Our Minority and God's Majority

"God + me = a majority." There is real power in this statement. It's the type of power that enables a new Christian to pray his way through his hours on the job when he is suffering some of the ridicule that comes from being born of a whole new order. It's the type of power that sustains a Christian undergoing the hardship of life as an exile. It's the sense of being a part of an invisible kingdom that is marking out its foundations in a very visible, seemingly more powerful world, a kingdom that will last because its king is Jesus.

Elisha shared this sense of kingdom, this sense of majority with his servant when he opened his eyes to see the mountain filled with horses and chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:17). The writer of Hebrews shared this sense of majority with the Christians of the first century when he pointed to the great cloud of witnesses that surrounded them (Hebrews 12:1). This sense of kingdom majority and the assurance of my place in it gives me the power to accomplish God's will in my life.

But there are many people, especially we as black people, who live under a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness that comes in part from living in a racially damaged society. I call this mindset "the minority mentality."

Whenever I speak at a college campus, I always take the time to talk to those working in the minority affairs department. As I listen, what I usually hear is just a bunch of complaining. "This can't be done because these white folks are in control." "This is a problem because the college is racist."

In the complaining, all I hear is the minority mentality. I am personally in no way interested in "minority affairs." I want to be into affairs, period. "Minority affairs" is just some cooked-up, dead-end sidetrack, that might just be one more way to control the input of black people into real policy. But as a black Christian, God gives me a concern that is much broader than my own race. It's a concern that encompasses the world in its need for racial reconciliation, salvation, and economic justice.

The person who suffers from a minority mentality suffers under three burdens: a lack of identity, a lack of self-confidence, and a feeling of dependence.

In a democratic society a person convinced of his minority status has all of his goals and aspirations shaped by the overriding desire to become a part of the acceptable majority. For a black person this usually means becoming a part of the white majority; this creates a conscious and subconscious rejection of his or her own origin, culture, and community, resulting in a real loss of identity. A person climbing the narrow societal success ladder, trapped by his or her own needs to make it as the majority has defined, limits his life goals to those of the status quo. A person with the minority mentality doesn't have the breadth of vision or the courage to live an alternative or be creative enough to offer the world something new.

A person convinced of his or her minority status has a lack of self-confidence, being convinced of his or her powerlessness. And a sense of powerlessness, a sense that "I really can't ever accomplish anything," results in bitterness, constant complaining, continuous faulting of others for my own failures and ultimately a deep-seated irresponsibility.

Irresponsibility leads to a feeling of dependence, and this has been deepened by our welfare and charity systems into a sense that "I'm always looking for someone else to do something for me." The majority has the minority in the position of always coming to them as beggars.

How do we break this sense of meaninglessness, powerlessness, and dependence? Here is where the gospel of Jesus Christ can save a person by breaking down every hindrance to his or her growth and development. The gospel can enter the lives of people who move toward freedom from both the false confidence of a majority position in society and the crippled thinking of minority mentality.

A person is saved from meaninglessness and lack of identity when he discovers that he has always been loved by God, when she realizes that God loved her so much that he gave up the life of his only son so that she can be a part of his royal family. He or she will cry, "I will love the Lord, because he has heard my voice…. when I was brought low, he saved me" (Psalm 116:1,6).

A person is saved from his sense of powerlessness when he sees that as a part of God's family he is a part of an eternal majority, when she sees that as a member of the body of Christ she has a position, she has gifts, she bears fruit. He or she will cry, "What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?" (Psalm 116:12).

Persons saved from their sense of dependence no longer look for what society can do for them. They now recognize that the calling and purpose of God for them in the world is to move out in the Spirit of Jesus--continuing his ministry, sharing the reconciliation they have with the Father and with each other, sharing their resources with the poor. Those who were once beggars, expecting that someone owed them something, will then say, "I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.... O Lord, I am your servant...the child of your serving girl. You have loosed my bonds" (Psalm 116: 13, 14, 16).

Let us be like Elisha and share with those around us the sense of our kingdom majority. And let us get close enough to our brothers and sisters suffering from a minority mentality so that, in the sharing, they might be set free.

John Perkins was a Sojourners contributing editor when this article appeared.