Crammed with Heaven is a monthly column in which Jenni Pretorius Hill shares stories of hope which bring Heaven’s perspective to Earth
I don’t always trust my perspective, especially when I know there’s a vulnerable spot in me that can cloud my lens and skewer my judgements. In these moments, I contact a person I trust to help me see better. Recently I sought the advice of a woman friend, much younger than myself, but someone I admire for her wisdom and honesty. She responded promptly and unfearingly in identifying my problem as offence. As she spoke it, I recognised the truth immediately. It wasn’t easy to hear, but I needed it. I am grateful for my Christian community as they hold up a mirror not only to my strengths, but my weaknesses too.
One of the biggest areas I have been challenged in, is in my understanding of people who stand at a different point on the colour continuum. Growing up in a white suburb and attending an all-white school for most of my learning years, my world was largely monochrome. I was fortunate however, in that my parents raised us in a diverse Christian community and my mother worked for an NGO that exposed me to people from all different backgrounds. But despite this exposure and my parents’ opposition to Apartheid, I was not safeguarded from the pervasive mindset of white superiority, and like a noxious invisible gas it seeped in to distort much of my thinking.
In one late-night conversation, a black friend challenged me when I was robustly defending myself as free of racial prejudice. We were sitting in my living room, and she asked me if I had these kinds of conversations with black people in their living rooms. I acknowledged that I didn’t; black friends came to my house. We speak English. They eat what I’m comfortable with. When we worship together on Sundays, they sing with me in all my familiar songs. “It would mean a lot,” she said, “if you walked across the bridge and met me in my world, but for you to do that you’ll first need to confront your fear.” I retorted. I am not afraid of black people! Or am I? Over the next few days I thought about that a lot, and I had to admit I was afraid! I asked the Holy Spirit to show me where the fear had entered, and immediately I remembered a moment in a history lesson when I was in Standard Two (Grade Four). We were learning about Shaka Zulu and Dingaan, and the clashes with the white settlers. My teacher hung a huge full-colour poster on the wall of Piet Retief and his men dying tortuously impaled on stakes. In sinister shadow behind them was a mass of dancing Zulus, high on blood-lust and madness. I was so disturbed by the picture that I felt nauseous. I asked my teacher to take it down, but she refused. Apartheid was perniciously engineered to inspire whites to one conclusion: black people are a threat to your safety and wellbeing. I wasn’t overtly taught to hate black people; I was conditioned to fear them. That memory came as a light-bulb moment.
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I was so changed by my intentional outworking to cross the bridge that I later encouraged others to do the same. Much later I introduced something called “walking in my shoes” where congregants either opened their homes, or visited the home of another outside of their comfortable space. The feedback was encouraging. One story involved a young Afrikaans woman visiting the home of a Zambian/Zulu couple. Both parties were anxious. The Zambian lady spent the week prior to the visit cleaning her windows because “white people noticed those things” while her Afrikaans guest fretted about offending her hosts. The experience changed them all. The Zulu-speaking husband shared how he was able to relinquish the pain and suspicion he had long carried toward white people, while the Afrikaans woman described the encounter as both healing and deeply humbling.
There is not a quick fix for our divided nation, but there is a way — and it is low and slow. What was established layer by layer is destroyed in the same manner — intentionally, proactively and humbly. It’s not easy to be confronted with a mirror of our weakness and it’s tempting to turn the mirror back to the other person. What about them! What about their prejudice? Look at the ruin they have brought! But we are not responsible for another’s heart; we are only responsible for our own. Positioning ourselves to allow people to challenge us takes immense courage, but real bravery is when we choose to listen and take steps to walk out our own healing.
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