Journey 3: See No Stranger—Ch 1

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You’re listening to Shameless Honesty. I'm Amy Marshal. This is a special series of episodes I've called “Journey,” where I'm recording what I'm learning from those who live at the margins of power and privilege—whether by faith, race, gender, orientation, ability … or in the intersections. These are folks who have long been reaching out to others with love and are changing the world one relationship at a time. I'm excited to see communities coming together, and I'm so glad you're here!

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I’m reading See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur. Let’s talk about chapter 1: Wonder.

Valarie begins with stories from growing up among the farmlands in California's Central Valley. She tells of her early religious education and quotes Guru Nanak, the first teacher of the Sikh faith, saying, “I see no stranger. I see no enemy.” He recognized a oneness of humanity, she explains. “Everyone around him was a part of him that he did not yet know.”

She goes on to describe several disturbing episodes of being treated as other, as separate, as less-than, because she was a Sikh girl with brown skin in the heavily white, mostly conservative Christian city of Clovis. Even when visiting family in Punjab, everyone seemed to recognize her as different simply by the way she walked through the bazaar. Her response was to seek inclusion by separating herself from those who seemed more peculiar than she. “I had fallen for the great bribe of white supremacy,” she relates, “the promise of acceptance for people of color who put down other people of color.”

The incidents I found most familiar were Valerie's interactions with Christians who insisted she was hell bound or demon possessed for her refusal to believe and love just as they did. I know these Christians. I was raised to be one of these Christians, though I was often quietly ashamed of my own hesitancy to tell everyone I met the eternal consequences of their disbelief.

This past week, my friend Abbi shared a link to her Substack post, “Fighting the Long Defeat,” which includes the line, “Helping survivors navigate church systems would transform a saint into an atheist.”

I don't call myself an atheist because that suggests a certainty I don't have, but I am agnostic. I have little belief there is a personal God who loves and cares about me or anyone else. I used to be a devout follower, but since I started to recognize the extent of the harm I experienced and perpetrated within Christian communities espousing doctrines that encourage fear, exclusion, and self-hatred—all while proclaiming "unconditional love"—I simply can't believe that any all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful deity would allow such evil to continue in their name. And if that God exists, I no longer believe such a being to be worthy of my worship. A god who calls his followers to hate their families in order to love him is not a god I have any interest in serving. 

“Oh, but don't confuse the actions of humans for God's love!” I am told. And to that I ask, “Why not?” How does God love but through other people? And if such hatred is "God's love," I want no part of it.

Are there people who do act out their Christian faith in ways that are truly loving to their neighbors, caring for the least of these? Sure. Valarie recounts her visit to a church one Sunday, looking to confront the priest who was teaching her neighbors such hateful theology. Rather than coming face to face with a priest, she was welcomed inside by Faye, the church organist, who was practicing for an upcoming concert. Faye invited Valarie to connect over the music she played. She looked to find ways the two of them were more similar than different. But belief in a powerful supreme being isn’t required to be respectful and kind.

In an earlier iteration of myself, I wrote about being a Christian, but thinking like an atheist. 

What if, instead of just assuming God will make all things right (somehow, someday), we acted like the changes that need to happen in the world are up to us? Wouldn’t we be a whole lot more motivated to get up off our collective fat “thoughts and prayers” to actually do something?

I’m not an atheist, and I don’t even play one on TV, but I have grown tired of seeing and hearing and being Christians who attempt to invoke a personal relationship with God as some sort of excuse for our own laziness or unwillingness to face what makes us uncomfortable.

Valarie writes, “Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence.”

Years ago, I wrote about fearing the other and trying to set myself above those I'd rather see as “other.”

I’ve spent a lot of time writing about fear and anxiety, mostly trying to deal with my own. This morning it struck me that fear is the root of an awful lot of the evil we experience and participate in every day.

Consider: 

•   Racism
•   Sexism
•   Homophobia
[•   Transphobia]
•   Religious discrimination
•   Political mudslinging

All of these are rooted in a deep fear of people who aren’t like me. None of us is immune. I want to be. I find myself taking pride in thinking, “I’m not like them. You know, the ones who are always … ”

Oh. Wait. That’s me, distancing myself from people who are different from me, who disagree with me, fearing someone might think I have something in common with them. Crap.

In therapy, I have learned to reconsider the idea of emotions being either good or bad, and instead approaching all of my feelings with curiosity. 

Hello, friend. What’s your name? What are you trying to say to me? What am I missing? How can I help you, and by doing so, help myself because (in this case, quite literally) you are a part of me?

Being curious allows us to step away from the very human reaction that anything unknown must be dangerous, must be bad, must be eradicated. 

What if we started asking these questions with every new interaction? Instead of fear or hatred, might we approach the unknown with wonder and curiosity, looking to better understand, to integrate more fully? And in doing so, perhaps we could see the expanse of the universe, recognize the wide variety of humanity, and learn to love those parts of ourselves—and others—we don't always like.

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Find full transcripts for this series and be a part of the conversation at ShamelessHonesty.com/Journey. Until next time, this is Amy Marshal with Shameless Honesty. Thank you for joining me on the journey.

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Conversation for See No Stranger posts is hosted at facebook.com/ShamelessHonesty