On Race, and the Differences in Life...

“Dave” he said, “you’ve just lived life differently than most of us here.”

That statement, by one of the guys who has been part of our Men’s Ministry in Oaxaca, has stayed with me since the day I heard it. 

Because it’s true.

Raised as a middle class kid in suburban Southern California by blue collar working parents, my life changed the day my mom and I walked to the church around the corner from our home. That’s the place where I came to know Jesus, work my first real job, receive my call to ministry and meet my future wife.

It’s also the only house of worship I’ve ever been to that resembled the words in Revelation. The ones that speak of people from “every tongue, tribe and nation” worshiping God. That’s because in that neighborhood church, where on a regular Sunday we held four services because the place was packed, we counted among our membership Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and African American people among others.

The different life that my friend recognized started infecting me at a young age.

And so while on some level I knew that when I married Chelle way back in 1979 things were gonna be different, nothing really prepared me for reality. Let me share a little on that…

I found out it was going to be different when Chelle’s grandmother said I was of the “other persuasion.”

I found out it was going to be different when my mom’s dad, my grandfather, said I was marrying a “negress.”

I learned it was going to be different when my dad’s parents, my other grandparents and leaders in their church, disowned me for marrying a black person. And I never heard from them again.

I learned it was different when as young kids on our honeymoon, Chelle and I stepped into a barbecue house in Central California and the place went dead silent. We took our food to go. 

I experienced that difference when as I was renting our first apartment in Las Vegas before we were married, the rental manager told me that the blacks lived in the back area, but my place would be upfront. I almost rented the place just to make a mess of his racist policy.

There was also the time Chelle was accused of stealing our child, because he’s light skinned. And the time I was thankful for that light skin of his when he and I were stopped by sheriffs in Alabama. Because as Joseph later learned, we were in a no go area for black people. 

Chelle’s brother is an attorney for the US Government. We were fortunate to have his card with us on the night of Joseph’s graduation from Auburn University. Because that night of celebration, in spite of our having made a reservation weeks in advance, the front desk continually ignored us and seated others, leaving us standing… waiting. 

It took her brother’s business card, the one that said US Justice Department Division of Civil Rights, to get us our table.

I was even once on staff at a church in California when the pastor rented a house from one of church members and had to sign an agreement to never allow a black person inside. The landlord, a longtime member of that church, evicted him when he and his wife adopted their special needs black son.

I do live my life with people different from me!

And I am eternally grateful to God for that. But sometimes, like right now, it’s hard. The other night as I was sitting outside Costco with a steamship full of supplies waiting for my wife to bring the car around, I fell apart.

There I was with tears streaming down my face, overcome by the reality of a guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin case. All of those experiences I shared above, and more came flooding back to me. Experiences that no one should ever have to endure. 

And then it got worse, because I knew that absent a nine minute recording of a man’s life being ended, few would have believed what had happened. Just like when I share my experiences, people ask me if I’m sure I’m not misinterpreting something. Or making it up.

In the US, it seems like we are sitting on a knife’s edge. I don’t know how we get past this place but I do know this… unless we stop, listen and believe the stories of those different from us, and live life differently from those who aren’t following Jesus, we’re never going to see that…

“great multitude that no one could count, from every tongue, tribe and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb… worshipping God.”

And I think that would break God’s heart.

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Read More... from the "other persuasion."

Color of Compromise, by Jemar Tisby. Well researched and difficult to read if you are an evangelical. But invaluable if you want to understand a lot of the issues facing America and the evangelical world as it relates to reconciliation.

Tears We Cannot Stop, by Michael Eric Dyson. Dyson is a father, professor and pastor. This book, which he calls A Sermon to White America reads quickly, despite it's difficult title.

Light for the World to See, by Kwame Alexander. Poetry on the issue of race, and hope in America... in 1000 words. You'll be challenged to stop, think and reflect deeply. Follow this link to the whys behind this book and hear Alexander read part of it. 

Judgement from God? Sorry Dr. Dobson, I think not...

Accompanying all the publicity about the shootings in Newtown, CT recently have been the tragically cliche like responses of many on the religious right.

Almost immediately these closet theologians came out claiming the multiple deaths were evidence of God’s judgement.  Much like after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the tsunami that hit Japan, Facebook and Gmail lit up with messages exhorting us to return to God or face countless death and destruction until we got the message.

Dr. James Dobson, long a hero of conservative evangelicals had this to say on a recent radio broadcast... “...a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on."

Often when pastors and leaders make an attempt to explain the mind and actions of God, they look to passages like this one found in Jeremiah 22...

Why has the Lord done such a thing to this [us]? And the answer will be “Because [you] have forsaken the covenant of the Lord [your] God and have worshiped and served other gods.”

Let’s not mince words here.  Clearly we can see in the teachings of the prophets a distinct warning from God that, in essence, He will not be mocked.  He wants His people to be holy and set apart for His purposes.  

In this understanding of scripture, Dobson, and others like him over the years, men like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and more recently Mike Huckabee have been correct in calling America to a faith rooted in a solid belief in God Almighty.

However it is precisely at that point where many in the evangelical community are now parting with a view that God is bringing these calamities, both natural and man made, onto us because of a lack of faith and/or trust in God.

The problem isn’t a lack of faith and trust in God.  The problem for the Dobson/Huckabee crowd is the fact that evangelicals have moved on.  

We are just not that into a faith where those on the inside determine, through some sort of external observation, who is and who isn’t Godly enough.

Let me give you an example.

A few years back the son of a very dear friend of mine in Mexico was riding in the back of a pickup truck.  While waiting at a stoplight in Guadalajara, they were rear ended, resulting in near total paralysis from the neck down for a previously young healthy 16 year old boy.

I will never forget walking with the father after that accident.  He grabbed my arm to ask me a question.  Hermano David, he asked with tears welling up in eyes, do you think my son is paralyzed because God is refusing to hear my prayers due to lack of faith on my part?

This man, one of my heroes of faith for his constant trust in God through the most trying of circumstances was questioning his faith.  Why?  Because a pastor had told him that God hears and answers the prayers of a faithful man.  Obviously, because he wasn’t getting the answer he desired, it was due to a lack of faith.

Just like an earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami or even a mass shooting are due to a lack of faith and rejection of God.

Excuse me, but what a load of crap. 

But let’s for a moment, take this theological belief seriously.

What should be our response?  What would be the return to God that the prophets, men like Jeremiah, Amos, Zechariah and Isaiah, envision?

Jeremiah, like the other prophets, in that same passage where he admonishes us for turning our back on God, calls us to defend the cause of the poor and needy... that, he says is what it means to know God.  That he says, is the Good News!

That is the response we are called to live... a response of justice, love and mercy, to the least of these.  We are called to live the Good News, serving, rather than condemning others.  It is a call expressed over and over again in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament and affirmed by Jesus in the New Testament.  

Yet for some reason the response I frequently hear regarding returning to God from many on the religious right is to demonize gays, self deport immigrants without papers and cut welfare payments like SNAP and WIC.  I never hear them trumpeting God’s call to stand on the side of the poor or the least of these, proclaiming justice, mercy and peace.

I have no problem saying America and everyone else on the planet should turn to God, just as James Dobson and all the others have expressed.

I just have a problem that the way they seem to want that faith lived out bears little or no  resemblance to how the prophets and Jesus have called us to live.