A Melting Pot or a Mosaic

Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and his legacy communicates very well to international students. Most of them know his name and generally what he stood for but their lack of a full understanding of American history prevents them from fully understanding why they, in 2015, didn't have school on Monday.

Our last Friday Dinner was a perfect opportunity to share about MLK, to talk about reconciliation, to introduce them to Jesus, the ultimate reconciler, and to celebrate the Mosaic of International Friendships. I had the honor and challenge of leading them through the touchy parts of American history which led up to MLK's "I have a dream" speech. We talked about how our founding fathers spoke and wrote grandiose words about rights endowed by our Creator that they didn't fully mean. How they were intentionally silent on the issue of slavery in the Declaration of Independence, then in the Constitution, and even still in the Bill of Rights, knowing that to face that issue head on would mean to sacrifice the union of the states. We talked about the nightmarish Civil War that our ancestors fought which was an inevitable result of their ancestors' inability to legislate those "inalienable rights" which they so proudly declared along with their independence. We celebrated the courage and providential timing of Abraham Lincoln. We embarrassingly discussed Jim Crow laws and a nation which, even 100 years after the abolishment of slavery, did not truly believe that "all men are created equal." We listened to the powerful words of Dr. King, and as they rang out from the shadows of President Lincoln's memorial that room full of over 100 international students and scholars was hanging on every word.

We then talked about reconciliation - a word that has been prostituted out by every advocate for every cause and bruised and battered often to the point of being unrecognizable. "To make right that which is out of harmony, unbalanced, or not in right relationship." Jesus is about reconciliation. Perhaps he's the only one that can do it? No, that can't be so or else he would never have called his followers to have a "ministry of reconciliation."

But the need for reconciliation is not exclusive to American race relations. Every international student in that room comes from a country where there is one group of people that discriminates against, hates, is at war with, or has tried to do away with through genocide another group of people that looks different than their people group, believes different than their people group, was born on the wrong side of an arbitrary border from their people group, or wronged their people group in the past. With the words Ferguson, Boko Haram, and Charlie Hebdo still ringing in our ears, there was no need to convince anyone that this issue is not only confined to American history.

International students in American universities are not exempt from discrimination. There are many Americans who flat out do not want them here - especially the ones with language deficiencies. But we used this opportunity to affirm the diversity in the Kingdom of God. Christianity is the one religion in world history that is not indigenous to one people group or one culture. Think about it, what other religion in history has had the ability to adapt to any culture? This is why the church has seen explosions in Europe in the first millennium, in North America for the last 200 years, and currently is currently seeing exponential growth in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The worldwide church is not a melting pot, it is a mosaic.



In America there are many people that refer to our racial and ethnic diversity as a melting pot - taking all that is different and colorful and melting it down, mixing it together, and coming up with one boring color or one bland flavor - American. At International Friends we celebrate each student - their gifts, their personality, their culture - as one beautiful tile in a mosaic, where no one loses their culture to be blended into a vanilla a-cultural blob. We believe everyone needs Jesus, but that becoming a follower of Jesus does not call anyone away from their cultural uniqueness but rather enhances it. We celebrate diversity because it is a picture of the Kingdom of God. Yes, Paul writes that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, etc. in Galatians 3:28, but that means we all have equal access to faith in Christ, not that we all look the same, worship the same, are gifted the same - just that we are all forgiven the same! I look forward to the day when we will celebrate before the throne with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. It will not be a melting pot where we will all speak one language and sing with the same instrumentation while wearing the same boring clothes - it will be a mosaic where Dominican percussion will stand alongside a classic pipe organ which will be supplemented by African dance while an Irish penny whistle floats above the melody - all in worship of the King of kings and Lord of lords!

At the end of the night we shared this mosaic, made with pictures taken that evening.