Christians and Violence

 

What makes the Christian perspective on violence different is the goal. Christians believe the future is a world without fear or death, a world in which violence does not exist. Our goal is not to minimize violence – we have not succumbed to the death-dealing notion that it is inevitable – we believe there is an end to violence, that it will be completely eliminated.

Christians take a long view on these things. The world which is coming may not (almost certainly will not) be realized in our lifetimes. We are committed to a lifestyle that may produce no visible results before we die. It may seem pointless and foolhardy in our present; this is why it’s called faith.

In light of that, killing can never be justified. Taking a life should be something with which the killer wrestles for the rest of their days. It should be conflicting and troubling; feelings of guilt should not be unexpected. Whether it is abortion or war or self defense, killing may, in fact, be the preferred option in a given scenario, but that does not make it “right.”

It’s never heroic to kill, even in the name of justice or the defense of innocence, even if you never regret doing it. Heroism is an action of discipline or creativity or plain dumb luck whereby someone stumbles into a non-violent means of making a real difference in the world. No action ever makes a person a hero or a villain, because no human being can ever be entirely defined by what they do.

History has shown us that opposing violence with violence only compounds the problem, even if some short term benefits are realized. If the goal is to minimize violence, there’s some argument for force opposing force, but if the goal, as it is for followers of Jesus Christ, is to realize a world without violence; it is never the answer.

Yes, we live in a world where killing exists and one where there will continue to be people who kill with the best of intentions. Our response, though, should not be to absolve them of guilt or normalize those actions – it should be to wrestle and grieve alongside them as they process the primal violation of existence that is the taking of life. Our job, as it is at all times, is to love unconditionally, because it is only love – especially love of those we would like to kill – that will ever end violence.

We Shouldn't Be Surprised

It's no secret there's a lot of mass violence in the US. We trot out the numbers every time another shooting happens, and those numbers are sickening. It's literally become a more-than-daily occurrence. One thing I don't agree with, though, is the rhetoric that seems to accompany it, especially among church people, that not reacting viscerally to such violence is a sign it's become routine, or that we've accepted the inevitability of such violence.

I mean, I get where that's coming from. We don't want to so forget the world God has promised us, the one Christ began to bring about, the one with no tears or sorrow, the culmination of which we look forward to each day and celebrate in our weekly gatherings, that we stop working and living into it. We don't want to say this is the world we live in and we just have to deal with it. We don't want to forget that there's something more. I get it.

The problem is, though, that the world we're rejecting, the one that's dying away and will ultimately parish still exists. It's not dead yet - and that world is one where violence is embraced and justified to gain and maintain power. Violence anywhere leads to violence anywhere. If you can justify any violence, someone will, in fact, justify any violence. The notion of good guys and bad guys is a fallacy from the pits of hell, but so long as we live in a world where it's still believed and lived out, this is the result.

I'm not saying you can't be saddened and heartbroken for the violence of our world, for the lives lost, and the lives forever changed by mass shootings, I just don't think we can be surprised that a world built on violence produces violence any more than we can be surprised that pulling the lever on the soft serve machine means ice cream comes out. It's cause and effect.

We don't have to live the effect, we don't have to be satisfied or complacent with it, but we shouldn't be surprised. Christians least of all. We should have a worldview that understands the problems inherent in the machinations of power, the complications that arise when love is not our response to absolutely everything. We should not be shocked by the world in which we live, even as we grieve it.

I get especially upset with this "don't be numb" rhetoric, because it's rarely accompanied by a full-throated, scripturally-based, Christ-like denunciation of violence. I recognize that the realities of the world mean we can't expect everyone to be 100% non-violent in every situation. That's not the issue, though - the issue is our inability to condemn ourselves, even as we recognize violence is sometimes the least bad choice we can make.

Just because violence is the best course of action we can come up with in a given moment, doesn't mean it's justified. If we, as Christians, resort to violence, we should be doing so with pleas of forgiveness and mercy on our lips. Taking life, even to protect life, is not a Christ-like virtue. When we make heroes out of people who do so, we contribute to a culture of violence whose byproducts are these senseless murders.

That's another thing: we call them senseless, because they make no sense to us. Often, though, perpetrators of societally condemned violence find great sense in their own actions. They plan them; they feel compelled that they are the best possible course of action, given the assumptions they hold.

Just because we disagree with those particular assumptions doesn't make them morally any different than the assumptions we use to justify the violence we deem (even regrettably) necessary. We live in a society where we're privileged to mostly outsource our violence to others - police, military, etc. Just because we're not perpetrating that violence, doesn't mean it's any less ours; it's done in our name, by people's whose actions we justify (at least passively).

Jesus said those who live by the sword will die by the sword. We can make our individual decisions - and I pray they are always to non-violence and love - but we're also communal people by nature; like it or not, we participate in a world that lives by the sword. Christians can be saddened by violent deaths, but we really shouldn't be surprised. Christians should know better.

People who grow up in a society where violence is the answer to evil have a right to be shocked and surprised when it's used to perpetuate evil. Christians, who've been exposed to the Kingdom of God, where violence is never the answer and always the enemy, just don't have an excuse. Gun laws are great and I'd support better ones. I don't believe any weapon should ever be directed at any human ever. Laws pushing us in that direction will likely save lives, but they won't solve the problem.

Violence is the problem. Until we name it and address it, nothing will change, and we shouldn't be surprised by anything.

The Myth of Second Chances

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.

Legends and Legacies

Last Tuesday was 9/11, so I decided to save this one a week.

9/11 is only going to become more important as the distance from it to the present increases. The kids I see in schools everyday weren't even alive when it happened and so many young people have no living memory. As much as telling our stories can feel old, at times, it's important to help our collective memory.

The world is different now than it was, which is always true, but rarely do we have such definitive, recognizable transition moments as 9/11. The militant nationalism so prevalent in our society can be traced to that day and the ones following. Our obsession with safety and security are collective travails that extend from the emotional trauma of watching a nation that had never previously been attacked succumb to the kind of violence that's commonplace in so many countries around the world.

It's a real thing and we must, absolutely, with all our might, prevent it from becoming legend.

Legends lack complexity and context. When we were in Hawaii a few years back, we got to tour the Pearl Harbor memorial. What struck me most about the museum was the dearth of historical context. The US was competing with Japan for influence and control in the Pacific, and part of that meant limiting Japan's supply of oil. War was inevitable, because that particular US policy was an existential threat to their country. We can talk about tragedy - a surprise attack that cost a lot of lives - without negating the issues surrounding it's place in history. We don't tend to do that, though, we paint ourselves the innocent victims and the "other guy" as the bloodthirsty evil.

The speed with which we did that in 2001 is why 9/11 has much a troubled connection in my mind. We set out for revenge real quick. It didn't even seem to matter who was on the other end of our national fist. It got us into a lot of trouble and it shaped our society in really negative ways (beyond the governmental and economic consequences, which were nothing to sneeze at).

9/11 was a violent attack; all violence should be denounced. I don't like the distinction between civilian and military targets, because, as I said, all violence should be denounced - but 9/11 was certainly beyond even the commonly accepted rules of war: terror at it's very definition. The purpose of terror, of course, is to create a fear that grows, panic and overreaction that feeds itself in a cycle of expansion that ultimately gnaws at the roots of a society.

In that sense, the terrorists won.

That's why context is so important. We need to tell the stories of our experiences and emotions on that day. We need to communicate just how traumatic it was for people entirely disconnected from the lives lost, because violence has real consequences - when we do it and when we're the victims of it. We need to tell the stories to learn the lessons of how to respond to terror, how to control our very real and right fear and not allow it to eat us up and dictate our actions.

We need to keep 9/11 within the larger narrative of international politics, recognizing the out-sized influence the US has played in middle eastern politics and how quickly a religious narrative can be used to manipulate people and power. We need to keep perspective on the "good vs evil" dynamics and tell the story of 9/11 honestly - not filtered through the lenses we'd like it to fit.

Things have been sanitized that don't deserve cleaning. The impact of the clean-up on the fire and police officers, the rescue workers, both paid and volunteer - they're lionized in the stories we tell as they lie forgotten, suffering and dying as a result of their work. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Iraq and Afghanistan died because of decisions our government made. Casualties of war are not just numbers on a page or phrases in a history book; they're real people - and there's many more of "them" who died than there ever were of "us." Such small numbers of "us" were ever asked to serve or sacrifice and we continually cut corners and pinch pennies to care for the hearts and heads of people who gave life and limb and family to fight angry, vengeful wars. We can't even be bothered to sacrifice the next marginally better drone or fighter jet to provide the medical care veterans across the country need.

Yes, I'm opposed to war and violence, precisely because they dehumanize and devalue life. It's all the more reason to support and care for those who've been victims of such war (and there are always many victims on every side of a fight).

I feel very different about 9/11 today than I did seventeen years ago, but that should also be part of the story. Reliving the vivid memories and emotional legacy of the moment as well as the changes it's wrought in us since that day, both individually and collectively. We need to recognize that while this is a singularly remarkable event, it is but one of many singularly remarkable events in our history and each come from somewhere and lead to somewhere. They fit in a larger narrative with both causes and consequences. While we may not be able to internalize all the complexities of experiencing such an event, we can understand why it happens and how we need to respond.

We can only do that, though, if we're honest - not just about the story we want to tell, but about the story that must be told. The worst possible way to memorialize 9/11 is to make it legend. The best thing to do is to keep it real.

May we all keep it real. On this day and on every one to come.

The Soul of a Terrorist

I was reading TIME magazine yesterday and one of the columns referenced Trump refusing to call the Charlotteville terrorists terrorists. The complaint was that he instead humanized them and gave them souls. My first reaction was, "well, they are humans and they do have worth and value because they're humans." Then it dawned on me: we really don't have a societal way of explaining people who are so desperate they act out in violent ways. We've made "terrorists" into maliciously evil bogeymen, who are more comic book villain than human being. We simply lack an ability to denounce someone's actions without dehumanizing them.

I mean, we have the ability, but not in one word - not anymore. Perhaps Trump had trouble calling terrorism terrorism because he understood the humanity of the people behind the heinous acts. Well, not Trump, but perhaps a normal person, one capable of empathy and emotion, could understand the humanity and balk at labeling them terrorists.

We should be at a "people-first" place of description these days anyway, right? We should be beyond defining someone by their actions - a person who commits terrorism separates the action from the individual, at least a little bit. It helps us to value humans as humans before we judge their actions.

No doubt those blokes in Charlottesville were doing terrorism. Driving a car into a crowd is almost terrorism cliche these days. It's evil and intended to instill fear the same way a car bomb or a plane hijacking or a random shooting is. It shouldn't matter if it's Virginia or Paris or Baghdad or Manila.

Then I started thinking about the various people who resort of terrorism, be they white supremacists in the US or Muslim fundamentalists in the middle east. Generally these are desperate people, folks who feel left out. They lack options, often economically. They lack opportunity for education, work, access, and exposure to the larger world. It creates a myopic world view that, When pressed against the wall or backed into a corner (especially when those feelings of fear and desperation are cultivated and exploited through media, religion, or tribal connection), violence is often a natural result.

People who are used to being powerless attempt to gain power by scaring those who seem to have more options. It's not hard to recruit people into these armies when you provide an outlet for anger and frustration. We can all find ourselves in situations we'd never choose if we give in to our emotions to thoroughly.

That word "terrorist" gives us emotional license to condemn not just ideas or actions, but the very people behind them - it encourages the kind of emotional commitment that produces people willing to commit terrorism in the first place. When we dehumanize others, we dehumanize ourselves. That is the way of the world.

I don't mean to condone or excuse violence and evil. It's inexcusable and awful and damnable and wrong. That doesn't mean, though, we have to call it unbelievable or indecipherable. We ask, after every terroristic tragedy, "how could anyone do this," but the truth is, we should be able to understand, even if we don't agree or approve. If we really can't imagine how or why people would resort to such violence, we're either far too sheltered or we're lying to ourselves.

This is the real problem. We're always quick to justify violence when its in defense of our priorities. Anger clouds things, to be sure. We do things in anger or fear that we might not otherwise do. That's always going to be the fly in the ointment, so to speak. But when we justify violence - any violence - we're giving someone else license to justify any violence.

We have "rules" for our violence as some balm for our conscience, but "rules" don't exist in war - ask any person who's been in one. Violence is not something we can handle in moderation. We, as a human society, are (sometimes) functional addicts of violence. We demonize the terrorists who take things "too far" so we can justify our relationship to violence. "I'm not like those folks."

Guess what? "Those folks" don't think they're like you (or me).

We can point out the differences between the world "they" want and the world we're trying to make, but they can do the same thing. I'm not saying those visions are necessarily equal or that one side isn't preferable to another - just that so long as we back up "our" notions of right and wrong with violence, we're never going to find what we're looking for (and neither are "they").

If you export or enforce your ideas with violence, your only idea is violence - at least it's the only idea anyone's going to hear.

I got to thinking what would happen if we provided education and meaningful work opportunities for the people who committed terrorism in Charlottesville. Set aside whether these guys were really oppressed or forgotten or even if they were really representative of the rural white-working class that's fueled our current political climate. Let's avoid that argument for a bit and just imagine we could provide free college or job training and a place to work for all the southern, western, rust belt, and appalachian folks who got Trump elected.

There would still be angry, entitled, and racist folks out there, for sure. You'll never get rid of them. You'll probably have less, though.

The one (probably unintended) consequence of fixing this one societal issue that we don't think too much about is that you'll have real trouble recruiting soldiers for the military. The biggest draw for young men to sign up and fight is a lack of options. Military service provides the very things a stereotypical US terrorist lacks. We can have all the moral arguments we want about "us" and "them," "good" guys and bad, but at the end of the day we recruit the same group of people (poor, uneducated young men with a lack of options), in the same way (appeals to religious or patriotic duty, economic opportunity, or plain fear), for the same thing (a violent imposition of general societal norms).

It makes even me uncomfortable saying it, but I also can't get around it.

Do we really have "better" morals or more humane rules? We denounce torture and violence against civilians, but our track record on those things isn't the greatest. We fear nuclear war, but we're the only country who's ever used a nuclear weapon on anyone.

I'm not saying the US is the same as terrorists, not at all. I'm against war, but I'd rather live in the US than under Nazi Germany or ISIS Syria. It's not so much the moral arguments than the ways in which we're prepared to make them. I'm just not sure where we got the idea that if we believe strongly enough in an idea we should be willing to kill for it.

It seems to me if we believe strong enough in something, killing should be the last thing we need to do to defend it. Dying, maybe, but not killing. If our beliefs are really true, they will win out. If truth can be killed off or destroyed or defeated, perhaps this isn't a world worth living in to begin with, no?

In the end, I guess, it comes back to human nature. We try to demonize the practitioners of the most extreme actions because we want to pretend that we're not capable of doing what they do, when we are. We're all capable of tremendous acts of evil, given the right circumstances. It's part of being human.

As much as we want to say we're all one big happy family, there will continue to be disagreements, maybe even big enough that we can't live together - we just have to avoid getting to a place where we believe those horribly, dangerously wrong people over there, don't deserve to live at all.

That's when we're really in trouble. That's when we become terrorists.

Swearing

I had an interesting conversation about Christians and swearing a while back. I don't quite recall with whom, so I can't give credit, but thanks, whoever you are/were. The idea brought forth was an examination of the purpose for Christians taking a strong stance against profanity. (Even the definition of what words are course, offensive, or "bad" is a pretty tough slog, but we'll just define them as however you would define them, for the purposes of this post.) Christians generally try to avoid needlessly offending people (so much so we've gotten squeamish about necessarily offending people, but that's a topic for another day) - and avoiding certain words was a way of ensuring we weren't lumped in with a particular, marginal group of people - you know, the proverbial sailors and skullduggers, the kind of people who had tattoos back when tattoos were something only a few, unwashed people had. It was a "set apart" kind of thing, an abstention from something that was generally seen as detrimental to society.

The question then emerges, what is the purposes of maintaining such abstention when the only people who are really offended by those words are the Christians themselves? I mean, in a world where you can't say "crud" because we all know you really want to say "crap" and crap is just a stand-in for "shit," which you can't even say on television (except you mostly can, now, because, by and large, don't care), is any of this verbal gymnastic even serving a purpose?

There's something to be said for a unique distinctive. Holy means to be set apart, after all, and there's lots of peculiar things Christians do because they're Christians. My question remains, though, is this one really saying anything of substance theologically? Does utter avoidance of certain words strengthen or enhance the cause of God's Kingdom in the world?

I'm not saying we go willy-nilly, say whatever the (circle one) heck/hell/fuck you want, because that's just selfish and inconsiderate. I'm all about embracing situational appropriateness. There are times and places for every word just as there are, most assuredly, times and places where they don't belong. I'm not even saying we should abandon the worthwhile endeavor to avoid offense in our speech; I'm just saying that maybe we tone down the good/bad talk and treat every word in relation to context.

Christians should absolutely be an odd, marginal people in the world, but probably not because of the words we avoid.

There's a book that came out last year, one that I've been on the library waiting list for, called Swearing is Good for You by Emma Byrne. As I said, I've yet to read it, but I did catch a very short article by her, about the book, in TIME Magazine (link unavailable) where her basic argument is that "profanity" words have real power and should be reserved for appropriate times. (Funny how he brings up a book that agrees with the idea he just put forth. Hmmmm....) I'm looking forward to reading the book because she talks about how people develop positive associations with particular swear words. Research seems to indicate that positive connections only occur during adolescence and come from "a friend's laughter, parent's disappointment or an enemy's fury," to name some examples. It's a learned behavior.

Not learned so much as "someone taught me," more learned in that swearing induces pleasure when it makes someone uncomfortable, angry, or upset. In other words, parents lecturing their kids about swearing only make those same kids MORE likely to swear. It really does seem like a universal issue - abstinence and/or shame (because they're almost always the same) imbues a thing with greater power than it would otherwise possess.

As I said, twice, I've yet to read this book, but instinctually I took this tact with my (now six year old) daughter. I've never said a single thing to her about "good" or "bad" words. She's heard swear words on occasion - whether it's something slipped into a podcast or some neighbor on the street - I've tried really hard not to react in any way to those instances (other than perhaps repeated or gratuitous use, where I might make some comment about needed a broader vocabulary to vary one's word choice). I feel like it's worked out pretty well. Our kids learn their vocabulary from the words they hear us use, not from everyone word they hear anywhere. My daughter is going to learn to talk the way my wife and I talk - for better or worse. If we're using words in ways that are comfortable to us, she will, too.

I was just using some potentially faulty logic when I made that decision, but I'm glad to know science backs me up on this one.

I still cringe a bit (at least internally) when I think about the little mouth click/disapproval vocalization my dad made literally every time an even moderately offensive word was uttered in our presence (and outside our presence, for all I know). There was certainly no doubt which words were acceptable and which weren't - and what's more, I don't think I was harmed in any real way by that. I'm not sure it served the purpose for which it was intended, but I do appreciate growing up in an environment where I was taught to consider my words.

That's the other side of the coin on this one.

We all know people for whom "those words" make up a shockingly high percentage of their vocabulary - like where the 'f's outnumber the conjunctions. There's something a little off in those conversation - not because such a person is lesser in any way, but because words do, in fact, mean something. I've got a pet theory I'd love for sciency person to actually test out: I think people who swear so casually are more likely to be violent.

Hear me out on this. "Swear" words are those we generally save for our most emotionally intense situations - from the proverbial hitting on a thumb with a hammer, to hearing the news that a loved one has tragically and unexpectedly died - the moments when we feel our feels to the feeling-est degree are often those times when profanity is most understandably used. These are special words to express special emotions at special times. (That's the very definition of profanity, by the way, making sacred - or special - things ordinary.)

My theory is that people who use profanity casually, as placeholder or filler word, when they encounter those moments of extreme emotion - the places where profanity is most appropriate - they lack a vocabulary to properly express those emotions and there's nothing left but a physical response. If some guy hits my care out of sheer carelessness, I might say "what the _____ were you thinking" while we wait for the tow truck on the side of the road. But if that's my response to someone setting the table with forks on the right or bringing back an espresso instead of a macchiato, I may lack the ability to express myself appropriately after the car crash and just take a swing at the guy.

I'm not saying it has to happen that way, just that it makes sense that it would for some people. I'm suggesting correlation, not that individuals who swear a lot are more violent, just that collectively, people who swear a lot might be more violent. Obviously it's an unscientific hypothesis that's convenient in that it proves my point. Still, I think it's got some merit.

This brings me back around to where I started in the first place. How and why do Christians approach this topic? Maybe, since Christianity is profoundly non-violent, there is some real world, theological purpose for avoiding profanity. Maybe banning even the replacement words, like darn or gosh, really does help us learn to save the "bad" words for extreme moments. There's also an argument to made that Christians shouldn't be reacting out of anger anyway (and that's one I do agree with, by the way) - disciplining our use of profanity might actually be discipline, as in practices designed to control our use of those very words so can avoid them even when they might be warranted and overcome the kind of anger that leads us to act in un-Christian ways towards other people.

I guess I'm saying if we're going to call people to be really, really careful with the way they use words, we should also be really, really careful that we know why we're doing it (both calling people to greater consideration and avoiding certain words ourselves). "That sucks" might be a crude phrase I was discouraged from saying growing up, but, as a pastor, I've found it profoundly helpful as a response when someone tells me a parent has died, or they lost their job, or an engagement was called off. It's an expression of compassion and solidarity and truth, regardless of how it's judged socially - I've found it to be comforting and cathartic and appropriate in ways I never would've imagined.

Words are indeed just words... in the same way that people are just people. We can define them from afar, offer our value judgments, and put them into neat little boxes, but none of that can actually define who or what they are in the context of our relationship to them. The world would be a lot easier if people would just be happy being who we expect them to be - that's just not how things work. We need a language that's just as specific and unique and flexible as the world we use that language to create, describe, and engage.

Black Panther and Black Power

Sorry for the sparse posting. It's basketball season and I publish 2,000 words a week from November to March on D3hoops.com; if I had no other responsibilities in life, I could probably also bang out another 2,000 words here, but, sadly, that is not the case.

I do want to write this, though, because I think it's important. Black Panther is coming out this week and what the world needs most is another anonymous white guy's opinion of it. I'm excited to see this movie. I've been excited to see this movie since the director was announced and even moreso as the casting came to light. This is a big time movie with a higher level of talent than any superhero movie before it. Robert Downey, Jr is a fantastic actor, but that's not why he was cast in Ironman.* I've been excited for this movie because I like movies.

TIME has a great piece by Jamil Smith on the movie and it's place in history. It's short and by no means exhaustive, but it does juxtapose the movie with Stokley Carmichael and the Black Power movement. As a white person, I'd been blissfully unaware of the connotations this movie presents of an un-colonized African nation with both the power and technology to take over the world.

It's a radical idea and a scary one for most white people - even those who recognize that it's a bit shameful to be scared. White people don't want black people to have real power because we're afraid black people will use that power in the same way white people have used it for the last 4,000+ years.

That's the long and short of it.

I won't claim to be "woke" or even entirely sure what that means, but I do think I'm more in tune with the sad realities of race than most white people (not that this is a high bar). I've been race-issue-adjacent on occasion, which feels embarrassing to even say - and I only do so to point out that I've at least spent some considerable time thinking about issues of race, even though I'll never be able to even approach the barest glimpse of what it means to be black in this world and I often entirely miss the point.

I see the joys expressed that Black Panther represents black people as heroes in ways that young black kids rarely get to see in society. I can recognize the truth of that statement and the ubiquitousness of people who look like me in pop culture, but I'll never get it. I can't. You just can't experience something you can't experience. The very fact that there's an experience we can't have is enough to make white people angry and expose our entitlement.

This is supposed to be an introduction, but it's already too long. I meant to simply say people with power tend to use it badly and when we use our power badly, it tends to work out better for people who look like us than for people who don't. This is the crux of what I want to say. Ceding power to people who look different from you is rightfully scary - not because people who look different are, in fact different, but precisely because they're the same.

The biggest privilege that comes with white privilege in the privilege to be human. Robert Downey Jr turned his life around and he got the opportunity to do that largely because he's part of the privileged class - he gets to make mistakes and be forgiven. Chadwick Boseman, titular star of Black Panther, also played Jackie Robinson in a movie, a guy who was picked to break baseball's color barrier because he was deemed least human - that is, most able to endure punishing, racist abuse without reacting in completely justified anger.

I prefer the philosophy of Martin Luther King to the philosophy of Stokley Carmichael largely for theological reasons. King was a minister of the gospel and preached an idealized version of humanity because he believed that it is the inevitable future of humanity and our best course of action is to live into that coming future reality as best and as soon as possible. Regardless of race, justice, or equality, this is the concept to which I've dedicated my life.

Carmichael saw the world as it is - a massive power game - and advocating playing that game by the established rules. If skin color were removed from this argument, we'd call it a civil war, memorialize the combatants on both sides and erect nostalgic statues to the losers out of respect for their commitment to their ideals. Why? Because we expect humans to make mistakes. We expect human beings to be wrong. We have grace when people mess up, because we're also people and we also mess up.

We have grace if they look like us or think like us or have some connection to us, anyway. If they don't, we make them a villain, removing their humanity, and raising the bar of acceptable behavior inhumanly high.

The "rights" and the "wrongs" of the black power movement are no different in kind than the "rights" and the "wrongs" of the US response to 9/11; the one difference is that one of them is an "us" and the other is a "them." Tribal identification makes all the difference.

We like to say that we're all the same, that we're all human - that all lives matter, perhaps - but as correct and self-congratulatory as those statements are in theory, they're just not true in practice. We like having good guys and bad guys and it's pretty easy to write off the flaws of one and the positive traits of the other simply because we've got more affinity for the former than the latter.

I do believe that white critique of whatever we describe as "black empowerment" today is largely valid, but what makes it unfair is that those same critics refuse to hold "white empowerment" (or maybe better named "continued white entrenchment") to the same standards of critique. This hypocrisy simply cannot recognize whatever part of "black empowerment"** is actually valid without revealing said hypocrisy. It's a Catch-22 that has almost no repercussions for those in power and far too many for those without.

I genuinely don't believe we need another white voice chiming in on Black Panther or Black Power, but I also feel some obligation as a white person to say what so many white people simply won't. Theory is all that matters to those in power, because we've got reality locked down. Theory matters very little for the unempowered, because reality is all they've got.

So there's a movie coming out, with a largely black cast and a black director that represents real progress on a lot of fronts. It's worthy of support, even if it's not Citizen Kane or The Dark Knight or even all that good. It doesn't have to be the perfect statement on black power or identity or experience to be a valid celebration of those things.

Some white people are afraid of this movie, I guess because it's symbolic of the societal power we're increasingly being asked to give up? We're understandably nervous because we'd like to be sure the "new" world is better than the old one, before we really commit to it. Guess what, white people? A world in which we're not entirely in charge will not feel "better" than one where we run the show. Here is where we have to take our own advice and trust the theory to come through for us, even if reality seems a bit uncertain.

Equality on our own terms is not equality. We've had thousands of years to learn that lesson. We learned it the hard way and other people paid the price. I believe every person has a right to their fear, but I also believe we have a responsibility to reject acting out of fear. That costs us something; it has to. But I don't think any world worth having comes without sacrifice and we've not yet done our fair share.

I don't particularly like that reality any more than anyone else, but I also can't ignore it.^





*We forget this now because he's pretty respectable and super rich, but, at the time, Robert Downey Jr was coming off yet another sobriety slip and literally could not be insured on a movie set. He basically had no other options, but, fortunately, he was talented and white, so second chances abound.

**I recognize that this looks (and feels) a bit condescending as a term, but I don't know any other way to name what I'm trying to name that will be apparent to everyone reading this. It's too easy to get sidetracked by arguments over terminology that we miss the larger point. I do apologize if it's offensive and fully admit my white privilege is primarily why I can get away with it.

^Apologies to anyone who feels like this post is condescending or inappropriate. I feel like just about anything I have to say about race is probably both of those things - I just don't know how else to process and progress without communicating actual thoughts and ideas.

Christians and Guns

The Ten Commandments say "Do not kill;" Jesus said "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies," and then he went out and did it - even when it cost him his life. We can parse all the various real-time possibilities where one might agree killing is the least bad of many terrible options, but those possibilities, in the grand scheme of things, are few and far between - far fewer and less likely than the attention we give to them - all so we don't have to feel the guilt of falling short of the ideal. There is a difference between justifying our weakness and apologizing for it. We need more of the latter.

I tell people my position on life is simple: it's precious; we should protect it. Don't kill. Don't do things that might endanger the lives of people. Be willing to give up your own life rather than take the life on another. The what ifs and the maybes are simply unlikely to matter in my life or yours. Thought experiments are far less important than real people - even enemies and those whose actions might make it harder to love and protect their lives.

Our typical answer to the problem of violence and killing is to make more laws. I'm not opposed to laws, especially when your job is to make them. A Congress doesn't do any good if it sits on its hands. Maybe you're one of those who'd rather they do nothing - which is fine by me - but then let's disband the system rather than stacking it with gridlock.

I don't believe laws will solve anything, though. Forcing people to do something will only result in rebellion. Radical freedom is the way to go. Some call it anarchy - where a society rises and falls on the health and strength of relationships between people. That's a scary proposition, but it's what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about (I wrote about this the other day). When it comes to guns and violence, you can't outlaw them with integrity - as I tweeted after the Las Vegas massacre, who would enforce a ban on guns?

We've got to get beyond the notion than power and control are the way to run the world. If you want to stop something from happening, you need to stop doing it and let your example be the evidence for others to see and follow. Jesus' solution to violence was to not be violent. His solution for the abuse of power was not to use it. His very words were to take that slap in the face and then turn your cheek for another. If it takes your death, my death, to condemn the violence of another - so be it. A violent response to violence justifies the violence.


My denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, was founded on some basic principles - one of them, strangely and tangentially enough, was the prohibition of alcohol. Many early Nazarenes worked among the poor - drunks and prostitutes, among others - and knew firsthand the dangerous of alcohol. Many of them were caught up in the prohibitionist movement - a movement so forceful and persuasive that 2/3rds of the US House and Senate (with vast majorities in both parties) along with the legislatures of 46 states approved an amendment to the Constitution to that effect.

It was ultimately a practical failure and later repealed with another, similarly overwhelming series of votes - but the root causes of alcohol prohibition remained dominant in the Church of the Nazarene. My forefathers and foremothers saw the perils of alcohol use - not for every individual, of course, but for society as a whole - and moved strongly and willingly to abstain in solidarity and out of love for those hurt by alcohol.

It's still an issue for our denomination. Personally, I would love for us to have maintained the historic position - that we're simply a people who choose not to drink out of love for others. Christians can certainly make different choices and be just as obedient and faithful as us, but the Church of the Nazarene is a place where we don't - not because it's against the rules, but because we've made a particular choice.

We'd be a lot smaller if that were the case. At some point along the way we decided being bigger was better and went a little "don't ask, don't tell" on the alcohol thing. So now, we've got a lot of faithful Christians who choose to love and serve God and neighbor while also drinking responsibly from time to time that call themselves Nazarenes. And we've welcomed them into membership and ordained them and I certainly wouldn't want us to get rid of them.

Personally, I'd love for us to be clear and united and small - but we're not - at least on this issue - so we move forward together and in faith. We maintain our position of abstinence, because that's who we are. I hope we can do it with grace and freedom - not making rules, but choosing to abstain out of love for our brothers and sisters. I even authored a change to our official statement to that effect last summer - it wasn't passed, but it wasn't killed either. I have hope.

The key, I think, is the emphasis on freedom and grace. Prohibition is a bad idea. It's why laws will only ever control "bad" behavior and never eradicate it. People bristle at being told what to do. The Church of the Nazarene calls its members to abstain from alcohol - with lots of good, sound, biblical and theological support and a grand historic narrative that stems from our profound belief in self-giving love.

We do the same thing in other areas as well. Gambling is a big one. Maybe one I can speak to better, because I enjoy it. I'm an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, so, for integrity's sake, my gambling days were over a long time ago - and were never much to begin with, because I'm inherently risk-averse and incredibly cheap. Still, a good poker game is a lot of fun. We abstain - and I join in - not because there's something wrong with gambling in the abstract, but because there's no real way to disconnect my actions from the larger gambling environment that ruins families and destroys lives.

We might say "there's nothing wrong with alcohol or gambling; it's the addiction that'll ruin you," and that's a true statement, but there's no such thing as the abstract in the real world. The five bucks my friend wins off me might end up being lost to a lottery or a casino when he's having fun over the weekend - that money used to entice the gambling of someone else who can't afford it or can't stop. As much as we third or fourth or fifth generation Nazarenes like to talk about the over-eager prohibitions of our past (which included, officially, movies, dancing, mixed-bathing, and circuses - along with unofficial prohibitions on jewelry, playing cards, and, sometimes, wearing the color red, among others) - the logic and the theology are sound.

We're called to give up good things that might harm others. I've spent several weeks studying, teaching, and preaching from Romans 14, and I've yet to figure out exactly where the line is - how much should I be willing to sacrifice for the good of others? I don't know the limit of my sacrifice, but I know there was no limit to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and I'm certainly not better than him.


All this to say - whatever the lawmakers decide about gun laws (or alcohol or gambling) is their business - but what I'd like to do is call my fellow Christians, and especially my fellow Nazarenes, to just give up the guns - not because of some rule against them or even because they're bad on their own, but simply because our society can't handle guns responsibly and we're connected to that, whether we like it or not.

I'm not going to make it a campaign or a crusade and I won't (or at least it's not my intention to) shame anyone. People who make a different choice than me should have the same grace we show to people who make different choices about gambling or alcohol or anything else we tend to avoid. I'm just saying, for me, and I hope for others, this is an issue that's taking on a different tone.

It's a bit tricky for me, since I've never been a gun guy and don't own any. I do think, though, that hunting for food is a near universal good - something we should have more of, not less. I believe deeply we'd all be better off getting our meat at the end of a gun than out of a slaughterhouse. As much as I'm not a gun guy, the loss of that positive indeed feels like a sacrifice. I don't think guns are bad - any more than I think alcohol is bad (or gambling or marijuana or movies or the NFL, for that matter).

We draw lines all the time about when to do things responsibly and with limits and when to avoid them altogether. We make choices about our health and habits. For Nazarenes, we've sworn off gambling and alcohol for a long time. I'd like to suggest we add guns to that list - not maniacally or forcefully or with shame, but of our own free will, out of love for our neighbor.

Laws can control behavior, but they cannot eradicate problems - only sacrificial love can do that. I'm not opposed to the former, but I'm deeply committed to the latter. In fact I think it may be the only truly gospel means of responding to the tragedy of gun violence in all its forms: senseless murder, police shootings, war and whatever else we do to each other.

It may be more than we "should" have to sacrifice, but the world certainly doesn't work the way it "should," and there are no limits to what we're called to sacrifice out of love for each other.

The North Korean Cop-Out

With all the troubling threats coming from the 'hermit kingdom' these days, it's easy to get worried. I mean a third-generation madman has nuclear weapons and seemingly no incentive not to use them. I don't appear too concerned about any of this - something that came as a surprise, even to me. Maybe part of it is living on the East Coast, where Kim Jong Un's missiles are unlikely to fall - I know, how selfless and caring of me, right? I think mostly, though, it's the knowledge that the US government, which has spent close to 50% of its annual budget on military preparedness for decades now, will likely just blast it's way out of this problem, regardless of the consequences.

Now, I don't think that's a wise solution for any number of reasons - the most being my general opposition to violence and war. However, I've been trouble by how easily I'm willing to let someone else do my dirty work in this instance. The number one critique of non-violence is that it's easy to do when someone else will do it - it's a typical retort from police officers or soldiers - and one I am generally challenged by. I work hard not to use that excuse, to be prepared to put my life in danger for peace, if need be, specifically because it's a valid critique. It's not really non-violence, if you're counting on the violence of someone else.

Yet I still find some measure of comfort if the notion that the US army could utterly reduce most of North Korea to rubble, if need be? It's a contradiction one doesn't have to ponder much when it's just a far-off possibility - however, as in recent weeks, when it looks like a more and more likely solution, it's an obstacle that must be faced.

I don't think it's likely that any world government will choose an alternative to violence, especially if other options have been tried extensively, so as much as I've been thinking and researching non-violent ways to potentially deal with the North Korean crisis, that's not really what this is all about.

How do I look at a situation in which people are almost guaranteed to die in large numbers with just about any outcome and not choose utility?
It's that means to an end thing, again - something I decry over and over again here - something I am absolutely opposed to on philosophical and theological grounds. The ends aren't ever ends. History is linked - stopping the madman today has influence on what happens tomorrow. Abandoning principles for a momentary victory might feel good to me and the people who are alive today (rather than dead) because of it, but is that reallt a better solution than choosing death now in the hope of a greater peace down the road?

I don't honestly know the answer to that question, because there's no evidence by which to make a decision. Violence has always been met with violence - at least on a national and international scale. The large-scale non-violence that characterized the Church in the first few centuries after Christ were not in the realm of global politics - it was not nation vs nation. The closest you might find is when Russia burned Moscow and withdrew from Napoleon's invasion, knowing he could never maintain supply lines through a harsh Russian winter - but that was really more tactical than noble; it was being willing to live with a problem, so long as the problem was far away.

Here, I think, it's important to point out the problems inherent with associating ourselves with a nation. The underlying Christian doctrine has always seen the people of God as an alternative nation, a separate construction, a different people. We get into trouble when we begin to associate ourselves with more than Christ. Being an American Christian (or a German Christian or a Korean Christian or a Christian from Lesotho, for that matter) is automatically a conflict. It might not always show up in our day to day lives, but we can't just let the passive be passive,
for passivity is a lie.

That's the real issue - we want to know how the US or China or Nigeria or Europe of whatever nation we associate ourselves with should address the problem in North Korea. For Christians, the prior issue is that we really shouldn't be associating ourselves with those nations in the first place. 1 Peter 2:9 call's Christians "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." We've too often taken that metaphorically, rather than quite literally, which is the alternative way of life proclaimed by Jesus and reinforced in the practice and teachings of Paul. It is not that we should become a nation to rival other nations,
but that we should avoid falling into the trap of nationalism.

The US may very well enter into war as a means of keeping North Korea from using nuclear weapons. Christians must mourn this - and any other violence - for war and violence are not part of the Kingdom of God. The very rational response from the US might be, "what else would you have me do?" Christians reply, "Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. If your enemy is thirsty, give them something to drink; if they are hungry, feed them."

I don't know if that's a rational or even feasible option, especially given the history between the US and North Korea, but it's the only answer I know how to give - and it's the national call of God's people.

I'm not sure what that means for my initial problem? Does it mean being willing to die rather than kill? Yeah. But it can't mean being willing for other people to die so I don't have to. On the other hand, I don't think, say, moving to the west coast so as to be more in the path of any rogue North Korean rocket really makes much sense either - it's not going to guarantee my sacrifice any more than staying here - no should looking to die really be the way to deal with such a situation.

In the end, I believe the answer is not looking to avoid suffering. That's really at the root of this reliance on someone else's violence to spare me my own. So what if millions of impoverished, suffering North Koreans suffer even more - I'll get to keep my way of life. That's the mindset we need to fight. The reality is, I am safer and better off than most people in North Korea could ever dream to be. Even living simply,
being sacrificially generous, and avoiding the trappings of the typical US way of life will not change the disparity between us and them.

Maybe my call is to go - sneak into North Korea and simply suffer with the suffering. It's a holy, noble, and worthy act, perfectly in line with scripture and the witness of the Church. I suspect the world would be better off if we were all able to do it. We're not. What we can do,
though, is live in peace - active peace - here and now. Love people. Give to those in need. Suffer with those who suffer in our backyards and around the block. Be the people God has called us to be with the sincere hope that this war will be the last one.

What we can't do is avoid the problem. We can't continue to live in our isolated peace and quiet, just expecting things to change on our own.
The comfort we have was not one by righteous means, no matter what the national myths around us say. Christians are called to live into a different story - it's one of love and grace and peace for sure, but one achieved through sacrifice and suffering. If we're not committed to those things, we can't really enjoy the benefits.

Power and Control

I don't typically share my sermon's like this on the blog, but this is the one I preached two days ago in Chestertown, Maryland. It's timliness is obvious, I suppose. The only comment I'll make is that I'm aware of the position I'm in even addressing such things as a well-educated, straight, white male - that comes with its own problems and blind-spots. I apologize in advance for how that colors my response. I agonized over this, far longer and with more prayer than any other sermon I think I've ever preached - but at some point, you have to say what you have to say - and this is it. The sermon text is Romans 12.


I was asked to preach today the weekend of the violence in Charlottesville. I imagine I’ll associate that event with this passage for a while. The whole thing is troubling, obviously, for a number of reasons, but I’ve been haunted these last few weeks by one line I heard in an interview with one of the participants. The man said, “These people are worthless; they’re making the country worse and they should go back where they came from.”

I want to be careful here. I don’t want to get into the “both sides” game that’s become so problematic. However, I do think this quote is a good illustration of where this passage is going today. When it comes to the ideology of race – there is a clear right and wrong – it’s because this is an issue with such a clear distinction between opinions that I think it makes a good illustration.

You see, that quote above – “these worthless people should go back where they came from,” – is the kind of hate we might associate with racists and bigots, but it came from one of the leaders of the counter-protest, the defenders of equality.

Now, let’s be clear, being the subject of hate and scorn does not give any credence whatsoever to this “alt-right” movement or whatever they’re calling themselves. We are all human beings. There is just one race: the human race – and we should, collectively, be lamenting the thousands of years we’ve spent acting otherwise and the terrible toll it’s taken on people around the world. We, especially we, should be working to heal and repair that damage as much as we’re able.

But, as much as there is a right and wrong ideologically, it pains me to see how often those in the right have used hate to condemn hate. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am a student of non-violence – many of my personal heroes are leaders of the civil rights movement, not just because of their cause, but because of their commitment to non-violence and the belief that love wins.

It’s troubling, mournful, to see how this generation – my generation – seems to be abandoning those ideals. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard language not just advocating the destruction of racism, but the racists as well. I’ve been seriously conflicted with how to affirm that the cause of justice and equality is righteous, while also rejecting the means by which it is so often delivered.

This is a timely and difficult example of a much larger problem. It might not be what you expected when we read that familiar verse from Romans – Be not conformed to the pattern of this world – but this is what I think of immediately, at least in our current context and reality. The pattern of this world so ingrained in us we don’t even know there’s an alternative, the pattern that we’ve largely come to think of it as part of our faith, when it is the exact opposite:

Power and control.

These are weapons of strength, rooted in fear. White supremacists fear the loss of power and privilege that’s long been the purview of white men. It’s a real and justified fear, even if it is completely lacking in perspective. White men do have less power, even if we’re still, by far, the most powerful group on the planet. But the fear is real. In fact, it’s basically the same fear that sparked the counter-protests: people with a real vision of justice and equality who are afraid that whatever progress has been made on those fronts will be turned back or snatched away. That’s a real fear, too.

When we are afraid, our first reaction is to recover control. That’s human nature. If someone is mugged on the street one night, they might respond by taking self-defense classes, or they might respond by never leaving home again – both responses are attempts to take back power they lost at the hand of another. They are fear reactions. It’s the pattern of this world.

It’s this notion that we should be in control that really gets us in trouble. And this is at the heart of Jesus’ gospel message: the actions of others are not your responsibility. That might sound strange, since Jesus didn’t say any of those actual words, but perhaps it’s more familiar this way:

Do not be afraid.

Our fear is entirely based on our inability to control other people. Even when we’re afraid we can’t do something – I’m not strong enough to be a good parent, I can’t do this assignment the boss just gave me, I don’t have enough money to make rent this month – the fear is not about our inability, but about how other people will respond. We’re afraid of being judged; we’re afraid of being fired; we’re afraid of being left alone and abandoned and exposed.

Even those existential fears, about food or money or shelter, are really fears that no one will provide for us if we can’t provide for ourselves. It’s not about our actions, but about how other people respond to them. We’re afraid of losing control.

So Jesus comes in and says, “You aren’t in control, and you never will be.” And that’s supposed to be our hallelujah moment for today, our good news. You aren’t in control and never will be; Praise the Lord! I know it sounds terrible, but that’s because we’ve spent so long being conformed to the patterns of this world. We’ve been so ingrained with the idea that we need to be in control of as much as possible as often as possible that we don’t see the good news when it’s right in front of our face.

We never look at it from the other side of the equation. Even if we control everything in our lives we could possibly conceive of controlling, it’ll never be enough. People will still die. We still argue with spouses and kids. Jobs are lost. Mistakes are made. Control is just an illusion.

When Paul says here, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,” he’s saying, “stop trying to control everything – in fact, stop trying to control anything at all.”

Why are we challenged to give sacrificially? Most of the world, if they’re generous, is taught to make a budget, figure out what you need to live, and then spend a sizeable portion of the rest on others. That’s sort of the worldly principle of generosity. Christians are different, though – Jesus calls us to give everything, even, quite literally the shirt off our back, if need be. We’re called to give until it hurts and then give some more. We’re called to figure out what others need to live and then budget for ourselves with what’s leftover. Why? Why do we do this?

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons, but one big one is simply to remind ourselves that our bank balance does not equal control. No matter what’s in the investment fund, our future is more dependent on the grace of God than the sweat of our brow. We have a different motivating factor than mere survival or even personal happiness. And that is foolishness to the world around us.

We are living into the Kingdom of God and this vision of the world in which there is no fear. Attempting to shout down an angry, hateful mob does not eliminate fear, it heightens it. God has instilled within us a greater creativity than that – we have the ability to respond to hatred with love and to violence with peace, if we’re willing to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

I struggled for the longest time trying to figure out why verses three through eight are where they are in this chapter. If you skip from verse two to verse nine, it makes total sense with what I’ve been trying to say. “Honor one another above yourselves” is exactly the kind of outrageous thing Jesus calls us to. The world tells us to secure our oxygen mask before assisting others – because it makes sense – but Jesus has a different way of life in mind. “Be joyful in hope and patient in affliction. Bless those who persecute you. Be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not repay evil with evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.”

You can move from verse two to verse nine seamlessly, yet Paul puts this thing in between – something we’ve seen him write in many other letters as well – we are part of one body with many members; we’re all different, but important. He talks about spiritual gifts and contributing to the people of God through your strengths. But why is that here, in this position?

Well, after some time pondering, I think it’s about fear again. We’re afraid because we don’t know how other people will react to us. We’re afraid of what they’ll do – or not do –so we try to gain and maintain control. We try to wall ourselves off, if not from people, than from needing people. We love having friends, but we hate to depend on them.

This is precisely what Paul is telling us we have to do in verses three through eight. He says, You can’t do it all yourself. No matter how hard you try, how much you work, all the effort in the world, you do not have everything you need. We need each other. In fact, you’re not even ‘you’ without me.

We forget this sometimes, because in English “you” is both plural and singular, but 99% of the time we see “you” in scripture, it’s plural. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” It’s something we do collectively. We’re in this together.

So ,what does that mean when it comes to Charlottesville? In that case, you’ve got a group of people saying exactly the opposite. “If you’re not white or male, we don’t need you.” It’s a message of hate spawned from fear – it might even be a universal fear, that we’re not needed, that we are worthless – and out of that fear, we attempt to grab power by making those around us worthless and lesser. Hate flows naturally from fear – that is the pattern of this world.

Too often our response to hatred and fear is doubling down, is meeting hatred and fear with more of the same. Christians are called to end that cycle – to be not afraid – and we show our trust, our lack of fear, not by acting powerful and in control, but by responding in love. When someone comes at us with hatred and violence, the Christian response just might be, “You may not need us, but we still need you.”

This doesn't mean we allow hatred and violence and evil to go unopposed, but we must not oppose them with power and control, but with love. It’s a dangerous position, for sure, but it’s not weak and it’s not backing down – it is the turning of our actual bodies into a quite literal living sacrifice. It is putting our money where our faith is, believing that sacrificial love, in imitation of Christ, can really change the world. It is showing, with our bodies, that we are not in control, and breaking the cycle of hatred and fear.

It sounds impossible, but it starts here, folks. We aren’t just transformed into living sacrifices at the drop of a hat. The whole purpose of the Church is to be a place where the Kingdom of God is lived out as an example to the world. We have to love each other, before we can love our enemies. We have to reach across whatever divides exist here – class, race, gender, income, age – as a means of training ourselves to take this good news to the world around us.

The people of Jesus Christ do life differently. We are not conformed to the pattern of this world. We remind ourselves of this every week as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This is a small scale enactment of what Paul calls our true and proper worship, which is to live our lives like we really believe what we’re doing here today. We come to the table together, one body, one family, united – everyone is welcome and everyone is equal – then we have to live like it, even when it hurts.

The Danger of Safety

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.

Racial History

A couple weeks back, I watched the now Oscar nominated ESPN 30 for 30 Documentary OJ: Made in America. It's a 7.5 hour, five episode exploration of OJ Simpson, not only his murder trial, but his place in American and racial history, particularly as it pertains to LA. It's incredibly done - and episode three is perhaps the greatest piece of documentary film making I have ever seen.

That episode, which I'd recommend to anyone, centers on the history of the relationship between the LAPD and the black community. It's a sad, tragic story. For me, it was eye-opening. I have a history degree. I am well-read. I care to know and understand issues of social and racial justice as well as I can for a privileged white guy. I was floored by just how much well-documented history I was simply unaware of.

I don't mean the countless thousands and thousands of beatings, rapes, and lynchings that went virtually unnoticed in our nation's history; I mean the dozens and dozens of serious abusive incidents, intensely publicized and covered by media that are just lost to even the sympathetic white racial narrative.

I know, intellectually, that Emmett Till was not the only black teenager who's life brutally ended for being black, and I know, intellectually, that Bull Connor was not the only law enforcement to use dogs and fire hoses to quiet peaceful protesters. However, it's real easy to believe those were isolated incidents when they are the only ones you know. Episode three opened my eyes to this huge middle-ground of racial injustice - events that were covered, named, exposed, and then all but forgotten. Not forgotten by the black community, for sure, but lost to white history altogether.

You sort of know there's a lot you don't know - if there's one thing education teaches it's just how ignorant we really are - but this has really rattled me the last few weeks. Probably more so because my white sense of justice tells me there should be some way for me to remedy this oversight, when there really isn't. Part of understanding injustice is the reality that we, who come from the class of perpetrators, can never even understand it in ways that we'd like to.

Healing comes not in understanding or explaining - not even in apology or reconciliation - but in mourning. We have to be comfortable with the grave discomfort of injustice, because no matter what we do now, or moving forward, it cannot be undone.

Racial tension is not something new and its not immediate. Whatever problems we have now are firmly rooted in the past. If we don't understand that, we cannot act in appropriate ways in our own lives. This OJ documentary really helps put that in perspective for me. It's worth seeing. I hope you do.

Race in America

So, I'm the least capable person to talk about race in America, but I do have thoughts that need an outlet somewhere. I've been really shaken in recent weeks - a little different than I've been shaken in the past. I've found great sorrow and solidarity with people like Eric Garner, because I've witnessed, first hand, the kind of unfair, prejudicial treatment that often stems from police towards black men in America. Philando Castile was different - not because I can ever claim to "know" what it's like to be black at a traffic stop, but because I've got a four year old and I've been pulled over for having a tail light out. The disparity between what happened to him and what happened to me is just a chasm too broad for my mind to even attempt to bridge.

But it touched something deeper inside of me - real grieving - something beyond just sympathy or sorrow or regret. It hurt. Deep down. It's why I wanted my daughter to be a part of our local rally for peace on Thursday. We couldn't stay the whole time and I doubt she'll even remember what happened, but she saw and heard perhaps the most racially diverse religious gathering in the history of this town. She was there and that's important to me.

Now I'm scared this will sound callous, but, amazingly, the events of the last two weeks have given me some measure of hope. Obviously a lot of people have lost lives - far too many - but the reality is that terrible violence has been done to black people in this country since even before it was a country. We can lament over the loss of life - any life; and we can lament over the slow pace of progress. No but - we can and should lament. Things look really bad.

I have some hope, though, because from my perspective, this time is different. TIME magazine reports that 61% of white people think racial equality is a real issue - a sadly low number, but the highest it's ever been. Further, white people, especially young white people, have been the majority of those engaged in protest following the most recent spate of events. So long as white people remain the majority in this country and control the levers of power and influence, white people need to be on board with solving racial inequality. It's been the indifference of me and people like me over the past 400 years that have left us at this point.

Maybe the perspective of black Americans in black neighborhoods is far from optimistic, but from my perspective, I've never seen so many white people engaged, willing to listen, and seeking to understand. I haven't felt my speaking up about my experiences, witnessing racially disparate treatment by police against black people, as being rejected or unwelcome. That's a first.

I've felt slightly emboldened, but mostly challenged by Rembert Browne in this piece from the New York Times - he calls on white people to speak up to other white people - to come out as sympathetic towards the plight of African-Americans. As much as I hate to admit it, he nails white culture pretty well (and, having gone to Dartmouth, the guy is in a pretty good position to really understand white culture from the outside). The strange thing, though, is that it doesn't feel difficult or unwelcome anymore. Yes, there were a few of the typical retorts, trying to explain away these police killings by impugning the victim, but those faded pretty quickly (at least more quickly than they have in the past). Shoot, freaking Newt Gingrich came out with a strong statement:

It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this. If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.

Newt Gingrich! There's some hope when an issue like this has moved from a partisan issue, to one infecting the "other" side in profound ways, it has to be seen as progress. The progress is embarrassingly slow. It's unacceptable that we've gotten to this point, but gotten to this point we have, and wringing our hands over it will not solve anything.

We have to avoid saying, "yeah, us; we care now," as that's beyond patronizing; it's insulting. I can't be the white guy saying, "hold on, we'll get there." That might be the only thing we can say, but it's as helpful as saying "All Lives Matter" at this point. Frankly, I'm not sure we have the right to claim any life matters until we can show that literally any life matters.

I'm particularly broken by the claim, oft repeated this week, that we've left too many problems for the police to solve. I hear the same complaint from school teachers, literally almost every day. The problems of our society are our problems, even if we've segregated ourselves in communities where we're insulated and isolated from those issues we rue. It's not somebody else's problem and it's not somebody else's fault. I can clearly say no one's done as much as they can to make the world a better place - save for those who've literally given their lives on the altar of our societal shortcomings.

Yes, do something rather than nothing, but do more than some thing, commit. Be a difference in your community - and that might just mean getting out of your community and into one you wish were better, not telling "them" how to be, but becoming "us" in the midst of the mess. We won't overcome our fear and obsession with safety until we have a world that's fear-free and safe for all. We can't look at a gash on our arm and say, "that's my arm's problem." My arm's problem is my problem; black America's problem is America's problem. I think more white people are starting to see this. I think that's a droplet of good news in a flood of bad, but it's enough for me to keep going and I pray its enough for others, for those really hurting in the midst of this outrageous reality, to keep going too.