those flags

Originally Published in the The South Jetty Newspaper

Part of my work as a priest is to invite people to live intentionally; to pay attention to who they are, what they have received, and then to make conscious decisions about how they are becoming the people God has made them to be. Part of my own journey has been to understand what it meant for me to grow up in a small East Texas town, and to be aware of the explicit and implicit lessons I learned in those formative years. My high school was quite diverse, and I had classmates of different racial, ethnic, economic, and religious backgrounds. From time to time, something either in our town or form the wider world would raise tensions among my classmates, or at least evoke conversation. I remember distinctly hearing a white friend and a black friend pondering if they would take sides if a race fight broke out in our school. Then we all went to math class. 

Another time, in middle school, about the time Spike Lee's movie Malcolm X came out, some of my classmates wore t-shirts from the movie. Another classmate wore a shirt with the battle flag of the Confederate Army; the caption read, "You wear your X, I'll wear mine." Whenever asked about why that X flag of the Confederacy is flown, people often say they are just proud of being from the south. It has been my personal experience that that flag represents hatred and racism almost as powerfully as the swastika. The swastika has pre-Nazi roots that are not associated with hate, but now it carries that energy as, for many, the Confederate flag carries a message of hatred and racism with it. 

I was discussing the abundant presence of those flags on the beach in Port Aransas with a friend who is a second generation descendant of immigrants, as I am (his family from Mexico, mine from Europe.) He quipped, "I'm glad when people fly that flag! I know who to avoid. It's the bigots who don't make themselves known that I worry about." Point taken. 

The presence of those flags so proudly displayed still makes me hurt for God's fractured human family. Its presence creates a tolerance for oppressive symbols and language that helps fuel racism. I worked in Jasper Texas the summer before James Byrd was dragged to death. That summer I heard racist jokes almost every day, usually preceded by the statement, "I'm not racist but..." Now I am glad that I spoke up to my coworkers and asked them not to tell those jokes around me, even though they gave me a hard time about it. The trouble came not from those guys making jokes, it came from someone who heard other people making jokes, or perhaps flying a flag, and interpreted it as endorsing racism. 

God created us in God's own image. (Gen. 1.27) In God's wonderful and boundless creativity it takes so many different people of different races, languages, ethnicity, and perspectives to express God's image. The stubborn presence of that confederate battle flag points back to a failed attempt in our (relatively recent) history to divide God's family and impose an oppression that scripture shows God continually overturns. Christ himself being the ultimate unifier. Christians know: "...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God...There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3.26-28) We, of course, live in a particular place and time, but the only tribe we truly belong to is that of Christ. 

What literal or metaphorical flags are you currently flying? In what ways are you helping to unify the kingdom of God, and heal God's human family? With gratitude to my hometown and home state, I hope to be intentional about what I grow out of, and what I carry forward.