The Holy Work of Good Trouble

I was taught that getting into trouble was always a bad thing. Rep. John Lewis showed me otherwise.

By Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

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ike most children of Asian immigrants, I was raised to be excellent at pretty much everything: academics, music, social decorum, moral behavior, and—since my parents were devout Christians—spiritual practices. I had to be the best in every area of my life, or at least work myself into the ground trying to be.

And the very minimum, bottom-of-the-basement standard my parents had for me? Don’t get into trouble. Never, under any circumstances should you get into trouble.

As a result, I have always had a robust fear of getting into trouble. I broke down crying the first (and only) time I ever get my name on the board at school. I nearly had a panic attack the first time I got into a fender bender. I wanted to collapse into myself when, as a twenty-four-year-old, I mishandled a complex work situation and my supervisor gave me a gentle talking to.

I feared making even the smallest misstep. A little part of my spirit withered each time someone told me I was in the wrong line, or I wasn’t finishing a task fast enough, or I misstated a trivial fact. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much spirit left in me by the time I reached adulthood.

For me, getting critiqued or corrected—whether or not it was justified, whether or not it was delivered with kindness and the best of intentions—meant getting into trouble. And the idea of getting into trouble gradually became synonymous with doing something wrong.

When Representative John Lewis, the revered civil rights activist and congressman who marched in Selma and spoke at the March on Washington, passed away last month, the tributes on the news and social media kept referencing one of Mr. Lewis’s favorite phrases: “good trouble.”

In June 2018, he had tweeted, “"Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble." The recently released documentary about his life is called John Lewis: Good Trouble.

I love that phrase. But it also terrifies me a bit.

The idea of choosing to get into trouble directly contradicts much of what I was taught to be right and good. It challenges a deep belief in Chinese culture—and other Asian cultures—that the highest ideal is harmony. The Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy calls harmony “the most important Chinese traditional value.”

The traditional Chinese understanding of harmony means more than just getting along or going with the majority. It includes important ideas around balance and diversity, and unity in the face of differences.

But in my day-to-day experience of how harmony gets lived out, it often serves more as a decree to keep your head down and stay quiet. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” goes the Japanese proverb. I have heard many fellow Chinese use the same expression.

I experienced this dynamic when I lived in mainland China for a couple of years in my late twenties. My husband and I oversaw an office of mostly Chinese National staff. They were wonderful, talented individuals who had a penchant for saying, “Mei wenti.” No problem. They said this when things were genuinely going fine and there wasn’t much to report. They also said this when team members were in conflict and our products were failing.

As outsiders, my husband and I could never distinguish between a mei wenti that communicated all was well, and a mei wenti meant to avoid trouble. Our co-workers’ intentions were well-meaning. They didn’t want to lose face or endanger their jobs; they didn’t want to get their peers in trouble; they didn’t want to stress out their foreign managers who were clearly in over their heads. 

But their unwillingness to cause a stir ultimately led to far bigger troubles for us and the business. We discovered problems after they had had time to fester and metastasize, when addressing them required significantly more effort, time, and money. Our Chinese National colleagues’ desire to protect us from harm ended up causing greater pain in the long run.

Refusing to cause trouble, while usually easier, is risky in its own right. I could see that clearly, so many years ago, in a small business that wasn’t yet doing much in the world. But the stakes are so much higher when it comes to long-term, systemic injustices like racism, sexism, corruption, and oppression of the poor and vulnerable.

For positive social change to happen, causing trouble is necessary. It is an imperative.

If we want to challenge corrupt and immoral leaders, we will get into trouble. If we want to dismantle unjust systems, we will get into trouble. If we are determined to follow Jesus in a fallen world, we will inevitably get into trouble.

After all, Jesus wasn’t afraid to be a troublemaker. He hung out with the wrong crowd; he didn’t always follow the religious laws of the day; he talked back to his elders. Jesus knew exactly what it meant to get into “good trouble.” He knew when love and righteousness and justice demanded that he break society’s rules. And he had no problem doing so, because sometimes getting into trouble means doing the right thing.

In the essay Rep. Lewis wrote shortly before his death, published in the New York Times on the day of his memorial service, he said, “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”

In this particular moment in our history, there are so many challenges that call for a bit of troublemaking by the people of God: systemic racism, voter disenfranchisement, climate change, police brutality, cruelty toward refugees and immigrants, growing income inequality, and so much more. 

In the past, too many Asian Americans—myself included—have watched from the sidelines, worried about causing a stir. Worried about upsetting people. Worried about disappointing our family. Worried that we might do something wrong.

But I have hope that more and more of us are overcoming our fear of getting into trouble. I believe we’re beginning to see that getting into trouble can be a very good thing. In fact, getting into trouble can be holy work.

It’s about time for us Asian Americans to get into some good trouble.

Public domain image courtesy of Rep. Barbara Lee

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Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is the editorial director of Reclaim.