One of the ways the intercultural experience has shaped me is that it taught me to be more attentive to the context of the person I am conversing with, especially, when it pertains to faith! A lesson I needed six years ago when I held a theological conversation I still remember -and regret- until this day.

Huntsville, Alabama – October 2014

During my second year of seminary, I did an internship at the First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, AL. The pastor of that church and his wife (also a minister) were part of a small pastors’ group that met over breakfast every Wednesday morning to discuss their sermons for the upcoming Sunday.

Among the pastors who attended that breakfast discussion was Rev. Gregory Jerome Bentley, the newly elected co-moderator of the PCUSA’s General Assembly.

One October morning, the discussion was happening around a passage from the letter of Paul to Philemon. Rev. Gregory went on to show that Paul demanded the emancipation of Onesimus the slave; for him, especially as an African American, the gospel message was one of freedom and equity.
Now being the fresh seminary student that I was, of course I jumped on to “correct” his “misinterpretation” of the passage.

Paul’s message -I argued- was only an urge to Philemon to show the same love and forgiveness to his escaped and now-believing slave Onesimus, that he himself has experienced after becoming a believer in Christ. The text says nothing about abolishing slavery! It says nothing about slavery being wrong! Paul does not say it! The gospel does not say it; let’s not make the bible say what we want the bible to say.

Years went by, and I kept thinking about that conversation! “What a fool” I often thought about myself. What kind of good news was I trying to preach? How did my words land on the ears of a man with a history of slavery?! Was it more important to sound smart than compassionate?

Rev. Gregory may or may not remember that conversation. He may or may not have been hurt. Maybe he knew I had no idea what I was talking about, but I still remember it! And I think it is overdue for me to say: I was wrong.

Forgive me Mr. Moderator; I learned after living in this country about the history of ungodly “gospel” messages that were taken out of scripture to oppress and to abuse.

Forgive me, for I learned after serving a church, that what we preach, we preach to show the eternal truth of God’s love, and not the truth of words written in a distant era.

I learned after experiencing God’s transformative power in and through the words that we say, that the gospel is meant to challenge and change, to heal and reconcile, but never to put down and break.

I may not have seen or heard the message of freedom in Paul’s words, but I see and hear it now. And even if I don’t, you have all the right to see it, and to preach it, and to use it to comfort a people in need of that message.

Forgive me, Mr. Moderator, for “I did not know what I was doing.”