The last 24 hours have seen a rare national glimpse into an oft-hidden world I inhabit: NCAA Division III basketball. I am the national columnist for D3hoops.com - THE source for news and information about Division III basketball for over 20 years. Division III is non-scholarship athletics, so the athletes are paying tuition just like every other student. We like to call them the real "student-athletes." Schools range from very small (400 or so in enrollment) to gigantic (40,000+) and talent varies as well. It's the largest division in the NCAA, with 450+ members, but even so, unless you've got a connection, most people don't pay attention or even know some of these schools exist.
Of course, that changes when something bad happen. Tuesday night Fitchubrg State hosted Nichols college in an otherwise ordinary early season non-conference matchup. Nichols is pretty good; Fitchburg isn't so much. The game was pretty uneventful, except that Fitchburg was making a late run, led by the truly excellent play of transfer Kewan Platt. Platt will now forever be google connected to the elbow he delivered, seemingly unprovoked, to the face of Nichols freshman Nate Tenaglia. If you follow sports even remotely, you've probably seen the video somewhere.
It was pretty vicious and ugly. Platt checked to see if the ref closest to him was looking before he delivered it, but failed to notice another ref nearby (or the webstream cameras that caught the whole thing). Tenaglia was in pain, obviously, but did and does (so far) seem physically unaffected. He passed a concussion test and hit both his free throws, following the foul. The Nichols team should get immense credit for responding so coolly and appropriately in this matter. Platt got ejected from the game and has since been removed from the team and banned from campus until official processes can be executed.
It got out on Twitter first, with all the various ugliness that comes with just about anything on Twitter. From there, the general consensus was that Platt should never be allowed to play basketball again and should probably be arrested. It likely was assault, although courts have to make that distinction, which they might do - another D3 player was arrested and received a one year suspended jail sentence for punching and stomping on another player and helping to incite a riot at a game last year. Hockey has had some similar issues with violence on the ice, as well as other sports from time to time.
I am a bit baffled by the severity of the reactions, though, even after you discount the Twitter factor. There's been time for discussion, both in person and in more civil, relational online forums, to talk about Platt's elbow, and people still seem pretty set on this moment ruining the kid's life.
First, I should say, I'm all for consequences, although I've written before on this blog about how easily we confuse consequences with punishment in this society. I don't think shame should be a consequence, though, especially an outward, national shame. Being ashamed of one's actions - maybe disappointing family, friends, and coaches, yes - but having national public shame heaped upon you doesn't feel like an appropriate consequence for an action that was extremely localized.
Fitchburg State will do what they do and the school's athletic conference will probably have a say. I hope those are fair and gracious processes not unduly influenced by the attention this has received. Schools are about shaping people and it's really hard to do that if they people aren't there. Every coach talks about shaping women and men of integrity and responsibility, but at the Division III level there's almost nothing else to do. Yeah, win basketball games, but those don't get you much on their own.
I don't know the context, obviously. Platt could have a long history of violence and this is a final straw. Schools can't have violent, angry people roaming around campus; that's not good for the formation of people either. Of course, I don't know if this is indicative of something deeper or just a one-off terrible decision. It's not really my place to even find out.
I do think we should recognize though, even if this isn't a pattern, that kind of violence is indicative of some kind of impulse control problem. That usually stems from some kind of mental trauma or illness, in which case shame is about the worst thing to help someone improve. Platt needs more people on his side than ever - not excusing actions, but offering help and support. I can't see how any of the internet traffic really helps that.
Yes, my site reported on it. We got video (hopefully with more context than the six second that went around Twitter) and we did background work to understand as much as possible. It's news; it happened. We can't shy away from admitting difficult truth, just because it hurts somebody. That's the balance. Recognizing there are consequences to our actions, but also refusing to dehumanize a person or define them by their actions.
We are not what we do. What we think, what we believe, what shapes and forms our understanding, those things are evident only in our actions. But we, as people, are more than just what we do. To define a person by their actions is to dehumanize. Kewan Platt is the kind of person who can elbow a guy in the face and walk away; he'll have to live with that and deal with that and it'll be hard - but we can't say any of us is inherently different. We can't say, given the same set of circumstances - from childhood to relationships to genetics to whatever - that we wouldn't do the same thing. That's humanity.
Now, providing a reason is very different from providing an excuse; we often get those two things confused in society as well. It's always wrong to hit someone. I'm a firm believer in non-violence. I don't think anything justifies what Platt did, ever. There is no excuse for that kind of thing. There are always reasons, causes. We have to be careful not to equate causes with excuses.
Immediately after the video started circulating, a lot of the comments were, "what did the white kid do to deserve that." We justify violence as a response to violence. We do it all the time. I get that it makes sense to some people in some contexts and I've certainly written about violence in other posts; there's not time for that discussion here. What those comments do, though, is recognize that actions depend on context.
We see less fighting in basketball than we used to see. We're less tolerant, so that may have something to do with it. We've also got this global social media platform that amplifies the violence that exists. My freshman year of college, a friend and I drove ten minutes down the road to watch our basketball team play a local rival. During the game, an on-court altercation ensued that really exploded. Eventually people were coming out of the stands to fight players and each other; it was a pretty terrifying experience. We told the story. We moved on. I don't think the local paper even covered it. Times change.
If both players had gotten shots in, we'd be having a very different conversation. It wouldn't have gone viral at all. People get mad playing sports. Adrenaline is running and emotions are high. Earlier this year there were NBA suspensions from punches thrown. It's rare, but not uncommon, even in basketball. It was a defenseless, unprovoked elbow to the face; that's worse.
Is it this much worse, though?
We tend to justify those things we could see ourselves doing and vilify those which seem foreign to us. The gap between the two, though, isn't as wide as we make it. In fact, it's razor thin. A hard foul during a basketball play is a response many might deem appropriate for a perceived slight. If Platt had been tripped or terribly insulted, more people would've come to his defense. It's all about perspective... and context.
I've never been in a frat, but I did go to college in Boston. I've seen some violence from drunk frat boys on a Friday night, maybe even an out-of-the-blue sucker punch or two. You hit a guy in a bar, is it even a 50/50 chance you get arrested? That's assault, but it's not always handled that way.
This wasn't a racial incident, but when you're talking about violence, crime, and punishment in our society, race does matter. I don't want to see another young black kid get his life derailed because of a really terrible decision like this. It's just harder to "learn" from this experience and move on if you're black, especially if Platt ends up with a rap sheet because of it. Anger management is a skill you learn in your teens and 20s. Some kids learn it more easily or more thoroughly than others. The patience we have with people as they learn this skill doesn't have to be dependent on race, but sometimes it is. That's just the truth.
I don't think this kind of behavior should ever be excused or justified or forgotten or swept under the rug. I'm just not sure what the end game is here for all the shame? Do we feel good about someone being "worse" than us? That says more about our own guilt and inadequacy than it does about Kewan Platt. It does feel good. I'm sure if you went all the way back in my Twitter feed you'd see some shaming I'm not proud of, but I'd like to think I've learned over time. I'd like to think we all can. I want to believe we can be better, more caring, more compassionate and understanding people than we were yesterday. I'd like to think that of Kewan Platt, too.
Violence creates two victims. Always. It shapes the life of the victim in ways they don't deserve or ask for. It also shapes the life of the offender, regardless of the consequences. In both cases, the only healthy response to violence is knowing, believing that we are more than what we experience, more than what the violence tells us we are.
If we're willing to call Kewan Platt "trash" or "worthless" we might as well just wish him dead, because we're writing off his future. For so many people, the future is determined by the mistakes they make. It doesn't have to be that way for any of us. We don't hear it enough, but we can be something different than what we've been. We have to be, or there's no point to life.
Nate Tenaglia is really the only one with standing to address Kewan Platt. Yeah, his coach and school and family and friends have a responsibility to address what he did; those actions come with consequences. But they, like us, really have one choice: to do what's going to help him be more than he was Tuesday night. Shame doesn't do that, no matter how much it feels like the right way. We've all had enough experience with shame to know that life itself is just a succession of second chances.
NOTE: In the days since this was written, a third witness has come forward and Kavanaugh has had lots of opportunity to speak publicly - if only to betray and illuminate the wealthy, elite, white culture in which he was raised, one with few consequences and lots of entitlement. I believe the conclusions of this piece stand even more starkly now, and the judge deserves even less benefit of the doubt.
Right, so here's the deal. There's a lot of partisan stuff going on with Brett Kavanaugh, as with any Supreme Court nominee. People on both "sides" of the aisle want to get someone on the Court most likely to side with them. It's always partisan in ways that mock the very tradition of our Judiciary. We can get that out of the way early.
Also, we can dispense with my personal objections: 1) that anyone would get confirmed before Merrick Garland gets a vote. The guy was nominated and is extremely qualified (not to mention moderate, but hey). He deserves a vote. 2) Trump nominated Kavanugh because he's got a robust philosophy of Presidential exception; the guy is about the least likely judge in the entire country to let a subpoena or an indictment of a sitting President go forward. He might be a conservative darling, but Kavanaugh was picked to personally benefit Donald Trump. That's troubling to say the least.
However, none of those things are my topics for the day. Instead I want to talk about the difficult journey of the sexual ethics debates roiling our nation. I read somewhere recently that the only real consent is an "enthusiastic 'yes.'" That sounds great. I affirm and endorse and support this idea, no questions asked. It has always been this way in fact, but, of course, it's not always been this way in culture or common practice. We've also yet to find a path through the thorny world of punishment and consequences, when it comes to sexual offenders.
Brett Kavanaugh now stands accused by two different women of making drunken sexual advances towards them, a couple years apart, roughly 35 years ago. He's making it hard on himself by denying these things so vociferously. Neither of the claims involves actual sex, so his protestations that he didn't have sex until college aren't really pertinent. Also, once you've admitted to occasionally over-imbibing, it's tough to categorically deny anything, right? I mean, you might say you don't remember assaulting these women (and maybe offer drinking as an excuse), but you can't say you didn't do it - at least not under oath, right? You just don't know.
On top of that, we've got the tricky situation of how to address youth. Let's face it, we learn things the hard way. We do. Especially in a time when "no means yes" was common parlance, teenagers working out how to deal with each other sexually is rough ground. That's not to excuse assault - please don't read that. If he did these things, it's wrong and he should've known better, even if it were more accepted then than now. Context doesn't change the right/wrong dynamic. People are still people, even if we've not yet learned to stop objectifying them.
It does, however, have some effect on how we might judge the guy today. I don't know Brett Kavanaugh. People seem to think he's a pretty moral, responsible, upstanding guy - a family man with a long history of integrity. It's just possible he could be all those things, and also a guy who did some terrible things to women when he was a teenager. Those exist together - or at least, it's possible they do. And, people can actually learn from the sins of their past and genuinely change. I'm not saying Kavanaugh has (that's what these hearings and investigations are supposed to help the Senate do), but it's certainly possible. Although, again, he's not helping himself with his response to this.
As much as I disagree with the judicial philosophy and constitutional interpretation Kavanaugh practices, and as much as I think he should be opposed because he's a self-serving pick on the part of DT, I don't think the guy (or any nominee) should be rejected simply because of the positions they hold on the law. Conservative Presidents nominate conservatives; liberal Presidents nominate liberals. I don't like it, but I've come to accept it.
To the extent that Democrats are using sexual assault as a means of blocking a nomination on partisan grounds, it's wrong. I don't know how genuine they are in actually caring about the women involved, but the skeptic in me feels like the answer is "not as much as they should be." That part of this thing feels really icky. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is just as bad as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons - which is the other part that makes me feel icky: to the extent that Republicans are overlooking a history of sexual assault on partisan grounds, it's wrong. I don't know how committed they are to forgiveness and second chances, but I feel like the answer is "not as much as they should be."
In the midst of this, we've got an entire argument in society about powerful men using their position and privilege to abuse, assault, and intimidate women. There have been, for the first time, widespread consequences to these actions. I'm not entirely sure, though, that we have figured out where consequences stop and punishment starts. Retribution isn't healthy for anyone. Les Moonves and Harvey Weinstein have made enough money to survive just fine if they are never able to work another day in their lives; that's not true for everyone else who's been called to account. How much is enough to atone for the crimes of the past? Collectively, as a society, we're still not entirely sure. There is no real justice for victims of rape and sexual assault, but destroying a life to atone for a life destroyed is also problematic.
Now this argument is being played out on a national stage. Should the guy lose a chance at the Supreme Court because of assaults committed decades ago? You can argue 'yes' and you can argue 'no,' but it's certainly not as cut and dry as the armies of antagonism would have us believe. There's always the competing realities of what is and what should be. There's also context.
This was amazingly illustrated in a quick interview Texas Senate candidate, Beto O'Rourke, did with Ellen the other day. She asked about a DUI conviction from his past. The guy gave one of the most politically astute answers I've ever heard. He said, essentially, "White men like me get second chances and I want to use mine to make sure everyone gets a second chance."
It's a great answer and an admirable one, if sincere. You could essentially put the same words in Kavanaugh's mouth and make a decent claim for his nomination (barring, you know, all the other arguments against it that we're not addressing here). Of course, the only reason he can even make the argument is that he's a privileged white dude.
You could say Beto's statement argues for his withdrawal from the race, recognizing that sometimes the way to combat privilege is to give it up. Our system may enable a good and righteous white man to win elections more easily and make a clearer path to equality for women and people of color, but equality is not really equality if it comes on the oppressor's terms.
I think most of us would like to believe second chances exist for people who've really changed. There's a part of us who wouldn't want to deny Kavanaugh the pinnacle of his career because of crimes in his past (if there were real change evidenced and not an increasingly callous defensiveness). The question is whether this could ever become a reality for people who aren't rich, white men. Can Kavanaugh really be an example of second chances, when he's precisely the kind of person who's always fallen ass-backwards into them?
Might it be time for the people who embody "how everyone should be treated" to sit back and endure "how most people actually are treated?"
White men make up an incredibly small percentage of the human race, but we've had an out-sized hand in how history unfolds. That history has often seen us at our most righteous, calling for universally just and equal treatment, exactly when one of our own most stands to benefit. That history has left us conspicuously silent when justice and equality for others might cost us some of our privilege, or the spoils that privilege has won us.
Why should Brett Kavanugh have to pay the price for the problems of white, male privilege? Well, for starters, maybe because we never ask that question when he benefits from it.
I had opportunity, this weekend, to think once again about why the societal celebration of police sometimes unsettles me. It's not the celebration, I realized, but the way in which we couch those things. I listened to a pastor talk about a first responders Sunday they did - honoring local fire, police, EMS, etc. I was excited about that - no conflict at all. People who serve others so selflessly and importantly deserve as much recognition as we can give.
It was the next sentence that struck me difficult. He said, "We prayed a shield of protection around the people who shield and protect us." In that moment, the light went on. I got it. My conflict is not with the honor and respect, but with this narrative we've concocted whereby people who serve as police or soldiers or the like are keeping us safe. It creates an "us vs them" dichotomy that I find practically and theologically troubling.
I don't believe in "them." I can't. People are people - as is the theme of most recent posts here, because I've been dwelling a lot on our allegiances and divisions and how we overcome them - we are not separate. There exists only "us." Yes, maybe "us" with some differences, but that describes every human being on the planet - we're all alike, except in ways we're not. Picking and choosing which differences to accentuate and which to ignore don't make a lot of sense. We should recognizing and responding to all the various uniqueness present in everyone around us.
It's a soft play on fear to say a certain group is charging with protecting "us" or "our way of life" or "our freedom." This implies an enemy and it implies weakness; only this other person, other force, has the power to keep me safe. We'll skip the notion of whether safety is something even worth worrying about for today, but it's this way of speaking and, ultimately, thinking and training, that causes so many of our problems today.
What if the primary purpose of a police force was to protect everyone - seeing every human being as equally valuable and important, regardless of their current actions? Would there big as quick a rush to pull the trigger without a "good guys vs bad guys" mentality? That's not to condone behavior or ignore real dangers in the world. I'm not trying to be naive or dismissive, but the notion of "there are bad guys out there who need stopping," is not the only way to look at society and those who fail or refuse to participate in our shared way of life.
Ultimately, that's what an "enemy" is, right? It's a person who has taken a look at the dominant, agreed-upon way of life, and decided to act counter to it. If this counter-action becomes uncomfortable or violent or scary enough, we send in the authorities and remove them. I don't think this process is wrong or flawed or even that it can really be any different, short the parousia or specific divine intervention. I do think, however, that the way in which this process is carried out can be understood and practiced in vastly different ways.
I suspect, most of the time, when someone is arrested, it's for their own good. It's a physical restraint that keeps them from doing even further damage to themselves or others. I wonder, though, if that mindset is less common know than it used to be. The first prisons were literally monasteries. We have the word cell, because that's what you call a room where a monk lives. When someone was being anti-social,
they were sentenced to some time in a cell. They spent time in the regimented life of a cloister, having their needs met in a safe, welcoming,
grace-filled environment, where they could put their head on straight and have time to reflect.
I don't want to get into all the specifics of police of prison reform - there are volumes and volumes of material on these topics and its much too complex to parse in a short space - but I do think there are some simple perceptions we can work on changing to begin a process of Christ-like response to society and those who act outside its bounds.
We must refrain from pronouncing innocence and guilt - I'd say all the time, but especially outside the judicial system - we are all innocent and all guilty, all worthy of reprimand, punishment, and consequences, but also all worthy of grace, love, and human value. We have to start there.
We've also got to boycott the dichotomies - not just us vs them, but good vs evil, and strong vs weak - we've got to fight against the false associations of grace and frailty, love and powerlessness.
If the Kingdom of God is going to have any real impact in our lives, it must penetrate to every aspect of our world and our interactions with it.
Our words matter, our thoughts matter, our perspectives matter. Things are so very rarely black and white, we might as well be prepared for the gray at all times. Life is messy, but love conquers all - we just have to be ready to see the right perspective.
We've got two really disturbing stories in the news this week that bring some real difficulty when thinking about them theologically. There is this man in Montana who, three times, raped his own teenage daughter and was given a suspended sentence, which will result in just a couple months in jail, provided he completes serious counseling and other treatment plans (and has no solo contact with minors, pretty much ever again). The judge in that case is getting a lot of flack, including a potential impeachment/recall, but he also sites the insistence of the girl's family that having the head of their household gone for, potentially, forever, would be a real detriment to the family, especially the man's young sons.
We've also got a police report out, which details journals and documents from the counseling sessions of NFL kicker, Josh Brown, who admitted to abusing his wife in many ways and on multiple occasions. There was a police incident over the summer that lead to a suspension, but these details show both a lengthy, serious pattern of abuse, but also an equally lengthy, involved process of counseling and recovery.
Our general society like revenge. We say, "do something awful, pay for it forever." That's generally our attitude in public and it's the way most of our laws are written. It's not hard to say, "You rape your own daughter, you're lucky to get to live." Although "life" for a child rapist in prison is probably not preferable to death, but then again, people are often ok with that - whatever punishment we can get for people like that. Spousal abuse used to be something we brushed aside as "private," but lately (and sadly) largely due to the spotlight of the NFL, those attitudes are changing - and perhaps to make up for all those years of neglect, the vitriol with which we approach those situations is as intense as just about any other crime someone could commit - and with good reason; it's pretty sickening.
What we seem to miss in all of this, and what makes it so difficult to really parse, is that despite the inhumane things these men did and the dehumanizing our system of laws, courts, and punishment does to those who commit them, these people are, in fact, still human beings.
I've written before that we take such extreme responses largely to separate ourselves as people from other people who do terrible things. We don't want to think of child rapists or murderers or domestic abusers as humans, because we are humans and it forces us to face the reality that we are capable of entirely inhuman things. Given a specific set of circumstances, that could be us. It's terrifying.
We rightly run from it.
Although I'd argue that people who embrace that notion - that we are all capable of tremendous evil, are the ones most likely to find the kind of health and peace necessary to avoid such evil. Hate is powerful, but it rarely plays out to our benefit. We tend to become that which we hate. In dehumanizing, we become like those we dehumanize. That's a lot of historical precedent for this.
I read, last week, the memoir of Bryan Cranston, who played Hal on Malcolm in the Middle and Walter White on Breaking Bad. He talked about an incident early in his adult life, where he became so afraid of and angry at an ex-girlfriend-turned-stalker that he believed himself capable of killing her, even had a lucid dream of doing the deed so real he believed, for a time, that he'd done it. The rest of the book (which is very good, by the way) illustrates, though, how the realization of that moment, those feelings, his actions, led to a really healthy process of growth and development that shaped his life in profound ways, building a solid foundation that helped prevent many of the mistakes he seemed bound for in his early years.
If we're going to see terrible people as human beings, we have to treat them humanely. Providing counseling and rehabilitation - programs for healing, growth, and recovery make a lot more sense than archiving evil in prisons and jails, ignoring mental illness, or labeling people as hopeless. Is Josh Brown going to be punished because he sought help? Will we eliminate any possible good this Montana rapist might ever do in his life, because of the atrocities he's committed? That's the Bill Cosby question, right?
If you're like me, it leaves you totally confused. I like black and white. Even in difficult issues, I tend to work until I find a path through the weeds - it might not be perfect; it might even need to be altered a time or two, but it's something, a decision. It doesn't work that way here.
A man raped his own daughter, three times! Certainly he should never, ever, ever have contact with her ever again; his name should never be uttered in her presence, unless she initiates it. I believe she earned that kind of respect and protection by what she's suffered. And Josh Brown is not the kind of person anyone would want to employ - and his bosses should have every right to fire him and no one should feel sorry about it.
At the same time, I believe in redemption. I really do. My faith is built on the idea that love changes people - not often quickly or completely, but I've formed my life around the idea that no one should be written off. It creates a real problem - the old punishment vs consequences problem - which is easy to solve in the abstract, but darn near impossible to even fathom in the reality of people's lives.
How do we separate our need for revenge and dehumanization, for distance and escape, from the very real responsibility we have as a society to ensure people don't escape the consequences of their actions. We long to shelter and shield innocent others from the consequences of the guilty, but it's rarely that simple. The pain we inflict on one person necessarily radiates to others - many others - for whom it was never intended.
That is the reality of life.
I'm not going to take a "position" on either of these two issues I brought up - other than to say I think we'd all be wise to consider every perspective with care and genuine concern. I don't think this judge is just trying to let a rapist off; I don't think it's necessarily undue compassion (the way it probably was for that Stanford athlete) - at the same time, it's real hard for me to call what the judge did "right." It's courageous and it flies in the face of what society expects.
Of course, as in any public event, there are a lot of details we don't know that are pretty core to making a learned opinion. And as much as these travesties compel us to speak, act, and react, we can never be in the position of those actually involved. We will never understand or fully appreciate the context. I'd just like for us to consider what our reactions say about what is important to us. I'd like to suggest that perhaps we expand that definition of "important" influences beyond those emotions which immediately spring to mind.
Life is difficult. Life is complex. Life is messy. But, man, is life worth it.
I got to spend a week at camp with 230-some teenagers (which is part of the reason these posts are late this week). There was some good time for reflection, renewal, and thinking. One of the things that struck me most profoundly (I guess because I'm now old and my memory fades) was the reminder of just how tough it is to be figuring out how the world works. Navigating adolescence and the search for understanding is tough, even with a supportive environment where people love and care for you.
It's not just teenagers, though - I mean it's a search everyone is on for their entire lives. But this week it just kind of struck me how important it is for us (all of us - parents, children, adults, teenagers, humans) to understand punishment and consequences. I feel like I've written about this before, how punishment is really a way for authority figures to display grace. Punishment most often occurs as a means of avoiding the consequences of some action. Someone driving drunk is punished as a way of bringing the very real consequences of that action into view. A person who drives drunk and kills someone with their car experiences the consequence. Even in that scenario, there's still a punishment. Typically the consequence of killing someone is that we die ourselves. Society, in general, cares enough about life to not repay death with death. Regardless the consequences are serious.
As a teenager, punishment feels like torture. There's no way around it. It feels that way on purpose, because if we understood consequences deeply enough, punishment wouldn't be necessary. Now not every authority is perfect and punishment does sometimes end up being punitive. That's regrettable. These errors in punishment, though, shape how we view the world, especially if take a theistic view of things.
It's real easy to look at the consequences of our actions as divine reward or punishment. This is likely more true in places most guarded from real consequences. In the modern US we shelter our kids, our families, large parts of our society from any real dangers. It is few and far between who suffer real consequences from our poor choices - and we tend to ignore, hide, or marginalize those who do suffer. So much of it is in secret. Thus, we're really living in a world of punishment - actions intended to teach us lessons about consequences, but facing few real, actual consequences.
This means we expect everything that happens to us to be someone else's choice. Kids are far more worried about what their parents might do if they're caught drinking on a Friday night than the hangover they'll have the next day (and even less concerned about cirrhosis in the future). Punishment is just our major frame of reference.
We project this on God.
My mom is a drug addict and abandoned me when I was a baby to be raised in marginally safer foster homes the rest of my life. That is really a number of tragic consequences to poor choices made by many people. But it's really easy to see it as divine punishment for something we did or for just not being a good enough person, punishment for some inherent failure.
I suppose it's inherently human to think this way. Our first inclination of the world is that someone somewhere is pulling the strings on everything. It's an underlying cultural assumption even into the present day. It's one of the reasons scientists get so fed up - not just that some religious people continue to propagate this notion, but that so many people believe it even without strong faith commitments. In this worldview, karma makes sense. The world somehow rewards and punishes people - and often in unjust, arbitrary ways.
I don't think the world really works like that. I make that statement as a faith claim, as someone who's spent a lot of time studying the Bible and theology - and the world around me. Science makes that claim, too - action and reaction, cause and effect. The things that happen to us are not rewards and punishments, they are consequences. They are the result of action, conscious or otherwise.
As a faith commitment, I believe in a God that suffers with humanity - a God who does not reward and punish, but who walks with us through life, enduring consequences as we endure them. God celebrates and mourns right alongside us. It is this loving co-suffering that is exemplified in Jesus and to which each of us are challenged to. I believe this is the way to live well in the world.
This is the difference between grace and torture.
If we see God as punitive, we can only see life as torture. It's pain, divinely inflicted pain, for no discernible reason other than existence. It's depressing and it's no wonder people flounder around in search of meaning when life looks like that. Instead, we should see (or try to learn to see) God's presence in the midst of pain as profound grace. God, and those people around you who represent God in your life, walking with you through the inevitable ups and downs (and the far more serious celebrations and crises) that life brings, are hope in the midst of despair.
This world is not about rewards and punishments - at least not deep down. It is about riding the wave of consequences and, if you cling to some measure of faith, trusting that our loving co-suffering can actually make a difference down the line. I believe that love changes things, but we have to see grace and love and peace around us to ever see this change.
It starts, at least in part, with how we see God present in the midst of tragedy.
This isn't a reflection or a lesson. Just story. What I feel is a quintessential parenting story. My daughter is almost three (in May) and she's been in full time-bomb, no-machine, three-year-old contrarian mode for three solid months already. It's already well beyond old. You know, refusing to eat foods she likes (even as she acknowledges - "I will not eat anything I like," or don't like, for that matter), saying 'no' to everything, and just all around demanding the world revolve around her. A three year old is baffled when you tell them what they want has almost no bearing on what will happen to and around them.
It's a trying time.
We were having one of those moments at lunch or dinner or something the other day - it was just the two of us. She was taking bites of food that I had to feed to her (even though she's been using silverware for 18 months already), a food she likes, but refuses to eat. Then she was holding those bites of food in her mouth for 90 seconds or more, just chewing and turning it in to terrible mush, before my begging her to eat again. You know, typical three-year-old dinner.
It was frustrating. What should have taken twelve minutes was approaching an hour. I was running out of patience, but I had enough piece of mind not to say what I was thinking. Instead, I decided to use the moment as a lesson and set the stage in an appropriate, mature way for what I wanted to say off the cuff.
I asked her if people ever did things she didn't like or made her do things she didn't want to do. We talked about getting hurt or frustrated and how we might respond to people. We talked about how it wasn't right to hit people. People are valuable and deserve love and hitting isn't the way to get your way. But we still want to do it sometimes. We talked about how it's ok to be angry and frustrated. Those emotions are good things, but we have to be careful how we use them.
I told her I would not ever hit her. We talked about how hitting is bad and hitting someone who hits is even worse. I made abundantly clear how anger and violence works and how important it is to have self-control and care for people. After all, dinner was taking forever, so we had the time.
It was one of the first times I really felt like we had a conversation she understood all the way through.
When we were finally done and she'd eaten enough and it was clear she wasn't going to eat anymore, I told her she could get down, but not before telling her.
"I love you. I would never hurt you. I would never hit you. But you're being incredibly stubborn and rude right now and I very much want to smack you in the face."
She said, very seriously, and with a straight face, "I don't want you to smack me."
And I said, "I won't. I promise. I would never hit you, but I want to. I really want to, and you should know that."
Then she got down and went to play.
A lot of times I hate being a parent and a lot of times I feel like I'm doing it all wrong. I imagine there will be people horrified by that story (likely one of them is my wife - who knows already - she's not learning about it here), but I know my daughter and I think it went well.
It was not an evening I'd want to play over again, but I think we both got out of it what we needed to get. She's two and a half. She'll probably never remember it, but I don't think it would be a bad first memory. "I would never, ever hit you... but sometimes I want to."
That seems to sum up parenting pretty well, at least as I've seen it so far.
I know originally the term "god-fearing" referred more to reverence than to terror, but the implication is still there. Traditionally powers, whether King or master or father, were reverenced out of fear. That's how the two came together. It was the responsibility of the authority to maintain the command structure. If people began thinking and doing their own thing, all the world's organization would come crumbling down. It's all based on the idea that God appoints and ordains kings and masters and fathers to rule over their subjects, servant, and families. It was all one big, safe, organized hierarchical structure.
You feared those in authority because if you didn't there would be swift action - not just because the power is capricious or particularly in need of respect, but because here was an obligation to maintain the God-ordained order of the world.
Well, we'd mostly say that's a faulty, antiquated way of looking at things, but we still, in many places, tend to use the idea of God-fearing as an appropriate model. In fact, the places where this is most prevalent tend to be the places where that harsh, rigid, top-down authority structure is still most active (at least in the back of everyone's mind, if not overtly).
I don't think we're supposed to fear God, in any respect. Respect, honor, appreciate, sure - those are good things, but they shouldn't have anything to do with fear.
The immediate response is, of course, about sinners - people who are not living and acting in ways consistent with God's intentions for the world better be afraid because God deals out justice. Although, here, I think, we're confusing punishment and justice. Punishment is the inflicting of pain (physical or otherwise) as a deterrent to future bad action. Justice is simply the righting of a wrong. The effects of justice may be uncomfortable (perhaps painful in some way), but the action itself does not have that intention.
If I lose focus driving and clip the back of a parked car, I'm going to have to pay for the damages (either out of pocket or through insurance). That's justice (or at least restitution). Now $800 worth of body work may feel like punishment to someone making minimum wage; it's hardly a concern for a millionaire.
Similarly, when someone is caught driving drunk, we take away their license for a period of time (or, at least, we do sometimes) - that's punishment. There is no actual offense, only a possible offense prevented. The punishment is intended to cause pain in hopes of deterring a repeat performance. If the drunk driver causes an accident, well then they generally get restitution (justice) and punishment - and that, most certainly, will be painful (maybe twice over).
All of this to say: God is not in the punishment business. We live in a world where our bad actions generally result in appropriate consequences - not karma, per say, but the things we do affect us and often in ways that aren't immediately apparent. Even people who escape the punishment and "justice" of our courts still retain the effects of their actions. That's just how the world works.
God isn't up there pulling strings to punish and reward people according to each daily action. It only feels that way sometimes because we refuse to take responsibility for what we do. We have too small a view of the world around us and the magnificence of God's creation.
This also has a converse benefit, though. Some people "fear" God simply because, often, doing the good, Godly thing means living rightly in the world and those good actions are more likely, over time, to make life a bit easier. But even such "fear" is not fear of God, but fear of natural consequences - and often that "fear" actually shapes and forms people into better versions of themselves. The world works that way, too. You do things they way they were intended to be done, and there are tangible benefits.
God's not in the business of fear. One of the bedrock principles from the Bible I try to wrap my life around is simply that God is love and perfect love drives out all fear. There is no place for fear in the world. Yes, we are afraid - and there are plenty of things that can and will hurt us. It's not that it's wrong to be afraid, just that it's not what God intends for us. God is not a god of fear.
I don't want to be God-fearing and I don't want anyone else to be either. Our reverence and respect for God should be out of overwhelming joy in God's love, grace, and kindness - not in fear. Doing something because you're afraid of the consequences is not real life.
I'll admit, loving or respecting God is a bit easier if you believe God is not about punishment, but about justice. Because justice - true justice - while at times uncomfortable in the short term, is refreshingly safe over the long haul. Things will be made right - not in an ominous, punishing way - but in the sense of wholeness and restoration. Yes, that might be a little discomfort now, but in the end: peace and joy.
We shouldn't be God-fearing. Fear is not what God's about.
I spent some time brainstorming what the next topic for this blog might be. Often I have a backlog of ideas; I have recently come to the end of my log. Unfortunately, yesterday provided a pretty vivid and all too common tragedy that screams (literally, figuratively, emotionally and just about every other -ly) for something to be said.
As with any loss of life or bad news we hear, the first and most appropriate response is simply to participate in the hurt and affirm the pain of suffering. A bunch of people were killed yesterday and that sucks.
When things like this happen, I get angry. Not really at anyone in particular, but at everyone in general. It's a simple response that's fraught with complications:
STOP KILLING PEOPLE!
If everyone stopped killing people, no one would be killed. Hard to argue with that logic. Of course it's not likely everyone will stop killing people and if the good guys stop killing the bad guys the bad guys are going to kill more people than they otherwise would. So we all keep killing as if it is a sane act simply because it can be justified through some logical stream of consciousness.
The main problem I see is that people aren't numbers. We forget that sometimes. We forget that in medicine and in war and in elections and in church. People are people. They are individuals and we are all interconnected in one giant mass called "people." (Theologically we should probably include all of creation in that giant mass, but that could be a bridge too far for today.) It's not so simple as "killing one person today, saves fifteen tomorrow." Beyond the fact that people aren't numbers, it's awfully difficult to predict the future and it's just plain asinine to think that killing someone, with or without good intentions, affects only that person.
What we do has an effect on the world around us. The things we see today and results, partly, of things done previously. I'll say again, people are not numbers and we're not isolated individuals - we are individuals in community whether we like it or not. Things effect us.
(A brief side note, I finished Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers recently - I know, I'm close to a decade behind - but the research he highlighted on the cultural foundations of our inborn reactions, even generations removed from their principal causes is both outrageous and amazing. We are not and can not be isolated!)
My thoughts on this are obviously rooted in Jesus Christ, who chose death over killing and in doing so rendered death impotent of real power (despite all appearances to the contrary, both from Christians and otherwise). The ethical implications of which are exemplified in the earliest Christians and explored for modern readers in the theology of the Anabaptist tradition and laid out by bad-ass prophets like Stanley Hauerwas, among others.
Yes, the degree to which, and situations where, killing might be acceptable for Christians is a difficult conversation. In the end, the Christian response is simply to call each other and the world to less violence. Hence:
STOP KILLING, PEOPLE!
I first started thinking about this on a large scale when considering Israel and Palestine. They shoot rockets at each other and blow up buildings and arrest people over a legitimate, complicated, historically-rooted dispute that will likely never be settled. Just on a practical level, if they're ever going to move past violence, one side is going to have to denounce violence preemptively - instead of the current posture of "no, you do it first."
Whatever side of that, or any particular tense situation you may consider sane, logically, it is the sane person who should expected to act rationally. Of course, one can't trust the insane to act sanely - but neither is the insane guaranteed to act insanely simply because of their lack of sanity.
What I'm saying is, take the chance. Yes, it's a chance which could cost your life or the lives of lots of other people, but it's better than banging your head against a wall for another 6,000 years. AND, guess what? You look a lot less threatening to the other guy if you stop actually threatening him. The same would likely be true if roles were reversed.
I use the sane/insane argument not because I believe those roles fit well in any conflict, but because those involved in the conflict believe them. If you're the sane one, do the sane thing.
STOP, KILLING PEOPLE!
Killing is contagious. The more advanced we get in our technology the further we come from actually physically understanding the reality of killing. When it was hand to hand combat and you had to grip the throat of an enemy and physically feel the remaining air in his lungs disappear - that's a difficult position. It was never taken lightly. When you can punch buttons on a keyboard and blow up an occupied house 15,000 miles away, then go home to dinner with your wife and kids - that's a lot of distance. The more killing we do, the easier it is to kill. That's not just for individuals, but for societies as a whole.
It trickles down. There's all this debate about why the US has so many gun deaths despite lower gun ownership rates than, say, Canada. There's a lot of factors going into it, a lot. One I never hear is that we live in the only developed country on Earth that still executes people. Could it be so simple as "my daddy does it, so it must be ok?"
It starts with society - and it trickles down to individuals. When we're part of a system that uses killing to impose an understanding of morality on the world, we should not be surprised to find individuals within that society who use the same logic - even if their morality is ridiculous and flat out wrong.
If you or I stop killing people, people will still get killed. I don't like what's going on in Syria anymore than anyone else (and I can't think of a single person on the planet, Asad included, who likes what's happening there). I have the same response for Syria that I do for the United States:
STOP KILLING PEOPLE!
I do not pray for quick resolution to war. I don't even pray for a cessation of fighting. I pray that every armed combatant everyone, on a battlefield or angry at home, will just lay down their weapons and renounce fighting altogether. I pray that words like war and peace will lose all meaning because people have refused to fight so long, they've forgotten what it means to kill.
Please, just stop killing people. It may not make a lot of sense in the short term; the math might not add up well (it probably won't). But in the end, the simple statement remains true: if everyone stopped killing, no one would be killed.
This third entry in what has come to be known as the "politics not Politics" series borrows heavily on the concepts in the previous post - Peace. The concept of shalom weighs heavy in any discussion of justice.
Justice is perhaps the most misused word in our culture today (except maybe love). We have everything from the Justice League (which is a fictional organization) to the Justice System (which we only wish were fictional). But throughout our world, the concept of justice is all about punishing bad guys and restoring good guys. There's a lot of retribution, perhaps not the violent kind, but retribution nonetheless.
Now don't think I'm again consequences for behavior or restoration for the aggrieved; those are both essential elements to society. No, my question involves why we divide ourselves into good guys and bad guys and what standard we use for "making someone whole."
We hear that Osama bin Laden's death brings justice to the victims that died under his various attacks. We hear that justice is served when a criminal is locked behind bars for the rest of his life. In those instances, justice has become synonymous with punishment. Someone commits a crime, thus they are penalized - monetarily, with time, or with their own life.
This is a perversion of justice (again, not that consequences for bad actions are wrong, but that this system is incomplete and is not really justice). Like many things in our society, justice has become too individualized.
Our legal system is based on making individuals whole. If I steal $100 from you, I must pay back that $100 and any interest that would have been earned during the time you didn't have it. You are made whole. If my drunken driving causes you to be paralyzed, I owe you a lifetime of medical bills and lost earnings. If a woman is raped, well, there's nothing to make her whole - so we do the next best thing, the guilty party pays as much as possible, by forfeiting freedom and spending time in jail. Sometimes the crime is horrific enough that it requires the perpetrator's life in payment. All in attempts to make the victim, or their loved ones, whole.
You can see, as crimes and violations increase in seriousness, the ability to make an individual whole diminishes. We can never think of an appropriate way to restore lost innocence or lost life - even torture, while satisfying on some primal level, doesn't do the job.
It becomes even less realistic when we move beyond one-on-one crimes and speak of sociological atrocities. How does the world compensate Africans and their descendants who suffer from the effects of the trans-atlantic slave trade? How does a nation compensate its indigenous people for the loss of a way of life and for near genocide? It would bankrupt our societies to make these individuals whole, so we give lip service to the injustice.
We celebrate justice or our attempts at justice until justice gets in the way of our way of life.
What if justice were not about making a group or individual whole, but about making creation itself whole? Justice, at least in its biblical sense, is about restoring shalom - about bringing society back (or at least closer) to what God envisions for the world.
This is where our idea of punishment as justice comes from. Of course, for justice to be done, some who have must have less and some who lack must have more. This is not a socialist utopia; God never said there should be no rich and poor. God did say that we should leave the gleanings of the harvest and the crops at the edge of the field so the poor will not be hungry. God did say that those who are foreign residents among you must be treated as native born.
Justice costs something.
Justice costs something for those with wealth and power because they must give it up. Is it right to buy bottled water when a billion people lack access to the kind of clean water that runs out of your tap all day, every day?
Justice is not about Robin Hood robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Justice condemns stealing, even if it's from a greedy, heartless corporation. Justice does not recognize victimless crime. Of course, justice also asks if the greedy, heartless corporation is acting justly in its dealings. Profits may have to be sacrificed for justice. Justice does not recognize a victimless crime (even if society doesn't recognize it as a crime at all).
But I earned this, I worked for it. Justice takes that into consideration as well. God created this world with enough. In a just society no one should be afraid of not having enough. We are afraid because we don't trust each other to be just.
Justice costs something.
Justice costs something for those who lack power and standing because they must submit. Justice does not mean punishment or retribution. After decades of slavery, it may seem only fair for the roles to reverse, for the slaves to becomes the masters and the masters, slaves. This is not justice, for people still suffer, for society still fails to live up to its created purpose.
Justice costs something because it requires repentance and forgiveness.
Justice is the restoration of shalom.
When Dr. King quoted the prophet Amos - "May justice roll down like waters..." he was not calling for an overturning of the tables, but a meeting at the table. Party allegiances aside, when John Lewis speaks of meeting one of the men who beat him on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, heard his confession and offered forgiveness, that was the beginning of justice. Justice is seen in the ongoing relationship of perpetrator and victim as friends.
Justice is George Bush and Osama bin Laden having a meal together.
That is, of course, impossible now - and likely was always impossible. Human nature is opposed to justice; we have to work at it. And likely we can't start with the biggest rifts, the biggest problems, the biggest injustices. We have to start with the small ones. The spats between husband and wife, the way we treat rebellious children and irresponsible neighbors.
Justice is not about demanding individual or group rights, justice is about commitment to making creation whole. It is about working for the good of others at the cost of your own. Proper justice rests on a proper understanding of peace and freedom.
True, justice is not expected in this world of sin and filth. Even those of us who are committed to the cause of Christ may never expect to see justice on a grand scale. But it is possible. Justice is not a pipe dream.
As we approach our politics and our Politics, justice should be an important foundation. We should be working for justice and supporting others who do as well. We should be celebrating those who sacrifice, both those with power and those without, for the cause of justice.
Most of all, we should not be fooled into calling our legal system a justice system. I don't think it's worthless. In our world, it is the best we have to keep order - and it certainly avoids some wicked calamities. We can always work to make our legal system more just - to make it more focused on the redemption of those who break the law rather than on retribution.
And we can work to make society more just, even if it's only where you live and with the people you know. We can work for justice so those in the legal system have a more just community to come home to, so we all have a more just place to live.
It has apparently taken me two and a half years to be affected enough to write another blog post, but Osama bin Laden was killed last night. I have a lot of thoughts. It is a rare situation when people feel open to be completely honest. This is one of those. I appreciate the honesty of people to say, "I'm glad he's dead," and frankly I'd expect nothing less. I am also touched by those who've expressed their conflicted feelings about being happy. That sort of honesty takes courage. It only seems fair to be equally honest.
My first response to the news was awe that it actually happened. I, like a lot of people, felt bin Laden was going to die of old age. My second response was nervousness.
This death does indeed bring some closure to an unsettling experience that began with a terrible tragedy almost a decade ago. I am one of those whose life perspective has been shaped by dealing with 9/11 and its repercussions.
I was beginning my Junior year of college at ENC, just south of Boston. The planes took off from Boston. There were guys on my floor who, for a while, were worried their father was on one of them. A fellow student lost a father as he responded from his fire house to help evacuate the buildings. I was not disconnected from this tragedy. It was real. It felt personal.
Two years later God changed my life. The result was a shift, from preparation for a career in politics to enrolling in seminary and the process of preparing for ministry. My encounter with scripture profoundly changed my perspective on life. I found a gospel that demanded my full allegiance. It meant a departure from the story my culture was writing for me to participation in a story God has been writing since the beginning of time.
News I would have cheered in 2001 brings sorrow in 2011.
I say this with no affinity for Osama bin Laden. He dedicated his life and his considerable wealth to increasing fear in our world. Fear, which is directly counter to a gospel of love. In this case, I cannot think of a more appropriate word to describe his legacy than: evil.
That being said, Osama bin Laden was a beloved creation of God's and every death is tragic. We do not have the right to kill anyone, no matter how evil. Judgement belongs to the Lord.
There has been much talk of justice, when people really mean revenge. Justice would have been for bin Laden to express real remorse and for the victims of his aggression to express real forgiveness; justice would have been for us to create a society in which George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden could live in peace.
I am not so deluded as to think this is possible, short of a miraculous work of God. Yet that miraculous work is the vision of the future laid out in scripture. What else do the wolf and the lamb, the bear and calf, the child and the serpent represent than sworn enemies living in harmony?
The real issue today is not how we handle death and killing (you can read my previous blog entry for that), but how we respond to them. I take Jesus seriously when he says an "eye for an eye" no longer applies, but instead we're called to love our enemies. Even if one feels that killing is necessary at some point, it should be done with repentance and regret - never celebration.
I am sorrowful because I believe that celebrating death is destructive to people. We cannot control the emotions life brings out in us, but we must control our responses. Revenge feels good; we've made someone suffer in the way we've suffered. But revenge can never bring healing. It can never bring restoration. That comes from loving those who don't deserve to be loved. It comes from remembering that we are all, simultaneously, undeserving of the love we're shown and profoundly deserving of love.
God weeps for Osama bin Laden. I'm not sure I can muster that response, but I do weep for people who rejoice in death and I apologize for any arrogance that may communicate.
