Galatians 6:2
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.
Philippians 2:4
Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Scripture gives us a consistent message about how we should bear one another’s burdens within the Christian community and use the power we have to protect the interests of others as well as our own. This basic solidarity is at the heart of Christian discipleship, and we see it powerfully modelled by Jesus himself. The letters of St Paul could be described as an extended meditation on this priority, lived out within the complexities of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society of his day.
However, the reality of life is that we struggle to deliver on this gospel imperative, especially when fulfilling it requires us to go beyond our personal “comfort zone”. For most of us, the more distant someone is from us in terms of racial identity or social class (or both), the harder we will find it to understand what burdens they are bearing and what legitimate interests they have.
A Flight from Responsibility
This reality manifests in what I would call a ‘flight from responsibility’ by church leaders. So often in my work in racial justice, I see cases where Christian leaders at all levels shy away from taking responsibility for difficult situations that are brought to their attention, especially those where race and ethnicity are part of the dynamic. Instead of ‘holding’ these situations and using the power and influence that they have to create a way forwards that acknowledges the real issues, they dither, delay, and hope the problem will go away. What this means in practice is that the person who has less power in the situation goes away (often never to return to that church setting), and the underlying problem is never addressed or resolved.
Confronting Favouritism and Checking Privilege
St James has a word for this – favouritism!
His epistle says: “My brothers and sisters, do not show favouritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the one wearing fine clothes, have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
James 2:1–4
This scripture is such a challenge, because most of us, if we’re honest, would admit we would naturally gravitate towards the person who looks presentable to us, and may be able to help us out in some way if we befriend them, rather than the person who looks less presentable and we suspect might perhaps need our help in some way. This is doubly so if we ourselves come from a privileged background and are highly educated – as, of course, so many church leaders are. It is trebly true if the more powerful person is already an established part of our church and the less powerful person is not so established.
St James gave us those challenging words to make us reflect and become self-aware. To be true disciples of Jesus, we have to understand our instincts and prejudices and actively fight against them. So many of our churches have a rhetoric that “we welcome everyone” – but a reality that they don’t – and that they haven’t even started to think about what that would really look like in practice. So many of our churches have deeply entrenched hierarchies that their leaders reinforce rather than deconstruct.
What we need to do, as well as “check our prejudice”, is “check our privilege”. In our lives, we constantly have opportunities to bless others – or to look the other way. As Christian disciples, we should be wide awake to those around us. Are they carrying burdens we can grow to understand and perhaps help with? Do they have vital interests that are not being taken account of? Are we showing favouritism as we live out our Christian lives? Let’s take it to God in prayer…
Amen
