#blacklivesmatter vs #alllivesmatter

A conservationist in Africa began to be concerned about the Rhinoceros species.  Although there are approximately 20,000 rhinos today, about 20% of them are in captivity (zoos), while over 20% of the overall population is being poached each year due to the value of their horns.  At that rate it appears that the species cannot stand for long except behind the bars of incarceration.  

While this conservationist was starting a movement called the #rhinoslivesmatter movement, one of his friends told him that he was offended that he was saying that rhinos lives matter when in fact all the animals lives matter, including the African buffalo.  The conservationist told his friend, “Yes, the African buffalo is a wonderful animal too, but while there are 900,000 buffalo, the rhinoceros is endangered, and if something is not done it will go extinct.”  

The friend said, “But I always see pictures of rhinos in my flip calendar, and when I take my kids to the zoo the rhinos are always there.  I think I am going to start a movement called the #allungulatesmatter movement, proving that all ungulates, whether buffalo, bison, rhino, zebra, deer, or hippo.  It’s not just the rhinos that matter, but the other ungulates matter too.”

The conservationist replied to his friend, “I am in no way against other ungulates, but this is a critical point in history for this species of ungulate.  Rhinos are being murdered and incarcerated at rates beyond other ungulates so that very soon the only way to see a rhino will be behind the walls of a zoo or it horn that was cut off.  African buffalos are also a beautiful animal, but they are not being poached or taken captive at near the same rate.  The poachers have a great monetary incentive to kill the rhino, while no such incentive exists with the buffalo.  The reason I am saying #rhinoslivesmatter is because it seems that I am a lone voice in a world bent on the extermination of the rhino, and rhinos need someone to advocate for them before it is too late.  For you to say #allungulatesmatter misses the whole point that it is rhinos lives that are being poached in such numbers that threaten speciesicide.  Friend, would you understand that I need your help.  Are you listening?  Do you hear my heart?”

#blacklivesmatter in a Christian context is like one body part hurting and needing the body to respond to the hurt.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

I, as a white male, cannot understand what it is like for a black man in today’s culture.  So I pray that I will listen more to my black brothers than talk about them or to them.  I pray this as someone who loves to talk and is bad at listening.  “Lord, give me a listening spirit.  Amen.”

Christian idea: listen to my brother

A great book to provide information on the topic of the mass incarceration of black males is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  

Two questions for the Christian family regarding the Syrian refugee crisis.

Question #1:  Should the United States allow refugees to come into the country?

This is a political question, in that it involves political leaders, elected officials, answering the question.  The governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, among others, have said, NO!, at least for now.  President Obama has answered Yes, and there is a political battle blowing up especially on facebook, with people stating both sides as their view.  I believe that this is a very easy question for the Christian family to answer.  Should our answer be based on fear, the fear of terrorists coming and killing us?  Without even going further into our refugee based nation, the quote,
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Without even going into the fact that Western White men were the terrorists who killed Native Americans and enslaved Africans based on fear. . . Without even going into the fear based idea of keeping people out which Donald Trump and George Zimmerman seem to agree so wholeheartedly on.. .. 

Should our answer be based on fear?  Should our answer not be based on compassion?  Compassion that if we do nothing we will be killing them, compassion that we would reach out in Christian love, even if that involves risk, even if that involves being misunderstood, even if that involves being hated, even if that involves death.  Should we not love, even to the point of death?  Why else are we here?  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?  That is the American Family, not the Christian family.

But this answer is easy for another reason.  It is easy because I may see the refugee at the mall, but not in my bathroom.  Inviting someone into my country demands almost nothing for the Christian family.  It is easy to post on facebook and say that we will allow, or should allow refugees into our country.  

Now for the harder question.
Question #2:  Should we allow a specific refugee or family of refugees into our home?

This is a personal question.  In a way though, the answer of yes or no are also based on either fear or love.  If I base my answer on fear I will never let a stranger in, for what if he kills me and rapes my children?  What if he beheads my whole family?  Many such questions are asked, and I will not say that nothing of the sort will happen, but I will continue my refrain, "Should our answer be based on fear?"  Do I really let a Syrian refugee family into my home?  Share our kitchen, our bathroom, our couch, our lives to the point that love is actually shown?  If love is the basis of my answer to this question I may do some crazy things.  The main objection that I see to this YES answer of mine is that why don't we let American homeless people into our homes.  While this is a very serious question, one also has to think through the roots of that person being homeless.  I have seen in my own personal life many homeless people being homeless because of alcohol or drug addiction, mental illness, or relational conflict.  I work at a homeless shelter specifically for such individuals.  The main root of the homelessness of the Syrian refugees is being in a War-torn land.  They are homeless, in huge numbers, due to war.  There is not a shelter large enough.  This is a specific crisis that demands a specific answer.  Many will read this and want to post something about fear.  If you base your response on fear you only prove my point.  Some, maybe a very few, will want to welcome Syrian refugees into your homes.  Some have already done it.  If the Christian family bases its answer to Question #2 on love, maybe we can show Christ to the people of Syria.

Christian Music #9 Urban Light Community Church

The best CD I have ever listened to, and I have listened to a lot of CDs, is Urban Light Community Church's CD, To God and To Each Other.

Am I biased?  Absolutely!  I have found that there is nothing like having a connection to the music, to know the people who are singing it.  That's why I liked Garth Brooks so much, he made me feel like the music meant something and that he was very personable.  From my friend who met Garth Brooks I hear that he is very personable, wanted to know more about my friend that talk about himself.

My wife is one of the soloists on the album.  Am I biased?  Yes!

There is nothing like your own church's music.  I hope you feel the same way.

Listen to my friend Destiny sing and tell me I am not blessed to be a part of Urban Light Community Church!

Carefrontation

When I was in college at a Christian University, someone introduced me to the idea of care-frontation.  Confrontation sounds so bad right?  It often can go bad, especially when I am confronting my kids.  I am also a soccer coach and I coach the blue team.  Often I have to yell these two words from the sidelines of a game, "SAME TEAM!"  I feel like someone should yell these two words to me when I am yelling at my kids.

Let me discuss three main aspects of how confrontation usually goes normally with my children. After something triggers my anger I decide what the main goal is, and 1. the main goal is for me to win the arguement.  After the main goal is established, I go about accomplish it by 2. the strategy of fight or flight (mostly fight), by using my voice as a weapon.  3.  I see myself as my ally, and the kids are my enemies.

Funny how this confrontation style, the one that comes naturally to me, is not very effective.  It usually creates a war in which win or lose I always feel horrid about later.  Is there any hope for confrontation, or should we not confront?

That is where Paul in Galatians 6:1 helps us in describing what I think is where people must have found the idea of carefrontation.

"Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.  Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted."

Essentially Paul was crying, "SAME TEAM!"

1.  The goal is not for me to win but for the team to win.  Restore him to what? - to the team.
2.  The way toward restoration is not fight or flight, but in a spirit of gentleness.  If I come calmly, the other person will not as easily perceive me as the enemy.
3.  The enemy is myself.  There is no I in team.  Not only could I fall prey to the very sin the other person was caught in, but I could be caught in the more destructive sin of self-righteousness and pride.

How can you do this in your life?

Decide who God is leading you to confront.
1.  See the goal as a team win not an individual win (same team).
2.  Approach not as an enemy, but as a friend (same team).
3.  Watch yourself, especially lifting yourself above the other (same team).

for white men: a white man's ideas on four dead black men

If you are already angry at the title, please know that this is intended for a specific audience:  white men.  Also know that although Tamir Rice was a boy, the man who would be also died.  This post is for my fellow white Christian men.  I am a white man.  I grew up in a small town which was almost exclusively white.  Almost no one in my town had any black friends.  I grew up not knowing who black people were.  There have been and there will continue to be many comments regarding the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and now Rumain Brisbon.  I understand that some of you are police officers yourselves or are family of police officers.  This post in no way is intended to demonize police officers.  In fact, the more police officers you get to know and be in relationship with, the more you come to love and respect police officers.  On the other side of the coin, the more I have begun to know and develop friendships with black men, the more I have come to love and respect black men.  This post is not intended to debate who is right and who is wrong.  The facts remain:  four black men are dead, one was just a boy.  How do we view these mourning families?  Do we view them as getting what they deserved?  Do we view these families as the problem of American society?  I believe that the less we know black people, the more we make assumptions like this, when really, we do not even know who black people are.  But in our internet posts we seem to know everything:  we could be the judge and jury in every case from Abel and Cain to Rumain Brisbon and the white officer who shot him.

If my wife is mad at me for something and I just keep telling her how wrong she is, our relationship is in a bad place.  If I say gruffly, which I have, “okay, I’m ready to listen. . . go ahead, tell me,” she is likely to stay silent.  My wife is quite intelligent and knows if I really want to listen or not.

Similar is the story of the white man and the black man in America.  Do I really want to listen?
Do I want white and black to be divided?  Do I want white and black to be reconciled?  Is my answer to that question the same as Jesus Christ’s answer?  This issue of reconciliation is not a political issue, but THE Christian issue:  God reconciling people to Himself and people to each other. 

I write this post for my fellow white men, men who are mostly in relationship to other white people.  I am suggesting, as a white male who still knows almost nothing at all about what it is like to be a black male in our society, the way towards racial reconciliation.

Very bold, you say, and you are right.  The way out is something that has been around for about two thousand years.  The way out is reconciliation in the church.  If churches continue to be white churches and black churches the racial divide will continue.  If churches become a family of believers united together across racial lines and begin to develop relationships in the Lord, I believe change will come.  I believe the time is ripe for pioneers, like my hero Ruby Bridges did in an elementary school, for people willing to take integration to the next level:  the church.   For such a time as this, we can take down the dividing wall on Sunday morning.  "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o'clock on Sunday morning…," Martin Luther King Jr. spoke over 50 years ago.  What has changed in 50 years?   Are you willing to be a pioneer?  Am I?

Practically speaking, what can a white man do? 

Idea number one:  Join a black church. 

I believe that if even one person reading this decided to join a black church, not in your comfort zone, not in your denominational preference, something different from what you are used to, for the sake of learning to relate to black people even as I need to learn to relate to my wife, then you will be changed.  Yes, you getting up on Sunday morning and walking through the doors of a black church.  You can’t?  Why not? 

Idea number 2:  Start a multi-racial church.

If you absolutely cannot leave your church for some reason and join a black church, try to make your church into a multi-racial church.  For more information see http://www.christenacleveland.com/2013/10/a-road-map-for-diversity/   If many of us started being part of multi-racial churches, developing relationships across the racial divide, then I believe that change will come.

One last note on Rumain Brisbon:  When my mother died in an automobile accident, she hit another man head on and he died as well.  It was her car that swerved over and hit his.  She was at fault.  Maybe she fell asleep, maybe she reached down.  When the myriad of people came to the funeral to hug me, not one brought up how stupid it was for her to swerve into the other lane.  It was many of you that hugged me and grieved with me.  I ask that we give Rumain Brisbon’s wife and four children the same consolation.  Let us not shoot a dead man again. 

Idea number 3:  Speak no evil of black men on the internet.

Words are very powerful.  I have used words many times to hurt and wound people.  I have also used words to heal people.  The words we put on the internet are very powerful.  Let us not say one bad word on the internet or anywhere for that matter. 
Idea number 4:  Ask God to soften your heart towards black men.
Satan cheers when my heart is hardened to anyone.  God does not cheer at that.  It is black men who are dying in the street and being locked up in jail in staggering disproportion to white men.  Weep with their Heavenly Father.  Weep with their families.  Could we, as the family of God, grieve together over the death of Rumain and the other men?  What if Rumain was Danny Smith instead?  What would you say on the internet if I had been killed?  Those Christians reading this, let’s remember what Jesus said in the parable of the sheep and the goats at the end of Matthew 25.  You can read it for yourself.  Whatever I do for the least of these, the black widows and orphans, the black men who fill the prisons, the black men being shot and killed, I do for Jesus Christ, the King of all Kings.

For those reading this who may be grieving the loss of someone, whether it be one of the four dead black men, or the million black men in prison (see http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet) I take time now as I end this post to weep over your loss and our loss.