Pastor and “beloved community” organizer Leroy Barber explains the importance of overcoming barriers to healthy relationships with people whom we perceive as different from us.

We humans … are made in the image of that triune God. And while the imago Dei in us has many aspects, it’s clear that we are relational beings…. We cannot help but function in community, and when we’re not in community, we suffer consequences. We were made to be together, and that’s by God’s design. Human flourishing requires that we establish, mend, and maintain relationships with other people.

Jesus exemplified and taught that those loving relationships ought to cross culture’s artificial boundaries of politics, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and socioeconomic status. But in our world today, we have become adept at erecting and fortifying these barriers. We live in the most individualistic society in history, and when we do interact with others, we do our best to make sure that those people look, talk, think, and behave just as we do. These tendencies may keep us in our comfort zones, but they are antithetical to God’s will for us. They are the enemy of God’s plan of redemption and relationship, and they keep us distant from one another and ultimately from the one who created us. [1]

CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies how “contact bias” causes us to distance ourselves from people who don’t look, think, or act as we do. 

When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Think of the child who is told by people [they trust] that people of another race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, or class are dirty and dangerous.

You can immediately see the self-reinforcing cycle: those people are dirty or dangerous, so I will distrust and avoid them, which means I will never have sustained and respectful interactive contact with them, which means I will never discover that they are actually wonderful people….

On page after page of the gospels, Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. Instead, he incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, and even lays down his life for the other. [2]

Barber concludes:

Is it possible for us to see each other the way God sees us instead of through our biases? The truth is that God doesn’t see people the way we do, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves and others that our way is the Creator’s way. In God’s eyes, each and every person is a bearer of [God’s] image. Each is a special creation, each is loved, each is in need of God’s love and forgiveness….

As ambassadors for the kingdom of God, we need to begin to see others as Christ does—as people in need of the same divine love, mercy, and grace that has been extended to us. [3]

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When Grief Grows and Loss Lingers
RACHEL MARIE KANG

“Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” Luke 24:52 (NIV)

Not too long ago, I found myself working through a few questions for self-reflection. They prompted me to think about my joys and my dreams, my friends and my family. Of these questions, two came in the form of charts with columns. The blank boxes beckoned me to name my wins and list my losses.

So I did.

I typed out my wins: finding a chiropractor, publishing my book, traveling to Mexico, growing stronger relationships with a few friends.

Then I also made a list of my losses: my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease, changes in my career path, the loss of my grandfather, the loss of many dreams. There are also the losses I wrote down with invisible ink — how I’ve lost more friends than I can count, how I wake every day with the same ache in my heart, missing my hometown and grieving the million little losses that come with moving to a new place.

It’s been said that time takes away the tears in our eyes, but this is not always true. Sometimes loss lingers long and loud. Sometimes grief grows thick with thorns. Sometimes we cannot escape our grief, cannot outrun those memories we still mourn. Sometimes we see their faces in framed photographs.
Sometimes we drive past the place where we watched our dreams die — the office, the church, the courtroom that ruined our lives with its ruling.

After I spent some time tallying up my losses, I studied Luke 24, which records what happened when Jesus returned to His disciples after His resurrection. He spent time with them, unfolding the mysteries of Scripture and breaking bread. Later, He led the disciples out of Jerusalem and into Bethany, where He blessed them before ascending into heaven.

I’ve found myself pondering these two verses over and over again: “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:51-52, NIV).

Is it possible? Jesus’ disciples returned to Jerusalem with joy? Jerusalem held the memory of their greatest grief: Jesus’ death. They returned to this place laced with the memory of their loss — and they rejoiced.

I am astonished, amazed and awed by the truth and the timeline of this. Jesus resurrected and then returned to the ones He loved, walked with them in the midst of their loss, broke bread with them, listened to their every lament and complaint … Then Jesus blessed them right in the middle of their brokenness. He calmed their confusion, dispelled their doubts and promised them power — so much so that they were able to return to Jerusalem with joy.

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