The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If any one of you or of your descendants is unclean through touching a dead body, or is on a long journey, he shall still keep the Passover to the LORD.” (Num 9:9–10)

And when [Pilate] learned from the centurion that [Jesus] was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. (Mark 15:45–46)

Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus and remained ceremonially clean to eat the Passover because God made the provision for him while Israel wandered in the wilderness.

This may seem odd advice in a book review but listen. Listen not only what you agree with, but when you disagree, stop and really listen. Benjamin Watson has something to say in Under Our Skin that all of us need to hear.

If you’re white and don’t understand why blacks can’t just work harder and get ahead like “the rest of us” start with chapter 2, “Introspective”. If you’re black and can’t understand why whites still don’t get it, start with chapter 2 as well. Watson confesses that he sees things from a black perspective and yet tries to critique and affirm both side fairly. I think he succeeds.

There are no simple answers to the problem of racial tension in our nation and Watson offers none. Under Our Skin started as a Facebook post Watson wrote when a grand jury decided not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the ensuing riots. The post went viral and Watson expanded it into this book. His chapter titles reflect the complexity of this issue: Hopeless, Hopeful, Fearful and Confused, Encouraged, etc. The symptoms he identifies are likewise complex—hip hop, rebel flags, disproportionate policing, fear of and resistance to police, blacks using the N-word, and whites using the N-word. Watson leads us through these complicated issues telling gripping personal stories, asking tough questions, and providing biblical wisdom for healing our nation’s racial divide.

What Watson affirms to equip us for reconciliation is our common humanity and the forgiveness we find in the gospel. “The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It’s the gospel” (xvi).

Pastors and church leaders should read Under Our Skin and reflect on it. If your church is in an area that is largely racially homogeneous, Watson can help you see the problem. If your church is in a racially mixed area, you’re probably already aware of these tensions; he offers you some perspective and wisdom. Watson shows that we are all part of the problem and therefore we all need to be part of the solution so Under Our Skin can be easily recommended to anyone.

I found Watson’s strongest and most convicting points were that what unites us is our common humanity and what divides us are the “cultural lenses” by which we see the world. Watson does not call for the annihilation of those differences, rather, he says, “we should preserve and celebrate our cultural differences, embrace the uniqueness of our histories, and pursue the distinctiveness of our arts and enterprises. We are beautifully different. But we are commonly human” (63-64). If we’re all the problem, why should churches especially read this book? “The church, I believe, has the greatest opportunity to affect changes in our communities” (10). The church, armed with the doctrine of the imago dei and the hope of the gospel, has been and can again be a beacon for and host of reconciliation to the world.

On November 30, 2017, John Piper shared a message live about racial brokenness in America. The entire message is worth listening to but I wanted to share this edited excerpt:

As the gospel of Jesus Christ spreads through the world it encounters thousands of new ethnicities/cultures. There is always at play a pilgrim principle and an indigenous principle in tension every time the culture is penetrated by the gospel. The pilgrim principle says some aspects of the culture are going to come into conflict with Christianity. When those cultural features don’t change, the people of God have to assume a pilgrim mentality, i.e. we’re not at home in this culture.

The indigenous principle means that in every culture where the gospel penetrates there are cultural aspects, cultural dimensions which are not necessarily sinful and which, without changing, will become incarnations and expressions through which Jesus Christ and his ways can be expressed.

These two principles, the indigenous and the pilgrim, are always in tension with each other and most minorities feel it. They’re compelled to come to terms with the fact that they have a culture as they try to be Christians.

The problem for whites for centuries in this country is that we have felt so at home as Americans with our civil-religion Christianity that we haven’t even, by and large, thought in terms of “Oh! I have a culture and my culture is in tension with the claims of Christ on me and I have to work at this. I’ve got to work at how my culture and my faith might be at odds.” Commitments to certain things in America, certain aspects of nationalism, certain ideologies, certain priorities have to be thought through more carefully than many of us have. The more dominant the culture is the more invisible it seems to us. I think its true that there is more cultural captivity in our churches and in our lives than most of us realize.

I believe Americans, especially culturally dominant Americans, need to carefully, prayerfully consider the pilgrim principle. It is getting easier for us to recognize as our country sluffs off the “civil-religion Christianity” and embraces more of the “do anything you like as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else” ideology. Christians are called to more.