Morality of Mortality in Still Life

Photo by David Lassman

This morning was bright and sunny near Syracuse, New York.  The last workday before a long three-day weekend.  And as people logged on to their computers, and surfed over to Syracuse.com, a local news website, they were greeted with this photo at the top of a story about a fatality accident in the area.

A white sheet, covering what's obviously a corpse, on the pavement, near a crumpled motorcycle, and a damaged Jeep.  Skid marks, a lone shoe, and what appear to be bloodstains on the white sheet.  Crime scene tape, two police cars.  With a small group of what likely are police investigators standing about a block away.

You can almost hear and feel the stillness of the scene.

By now, however, if you visit the website, the photo has been cropped to exclude the white sheet covering the motorcyclist's body.  According to purportedly eyewitness accounts from feedback to this story, the deceased was a worker at a nearby office complex.  It is believed that he ran a red light and hit the Jeep.

The reason Syracuse.com decided to crop out the white sheet covering the victim stems from a rush of criticism from dozens of readers posting feedback to this story, objecting to being subjected to such a garish scene in the original version of the photo.

Bad taste, showing what's obviously a lifeless body, even if it is covered by a sheet.  Disrespectful to the victim's family, should they be venturing onto Syracuse.com without knowing their loved one's body is under that sheet.  Needlessly sensationalistic journalism.

Or is it?

This story quickly became one of the most heavily-debated articles on Syracuse.com, as readers went back and forth, posting complaints about the photo, or complaints about the people complaining about the photo.  Hey, at least the corpse itself wasn't visible.  Blood, death, and tragedy are part of life.  Maybe such a graphic depiction of the results of running red lights, as has been assumed was the cause, will convince other people not to take such foolish risks.

On the one hand, it's simply a photo that's generated quite a bit of buzz in an otherwise sleepy corner of New York State.  We've seen far more disturbing images out of Syria lately, and Iraq.  Does it make a difference when the bloody sheet is covering an American?  Or a local guy that somebody might actually have known?

When I lived in New York City, I particularly remember seeing on the local evening news some coverage of a Mafia hit in either Brooklyn or Queens.  A mob operative had been assassinated while sitting in his car underneath an overpass.  It was a burgundy Lincoln, and the driver's side window had shattered from the close-range gunshots.  The news camera angled right in for a close-up of the victim's blood-splattered face, a middle-aged man with greying hair.  And the whole thing was broadcast unfiltered to New York City, as a reporter droned on in the background about plausible motives.  As I recall, there was no "some of the scenes you are about to see are disturbing" disclaimer.  It was simply ordinary news footage of yet another casualty of the city's time-worn mob wars.  Film at 11.

Granted, I have no idea how much angry feedback the station received after airing that footage, but chances are, it wasn't much.  It's not like mob hits are exceedingly rare in New York City.  What might be rarer are mob hits where news camera crews arrive on-site before police detectives have started covering up the crime scene.  Even in the Syracuse.com photo, it seems a bit odd that the body was left on the street for so long.  The accident happened at 7:54 in the morning, the photos were posted at 8:49, and even past 9:00, according to the story, the body was still there, eventually covered by a yellow tarp.  How long does it take for the coroner to show up at fatality accidents in Central New York?

Maybe it's no big deal.  Maybe it is a bit opportunistic of Syracuse.com to run an attention-grabbing photo like this, knowing that if they really have to crop out its most objectionable component, they can do it and still have a photo that tells a story.  We all know that motorcycles aren't the safest mode of transportation anyway.  And people die in motor vehicle accidents every day.  Plus, it's not like Syracuse.com is in the same league as the New York Times or even FOX News.  Millions of people around the world aren't going to see this story and be horrified at the disturbing depiction of a dead person lying on the pavement with a bloodied sheet covering it.

But looking at this photo, it truly is the finality that it captures that makes it disturbing.  Maybe even horrifying.  A lone shoe, thrown from the foot of its owner by the impact of the collision.  A motorcycle, wrecked, never to be ridden again, at least not by the guy who, mere minutes before this photo was taken, was riding it to work.  A relatively new Jeep, looking like a 2013 model, by the narrow shape of its broken headlight - still so new, it doesn't yet have a permanent license plate on its front bumper, assuming it's registered in New York State.  What about it's driver?  How are they coping with the reality that this wreck involved a fatality?

This story never was headline news on CNN or Drudge Report, and by now, it isn't a headline story on Syracuse.com, either.  It's hardly distinctive enough to be nominated for a Pulitzer.  The road is back open, the vehicles are gone, and the victim's body is in a morgue or funeral parlor somewhere near Syracuse.

All we've got left, those of us who never knew anybody involved in this accident, is this photo.  And the story, however ordinary, that it's telling.  A story about finality.  Endings.  Sudden impacts.  And, frankly, how ordinary they are.

That's why people who found it upsetting were, well, upset.  We don't like being reminded about how common mortality is.

One of those cops in the background of this photo appears to be leaning back casually against a squad car, in a pose suggesting far more ease with this type of situation than many of us have when looking at the photo.  And for the most part, that's to be expected.  Cops deal with this sort of thing all the time.  They need to maintain a certain level of detachment for their own sanity.

For the rest of us, however, I think it does us good to be challenged by photos like these every now and then.  They remind us of our humanity.

Even if it is far more fragile than we're comfortable admitting.

Gospel Truth Despite Doubt

What is truth?

That's the basic question of life, isn't it?  In what can we believe?  To what can we affix our hope?

It's the question Pontius Pilot asked Jesus.  It's the question all of us ask - however subconsciously - as we develop our worldview and make our way through our lives.

It's the question that born-again evangelicals say we've answered by putting our faith in Christ.  And while for some, that sounds like a trite answer, perhaps its triteness comes the consistency of its trueness.  Even if, at least for Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, it's an answer that's been given more in theory than in practice.

For generations, regardless of how strongly anybody believed in Jesus, as Americans living in our Christianized society, acknowledging the historicity of the Bible has sufficed in providing at least a benchmark for religiosity.  One didn't have to be "born-again" to acknowledge that the Bible is more than just another work of literature.  For people who took the Bible seriously, their claims that God's Word is true were met, on the whole, with at least a begrudging acquiescence by the general population.  Public dissent against Christianity and its teachings was extremely rare, and its doctrines seldom challenged in the public square.  And when they were, dissenters were portrayed as outside the mainstream.  .

When we talk about America entering a "post-Christian" phase, we're talking about all of that cultural context flipping backside-to.  Whereas Christians had become accustomed to commanding America's moral dialog, nowadays, we're finding ourselves on the defensive more than ever.  Over the past few decades, our culture become more pluralistic, and suddenly, it seems, more and more people have become comfortable with - and even driven to - openly challenging longstanding assumptions about Christianity.

"How do you know that God exists?  Or that the God of the Bible is the only god?"

"How do you know the Bible is completely true?  What makes it so special?  Plenty of cultures throughout history, around the globe, have created their own analogies, myths, and superstitions about how and why the world works the way it does."

"Isn't it awfully convenient for you to say we shouldn't do something, even when we want to, just because a book of Jewish mythology says so?"

Actually, it's not like any of these are new questions.  Nobody's asking anything today that hasn't been asked since Satan tempted Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.  What's different about today's questions, however, is that cultural tradition doesn't suffice as an answer anymore.  In the minds and souls of many Americans today, the Christianity that has been part-and-parcel of Americana since Pilgrims set foot in New England no longer is sufficient proof for the Bible's validity.

That's not to say that the Gospel has become irrelevant.  Or that Christ isn't as powerful as He used to be.  Or that God really can be Whomever we want to imagine Him as being.  The orthodox truth of God that has existed and been believed by angels since before the world was created is the same truth in which I believe today.

Evangelicals like me simply can't expect anybody else to take that at face value anymore.

Not that I haven't entertained doubts in my own mind.  After all, I'm not unaware of how bizarre much of the Bible sounds to people who don't believe it.  Six days to create the universe?  A flood that covered every inch of the globe?  Shouting until a city's fortifications were obliterated by some unseen force?  An immaculate conception?  Feeding thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish?  Resurrection from the dead?

Come on!

How do I know that I'm not making some massive, foolish mistake by living my life according to some ancient proverbs instead of my own intuition and emotions?  Didn't God make me as a person capable of independent thought?  A lot of those proverbs are found in the literature of other cultures, by the way.  What makes them so special just because they're in the Bible?

And don't tell me that I won't understand about the Bible unless some event like being "saved" through a "working" of some invisible being called the "Holy Spirit" takes place in my soul.  We are an enlightened, educated, and scientific society.  We need proofs, validations, and empirical evidence.  Otherwise, your word is as good as anybody else's.  Merely an opinion.  Which means you're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine.  Everything's relative, and the only absolute is the individual; the self.  Which means I shouldn't have to change my lifestyle to accommodate your beliefs.

Sound like a lot of the push-back evangelicals are receiving by society at large today?

Frankly, to a certain degree, it's all a fair argument.  Little of Christianity makes sense if you take its theology's linchpin out of the picture.  And that Linchpin is Christ.  And even with Jesus, plenty of secular scholars, along with other world religions, acknowledge that He existed, and walked on this planet, and did good stuff for humanity.  It's His divine nature as the Son of God that skeptics can't embrace.  There is no literal, physical proof that Christ is a member of the Trinity.  Even the "Trinity," as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a concept whose very name is never mentioned in the Bible.

So, how do I know the Bible is true?  That God is Truth?  And that Christ is Truth incarnate?  How do I know that believers through the past two millennia who've been killed for their faith haven't been gravely mistaken?  How do I know that God hears my prayers, and that He answers them?  How do I know that Heaven is where my soul will go when I die?

Again, these are just some of the doubts, questions, fears, and aspersions that have bedeviled almost everybody who has ever heard the Gospel of Christ.  They represent just a smattering of the questions for which society wants concrete proofs, so that when evangelicals advocate for heterosexual marriage, or life in the womb, or even morality in the media, we people of faith have what society at large can accept as a legitimate reason for why it should listen to us anymore.

I could provide a listing of Bible verses to try and explain why I believe that eternal truth resides in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  But none of it will mean anything to anybody who doesn't want to accept them as facts.

So I'll just say this.  Truth is that which honors God.  Don't believe it?  Well, even unbelief can honor God, because His Word teaches that without the Holy Spirit revealing His truth to us, none of us will truly believe it.  We might acculturate to it, like generations of Americans did before us, but that's not the same as accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior.  And maybe one of the unconventional truths about the Bible is that it teaches that the Gospel isn't for everybody.  Nobody can be forced into it, nobody can be chided into it, or guilted into it.  God has created belief and truth to exist whether you want it or not.

Not everybody will be saved.  Not everybody will believe in Christ.  Not everybody will tolerate the Gospel.  In fact, the Bible teaches that most people will not want to hear that heterosexual marriage is the only type of marriage that honors God.  Most people won't really care about protecting life in the womb, either, or whether a young female singer gyrates on a TV show watched by youngsters.  People will intentionally fly planes into office buildings.  People will kill other people simply because of the color of their skin.  People will hate, castigate, and fornicate with apparent impunity.  And some of them will claim the name of Christ.

But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The Fruit isn't literally edible, but it is a lifestyle given by the Holy Spirit to everybody who accepts Christ as the Lord of their life.  And to the degree that these Fruit - they're a set - can be seen in my life, and in the lives of everybody else who professes faith in Christ, then you will know that we are His disciples.

You still may not want to believe that what we believe is the truth.

And you'd be in good company.  After all, the powerful Roman prefect, Pilate, didn't, either.

Holy Providence in an Inequitable World

Inequity.

It's a tricky thing.  Although we Westerners know that sociopolitical equality is good for society, we often forget that capitalism thrives on inequity.  Pursuing dreams is one thing, but even when dreams are realized, we know we're not all going to die with the same number of toys.  The ideal objective in capitalism is that everyone has a relatively equal playing field to pay for what they need in a peaceable society.

Not that this is about acquisitions.  It's about life experiences, and the paths along which God leads each of us in our individual faith walks.  Being humans, and Westernized humans in particular, we're enculturated to compete against each other, and peg our life's progress against a particular peer group.  We're told that if we don't aim our sights high enough, we'll be lazy, ineffectual, poor, and expecting handouts from others.  Aim too high, and we'll be hopelessly unfulfilled, perpetual strivers, conceited, and jealous.

The trick, we're told, is to aim for somewhere in the middle, between untapped potential and blind ambition, so that we stand a good chance of gaining respectable ground beyond where we're standing today - but if things don't work out as planned, we don't actually become unacceptably poor.  Fortunately for us Americans, we've been able to build the largest, most stable middle class in the world using the least amount of corruption and civil warfare.  When people say God has truly blessed America, this is what I think of.

The Lord Giveth, and Taketh Away

The problem, many of us soon learn, is that inequity in our society can hamper our conventional strategy for success.  Depending on how much we start out with, and the resources we acquire along the way, we may be able to insulate ourselves from personally punitive inequity, even without knowing it.  Others of us let our morality become our conscience more in theory than in practice, and we figure out which rules we can bend - or even break - along the way towards "success."  After all, the ends justify the means, right?  "Whatever it takes."

Some of us, however, particularly during these days of volatile - or, actually, downright stagnant - economic activity, are simply trying to hang on for the ride.  For people of faith, trusting in Christ for guidance and provision is a daily practice, not a grateful acknowledgement of sheer abundance during our quarterly update from our financial adviser.  We tell ourselves it's not what's in the bank - or our portfolio - that counts, as much as what's in our heart.

But what does all this mean about our understanding of God's perfect providence?

How many times have you heard a believer in Christ exclaim about the Lord's providence, and then learn that what has been assumed to be providence may simply have been His common grace?

Everything that happens to us is providence, right?  Everything!  In our Christian parlance, however, we like to reserve those things we think are extra-special as "providential," as if they wouldn't have happened to us any other way than an extraordinary working of God for our benefit.

For example, somebody gets a better job in a more exciting city, and they talk about it as though they wouldn't have gotten that job or the opportunity to move to the more desirable city without God's explicit intervention on their behalf.  Hey - at least they're giving God the credit!  We often forget to do that.  Still, sometimes, I wonder if this has become an acceptable way to brag about our accomplishments among churched friends, since cloaking the "good" things that happen to us in a garment of religiosity negates our personal pride in having something go our way.

Now, bear with me, I'm not talking about being jealous of somebody else's success, even though that's another real temptation in this scenario.

Nevertheless, think about it:  Isn't it common sense that, in the normal course of human events, at least for us Westerners, if we work diligently, study well, and engage with others productively, we ordinarily progress up the ladder of life?  Unsaved people do this all the time.  If we knock on enough doors for which we have the appropriate credentials, and they open, and we walk through them, what's the big deal?  Yes, it's providential, but isn't it also providential when people who hate God knock on those same doors and walk through them?  Isn't it simply what happens in a rewards-based society like ours?  Might the difference be that we know to thank God, and that we use this opportunity for His glory, not ours?

After all, plenty of unGodly people get promotions, earn big salaries, live in exciting cities, and lead lives that dazzle us.  Sometimes, God's people don't get chosen for promotions, but He's still sovereign, right?  According to Psalm 145:9, God is "good to all," and "has compassion on all He has made."  That's the essence of common grace.  The sun shines and the rain falls on both the just and the unjust, according to Matthew 5:45.  Not that it's wrong for us believers in Christ to praise Him when good things happen to us.  But how often, when good things happen to us, do we credit our own specialness as the reason?  Or when we think we're missing out on something good, do we assume it's due to some fault of ours?

Look at it this way:  How often do we credit God with a demotion, or the loss of a job, or having to move to a less desirable address?  How much less providential are those things?  Not everything "bad" that happens to us is our fault, is it?  Inequity, remember, is part of life.  God can use what we think is negative for His glory, and His glory is the reason for our very existence, right?  Scripture doesn't tell us that we should be happy when "bad" things happen to us, unless we're suffering something directly because of our faith in Christ.  But evaluating God's goodness to us based on the desirable qualities of those things He allows us to steward and enjoy is only half the story, isn't it?

Appreciating Blessings, In All Their Forms, and He Who Bestows Them 

After all, many more people on our planet live in poverty than live in wealth, and much of the poverty on our planet comes not from personal sin, but from various forms of suppression and exploitation, which are results of - you guessed it! - inequity.  And no, these inequities aren't necessarily caused by us big, bad Americans, but by unscrupulous power brokers within their own countries.

The point is that God has blessed Westerners with many good things, but that doesn't mean we're any more special to Him than people in Majority World countries.  Unfortunately, we Westerners often take for granted God's material bounty to us, even as we tend to inflate the parameters of what God's providence should provide.  God promises us that His people will not starve or lack clothing or shelter, but He never says anything about smartphones, automobiles, or even college degrees, or crime-free neighborhoods. 

Not that any of these things, nor reliable supplies of electricity, nor functional systems of law, nor cutting-edge healthcare, are wrong.  Taking them for granted - that's what's wrong.  Promotions, new homes, and better living conditions aren't wrong either, and neither is crediting God's goodness in supplying them.  However, isn't there a fine line between assuming we're entitled to things because we've worked hard to attain them, being genuinely appreciative to God for allowing us to experience them, and implying that if we don't attain these things, God is somehow being less good to us?

"It's a God thing" can be quite inaccurate, since everything is a God thing.  Even things that don't happen are God things.  Yes, God gives good gifts to His children, and many of those good things are enjoyable, and in a sense, we deny the goodness of those enjoyable things by, well, not enjoying them.  Don't not enjoy something because it's been granted to you and not somebody else.

In God's perfect Kingdom, there is no inequity, even though we may be responsible for different facets of His assets.  There's the parable of the talents, and also the metaphor of the parts of the body.  Ironic, huh?

So, if something isn't granted to you, couldn't that withholding be a form of goodness from God, too?  Probably not an enjoyable goodness, of course, but something in which a lesson exists for us to learn something more about God's providence?  Whether God gives us something or doesn't, is it necessarily based on whether or not we've earned it, or deserved it?

Sometimes, it doesn't seem that God "gives," as much as He "allows."  Evaluating the merits of what He allows based on our culture's expectations and definitions, then, might not be telling the whole story.

Collie Dog Days

They're here.

Those dog days of summer.

The hottest part of our year, in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway:  July and August.  And particularly August! 

For us Texans, all things considered, it has been a mild summer so far, with some downright rainy days dragging their way half-way through the month of July, of all things!  Usually, we say goodbye to the rain after Memorial Day.  We even had a couple of days in July when the temperature didn't get out of the 70's.

Of course, with the cooler weather, many right-wingers here in the Lone Star State were gleefully goading environmentalists who insist global warming is a reality.  "Gotta love that global warming when our first 100-degree-day comes near the end of June."  Instead of the more typical May.

Mm-hmm.

It was the ancient Greeks and Romans who coined variations on the term "dog days," in honor of Sirius, the bright "dog star" in the constellation Canis Major.  Oddly enough, as the millennia have plodded along, the dates for the original dog days have lost their astrological significance to our Northern Hemisphere's summertime, with the best time to view Canis Major now occurring in February, when summertime is winding down in the Southern Hemisphere.

But our dog days persist, if for no other reason than that our canine friends help exhibit the strain of July and August's heat on their fur-clad, perspiration-incapable bodies.  They tend to slow down, they pant a lot, and they enjoy walks on pavement a lot less.

My Dad used to have a wonderful, pure-bred collie that he rescued from a pound in suburban Dallas.  Before the collie had been taken in by the pound, it had suffered an injury to his rear-right hip, and he limped slightly from it, and had a hard time climbing stairs.  We figure a touch of arthritis must have set in, because Feliz - Spanish for "happy" - would love to go outside, even during scorching dog day afternoons, with temperatures over 100, and lay flat on the backyard lawn underneath blazing sun.  Always with his rear-right hip facing the sun!

We'd have to call him to come inside for his own good, even as his long torso heaved from all of his panting.  A few minutes inside, in the air conditioning, and with a bowl of water, he'd be fine.  He'd also sprawl beneath any of the ceiling fans in my parents' house, and enjoy the breeze, but almost always with his rear-right hip buried under his fur, and resting on the soft carpeting.

The times we all went to Maine in the summer, I think Feliz thought he was in Heaven.  Maine's summer sun seems even hotter than the one here in Texas, if that's possible, but the ground there stays cool and moist.  Maine's summertime breezes never seem to heat up like an oven's the way dog day breezes in Texas do.  What bliss for Feliz, who could lay in the sun all afternoon, and warm up his hip, but keep his overall body temperature down.  We sometimes had to sharpen our tone to order him inside on those days!

Feliz was a sweet and obedient dog, and we rarely ever had to raise our voice to him.  Usually, those times only came when he was smothering a visitor with furry, drooling affection, since he was one of those dogs who figured everybody who came to my parents' home was there mostly just to play with him!  He'd have made a pretty ineffective guard dog, except when it came to the neighborhood cats.  It got so that we couldn't even spell the word "c-a-t" within his earshot, or he'd be at one of the windows, growling, whining, and scouting for his mortal enemy.

He was great with kids.  He never bit, and only barked when they were making too much of a ruckus, or he thought they were hurting themselves.  He didn't like us humans to touch each other, which led us to believe that in some former home of his, he may have witnessed physical abuse.  Whenever we'd hug somebody, he'd always bounce over, growling, and try to nuzzle us apart.  We'd have to comfort him and thank him for protecting us, but that nobody was getting hurt.

Sweet, huh?

My best Feliz story, however, took place not during the dog days of summer, but one Christmas morning, when we were all getting ready to open presents in front of the Christmas tree in my parents' front living room.  My brother and sister-in-law and their family - which at the time, consisted of four kids (there are five now!) - were down from Michigan, and I was sitting on the piano bench when my sister-in-law swooped into the living room with my niece, who was only a few months old at the time.

"Here, Uncle Tim, you can watch your new niece while I go get ready," my sister-in-law pronounced, and she softly put my little niece, in her infant outfit and wrapped in a soft blanket, on the carpeted floor at my feet.  I can't remember if I already had something in my hands, which would have explained why I just didn't reach out and take the baby in my arms.  Anyway, my sister-in-law got back up, twirled around, and swirled towards the kitchen.

Feliz was curled up over by a bookcase at the far corner of the living room, and saw what had happened.  He looked at the tiny human, all bundled up on the carpet, and its adult caretaker bounding off to another part of the house.  Feliz pulled himself up from his corner resting place, and intentionally strode over to where my niece lay on the floor.

And he promptly settled down, length-wise, right alongside my niece!  He glanced around, with a look on his fuzzy face that said, "well, SOMEBODY'S gotta protect this helpless little creature!"

Collies are herding dogs, and exceptionally protective.  And that Christmas day, Feliz proved he was no exception.

As it happens, today, my niece enjoys a particular affinity with all sorts of animals, with an uncanny ability to immediately befriend anything from zoo animals to noisy seagulls at the beach.  I like to think it all comes from the morning when a huge, hairy, and somewhat smelly collie plopped himself down next to her to guard her when she was very, very young.

Happy dog days, y'all!

Frisk Risk Mars Racial Recognition

Imagine it.

You're walking along, wearing a hoodie.  You're young (remember - we're imagining here) and not Caucasian.  Suddenly, a male with lighter skin than yours demands that you stop and explain yourself.

No, you're not Trayvon Martin, but an even younger multiracial teenager in Harlem named Alvin, walking down 116th Street after visiting your girlfriend, wearing a hoodie in the early June air, and an empty backpack.

And this was your second time today to be stopped and frisked by New York's "finest."

Not because they had a bulletin from the precinct to be on the lookout for somebody looking like you who'd just robbed a bank.  But just because you're not white, and you're young.

If the Zimmerman verdict has proven anything, it's that the death of Trayvon Martin will not be contributing positively to our nation's dialog about racial profiling.  It's been woefully tainted by bias and crippled by a lack of irrefutable proof.  Meanwhile, farther north up the East Coast from Florida, a longstanding police policy that has been vehemently criticized for almost as long as Trayvon was alive has languished outside of the national spotlight.  It's a policy within the New York City Police Department called "stop-and-frisk," in which cops can basically detain anybody they deem suspicious on the spot.  They can frisk a person without reading them their Miranda Rights, or advising them of the crime with which police intend to charge them.

In fact, in the overwhelming majority of stop-and-frisk cases, no crime at all is involved.  Unless, of course, you count the actions and attitudes of the cops.

The practice has been heavily used and debated in the Big Apple for nearly two decades, with minorities and limousine liberals decrying stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional, while whites and the business community generally have been ambivalent about it, since it's been credited with helping give the city incredibly low crime rates.  The city lost a court case over stop-and-frisk ten years ago, but that didn't stop the practice.  Police officials are convinced that those low crime rates are due in no small measure to the success of their widely-used stop-and-frisk initiative.

It hasn't helped discourage the practice having bigoted agitators like Al Sharpton acting as spokespeople against it.  Nor has it helped that the overwhelming percentage of crime in the city is perpetrated by minorities, or that the "gangsta" culture prevalent among minorities intentionally intimidates whites in the city's streets, mass transit, elevators, and parks.  Stop-and-frisk became synonymous with the "broken window" theory, in which it's believed that the best way to increase public safety is nip crime in the bud, starting with the most basic of anti-social events, like a broken window, or a person who "looks suspicious."

Even though plenty of New Yorkers were uncomfortable with stop-and-frisk, it seemed to be working, and hardly anybody except the guys who were being stalked by the police really knew what happened during these stop-and-frisk episodes.  Episodes which took place a staggering 4.8 million times during the past decade.  And which, as statistics are now revealing, provided evidence of a crime - such as illegally possessing a weapon - only 12% of the time.

The Nation, a left-wing periodical based in New York and devoted to helping progressive urbanists feel ever so superior to everybody else, has been an ardent opponent of stop-and-frisk.  In 2011, they produced a video based upon the audio recording Alvin made that day on Harlem's 116th Street of an experience with stop-and-frisk.

For conservatives who had insisted that the NYPD conducted this practice professionally, it was an obscene wake-up call.  Literally:



In terms of their overall objective, please understand that The Nation espouses an exceptionally left-wing political platform with which I cannot agree.  However, it's quite obvious from this video that Alvin is not a pawn in any partisan agenda.  He was not stopped for any reason other than a punitive, vicious form of racial profiling.  There are times in which racial profiling can be relatively benign, such as when my friends and I were accosted for supposedly being rich homosexuals on the subway.  But there was nothing benign, partisan, or moral about how Alvin was treated by the cops.

Which begs the question:  out of nearly 4.8 million stop-and-frisks over more than a decade, how much of an exceptionally brutal example of the practice was Alvin's recorded encounter with it?  Doesn't it seem to you as though this was all part of their day's work for the cops?  Routine?  Kinda fun, even?  In a macho, drunk-on-power kind of way?

How could this continue for so long in one of the most liberal cities in America?  Well, as it turns out, the NYPD didn't pull stop-and-frisk out of thin air.  It's actually based on a Supreme Court decision from 1968 in which the Constitution's Fourth Amendment provision against unlawful searches doesn't apply when a police officer believes a person could be an imminent participant in a crime.  However, that was then - and in Cleveland, Ohio, too, where the Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio, originated.  Today, what stop-and-frisk has apparently degenerated into is a thinly-disguised form of racial profiling.  Currently, two bills are before New York's city council that seek to discourage stop-and-frisk, but the bills themselves represent typical political posturing that may not resolve anything.  A federal class-action lawsuit against the city that has been waged since 2008 may be decided by Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin as early as this month, with legal experts predicting that Scheindlin will appoint a federal monitor to oversee the city's deployment of stop-and-frisk.  But powerful city officials continue to stake their professional reputations on stop-and-frisk's legitimacy.

Many New Yorkers, including the police chief, and its current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, have opposed any interference in stop-and-frisk since the tactic was introduced back in the early 1990's.  The time right before the city's crime rate began to dip drastically.  That's not coincidence, stop-and-frisk's defenders insist.

Maybe not.  Maybe some form of stop-and-frisk has a place in law enforcement's arsenal, as long the police are acting on credible information, and have specific characteristics for which they're looking relative to that credible information.  Nevertheless, no police department should simply assume that "crime is going to happen" so it's safe to assume that people who fit a broad generalization regarding what typical criminals look like can be harassed in the off-chance they might be walking away from a crime, or getting ready to commit a crime.  Can simply frisking people without a warrant and finding a knife or a gun on them 10% of the time be sufficient grounds for perpetrating stop-and-frisk on an entire race or gender?

According to The Nation's video, and the accounts of other whistleblowers within the police department, an unofficial quota system exists for stop-and-frisk that has likely corrupted the original intent of the practice.  Doesn't it make sense to start there, within One Police Plaza, the department's headquarters, and dis-incentivize stop-and-frisk?  Terry v. Ohio was about "reasonable suspicion," but New York City's version of it looks like "unreasonable racism."

Indeed, what's not up for debate is whether or not the treatment 16-year-old Alvin received from the police on that sidewalk in Harlem is acceptable.  It absolutely, definitely, incontrovertibly is not.  It's not a question of liberal or conservative, black or white, New Yorker or Texan, rich or poor, urban or rural, law or chaos.  It's basic humanity.

This is what many people wanted the Trayvon Martin tragedy to be about.  And maybe many cases of stop-and-frisk aren't as clear-cut as the one shown in this video.  But still, why the disparity in our mainstream media's coverage of both stories?  Was it the "gated community" or "stand your ground" buzzwords?  Was it the fact that Trayvon got killed, whereas Alvin was "only" humiliated?  Was it Zimmerman's gun?  Was it the fact that New York's profilers are intimidating, "professional" cops?  Even in New York City, while stop-and-frisk has generated heated debate, it hasn't been nearly as polarizing as the Zimmerman verdict.  Maybe that's because what happened to Alvin really is the exception, instead of the rule.  And maybe not knowing whether that's the case gives the same ambivalence about the practice to New Yorkers as the Zimmerman case gives to many whites.

That same ambivalence towards racial profiling that blacks have long suspected whites of harboring may have helped fan flames of pain and unrest among blacks after the Zimmerman verdict.  But much of what the Zimmerman verdict lacked in terms of its applicability to the subject of racial profiling is present in sobering abundance as we near a verdict in New York's class action lawsuit against stop-and-frisk.

Alvin's biological father is a cop.  If you listen closely, you'll hear one of the cops in the video even recognize him as the son of a cop.  But by then, the recognition came too late.

Seeing people for who they are can't be all about assumptions.
_____

Update - August 12, 2013:  Judge Scheindlin has ruled stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional, and will appoint a monitor to oversee the city's wind-down of the practice.

Profiling the Content of One's Character

Zimmerman Verdict Series
1. Sourcing Zimmerman Verdict Angst
Today's essay is #2
3. Eulogy For Home From Zimmerman Verdict

_____


We were three young, white, single guys.

Thin, well-dressed, well-groomed.  And yes - even I was thin, back when I lived in New York City!  I used to have a 29-inch waist.  No lie.  Of course, this was over twenty years ago, when even daily pints of Ben & Jerry's couldn't put fat on my bones.

Twenty years ago, too, the Big Apple was a far more dangerous place than it is today.

We left the Yankees game early.  Probably because it was a work night.  Probably because the Bronx Bombers were losing.  Probably because we didn't want to wait for the crush of fans at the Lexington Avenue Line subway platform alongside the venerable stadium after the game ended.

The subway car we boarded was practically empty.  But not for long.  A few minutes into our trip back into Manhattan, as the train creaked and rolled through the notorious South Bronx ghetto, the rear emergency door suddenly crashed open, and into our car swaggered a group of young black men.

And we three white boys were sitting ducks.

Boisterous and emboldened by our presence - and the lack of anybody else's - they hollered and bellowed in a gangsta dialect as they made a big production of coming over to where we were seated.  The three of us whiteys quietly glanced at each other, bracing for anything.  Those guys weren't coming over to chit-chat with us about the score of the Yankees game.  That wasn't necessary.  We all knew the score.

Those of you who've ridden New York City subway cars know there's a metal bar that hangs from the ceiling and runs down the length of the car, parallel to the seats.  Those young men came right where we were sitting, hanging onto the overhead bar, leaning down into our faces.  One of them plunked himself right down beside me, practically sitting on my lap.  I started perspiring.

I don't know how long it lasted, but these punks jeered at us for being rich (even though we weren't), white (which was obvious) and gay (which we weren't - but in New York City, it's rare to see three thin, stylishly dressed young white men together who aren't gay).  The guy who'd sat down next to me rubbed himself against me, and in my mind, I was playing the scenario I'd rehearsed about what I'd do if I was ever mugged:  give them my wallet with the $20 bill inside and the credit card, and hope they don't find the $20 bill, drivers license, and medical insurance card that I'd hidden in the socks I was wearing.  I'd heard that most muggers would be content with a $20 take, and if they roughed you up, most cabbies would still at least take you to the nearest hospital for $20.  The credit card could just be cancelled out, and maybe even used to catch whomever had stolen it.

By this time, my friends and I had been pushed tightly together by our tormentors, who were relishing the fact that we were all now perspiring, trying so hard to look at the ceiling of the subway car and ignore them, even though they were taunting us from mouths mere inches from our faces.  They weren't yelling, just amusing themselves with all the different vulgarities they could come up with for gay people, white people, and rich people.

Suddenly, the subway's passenger doors slid open, and other riders trickled into the car.  This was the signal our tormentors used to effortlessly step back from us and disappear from the subway car, while other people were still boarding.  The three of us silently reclaimed a bit of personal space between us, but remained quiet, not saying a word, nor looking at each other for the rest of the ride.  We were deeply relieved, woefully humiliated, and I can't remember us ever talking about it.  It was just part of what we should have expected, being in another ethnic group's territory.  Plus, it could have been much worse.

Facts Create Context, and Context Matters

As I've struggled for the past two days with the complaints black Christians are making about the insensitivity of us whites towards the Zimmerman verdict in Florida, two disconnects appear to be taking shape.  One of them has to do with the facts of the case, which I believe have been grossly misrepresented by the mainstream media, yet assumed to be accurate by many blacks, for whom television is a primary source for information.  The other has to do with the issue of racial profiling, which, as we all know, has been left utterly unresolved by both the trial and the verdict.

Now, the racial profiling those thugs performed on my friends and me during that subway ride may have been an isolated incident for us, but I tell the story so people will understand that I know what it's like to be racially profiled.  What I don't know about is being racially profiled like that multiple times during my life - or indeed, daily or weekly, but I can imagine how distressing and humiliating it must be.  I remember my brush with it vividly because it only happened to me two times during my three years in New York City (the other was also on the subway, by Puerto Rican and Dominican teenaged girls, who also presumed I was too thin and well-dressed to be straight).  If racial profiling is the issue blacks hoped the Zimmerman case could resolve, please understand that while I can't understand a life of such profiling, I've had a taste of what it's like.

Yet I still insist that this case was never going to resolve the issue of racial profiling, and while I'd like to be wrong about this, blacks who've allowed themselves to hope for even a productive dialog on the subject will only continue to be deeply disappointed.  And while whites may be responsible for some of the pain they're feeling, I believe that the mainstream media is mostly to blame, because they're the ones who turned a shooting in a gated condo community into a circus, full of glittery promises, hollow reality, and bitter endings.

It has been popularly believed that if it wasn't for racial profiling, Zimmerman wouldn't have gotten out of his car and confronted Trayvon Martin.  Yet while Zimmerman used the term "a**hole" while in his car, and then possibly the racially-derogatory term "coon" under his breath while he was on foot, looking for Trayvon, it was Trayvon who used explicitly racial terminology in describing Zimmerman to his girlfriend over the phone.  In terms of racial profiling, Trayvon's attitude was far more cavalier than Zimmerman's, which could speak to what his demeanor may have been like during his physical interaction with Zimmerman.

We also now know that Trayvon used marijuana, was a juvenile delinquent, and did not live at that condominium complex.  All three of those facts likely contributed to behavior witnessed by Zimmerman that combined to paint a portrait of somebody who might be up to no good.  What was the teen's mental state at the time?  How might his belligerent attitude been reflected in how he moved?  Being relatively unfamiliar with the complex, at night, and in the rain, how disoriented might he have been?  And how was Zimmerman to know that Trayvon may have likely been displaying this behavior not because he was trying to evade detection, but because other factors were impacting his demeanor?  Remember, the condo complex had recently experienced other burglaries.  If you were on patrol and saw something suspicious, would you just drive in the opposite direction?

Now, granted, Zimmerman did a number of stupid things.  He called 911, but he was impatient, and didn't want to wait for the police to arrive.  He got out of his car, which during a rain storm at night wasn't a wise thing to do.  We don't know much more than that, except that both Trayvon and Zimmerman had the right to defend themselves, and one of them ended up dead.  And the other one with bloody scars on the back of his head.  Considering all of the facts that were presented to them during the trail, Zimmerman's jury decided that it was reasonable to assume he was protecting himself, and they ruled accordingly.

That's what this case was about.  It wasn't about race, or racial profiling, or even a sweet, naive teenager being gunned down near his home.  The condo Trayvon was going to was owned by his father's current girlfriend, somebody he'd apparently started dating relatively recently, since Trayvon had been living with his stepmother until around that time.  It's entirely probable that Trayvon's troubles at school and use of narcotics stemmed from confusion, disappointment, and insecurity over his father's serial fornication.

Zimmerman obviously is no angel, but how likely is it that he's now going to have to live the rest of his life with Trayvon's death hanging over him because the youth's father didn't take his paternal role seriously enough?  Teenaged boys need their father to be morally stronger than Trayvon's was.

Content of Character Is Also Context

What does that have to do with racial profiling? Well, if we're going to go into the reasons why Zimmerman felt compelled to leave his car and pursue Trayvon, don't we have to consider the reasons Trayvon was acting the way he was to attract such attention from Zimmerman?  Remember, we don't have enough proof that Zimmerman was after Trayvon because he was black.  There's just as much proof that, had the teenager Zimmerman spotted that night been white, and had been acting the same way as Travon was acting, Zimmerman likely would have done the same thing.

But we don't know, do we?  And that is why this case is not a case for proving racial profiling.  Zimmerman was a gun-toting vigilante who was looking for anything suspicious.  When the 911 operator first asked him to identify the suspect's race, Zimmerman said he though it was black.  It wasn't until after he'd gotten a better look that he confirmed Trayvon's race to the operator.  By that time, Zimmerman was well into a state of high alert, and for people like him - see?  I'm profiling Zimmerman now - once you're that far along into a 911 call and following a suspect, race likely becomes a minor detail.

Sigh.

Part of me tells me to simply move on.  Drop it.  That's what plenty of other whites are doing, either out of their own well-worn frustrations over being unreconciled to blacks, or out of a closet racism that says blacks are their own worst enemy.  Part of me rationalizes that, attention spans being what they are, the media will soon pounce on something else, and the Zimmerman trial will become one of those wounds that scabs over, just like so many others.

Meanwhile, another part of me asks if I should ignore the reality that many people are still genuinely suffering over the Zimmerman verdict.  Wouldn't it be unkind - unChristian, even - to let them languish in their emotional pain?  Especially when they're brothers and sisters in Christ?  When one of us hurts, we all hurt, right?  Besides, I don't want to be a bigot in my heart.  Nor do I want other people to think I'm a bigot.

If explaining how the facts in this case doesn't help assuage the hurt blacks are feeling over its verdict, about all I can do is ask blacks not to fall into the same stereotyping traps into which we whites fall all too often.  We need to remember that racial profiling is a two-way street, and something all of us do in a variety of situations.  We also need to remember that different races and ethnicities are not our enemy, but the evil one who makes us think they are.

Didn't Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have it Biblically correct when he elevated the individual above their appearance?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I'm not some white man rhapsodizing on a standard-bearer for civil rights simply to elicit some emotional affirmation.  If "content of character" is what we're aiming for, doesn't that set the bar a bit higher than the Zimmerman trial?

For all of us?

Why We're Not God's Pets

Do you have a pet?

If you do, is it happy in your home?  It probably is, isn't it?

After all, dogs and cats and hamsters don't get together down at the coffee shop or obedience school and compare notes about what kind of food their owners are feeding them, or the thread count of the fabrics upon which they sleep.

Children usually start out in life thinking their parents are the best.  It's not until they start socializing with other little kids that they begin to realize that not everybody has it as good as they do, or that their own home isn't as luxurious as those of other families.

We develop our jealousies early, especially when it comes to the amount of time we expect our loved ones to lavish on us.  But it's not until we start comparing ourselves to other people - even other little people - that we begin to learn about stratification, hierarchies, degrees of affluence, and the value of money.

Pets can be jealous, but not because one of them lives in a mansion, and the other one lives on the street with its homeless owner.  Jealousy among pets seems to occur strictly over levels of affection, not levels of materialism.  Some neighbors of mine walk their two dogs almost every night, and we're all great friends - except when one of the dogs thinks I'm stroking the other one more, or talking to it more.

My brother and sister-in-law used to live in a subdivision with low chain-link fences separating the backyards.  One of their neighbors had a big old black dog of indeterminate breed, and since they were hardly ever home, their dog spent a lot of its time pacing along the fence it shared with my brother's backyard, because my nephews and niece would be outside playing.  One year, my parents and I visited with my father's dog, a handsome, pure-bred collie.  Dad was over by the chain-link fence, petting the neighbor's dog, and talking to it.  But Dad's collie was not pleased!  He went over there, moaning and fussing, making whining sounds in his throat.  He actually tried to push himself between Dad and the chain-link fence, to physically separate Dad from the other dog!

"Hey!  This is my owner!" Dad's dog seemed to be saying to the neighbor's dog.  Of course, the neighbor's dog barked and barked, afraid of having my Dad's affection withdrawn in favor of this visiting collie from Texas.

Tucked down in a cul-de-sac where I live is a rambling house on a deep lot where a big, goofy dog named Hoss lives.  I've written about Hoss before; a happy-go-luck white-haired Lab who doesn't have a mean or jealous bone in his body.  He gets out of his yard all of the time, and our neighbors are afraid of him - but not because he'd bite or anything.  He's simply so big, he could literally knock some of our elderly neighbors over just trying to be friendly.  Once, when he was loose, of our neighbors made the mistake of letting him inside their own home while they called Hoss's owners to come get him, and with his stiff Lab's tail wagging and slapping about in the excitement, Hoss managed to knock practically everything off of their kitchen table!  The neighbor's wife told me she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

When I'm out for my evening walks, and Hoss is loose, he'll come bouncing down the street to greet me, his tongue flapping out of the corner of his drooling mouth, his eyes full of mirth, and he'll bang himself into my legs and hop up for some instant affection from me.  Then he'll tag along as I walk back to his house, where he belongs.  He never stops, wanting to go home with me instead.  Hoss knows where he's "supposed" to be; he just happens to be on the loose, but he's not looking for anyplace else to live.  He has no idea how other households run, or whether another family would be even more loving towards him than his current family is.  He knows where his home is, and he never considers other options.

Don't you think God could have made us like that?  He made pets that way; why not us?

Because we're not God's pets, are we?

He cares for us, provides us with shelter and food, and grants us salvation through His Son.  He's invested infinitely more into us that we could ever invest in our own pets.  And while God expects us to render to Him our devotion, He hasn't wired into us the innate homing mechanism that automatically precludes our consideration of anything else that might be better than what we already have.  The Holy Spirit is our Guide, and the more we progress in the process of sanctification, the more "at home" we'll be in Christ, but that process of sanctification is often derailed by our wanderings when, unlike Hoss, we wonder if other enticements aren't better places to go and abide.

Sometimes I wonder if you and I aren't looking around at what the world offers and evaluating whether or not maybe that stuff really is better than what we already have in Christ.  I know that I live where I live, drive the car I drive, and wear the clothes I wear not because I'm perfectly satisfied with them, but because they're what I can afford.  I often look at what other people have and catch myself feeling slighted by God because I don't have what they have.

Do we live the way we live out of loyalty to our Master?  And if we're happy with our lives, is it because we're content in Christ, or content with the things and accomplishments He's allowed us to acquire?

One reason God hasn't made us to be His pets is because He wants us to show Him - and the world - that we can be content and loyal without being forced into it through biology or even emotion.  Or bought with status symbols.  He wants us to "come home" to Him without hesitation or second thoughts, because He is our Heavenly Father.  And He has a holy jealousy for our affection.

Weird, huh?  We normally wouldn't think it to be healthy if we were jealous of the affection our pet gave somebody else.  But that's another reason why we're not God's pets.  His Son died for our sins.

We wouldn't think of sacrificing a loved one in repayment for our dog's tail sweeping a neighbor's tableware onto their kitchen floor.  Yet that level of insignificance is how we often view our sins.

According to 1 Corinthians 6, being bought with a price means that we are not our own, and the Price that was paid is yet more reason for why we're not God's pets.  He desires from us a relationship that exceeds loyalty and affection, so that regardless of where we live, or our life's circumstances, we are at home in Him.

Not looking anyplace else for comfort, affirmation, or peace.

Saints Unbecoming

Two weeks ago, an article entitled "How Do I Know When It's Time To Leave A Church?" was the most-read article on Crosswalk.com.

At the time, I commented about how telling it must be that such discouraging subject matter - a strong dissatisfaction with one's church - would be the top article on one of Christianity's most popular websites.

So, it's been two weeks, which can be an eternity in Internet time.  Who knows how many topics, headlines, crises, opinions, and tweets have come and gone.  You'd think the article about leaving one's church would be long gone, too, wouldn't you?  At least, it wouldn't still be listed among Crosswalk's top ten.

But you'd be wrong.  Okay, so it's not number one today... it's number three.  After two other articles of similar subject matter.  Currently, the most-read article is "What You Are Wearing To Church," which has likely been a weekly debate in families across the Western world for centuries.  The second-most-read article currently is entitled "Seven Viruses That Infect the Church."

Ouch.

Isn't this "church" thing supposed to be helping us?  Isn't it supposed to be the place where our faith walk can find refuge from the sins of the world?  Judging by what people are choosing to read on Crosswalk, however, it looks more like church is a thorn in our side, or a cross we have to bear.

When Doing Church Becomes One's Undoing

Maybe I'm back on this topic of dissatisfaction with church because I've been interviewing somebody for an upcoming article of mine for Crosswalk.  After years of trying to act like a Christian, find a church where she can grow as a Christian, get involved in ministry with other Christians, develop Christian friendships, and plug her young son into a similarly God-focused faith community for his age level, she's thrown in the towel.

She walked out of church.  She's not really bitter, or even angry, although she's sad, and almost bemused at what the rest of us continue to tolerate in our faith communities.

Looking back on her conversion experience, she figures it must have been an emotional reaction to her failed marriage.  She was told she needed God in order to have peace.  And for a while, it all seemed to work... until she tried to assimilate into a large church that asks people to "come as they are."  So she did.

Things went downhill from there.

Early in her faith walk, a small-group leader chastised her in front of their home group for professing to enjoy a popular but mildly-raunchy television sitcom, but then she witnessed him in his own home watching something even raunchier on cable.

She found out by accident that malicious gossip was being spread around her church about her and her son.

Her son went on a couple of church youth outings and witnessed adult sponsors of the events getting tipsy on contraband liquor.

She herself attended events with fellow church-goers where alcoholic beverages were flowing.

It was as if everybody else was as wounded, anxious, and depressed as she was, and church had become simply another crutch, or a glorified passport to Heaven.  The church people she saw drinking weren't living under grace, they were addicted to the stuff to fill the void she thought churchy stuff was supposed to fill.  Preach hellfire and damnation for the world's gays, but adultery within the church is only wrong if you get caught.  None of it matters - your passports to Heaven have already been stamped.

When she started expressing her doubts on Facebook, church friends either ignored her, or de-friended her.  When she saw one of her pastors at their kids' mutual sporting event, he didn't want to talk to her.  She realized she was more wounded, anxious, and depressed now that she had gotten involved in church, than she was before "professing her faith."

So she relinquished her faith.  Returned it, even though she didn't get a refund for all she'd been through.  She didn't expect to find a bunch of holy-roller saints in church, but she didn't expect a bunch of sinners who self-righteously claimed to be holy-roller saints, either.

"Don't pray for me," she's asked me, "because that's so patronizing.  I have explored your faith option and found nothing that comforts me more than my own awareness of my own spirituality."

Preachers Missing a Teachable Moment

We evangelicals might be tempted to parse this woman's refutation of Christianity in order to find clues to its theological inadequacies, but before we do that, consider the haughtiness with which one of our celebrity preachers recently praised a fellow celebrity preacher friend of his.

Mark Dever, senior pastor at Washington, DC's wildly popular Capitol Hill Baptist Church, served as a guest preacher earlier this month in the pulpit of Sovereign Grace Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Sovereign Grace Church is the new congregation established by C.J. Mahaney, the embattled former director of Sovereign Grace Ministries, which has come under fire for hiding allegations of child abuse.  However, Dever has come out not only in support of Mahaney, but veiled contempt towards those who have filed a lawsuit against his former ministry as its alleged child abuse victims.

In what appears to be an arrogant affirmation of the indicted despite a Biblical need to be sensitive to any harm that has befallen alleged victims, Dever offered Mahaney's congregation a heavy dose of hero worship.

"If you’re visiting or if you’re sort of new to Sovereign Grace," Dever said in his sermon, regarding Mahaney, "you have a privilege in having this man as your pastor that you don’t fully grasp..."

Not only does one celebrity pastor inadvertently chastise fellow Christians who dare question the integrity of another celebrity pastor, but he appears to display a degree of impunity that seems to defy the Gospel of Christ.  It's not that during a time of crisis in one's personal life or public ministry, a minister of the Gospel shouldn't be able to depend on his peers for comfort, friendship, and support.  But it almost appears as though Mahaney's friends have willfully ignored the facts in this case.  Indeed, the fact that we need to keep talking in abstract terms instead of facts betrays the fact that Mahaney and his friends have not broached the accusations with the seriousness the rest of us have accorded them.

Either way, their attitudes and actions don't seem to square with the Gospel they've built their careers preaching.

I don't personally know any of the people about whom I've written here today.  The woman who's returned to atheism was referred to me by a mutual friend, who thought I should hear her story.  Our mutual friend is saved, and the only church friend who remains in contact with this woman who's left the church.  I've never met either Dever or Mahaney, and only know of their disturbing, stubborn alliance through what I've learned about it online.

But hey - even if all the rest of this is anecdotal, don't we know how hard it is to do church?  We don't need to be told this by an atheist, or preachers pretending that accusations of child molestation don't exist.

Still, I believe that God is sovereign.  He knew from eternity past that these days would come for His North American church, when His people would be so cantankerous, malicious, hypocritical, self-righteous, and unlike Christ.  Yet still, the church is His invention.  He has purposes for it, even if we can't see them.  I believe that, because I believe God is sovereign.  We can't irrevocably screw up His church, even though it sure looks like we're giving it our best shot.

What am I to make about all of the feedback I've received from this atheist, who, frankly, seems almost freer now that she thinks she can cross "God" off of her list of things to make her happy?  I don't know.  After all, most of the world today sees religion as simply one of many means to an end, with the end being some sort of self-realization.  All the better to find those things that don't work earlier rather than later, right?

What our celebrity preachers are doing in the name of this God, however, truly unnerves me.  The God in Whom the Holy Spirit has given me faith is not a God to be mocked by elitist games of personal favorites during - of all things - sex abuse cases.  In their cloistered world of church plants, seminars, and doctrinal associations, it's almost as if the guys with the biggest bully pulpits win the day, while hapless sheep bleat in the fields.

Or go online in droves to Crosswalk.com, getting advice on evaluating how sick their church may be.

Sounds of Praise Worth the Effort

Was it worth it?

All that hard work.  The tedious practicing.  Hours of it.  Hours upon hours.  Those interviews with the press.  Time away from his fiance, family, and friends.

My musical friend, Alex McDonald, spent months in intensive preparation for the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition currently underway here in Fort Worth, Texas.  He has a day job as a piano instructor, both privately, and for a local college.  But in addition to that, Alex managed to squeeze in a full workweek's worth of practice to compete at the prestigious Cliburn.  And his fans were pleased when he survived the initial round of pressure-cooker tryouts - weeks before the actual competition - simply to win one of 30 coveted spots in the Cliburn's first official round.

When the Cliburn got under way last week, he played two different mini-concerts in the first round, and was warmly received by his audiences, if not his critics, who apparently weren't aware that Alex actually did some of his doctoral work at Julliard on the composers whose pieces he played.  I've always been skeptical of music critics - well, of critics who review most of the arts in our culture - because the ones who make a living doing so rarely seem to have the professional credentials they expect the artists they're reviewing to achieve.  Siskel and Ebert, for example, never produced a feature film in their lives.  Ada Louise Huxtable, the inimitable architecture critic for both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, was never a certified architect.  Although all three of these personalities were able to carve out good livings offering generally solid feedback on their preferred art forms, like another artist friend of mine advised me recently, when you're not the one having to design something for a client, it's easy to forget that it might not be the composer, director, or architect whose faults you're seeing, but the person who signed the check for it.

Suffice it to say that Alex did not get paid for competing in the Cliburn.  None of its contestants do.  In fact, there's a small army of volunteers that make sure it runs without a hitch during its quadrennial appearances on the music world's stage.  And it is a big international deal.  Musicians on the jury come from countries like Israel, France, and China, and many contestants come from Japan, Russia, and Italy.  It's been thirty years since this competition, always held in Fort Worth, had a contestant from anywhere in north Texas.

Indeed, the Cliburn is not the provincial talent show people outside of classical music's orbit may assume it to be.  When it first started, back in the early 1960's, some music teachers from what was then more of a small-town social club approached Van Cliburn - then one of the few fantastically-famous musical Texans who didn't strum or pluck a gee-tar - with the hopes that he would lend his name to their fledgling contest for young pianists.  Typical amateurish local-boy-makes-good publicity.  According to legend, Cliburn's fawning mother, Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn, encouraged her son, who was balking at the idea, to let the little people back in Texas use his name.  "It will only be a one-time contest," she's reputed to have dismissively advised.

So much for mother knowing best.  Today, that nice little contest in Cowtown has become one of the premiere classical music competitions on the planet.  According to the organization that runs the Cliburn, tens of thousands of people come from all over the globe to attend portions of the sprawling event, while over two million more watch online.  Not only does this add real cash to Fort Worth's tax coffers, but it provides the city with valuable publicity.  Dallas, Houston, and Austin - the other three arts capitals in the state - have nothing like it.

Okay.  So it's a big deal.  Even if classical piano music is more of a cultural niche than, say the Superbowl or the World Series.  But how did he do?

Well, last night, the names of those 12 contestants who will be advancing to the second round were released, and Alex's name wasn't on it.

Frankly, I can't imagine how disappointing that must have been for him.  I've never worked so hard for something so prestigious.  I've certainly never worked so hard and failed to gain something so prestigious!  In Alex's chosen profession, winning the Cliburn would have set his career on a trajectory of renown that only He and God could change.  The Cliburn's cash prize is a paltry $50,000, but it's the instant fame and professional booking services to manage that fame for which contestants are truly vying.  Having the Cliburn organization managing your new career in the classical music world can open a lifetime of coveted concert hall and recording studio doors.  That may not sound like much to many Americans, but classical musicians can gain iconic stature in places like Japan, China, and Russia.

Angling for all of that professional career management, however, soon came to trouble Alex.  He was a prodigy - hardly anybody can train themselves from scratch to compete at the Cliburn's level; you have to be born with the gift.  He's lived his whole life as a student of the craft that is part of his being.  As a follower of Christ, he knows he's been blessed with this ability, and he desires to use it primarily for God's glory, even if he has to commercialize it a bit to put food on the table.  Even there, he knows he's one of the fortunate ones:  somebody who knows what they do well and can earn a living at it.

So how much did he need the Cliburn?  Was trying out for - and winning a rare spot in - the Cliburn more an act of arrogance and blind ambition on his part?  Or was God in this, leading him, placing within him not only the ability, but the desire, and the tenacity?  As he pushed himself through his grueling practice regimen, he desired for God to be at the center of it all.  He didn't want to be like so many others of us who set a goal and try to drag God along for the ride, when He hasn't been the one opening those doors to begin with.

Anybody who has ever heard Alex play knows that if he didn't try for things like the Cliburn, it could almost be said that he risked suppressing the talent God has given him.  Such accusations are extremely dangerous to make, since few of us can get into the same wavelength of heart and mind between God and the individual to whom He's given such abilities.  But still, now many skills and proficiencies do we actually end up dishonoring God with by our ambivalence towards them?  This isn't about art necessarily, but maybe the gift of administration, or helps, or child-rearing, or evangelism, or writing computer code.  Maybe they won't earn us the type of money or privilege we think we want or need.  We can still honor God if we do something else, so that's what we do instead.  It's a tough call, especially with people to whom God has given such obvious expertise.

So I sent Alex a note today, and this is what I shared with him:

"From what I can tell, you've honored God with this effort, and that is the whole point. If success is doing what God wants us to do, you've been wonderfully successful! And you've treated us to some great music in the process. Thank you!"

For all practical purposes, as a professional pianist and music teacher, Alex will still be able to put on his resume that he made it through the first round of the Cliburn.  There's considerable prestige in simply being accepted into the competition.  He's not going to win the $50,000, or the instant-career-starter-kit promised by the Cliburn organization, but he's still a lot farther ahead than those who've never tried or never been accepted.

He also has now mastered - at least as far as the general public is concerned - an impressive repertoire of classical piano music that, besides making him Dallas' newest attraction at dinner parties, could help him with concert events that don't involve ticket prices topping out close to a monthly car payment.

Most importantly, however, remains the fact that Alex loves the Lord, sought His guidance and peace, and demonstrated well the gifting with which He has generously blessed him. 

So, was it worth it, even though he didn't make it to the second round?

Man looks at outward things, but God looks at the heart.  And while I would never intentionally put words in God's mouth, I can see no reason to doubt that God has seen Alex's heart all the way through this musical journey.  He was Alex's only true Audience.  Then, too, God not only knew Alex would "lose," as we mortals might say, but that even in losing, Alex would honor Him.  And that, as Alex has already done in front of those of us who've been following his musical journey, he would still give God glory.

Praise be to God!  And, bravo, Alex.

At Mount Olivet's Doughboy

That's me, just to the left of center (go figure!), in a light blue t-shirt, looking up to a nearby bridge,
where some Boy Scouts are preparing to toss a ceremonial wreath into the Trinity River
while a bagpiper plays.  This was during the maritime portion of yesterday's Memorial Day observance.

It gets shorter every year.

My friends and I guesstimate that we've been attending Fort Worth's annual Memorial Day observance at Mount Olivet Cemetery for fifteen years.  For 8 decades, Mount Olivet has hosted a traditional, no-frills commemoration of military servicemembers killed in the line of duty.  It's become the official Memorial Day event for both the city of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, usually attended by mayors, city councilmembers, county commissioners, and other local dignitaries. 

But unlike some ceremonies, this one has been getting shorter every year.

They've thrown in an extra speech - a speech to introduce the person who's giving the main speech.  This year, they added the sanctuary choir from one of the oldest congregations in Tarrant County, the politically and theologically liberal First Christian Church in downtown Fort Worth.  About 40 people dressed in red and black sang the National Anthem, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and a choral benediction.  They sounded quite good, considering they had no amplification and it was a breezy evening.

Maybe the singing helped the service seem to fly by.  But, then again...

It's never been a pretentious affair.  An executive from a local veterans association runs the show, which includes proclamations from the city and county thanking the private cemetery for underwriting the evening.  Interspersed are some military flourishes, such as a Presentation of the Colors, the playing of "Taps," a 21-gun salute by handicapped veterans in wheelchairs, and the solemn Retiring of the Colors, during which we in the audience stand in utter silence.  It's very cool hearing how respectful, dignified, and patient people can be when they want to be.

There's also usually a bagpiper from the Fort Worth Fire Department who bleats out "Amazing Grace" while marching in full regalia along rows of big American flags.

One year, the soldiers got it wrong while folding up the Stars and Stripes during the Retiring of the Colors.  They didn't have enough of the flag left over to tuck inside and create the appropriately-stiff triangle of star-spangled hallowedness.  So, instead of fudging it, they slowly and methodically unwrapped what they'd done, and started folding it again.  The whole thing must have taken ten minutes, and that's a long time when all you're doing is watching two young men fold up a piece of cloth.  But we all waited, quietly, almost religiously, to make sure it was done properly.  Veterans in attendance kept their sharp salutes the whole time, and in the stifling May heat we usually have for these ceremonies, that's no small feat.

One year, it had been raining all day, and it was drizzling as we gathered at the cemetery for the ceremony, so officials moved it indoors to one of the chapels.  I remember that the air conditioning was turned down so low that I was actually freezing - the only time I've been cold during these Memorial Day services!  I think they made the bagpiper play in another room down the hall; the low-ceilinged chapel being too small for the sound.

Yes, we could all fit into a funeral home's chapel back then.  When my friends and I started attending, the crowds were definitely small, which was one of the reasons we decided to keep attending.  The theology is thin to non-existent at these services, which are designed to be ecumenical.  And most of the speeches are by either politicians or commanders at one of our local military installations, so their quality is decidedly hollow.  But we've felt a certain obligation to make this yearly service a part of our Memorial Day Mondays, not out of a punitive sense of compulsion, but as a necessary reminder of the fact that real people have fought in real wars and died real deaths for our country.

No, we don't all agree on the merits of certain political causes, or the decisions our elected officials have made regarding warfare and picking fights with other nations, but the fact remains that our military consists of men and women who willingly - and often enthusiastically - agree to put their life on the line for the honor of our country and the freedom for which it stands.  Surely there's some sort of gratitude we're to demonstrate for such self-sacrifice?  Before being executed by the British, colonist Nathan Hale reportedly proclaimed his regret that he had "only one life to give for my country."   Even being willing to give that one life, and managing to escape armed conflict to retire from the service, never having to make good on that pledge, as most servicemembers are able to do, is worth more than many lesser Americans pledge for the lifestyle we so often take for granted.

After the main speech every year, representatives from area veterans groups line up and place ceremonial wreaths at the "Doughboy Statue," Mount Olivet's version of the "Tomb of the Unknowns."  Lest you've forgotten, the term "doughboy" comes from the Mexican-American War in which soldiers would get covered in colorless dust, and ate flavorless dough as part of their rations.  "Doughboy" became particularly popular as an affectionate reference for American soldiers during World War I.  At Fort Worth's Mount Olivet Cemetery, the "Doughboy Statue," dedicated in the 1980's, helps to anchor a section were many veterans are buried.

The number of veterans groups that participated in this part of the service used to be considerable, and the time it took for everybody to present their wreaths and observe a moment of silence could stretch for what seemed like hours, even though it was probably twenty minutes or so.  Yesterday, they were finished in less than five.  Veterans still march towards the statue in their dress uniforms, their spouses wearing outfits in patriotic colors; a few military widows and mothers, some white-haired, all of them usually dressed to the nines; many of them escorted by members of the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternity of men who wear black tuxedos, sashes, and tall hats with plumes of feathers, holding long silver swords at attention.  Solemn and silent, they walk down, and their line tends to bunch up near the Doughboy as the ones in front of them linger a bit too long in their salutes.

Only there are far fewer of them than there used to be.

For a while, it seemed as though ever year, we could notice who wasn't there.  Particularly the older men, who would shuffle with a peculiar gait, or whose comb-over was exceptionally pronounced.  There was a Japanese woman who was a member of a Japanese wives auxiliary, but when she died, apparently so did that auxiliary.  And that's been the pattern over the past fifteen years we've been attending.

There's still one tall, elegant gentleman, always in a black suit and crisp white shirt, with a tie, no matter the heat or humidity.  His full head of thick white hair blows about whenever there's a breeze, and he never sits - he's constantly wandering the periphery of the event, tiny camera in hand, taking photos of everything and everybody.  Teetering about on long, thin legs that seem about to give out on him, but still, he makes his circuit, around and around, never even flinching during the ear-popping 21-gun salute.

Each year, although we have no idea who he is, my friends and I hope to see him, knowing that one of these years, we won't.

Afterwards, on the drive home last night, my friends and I joked about maybe having to form our own auxiliary and signing-up to present our own wreath during the Doughboy part of the ceremony.  My friends were dating when we started attending these, and now they have two elementary-school-aged kids they bring along for a lesson in patriotism.  Apparently, newer generations of GI's don't join veterans groups when they leave the service, and considering the rowdy, beer-swilling, vulgarity-laced reputation many of these VFW halls have had for decades, that's likely not a bad thing.  And since the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, the attendance at Mount Olivet has been climbing almost every year.  There were probably three hundred or so people in attendance yesterday, which my friends and I thought looked like the largest crowd yet.

But somebody's still gotta lay down the wreaths, right?

In remembrance of those who've laid down their lives for our country.