Is Something More Serious Going On?
Chapter Two of Culture Changers
Read Chapter One
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn’t detect.
Mark Twain
Healing a culture is surprisingly similar to healing a person. As a mom, I know my child is sick when they start displaying visible symptoms like coughing or sneezing. They want to snuggle more than usual, letting me know, “Mommy, I don’t feel well.” They need me to recognize their pain. Acknowledge their misery. So I have the opportunity to help them emotionally and practically. I need to let them know that I feel their pain; that is, when they suffer, I suffer with them. Then I practically ease their discomfort and strengthen their immune system by making them rest and take extra vitamins and supplements. I also pray for them. If the cold doesn’t go away after a reasonable period of time, I begin to ask questions. What is keeping their immune system weak? Are they staying hydrated? Is there something more serious going on?
Before we look at the process of cultural healing, we must first acknowledge how the symptoms we see or experience make us feel. The issue of racism makes many of us frustrated and angry. Social unrest causes anxiety and criticism. And it’s easy to compare ourselves with people that seem to be okay with it all. They aren’t suffering as much as I am.
In some ways, this could be true. A sick child whose parents can easily buy medicine suffers less than the sick child whose parents have no money even to buy groceries. We can mourn with both, yet acknowledge that one has more stress. When generations of people have been disenfranchised, and the prosperous hear them cry, “we don’t feel well,” empathy must come before investigating the why of the pain. When this is done backward, too often, the problem is focused on, and people’s pain is ignored.
But what if their pain makes us uncomfortable? Although some of us seem okay on the outside, shame and embarrassment keep us silent. We feel guilty because we are the parents who can afford the medicine. Accepting our affluence or personal disconnection from affliction doesn’t excuse us from acknowledging someone’s pain. When one member of a sports team gets injured, the whole team suffers.
All of us deal with the reality that pain is no respecter of persons. We enjoy times of joy and lament times of hardship. But those that are presently sick—those whose symptoms are more apparent—need the less affected members of society to acknowledge their pain.
Although we can hone in on a particular symptom—racial prejudice, for instance, we also have to widen our vantage point. The symptoms vary. But no matter the focus, to bring healing we must acknowledge what others feel; then, we can look at the symptoms and ask questions. Why are the symptoms there? Is there something more serious going on? When symptoms persist for generations—as many have, we must find the source of the problem.
When we look at our American society as a whole, we see different symptoms and bigger problems that point toward the need for corporate healing.
Contemporary Symptoms that reflect Historic Roots
No matter who we are—what ethnic make up, we’re surrounded by the pain of our history. I learned about the Jewish holocaust and the civil rights movement in my elementary school years. The movies we saw were horrifying: emaciated Jewish women in concentration camps, sullen black men scarred from whips and years of disrespect. I read about Sojourner Truth, whose six-year-old son was mercilessly beaten by his master in Alabama. History affects our present, whether we like it or not, whether we believe such influence is possible or not.
In the past several years, we’ve seen this influence through protests against racial profiling as well as a renewed outcry for gender equality. Although many colleges created women’s studies and other programs two decades ago, unresolved male chauvinism still feeds gender inequality. Scandals in the entertainment industry and the boldness of a fed-up generation birthed the “Me Too” movement that highlights the quietly perpetrated culture of sexual harassment and rape. Systemic inequality is a social and economic reality, and it extends beyond the female fight for equal pay and respect.
As Culture Changers, we benefit when we understand how human brokenness affects the world around us. Gender dynamics and race relations are just two issues. Elitism in economics is another. Some of us believe the chasm between the have and have-nots is maintained by rich people in power who intentionally limit access for those trapped by poverty. Others of us might blame the tension on the poor, citing their neglect of family nurturing, educational opportunities, and financial resources. No matter who we are, what we look like, or what we believe, we are impacted by each other’s lens.
Gentrification is a symptom that reveals the overlap of economic subsystems: housing, investing, city planning, etc. Too often, property owners raise the rent on low-income housing so they can force those people out and rebuild for higher income tenants. These property owners and developers are essentially controlling where people live and designing communities to meet not the needs of their current clients, but the desires of clients who can pay them more money. Imagine what it would be like living paycheck to paycheck and barely surviving as a family—and then add to that weight an unsettling fear and bitterness that lower-income people face daily, not knowing if they’ll be forced from their homes at any moment.
Discrimination and economics are two major sources of struggle, but for millions of Americans who practice a religion, a changing moral landscape is a symptom of an ailing culture. Even though the United States is home to different belief systems, many of those systems share fundamental views on gender identity, marriage, and abortion. Will they be ridiculed for their beliefs? Will their friends who believe differently than they do walk away from them? Will the holy books of various religions one day be banned because relativism is the new compass for morality?
These issues and so many more can leave us wondering, “What in the world will tomorrow bring?” With the advent of a global pandemic, this has become a daily question for all of us.
A Culture Changer resolves to resist the low level of daily anxiety—a quiet, fearful ache that can be hard to ignore. We listen to everyone’s concerns. One of our remedies is to “lift up the humble” (Ps. 147:60) and weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). Within our hearts is the desire for every individual to have the opportunity to prosper economically, spiritually, and emotionally —holistic healing. Brokenness needs to be addressed in all areas, not just the most obvious. People can be broken when they’re wealthy, and they can be broken when they’re impoverished.
The Root, Not Just the Symptoms
To see tangible results in society, we need to look beyond the pain-ridden symptoms to identify the problem’s roots. But what does that look like?
When I look at racial discrimination, I can see the root cause is fear. Fear of losing out, fear of losing control, fear of change, etc. From fear comes control and greed. So the question then becomes: How do we get rid of fear? For many of us, that’s an easy question—we already know how to answer it because we’ve been answering it for ourselves or our kids for years. When we’re afraid of something, we need to discover the lie that overshadows the truth.
Therefore, the process of healing this pain point in our society looks like speaking into people’s fear and helping them to understand what’s true, not what is perceived. Once we go through our own seasons of healing in this area, we can then engage different types of people who are struggling in this same area and speak comfort to them. Our explanation offers them a clearer lens, “We don’t need to be afraid here because this person or these people are like us. Let’s not allow the externals to dictate truth, but acknowledge the essence of their humanity. We will make ourselves stronger by claiming them instead of rejecting them.”
If you’re familiar with the biblical story of the Good Samaritan, you recognize that God has a way of turning a nation’s story upside down. The hated guy—the Samaritan, whose people were oppressed—went out of his way to take care of one of his oppressors. He didn’t react in fear or hatred but stooped down to show compassion—what a statement. And what a quiet announcement to his fellow Samaritans: “If we want to change the situation, we need to love the very people who are perpetrating the situation.”
We can change culture by the way we live and how we treat those who hate us.
Brokenness Knows No Color
As we’ve come to understand, we’re all broken. The symptoms of our dilemma show themselves on our bad days—when we are tired, overwhelmed, and hampered by personal struggle.
Hurting people don’t live just in inner cities, nor are they simply those who suffer from depression or physical issues—they’re your next-door neighbor and college roommate, your boss, and your mother. Whether your neighbor is the wealthy wife of a lawyer who never experienced an emotional connection with her mother, or the athlete in your son’s high school whose recent injury just ended his collegiate prospects, hurting people exist everywhere. No one is exempt from emotional pain.
Despite the layered symptoms that we see every day, we can position ourselves to find the cure—the solution that will help heal our culture.
Dreams allow us to strive for a better future, no matter how impossible it seems. This work is day to day, little by little, and if we want to see immediate results, we will be disappointed. If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the symptoms—the giants that we see every day—we will remain stagnant. Healing takes time. The poet Langston Hughes wrote that daily life can be a dream killer.
Bring me all your dreams,
You dreamer, Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue-cloud cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. (Langston Hughes, “The Dream Keeper”)
Here’s one of my dreams. When I think of “valleys being exalted,” as Isaiah 40:4 talks about, I envision decaying rural and urban areas and their residents given the value they deserve and the attention they need. I see private, home, and public high school students doing service projects to fix shutters and pull weeds. I see mom groups taking groceries and recipes to new moms, whether they live in the inner city or the suburbs. I see male pastors walking down streets, some with manicured lawns and some littered by garbage, asking for names and giving a father-hug to the fatherless.
The best way to see the people around us overcome personal and family dysfunction, the trauma of discrimination, and systemic corruption might surprise you because it’s so simple.
Hard, yes. Time-consuming, yes.
But the answer to many of the big questions we’re asking today is one-on-one relationship.
Substack followers! I welcome all comments! What are you doing to be a culture changer?