Christian Compassion without Culture Wars, episode 3 transcript
Microaggressions, Macroaggressions, and Unconditional Forgiveness
www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
Moses Saldivar: True forgiveness is one that doesn't come with conditions. And the Father views us through the lens of the son because of the work that Jesus did. So the same way, if we're going to forgive someone, it's not true forgiveness if it's dependent on their actions.
If we place conditions on it, it's never gonna be enough. We're always gonna find something else that needs to be rectified or something else that somebody said 10 years ago that was was hurtful.
John Yoder: Hi everybody. John Yoder here. Welcome back for part three of our series, “Christian Compassion without Culture Wars”. Today's topic is “Macroaggressions, Microaggressions, and Unconditional Forgiveness”. As we start, I want to remind you that all of our podcasts, their transcripts, and our weekly blog are available on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org.
Today's young people are facing an epidemic of mental health issues. That includes anxiety, isolation, depression, tension, and more. We want to encourage behaviors that incline people towards peace and joy. We want to discourage behaviors that incline people towards anxiety and isolation.
One Christian value that strongly moves us towards peace and rest is unconditional forgiveness. But harboring bitterness and resentment tends us towards more isolation and more anger. When you and I hold bitterness in our hearts towards an individual or a group of people, it does not harm those people. It harms us. Here's what the book of Proverbs has to say:
Proverbs 19:11 Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is one's glory to overlook an offense.
What Solomon is telling us here in the book of Proverbs is this. When someone has offended us, whether as individuals or as a class of people, it is our honor, our glory, it is a hallmark of maturity, that we forgive. This runs contrary to voices that tell us when we're offended, we receive a microaggression or other kind of offense. We do not forgive until we have an apology or other form of restitution. Here's what Jesus has to say.
Matthew 6:14-15. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Friends, I understand that these words of Jesus are very difficult, very hard to hear. Jesus is saying that if we are not willing to forgive other people of the ways that they have offended us, God the Father is not ready to forgive us of our offenses. My sin, your sin is deep enough and bad enough that it sent the son of God, Jesus Christ to the cross to be killed.
If God the Father is willing to forgive you and me for murdering his Son Jesus, he is calling on you and me to forgive others for the crimes that they have committed against us.
Before we talk about offenses between individuals, we want to start by talking about offenses that happen at the macro level, that is between nations or between ethnic groups. These offenses tend to last for centuries and never become resolved. Let me tell you a story.
In 2010, Sherry and I visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing, China. It describes the atrocities that happened there in 1937 during the Japanese Occupation. The lower level is simple, it's graphic, it's stark.
It's built around a mass grave site, and it displays the skeletons of victims who are half buried in the ground with placards that described how they died. Here's how the Warfare History Network describes the massacre of Nanjing in an article from fall of 2011.
Article: On August 15th, 1937, the Japanese imperial army bombed Nanjing, the capital of China. These raids were unrelenting until December 13th, when Japanese troops entered the conquered city. For the next month, Japanese soldiers killed, raped, looted, and burned. More than 300,000 Chinese died. The Japanese turned murder into sport. They rounded up tens of thousands of men and used them for bayonet practice or decapitation contests, in an attempt to further degrade their victims.
The Japanese forced fathers to rape their daughters, or sons their mothers. The Japanese were equally brutal to infants and small children. Japanese soldiers made a game of torturing and gang raping women and children.
John Yoder: These events, so graphic, were regarded as the national humiliation of China. In the years after the end of World War II, Japanese leaders at the highest levels repeatedly apologized for the atrocities they committed in Nanjing. Between 1946 and 1949, Japan spent $160 million on reparations to nations it invaded, including China.
Sherry and I have visited the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, paid for by Japanese reparation funds. No matter how much is spent on reparations, it is never regarded as enough, no matter how many apologies are issued, it is always regarded as not sincere enough, not by enough people or not with enough emotion behind it.
The Chinese government and the state controlled Chinese media regularly stir up anti-Japanese sentiment, to distract public attention away from their own imperfections. Here is how Emily Matson describes the way in which the Chinese Communist Party has used the Nanjing massacre to its own advantage, in an article for the Wilson Center in July of 2024.
Article: After the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party needed a new legitimizing narrative, which came in the form of patriotic education, centered on the century of humiliation. The greatest outrage of the century of humiliation was the War of Resistance against Japan and the atrocities Japan inflicted on Chinese civilians.
For China's leaders, fostering public outrage against past imperialist aggressors, fomented patriotism, and redirected outrage that might otherwise have been directed at the Chinese Communist Party for its crimes against its own people.
John Yoder: Those of you who are subscribers to Cross-Cultural Voices, receive our weekly emails about upcoming episodes from our Communications Director Sai Wang. Sai is a native of Shenzhen, China. She spent her first 20 years there before coming here for university. She describes for us what it was like growing up to hear what the popular media said about Japan.
Sai Wang: We have a love and hate relationship with the country, it seems. We also hear from the news that there was rage against the Japanese people because of that history from all the way back to 1894 to 95. So as I grew up, the history class told much more about the crimes that had been committed against the Chinese from Japan. And as a student, you start to learn about these things, and start to develop perhaps negative views on Japan.
We started to observe many TV series that are featuring the history of Japan invading China, and the fighting against the Japanese Army. And in all of those portrayals, Japan soldiers were demonized a little bit. So the word to describe them is guizi, and that is essentially using the character “ghost” to describe them.
John Yoder: So friends, Sai and I have described for you an ongoing smoldering tension between Chinese and Japanese. Now we all know about the hot wars. It's 2025, and today there are hot wars between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Palestine. But there are also long-term smoldering issues between India and Pakistan, Kurds and Turks, American blacks and whites, Oromo and Amharic in Ethiopia, Uyghurs and Tibetan in China, and far more.
These conflicts are not new. They are generations old, if not centuries old. And in every case there is no forgiveness. I am not aware historically of any incidents where a nation or an ethnic group has ever forgiven another for the things that they have done in the past.
And the reason is that most people are not followers of Christ and do not value the Christian principle of forgiveness. If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ and you do not follow his teachings, let's talk about some of the disadvantages you may perceive of forgiving others.
First of all, it feels like you're giving in. You're letting the other party off the hook. They win, you lose. They get away with it. And you lose the emotional high ground of being the victim.
So let's talk about some of the advantages of holding onto bitterness and resentment if you don't follow Jesus Christ. One is you've got a new sense of identity. You're part of a group, and there are others of your nationality or your skin color who will affirm you for that bitterness and resentment against others. And in fact, you will be seen as a traitor to the group if you grant forgiveness.
In addition to that, holding onto bitterness and resentment gives us the emotional sense that we are in the right, that we deserve justice and that we deserve sympathy.
Bitterness and resentment can become emotional armor that keeps others out and keeps us from being hurt again.
In addition to all of that, holding onto bitterness and resentment may be financially profitable. If you're a journalist and you live in China, you'd better not be writing about why Chinese need to forgive the Japanese. You'd better learn how to stir up resentment against the Japanese if you want to do well in Chinese journalism. In the United States, there is a multimillion-dollar grievance industry that might just pay you good money to write a book or to become a consultant, talking about the ways that you are a victim.
Here's what Neil Shenvi says in page 439 of his book, Critical Dilemma.
Neil Shenvi: Within victimhood culture, victimhood becomes a kind of commodity. The more victimhood points you possess, the more power and social affirmation you command. This growing market for victimhood is readily supplied by contemporary critical theorys’ ever-expanding list of oppressed identities.
John Yoder: Friends, for these reasons, I am not aware of any time in history that a nation has forgiven another nation, or an ethnic group has forgiven another ethnic group. And I believe it never will happen because most people in those groups don't follow Jesus Christ.
Now let's talk about the disadvantages of holding on to all that bitterness and resentment. It leads to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression. It's a barrier to peace, to joy, and to good relationships.
It means identifying good, caring people around you as oppressors and enemies based on their skin color or their citizenship. It leads to emotional exhaustion.
It means you're stuck in the past, that your people cannot write a new chapter, that they must define themselves by what happened generations ago.
And worst of all, it means that if you do not grant forgiveness to others, you may not receive forgiveness by God. As Sai works with students from many different cultural backgrounds, she realizes that those who do not follow Christ will struggle to find a place for forgiveness.
Sai Wang: We have to talk about the general worldview of Chinese people today. We live in a fairly atheistic worldview where forgiveness sometimes is perceived as weak. So forgiveness and reconciliation often is not talked about and normalized.
John Yoder: Now let's transition from talking about macroaggression at the national and ethnic level, and talk about microaggressions at the personal level.
Emotionally healthy people know that no two people are going to agree about everything. Husband and wife, parent and child, the best of friends, are going to have differences of opinions about many things. And we need to find good ways to accept those different opinions.
However, there are those who say that others are not permitted to hold different opinions than they do about their oppression or victimization. If you graciously and kindly share a difference of opinion, you may be told that you are giving a microaggression, that you're gaslighting, that you're centering yourself, and that you're making the conversation about you.
There is another group that holds that when someone is sharing their learned experience, they can never possibly be wrong. I've lived in Asia for 13 years and I've talked to people from many different nations and cultural backgrounds. People from any country in the world can be in denial or can be lacking in self-awareness. And any of us, as we share our learned experience, may be mistaken or partly mistaken. And when others help us see another perspective, they're doing us a favor.
I hope you have the opportunity to listen to our series “Friendship in Black and White”. If so, you know our friend Monique Du here is what she says in page 88 of her book, “Walking in Unity”.
Monique Duson: The concept of microaggressions is unbiblical. The alleged victim often becomes an unchallenged authority, and the offending words or deeds are deemed covertly or overtly racist. It places the victim in the role of the judge, able to discern the intentions and guilt of others without evidence.
John Yoder: I hope that you will also have the opportunity to listen to our podcast series Unseen. Here is something that Dr. Michelle Lee-Barnewall shares with us in that series.
Michelle Lee-Barnewall: I would say even the use of the term microaggression, the idea that it's an aggression, I think is a bit of an inflammatory term.
If I ask a question, and maybe it is something that's hurtful, but I don't intend to, but I'm told I'm being aggressive. That's gonna put me on the defensive, and so relationally, if we're gonna try to work this out as a corporate body, I think we need to have an environment, a language in which people can be honest in both directions without coming at it right outta the starting gate with language that puts people on the defensive.
John Yoder: The dividing line between forgiveness and bitterness is the dividing line of whether one accepts Christian principles. Our friend Moses Saldivar shares with us why forgiveness needs to be unconditional.
Moses Saldivar: True forgiveness is one that doesn't come with conditions, and I think that's the thing that we've gotta keep in mind.
If the Lord holds us to the same standard, we're never gonna pay the cost. His blood is not enough. And the sacrifice that he made, and by that coming to him and him forgiving us, and him offering us that forgiveness, there's not any real other conditions in there. And the Father views us through the lens of the Son because of the work that Jesus did.
So the same way, if we're going to forgive someone, it's not true forgiveness if it's dependent on their actions. True forgiveness happens when we are letting that go. And again, placing that at the Lord's feet, and trusting that God will make it, he'll fix it, he'll redeem it, he'll do whatever he is gonna do through it.
But if we place conditions on it, it's never gonna be enough. We're always gonna find something else that is a gap, or something that needs to be rectified, or something else that somebody said 10 years ago that was hurtful. And again, that is exactly where the enemy wants to keep us. He wants us staying in this perpetual cycle of frustration and anger and hurt so that his bride cannot do the thing that she's been called to do.
John Yoder: Like all other Christian values, forgiveness runs contrary to every nation, every ethnic group, every skin color in the world. If you choose to follow Christ into unconditional forgiveness of those who hurt you, you will be seen as a traitor by your ingroup. They will say to you, “Why do you not stand up for us? We are your people. Why are you standing with the enemy”?
But for those of us who are the children of God. Our primary identity is not our citizenship. It is not our skin color, our denomination, or anything else. It is being children of God, and it is being brother or sisters of every other born again Christian, regardless of their race. Let me encourage all of us to follow Christ by walking on paths that lead toward peace and love and unity. I'll talk to you next time.
