A Recovering Bigot

I am a recovering Bigot. It took a while to name it—a long while. Its roots go away back. And there are no BA meetings (Bigots Anonymous) available to attend for recovery. So I’m relegated to self-recovery. I first recognized the symptoms before I knew its reality.    

Football season was over, and my SHS Dance Band practice ended early that Thursday night. With my freshly minted drivers license safely stashed, a full tank of gas in the truck, I wanted to hit the road. In the distance, I saw the lights of the pumping station at the Kaolin mine: Mr Landers’ truck was parked out front. Ten miles from anywhere,  I was not ready to go home yet. At least I could stop and talk with him. He lived in a rented house up the road from my home. His son was couple of grades below me in high school; and not an impressive student.

I knocked on the door and Mr. Landers invited me in. “I’m just sittin’ here workin’ on the Sunday School lesson I’m teachin’ Sunday” he drawled. “The pumps are purrin’, ” he said, “so I’ve got some time,” .  He’s working on teaching a Sunday School lesson!? The idea was incongruous: I thought, “Here I am a senior in high school, and holding a Methodist Local Preachers’ License! (It was possible back then). What could this man, sitting in overalls covered in chalk dust, know about Bible teaching!?’ Well. My astonishment flew back in my face. Mr. Landers began connecting the power of God’s Creation and the wonders of God’s love as recounted first in the Old Testament; Then from the New Testament he joyfully opened the warmth and strength of life in Jesus. I sat in awe. I hope my bigotry didn’t emerge.      

 In the Fall, I went away to college, my next step toward seminary and ordination. That scene in the pumping station stuck in my mind like the earworm of a bad country song. Later, in Seminary at Emory University, I sat in the halls of academe hearing lectures by world renowned theologians, and yet, Mr. Landers quietly and confidently had opened biblical truths to me; how could this be? I hope my bigotry didn’t emerge.      

After seminary graduation and ordination, I served in Campus Ministry, country, and town churches. In one, twenty miles from anywhere, I met an elderly widow. Often we sat cracking crab-shells, digging out the luscious meat. She, in gentle ways, cracked hardened ideas of mine; she opened vistas of learning and service still opaque to me. She, I observed, hadn’t been to seminary: yet she offered insights not found in the ivy halls of learning.  I hope my bigotry didn’t emerge.      

Then, while working on my doctoral studies, I went on a field trip with our professor: it was a tiny shack of a church: propped precariously on the side of a North Georgia Mountain.  Not a hymn book in sight, but joyous songs filled the rafters, sung lustily. The preacher, in his overalls, sweating , preaching with dynamism, couldn’t read: his son lined out each passage from the Bible as his father requested it. An expository Bible teaching was fully given, And yet. And yet, again I say: How could this be?  I hope my bigotry didn’t emerge.    

My doctoral study group was multiracial, and had not a single United Methodist in it: everyone was from a different faith tradition. Over time, as we studied, struggled, laughed, and prayed together, I found my answer! I discovered my bigotry. I am, have been, and always will be, a recovering bigot. I am not a practicing bigot: there is not yet a BA meeting to attend. However, I have found solace, and meet regularly, with Jesus. When I don’t, the old self rises up.

So. Now I’m coming out: I am a recovering bigot. It is frustrating. I just cannot shed every iota of it. But there is hope. There is forgiveness. There is The Way.  As Charles Wesley prayed (in song) “…take away our bent to sinning, Alpha and Omega thou art. End of Faith as its beginning Set our hearts at liberty.” Henri Nouwen said, when an evil spirit (and bigotry is one) challenges, focus on Jesus; the evil spirit will fade away. I am learning that I have to re-focus. Constantly .

( FYI; In case you missed it: The Merriam  Webster Definition of bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices