a powerful message

[RM260boy]

this one is not letting me sleep so i know i must get it started.

i grew up gowing to a disciples of christ affiliated church. being in the country churches have small congregations here (usually 20 to 100 members). the church i attended had about 150. youth groups here will sometimes combine together so that we can have a good fellowship. our church usually partnered with a baptist church for our youth activities

now please understand that this was back in the day and churches were still segregated. my freshman year (1976) in high school our church decided to invite the 2nd christian church (a black church) to partner with our youth group and they accepted. we had a blast and very good fellowship programs that year. we even had enough youth to stage a spaghetti dinner with PLAYS:weee: :weee:.

we were children and we didn't pay any attention to who took what roles in the plays, we wanted to make sure that everyone got the chance to participate. (i don't think that you can have fellowship without participation.) everything went great for the first play and the audience seemed to be enjoying the evening that we were providing.

then came the second play and something that will never leave me.
i was the husband in the play and my wife was also from our congregation, our 3 children however were from 2nd christian church. the intro to the play was my wife and children setting up dinner for the husband (me) to come home. i walked through the door and was about to deliver my first line when i heard dr d**** say from the audience "if those kids are hers, then they deffinitely aren't yours".

i was dumbstruck and embarrassed. we did manage to finish the 2nd play, but i have revisited it many times over the years.

these are the things that have bothered me 1st i was embarrassed because we didn't even think to make sure the family could be believable for our audience (this admission still hurts me to this day, and this day and time i would hope that this type of family would be accepted) 2nd i was embarrassed because dr d. did not take into consideration that we were just children having fellowship and 3rd i am to this day mad at myself for not taking issue at that moment with dr d. for not recognizing what we "knew" as children. THERE IS NO BLACK OR WHITE IN CHRIST.

now being out and proud i take this one step further i don't believe that there is such a thing as a gay christian. there are christians who are gay, but in christ we are one.

[keltic63]

Hey Rufus,

I'm a Disciples of Christ, but a transplant. I was delivered from the Assemblies of God.

I was struck by the fact that you and I are close in age, and I got to thinking about what my reaction might have been. I think I would have been too dumbfounded to say anything. Racism isn't taught in direct ways; I think it's very subtle. I know that from my own upbringing, my church always had the "right" answers, but that didn't mean they applied them. I suspect as much with your own church. It was "right" that your youth groups worked together; when you did, the adults let the application of those "right" answers slide. We were naive enough to think the concepts of love and justice that we were being taught should actually be used in our daily lives. I understand your surprise at learning this from hard lesson from the respected adults in your church.

[RM260boy]

it is something that has had profound affect on the way i look at things.
sometimes racism is just our mouths running ahead of our brains. for i am sure he intended for his remark to be funny and it was almost a show stopper so to speak

[Daniel]

The phrase that ran through my head when I read your post was:

The suspension of disbelief.

Which is a term used in the theater and means that the audience member is able to forget that they are seeing actors act and are able to enter into a world beyond appearances. Trouble is, a great many people can't get past the appearance of things: their perception is disciminatory insofar that they categorize visual information (if it doesn't look 'right, well then, it can't be right, can it?) in ways that leave them unable to 'see' anything else. What they lack is imagination, something chidren have in abundance, that is, until it is pounded out of them.

I've often wondered if anti-gay sentiments are predicated on just this kind (or lack) of perception.

What's the scripture?

You must be as little children to enter the Kingdom of God?

Methinks that takes a little imagination.

[RM260boy]

The phrase that ran through my head when I read your post was:

The suspension of disbelief.

Which is a term used in the theater and means that the audience member is able to forget that they are seeing actors act and are able to enter into a world beyond appearances. Trouble is, a great many people can't get past the appearance of things: their perception is disciminatory insofar that they categorize visual information (if it doesn't look 'right, well then, it can't be right, can it?) in ways that leave them unable to 'see' anything else. What they lack is imagination, something chidren have in abundance, that is, until it is pounded out of them.

I've often wondered if anti-gay sentiments are predicated on just this kind (or lack) of perception.

What's the scripture?

You must be as little children to enter the Kingdom of God?

Methinks that takes a little imagination.

daniel, i even accept that it may be even simpler, children do not have to suspend disbelief to get past discrimination. it was just somthing we accepted as "it is what it is". the adults always made the decisions as to who we extended fellowship to. this being true, our acceptance was not even discussed among us (the children).

for me the end result is that discrimination is easy to pick up, hard to put down. and deffinitely a learned behavior.