I began this blog to address two things that are under the radar as people in general, and Christians in particular, think about life and faith today: worldview and paradox. Here is a story of worldview and how it may be changed.  

No one following the national news has missed the reports of growing acts of hate against particularly African Americans and Muslims since the election of Donald Trump. If one’s proclivity is to downplay or discount such stories, one might easily dismiss them as media ‘bias’ or ‘exaggeration.’  I, however, have first-hand access.

A good friend of mine teaches at a well-known Midwestern university. It is a classic college town, with a leafy campus and an all-American town square centered around a courthouse with a Civil War memorial. Yet this all-American town has also become a scene of hate, even violent hate.

A black woman was walking down a street when white men shouted at her, in her words:   “As they sped their truck up on me, they rolled their window down and yelled: ‘F*** you n***** b****,” she wrote.  “Trump is going to deport you back to Africa’.  In my 33 years of life, I’ve never had blatant racism shown to me than in that moment.”

A student at the university was arrested after yelling racial slurs and then attacking a 47-year old Muslim woman sitting at an outside table at a downtown Turkish Café.  Why did he attack her? He wanted to rip off her hard scarf.

In this environment, my friend tells the story of one of her Muslim students who came to see her.  This young woman was terrified for her safety after white students shouted obscenities at her while she was simply walking across campus. My friend gave the student her cell phone number and told her to call her whenever she felt threatened, anytime day or night. She also offered to drive and pick her up if she felt in an unsafe situation.A small act of kindness.  I’m proud of my friend for offering it.

But it fits into a larger picture.  Our worldviews are built of such small daily acts—both positive and negative, both initiated by us and received by us.  These small daily experiences are then organized into larger narratives that give them an overarching coherence.  These narratives become the lenses or filters through which we then perceive reality—our worldview.

One rightly asks: how could an all-American town be ground zero for such hateful episodes? The answer is some people living out a narrative which tells them their own social pain (and the anger it creates) can be alleviated by directing it outward toward certain classes of “others.”  A tiny fraction have always been this way. My guess is that this election season gave others this new narrative and permission to act it out.

Will my friend’s small act of kindness change the narrative behind the white men taunting her student? No. They will never know about it. For worldviews to change, an accumulation of experiences moving against the reigning narrative must grow until a person begins to question the accuracy of that narrative.  This will take other small acts, their friends and perhaps total strangers showing them acts of hate are not acceptable (and further, do not solve their core social pain).

But her small act of kindness will make a difference to the worldview of that one student. It is a reinforcement that America is not a land of bigotry, that our national ideals are still intact. Such small acts of kindness are needed now more than ever.  One person can make a difference.

Want to Hear More?

Subscribe and receive all my posts about the intersections of faith and life. You'll also receive my regular newsletter. 

Join Now!

You have Successfully Subscribed!