*This is the second installment of a two part series on my cultural journey first as a student and then as staff with Cru. For some background and context, I am Chinese-American, serving with Epic Movement.
You can find the first post here.
It took all of 3 seconds for me realize that I didn’t belong. Yes, the faces were friendly and yes, I was in a room full of other Asian Americans, but the reality was that I felt like a stranger crashing someone else’s family reunion. Again.
That was my first experience with Epic while I was joining staff. Epic had gathered all their staff before CSU started for a little dinner get-together. And just like my first experience with Cru as a student, my first encounter with Epic as staff was just as uncomfortable.
It's funny how I went from an 18 year old who was uncomfortable around the majority culture to someone who was now uncomfortable surrounded by people of my own background! How had I made such a 180 turn around in such a short period of time? And now, five years later, I am more at home surrounded by Asian Americans than ever before.
For the past five years on staff with Epic Movement, I've learned a great deal about not just my own culture but others too. On top of that, I've learned to understand and appreciate the different ways cultures reflect back a part of God that I had never thought or known before. As a college student, I was happy to bury my Asian-ness and just fit in with the majority culture. I assimilated. It's only now that I realize that my assimilation cost me and others the joy of experiencing and embracing my own story.
It is hard living in America as an ethnic minority. In many ways, the popular culture will never see me as fully American. Just ask an Asian American staff member how many times they've been asked at our national staff conference, "Where are you from?" or told that they "speak really great English!" At the same time, my own family doesn't see me as fully Chinese either. From their perspective, I've lost the Chinese culture and am as American as apple pie. Many of us who are of an ethnic descent but were born here are, in a way, without a home or place of true acceptance. We are always outsiders looking in, no matter where we go.
What's made my time with Epic so dear to me is that I no longer feel that God just made me Chinese-American for the fun of it or at random because He was bored. There was a purpose and an intent for Him to make me the way I look and for me be a part of the Asian American culture. My culture reflects a part of God in a unique way and here's a perfect example, written from the perspective of my Caucasian wife:
A Wedding "Dance"
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After years of pretending that my differences weren't important or didn't exist, can you imagine how liberating it was to be on campus, talking to students and telling them that the way we look is purposeful? Can you imagine what kind of impact it has on a student to hear that they were not a mistake or that the way they look and see the world actually was intentional? Worse yet, can you imagine how many times (both explicitly and implicitly) they've heard just the opposite?
I'd like to invite you to think about your own culture. Yes, contrary to common perception, white Americans have a culture too - a culture that reflects a part of God. This isn't about who's right or wrong or who's better and worse. But rather this is an invitation to examine how wonderfully and beautifully God created you and your ethnic group. My cultural journey has taken me to understand that we are all made differently to gloriously reflect our Heavenly Father, just like how God made man and woman to show case different characteristics of Himself.
The next time you're on campus or on a plane and you find yourself conversing with someone completely different from you, take a moment to think about how this person uniquely reflects God. You'll be surprised by what you learn about them, yourself, and the Father who created us all.
