Thank God I Am NOT A White American Male...

The other day I was talking to a friend who is a white American male—Bear with me. I know mentioning someone’s race is not very PC these days, but there is a point to this race calling. He was basically telling me that the people who don’t vote for Obama are racist and if he loses it is because he is black.

“And if he wins, are you willing to admit it is because he IS black? I didn’t vote for either Kerry or Gore, does that make me a racist too?” I asked

“Of course not, you are different,” was the response.

“How am I different?” I asked.

“Well, you are Persian,” was the answer.

“So, you think because I am not white, I can’t be racist?” I asked with a funny look on my face.

“No, that’s not what I meant. It’s this country that is so racist,” answered my friend looking rather serious.

“What do mean, ‘It’s this country that is so racist?” Now, it was me who was serious.

This was not the first time I had had a conversation like this with Americans who honestly believe that we live in the most racist nation in the world and somehow only white people are perpetrating this act of racism. What I find interesting is, here I am, a naturalized American citizen from the Middle East, having to defend America against American-born Christians and non-Christians alike.

Have you noticed how the Chinese, the Koreans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Blacks and the Hispanics can all have their own churches which are called the Korean, the Persian or the Black church of such and such without anyone ever walking out of those churches saying, “My goodness, that church is all Hispanic or all Arab!” or, accusing those churches of being ethnocentric? Yet, I can’t tell you how often I have heard Christians tell me, “Last Sunday I went to an ALL white church!” as if they were referring to a KKK gathering.

I have lived in the United States for almost 40 years. I went through the Iranian hostage taking in the late 70s and the two Gulf Wars when, if the above people were correct, I should have faced some kind of discrimination and yet I can’t prove that at any time in these last 40 years I have experienced any such thing. Even when the pastor of a mega church referred to me as “our token Iranian pastor” in front 900 people, did I take it to be a racist act? No. Stupid and ill advised? Definitely! But, not racist.

This is not to say that there are no racist Americans. There are many of them. But, they come in every shape and color – not just white. But that does not make the whole nation racist.

A few months back, Karen and I went to Montgomery, Alabama for the commissioning of our son, Todd, into the United States Air Force as a Second Lieutenant. While there, we visited Rosa Parks’ Museum. I can’t tell you the emotion I experienced and how I wished I had lived here at the time so I could participate in the Civil Rights marches and have the honor of walking side by side with Dr. King.

As I watched the reenactment of that memorable evening when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, with tears in my eyes, I marveled at a nation where, in the span of only 50 years or so, things have gone from considering the black man so unequal that he was forced to sit in the back of the bus so the white man could sit in the front of the bus to today when a black man – I am aware that Obama is only half black, but he considers himself to be a black man – has the possibility of becoming the president of the same nation, and under my breath I whispered, “God bless America.”

Please compare what America has accomplished in her short history with some parts of Africa or the Middle East where people have been killing each other for hundreds of years because people of tribe A consider people from tribe B to be inferior and therefore worthy of being wiped off the face of the earth. Racism is a disease that plagues every race, color and nation and white people do not have a corner on it.

A few years ago a black pastor asked me the following question:

“Shah, I have tried very hard to befriend the Muslim foreigners who attend the mosque next to my church, but these people won’t even come near me. Why do you think is that?”

“Well, there could be couple of reasons. First, they might be racists and dislike black people. After all, some Muslim countries still use black people as slaves. However, there is a second reason. They are afraid of you,” I responded.

“Why so?”

“Rosa, how many blacks do you know that have been mugged by Iranians?” I asked.

“None!”

“I have two Iranian friends who were mugged by black guys and my third friend’s father was shot to death by a black man. Do you blame these friends of mine for being afraid of blacks in general? Is it possible that your Muslim neighbors might also have friends and relatives who have experienced the same things?” To her credit, my dear friend, agreed with me.

The other night, as I was channel surfing, I came across Chappelle’s Show. Dave Chappelle is a black comedian who, like most ethnic comedians today, gets a lot of laughs by making fun of white people. I guess it is considered comedy when other races make fun of white people. However, when it is done the other way around, it is called racism. To his credit, on some occasions, Chappelle also pokes fun at his own people. On this particular episode, using all black comedians, he did a skit called something like, “If people don’t like you, it could be that you are a jerk and has nothing to do with your race.” Is it possible that some people don’t like me and won’t hang out with me because I am a jerk and my race has nothing to do with it? Abso-freaking-lutely! And this brings me to why I wrote this article.

I am tired of all the America-bashing I hear constantly. Yes, she has done many wrong things in her past—which nation hasn’t?—but she has been quick to fix it. NO, she is not perfect, but, as one who was raised under a totalitarian system, I believe America is still the best nation on the face of the earth. Let’s stop looking at what she should have done right and start being grateful for how far this young country has come to correct her past.

I am willing to bet my last dollar that some of you would never dare to even think about what I have said on this posting lest you be called a racist. But don’t forget, I am not white and therefore, couldn’t possibly be racist and that is why I say, “Thank God I am not a white American Male.”

MAYBE A CAMEL OR MAYBE A BIRD, BUT NOT A CAMEL-BIRD, PLEASE!

There is a Persian parable about the ostrich, which is called the camel-bird in Farsi. The parable goes something like this:

One day the camel-bird was asked to carry a load and he said, “Why should I? I am a bird”. They said, in that case, “fly” to which he responded, “I can’t. I am a camel”. The same parable applies to many of the Christian organizations today, which can’t decide whether they are a spiritual entity or a secular corporation. If they are expected to act like a corporation, they are quick to tell you, “We are a church.” However, when asked why they are not more Christ-like in some areas of their operation, they are quick to point out, “We are a corporation.” Let me give you a couple of examples.

I heard, recently, a rather large Christian organization announced to her staff members that they weren’t going to get any raises for the next couple of years. Apparently, due to the lack of income, the denomination has been running a deficit for the last few years. As it often happens, after the above announcement, one after another, the leadership of the organization admonished all staff members to be good Christians and work sacrificially by taking on more responsibilities due to the future downsizing. So, in reality, each staff member was asked to work harder for less money, something that I whole-heartedly agree with. As followers of Christ, we ought to be exemplary imitators of our Lord. If we believe in what our Christian employer stands for, then we are bound to give it all we have got to accomplish her mission in this world. My wife, Karen, and I tried very hard to live up to that conviction.

I left a good paying engineering job to become a pastor of a 50-member immigrant church because I believed that was what God wanted me to do. There were days when Karen had to look behind the cushions of the living room couch in the hope of finding some coins to buy milk for our kids. To support our family, Karen, who is probably one of the best executive assistants I know, had to eventually go to work at a mega-church. She worked there for twelve years.

In all the years my wife faithfully worked there, she was only given a one-time raise of $100. As badly as we, at times, struggled with our finances, she never considered looking for a better paying job somewhere else. After all, we felt it was more important to serve God than to seek a better paying job somewhere else. We were taught that if God wanted you to work at that church, you should be willing to receive whatever they offered you. Karen would have probably still been working there if she were not forced to leave. After she accepted a position in a secular company, the pastor of the church personally apologized to me and said, “If I knew Karen was leaving, I would have done all I could to stop her. Letting her go was the biggest mistake our church made this year.”

Having worked for couple of different churches for many years, Karen had never had the luxury of demanding a certain salary. She always took whatever the church offered her. After all, over and over again, we were taught working for God meant money should not be an issue. So, when her new company asked her what kind of salary she expected, She didn’t know how to respond. Needless to say, she took the job and has never and will never look back. “But, what do these two examples have to do with our camel-bird?” you might ask.

In the first case, it is interesting that the same leadership which is encouraging their staff members to make sacrifices—to be camels and carry the load—never demanded the same from themselves because that is not expected of the executives of a cooperation—they act like birds. In the midst of their financial shortfalls, these leaders have continued to remodel their offices, fly first class and give themselves over 100K per year salaries.

In Karen’s case, in 2005, two years after working for the secular company, several people from the above mega-church and the Christian organization I used to work for approached her in the hope to get her to work for them. There was no way Karen was going to leave a job where she had been rewarded so well for her skills. But out of curiosity, she wanted to know what kind of salary these Christian leaders were going to offer her.

In every case the response was, “What? Money is an issue?” In one case I was told, “I don’t know what the salary is. It is somewhere between X and Y amount. Why don’t YOU go to the HR and find out what her salary might be?” Please consider the arrogance that hides her ugly head under the pretence of being spiritual. The man wanted my wife to leave her well-paying job where she was appreciated and compensated accordingly and become his assistant without us having to even dare to ask what her salary might be. For to do so, is considered unspiritual. As a couple of Christ’s camels, we were supposed to feel ashamed and guilty for turning down the opportunity to serve God’s Kingdom because we desired to be adequately compensated for the gifting that God has given Karen. Yet, to every one of these leaders—the birds—the expected Christ-like sacrifice is only for the camels and not the birds. Otherwise, they would willingly give up a few of their luxuries such as remodeling their offices and flying first class to ease some of the financial burdens of their organizations.

Any organization would like the most talented and capable people working for them. Christian organizations are not and should not be any different. However, not wanting to forsake their spiritual obligations as Christian entities, the employees of these organizations are expected not to consider their salaries an issue and instead work for God—basically, get paid next to nothing. On the other hand, when it comes to the executives of these organizations, money IS an issue. While they constantly announce to their constituencies that Christ’s task (preaching the Gospel around the world) cannot be accomplished due to lack of fund, they are all handsomely paid and get to spend God’s money without any accountability because, they say, “This is how a corporation should treat her executive members.”

Having said all the above, please note that there are many churches and Christian organizations who do good by their employees and at the same time are great stewards of what God has given them. By no means am I bringing an indictment against everyone, God forbid. However, to those who are caught in this camel-bird game I say, at the time when more and more Christians are losing their trust in the Church and leaving her, try to win their trust back by, once and for all, making it clear if you are a church or a corporation, a camel or a bird and then act accordingly.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I WHIP SOME CHRISTIANESE OUT OF MY BACK POCKET!

It was the first day of an annual conference of a Christian denomination. The hotel where the conference was taking place was buzzing with people. The lobby was filled with attendees who were checking into their rooms. A group of people who had just checked in was standing in front of the elevators waiting for the next one to take them to their rooms. From looking at their badges, any outsider could tell they all belonged to the same First Church of the Greatness.

When the elevator finally got down to the lobby, with much patience and courtesy, they all let the bellboy carrying several bags get in first. Trying to return the kindness, the young man standing next to the elevator panel, asked each person which floor they were going to and then he would press the appropriate button.

“47,” shouted a lady standing in the back.

“So you are going all way to the top?” asked the young man.

“Yes, I AM going all the way to the top, but ARE YOU?”

Suddenly a hush came over the full elevator. It was one of those moments when pulling a George Carlin’s suggestion on what to do in a full elevator would have been much welcomed. George used to say every time we got into a full elevator, we should make higher and higher dramatic notes as the elevator went higher and higher. Alas, no one had the presence of mind to do something like that. So, understating the lady’s Christianes language, everyone else held his or her breath, waiting for the bellboy’s response.

For a split second a confused look came upon the young man’s face as if he was saying to himself, “What kind of a @#$!% stupid question is that? Isn’t it obvious that, along with everyone else, I am going to the top, too.” But then, Eureka! You could see the light bulb began to flash on the top of his head like a neon sign on the top of a cheap motel in Vegas.

“Yes, Ma’am, I’M going to the top, too,” He responded politely.

But the lady just couldn’t let it go. By witnessing to this heathen, this was her chance to make a point with the people present and show them how to add another notch to their spiritual gun.

“I am not talking just the top, but all the way to THE TOP,” she continued.

By now the man had caught on with the game she was playing. He was doing his best to play as dumb as he could just to get the woman off his back without giving into what she expected him to say.

“Yes, Lady, I am going all the way to the TOP where the pool, the bar and the gym are.”

Recently a friend gave me a book by Anne Lamotte entitled, “Traveling Mercies” In the book Anne talks about how she got “all the way to the TOP”. The contrast between her language and our elevator lady, who represents so many evangelicals, is so striking that while reading the book I cried, screamed and laughed for joy.

Anne did not grow up in a Christian family. Just like me, she grew up during the Hippie era of free love, drugs and booze. By the time she is writing the segment of the book talking about her so called, “conversion” she is a pill-popping alcoholic who had just aborted her unwanted child by a married man.

Every weekend, when she was hungover, she went to a flea market where she could buy the most wonderful ethnic food. Between eleven and one on Sundays, she could hear gospel music coming from a run down church right across the street where she often stopped by to listen. Once a month she went to the church, however, she always stood at the door and never went inside. No one tried to con her into sitting down or staying. She says, “To me, Jesus made about as much sense as Scientology or dowsing.” It wasn’t till a few months later when she finally allowed herself to take a seat on a folding chair at the entrance.

Seven days after her abortion, as she is bleeding heavily, lying down on bed in the dark, she became aware of someone with her, hunkered down in the corner of her room and she knew it was Jesus. The thought of becoming a Christian appalled her. “I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

From that day on, everywhere she went she felt a little cat was following her, wanting her to pick it up, open the door and let it in. A week later, when she went to church, she was so hungover that she couldn’t even stand up for the songs. But this is what happened afterwards.

…I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels… I opened the door to my houseboat, and stood there a minute, and then hung my head and said, “Fuck it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in now.”

Oh my God! Isn’t that the most creative “sinner’s prayer” you have ever heard? Can you imagine walking a sinner through a prayer like that?

“OK, are you ready to accept Christ into your heart now? Then, close your eyes and repeat after me: Fuck it I quit. You can come in now!”

Being so offended by the word “FUCK”, I know many evangelicals would completely miss Anne’s conversion moment. After all, how could a holy God accept such a filthy prayer? Forgetting that, as Søren Kierkegaard calls him, the “Wholly Other” that I know cares more about the woman’s soul than her using a four-letter word while talking to him.

In responding to her own question, “why everyone is not joining the evangelicals”, in her book, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation”, Christine Wicker says:

Partly that’s because evangelicals use spiritual language that’s no longer heard in common parlance and because like every strong group, they learn to communicate in a sort of verbal shorthand that has depths of meaning to it but sounds like jargon and nonsense to others.

The self-righteous and “out of touch with reality” attitude of so many of us evangelicals that insist on saying, “We have it all figured out. We got the formula! There is only one way to communicate with God and that is, of course, our American Christianese” reminds me of a message Dr. Tony Campolla once gave to a large group of young evangelicals.

He was talking about world hunger, urging the young Christians to get involved with preventing it, when he said something like the following--I am quoting from memory:

Within the next a few minutes, as I am talking to you, X number of children around the world will die of hunger, but the majority of you will not give a shit about it. And you know what angers me even more? That you are more concerned about me using the word “shit” than you are about the thousands of children dying of hunger.”

As I am writing this blog, there are millions of people around the world who, like Anne, acknowledging a vacuum in their lives, are starved to know something that would fill that vacuum, but majority of us, evangelicals, do not know how to communicate with them. Just like the old Romans, we have decided that anyone who doesn’t speak our tongue must be a Barbarian. We are so used to our Christianese language that no longer are we aware that the rest of the world needs to hire interpreters to even understand us.

Recycle or Produce?

A few years ago, at the evening session of a Christian conference I was attending, the host introduced the guest-speaker, a megachurch pastor, as the greatest thing since Al Gore invented the Internet. In fact, after that introduction, many were left feeling like a bunch of apostates for not sharing the same sentiment towards our guest-speaker.

After that superb introduction, the pastor pulled a PDA out of his coat pocket and began to rattle off some statistics on the growth of megachurches in America. According to his statistics, megachurches were the way of the future; growing twice as fast as anyone ever thought they would. Majority of the conference attendees, mostly pastors of 50-60 member churches, reacted to every piece of his statistics with shouts of praise and “hallelujahs” and who could blame them?

Having been conditioned to believe that pastoring a large church would bring them legitimacy and recognition, which to them, were equivalent to having God’s favor and power, a majority, if not all, of the pastors sitting there dreamed of having a megachurch. So, swelling with pride, they relished hearing how quickly these churches were popping up all over the land, which left them with a glimmer of hope that whispered in their ears, “YOUR church could be next...”

I couldn’t stomach more than a few minutes of the man’s talk and left the auditorium. As I was getting out of the door, a friend who was among the audience text me the following: “Isaiah! Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” referring to the prophet Isaiah rebuking the false prophets of his time for prophesying of a coming peace that would never come. We both felt that the speaker’s message of megachurches being the way of the future for all and any pastor had several faulty premises. Not once did the speaker refer to evangelism as a way to build megachurches.

In her New York Times bestseller, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation”, Christine Wicker says:

…As for those splendid megachurches, the pride of the evangelical world, they’re dinosaurs and don’t yet know it…Megachurches soon will be like Old West ghost towns, one former megachurch leader said. People will be taking tours of them as examples of a bygone era.

I taught a class on evangelism and discipleship at a Bible college for five years. Many of my students hoped to become pastors of large churches. These students’ philosophy of pastoring mostly focused on what I call, “Christian recycling”—finding the quickest way of drawing Christians from other churches to theirs. The sad and most frustrating part of dealing with this megachurch fascination was that very few of the mentioned students had hardly ever considered evangelism as a means to grow a church. But then again, why should they have? These young men and women were fed a cooked up data that lolled them into believing that someone else must be doing the evangelism since the number of the evangelicals in the US is growing by leaps and bounds.

According to Christine Wicker, if evangelicals really had the numbers they say they have and were growing the way they tell us they are, they would be unstoppable. Christine believes there are three sets of figures when it comes to the number of evangelicals in America:

1. The numbers that are provided by the evangelical organizations such as the Southern Baptists and National Associations of
Evangelicals (NAE) brings the total to 54 million, 25 percent of the adult population.
2. The numbers according to the membership figures from churches belonging to NAE total to 23.6 million.
3. When we look at the numbers church planners really count on, Sunday school or small-group attendance, the total drops
down to only 8 million, a far cry from 54 million that my students were fed to believe.

I know some people might be offended by me using phrases such as “cooked up”, “fed to” and so on. However, I speak from experience.

“How many are you running now?” as if I was a cattle rancher, was a common question I was asked when I pastored. The larger the number the more respect you had so keeping count of attendance is very important for any church, especially, a megachurch. At any megachurch there are ushers who are in charge of, literally, counting heads whenever people meet at the church. I can’t tell you how often I heard these ushers tell me something like:

Last Sunday the pastor told me to change the head-count to a much higher number because from the pulpit he could see there were more people in attendance. But, I know there weren’t that many people at church that Sunday.

I have seen churches double and triple count their attendance to reach a much higher specific number—usually, around the magic number of 10,000 if it’s a megachurch.

A few years ago at an annual convention of a large evangelical denomination, I heard the report of the denomination having planted something like 235 churches that year. HOWEVER, very conveniently, they neglected to say that, in the same year, they had closed down over 200 churches, which left the denomination with a net increase of only handful of churches.

Because of the megachurch phenomenon of our days, the evangelical leaders make it sound as if we are racking up victories the Church never dreamed of, yet, on any Sunday, at majority of American churches, mega or small, over 90% of the attendees are transferred Christians—those who left one church to attend another. I have spoken at churches where 100% of the members were originally from other churches.

My church was different. We worked among Iranian Muslims and Jews. Unlike
Christian background Americans, hoping to find a church they could call home, these Jews and Muslims did not get up on Sunday mornings, going through the Yellow Pages asking each other, “Where would you like to go to church today?” Through years of friendship and trust building, 90% of our members were introduced to Christ by the believers at the Iranian church. My church did not have the opportunity of growing through transferred Christians. Our only means of growth was evangelism and that’s why the church grew ever so slowly. If I remember correctly, in the Great Commission, Jesus did not say, “Go into the whole world and recycle Christians by convincing my followers to leave their churches and attend yours because you offer a better youth or singles’ ministry.” But He commanded us to make NEW disciples.

Being so over taken by a capitalistic attitude of “bigger is better”, the church has lost her bearing and true mission—going into the whole world and making disciples for the Master. In any industry, if you are not producing, you will go out of business and the church is not any exception. It is time for the church in America to get out of recycling business, which might be good for the ecology, but sucks for the Kingdom and start producing.