As our first week of ministry in Mukono, Uganda came to a close, God finally gave me some sweet time to let my mind saturate on what he had been teaching me. In Mukono, we are working with Christ Ambassadors Church, and because they are a well established, aggressive, initiative-taking ministry, it is safe to say that this is one of our busiest months on the race! Ministry starts after breakfast and, other than a short break around lunchtime, lasts until almost eight at night. Thus, it is with exhaustion—a good, healthy brand of exhaustion—that I write this blog.
We’ve participated in hospital ministry, teaching and preaching (three times), house visits, children’s ministry, choir practice, manual labor, and long soccer games—all in five days’ time! I have absolutely loved the fullness of our intense schedule as it suits my personality well. At the same time, I recognize that Satan often uses busyness to distract the saints from realizing the full measure of what God is trying to teach us—cheapening our worship in the process. Such was the case with Martha (Luke 10:38-42):
“While they were traveling, (Jesus) entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted with her many tasks, and she came up and asked, ‘Lord, don’t You care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.’
The Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.”
I do not believe, however, that “sitting at the Lord’s feet” and soaking up his teaching requires a light schedule. It simply requires intentionality. So, it was with God-wrought intentionality that, in the small cracks of time between ministry (and often during ministry itself), I was able to truly comprehend the weight what God had been teaching me most recently—namely, the racist nature of my own heart.
The word racist—or racism—stings the tongue like vinegar on an open wound and cuts through the air like lightening. It’s even an unpleasant word, phonetically. Though I might not appear racist, through my blog pictures, my writing, or even from what you know of me in person, I assure you that I am.
You may say that I am overcritical of my own self, but I would argue that any analysis containing an “over” or “under”—overcritical or under-critical, in this case—begets a standard of comparison. As Christians, we are called, for both ideological and pragmatic purposes, to make Christ our standard (1 Peter 2:21), and when one’s standard is a holy and perfect God, any comparing of our qualities to his would be, by nature, extreme understatements.
In the secular world, as I realized through 19 years of personal experience, being overcritical of oneself comes with some nasty side effects—low confidence, constant comparison to others, and stress, to name a few. As Christians, though, realizing the depth of our own ugliness has one, world-changing, beautiful side effect—increased worship. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.” (Romans 5:20). The more I realize how sinful the deep caverns of my heart are, the more I appreciate God’s limitless love. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, to save a wretch like me.”
Every last ounce of my flesh wants to self-promote. I would love to be the guy who valiantly espouses “golden rules” and life principles, all the while hoping my occasional “It’s not me, it’s God” disclaimers overshadow my implicit self-righteousness. But, the goal of this blog (or my going on the World Race in general) has never been to exalt myself and hope people connect the dots, and has always been to crucify the Ben Friedman and exalt the Christ. More importantly, it’s just not a true picture of who I really am—it would be lying, literally.
Uganda is, without a doubt, a beautiful country full of beautiful people, and its very beauty makes it hard to imagine anyone even entertaining racist thoughts while there. I have no doubt in my mind that anyone who comes here on a week-long mission trip would want to pack up and move here as soon as they get home—as I wanted to do when I went to Honduras for a week last March.
Like most African countries, Uganda moves to its own rhythm. Nobody tells the markets when to open, nor does anyone regulate the traffic flow, as old motorcycles and hand-drawn jackfruit carts weave in and out of each other, vying for the same limited space on the dusty, dirt road already well-crowded with running children and local merchants. When the orange sun rises over the palm trees, it all starts and when it sets over the soccer pitches, it all winds down—simple, organic, and free.
Ugandan reggae music pumps out of broken shop windows and the radios of moving busses, formerly white, but now caked in red-brown dirt, laying a backbeat to the goings-on of the day. Banana trees and other local flora drape hastily erected plywood shacks, partially obscuring their “Top Up Here” signs. Though they droop, their very curvature serves not as an indicator of a lack of maintenance, but as bunting—festive decorations to enhance the already colorful third-world flavor.
I legitimately enjoy—deeply—both the scenery and the people around me. Nonetheless, this is my seventh month on the field, and much of this vibrant culture is becoming—sadly, but inevitably—second nature. It is at this point, month seven—the point where extreme sensory overload is no longer sufficient to override all things—where racism awakes from its lazy slumber, deep within my heart, and rears its ugly head.
My racism may not be overt. It may not assume the most recognizable forms, as I am both careful to tame my mouth and as I see absolutely no benefit in endorsing racist political policies. Nonetheless, racism is there.
I realize it most when people operate differently than I do. “Are you kidding me,” I will think to myself, “What possibly makes you think that five straight hours of church isn’t too much?” I conveniently overlook the fact, of course, that a viable response could easily be had in “What makes you think that an hour and fifteen minutes at church—shorter than you spend at lunch afterwards—is enough?” In my own selectivity, racism abounds.
Sometimes, I will even tune out, as I ponder “better times” to come—times with the Christianity I am used to. “Many people here are illiterate, or read at a very low level,” I will also think to myself, “thus, I cannot wait until I am around believers in the United States, so I can have more in-depth Biblical discussions”. The Christ-like response, on the other hand, would be, “Many people here are illiterate, or read at a very low level. Thus, how can I engage with them and help find solutions for affordable literacy training?” In my own indifference, I am implicitly saying, “I will do X, Y, and Z to help you if your problems are small, but if your problems are large, then you are a lost cause and are not worth my time and energy.” In my own indifference, racism abounds.
My racism is at its ugliest when it applies haphazard solutions to complex problems. “We’re leaving for church at 8:45 when we were supposed to be there at 8:00. Maybe if everyone here would just be punctual, then you could compete in the global marketplace and thus not be poor!” It is racist for me to think that if they could follow my simple piece of brilliant insight, their complex problems would be solved in the blink of an eye, regardless of the fact that it would mean changing a fundamental aspect of their culture.
You may say, “I wouldn’t even dream of thinking like that!” To that claim, I would say you’d be surprised at what goes on in your own mind when cultural quirks are no longer “new and exciting” and when fatigue and travel combine to accentuate, like eyeliner, sinful qualities that were, under normal circumstances, minimal or latent. If this still does not apply to you, then I praise God for you, as he has distributed multi-faceted strengths and weaknesses among his saints so that we may complement each other—and strengths among those who are not saved so that we may be humbled.
I am making vast improvements though—and I say this, not for my own glory, but for the glory of God as sanctifier—in how I view others. Step by step, I am learning to embrace God’s global church. Even if my ministry ends up working itself out in a primarily American context, as I feel it likely will, a commitment to deeply loving and cherishing God’s diverse, world-wide body of saints is an absolute necessity, ideologically. God has ordained that, “(His) house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.” (Mark 11:17).
“And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”(Revelation 5:9).
The reality that God is a global God transcends the ideological realm, however, and is found to be true practically today, in a way that it never was before. The majority of the world’s Christians today live not in America or Europe, but in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the “global South”. Between 1900 and 2000, Africa’s Christian population increased from 10 million to 360 million. I read that this represents the largest and fastest spread of any religion, in any time period, in any place.
When I recognize that I am quite literally in the minority, in how I culturally practice my Christianity, my entire line of thinking changes. No, the fact that I am literally in the minority is not enough to breach Biblical truth, especially as some of the greatest movements in thought have arisen from what were originally “minority mindsets” (think the Protestant reformation, for example). The fact that I am in the minority does make racism look all the more ridiculous, however. My emotions change when I realize that the East Africans who worship without guitars can no longer be thought of as dismissible specimens called “them”, as they represent a very wide piece of the world’s Christian pie chart.
Most importantly, though, my racism directly undercuts God’s wise plan for how he chooses to glorify his own name. John Piper put it best in his book, Bloodlines:
“The fame and greatness and worth of an object of beauty increases in proportion to the diversity of those who recognize its beauty. If a work of art is regarded as great among a small and like- minded group of people, but not by anyone else, the art is probably not truly great. Its qualities are such that it does not appeal to the deep universals in our hearts but only to provincial biases. But if a work of art continues to win more and more admirers not only across cultures but also across decades and centuries, then its greatness is irresistibly manifested.”
So, what do I do? I give glory to God for the improvements he has already worked in me. I “take every thought captive” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Lastly, I humbly acknowledge my own sinfulness and ask God for forgiveness. If God didn’t love the nations through dirty vessels like me, I wouldn’t be here.
