Living with Diversity

Families are designed to help us learn to live with people who are different than us.

My 3rd child has started going to public school. That means that she is getting up earlier. What does she want to do in the morning? Talk. My wife and I like to quietly read and meditate in the morning, if possible. There’s nothing wrong with either preference. We’re just different.

But how are we going to deal with it? Can we tolerate the differences, live with them, and even thrive with them?

Sadly, many families don’t prepare people well for living with differences. Instead, they do one of three things. They either seek to suppress the differences, continually fight about them, or eventually flee from them.

The church is also designed to be a place where a diversity of people come together. A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus as the one who saves us from our predicament in sin and brings us to forgiveness and new life. Anyone can hear the message about Jesus, accept it, and become a Christian that very moment. Ideally, they also become a part of a particular community (i.e., the church) at that time.

When this happens, you have people who have a lot of different ideas, a lot of different backgrounds, and a lot of different experiences coming together to try and make the community work. Romans 14 describes the situation in the early Christian communities. The Christian teacher named Paul wrote to the Christian community in Rome describing this situation, “One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. . . . One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike” (Rom. 14:2, 5).

So, what are we to do with this diversity? The church has often tried the same things that families try: suppress the differences or continually fight about them. They also do what families sometimes do when these becomes too difficult. The differences are so hard to deal with that they just separate (which leaves them just as ill-equipped to deal with differences as before).

In the same letter, Paul gives some helpful instructions on how to live together in diversity. Here’s what he proposed:

  1. Receive or accept each other. “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters” (Rom. 14:1). What if our basic stance toward others was to accept and receive them whatever their differences?
  2. Do not have contempt for others. “The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them” (Rom. 14:3).
  3. Continue reading “Living with Diversity”

White Evangelicals & Race

Christian rapper LeCrae. LeCrae decided that he was going to distance himself from white evangelicalism. This saddened me. I’m not judging what LeCrae has done. I know that he is far from the only person who feels this way. This reminds me of the sad reality that white evangelicals and evangelicals of color in the United States are not as close as they could and should be.

That said, I do understand it. I can understand particularly why African-American evangelicals would feel like they don’t belong in white evangelicalism.

This has led me to think about my behavior as a white evangelical. Do I do things that make white evangelicalism unwelcome for my brothers and sisters of color?

But this issue seems so big. What can I do? Especially, what can I do concretely? I came up with a few ideas. Here are a few things that I think I should do in regard to the race issue. I’d be interested in hearing what your thoughts are on this issue and what white evangelicals should do.

  1. Listen. James 1:19 says, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” For example, when my brothers and sisters speak about racial injustice, I want my first reaction to be to listen rather than to speak or react emotionally.
  2. Be honest about the history of the relationship of African-Americans and Whites in this country. A lot of it is very bad. I want to try to understand how this has worked out in my own area, family, and church and be honest and open about it.
  3. Continue reading “White Evangelicals & Race”

Thoughts on Church Membership

The title of this post may not elicit the most excitement from my readers, but I think it is an important one. What we say about who gets counted in the church says a lot about what we think about the Gospel and the way that human beings can and should connect with God.

Here are some “theses” or “thoughts” that I wrote in 2012 after some serious prayer and consideration of this issue. My view has not substantially changed.

  1. Church membership must be based on our definition of a Christian, since all Christians are members of the true church invisible and should be members of the visible church.
  2. A Christian is someone who has repented of their sins and believes in Jesus Christ for salvation.
  3. Consequently, the test for church membership should be a credible profession of faith in Christ with a promise of repentance as well as a desire to do this in the context of a particular local church (as the questions for membership indicate in the Presbyterian Church in America’s Book of Church Order).
  4. Continue reading “Thoughts on Church Membership”

The 2,446 Descendants of James Russell “Major” White

Me and my Dad, Myrland Edward “Sam” White, Jr.
Do you ever have an idea from childhood that sticks with you? Then, you say it out loud as an adult, and you think, I’m not sure that’s true! I’ve had experiences like that more often than I’d like to admit.

One of those ideas was that I (with my brother) was one of the last males in my line of the White’s.

I think there are two reasons why I developed that conception. First, my Dad’s name is Myrland Edward White, Jr. If any of you know him, you may be surprised to read this because he goes by “Sam.”

My Dad’s Dad, Myrland Edward White, Sr., died after 3 months of marriage to my Grandmother, Betty Lindsey. During those 3 months, my Father was conceived. For the first 3 years of his life, my Dad was often with his Grandfather, Sam White. He lived with them long enough to get the nickname Sammie that he carries with him to this day as “Sam.”

Eventually, Betty remarried to Lloyd Babb, and my Dad went into the orbit of the Babb’s and Lindsey’s with little contact with the White family.

The second reason is that growing up I didn’t know any male cousins with the last name of White. My Dad connected with one of his half brother’s, Larry, who was a White, but he had only one child, a daughter.

So, from one perspective I was right. I was one of the only male descendants of Myrland Edward White, Sr. However, what I discovered is that if you extend that out to one, two, or three generations beyond my grandfather, then it’s not even close to true.

Here’s how I made that discovery.

Through some strange circumstances that I won’t go into, I ended up taking a DNA test from Ancestry.com. This led me into an initial foray into genealogy. You can read about that here.

Through a couple of genealogists on my Mom’s side of the family, I had a pretty good sense of where my Mother had come from. However, I only had a vague idea of where my Father had come from.

So, I made it one of my goals to research my Father’s ancestors. I just needed some time to go through the material on Ancestry.com. That would be my start.

Several months passed.

Then, I got sick. As I lay in bed trying to recover from the flu, I realized I had enough strength to do some searches on the internet. It was time to research my Father’s ancestry.

I made some significant progress, but I also realized that when you look at other people’s research on Ancestry.com, you need to trust but verify.

Gravestone of my 3rd Great Grandfather, James Russell White
I knew my Dad’s Grandfather’s name on the White side was Sam, but I didn’t know much beyond that. Gradually, the story began to unfold. From what I could tell, My Great Grandpa Sam’s father was Robert Dempsey “Dock” White. Robert’s Father was James Russell “Major” White.

James Russell White’s family lived in De Kalb County, Tennessee and moved up to Russellville, KY, probably sometime in the early 1860s. I had moved to TN thinking I was going to a place where The White family had never lived before. Perhaps I was wrong.

In spite of this initial research, I was still skeptical. If this was correct, I realized that I probably had a bunch of cousins in Logan County, Kentucky.

So, I asked a couple of my older relatives on the White side if “Russellville, KY” meant anything to them. They both replied, “Oh, yes. We went down there to visit relatives often.” It turns out that five of Robert Dempsey’s children had moved to Owensboro from Russellville and yet stayed in contact with their relatives in Russellville. One of my living relatives even confirmed that they had heard the name “Major” White before.

I was quite satisfied that the link between my White’s and the Russellville White’s was established. Still, I wanted to know more, and I wanted more documentary proof.

I probably had searched James Russell White’s name on Google a few times, but I did it again. To my shock, I discovered that there was a book, The Descendants of James Russell “Major” White written by Michael and Barbara Christian. Wow! I thought. That’s amazing. I wonder if I can get a copy. I could not find it in any of my normal searches for book purchase.

What about libraries? I wondered. I found through WorldCat that this book was in 7 libraries in the United States. One of them were relatively close (compared to Utah!): Muhlenburg County Library in Greenville, KY. I was going up to visit some relatives in Louisville and Owensboro over Christmas break, so I concluded that I could stop by the Muhlenburg County Library’s Genealogical Annex and take a look at this book on my way home.

The Courthouse in downtown Greenville, KY
So, that’s what I did. I arrived in Greenville on December 28th at about 11:00 in the morning. Google Maps told me that my destination was on my right. I got out of my car and looked at the library. There was yellow warning tape in front of it: Under Construction!

Seriously? I thought. I come all this way, and it’s closed? So, I called the Genealogical Annex.

“Are you open?” I asked.

“Yes, we’re temporarily located in the basement of the Old National Bank. What do you need? Most of our stuff is in storage?” The lady on the other end asked me.

“Well, I’m looking for a book called The Descendants of James Russell “Major” White.” I replied.

“I have it!” She answered.

“I’ll see you in a minute.” I said and then hung up.

With the joy of potential discovery in my heart, I went over to the bank. The librarian gave me the book, and I sat down at the front of her desk while she worked on her computer in the tiny room where the Genealogical Annex was housed.

I opened the cover and saw the first page of the book written around 1996. I opened the book and began reading, “James Russell and Mary White did not leave behind many worldly goods. However, they had 10 children, and their 2,446 descendants have settled throughout the United States from California to Florida. . . .”

Of Course, Church Is Also for Unbelievers

It would seem rather obvious that church is a place for unbelievers as well as believers. After all, where else are people going to learn about who God is and what it means to be a Christian? What better place could there be?

Some argue that church is only or primarily for believers. Church is designed primarily to help believers grow, and then they go out and connect with people in the world. At the least, they might argue, unbelievers should not be a focus of the church as an institution. If they come, that’s fine, but having unbelievers in church is not a goal that the church should pursue, they might say.

I believe that this argument often grows out of frustration with churches that water down the Christian message in order to try and get people to come to church. I have also heard many people who think that if church is also for unbelievers, then it will simply be a church service where a simple Gospel message is presented over and over again with an altar call. Some Christians feel like they never get anything from these services that help them grow. They feel like they have been left behind in the quest for “numbers.”

Whether these sorts of complaints are just or not, I won’t attempt to answer here. It’s sufficient to say that there is no necessary connection between church also being for unbelievers and watering down the message or just focusing only on getting conversions.

In fact, I would suggest that merely repeating the simple Gospel message or watering down the Christian message is not particularly helpful either to believers or unbelievers. While it is true that in order to become a Christian, we only need a little bit of knowledge (i.e., John 3:16), following Christ involves understanding a whole variety of topics explained in the Bible at large.

For those considering whether or not to follow Jesus, it’s good for them to learn about what that means for their families, their work, their emotions, their time, and a host of other things. That’s why being in church where the whole counsel of God is taught is especially helpful for those considering Christianity.

But does the Bible teach that church is also for unbelievers? I believe it does. When God established His worship in the Old Testament, He centered His worship in the temple. According to Isaiah, the design of the Temple was to “for my house [to be] be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7). Continue reading “Of Course, Church Is Also for Unbelievers”