Apologizing to the Central Park Five

 
Did cops commit theft themselves?

Back in 1989, "New York's finest" responded swiftly and decisively upon learning that a white woman had been brutally raped and left for dead in a notoriously dangerous region of Central Park.  A ragtag group of teenaged scofflaws had just been brought in to the department's precinct house, a dilapidated outpost within Manhattan's legendary green space.  Might there be a connection between this savage crime and these teens' self-professed "wilding" that evening?

It had already been a violent night in Central Park.  A couple of hours earlier, a homeless vagrant had been assaulted, as well as several joggers and bicyclists.  All of the incidents had taken place in the northern reaches of the long park, far from the relatively safe and more heavily used recreational spaces clustered in Central Park's southern "white" zone, near many exclusive hotels and luxury apartment buildings.  Whereas few New Yorkers with common sense ventured into the park after dark, those who did had less to fear if they stayed close to its outside borders.  But a lone, young, white, female jogger took the risk of going deeper and further north.  She was a privileged stock broker from Pennsylvania who perhaps didn't truly appreciate the grim realities of 1980's New York City.

Not that what happened to her was her fault.  But plenty of idealistic young people coming to the big city to make money underestimate how some people without it live.

Darkness Deeper Than the Night

It was after 9:00 pm on April 20, 1989.  A darkness more pervasive than the nighttime sky had swallowed the socioeconomically distressed slums teeming in uncomfortable and paradoxical proximity to Manhattan's impressively elite neighborhoods.  For better or worse, stretching more than 50 blocks, Central Park can't help but link Manhattan's have's and have-not's.  And it does so with a seductive canopy of marvelous trees, romantic winding pathways, and a misleading atmosphere of tranquility.

Entering this realm was not only the successful Wall Street broker, jogging through for just another night of exercise, but five restless teenagers from a world completely opposite that of the accomplished Pennsylvanian.  Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise were kids, a mix of blacks and Hispanics, mostly from the projects, and of somewhat disreputable conduct, who decided to go out for a bit of adventure.  Neither hard-core criminals nor choir boys, they tagged along with a larger group of more hardened punks who caroused along and into Central Park looking for trouble.

And they found it.  McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and Wise would soon become known to New Yorkers as the "Central Park Five," but were they the hooligans cops assumed them to be?  Their group's pouncing on a disoriented homeless man disturbed these five boys, and they began to have second thoughts about those with whom they were associating.  As some of the others began targeting additional victims who had ventured too far north into Harlem's domain, these five kids started backing away.  But it was too late.  Before they knew it, cops were swarming over them, and the Central Park Five was formed as the boys were rounded up and dumped at the precinct house.

New York then wasn't the same New York most tourists know today.  New York then was a city of incessant muggings, murders, rapes, Crack cocaine, and pervasive fear.  And everyone wanted the cops to do something about it.  At first, when the five hapless teens were brought in, police were simply interested in getting a handle on that evening's crime spree.  Just another night of mild mayhem - by Big Apple standards, anyway.  However, when the rape report came in, everything changed.

Before long, cops who were either overzealous, or indifferent to justice - or both - had gotten the Central Park Five to individually confess to a crime they didn't know anything about.  Their videotaped confessions were not consistent, nor did they align with pertinent facts, but they were enough to help police officials convince New York's voracious media machine that the Central Park Jogger's rapists had been caught.  That the enraged city could relax.  Everything was under control.

Any rape is a heinous crime, of course.  But the rape of the Central Park Jogger came to represent an apex of the city's anger towards its criminal element.  The case also became a sort of rallying point for not only recognizing the depravity of its collective conscience, but a determination that New Yorkers could not allow things to get any worse.  Its symbolism and the arrest of the Central Park Five resonated throughout New York's spectrum of people groups:  rich whites were relieved by it, poor blacks were resigned to it, and everyone hoped it was a turning point in the right direction.

Blinded By Racism's Power

I wasn't living in New York in 1989, but I was by 1990, and I remember the brou-ha-ha in the media over the Central Park Jogger case and the much-hyped trials of the Central Park Five.  Not that I followed the trials very closely, however.  For one reason, I was preoccupied with the mechanics of working and living in one of America's most stressful environments.  But for another thing, I was young, naive, and apparently, more of a racist than I am today.

Late this past Friday evening, however, I was surfing television channels before going to bed, and I stumbled upon a Ken Burns documentary on our local PBS station here in north Texas.  It was about the Central Park Five, a case that this past Friday, I barely remembered.  But I quickly caught on, and recalled how the five punks had been found guilty and sent to prison.

"Ken Burns is doing a documentary on these guys?" I thought to myself.  "I wonder what his angle is?"

The show started with personal interviews of the Central Park Five, and they were admitting to being in the park, and to being a part of the pack of teens that beat up some innocent visitors to the park.  So I assumed that Burns wanted to explore how these thugs have been able to turn their lives around after serving their time for such wilding.

But Burns caught me completely by surprise.  As each of the boys - now, thirty-something-year-old men - kept insisting they didn't rape the Central Park Jogger, I was reliving the same "I'm not buying your sob story" mentality I had back when their trials were taking place.  Burns lined up the videotaped evidence each boy gave prosecutors so we viewers could see how they didn't match, but still, I was sold on their guilt.

It wasn't until Burns' show was more than half-way finished that he introduced Matias Reyes, a serial rapist in the city back then, and then the shocker:  Reyes did it.

Several years after the trials, Reyes not only confessed to raping the Central Park Jogger, but DNA evidence proved it.  No DNA evidence from any of the Central Park Five was found at the rape crime scene.  Reyes was able to corroborate details about his crime that cops had never released to the media, and which none of the Central Park Five could confirm.  Reyes' infamy was also already known to the cops before the infamous rape in Central Park.  However, as Burns tells it, New York's district attorney's office and police department appear to have intentionally stolen the youth of these five boys.

In order to avoid an embarrassing, public-confidence-busting, and legal-Pandora's-box backtrack from that fateful night in the Central Park precinct house, city officials pressed forward with their original yet utterly contrived version of what happened to the Central Park Jogger.  Officials did not want to publicly second-guess the cops.  The district attorney's office refused to admit that, aside from those videotaped confessions, extracted through duress and outright lies told by cops to the teens, they had a flimsy case. Instead, city officials placed their trust in the public's reliable racism and the jury's likelihood of rendering a verdict based solely on whatever videotaped evidence is presented to them.  Apparently, it's well-known in legal circles that juries will place greater weight on anything they see and hear on a videotape, even if it contradicts hard facts in a case.

Compounding matters, remember, was the city's boiling-point anger against roving gangs of minority boys and men, and the impunity with which people with threatening demeanors could terrorize neighborhoods.

Granted, it didn't help anything that activists like Al Sharpton were organizing protests against the trial, the district attorney's office, and the police.  Parents of the Central Park Five had appealed to anybody who would listen to them - and that consisted only of people like Sharpton - because of how the evidence had been so egregiously compiled against their sons.  For all the rest of us, even other impoverished minorities in the city, it proved far easier to assume the cop's case against these teenagers was as true as it seemed.  And we were content to let them be found guilty and go to prison.

For something for which, I learned Friday night, however, they weren't guilty.

Oh. No.

I'm So Sorry

The Central Park Five today:  From left, Antron McCray,
Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam and Kharey Wise

Of course, I'm leaving out a lot of details from this story, and for those, you'll have to watch Burns' special.  After all, I'm not here to steal Burns' storytelling thunder.  My purpose in this essay is to do something that is uncomfortable, and sad, but something that is also rather freeing.  Freeing, at least, for me.  Ironic, since it's the Central Park Five who should have gone free on the rape charges.

For what it's worth, to Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise, I respectfully apologize for being one of those people who automatically assumed you were guilty because of your race, your family's economic situation, and the stereotypes I held - and still hold - about how kids like you behave.  You were not innocent until proven guilty.  I figured that since the cops said you did it, and since you seemed to be the type of kids who would do it, you had done it.  I am so very sorry, and ashamed.

I don't pretend to be the most righteous person out there, and like most of us, I struggle with varying degrees of racism.  But it was too easy for me to let the pieces of this case fall together against you based more on my own racism than the facts - or lack of them.  Granted, I was not on your jury, and I didn't hear all of the evidence, nor did I know then what I know now about what the police knew - but didn't tell the public.  And there's nothing I can do now - or could have done then - that would have made any difference in how your case turned out.

Yet I was a member of the New York City community during those years when your parents wanted somebody to listen, and hardly any of us did.  One of the reasons why New York's media did not stop and listen to your families was because people like me thought putting people like you in prison would help the city's crushing crime problem go away.

Instead, you were put away, along with your youth, and whatever potential you might have been able to build upon without the psychological stigma both you and society hold about prison time.

You'll probably never hear me make this confession, and offer this apology, but hopefully, as Burns' film lends credence and publicity to you, your ordeal can stand as a testament to the ugly power of racism.

Indeed, there were five more victims than cops realized in Central Park that night.  Six, if you count justice as one of racism's casualties.
_____

Update 6/19/14:  The exonerated Central Park Five settled their claim of false imprisonment by the City of New York for approximately $40 million, to be split amongst them.

What Would You Do With $2 Billion?

You're not gonna believe this.

If you attend a church, take a guesstimate at how much it's worth.  If you don't attend a church, pick the biggest one in your community, and go a little wild with how much you'd guess it's worth.  Go ahead:  add it all up.  Property, buildings, vehicles, cash-on-hand, parsonages, religious icons and custom artwork, sound equipment, musical equipment... throw it all in and add it up.

Does it add up to $2 billion?

Billion.  With a "B."  Actually, does it add up to MORE than $2 billion?  Because that's how much New York City's mainline Episcopal Trinity Church estimates its worth to be.

Incredible, huh?  I'm laughing out loud as I type "Manhattan Church Worth Over $2 Billion."

Liz, Phil, and Anne

Now, granted, it's hard to put a pricetag on the church's historic worship spaces.  These include St. Paul's Chapel, one of the oldest continuously-used religious buildings in the United States, plus the congregation's flagship space, an elegant jewelbox of a miniature Gothic cathedral built in 1846, anchoring the head of Wall Street.  What its main sanctuary lacks in size - compared to its massive European cousins - it more than makes up for in lush hallowedness and hushed venerability.  You can practically smell its ancient auspiciousness as you enter off of cacophonous Broadway, walking right over the threshold embellished with a plaque commemorating Queen Elizabeth II's royal visit in 1976, during America's Bicentennial.

The Queen, of course, is the figurehead of the Church of England, from which Trinity's Episcopalian denomination is an offshoot.  So even though I've always thought it unusual in multiple ways for a church to have a brass plaque in honor of Her Royal Highness, perhaps what's genuinely goofy about it is what's immortalized on it:

"ON THIS SPOT

STOOD

HER MAJESTY

QUEEN ELIZABETH II

ON THE OCCASION OF

HER GRACIOUS VISIT

9 JULY 1976

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCE PHILIP

STOOD NEARBY"

Again, I find myself laughing as I type this out, even though I'm glad having the Queen's husband in such close proximity to her hallowed ground was worth being acknowledged in such grand fashion.  He's certainly played second fiddle all his married life.  Considering how theologically and socially liberal Trinity has been for years, perhaps referencing a royal spouse this way was a bold - albeit contrived - form of gender equality.

Indeed, since Trinity has a legacy of liberalism, doesn't it seem odd for the church to be one of Manhattan's largest landowners?  All of that $2 billion isn't tied up in their sanctuary, chapel, and cemeteries along Broadway.  Trinity owns 14 acres of land in Manhattan, which is some of the world's priciest real estate, regardless of what's built on it.

When it comes to money and wealth, however, everything is relative, isn't it?  Although Trinity owns 14 acres of highly-coveted city property, it used to own a whopping 215 acres, mostly farmland north of what is now the Financial District.  England's Queen Anne donated the land in 1705, back when Trinity was part of the Church of England.  Imagine the church's worth today if it still held even half of those 215 acres!  In a way, Trinity could be considered poor by comparison.

Putting On Airs

It's not even as though Trinity is the only church with extraordinary finances in New York City.  Several churches, particularly those on Manhattan Island, have been able to parlay their real estate portfolio - as meager as most are - to their financial advantage.

The new St. Peter's Lutheran Church (in red circle)
sits underneath a corner of the Citicorp Center tower

St. Peter's Lutheran Church, for example, used to be housed in a grand old Gothic edifice at the corner of 54th Street and Lexington Avenue.  In the late 1960's, when Citicorp Bank was putting together parcels of land to construct its new skyscraper east of Lexington, in what used to be a residential part of Midtown, the congregation decided it couldn't fight change.  Rapidly shrinking in size from white flight to the suburbs and Midtown's rapid conversion to high-rise office space, the church sold out to the bank in exchange for a smaller, modernist, yet opulent facility tucked underneath the new "floating" skyscraper.

Just this past February, the legendary Zeckendorf family of developers paid over $40 million to Christ Church, a Methodist congregation, for the air rights over its prime Park Avenue sanctuary.  In New York City, air rights refer to the volume of space that exists between the amount of construction the city's zoning laws allow, and what is currently built on the site.  In other words, if you own a parcel of land in Manhattan, and it's about five stories high, but zoning for that parcel of land allows something of up to 30 stories, you could sell the air rights for 25 stories to a developer to use on another project that needs air rights.  So Christ Church sold the air over its sanctuary for $40 million to developers who plan on using those air rights to increase the allowable size of a residential skyscraper they're building next door.

And if you think $40 million for empty air is a hefty price for the church to charge, consider that the Zeckendorf family plans on charging up to $48 million per apartment in their new tower.  Prices are that crazy in New York.

But, even so:  a church holding a portfolio worth two billion dollars?

Some say such an eye-popping amount is really only due to the city's unprecedented explosion in real estate values.  Trinity Church didn't set out to amass such a windfall, even if they have administered their properties adroitly.  If the church truly was money-hungry, would they have allowed their real estate holdings to dwindle so significantly over the centuries?  Plus, it's not Trinity's fault that Manhattan property values are ridiculously high.  Neither is it like the church has been on a buying spree, snapping up properties for profit.

In addition, this two billion dollars could be considered a form of endowment to help hedge the church against lean economic times.  Granted, two billion dollars represents a veritable concrete fortress instead of a lush hedge, especially for an organization whose enterprise is generally believed to be a break-even charity.  And considering the wealth and prestige many of its well-heeled members individually enjoy, it seems most unlikely that Trinity's collection coffers are going to run dry anytime soon, necessitating a run on the parish's rainy day fund.

A Billion Here, A Billion There...

The question has arisen, however, as to what the church plans on doing with its wealth.  It's been the type of question most congregations never get to ask, or if they do, the amount of money they're bickering over totals far less than two billion dollars.  But New York City is anything but normal, average, or conventional.  Except in one aspect:  at Trinity, the question has sparked what's turning into a good-old church split of sorts, and so far, one lawsuit.

Who says money can't buy happiness?  Many people in Trinity's membership, apparently.  They're not pleased that out of the church's $38 million operating budget for 2011 - yes, I'll let that sink in:  2011's annual budget was $38 million - less than 10% was spent on philanthropy.  True, Trinity funds the usual social programs expected of liberal churches, such as an AIDS walk, letter-writing to prisoners, an anti-racism campaign, and a community center, but these are mostly low-budget initiatives churches much smaller and poorer than Trinity also run all over the country.

And that's what galls an increasing number of Trinity congregants.  Most of Trinity's budget gets put back in the bank.  Shouldn't that money be out in the community, working on whatever churches traditionally are expected to do - but on a grand New York scale?  We evangelicals wouldn't expect a church with the type of theology as Trinity's to develop evangelistic programs and church planting efforts around the world.   But Trinity already spends some money helping Anglican churches in Africa, and some of Trinity's members think they could do far more of that.

Then there's New York's grinding poverty that Mayor Bloomberg may have been able to conveniently hide during his extraordinary three terms, but still stubbornly exists.  What two billion dollars couldn't do to help provide affordable apartments for indigent senior citizens!  Or run comprehensive transitional shelters for abused women and children, or fund scholarships at private schools in neighborhoods with sub-standard public schools, or even help subsidize late-night mass transit routes so the working poor can get safely home from their off-hours jobs in a reasonable amount of time.

It's not rocket science:  money talks in New York City.  It talks louder there than anyplace else in America - other than Washington, DC, of course!  In fact, it's the very same loud money that has helped Trinity to realize the stunning valuation of its 14 acres.  Fourteen measly acres - how many mega-churches across suburbia sprawl over so much more land that's worth a fraction of Trinity's two billion dollars?

Meanwhile,  Trinity is facing a revolt within its membership over whether hoarding money is helping to serve its community.  What about "the least of these," the folks for which limousine liberals usually sympathize?

Are they quietly standing nearby, negligible, an afterthought, just like the Queen's husband?

What The Carpenter Said

"At the appointed time."

It's a phrase that appears numerous times throughout the Old and New Testaments in various contexts.  Yet, since it's a prepositional phrase, it's easy for us to gloss over it and concentrate on what actually happened upon the "appointed time."

However, in that natural and innocent process, we likely forget to realize that in these instances, the timing itself represents some measure of significance.  After all, God uses time for His plans and purposes, even if we tend to take it for granted.  "In the fullness of time" may have a poetic ring to it, and we assume to understand what it means, but it also holds some poweful theology in and of itself that may not be immediately apparent.

Because God is the God of order, doesn't it make sense that schedules matter to Him?  He ordains that certain things take place at certain times - and not before, or even after!  We say we know that intellectually, but don't we normally conduct our affairs as though we're the ones charting our own future?

We often forget that this world in which we live isn't for our benefit exclusively, but for His benefit - exclusively.  True, we share in the benefits of His grace towards us, but we are the created, and He is the Creator.  The freedoms we enjoy in Christ carry a responsibility, while God is not obligated to us for anything.  It is through His providential care and sovereign grace that we can enjoy anything, or participate in any way in His Kingdom work here on Earth.

And that includes the plans we think we're making unilaterally.  Or maybe with a group of people.  And, hopefully, even in consultation with God.

Meanwhile, His timing remains in ultimate control over our universe.  Sometimes, through the mysterious allowances of free will, we appear to have a certain level of control over the things we schedule and the activities in which we participate.  I suspect these times are not so much to "liberate" us from the bondage of time and, as Charles Hummel says, the "tyranny of the urgent," since mostly, we have only ourselves to blame for the crushing demands we allow to commandeer our days.  Instead, I think these vast stretches of "free time," if you will, are given to us by God so that we can demonstrate our reliance upon Him in the way we prayerfully seek His will for our lives and the way we spend the time He gives us.  To the extent that we allow worldly preoccupations to clutter our schedules, whose fault is that?

According to the rich history of our world documented for us in God's Word, however, there are precise, fixed, definitive, ordained, "appointed" times in which God planned before His creation of our world to exercise specific events for and to each one of us.  He placed Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden at a specific time.  He provided miracles at specific times.  Many things are recorded for us that appear to be the result of mankind's free will, but how many of those events really were?  Conception and birth, for example, are two profound miracles that parents think they control, but are actually provisions of God's life-giving power.  This is the main reason why believers in Christ so passionately advocate for the unborn.  Life - and its timing - is not ours to deny.

Speaking of life, Christ's death, burial, and resurrection took place at the precise moment and time across history at which God ordained it to happen.  Some have speculated about why God waited so long after the Garden of Eden, or why He didn't wait several thousand years after the point at which humankind began recording time as "anno domini."  Yet this singular, pivotal event took place exactly when God decreed it would.
  
"For while we were still weak, at the right ('appointed') time Christ died for the ungodly."  - Romans 5:6 ESV

I was reminded of all of this yesterday at church, but it wasn't from any of our ministers.  After the third service, an usher who works the doorway I normally use each Sunday came over and chatted with me for a bit.  We don't know each other well - we don't even know each other's names - but in a large church, it's understood that always being on a first-name basis is a bit unrealistic.

Still, despite our relative ignorance of who each of us are, our conversation managed to effortlessly branch out to a variety of topics.  I learned he went to seminary, but ran out of money, and never graduated.  He's now a carpenter, and the Lord has blessed him with a good career.

"I think a lot of it is professional courtesy," he joked, since Christ's vocation was carpentry as well.

Suddenly, he made a comment that echoed something my Mom had been discussing with me only last week.  I've been particularly anxious about some unresolved situations in my life, and to have this brother in Christ who barely knew me affirm what a parent of mine had been encouraging me with really struck home to me.

"Think about all of the moments in Scripture when God waited until the appointed time," my new friend mused.  "We're to wait on Him, and sometimes, His timing seems so wrong.  But it never is, is it?  He appoints the time, and whatever it is won't happen until then."

I can't tell you how much I needed to hear that.  And how encouraged I was to hear that!

Church has become such a drag lately, I wasn't even intending on going at my usual time.  I'm in the chancel choir, and we sing at the two later services, at 9:30 and 11:00am.  But yesterday, I figured the 11:00am service would be enough.  I didn't even set my bedside alarm Saturday night.  Yet I got up, had breakfast, and finished my ablutions with enough time to get to the choir's rehearsal hall before the 9:30 service.  That's quite a feat for me, even when I wake up on time.  I figured the Lord might be telling me He wanted me at both services.  So I went.

If I had just gone to the last service, I would have been sitting in the sanctuary, listening to the morning sermon, during the time I had my conversation with the carpenter.  As it was, I sat through the sermon during the 9:30 hour, and was biding my time in one of our church's parlor areas before our organist played the last postlude for the day - a particular favorite of mine, Louis Vierne's "Carillon de Westminster."

Now, perhaps you'll think me foolish for supposing this, but I believe God got me out of bed, even though, in my "free will," I wasn't planning on doing so.  He got me to the 9:30 service and had me in place for His messenger, the carpenter, to share with me this word of encouragement towards the end of the morning.

At the appointed time, wouldn't you say? 

From one Carpenter, through another. 
_____

"Wait on the LORD: be of good courage , and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait , I say, on the LORD."  - Psalm 27:14 (KJV)

Going to Church With Mindless Offerings

How do you go to church?

I'm not asking if you get there by car, or subway, or bicycle.

Nor am I asking how often you go to church, whether it's weekly, twice a week, monthly, "C & E" (Christmas and Easter), or never.

I'm asking "how" you go to church.  With what mindset do you approach your church's sanctuary?  What kind of demeanor and attitude do you adopt as you enter through the doorway?

How do you go to church?

What difference does it make how you go to church, you ask?  Well, consider this obscure little passage a Facebook friend of mine, Kris Swiatocho, blogged about today:

"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.  Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong."  Ecclesiastes 5:1

Now, that's the New International Version's translation of the text.  And it sounds pretty serious, doesn't it?  I mean, how many of us tread carefully, like we're trying to avoid something calamitous, as we approach the sanctuary where we worship?

If you still don't see what the big deal is, then consider this version of the same text, from the normally casual New Living Translation:

"As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut!  Don't be a fool who doesn't realize that mindless offerings to God are evil."

Keep your ears open and your mouth shut as you prepare for worship.  Don't just go through the motions.  This is not about you, it's about the Holy God you claim you're intending to worship.  Unless it really is all a pretentious show - whether your church is traditional or contemporary - and you're simply there because it's what Christians do.

Indeed, this has nothing to do with music style, or how liturgical (or not) your corporate worship style may be.  King Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, doesn't really care whether you're about to be serenaded by a praise band or enveloped by a pipe organ.  Strip aside every consideration for what you're wearing, whomever else you might see in the next aisle, whether you remembered your Bible and nametag and nursery pager.

Are you focused on worshiping God in the splendor of His holiness?  Are you even aware that three times, God's Word instructs us to do that?  To worship Him in the splendor of His holiness.  God offered Peter three opportunities to confirm that he and Jesus were associated, but all three times, Peter denied his relationship with Christ.  Christ invites us three times to worship Him specifically by acknowledging the splendor of His holiness.  That involves our recognition of His holiness.  Which should invoke some degree of awe.  Which we usually demonstrate with silence, right?

But as we enter His house, how often are we less prepared to keep our ears open and our mouths shut, and more prepared to present a mindless offering?  Going through a routine?  Checking off a box?

When we go to church this way, don't we leave ourselves open to all sorts of distractions?

How do you go to church?  I have to confess, even though I attend a church with grand music and glorious liturgy, I find myself lately going through the motions.  Sometimes I'm chattering with fellow choir members as we line up in the rear of the sanctuary before each service begins.  Most of the time, however, I quickly become angry at the throngs of "worshippers" who stream through the sanctuary's doors even as the service has already begun.  They've been chatting in the foyer, laughing loudly with friends, and sometimes even screaming in exclamation at seeing somebody with whom they haven't spent much time in a while.

Regular readers of mine know the church I attend is one of the most affluent Presbyterian churches in the country.  Not all of those rich Dallasites who attend, however, act in church like the cultured WASPS they like to pretend they are.  And virtually every Sunday, I allow them to distract me, divert whatever attention I might have tried to bestow upon God, and generally go into worship with a bad attitude.  Not a frivolous attitude, or a silly preoccupation with how I look or whomever else is there, or an obligatory resignation that doing church is probably better for me than sleeping in - even though all those things are just as bad.

I go in, do my duty as a member of the choir, and go home.

Is church a place of fellowship?  Of course it is.  Is church a place of celebrating our common joys and trials, of sharing our lives with each other, and building each other up?  Of course it is.

But corporate worship is not about us.  It's about God.  He has invited us to fellowship with Him, but this invitation is on His terms, and He is jealous for our attention and commitment.

A few congregations around the world still meet daily for corporate worship.  Here in North America, hardly any congregations do.  Many people use that as an excuse for spending the time before and after the corporate worship program to wander around, giggle, babble, gossip, tell anecdotes, say "we're praying for you," talk about the week you just spent in Las Vegas, hug, air kiss, and otherwise participate in lateral communication with people who, if we really cared about them and wanted to be an active part of their lives, we'd commit to setting up times outside of church for getting together.

All the while, forgetting it's not the fellowship that we're doing wrong, but the time we choose to engage in it.

How do you go to church?

I hope it's not with mindless offerings, but open ears and shut mouths instead.

After all, this isn't some arcane Old Testament law intended for a type of works-based salvation before Christ's death, burial, and resurrection freed us to be loud and self-centered.  It's deference to sovereignty.

God's.

Not the sovereignty we - however subconsciously - claim for ourselves.

Graffiti in Christianity's Ghetto

Although I disagree with controversial Christian author Rob Bell on many things, on one thing, he's quite right.

During a recent appearance in San Francisco in which he called for liberality towards gay marriage, Bell accused evangelicals of living in a Christianized cultural ghetto.

"I think there is a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, Evangelical subculture" in North America, Bell has been quoted by Huffington Post as saying.  And to a certain extent, I've been complaining about that too, on this blog.

New York's historic ghetto culture

But I guess, since I'm so familiar with New York City, associations with the word "ghetto" conjure up completely different imagery than the way Bell uses it.

After all, a ghetto simply refers to an insular - or insulated - community.

But even then, both modes apparently work for our evangelical ghetto, considering what I've learned today by visiting Tim Challies' blog.

Fish Don't Fry in the Kitchen

Challies is a reformed evangelical who writes a popular blog on all sorts of Christian topics.  He reviews books, exegetes Scripture and Biblical concepts, and discusses deep nuances within theology that oftentimes make my eyes glaze over.  Indeed, I don't visit his site often.  Not because I disagree with him, but because, frankly, deep theology doesn't float my boat.  He's writing mostly to folks within mainstream reformed evangelicalism who seem to enjoy fussing over the semantics of faith, a robust activity within the cultural ghetto of Christianity Bell has identified.

Theologians like Challies assume that the merit to semantics is that people of faith will turn around and apply them to their testimony among their spheres of influence.  The problem is, if his readers ever do that, I suspect their spheres of influence are usually people just like themselves.

Meanwhile, I'm writing to whomever will listen!  And since semantics bore me, I write about other things.  I realize that, on many issues, I'm outside the mainstream school of thought, whether you're a reformed evangelical or an atheist.  Plus, I tend to view things through an Americanized political and sociological lens than does Challies, a Canadian.  It doesn't help my disconnect with Challies that, as one of the Internet's first bloggers for any genre, he's a techno-geek, and you know what a Luddite I am.  He's also published books and has influence within the Christian publishing world, itself a contributor to our Christianized cultural ghetto.

And then there's his admiration for Christian rap.  Particularly rap that he insists features reformed theology.  I know some very fine believers who enjoy rap music, but I fail to see the merit in a type of noise born of dysfunctionality and aversion to authority.  What about cultural relevance, you ask?  Last night, the choir conductor at my church was talking about classical music as a white person's "tradition," and I wanted to scream!  I don't like Bach because his music exalts white traditionalism, but because it so closely adheres to the metrics of reverence and awe with which we're to worship our Creator!

See what I mean?  Challies might be a nice guy and all, but rap and Bach collide too painfully in my world.  Still, it apparently resonates with Challies' readership, and even revered reformed preacher John Piper is said to like reformed rap.  Which, I guess, means that it's OK, since two of reformed evangelicalism's apologists endorse it.  In the Christianized cultural ghetto, popularity means a lot, and following popular leaders is a popular way to live.

In fact, Bell used to be a popular leader in our cultural ghetto, until he started wandering from some of the basic tenets of our faith.  Still, he's seen our ghetto from the leadership's podium, and he knows how most of us have cloistered ourselves within walls that allow just enough of our surrounding culture in, but keep out just enough of the sin so we can render superior evaluations on the heathen unbelievers around us.

Since so much popular culture has been invited into our ghetto, the easiest way to differentiate ourselves from those heathen unbelievers is to use the political tag by which many of us identify ourselves.  Which has led to blind allegiance to all things Republican, while at the same time creating a freedom to castigate all things Democratic.  This means that our Christian ghetto is mostly white, even though plenty of Christ followers have other skin colors.  This also means that, as our North American society becomes more diverse, we're having a harder and harder time correlating the might our political leaders have told us we enjoy against our rapidly sinking clout among heathen unbelievers.  Things like gay marriage, gun control, immigration reform, tax reform, entitlement reform, school reform...

Do you notice how many things folks in the Christian ghetto want to reform?  I guess it makes sense, since reformed theology is so trendy these days.

Beans Don't Burn on the Grill

However, here's where the ghetto motif with which I'm most familiar comes into play.  The ghetto where people are not only segregated by race and religion, but where graffiti covers every available commercial building.  And subway cars.  I remember riding New York's subways in the 1970's and 80's, when seats were covered in so much wet paint from all of the fresh graffiti, riders had to stand.  Some avant-garde liberals tried to tell us graffiti was a beautiful form of urban art and freedom of expression, but only fools believed that schtick.

Within our evangelical ghetto, our anti-social behavior takes similarly foolish forms, including a digital graffiti of vitriol and impertinence.  Although I rarely read Challies' blog, I did so today, and quickly became alarmed at what he calls "Discernment Bloggers."

Apparently, some so-called Christian bloggers have been excoriating Challies on their own websites out of anger for comments Challies has made on a variety of subjects, including a lawsuit over child abuse that has been filed against Sovereign Grace Ministries.  I'd heard before of Sovereign Grace Ministries - an affiliation of charismatic reformed churches - and its former leader, C.J. Mahaney, but only in passing.  Turns out, as some sort of retribution, these discernment bloggers have been digging into Challies' finances and other personal records, trying to find dirt they could throw at him.  All in the name of Christianity.

I had no idea that Sovereign Grace Ministries was involved in a lawsuit accusing it of covering up child abuse.  Nor had I ever heard the term "discernment blogger," although I was relieved to learn that, according to Challies' stiff definition of their merciless tactics, I don't fit that category.  You might not always agree with how I think and what I write, but wouldn't you be hard-pressed to prove my viewpoints lack grace or dishonor God?  Especially when I write about fellow believers in Christ?

To learn that muckraking is alive and well within our evangelical ghetto, aided and abetted by technology that allows any indignant blogger to look like an expert, is extremely sobering to me.

While I consider myself to be fairly well-versed in the culture of our evangelical ghetto, even though I'm on the ghetto's fringes, maybe it's a good thing that the folks who enjoy living deep within it don't pay much attention to me.  I'm only sorry that some of them appear to be turning on Challies.

He may be gettin' jiggy with reformed rap, but that's the worst stuff I've seen from him.  And while that genre of noise comes from the dangerous ghetto of painted graffiti, I'm ashamed to see that digital graffiti is now disgracing Christianity's ghetto.

There goes the neighborhood.

When the Dog Bites, Don't Feel So Sad

I like big dogs.

And my neighborhood is full of them.  One elderly lady across the street has a huge, tan-haired fuzzy mutt named Buster that her son brought her from the pound.  Whenever I go over to visit her, and sit on one end of her sprawling sectional sofa, he'll immediately take up two other sections to lay next to me.

I'm sure he thinks my only reason for being there is to see him!

Down in the cul-de-sac, there's a big, white-haired lab named Hoss, and although he's about as sweet as a dog can get, he's also about as dumb.  Happy, fun-loving, and able to knock down people thinner than me, he loves to barrel across his huge, deep front lawn to welcome me.  Just when I think he's going to crash into me at full speed, he veers off to the right or left, obviously enjoying the thrill as much as I'm dreading the impact.

We have a creek behind our back fence, and the wild critters that roam our little Eden at night have made a path along its banks.  One evening, I noticed Hoss was behind our back gate, where the path peters out due to the creekbank's erosion.  He was looking sadly at the end of the path with a befuddled expression on his face, as if he was wondering "what do I do now?"  The thought of turning around and going back the way he'd come apparently hadn't dawned on him.

Up the street, some neighbors have two dogs; a big one named Coco, and a smaller one named Mei Mei.  The smaller dog is cute enough, but even her owners admit she's a bit of a prima dona.  Coco, meanwhile, is older and wiser, with a soft coat of chocolate-colored fur.  Plus, she loves the gentle scratching behind her ears that she knows I'll give her - both Buster and Hoss like it when I scratch behind their ears, too.  They moan with pleasure and tilt their heads into my hand, trying to savor every moment.

A block away lives another big, brown-haired dog - a labradoodle.  His owner's house has a concrete wall next to their neighbor's long driveway, and there used to be a wood gate in that wall.  So much opaqueness meant that this big, long-legged dog would have to leap about five feet into the air to catch a glimpse of whomever was walking by.  And what a sight that was!  Seeing a furry brown head with big, floppy ears, popping up over the wall!  Usually, the dog didn't even bark - I imagine he was using all of his breath to make those leaps and jumps. 

Finally, his owner installed a wrought-iron gate that he could see through, since, as he got older, his hips weren't holding up so well.

The Girl With the German Shepherd

I thought I knew where all the dogs live in our neighborhood, but last night, while I was out for a walk, a teenaged girl went jogging past me with a German shepherd, and I'd never seen either of them before.  This impressively-sized dog had a cream-colored coat featuring a black patch across its back, with penetrating eyes and tall ears.  At first, I thought it was a good-looking pet, until it tried to lunge at me when we went by each other.  Fortunately, the teenaged girl held him back. 

Shortly thereafter, we passed a second time - thanks to the multiple connections the streets make in our neighborhood - and the dog did the same thing.  Again, the girl was able to hold the dog back, and we went our separate ways.

Later on, we approached each other a third time, and the German Shepherd strained against its leash, trying to head over to me.  Suddenly, it lunged again, and churned its powerful legs towards me, closing the thirty-odd-feet gap between us surprisingly swiftly.  This time, however, the teenaged girl - thin and petite - couldn't control it.  Snarling with fangs hanging out of its jaws, the German Shepherd chomped right into my left calf, just below my knee.

Seriously:  it chomped!  Like in those Looney Tunes cartoons.

Had I just been bitten by a dog?  Did this dog just bite me?  I was stunned.  I'd never been bitten by a dog before.  And it hurt!

Or at least, I thought it did.  I stopped, bent down, and inspected my injury.  The teenaged girl stopped too, and apologized several times.  It was obvious both of us had never been in this type of situation before.

In the heat of the moment, the pain seemed to go away.  "That initial pain was probably just a nervous reaction," I thought to myself.  The teenaged girl again asked me if I was OK, and I said that I was.  I couldn't see any puncture wounds - but it was dusk, and visibility wasn't the best - and there was no blood.  So I said I wasn't going to make a  big deal out of it, and we both went our separate ways.  Frankly, I was so impressed that a modern teenager stopped, apologized, and asked if I was OK, that I was eager to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Plus, I didn't want to act like a fat, middle-aged wimp in front of a teenaged girl.

As I walked home, however, the pain came back.  And little drops of thick blood dripped from the biggest wound.  I stopped in front of a house with a bright yard lamp and gave it another inspection.  Hmm... maybe it wasn't OK after all.

After I got home, I took a hot shower, and even turned the cold tap almost off and let some super-hot water practically scald the wound area.  And it was a fairly large area, in my opinion, since I didn't have any other dog bite experience to compare it to.  It's at least six inches long, and three inches wide, from the first puncture wound to the last, with a bruise mark today that spreads out past those dimensions.  It hurts a little, but there's been no puss, and the bleeding stopped last night, so according to the websites I checked while playing doctor on myself, it doesn't look like there's any immediate infection.

My neighborhood has an e-mail alert system for our crime watch, so I posted last night a plea for help in determining whose dog had bit me.  Remember, I'd never seen the teenaged girl or her dog before.  Hopefully, they lived in our neighborhood, and even if they were not on our e-mail alert system, somebody else would know who owns such a distinctive dog.

Neighbors Have to Live With Each Other

It was about 8:30 this morning when two ladies knocked on the door, a homeowner in our neighborhood, and her adult daughter, who actually owns the German shepherd.  It was the teenaged daughter of the homeowner who was jogging with her older sister's dog last night, and my neighbor was beside herself with worry.  Her teenager told her the dog had bit somebody, but that the person said it wasn't anything to worry about.

I showed the two women my wound, and they both agreed it was something to worry about.

However, I told them, I still wasn't going to get all worked up over the situation.  The women said they'd pay for me to get a tetanus shot, and they'd fax over the dog's records to my doctor if he wanted to review them.  In fact, the German shepherd was a new dog to their family, and had just spent three weeks in an expensive obedience school:  two weeks for their regular training program, and an extra week because the dog had displayed such aggressive tendencies.  The family had even just had the dog neutered, as recommended by the obedience school, to try and tame some of that aggression.

It all made sense to me, and even though, when I was surfing medical sites online last night looking for how to care for my wound, I saw lawyer advertisements popping up offering to help me sue the dog's owners, I assured the women that I wasn't hiring a lawyer.  They were actively taking responsibility for the situation, and that's really all I wanted.  They would pay for my shot - in fact, the mom insisted I get one, when I said I was merely thinking about it.  And they'd already discussed the reality that the teenaged daughter simply doesn't have the strength to control this dog.  Somebody else would have to walk it.

What more can you ask for?  Accidents happen, right?  Dogs are animals, and some are less controllable than others.  The family had tried obedience school and getting him neutered.  They came to my home and offered to do whatever it took to fix the situation.  Things could be turning out far worse, couldn't they?

When I called my doctor's office to schedule an appointment for the shot, the nurse advised me to call the police and have them quarantine the dog for 10 days.  Here in Arlington, apparently that's the protocol the city wants dog bite victims to follow.  Still, I objected, telling the nurse I've met the family, I know where they live, I know the dog's history, and they say his shot record is up to date.  They know they're liable for whatever happens, and I don't want to blow this thing out of proportion.  When the nurse heard that the dog had just returned from obedience school and the vet, where its health would have certainly been checked, she didn't press the quarantine issue any longer.

So... why am I telling you about all of this?  Because, granted, it's not on the scale of gay marriage or illegal immigration or gun control, but hey:  I've still got to live with these people.  We live in the same neighborhood.  A community's cohesiveness is one of the best quality-of-life indicators any of us can have, no matter where we reside.  Yes, things would be a lot different if they weren't taking responsibility for their dog's behavior, but even then, I think I should help set the tone for approaching the situation in a manner more conducive to outcomes that benefit all of us in the long run.

I've also thought about how much better it was for somebody like me to get bitten by this dog, whose viciousness the family doesn't seem to have fully realized, instead of some child in our neighborhood riding its bike or playing in the street.  Something like having a big, strange dog tearing into their flesh could traumatize a kid, whereas for me, it's more of an inconvenience than anything else.

Although I wish all of life's problems never got any more serious than a dog bite, I think the way in which we handle life's smaller problems can help condition us for how we address life's bigger ones.

My attitude may not make any personal injury lawyers rich, but my neighbors with the German Shepherd and I can still look each other in the eye with honesty and integrity.

And that's worth a lot, isn't it?