Race

There is a lie that our culture continually perpetuates. It is the lie that life is only as valuable as its circumstances. We see it in films or books that romanticize assisted suicide and euthanasia, that reduce abortion to a decision over whether one can afford a child, or that imply that people with disabilities are burdens, or that some people are more violent than others because of their race or ethnicity. These lies are deeply offensive on a variety of levels, but they are also all around us.

Have you seen the line-up for this year’s January Series from Calvin College yet? Every year, the college puts on a free series of talks on various issues of the day, presented at their campus in Grand Rapids and streamed online, as well as at remote sites across the continent. (Each address begins at 12:30 PM EST.) We commend Calvin for a diverse, high-quality line-up of speakers with important things to say, especially about justice and diversity. Here are our staff picks for this year.  

It’s been a great year for Do Justice. Thanks for reading and learning along with us, as we wrestled with faith with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other (Karl Barth)!

My kindergartener came home excited this weekend -- he’d gotten a free book, one that he could keep! He wanted to read it right away.

As soon as I saw the book, I tried to deflect. “Maybe later, honey.” Nope! Now!

“Wouldn’t you like to find a different book? There a whole bunch of new ones from the library on the table.” Nope! This one! The Indian one.

It’s Thanksgiving season in the United States -- when many of our kids will come home with construction paper head-dresses and mythology about a peaceful dinner between "Pilgrims and Indians."

What this pro-life series has taught me is that the CRCNA is deeply, unapologetically pro-life. 

“Sometimes Native people want to be white. Tell them that they’re made in God’s image.” That’s what an Indigenous elder told a friend of mine when she asked what she should tell Church people about Indigenous peoples. Violet, an elder among the Carrier people of northern British Columbia, is naming and challenging the internalized racism faced by Indigenous peoples across North America today. When the image of God is diminished in one it is diminished in all of us – and life and shalom are affected.

I have participated in the Blanket Exercise several times and each time I have heard people, of all backgrounds, say “I never knew. Nobody ever told me this.” How we tell the story matters and the Blanket Exercise gives us the opportunity to learn a more complete story.

After noticing that some of the books we grew up reading were less than inclusive and made for attitudes about our neighbors that had to be unlearned, we started wondering...how do parents and educators find books that both explicitly and implicitly support a cornerstone of our theology--that all people are made in the image of God? We've asked a number of justice-minded parents and educators for their thoughts. Today we hear from Laura Veenema, a literacy tutor and mom in Chicago. 

Injustices are prevalent first in what or who is NOT being included in the content and second in HOW marginalized groups are presented.

Books that are imaginative and creative also help our kids develop a sense of wonder, curiosity, and possibility. These are helpful traits when imagining what a world that is different than the status quo could be like, an important aspect of working for justice.