The “R-word.” It shuts down so many conversations. It puts white people on the defensive. And I find that reality to be of profound theological importance!

The questions we ask are at least as important as the answers we offer. While the questions that are most pressing on our hearts surely feel of equal urgency existentially, some are more trivial when we look beyond an individualistic perspective.

While liberal Christianity has been driven for 200 years by questions like, “How can Christian faith make sense in a modern world,” a more compelling question for me is “When people are being dehumanized, and their neighbors feel nothing, what does that say about people’s capacity for transformation?” Don’t get me wrong: I’ve asked that first question too! After all, I’m a born and raised once-born Christian from an old-line Protestant denomination. But I can’t help but feel that it ignores the weightier matters of the gospel, especially as they relate to racial and class domination.

The latter question points to the nature of sin, how we stand complicit in one another’s suffering, and how salvation must include the liberation of bodies as much as the redemption of souls. While that feels compelling, it pains me when my community gets stuck on feeling personally attacked when issues of race come up.

But here’s the thing: 9 times out of 10 it is not about explicit individual prejudice. It’s fundamentally not about you as an individual, nor is it about feeling guilty for being “racist” as a white person. It’s about principalities and powers, systems so deeply rooted in us that they shape our very way of life. And those dynamics are built to remain invisible to all those are advantaged by them. Now that’s sin! But it’s so hard to express this in ways white people can hear without feeling like they are under attack (If you feel that way even now, please read this).

On my more pessimistic days, I wonder whether it is easier to educate communities that already have grounded understandings of racial and economic domination on the value of interfaith learning, environmental concern, and LGBT equality, than it is to help progressive white Christians confront their own racial-class privileges?

But then I’m reminded of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:24-26, which gives me hope and I rephrase here:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a comfortable progressive to participate in the Divine Commonwealth.”

“Then who can be saved?”

“For individuals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

I take comfort that it is not by our individual efforts that we find salvation! It’s a mysterious, unpredictable power that moves one heart to repent but leaves another cold. As we said back in the South, “It’s a God moment!”

Addressing exploitation, violence, powerlessness, and oppression with a gospel of radical solidarity and an affirmation of the beauty and fortitude of what the systems of this world call worthless is the central thrust of Christian faith, whether it calls itself “progressive” or not. In a world where the violence done to others is more often hidden from our eyes than in plain, even horrific, view, may each of us ask questions that help us better love our sisters and brothers as ourselves.

Questioning,

Timothy Murphy

Executive Director, PCU