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Tag: trust

I Am Not the Expert in the Room

June 3, 2020 /


The old dictionary Merriam-Webster defines racism as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” If you are like me, no matter how many times I read that definition, I still don’t understand what it is. And it certainly does not help me to see it in the community around me. As hard as it is to define with words, I have learned this about racism: Racism always has a better explanation.

This is what I mean, sometimes I have listened to the news and said these things myself:

  • It was not police brutality; he was resisting arrest. He should have done what the officer told him to do.
  • He may have been jogging, but he was also trespassing on a construction site.
  • When a police officer pulls a young black man over, and the first question he asks is, “what are you doing on this side of town?” It’s not racism, its just an officer wanting to ask something other than “Where are you headed to in such a hurry tonight?”
  • When a cashier accuses a man she just rang up of not paying for items as he walks out of the store, it is only a simple mistake.
  • She didn’t call the police because he was black, he made threatening motions.
  • It looked like a gun.
  • He was running away.
  • When a young dies in the back of a police van because he was not strapped in correctly, it is only a tragic accident.
  • She made a threatening motion.
  • When I feel the urge to cross to the other side of the street because a black man is coming toward me, I say I am just being careful.

This is of the muddy mess of racism that we must wade into. Sometimes the explanation is the explanation; often it is not. How do we know? I have learned that I can’t know. I have also learned that African Americans have lived under the weight of racism for so long they often intuitively know the difference. What this means for me is that I must put aside what I think I know and my explanations and be willing to listen. I must trust that my African American (or Hispanic, or Native American)  friend sees, hears, and knows better than I. I am not the expert in the room.

Blessings,
Stephen

 

Today’s resource I want to share is the book The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby. Tisby challenges the church to see how we have often participated in and supported the systems to maintain racist ideas and practices. Tisby does more than shine light into darkness, he also helps us plot a path forward. In addition to the book, there is also a podcast episode on Fuller Theological Seminary’s Conversing with Mark Labberton, Episode 51 – Jemar Tisby on Race and the American Church I would also highly recommend.

Micromanaging God

April 26, 2016 /

man holding a banana gun

We have all had that boss. You know the one that makes the pointy-haired boss in the Dilbert cartoons look like a managerial ninja. There are not enough hours in the day to tell the stories of the trauma we experienced at the hands of our micromanaging bosses. The micromanager will say they view themselves as an empowerer of employees. If pressed further to explain why they must check with a ruler the trash bags to make sure the tops of the bag descends exactly 2.78 inches over the lip of the garbage can the micromanager will say it is because it is important . . . and everything is important.

The foundation of any relationship is trust. The micromanager has none. If they trusted their employees they would allow their employees to do the job for which they were hired. What keeps them from trusting? Low self-confidence and fear. They doubt themselves and their employees. They are filled with fear of what could happen if they were not there to handle every situation. No one likes a micromanager.

All of us have a little micromanager inside of us. This manager’s name is “fear.” But it is not employees we are hovering over it is God. To be consumed by fear is to micromanage God. Craig Groeschel puts it another way “Fear is placing your faith in ‘what-ifs’ rather than in ‘God is.'”

What’s the problem with micromanaging God? First, you are not his boss. Nothing more should really need to be said here. Second, do you honestly think you can run the world better than its creator and sustainer?

In this dramatic political season, many of us are tempted to be fearful of the “what-ifs.” To do so is to attempt to manage our world and not trust God’s capacity to manage. It is to place our faith in our capabilities or the capabilities of a particular candidate rather than the capabilities of God.

In this time, let us place our faith in who God is rather than being consumed by what could be.

Blessings,
Stephen

Cower or Fight: Building Trust

July 11, 2015 /

Man and Dog

I have been driving the same truck for nineteen years. I can’t change it. It has a little button. A wonderful, great and glorious marvel of modern engineering. The likes of which I have not found in vehicles before or since. The “scan” button. With the press of the button, my radio will automatically advance to the next station it finds with adequate signal strength. You may be saying to yourself, “my car has such a button.” But here is where you are mistaken. Many vehicles have a “seek” button, even my relic has such. This button advances you to the next station found and stops. Many vehicles also have “scan” buttons, but these advanced forward to the next programmed station. My button is unlike these. Mine is a triumph of automotive auditory engineering. With the press of this little beauty, my radio will advance to the next signal it finds but only pause there for a few seconds before automatically advancing again to the next signal of strength, repeating this process perpetually until commanded to stop. For those who have made TV channel surfing an Olympic sport, this wonder brings your years of training into the automobile. Many times I can be found driving and listening to forty-seven radio stations, all at the same time. It is a thing of beauty. Almost brings a tear to the eye just to think about it.

It was on one of these radio binges that I was caught by the words of a preacher. I do not know his name. I do not know the church he was preaching in. I do not even know what radio station he was on. But the words I heard were like a flash of light to my understanding.

We have all seen the pictures of dogs beaten and abused. From a distance, they look like normal friendly animals. But when you step up close and stick out your hand to scratch him on the head a switch in the dog’s psyche goes off and memories of past abuse flood the mind of the dog. Instinctively the dog will cower in terror or run. Other dogs will have the opposite reaction. Fear will overwhelm them and they will lash out in anger striking at the hand extended in love and friendship. This preacher made the connection that African Americans are like the beaten dog. For centuries, they have been abused and excluded in our society. Abuse that all too often continues today.

I remember recently seeing a friends post to Facebook in response to the swimming party debacle in Texas: “If you are not guilty don’t run.” Great advice, unless your life experience has been one of injustice and abuse. Then the prudent thing to do is to run . . . or fight. The history of beatings and abuses of power by those in authority against African American people in our country is long and well documented. The passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865 may have abolished slavery, but it did not change human hearts or behavior. The abolition of segregated schools in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not change human hearts or behavior. We still have a very long way to go.

One final observation. If I wish to regain the trust of the beaten dog. The one whose natural reaction is to cower or bite. On whom does the greater burden of trust building rest, on me or the dog? The answer is obvious: On me. This is the great challenge we all face and the even greater challenge faced by our law enforcement. Centuries of abuse cannot be erased from the human psyche in a day or with the passage of law. Many well-meaning officers have reached their hand out to members of their community in love and friendship only to be bitten. But we must not give up the hard work of gaining trust.

In my next post, the last of this series, I will offer some insights on a way forward for each of us. In the meantime, I welcome your comments and thoughts. Please visit our website and post them below this post or make them on Facebook.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Unlike Any Other

August 26, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

I wonder how much sleep Matthew really got those first few months he was with Jesus. Did he try to stay awake all night long? Did he insist on sleeping beside Jesus each night, but not just beside Jesus on the side opposite of Simon? Did he struggle to never fall asleep before Simon or allow Simon to wake-up before him? What about when they walked along the path together traveling between cities? Did Matthew always stay in Jesus’ line of site and never allow Simon to get behind him? When they would come to a section of road that was filled with twists and turns amongst the rocks did Matthew close up his distance to be sure he was right next to Jesus as they went around the blind corners? Why do I wonder about Matthew’s behaviors? Because he was a tax collector and Simon was a Zealot.

Matthew was a traitor to his people and his faith. He had turned his back on it all instead choosing to go for a life supporting the occupying nation. Simon was a devout man of faith. A fundamentalist who had sworn an oath to kill people like Matthew, if a chance ever came.

Now here are these two men are walking and traveling together with Jesus. Each because they had been called to this place by Jesus.

Crowd of PeopleThis is the Kingdom of God. This is the power of the Gospel. To change hearts and make friends out of enemies. To unite people who have no reason to be united. Only in the Kingdom of God is it possible for there to be true unity across economic, gender, ethnic, and social lines. This is the example Jesus gave to us and to which Paul calls us in Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28, NIV).

Sadly, 2,000 years later we still struggle to be what Jesus called us to be. But there is hope as we are people of the Kingdom of God and not people of this world.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Dry Bread

February 14, 2012 /

Dry BreadEarlier this week, I forgot a slice of bread in the toaster. Coming back a couple hours later, I decided to do something I haven’t done in a long time. I decided to feed the birds. Taking the slice out of the toaster, I set it on the counter to dry out. Now I have to admit that it’s been so long since I was involved in putting out bread for the birds that I spent some time pondering how long I needed to let the bread dry out—and probably erred on the long side. A couple days later, I could barely break it in my hands and thought about tossing it in the garbage. Still the thought of watching birds gobble it up caused me to keep on putting it out. It’s kind of like that in the Christian life as well. Sometimes we feel inadequate and dried out as we allow ourselves to be broken for God to use.

N.T. Wright in commenting on the feeding of the five thousand writes— “This is how it works whenever someone is close enough to Jesus to catch a glimpse of what he’s doing and how they could help. We blunder in with our ideas. We offer, uncomprehending, what little we have. Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fishes, money, a sense of humour, time, energy, talents, love, artistic gifts, skill with words, quickness of eye or fingers, whatever we have to offer. He holds them before his father with prayer and blessing. Then, breaking them so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us to give to those who need them. . . . And now they are both ours and not ours. They are both what we had in mind and not what we had in mind. Something greater and different, more powerful and mysterious, yet also our own. It is part of genuine Christian service, at whatever level, that we look on in amazement to see what God has done with the bits and pieces we dug out of our meager resources to offer to him” (from Matthew for Everyone).

The next time we feel disappointed with our broken pieces, let’s trust God to use them to feed a multitude. After all, broken pieces of bread go farther than whole loaves. So let’s keep putting them out.

Laura

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