How to be a Person when Love and Unity Seem Far and Not Near

At Bible study this week, we ruminated over Colossians 1:24 – 2:5. Our first reflection question was almost uncomfortable in its very direct-ness. This question asked if Paul’s stated purpose in 1:28 & 2:2 was a reality in our own lives, or if we were still somewhere along the way. The NIV translates these verses as follows:

27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 2 My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Paul’s purpose –as stated here – was to make known among the Gentiles the glorious mystery of Christ in each of us, his goal to encourage believers and see them united in love.

When I’m sitting in Bible study – any Bible study, not just this one – I can’t help but to relate verses we read to what’s happening in the world around me. As I sit and try to understand what new-to-me truths these Bible verses might hold, my limited knowledge of world events inevitably creeps into my thoughts as I try to make sense of happenings that don’t always seem to mean anything good. Tonight, as I sat and read over this passage, I began to wonder where exactly our focus is with regard to the Gospel. There seems lately to be an epidemic of American Christians who are staunchly convinced they are right because the Bible. And the message of what it means to be a follower of Christ’s teachings and example begins and ends at a discussion of sin.

To my knowledge and according to my experience – and I’d even say according to Paul’s stated purpose above – the Gospel of Christ involves His indwelling each person who invites Him in, and the goal of the Paul’s teachings for the early church (and arguably the mission that should be at the heart of the church today) is that believers be encouraged in heart and united in love…in order that we may know the mystery of God. To me, this means Christians who wish to grow in maturity must necessarily embrace the fact that the wholeness of God’s Self and love for us is not entirely knowable – hence the mystery. To me, this means all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ Himself. So when I find myself confused when trying to understand the Bible's teaching and relevance for today's culture, I turn to the example of Christ Himself and to prayer for illumination.

Therefore, my concept of my faith and relationship with Christ allow me to reject some Christians’ “fine sounding arguments” in favor of the treasure and mystery of Christ Himself.

As I shared with the group the other night after browsing the commentary my Bible offers on verse 2:8(which refers to Colossian heresy which in part taught that faith was not enough for salvation because rules), I realized that the nature of the Gospel message as being a free gift to all is an idea that is still as offensive now as it was when Jesus lived and walked this Earth. The free gift of salvation, grace, love, acceptance, just as we are, is not quantifiable, doesn’t follow the rules we’d much rather establish for the sake of order (and freedom, truth, and the American Way), and therefore it gets all up in our shizz. It’s audacious – this idea. And how very dare we live like we believe it, especially if someone who disagrees with us on a point of doctrine also claims to believe the same.

There has to be a time for Christians to come together, look each other in the eyes, embrace each other, and move forward together, in faith. Lines drawn in the sand in order to enforce arbitrarily chosen and elevated Bible verses only serve to further divide us, not to encourage our hearts, and not to unite us in love – which, as we well know, will win.

So in answer to that initial, invasive question about whether Paul's stated purpose  is a reality in my own life or if I'm still somewhere along the way, I think I'd have to say, "Yes." It is my desire to encourage others and be united in love, but I know I've got a long way to go. So does the whole of the American church.

How to be a Person...when Charleston changes you

I went over to a friend’s house recently to spend the evening chatting and drinking wine, as we’ve done more than a few times before. This time was a little bit different, because it was the first time we’d spent such time together since Charleston. I looked into the eyes of my dear friend that evening as we sat on her couch, and I told her that Charleston changed me. She asked me the most logical but profoundly difficult of questions: How? Why? This is my best attempt to answer those questions.

I was shaken – badly – by the Charleston church shooting: because it was a vicious and premeditated atrocity carried out by a self-proclaimed white supremacist racist, because I’m black and my children are biracial but still black enough to be viewed as black, because Roof wasn’t apprehended quickly but when he was taken in got food brought in to him when he became hungry, because certain media outlets immediately changed this killer’s motivation and re-branded this atrocity as an attack on the church, because of media coverage which sought empathy for Roof with the headline that he “almost didn’t do it,” because the judge who presided over Roof’s arraignment stated – with conviction – that Roof’s family were victims just as much as the men and women who were murdered at their church – and the families who now mourn them.

There’s the why.

Here’s the how:

I feel I can no longer sit idly by and ignore microaggression and racism in its most passive forms. Such hatred-borne violence that gets promptly written off as an anomaly, re-branded as an attack on Christianity, and has its stated racial motivations blatantly ignored, demands activism, counteraction, education and self-reflection of the hardest kind.

By my having remained silent regarding matters of race, I’ve unwittingly encouraged a culture 

of nonblack Americans who have convinced themselves that racism is a thing of the past and not the present. The prevailing opinion among these Americans seems to be built upon the problematic teaching that “color-blindness” is the cure to racism.

It is not.

In fact, this doctrine of color-blindness has encouraged a large segment of the population to de-legitimize the cultural experiences of nonwhites: If I don’t see color, that must mean no one does. Therefore, it is simply impossible to acknowledge as true that someone else is being treated differently because of their race.

Let me put this more simply: If #blacklivesmatter offended you, it’s because you’ve been conditioned to believe that such an assertion is audaciously untrue by a system that insists black lives don’t – in fact – matter. This point is illustrated when innocent, unarmed black men, women, and children are killed – particularly at the hands of police officers – and their killers are not held accountable. This point is illustrated when nonviolent protesters take to the street in order to draw attention to such brutality and injustice and are branded as race-baiters and greeted with heavily armed police officers hidden behind shields and “protected” by helmets and batons. This point is illustrated when a white supremacist racist maliciously plans and executes the murder of nine innocent black people inside their house of worship and is treated to Burger King after he gets to jail.

When I say Charleston changed me, I mean that #IAMCharleston. When I look at the face of Tywanza Sanders, I flash forward mentally and imagine my son, having graduated from college, become gainfully employed, and plugged in to a local church, being killed in cold blood by a man who sought him out based solely on his skin color.

When I say that Charleston changed me, I mean that if you share a meme which spouts someone else’s ignorance and has a snappy picture to accompany it, you can expect that instead of hiding your post like I have in the past or simply ignoring you, I’m going to kindly but definitely ask you what you mean by what you post, and if you realize its implications. I will initiate a conversation that I should have initiated long ago.

When I say that Charleston changed me, I mean that I’ve never told you the story of my first – and only, to date – speeding ticket. The one I got while driving to a Matchbox 20 concert in New Orleans with my best bestie. I haven’t told you that I was asked to get out of the car while the police officer asked my bestie – who’s white – if she was in the car against her will.

When I say that Charleston changed me, I mean that I need to tell you I am vigilant in my insistence that my children always keep hands out of pockets while we are in any store. Because all too soon I know they will be in a store without me, and they’ll be tall for their age and will look like grown men to store-owners.  And that it won’t matter if their hands were near pockets rather than in them, won’t matter if they truly took something from the store without paying by accident. It’ll only matter that they are there. And they are black. This is my reality.

So as I sat talking to this friend on her couch, she listened. And her countenance changed noticeably. She looked worried. And she told me some truth: that I have to give all my anxiety and fear over to God, that He doesn’t want me to be afraid and anxious. To an extent, this is true. True, too, is the attention and care Jesus afforded to those on the margins of society, to those whose voices were ignored, invalidated. And for the Church – and me, as part of it – to live out the Great Commission, we must necessarily pay attention to the hurting in our own society rather than assuming the only people who need Jesus and justice are those who live far away from us.

For me, Charleston was a call to action, awareness, a call to wake up. 

I intend to answer that call. 

How to Be a Person When Summer Hurts

Dear Adam Levine,

You have no idea. This summer really, truly has hurt like a mother. And not in that way your song seems to describe, a la I-can’t-get-this-girl-off-my-mind. More like, this summer has introduced to my body a new affliction: hashtag indigestion.

I remember exactly where I was when I read about Charleston. I was getting ready to go to bed, having readied my home and our fourth bedroom for my parents-in-law, whom my husband had just that evening picked up at the airport for their week-long stay with us.

I scrolled my Twitter feed – I follow a handful of people who are vocal on Black Twitter – and began to see snippets of information that alarmed me. I remember saying to Andrew, “Something’s happened.” And I kept scrolling until I could find a cohesive story about the shooting, the victims, the alleged shooter still at large. My prayers that evening were for the victims’ families, the shooter’s quick apprehension, and that he’d have no opportunities to inflict further harm, take more lives.

And when I woke the next morning, stomach knotted, I checked Twitter and Facebook, confident that he must have been found while I slept. In fact, that confidence was the only reason I had been able to allow myself to fall asleep in the first place. And while this man was found and taken into custody that same day, I have to say it felt like the Longest Day to me.

And then there was more. Every news story that followed seemed centered around the families’ forgiveness rather than the video I saw on Twitter which showed people who were rightly rallying and calling for justice, or rebranding the racially motivated hate crime to which Roof himself admitted as an attack on the Church, or humanizing the killer by highlighting that he “almost didn’t do it.”

I was shaken. Angry. Tired. Sick to my stomach. Sad in my heart. Mourning these people I’d never met, for the tragedy of their lives cut short so violently, solely based on their race, which is the same as mine. And terrified of the public response to focus on forgiveness, move on, and ignore the racism so entrenched in this country that it produced Dylan Roof: not an anomaly but a proof of concept.

I mean, for real, Adam Levine. When this summer started, I thought for sure I’d found a summer anthem in Maroon Five’s single. It had a good beat, didn’t seem (at first, wasn't listening closely enough:fail) too obviously to reduce women to objects, and didn’t contain any discernible profanity – though it’s obviously hinted at in the title. This seemed like a win to me.

And then Charleston. And all I could do was pray and cry and try not to be sick to my stomach. And try to look forward and trust God but still look around me and see a country much harsher than the one I thought I was raising my children in. So my anthem became Tamela Mann’s “Take Me to the King,” as I showed up to church every Sunday wearing black, because I can’t stop thinking about these lives cut short, sorting through complicated grief even in the midst of faith, because I can’t say enough that #blacklivesmatter, even though so many people in this country are so determined not to hear it.

Indeed, this summer has hurt like a mother. I pray there’s never another like it.

How to be a person...

...when 50 Shades of Grey is a cultural phenomenon.
What is a teacher? Only a certified adult with subject-area competency, standing behind a podium, molding young minds?

Or is a teacher any person or thing from which a lesson can be learned? Must learning be consciously, intentionally attained, or can learning happen bit by bit, as you wake and as you sleep, as you walk and as you rest?

What becomes of a society, or a person, accustomed to passive intake of information, largely if not completely devoid of precious critical thought?

Does that society, that person, dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or does it continue to mindlessly consume purportedly harmless, indulgent housewife erotica, catapulting hurtful, dangerous subject matter onto the New York Times Bestseller list, all the while its relational core deteriorates silently, helpless to mend itself?

What is going on, really, when such an unhealthy, codependent, abusive relationship captures the attention of a nation and soars to high heights of financial success?

Are we a society asleep? Are we a society apathetic? Are we a society innocently unaware? Are we paying attention at all?

The following are fifty reasons - some funny, some serious, all legit - that I will #not see or read 50 Shades of Grey.

50 Shades of...No.
49 Shades of...Hide ya kids
48 Shades of...Hide ya wife
47 Shades of...Ain't nobody got time for that
46 Shades of...#nothappening
45 Shades of...Dysfunction
44 Shades of...Misogyny
43 Shades of...Wrong
42 Shades of...Leave. Anastasia. Alone!
41 Shades of...Crazy in something...but it ain't love
40 Shades of...Hell to the no
39 Shades of...Miss me with that ish
38 Shades of...Wtf
37 Shades of...Wtactualf
36 Shades of...Mr. Grey will *not* see me now
35 Shades of...No he didn't
34 Shades of...Don't let the doorknob hit ya...
33 Shades of...Not today
32 Shades of...Not tomorrow either
31 Shades of...No you may not
30 Shades of...Bye Felicia
29 Shades of...If loving Christian Grey is wrong, I don't wanna be wrong
28 Shades of...You can't handle the truth!
27 Shades of...#hotandspicymess
26 Shades of...#notflawless
25 Shades of...#beydidnotwakeuplikedis
24 Shades of...Twifan fic
23 Shades of...Even left shark can see this is wrong
22 Shades of...I knew this book was trouble when it walked in...
21 Shades of...Anastasia needs to #runlikeagirl
20 Shades of...Shenanigans
19 Shades of...Tomfoolery
18 Shades of...I'mma let you finish... but I am not gonna be a part of that
17 Shades of...Do *not* eat this book
16 Shades of...Good luck with that
15 Shades of...If you see something, say something
14 Shades of...Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me...
13 Shades of......so help me. so help me, it's true!
12 Shades of...Emotional abuse
11 Shades of...Manipulation
10 Shades of...I'd rather build a snowman
9 Shades of...Love should be an open door, not an abusive relationship
8 Shades of...Mr. Grey is not just a bit of a fixer-upper
7 Shades of...Anastasia shoulda ended up Grey's ex-girlfriend
6 Shades of...Cray
5 Shades of...I wish there was an app to make this book go away
4 Shades of...Self-Loathing
3 Shades of...Some books are better left unread
2 Shades of...Sssssssshhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddddeeeee
1 Shades of...Anastasia, girl, you don't have to try

...when a college crush dies from cancer

I had a large, awkward, disproportionate crush on Seth in college. He was pretty crushworthy: dark hair, blue eyes, and a certain intangible quality that my younger self read as strong and silent. To be honest, I didn't know him terribly well. But my younger self wasn't concerned with a detail like actually knowing him; I was content to nurse my crush on him anyway.

When I found out yesterday that he had passed, I felt a heaviness: for his wife and children, his parents, and for my own self. How does someone my age, with a lovely family, succumb to cancer? I've wondered this same thing several times in recent years: once, when a former fellow Bible study group member lost her husband tragically, leaving her with four kids to raise; once, when a beloved local chiropractor and his young son died in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and three daughters; and once several years ago, when a fellow MOPS mom died after numerous health issues, leaving a husband and three kids. I struggle with this heaviness of mortality. Not the sense of my own mortality necessarily, but the heaviness of the lives we are left to live when those closest to us - in our homes, in our beds - die.

I pray often for friends who have experienced such loss so recently. I sit, looking at my babies run around the house in their pajamas, listening to them tell too many potty jokes at the table, and I look at my husband interacting with them. And I am in awe of the task those going it alone have before them. Raising kids is not easy, even when one has a loving and supportive spouse. My heart absolutely breaks for those people in the throes of building a life together who are abruptly separated when one of them passes on.

As I remember Seth today, his friends and family are remembering him at his memorial service in Austin. I - the woman who was the girl who had an awkward crush on him in college - am not in Austin with those closest to him but will remember him as someone who was kind, funny, and honest. And as often as I remember Seth, I will pray for comfort, peace, grace, and strength for his family as they find their way through grief and learn how to live without him.