How Belonging Helps Change Perspectives on Race
Why do some Christians (typically white Christians, like myself — or others who see the world from that perspective) struggle to acknowledge racial prejudices they have or the systemic injustices black and brown people suffer?
There are likely many complex reasons. But I believe one of the deepest reasons is fear. Particularly, the fear of not belonging.
If we can change that fear we may open the door to greater reconciliation among Christians who hesitate to acknowledge the racial prejudices at work in our hearts and the systems of injustice at work in our country.
Let’s explore how we might do that…
First, what is belonging and why is it important?
Brene Brown, in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, defines belonging like this:
Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.
In Christianity, we say that innate desire is the desire to belong to God. and to each other . God made us to belong to him (Isa. 43:1) and to each other (Rom. 12:4-5). He hard-wired belonging into our souls.
Belonging, then, is so important to us because it is fundamental to who we are. Naturally then, we do everything we can to make sure we feel we belong somewhere. When we feel like we’ll lose that connection, we start to malfunction.
This is where belonging comes into play for changing perspectives on race
Belonging matters for changing perspectives on race because many people’s unwillingness to admit a fault — particularly faults like supporting systemic injustice (whether intentionally or unintentionally) or harboring racial prejudice (whether consciously or unconsciously) comes from fear.
What does that fear consist of? Two things:
The fear we won’t belong in our community anymore
We fear we won’t belong in our families, friendships, churches and workplaces when we acknowledge we have racial prejudices (even ones we weren’t aware we had) or that we’ve propped up systems of injustice by not speaking up or taking action.
The fear we won’t know who we are anymore
We fear our whole understanding of the world will shake and we will discover we’ve been fundamentally wrong about many things. Up will seem like down. Left like right. We won’t know how to be good or safe anymore.
Where do those fears come from?
They likely come from many things, but two very important ones to address are:
The problem of not understanding how sin works and
The problem of not really trusting the grace of the Gospel
This section is longer, but knowing what’s underneath our fears can change the power those fears have over us. So, stay with me!
1. Not understanding how sin works
Part of where these fears of not belonging come from is the place of not understanding how sin works.
Prejudice, for example, which is a sin, actually exists on a spectrum. There are greater and lesser degrees to which we can have the sin of prejudice in our hearts and degrees to which we act on it.
But in the white majority culture mindset (which I used to have myself) there isn’t a spectrum for racial sin. There are just two options: people are are either racists or good people. You’re one or the other. You commit this sin or you don’t. If you cross over into the racist category you don’t come back. You no longer belong.
Such a crossover creates the predicament many white Christians face in acknowledging prejudice and systemic injustice. Because from this perspective, acknowledging and confessing racial sin triggers the “you no longer belong” category shift. That shift in turn leads to relational malfunctioning (such as not listening, not acknowledging, not repenting, not reconciling) born out of our innate desire to protect our sense of belonging and self-understanding.
We can see why this kind of either/or perspective on racial sin is a problem. It’s a defense trying to help that actually hurts. It leads to breakdowns in relationship rather than greater belonging.
But we also know this either/or perspective on sin is wrong not just because it creates relational problems, but because it doesn’t line up with how we experience other sin…
For example, take the sin of lying (Ex. 20:16). We wouldn’t take an either/or approach to lying. You wouldn’t say you’re either a compulsive liar or you never lie. You’d admit, “Yes, sometimes I lie. I lie more in particular circumstances or around particular people. I’m working on it, but I still lie.”
With lying, you’d acknowledge there’s a spectrum for sin. It’s not either/or — all or nothing.
When we make sin an ‘all or nothing’ thing, we miss its real nature. In doing so, we wander into the defensive fear that we won’t belong because we’re ‘that racist’ and end up distancing ourselves from the greater belonging we seek.
But if we can change how we understand racial sin (existing on a spectrum, not all or nothing), we can change the stakes for admitting racial prejudice.
When racial sin exists on a spectrum, there’s room for saying you have prejudice you need to work on eliminating. There’s room for admitting you’ve been complicit in supporting systems of injustice and need to speak out and take action to live more justly.
You can do that because admitting those things no longer creates an instant rejection. It no longer takes away your belonging.
2. Not really trusting the grace of the Gospel
The second source of these fears of not belonging and not knowing who we are if we acknowledge racial sin is: a lack of trust that the gospel really is ours by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. And it’s ours by nothing more.
We may say we believe that, but functionally, we often live like we have to ‘be good enough’ to be saved. And when our functional belief that we have to be good enough runs into our racial sins, it just churns out more defensiveness and resistance to acknowledging sin. Because when we’re saved by being ‘good enough’ for God to love us, admitting racial sin quickly makes us recognize that we are not ‘good enough’ to love.
So, we move to protect the belonging we know we need and up go the defenses. We combat any acknowledgment of racial prejudice that would threaten to cast us out in rejection.
But this defensive reaction tragically misunderstands your relationship with God as a Christian.
Getting defensive and trying to protect your image as ‘not a racist’ only gets in the way of your belonging to God and to your community. Granted, what that defensiveness does get right is that sin gets in the way of belonging. Sin breaks relationship. But what that defensive, self-protective action gets wrong is you were never going to be the one who makes you acceptable to God and to others.
You’re not the one who saves or repairs your self. Christ is the one who does that. Christ is the one who got in the way of your sin on the cross so that you might belong to him once again and forever (2 Cor. 5:17-21). Yes, your sin estranged you from God, but it’s God, not you, who puts you back in relationship to him and to others. He’s the one who repairs what’s wrong in us and who gives us the courage to admit where we are broken.
Putting up defenses to protect our sense of having to be ‘good enough’ totally eliminates grace from the picture. And in doing so, it eliminates the entire hope of the gospel, which is that repentance always finds forgiveness in the grace of Jesus Christ — even repentance for great and ugly sins like racism and prejudice.
This is the true breakdown that gets in the way of changing our perspective on racial sins.
When we don’t trust the grace of the Gospel to give us the belonging we need we won’t own up to (and have a chance at fixing) our sin. We think we can’t do it because we don’t see the gospel as big enough to cover over that sin.
The real problem, however is not that our sin is too big to fix. The problem is that our view of our Savior is too small. The problem is not that we need to minimize the part we’ve played in systemic injustice or the degree to which racial prejudice is embedded in our hearts (even in places where we don’t realize it). The problem is that we need to let Christ die for those sins too and trust him as a Savior of even such a great sinner as myself (1 Tim. 1:15).
We can see, then, that part of reason we don’t acknowledge race and racism is because we don’t yet trust the grace of the gospel to give us belonging. We don’t yet trust that ours is really a salvation for sinners. But God is able to help us with even that. He can not only heal our racial prejudices, but our fears about our racial prejudices.
So how does all this stack up to changed perspectives on race — and racial sin in particular?
When we trust that we really belong to Christ by grace, through faith (not by our sinless living ) and when we know that racial sin exists on a spectrum (it’s not all or nothing) we find greater freedom to acknowledge, repent of and be reconciled for our racial sin.
Why? Because that acknowledgement no longer means we lose our belonging. Rather, it gives us more room to be reconciled and belong more deeply as we acknowledge the sin that’s separated us. It no longer means we don’t know who we are. Rather, it increases our knowledge of who we are. We know we are sinners, but we know we are sinners saved by grace, leaning into the repentance to which that grace call us.
This is not to say acknowledging and repenting of racial sin isn’t scary or that it won’t take courage and humility. But it is to say that because of the gospel, such acknowledgement and repentance is not the end of your relationship to God or to others. It is only the beginning of another chapter in the long story of God’s redemptive work in your life.
Belonging is what lets us know who we are and whose we are more deeply. Without a deep trust (which does take time to develop) that God has saved us by grace and that we belong not because we are perfect, but because he has invited sinners to his table, we won’t make much progress in changing our perspectives on race. But when we know we belong by grace, through faith — when we live that truth — then there is a lot we can change.
May Jesus Christ, the gracious Savior of sinners, make it so in us and in our times.