Month: October 2015

THE PARABLE OF VANNA WHITE

Vanna White needed a new transmission. I guess I should explain that.

Tradesmen often name their trucks. The maintenance crew I worked with in the early nineties was no different. The ancient, white Ford Econoline 150 panel van that the carpenters used was so reliable, doing the same simple tasks day after day, well past her prime, that they called her Vanna White. Only now her transmission was slipping. It was time for a rebuild.

I put her on the lift, removed the big automatic tranny, dismantled it, cleaned it out, installed a rebuild kit in the old case, and hoisted it back into place; a six or seven hour job. Then I filled it with transmission fluid and took it for a drive. It slipped, right between first and second gear.

So I did it again, looking carefully for mistakes; and it slipped again. So I did it again. And again. And again. And again. It kept slipping! I was ready to quit!

Now let’s pause this parable and ask a question: Is there some part of your spiritual life that isn’t working? Are you continually disabled by a slip into sin whose source is invisible to you? Have you gone over the details again and again, tried as hard as you can to solve your problem, and failed?

Good. Coming to the end of our resources is the best place we can be because only then are we ready to receive the power to overcome the “sins that so easily entangle us.” The Apostle Paul explained it as the difference between living in the “flesh,” translated “sinful nature” in the NIV, versus living in the “Spirit.” (See Galatians 5:16-25). Jesus spoke similarly in John 6:63 when he said, “The flesh counts for nothing. The Spirit gives life…”

Everything about us, our bodies, our minds, our emotions and personalities, were permanently weakened by the power of sin. We “slip between first and second.” Until the day we physically die that power will remain. In fact the only way to conquer the power of sin is through death. That is the beautiful thing about the gospel. In Christ we did die, not a physical death, but a spiritual one. We died with him to the power of sin. When the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ his death and his resurrection become ours in spiritual fact (See Romans 6). The trick is to learn how to live in the power of those things.

Remember Vanna White? The sixth time I pulled the transmission from the old van I remembered another Ford E 150 in our fleet. The engine had died and we junked it, but not before pulling all other usable parts, one of which was the transmission. Automatic transmission casings are cast with hydraulic control circuits critical to their operation. If the case cracks in the right place, a place invisible to the naked eye, those circuits will leak under pressure and the transmission will slip. I pulled the new parts out of Vanna White’s original transmission case and installed them in the one from the van that had “died” and Viola! No more slipping between gears!

The problem most of us face in overcoming sin is that we try to stuff new parts into our old life. We need new parts in a new life. Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit within us we can overcome by exchanging our life with Christs. Only when we have given up on trying to improve ourselves by our own will power are we able to begin operating in the power of the Spirit. Only when we have exchanged Christ’s life for ours are we able to know his power to overcome.

KOINONIA IS SHARED LIFE

KOINONIA IS SHARED LIFE

2015

Speed skating is a Dutch sport. It originated in the 14th & 15th centuries when people figured out how to make a blade run on the ice. They began skating on their frozen canals as a form of transportation. Then, like good sports everywhere, they figured out how to race with skates.

The Dutch are true fanatics of speed skating. They all wear orange. They paint their faces. They wear funny orange hats. They even have their own band called “Little Beers” that travel with them to each event. Every ice rink is home field advantage for the Dutch because their fans go to every race in Europe. Nobody tells the Dutch that they have to go to the speed skating races. They go because they love it. They love the sport. They love each other loving the sport. They wouldn’t think of missing it.

The Dutch speed skating fans are a good metaphor for the Christians in Acts 2: 46-47 who “met together every day in the temple courts, breaking bread and eating together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” Nobody had to tell them to meet together every day in the temple and eat together from house to house. They spent time together because they loved Jesus together. They loved each other loving Jesus. They wouldn’t have thought of missing it.

The Greek word used in Acts and throughout the New Testament for the life they were sharing is Koinonia, often translated “fellowship.” Koinonia means “sharing in common.” They shared a common life: a common table, a common purse, a common set of values, and a common love for one another. Most of all they shared Christ and what he had done for them. They were eager to share what he had done for them with others.

The kind of love that builds a body of believers isn’t just a human love. It isn’t “affinity group love”, a love built on commonalities of education, income, race, outlook or profession. It’s supernatural love. It’s an affinity built on the Christ we have in common, the salvation we have in common, and the continuous life-change we are experiencing together in him.

There are some hurdles to building this kind of community. It requires vulnerability, enough transparency to talk about what God is doing in our lives. That takes trust. It also requires belief that we are just as needy before God as the neediest person in the church. That takes humility. Finally, it takes commitment, the determination simply to show up and be part of what is going on. That takes, sacrifice; maybe not as much as painting your face orange and riding trains all over Europe to shiver while others race, but sacrifice nonetheless.

As churches grow in size it becomes more and more important that they build those connections with each other. Some churches do it with small groups on week nights, others through Sunday school programs and various Bible and book study ministries. Whatever your church does I encourage you, as you gather, to build the trust that enables vulnerability, to share with others what Christ has done and is doing in your life. Acts reports that as the early church did this, “the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved.” I believe that as you build koinonia in your church, he will do the same.

What THE BUTLER Did For Me

Not long ago my neighbor, Ralph, an African American man for whom I have deep respect, and I were chatting in our back yard. We usually talk about our kids or joke with each other about our geriatric joints and other ailments with him always having the last laugh. “Just wait till you’re seventy. You ain’t seen nuthin yet!” But that day I had more on my mind. Something in the news, or in my reading, made me want to understand more about his life as a black man in America. At seventy-odd, his is a longer experience than mine.

“Ralph, one day I want you to tell me what it was like for you as a black man in the American south in the twentieth century,” I said.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Atlanta.”

Ralph’s face clouded a bit, something I’d never seen before, and he said, “Well then, you know … you know.” And that’s all he would say.

But I didn’t know, not from the inside, the way I wanted to know.

I was four years old when the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which desegregated the schools, passed. I grew up in the turmoil it precipitated among the races; especially in the schools I attended in the Atlanta suburbs. I’m sure my family would have been considered racist by the standards of today, but we didn’t consider ourselves so. We didn’t march with Dr. King or anything like that. But my father had stood up for the right of a black man to join his Southern Baptist Church in 1957, and my mother was always kind to the black people we met.

Desegregation didn’t affect me until I reached middle-school age, in 1973. From then until I graduated high school my experience of desegregation was one of upheaval, disorder, disruption, and danger. Knowing what I do now, I can’t say I blame the black kids of that generation for the anger and aggression they displayed toward us white kids, but it wasn’t conducive to the development of a sympathetic attitude either.

Time moved on and so did I. I became a follower of Christ and became committed to racial reconciliation. But I still couldn’t say that I understood the African-American experience with any depth. I knew my story, but I didn’t know theirs, not with empathy.

Then, via Netflix, I watched the bio-picture LEE DANIEL’S THE BUTLER (2013), starring Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a man who rose from the cotton fields of Georgia to become butler to eight presidents in the White House. THE BUTLER is loosely based on real-life White House butler, Eugene Allen, who retired in 1986 after thirty-four years of service. It is to the racial turmoil of the time what FOREST GUMP was to the Viet Nam War, a comprehensive narrative of one powerless man’s journey through a world fraught with legalized oppression, naked cruelty, and blind hypocrisy. I saw through Cecil’s eyes, the bitter brutality of racist southern farmers and the lordly arrogance of hypocritical politicians and business men. I’ve known men like that, I thought. I winced too at the quiet carnage of condescension, remembering women with saccharine smiles, as dismissive of black personhood as they would be a soiled napkin.

I’ve also known men and women like Gaines, servants with such self-mastery that they could be “invisible in the room,” even when the people they were serving tossed off thoughtless insults that would have enraged me. That was the films greatest impact, Gaines’ ability to rise above the bigotry of his employers with a dignity that revealed his inner nobility, and their shabbiness. His commitment, even his joy, in performing with excellence the most menial tasks brought honor to everything he did. (1 Peter 2:12).

Through his relationship with his oldest son, who became a freedom rider and later a congressman, I also learned the inner conflict many older black men and women had with the civil rights movement. They knew in their bones that the cause was just, but they hated the disorder it brought and feared the predictable backlash.

Finally, the film helped me understand on a visceral level, why the majority of African-American men and women felt obligated, if not compelled, to vote for Barak Obama to serve as president. It just makes me wish Ben Carson had been running against him instead of McCain or Romney.

LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER, is not a bio-pic in the strict definition of the word. “While the movie The Butler is set against historical events, the title character and his family are fictionalized,” states director Lee Daniels. “We were able to borrow some extraordinary moments from Eugene’s real life to weave into the movie.” I hope everyone, black and white, who did not live in that era, will watch the film and share what they learned. It will go a long way toward building reconciliation.

If you want to know the real history of Eugene’s life, visit http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/the-butler.php.

STOP THE SHOOTINGS

Trauma. Pain. Innocent and young lives lost, those left behind forever wounded, all because a psychopath with a gun decided he wanted to make a name for himself. Who among us does not feel the clawing grief? Who among us doesn’t want to end it? Other nations have managed it, or at least slowed it down. Why can’t we?

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Charleston, the Navy Yard, and now Roseburg—the list is too long. I wrote a theology of resisting evil in 2013 attempting to address the problem. Find it here: http://www.fccsobo.org/rwt-blog-39101. I stand by that theology, but it’s not enough. The mass shootings keep happening, showing no signs of slowing down. We need to stop them. Perhaps we need to reconsider? I decided to do that. I hope you find the results helpful.

Two Controlling Considerations
Because there’s a lot of noise about this, we need to boil it down to the essentials with two considerations.

First, we need to compare apples to apples. These are mass shootings of four or more defenseless people, often children, in a confined space with few exits like a school room, a church, or a movie theater, often in so-called “gun-free” zones. Conservatives like to point out that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, yet suffers one of the highest gun related murder rates (59 murders and 362 gunshot victims in September alone). I don’t disagree. But we’re not talking about armed robberies and drug deals gone bad, crimes of passion and the like. We’re talking about the unprovoked massacre of undefended innocents, “soft targets” in military jargon.

Second, we live in America, not Australia, not Canada, not the UK or any other place. We are the first nation on earth where the right to bear arms is specifically written into our founding document. America was born with a gun in its hand for good reason. We tasted tyranny early on and spat it out with the conviction that we would never knuckle under again. The Founders believed, and many of us still agree, that an armed citizenry is the first defense against violent oppression on a personal as well as civic level. Conservatives will point out that there are more violent crimes prevented by law-abiding gun owners each year than are ever reported in the press, and none of them receive the media attention given to mass shootings on soft targets. True enough, but were we candid we would also admit that this isn’t 1776. It isn’t even 1940. This is 2015 and if we think a few modern minute-men with AR 15’s and homemade mortars are going to stop a determined government with M-1 Abrams Tanks, F/A 18 Hornets, smart bombs and Reaper Drones, we aren’t just mistaken, we’re deluded.

Two Questions
That leaves us with two questions, one short-term and one long.

First, taking seriously the biblical worldview that we are fallen creatures prone to personal evil and political tyranny, what is the fastest way to stop the shootings, the most expedient method to halt the mass murder of soft targets without cashing in our constitutional rights?

Second, what long-term, systemic changes can we make that reasonable people on both sides of the debate would agree on?

Two answers are offered, one by the radical left, the other by the radical right. One calls for a total gun ban, the other for almost no changes at all. Neither is adequate for the short or the long term. Neither is politically realistic. We need to find something in the middle that will address the short-term reality as well as the long-term need that everyone can agree on.

Three Factors
Workable solutions must address the combination of three contributing factors that have emerged in the analyses of multiple mass shootings. (I’m leaving Islamic jihadists out of this discussion because their motivations are different, but some of the solutions will apply to them anyway).

First, these places are soft targets. They may have had defensive strategies in place: instant notification systems, lock-downs, gun-free zones and the like. But as we’ve repeatedly witnessed, these systems are inadequate.

Second, the shooters are almost always fatherless, mentally unstable, emotionally wretched, narcissistic, cowardly, suicidal-yet-vengeful young men. Some (all? we don’t know) of them have been on and off of psychiatric medicines that have known violent side effects, especially when discontinued cold-turkey. They have easy access to weapons, are almost always fascinated by the instant fame of previous shooters, commit their crimes at the end of a slow, bitter burn of self-justifying resentment, and often broadcast their intentions ahead of time on social media.

Third, America has a woefully inadequate mental health care system for such people coupled with equally deficient involuntary committal laws for those with serious mental illnesses. Many of us voted this state of affairs into existence when we voted for Ronald Reagan, who led the charge in the dismantling of state mental health hospital systems in the 1980’s.* We did it for humane reasons, as many of the things that happened in those institutions make the VA look like Mayo Clinic. Further, any law that makes it possible to commit people against their will is vulnerable to abuse. But the law of unintended consequences prevails and we are paying a steep price. Would that these young villains could have been institutionalized before they imploded.

Short and Long-Term Solutions
Boiling it down to the essentials makes the following solutions seem pretty obvious:

Short-term: Harden the targets. These shooters are cowards. The ones that haven’t killed themselves almost always run when confronted by armed defenders. Hire ex-military men or women who are trained in close quarter combat with civilians present. We have thousands of them available at this point, after the Iraq war. And take down the ineffective gun-free zones—they are like red flags to raging bulls. If we aren’t going to hire armed resource officers, we at least need to let the teachers who are willing to take the responsibility, be trained and armed. This is a solution that has a proven track record.**

Also, let’s take it on ourselves, and ask the media to cooperate, never to publish the name or face of one of these shooters. It only encourages copy-cats.***

Long-term: It’s time to raise the responsibility level for gun buying. The smartest thing yet among ideas from other countries is that anyone who purchases a gun needs to have a reference from at least one other responsible adult, preferably two, who has known the buyer for at least five years. Yes, the Newtown and Roseburg shooter’s mother’s helped them obtain weapons. But more family and community involvement is better than more government involvement. We do this with driver’s licenses. In Virginia, a family member can request that the state reclaim the license of a minor. An instructor has to sign off before a new driver can take the state driver’s test. A family member, doctor, EMT, or peace officer can also recommend reexamination for a driver’s license for anyone of any age. In many cases, family members know more than any background check can uncover. Those of us who demand our rights need to up our responsibility levels. This is the least we can do.

Also, we need to change involuntary committal laws and improve our state-run mental health systems. We need better laws and systems that family members can access in a mental health emergency. This will take time and money, but it needs to be done.

It’s time to stop mass shootings of innocents in soft targets now. We may find that if we take the short-term steps, we won’t feel the need for the long ones. But we should take them anyway. We owe it to the victims and to our country.

Notes:

1*. http://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas_d.html
2**. William M. Landes, University of Chicago Law School, November 1, 1996, Latest Revision October 19, 2000.
3***. Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown, By DAVID KOPEL, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2012.