David W. Swanson

Pastor and Author

responding to comments about racism

The sentiments (as I perceive them) behind the first three comments on my Our of Ur post are the very reason we have to continue to talk in our churches about racism and class divisions.  While the commenters find such conversations to be unhelpful, tiresome, and counter-productive, I believe the opposite to be true.  What is the point if we are not willing to go hard at every area where the Gospel is not manifest in the lives of our churches?

I responded to these comments this morning on the Out of Ur blog.

David Swanson

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One response to “responding to comments about racism”

  1. Karen Avatar
    Karen

    I believe only the soul that finds its identity in Jesus Christ in the following way can completely transcend racism:

    http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/on-behalf-of-all-and-for-all/“>http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/on-behalf-of-all-and-for-all/

    Accordingly, if the above linked post describes the contours of the soul that has real communion and reunion with God in and through Christ, I would have to say I agree with Gregg in the comments at the Out of Ur site (which for some reason wouldn’t recognize my comment). If the Lord isn’t effectively building His Kingdom within me, then all my attempts to build one in His name with others are vain. If His Kingdom is growing in me OTOH, reconciliation with others will be the natural outflow. As an Orthodox (cap. “O”) Christian, I probably mean something a bit more wholistic than how you take Gregg’s first statement about reconciliation with God in your reply to him. What I mean is that in Orthodox Christianity, true “belief” is, by definition, more instrinsically connected to real inner and incarnational personal holiness than the kind of “Jesus-believing, gospel-preaching, church-going” Christianity you mention, the kind that you point out seems often not necessarily related to and quite often untranslated into real change in inner motivation and behavior on a progressively more profound level affecting all relationships, not just with those in our own camp. In Orthodox spirituality, it is understood that no one fully believes Christ who has not yet learned to love even his enemies from the heart as he loves himself (or as Christ loves us). That is not to say that the average Orthodox are necessarily any more fully believing than the average evangelical in this regard, only that in Orthodoxy, those of us who are still in process of being saved (in terms of our sanctification) are reticent to pronounce ourselves “saved” as an a priori fact based merely on jumping through some sacramental hoops and/or assenting to specific dogmas. We thus perhaps avoid drawing some artificially sharp distinction between ourselves and human beings of other creeds (which may translate into more openness and sense of solidarity across racial lines also for the Orthodox Christian who is sincerely and faithfully “working out his salvation with fear and trembling.”). It is also why we hold up certain glorified Saints (among whom are people of both sexes and all races) as examples of what a fully realized Christian faith looks like, and don’t merely rely on adherence to certain “essential” dogmas of the faith to satisfy our need for assurance that Christ will see our process of salvation to its end or to figure out who is properly in our group, which can be fodder for a very nominal or at least truncated Christianity. In Orthodoxy, we rely solely on the mercy of Christ and a real and growing sense and evidence of real personal Communion with Him for assurance of salvation, and Christianity is understood not primarily as a system of belief, but as a way of life.

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