"Bump, Set, Spike!" Serving Up a New Metaphor

This blog is written as an assigned response to Paul Louis Metzger’s post, The Rabbit Hole Revisited.

"Bump, Set, Spike, Block, Dig, Pass, Side out!" 

What does a game like volleyball have to do with revisiting “rabbit holes” and working towards racial unity? Perhaps not much but perhaps more than one might think. I will do my best to build this metaphor—a volleyball team—while tying it to what Dr. Metzger has written.

Let's begin by looking at the distorting influence of the “rabbit hole” as Metzger writes,

“Some friends of mine and I have spoken of the rabbit hole of race relations. I have often experienced vertigo when trying to address power dynamics involving “majority” and “minority” cultures, for lack of better terminology. So often, I don’t realize my privileged status as a white man in the United States and the American church and what that so often entails for minorities.”

While I understand the power dynamics Metzger writes about, up till now I have had my issues with this metaphor. I am pleased to report that I have finally seen how this metaphor relates to race relations. In fact, there is something called Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS),

AIWS...is a disorienting neurological condition that affects human perception. Sufferers may experience micropsia [seeing objects smaller than they really are], macropsia [seeing objects larger than they really are], or size distortion of other sensory modalities. A temporary condition, it is often associated with migraines, brain tumors, and the use of psychoactive drugs.

This condition that affects human perception might very easily be describing racial perceptions. Do we see other races as less than they really are and our own as greater than it really is? Sometimes ethnicities that have been oppressed or ignored by dominant cultures come to see themselves as less than the people that God created them to be. In volleyball, as in racial reconciliation, it would be very hard to be effective while suffering from AIWS!

Volleyball is very much a team game and at the rec level (6 v. 6) one that involves continuous rotation of positions. One person cannot specialize (e.g., outside hitter, setter) but must play every position in turn. A team with more than one weak spot is liable to lose. However, I have noticed that in our group you are not judged by where you are from. What matters is how well you play as part of a team. Some combinations work better than others. Sometimes, after watching a couple of missed touches, some more advanced/aggressive players may tend to overplay the positions of less confident players because they expect them to not make the play. Usually, this frustrates the newer player and results in a badly hit ball.

These same players with less developed skills and a lower confidence level tend to blossom when playing next to someone who respects them, encourages them, and doesn’t try to play their position. They show more effort and confidence when the team’s confidence is placed in them and may quickly begin to play up to the level expected by the team. People know the difference between when they are being patronized and when they are invited to fully participate as teammates.

In addition to a few run-of-the-mill dominant-culture white Americans, our volleyball group is made up mostly of foreign nationals and first-generation immigrants. In the last year, our small group has included regulars, semi-regulars, and visitors from at least 15 different ethnic and national backgrounds— Taiwanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Salvadoran, Mexican, Greek, Turkish, German, Japanese, Korean, Tongan, Hawaiian, Swiss, Guatemalan, Indian, and Laotian.

I try to use my "white privilege" to argue line calls, but it rarely works. We did not start out to be an intentionally multi-ethnic group, but over the last couple of years a number of our founding members moved away to plant churches and pursue mission opportunities, then as college students left for school the need for players increased. Through word-of-mouth and personal invitations, our group became wonderfully diverse. For some reason, they allow this slice of aging Wonder Bread to continue playing with them… I am glad. Our identity as a group is that we play volleyball as a group of equals, and as a young German engineer said after our game tonight, “I have come to really like this group!”

As a text I have been reading puts it,

“Multiracial congregations can serve as gathering spaces where whites and persons of color begin to see and relate to each other as human beings…

To this end, a multiracial congregation with egalitarian relationships between the races offers the best opportunity to learn about other cultures.”[1]

While I don’t sense a lot of racial tension in my increasingly integrated area, I recognize the counter-intuitive direction God’s plan takes—life through death, honor through humility, cleansing through confession, strength through weakness, and up through down, just to name a few. If that is what Metzger means by “going down that rabbit hole” then I am following. When I play volleyball I find I need to spend considerable time on my knees or face-down on the floor for the sake of keeping the ball up and the volley going. I'm usually pretty sore the next day. It's not so different from real life after all.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Romans 12:3-5)

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[1] DeYoung, Curtiss Paul; Emerson, Michael O.; Yancey, George; Kim, Karen Chai (2003-04-22). United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race (p. 129, 133). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.