ADVERTISEMENT
Faithfully Magazine
  • News
    • All
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • World
    Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York

    Overtly White Supremacist Ideology Is Being Sanitized and Mainstreamed

    David Wenwei Chou

    FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime

    Ruth Whitfield

    God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims

    Crystal Mason provisional ballot

    Texas Court Must Reconsider Illegal Voting Conviction of Black Woman Sentenced to 5 Years

  • Clippings
    Dr. John Cheng, 52, was fatally shot by David Chou

    Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman

    The May 13, 2022, funeral procession of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in Jerusalem

    Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners

    cellphone

    Nigerian Student Beaten to Death, Set on Fire for Critical WhatsApp Post of Prophet Muhammad

    Indian Boarding School Students

    Christians Likely Helped Run Half of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

  • Features
    Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York

    Overtly White Supremacist Ideology Is Being Sanitized and Mainstreamed

    children in a classroom getting education

    On Race and Schools, Here’s What Americans Agree and Disagree On

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

    Stop Asian Hate sign

    ‘We Are Being Hunted’ — Asian Americans Say They Are More Scared Now Than Ever

  • Inspiration
    • All
    • Bible
    • First-Person Essay
    • Poetry
    Everything Everywhere All At Once. (A24 Films)

    ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ & the Absurdity of Love as Resistance

    God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God's Unexpected Coming

    The Gospels Give Birth to Poetry (‘God Speaks Through Wombs’ Excerpt)

    two women talk

    100 Proverbs That Teach Us How to Speak, Listen, and Respectfully Disagree

    Rapper J Cole and a hanging tree

    J. Cole’s ‘Javari,’ the Cross, and the Lynching Tree

  • Members
  • About Us
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Write for Us
    • Advertise With Us
SUBSCRIBE
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • All
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • World
    Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York

    Overtly White Supremacist Ideology Is Being Sanitized and Mainstreamed

    David Wenwei Chou

    FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime

    Ruth Whitfield

    God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims

    Crystal Mason provisional ballot

    Texas Court Must Reconsider Illegal Voting Conviction of Black Woman Sentenced to 5 Years

  • Clippings
    Dr. John Cheng, 52, was fatally shot by David Chou

    Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman

    The May 13, 2022, funeral procession of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in Jerusalem

    Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners

    cellphone

    Nigerian Student Beaten to Death, Set on Fire for Critical WhatsApp Post of Prophet Muhammad

    Indian Boarding School Students

    Christians Likely Helped Run Half of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

  • Features
    Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York

    Overtly White Supremacist Ideology Is Being Sanitized and Mainstreamed

    children in a classroom getting education

    On Race and Schools, Here’s What Americans Agree and Disagree On

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

    Stop Asian Hate sign

    ‘We Are Being Hunted’ — Asian Americans Say They Are More Scared Now Than Ever

  • Inspiration
    • All
    • Bible
    • First-Person Essay
    • Poetry
    Everything Everywhere All At Once. (A24 Films)

    ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ & the Absurdity of Love as Resistance

    God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God's Unexpected Coming

    The Gospels Give Birth to Poetry (‘God Speaks Through Wombs’ Excerpt)

    two women talk

    100 Proverbs That Teach Us How to Speak, Listen, and Respectfully Disagree

    Rapper J Cole and a hanging tree

    J. Cole’s ‘Javari,’ the Cross, and the Lynching Tree

  • Members
  • About Us
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Write for Us
    • Advertise With Us
No Result
View All Result
Faithfully Magazine
No Result
View All Result

National Rifle Association Ad Perpetuates Evil of ‘Othering’

Kyle J. Howard by Kyle J. Howard
July 25, 2017
in A Word, Web Exclusives
Reading Time: 6 mins read
0
Dana Loesch speaks for the National Rifle Association in recent ad, seen as othering by some

Dana Loesch speaks for the National Rifle Association in a recent ad. (Photo: Screenshot/YouTube)

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on RedditShare on LinkedInEmail This
51
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

“You are not me, and I am not you.”

This simple statement of truth is the fuel that ignites both the deepest friendships and most violent forms of segregation.

Mosaic Coffee

At creation, Adam saw the differences between himself and his wife, and they led him to rejoice in her differences. The fall of the entire human race was a result of the serpent convincing Adam and Eve that their differences designed by God were not something to accept and embrace but something of which to be skeptical.

RELATED STORIES

Bible Verses About Love

Concerned Cru Staff Slams Diversity Efforts Within Evangelical Organization

Satan used “otherness” to nurture discontentment in the hearts of Adam and Eve. This seed of otherness has grown and blossomed into poisonous fruit and greatly cost all of us. Since the fall, how people made in God’s image navigate the reality of their differences determines the pinnacle of love and the depth of hatred.

Love, compassion, empathy, intimacy and friendship are good fruits of embracing differences as precious. Genocide, the Holocaust, murder, hatred, racism and prejudice are bitter fruits of viewing differences as divisive. This is not how it should be.


“Love, compassion, empathy, intimacy and friendship are good fruits of embracing differences as precious.”


It seems as if there is a pendulum that swings from side to side, mirroring the posture of society and the church in regards to how it engages with unity and segregation. The pendulum swings toward unity, and society and the church embrace the beauty of diversity. The pendulum swings toward segregation, and they perceive differences as a means to divide, marginalize and oppress.

Some have sought to correct this issue through an ideology called “colorblindness.” Colorblind ideology dismisses the very existence of racial differences as an attempt at unity. In reality, colorblind ideology is simply the denial of the pendulum and is itself a form of oppression. To people of color, it essentially says, “Your color is an obstacle that must be ignored in order for me to be unified with you.”

“Othering” is another ideology. It is the act of categorizing people as “different” for the purposes of dehumanization. Othering is also a way of justifying apathy or indifference toward others because it views people’s sufferings and experiences as “different” and, therefore, irrelevant to oneself. Othering is what happened in the Garden of Eden when Satan convinced Adam and Eve that they needed to be like God. They neither accepted God for who He was nor were content with their differences as image-bearers of God. Othering explains why David rationalized Uriah’s life away: “He’s just a soldier–I can have his wife and take his life.”

Othering was the philosophy and practice of European conquerors, and it led to the enslavement and genocide of Native American people groups. It is the philosophy that propelled chattel slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws and mass incarceration. It takes the truth statement, “I am not you, and you are not me…” and adds to it, “…therefore, what I think about you and what I do to you is amoral because you are deficiently different than me.”

discriminate photo

To clarify, when you dehumanize and “other-ize” people, it allows you to oppress them or be indifferent toward their oppression without it conflicting with your morality because they are not as human as you. Othering causes people to perceive others as “creatures” who lack inherent dignity and value as image-bearers.

Them. They. Those People. Criminal. Savages. Nigger. Cracker. Divisive. Agitator. Race-Baiter. Libs. Repubs.

The list of othering vernacular is extensive, but its point is the same. It is like the wind that blew against Job’s home and destroyed his family in the Bible. The breath that utters such words is like a wicked wind that pushes the pendulum against unity and towards othering. Words that ostracize other image-bearers of God kill, destroy, isolate, wound and scar. We recently heard words like this in an advertisement for the National Rifle Association (NRA):

Hulu

“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance.

“All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding—until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this – the only way we save our country and our freedom – is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place” (author’s emphasis added).

This is where the world is, and the political and social climate of American society has always been marked by othering concepts. One could say that Western conquest and colonialism itself has been fueled and justified by principles of othering image-bearers.

The question for us, as citizens of a kingdom not of this world is whether or not we have allowed this ungodly principle to enter the church. I believe the answer is a clear yes. If biblical ethics has been the angelic representative of the conscience that sits one shoulder of the majority culture’s evangelicalism, othering has been the little devil that sits on the other shoulder, whispering white supremacy into the ear and perpetuating segregation.

When we think about the NRA video and the othering vocabulary that is used within it, we must ask ourselves, “Do we hear this vernacular in the church? Is the majority culture (White Christian culture) perceived as normative while non-White expressions of culture are perceived as ‘other?’ Are minorities in the church spoken to in a way that makes them feel like they are ‘other?’”

These experiences are real for me. Regarding posts about racial injustice, I have received private messages on Facebook from friends asking, “Why are you talking about this? I thought you were one of us?” White brothers in Christ have accused me of being one of “those people” who is obsessed with race. I have lost count of the number of times saints have associated me with “they,” “them,” “those,” “y’all” and “the Blacks.”

unity

The church of Jesus Christ should be a faith family that collectively rejects othering. After all, Christ became one of us. God took on human flesh. He was so different from the general populace of Israel that some did not believe anything admirable could come from His hometown. Jesus, the last Adam and human representative of us all, was a Jewish carpenter born out of scandal and laid in a feeding troth. He was the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, but He did not fit the mold of a king. He was the epitome of biblical masculinity but was not married.

It is through Christ that we have become members of a new humanity, which is unified in its diversity. Our Savior was a man who lived for over 30 years among a people and society that treated him as other. He was part of a religious culture that treated him as other. But it is this same Christ who has brought us together, and Christians must resist the segregating ideologies that keep the world in disunity. Instead, we are told in John 13 that the familial love of the church is a testimony of its divine source. Jesus prays for us in John 17 that we would abound in unity and oneness.

Christians come to Christ from a multitude of cultures, ethnic groups and social structures. In coming to Christ and being baptized into fellowship with his body, we become new creations with all other saints sharing one Lord, one faith and one baptism. The reality of the church’s oneness should not eradicate the beauty of its diversity. One of the great challenges within majority culture churches is that the majority culture often perceives itself as normative and forces minorities either to assimilate or be ostracized. The oneness of the church should not rob God of the glory he receives through having ethnically and culturally diverse people. The oneness of the church should simply be the foundation upon which the church is built, allowing it to be a stable and unified house of diversity.


“The reality of the church’s oneness should not eradicate the beauty of its diversity.”


As Christians consider the NRA, we should grieve that they are perpetuating otherness, and, in so doing, dehumanizing image-bearers of God. As Christians, we have a glorious message for the NRA and those who share their ideology, even in the church. We have good news, which declares that the Son of God–in His holy otherness–became one of us.

Through His life, death and resurrection, Christ has added to the truth statement, “I am not you, and you are not me.” If the blood of the Lamb were ink, it would put an end to mankind’s sinful inclination by writing the following: “I am not you, and you are not me. But we are one in Him.”

Watch the NRA’s ad here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrnIVVWtAag&w=560&h=315]


Kyle J. Howard currently serves the church as a biblical counselor. He is a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he received his associate degree in biblical/theological studies and a bachelor’s degree in biblical counseling. He is finishing a graduate degree in Historical Theology and is preparing to plant and pastor a transcultural church.

Leave your vote

0 Points
Upvote Downvote

Browse and manage your votes from your Member Profile Page

What's Your Reaction?

  • AngryAngry
    0
    Angry
  • CuteCute
    0
    Cute
  • CryCry
    0
    Cry
  • LOLLOL
    0
    LOL
  • LoveLove
    0
    Love
  • OMGOMG
    0
    OMG

REPRINT REQUESTS | MEMBERSHIPS | GIVE



Share This Post

Share via

Share This Post

  • Digg
  • Tumblr
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
More
  • Report
51
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

Related Posts

Josh McDowell

Apologist Josh McDowell Backtracks After Claiming Black Families Don’t Value Education

Christian author and preacher Dr. Voddie Baucham

‘Fault Lines’ Author Voddie Baucham Confused or Making Things Up, Richard Delgado Says in Response to Misquote on ‘Righteous Actions’ of Whites

Upcoming Live Events

There are no upcoming Events at this time.

Recently Published

  • Overtly White Supremacist Ideology Is Being Sanitized and Mainstreamed
  • Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman
  • FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime
  • God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims
  • Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners
Mosaic Coffee
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Newsletter

© 2022 Faithfully Media LLC, owner and operator. All rights reserved. This site participates in the Amazon Associates program, and other affiliate programs, and may earn a commission from your purchases.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Clippings
  • Features
  • Spotlight
  • Inspiration
  • Log In
    • Your Profile
Share via

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Copy Link
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
close

Log In

Sign In

Login with Facebook
Login with Twitter
Forgot password?

Don't have an account? Register

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Back to Login

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Accept

Add to Collection

  • Public collection title

  • Private collection title

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
Send this to a friend