My first conversion to Jesus Christ took place in 1949; my second conversion to the kingdom of God occurred in 1968. Both conversions were needed to make me a fully biblical Christian. See Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31.
I began my Christian life as an evangelical conservative, almost totally unaware of the massive social evil in America. Everything was individual responsibility; everything was spiritual; America was a Christian nation. Period. The kingdom of God on earth as justice for the oppressed poor did not exist in my understanding. Though I didn't know it at the time, though I would have denied it, I was an American Pharisee. My understanding of the Bible was narrow, even after studying every book in the Bible in college and graduate school. I read my Bible with American cultural blinders on as did my teachers.
Then God intervened; my cultural scales fell off; a spiritual floodlight revealed massive social evil. This was connected with Martin Luther King's assassination in April, 1968. God used this tragic event for good, for my personal good. For the first time, I saw that America was fundamentally flawed at its core, pious proclamations about America being a Christian nation not withstanding. Now 46 years later, I am still discovering new understandings about the depth of the oppression problem and radical nature of the Sabbath Year justice solution.
Along the way, I have discovered institutional racism, ethnocentrism, oppression, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), the American trinity and post traumatic oppression syndrome (PTOS). A multitude of persons and factors have played an important role in the continuing transformation of my life.
First of all, the Holy Spirit again and again illumined my mind and heart. Morning after morning, I woke up early, and so to speak, the Spirit put a pen in my hand and said, "Write." Again and again, the Spirit showed me new teachings from the Bible. Along the way, God brought key persons into my life such as Martin Luther King, Tom Skinner and John Perkins, authors such as Thomas Hanks, Perry Yoder and Michelle Alexander. I spent over 30 years living in two American ghettos---Jackson, Michigan from 1973 to 1993 and West Jackson, Mississippi from 1994-2010.
I retired from teaching sociology and anthropology in 1994.
My study of anthropology and sociology helped me understand the social side of humanity and Christianity. American society overemphasizes the role of the individual and minimizes the role of culture and society. Jesus was not only incarnated in a human body but also in a functioning society, the Jewish society. One of his ministries was exposing social evil/social oppression, especially among religious leaders and in the key social institution, the Temple which he called a den of robbers.
Yet with all these helps, I am embarrassed that it took me so long to see so many important things. Why did it take me 46 long years to discover that multiplied millions of fellow Americans have suffered and are still suffering from PTOS---a mental health cousin to PTSD. Millions of other Americans were demonically involved in creating and maintaining PTOS. I was one of them for too many years.
Next, a section titled: "Think, Weep, Liberate---in the Spirit."
Around 25 years ago, I attended a Christian College Coalition Conference for sociologists teaching at Christian liberal arts colleges. In conversation with Bille Davis, sociologist and social worker from Evangel College in Missouri, an Assembly of God college I learned about a new gift of the Spirit. Billie Davis said that in her Pentecostal tradition there was a strong tendency to see the work of the Holy Spirit primarily in the unusual, the unique, the supernatural as in being led by the Spirit, miracles or singing in the Spirit.
Professor Davis challenges her sociology students to understand that the Holy Spirit can also work through the mind so she exhorts them to "think in the Spirit." Simple but profound; a classic phrase that spoke to me. I now identify my gift as "thinking in the Spirit." I have sensed the Spirit of Truth illuminating my mind numerous times as I have attempted to develop a biblically based theology of society or a kingdom of God on earth theology.
At the same conference, Nicholas Wolterstorff, editor of the Christian College Coalition textbook series, spoke to us. He told of a medical doctor in Holland who trained nurses how to care for mothers who lost their babies at birth. The doctor said, "Watch the IV with one eye; with the other eye, you weep." Be a professional in taking care of her medical needs; also be a compassionate human being at the same time.
Wolterstorff applied this story to Christian sociologists. "With one eye you analyze; with the other eye, you weep." With one eye you carefully analyze society and its problems; with the other eye you weep for the oppressed of the earth.
I tied Billie Davis' and Wolterstorff's ideas together. A Christian sociologist should both "think in the Spirit" and "weep in the Spirit."
But thinking and weeping in the Spirit is not enough. The Gospel also calls us to "liberate in the Spirit." Jesus Christ stated the following about his ministry [and by implication, the church's ministry]:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, . . .
to set at liberty those who are oppressed, . . .
According to the Old Testament, the oppressed are powerless people such as the poor, orphans and widows who are crushed, humiliated, animalized, enslaved or killed by the rich and powerful. One of Jesus' ministries was to liberate such people from their oppression. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit to engage in this ministry.
I now see that my ministry and the ministry of the church is to disciple persons to think in the Spirit---the Spirit of Truth; to weep in the Spirit---love and compassion; and liberate in the Spirit---release the oppressed from their systems of oppression; and then do justice in the power and wisdom of the Spirit. Liberation is not complete until justice is done.
Think, weep, liberate---and do justice in the Spirit.
To end the story of my personal pilgrimage, I would like to share excerpts from a prophecy; the following is a personal prophecy given to Lowell Noble during the morning worship of Adullam Ministries on May 17, 1998 by Pastor Leon Forte, an Afro-American pastor of an interethnic church in Athens, Ohio. This church records the prophecy as it is given and presents a copy to each individual prophesied over. Pastor Forte and I had never met prior to the morning service; through a mutual friend, Keith Wasserman, he knew I was in town presenting an 8-hour seminar to Good Works about poverty, oppression,justice and the kingdom of God. I did present a 15 minute teaching in the morning service based on Isaiah 9:7, Luke 4:18-19 and Romans 14:17:
"Favor, favor, favor, says the Lord. . . . I will open doors for you to walk in, my son. . . . Even some of these doors you may question, for you have never been this way before. . . . This is the season for you to speak. This is your hand [holding up my right hand] that I anoint to write. . . . Do now through instruction what you could not do through self-effort. . . . Many are your sons in me; nurture your sons, says the Lord."
This 1998 prophecy was confirmation of what was begun in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. My gift of sociotheological insight has continued and expanded in depth and quality since this 1998 prophecy was given. See my blog lowellnoble.blogspot.com for some of my writings.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Are We Blaming the Victim Instead of the Oppressor?
Three Thesis Statements:
1. While the rich oppressors are crushing the poor, far too often, Americans stand on the sidelines, blaming the victim, condemning the 'lazy, dysfunctional poor'.
2. Well meaning scholars who operate out of an implicit or explicit 'blame the victim' theory instead of a blame the oppressor theory are more dangerous than the Klan type bigot.
3. Most white American evangelicals who do not have a biblically based theology of oppression end up, wittingly or unwittingly, using a blame the victim theory in regard to poor, urban blacks.
William Ryan, author of Blaming the Victim (1971), once defined blaming the victim theory as a way to "justify inequality by finding defects in the victims of inequality."
Without a clear understanding of social evil/oppression/injustice, it is almost inevitable that most Americans, including most Christians, even most sociologists and theologians, will end up blaming the oppressed---the victim---for their own fate. Or at best they will go only half way in understanding the problem. Some do this deliberately; some do it out of ignorance.
I, a white evangelical, only took my first steps in understanding at the age of 42. Now, at the age of 87-88, I have reached new depths in my understanding; for example, that oppression can cause post traumatic oppression syndrome, that external forces cause most cultural dysfunction.
But I am not the only slow learner; listen to William Ryan:
"This book [Blaming the Victim] grows out of my own experience, both professional and personal. As a psychologist and a social scientist, I have spent some years in clinical work and more recently have engaged in research and planning for the solution of urban social problems. Over these years I have found myself forced, painfully and gradually, to discard one supposed social fact after another, facts that made up some of the core of my own professional identity. My own process of relearning and rethinking has been accelerated by many, many years of activity as a citizen on the battleground of what used to be called the civil rights movement. During these years, I have come to know some of the people who have been victimized and lied about---at meetings, on picket lines, in confrontations with landlords, in living room talks, and at coffee sessions around kitchen tables. The realities I have experienced are very different from the myths and untruths dealt out by politicians and bureaucrats and even by some of my fellow social scientists."
What are the implications of a blaming the victim theory? Ryan explains:
"I have been listening to the victim-blamers and pondering their thought processes for a number of years. That process is often very subtle. Victim-blaming is cloaked in kindness and concern, and bears all the trappings and statistical furbelows of scientism; it is obscured by a perfumed haze of humanitarianism. In observing the process of Blaming the Victim, one tends to be confused and disoriented because those who practice this art display a deep concern for the victims that is quite genuine. In this way, the new ideology is very different from the [old] open prejudice and reactionary tactics of the old days [Klan type bigotry]. Its adherents include sympathetic social scientists with social consciences in good working order, and liberal politicians with a genuine commitment to reform." I would add that well meaning but ignorant theologians who talk about the plight of the poor but do not talk about the need to release the oppressed are equally misguided. Is the primary focus on changing the victim or releasing the oppressed?
Finally, Ryan comments on why white American oppressors or those whites who benefit from oppression fail to see or admit the real cause:
"We cannot comfortably believe that WE are the cause of that which is problematic to us; therefore, we are almost compelled to believe that THEY---the problematic ones---are the cause and this immediately prompts us to search for [their] deviance."
Enter Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. Even though Alexander is black, brilliant and a civil rights lawyer, she says that for years she missed what was really going on in the drug war, the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males. Only around the age of 40, and after extensive research, did she catch on that it wasn't primarily internal deviance and dysfunction, but the primary cause was external systems of oppression. The criminal justice system and the Supreme Court were a part of the problem. Now Alexander, though gentle in spirit, is sounding like an Old Testament prophet. The following quotation comes an interview by Phillip Smith (March 10, 2014) titled, "The New Jim Crow Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and Drug War," Instead of blaming the victim, Alexander, at her very best, explains:
"There is an implicit assumption that we just need to find out what works to lift people up by their bootstraps, without acknowledging that we're waging a war on these communities we claim to be so concerned about. The initiative itself reflects this common narrative that suggests the reason why there are so many poor people of color trapped at the bottom---bad schools, poverty, broken homes. And if we encourage people to stay in school and get and stay married, then the whole problem of mass incarceration will no longer be of any real concern.
"But I've come to believe we have it backwards. These communities are poor and have ailing schools and broken homes not because of their personal failings, but because we've declared war on them, spent billions building prisons while allowing schools to fail, targeted children in these communities, stopping, searching, frisking them---and the first offense is typically for some nonviolent minor drug offense. . . . We saddle them with criminal records. . . . We have stood back and said, "What is wrong with them?" The more pressing question is "What is wrong with us?"
In other words, why do white Americans never really end systems of oppression, only redesign them? And why is the church not on the front lines waging war against systems of oppression, releasing the oppressed?
Even in 2014, most American whites still don't have a clue what is really going on. According to the October 31, 2014, The Week, in an brief paragraph by Jamelle Bouie titled "Exposing the racial divide," whites say "they don't buy into that nonsense about discrimination, are tired of being pushed around." "Polls show that 75 percent of white Americans have all-white social networks and that just 16 percent of whites believe minorities face significant discrimination."
In other words, most whites refuse to believe that there are current systems of oppression at work that benefit them and damage minorities. In listening to most white evangelicals talk about race, I find the same level of ignorance and denial. Why? One reason is ignorance to the biblical teaching about social evil. Stephen Mott, in an article titled "Biblical faith and the reality of social evil," asserts:
"Evil exists externally to the individual not only in the order of society [cosmos], but also in the oppressive social and political roles of powerful supernatural beings. . . . The necessary stability of society requires being able to build on the solutions of previous generations. But as a consequence the evils of those generations pass on too. . . . with relatively little dependence on conscious individual decision-making or responsibility. . . . Our institutions are not just a constraint on sin; they themselves are full of sin. The structures of social life contain both good and bad."
Mott clearly documents the social evil message of the New Testament; I would add the concepts of ethnocentrism and oppression and the widespread condemnation of the rich oppressors. Most white American Christians are biblically ignorant, historically ignorant and sociologically ignorant, blind to their participation in either sins of omission or commission as far as the urban poor are concerned.
1. While the rich oppressors are crushing the poor, far too often, Americans stand on the sidelines, blaming the victim, condemning the 'lazy, dysfunctional poor'.
2. Well meaning scholars who operate out of an implicit or explicit 'blame the victim' theory instead of a blame the oppressor theory are more dangerous than the Klan type bigot.
3. Most white American evangelicals who do not have a biblically based theology of oppression end up, wittingly or unwittingly, using a blame the victim theory in regard to poor, urban blacks.
William Ryan, author of Blaming the Victim (1971), once defined blaming the victim theory as a way to "justify inequality by finding defects in the victims of inequality."
Without a clear understanding of social evil/oppression/injustice, it is almost inevitable that most Americans, including most Christians, even most sociologists and theologians, will end up blaming the oppressed---the victim---for their own fate. Or at best they will go only half way in understanding the problem. Some do this deliberately; some do it out of ignorance.
I, a white evangelical, only took my first steps in understanding at the age of 42. Now, at the age of 87-88, I have reached new depths in my understanding; for example, that oppression can cause post traumatic oppression syndrome, that external forces cause most cultural dysfunction.
But I am not the only slow learner; listen to William Ryan:
"This book [Blaming the Victim] grows out of my own experience, both professional and personal. As a psychologist and a social scientist, I have spent some years in clinical work and more recently have engaged in research and planning for the solution of urban social problems. Over these years I have found myself forced, painfully and gradually, to discard one supposed social fact after another, facts that made up some of the core of my own professional identity. My own process of relearning and rethinking has been accelerated by many, many years of activity as a citizen on the battleground of what used to be called the civil rights movement. During these years, I have come to know some of the people who have been victimized and lied about---at meetings, on picket lines, in confrontations with landlords, in living room talks, and at coffee sessions around kitchen tables. The realities I have experienced are very different from the myths and untruths dealt out by politicians and bureaucrats and even by some of my fellow social scientists."
What are the implications of a blaming the victim theory? Ryan explains:
"I have been listening to the victim-blamers and pondering their thought processes for a number of years. That process is often very subtle. Victim-blaming is cloaked in kindness and concern, and bears all the trappings and statistical furbelows of scientism; it is obscured by a perfumed haze of humanitarianism. In observing the process of Blaming the Victim, one tends to be confused and disoriented because those who practice this art display a deep concern for the victims that is quite genuine. In this way, the new ideology is very different from the [old] open prejudice and reactionary tactics of the old days [Klan type bigotry]. Its adherents include sympathetic social scientists with social consciences in good working order, and liberal politicians with a genuine commitment to reform." I would add that well meaning but ignorant theologians who talk about the plight of the poor but do not talk about the need to release the oppressed are equally misguided. Is the primary focus on changing the victim or releasing the oppressed?
Finally, Ryan comments on why white American oppressors or those whites who benefit from oppression fail to see or admit the real cause:
"We cannot comfortably believe that WE are the cause of that which is problematic to us; therefore, we are almost compelled to believe that THEY---the problematic ones---are the cause and this immediately prompts us to search for [their] deviance."
Enter Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. Even though Alexander is black, brilliant and a civil rights lawyer, she says that for years she missed what was really going on in the drug war, the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males. Only around the age of 40, and after extensive research, did she catch on that it wasn't primarily internal deviance and dysfunction, but the primary cause was external systems of oppression. The criminal justice system and the Supreme Court were a part of the problem. Now Alexander, though gentle in spirit, is sounding like an Old Testament prophet. The following quotation comes an interview by Phillip Smith (March 10, 2014) titled, "The New Jim Crow Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and Drug War," Instead of blaming the victim, Alexander, at her very best, explains:
"There is an implicit assumption that we just need to find out what works to lift people up by their bootstraps, without acknowledging that we're waging a war on these communities we claim to be so concerned about. The initiative itself reflects this common narrative that suggests the reason why there are so many poor people of color trapped at the bottom---bad schools, poverty, broken homes. And if we encourage people to stay in school and get and stay married, then the whole problem of mass incarceration will no longer be of any real concern.
"But I've come to believe we have it backwards. These communities are poor and have ailing schools and broken homes not because of their personal failings, but because we've declared war on them, spent billions building prisons while allowing schools to fail, targeted children in these communities, stopping, searching, frisking them---and the first offense is typically for some nonviolent minor drug offense. . . . We saddle them with criminal records. . . . We have stood back and said, "What is wrong with them?" The more pressing question is "What is wrong with us?"
In other words, why do white Americans never really end systems of oppression, only redesign them? And why is the church not on the front lines waging war against systems of oppression, releasing the oppressed?
Even in 2014, most American whites still don't have a clue what is really going on. According to the October 31, 2014, The Week, in an brief paragraph by Jamelle Bouie titled "Exposing the racial divide," whites say "they don't buy into that nonsense about discrimination, are tired of being pushed around." "Polls show that 75 percent of white Americans have all-white social networks and that just 16 percent of whites believe minorities face significant discrimination."
In other words, most whites refuse to believe that there are current systems of oppression at work that benefit them and damage minorities. In listening to most white evangelicals talk about race, I find the same level of ignorance and denial. Why? One reason is ignorance to the biblical teaching about social evil. Stephen Mott, in an article titled "Biblical faith and the reality of social evil," asserts:
"Evil exists externally to the individual not only in the order of society [cosmos], but also in the oppressive social and political roles of powerful supernatural beings. . . . The necessary stability of society requires being able to build on the solutions of previous generations. But as a consequence the evils of those generations pass on too. . . . with relatively little dependence on conscious individual decision-making or responsibility. . . . Our institutions are not just a constraint on sin; they themselves are full of sin. The structures of social life contain both good and bad."
Mott clearly documents the social evil message of the New Testament; I would add the concepts of ethnocentrism and oppression and the widespread condemnation of the rich oppressors. Most white American Christians are biblically ignorant, historically ignorant and sociologically ignorant, blind to their participation in either sins of omission or commission as far as the urban poor are concerned.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Superior Whites???
White racism teaches that whites are superior and blacks are inferior. Christian racists also believe that God created the races and that he intends for the races to remain separate and pure. Whites, obviously, should be the superior and pure race.
Strangely, however, this superior, pure race had a problem with lust. The white male seduced and raped the black female during slavery; he had a part in producing a mixed offspring. What to do? Should he claim this offspring as white? It was half white. No, he turned his back on his own superior genes and declared that any person who had mixed genes was black. With this decision, the white male ended up multiplying the number of despised, inferior blacks. Did the white male outsmart himself? Not if he wanted more slave labor.
But slavery is gone. Maybe white racists should now reverse their logic. Instead of saying that any person with even as little as 1/32 black genes and 31/32 white genes is black, possibly whites should now claim their superior genes as their own. Should not all persons with any white genes, even if only 1/32 white and 31/32 black genes, be claimed as white persons? If white genes are really superior, they cannot be ruined by inferior black genes, can they?
According to one scholar's estimate, if whites claimed all white genes as their own, the black race could be reduced by approximately 75 percent overnight. What a coup! Eliminate three-quarters of the inferior black race in one fell swoop!!
Why not finish the job in one or two generations? Whites should wage an aggressive program of interracial marriage. Soon the entire black gene pool would be infiltrated by superior white genes. By claiming all the offspring as white, soon the inferior black race would be wiped off the map of these glorious United States of America. By the way, I understand this is what the Mexicans did to their black population. Are Mexicans smarter than white Americans?
If we superior whites do not do the above, then we have problems, serious problems. We still have inferior blacks in our midst. What are we going to do with them? Support them on welfare now that slavery is abolished?
Superior whites are genuises at inventions; how about inventing the self-fulfilling prophecy to explain away our problems?
Let's begin by teaching everyone---blacks and whites---that blacks are inferior. By this we mean that they are not as smart as whites. This would be our unchallenged assumption.
If this is true, white society should not spend much time and money educating blacks. It would be a waste of valuable resources. So give blacks used, out-of-date textbooks, etc.
Then we can compare the results of the two school systems. It will be obvious to all that whites are smarter than blacks.
Since this is a scientific age, why not hire scientists to prove our points. Have some white psychologists invent an intelligence test. Give the same test to both blacks and whites, or should I say whites and blacks. The results are predestined; since blacks have received an inferior education, they will not do as well on the intelligence test. Now we will have iron-clad, scientific evidence to prove our point.
Since blacks will have an inferior education, they will not be able to compete for jobs on an equal basis with whites. So why not hire a sociologist to study the unemployment rate. She should find evidence that blacks are lazier than whites. If black males can't find jobs, they won't be able to support their families and divorces should increase. A doubled divorce rate would prove that inferior blacks are less stable, more immoral than whites. Again inferiority would by supported by scientific evidence. Hooray for science!
But there are some people who only believe the Bible. Can we find some evidence in the Bible that at hints at the inferiority of blacks? Religious proof would be the final proof; no one can argue with God. How about "Be not unequally yoked together?" This must mean that interracial marriage is forbidden. God apparently wants the races to remain separate and pure, probably because blacks are inferior. What we believed to be true, really is true, biblically true, after all!! What a relief to be absolutely certain!
What!? You say we still have a problem? Blacks are multiplying faster than whites! And if all mixed offspring are included as blacks, that increases the black population even faster. Some day, in the future, there will be more blacks than whites in these glorious United States. God forbid! We must protect our future white generations from the horrible fate. Wow! No matter which way we turn, we superior whites seem to have painted ourselves into a corner. Is there any clear cut solution to this problem? Where are you when we need you, Solomon?
SOLOMON SEZ
"Superior Whites?" Well, I don't know about that. One of my 700 wives was black, coal black. A gift from the Queen of Sheba. What a doll!! And was she intelligent! She taught me all I ever knew.
Pure white? Are there very many left? I understand that a lot of my black friends have already passed as whites so they are spreading their black genes among whites. And whites don't even know about it. What about those thousands of Indian-white marriages? One of my best friends married a gal who was half Indian; they had four children who are one-quarter Indian; now there are 7 grandchildren. Do you see how fast the pure white race can be contaminated?
Then there are many Mexican-white marriages; many Japanese-white marriages; many Jewish-white marriages. By the way, are the Jews a race? I sure hope so; I would hate to be without a race.
One day two women brought their children to me and each asked, "Is my child black or white?" One woman was black and had married a white man; the other woman was white and had married a black man.
At first, I was stumped. I was just about to admit, for the first time in my life, that I didn't have an answer. I had thought about some smart alec answer like "Blite" or Whack," but then all of a sudden I realized dumb questions should not be honored with answers, so I said to these two unnecessarily troubled women, "Go your way---your babies are fully human. That's all you need to know."
NEWS FLASH
White biblical archeologist proves that Jesus was black!
He said, "A true white must be pure white. Anyone with any amount, even small, of black genes in his ancestry must be black." The evidence:
1. Moses married a black woman, an Ethiopian. This proves that some black genes entered the Jewish gene pool.
2. There were blacks in ancient Egypt where the Jews lived for over 400 years.
3. There was much movement of people back and forth through the Palestine area over the centuries.
4. Jews intermarried with other peoples.
5. Present day people from the eastern Mediterranean have a brownish cast to their skins.
6. Therefore, Jesus was a black man.
Conclusion: A black man died to save white racists from their skins (oops!) sins.
Satire has ended; now some commentary
The concept of race is stupid and erroneous, biblically, biologically and sociologically; the practice of racism is frightening real, damaging and devastating.
Several historians have done a fine job of tracing the complex history of racism: Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror; Bennett, Before the Mayflower; Richard Hughes, Myths America Lives By.
I would like to end with a reference to a book reviewed by historian Edward Blum in the December 28, 2010 issue of Christian Century---The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. Blum writes:
"It is within this history of white slavery that Painter finds the first claims of the supremacy of whiteness---in the sex trade. Enslaved eastern European women became symbols of beauty. . . . The profound irony of the emergence of whiteness is that it was packaged in the beauty of a slave." Blum is lavish in his praise of The History of White People. This is significant because Blum himself is an expert in the area, especially from the Civil War until 1900. See his book Reforging the White Republic. I also highly recommend his interpretation of Bu Bois---W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet. Most writers on Du Bois regard him as a secular prophet highly critical of Christianity. Blum, however, treats Du Bois as a deeply. though unorthodox, spiritual prophet, exposing the injustice and oppression hidden within Americanized Christianity. If social justice, liberating justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom justice, an Amos 5:24 justice "I want justice---ocean of it." is a biblical issue, required of biblical spirituality, then Du Bois is more spiritual than Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Tozer.
Next, Blum's negative statement about The History of White People:
"In one arena, Painter's account is too shallow. She never looks into the soul of whiteness---into its connections with religion or its links to the sacred. . . . Du Bois saw the depth of whiteness in its proponents' attempt to make it a religious value. . . . Richard Wright: 'The apex of white racial ideology was reached when it was assumed that white domination was a God-given right.' . . . .
"The link between whiteness and morality is an important one. It may explain the tenacity with which whiteness has remained an arbiter of all that is good and right. Painter wonders why Americans hold onto the 'superstition' of whiteness. Perhaps the history of links between whiteness and godliness is a key to solving that puzzle."
Strangely, however, this superior, pure race had a problem with lust. The white male seduced and raped the black female during slavery; he had a part in producing a mixed offspring. What to do? Should he claim this offspring as white? It was half white. No, he turned his back on his own superior genes and declared that any person who had mixed genes was black. With this decision, the white male ended up multiplying the number of despised, inferior blacks. Did the white male outsmart himself? Not if he wanted more slave labor.
But slavery is gone. Maybe white racists should now reverse their logic. Instead of saying that any person with even as little as 1/32 black genes and 31/32 white genes is black, possibly whites should now claim their superior genes as their own. Should not all persons with any white genes, even if only 1/32 white and 31/32 black genes, be claimed as white persons? If white genes are really superior, they cannot be ruined by inferior black genes, can they?
According to one scholar's estimate, if whites claimed all white genes as their own, the black race could be reduced by approximately 75 percent overnight. What a coup! Eliminate three-quarters of the inferior black race in one fell swoop!!
Why not finish the job in one or two generations? Whites should wage an aggressive program of interracial marriage. Soon the entire black gene pool would be infiltrated by superior white genes. By claiming all the offspring as white, soon the inferior black race would be wiped off the map of these glorious United States of America. By the way, I understand this is what the Mexicans did to their black population. Are Mexicans smarter than white Americans?
If we superior whites do not do the above, then we have problems, serious problems. We still have inferior blacks in our midst. What are we going to do with them? Support them on welfare now that slavery is abolished?
Superior whites are genuises at inventions; how about inventing the self-fulfilling prophecy to explain away our problems?
Let's begin by teaching everyone---blacks and whites---that blacks are inferior. By this we mean that they are not as smart as whites. This would be our unchallenged assumption.
If this is true, white society should not spend much time and money educating blacks. It would be a waste of valuable resources. So give blacks used, out-of-date textbooks, etc.
Then we can compare the results of the two school systems. It will be obvious to all that whites are smarter than blacks.
Since this is a scientific age, why not hire scientists to prove our points. Have some white psychologists invent an intelligence test. Give the same test to both blacks and whites, or should I say whites and blacks. The results are predestined; since blacks have received an inferior education, they will not do as well on the intelligence test. Now we will have iron-clad, scientific evidence to prove our point.
Since blacks will have an inferior education, they will not be able to compete for jobs on an equal basis with whites. So why not hire a sociologist to study the unemployment rate. She should find evidence that blacks are lazier than whites. If black males can't find jobs, they won't be able to support their families and divorces should increase. A doubled divorce rate would prove that inferior blacks are less stable, more immoral than whites. Again inferiority would by supported by scientific evidence. Hooray for science!
But there are some people who only believe the Bible. Can we find some evidence in the Bible that at hints at the inferiority of blacks? Religious proof would be the final proof; no one can argue with God. How about "Be not unequally yoked together?" This must mean that interracial marriage is forbidden. God apparently wants the races to remain separate and pure, probably because blacks are inferior. What we believed to be true, really is true, biblically true, after all!! What a relief to be absolutely certain!
What!? You say we still have a problem? Blacks are multiplying faster than whites! And if all mixed offspring are included as blacks, that increases the black population even faster. Some day, in the future, there will be more blacks than whites in these glorious United States. God forbid! We must protect our future white generations from the horrible fate. Wow! No matter which way we turn, we superior whites seem to have painted ourselves into a corner. Is there any clear cut solution to this problem? Where are you when we need you, Solomon?
SOLOMON SEZ
"Superior Whites?" Well, I don't know about that. One of my 700 wives was black, coal black. A gift from the Queen of Sheba. What a doll!! And was she intelligent! She taught me all I ever knew.
Pure white? Are there very many left? I understand that a lot of my black friends have already passed as whites so they are spreading their black genes among whites. And whites don't even know about it. What about those thousands of Indian-white marriages? One of my best friends married a gal who was half Indian; they had four children who are one-quarter Indian; now there are 7 grandchildren. Do you see how fast the pure white race can be contaminated?
Then there are many Mexican-white marriages; many Japanese-white marriages; many Jewish-white marriages. By the way, are the Jews a race? I sure hope so; I would hate to be without a race.
One day two women brought their children to me and each asked, "Is my child black or white?" One woman was black and had married a white man; the other woman was white and had married a black man.
At first, I was stumped. I was just about to admit, for the first time in my life, that I didn't have an answer. I had thought about some smart alec answer like "Blite" or Whack," but then all of a sudden I realized dumb questions should not be honored with answers, so I said to these two unnecessarily troubled women, "Go your way---your babies are fully human. That's all you need to know."
NEWS FLASH
White biblical archeologist proves that Jesus was black!
He said, "A true white must be pure white. Anyone with any amount, even small, of black genes in his ancestry must be black." The evidence:
1. Moses married a black woman, an Ethiopian. This proves that some black genes entered the Jewish gene pool.
2. There were blacks in ancient Egypt where the Jews lived for over 400 years.
3. There was much movement of people back and forth through the Palestine area over the centuries.
4. Jews intermarried with other peoples.
5. Present day people from the eastern Mediterranean have a brownish cast to their skins.
6. Therefore, Jesus was a black man.
Conclusion: A black man died to save white racists from their skins (oops!) sins.
Satire has ended; now some commentary
The concept of race is stupid and erroneous, biblically, biologically and sociologically; the practice of racism is frightening real, damaging and devastating.
Several historians have done a fine job of tracing the complex history of racism: Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror; Bennett, Before the Mayflower; Richard Hughes, Myths America Lives By.
I would like to end with a reference to a book reviewed by historian Edward Blum in the December 28, 2010 issue of Christian Century---The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. Blum writes:
"It is within this history of white slavery that Painter finds the first claims of the supremacy of whiteness---in the sex trade. Enslaved eastern European women became symbols of beauty. . . . The profound irony of the emergence of whiteness is that it was packaged in the beauty of a slave." Blum is lavish in his praise of The History of White People. This is significant because Blum himself is an expert in the area, especially from the Civil War until 1900. See his book Reforging the White Republic. I also highly recommend his interpretation of Bu Bois---W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet. Most writers on Du Bois regard him as a secular prophet highly critical of Christianity. Blum, however, treats Du Bois as a deeply. though unorthodox, spiritual prophet, exposing the injustice and oppression hidden within Americanized Christianity. If social justice, liberating justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom justice, an Amos 5:24 justice "I want justice---ocean of it." is a biblical issue, required of biblical spirituality, then Du Bois is more spiritual than Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Tozer.
Next, Blum's negative statement about The History of White People:
"In one arena, Painter's account is too shallow. She never looks into the soul of whiteness---into its connections with religion or its links to the sacred. . . . Du Bois saw the depth of whiteness in its proponents' attempt to make it a religious value. . . . Richard Wright: 'The apex of white racial ideology was reached when it was assumed that white domination was a God-given right.' . . . .
"The link between whiteness and morality is an important one. It may explain the tenacity with which whiteness has remained an arbiter of all that is good and right. Painter wonders why Americans hold onto the 'superstition' of whiteness. Perhaps the history of links between whiteness and godliness is a key to solving that puzzle."
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Kingdom of God On Earth Theology
Key Scriptures:
"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth. . . . "
"Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . " Mt. 6:33, NEB
"The Spirit has anointed me [and now the church] to preach good news to the poor by releasing the oppressed through implementing the radical justice of the Sabbath Year." Luke 4:18-19, Noble paraphrase.
"The kingdom of God is justice [NEB], shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." Romans 14:17, Noble paraphrase.
Messianic Passages from Isaiah:
"Of the increase of his government and shalom there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness." 9:7
"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him---the Spirit of wisdom and understanding . . . with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor." 11:1-4
"In love a throne will be established . . . one from the house of David who seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness." 16:5
"I lay a stone in Zion . . . a precious cornerstone . . . I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line." 28:16-17
"Here is my servant . . . my chosen one . . . I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations . . . " 42:1-4
"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the oppressed poor, to proclaim freedom and release by practicing Sabbath Year justice for the oppressed poor."
"To bestow on the oppressed poor a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
"These transformed oppressed poor will be called oaks of righteousness or trees of justice.
"These transformed oppressed poor will rebuild the ruined cities." Noble paraphrase
"For I, the Lord, love justice." 61:8
Since there is almost total ignorance in the American church about the extensive biblical teaching on oppression, any biblical synopsis of the kingdom of God must begin with a detailed analysis of oppression:
* who the oppressors are---the rich?
* who the oppressed are---the poor?
* the motivations driving oppression---greed?
* the damage done by oppression---crushing the spirit?
* the systems of oppression, how they are created, maintained and legitimated---slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, etc.
* warnings about half-solutions (abolition of slavery) while allowing the underlying cause (white supremacy or American trinity or WASP superiority) to continue and spawn new systems of oppression.
If the American church only lightly touches the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and then rushes too quickly to a justice or shalom solution, it will create a fine-sounding but shallow solution. Based on an history of catastrophic failure, all American theology on the kingdom is currently suspect until proven to be thoroughly biblical.
Once the biblical analysis of oppression is complete, the church must then engage in a similar rigorous biblical analysis of justice (Jubilee justice). Then a biblical analysis of shalom followed by a study of the relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom.
"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth. . . . "
"Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . " Mt. 6:33, NEB
"The Spirit has anointed me [and now the church] to preach good news to the poor by releasing the oppressed through implementing the radical justice of the Sabbath Year." Luke 4:18-19, Noble paraphrase.
"The kingdom of God is justice [NEB], shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." Romans 14:17, Noble paraphrase.
Messianic Passages from Isaiah:
"Of the increase of his government and shalom there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness." 9:7
"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him---the Spirit of wisdom and understanding . . . with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor." 11:1-4
"In love a throne will be established . . . one from the house of David who seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness." 16:5
"I lay a stone in Zion . . . a precious cornerstone . . . I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line." 28:16-17
"Here is my servant . . . my chosen one . . . I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations . . . " 42:1-4
"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the oppressed poor, to proclaim freedom and release by practicing Sabbath Year justice for the oppressed poor."
"To bestow on the oppressed poor a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
"These transformed oppressed poor will be called oaks of righteousness or trees of justice.
"These transformed oppressed poor will rebuild the ruined cities." Noble paraphrase
"For I, the Lord, love justice." 61:8
Since there is almost total ignorance in the American church about the extensive biblical teaching on oppression, any biblical synopsis of the kingdom of God must begin with a detailed analysis of oppression:
* who the oppressors are---the rich?
* who the oppressed are---the poor?
* the motivations driving oppression---greed?
* the damage done by oppression---crushing the spirit?
* the systems of oppression, how they are created, maintained and legitimated---slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, etc.
* warnings about half-solutions (abolition of slavery) while allowing the underlying cause (white supremacy or American trinity or WASP superiority) to continue and spawn new systems of oppression.
If the American church only lightly touches the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and then rushes too quickly to a justice or shalom solution, it will create a fine-sounding but shallow solution. Based on an history of catastrophic failure, all American theology on the kingdom is currently suspect until proven to be thoroughly biblical.
Once the biblical analysis of oppression is complete, the church must then engage in a similar rigorous biblical analysis of justice (Jubilee justice). Then a biblical analysis of shalom followed by a study of the relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom.
Can Oppression Create PTSD?
Does prolonged oppression cause post traumatic stress disorder---PTSD? I have probing this question for several months; I am increasingly convinced that the answer is, YES, especially after discovering a book titled Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005) by Joy DeGruy who has a doctorate in social work. In her opinion, PTSD and PTSS are cousins in the mental health field.
For the last four years, I have been trying to understand a puzzling Bible verse---Exodus 6:9. In Exodus 6:1-8, God plainly and directly says that he is going to deliver the Hebrew slaves from Egyptian bondage. Moses reports this exceedingly good news to the people of Israel. What was their reaction? I would have thought that 6:9 might have read something like the following: "With a tremendous shout, the people, with one voice, praised God for their coming deliverance." But, instead, the people reacted this way: "They didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions." (The Message)
In the RSV, the people are described as "broken in spirit." Obviously, something very traumatic had happened to the Hebrew slaves if they were unable to believe a direct message from God. Note that it was not just a few isolated individuals who were traumatized, but the people as a whole; in other words, mass PTOD---post traumatic oppression disorder.
In previous chapters in Exodus, slavery is described as cruel and ruthless; this was prolonged oppression, generations of oppressions; great grandfathers had been oppressed, also grandfathers and fathers; sons faced oppression as well as grandsons. Nobody knew anything but the unbroken agony of oppression. According to the Hebrew scholar, Thomas Hanks, oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons created in the image of God. Oppression not only smashes the body, it also crushes the spirit.
Slowly it dawned upon me that oppression could cause PTSD or PTOD; this is my invented term to focus not only on past oppression (slavery) but also current systems of oppression.
Then I read this description of life in the Mississippi Delta in an article by Nikole Hannah-Jones in the August 15, 2014 issue of The Week titled "Ghosts of the Freedom Summer." Nikole, now living in Waterloo, Iowa, wrote:
"My dad never once [over a period of 50 years] had taken us to the state of his birth. Not for family reunions or funerals. Not for graduations or holidays. . . . [they] have no desire to speak of the daily degradations they'd faced at the height of Jim Crow." Sounds like a case of PTSD---a refusal to revisit the pain, the trauma of their horrible past.
I had previously concluded, after reading the book Slavery and Social Death by Harvard historical sociologist Orlando Patterson, that oppression can cause not only physical death but also psychological death (broken spirits) and social death (broken social institutions such as marriage and family).
One of the reasons to label oppression as the cause of PTSD is to explain that the widespread dysfunction among the urban, black poor is not the result of personal or cultural flaws, but it is the severe damage caused by powerful outside forces. We now recognize that wartime PTSD is not caused by an individual soldier's flaws or weaknesses, but by the hell of war---an external force. For the oppressed, prolonged oppression is also hell.
In highly individualistic America, we tend to hold the individual person responsible for her/his flawed of dysfunctional behavior. As a result, the majority of white Americans blame blacks for the dysfunctions of the ghetto. Possibly the use of the PTSD or PTOD theory will clarify that oppression (slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, the racial wealth gap) is the primary cause of these dysfunctions.
The Mayo Clinic defines PTSD as "a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event---either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety about the event." DeGruy describes post traumatic slave syndrome as having these characteristics: "enduring injury, residual impacts of generations of slavery, multigenerational trauma, absence of opportunity to heal, no access to the benefits, privileges of society, vacant esteem, feelings of hopelessness, propensity for anger and violence, internalized racism, learned helplessness, physical, psychological and spiritual injury, self-hatred."
Are white theologians guilty of theological malpractice for their failure to engage the extensive (555 OT references to oppression) biblical teaching on oppression? Are white pastors guilty of criminal neglect by failing to preach about oppression? By failing to stop segregation in the church? Has this tragic omission contributed to ongoing PTOD among blacks?
Does PTOD exist in today's urban ghettoes; if so, only among a few individuals or on a large scale? Does PTOD exist on today's Indian reservations; if so, only on a small scale or on a large scale? Does PTOD occur in Haiti; if so, only on a small scale or a large scale?
If PTOD exists today, does Christian conversion take care of the problem? Does church? Or does Christian education? If not, what do we need to add to the HCDF ministry?
It is probably useless to argue about which is worse, PTSD or PTOD; both are horrible. But I would like to point out that in America PTOD has gone on for hundreds of years against American blacks, that it has affected a whole ethnic group, directly or indirectly, on a mass scale, not just a small minority of one ethnic group.
In rereading Black Rage (1968) which was written by two black psychiatrists, William Grier and Price Cobbs, I am all the more convinced that PTOD is real and pervasive in the black community. According to Senator Fred Harris, the root cause "is the unwillingness of white Americans to accept Negroes as fellow human beings." Despite some significant progress, "so little has changed." "The practice of slavery stopped over a hundred years ago, but the minds of our [white] citizens have never been freed."
Grier and Cobbs write that black rage "grows out of oppression and capricious cruelty." "White Americans do not understand what their role has been and still is in causing black rage." In addition, Grier and Cobbs state that "there is enduring grief in being made to feel inferior. . . . Persisting to this day [and in 2014] is an attitude, shared by blacks and whites alike, that blacks are inferior. This belief permeates every facet of this country and it is the etiological agent from which has developed the national sickness."
Three more quotations from Black Rage:
"The reality of being alternately attacked, ignored, then singled out for some cruel and undeserved punishment must extract its toll. That penalty may be a premature aging and an early death in some black people. To be regarded always as subhuman is a stultifying experience."
"America has waxed rich and powerful in large measure on the backs of black laborers. . . . It has become a violent, pitiless nation, hard and calculating, whose moments of generosity are only brief intervals in a ferocious narrative of life."
"The white man has crushed all but the life from blacks from the time they came to these shores to this very day." Smashed in body, broken in spirit; no wonder PTOD is widespread.
For those who would like more professional analysis of PTSD, I recommend googling the National Center for PTSD. The American Psychiatric Association added this diagnosis in 1980: "From an historical perspective, the significant change ushered in by the PTSD concept was the stipulation that the etiological agent was outside the individual (i.e., a traumatic event) rather than an inherent individual weakness (i.e., a traumatic neurosis)."
An October 17, 2014 revision: Cancel PTOD; instead, I now prefer PTOS. The S stands for syndrome which means "together, concurrence, a group of symptoms, a variety of etiological factors." Or for this theory, a set of factors, a series of traumatic, sometimes terrifying events. PTSD, according to Mayo Clinic, focuses on the enduring trauma caused by a single terrifying event such as a death in war or a rape. Oppression may include such terrifying events, but the total experience of a system of oppression such as slavery would be ongoing trauma, even a lifetime of varying degrees of trauma, often rape, severe beatings or lynchings; in other words, unending agony. So blow after blow after blow is imposed a people, an ethnic group; the cumulative damage is enormous.
I could have easily kept Joy DeGruy's PTSS---post traumatic slavery syndrome---except I felt that most whites might quickly dismiss it as an interesting theory, but irrelevant and dated since slavery ended 150 years ago. For me, the word oppression captures both the systems of oppression of the past such as slavery and legal segregation and the current systems of oppression such as the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males and the 20-1 racial wealth gap.
So PTOS has the following in common with PTSD: powerful, damaging external forces, and victims experience long-lasting trauma. PTOS is different from PTSD in that there are a set of factors, a series of events, a lifetime of trauma, not just a single, terrifying event.
For the last four years, I have been trying to understand a puzzling Bible verse---Exodus 6:9. In Exodus 6:1-8, God plainly and directly says that he is going to deliver the Hebrew slaves from Egyptian bondage. Moses reports this exceedingly good news to the people of Israel. What was their reaction? I would have thought that 6:9 might have read something like the following: "With a tremendous shout, the people, with one voice, praised God for their coming deliverance." But, instead, the people reacted this way: "They didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions." (The Message)
In the RSV, the people are described as "broken in spirit." Obviously, something very traumatic had happened to the Hebrew slaves if they were unable to believe a direct message from God. Note that it was not just a few isolated individuals who were traumatized, but the people as a whole; in other words, mass PTOD---post traumatic oppression disorder.
In previous chapters in Exodus, slavery is described as cruel and ruthless; this was prolonged oppression, generations of oppressions; great grandfathers had been oppressed, also grandfathers and fathers; sons faced oppression as well as grandsons. Nobody knew anything but the unbroken agony of oppression. According to the Hebrew scholar, Thomas Hanks, oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons created in the image of God. Oppression not only smashes the body, it also crushes the spirit.
Slowly it dawned upon me that oppression could cause PTSD or PTOD; this is my invented term to focus not only on past oppression (slavery) but also current systems of oppression.
Then I read this description of life in the Mississippi Delta in an article by Nikole Hannah-Jones in the August 15, 2014 issue of The Week titled "Ghosts of the Freedom Summer." Nikole, now living in Waterloo, Iowa, wrote:
"My dad never once [over a period of 50 years] had taken us to the state of his birth. Not for family reunions or funerals. Not for graduations or holidays. . . . [they] have no desire to speak of the daily degradations they'd faced at the height of Jim Crow." Sounds like a case of PTSD---a refusal to revisit the pain, the trauma of their horrible past.
I had previously concluded, after reading the book Slavery and Social Death by Harvard historical sociologist Orlando Patterson, that oppression can cause not only physical death but also psychological death (broken spirits) and social death (broken social institutions such as marriage and family).
One of the reasons to label oppression as the cause of PTSD is to explain that the widespread dysfunction among the urban, black poor is not the result of personal or cultural flaws, but it is the severe damage caused by powerful outside forces. We now recognize that wartime PTSD is not caused by an individual soldier's flaws or weaknesses, but by the hell of war---an external force. For the oppressed, prolonged oppression is also hell.
In highly individualistic America, we tend to hold the individual person responsible for her/his flawed of dysfunctional behavior. As a result, the majority of white Americans blame blacks for the dysfunctions of the ghetto. Possibly the use of the PTSD or PTOD theory will clarify that oppression (slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, the racial wealth gap) is the primary cause of these dysfunctions.
The Mayo Clinic defines PTSD as "a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event---either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety about the event." DeGruy describes post traumatic slave syndrome as having these characteristics: "enduring injury, residual impacts of generations of slavery, multigenerational trauma, absence of opportunity to heal, no access to the benefits, privileges of society, vacant esteem, feelings of hopelessness, propensity for anger and violence, internalized racism, learned helplessness, physical, psychological and spiritual injury, self-hatred."
Are white theologians guilty of theological malpractice for their failure to engage the extensive (555 OT references to oppression) biblical teaching on oppression? Are white pastors guilty of criminal neglect by failing to preach about oppression? By failing to stop segregation in the church? Has this tragic omission contributed to ongoing PTOD among blacks?
Does PTOD exist in today's urban ghettoes; if so, only among a few individuals or on a large scale? Does PTOD exist on today's Indian reservations; if so, only on a small scale or on a large scale? Does PTOD occur in Haiti; if so, only on a small scale or a large scale?
If PTOD exists today, does Christian conversion take care of the problem? Does church? Or does Christian education? If not, what do we need to add to the HCDF ministry?
It is probably useless to argue about which is worse, PTSD or PTOD; both are horrible. But I would like to point out that in America PTOD has gone on for hundreds of years against American blacks, that it has affected a whole ethnic group, directly or indirectly, on a mass scale, not just a small minority of one ethnic group.
In rereading Black Rage (1968) which was written by two black psychiatrists, William Grier and Price Cobbs, I am all the more convinced that PTOD is real and pervasive in the black community. According to Senator Fred Harris, the root cause "is the unwillingness of white Americans to accept Negroes as fellow human beings." Despite some significant progress, "so little has changed." "The practice of slavery stopped over a hundred years ago, but the minds of our [white] citizens have never been freed."
Grier and Cobbs write that black rage "grows out of oppression and capricious cruelty." "White Americans do not understand what their role has been and still is in causing black rage." In addition, Grier and Cobbs state that "there is enduring grief in being made to feel inferior. . . . Persisting to this day [and in 2014] is an attitude, shared by blacks and whites alike, that blacks are inferior. This belief permeates every facet of this country and it is the etiological agent from which has developed the national sickness."
Three more quotations from Black Rage:
"The reality of being alternately attacked, ignored, then singled out for some cruel and undeserved punishment must extract its toll. That penalty may be a premature aging and an early death in some black people. To be regarded always as subhuman is a stultifying experience."
"America has waxed rich and powerful in large measure on the backs of black laborers. . . . It has become a violent, pitiless nation, hard and calculating, whose moments of generosity are only brief intervals in a ferocious narrative of life."
"The white man has crushed all but the life from blacks from the time they came to these shores to this very day." Smashed in body, broken in spirit; no wonder PTOD is widespread.
For those who would like more professional analysis of PTSD, I recommend googling the National Center for PTSD. The American Psychiatric Association added this diagnosis in 1980: "From an historical perspective, the significant change ushered in by the PTSD concept was the stipulation that the etiological agent was outside the individual (i.e., a traumatic event) rather than an inherent individual weakness (i.e., a traumatic neurosis)."
An October 17, 2014 revision: Cancel PTOD; instead, I now prefer PTOS. The S stands for syndrome which means "together, concurrence, a group of symptoms, a variety of etiological factors." Or for this theory, a set of factors, a series of traumatic, sometimes terrifying events. PTSD, according to Mayo Clinic, focuses on the enduring trauma caused by a single terrifying event such as a death in war or a rape. Oppression may include such terrifying events, but the total experience of a system of oppression such as slavery would be ongoing trauma, even a lifetime of varying degrees of trauma, often rape, severe beatings or lynchings; in other words, unending agony. So blow after blow after blow is imposed a people, an ethnic group; the cumulative damage is enormous.
I could have easily kept Joy DeGruy's PTSS---post traumatic slavery syndrome---except I felt that most whites might quickly dismiss it as an interesting theory, but irrelevant and dated since slavery ended 150 years ago. For me, the word oppression captures both the systems of oppression of the past such as slavery and legal segregation and the current systems of oppression such as the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males and the 20-1 racial wealth gap.
So PTOS has the following in common with PTSD: powerful, damaging external forces, and victims experience long-lasting trauma. PTOS is different from PTSD in that there are a set of factors, a series of events, a lifetime of trauma, not just a single, terrifying event.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Spirituality Without Justice; Spirituality With Justice
Spirituality Without Justice Spirituality With Justice
Isaiah 1:11-16; 22-23
Isaiah 58:1-5 Isaiah 58:6-14
Amos 5:7-12; 21-23 Amos 5:24
Matthew 7:15-23 Matthew 5:6, 10; 6:33
James 2:1-13 James 2:14-26
Examples: Examples:
New Testament Temple: a den of robbers. Job 29:7-17; 31:16-25
Pharisees who loved money and neglected justice. Mahatma Gandhi, India
The church in James 2. Martin Luther King, United States
Jonathan Edwards owned a slave. Nelson Mandela, South Africa
A.W. Tozer moved his church out of a poor black community. John Perkins, Mississippi
White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants.
According to Isaiah 10:1-2, Israelites both "withheld justice from the oppressed" and "robbed the fatherless." Sins of omission and commission? According to the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:6,10 and 6:33, Jesus sets a high standard for the doing of God's will---"Seek first God's kingdom and his justice" and do it with passion, hunger and thirst after justice, even though the aggressive pursuit of justice will often end up flavored with persecution. Those who set a low standard for doing God's comprehensive will, those who only cast out demons and perform miracles but do not do justice for the oppressed, are classified as evil doers or doers of injustice.
As an individual, a person is either a sinner or a righteous one; there is no neutral in between; socially, are we doers of injustice or doers of justice with no neutral in between? So is spirituality without justice also spirituality with oppression? When an individual is born again, this is only a spiritual beginning that is supposed to lead to doing justice. God hates, despises injustice; God loves, requires justice.
The Scripture are fierce, unsparing in their condemnation of a spirituality without justice. America is awash in an evangelical spirituality without justice. Often a spirituality with charity, but not a spirituality that creates economic justice for blacks, that practices comprehensive Jubilee justice.
I have some white Christian friends who were typical Americanized Christians. Then they went to Haiti and found a more biblical God at work in the ministry of Jean Thomas (HCDF), a ministry that combined spirituality and justice among the rural poor of Fond-des-Blancs. They were surprised, amazed and receptive; I see that they are now more biblically Christian, not just Americanized Christians.
The following quotation comes The Message, a Bible translation by Eugene Peterson, the Introduction to the book of Amos:
"Prophets sniff out injustice, especially injustice that is dressed up in religious garb. Prophets see through hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy that assumes a religious pose. . . . If we pray and worship God and associate with others who likewise pray and worship God, we absolutely must keep company with these biblical prophets. We are required to submit all our words and acts to their passionate scrutiny to prevent the perversion of our religion into something self-serving. A spiritual life that doesn't give a large place to the prophet-articulated justice will end up making us worse instead of better, separating us from God's ways instead of drawing us into them."
We need to train a new generation of theologians and preachers who know the difference between a demonic spirituality without justice and a spirituality with justice, and who have the courage to both preach and practice it.
For 15 years, I lived in nearly all black West Jackson, Mississippi. In a 12 square block area, there were 3 large black churches with million dollar church buildings that were well-kept and well-attended. Around these churches, the community was deterioriating with much delapidated housing. A spirituality without economic justice. Just to the east of Rose Street, Habitat for Humanity had built a dozen houses---a spirituality with justice. A few blocks west of Prentiss stood the Perkins Center, a model of Christian Community Development---a spirituality with justice. Strangely, none of the 3 black churches imitated the models of spirituality with justice very close by.
From The Message, Amos 5:
"I can't stand your religious meetings. . . . Do you know what I want? I want justice---oceans of it. I want fairness---rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want."
From The Message, Isaiah 1:
"No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I will not be listening. And do you know why? Because you've been tearing people to pieces."
From The Message, Isaiah 58 on authentic spirituality:
"break the chains of injustice, free the oppressed, cancel debts."
Sweeping, Radical, Extreme
For years, I have been exploring Jubilee Justice/Sabbath Year and its implications for the New Testament kingdom of God. Jonathan Cahn in his book The Mystery of the Shemitah [Sabbath Year], 2014, shed new light for me on the radical release involved in the God-designed Year. Cahn is a Messianic believer, a Jewish follower of Jesus Christ who leads a worship center made up of Jews and Gentiles in Wayne, New Jersey. He knows Hebrew.
Because we are fallen individuals who live in fallen societies [cosmos---evil social orders], we incline toward greed, materialism and oppression. To stop this widespread tendency, every seventh day we are to rest and worship, make the Sabbath Day a holy day. So also the Sabbath Year; every seventh year is to be a holy year---a year of rest and worship in which the land is not to be tilled, the slaves must be freed and all debts canceled. In other words, massive economic and social leveling; every person, family has a new beginning. All tendencies toward lifelong oppression [slavery and debt slavery] are broken. The Sabbath Year which combines holiness and justice is, according to Cahn, "sweeping, radical and extreme." Why? Because social evil in the form of systems of oppression, if allowed to continue for a lifetime or even for generations, becomes "sweeping, radical and extreme." So strong action is needed; a periodic cleansing, a chance to start anew.
According to Cahn, "During the Sabbath Year the people of Israel were to leave their fields, vineyards, and groves open for the poor. For the duration of the year the land belonged, in effect, to everyone. And what ever grew of its own accord was called hefker, meaning "without an owner." So during the Sabbath year the land, in effect, belonged to everyone and no one at the same time."
Cahn states: "So on Elul 29, the very last day of the Sabbath year, a sweeping transformation took place in the nation's financial realm. Everyone who owed a debt was released. And every creditor had to release the debt owed. . . . The nation's financial accounts were, in effect, wiped clean. It was Israel's day of financial nullification and remission." Sounds like every creditor who refused to release the debtor would then, in God's eyes, become an oppressor. See Deut. 15:1-2. This whole action is called "the Lord's release." But it was something the people had to do.
Cahn adds: "The idea of a nation ceasing all work on its land for an entire year is a radical proposition. No less radical is the idea of a day in which all credit and debt are wiped away." So this is why Cahn at the end of chapter 4 states that the Sabbath Year is "sweeping, radical and extreme." It is against the rich and for the poor.
In summary, Cahn says: "So for the people of Israel to keep the Sabbath year was to acknowledge God's sovereignty over their land and lives. It was also an act of faith. It required their total trust in God's faithfulness to provide for their needs while they ceased from farming. In the same way, to cancel all the debts owed them was to sacrifice monetary gain and, again, to rely on God's providence." I think that the New Testament kingdom of God, fully understood, is equally "sweeping, radical and extreme." To avoid these implications, theologians have cleverly futurized and spiritualized the kingdom of God. Therefore, the church has no clear and compelling vision of the kingdom of God here on earth.
According to Cahn, violation of the Sabbath Year can bring divine judgment, but not without warning. 9/11 took place during a Sabbath Year. The 2008 Recession took place during a Sabbath Year. September 2014 marked the beginning of a Sabbath Year which will end in September 2015.
If the church is not now so doing, we should repent, live simple, holy and just lives, shed our American materialism.
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