By Jimi Calhoun.
This entry is the thirteenth post in a series of bridge-building, theological-cultural reflections by Jimi Calhoun, Pastor of “Bridging Austin,” in Austin, Texas.
God is Love![1] What does that mean to you? I am probably on solid footing to say that if you could respond audibly, I would get as many different answers as there are people reading this. And in a way, that is exactly what this article is about.
Love is a word that gets its meaning from how it is used. Love borrows its character from the relationship it lives inside. If context is stripped away, the word just meanders around in space, meaning everything or nothing at all. According to the influential Irish Priest Herbert McCabe, even the great 13th Century Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas recognized this. McCabe writes, “Aquinas thought there were certain words and phrases that move freely within the context or contexts in which we learn them . . . and are not tied down to any particular meaning.”[2]
Orientation is another such word. It lives and breathes through its context. Like the word love, its meaning is not fixed but relational, defined by whoever is using it and whatever context surrounds it. For example, it is used in discussions on values, moral codes, ethnic identity, and more recently, sexual and gender identity. Given that each of those implies some degree of personal interpretation and fluidity, maybe orientation should too—maybe not.
The words in that list are not the kind that point you somewhere specific. They are more like coordinates, tools for navigation, rather than certainties. In contrast, orientation operates like a compass needle and gets its true meaning when it has something to point toward. So, orientation is not in the beholder’s eye, as you might have gathered from Aquinas’s take, but something very real that can have a norming effect. Nowhere is that more apparent than in race relations.
Disorientation: A Problem of Direction
If orientation acts as a compass in our lives, then disorientation functions the opposite way. When a person is experiencing disorientation, they often lack the ability to be aware of themselves or their environment. We know the Israelites didn’t spend forty years in the wilderness because Canaan was far away. The biblical account links the delay to unbelief and the need for a new generation to emerge, but it also reveals a people suffering from profound disorientation. Their wandering was not primarily a problem of distance; it was a problem of direction.
Today, demographers say that an estimated 7.2 million Americans age 65 and older live with Alzheimer’s dementia, and that by 2060 that number could grow to 13.8 million.[3] That reality brings my definition of disorientation front and center. When someone cannot recognize a loved one or family member, that is not disinterest; it is disorientation. Even when they have a faint idea about who the person in front of them is, but lack the ability to know how they should relate to them, that is not dismissive or uncaring behavior–that is disorientation. That is exactly how racism operates, and sadly, it leads people far off God’s preferred track for human relationships.
Reorientation: Getting Back on the Right Track
Most of us know that the idea of loving your neighbor is suggested in both the Old and New Testaments (Lev. 19:18, Matthew 22:39). However, there is a command in the Torah that gets even more airtime and it’s this: “Love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”[4] Welcoming the stranger is repeated 36 times, more than any mitzvah, e.g., obligation before God.
That kind of repetition is not an accident; it is an insistence! The reason is that outsiders in every society have a tougher time of it in all areas of life. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul were all outsiders to some extent. That is because their lives were lived “splitting heritages,” and they paid a price for it. That is the cold, hard truth, and it provides an added incentive for all of us to reorient our views in ways that point toward love.
To those of you unfamiliar with us, let me re-state the reason the ecumenical Christian community called Bridging Austin was conceived. It emerged as a concept because I had worked in conservative white evangelical churches and white progressive churches for several years. Over time, I realized I was making the same mistake many Christians do when they believe a person must choose one side or the other to be faithful to God.
Being a Black evangelical pastor, I occupied an unusual place and knew better. What do I mean by that? I had served in white conservative churches where most of the attenders would see themselves as “colorblind” and say, “Hey, I don’t see race, only brothers and sisters in Christ.” I had also served in progressive churches where most of the white attenders would sign-off on an “anti-racism” approach to end racism.
When I asked myself what a church truly oriented by Christ’s love should look like, I had to consider that both sides of the spectrum were failing. That is why I founded Bridging Austin to be a community that would pursue both approaches, and our direction is clear: We must learn to love the progressive and conservative Christian equally, and failure is not an option. We cannot allow the type of disorientation just discussed to continue to result in perpetual disconnection between groups of people trying to follow Jesus.
I will leave you with one simple rule of life that is central to Bridging Austin that I hope you will make yours: Love all you can while you can, because as the Bible says, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.”[5] Why does the Bridging Austin community live out that rule and why should you? Because God is the source of all that we are to value in this life, and anything short of that de-values Jesus’s work on the cross.
[1] 1 John 4:8
[2] McCabe, Herbert, God Matters. p. 149
[3] https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.70235?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[4] Lev. 19:34
[5] James 4:14
You may contact Jimi Calhoun at Jimi@Bridgingaustin.org.