Life on the Spectrum
Life isn’t black and white.
It’s so easy to label people, but that label is often just one aspect of who they are, and maybe not the most important aspect. And maybe not even entirely accurate. When I was at UCLA, I had a roommate named Wayne who was a really nice guy but could be labeled as racist and if you didn’t know him, you would think it was an apt description. He would often stereotype people and made assumptions about them based on those stereotypes. When we first met, I think he was genuinely surprised I didn’t have a pocket protector or wear button-down, short-sleeved shirts. Wayne had opinions about every ethnicity on the planet and none of them good. If you can imagine a stereotype about Asians, Hispanics, African Americans, or some other ethnicity, Wayne thought of it first. We’d stay up late at night talking about life and he would make the most awful comments about someone based only on the color of their skin or the shape of their face. If you didn’t know him, you’d think he was a hard and fast racist, but the funny thing was, I met most of Wayne’s friends and they weren’t at all what I expected. Instead of the sea of monochromatic faces I expected to find, his friends were a rainbow of different colors. White, black, brown, yellow, red…you name it. I couldn’t figure it out until one day he and I were talking, and he made a comment about “all Asians” and then he looked at me and said, “Except for you, Craig. You’re one of the good ones.” I just said, “Thanks, Wayne.” But in that moment, I knew. I knew what the difference was between me and “all Asians.” Wayne knew me, and because he knew me, I was no longer one of “them.”
“They” are evil.
“They” are what is wrong with the world. “They” are going to ruin things for everybody. But really, who are “they?” If you listen to God, “they” are “us.” When you think about the world from a Christian perspective, there is no “they” because every single one of us is part of the family of God. You don’t have to like them all. You don’t have to agree with them all. They might be that strange aunt who always brings Jello salad to the potluck. But in the end, we are united under this one umbrella of Jesus. We forget that. A lot. I hear pastors and politicians who call themselves Christians saying some awful things about “them.” But those identifiers like race, sexual and gender identity, education, wealth, etc. that we like to use are artificial. They are just things we made up to make life simpler. But at what cost? I think we are seeing that cost play out in the political arena today. We have dehumanized the other into a label and dangerously make assumptions about every person under that label. Democrats, so trapped in their ivory towers, they don’t understand the plight of the common person. They are ruining America. Republicans, so closed-minded and secretly racist, they don’t see what a danger they are to Democracy. They are ruining America. Did I get that about right? Those labels extended to every part of our lives. Race, size, gender identity, sexual orientation – you name it and there is probably a stereotype for it. I actually heard someone on NPR saying trans kids were claiming to be trans so they could compete in sports and have a better chance at winning. That defies all logic. A kid would put themselves out there, subject to ridicule, bullying, and harassment, potentially have their life threatened and at the very least get made fun of and stared at to what end? Win a track and field event? Our fears of the other have grown so large that we don’t even regard them as humans. We don’t think of them as one of “us.” And that’s where we need to begin. We need to stop seeing the world in black and white and instead see it for the rainbow of colors that it is.
Black and white thinking can make our lives worse.
Not just for the people who are the targets of our binary thoughts, but for ourselves, too. It can negatively affect your relationships. It can hurt your self-image. It can hold you back from success.[1] When we talk about living on the spectrum, we usually take it to mean being autistic. But more and more people are using this type of framework to talk about all aspects of life. A concrete example is being left or right-handed. Unless you’re missing a limb, most of us make use of both hands. Only about 1% of the population is truly ambidextrous,[2] but how much we can use both hands varies from person to person. Then there are aspects of who we are that are now being understood as being on the spectrum. Researchers studied narcissism – the tendency to focus on oneself at the cost of caring about others – and found that it is what they call a core “dark trait” meaning something we think of negatively but an aspect that we all have in varying degrees.[3] People tend to think that someone either is or isn’t narcissistic but the truth is there is at least a little bit of it in all of us. It’s what psychologists call a “continuous trait.” Today, gender identity and sexual orientation are understood more and more in this way as being fluid instead of static or binary. People aren’t just straight or gay as we can see from the alphabet soup of sexual orientation. And most younger people today understand intrinsically that gender identity is just as fluid even if that is a completely new concept to older generations. Nothing is truly black or white. Not even the colors black and white. According to Adobe, black and white are just shades and not truly colors. But what’s more interesting, when you create the color Rich Black on Adobe using the color code #000000 the software actually adjusts it to include cyan, magenta, and yellow because to our eyes, it is a darker black than black![4]
It’s time to take off the sunglasses and see the world in all its beauty.
As God intended. God made the world with an abundance of diversity and to God each of us is like a snowflake. All of us are his creation, but all of us are unique beings with our own gifts and graces. I think that’s how God sees us. Not as Asian or White or liberal or conservative. God sees us as Cassie and Craig and Gwen and Red and Lorrie and Marilyn… God sees YOU. Not as a sum of your different parts, but God sees YOU as a whole and complete being. We need to do that more often, to think even of those we don’t know (or don’t like all that much) as people beloved by God so we can set aside our differences, embrace the things we have in common, and get to work making the world a better place. We need to stop feeling threatened by what other people do and instead focus on ourselves and our loved ones and make sure WE are living up to the standards God has set for us. Instead of worrying about what “they” are doing, we should focus on doing right ourselves and not standing in judgment of other people. Paul’s letter to the Romans emphasizes this point. In it, there was apparently a dispute over what people ate. I don’t know if it was in the context of communion or just living styles of different churches in Rome or if Paul was just using this as a minor example, but his point was pretty clear. Modeled after Matthew 7:3-5 where Jesus tells the disciples to pull the plank out of their own eye, Paul the churches in Rome to focus on their own account before God instead of worrying about things that ultimately don’t matter.
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
12So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.
17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
22So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. – Selections from Romans 14
Who are we to judge someone else?
Don’t we have enough to worry about on our own without getting in someone else’s way? Paul reminds us of what is important and I love the way he says it, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking (and you can insert your own petty argument here), but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” When a new idea doesn’t fit within our life experience, our tendency is to deny it or to treat it as “other.” We condemn it, often without considering it at all. And Paul tells us “…whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.” Today the target of judgment is the LGBTQ community and right now especially transgender kids. I’ve sadly heard Christians condemn their parents or even condemn the kids themselves. And whether you agree or not, I challenge you to hear Paul’s words and then reflect back on other communities Christians have historically attacked as being against the Bible and see where we are now. People of African descent. People of Chinese or Japanese descent. Women. Children. People who had disease. People who were victims of natural disasters. The list is long and sad of how we have condemned these groups and claiming to do so in the name of God. Maybe we should listen to Paul and keep it to ourselves or more importantly, listen to Jesus who told us to pull the plank from our own eye before removing the splinter from another. We have much to learn from each other and when we do so from a place of humility and love, we also share the love of Christ. God created the world in such amazing colors. It would be a shame to limit the beauty of creation with our black and white sunglasses.
[1] https://www.talkspace.com/blog/black-white-thinking-ways-poisons-your-perspective/ ; https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/black-and-white-thinking#risks
[2] https://www.healthline.com/health/ambidextrous
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201601/black-and-white-thinking-in-our-social-worlds
[4] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/is-black-a-color.html
Craig's Corner 