Ferguson. We've all been watching the news. The headlines emphasize a racial tension, specifically the tension between blacks and whites. But there is another tension that does not get as much press, an awkward reality that cannot be ignored. It is the uncomfortable conflict of opposing views within the Christian community, particularly white Christians and black Christians. It is not that this is altogether forgotten by the media. On August 17, 2014 the Washington Post ran an article about the parallel universes, as one black pastor put it, that separate white Christians from black Christians.  It was entitled Two churches in Missouri are filled with faith, but common ground remains elusive.

Why is the common ground so elusive? Why is it that sincere Christians, white and black, instinctively analyze a crisis like Ferguson along color lines when they both love the same Lord? Many white Christians sincerely wonder how any sincere black Christian can take offense at their calls for delayed judgement "until all the facts are out" while seemingly ignoring the alleged bad behavior of the victim that put him into conflict with a police officer in the first place. And  many  black Christians wonder how any sincere white Christian can not see the obvious problem of prejudice and white-on-black abuse of authority that exacerbates tension and escalates any confrontation between black youth and white authority in ways that are manifestly unfair. And so the churches meet separately. The whites pray for the officer who is a "good man" who risks his life daily to fight for crime. The blacks pray for the family of the victim who is a "good  boy" who was unjustly and prematurely cut down by white privilege. While neither side will go out into the streets and throw Molotov cocktails at each other because they are law-abiding Christians, their sympathies which are visceral and spiritual come together like the repulsive force between two north pole magnets. In other words, it is in crises like Ferguson that a repulsive force of seemingly opposing sympathies is most felt between white and black Christians.

Perhaps one of the problems is that pastors, black and white, need to adopt a different posture in the racial conflict than what is normally practiced. Perhaps we should step aside and look at the tension from the perspective of an outsider. Much like a missionary seeking to reconcile two tribes that have woven into the fabric of their respective cultures a hostility toward one another, the gospel preacher must yearn to bring hostile communities together on that embarrassingly "elusive common ground". Embarrassing because both communities claim the same Lord, the same Bible, the same Gospel, the same Hope and yet we can't pray together in the same way when a Ferguson happens.

Outsiders tend to look at conflicts between parties with more objective emotions, if not more actual knowledge of the grievances and pain that have been experienced by the warring communities. Therefore, they are sometimes more clearheaded about what the real problems are. The Hatfields and the McCoys have been fighting for so long that they don't even know what they're mad about. The McCoys just know that if the Hatfields had anything to do with it they don't like it. And the Hatfields know that if McCoys like anything, they hate it.

Enter the Gospel. It is the news from the Outsider. And it is brought by ambassadors from Another Place. Ambassadors from another place know that their news of reconciliation has to penetrate three different cultures: the McCoy culture, the Hatfield culture, and the Hatfield/McCoy culture. Foreign missionaries who are addressing warring factions know that the Good News must penetrate cultures (plural), and they know that they can best communicate cross-culturally when they learn the language and the culture of each party.

This is to say that the racial conflict in our country is deeper than skin. It is a cultural issue. There is a black culture and a white culture. There is an American culture and an Evangelical culture. And Christian pastors will not be able to have an effective ambassadorial work until they familiarize themselves with both cultures with the detached objectivity of a foreign ambassador.

What is culture? There have been many definitions of culture that range from a few words to multiple paragraphs, but perhaps one of the more famous definitions is most helpful for this conversation. I will present my thoughts about the Gospel in Black and White by using two very simple -- and definitely not comprehensive -- definitions of culture. It would be more accurate to say that I am using parts of a complicated understanding of culture to advance my proposal. Culture is, among many other things,

1. shared understanding, and
2. shared values.

Shared Understanding

The first comes from Robert Redfield who said simply that culture is "shared understandings made manifest in act and artifact." When Michael Brown was slain on August 9, 2014 what followed between white and black Americans was anything but shared understanding. Instead, as it did in the Trayvon Martin case and in many cases prior to Michael Brown, there surged into the American consciousness a conflict of seemingly irreconcilable understandings. Blacks understand the crisis in one way and whites understand it another way and dialogue between the communities gets sabotaged by leaders who need crises to be relevant. This is further complicated by the political nature of the crisis and so liberals, conservatives, libertarians and the myriad of nuanced shades of political ideologies in those categories all have their own preferred interpretation of Ferguson. But the focus of this article is the very real tension that arises between black Christians and white Christians. Both love the Gospel, but both are watching the evening news with different understandings, and those understandings are so deeply embedded into our sense of identity that we cannot even pray to our common Lord together.

Obviously, the problem is not the Gospel. But on the face of it the Gospel does not seem to be the solution either. I would suggest that a large part of the problem is the preachers of the Gospel who are missing an opportunity to do ambassadorial work that is truly culturally relevant because if the Gospel is not the solution there is no solution.

The Gospel is not partisan and the Gospel comes most effectively through preachers who, like Jesus, enter into the context of the conflict with the goal of sympathizing. They have an incarnational approach to gaining understanding of the conflict that divides the tribes. They don't interpret social events in black or white. They see colors, hues, shades, light, and darkness. As my friend, Dr. Ed Copeland says, they are committed to "learning the narrative of the other". They see creatures created in God's image, and they see Christians who have the Spirit of Christ indwelling them, a Spirit who has baptized all redeemed humanity, black and white, into one body.

Preachers of the Gospel have to be outsiders while politicians fight for the role of champion insiders. I suggest that too often black preachers of the Gospel have been tempted to be less ambassadors of another city than advocates for their community while too many white preachers of the Gospel have never even bothered to consider the fact that they minister from the position of unjust privilege.

Politicians may enjoy capitalizing on the differences, and many hope that these angry outbursts will turn into movements. The language is already employed in the media. Movements get their momentum in tragedy and in a heightened perception of hostility. Opportunists on all sides clamor for simple, reductionistic explanations that will cohere their group identity. And too often it is around their personae. This is the way self-serving leaders work. As Paul said, "They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them" (Galatians 4:17). The point is this: opportunistic leaders like the chance to seal off one group from another in order to inflate their significance as a messiah for the wronged group. Politicians need opportunity to forge collectives that advance their causes and their personal ambitions. This is the way social change has always happened.

All of these are merely the outworking of social movement. Social movement is the shifting of society into collectives by which individuals can feel rescued from threats real or perceived. It gives them a sense of belonging and safety. They are bumped and prodded and coaxed and goaded and frightened into groups in which they feel best identifies who they are as individuals. Some may even be there reluctantly, but they feel safe there. People long to belong and social crises as we see happening in Ferguson are often more about identity crises than anything else. The fifth generation Hatfield only feels like he really belongs when he is shooting at the McCoys. Thus, reductionistic explanations and stereotypes are all he needs to feel vindicated in his fiery outburst as a proud Hatfield. And in that outburst there's a sense of renewal. As sociologist Jeffrey Alexander said, "Virtually every kind of modern collectivity. . .seems to depend at one time or another on integrative processes that create some sense of shared identity, even if these are forged, as they all too often are, in opposition to simplistic constructions of those who are putatively on the other side." Whites imagine blacks don't care about law and order and close their eyes to the disrespectful behavior of the young men toward authority. Blacks imagine whites don't care if black kids die and that predominately white police forces seem trigger happy when it comes to black children. Both are "simplistic constructions of those who are putatively on the other side."

The problem is that for the black Christian and the white Christian there really should not be another side. Both black and white preachers of the Gospel have to approach the feud as outsiders who, like their Master, are prepared to identify with the people he is saving. Jesus is the Ultimate Sympathizer and this can only be done with ambassadorial effect when outsiders enter fellowship with the true identity of those they wish to minister to. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. I am a white American and so I have to detach myself from my automatic white sympathies in order to learn black sympathies by choice. This is incarnational gospel ministry.

How might we do this? We must do this by immediately choosing to respect the understanding of the culture that we are approaching. If we are white we need to dignify the the black understanding of Ferguson with immediate respect and ban our censorious simplifications and reductionisms. We must choose to look through their lenses if we are to truly empathize and until we empathize we will never be able to be effective ministers of reconciliation.

But how can we identify their understanding of a situation? How can we immediately move from simple respect to shared understanding?

We could begin by understanding the values of the black community.

Shared Values

Many whites bristle when they are told that they may be contributing to a racist system, or conveying racially insensitive communication. They have a black friend! They hire black people! And, by golly, if the white police office is proved guilty after due process he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law! How can anyone think that they are racist?!

Similarly many blacks perceive racism in the actions and words of godly whites when, in fact, there is none. David Hesselgrave famously said, "The missionary problem par excellence is communication." Perhaps the real problem between white Christians and black Christians is communication. Perhaps what they think they are saying is not really being heard.

Let me give an illustration of potentially offensive communication that comes from white Christian leaders that conveys the wrong message although it is usually stated sincerely. Almost ten times out of ten when a white leader is asked about the situation in Ferguson the reply is something like this: "Well, we don't know the facts." And the accompanying action is one of silence. This sometimes infuriates blacks and frustrates them at the very least. Some wish to scream out, "Here's a fact that we do know. An unarmed teenager from our minority community was killed by a predominately white police force and his body was left to lay in the street for four hours. How can you call yourself a decent Christian and not be outraged by that?" To which the white Christian, especially upon hearing that the teen had allegedly been misbehaving earlier in a store, responds with sanctimonious grief, "How can you claim to be a follower of Jesus and not care about the fact that the white police officer may have been trying to do his job while dealing with a lawbreaker? This is not about race! Gasp! I am NOT RACIST! If the white officer is guilty, prosecute! Wait for due process."

But the issue is not about the morality of the individual officer, whether he was justified or not. The issue is about the value of black life and the seemingly easy way in which it is disposed of by a white system of policing.

The practical reality of this cultural communication conflict is best understood as a misunderstanding of values. Culture, among other things, is shared values. The black community has values that are different than the white community. Values and the priority of those values determine our actions or reactions in any given situation. If I am eating a sandwich in the park on my lunch break and see a chicken dart into the busy street I will not suddenly spit out my sandwich, scream out an alarm, bolt into the street, adrenaline shooting through the roof, wildly flailing my arms to alert the traffic, risking my very life like I would if it were a child running into the street. Why? Because I highly value the life of a child. I only value a chicken if it is dead and grilled. Values are often revealed in my knee-jerk reactions or non-reactions. Would a white boy's body have lain in the streets of Ferguson for four hours? Actions and reactions reveal value and non-value.

Whites are confused by the outcry of blacks from all over the country when a black boy is killed. This is because whites do not value their white collective in the same way that blacks value their black collective. The black culture values the black community. They value the black collective. It was through community that the blacks prevailed through the Civil Rights Era. In fact, it is through community that African Americans survive still. They feel much more dependent on community than we whites do.

Whites, on the other hand, simply do not see themselves as a collective. We are the proverbial fish in the water that sincerely asks, "What is water?" We see ourselves as Missourians, Bears fans, cowboys, motorcyclists, Democrats, evangelicals, and countless other possibilities, but we do not feel ourselves to be part of a white collective. Thus, when our black friends feel the impact of Ferguson even though they are three states away we scratch our heads and wonder how in the world this whole affair became a white/black thing when it just happened to be a white office that killed a black youth while in the line of duty. How, we wonder, can this be so visceral to them? As one black pastor friend said, he was vicariously traumatized. Honestly, I was not similarly traumatized. I went to bed that night without the feeling that one of us had killed one of them because as a white I don't even get the feeling of a white us. In the same week a white teenage girl was shot and killed by the police three blocks away from my home. Naturally there were questions about the police procedures and an investigation is taking place, but no white person felt like one of us had been eliminated by a large impersonal other. It wasn't until I consciously chose to respect the understanding and interpretation of black Christians that I sorrowfully recognized my slowness to sympathize with them.

White christians trust too much their initial feelings, not realizing that feelings are shaped by understanding. I do not say that black Christians do not have the same temptation. I am speaking, however, as a white Christian preacher, trying to model ambassadorial effort. We have to understand that our instincts and knee-jerk analyses are products of our culture.

The reason for this is in the question of value. The fact that trumps all other facts emotionally in the culture that values the black collective as a minority community is that there is one less black boy of an already too-few number, dead at the hands of a white system that seemingly does not share that value. This assumption that a white system does not value black life seems proven when the force seems more trigger happy when the black youth is the target or when the force leaves his body on the street for hours before picking it up. As the value of a child would call up from deep within me a visceral, passionate, death-defying lurch toward the street in the flash of an eye, in the same way the devaluing of a chicken fails to to call up the visceral reaction in my soul and body to do something about it. In the same way, the black community senses from whites who calmly munch on their sandwich and say, "We don't have all the facts yet" a devaluation of a black life. They do not see what whites think they are conveying, a calm deliberation that waits for due process and accepts the rule of justice. Instead, they hear from our inability to sympathize, "It's just another black thug with sagging pants that wasn't respecting authority."

White evangelicals need to learn that it is not enough to have a black friend or to love a black person. One must love the black community. We who are white have grown up in a world where blacks must learn to live with us but where we have never had to learn to live with them. We love to go to a black church as tourists, but we do not want to go there as members. One must love the community that an individual comes from to truly love that individual, especially if the culture of that community places such a high value on its community.

In the 2014 sitcom Welcome to Sweden Bruce, an American accountant moves to Sweden with his girlfriend and becomes friends with an older Iraqi who hates America but accepts Bruce because Bruce, in his desire to have a friend, introduced himself as a Canadian. The charade goes on until Bruce can no longer stand being "accepted" by someone who does not accept where he comes from and dumps the friendship. In the same way, many evangelical Christians cannot comprehend what is possibly wrong with their sincere efforts to accept black individuals while they persistently refuse to accept where they come from. Only when Christians begin to love the black community will they ever begin to truly love black people. In so doing they will begin to share the same values that the black community shares. White christians who rail on black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as race baiters do not comprehend that they are actually alienating most blacks, even those who do not share the same views as Sharpton and Jackson or the Black Panther or any other person or party that cares about the black collective. Because one thing that almost all African Americans have in common is a deep-rooted value of the black community.

If we white Christians are really earnest about healing the rift between black Christians and white Christians we will make a firm commitment to care about the black community as a whole and interpret the tragedy of Ferguson in light of what a minority culture is telling us about its values and understandings, and we will humbly trust godly black Christians to help us feel the way they feel. Until we act incarnationally we are not loving Christianly. Then, and only then, will the "elusive common ground" between black Christians and white Christians begin to pierce through the fog of cultural differences and what we see will be the cross of Jesus Christ where we all go to die to ourselves.

The Gospel in black and white is this: there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Church.