From The Tap or From The Bottle: A Wisdom Paradigm

 

The other day at Costco I was picking up some bulk items, including bottled water. As I approached the stacks of 40 bottle cases, an unusually large crowd was swarming around — adding cases to their shopping carts.  As I hefted my two cases to my cart, it dawned on me that a few years ago this scene would have been bizarre in the absence of a serious water emergency.

            I questioned some fellow shoppers about why bottled water was their choice.  The universal answer was, “I no longer trust tap water.”  When asking “why,” the dominant response was, “tap water is not as pure as it used to be.”

            This resonated with a deep African American identity issue that had troubled me for years.

Anxiety

            Since the dawn of the modern Black Consciousness Movement, I have been a strong advocate for African American advancement on all fronts.  Over these many decades, “Black is beautiful” has been my mantra — not because I say so, but because it IS.  The basis of this truth is that all humanity bears the image of God — even in our current flawed state.  For me, being African American is a great honor and privilege.  In fact, if I had to do it all over again, I would not change a thing about my ethnicity. 

            Over the last few years, however, I found myself disagreeing with most well-known African Americans, including leaders, celebrities, militants and politicians, etc..  At times I have even strongly opposed them.  This gave me anxiety.  This unease increased relentlessly — even bordering on dysphoria.  I even had doubts about my own state of mind.  “What is happening to me?”  “Am I becoming a sell-out?”  “...A “‘bougie’ Negro?”  “...An “Oreo?”*  “What’s gone wrong?....” 

Justice: Yes — “Whack-a-Mole:” No

Behind much of the radicalism and turmoil today is a yearning and cry for justice — cosmic justice.  Biblically speaking, when God created the universe, He described it as “good” and when He had created humans “in His own image,” the description was “very good” (Genesis 1:1-31).  If we understand biblical wisdom we would know that God is perfect in righteousness, wisdom, knowledge, etc.  So, for Him to say that His creation was “very good” it meant “VERY GOOD.” 

Disqualified

Any observer of the current condition of reality knows that, while there are glimpses of the original goodness of the creation, its present condition is not good (whether due to pollution, climate change, floods, deadly earthquakes, tsunamis, destructive volcanos, supernovas, gamma ray bursts, etc.).  Truly, something has gone wrong in the cosmos.

 

The present condition of mankind is deplorable in many ways: totalitarianism, crony capitalism, crony socialism, anarchy, war, ethnic conflict, etc.  Other manifestations of our atrocious condition are seen in various types of “us-isms,” where “us” becomes the standard of judgment for “them” — rendering “them” as inferior — not being able to be “us” as well as we can be “us.”  This is seen in tribalism, racism, classism, culture-ism, and the caste system — to name a few.  

 

When we make ourselves the standard of judgment, we reduce evil to aspects we perceive do not condemn us and we get into trouble. When we exclude ourselves from the full scope of sinfulness, we make ourselves the standard for a twisted piety.  Individually, this is “me-ism,” collectively, another form of “us-ism.” In the resulting self-righteousness our evil runs rampant under the illusion of non-evil. Truly, something has gone wrong with humanity.

Protest and Anarchy in Black and Blue

Everyone knows that food left out in the right conditions will draw roaches — pests that carry disease, destruction and death.  In the last weeks, we’ve watched once-peaceful, constitutionally protected marches draw parasitical ideologies that commandeered the demonstrations for their warped intentions and destructive aims. 

Moving beyond whether we agree with the reasons for a person’s peaceful protest, the destructive elements who’ve attached themselves to these current demonstrations should cause all living in a democracy to ask: in what other ways can we express our convictions when the infestation begins?  In what ways can one safeguard against an infestation altogether?

If you’ve ever dealt with a parasite in your home, you know they have numerous ways of infiltrating, and then adapting to just about everything you throw at them.  Homeowners and apartment dwellers alike know this to be true...parasites have to be admired for their smarts and constant adaptability, if for nothing else.  They adapt to all your tactics in order to gain or maintain their advantage.

SEVEN POINTS OF CLARIFICATION

I have a decades long history of helping the Body of Christ navigate the particular concerns of minorities. Most of my ministry has been done through publishing, speaking, teaching, and one-on-one discipleship of young men. 

Because I serve a minority population, much of my work has involved addressing the unique challenges that such communities face. One such example is defending the Christian faith against the accusation that “Christianity is a ‘tool of oppression.’” 

This defense has involved engaging people who have looked for answers in counterfeit teachings, often disguised in theological language – teaching on the bankruptcy of these ideologies when compared to the biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ. The genuine Gospel that answers these ideologies is the robust and transformative message found in the Scripture along with all its implications, not the anemic or privatized version that emanates from some quarters of contemporary American Christianity. This was the basis for a book I wrote decades ago, Free at Last?. 

Fine Dining or Dumpster Diving: A Paradigm for Activist Theology

swasti.verma@gmail.com, 10 June 2012

As the cultural ground shifts under our feet, the church often gets caught up in these tectonic quakes — unnecessarily so.  Much of our stress is due to an inadequate theology.  Not that our theology is wrong as far as it goes.  It’s just that it has further to go.  Most Christians I talk to define theology as, “The study of God.”  While I affirm this definition, it leaves out the cultural and historical context in which we study God.  A broader, more comprehensive definition is, “The application of God’s Word by persons in every area of life.” (Dr. John Frame) This includes the study of God.

By Khalid Aziz    

In our Western context, several valuable methods of doing theology have developed such as Exegetical theology and Systematic theology.  However too often I have seen a tendency to think that all theology that can be done has been done.  This is a short step from relying on theology more than on the Word of God itself.  The scope of the Bible covers all of reality while the scope of theology is limited.  If the Bible can be compared to a movie, our theology would be one frame from it.  

                                   

Theology can be approached from at least two perspectives.  In terms of epistemology — what we should know about God, and in terms of ethics — how we should obey God.  Theology can also be done on both sides of human intelligence.  The cognitive side — involving conceptual knowledge and the intuitive side — involving perceptual knowledge.  If the epistemological approach is ‘Side Alpha,’ * then the ethical approach is ‘Side Beta.’ *   Similarly, the cognitive would be ‘Side Alpha’ and the intuitive, ‘Side Beta.’  

Some Things I’ve Learned Along the Way

Soon I’ll be seventy years old.  It’s hard to fathom this, since I still feel twenty-five.

When I was young, I lived for moments.  Today, I’m living for time. Langston Hughes has a poem that included the line, “life is short, but God is long.”  That’s how I feel these days.

My decades as a Christian activist have taught me valuable lessons.  I’ve had to learn a lot of these things the hard way, but I boiled a handful of “lessons” down to twelve common sense and overlapping principles of protest, some of which are adapted from my book Free At Last? — all of which are based on familiar biblical truths. 

They’ve served me well at different levels of cultural engagement, so I offer them as a reminder of our true focus, the gracious God who has ‘shown us what is good.’  I hope they can help us avoid the “syncretistic subculture” discussed in my last blog, and save us unnecessary tears and wasted years as we seek to ‘do what the Lord requires of us — namely “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with...God” (Micah 6:8).

Many of you in the field will already be familiar with these concepts, but there are also some men and women I’ve spoken with who are just wading into the waters of protest and prayer, even at this stage.  If you don’t find these principles helpful today, I hope they will be useful in the years to come.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, there will always be something in our immediate surroundings that will fall short of God’s plan for a just society.

Reflections on Black Lives

Last night, two young Black Christian leaders from our community came to visit us.  They joined a steady stream of young people who’ve come to our home in the last few years seeking answers.  One brother was primarily concerned about unjust policing in our city, the other with the high crime rate in his neighborhood.

Both of these issues have affected them and their friends deeply.  My two young brothers expressed their frustration with measures that often lack practical application, be they protest or prayer.  They were united by their larger concern over the lack of discipleship, the absence of applied biblical principles, and a prophetic void – all three, they sensed, were at the heart of their frustrations.  They expressed a profound sentiment: “‘Black Lives Matter’ won’t matter to us until all Black lives matter.” 

They also came with a question, “What do we do?”

Most folk acknowledge that there are at least two versions of “black lives matter.”  For the Christian, making some sort of distinction makes it possible to participate in the movement for Black lives without compromising fidelity to Scripture.  Not long ago, the two versions were distinct.  They’ve since become so intertwined that it’s worth revisiting how they’re framed and perceived, and how they might be evolving.

Racism Alone? – Reflections on the Current National Divide

When I heard the decision not to indict the killers of Eric Garner, my outraged response was, “here we go again!”  If the Michael Brown case lacked moral clarity, the senseless tragedy of the Eric Garner case was much more clear.  No matter what the circumstances were, here were two more African American men added to the list of senseless killings, arousing strong reactions nationally and internationally.

Some claim that these killings demonstrate the existence of racist structures that permeate our society.  Others claim that these killings resulted from criminal behavior or “a lack of personal responsibility.”  While both positions point to contributing factors, they both continue to ignore the elephant in the room, namely culture – a factor that dwarfs the previous two. 

We have made astounding progress against racism thanks to the Civil Rights and Black Consciousness movements.  Yet in the ’hood, conditions have not improved accordingly.  Today, there is a growing culture of dysfunctionality eating away not just at the ‘hood, but at our larger society.  It is often government funded through well meaning but mismanaged subsistence programs.  It is having devastating effects across cultures, yet is felt most profoundly in the ’hood.  It is a culture derived from the old “redneck” South – a culture nurtured by structures of oppression and one that wears down initiative and personal responsibility – whose value system elevates and encourages anti-achieverism, fatherlessness, dependency, helplessness, hopelessness, self-sabotaging/self-destructive behavior, fratricide, etc., and in extreme cases, nihilism. 

Ferguson — “We Don’t All Look Alike”

Photo Credit: Megan Sims @The_Blackness48, 

Howard University Student Body via USAToday

A quiet rage has been inside me since the shooting of Michael Brown on August 15 — a rage I kept under control as I tried to be objective, and resist being manipulated by the strident and predictable rhetoric surrounding this senseless killing.  However, as I watched Michael’s funeral, that rage burned hot.  It brought to mind the senseless and tragic deaths of other young Black men: Eric Garner, age 43 on July 17, 2014 in Staten Island, NY; Trayvon Martin, age17 on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, FL.  I couldn’t help recalling the horrifying murder of Emmett Louis Till, age 14 on August 28, 1955 in the Mississippi Delta.  His body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River after being beaten and shot in the head.  The image of his mutilated and bloated body is still seared in my memory.

Before you write me off for strident and predictable rhetoric of my own, you must know that these killings are not the only ones that have me incensed.  I am likewise enraged by the murders of thousands of young African American men in places like Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia, where the killers happened to be Black.  I have lost personal friends in “drive-by” shootings, simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

A Letter to Our Young Brothers and Sisters

This letter was written in response to the National Center for Family Integrated Churches' 2013 Panel, "The Worship of God - Q&A: Holy Hip Hop." 

UPDATE: (12/5/13) Several of the men on the above panel have issued apologies. Their comments can be found here, here and here.

UPDATE: (12/21/13) The NCFIC site administrators have removed the original video from the NCFIC web and blog sites.


To our dear brothers and sisters,

Our culture — within and outside of the Church — will always misunderstand your Kingdom work ... at this, you must not be dismayed.

You know better than anyone that we are in the midst of a devastating cultural crisis, a cancer that is destroying souls in our community.  This cultural cancer doesn't discriminate by socioeconomic class or by color, but merely takes different manifestations according to the hopelessness that festers in each of the despairing.  

We have seen the rise of ghetto nihilism, Wall Street nihilism, government nihilism, Hollywood nihilism, gender nihilism, and on and on.  Many of our self-appointed cultural gatekeepers are exploiting this crisis for personal gain, instituting programs and legislation that promise satisfaction, yet work against the liberating biblical principles we seek to teach.

For those who live and work in our most hopeless areas, be it in the city, the 'hood,' or in the 'burbs, it sometimes seems as if the deck is stacked against our Kingdom work.  And so, we carefully count each hard-won victory as precious Kingdom treasure — each life saved, each family mended, each young woman or man who comes to see themselves a bit more clearly through Christ’s eyes, know Him more intimately, and find their ultimate identity in Him.    

Thanks to your labor, God is not without human testimony.  Daily, for decades, you have been used to breathe new life into dry bones.  Yours has been a powerful and refreshing voice of redemption and cultural renewal.

Now, a new set of self-appointed gatekeepers has emerged who are out of touch with our most basic core concerns. 

Undercurrents: A Perspective on Why the Trayvon Case Aches

How does one begin to explain this feeling? 

Korean culture has a name for it … they call it Han.   

Han. The overwhelming feeling of helplessness in the face of irreversible cultural sorrow; a cold fist that reaches deep into a people’s collective soul, only to pull away having grasped a fistful of emptiness and despair. 

Something… simply... is... not... right.

An “Illiberal” Liberalism: Why Black Folk Can’t Get Ahead

While many people are loyal to a single news outlet in their homes, my wife and I take in a considerable amount of daily news from a variety of viewpoints – domestic and foreign, liberal and conservative, and much more.  A few nights ago, Fox News featured an audience of articulate African American citizens who identified themselves as “conservatives.”  What caught our ear was host Sean Hannity’s teaser for the show: he announced that African American conservatives “don’t enjoy freedom of speech” in their own country.  With our curiosity piqued, we tuned in.

As we listened to the audience describe the disdain they had experienced from fellow African Americans for their conservative affiliation, we realized that, experientially, we had much in common with them.  We don’t subscribe personally to either the conservative or liberal ideology; we have as many agreements with both as we have disagreements. 

Yet with few exceptions, one thing remains fairly consistent: when we express our disagreement with the prevailing “liberal” agenda, we’re often tagged with the same epithets that leftists use to besmirch these conservatives.  

For Whom Will Tomorrow’s Bell Toll? Thoughts On Paula Deen

"A word once spoken can never be taken back..."

So goes the old African proverb, wisdom no doubt gleaned from a lesson that was learned the hard way.

Last week, we all watched the train wreck that resulted in Paula Deen’s removal from the Food Network. Ms. Deen will appropriately have to answer for her workplace atmosphere – she is singularly responsible for the conditions in which her employees worked, and for their treatment while there. If the allegations are true, then feeling shame, remorse and regret for her actions is, in this case, appropriate.*

The deeper problem with Ms. Deen’s story is that the court of public opinion doesn’t exact justice. It cries for vengeance. I wondered, along with several friends, what would happen if people demanded that we be held responsible for the careless words we’ve spoken in the past?

Taking Back the Black Church From Yvette Carnell

Last week, Huffington Post contributor Yvette Carnell published “Why Black Liberals Need to Take Back [The] Black Agenda From The Black Church.”  In it, the founder of the Breaking Brown media hub felt she “made the case” that the Black Church had outlived its political usefulness, and should take a back seat to Black liberals in driving the Black political agenda.  In response to strong criticism from her readers, she released a subsequent article to bring some definition to the large brush strokes with which she painted the Black church, its history and shortcomings.  On her media site, Ms. Carnell promised that this is just the beginning of a larger analysis she will deliver on the Black church, and its relation to current Black politics.

Her writings left us with a few questions: Did she indeed ‘make her case’ regarding the Black Church in these two articles?  Further, what do we need to know about her approach as she presents her forthcoming critique?

Let’s think through her argument together.

Motherhood, Untimely Born

A curious command and promise opens Isaiah 54:

1 “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;

break forth into singing and cry aloud,

you who have not been in labor!

2 For the children of the desolate one will be more

than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.

 “Enlarge the place of your tent,

and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;

do not hold back; lengthen your cords

and strengthen your stakes.

3 For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,

and your offspring will possess the nations

and will people the desolate cities....

While Isaiah is speaking directly of the little post-exilic community in Judea, he is also speaking more broadly of the future glory of True Israel.  We just saw the anguished victory of the Suffering Servant in the passage before; now the Servant’s task is seen as fulfilled, and the prophet breaks into a hymn and shouts of praise from the "barren, childless woman," welcoming the dawn of the New Age.

Hold up… did we read that right?  What reason could a childless woman possibly have to rejoice?

“Who’s Your Daddy:” Our Creeping Cultural Crisis

The other day my wife and I pulled into a gas station where several others were already fueling up.  From all appearances, they were “good-ol’-boys”, friendly southern White folks who have risen above the old historically offensive and racially charged “redneck” culture.  Good-ol’-boys are light-hearted about their own culture and appreciate the cultures of others.  As we filled our tanks, an African American fella pulled up in his ‘hoopty’, gangsta rap booming so loud that it distorted his speakers.  With pants sagging, he promptly left his car with the ground shaker blasting, leaving the rest of us in the noise that required us to shout to be heard.  Everyone at the pumps was similarly affected and annoyed.

As we left the gas station with our ears ringing, my wife commented, “the ol’ redneck culture meets its progeny.”  (I’ll explain this in a bit.)  This incident caused the memory of Lil’ Wayne’s tasteless and insolent lyrics from "Future's Karate Chop" to intrude into my mind: "I’m gonna pop a lot of pills / [then] beat that p***y up like Emmett Till…" – disgusting.

The Chocolate Heart

Don’t tell my husband’s mom, but I bought her one of those giant boxed hearts full of chocolates for Valentine’s Day.  I really can’t think of anyone who enjoys chocolates more than my mother-in-love.  She can detect chocolate in the house more accurately than a heat-seeking missile – after all, she’s had some eighty-plus years to refine her detection technology. Between her and my chocolate-loving husband, such treats don’t last long in our house, but I think I’ve successfully hidden the chocolate heart out of the range of her highly-refined cocoa-radar … so far.

Since the purchase, I’ve found myself reflecting on a poem from Langston Hughes that my mother-in-love would remember, having lived in New York during the Harlem Renaissance.  It echoes in my head every time I think about that chocolate heart, knowing that it contains a diverse selection of candies that will be received by a woman who’s learned to appreciate each one for what it may have to offer. 

Here’s an excerpt from that poem:

“Molasses taffy,

Coffee and cream,

Licorice, clove, cinnamon

To a honey brown dream.

Ginger, wine-gold,

Persimmon, blackberry –

All through the spectrum,

Harlem girls vary –

So if you want to know beauty’s

Rainbow sweet thrill,

Stroll down luscious,

Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.”1

Hughes has spelled out something that could take a lifetime for many of us of color to embrace – that everything about us can reflect God’s deliberate artistry and handiwork, down to the DNA that determines the way each of us is made.

The Brazen, Beautiful Humanity of Malala Yousafzai

Karen's latest blog post looks at Christ's approach to women living under the first century Roman Empire in light of children's rights, and the recent radical Islamic violence against fourteen-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai.

I'm so proud of my wife, and I'm pleased to encourage you to follow her on her new page for blog posts about theology, identity, dignity, women's consciousness, the unique value of redeemed women of color, and the global pursuit of human rights. - CE

Behold, The Man

By now, we’ve all seen this infamous tri-panel icon, an Ecce Homo that is Elías García Martínez’ fresco representation of the suffering Christ, crowned with thorns.  The three panels escort our eye from left to right; from the fresco in its younger days, to its time-weathered degeneration, ending finally with the well-intentioned yet botched efforts of an amateur restoration that holds only a shadow of the original.  This century-old Ecce Homo, housed in Spain’s Santuario de la Misericordia, was first created as an instrument to inspire worship.  After its unfortunate “restoration,” the community says it’s now valuable only in a far less lofty function – promoting tourism and stimulating pop-culture.  As t-shirts and other marketing items exploit its odd tale, experts now consider it ruined for its original purpose.

All is not lost; the incident brings out at least two valuable lessons that stand out in bold bas-relief. 

But God ... Reflections on Sleepless Nights

Battles are best waged 

under cover of darkness.

By day, a siege is easier to fend. 

Obstacles lie exposed, 

reinforcements stand ready, 

troops take action - quickly rallied.

But in the night ...

Lord, have mercy, in the night ...