Confronting racism with God’s thoughts
What does it mean to think God’s thoughts? For a woman who has experienced both racism and sexual harassment, digging into that very question lifted her out of a dark place and brought peace, confidence, and clarity about how to effectively confront such injustice.
When I was a teenager, I would occasionally help my sister by taking her job of delivering newspapers. One morning I encountered an older woman who shouted anti-Asian epithets at me, telling me to go back to my country. It was the first time I had ever encountered such overt racism, and I was quite shaken.
I had grown up moving every few years from one country to another, and neither Japan (if defined by race) nor any other country (if defined by nationality) felt like “my country.” The incident that morning made me feel even more out of place. That night I was still roiling inside, furious that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to come up with an equally nasty response.
My father helped me see how I should think about what I had experienced. He told me about a Japanese friend of his living in the US during World War II who had been effectively “interned” at the college she was attending. She had once said, “I do not have to think American thoughts. I do not have to think Japanese thoughts. I have only to think God’s thoughts.” This comment had freed my father from feeling bound by nationality, and he began to understand better how to think as God does. (You can read my father’s testimony about this in the Christian Science Sentinel, Aug. 10, 1946.)
I can’t say that this comment was particularly helpful to me at the time. I was still too wrapped up in wanting some kind of retribution. But in the many years since that incident, I’ve sought to understand what it really means to think God’s thoughts.
The Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, says, “God is Spirit; therefore the language of Spirit must be, and is, spiritual” (p. 117). In moving around the world throughout my childhood, I was often in situations where my language skills were not those of a native speaker. I found that communication through the eyes, gestures, and intonation always gave a fuller meaning than the words alone.
In much the same way, learning to speak the language of Spirit requires turning from the words and engaging with our spiritual sense, which “involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality” (Science and Health, p. 298). Spiritual sense takes us beyond words to the communication that is really coming from God, expressing peace, harmony, and wisdom. It helps us discern the ever-present reality of God’s creation, in which God and all of us as His children are inseparable. There is no “outside” to this inseparability from God. When we think God’s thoughts, we are seeing the goodness, love, and tender compassion that are innate to His universe.
I was struck by this statement in Science and Health: “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, – a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love” (p. 1). “Unselfed love” isn’t merely about being more generous. This love does not have a material source; it is spiritual – it is how God sees and knows each of us as His loved children.
Currently in the US, we are going through a national reckoning around race and identity, much of which is being brought to the surface because of the pandemic. Incidents of prejudice and violence, including against Asians, have exposed the complicated status of race relations in this country, despite the progress that has been made.
It is important to see that one’s self-interest and others’ interests are intertwined, and we can’t help seeing this when we go beyond a materially defined sense of self to the unselfed love that comes from a spiritual point of view – thinking and acting on the basis of God’s thoughts.
This higher sense of self also removes the belief that safety and confidence are uncertain or reserved only for certain people. And we find our safety and confidence in the spiritual truth that God loves and maintains each one of us as precious and unique expressions of His infinite creation. We can effectively confront racism and injustice when we see that we are all equally embraced in God’s love.
In my working career, I have experienced both racism and sexual harassment, and while I took proper steps to report the incidents, harboring hateful feelings kept me in a dark and angry place. Peace came only when I let go of identifying myself as a victim and others as unable to change their ways. The more I prayed to think God’s thoughts, the more I could see that God’s love is deeper, higher, greater, and more inclusive than I had ever imagined.
This has been the only surefire way I have found to remain at peace with the whole of God’s creation, and to feel the confidence and assurance that come with thinking God’s thoughts.
Some more great ideas! To read or listen to an article in The Christian Science Journal on the challenge and reward of forgiveness, please click through to www.JSH-Online.com. There is no paywall for this content.