Christian Compassion without Culture Wars, episode 2 transcript
www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
Sam Chacko: It's not always easy. Like I think navigating this post-election, there's a group that's frustrated, worried, and there's a group like, man, I think we're finally moving in the right direction. How do you shepherd both of them and care for them? And navigating, Hey, if you're happy right now, know there are people in your community that are grieving, and if you're grieving right now, yes, you're grieving, but know, there's others who have a different viewpoint.
John Yoder: Hi everybody. John Yoder here, your host for Cross-Cultural Voices. Welcome back for episode two of our series, Christian Compassion without Culture Wars. As we said last time, our purpose in this series is to understand how Christians through the centuries--and still today--have been building marvelous cross-cultural relationships without arguing about modern terminology such as DEI, CRT, intersectionality, microaggressions, and a whole lot more.
They have done and continue to do this by following timeless principles taught by Jesus in his apostles, such as love one another, forgive one another, listen to one another, and center Christ. In our first episode, we focused on the first of these, love one another. Today we turn our attention to the second principle, listen to one another. The title of our episode is Overcoming Cancel Culture through Active Listening.
And as we start, I just want to remind you that all of our podcasts, our transcripts, our blog, our other resources are all available on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org.
In Western culture, the ability to speak is more highly valued than the ability to listen. When I was in high school, I took public speaking classes. When I was in college, I joined the debate club. When I went to seminary, I took preaching classes, which theologians call homiletics. I have never taken a class in listening. I don't know anybody who has taken a class in listening, because we as westerners value the ability to speak more than the ability to listen.
But that raises a really important question. What does it matter how well all of us can speak if no one is trained to listen? Listening is a highly valuable spiritual discipline. Here's how the Apostle James puts it.
James 1:19: Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
John Yoder: It seems to me that we are all hardwired to do the exact opposite of what James says. That is, we are quick to speak and we are slow to hear. Pastor Moses Saldivar shares with us that this is common across all cultures.
Moses Saldivar: You mentioned white people coming into the room and maybe having this tendency to take over, but that happens in every culture. The narrative that we hear is it's only the white folks that do it. That is not the case at all. If you are in any space where there is a dominant culture, that dominant culture has a tendency to swing and to do that. That happens also in ethnic communities as well.
And you see it especially with first gen and next gen folks, where first gen tends to dominate the conversation. Next gen tends to feel like they're getting steamrolled. And then you have all sorts of tension that happens there as well.
John Yoder: I have seen what Pastor Moses is talking about again and again, I have been in so many conversations where whoever is more than half of the people in the room take over the conversation.
I have been in conversations where white people like me, completely unconsciously, take over the conversation and don't realize they are shutting out the voices of people with something really important to say.
I have been in other conversations where I've been told because I am a white man, I have too much privilege. I am not permitted to speak. My only role is to listen, lament, dismantle, and perhaps become an ally.
Either way, whether your party is the one that takes over the conversation or gets shut out of the conversation, genuine dialogue is shut down. James’ command, that we must all be swift to listen, is shut down.
Genuine dialogue can only happen when everyone in the room gets a voice. Here's what the Apostle Paul says about who gets a voice at the table.
1 Corinthians 12:21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”, nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you”.
John Yoder: Paul is saying that none of us have the right to say that someone's voice should be excluded. We all need to acknowledge that every member of the body of Christ is valuable and needs to be heard. However, in today's cancel culture that is frequently disregarded. Here is what Neil Shenvi says in his book, Critical Dilemma.
Neil Shenvi, Critical Dilemma, page 459: Open dialogue is one of the casualties of our culture's increasingly political and cultural polarization. Even panels on controversial topics rarely include guests who truly represent the full spectrum of evangelical beliefs. An honest conversation on race should not include five speakers who are all woke or who are all anti-woke, except for one uncomfortable looking moderate who spends the night apologizing.
John Yoder: As you are listening into this series, I hope that you will also listen into the other series we're running in parallel. It's called Friendship in Black and White, and it tells the story of Monique Duson and Krista Bontrager, who began their friendship at opposite ends of the spectrum on social justice.
They went for long walks together. They had heated discussions and they came to some mutual understanding together. They wrote the book Walking In Unity, and you will be fascinated by the story that they tell.
As they begin their podcast and other online resources, you would think because Monique is a black woman, what many would call intersectional, that her views would be very popularly received. The opposite is true. Here is what Monique writes in the book she co-authored with Krista, Walking In Unity.
Monique Duson, Walking in Unity, page 31: Krista and I started the Center for Biblical Unity in February 2020. During the riots that summer, our ministry's popularity began to grow as social media began focusing on lifting black voices.
My black voice was pushed out to hundreds of thousands of people each week. But all of that stopped when the social media algorithms realized I was a theologically conservative black voice promoting a biblical path to racial unity. Once they caught on, they stopped promoting my black voice.
John Yoder: Friends, we need to understand that we in the body of Christ have many different opinions about politics, socioeconomics, and more. It's perfectly fine for Christians to have different views and to debate them, but at the end of the day, all of us need to love and embrace each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Here's what the Apostle Paul says.
1 Corinthians 12:25 That there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
John Yoder: That's the hard news. Now, some good news. For the rest of this episode, we are going to look at a case study of somebody who does this right. One of the popular frequent contributors to our podcast is Pastor Sam Chaco. Sam is a second generation Indian American, and he is the founding pastor of Loft City Church in Richardson, Texas.
It's one of the most diverse churches I know. It has people from about 30 different ethnicities. It's multi-generational and it contains people of various different political affiliations. For that to happen, listening is a very important skill at Loft City. Now, Sam knows that we are hardwired to speak, not listen, and he knows a skill that will help us get out of that and focus on listening instead of speaking. And that is to learn to ask really good questions.
Sam Chacko: I think Jesus is a great model for this. 'cause I think when you read the gospels and even I think when you read scripture you see both God in the Old Testament and especially Jesus in the New Testament they ask a lot of questions, right?
They're constantly asking questions of people. I think there's over 300 questions that Jesus asked in the gospels, right? The reality, like Jesus doesn't ask questions because he doesn't know answers, like he knows the answers. He asks questions because he deeply is interested in people like he could have sat there and given just direct commands and opinions, but he really engages in the hearts of people of man, at the end of the day, people mattered to him and their thoughts.
And so the invitation for us to, Hey, if we're gonna be like Jesus, what does it mean for us to deeply know the person, engage the person, not just assume, we've got our theology right and our political viewpoints right. And we can win arguments. Winning arguments doesn't mean that we're gonna build bridges. Bridges means that we're willing to sit, ask questions, learn, and engage in deeper conversations. And we'll take people that are far from each other and bring 'em closer and closer.
John Yoder: Sam knows very well that one of the most divisive issues in the church is politics. And he tells us exactly how Loft City handles that.
Sam Chacko: It's not always easy, like I think navigating this post-election, there's a group that's frustrated, worried, and there's a group like, man, I think we're finally moving in the right direction. And how do you shepherd both of them and care for them? How do you navigate Hey, if you're happy right now, know there are people in your community that are grieving. And if you're grieving right now, yes you're grieving, but know there's others who have a different viewpoint.
I think the invitation to say, Hey, if you are a follower of Jesus, look at the life of Jesus. Look at the people he brought around the table with him. He brought zealots, he brought tax collectors, and they were all willing to sit at the same table as Jesus.
Jesus did not live in an echo chamber. His followers did not live in echo chambers. The early church, Acts 13, is one of the most beautiful and diverse communities in in scripture. And so they, from a very early on stage, said we want people who are different from us at the table. The last supper, one of the most beautiful tables that we still celebrate today.
The people that were around that table could not be more different from each other, right? You have Judas Iscariot at that table. Matthew the tax collector was at that table. Simon, the Zealot was at that table. Jesus, the perfect and holy one was at that table like and they shared this meal that we as a church still celebrate today.
The danger of being in an echo chamber is I don't think that's the invitation of Jesus. Is staying in your echo chamber easy? Yeah. 'cause you're staying in your comfort zone. But the call of the gospel was never to be comfortable.
We invite conversation. We also invite people to say, Hey, at the end of the day, we're all gonna disagree. We have not had any major heated disagreements that's turned ugly. We've had, Hey man, I tell me your opinions. Tell me why you believe what you believe.
John Yoder: Now if you're like me, you listen into that and you say, Wow, I wish I could go to Sam's Church, but I don't live anywhere near Richardson, Texas. There may or may not be a church like that in your community, but Sam says you don't have to wait until there is. You can take the people that you know today and begin the process of listening to one another.
Sam Chacko: You don't have to wait for a church to be that, right? You can do that, right? Who's at your dinner table? If you think about the last 10, 15 people that have sat at your table that weren't family, did they all look like you? Did they all believe like you?
I think you can start to do that, right? You can engage in conversations. I was just having a conversation with an American church, a predominantly white church, where a lot of Indians have moved into community. They were like, Oh, we need to hire an Indian pastor to reach these Indians.
I'm like, you don't. All you need is, hey, get to know them, invite them into your home, build relationships. Invite yourself into their home. Say something like, man, I'd love to have some homemade Indian food. Can I, would you cook for me? Invite them into your home. Build relationships.
You don't have to wait for the church to be able to do that, or you don't have to bring an Indian to be able to reach them. God has put them into your context, and so love. Love and care well.
John Yoder: You can learn more about how Pastor Sam and his team build relationships at Loft City Church in our podcast series Church for People who Hate Church.
All of us have a deep God-given yearning to know and be known by a small group of people. But for many of us, our perception of church is that's a place where we go to hear a sermon and sing some songs, and not necessarily to see people that we know well. I agree with Sam's recommendation that churches be in the regular process of launching new groups so that as new people come into the congregation, they can find a group of people like them who are new there looking to connect.
But you and I cannot wait for somebody else to take action so that we can build relationships. You and I cannot blame the church for our loneliness if we are not willing to build relationships. Just go out there and find one other person that wants to connect, and start having lunch once a week. Or invite two or three people.
It doesn't need a lot of systems. It doesn't need a lot of structure. It just needs a few brothers and sisters in Christ who are all willing to listen to one another.
Next time, we are going to talk about Jesus' third principle for building healthy cross-cultural relationships, and that is that we forgive one another.
That forgiveness happens at both the macro and the micro level. At the macro level, it is offenses between nations, between ethnic groups, between other large groups of people. At the micro level, it is offenses between two people. It could be something as severe as abuse, or it could be something that's relatively small and trivial, that today we call microaggressions.
At both the macro and the micro level, Jesus' value of forgiveness is absolutely indispensable to the building of healthy cross-cultural relationships. I'll talk to you next time.
