I am writing this, with much fear and trembling, for the January Synchroblog on the subject of "Faith and Ethnicity."

Faith. Ethnicity. Faith and Ethnicity.

Big topics. HUGE.

What do I do when faced with big topics and a small space to address them?

I tell stories.

This one's a long story, mind you, but still radically condensed from how it could be told. It is not meant to be a final word on faith and ethnicity. It might not even be a word on faith-and-ethnicity. It is simply a story that incorporates the themes of faith, ethnicity, but also brokenness, love, redemption and some other miscellaneous topics.

It is a true story. It is an unfinished story. I share it with you, like I said, in fear and trembling...and faith.

My wife and I recently went into an Armenian-owned shop and we got to speaking to the owner about the various Armenian private schools in the city. The owner gave us her opinion as to which school was the best. The basis for her opinion was as follows: “You know, the parents there are just at a higher level,” she said, her left hand held horizontally and her right hand held parallel and six inches above, then six inches higher, then six inches higher. “We just all think in the same way. You know, the school down the street here, all the parents are at different levels. Some of the parents who are new to the States; for example, they think it’s OK for their sons to smoke when they’re seventeen or eighteen years old. You know, to show that they are macho. I don’t want my kids to smoke. You understand what I’m saying, right?”

I understood perfectly what she was saying. The owner was a “Western Armenian,” a fact easily discernable from her dialect. I am also Western Armenian. My wife is Eastern Armenian, but she speaks in the Western dialect fluently and was doing so at the shop, leading the patron to believe that she was having a conversation with a nice Western Armenian young couple. In appropriately coded language, what she was saying was that she prefers the one school over the other because there are not as many of those Eastern Armenians there.

In 1915, the Ottoman Turks perpetrated the first systematic genocide of the twentieth century against the Armenian population within its borders. One and a half million Armenian men, women, and children were murdered. Hundreds of thousands of others fled the region and, during the decades following World War I, established Armenian communities around the world. A large number settled in Lebanon and the surrounding region. Those who remained in Armenia and survived the genocide briefly succeeded in establishing an independent Republic in 1918, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1920.

During the 1960s and 1970s, various instabilities in the region, as well as the lifting of the restrictive U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, caused a large influx of Armenians to the United States, primarily to Los Angeles. The recent immigrants slowly acclimated to the surrounding culture, and the period saw a great proliferation in Armenian-American schools, churches, and various other institutions in the Los Angeles area.

Starting in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, a second wave of Armenian immigration occurred, caused by the weakening and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. The immigrants from the former Armenian SSR arrived en masse to the city boasting the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia, Los Angeles. The politically correct term for the new immigrants was “Eastern Armenians.” Parochially, they were called Hayastansis, literally meaning “from Hayastan (Armenia).” They spoke a different dialect of Armenian than their “Western Armenian” brethren. Their culture, traditions, and general outlook on life, having been shaped by two and sometimes three generations within the Soviet system, was naturally different from that of the Western Armenians, whose culture, traditions, and general outlook on life had been shaped by their unique immigration status.

But the bottom line was this: the Western Armenians were here first. They developed, shall we say, a “distaste” for the new arrivals with their new ideas and their funny way of speaking. Also, since the new immigrants were generally not as well off financially, since within the Soviet system one could not simply liquidate assets and take them overseas, Western Armenians were not particularly fond of their Eastern brethren’s “image,” or rather, their effect on the image of the Western Armenians. The Hayastansis were tolerated, however, because they were essentially “powerless.” They had no “pull,” no “clout” when they first arrived with practically nothing. One thing you learn living within the system of Soviet Communism for multiple generations, though, is how to provide for your family in a system that is, in all its facets, striving to maintain your powerlessness. The Eastern Armenians were street smart, creative, industrious, and they were not going to let a system that sought to keep them powerless prevail against them. They soon began to thrive and, within a decade or so, came to rival the Western Armenians in the sizes of their homes, the kind of cars they drove, and various other signs of having achieved the American dream.

The Western Armenians were not too pleased. And now signs of that displeasure became more and more overt. In return, the Eastern Armenians naturally developed an attitude toward Western Armenians that any group would develop toward another who so clearly and unabashedly disliked them. They grew to dislike them back.

Against this backdrop, I, a Western Armenian, the eldest son of parents who had arrived during the “first wave” of Armenian immigration, married my wife, a Hayastansi. Actually, my wife’s family’s situation does not fit neatly into one of the two general categories, but whenever there are two such prominent and polarized categories, black or white, right or wrong, true or false, Western or Eastern, we become so lazy and accustomed to thinking in such minimalist terms that we fail to see the spectrum in between. My wife’s maternal grandparents were from Greece, and her paternal grandparents from Syria. Her parents had come to the U.S. well before the “second wave.” Nevertheless, because they came from Armenia after the “first wave,” and spoke primarily in the Eastern dialect, they were forever labeled Hayastansi, with all the baggage pertaining thereto. Needless to say, my Western Armenian parents were not too pleased. They never directly expressed their displeasure, but I knew. My wife knew.

The effect of my family’s views on our early marriage was subtle. In all honesty and fairness, our marital problems did not stem from my family’s prejudices. They stemmed precisely from the fears, doubts, selfishness, and the inability to love of a godless young man who had grown to develop a particular philosophy about life, a philosophy into which the concept of marriage and family did not fit very neatly.

Having said that, I would bet my bottom dollar that had I been married to a good, first wave Western Armenian girl from a good, first-wave Western Armenian family, my family would have reacted very differently to my struggles. As it turned out, I was given covert and not-too-covert signs and signals that my family would be very supportive if I happened to choose to give up on this whole marriage and family thing. My wife is not a slow-witted person. She was very aware of the subtle hints and the meanings behind them. An air of tension began to mount.

On November 20, 2002, almost one week after my daughter’s first birthday, I abandoned my family.

In the two years I was gone, Jesus found my wife.

In late 2004, I walked into a restaurant where my wife and daughter were waiting. I saw them sitting there, both as beautiful as ever. I immediately recognized my wife. I did not recognize my daughter. If I could learn every language ever spoken on this earth, I would still not be able to describe the emotions I felt at that moment. I would imagine it was a similar feeling to that of Peter in John 21, where Peter was now face-to-face with the risen Jesus. A few nights ago, around a charcoal fire, Peter had spat in his friend’s face by denying that he even knew Jesus. Here, with the smell of another charcoal fire burning in the air (these are the only two instances of the word “charcoal fire,” anthrakián, in the whole of the New Testament), he was facing the friend that he had so cowardously betrayed. The shame must have felt gargantuan. It certainly was for me.

I don’t remember the words my wife spoke to me that afternoon. The only words I remember were those of my daughter looking to her mother and asking, “Is that my daddy?” I do, however, remember vividly what my wife’s words, coupled with her tone of voice, body language, and facial expression, were saying: “I love you, I always have, and while I can never condone what you have done, I forgive you. Can you, at this immense moment of brokenness, accept my love and forgiveness?”

I looked love in the face and said, in my heart, the only thing a person like me could say in the face of agape: “Yes. I believe...help my unbelief.”

At that moment, by that free choice, I was saved...


Grace and Peace,
Raffi

And if you get a chance, check out some of the other posts from the Synchroblog...

Phil Wyman on Seeing the Middle East from a Jewish Perspective
Susan Barnes on Just a God of the West
K.W. Leslie on Why I went to an all-white church
Adam Gonnerman on Multicultural experience (and inexperience)
Matt Stone on Is the church ready for a multiethnic future?
Beth Patterson on Viva la particularities
Steve Hayes on Christianity and ethnicity"
Matthew Snyder asks What's Your Nation?
Jeff Goins on Gypsies in Spain