believed to be endowed with a certain amount of Heavenly protection.

This viewpoint disallowed the opportunity to genuinely reflect on the magnitude of human suffering, which was taking place for those who lost family members, friends, colleagues, and spouses. We also were not able to sympathize with those undocumented workers who were now without the low paying jobs they attempted to support their families with.

What we were extremely adept at doing was assigning blame on a people group and their countries, moving towards them as an inspired angry mob. America went forward, believing that God had called us to “crusade” towards justice and the annihilation of those whom served “other gods”.

Using religious rhetoric as a cover for our brazen pain and outrageous racism, we sang obstinately for God to bless America at every church gathering. Knowing that are hearts were actually asking for God to curse Islamic Nations while in the process of blessing “our great and godly nation”.

Our Evangelical Nationalism was so prevalent that some actually preached from our pulpits that Bin Laden was beyond the reconciling grace of the Holy Spirit. All of our prayers concerning the innocent people in Afghanistan seemed to come across a forced and hollow while we remained eerily silent as countless numbers of Islamic peoples were imprisoned and tortured by our God-fearing government officials. We simply could not deal with our own immense pain so we defaulted to religiously finding fault with our Islamic brothers of Arabic decent.

“God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences but shouts in our pains … it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”
C. S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain