Blindspots

As I do once a month, I rolled into my barber early yesterday to get my "do" in order. I used the word barber, because that's who I like to have my hair cut by - call me old fashioned. I like the older gentlemen - I like the blue & red pole - I like the other older guys who come up there and hang out to talk, but don't actually get haircuts - I like the funny community it is. The truth is, it's rarely a haircut about which I say, "That's perfect." I find that I have to go home and "touch it up" usually. There's one more reason I stick with this fella - I want to support the brother. I say "brother," because this fella has exhibited some great integrity since I've gone to see him over the years. He proudly displays a "JESUS" sign in his shop, he has his devotional readings laid out, he hums/sings hymns about the Lord. He really won me over when he fired his fellow barber because he had inappropriate (read: nude) pictures on his cell phone and was showing other guys in the shop. He had told this guy not to do that and then found out that he did it. So, he canned the guy. When he relayed this entire story to me, his reasoning was this: God can't bless my business if I have that kind of stuff going on here. We talked about the Corinthians passage about "what fellowship does light have with darkness." So, as you can see, he's pretty much the cool, local, Godly, grandfather type - the kind of guy that makes communities (and our country) great. Right?

On Monday, as I sat down in the chair, the news was on the tv and it showed Oprah talking about how she supported Obama, not because he is black, but because she believes in what he stands for. My barber says in response to both the tv and probably for his buddies, "No you don't, you support him because he's a n***** like you are." He then goes on to tell this story to his buddies that he was having lunch at a local establishment and got to talking politics and didn't realize how loud he was talking. He was disparaging both Hillary and Obama and once again used the "n word" in his description of Obama. He said an African-American (my term, not his) woman was there and looked over her shoulder at him when he used this term. He then went on to say how much he didn't care what she thought because he's not a politician and doesn't have to be politically correct. He finished off this story with this statement, "...anyway, it was our country first."

While he's amazingly wrong on so many fronts (it was not our country 1st - as best I can remember from history class, there were some native people here; I don't recall when we sent a pleasant invitation to people in Africa asking politely if they would come visit us in this country - again, my history books seem to say that we enslaved them and dragged them against their will to this country so they could do our bidding), this was crushing and convicting on a spiritual level even more than a racial level.

I didn't want to challenge or embarass him in front of his friends, so I did not ask him these questions that were running through my mind: Do you love Jesus? (yes) Do you think God's goal for you is to mold you into the image of His Son? (yes - Rom. 8:29) What do you think Jesus thinks about African Americans? (???) Do you believe that Jesus would use the "n word" when speaking to or about African Americans? (doubt it). Then how do you reconcile this? You would boldly stand up and count yourself a Christian (meaning: follower of Christ), but yet you clearly hate people?

After I paid, I got in my car and had 20 minutes or so to digest this. I thought about how the Christians in Europe in the late 30's and early 40's turned a blind eye to what was happening to the Jews and how that blind spot for them absolutely cost them any chance at being relevant to culture or society - one big reason Christianity is on life support in Europe. I also thought how the church in the South also demonstrated a total lack of love for people and how this probably led many in society to say, "I want nothing to do with those people - they say God loves me, but I cannot believe that based on their attitudes and actions." My shock and anger quickly turned to conviction. I felt the Spirit saying, "Chris, do you really think that you don't have a blind spot? Do you really think there's nothing in your life that has given people around you the wrong impression about what I'm really like?" It's weird to be offended by another person and their behavior and then to come to grips with the fact that, in some ways, you're not real different than him.