{"id":16169,"date":"2017-11-17T08:37:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T13:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16169"},"modified":"2017-11-17T08:47:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T13:47:24","slug":"the-invisible-character-of-white-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16169","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oYFqj7i1KdY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Friday, November 17, 2017   Richard Rohr<\/p>\n<p>If we are going to talk about God as me, we must also talk about God as thee too!  For a long time, I naively hoped that racism was a thing of the past. Those of us who are white have a very hard time seeing that we constantly receive special treatment just because of the color of our skin. This \u201cwhite privilege\u201d makes it harder for us to recognize the experiences of people of color as valid and real when they speak of racial profiling, police brutality, discrimination in the workplace, continued segregation in schools, lack of access to housing, and on and on. This is not the experience of most white people, so how can it be true?<\/p>\n<p>Because we have never been on the other side, we largely do not recognize the structural access we enjoy, the trust we think we deserve, the assumption that we always belong and do not have to earn our belonging. All this we take for granted as normal. Only the outsider can spot these attitudes in us.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, we all belong. There is no issue of more or less in the eyes of an Infinite God. Yet the ego believes the lie that there isn\u2019t enough to go around and that for me to succeed or win, someone else must lose. And so we\u2019ve greedily supported systems and governments that work to our own advantage at the expense of others, most often people of color or any highly visible difference. The white man\u2019s easy advancement was too often at the cost of others not advancing at all. A minor history course should make that rather clear.<\/p>\n<p>I would have never seen my own white privilege if I had not been forced outside of my dominant white culture by travel, by working in the jail, by hearing stories from counselees, and frankly, by making a complete fool of myself in so many social settings\u2014most of which I had the freedom to avoid! Recognition was slow in coming. I am not only white, but I am male, overeducated, clergy (from cleros, \u201cthe separated ones\u201d), a Catholic celibate, mostly healthy, and part of the American empire.<\/p>\n<p>Power never surrenders without a fight. If your entire life has been to live unquestioned in your position of power\u2014a power that was culturally given to you, but you think you earned\u2014there is almost no way you will give it up without major failure, suffering, humiliation, or defeat. As long as we really want to be on top and would take advantage of any privilege or short cut to get us there (what exactly is it that is up there?), we will never experience true \u201cliberty, equality, fraternity\u201d (revolutionary ideals that endure as mottos for France and Haiti).<\/p>\n<p>To repeat, if God operates as me, God operates as thee too, and the playing field is utterly leveled forever. Like Jesus, Francis, Clare, and many other humble mystics, we then rush down instead of up. In the act of letting go and choosing to become servants, community can at last be possible. The illusory state of privilege just gets in the way of neighboring and basic human friendship.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Eternal Goal<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing\u2026I will bless you\u2026 \u2014Genesis 22:16-17<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Abraham, at this point, has reached where he is in touch with the very nature of God. He now understands the reality of God.<br \/>\nMy goal is God Himself\u2026<br \/>\nAt any cost, dear Lord, by any road.<br \/>\n\u201cAt any cost\u2026by any road\u201d means submitting to God\u2019s way of bringing us to the goal.<br \/>\nThere is no possibility of questioning God when He speaks, if He speaks to His own nature in me. Prompt obedience is the only result. When Jesus says, \u201cCome,\u201d I simply come; when He says, \u201cLet go,\u201d I let go; when He says, \u201cTrust God in this matter,\u201d I trust. This work of obedience is the evidence that the nature of God is in me.<br \/>\nGod\u2019s revelation of Himself to me is influenced by my character, not by God\u2019s character.<br \/>\n\u2019Tis because I am ordinary,<br \/>\nThy ways so often look ordinary to me.<br \/>\nIt is through the discipline of obedience that I get to the place where Abraham was and I see who God is. God will never be real to me until I come face to face with Him in Jesus Christ. Then I will know and can boldly proclaim, \u201cIn all the world, my God, there is none but Thee, there is none but Thee.\u201d<br \/>\nThe promises of God are of no value to us until, through obedience, we come to understand the nature of God. We may read some things in the Bible every day for a year and they may mean nothing to us. Then, because we have been obedient to God in some small detail, we suddenly see what God means and His nature is instantly opened up to us. \u201cAll the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen\u2026\u201d (2 Corinthians 1:20). Our \u201cYes\u201d must be born of obedience; when by obedience we ratify a promise of God by saying, \u201cAmen,\u201d or, \u201cSo be it.\u201d That promise becomes ours.<br \/>\nGateway to Silence:<br \/>\nWe are temples of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday, November 17, 2017 Richard Rohr If we are going to talk about God as me, we must also talk about God as thee too! For a long time, I naively hoped that racism was a thing of the past. Those of us who are white have a very hard time seeing that we constantly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16172,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16169\/revisions\/16172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}