Shifting our Rhetoric: Learning from the Countercultural Christ by Feleceia Benton

This week’s guest blogger is Feleceia Benton. Feleceia, also known as Zoe’s Momma, is a Dallas-based songstress and TCU grad with a BFA in musical theater and BS in Advertising/Public Relations. She is the owner of the Zoe Communications Agency, Editor-in-Chief of Elisia Magazine, and host of LifeChat Radio, an internet radio show on ThaAfterParty.com. She’s performed with almost every professional theater company in North Texas including Dallas Opera, Bass Hall, Casa Mañana, Lyric Stage, Water Tower Theater and Dallas Theater Center, and is an active choreographer and playwright. She recently published her first book, Lessons From Five Fingers: 21 Life Lessons from the Book of Zoe, now available on Amazon. Feleceia frequents DFW stages and places that serve brunch with her little girl, Zoe. You can find out more about her at ZoeSaysHello.com.

Every Christ follower is looking an answer.

Scrolling through Facebook the past few weeks, I’ve seen a whole lot of opinion, but not a whole lot of Word.

Opinion. Opinion, opinion, opinion. Opinion.

Perhaps that is because the things we need to do are not things we want to do. We cast blame on the condition of our country and think that if we tell people how angry we are, then suddenly the world will shift and all will give pause to the Black cause…or the White cause…or the Hispanic cause…all the causes.

I’m not so sure if that solution is working out well for us.

What happens when your mom or dad or spouse tell you how angry they are at you and how tired you make them feel? Does that make you want to do better? What if the thing they’re mad about is the way you’ve been for years? Most people would say, “You knew what you were getting when you married me, so just get over it.”

America is steeped in years of hate that seems inescapably engrained deeply into the veins of our country.

We were forced into slavery, so we hate.

They stole their country, so they hate.

Their son can’t become a citizen, so they hate.

We hate them, so they hate us back.

And then our children hate. And their children hate. And hate continues to run through our veins.

Take a look at your own family: are there generational “issues” that don’t seem to die? Let me answer that question for you.

Yes.

And unless you choose to stop them, they’ll continue to live on through the course of your family’s existence.

What if I told you that the remedy for the race epidemic in America is to make this not about race? Now this won’t work for folks who don’t call themselves Christ-followers, because without the universal power of His spirit, this is nearly impossible. Racial reconciliation…reconciliation of any kind is usually IMPOSSIBLE without the redeeming POWER of the shed blood of Christ Jesus. There is POWER in the blood, without which this attempt is null. This is why no attempt at reconciliation in our county in the past has lasted.

It can’t come from the government. It must come through the Church.

“If any man  belongs to Christ, He is a new person” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

There is a new culture to which those of us who follow Christ belong, and with that culture comes an entirely new set of principles, a new outlook on life, one that forces us to think, look and act beyond our visual cultural constraints.

Consider the very nature of the purpose of Jesus’ coming. For whom did He come? Jesus was born into cultural constrictions evidenced by the stirring tension in that part of the world at the time. It’s bad now, it was bad then. Yet the countercultural Christ came to give His life for the very people who murdered Him. This is the likeness of Christ — the man we are meant to emulate. His impact on culture has lived on across waters and penetrated borders and hearts for thousands of years.

So, how do we shift?

Simple.

We embrace the identity of the nature of Christ. We unite in Christian unity not just through prayer vigils and walks and rallies, but in our everyday lives. We work together. We live together. We break bread together. We fellowship together. We fight together. We intentionally work to create community that reflects the unique beauty of the diversity of the body of Christ

Change does not come without intentionality. A seismic shift will never occur until we individually make the choice to do the same things differently. To see our brothers differently. To “let love abide.”

Setting ourselves aside is hard — I know. We are hurt, broken, scared, frustrated. I get that. But living hurt and defeated is not who we were created to be. He overcame. We can, too. We will, too, “by the blood of the lamb and the Word of our testimony,” we will too. And do you know what will happen when we LIVE Christ? He’ll be exalted and the world will know us because of the fruit we bear.

Our Scriptural script for life is laden with solutions, giving us no need to rely on our own understanding. Being a Christ-follower doesn’t make the solution easy, but it does make it possible.

Do we live in a county steeped in racial bigotry?

Yes.

Are we helping to perpetuate our own stereotypes to the world as a country?

Yes.

This, my friends, is a trick and a distraction. And if we are not conscious, we’ll create lines in the sand that didn’t before exist.

If the church falls prey to perpetuating our societal framework of black and white, we loose. But if our song becomes about people, the race that wins is the human one.