On Seeing Others as Image Bearers

(This post was originally part of the content I shared in my newsletter. Upon my husband's insistence, I decided to share it on the blog.)

I often feel ill at ease and reluctant to opine on the state of affairs of a country I love deeply, but which is not my own.

I am not American, I’d remind myself when I would start to draft some thoughts. Living there for years doesn’t give you the right. But I realized that it's not about nationality. It’s an issue of faith. I am a citizen of a Kingdom God is building one soul at a time. Therefore, what happens to embodied souls here on earth should affect all of us who are in Christ. 

I sit in a peculiar in-between of sorts. As an immigrant, I’ve experienced varying degrees of bigotry and racism. People expecting a certain behaviour on my part on account of my nationality and my legal status. Yes, even when our immigration status was legal we were sometimes treated as if we’d come to Canada illegally. 

As a person raised and educated in all the privileges Western culture has to offer, I am acutely aware of the advantages I can access. Because my skin colour is fair and my accent in English is American, I can pass for “majority” even though technically I am a Latino woman, and therefore a minority.  

I am ethnic, I appear “white”, and I sound educated.  Depending on which of those people perceive, they react accordingly.  

For a person of colour, the experience is different. There is no nuance. The skin colour is the first (and often only) thing that many see. Before they are from somewhere, or work here, or graduated from there, they are black. And the assumptions placed on that colour confine and reduce the one who bears it. 

You may think, “I am not racist.” And perhaps you aren’t in the horrific ways shown on the images on TV. But I think we all carry a dose of bias and prejudice in us.

We don’t know what it’s like to be black. And we especially don’t know what it’s like to be black in America unless you are, or have a loved one who is. It’s hard to comprehend what it’s like to carry 400+ years of injustice on your back on account of the colour of your skin unless you are black. And while it’s true that 2020 is not in the era of slavery, it is equally true that some lives are better protected than others. 

If you are a Christian person, your faith compels you to look at others in light of Genesis 1. We must recognize image bearers on the streets, crying, angry, and not just see them in the mirror or in our personal spheres of influence.

An index card folded in half sits on my desk. It reads in my handwriting: 

“Sing to the LORD a new song; for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” Psalm 98:1

But what if I don't have a new song Lord? What if all I have for today is tears, old and new, over the things that are happening that remind me so much is still old pain because our old ways have not been changed?

The images of the past few days have been chilling. There are no words that can appropriately fit the scene in American streets right now. Just single nouns tossed along the debris to articulate poorly what is happening: violence, devastation, and so much pain. 

I grieve what we do to one another. 

I grieve what we fail to do for one another. 

I wrote the verse on the index card over a year ago, while going over the psalms. I neatly folded in half to make it stand on my desk, so I can read it often.

It struck me deeply because I was in a season of unlearning and relearning, and from it all, I had new thoughts and new hopes about old things. I understood that my life in Christ is a new song.

We sing a new song because we are anew and the life we live has something new to say with each breath we take. This is why I am so grieved. If we profess to be in Christ then our life is different and the love we have received shows in how we live each day. 

We sing a new song when we wrestle to forgive though we’ve been hurt. We sing a new song by loving the hard to love. We sing a new song when we truly lament our own fallenness and not just someone else’s. 

This week I find myself reading my little card after days of watching American streets filled with sorrow, anger, frustration, and violence. Cities I’ve visited or lived in, becoming undone because the people are done. 

“Sing to the LORD a new song…”
But Lord, what if we have no new song to sing? I whisper, heartbroken. 

But in Christ we do, we always do. Because a new song comes from a life that is made anew. It’s to say we are better than this. We NEED to do better than this. If by the power of the Holy Spirit we’ve been remade children of the living God we must act like it!

But, how? The Word of God says: Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:3)

Do Justice.

Act in favour of justice. Do what is right. 
Ask, What is the God-honouring thing to do?
It doesn’t have to be terribly complicated. Yes, sometimes it is terribly hard. But we should do it anyway.

If we have a hard time understanding how destroying public property is wrong but standing for those who are screaming to be heard is right -even when some are involved in wrongful activity, both can be true. They did something they shouldn’t have done AND something wrong has been done to them. 

One doesn’t excuse the other any more than being belittled and humiliated by his boss entitles a husband to do the same to his family when he gets home for dinner. But each thing can be true because we are fallen. The question is, how do we face the fallenness of this world? The next verse informs us.

It says to love mercy. 

When we love something we seek it. We cherish it. We hold it in high regard.
And we want to have it present in our lives.
Mercy is what gave me (and anybody who is with Jesus) a new life and a new song to sing. It’s God reaching out to us and withholding the natural outcome of our choices. It shows us compassion and kindness in our moment of sin.

Will we not love mercy?

And lest we feel we have a better grasp of right and wrong than those screaming for justice we are reminded to walk humbly with our God. 

I want to ponder: What do I see when I see my black neighbour? What does my life look like if I sing a new song to the Lord with my words and my attitude?