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When They Becomes We...

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Christena Cleveland ends her book with more hope than I was anticipating. When discussing issues like discrimination and segregation, it is easy to find only the pessimistic outlook and stick with it to the end: “people are born like this, bred like this, live like this, and die like this”. It is easy to look for the perspective that offers no hope of change and simply sits on the sideline and condemns. However, Cleveland refuses to do this. She takes Disunity in Christ and steadily treads down the long-suffering road of hope. Her perseverance through this journey leads to some resounding and markedly hopeful statements and sentiments about what God has equipped us – as Christians and as human beings – to do. Throughout the chapter, she repeats a phrase that stuck with me: “when they becomes we, ___”. The word ‘we’ is not homogenous. It is not “colorblind”, as she cautions against near the end of this chapter. ‘We’ simply implies something stronger than the conflicts we attempt...
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Reconciliation

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Over the past few weeks, as we have read Disunity in Christ , I have felt rather discouraged. The readings have brought forth not only my own shortcomings, but those of everyone around me. It is easy to read this book, read all of the ways in which we fall short, and land in a place of sadness and pointlessness. After all, what good is any of this if we just naturally drift into distrust of those unlike us, creating prejudice and discrimination just by living? There seems to be no point to it. Is it not futile? Our subconscious makes these choices for us. Our culture and society breed us to act this way. We are powerless. This seems to be hammered even further in chapter eight, as Cleveland introduces us to the blinders that our cultures place on our eyes. We cannot see past our differences because we have been taught not to turn our heads to peer past those blinders. Another chapter that feels hopeless as it ends. Regardless of the attempt to uplift us by providing some atte...
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Identity and Self-esteem

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In the sixth and seventh chapters of Disunity in Christ , Cleveland begins to address some of the more flagrant issues regarding “us” and “them”. She begins by talking about what she terms “identity wars” in chapter six, and continues on to “culture wars” in the seventh chapter. I found the studies she explained fascinating, the idea that people will react negatively to someone simply because they speak a different language is disheartening. My heart hurts knowing that we are brought up to fear anyone who is even slightly different. These unconscious traits of aggression go against the very essence of Christianity: to love your neighbor as yourself. However, I also found it both fascinating and encouraging as Cleveland talked about self-esteem. Tearing others down is a simple solution to low self-esteem, as she mentioned, but it also antithetical to several Biblical principles (Ephesians 4:9 says “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpf...
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