Thursday, September 28, 2017

What I'm Reading



I spent the last three weeks in Canada just relaxing and enjoying our home away from home.  I did a little work too, but mostly I had lots of free time to read a lot of good books.  Here are some of the highlights.

An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter was a memoir of his days growing up in Plains, Georgia during the Great Depression.  He gave lots of details of his life on a farm, his relationship with the black sharecroppers who lived all around him, and his devotion to his daddy.  President Carter is a gifted writer and I plan to read some of his other books in the future.

Another memoir was Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  Although they grew up during the same time period, Angelou's experiences are in stark contrast to the life described by Jimmy Carter.  She has some beautiful descriptions of the people who surrounded her and impacted her life.

Quotes:
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.” 

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” 

On the religious side, I read Jesus Outside the Lines by Scott Sauls.  The subtitle for the book is what sold me on it:  A Way Forward For Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides.  It couldn't sum up better how I feel about a lot of the issues we face on our Facebook feed every day.  He tackles many of these issues with grace and understanding, and I really appreciated his tone, even when I didn't necessarily agree with him on a particular subject.

Quotes:
"Our loyalty to Jesus and his kingdom must always exceed our loyalty to an earthly agenda, whether political or otherwise.  We should feel 'at home' with people who share our faith but not our politics more than we do with people who share our politics but not our faith.  If this is not our experience, then we very well may be rendering to Caesar what belongs to God."

"My friend Darrin Patrick...once said that it's naive to give yourself credit for hitting a triple if you were born on third base.  He also said that it's equally naive to expect a person who was born in the parking lot to get to third base without your help."

Right before we left Will purchased Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  I have heard Tyson speak on several talk shows, and I always find him interesting so I asked if I could take it along.  Will agreed, and Phil and I both read this during our stay.   He talked about the wonder and amazement he feels about his studies of the universe and his excitement about all that we are learning from our exploration of space.  But he said that he was able to ponder these big ideas because his life is not consumed with having enough food to eat, finding clean water, and just trying to survive.  He made the point that we need to care for each other better all around the world so that everyone can have the opportunity to think about bigger and deeper ideas.

Tyson's amazement at the universe was very striking to me.  Here is a man, an atheist, who does a better job of marveling at the wonders all around us than most Christians do.  Shouldn't we Christians be at the front of the line when it comes to being awed by the things we believe our great God has created?  Having grown up in a culture that has always been very suspicious of science and its claims about the universe, I think I've been robbed to a certain extent of my ability to wonder at such things.  What a shame!  I want to find a better balance in my thinking between faith and science, so that I can marvel at the universe like Tyson does.



My friend Alex loves science fiction and fantasy, so he gave me Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  It was an excellent YA fiction book that kept my attention throughout.  Alex loved the action part, but I loved Ender's mind and the thinking behind all his actions.  Great ending too!  If you have a middle school age child, this is a great book and the first in a series about Ender.



Right before I left for Canada I finished this book, The Book of Joy  by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  I learned a lot from this book and am still thinking about how to apply what I learned from these too.  Of course I'm not a Buddhist, but I thought both these men had many important and helpful things to say about learning to live with a great sense of joy in your life.  It was  a really delightful book, and I highly recommend it.

Quotes:
"Discovering more joy does not, I'm sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak.  In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too.  Perhaps we are just more alive.  Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters.  We have hardship without becoming hard.  We have heartbreak without being broken."
--Desmond Tutu

Finally, I listened to several podcasts.  My favorite was this one from the TED Radio Hour on NPR.  It was called "Beyond Tolerance."  The title comes from the idea that tolerance is not the goal, that we need to move way beyond just tolerance.  For example, if a couple has been married 40-50 years you don't want them to say that they've just tolerated each other all these years.  Although I didn't agree with all the speakers, I felt very engaged by what they had to say.  The most thought provoking idea came from Verna Myers on how we could have a better conversation about race and other important issues:

"If you were just the least bit more curious [about them]...
       If you didn't trust your own story so much...
               That's a start."

Maybe you'll find something here that will strike your fancy.  Happy reading!











Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A Sermon On Racism


Last month I heard my first sermon ever on racism.  It was related to the events in Charlottesville which happened back in August,

before Harvey,

before Irma,

before the NFL controversy.

Before the news cycle moved on as it always does.

But I can't stop thinking about something I should say, so I'll say it now.

I grew up in downtown Indianapolis in the early 1960's.  My family owned and lived in a duplex in a working class neighborhood.  I went to my neighborhood school that was only a couple of blocks from my home.  Most of the kids in my elementary school classes were white, but there were several African American students too.

But in the late 1960's my family did what lots of families of that time did.  We moved to the suburbs.    It was just a part of the middle class dream to have a place in the suburbs.  Nonetheless, we were part of white flight.  The new school I attended was 99% white.  The new church I attended was 100% white.

Phil and I moved to Dunlap right after college.  Very early on I remember seeing several events that were very racist, things I had never seen up close before.  There was a KKK rally and other times members of the KKK even took up money at the red light in the middle of town. (It was common practice by several community groups to take up money for their causes at the red light.)  I remember smirking about these things and thinking they were kind of amusing because it was so weird.  I couldn't believe these things were happening, but it didn't really bother me or make me think I should do anything about it.

Now I look back and think, "How could I do that?  Why didn't I think, 'I can't live in a town where people let this happen.'?"

I could think that way because no one I knew personally was thinking any other way. I lived in a culture that believed in being separate from those who are different from us. When I arrived in Dunlap there was nothing in my background that would have made me sensitive to the racism I encountered.

I'm very glad that things have changed in Dunlap over the years, although there is still much that needs to change in this area.  I'm also glad that my children and grandchildren are growing up to give much more thought to the subject of race and their relationships with those who are different from them.

So, given my background, it's not very surprising that I just heard my first sermon on racism.  But it is quite unsettling.

The sermon my pastor preached last month was based on Matthew 15:21-28 , a passage that can be somewhat disturbing.  


21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Prior to meeting this Canaanite woman Jesus had just fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  Five thousand Jews.  Jesus tells her he can do nothing for her because he has come to serve one particular group of people, a chosen group.  He tells her he can't give her what she's asking for because she's a dog, a Gentile.  As much as I want to soften this in my mind because it is Jesus talking, I can't get over how offensive these words are.

Now this woman is asking for the crumbs, the leftovers, of which there are plenty.  The fact that there were twelve baskets left over from the miraculous feeding speaks of the abundance available in God.  Jesus is amazed by her faith and heals her daughter.

But the next thing he does is quite interesting.  

Jesus goes into a region that is mostly Gentile and preaches and teaches.  The people are hungry and exhausted, and Jesus decides to feed them.  Once again there is a small amount of food to distribute, but this time four thousand are fed.  Seven baskets are left over.  Seven, a number of completion.  So now Jesus commits himself to the spreading of the Gospel to all people, even Gentiles.

Jesus had an encounter with a real person who changed his perspective on what he was supposed to do, who he was supposed to serve.  Even though the plan all along was to include the Gentiles, Jesus opens the door for this maybe sooner than he expected.

I struggled to write this piece for a long time.  I kept thinking, "What's the point?  What do I want someone to get out of reading this?"  And finally I think I know.

It's not some earth-shaking discovery.  It's something we all know.

It's all about relationships.

A ministry that I follow and support has a saying:  "There is no significant change without significant relationship."

It's true, even for Jesus.  His thinking and actions didn't change until he met someone who spoke to him and engaged him in conversation, someone who needed His help.

So we have to speak up and challenge people's thinking about race and any other labels we use to separate "us" from "them."  And we have to seek out and intentionally develop relationships with those who are different from us.  We have much to learn from them.

I'm preaching to myself right now.  Ideas are forming in my mind about what I need to do next.

What about you?