Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut

I feel like I’ve been sounding like a broken record. For my Intro to Christian Scriptures course I have my students do what I call a “Global Interpretation Paper” where they read an interpretation of a passage by a minority in the U.S. or someone from the 2/3 world and compare it to an interpretation by a Western theologian. This assignment oftentimes forces students to think through racial and cultural implications and assumptions of the text. Today we discussed Acts and one of my main objectives was to trace the transformation of a small Jewish sect into a global Jewish-Gentile movement. One of my arguments was that this transformation didn’t just come about by chance. There were intentional actions to diversify and be more inclusive directed by the Spirit (see Acts 8.26-40; 10-11) or the apostles. We read Acts 6.1-7 and discussed how the apostles took the time to address the inequality within the community. That alone I find significant – that the apostles didn’t dismiss the problem as an unimportant matter. They didn’t say, “Oh those Hellenized Jews just need to loosen up. They’re being too sensitive.” What is startling to me is the radical measures the apostles/Spirit took to address the problem. To choose say 4 Hebrew Jews and 3 Hellenized would be understandable. To choose a group of Hellenized Jews to insure that Greek widows would be fed is probably the route most Christian organization would go. But what takes place? 7 Greek Jews are appointed for the distribution of food for all. That is, the marginalized/minority are placed in leadership over the privileged/majority. Justo Gonzalez writes a great article on this passage from a Hispanic American Perspective, Jason Rust comments on this chapter as well, and Daniel Boyarin, a Jewish scholar, argues that it was not on theological grounds did Jews part with Christians but for cultural reasons. I got mostly blank stares from my students. I wonder if they’re thinking, “Here goes Dr. Lim playing the race card again.”

Perhaps I’m a little overly sensitive due to some events that took place at SBL. I attended a session on Missional Hermeneutics led by Daryl Guder and Ross Wagner. They co-taught a class on Philippians with an intentional missional perspective in mind and shared with us their results. At one point we broke into groups and discussed a passage from Philippians among ourselves. Our group discussed how 3.1-21 related to the Christ Hymn in 2.5-11. We saw a number of connections between the two texts with the overall point that just as Christ humbled himself so too did Paul and so was the church to do. Our next assignment was to think through contemporary significance of the passage. We discussed a number of things. Then Michael Gorman brought up what I considered an interesting point. He said that some of his African-American students have a hard time with this passage because they feel that they have already been downtrodden by society or circumstance. I thought that this dilemma was fascinating: “How is an individual that has been disenfranchised or oppressed to read Paul’s autobiographical account of voluntarily renouncing one’s privileges (3.1-8)?” The comment I made to our group was that Paul’s autobiographical account may mean nothing to such a community whereas a Caucasian, affluent community may be able to personally relate to Paul.

What response did I get from another in the group? “Well we need to careful of not beating white folks over the head with sins of the past.” I was quite puzzled by his comment. My point was merely that different communities might hear the Scriptures differently. I wasn’t leveling any blame against white folks, calling for reparations to be paid out, etc. Later on I commented on 3.20 and how once when I was preaching to a church that was wrestling through what kind of cultural identity they were going to embrace (Korean, Korean-American, multicultural) I reminded them that their foremost citizenship is heavenly. Later in the conversation I commented how Philippi was a Roman colony and therefore inevitably Paul’s language has political overtones. I.e., rather than have their primary allegiance to Rome, they were to be a heavenly outpost in a foreign land.

At this point another person interjected, “Well you’re reading it that way because Koreans have a strong familial identity…” Irritated I cut him off, “No, I’m talking about allegiance to the kingdom of heaven over allegiance to the state. I’m talking about how some of my students were baffled at the fact that as I Christian I would be opposed to the War in Iraq.”

Based upon this experience at SBL I wonder if once I bring in race/culture into the conversation from then on that’s all they hear from me. From then on they hear, “RACE blah blah blah blah CULTURE blah blah blah blah DISCRIMINATION blah blah blah blah AFFIRMATIVE ACTION blah blah blah blah” even though I am saying no such thing. I.e. I say race and they hear racism. I say privilege and they hear discrimination. Or I say multiculturalism and they hear intellectual pluralism.

Certainly I can be more clear in my communications. Or maybe I should keep my mouth shut.