Martin...

"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness, let us stand with a greater determination, and let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation, and I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you." -MLK in Memphis, April 3, 1968

"But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him." -Luke 10:33-34

I often like to highlight on MLK each year that I was named after Rev. King. It's an amazing legacy, mostly because I was named by a dad who was raised in Alabama in the 60's. It's a special honor I carry with me, and something I try often to remember to live into and up to.

And yet, this year has been different. So much, in fact, has been different. But as MLK Day approaches, I'm finding myself wrestling with much of what Dr. King said this year in a new way. You see, like many of us, come MLK Day, I post some quote, trying to capture the essence of Dr. King's thinking and to prove my credentials as someone who cares. But this year, I've tried something different. This year, I've tried to actually listen to his words.

If you're anything like me, you see a lot of the quotes and memes with Dr. King's face and words this time of year. What I'm finding is that they don't even begin to capture the essence of the man. I've been listening to his speeches, beginning to end, and I can't help but think we've so watered down his idea of nonviolence to the point of apathetic reservation. Or we've manipulated his words to endorse our own attitudes and actions.

The truth is, when I hear his words, all of his words, I don't feel endorsed. I don't feel encouraged. I don't feel proud of myself. I feel disappointed.

I feel disappointed that the calls he made 60 years ago still haven't been heeded today, that the America he describes them feels painfully similar to the America we have with us in 2021.

I feel disappointed because his nonviolence was not apathy, but action. It demanded stepping into harm's with with an impossible strength, determined not to strike back, to highlight that aggression and evil were not the tools of those fighting racism, but to maintain it. His nonviolence was rooted in sacrifice, for which we all know how it ended for him.

I feel disappointed because his words about riots feel misplaced in 2021. We take his words and validate the destruction of property, which he saw as a distraction from the message. In damage, the focus could be taken off of the purpose and onto the methods. And yet, we also miss the point he had made, that riots are a natural outcome when an entire community has been stripped of equal opportunity to health care, education, living wages generation after generation.

I feel disappointed because like Bonhoeffer, the faith of Rev. King recognized that the work of justice on behalf of God's kingdom would cost something, and I find myself, like many others, confusing activity with cost. The work of justice involves real-life choices that don't always stand in my best interest. The work of kingdom building involves choices with real-life consequences. Rev. King had words for white folk, for suburbanites, for Christians, for those with influence. It wasn't easy to follow King much like it wasn't without risk to follow Jesus. It isn't today either.

In listening to his words, I've found both a new appreciation for King as well as a new disappointment in myself. Much like with Jesus, I often try to tone down his words to make them more palatable, as if I can excuse myself from responsibility in this effort. I have simply been sitting in his words, letting them wash over my like a crashing wave and allowing myself to simply wade with their tide. Listening to King's words has reminded me that ignoring pain doesn't mean it isn't so, but rather that I have simply omitted my own responsibility from being a part of the healing.

So may we heed once again the radical words of Rev. King because radical they are. May we let them inform us, challenge us, heal us, and compel us. May we stop neutering them so that we can feel better about ourselves, but hear them so that we can figure out what's next. Now more than ever, I'm feeling particularly...

forever unfinished...

Dear Mr. President...

Dear Mr. President,

We've not met. Nor, I suppose, will you ever read this letter. I'm a simple youth minister from St. Louis, and you are holding an office which has often been described as "the leader of the free world." It only makes sense that our paths wouldn't cross.

It is with the utmost conviction that I do not often discuss politics, either here or in the greater digital sphere. We have lost the capacity to humanize and sympathize with our neighbors through screens, and dialogue and discourse are, I feel, greatly endangered when we fail to speak when we can see our neighbor.

But this isn't about partisan politics or policies. Like any other politician, there are policies with which I agree and there are policies with which I disagree. You are no different, and I would assume nothing less from a Democrat or a Republican holding your office (as I have voted for both). This is not about that.

38 months ago I was a resident of Texas. You were a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and you were coming through Fort Worth for one of your rallies. It was during Lent.

This last detail may seem insignificant, but it is in fact what drove me to attend your rally. You see, I am a praying person, and it is my deepest desire to see the fullness of humanity and God's image in each of my brothers and sisters. As I watched you debate and listened to your speeches, I'm heartbroken to say that that was difficult for me.

Your words stung and you belittled your opponents and others. We teach our students to respect one another, that Jesus' love knows no boundaries and that no one is left out. So I went to your rally to pray. For you. Because I know that transformation cannot happen until we can see the reflection of our Creator in all. We cannot have peace with some until we can have peace with all. So I went to pray that I could love you better.

And as I waited in the line that wound around the building, I caught my first tinge of pain. I stood behind an anonymous father and his young daughter. On the roads surrounding the building were Hispanic protesters driving cars, waving Mexican flags, and shouting, "Dump Trump." I had anticipated demonstrations, I suppose, so I wasn't particularly surprised. What caught me off-guard was what I heard from the father in front of me.

He looked at his daughter, somewhat oblivious to the magnitude of the occasion, and reminded her how shameful the protestors were. They must've been in America illegally. They must've been too illiterate to have real jobs like her father. They must've been out of work because they were too lazy to find a real job. My heart broke a little bit and I pulled my hood above my head as the line neared the entrance.

After passing through security, I found a spot near the back of the auditorium and began to pray. I prayed hard. But my prayers were interrupted by conversations my ears could not tune out. They were the same conversations I'd heard in line. No, they weren't about the protestors, but they were stained with the same pain and the same anger. They were filled with the same arrogance and ignorance.

But I kept praying. And then you came to the podium. So I prayed with my mouth and listened with my ears. Eventually my ears won out and I tried to show you the respect of listening without distraction. I was there the day you splashed water on the crowd to mock Marco Rubio, whose own attacks had grown increasingly immature and disrespectful as well. You were acting like a bully, Mr. President.

But what stung more than your words was the way the crowd cheered them. What broke my heart more were the ways they laughed and mocked along with you. Clearly, not everyone in the crowd was doing this, and to paint with too broad a brush would be irresponsible and unfair.

Nevertheless, I learned an important lesson in that moment. Sir, by lowering the bar of respect and civility from that podium, you were lowering it for the rest of us as well. You were validating and legitimizing anger and hate and allowing others to feel affirmed in their speech to do the same. You see, when you tweet name-calling and disrespect, you are subconsciously allowing others to do the same.

I walked out of that convention center crying. I learned the limits of my heart's grace in that place, the limits to which my heart could not bend and break any further. I hope that in that pain my heart grew wider, that those limits have been broadened. This is my confession, my humble acknowledgement that I too am imperfect.

As I watch what is happening in our world, we need more strength through grace, more power through powerlessness. I'm reminded that our God taught us to love in our fullest through sacrifice. Power wasn't wielded through might, but rather through surrender. May we both learn the lessons of Jesus.

You are my brother, which is why I have not written with sarcasm or triviality. Those are not tools for resolving family conflicts. Patience, steadfastness, and grace are the tools for such work. I write this because your microphone is louder than mine, and it is with the deepest hope that I pray you will recognize in your position the potential for all humanity's life and flourishing.

Please sir. Let us both strive to live and love our neighbors with more exuberance. Lives depend on it.

forever unfinished,
a simple youth minister

2020: A Few Reflections

As this most interesting of years comes to an end, I've been doing a lot of reflecting, and a few (unoriginal) thoughts have shaped my thinking. I typically start these blogs with quotes and Bible verses, but today, those come second. This year has been a 12-month period that has allowed us more free time than ever, and I've been more introspective than ever. So enjoy these quotes, and know that these have shaped me this year. I hope they can do the same for you.

#7: "Three thousand times a day, we're told that our hair is wrong, skin is wrong, clothes are wrong, our furniture is wrong, our cars are wrong, we are wrong but that it can all be made right if we just go shopping." -The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard

We have everything at our fingertips, and yet we're at historically high levels of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. We've bought into the lie that if we just had THAT, we'd be happy. And yet, we all know that THAT has never filled the hole of desire. We've got to reclaim contentment, the ability to find joy in what's before us and not what's wrong.

#6: "Listen to me, Corey. Throughout your life, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities that come up, and they're seem great, and they're gonna seem wonderful, and they're going to seem like they make your life a heck of a lot easier. But you have to walk away. And you know, at times, it's gonna be really difficult to do that, but you have to. Because you deserve better." -Boy Meets World

These words have echoed through my ears for more than a decade. We all know life is easier now in so many ways. We can have whatever we want, whenever we want. We live by the mantra, if it's good for me, it's good. "You do you." And yet, we'd be wise to remember the words of Paul, that just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we SHOULD do something. There are times when "no" is the only responsible response.

#5: "I made the mistake of thinking that condemning other people's misdeeds somehow made me virtuous. I'd become, I realized, a member of that class of liberals who allowed themselves to glide by on way too few political gestures and lifestyle concessions and then spent the rest of their energy feeling superior to other people who supposedly don't do as much." -No Impact Man, Colin Beavan

To be honest, this is the most recent book I've read. And I've read a lot in 2020. But this hit me hard. And I don't think it's just true of "liberals." We've girded ourselves in self-righeousness. And by we, I recognize that I can't use that pronoun without including myself. So we point out what others do wrong. It makes us feel like we've done our part. Criticism is the tool of the day. But criticism is not the end of the road. It's a tool I use too often to make me feel like I've done enough. The truth is, too often, we ask for the powers that be to change things without taking the responsibility to institute changes in our own worlds. We push for greener laws from Congress, but we consume at ever rising rates with more disposable packaging than ever. We call on cities to enact more just laws around racial disparities, but how are we giving up our own privileges without being asked to help raise others up? Again, I count myself ever first in this collection of we.

#4:

-Great Dictator

It's true. "We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want." This call was as true 70 years ago as it is today. We have to re-establish our trust in our neighbors. We've got to step away from screens and towards one another. We've got to let go of power and reclaim humility. The desire for power has poisoned our souls, and it's not a Right or Left problem. Our connections are threatened. Our relationships strained. We've got to recapture the capacity to see value and purpose in one another, even (and perhaps especially) if we disagree.

#3: “Jesus was always too busy being faithful to worry about success. I'm not opposed to success; I just think we should accept it only if it is a by-product of our fidelity. If our primary concern is results, we will choose to work only with those who give us good ones.” -Tattoos on the Heart, Greg Boyle

In 2020, the mandate across all sectors was to maintain and grow. Be creative. Be productive. Adapt. Grow engagement. But engagement was never Jesus' goal. Growth wasn't an aim in and of itself. Where we should always begin is, "What do people need?" and how can we participate in what God is doing in the world to bring that healing. Efficiency and engagement were never Kingdom values. In fact, the Kingdom of God is INefficient most days. Grace is in it for the long haul. Real problems demand more than 260-character tweets. They demand more than streaming hits. Grace compels us to roll up our sleeves and slow down.

#2: "If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!" "If," Rudyard Kipling

I've hiked to this poem being read by Ray Fiennes on repeat. I've spent time rehabbing my wife's old house while its words floated through the air over and over again. There's not a single line or stanza that doesn't perfectly express my hopes for what I might become. We're not finished products. And if I'm not one, then neither are you, and neither are they. That's the meaning of grace. And the Jungle Book author so captures the struggle of growing in 2020, even if he was writing it a century ago.

#1:

A Troll in Central Park

I turn to this song more than likely any other in existence. It's silly and from a movie that has long been lost to the annuls of irrelevance. But it's hope encapsulates all I've felt about 2020, and most of my life. Sometimes, when all else feels lost, I too "like to close my eyes so my heart can plainly see right through the way things are clear to the way they ought to be."

Silent...

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." -MLK, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." -Ezekiel 36:26

By nature, I don't post much about current events. I usually say it's because conversations rarely breathe life on Facebook. I believe that with all my heart, but the truth is it's likely a result of cowardice. I don't like offending. I hold it as a deep sense of pride that I have friends from all across the country of unique backgrounds and worldviews and upbringings and political perspectives. I like to celebrate the diversity of my friends. I happen to think it makes my life richer. However, we've unfortunately so structured the world that everything is forced to fit into a "this" or a "that," an "either" or an "or," an "us" or a "them." And in a world like that, offending feels unavoidable. Problems feel unsolvable. So I often stay silent.

But I'm recognizing that that is an unsustainable approach. I don't know how to avoid the gridlock of partisanship, but I know that as someone who follows Jesus, silence is no longer optional.

I tell my students often that we usually miss the mark when it comes to talking about faith. We usually talk about faith as an idea we agree with. We talk about faith as belief. If we believe, that makes us a Christian and so the story goes. But we've so missed the invitation Jesus offered. Jesus invited followers, not believers. The word we often translate as "faith" in the Old Testament is a Greek word pistis. Pistis didn't mean some kind of intellectual assent, like believing that 2+2=4. Pistis was a faith that re-oriented action. It's an idea rooted in trust, like crossing a rope bridge over Niagara Falls and having faith that it will hold.

That's why, when Jesus met some fishermen, he invited them to follow. He didn't invite them to believe in an idea. He invited them to re-orient their lives around the reality of the Kingdom of God. He invited them to do what he did, knowing that in the fullness of that trust, they could. To follow Jesus means to surrender to the Kingdom of God and to the life-changing reality that it invites us into.

And let's be clear, that work isn't easy. LOTS of people backed away from that invitation. I'm beginning to think that it's because being like Jesus is a harder proposition than most of us like to acknowledge. The entire existence of Jesus is rooted in the movement of a God apart from the action and suffering of God's creation into its messiness. To be like Jesus, to follow Jesus, means to spend time with people like Jesus, which isn't comfortable very often. To be like Jesus is to oppose the systems that were built to dehumanize and marginalize. To be like Jesus is to reimagine who is in and who is out, and you'll find that very, very few were out with Jesus. To be like Jesus is to sacrifice and surrender for the good of those who couldn't help themselves. To be like Jesus is to grieve and lament the pain in the world and participate in hope springing eternal. To be like Jesus is to work towards downward mobility. To be like Jesus is to fight for the inefficiencies inherent in agape love. That's not an invitation most of us run towards.

In light of another shooting of an unarmed black man by police in America, to follow Jesus means that we can no longer remain silent, innocent bystanders trying to look away. Nowhere in the four gospels do we find a prescription for institutionalized American racism, as if we can simply take what Jesus says and shift them into policy plans. But to follow Jesus is to re-imagine family. And when I see my Black brothers and sisters have to strive harder for half the reward, when I see the disparities in education and work opportunities between Black and White communities, when I see Black men and women shot because they "look more dangerous," my heart breaks for my family. When I see my brothers and sisters hurting, my heart hurts. My family is hurting.

This isn't a Republican or Democrat problem. The truth is Jesus wouldn't have supported either party. I find it hard to believe Jesus would've ever participated in a system where one group is raised above the other. No party holds an exclusive claim on Jesus, primarily because Jesus didn't seek power, but gave it up to uplift others. Power seeks to keep power, and Jesus surrendered his. Jesus found the "least of these" and ran towards them in full force. No, this is a human problem that demands we reignite the latent empathy in our souls. It demands the same resurrection that Ezekiel cried out for, that our hearts of stone would be cracked and replaced with a heart of flesh, capable again of love and the ability to sacrifice for the good of our neighbors.

I don't know what the "right" ways to protest are. I usually don't know know what to "do." I really don't know how to be a part of this work and I certainly don't have the right solutions to the depths of these problems. How do you work against systems so entrenched that they don't even seem like problems anymore? The honest truth is I don't know. But I do know that following Jesus means asking questions to figure out the answers. I do know that following Jesus means participating in the work. I do know that following Jesus means spending more time in the kind of community Jesus imagined in the early church, one that broke down the lines of gender, race, and background. I do know that following Jesus means getting some skin in the game and risking rejection. I do know that following Jesus means restoring humanity to those we fear or rage against.

I pray. It's become easy to lambast the offering of thoughts and prayers in moments of tragedy. I suppose that sentiment, tweeted out from the comfort of a couch, can seem trite. And yet, I've found that miracles happen more often when people are praying than when they're not. I've found myself more drawn into the invitation of Jesus to participate when I'm praying. I've found myself more connected to the struggles and people I'm praying for when I pray.

I believe in building bridges. I've rarely been on the frontlines, and I'm not sure that I'll start finding myself there at all times. But what I am certain of is that the work of those who follow Jesus is to participate in making this world more like the one Jesus is calling into being. I am certain the work will likely involve surrender and sacrifice by me. But I'm all the more certain today that my silence is no longer sustainable, no longer faithful. Racism is sin, my friends, and our question as people following Jesus isn't whether or not to fight it, but why we aren't.

forever unfinished...

I Am White...

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One ever feels his twoness,-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -W.E.B. DuBois, "The Souls of Black Folk"

"Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." -Galatians 6:2

"What's it feel like to be the oppressor?"

I'll never forget hearing those words. I was a sophomore in college, completely unaware of so many of the deep-seated realities of racism in our world. Yet there I was, the only white guy in a class called Black Liberation and Womanist Theology as a religion major. I loved the class. It stretched me. I read things that made me more uncomfortable than anything I'd ever read, books with words like oppression and White Devil.

But that particular day kicked off with a bang. Justin, a Black defensive lineman on the football team who looked like he could finish me in one swing if he'd wanted to, asked me those eight words as class started. I was startled. Not even that, I was defensive. I was stunned. I wanted to hide in a shell for the next 90 minutes and sprint to the door.

But I didn't. And he wasn't trying to intimidate me. It was a legitimate question. And after 90 minutes of conversation, I started to get it. He wasn't accusing me of oppressing him. He wasn't accusing me of bigotry and racism. In fact, by the end of the class, we'd done more honest sharing and grown more comfortable with each other than any other 90-minute session would've allowed.

He was getting at a deep reality that I was uniquely positioned to speak to. In very few moments in my life do I have to worry about how others are perceiving me because of my identity. I don't need to identify myself by my whiteness because we've largely imagined it as the default (imagine why there is a Black Congressional Caucus but not a White one). I don't have to prove myself twice over because of my gender like so many women still have to do. No one needs any explanation or asks any questions when I describe my sexuality or faith. I get to just be me.

Not everyone in our world gets to live with that same freedom. For so many, they're forced to live within the constraints of what W.E.B. DuBois coined "the double-consciousness," the reality that for most Black folks in America, they must live true to themselves AND project an image acceptable to the world around them. I know this is true, because I've never wondered if I'd be safe when pulled over. I've never wondered if the police would be called because the car I was driving looked "too nice." I've never wondered if I'd get beaten for talking to a white girl. I've never wondered if I'd be allowed to buy a house in a particular neighborhood.

I didn't even know to think about those questions. It took what Donald Miller calls an "inciting incident." It took being uncomfortable and being forced to wrestle with questions that tinged me with guilt and sadness and defensiveness and frustration and exhaustion. It took Justin. We all need an inciting incident. We all need a nudge. I still need lots of nudges.

But I also know that we need compassion. Compassion is a simple word with so much depth. Literally, it means to "suffer together." To carry one another's burdens. We all have burdens. We all carry pain. We all carry suffering. Instead of it motivating us towards comparison, forever arguing over whose suffering demands greater redress, our shared pain ought to attune our ears to hear the pain of others. We're all intersections of unique stories and pain, and that intersectionality ought to highlight our own pain so that we can see and sympathize with the pain of others. It doesn't require us to prioritize some over the other, nor does it necessitate that we delegitimize honest and painful reflections as not "woke" enough or not "activated"enough.

As I watch our country's cities burn, I can't help but hear pain. It's been crying out for far longer than just the past few days. It's been crying out for centuries. We've been inflicting pain on our Black brothers and sisters for far too long. It doesn't have to look like lynchings and cross-burnings. It doesn't have to wear white hoods. It looks like restrictive housing policies, localizing poverty in African-American communities while opportunity immigrated to the suburbs. It looks like policing policies and attitudes that result in dead unarmed Black men. It looks like the side glances and off-handed jokes we make about the Black students who don't really belong at our school except that they play sports or met some diversity quota. It looks like assuming the man in front of you is a janitor, not the physician, simply by virtue of their skin color.

But I hear pain. Where hope has been silenced, opportunity suppressed, and equality denied, pain sometimes requires a louder voice. Systems don't often respond to whispers. They don't often respond to single voices. Sometimes the voices of hopeless pain must scream from the tops of their lungs in protests. Regardless of our response to the mediums that voice takes, we have to hear pain. We have to hear trauma. We are called to compassion, to hear the suffering of our neighbors and try to help carry it.

This is the work of God's people. God's people were never called to a life of passivity. We're called to stand in God's presence and proclaim the kingdom of God. if you're curious what that kingdom looks like, it often involves embracing the least of these, the forgotten, the voiceless and hopeless. Throughout scripture, God has stood alongside those suffering. God has seen our suffering and heard our cries of pain and declared, "I am with you." If we want to stand in the presence of God, there are worse first steps than to stand with those God stands with and amongst. There are worse places to stand than with those crying out. Listen, and we may just hear the voice of God speaking.

I have so much to learn about loving God and loving God's people. I have so much to learn about my own prejudice and my own pain. I have so much to learn about the pain of Black Americans. I need so much more courage and less defensiveness. I've got to let go of so much of the fear that drives me! But that's the work of faithful disciples of Jesus. May we take that on, striving faithfully every day to take another step towards becoming the people God made us to be and working for a world of shalom like the one God created this world to be. It won't be without pain. It won't be without discomfort. But Jesus never invited us to those things. God began with a garden, getting God's hands dirty with the work of creating a new world. May we get our hands dirty and do God's work.

forever unfinished...

We...

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." -Galatians 3:28

"We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons... We sacrificed. We cared about our neighbors. We never beat our chests... We cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence. We didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election." -Will McAvoy, The Newsroom

Like plenty of Americans, I spent a fair amount of last week watching the impeachment hearings in Washington D.C. I tried to remain productive while the headphones in my ears caught the testimony of lifelong public servants and their responses to questioning from elected officials trying to get to the heart of a phone call and foreign aid irregularities. I've got to tell you, I came away disappointed.

In fairness, I had numerous disappointments. But chief among them was the knowledge that everything was built for political points, 10-second talking points meant to be splashed across Facebook and Twitter to activate the bases. One side spoke to theirs, the other to theirs. And all the while, while we should have been having an honest conversation about power and truth, we were subjected to tribalism playing out on a national stage.

We're increasingly people of labels. We cultivate a set of labels by which we want others to identify us. Conservative. Liberal. Republican. Democrat. Gay. Straight. Millenial. Boomer. Man. Woman. Christian. Atheist. Alabama fan. Auburn fan. The list goes on and on.

We want people to see what we're about and deduce something about us. But we're also doing a tragic job of tossing labels onto others, and that exercise is rarely as gracious. Snowflake. Bigot. SJW. Racist. Alt-Right. Libtard. Elitist. Socialist. Alabama fan. Auburn fan. You know the names.

And we ascribe a set of assumptions to go along with these labels. If you're this, then you must inherently be that. I assume this is why, when I was young, we didn't ask people who they voted for in elections. If we knew who people voted for, we might be inclined to appreciate them less. Oh, weren't those the days.

But even more terrifyingly, we've begun to identify people by these labels rather than their uniqueness and individuality. "I could never love someone who..." I assume that none of us would prefer to be identified by stereotypes, and yet we're quite adept at doing it to others.

Black and white is a terrible way to go through life. Us and Them isn't any better. Picking a camp and filling it with people who fit into very specific and rigid expectations leaves us awfully lonely and never forces us to ask questions that might make our own lives and perspectives richer. We unfollow people who think differently than us and close our eyes to opinions different than ours. We gather our news from sources likely to support our conclusions and demonize other outlets.

More troubling, we're more likely to pull out our phones and capture an incident than step in to help. We see our neighbors as a profile picture and archetype rather than a complex human being. I'm finding myself rooted in the idea that solution isn't another Facebook comment thread war or sharing another video to convince our neighbors and family of our position. No, in fact, just stop.

We have to remember how to be WE. We have to get to know people, not just as targets of debate or echo chamber supporters, but as people. We need to know one another's stories and passions. We need to remember one another's humanity and wonder. We've got to get over the idea that cooperation and compromise are evils, that shared ground is to us what "hot lava" was to children on the playground.

In the past couple of years, there is a picture from scripture that has become increasingly important to me: the Last Supper. Jesus had spent 3 years gathering disciples, healing the sick, restoring the broken, pushing against powers that were hurting people, preaching, and more. And at the end, he gathered his 12 closest disciples around a dinner table to eat together and paint them a picture of love at its core. He took the bread and the wine and let them tell a story of sacrifice and covenant. Jesus was going to be killed so that a covenant of love could be sealed, and he sat around a dinner table, surrounded by friends, to spend his last few moments.

What's become most remarkable to me is imagining who was seated with Jesus around the table. There were teenagers and doctors. There were not-good-enoughs and there was the one who was going to betray him. But it is two, Peter and Matthew, whose presence has most transformed me. Peter, also known as Simon, was a Zealot, meaning that he was actively working to tear down Roman occupation in Israel when he was called by Jesus. Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus found him, meaning that he was actively profiting from the Roman occupation of the Jewish people. Their political ends were diametrically opposed, and yet here they were seated around a table with Jesus, breaking bread and enjoying the feast together.

Their labels may have been incompatible, but their calling and experience of God's grace weren't. Jesus didn't have litmus test questions when he met his followers. He just offered invitations. And he modeled a community where ALL were invited. People with vastly different ideologies spent 3 years together learning to live together. We'd do well to learn.

With that in mind, I have great news: you're not perfect. Some of your opinions are wrong and some of the words you choose to use hurt people. You make poor choices and selfish decisions. I've got some more great news: neither is anyone else, either. Most of us are trying our best each day to leave the world a little better place. Most of us are giving it our all and falling like failures most days. A little grace for one another would go a long way.

May we learn to live out the kind of community Jesus modeled at the Last Supper. May we learn to drop the labels and see people with the grace we'd hope to receive from them. May we extend olive branches when they feel sure to be unreturned and stop demonizing one another on the internet. We can do better. WE can do better. We've got to rediscover the wonder of We-ness. May we find success in becoming the community Jesus imagined.

forever unfinished...

Functioning Workaholic...

"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." -Genesis 2:2-3

"We have enough work, but too little time for God and life. We have enough money, but we opt for a cycle of consumption and waste. We canonize the American dream and worship it." -Matthew Sleeth, 24/6

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor." Those were my words of encouragement to Travis Garner. Or maybe they were words of conviction. Or maybe compassion. I'm not really sure, all I know is that, at the time, I felt like they might have been the most insightful words I'd ever breathed into existence. More likely, they were the words of a spunky college student with an inflated sense of self-importance.

First, let me give some background. I was a college chaperone of a winter youth retreat for the church I'd grown up in. Travis had been my youth pastor growing up, and against all reasonable wisdom, he'd invited me to be a "responsible adult" for this weekend retreat. (At this particular stage of life, "responsible" and "adult" were terms held very loosely in any sentence involving my name.)

At some point overnight, one of our more adventurous high schoolers had attempted a physics assignment: to discover how much force his hand, when applied as a fist, required to create a hole in the drywall of the cabins. I'm not sure what the result was in Newtons, but he eclipsed it.

After the big group session that morning, Travis pulled all the high school boys aside and erupted in a tirade of epic proportions. Veins were bulging. Decibel level records were eclipsed. I think at least 1/3 of the boys were in tears. (At least that's how my memory remembers it, because I might have been one of the boys crying.)

As the gang shuffled out with the timidity of a scolded puppy, I caught Travis looking like he'd reached the breaking point. It was the kind of moment when you realize this isn't really about that. The talk hadn't really been about the hole in the wall. It was simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Yes, the hole needed to be replaced, but this was a man who needed a break.

So of course, once it was just the two of us, I interjected.

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor," I offered with my infinite depth of perspective and wisdom. "You seem stressed. You can't do it all."

Now, if I heard that feedback from a college chaperone as a student pastor now, I think I'd explode. It's a testament to the patience and wisdom of Travis that my tongue wasn't ripped out at that moment.

I imagine he's forgotten that moment. I, however, have that conversation forever seared in my mind. With any luck, it'll seep into the fiber of my being and become my life motto: become a more mediocre student minister every day.

Don't get me wrong: I love teenagers. I love my work and I love the church I get to serve. It gives me so much meaning and I feel so fortunate to be able to live out my calling doing something I love. But in loving what I do, I've bought into the lie so many of us invest in: the busier and more tired we are, the more value we have. The less we rest, the more we work, the better our lives will be.

Let's test this, shall we? When someone asks you how you are, I bet your default answer is similar to mine. When I don't offer the half-hearted "OK," it's almost always "I'm tired." We pass it along as a badge of honor, and we've bought into this idea that exhaustion is the default gear in which we were made to operate.

We can respond to all of those emails as we fall asleep in bed.

We can reschedule that meeting, even if it means delaying a date night or our kid's soccer game.

We can plow ahead and work the weekends when what we need more desperately than anything is a nap. (But we can't nap, because there's no time for that silliness.)

I'm beginning to think I might be a functioning workaholic. Sure, it's all good on the surface. But there's collateral damage when we are willing to perennially say yes to work.

But that's not how we're made. We're made for rest. From the very beginning, we were structured for work and wired for rest. In the very beginning, the very first rule God gave the people was something called Sabbath. God had created for six days, and then God laid down on a La-Z-Boy and dozed. It was a "gift" we're told. (Just as an aside, I figure the duck-billed platypus is one of those things that happened while God was on break.)

And over and over again in scripture, we hear this reminder to observe the Sabbath. It wasn't just some theoretical proposition. It was held in the same 10 Commandments that include things like not killing and not stealing. We don't hold those particularly casually, but we're quick to skimp on the resting and recovering.

And God kept reminding the people continually that this wasn't just a suggestion. It's in our DNA. Based on personal experience, there was good reason. Taking a stop doesn't come natural. We always stretch our capacity. If we make more money, we spend it. If we have more time, we spend it. But what I've discovered in giving money away is what I assume happens when we give time away. It re-orients the time we do use for work. We become more focused. We become more present. We realize we were made for something more.

And then we rest. I need it. We need it. We can't keep up at this pace. We weren't made for the hamster wheel, and the good news is, believe it or not, we can step out of it at any time. Because the even better news is, we are not defined by what we do or what we produce. Our value and worth is not determined by our work.

What's true of planted fields is true of us: every so often we have to stop and recover if we want to operate at our full capacity. And life is meant for full capacity. We've got to stop telling ourselves that we can keep on going. We can't. If God can rest after forming the world, we can certainly rest after a weeks' worth of conference calls and planning meetings.

So here's my promise: I'm trying to be a worse student pastor. I'm trying to be more present and invested in the moment to moment in front of me. I'm trying to put my phone down and experience the world going on all around me. I'm trying to let emails sit unanswered over the weekend because my worth is not tied to response time. I'm trying to rest and say "No", and in the process, I'm betting that by accident, I might just become a better student pastor too.

forever unfinished...