If I had to sum up the paradox that is Christianity, the “the joy of being wrong” is close to the heart of it. If I had to say what one of the prevailing anxieties of our moment is, it’d be “being wrong.” “Systemic racism” has gone from being a top-shelf theoretical concept to a phrase used in everyday language by 6th grader and 60 year old alike. It’s an amazing thing. And this concept is drastically changing our self-understanding.
Consider the question “who are you?” Many of us think about our identities along the lines of how we were raised, what schools we attended, what our hobbies are, maybe who our kids are, and our favorite place to vacation. Our identity is something we get to create for ourselves. But what if we, white people, don’t just get to decide who we are; what if there is more to it than that? What if, for instance, the very fact that we are white implies that we inherently perpetuate systemic racism, systemic oppression against those of black and brown origin? We didn’t choose to be white in the same way that we chose where to go to college, and yet, here’s the paradox: we are responsible for something we didn’t consciously choose. You can see why systemic racism is a challenging concept – in a culture where we are told “you are who you choose to be,” we are discovering that our identities are far more complex than this. And here’s where “the joy of being wrong” comes in.
There is, as Robin DiAngelo points out in her book White Fragility, a defensiveness about white people owning up to their racist legacy. The defensiveness, the fragility, derives from the above understanding of “identity-formation” – who are you to tell me I’m racist just because I’m white? For people who have been cultured to think they are the summation of their individual choices (I am who I choose to be), this is offensive. The fragility is understandable – we feel ourselves to be mostly good and respectable citizens. And yet, for Christians it’s this “fragility” that we are being saved from.
This fragility is what St. Paul says must die. Paul’s placeholder concept is “righteousness.” Read his letter to the Romans and you’ll see how he much he is trying to undermine humanity’s instinctual need to feel “right.” There is a kind of weaponized defensiveness to being told you are wrong. And the Apostle comes in and says, “You don’t need to make yourself righteous. In fact, you can’t. Trying to prove yourself and your life as right is killing you. Your righteousness comes from God.” There is great freedom in realizing you don’t have to be defensive anymore. You can be wrong, even. Because when you admit that you are wrong, you open up larger space in your soul to feel the Sunlight of the Spirit. And you realize that God’s love has nothing to do with you being right.
Christians ought to be the least defensive people in the world.
For me, owning up to the ways that my whiteness implicates me in systemic racism isn’t an optional task. It’s the work of my faith. It’s the journey of realizing that I am wrong and that I’ve been wrong about how I think about myself. As a white person, I’ve too long believed that banner in my high school cafeteria: I am who I choose to be. That’s wrong. I didn’t choose to be white. But being white now implicates me in racism and I cannot disentangle my identity from this. I didn’t choose this but I must accept it and work to change its damaging effects.
But I should also say that I didn’t choose to be loved by God either. “When you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” St. Paul tells me, just then God came to bestow an identity on me. God calls us “his beloved” just when there is no way we feel that we can be beloved. For Paul, the metaphor here is death. You didn’t choose for God to love you. God’s love is that free and overflowing fountain of goodness. You didn’t choose that it should drench your life. It just does. You can only accept that. And to feel it at its most powerful is to reckon how it found you at your lowest – “when you were dead…” When there was no choice you could make.
To accept and fully reckon with the love I didn’t choose, I must also reckon with the skin color I didn’t either. To admit that it implicates me in being wrong is to begin to crack open the door of knowing God’s love and healing, and to have that expansive, life-giving, and paradoxical joy that outlasts all my fragility.
Garrett+