001/007 Why Wise Leaders Pursue “Reconciliation”

Human beings think in shortcuts through analogies, by considering how one thing is like another. In educational theory, knowledge can be distilled by understanding how things are like and different from other things. This is such an important part of human thinking that analogy-based assessments have been in our college entrance exams and IQ tests for decades.

Rather than being simplistic or unintelligent, thinking in analogy is a form of higher intelligence and abstract thinking found only in humans.¹ Educated people often imagine they think primarily analytically, but even our analytical thinking tends to be analogical.

Why is this the case? Humans think in metaphor and analogy to simplify an otherwise unmanageably complex world. We use heuristics—mental shortcuts that help us simplify more complex phenomena—to determine how we think through any question, and they set the priority for our solution. Metaphors and analogies allow us to categorize an almost inconceivable number of complexities in the world. They allow us to manageably and creatively conceptualize the world around us.

This being the case, the metaphors or analogies we use to analyze anything become increasingly important. If we use the wrong analogy in our thinking, it can lead to very unhelpful ways of understanding and acting in the world. “Life is like a journey.” “God is like a father.” “Faith is like a grape vine.” “Business is like a sport.” “Marriage is like a partnership.” All these analogies work and also break down at some point, making it helpful often to use more than one analogy for a given phenomenon.² But when it comes to the most important dynamics in our lives, we tend to conceptualize them through one primary or foundational analogy. This primary metaphor will drive not only our thinking, but also our feelings and reactions about everything in our life. Getting an accurate primary metaphor is therefore critical.

When we think about a problem, we often use some metaphor to frame the question for ourselves. A young man might think of trying to get a date as going fishing or hunting. (You have to make a lot of casts and have the right bait.) A mother might think of raising children in the metaphor of gardening. (You have to be patient and let things grow.) So when we discussed race and justice, what is the controlling metaphor? What is the pursuit of racial justice like? What sort of thing has a similar dynamic, or functions on similar principles?

It has been my view as a pastor that the analogies and metaphors that seem to be in the ascendancy are making things worse, not better. There are a number of these, but perhaps the most common are the analogies to poverty and emancipation. These are both reasonable analogies that are dangerously limited and that functionally harm our personal conceptions about life, our public harmony, and our corporate reforms.

The Conservative Analogy: Poverty

Many American conservatives³ or traditionalists⁴ see the equity divide (the gap between measurable life outcomes of different “groups”) as being primarily the result of social dysfunction. This is conceived to be like poverty, which, according to these perspectives, is seen primarily as the result of vast differences in ability or functionality in the lives of the poor as compared to others.⁵

In helping the poor, you can open doors and give them opportunities, but you cannot give someone their destiny or change their fundamental abilities. They must be left accountable to lead their own life. Many among the poor either do not have the capacity or initiative to do for themselves what must be done to achieve equitable “success.” According to this analogy, those who rise are the ones with ability and willingness to exert the moral characteristics of success (grit, conscientiousness, discipline, self-criticism, organization, abnegation,⁶ concentration, and so on). Disparities exist between and within all groups, because people neither are nor act equally in real life in relation to the criteria that make for success in a free and competitive environment.

Similarly, many conservative or traditional people believe this is analogous to racial inequality. They see among American Blacks higher crime rates (not just high conviction rates), higher dropout rates, and so on, and they conclude that like poverty generated by indolence, racial inequity comes from the cultural dysfunction operating in the inner city, generational poverty, and other factors disproportionately affecting Blacks. They then tend to see claims of racial injustice as a diversion from the real problems that keep people in poverty—choices, human differences, and cultural values that inhibit success.⁷ Socially and politically, most of these conservatives fault White liberals for:

the “great society” welfare programs that disincentivized the formation of Black families.
the “progressive” policies that led our inner cities into legal and economic chaos, which incentivized the influx of drugs and intensified urban degradation.
the exacerbation of this dynamic by radical and progressivist ideologies that 1) blamed others for problems of poverty and 2) affirmed the very choices that lead inevitably to social and personal ruin.

It’s hard to deny these had some profoundly negative effects. Add to this that most Black leaders and White progressives seem unwilling to publicly consider these as key factors in Black inequality, while dismissing and vilifying the few heterodox Black voices that make the above arguments. This is exactly what you would expect to happen if this view were an accurate analogy, and these denials serve to confirm the believer’s prior conceptualization. The more it is attacked, the more it is strengthened. Add the social media echo chamber, rinse and repeat.

Therefore, such thinking focuses on solutions to racial injustice that fit this analogy. How do you elevate poverty and spread prosperity? If seeking racial justice is like alleviating poverty, then we must offer accountability while opening the gateways of opportunity. We should pursue fast economic growth so there are more economic opportunities, make the safety net minimal to motivate hard work, improve school effectiveness, foster a family structure that includes fathers in the home, keep expenses low by keeping taxes low, preach a message of self-reliance and self-improvement, establish the rule of law in lawless communities, crack down on gangs, keep fighting addictive drug use and do everything possible to foster the development of the voluntary institutions of civil society including private philanthropy. Last, don’t demonize inequality that is inevitable and morally unproblematic. Instead, encourage the wealthy to be philanthropic and be thankful for their generosity.

The emphasis here is that productivity and voluntary philanthropy is the solution, and the key to achieving it is creative people choosing how to serve others through opportunity. Those who hold this view distrust government intervention and redistribution of wealth and power by any means other than the open market rooted in the price system. Non-voluntary power dynamics invite corruption, even if rooted in democracy. The goal is a meritocracy of opportunity. You bring economic and social justice by letting people freely create it. Such freedom not only achieves as much justice as is possible; such freedom is the greater part of justice.

The Progressive Analogy: Emancipation

No man can have respect for government and officers of the law when he knows, deep down in his heart, that the exercise of the franchise is tainted with fraud.
– Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

Conversely, many American Progressives tend to see the equity divide as evidence of the need for “true” Black emancipation. That is, seeking racial justice is like seeking revolutionary emancipation from slavery.⁸ These folks see Black inequity as analogous to the oppression of slavery. According to this analogy, American Blacks have been extraordinarily successful given the savage oppression they have suffered and still suffer under race-based discrimination in American society. The equity gap is produced by objective acts of oppression, done by oppressors in bad faith or privileged obliviousness, to subjugate Blacks because White people irrationally find them threatening to their safety, their sexual inviolability, and their economic and legal supremacy.

This has led Whites to create networks of unwritten or seemingly neutral rules that enforce their dominance, and a set of functional practices to exclude qualified Blacks from advancing and exerting influence. The result is referred to as “systemic racism.” Such systemic racism is the method by which American Whites enforce “white supremacy,” their retention of a superior place in the franchise of American life. Such progressives and revolutionists concede modern systemic racism it is much more subtle than the more overt and official forms of domination in our recent past. However, they still believe the current results are profoundly harmful and account for most of the equity gap between American Blacks and Whites.

Consequently, what school children learn about America embracing “civil rights” and creating equality, have contributed little to racial “progress” and were not really in good faith. They have only been a delay tactic that choses the minimal appeasement a supremacist system can offer to an aggrieved and oppressed people who are revolting. The public systems of discrimination (e.g., Jim Crow) were replaced with more durable and more defensible forms of discrimination and exclusion.

Therefore, pursuing racial justice means emancipating these suffering American minorities from a racist, supremacist, and systemically oppressive system that holds them in a subordinated position under the farce of being a meritocracy. America’s wealth did not come from incomparable productivity born of liberty. Anglo America is rich because it didn’t compensate the rest of America for their back-breaking labor,⁹ and it still doesn’t.

Consequently, progressives desire a more complete replacement of the present system in as radical a way as is practicable. This transformation must include actions meant to function as reparations (or restitution) for past wrongs. Complete formal and institutional reeducation of all racial groups is also necessary—an empowering education for Blacks (understanding that the problem is entirely with Whites and their supremacist system), and an awakening one for Whites (to acquaint them with their repressive bias, which is often unconscious). Depending on how far you take the analogy, you could protest very vigorously, or you might even engage in vandalism, rioting, looting, or any forceful re-ordering of power and possession.¹⁰ After all, emancipation requires revolution. No oppressor or abuser voluntarily gives oppressed people their freedom. You must take it, and usually, violently. This is why a similar logic is used to make an analogy between looting and paying reparations to slaves.

Most recognize “the revolution” toward equity, and violent military revolution is an analogy. While the two are similar in certain ways, they are not identical. The results are not a literal revolution, but they are to be revolutionary. There must be a change in the “regime.” This tends to lead these people to “big” solutions—democratic and big government solutions—since they feel the “conservative,” liberty-based and natural solutions have failed them. Therefore, the analogy pushes for big government intervention, big spending solutions that are reparative or that provide aid or opportunity, and full changes in power and wealth distribution in society. In Madison this has meant making minorities the majority in public boards and positions of power, though “Whites” make up 78% of the city’s population. Business grants discriminate toward minority and women owners, and so on. Such “discriminatory” actions to favor minorities, like affirmative action programs in the past, are seen as the only way to break up the regime of systemic racism. Some consider such discrimination regretful, but most who hold this view see it as necessary. This is because systemic racism is regarded as a system of power that supports itself. Therefore, the only practical solution is the redistribution of power, whether voluntarily or by force.

Doing More Harm Than Good

I believe that both popular analogies have value and are productive lines of investigation. I have used and continue to use them both. Yet, neither is my primary conceptual analogy. They are good tools and bad gods. In the end, I believe they do more harm than good for two primary reasons.

First, they are irresponsibly and dangerously simplistic. We must aim to make this as simple as possible, but not simpler. Both are simplistic partly because they leave out the truth of the other (as well as many other truths). This not only makes them simplistic but also leads to intractable conflict, creating a catastrophic cascade effect:

Conflicts driven by a large perception gap and a combative analogy lead to unproductive conflict.
Unproductive conflict leads to open hostility, contempt, caricaturing, and chronic anxiety.
These phenomena undermine good will and good faith, making productive action nearly impossible while increasing resentment as nothing changes.
This leads to stalling, to quick fixes that make things worse, or to the aggrieved group turning up the heat to make something—good or bad—happen.
Finally, for people growing up in a chronically anxious society (which I’ll discuss more later), it is impossible to develop or mature in a psychologically healthy way.

These analogies set off this cascade by failing to account for the primal needs of human beings:

Physical security – safety from harm and immediate threats.
Resource security – knowing you have access to essential resources.
Relational security – a feeling of belonging.
Existential security – assurance that your life matters to someone and that you are rightly placed in the world.
In-group belonging – knowing who your tribe is and having a clear “in-group and out-group consciousness” (who are the good guys and who are the bad guys).

Each of these areas of need is ineradicable; you can’t remove them from the human psyche. Therefore, when we take a fundamentally conflict-focused approach, that approach is by definition threatening to the natural dynamics of internal security for anyone being “attacked.” This will tend to trigger either increasing to chronic anxiety, or a fully defensive response. We can criticize this response as something like “White fragility,”¹¹ but we are really fighting against foundational human primal needs that are ineradicable. You can’t shame and guilt them out of existence. People will still feel them; they just won’t say them, and they’ll find another way to fight you.

The fifth level of this cascade is perhaps the worst.¹² The human cost here, especially when combined with the intensifying effect of broken families and the fruit of the sexual revolution, increases geometrically through generations. Like in previous generations, such costs are both hard to measure and catastrophic. Now, instead of inflicting rather different deformities on Whites and Blacks,¹³ we are inflicting similar and more universal ones on the whole of our chronically anxious society.

I cannot impress on the reader enough the effects this is having already on emerging adult generations of all the ethnicities and economic classes that I pastor. Because it is hard for social scientists to measure, it only shows up by its symptoms, unrecognized as its own epidemic psychological syndrome. I fear it is dramatically worsening in the present crop of younger adults.

The second way these current metaphors will do more harm than good is by misunderstanding how groups of people get better. Edwin Friedman, in his book A Failure of Nerve, applies these well-known principles from family therapy to people more broadly, especially as applied to organizations and leaders. He notes that most dysfunctional families tend to live in a state of chronic anxiety. People who are the most harmed are often the most adamant about changing the emotional processes and dynamics of the family. However, this virtually never works. If we try to heal a dysfunctional family by simply putting more stress on that family to act in a different way, it tends to lead to increased distrust and the belief that others don’t care about your best interests, an increase in chronic anxiety, negative and destructive reactive behavior, lack of differentiation and personal agency, seeking and accepting quick fixes, and giving power to the weakest and most dysfunctional people as leaders—the people who tend to be the loudest, the most reactive, and sometimes, the most ruthless.

These extremely predictable dynamics are built on the human needs described above. Anyone seeking a better world must start with the things that are in the world because they can’t be otherwise. A true reformer fights corruption, not nature. When our reform does not change a group of human beings, it does no good to wish for a different kind of human. However, while recognizing this inherent flaw in ideological thinking, we must not lump human corruption into human nature and therefore forsake reforming it.

Third, the effects of these simplistic analogies make the work of gospel proclamation harder and obscure its remedies. People look outside of themselves for sin and evil. Compassion is exiled, and mercy is suspect. Personal morality and true social justice are minimized. Materialism is (ironically) of transcendent importance. Since people think in simplistic terms politically, they are correspondingly simplistic in their intolerance toward the much greater complexity of God’s governance and providence, especially in human suffering.¹⁴ This destroys faith by causing people to think their emotional and intellectual objections to God’s good governance of all things are much better than they are.

Further, the teachings of Christ are proclaimed irrelevant for our “most important” problems if they don’t serve our preconceived notions of social justice. Jesus’ teaching that we are not our group identity is seen as a dangerous and even “White” teaching that undermines revolutionary solidarity. Meanwhile, conservative understandings do not seem to “do anything” about inequality, or at least not fast enough. We humans can easily dismiss our moral obligations if we perceive others are failing in theirs. This has always been a danger for those who see poverty as primarily the result of the poor not doing their part. Worst, the loud disagreement about group identity takes us away from God’s teaching about the two other key levels of human analysis: our general humanity (understanding what we are) and our personal identity (being accountable for who we’re becoming and are). The overemphasis on group identity puts all our thinking (feeling and reacting) off-center, out of proportion, and on the wrong level of human analysis to embrace a truly Christian spiritual theology or saving gospel.

An Alternate Analogy: Acute Family Counseling

As I have looked through the Scriptures, I have certainly found affirmations of structure, institutions, hierarchy, and right authority. There is also a high view of private ownership, personal accountability, broad liberty, and meritocracy. I have also found in many places commands to reform systemic injustice and to pursue mercy in the social sphere. This leads us not only to desire such reform, but to expect to find injustice and corruption in most human systems. This is a truth about general humanity, not group identity.¹⁵ Incumbent groups of humans (those in power) seek to make the system beneficial for themselves rather than impartial. This is a form of self-protecting corruption that will pervade the system. If a group is purposefully excluded, and they can be racially identified, then the incumbent corruption would be “systemic racism.” No Christian should be surprised to find such a thing, nor assume this is the primary mode of human corruption. We have so many. Only profound spiritual regeneration applied in public actions in our vocations can change corruption in all its forms. However, the only way people can do this reforming work is if they are powerfully morally differentiated, and hopefully, regenerate in Christ.¹⁶

However, the Spirituality of the New Testament has confronted me again and again with the supremacy of being a peacemaker and seeking human reconciliation that leads to godliness. Jesus’ teaching often implied actions of restitution. But Jesus’ focus was on applying the truth in a form of an “inviting accusation” in order to win resistant people over to God. He spoke of peacemaking, humility of spirit, rejecting revenge, accepting scorn, loving our enemies, not resisting those who mistreated us or took from us, and other doctrines unique to Christianity in their scope and motivation. Such peacemaking has the power to save both the oppressor and the oppressed, freeing one from the sins of oppression and domination, and the other from hatred and dishonesty—and both from fear.

So how can a Christian be faithful to the centrality of the gospel and its extreme emphasis on reconciliation while not losing sight of the need to pursue justice, especially along racial lines in the USA? Since our primary analogy controls our feeling and reactions, not just our thinking, we should concern ourselves with finding an analogy that is not simplistic, divisive, partisan, captured, and inhuman. Obviously, the most biblical metaphor is: The Body of Christ, the family of God forged by the cross itself. There is no substitute for this in the church, and it is the summation of the work of reconciliation that God has done.

However, many will also need an analogy that can be used publicly and with which they connect practically for immediate relief from the more destructive analogies. It must be simple enough to be usable, but also broad enough to reflect a larger scope of the truth in Christian terms with secular neighbors and within the public square. It must offer hope for improvement while leading us in the way of cooperation and reconciliation.

Increasingly, I think the analogy to acute marriage and family counseling is a much more truthful and fruitful metaphor to use in thinking, feeling and reacting to this question. Since the body of Christ is like a marriage and a family, Christ’s principles can flow directly into this analogy, while providing a secular or universal conceptualization for Americans.

I believe this analogy is useful for a number of reasons:

It maintains a sense of urgency for the aggrieved. Something must be done. Things cannot go on as they are, and the process of rectification will probably be acutely painful in the short term for all parties. Acute counseling involves situations in which one or more parties “can’t do it anymore.” A wife is threatening separation. A man is slipping into an affair. Kids want to emancipate at 16 and never talk to their parents again. Police are coming to the house because neighbors called them. Things are decisively, undeniably bad. In the New Testament, God frequently confronts our sin and instructs us to take it seriously when a brother or sister has a claim against us. We are not to avoid or stonewall God or people who call us to accept a true moral obligation we have failed to embrace.
It recognizes the critical nature and foundational need of building trust and good will between the divided parties. Our primal self needs to know things like, “Can I trust you? Do you like me? Are you a threat or an ally? Will you betray me?” In 25 years of counseling couples and families, I’ve learned that potential for recovery often comes down to whether or not you can do anything to recover trust or create good will. There is no future without finding love and good will and rejecting hatred and contempt. Everyone must recognize that after the initial confrontation and accusation, progress can only happen on the basis of trust and good will. Therefore, actions that undermine good will and trust cannot serve the end of greater justice.
It seeks to follow a workable path of incremental change on the foundation of the primal needs and core desires of the human person rather than expecting humans to conform to an ideological abstraction or inhuman ideas. Humane counseling must start with the basic psychological nature of human beings. Jesus understands the order of human healing. Real justice is to pursue repentance, then reconciliation, then healing, then a just environment. That’s the natural order of restoration. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in reverse. We may want justice now and personal growth and repentance later, but that’s not how it works. You can’t keep justice if you aren’t just yourself. If we are too impatient to follow this path, we will not achieve justice, let alone maintain it.
Christians show up for counseling because they know that hostile estrangement isn’t God’s desire. They may not desire reconciliation, but they also know that God demands it, and that division will be even worse. Scripture teaches everywhere that God faces inconceivable humiliation and disregard from the humanity he is pursuing for reconciliation. He does not wish to be estranged from his own creation, no matter how abominably we act. The full extent of this love is humiliated, sacrificial service, symbolized in Christ washing his disciple’s feet and demonstrated in his peaceful and willing death on the cross. This heart for reconciliation is perhaps the distinguishing mark of the person made new in Christ.
It recognizes the relationship as chronically anxious and dysfunctional and seeks to address its effects. Chronic anxiety in a family or society leads to many ills that are destructive to the whole and to the individuals. We respond reactively, leaving us to exchange unproductive blows, and we rush to emotional quick fixes rather than long-term solutions. People do not foster a strong sense of self, but take their identity from who they are in the group, or as their role in the family faction they are in. Scripture teaches that we are often driven by our anxieties, which it just calls “fear.” Our obsession with what Jesus calls “mammon”—materialist and selfish pursuits—easily displaces spiritual life, moral formation, and identity development, and therefore peace with God and creation. These lead to quick fixes that are faithless and immoral—what the Bible calls “sin.”
Both parties must recognize that their assessment of the problem is probably partial. By seeking out a third-party counselor, the couple concedes there is a perception gap in their unmanageable problems. The perception problem exists because their problems are beyond their analysis. Because they can’t understand them, both parties have reverted to self-justifying analogies for what the problem “really is,” which has led to a long train of mutual hurts and resentment. Scripture teaches everywhere that humans are suppressors of the truth (Romans 1:18). To be saved and reconciled, we have to open ourselves to the fact that our interpretation of ourselves and our lives is partial at best, and to some degree a self-deception.
It acknowledges the agency and moral responsibility of every individual, including the most victimized person. This perspective takes seriously the dignity of each person by holding all parties responsible for their own contributions and self-management, and it does so without minimizing the family’s dysfunction or systematic problems.
In acute counseling situations, the person most morally responsible to change is usually not the person who most needs to change. Jesus took the main responsibility for our redemption first, though he was the least morally obligated to do so. This is also true for his people. Moral exertion is a function of faith and courage. The more we are blinded by sin, the more we need to change, and the less likely we will on our own. We need to be won over by someone willing to humble themselves, sacrifice for us, and yet not be drawn into our sin. We need an inviting accusation. This is the only way we can be each other’s saviors.
It recognizes the necessity of individual differentiation. Change can only come when individual people refuse to be manipulated by the reactive system of chronic anxiety and become strong enough to emerge from the dysfunctional emotional systems of the group.

I believe that if we apply this analogy to our considerations of the current interracial strife, it will avoid the dangerous snares of our current analogies and guide us to practices that produce real and lasting remedies. No analogy will be complete in exhausting the meaning of anything in our lives. However, our foundational metaphor for anything will deeply affect how we relate to it emotionally.

Christians must use metaphors that include the very structure of the gospel at the foundation of our thinking rather than use a metaphor that keys in on something in Jesus’ ministry but ignores the larger structure and balancing ideas. We must try to use analogies that are true to the human condition, but that are careful to distinguish human nature from human corruption. By thinking in terms of trying to save a broken marriage, or healing a dysfunctional family, we can hold to many important priorities simultaneously that could otherwise be lost if we think in either of the prevailing analogies.

Pursuing Peace and Justice Through Reconciliation

I believe that the Christian pursuit of justice looks something like this: confrontation – repentance – reconciliation – restitution – justice. That is, Christians believe heartfelt forgiveness and reconciliation are fundamentally integral to our pursuit of the good. This is not to say that injustice cannot be pursued by force in certain situations. But it is to say that if we do this, we have won and lost, for though we have stopped a particular train of abuses, we have done so by harming and probably hardening the perpetrator, and by likely becoming a perpetrator of harm and injustice ourselves. These actions also tend to perpetuate division and disgust by forming new grievances and abuse on both sides of a conflict.

These are some of the many reasons Jesus called his people to imitate him in peacemaking by bearing suffering with him, loving our neighbors, and not taking vengeance on people who deserve it. Only by doing this through self-sacrificial, loving confrontation can we lead people to repentance, then reconciliation, then restitution, then justice. This way of seeking justice is both holistic (seeking all goods, not only justice) and idealistic (pursuing God’s moral goodness) rather than ideological (reasoning how reality should be without starting from reality itself). We are all called to rebel against the “reality” of sin and wickedness with the weapons of grace and truth, but we are not called to do it through means that misunderstand what human beings are, how they relate to each other, and what they need. To seek the ideal of justice Christianly, we must have a right view of God and a clear view of what human beings are, what theologians call a “Christian Anthropology.”

Until recently, Black ministers and Christian leaders figured heavily not only in the civil rights movement, but in the racial reconciliation movement. Reconciliation and forgiveness, being at the very heart of Christian faith, tended to be at the heart of these movements, even when they were engaging in “radical” protest. When Martin Luther King Jr. said he was working to help Americans live up to their own creed, he recognized that much of that creed was the Christian one. And within Christian faith lies an immovable foundation of forgiveness, which leads to reconciliation, which leads to fellowship. And when that fellowship would be truly produced through breaking down of all the walls of human hostility, we will experience the “beloved community” where we would all be free at last, judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.¹⁷ From a worldly perspective, the pursuit of victory by power—liberating yourself by subjugating your opponent¹⁸—seems vastly more expedient and satisfying than the pursuit of reconciliation under truth, but as people called by Christ’s name, we cannot escape that the latter is his unwavering calling for us.

Footnotes

Thinking in analogy is a form of thinking in abstraction. Not only is it only found in humans, but it is also used more and in increasingly sophisticated ways as human intelligence increases. This is also seen in human development. As children get older, their ability to understand abstractions and deeper analogies advances.
Because of this, it’s always good to specify how the analogy applies and where the similarity stops. Our minds like to make more and more connections, and without a limiting principle, an analogy can do more harm than good.
When I use the word “conservative” here, I am referring to most versions of classical conservatism. See the works of Roger Scruton or Russell Kirk. I am not talking about the new and much different coalition of Republican voters that voted for President Trump for populist reasons.
Important: almost no one is a complete traditionalist (change nothing, tradition is good) or revolutionary (change everything, tradition is bad). We almost always believe in some mixture between what should stay the same as goods we hold on to, and those we should change to remedy injustices. However, most people hold to one as their primary principle, and if wise, the other as a moderating principle. I’m labeling you on the basis of which is your primary principle. Usually this is also your mental reaction or presumptive feeling on such matters. It’s your internal default to social problems.
This account of the cause of poverty assumes a creative and open market that incentivizes entrepreneurship and enterprise. Unemployment can obviously be a problem caused by limited opportunities or unproductive employees (not to mention disincentivized employees through payments from government programs). Conservatives tend to focus on maximizing this dynamic of free enterprise: a creative and growing market with capable and productive employees. Hence, they favor decreased government regulations, low taxes, ease in starting businesses (especially small ones), and open exchange of property. This maximizes ownership and employment and helps people find ways out of poverty built on initiative and productivity, rather than income redistribution through a government. This allows the price system to let people hold each other mutually accountable to be productive. This view is articulated in: Grudem and Asmus, The Poverty of Nations.
Abnegation is renouncing pleasures for higher goods. For example, 34% of those making less than $10K a year watch more than 5 hours of TV per day. 1.1% of those making more than $150k do that. The relationships of screen watching and economic success are inversely correlated—the more you watch, the less money you make.
A famous study from the left-leaning Brookings Institution offers just three rules that lead to only 2% of people that follow them being poor: 1. Finish high school. 2. Get a full-time job, any full-time job, and work it. 3. Wait until age 21 to get married and have children. For many non-poor Americans, these do not seem like very difficult accomplishments. Therefore, natural feelings of empathy decrease if people won’t/can’t do these three things. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/
For many, you could replace “class struggle,” a la Marxism, for slavery. Early critical theorists saw race, rather than class as the main divide in the American system, as opposed to the hardened class system in many parts of Europe.
Most Americans, ignorant of macro-economic theory, are not familiar with the debate over economic value—whether it is rooted in how goods are valued by buyers (Adam Smith), or by how much labor went into the good (Karl Marx). This leads to arguments about where economic value comes from. People in the Marxist tradition tend to believe that value is added by the worker’s labor, rather than other factors related to achieving a voluntary market value like ownership assets, infrastructure, risk, creativity, experience, relationships, expertise, contingency expenses like insurance, etc. This is a dilemma as old as humanity: the worker wants “fair livable compensation,” and the buyer wants to pay “what it’s worth” to them. There is always a gap between those perceptions.
The analogy to the Boston tea party is interesting since the issue was supposed to be lack of representation in the governance of where the Bostonians lived, especially in economic affairs. The tax—3 pennies per pound of tea—was not particularly high. The act was a bailout to British commercial interests at the expense of colonial interests, or an act of “British Supremacy.” It’s also worth noting that George Washington said that “the cause of Boston…ever will be the cause of America” while still voicing strong disapproval toward their “conduct in destroying the tea.” In 1774, our first president was able to balance hearing the cry of protestors while rejecting their right to vandalism. Remember, Washington was himself sympathetic to the revolution.
The argument of “White fragility” is essentially that, because white people are not used to the emotional cost and confrontational dynamics of interracial conflicts, when confronted with such conflicts, many if not all white people engage in reactions that psychologists would call dysfunctional. Although I think the argument has some significant flaws and the phrase is intentionally demagogic, I also think the concept is too often an accurate description of our situation. I have observed for many years how all humans tend to be emotionally fragile in areas of conflict and tension to which they’re unaccustomed. While that may not account for this fragility entirely, I do believe it plays a significant role. We humans tend to be psychologically “in shape” for the conflicts we consistently face. Our minds and emotions are a lot like our physicality. So, if a white person who isn’t used to interracial strife or the dynamics of diversity is then confronted by it, human nature predicts that their likely behavior will be avoidant or defensive. You could say the same thing for people of any race or ethnicity in a different situation. It’s only a point about white people because of the particular situation in America. More foundationally, it’s true about white people only because it’s rooted in a fundamental dynamic shared by all human beings. We can easily talk about “liberal fragility” when a conservative speaks up on a university campus. Or “basketball player fragility” when wrestlers make fun of them from across the gym. We could even talk about “woke fragility” when someone questions a social activist’s stated truism or universalized attributions of their lived experience. It’s all fun and games until you are the one being called “fragile.” I freely admit that I have at times exhibited this phenomenon. And while we’re at it, I freely admit that I have exhibited many other kinds of human fragility. I do so much more regularly than I wish to admit, but since denial is even worse, I will admit it. Therefore, although I don’t think the label “White fragility” is very constructive, I think Christians can and should provisionally profit from this concept if it is rooted to a deeper understanding of human nature and the truth of the gospel.
Constant group anxiety and social dishonesty inhibits the development of an individual self. That development is called “differentiation.” By feeling the need to please others, agree with your tribe, hate the other tribe, pay lip service to the party line, say something is true that you believe is false, or believe it in cult-like purity, young people do not become complex and unique individuals who know who they are or where they stop and another begins. This horrible inability to develop a clear individual personality is, ironically, something Black civil rights leaders lamented under segregation. Leaders like Benjamin Mays, Howard Thurman, MLK, and others said the inability of, especially Black men, to develop their personality and masculinity under oppression was one of the worst losses of human capital and a catastrophic unseen oppression. Ironically, at nearly the same time, Alexander Solzhanitsyn, and other Caucasian Christians suffering under totalitarian socialism, were arguing the same degradations resulted from living by lies and in fear as perpetrators or victims.
Enforcing segregation and being subject to it were both psychologically and morally deforming to those in the regime. Booker T. Washington talks about this in his autobiography in his letter on lynching. He not only describes a destructive regime of fear and murder in lynching blacks, but he offers an extended section on the moral degradation the system had on Whites, especially White children. He says at one point, “I shall never forget the remark by a little nine-year-old white boy, with blue eyes and flaxen hair. The little fellow said to his mother after he returned from a lynching: ‘I have seen a man hanged; now I wish I could see one burned.’ Rather than hear such remarks from one of my little boys, I would prefer seeing him laid in his grave.”
This is incredibly important. When people simplify and problematize complex political, social, and economic realities with single stage thinking (if A is the problem, then not A is the solution), such sophomoric pride leads to a similar assessment of God’s governance of all things. This lack of piety utterly destroys the plausibility of the picture God has given of himself in Christ.
This is an important point for progressives, since they cannot convince conservatives of systemic injustice on mere group analysis alone. When we recognize Christian faith predicts a certain amount of corruption on a human and individual level, group corruption is much easier to see and has fewer emotional barriers.
However, corruption is only halted by a differentiated person, not necessarily a Christian. Many Christians are still caught in the reactive system of chronic anxiety/fear. Only a person who is truly independent and knows who they are and what their life means morally can risk themselves to take responsibility to reform corruption. Differentiated faith is the strongest form of this capacity, but unless the person with faith is strongly differentiated, they will not have the courage and clarity to make the needed decision and accept the inescapable risk and pain.
This is not to say that we would be colorblind. I know of no Black Christian leader who believes colorblindness is attainable, much less desirable. Just as the tribe and tongue of all nations could be recognized in the heavenly picture in the book of revelation, so the beloved community maintains its human, and probably even cultural, diversity. We would be seen in a way that included the color of our skin (and all that means). We just would never be judged by it.
It is true that in the 1950s and 60s, civil rights leaders believed that a radical approach, pursuing victory by power, was unattainable for American Blacks. That such tactics were suicidal, as well as wrong. However, most Black Christian leaders insisted that reconciliation was not just functionally necessary, but morally upright and theologically faithful.