"How do you feel about that?"

I love my job.

That sentence is going to sit awkwardly up at the top because it is so true for me that I feel that it can stand alone up there. Let me explain: I am lucky enough to be employed as an instructor at a new ballroom dance studio here in town. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to dance. Work would be intolerable without that innate desire to move around when I hear music, but that’s not why this is the best job I’ve ever had. Rather, it’s because of the students. And one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had while working there has been talking with them about whatever homework I happen to be doing up at the front desk at the time. The small stack of religious studies textbooks tends to invite some wonderful questions. They range from “Does your church know that you’re a dance teacher?!” to “Ah, you’re a Christian. So you must be a Republican, am I right?” And while some of these admittedly led to awkward conversations, the most thought provoking question has been one that one woman asked me:

“How do you feel about that?”

To give it more context, I was reading the textbook for this class, specifically Chapter 4: Practice, she asked what I was reading about, and I said with a smile, “White people doing horrible things to Native Americans… you know, for Jesus.” That’s when she hit me with:

“How do you feel about that?”

It wasn’t a terribly complicated question, and I immediately knew the answer (it’s “bad,” I feel bad about it), but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The tone in her voice created this dense sub-text of “you should be held responsible for what Christians did 400 years ago” and “your answer won’t change my mind.” Despite being a little rude, she was right in asking the question. Our textbook contains example after example of Europeans and Colonists stripping the Native Americans of their dignity and identity in confrontations that usually result with a lot of people (on one side or the other, or both) dead.  You know, for Jesus. And it’s not hard to look at these encounters and know that they’re wrong. The whole philosophy behind the reading of the Requirimiento is horrible and selfish and is scarily similar to Christians today posting random, out of context scripture verses everywhere. A billboard condemning people to Hell is not that different from a declaration of non-consensual Papal authority.

Then there’s the story of Jacques Marquette. Buried under all of the examples of just how dark the history of the church can be is one paragraph about a French Jesuit who established a mission to meet people where they were and present to them a Jesus that they can relate to. The Jesuits lived with the Native Americans, they became part of the community. Like Jesus eating with tax collectors, they did not think themselves greater than the natives. They gave years of their lives to these tribes because they knew it was the right way to share something as personal as Jesus.

“How do you feel about that?”

Good.