The Power of Love for Reaching Out to “The Other”

“It is impossible for us to change unless we are willing to learn to know ourselves and others in a substantive and personal way. . . . Johnny Ramirez-Johnson has placed in your hands an offering of Scripture, insight, and experience that you may prayerfully employ to begin your personal journey of submission first to Christ and then to obedience as his healing presence for racial healing and justice in your local community and family.”

—Sherwood Lingenfelter, Fuller Theological Seminary

“In the following pages, Dr. Johnny Ramirez-Johnson supplies a compelling interdisciplinary discussion of theology, social science, and psychology which offers hope for getting past our current racial divides. As a pastor, Harvard-trained educator, and Fuller Seminary missiologist, Ramirez-Johnson presents his original IMAGE-IQ framework . . . to help us gain an understanding of the unconscious logic, values, and beliefs that limit dialogue and hinder koinonia across ethnic difference.”

—Robert Chao Romero, Fuller Theological Seminary

“Ramirez-Johnson’s extensive discussions in this book are questioning our value-driven assumptions in general, and value-driven assumptions about the other in particular. . . . I unite with John the Revelator and with Dr. Ramirez-Johnson calling the reader to stand down, look around, see the earth, and ‘subdue it’ in love. Only then can we claim our new birth in the biblical ways.”

—Joy J. Moore, Luther Seminary

From the poem “Princesa” (see afterword):

The princesas marrones are not bonitas
I want to be blanca with straight pelo
Even the white missionary that preached in our church said that
In heaven we all will be white, straight pelo, and tall like him
¿Por Que I have curly hair?
I want to be like angels and missionaries.

—Clara Jorge Ramirez-Johnson, pastor, Glendale City Church