Our national conversation around race has revealed important truths about my identity, and made me long for God’s coming redemption of all things.
By Sarah Horton
F
or years, I associated Advent as a time of cozy candlelit services, little pieces of chocolate from a paper calendar, and a giant pine wreath. More recently, I’ve seen the holiday as a season of longing, waiting, and being isolated. This year, there will be no crowding into a church sanctuary to sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” There are no communal meals. The only fire from Advent candles comes through a computer screen.
As we close 2020, we have experienced a pandemic that halted daily life, witnessed further acts of police brutality, reached record high numbers of unemployment, and grieved the deaths caused by an uncontrolled public health crisis. All of these things have revealed how imperfect and inadequate our world is. This Advent season comes at the end of an apocalyptic year, revealing the shortcomings and pain of our world.
One sign of hope this year was the wave of protests demanding justice for Black and brown bodies murdered in the streets. Although police brutality against these communities is not new, this year’s protest included supporters from people who had not previously been involved. Perhaps this momentum grew because we were all virtually connected more due to the pandemic, or maybe it was because people were already feeling emotionally stressed from the isolation of a pandemic.
At the height of the movement this summer, I watched prominent leaders in the white evangelical world, like Joel Osteen and Hillsong leaders, speak out against racism. I watched my city, Grand Rapids, on the news, as protestors smashed storefront windows with baseball bats, burned trash cans, and even lit a police cruiser on fire.
Observing these fiery demonstrations led me to consider where I, as a half-Korean and half-white woman, fit into larger discussions of race. This revelation of the gravity of racial injustice in our country, as well as specifically in white Christian spaces like the one I grew up in, has caused me to feel like I am having my own personal apocalypse--the revealing of my own identity and where I fit in with the discussions.
As a biracial person, I cannot fully identify with the white experience, nor can I fully identify with a Korean experience. At times, that has felt isolating. I have responded to the pressure of needing to be in a group by settling on being a weird-looking white person. But the ongoing discussion of race has made me realize that assimilation into whiteness is not the answer. I have begun examining my own racial experience and trying to figure out what, if anything, my experience has to do with the discussion, and I find myself with more questions.
MY FAMILY’S STORY
My mom and her brother were adopted from South Korea when they were three and five years old, respectively. They were adopted by a loving, white Christian couple in a tiny town in Indiana. My mom and uncle were the only Asians in the entire community. She married my father, who is white, and they had my brother and me.
But our existence wasn’t quite a beacon of a post-racial America. In reality, we have both lived through our share of microaggressions, ignorant comments, “ching-chongs,” and eyes pulled into slits to “look like” us. Our presence has been apocalyptic, revealing the insidious racism that still is woven into the fabric of our society.
Like many minorities who experience these harsh realities, my brother and I sought to assimilate as much as possible into our white, suburban circles. I was embarrassed when my friends found a picture of me wearing a Hanbok, and I blushed when they would peer at me, asking, “What are you?”
Often, I felt like a warped version of my mom and my dad at the same time. I longed to be fully Korean or fully white. Being both created too much tension. I always felt too Asian in white circles and too white in Asian circles. Many times, I wanted to ignore my body and the way that I looked. Other times, I looked in the mirror and wished I saw something different.
I eventually ceded these self-image problems to a gnostic view of my body, believing that it didn’t really matter that much anyways. What mattered most was my inner spiritual life. All of this was a coping mechanism to fit in with everyone around me.
As an adult, I am now realizing I don’t need to assimilate. I have been inspired by the ways that BIPOC have been owning and embracing their differences. I am ministered to when I hear leaders in the Black church repeating that “Black is beautiful.” I am moved seeing examples of people who are different, and affirm and celebrate that difference. I think about the Korean roots that my mom has tried connecting with, and remember the ways she worked hard to pass on pride in our Korean heritage.
In recent years, it has become even more important to me that the Korean part of our family does not get erased. When I look at my blond-haired, blue-eyed children, I feel a sense of urgency to preserve the Korean culture my mother discovered and shared with us as children. I want my children to know the story of our family: my mom’s adoption, her attempts to connect to the culture, and my tension living as a mixed-race person. I cook my children Korean dishes, teach my son some Korean words, and hope one day my mom can share her experience coming to terms with her Korean identity.
In all of this, I realize the tension of a multiracial person living in extremely racialized America calls me to both the apocalypse and Advent. I observe the former as race is actively discussed and becomes important to my own identity, revealing my heritage when in the past I felt I could hide it. I experience the latter as the awkward pressure of not quite fitting in presently, but looking forward to the day that everything is made right by Jesus, when microaggressions, self-hate, and our flawed dealings with racism will fade away.
This moment in time is mixed, like me, in the way that things are not always cut and dry, clearly one category or another.
These tensions of never belonging leave me longing for the day that all people are truly seen as made in the image of God. I try to peer through our dimly lit reality and anticipate the day when Christ redeems everything and we see that glorious image in Revelation 7:9: “...a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…” (NIV).
I pray that God would give me eyes to see his reflection in every person I encounter. I look forward and hope for a day when I can accept myself as a whole person and not feel like an outsider in all groups because of my mixed-race identity. All of these things, I hope and wait for in the future.
WAS BLIND, BUT NOW I SEE
For so long, I wanted to make sure I was able to blend in, to erase the Korean pieces of DNA. Now, I’m realizing that the body God put me in matters. My culture matters. God came to be with us in a brown, Jewish body, and that matters. That’s what we look for in the season of Advent—we look for that hope that came in the form of a human. We look for the physical reminder and hope of a body that dwelt among us, showing us how to live.
In this Advent season, I am longing for a world where differences are celebrated and accepted, and justice is pursued. I long for true repentance and confession of the ways the white American church has held hands with white supremacy. I long for a world where the biases floating under the surface are thrown out, and instead are replaced with genuine curiosity. I long for a world where people with darker shades of skin no longer fear for their lives. I long for a world where Christ comes back and redeems this colorful, fractured mess that we find ourselves in.
God started a work, God is in the middle of revealing and sanctifying his work, and I look for the day that the work is complete—hope fulfilled in Christ.
Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash
Sarah Horton lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband Caleb and two sons, Micah and James. She enjoys music, good food, and spending time with her family.