Multiculturalism in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Unity Without Uniformity (Ben Mathew)

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone you call them make a difference. In mental health. Columbia International University offers graduate counseling degrees that combine professional excellence with Biblical truth from associates. Through doctoral program, CiU prepares you to bring healing and wholeness to others through a biblically based framework of compassion and care. Whether it's their carep accredited Masters in Clinical Counseling or their PhD in counsel or Education and supervision. You'll learn from experienced faculty who integrate faith with real world application to cultivate a Kingdom impact through disciples who counsel, teach, and train. Whether you're starting your journey or advancing your career, CiU's counseling programs equip you to serve others both professionally and spiritually. You can visit CiU dot edu to learn more about making a difference in mental health through Christ centered education. That's CiU dot edu. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined today by one of my favorite and recurring guests, Ben Matthew. He is a professor at Columbia International University in their counseling and I think it's counselor education. He's a professor of counselor education at Columbia International University. And so today we're going to talk about a subject that Ben's been speaking on and thinking about for a while now, multiculturalism in the church. And so welcome Ben back to the program. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

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Speaker 2: Man.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Jay's I always love these conversations in the ways in we've gone.

00:01:51
Speaker 2: I appreciate being back with you as.

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Speaker 4: The randomness is always good.

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Speaker 2: Exactly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well, so I was looking through your CV and I read a couple of pieces on immigration and uh, you know, how we treat the other And then I noticed you've been doing some talks on multiculturalism, biblical theology, those kind of things. So maybe just give me a give to everybody a little bit of a sense of why you got interested in these issues in the first place. Ye and uh, and maybe what your general approach to them is.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: For those of you that are watching, you can see that I have a lovely tan here. It's kind of year because my family is originally from India. And so for those of you that are listening and don't see me, that that's uh, that's what you'd be looking at if you saw me, and that that has always informed part of my just understanding of life identity. You know, this family that migrated from India lived in Canada, and then I moved here to the US. You know, there's been a lot of movement of culture and identity and content for me personally. One of the stories I often think about is my mom remained an Indian citizen for a number of years while we were living in Canady. She just didn't want to give up her Indian citizenship, and so she was known as a resident alien. I think is the term they use up in Canada. I don't know if they use that still, but that was the term. I remember like the first time hearing a customs immigration officer asked my mom like, where is she an alien from? And I'm like, what, She's an alien? Like this was like me coming off the heels of et back in the eighties, right, So I'm like going home kind of stuff. And to be honest, you know, after learning what that meant, you know, being from a thereland land, it made sense then for why we then experienced a lot of the struggles we did growing up. To give you a little context, our family grew up in Canada near Toronto, but in a very very to be honest, with white community and first moved there as we were kind of moving up the ladders of life as it were, that community did not embrace us at all. In fact, our house was regularly vandalized, firebombed kind of And I'm like, are six years old, right, So we moved to this community and like I remember this one time my grandfather, who was visiting from India, he took out, he would take a walk every morning in the neighborhood and he stopped in front of our garage door and he's just looking at it, and I see him from the living room window. So I walk out and I look in the garage door and spray painted like all over it our words like get out of here, go back to where you're from, get out of here, n word like written on there.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And so I remember as a kid, you know, experiencing all these things, seeing all these things, and to me, the answer, obviously then is the color of my skin, Like this is what's wrong. So I would have these prayers as I alwayd walk to school, Lord, please turn me white, like this would just make everything so much better, make my life so much easier. And then as I would walk home, I'd be like, but God, turn me back Indian, because if I show up white at home, my mom's gonna kill like this.

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Speaker 2: Is this will not be able to see. Well. Oh that that was.

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Speaker 3: That was very formative, right, like clear understanding of how race impacts communities, cultures, perspectives, unfortunately in some really really ugly ways. But it was through really the faith of my parents, how they engaged their faith through racial animosity. And I won't get into all the Jesus, but my dad started just volunteering in the soccer club in the community. He would hold a flag and call off sides and then he worked his way up to becoming like the head of the program. My mom started realizing these Canadians do these weird things called barbecues, which she had never heard of before, and so he ended up buying a barbecue and just started inviting people over for meals, which of course, you know, no one was available. We're busy, you know, can't do it. But they were just persistent and they just loved loved the community, They loved people, and I just saw their faith and it gave me. Twenty five years later, when they decided to move from that neighbor just to downside, that neighborhood, threw them a party, just shot in showing how much appreciation they had for them. So when you asked the good question like what got me into this, to be honest, it was my family's faith in the midst of racial animosity that did. I didn't really understand how my faith necessarily spoke to that, but I saw it. So when I grew out and developed my own understanding of things, both theologically as well as clinically, oh man, I want to get more into this. And it's just continued to expand. But it really started in those real expressions of faith by my parents.

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Speaker 1: How do you think, you know, from a clinician's perspective, when we talked about some identity issues before, and how you know how one views oneself? How do you think about or how do you counsel people to think about their ethnicity racial background in relation to their overarching identity? And you know, maybe that's the general question, and then sort of digging down and maybe the second question would be how do you do that with a Christian right? It's a you know, how do you cultivate a Christian first identity without losing the appropriate distinctives that come along with being part of an ethnic group and a culture. So yeah, first step like, how do people usually think about that ethnic identity? And how would you love to see them think about that ethnic identity as a counselor.

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Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: One of the things that we always wanted to do in a clinical context is first understand their narrative. How do they understand their ethnic realities as part of their own narrative? And so that's not to say it's either right or wrong, it's just I need to build some therapeutic rapport right to be able to understand which do you think is if I can use the word somewhat incarnational in itself, like, how do we step into those realities before we speak to those realities? That to me then gives me some understanding of then maybe to some degree helping me understand how either important it is to them or how marginalized it is to them. Have they over emphasized it? Have they not emphasized it enough? I know if you talked to Ben Matthew when he was like five or six, I wanted to get rid of my ethnic identity here right, It was shameful, it was causing problems.

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Speaker 2: If he went to counseling.

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Speaker 3: But I would hope of clinician would be able to identify that and okay, how do we actually have a healthier understanding of your ethnicity as part of who you are rather than trying to put it away in light of all these contexts. But I've worked with others on the other side where in some ways that has become an overwriting part of their identity. And what I mean by that is that because of the desire to kind of maybe work out of hardship or animosity or whatever it is, they made such a high priority of their ethnicity as kind of the dominant part of their identity, and so when and if others in culture or community or family don't recognize that, they feel offended and they transfer a lot of animosity against other people as well. So I use these terms particularly that we've often heard color blindness and color essentialism. So color blindness, if many of your listeners probably know that term, the idea that well, we don't see color, we don't see rays, we just see everyone kind of as they are. And the good of that, and I actually think there is some good is that we don't want to prioritize ethnicity over and above just humanity.

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Speaker 4: Right, yeah, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: The concern of.

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Speaker 3: That is that you're removing an aspect of the individual that is part of the individual, and sometimes individual clients of mine sometimes have to rest with it. But I think we can go to the other extreme too, of what I refer to as color essentialism, where we make race and ethnicity actually too much of a priority in terms of identity, and when others don't give you reciprocate the same level of importance, we then get offended and we kind of go out of turn against those other people. When I'm working with clients, I'm having to kind of help manage where they are on that spectrum, And yeah, how is this actually helping or hindering your own flourishing, which then for Christians takes on like another whole level. And I'm speaking to someone who knows this a lot better than I do. But I love pulling out the biblical theology. I think of what God's vision is for the nations, you know, from Genesis eleven, Tower of Battle to acts to God through language, either dividing or uniting, and so what that looks like in the community of Christ. That again, it's not supposed to be the main part of your identity. Color essentialism. And so when Paul talks about neither Jude nor Greek male or female, I think we need to prioritize our identity in Christ. But neither is it ignored. Right read Revelation seven, like gathered around the throne, or people from every tribe tongue in nation. Right, as I say with my wife who is of Scandinavian background and I have Indian background, when we get to heaven, God will not take out his remote control and like color contrasts us to neutral, right, He's not gonna bage us all out because the diversity actually adds to the glory of of our risen Lord. And there's something in there that we struggle here because this topic often creates a lot more more heat than light. But if we can frame it from a biblical construct, I actually think that there's a lot there that we can help our Christian colleagues and communities deal with.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Ephesians has always been interesting to me on this right. I mean probably a circular letter. You know, you've got the textual variant of in ephesis sort of in the first line where that may or may not it looks like it's a later edition, so you know, a very circular letter that's dealing with the coming together of Jews and Gentiles into one body united in Christ, and this somehow serving as a calling into account the principalities and powers of the day. You know, it's Phijians I think three ten, where it talks about the church calling them to account. Like there's a sense in which we are supposed to accomplish this unity through Christ that everyone else is trying to do. But it always goes astray because the unifying factor, the peg in the ground is it's constantly sort of shifting and moving.

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Speaker 4: It just can't work. And so.

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Speaker 1: But it's not a call to to your point, like it's not a call to color blindness, like Paul still refers to Jews and Gentiles. There's a sense in which these two groups are the interesting part of them coming together, maybe the god glorifying part about them coming together is that they're not becoming uniform. Yeah right, right, they're they're they're coming together in love despite difference, yeah right, and and and being together as different peoples. They're not being you know, yeah, made uniform whitewashed.

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Speaker 4: However, we wanted to say that like good contrast on the TV.

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Speaker 1: I love that, right, it's nothing's adjusted to beg like it's it's that it's they're coming together in difference.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And the diversity, I mean it is moving towards not towards uniformity, but it is moving to unity. Yes that that that the fact that unity because of that diversity. Actually, I mean that this is the vision that John gets that when they're gathered around the throne from every tribe tongue in nation, it actually brings more glory to the one who has unified us.

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Speaker 2: Like yeah, on paper.

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Speaker 3: I was just in Thailand just this past summer, just as an example of this being played out, and on Sunday morning, I'm literally worshiping with tribe tongue in nation all around the world. We were in a pan Asian context. It was beautiful and at one point one of the guys who was singing, he's from India. He asked for all the Indians to come up and sing a song of praise with him. And then he's thoughts that, in fact, I'd also like the Pakistanis to come up as well. Now, for those of you that know the history between Indian Pakistan, there's not a lot of love.

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Speaker 2: Between these communities, right.

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Speaker 3: These are two nuclear nations that are at odds with each other, have been for decades. James to see these two groups up on stage together, and there was probably about one hundred of us out of this conference of a couple one hundred people that were singing praises together that on paper, there's no reason why those two groups should be singing together.

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Speaker 4: Yea.

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Speaker 3: And yet because of the finished work of Christ, who, as he says in Revelation five, buy your blood like part of the Atonement plays into this right by your blood you purchase for yourself people from every tribe, tongue in nation. It was one of the most beautiful experiences that I saw of how the Gospel still maintains the identity, the reality of ethnicity, but for this greater purpose, this greater symphony. Right, we want woodwinds and brasses and percussions, we want the different parts of the symphony, but the whole point is that they work together for this greater performance of the lamb. Which, yeah, seeing things like that. So for me as a clinician, I'm trying to do that on a little more of an individual level, right, Yeah, trying to help people understand what God is trying to do, I think on a macro level through the Church for the world. How do I help you then understand that either identify as it too little, too much, and then actually push towards something that actually gets to be part of it. Whether they are a Christian, whether they are someone who can kind of be part of that larger narrative of God's work, or even for those who don't have a faith perspective. It is amazing how I'm still able to speak into helping them understand whether it's too much or too little, and how that may contribute or pull away from human flourishing and that's ultimately what we're trying to do here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really I think it's a really interesting challenge. I mean, when you're talking about the color blindness and the color of essential ism, my mind went to universalism versus tribalism.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 1: There's this sense in which, like, yeah, we're all human, but just saying we're all human doesn't really acknowledge any of the unique ways each one of us is actually embodied. But if we say, well, let's be tribal, then it's just you know, me and my fellow white guys hanging out. And you know, you're kind of like what just happened there? Like neither one of those is quite right, And so you're sort of navigating these two ideas and saying, well, yeah, it's okay to understand your tribe, right, and it like you're going to be shaped by your tribe to some degree and understandably so, right, But that doesn't mean your tribe is better than every other tribe, and that doesn't mean that you're detached from the human race so that these people aren't part of the Like now, you've got Okay, you're shaped by your tribe.

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Speaker 4: That's cool.

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Speaker 1: Now you're integrating in with everyone else somehow, like this is a negotiation process maybe, But again I think I don't know how familiar you are with an Asia Art's work.

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Speaker 4: Have you ever read any nature Art?

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Speaker 1: I mean that his notion of memetic desire, which for those of you who aren't familiar, Basically, it's this idea that we all have something that we're sort of shooting for. We all have models, and as we follow this model, it inevitably comes to a point of conflict because as we conform to the model that we're seeking to emulate, we start to pick up the same desires, the same interests, and go after the same for lack of better term resources, and so it almost always creates a conflict, except with Christ. And this is what Gerard really highlights is that when we're all seeking to conform to the image of Christ, if Christ is the one we're seeking to emulate, you don't run into conflict.

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Speaker 4: You ultimately run into peace.

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Speaker 1: And so that's sort of a rough summary of Nature Art, but it seems app to what we're kind of talking about a little bit.

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Speaker 3: I think so and that is the this is this is my my Chesterton tension point, right, this is this is what GK did for me, is that he helped me appreciate it's in the tension that you're find the greatest joy, right, instead of saying, well is it this or that? And and he goes out of his way to say, and I thing this is an Orthodox where he goes out of his way to say, listen, it's not a matter of balance between it's the tension of right that yes, you have this identity that's informed by your culture and ethnicity and your tribe, and you're part of this greater narrative, this greater story, this greater humanity that is actually not about you in your tribe. It's actually something bigger. So is it either or no? Chesterton actually says it's both. And then the questions of affections that you're ultimately saying, yeah, James Smith to me has helped a lot in this.

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Speaker 2: Area, like we become that which we love.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So if I if I love my tribe so much, and I'm not saying that's wrong, I have a Canadian flag hanging in my house somewhere, there's a certain love of country that I have. Right, I'm not saying that that's wrong, But to what end right If I'm not pushing on the tension point of how love of culture, context, ethnicity, nation, whatever it is, If it doesn't push up against this tension point of something bigger than just that, I actually find less flourishing. I find my affections are not satisfied in what I think is the best, and I become a smaller sense of self in that sense because my affections are actually whittling away rather than being nourished.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I know you've done some work on critical race theory. I have too, and.

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Speaker 1: There's part of me that sort of is sympathetic to the arguments there.

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Speaker 2: Yep.

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Speaker 1: Right, even some of the intersectional work that I've read. You kind of sit back in your life, like, no, some of this actually does make sense, Like you can see that it's working itself out like that, that there are these sort of double oppressed classes where you know, the maybe the legal protections just haven't caught up, or maybe you have you know, not only a prejudice, sort of a racial prejudice, but also you're physically smaller, right or something like that, Like you have all these sort of money plays into it, whatever else plays in At the same time, I kind of find myself saying, man, it doesn't feel like there's any way to work this out really and fix it. And so what I like about what you're saying with the tension point is you don't have to let go of either side. What you have to do is you have to recognize the tension and constantly adjust to it. But you're sort of always readjusting to this tension, and you're not trying to sit in just one place and be really comfortable in the discomfort right and say, you know, I'm gonna this is my flag, I've planeted.

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Speaker 4: I'm not moving anywhere.

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Speaker 1: You have to sort of let that tension move and shape you a little bit and and push you toward repentance, push you toward change strategy, push you toward you know, all those different kinds of things that would actually make you rethink stuff.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a great point because as you've probably had conversations as I have, when someone does read the full title of my dissertation and they see that I engage with CRTs poretic, they're like, yeah, man.

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Speaker 2: I thought you loved Jesus, what's going on here?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 3: And I'm like, let's let's have a conversation, because again, to many, it's like either or either this is the best thing that has ever happened since sliced bread, or this is from the pit of hell. Right.

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Speaker 2: And what I often try to do is similar to what you just said. Listen.

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Speaker 3: I think I think there's some valid observations here that it provides, as especially first generation as as they were essentially trying to look at why have not advanced in the ways of civil rights that we thought we should be at this point, right, And so Eric Bell and others are trying to wrestle with that, and they're identifying I think somewhat correctly some diagnoses of culture.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: The concern comes in when they and I would argue more second gen CRT comes along and when a prescription then is applied to the diagnoses.

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Speaker 5: Right.

00:23:26
Speaker 3: So good diagnosis needs a right prescription, but a wrong prescription to treat the diagnosis can actually make it even worse. Right, And so the prescription that second gen CRT actually doesn't appreciate some of the tension points, and then try to apply these other narratives that were never necessarily part of the original contract. So whether it is from Syrian or Marxist ideologies or whatever it is, we won't get into all these details, but the reality is that they're pushing into it an answer that then give room for exactly what you're talking about. Where do we both need to challenge? But where do we also need to grow? Where do I need to help others? But where do I need to repent of myself? Is it either or? Or is it both?

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Speaker 5: And?

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Speaker 3: And so I often talk about that as a good example of good observation but bad prescription. So how do we think that much better? We as Christians have a narrative amid a narrative that speaks even more so to this reality that I think we can lean into as a means of helping people in their flourishing.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I've.

00:24:36
Speaker 1: Always found so when I was studying it, I was kind of like, are there any instances in scripture where we could actually see something of this dynamic?

00:24:43
Speaker 4: Right?

00:24:43
Speaker 5: Not?

00:24:44
Speaker 4: Can I prove CRT from scripture? Right?

00:24:46
Speaker 1: That's not what I was trying to take amautical principle. Yeah, it's always yeah, that's always what you want to do. I'm going to I'm going to take my idea to scripture and make Scripture prove it. But no, I was like, are these dynamics available? I mean, you think about the early ur right, and you've got you know, all of these communities that are at the crossroads of all these multiple trade routes. They are metropolitan, right, They're they're getting in an influx of different sorts of Jews and Gentiles from all over the place in addition to having the more stables you and gentile communities that are melding together as part of the church. And so they're not like, you know, it's not like they have the Jewish Church over here in the Gentile Church over here. It's there together. So I mean, you know, I looked at things like Romans fourteen and fifteen. You see some of these dynamics, and what do you seek Paul doing? You say, you hear him calling like, hey, don't judge one another, you know, out do one another and showing honor, come together, be together. The historian acts where the Greek speaking Jews come and they're like, hey, I don't know whether you noticed this, but we're not being fed, you know. Yeah, yeah, And I mean the apostles aren't just like a stop and planning. You're not praying it, you know, like, they respond, They recognize the problem and they respond to it, and they sort of reorder themselves to make sure that this is cared for. And I just think that those stories, again, not that they demonstrate CRT or something like that, but they do offer some insights into dynamics that occur within communities of difference and how we sometimes just our assumptions lead us towards something that we weren't intending. Yeah, now that's not to say that those that we never intend to do bad stuff. It's just saying that these things can tend to just sort of systemically grow into us, and we need to be aware of those and allow ourselves to be shaken out of them a bit.

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Speaker 3: And it's a great point because I mean, to me, Acts really does. I've actually done this in counseling with some people those are faith perspective who are struggling with these issues. How do I understand my ethnic realities in light of the cultural pressures as I'm trying to live this out in my faith. Acts to me is a great casebook of sorts. I know, again, for hermeneutics. That's not the main point, but it is a great facebook of the church wrestling with this and sometimes stumbling through it. Right, whether it's Peter up on this roof and he has this vision a rise, kill and eat, and you're like, what the heck is all that about? Like, what the and then he gets this knock at the door by this Italian like okay, wait, is that that's oh interesting? Okay, So I'm supposed to go tell him the gospel, O.

00:27:33
Speaker 4: God, I'm supposed to eat him.

00:27:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the constructs that are be but he still stumbles through because you have just other story in Galatians where Peter has no problem eating with him Gentiles until the Jews walk in.

00:27:50
Speaker 2: Sorry, dude, I'm not I gotta go okay with my brotherre In.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: And when Paul finds out about this, he's like, you're kidding right, like and and what Paul says is this is this is because you're in a this is an affront to the Gospel, right And then fact to me is always what fascinates me with this is that this is this is not just a peripheral issue. This is not a second or tertiary issue. Yeah, this is this is a core issue that again, if we only make it about us, I think that's when it gets too far. But if we do relate it to the Gospel, to the work of Jesus Christ. So when Paul confronts some Englatian says, you are not in keeping with the Gospel, it's not about necessarily who you're eating with, it's what you're doing to represent Jesus Christ.

00:28:35
Speaker 4: That's us, right.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: And so I love that I can use passages like that to kind of help my clients and others. Listen, we're gonna stumble through this, and that's kind of part of the other thing is can we just give each other some grace here? Like this is this has been going on for two thousand years. Jews has struggled with it because they're like, hey, we're God's chosen people. But now all of a sudden you want them like to come in like really, you'll be in Eunichs like really, okay, Like sure, yes, yeah, we're still stumbling through it and we have. But I think that that's why the Gospel gives us the north start to be able to kind of keep pushing.

00:29:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:29:12
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting to look the transformative relationships in the New Testament more generally, and then think about how that might inform the way we think about multiculturalism in the church today. I mean, Paul's letter to Fi Lehman, you know, asking him to receive as back. Yeah, right, And and the way Paul encourages him to treat Anissimus when he comes back was a social innovation in and of itself, like don't don't overly punish me, you know this person like put all that on my account.

00:29:42
Speaker 4: You know.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: It's almost as if Paul is saying, if you're going to beat him, just beat me, you know, like, if you're going to punish him, punish me. And he involves himself in that in such a way that you get this sense that, I phi Lehman is not going to do this to Anius, like he is going to welcome him back as a Christian brother, and that the use whatever breakage of that relationship there would have been, that's going to get healed up. But I mean, I think those are relational dynamics that the New Testament really does encourage. And when we think about how to deal with that in a multicultural situation, I think there's good resources there for us.

00:30:17
Speaker 4: I guess that's all I'm saying.

00:30:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's exactly, And it's constantly pushing us to then, yeah, push towards this greater identity. Again, particularly for those of us that have faith in Christ. It uses those realities. I often refer to this as I want to avoid cultural egalitarianism, right, Yeah, whatever your thoughts are about the original egalitarian complementarianism, what I'm trying to avoid is that God gets rid of, or flattens out all the cultural distinctions as it relates to salvation. Yes, none of us hold any swim to salvation because of our ethnicity, and so in that sense, it's miles apart. And I think, going back to what you said about Ephesians, this is the beauty of the gospel, right, But then the outworking of the gospel is the bringing together of these two communities. Like the dividing wall of hostility has been broken down, and these groups, I mean those gentiles, we're gonna be on the far walls of the temple, right, Like there's a court for you guys.

00:31:27
Speaker 2: Way out there.

00:31:29
Speaker 3: We'll let women first, and then Jews and then like there's enough separation. Yeah, and in Christ, all of that is removed. It's just such a radical notion that still understands their reality and yet invites them into something bigger.

00:31:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome.

00:31:46
Speaker 1: Well, I think those Romans fourteen and fifteen, which we often sleep on. You know, by the time you get through Romans, you're like, we've spent so much time on one through eleven, rightly, right one through eight, you kind of you're like, those are the chapters. Then nine through eleven, you know, everybody's interested in eschatology and what's the separation prechurged is, So you got to do those, and by the time you hit chapter twelve, you're just like, I'm out of the.

00:32:11
Speaker 2: Right.

00:32:11
Speaker 1: So fourteen and fifteen you kind of we usually sleep on, but I think they're really crucial because in those chapters, what Paul is saying is, look, let the week be weak, let the strong be strong, and figure out how to live together with that. And I think, you know, in that context, it was there's some mix of juw gentile in there, and so he's not looking at flattening out distinctives. What he's saying is all of these people, and he actually talks about this, is that they all belong to a different You know, you're not their master. They're answerable to God, and so don't worry about judging them. Just live in peace with them, bear with them, don't cause them to stumble, right, Let them have their distinctive, whether it's weak or strong, and let them live as they seek to conform more closely to the image of Christ. Just let them do their thing, but do it together. Don't isolate yourself.

00:33:09
Speaker 4: From one another. You know, it implies that you're you know, he doesn't.

00:33:13
Speaker 1: He's not just like, hey, just let the Jews go do their things and the Gentiles go do their things like and don't just stop looking at each other, right, you know, and not like separating two little kids in a room. What he's actually saying is no, stay together and figure this stuff out, but be kind to one another, allow everybody room to grow and think. And you know, don't be so hell bent on figuring all of this out like you're right there wrong and it should be this way and it should you know. I just think those are chapters that help us frame out maybe how these relationships should go and the sort of approach we should be having.

00:33:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love how you said we shouldn't sleep on this because actually all thought it was really important. This is the outworking about theology that he spends that's right, chapters getting into and so how much more I mean for me? Honestly, I was just talking about this last week with some students on campus, about the other conversation of deconstruction right about you know, doesn't mean to leave faith to struggle, doubt, all those different things. And I was sharing with some students how do we maintain our faith in the midst of significant evil too, especially when it is in this construct racially oriented right in fact, to my story and my parents and their willingness to persevere in faith in the midst of racial evil, to me, the community of the African American Church in particular has been a wonderful source of encouragement that for whatever hundreds of years of chattel slavery that they were put under and then moving into Jim Crow laws of lynching, like all the other historical realities, most of them maintain their faith. Their faith in CHRISTI is actually what helped them persevere in the midst of such racial hatred that if anyone had a right, if I can even say it that way, to deconstruct from Christianity you would think of being the Black Church, right, Yeah, given the horreduous evil that many generations of blacks have had to endure, and yet it actually helped them persevere in their faith because they realize it's not just having to work together. How do we live together with whites? Well, what if the whites are subjecting you to slavery and are constantly putting you in horrific situations to which they still say, no, we still got to figure out how to live with them.

00:35:36
Speaker 2: We still need to love them.

00:35:38
Speaker 3: We still have to figure out what an example to me and to I think successive generations of not just the American narrative, which I think it speaks into that, but I think even more so to the Kingdom narrative right of how we as Christians can learn and that stort can be repeated in multiple contexts outside of America as well, that I think we need to hear more of that and realize this is actually what helps from about with the Kingdom in some some really beautiful ways.

00:36:04
Speaker 1: Well me ask you this because this is something that comes up an awful lout when I'm talking to people on the podcast, and I just think it's really interesting. So I'm kind of looking for how do you use this in a counseling context, But where does the lament actually come into the healing process, like an admission that something is actually loong here and not just you know, sort of the fact base, yes this is wrong, this is right, but also a real deep sense that just you know, as Planting could put it, the world is.

00:36:36
Speaker 4: Not as is not as it's supposed to be shalom.

00:36:41
Speaker 1: Right, And this this like tension is like rising up within me.

00:36:45
Speaker 4: But I don't know what to do with it.

00:36:46
Speaker 1: And we're not a lamenting culture, right, We're pull ourselves up by our bootstrap sort of culture most of the time. So how do you do you do you do you find that lament enters into counseling it?

00:37:00
Speaker 4: Like, how does that work for you know?

00:37:04
Speaker 3: This is kind of where some of my own cultural realities play in. I kind of refer to myself as a bit of a coconut. I'm brown and hairy on the outside, but I'm pretty white on the inside. Because while my parents are from India and I grew up with food and culture and language, I grew up in Canada, and so you know, I had all the contexts of you know, church and school and community that were generally white. Yeah, so we often use this word code switching, right, You're able to kind of move in different circles and adjust yourself to those different realities. In my more kind of Caucasian white contexts, I remember hearing phrases like, you know, when someone would die, they would ask, how's he doing? Oh, he's doing well, he's keeping it together.

00:37:52
Speaker 2: Right.

00:37:53
Speaker 3: I didn't realize until later what essentially that mean. It means he's not emotional, he's not crying, he's able to. He went to the funeral, and then the next day he went back to work, and you know, it just kept on going. That's what that's the good good. And then I'd go to funerals over on my Indian side of the family and I would be like, they are wailing, They're like sometimes prostrate on the floor or like hunched over each other, and it would go on for days. Sometimes I'm like, what is going on here? And it helped me realize again some of this distinction. And we're not saying one is better than the other. I think it's just the realities of both these cultures. But the challenge that always comes is how scripture then speaks to this right And so when you when you read the Psalms, my goodness, the opportunities that they give for lament as a means of an appropriate, if not expected, response to the evil. As you said, plantic that that plantic a quote for me, just helps the.

00:38:56
Speaker 2: Vandalism of shaloam. This is not the way supposed to be.

00:39:01
Speaker 3: And yes, do we want to figure out how it can be corrected by the grace of God and the movement of the kingdom. Yes, but before we get there, can we just sit for a moment and just we Yeah. I find myself with a lot of my clients who are coming out of a Western individualistic construct. To them, that's a really hard pill to swallow because it feels like a failure on their part, Like I just need to get over I just need to get back to work. And when I'm able to open this up, you know, another element of the Psalms that I often use sometimes is sometimes not just lament, but in precatory and trying to kind of how do I help you get angry over this reality too?

00:39:41
Speaker 2: And yes, that mean we need.

00:39:42
Speaker 3: To pray for the mountains to descend on your enemies. I don't know if we don't want to go that far, but we may need to be willing to just be angry over the evil that you see. That those emotions are part of the vocabulary God has given to humanity. And before you could move move on to what's next, you have to sit.

00:40:02
Speaker 2: In the here and now.

00:40:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's really that's a hard pill to swallow. But to me, that's what counseling is is a lot of times just opening a space for them in that moment away from work, away from family and the expectations of their community that stiff up or a lit keep it together, right, I give them a space just to say, like Job's friends did right, We often rightfully complain against his advice, but the good they did they sat with him for seven days.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: And weft right.

00:40:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's something good and holy about that. And so for my clients, I'm just trying to They're often thinking what do I do next? I'm trying to say, what do we do here and now? How can we use this space in the vocabulary of emotion to see where God wants to lead us?

00:40:48
Speaker 1: I will say, it's really interesting. So my wife and I've talked about this several times. So I am that sort of pull myent, you know, like just gut it out right, like I was going most dependable in high school, and that's just sort of carried through. And so it's like, you know, look when when stuff is going crazy in South, it's like everybody kind of says, okay, yeah, but he'll do he'll make it right. Yeah, And so it's fine, like I don't mind that, but it's also you know, it does sort of limit my emotional range and difficult situations. But the one thing I will say, like the imprecatory palms, those sort of speak to me a little bit more.

00:41:27
Speaker 4: I will say, it's only within a limited range. And so that's the other thing my wife and I usually talk about.

00:41:32
Speaker 1: She's like, you're very tribal, right, You're you have a small group of people that you want to protect, and when bad things happen to them, you get really animated about it. When things happen outside of that, you're not so concerned, right, And I find it really interesting just to hear you talk through that, because my tendency would be like if I'm psychoanalyzing myself a little bit. I would say that part of my problem is that because I don't lament, I don't all also get angry, right, like the smallness of the world that you really care about almost like for me conditions what I feel sad about and what I get angry about. And so there's a broadening that I think I need to do in some cases, and I've seen that happen, like when I've done some of this, like multicultural research, when I talk to people about it. I have a friend who's really good in this, like he understands it from a biblical and theological perspective, and it's like I start to feel that way, but it requires a broadening. Does that resonate with you, Ben at all? Like this idea that there has to be sort of a broadening of your scope on some level without just sort of decoupling you and detaching you from your embedded reality.

00:42:49
Speaker 3: No, I appreciate you. Yeah, working that out yourself. That'll be one hundred and fifty dollars for the session.

00:42:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, checking the mail. Checking the mail.

00:42:58
Speaker 3: Part of that is and I think this is where it connects to some of this discussion of ethnicity and multiculturalism and things like that. As well, if we've become so focused in on our own tribe, our own community without realizing no, we are part of this larger community called humanity, right and somewhat understandable. Listen, when my wife is offended, I'm going to fight back. When my kids are under threat, I'm going to do something about it. And as my concentric circles move out, my emotional attachment to them is less, and so my response may be less accordingly as well. But I need to give some space to realize I can't be I can't fight for everyone in that sense. I just don't have the emotional, physical, mental capacity to kind of be so broad to be effective for everyone. And Yet at those times where I'm so singularly focused on this reality and I feel all the feels as we're here, sometimes I do need to open it up. I'll help my clients open up as well and realize, are you missing something bigger beyond this?

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Though? As well?

00:44:09
Speaker 3: To be honest, I think this is what the psalms do right. All my enemies surround me strombles of basing company. Where's my hell come from? I look to you like the posture of looking up that we read in the psalms, So it's both recognizing the evil that's here, but at this same time, the psalms often say well where can you look though, where can you find hope? You need to broaden your your perspective. This is not denying the reality of this. It's just saying this is not just the reality. There's a big, greater reality that needs to be brought into focus as well. So I'm always trying to give space for what you're dealing with now. I don't want to minimize that. I don't want to say I'll just get it's not that bad. No, this really is bad right now right here and tension point, there's something bigger. How can we kind of expand into that broader perspective that doesn't minimize it, but actually gives it some clarity. It helps you understand this is actually something part of something bigger. Right This is why I think biblical theology for me is so helpful, because it gives me that broad, broader meta narrative to kind.

00:45:17
Speaker 2: Of speak into people's lives.

00:45:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sort of strikes me as you're talking there that it's very similar to what Augustin talks about with the love love of neighbor. You know, he talks about number one, you know, all of our love should be tossed into the current of our love for God, and sort of this picture of a river flowing and all the you know, God's love is the current. Your love for God is the current, and anything that you throw into that river is going to flow with that current.

00:45:44
Speaker 4: Right.

00:45:45
Speaker 1: It's kind of a I love that, you know, sort of idea, this immersive love that and you know, encompasses and carries along all of our other loves. Then he also talks about everyone in the world. Every I think he phrases it, every man in the world deserves an equal amount of love. They're all equally deserving of love. But each of us has a limited capacity, and so our role is in large part to love those who have been put in front of us. And he talks about in terms of God's ordination, like God has placed you somewhere, and so love the people where God has placed you.

00:46:23
Speaker 4: This is your role as a Christian.

00:46:25
Speaker 1: But he never really loses sight of this broader perspective. And I think, you know, that's largely what we're talking about when we're talking about these other emotions as well, that it's sort of appropriate for us to be angry or sad about the things that are close to us, but those are within a context of us recognizing that creation is groaning for the restoration that God is going to bring. And this is one instance of that. You know, we're now feeling the cosmic weight, you know, balanced on the head of a pin of everything that is broken in this one moment.

00:47:01
Speaker 2: That's a great point.

00:47:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and someways connects a little bit back to what we were saying about some of the larger discussions of race, ethnicity, how c our teammate even may help or speak into that. One of the other areas I usually try to help people kind of grasp is that in your quote of August, I think highlights this this individualistic reality coupled with these systemic realities.

00:47:26
Speaker 2: Right, so this is another big discussion in large of this.

00:47:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the question off, guys, is it this or that? Again, Chesterton helps me and it's like, well, actually it's both. And that's hard for some to to kind of digest because we do have individual responsibility, right for all have sin, and I'm individually responsible to the to the to the call of the gospel. In my life or to the responsibilities of my identity and how that played itself out. Ye, and I'm part of systems. I'm part of there's larger realities at work that are more more than just the individualistic tribal entity that I have. That I mean, it helps explain why I have sin to begin with. Because as one of my non Christian friends, and so you're telling me some dude named Adam thousands of years ago on the other side of the world ate some fruit and now I'm messed up because of it. I'm like, yeah, you actually that stinks, Like from his individualistic perspective, that's unfair that someone over there would have this negative impact on me today. That's a system, right, it's called the human race sin. Yeah, the second atom gives us the hope though another guy that you had nothing to do with, that you didn't earn, and yet because of what he finished, this new system, this new reality can be placed into your life. I'm often having to help people kind of sometimes they're a little more collectivistic in their mindset and so they lose the individualistic responsibility, or they're a little too individualistic and they don't appreciate some of the larger systems at play as well. Yeah, Keller, for me, has been a huge help in this area as he tries to recognize again we need to push into both and realities. As he says it, that we are individuals of systems both for racial engagement but more so for kingdom engagement and what that looks like.

00:49:21
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's been interesting.

00:49:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I think when I was having more frequent conversations about CRT, and I don't know whether I'm sad that that conversation has sort of started to dwindle down or whether I think it you know, we need to continue sort of bringing it back up and have good biblical and theological conversations about systemic evil and our role within that. But one of the things I found was when I drive into Saint Louis from my house. I live over on the Illinois side, so I'm drawing over the Missouri side and I have to pass these It's like strip club row and on one of the digital signs, they almost always have an AD and it says student loans got you down, We're hiring wow, And I'm like, what an instance of systemic evil?

00:50:06
Speaker 5: Wow?

00:50:07
Speaker 4: Right?

00:50:08
Speaker 1: You just think about all the things that come into play for that sign to make sense, to work, to work, and you just sit back and you're like, Wow, this is this is what we mean when we talk about systemic evil. People are now you know, they're struggling under student debt, and this place is going to offer them an opportunity to exploit themselves to pay it off.

00:50:30
Speaker 4: And it always drives.

00:50:31
Speaker 1: And every time I see it, I'm like, man like, if we don't believe in systemic sin, I don't even know how to make sense of that.

00:50:37
Speaker 3: Right, right, And and that's that's part of what I, with a large number of my clients, is trying to then recognize, as much as your individual narrative matters, it is part of this larger system well for good and for bad. So the bat that we examples like that that highlight, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, against the that the agencies that are at active work in these systems to pull down the Kingdom of God. And yet the calling for us as a community of faith, right and so to me that that then plays back into this discussion of ethnicity and race that one of the greatest I heard this quote recently, I don't even know who's attributed to, so I'll pretend it's mine that the silence of God is answered in the community.

00:51:27
Speaker 2: Of the church.

00:51:29
Speaker 4: Violence of God has answered.

00:51:30
Speaker 3: In the community of the church. And there's something about, particularly when the ethnic realities, that the things that on paper we should not be together, but through the Gospel we can come together. Is such a declaration to those powers, right, is such a pronouncement against those systems at work. But it's through the church.

00:51:50
Speaker 2: It's not just me.

00:51:51
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to do the best I can, but to the scree that I have to be part of this other system called the church. That's that's where these these realities start taking place in some beautiful ways.

00:52:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like we are the light of the world, right, and so we are the salt.

00:52:08
Speaker 4: We are the light.

00:52:09
Speaker 1: And it goes back to that Ephesians three ten passage where we are calling the powers and principalities to account, demonstrating to them that they can't do what they're trying to do. Only Christ can do what they are trying to do. Absolutely, He is the ultimate power and authority, and so when we unify around him, we we demonstrate something different.

00:52:30
Speaker 2: World.

00:52:32
Speaker 1: Well, man, this has been great. We're coming up on the end. I'll give you kind of the last word. When we think about multiculturalism in the church and you think about what could be done and some you know, maybe one or two concrete steps that we could take to start advancing in this area, what comes to mind.

00:52:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question, and again, thank you so much for giving me some time. I I'm always interested in people stories. I think it's one of the things that got me into counseling, to become an educator, to become a pastor, Like all the different opportunities I've had in my life, it's always because I just love story, whether it's your story, James, whether it's the church's story and ultimately God's story.

00:53:22
Speaker 2: And I think that.

00:53:23
Speaker 3: Curiosity of just I want to get to know people and understand their story has has helped me both developed some if I can say cultural humility, right of recognizing I clearly don't have the full story of existence, of truth, of reality. I do believe there is truth. I do believe there's beauty. I do believe there is reality. It's just I don't have it all. So I encourage people just get curious about people's stories, especially when it comes to this area of ethnicity and multiculturalism. I know, were so encamped into our own political tribal realities, and it's hard to get out of that.

00:54:06
Speaker 2: For me.

00:54:06
Speaker 3: One way I kind of push myself in others is just get curious about other people's story. Let it develop some cultural humility to help you understand I need I need these other people, which to me then pushes me into okay, so how can I be part of this? The cultural humility actually energizes me more than anything else when I realize I don't have all the answers I need to hear these other stories. But you don't have all the answers either. In fact, we're a bunch of people that are stumbling through this thing. So how do we help each other? And how do we help the church and the community of God make movement towards this greater reality called the Kingdom? Usually one kind of has to come before the other. So I usually tell people get curious about what God is doing in people in other people's lives. Find ways to just learn about that coffee podcast, whatever it is, and you'd be surprised that what it helps you then kind of reprioritize in your own heart and then what you can really get excited about as God is wanting to move his kingdom.

00:55:17
Speaker 2: For his glory.

00:55:18
Speaker 4: Very cool. Yeah, I like that a lot.

00:55:20
Speaker 5: Man.

00:55:21
Speaker 1: Well, Ben, always a pleasure having you on. Thanks so much for being here. I think this is an important topic. I'm glad you're tackling it and it's a great conversation.

00:55:29
Speaker 4: Really appreciate it.

00:55:29
Speaker 2: Always a joy for me, James.

00:55:32
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, Well, we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian check Down. In the show description, I'll put a link to Ben's faculty page at CiU and his CV is posted there. If you want to check out some of the other stuff he's written and that kind of thing, you can go right there and check that out. Otherwise, just encourage you to come on back listen to the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:55:53
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:55:53
Speaker 1: Well, I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to life audio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.