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Cancer Can’t Keep You Down: Presiding Thoughts about My President

Note: Today I had the opportunity to give this address on behalf of the Faculty during a special chapel in honor of Dr. Daniel Lockwood on his last day as President of Multnomah University, where I teach.

lockwood_webresJust the other day, someone asked me concerning US Presidents: Can one respect the office without respecting the person? President Harry Truman told General Douglas Macarthur when Macarthur walked in 45 minutes late for their meeting on Wake Island in the Pacific that he did not care what he thought of the person Harry Truman, but that he would never again disrespect his Commander in Chief. Fortunately and providentially for us, we don’t have to worry about respecting the office or position and not the person. We were exhorted this morning to be on time for this chapel in honor of Dr. Lockwood, not simply because of his position, but also because of his person.

Dr. Lockwood, we will miss you dearly. In the few moments granted me on behalf of the faculty, I want to share with you some of the reasons why we will miss you so.

Your Christ-centered confidence.  You announced a few weeks ago your resignation from the office of President at Multnomah University because the cancer you have battled for nine years will soon take you home. While we were not surprised by your confidence in Christ, we were blessed by how you took that opportunity to encourage us all to have confidence that our triune God providentially cares for each one of us. We can trust in him. You have been unswerving in this confidence over the years. May that same confidence in Christ permeate each of our lives and our institution in the coming months and years.

Your courage. Just as you have battled cancer, you have battled challenging times in Christian higher education, as you have led the way in seeking to transition Multnomah University on how to provide biblical education that serves various needs educationally in a host of disciplines to equip a new generation of Christian leaders for the church, academy, and marketplace here and abroad. As with your cancer, this has not been an easy challenge. But you have been willing to face the complexities and the obstacles head on in order to help us serve the church and society in a Christ-honoring way.

Your biblical conviction. In keeping with your unswerving commitment to Christ, you have been unswerving in your commitment to Christian Scripture. Your biblical conviction is not something we shall ever take for granted, but seek to cherish as we diversify our curriculum, integrating our biblical faith with robust learning in a multiplicity of disciplines for the sake of our mission to impact the church and the world in our day through our graduates.

Your compassion. I have been moved on many occasions by your support to take that Christ-centered confidence and biblical conviction to our society. You have supported your faculty to be unswerving in our biblical commitments while at the same time reaching out to engage relationally an increasingly diverse culture that has so often found in Evangelical Christianity rejection rather than love.  You have wedded biblical truth with Christ’s incarnate love. Not only have you supported us in seeking to wed truth and gracious love, but you and Mrs. Lockwood have modeled it to us in a variety of ways over the years. Here, let me speak personally. A few years ago, when my wife and I were facing one of the gravest challenges of our lives, you and Mrs. Lockwood reached out to us and our children one Christmas season and showered us with so much compassion. Your personal touch as the persons that you are only adds exponentially to my respect for you as you have filled the office of the President. I will miss you greatly. I know that you have showed the same care toward others in our midst. Your cancer won’t keep you down. We take you with us in our hearts.

Cancer won’t keep you down at the resurrection of the dead. Cancer can’t keep you down in our lives as we move forward. We take you and these qualities with us as we move into the future as individuals and as an institution.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and at The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

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Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Social Solidarity and Gang Violence

iStock_000019386469_ExtraSmallAuthor’s note: An African American friend of mine raised respectful concern over my use of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song “None of Us Are Free” while discussing gang violence. Regardless of what others might think of the use of this song and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s music generally, my friend’s concern over what he (and he believes many other African Americans) takes to be the group’s racist associations (he referred to the song “Sweet Home Alabama” as an example of the concern) has led me to remove the allusion to the group and re-title and reshape the piece in particular ways. This post was originally titled “Lynyrd Skynyrd and Gang Violence–‘None of Us Are Free'”. The use of the song, no matter how relevant the lyrics might appear, hurt the reception of the argument. My relationship with this friend and the overarching argument were more important to me than any possible merit certain lyrics concerning social solidarity might convey (10/29/13). 

So often we think of gang violence as a Black or Hispanic or Asian or Russian thing, not anyone else’s thing. I don’t hear much about Swedish American gangs, so I guess I’m off the hook since I’m half Swedish by descent! But what about that other half? And what about that whole connection to the rest of humanity since we are all created in God’s image, not just Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel? I, too, am my brother’s keeper (See Genesis 4:9). I may not kill “Abel” today, as Cain did, but I may still have a hand in his demise.

What does social solidarity have to do with gang violence? While each of us is individually responsible for our own actions—gang related or not, our actions are not committed in a vacuum. I am also corporately responsible, albeit perhaps in an indirect way at times, for what transpires in gangs. After all, gang violence is a symptom of a much deeper problem—social fragmentation in society. Educational and economic disparities bound up with various forms of privilege that displace others help fuel the problem, as do negative aspects of gentrification, among other things. The fatherlessness that runs rampant in certain sectors of society fuels the problem, too. Often lacking consciousness of the trauma that stems from fatherlessness in various ethnic settings and leads to further instances of it, we must all see that we have roles to play in parenting our communities. Those who father children in and out of wedlock today are responsible. So, too, are those who benefited from the separation of families at the slave blocks generations ago. The dehumanization of black men, women and children under slavery by their slave owners (as the movie 12 Years a Slave illustrates) impacted not only them, but also the generations that followed. It carries on to the present day, even while white family fortunes and corporations have benefited from such oppression. We all have to be involved in one way or another to stem the tide of wrongful privilege and rebuild the infrastructure of our society so that everyone is free.

We also need to rebuild our reading of the Bible, where we emphasize both individual responsibility and corporate solidarity. How orthodox are Evangelicals who do not have some sense of corporate solidarity, but make everything an individual thing? Here I call to mind Robert Jenson’s discussion of that Evangelical forebear Jonathan Edwards, who took very seriously our corporate solidarity in Adam’s sin. In the book, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church, I write:

Robert Jenson, in his discussion of Jonathan Edwards’s Original Sin, says that the idea of corporate solidarity and responsibility bound up with Adam’s sin offends modern sensibilities and thus is rejected. The modern anthropological doctrine rejects the notion that each person “accept responsibility for human history’s total act as my act.” Yet, as Jenson argues, that modern dismissal is “morally corrosive.” He reasons: “If I cannot take responsibility for humankind’s act, how can I take it for that of my nation? If not for my nation’s act, how for that of my family?” [Robert W. Jenson, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 150.]  It is ironic that many evangelical Christians claim that they are not responsible for the sins and lives of others, whether it be those monstrous forebears who enslaved blacks or committed genocide against Native-American people or those criminal forces today that enslave women to lives of prostitution and who rob the poor of their homes through enforced gentrification and “urban renewal.” Taken far enough, it will undermine their patriotic concern for the nation and their veneration of the family, as Jenson’s argument suggests. [Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 147-148].

Paul argues that everyone is bound up with Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12). We are bound up with our own societal sin, as was the case with righteous Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel (See their prayerful declarations in Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9 and Daniel 9 respectively involving their strong sense of corporate solidarity in their people’s sin). None of this should be taken to discount individual responsibility, since individuals make up society, and God holds individuals responsible for their actions, as God did Cain for killing his brother (Genesis 4). Not only that, but Jesus individually took responsibility for corporate humanity’s sin, even though he was righteous and without blemish (See Isaiah 53:5-6; 1 Peter 3:18).

Close to home for me, a civic leader in Portland asked me, “Why don’t the white Evangelical churches in Portland concern themselves more with gang violence?” My answer was that we often see it not as  our thing, but as an ethnic minority thing (as if we’re not ethnic, or not connected to those of other ethnicities). While there are groups engaged in challenging and rebuilding the structures through holistic enterprises involving educational programs and community development work, more can certainly be done. One way we can be involved in stemming gang violence is to partner with leaders who are doing significant work in this regard. I recently interviewed four African American pastors for today’s episode of The Georgene Rice Show (at 4pm, tune into 93.9 FM in Portland or stream the show; this particular segment will air around 4:30pm). In the interview, we discuss their work and the need for us to see our corporate connection to addressing the problems of gang violence in our society. I commend the work of Pastor Cliff Chappell and Man Up, Pastor Mark Strong and 11:45, Pastor Eric Knox and the Holla Foundation, and Pastor Tory Campbell and the Intergroup Dialogue on Race and Reconciliation (video). We need to realize that gang violence impacts all of us and that we are bound up in one way or another with the social decay that causes it and that we need to be involved with making fragmented cities whole. We are our brothers’ keepers.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

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’12 Years a Slave’ — Could It Happen Again?

This piece originally appeared at Sojourners on October 14, 2013.

iStock_000016873096_ExtraSmallI watched 12 Years a Slave today. The film is based on Solomon Northup’s autobiography by that name. Northrup was a free black man living in Saratoga, N.Y. He was lured away from his home to Washington, D. C., on the promise of lucrative work and was kidnapped, transported to Louisiana, and sold into slavery. He was rescued 12 years later.

Some of the questions and issues that the movie raises are: What right do people have to own others? Do money and might make right? Unjust laws — such as slave laws — exist. It just goes to show that something can be legal, yet morally wrong. Still, laws come and go. We must not confuse laws with rights, which are universal and enduring truths that do not change. What is true and right and good is always so. So, too, that which is evil is always evil. Even if unjust laws are overturned and abolished, evil can still return in other guises.

I asked myself as I watched the movie, “Could it happen again?” Some of us may think, “Surely, something like this could never happen in our day.” And yet, people are abducted and sold into various forms of slavery here and abroad on a daily basis. Granted — people are not publicly bought and sold on the slave block in America today because of skin color; however, people are enslaved based on race and class divisions.

I hear that redlining still exists, though cloaked in banking and business subtleties. I see that Jim Crow laws may be returning in many places, now that the Supreme Court has given states the right to oversee their own voting procedures. It is incumbent on us to call on Congress to act upon the Supreme Court’s ruling to put forth a contemporary formula for Section 4 “preclearance” so as to guard against the erosion of voting rights for minorities. The various costs involved in obtaining such things as identification cards for voting makes it difficult for many minorities as well as the young and old to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote.

What if those of us who experience privileges that money can buy lose our privileges based on the loss of money? What if the laws change and those who are free and those who own or oppress other people lose their liberty and become slaves, as the film 12 Years a Slave suggests? Most likely, Solomon Northrup hadn’t thought it could happen to him. His slave owner thought it would never happen to him.

What about you and me? What would those of us who are free do differently if we knew the fate of those enslaved in various ways through poverty and economic exploitation or through injustices in the criminal justice system could be our own? Would we seek to free them? Would we seek to change the laws to ensure that laws reflect everyone’s fundamental rights? Would we seek to transform a criminal justice system that imprisons an inordinate percentage of African-American men, far beyond their numbers in the society at large? The prison system is a booming business in many spheres. What can we do to make sure it is not a modern-day slave block?

By becoming vigilant and making sure that such sectors as the government, the market (such as Wall Street, which was once built on the back of the cotton industry), criminal justice, and the educational system cultivate comprehensive reforms for equity so that people no matter their skin color get ahead and never fall back into slavery.

Only as we fight for political, judicial, economic, and educational freedom for all can each of us remain free. As 12 Years a Slave makes clear, something spiritual dies eternally in each of us as we fail to resist evil rather than support those in need. What is needed today, just as in the time of Northrup, is to experience again the better angels of our nature’s touch as we embrace justice, not just for some, but for all.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

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Burdened by the Burden of Proof: From Eve to Marissa Alexander

iStock_000012546214_ExtraSmallHow in the world did Marissa Alexander get sentenced to twenty years in prison for firing a gun in the air in self-defense against her husband whom she claimed violently attacked her and threatened to kill her? She didn’t even hurt him, and yet she ended up getting severely hurt by the whole ordeal.

How did Eve get blamed for everything in the garden of Eden in many circles for much of church history, when she wasn’t the only one eating forbidden fruit?

Is there a connection between the two stories? Why is it that both women have born unduly the burden of proof?

I am glad that a Florida appellate court ruled recently that the jury instructions in Marissa Alexander’s case were unfair: they made Alexander “prove ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that she was acting in self-defense…” Many have protested that the Florida courts are unfair in how they apply the Stand Your Ground law in view of the recent decision that awarded George Zimmerman a not-guilty verdict in the slaying of Trayvon Martin. While the law and handling of it have faced increasing scrutiny, what needs to face even more scrutiny is how women so often bear the burden of proof in various legal defenses over self-defense and rape, for example.

What is often forgotten regarding the biblical account is that Genesis 3:16’s verdict on Eve’s judgment is post-fall: “To the woman” God said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Regardless of whether or not one believes male headship is a creation reality, the husband’s rule over his wife is not something that God applauds; rather, such rule is the consequence of their fallen state as man and woman. Given what transpires as a result of Genesis 3:15, where Eve’s seed (namely, the Christ) will crush the head of the serpent who strikes his heel for taking the burden for sin and its consequences, a new order has been established in and through Christ’s church and in the world. Christ bears the burden of proof, not woman.

What bearing might Christ’s own trial and atoning work have on women’s undue burden in many court hearings to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are innocent? What bearing might Christ’s trial and atoning work have on proceedings, when the men whom they claim are guilty are only convicted—if they ever are—when the women first experience the conviction of shame in such cases as rape? At least in the Genesis account, the serpent and the man also experience outright shame and blame.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

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Just Thinking about Justice: Humility is the Best Policy

P Food for ThoughtWhen it comes to justice issues, activists, theorists and policy makers living in the moment often charge where angels fear to tread and newcomers to the issues waffle in confusion. The newbies like myself can easily feel like they are drowning in the depths of the complexities surrounding the issues in question. What should they (we) do? Wait for handouts, where the experts on the issues give them basic meat and potato food for thought?

Newbies should be humble enough to ask questions about what they don’t know rather than erroneously claim that they have it all figured out or refuse to ask open questions because they don’t want to be humbled. They will only further injustice. What is really detrimental is when people engaged in justice concerns come across acting as if they know when they don’t know rationally or experientially.

Newbies should also learn to think through where they have gaps in thinking and experience about the justice issues before them, and why. Identifying blind spots is very helpful. Still, so often those of us who are newbies don’t even know enough to ask questions. So, there may be times when we need to ask people in the know to let us know what they think we don’t know and why: the answers to the why question might possibly arise from the community in which one has been inculcated: perhaps that community has not addressed the issues at hand, or has been involved with advancing directly or indirectly the injustices that gave rise to the justice concern in the first place.

Lastly, it is important to do research. Rather than expecting others to do the work for them, newbies to justice issues should ask people more knowledgeable about a pressing justice issue for resources that they would recommend. They should also listen to different perspectives so as not to be driven by ideology, but rather by goals geared toward comprehensive education and reform on the subject at hand. Those doing research should not simply ask for information but also perspectives based on people’s experiences. All our talk of objectivity on matters of justice research often clouds our insecurities and veiled forms of subjectivity that betray how insulated we really are. Perhaps nowhere has this problem been more acute than among white men like me, who often put on airs that we have it together and don’t need anyone’s help-especially people of minority perspectives and seemingly less elevated status in society. To the extent this is true, it just goes to show that we need to ask questions and listen more than anyone.

In all these things, the posture we take is all-important. I have often played the fool because I did not know what to do or where to go to address justice concerns. But I would rather be humbled by asking for help than by hurting and shaming others and myself by claiming to have it all together when I don’t. If we are to think justly about justice, we need to pursue equity by favoring humility in solidarity with others. So, will we go forward together? Will you help me?

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An example of the kind of thinking and activity that is envisioned in this post is displayed in my church’s (Irvington Covenant Church) Intergroup Dialogue on Race and Reconciliation. Here is one short video dealing with this work. Longer videos will be posted in coming days.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.