![\"White](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/687\/2016\/12\/White-2-1024x512.png\")
Last year, I went on a Bus Ride with 10 black preachers and 10 white preachers to visit all the civil rights sites in Alabama. It was an incredible\u00a0bonding experience that changed my life in more ways than one.<\/p>\nLast year, I went on a Bus Ride with 10 black preachers and 10 white preachers to visit all the civil rights sites in Alabama. It was an incredible\u00a0bonding experience that changed my life in more ways than one.<\/p>\n
Every night, we\u2019d eat dinner and share stories.<\/p>\n
One of those nights, I told a funny story that I often tell in those kind of get-to-know-you moments about how, while I was in\u00a0college, Leslie and I had a cop pull us over with a few other cars for speeding on the Insterstate. But after I pulled over, Leslie said she didn\u2019t think that he was pulling me over too, but was just trying to get me out of the way so that he could get those other cars.<\/p>\n
Her logic made sense, so I, being a law abiding citizen, put on my blinker to merge back onto the highway and drove off.<\/p>\n
As we passed the police officer we waved, and he apparently disagreed with Leslie\u2019s read\u00a0on things, because he threw his hands up in the air and ran back to his patrol car where he immediately punched the gas and sped up to catch us.<\/p>\n
I pulled over, of course, and he gets me out of the car, throws me up against it and begins to frisk me while yelling some very choice words, while I\u2019m trying to explain that we weren\u2019t trying to run from him.<\/p>\n
When I was telling this story, my black friends were laughing so hard, picturing me getting thrown up against the side of our car and handcuffed.<\/p>\n
But then I told them about how after a few seconds the police officer realized that we were telling the truth, and how he didn\u2019t arrest me, but actually wound up laughing with us and took a picture with us and even gave me one of those Junior deputy stickers.<\/p>\n
And my black preacher friends weren\u2019t laughing anymore.<\/p>\n
Because what I had just told them was no longer a story about a funny misunderstanding, it was a stark example of white privilege. Those few seconds that it took to explain the misunderstanding were a privilege that I had, and suddenly I had to realize it wasn\u2019t one extended to everyone.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite preachers is a guy named Don MacGlaughlin from Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Don has dedicated his life to the church and racial reconciliation. As a father of both white and black children, Don has had two different kinds of parenting experiences.<\/p>\n
His white children have been treated the way most middle-class white children are treated by the police, his black son however has been pulled over, cuffed and held in the back seat of a cruiser for crimes like \u201clooking out of place in a nice neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first he thought it was just bad luck, but when it happened repeatedly he began to realize that this was something more than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.<\/p>\n
At the same time, it was something that was hard to blame on anyone, police officers just taking precautions, perhaps unaware that their intuition was misfiring. It was, in the language of Scripture, principalities and powers, and so Don confronted the Atlanta police department, and then taught his church how to learn from each other.<\/p>\n
Don says that the most important thing that Christians can do is listen to each other, and when we hear someone say something that is offensive, don\u2019t react. Just learn to say these three words: \u201cTell me more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because chances are, if we can see the world from their perspective it might help us to understand how to bear each others burdens\u2026and what that would even look like.<\/p>\n
I never really thought of my whiteness as a\u00a0privilege, until I started listening to my friends of color, people that I trusted, telling me their own story and realized that their experiences didn\u2019t match up with my own.<\/p>\n
This is why I believe so much in the local church. I believe that when we hear each others stories and step into other people\u2019s shoes we become aware of how the world needs to change.<\/p>\n
Andy Crouch in his book, \u201cPlaying God\u201d tells a story about being in the airport in Mumbai, waiting in a long line of tired passengers to go through customs. After only a few minutes in the line, he was singled out, taken to the front where he was ushered into India in a matter of moments. And it slowly dawned on him, they did this for me because I was a white, American male. He had done nothing to deserve this, he was not more special than the other passengers, nor was he in a greater hurry. He was just standing there being white, and being white meant that he got to go to the front of the line.<\/p>\n
But then Crouch makes this observation:<\/p>\n
What really has haunted me is this question: How many times have I been put at the front of the line without even knowing there was a line?<\/strong><\/p>\n Crouch believes that privilege is neutral, and sometimes even beneficial. If the right people are given privilege, and if they use their influence for the sake of the whole, then it can be useful for the common good, but first we have a to step back and ask the question: \u201cWhat privilege have I been given with my life? And what am I going to do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m white, and I\u2019m grateful for my family, my heritage and even the resources that I\u2019ve been given due to nothing I\u2019ve done on my own. But in the Scriptures, it is precisely the people who have inherited resources (privilege) that are called to account for how they use it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m always going to be white, but that doesn\u2019t mean I have to be bad at it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year, I went on a Bus Ride with 10 black preachers and 10 white preachers to visit all the civil rights sites in Alabama. It was an incredible\u00a0bonding experience that changed my life in more ways than one. Every night, we\u2019d eat dinner and share stories. One of those nights, I told a funny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2768,"featured_media":873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n