When We Dehumanize Others While Fighting for Justice / April 29, 2018 by Robyn Rapske

"The natural/easy way of fighting for equality/justice is to dehumanize dehumanizers. But perhaps we could find a way to transcend that cycle"
Michael Gungor, May 2, 2016, Twitter

I regularly listen to Michael Gungor on a podcast he runs with three other podcasters, called The Liturgists. Having listened to most of their podcasts, I’ve seen that Michael is not always super great at what he suggested on May 2, 2016. He reacts to ‘dehumanizers’ in a somewhat unhelpful way, teetering over the line of grace and into unkind words.

However, he has surrounded himself, at least on that podcast, with people who see beyond his human instincts of dehumanizing the dehumanizers. The other podcasters, as well as guests they invite to speak, generally keep each other in line. Within friendship and accountability, they always come to a more gracious point together.

I see that in many people, including myself. Blind to how we dehumanize others on our unique journeys towards justice and equality for the oppressed.

I began to notice this in myself more when I started to get involved in the lives of people from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

In my fourth year of university, I volunteered with a group of women who came down to the DTES to offer hot chocolate and prayer to women in the survival/street sex trade industry. I don’t know how helpful we were in anything we did, but maybe God used us anyways.

One time I felt shattered as I saw a fancy car driven by a man, pick up a woman, so he could pay her for the use of her body. I seethed with anger and hatred against that man, and all men who would ask a vulnerable woman to dehumanize herself to distract himself from his own sick soul. All I could see was a woman struggling to survive amidst trauma and pain, and a man taking advantage of her struggle to use her as an object.

At that time, this event solidified my hatred for men who would do this, rich or poor. I could only see them as an oppressor. I could not see their humanness at all.

Luckily God works well into the depths of our sins, and he gradually showed me how my dehumanizing of the ‘oppressor’ was not in his will. It’s not even helpful for my goals of bettering lives for vulnerable women.

This happened in many ways, but a major influencing factor was learning the stories of men in the recovery program attached to the organization I now work at. The organization I work at is on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, where every street corner nearby has vulnerable women selling the use of their bodies. The recovery program attached to our program works with many of the men in the area who were previously the pimps to vulnerable women, or who paid for women to have sex with them.

These men were coming into our recovery program and revealing the horrid sickness they had been hiding within their souls, and how much pain they were in. They were in severe addiction to substances, and their relationships were devoid of health and goodness. The solution? Love, Acceptance, and New Life. Their remorse and apologies for previous hurtful behaviours, including paying vulnerable women for sexual services, slowly had the opportunity to heal them, as they were shown such grace and love in our program. Listening to their stories has chipped away at my hard heart towards men like them.

I was waiting at a bus stop sometime after just getting a job at the organization I’m now at, when a man who had gone through recovery started talking to me. I don’t think he knew that I worked in the same organization that he had found this recovery through, but he struck up a conversation with me about his freedom from addiction anyways. He included the fact that he used to think it was fine to treat women like objects, and said he regularly paid women for sex. Now, through his recovery, he realized it was hurtful both to the woman and to himself, and was finding freedom from that realization.

I still get the gut instinct of hatred towards those cars stopping by, or the men who strike up a conversation about sex with a woman in street prostitution. But when that fades, I also see a man who is sick, and in pain. He may not admit it, but I know that God sees his pain, loneliness, and/or anxiety, and if I do as well, maybe I can be more useful in helping him stop the dehumanizing behaviours.

It doesn’t mean that I have to condone behaviours I disagree with, but it does mean that I can see the humanity in all, not just in the people I’m defending.

Not only is this a relational, healing way of approaching dehumanizers, but in a more pragmatic way, it seems like it could be more useful for the goals of those wishing to bring forward justice.

Have you ever been dehumanized by someone because they disagree with your behaviour? It sucks! Even if you secretly agree with the behaviour being wrong, being treated that way hurts.

I remember a conversation with a Greenpeace advocate in California many years ago. It was a conversation full of judgement towards me, hatred of my choices, and zero care for my well-being in that moment. It brought absolute stubbornness in my soul to their message, out of self-preservation instincts against their attacks.

However, a few years later, I unexpectedly won a book at a justice conference, called “Planted”, written by a wonderful woman, Leah Kostamo, who runs environmental work in BC. In the book, she was gracious, honest, kind, and she understood, even related to, the conflict many of us have with environmental decisions, and how hard it is to involve a better earth into the daily, practical needs of our lives. And what was my response to her love, respect, and her efforts to see the best in her readers? I was inspired to make changes in my life.

I gradually went from driving to work, to then bussing to work, and then to cycling (rain or shine!). I cycled for two whole years to work and back, and when I became ill, I went back to bussing to work for a further eight months. I directly attribute this decision to the words of Leah Kostamo. Her kind, understanding, realistic words. I continue to make better efforts of what food I buy, what clothing I buy, and other small efforts towards environmentalism because of her kindness. What a vast difference to how I responded to the Californian Greenpeace woman who could only see me as an unjust object against the environment. To Leah Kostamo, I was a human who was worth love and respect, and she offered me non-judgemental inspiration to be a better human.

It may not work to cause change and growth instantly in everyone’s life, and we don’t have continue to be in the company of those who hurt us if it’s too traumatizing, but still, I think we can have much more hope in our future if we treat the person we disagree with more humanely. Whether in our person-to-person interactions, our posts on social media, or our conversations with others about them.

Questions to consider:

Have you ever felt dehumanized by someone else for your life’s decisions and felt defensiveness or stubbornness?

Have you dehumanized someone else because they do something you disagree with? Does it actually work in changing that person’s decisions?

The Clumsy Efforts of Reconciliation in One White Life Part 1 / April 22, 2018 by Robyn Rapske

Senator Murray Sinclair said “Getting to the truth was hard. Getting to reconciliation is going to be harder” Full talk here

I, like much of Canada through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, have been told a lot of the truths of systemic racism in Canada against Indigenous people, being exposed to the realities that were hidden from my eyes for so long. But that is just the beginning. Reconciliation is hard, reconciliation is messy. It’s confusing, it’s difficult, and it’s ongoing. I will be stubborn, uncomfortable, stressed about it. Others will also deal with it that way. Different people will have different perspectives on how it looks. It happens in relationships, within workplaces, within our choices of industry, through our decisions of language. It’s going to be revealed through so many levels. It will take a lot of time, effort, bravery, and humility.

But it is possible, and it is important. My faith is that God has a way.

Sarah Bessey speaks about the similarity of reconciliation in Canada, to God reconciling his church back to himself through Jesus Christ. She says:

"Christ’s death and resurrection is the story of the greatest reconciliation, the end of our separation from God. Could we truly be that ambassador of reconciliation without reconciliation between one another?”
Sarah Bessey, 2018, Read more here

Our individual and corporate reconciliation with Jesus was made possible through his resurrection, but it is also ongoing, confusing at times, within relationships, and full of mistakes.

Reconciliation in Canada between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people will look similar.

I believe, SO STRONGLY, that God, our Creator, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, cares about this reconciliation within his children. I believe that, if I ask him how to be part of reconciliation, he will answer that prayer and guide me. I also believe that all Canadians can be part of it.

So right now I’m writing about my mistakes, my learning, and my next steps here, if you’d like to walk along with me.

Disclaimer: This is an honest reflection on reconciliation as I’ve learned so far in my life. Just as the efforts I write about have been clumsy and sometimes ill-advised, this blog itself may reflect that clumsiness. I apologize to anyone who sees glaring evidence of my colonial brain still in action. I’ll keep trying, and feel free to kindly discuss with me my mistakes.

How It All Began For This One White Life

In 2010 I graduated from my undergrad degree. It was coinciding with a time that I was trying to become a Christian again after a hiatus. I was single, living at my parents, debt-free (phew!), and jobless, with absolutely no plans.

It was then that I had some offers of going to some African countries with acquaintances. At the time, I barely knew either of the people who offered to have me along on their adventures, but I had asked God to do something with my life, and I figured I’d go along with these opportunities he was dropping in my lap.

What happened on this trip, which changed me forever, was visiting South Africa, and learning about Apartheid.

Apartheid. The dreaded system of oppression which Nelson Mandela and thousands of others fought and ended. I saw how it left its horrible mark within every level of society within the country. Extreme poverty in Black communities. Explicit racism that still within White Afrikaners.

Why did this change me so much? Because I found out that South Africa’s institutional segregation and discrimination had been inspired by, and modelled after, Canada’s Indian Act! We still have the Indian Act in place, despite some alterations. It’s even still called that today, a phrase that is not appropriate to say anymore. The last Residential School only closed in 1996. I was eight years old when it ended. Apartheid ended in 1994 when I was six.

It was the first time I felt real shock over the realities of Indigenous people in Canada

(Sidebar: I choose here to use the word “Indigenous” to encompass Inuit, Métis, and First Nations people of Canada. Each Indigenous person has a preferred way of identification, but for the purposes of this post, I choose this term because, as Cheryl Bear-Barnetson describes, this term relates to the concept of naturally originating in a specific place, and belonging to that specific place. She says that it implies Indigenous people were here first, are rooted in the land, and have a sense of belonging within the lands they stewarded for thousands of years. (Bear-Barnetson, p. 26)*)

After my trip, I was inspired to apply for a Social Work program at University of Victoria, where I learned even more about the awful past and present things that Indigenous people deal with. I started to have conversations with people about the state of things.

With this new knowledge, I started getting angry. I was so upset that most of circle of friends and family weren’t doing something to change it all. I got pretty riled up at a relative regarding residential schools one Christmas Eve, which I didn't handle well at all. It was a time of directionless passion to make the world better for Indigenous people.

I attended a Truth and Reconciliation event at my church during that time, which involved a documentary screening and a representative of the Mennonite Central Committee and his Indigenous wife answering some very uncomfortable questions by our congregants. I couldn’t believe the bravery of the Indigenous woman facing some pretty judgemental ignorance from some people.

That night, after the event, I drove to my car to a parking alone, and wept.

There are lots of reasons to weep, but I was actually weeping for my own selfish reasons.

I wept because I felt so unable to help the situation. But I so badly wanted to do more. I wanted to support Indigenous people, but knew no way of doing that well. If I charged in to situations I wasn’t invited to, proclaiming ideas of my own, I was just continuing colonization in a modern context. I knew very few Indigenous people, and even if I knew more, I wouldn’t know how to ask what I should do to support them well. I also made a pretty poor ally when trying to convince my fellow White people to care about the issues as much as me.

In my car, alone in the parking lot, I literally begged God to let me do something more to help the situation.

It’s been almost 8 years since I visited South Africa, and I’m so glad to say he is slowly and faithfully answering that cry in the parking lot. I haven’t ended up educating groups of White people on the changes needed for Indigenous people in Canada. I didn’t end up creating programs that support Indigenous people. I didn’t even attend a lot of events benefiting Indigenous movements. Each step for the journey so far has been small and cautious, but as gradual as it’s been, I feel like I’ve moved forwards.

Right now I get to do an incredible job in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, sitting with women of all races and ethnicities, including Indigenous, offering support in their crises. We provide necessary things like food, hygiene items, clothing and gift cards. But the most important part, and my favourite part, is what we call ‘holding space’ for women. We are available to talk in a safe place, with a non-counselling setting, showing care for their stories. I get to act out Jesus’s love to women in a way that fits perfectly with my skills. I can set aside time to listen to, affirm, pray with, and encourage Indigenous women who have ended up in poverty, addiction or sex-work as a result of the painful history of colonization. I feel incredibly honoured to be there. I wanted so deeply to do anything to help.

I’m working towards more, and this is where I am now.

One of the things that I’ve realized about God along the way, is that our cultures don’t confine him, and yet they are part of how he created us. He is both free from them, and yet working deeply within them. He gave us the beautiful ability to have cultures, and yet he continues to be bigger and better than them.

“God is not colorblind, our Creator invented color, distinctiveness, and diversity”
Cheryl Bear-Barnetson, pg. 24*

I am from a very individualistic culture, which means that my personal journey of vocation (above) is very important to me. And yet, what is required for reconciliation is a path that doesn’t just acknowledge, but gets changed by, the more collectivist culture of Indigenous people. I know that generalizations are never fully correct, plenty of Indigenous people, especially in modern context, are like all of us, a unique blend of a variety of influences. Also many White people are much more collectivist than other White people. But what I mean to say is that somehow God sees us in each of our individual desires and hopes, and also sees the greater troubles of Canada’s cultural divides, and in his wisdom can reconcile these all towards healing and goodness.

I believe that, somehow, God is both working out the story of myself growing into my vocation as an individual, and at the same time also building my story as a White ally being changed by the efforts towards reconciliation.

Stay tuned.

*Bear-Barnetson, C. (2013) "Introduction to First Nations Ministry" Cleveland, Tennessee. More info here.

One Month of Biblical Healing Stories? / April 11, 2018 by Robyn Rapske

On March 1st of this year, I attended a spiritual retreat focused on the concept of ‘resiliency’ held at the Carey Centre on UBC campus. My work sends staff to classes and retreats like this so we don’t burn out. I’m glad of it.

These kinds of experiences tend to be encouraging, but can also bring a challenge, if you’re open to it.

This time around, I found a challenge, and decided to take it.

A coworker that has since landed a dream job elsewhere, is an outgoing soul. I’m going to stereotype here and say she probably grew up in a pentecostal church, or else in a very charismatic version of another denomination. It gives a bit of context for my reaction to her words.

We were in a small group discussion together. I told her about my Graves’ Disease, which I was diagnosed with in April 2017 and unexpectedly gained remission from by October 2017. I then described the Post-Concussion Syndrome I developed in January of this year and continue to deal with. I was chatting about the lessons I’ve learned through this experience.

After I spoke, she said I needed to ask God for healing.

My instinct was to give her a very hearty eye roll. But I didn’t, because I try not to be rude.

She went on to describe her own physical healing from an illness. She had proclaimed God’s power of healing over her body, and had told doctors that she would not suffer because God would heal her. She was healed, and she believed I could be too.

While she spoke, the top thoughts in my head were:

I am so awkward around this charismatic Christian–my stoic, Mennonite church background can’t handle it.
Do I even believe in physical healings?
I have heard miraculous healing stories from friends so… maybe it is possible to have physical healing?
Am I going to offend her by not responding to her in an equally charismatic way??

I hushed myself up (to be polite), and listened further.

She summed up her talk by giving me a task. She said I should read the bible and find all the passages where people were physically healed, and I should pray over each one, asking for my own healing. I was to do this for the entire month of March.

Mostly to avoid being rude (again, that tendency of mine!), I said I would.

From March 1st to 31st, I diligently found stories of physical healing in the bible, wrote them in my journal, pondered them, and prayed healing over myself.

As I write this, it is April 4th, and no, I am not physically healed.

I have had a bad headache for a week straight, and I have huge anxiety that Graves’ Disease is on it’s way back into my thyroid.

So why tell this tale?

Because I learned some interesting things regarding God’s character as I read over these stories, which are the following:

(Disclaimer: Each person with chronic illness has a very different experience of life, and therefore will respond to the idea of “Healings” differently as well, so this is just my personal thoughts. I don’t pretend everyone with chronic illness would believe the things I learned below.)

God cares a lot about my physical wellness

In his very short time ministering on earth, Jesus healed SO many people! I stuck to stories where demons were not said to be creating the illness, and tried to cross-reference between the gospels so I only touched on each healing story once. And with this, found 22 stories of Jesus healing. That’s a lot if you consider that many of those stories included more than one person healed. He could have spent that time teaching, or doing something else more ‘heavenly’ minded.

In my ongoing health ups and downs God cares deeply for what my body and I are going through.

God lets physical healing interrupt ministry and the laws

Most of the 22 times Jesus was healing people, those who were suffering sought him out in their desperation, very much interrupting his work. At one point, two blind men at the roadside were making such a loud ruckus that the crowd around Jesus started rebuking them. It says “but they cried out all the more, ‘Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!’”. Jesus stopped the whole parade of people to speak with them, hear their pain, and heal them (Matt. 20:29-34). At one point he shows the Pharisees that it’s more important to have compassion on the sick than to follow the rules of the Sabbath they so strongly held to (Mark 3:1-6). In Luke 5:17-39 a man is so desperate for healing that his friends cut a hole into the very house where Jesus is teaching. That’s about as disruptive as you can get, and Jesus rolls with it, hears his pain, and heals him. Matthew 21:12-14 speaks of the time when he tore apart the temple tables and kicked out the pigeon sellers and money-changers. Whatever they were doing, he wanted it replaced with the “blind and the lame”, who entered shortly after, and he promptly began healing them.

This year while I’ve had to take lots of time off work, I’ve struggled a lot with the pain of being unable to do as much of the ministerial job I love, as much socializing as I desire, and as much activism as I’d want. I was unable to do the things that I value as good works. The stories above make me think that it’s okay that seeking healing has interrupted the ministry and tasks I care about.

God has compassion for the unique context of each person (especially women!)

This one was particularly wonderful to read about. Jesus came across a widow whose only son had just died. Death is hard for everyone, but the cultural context for that woman meant she, without the two men she was attached to, was now in a desperate economic situation. Jesus “had compassion on her” and raised the son from the dead (Luke 17:11-19). He also healed Hannah through her barrenness, understanding what that meant for women in the time (1 Samuel 1:9-20). Similarly, he healed Rebekah’s barrenness in Genesis 25:21, and Sarah’s in Genesis 21:1. It’s hard enough to deal with barrenness when one wishes desperately to have a child, but I think the true suffering of theirs was to also have the immense pressure of the cultural context. God saw them and brought healing to them.

The reason these resonate with me, is because I’ve witnessed many people forget cultural context for people in suffering, and God himself showed compassion to the cultural context of these women. My own contextual pain matters to him.

Generally, Jesus waits to be asked for healing

It was interesting to realize that most of the time people came to Jesus requesting help, expressing their pain to him, he did not force it on them. In John 5 he even explicitly asks “Do you want to be healed?” to a man at the healing pool.

This one hit me mostly because of the ever troublesome Ableism I’m trying to be taught more about. These people who sought healing desired it and wanted so desperately to be freed of their struggles. He didn’t force it on them, telling them what was wrong with their bodies. I’ve heard stories of well-intentioned Christians praying for healing over a child with Down’s Syndrome when the parent didn’t ask for it, or seeking healing for Autistic folks who don’t feel that they need healing. Jesus cared enough to ask. He cared about our opinions of our bodies. Many people find beautiful life even through their physical differences, as long as society adapts to them (as I think we should).

God uses the healings for a bigger purpose

Multiple times he uses healing to show that he is God, as a part of the bigger picture to show them he is the Messiah. He even raises multiple people from the dead. It’s one thing to alter aspects of an alive body, but if you know how much brain damage and deterioration of a body happens immediately after death, he HAS to be divine to bring someone back from that. Many times the stories say people understood he was God by seeing miracles of healing. The disciples also did their best to attribute the power to God when they healed others, to be able to proclaim the gospel.

So, through our experiences of healing, or of pain, there can be redemption for a greater purpose. Maybe I was always going to get injured, and deal with an autoimmune disease like Graves’, but he has the ability to use whatever goes on in the body for greater purposes.

So, what does this all mean for me?

1. God cares about the pain my body and I are going through. He cares about the times of extreme fatigue, he cares about the on-and-off headaches, he cares about the pain my eyes get from too much light, he cares about the stress I feel when I see signs of Graves’ Disease coming back. He has compassion for my experience.