daveingland.com   about church relevance, culture, life, community, & transformational faith

While responding to a blog post recently I was compelled to introduce a concept to those that follow my blog. It’s a story that was briefly introduced awhile ago, yet only engaged new Asian readers into the discussion, while most of my readership is not Asian. Asian or not, this is an issue that we must face within the church and I’m curious what you all think.

A reply to one of my comments on the blog was:

“In the short-run, you are right, i don’t think you’ll see much positive growth at all, but ethnicity needs to validated as a gift from God and our inheritance from our immigrant parents. so while i agree with your implication that many would benefit from a multi-ethnic or missional church (culture/ethnicity can be viewed as an inefficiency from many people’s eyes, but), an honest exploration into the question of why God created us to be from a certain place and of a certain people should inspire us to discover our ethnicities and cultures in a redemptive light.

This is where i think the example of the people of israel and the biblical practice of remembering, remembering what God has done, who God is, and who God has made us to be, a very real practice to engage in the ethnic context.”

First of all, let me state very clearly that I am extrapolating something from a post that had a larger context. It is not my intention to argue or criticize the blog author or anyone that shares his viewpoint. I am just taking the statement and inflecting my experiences and ideas in the hopes of engaging in some dialog about the subject (hopefully) from both Asian and non-Asians.

Okay, so I’m Japanese, but I’ll admit there were some times in my life where I wished I could have been born looking like Brad Pitt or Joe Montana (nod to my NorCal upbringing) or David Cassidy. Usually it was so that I could have a girl attracted to me that wouldn’t date me because I was Japanese or so that I could avoid the words and violence associated with racism and prejudice. However, I am who I am and all that I am is for the glory of God.

However, do I want to celebrate my heritage in such a way that I need to have everyone around me be Japanese and understand my culture and my language when I’m in a Sunday church service? Is preserving my heritage in such a way something that can honor God much in the same way that the Israelites were true to their place as God’s chosen people? Did God create me as a Japanese person to engage only other Japanese people and rally us around a common cause of preserving who we are?

The Israelites were in-fact God’s chosen people. They were to inherit the earth as Abraham’s descendants. They were not to intermarry or in anyway corrupt the lineage. However, even in the Old Testament we see evidence of something that goes against this notion. Ruth was a Gentile that came to faith in the one true God. Not just any Gentile, but a Moabite and therefore hated by the Israelites. Ruth marries Boaz and bears a son that can be traced to the family line of Jesus himself.

As we see here, introducing Ruth into the Israelite culture of Judah had a profound place in history. Therefore, what is my place as a Japanese person living in the United States? Am I to segregate myself to a place where I can teach the things of God based on the context of my Japanese culture for those that will understand it because they too are Japanese? Or should I celebrate who I am in Christ and share my culture and experience with others so that they may benefit?

Let me shift to a different scenario to help me make my point. With Barack Obama’s candidacy the discussion of black church and white church came up in the media. There were some black churches (I personally dislike this label even though it is socially acceptable) where the message was preached against white America. It was almost an us-against-them mentality that was glorified. However, what if instead of trying to empower African-Americans in the church to stand up to social injustice from the caucasian world they tried to share their stories outside of the black church in a way that brought attention to what has gone on and continues to go on in their lives? How can white America know what is going on in the black community if the black community segregates themselves from the rest of us? The same is true with Asian-Americans in my opinion.

I talk to so many people today that have no clue what I go through as an Asian-American in society. So many think that racism and prejudice is a thing of the past. You wouldn’t believe how many people think I must be smart in math or must have gone to college at UCLA or Cal or that I must be an engineer or know all there is to know about computers or ask me questions about sushi. The outright hatred of me due to my Asian features has diminished greatly over the years, but the stereotypes have not. How does being exclusively with other Japanese people on Sundays help me to make a difference? What if I could take the fulfillment of one of God’s Ten Commandments to honor your mother and father to a whole ‘nother level by introducing my Japanese culture of being there for my parents in ways that aren’t the norm here in America?

I believe that God created me more to honor him and bring glory to his Son Jesus through my unique perspective of a Japanese person with my own individual experiences than he did to see me perpetuate my ethnic values and cultures at all costs. As the Great Commandment in Matthew 25 calls us to do, we are to preach the gospel to all nations and teach them what Christ has taught us. He didn’t say each nation is responsible for the preaching of the gospel to themselves. Three thousand didn’t come to Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and believe so that they could go back to their nations and keep their faith within the borders of their individual nations. Paul didn’t preach there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile only to see us reverse that in order to preserve our ethnic culture in a new land.

I should not have the viewpoint that I am Japanese and you are not so I can perpetuate my culture and heritage in my church and you are excluded, therefore you lose out on all that you could gain through knowing and understanding who I am and what I experienced. Through knowing my struggles with racism and prejudice and the pressures I faced in school here in America you can have some insight on persecution for who I am and how I dealt and continue to deal with that now that I am a Japanese person and a Christian. You can learn how some of the values revealed to us through the Scriptures have been in place in the country of my birth even though less than 1/10th of 1 percent of its people are Christian and how that breaks my heart. You can learn how to look at me as a brother or sister in Christ with individual experiences I can bring to the table and share rather than someone you have no idea how to address since you couldn’t be as mathematical or technologically savvy as me or because you don’t like sushi or whatever.

The harsh reality is that I am different from most of you. Heck, I’m different from many Japanese people as well. However, not only do I truly believe that you can learn from me, I absolutely know that I can learn from you. Together we can celebrate all of God’s people and all that he is doing in this world as the brothers and sisters he created us to be.