Baldwin in a microcosm
"Not everything that is faced can be changed
but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
- James Baldwin
Racism has been a part of American and world history for centuries, and has become a pattern in cultures. James Baldwin was an African-American author who, like many black men and women, struggled against the inherent hate/racism in America. Baldwin had the opportunity to travel to a microcosmic Swiss village atop a mountain. His story of the native's curiosity towards him and eventually fondness challenges the idea that racism is quickly overtaking the world.
A microcosm, by definition is a representation of something on a smaller scale. In the Renaissance age, philosophers considered the world to be a macrocosm hosting millions of individual microcosms: people. The term microcosm signifies the creation of the human being as a complete world. In contrast, macrocosm refers to the idea of the whole universe outside humanity. This idea that an individual person is a world unto himself, surely influenced Baldwin in the writing of his essay pertaining to the small Swiss village that was "virtually unknown" (124).
The village that Baldwin verbosely writes about is not specified although he tells us that the warm springs are a tourist draw and that the village is "only four hours from Milan and three hours from Lausanne" (124), but this gives the reader little information about the city. The imagery that forms while reading the passage comes directly from the population of the village. The men, women, and children, are all astounded by Baldwin's skin color and hair texture. Some of the inhabitants believed that Baldwin's hair "was the color of tar, that it had the texture of wire, or the texture of cotton" (125). The sheer astonishment of the village natives took Baldwin by surprise, as did the young children shouting "Neger Neger!"
The people of the town, although geographically sheltered, are the same people that Baldwin knew as he grew up. He says that "America comes out of Europe, but these people have never seen America, nor have most of them seen more of Europe than the hamlet at the foot of their mountain" (127). Baldwin grew up in Harlem and suffered from racism in many ways. He recalls be called the very same derogatory word that the children in the Swiss village called him, but the difference was that the children in Harlem had an inbred racism and the Swiss children had never seen a black man before.
James Baldwin's youth was the catalyst for his fight against racism as an adult. James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York City (”James Baldwin Biography”). Baldwin’s mother, Emma Berdis Jones, left his biological father after he was born. Jones went on to remarry a preacher, David Baldwin. David Baldwin had a very strained relationship with his children, including James, on account of the bitterness and hatred he constantly sheltered. In one of his first non-fiction books, James Baldwin wrote,”I do not remember, in all those years, that one of his children was ever glad to see him come home” (Baldwin 3). This bitterness and hatred was not something he was born with, it was the result of a lifetime of racial harassment and
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...the novel. Through harsh language Baldwin intensifies the anger. One such example is this passage:
(Acts 20:28-29)” An effective guardian, will feed his flock but first of all holding fast to sound doctrine (2 Timothy 1:13), preaching and teaching that sound doctrine. He will preach and teach the word of God. He will proclaim Jesus Christ as a crucified and Risen One. It is also his responsibility to preach and teach the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. To be an effective Guardian the pastor must in no doubt know his sheep.” I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and have known of mine.” (John 10:14). A good shepherd will love (John 10:11), lead (John 10:3, 15), protect (John 10:12, 16), feed (John 10:9), strengthen (Matthew 9:36), perfect (Hebrews 13:20 – 21), and preserve (John 10:27 – 30) his sheep. As a Guardian, the shepherd must understand his responsibility in preaching God’s word.” How very great, then, is the responsibility of those who preach God’s word! If the man is wrong and mingles his own unclean things in with the word, he defiles the word of God, greatly damaging it. The fundamental problem in preaching rests not on how much one knows of the Bible, for the mere knowledge of doctrine is a little avail…. As ministers, though, we can never be like the Lord Jesus who is the Word became flesh; still the Word of God is deposited in our flesh and is to be released through this flesh. We need to be daily disciplined Any defect in us will defile the Word and destroyed its
Then they must ask God, “what is it Lord that you will have me to say?” They should allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the answer. We should not use Scripture to support out thoughts, our philosophy and our reasoning. As soon as we begin to preach something outside of the Word of God, we lose our authority. In other words, God is no longer in the message and only the words of a man is glorified. This is why we should approach the Word using a childlike attitude. The goal is to glorify God in our preaching. We should allow the sermon to preach to us first before we preach it to the congregation. This means that the sermon needs to be incarnational. In other words our sermons should serves as a mirror. A mirror where we first see our own reflection and make adjustments and then reflect it back to the
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