Testimony
by Anna Laura Grant
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Good morning! Having the opportunity to address the whole church is pretty daunting. While I make my living speaking in front of high schoolers as a teacher, adults can make me pretty nervous. I’ve thought and prayed for a while about what part of my testimony I should share in the next couple minutes, so thank you for listening.
I’ll start with an exercise I use in dialogues I facilitate. I’m going to tell you 3 things you might not know about me by just looking at me:
First, I listen almost exclusively to gospel music, my favorite songs on repeat loudly, and my neighbors know it. In fact, I’ve got Kirk Franklin blasting as I write these words.
Second, I’m bicultural. My mom is an immigrant from Italy, and I’ve grown up in both worlds, switching language and cultural norms based on my environment. I actually had to repeat preschool because my English wasn’t good enough when we moved back from Italy.
Third, a dark confession I want to make… when I was a preschooler, I was a bully. I have very clear memories of making fun of people, young and old, for things they couldn’t control, from their names to their skin color. I have no idea where this evil came from or where I learned to talk about people in that way. It certainly wasn’t from my parents, who dedicated their lives to working in cross cultural settings with international students. While I know I was only a child, it honestly still haunts me.
My story of conversion starts there, as a 5 year old bully. Something happened between then and elementary school. I have faint memories of praying to have Jesus in my heart, and throughout the years, this bully changed into a social justice activist.
With this newfound basis of morality came a strong sense of right and wrong, and the sin of pride that comes along with it. By college, I had it all figured out. I was a Justice Studies major, had gone on multiple mission trips around the world, and had organized protests and petitions. My faith backed up my actions, and I was confident in what I “knew.” From college to adulthood, God showed me, however, how much I needed others to really understand the gospel and bring me face to face with my own sin.
I “knew,” for example, that Muslim women were oppressed and needed help. Then, I roomed my sophomore year with a devout Muslim exchange student from Cairo. She assured me she was not oppressed, that wearing a hijab was her choice, and that she did it out of love for God, even if she got judged for it. The dedication with which she prayed 5 times a day put me to shame. It was through my relationship with her that I saw what beautiful, committed faith really looks like.
I also “knew” that equality for African Americans had come as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. While people should know that White privilege existed and race was a made up construct, there weren’t really any issues with race in American society today. I was living in Spain when Trayvon Martin was killed and largely unaware of what was going on in the US then. A year after I moved back to America, Michael Brown was shot and the pain and unrest in Ferguson was on everyone’s mind as we went back to school for a new year. Knowing my background in peace studies, my principal appointed me to lead a racial reconciliation faculty dialogue group, which began as a space to process what was happening together. Through that experience, my world changed. I learned that police violence wasn’t new; smartphones were. The stories of my coworkers and how their lives were daily impacted by their Blackness radically changed me. One of my closest friendships today actually started because of that group. I learned from her resilience and extraordinary faith that I actually put more of my hope in government policies than I did in Jesus Christ. It was through my friendship with her that my own faith was tested and strengthened.
After 3 years of engaging with social justice issues in DC, teaching kids about nonviolent heroes, reading every book possible about racial reconciliation, facilitating dialogues, and getting accepted into a conflict resolution masters program, I “knew” that I was an enlightened, “woke” White woman doing my part to make a difference. This past summer, I attended a conference on racial reconciliation at Duke Divinity school. During a session about the criminal (in)justice system, the presenter broke down stats about the state of mass incarceration in the country. Halfway through the presentation, she revealed that she had formerly been incarcerated. Automatically, a domino of thoughts set off in brain… What did she do? Why was she in jail? Could I trust what she said? After about 30 seconds, I realized in horror the reality of my own implicit bias towards people who have been incarcerated. I learned through her story and openness that I was more biased than I wanted to admit and that God still has work to do to cleanse my heart of broken, judgemental, and prideful thinking.
My purpose in sharing these stories is to highlight what Duke has been preaching for a while now. We need each other. The reality of the gospel of Jesus and his grace filled redemption comes alive through relationships with others, and, I think, specifically in relationships with people who are different than us. Being unified in the body of Christ means not only recognizing the diversity that comes with it, across culture, race, class and gender, but also valuing how each part brings others to life. My prayer for myself and for our church is that we would dare to pursue these types of deep, transformative cross cultural relationships. They are relationships that challenge, teach, encourage, heal, and at times may hurt, but they are vital to making real the power of the gospel in our lives.
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