Week 3- Monday

I saw The Great Debaters last week, a movie about a  debate team from an African American college that competed against and beat Harvard during the 1930s. It was an incredibly difficult and yet inspiring movie to watch, depicting the horrors of racism in the 30s as well as the small triumphs won along the way. As I left the movie, I thought to myself that I cannot imagine what it would have been like watching that movie as an African American. With all of this talk of contextualized theology, we must also be doing contextualized “intake of all life experiences.” Just as I must attempt to take in the Bible through the eyes of a black man, I must also attempt to take in this movie from the eyes of a black man. I was able to leave the movie, be affected, but continue in my everyday life. A movie like that can become somewhat of a “Oh, gosh, that was moving, and wasn’t that awful, and I am so glad we have come so far, yada yada…” Yet if I could see the movie through the eyes of someone who has been so affected by those realities, my life would be changed by it. I want that change. May I try to experience MLK day tomorrow with that in mind.

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