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I'm reproducing here a slightly-condensed version of my first-ever guest blog, which was published in full at https://bit.ly/4cgers2 (Therapy for Christians) on July 30, 2024.
Oh, the resistance Christians face as we seek to share our message with today’s culture! One aspect of our message that seems particularly drowned out by the spirit of the age, is that our God loves to heal broken people so they can live in shalom harmony with each other. During a recent morning drive, a radio news program delivered its daily reminder of how faintly “shalom” echoes in our world these days.
The radio exposed to me the horrors of war and cries of human suffering in Ukraine and in Gaza. It reported on how our nation’s gun violence kills, maims and damages survivors’ lives seemingly like never before. The radio then schooled me on how increasingly divided our nation has become over politics. Then it broadcast some social scientists’ compelling evidence that the “screen time” we’ve afforded to an entire generation of kids has left many of them without the basic social skills needed to connect with others in healthy ways.
If you’ve been called to help others with their healing and growth processes it’s likely you’ve seen countless ways in which powerful elements within our culture complicate people’s ability to have communion with God and community with one another.
Some people want to counteract these influences. One talking head whose program I catch from time to time is convinced that people can be more intentional about signaling their membership in the communities they live in, and their openness to connect with others over the less controversial interests that can bring a local community together. He’s started a “Mingle Project” that appeals to the human desire for connection.
Enter: "DEI" Programs
We’ve seen a somewhat different approach taken by many corporate Human Resource leaders who promote “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” initiatives to correct systemic inequalities that are based on unhealthy social attitudes. My professional background has given me opportunities to experience some of these programs in depth. It seems they are worldly attempts to teach working adults the ground rules of how to establish healthy communities in the workplace.
I admire and appreciate many of the ideas contained in these worldly initiatives. And, I long to test them against the principles of community contained in the Bible. Christians know that God created people for relationship, while Satan loves to isolate us from one another. We know that our God does not play favorites based on a person’s heritage (for example, Acts 10:34, Ps. 86:9, Acts 1:8, Rom. 16:26) and longs to bring those from every nation, tribe and language into his kingdom community. how do we evaluate the world’s attempts to fix what we might term the “problem of lost community?” in light of the Bible’s teaching on community?
A Gentle Critique of DEI
I gave some thought to the concept of “microaggressions” which is featured in many corporate DEI programs, in this light. As I read to understand how social scientists currently define this term, iI fit into my cognitive framework this way: “passive aggressiveness based in prejudice.” The confluence of two things many of us recognize as sinful and unhealthy. It’s bad! People shouldn’t do it! But then, for an act to really be “passive aggressive” it must also be done with some intention. Those who write and educate on microaggressions tell us that words and actions can be defined as such even if the offense is unintentional. And I get it! Because I’m such a sinner that I sin when I don’t even mean it. I have unintentionally hurt people by saying or doing something that turned out to be a colossal display of my ignorance. I shudder at some of the memories, and I’m grateful for receiving correction (although it stung in the moment).
And yet – and especially in the context of promoting “shalom community” between people, something rings hollow to me in the way we’re being instructed on this subject. While social psychologists have done us a service in calling out the need for greater sensitivity and awareness to ethnic and cultural differences as we all strive for better and closer community, my survey of the related literature reveals scant attention to what we might well consider a central theme of God’s design for how all of us sinners may live in community with one another: forgivingness.
Biblical Thoughts on Radical Inclusiveness
I wasn’t sure until writing this that “forgivingness” is really a word. But Vocabulary.com thinks so, and defines it as the “tendency to be kind and forgiving.” I choose it instead of “forgiveness,” which is something that’s extended on a case-by-case basis. “Forgivingness” indicates a feature of one’s character, not a single transaction. It’s not unlike the way the Bible describes God’s “lovingkindness” as part of God’s abiding character.
As a Jesus-follower – Jesus, whom God gave to the world to restore communion between God and people as well as healthy community between people, it seems right to applaud DEI programs for their zeal in educating us on the importance of taking care to not offend our neighbor over vain and profane human distinctions. This seems consistent with how the Bible describes “kingdom demographics” – a community of God-worshippers from every people, tribe and tongue.
But where does that leave us in fostering healthy community between people who may even have shared ethnicity and other demographic characteristics, and who just plain disagree on matters they consider important? I’m a white American male, and over the past several years I’ve become increasingly aware of the strained friendships and broken fellowship between other white American males who strongly disagree over politics – while all professing to be Jesus followers! As a person who cares about the image the church portrays to the rest of the world – becasue an important part of our spiritual gifting to draw others to Christ is supposed to be the love that exists within our communities of faith (John 13:35-38, for example) – I’m grieved by the loss of division and splintering I have sensed. Who or what can rescue us from this, save from the example of they type of inclusive community Jesus has left us? At this point, I remembered a striking passage on the topic of community formation from the Gospels.
Forgiveness, “Mingling” and Radical Inclusiveness in the Gospels
The sixth chapter of Luke records not only Jesus’ choice of his twelve closest companions, but also his choice of the kinds of other people he sought out to love. What a variety of characters! And to truly appreciate the message, it’s good to ground ourselves in a bit of context.
To this point in Jesus' ministry as told by Luke, he has welcomed and touched people of all nations, both Jew and Gentile. We see in verse 17 that the multitude includes people from Tyre and Sidon, ethnically Phoenician cities whose rulers, throughout history and from a military and political perspective, had been alternately allied with (see for example 1 Chronicles 22:2-4; Ezra 3:7) and in conflict with (see Judges 4:1-24) Israel. The Phoenicians were businessmen and merchants. Their affection for Israel is transactional, depending on the economic currents of the day rather than on any spiritual affinity. In Jesus’ day, the Romans used these cities as Mediterranean ports, key links in their economic plunder and exploitation of Judea and Galilee. Jesus’ reference to them at Luke 10:13-14 indicates that he considered these cities to be full of people who had yet to repent of their sin; and his contrasting them to the Jewish towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida indicates that these cities do not contain many (if any) Jewish people. Yet, he welcomes them all as they come to hear him, and he is healing them of diseases and unclean spirits.
The self-righteous Jew would find Jesus’ acceptance of the Phoenicians contemptible! Especially since Jesus was claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, Holy God himself, and their view of holiness was to keep from touching the sinful, unclean and profane.
Furthermore, extremely nationalistic Jews of Jesus’ day, such as the Zealots, would have recognized Sidon as the hometown of Jezebel, who brought her strong embrace of Phoenician idol worship into her marriage to King Ahab (1 Kings 16 and following chapters) and hastened Israel’s apostasy from true worship – leading in turn to Israel’s descent into defeat and desolation at the hands of the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. From the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 18.1.6) we know that the Zealots’ religious sensibilities were extremely agitated by any notion that Israel should be subject to any man or deity other than the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet this Jesus is welcoming this idolatrous people and healing them.
All this, against the backdrop Luke has given us that Jesus has just chosen Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15) to be one of his twelve closest companions. What might Simon be thinking (and learning) as Jesus welcomes and heals Simon’s sworn enemies?
And then, there is the matter of Matthew. A tax collector working for – Rome. Rome, a particular object of the Zealot’s rage! Polytheistic Rome, careening toward Emperor worship – systematically robbing the Jewish people of their wealth and resources and using conniving people like Matthew to do it!
Matthew. A traitor to his own people – if he was a typical tax-collector, he’s been grafting his own take onto the legal tax as a money-grubbing accomplice to Rome’s intimidation, oppression and thievery.
Alongside Simon the Zealot, Jesus calls Matthew to the circle of twelve men who will be his closest confidants, companions. Community.
Can you imagine some of the conversations that must have taken place between the Zealot and the tax collector, in order for them to become two of the twelve men Jesus entrusted with establishing the faith throughout the world after he was taken up to heaven? While the biblical record does not contain details of any interactions between the two, we who understand the very earliest history of the church from the Gospels and the book of Acts can only marvel at the unity of these earliest apostles, who unwaveringly stuck to their story of Jesus’ victory over death and established the enduring community of Christ-followers we know today as “the church.” Imagine how the reality of the miraculous events they had seen together both while Jesus walked the earth and then after the empty tomb, overshadowed their profound differences! Drew them together in their common understanding of a greater reality about human existence that overshadowed the conflicting priorities these men lived by previous to their encounter with the living God?
I imagine they shared many tears, much confession, and new heights of honesty and compassion. I imagine a tearful embrace as guilt and bitterness was released and old, sinful affections melted away.
I imagine they experienced a festival of confession and forgiveness.
Drawing Today from Jesus' Example of Radical Inclusiveness
What are we to make of this in the context of the “dis-community” we often see in the 21st Century? What difference might it make today if we’re truly Jesus’ disciples, and He’s called us to vocations of facilitating the healing and well-being of others?” While it is important for each of us to answer these questions in our own context, I propose that there are some principles we find in Luke 6 that are helpful in guiding us to a truly Christian response, as counselors, therapists and coaches, to the “dis-community” that we so often encounter as we encounter people.
In Christ, God set aside and transcended some of the most “sacrosanct” human beliefs of his day to emphasize the worthiness of every person to be accepted and made whole, regardless of whatever defined them in the past.
By including both Matthew and the Zealot in his group of twelve, one a tax-collector who had colluded with Rome to oppress the Jewish people and one an activist who abhorred Rome and their Jewish collaborators, Jesus blew away political and national distinctions.
By gladly teaching people of Phoenician heritage about himself and healing them, Jesus set aside historical grudges one ethnicity or religious group may have against another.
By continuing to heal with his divine and supernatural power without ever condemning human arts and sciences (recall that Luke, who in God’s providence wrote this account for us, was himself a doctor!) - Jesus shows us that we never need to choose between reliance on the science vs. the supernatural. God uses both alongside each other.
In blowing away all these distinctions, Jesus replaced them with a brand new principle upon which God will accept people: acceptance of, and trust in, Himself as the only one who can restore humankind to the condition of shalom that God has intended for man all along.
A Peace that Surpasses Understanding
I’ve used the word “shalom” quite intentionally in this article. It goes far beyond our English word “peace” which we often use to mean only “the absence of conflict.” Shalom, on the other hand, connotes not only the absence of strife but also the presence of all the conditions required for human connection and flourishing. “Shalom” in the original Hebrew signifies an unshakable harmony of every entity God created; it is a restoration of the fellowship with God, nature, and people. Shalom is what our first parents experienced in the garden before they defied God.
What do we do with this? I leave it as an open question that I invite each of you to enter into dialogue with God to explore.
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