{"id":666,"date":"2017-05-01T20:49:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T20:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=666"},"modified":"2018-09-21T20:52:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T20:52:05","slug":"when-good-intentions-are-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/bible-study\/when-good-intentions-are-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"When good intentions are not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think it was coincidence that the Sunday<\/strong>\u00a0after I read Bob Bowman\u2019s Bible study from the April Messenger someone quoted one of his helpful scriptural interpretations during our congregation\u2019s regular time for responses after the sermon. It wasn\u2019t just any helpful interpretation, either: It was a clear, paradigm-shifting insight that this person had heard from Bob 35 years ago. It had been so transformative that this person remembered it across the decades.<\/p>\n

I have long appreciated Bowman\u2019s scriptural commentary and knack for shaping our denominational reading of scripture. But I found \u201cSarah, My Sister\u201d problematic. Bowman follows a reading of the Genesis 16 text by Cat Zavis, a contemporary Jewish commentator writing in the magazine\u00a0Tikkun,<\/em>\u00a0to explore the relationship between Sarah and Hagar. Zavis and Bowman contend that perhaps Sarah\u2019s attempts to give Hagar to Abraham as a \u201cwife\u201d and not a \u201cconcubine\u201d indicate Sarah\u2019s good intentions, an attempt to change the inherent injustice in the relationship of slave and slave-owner.<\/p>\n

There are two problems with this reading. First, the scripture itself does not support it. Sarah\u2019s actions\u2014giving Hagar to her husband as property, forcing her to bear a child, eventually casting her out into the wilderness as the single mother of a defenseless infant\u2014are not the actions of someone invested in a relationship of mutuality. When Hagar does return to Sarah, she does not do so in order to participate in a utopian sisterly ideal. Verse 9 clearly reads that Hagar is to return to the woman who owns her and \u201csubmit\u201d to her. Focusing on Sarah\u2019s \u201cgood intentions\u201d obscures the overarching unjust and oppressive context of slavery: one human being owning another.<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly, reading the story this way obscures our own discipleship. Good intentions are not enough. A life of discipleship involves what the New Testament authors call\u00a0metanoia.<\/em>\u00a0We read this word in translation as \u201crepentance,\u201d but the Greek word actually means a \u201ctotal transformation of mind and heart.\u201d If we act on our own good intentions and simply regret that they do not produce good fruit, this is not true metanoia. This is not the way toward the transformation offered in Jesus\u2019 life, death, and resurrection.<\/p>\n

When we realize that our own good intentions are not enough to change broken relationships, unjust systems or a fallen world, it is not enough to simply shake our heads, return to our old patterns, and ignore the larger realities that shape our behavior. Sarah did not seek metanoia. She remained oblivious to the ways her power and privilege were direct causes of Hagar\u2019s pain. When her good intentions failed her, she retreated into her stale and broken worldview, content to live comfortably in her own power and privilege instead of acknowledging and allowing Hagar\u2019s pain to change their relationship for the better.<\/p>\n

We Brethren are a people of very good intentions. We know that we are called to witness and to serve. We have lived this way of service for so long that our good intentions have obscured opportunities for our own metanoia. Too often, we are like Sarah, resting on our own good intentions and refusing to acknowledge the pain of the other. When our actions fail to enact healing or justice, we say \u201cwell, we meant well,\u201d and refuse to turn our regret into true repentance.<\/p>\n

This is especially true when it comes to racism and power. As a denomination with historical and demographic roots in white, well-off, and privileged communities, we have barely begun to wrestle with the ways our good intentions might actually be perpetuating systems and structures of harm and injustice.<\/p>\n

Instead of reading the story of Hagar and Sarah as a way to let ourselves off the hook\u2014again\u2014for failing to question the larger systems and structures that perpetuate relationships of inequality, we could begin to practice true metanoia. Instead of immediately identifying with the privileged Sarah in the story, we could begin to listen to Hagar\u2019s perspective, to allow Hagar\u2019s pain to penetrate our walls of self-deception and self-righteousness.<\/p>\n

In the same way, we might begin to set aside our own good intentions and self-assured action in order to listen to the perspective of sisters and brothers of color, to allow their pain to penetrate our stubbornness, to seek\u2014and genuinely desire\u2014a true transformation of our relationships and our systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah remained oblivious\u2026do we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,105],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-study","tag-bible-study","tag-dana-cassell"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":668,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}