Bar Jokes and Power Struggles (Nov12-18)
This week’s snapshots:
Happy Saturday!
We had a lady wish our crew a “happy Thanksgiving” after lunch today, and after smiling and wishing her a good day proceeded to look at each other, aghast, wondering where the time has gone. It feels, because of the warm weather and the first touches of yellow on the trees here in Dallas, like late August or early September.
Regardless of when it is, I am beginning to feel festive ~ but I have a few thoughts before we get there ;)
IF a group of American Christians, atheists, and Buddhists walk into a bar and I asked you what they do with their days, you couldn’t tell me with the given information. The labels I used only communicate their homeland and what they think about spirits. But if I told you a group of gamers, cross-fitters, and Amish walked into the same bar, you could probably answer with some accuracy what each of them do in their days. If you know a joke that starts with either group in a bar, I’d love to hear it, but I simply want to highlight the fact that in our cultural context, being religious is connoted not with how you live your life or what you do with your body but by what beliefs you purportedly hold in your head about how the world works (or doesn’t).
Because of this, for a long time I was obsessed with Truth. I was taught that my salvation was determined by my mental adherence to a correct set of beliefs about how the world works, who God is, and how I relate to him. If my belief was incorrect in any way, I was damned (and damned is not a desirable label to be running around with). And while correct belief is, in fact, an important part of salvation, I’d now say that the correctness isn’t always as important as the belief, and that belief without behavior is a delusion.
But just as nobody is pleased by the label “damned,” “deluded” isn’t a profession you’re likely to hear from anybody. Labels are inherently limiting, which, as I complained about them last week, feels abrasive. But I want to propose today that those limits also contain power - even creative power. The first label that was weaponized against me was “girl.” And while I’d be happy to tell you that whole story separately, I want to tell you about “missionary kid.”
As a “missionary kid,” I was separated from normal kids no matter where I went. In my passport country, I was separated as a holier-than-thou, exotic stranger. There’s an implicit homage, because I “suffer” God’s call to leave everything I knew behind - while most only sing, “the cross before me, the world behind me,” I had done it in a visceral way. All this impacted the way that people would relate (or not) with me. In my second culture, I was separated as a self-righteous, obnoxious American who always used the wrong, dirty words for normal things. Talk about whiplash! While I was still treated with importance, instead of a discomfiting reverence I was treated with curiosity and mild contempt.
That’s pretty limiting - people struggle to interact with you as you are, and instead have a very thorough interaction with who you supposedly are. But these limitations are also creations of personal power (aka the ability to, as an individual, enact good in the world): in the past and even today in my passport culture, I carry spiritual authority out of my label. Being a “missionary kid” gives me confidence to contribute to any ministerial setting - which has led to some funny looks in my current line of work, where people don’t know I carry that history or power! And while I never used my label as such, being a “missionary kid” would provide me permission and freedom to pull proper Poles out of their ideas of propriety and experience a more expansive way to be Polish.
Not all labels are created equal - just because the label “Christian” could have intrinsic meaning and power beyond a core set of beliefs doesn’t mean it does in our context. And many of the powers of labels come not from within (you choosing how to wield the assumptions) but from without. For example, iif people believe that a man as more authority in power positions than women, they will treat people labeled “men” as though they have more authority in power positions than people labeled “women” regardless of the titles you a specific woman might have. But just because a label doesn’t have those connotations at-large doesn’t mean you can’t take that label and imbue it with meaning of your own.
As a matter of fact: your response prompt for today is to tell me about a (derogatory?) label that people use to try and limit you, and illuminate to me what power actually lies in that title and how you do, or want to, use said power to enact good in the world. Your alternate response might be to tell me more about what doings the label “Christian” could evoke instead of “mental assent that a first-century Jew actually existed and meant what he said.”
I look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Beth
