Weaponizing Black Bodies

Weaponizing black bodies for majority purposes, whether good or bad, is racism.

It is grievous to see family and friends of those who have sons and spouses and dear friends who are black dismiss what they and the overwhelming consensus of godly black people say by finding a rare black voice that contradicts the consensus of the minority and supports the prejudices of the majority and then promote that rare black perspective as if it is the end-all argument and proof of the majority view. It’s as if people of color are incapable of a wise consensus unless it passes muster with the consensus of white people. When your own family and friends direct your attention to black voices that they do not know personally in order for you to dismiss the black voices you know and love personally you are dealing with racism, plain and simple.

One relative literally told me, “It feels like you would put black people before family.” That’s not possible in my case, but even if it were, the answer is an absolute yes. I would most certainly “put black people before family” if the cause is righteous and the consensus of the godly black community endorsed it.

Everyone has a right to his or her individual perspective, but as one black pastor says:

“Can you imagine scrolling past hundreds and thousands of black Christians saying the same thing to find the one or two black Christians who say what you want to hear the way you want to hear it and thinking, finally somebody gets it? We are not a monolith, but consensus matters. I’m not mad at those black Christians who come to disagree honestly.
I’m frustrated at how they are weaponized against the 97% to justify continued apathy.”
Esau McCaulley

7 Ways Evangelicals Dodge the Charge of Racism

Seven Ways Many White Evangelicals Dodge Any Complaint about Racism

1. General corruption is the problem. “Well, there is sin all over the place. We all have sinned.” “Everybody is a racist deep down.”

Rebuttal: The best of Christian leadership in the past have chosen to focus on the particular sins of their own nation and church. John Owen, the famed theologian/statesman of the 1600s said, “It is the duty of faithful ministers or of the Gospel to consider diligently what failures or temptations their flocks are liable or exposed to, so as to apply suitable means for their preservation – John Owen (1616 – 1683). This is why I don’t rant and holler about the abominable practice of FGM (female genital mutilation), but if I were in the country of my childhood I would. 

2. Moral equivalence. “Well, the media is wrong to stir up the pot.” “Blacks are racists too. I’ve heard them say some horrible things about white.” “But they’re stealing.”

Rebuttal: This dodge is most offensive morally AND intellectually! It seems that people from legalistic religious structures are most inclined to employ it in the most egregious way. A hypothetical that is too close to real life: A girl gets molested by a Christian leader and people clamor for the resignation of the perpetrator. Christians respond with almost-reluctant agreement that the molestation was wrong but that we should not forget that the girl was dressed quite immodestly and had actually attempted to lure the man. Supposing this were actually true, it is irrelevant. The fact of immodesty and seduction are “related issues” but they are not “mitigating issues.” To bring them up when molestation is being denounced is completely irrelevant because “related issues” distract from the major issue and even imply that they are therefore “mitigating issues”.

3. Immediately find a token black person to quote (usually out of context and with no appreciate for the nuance that the black person may want to insist upon).

Rebuttal: It is ignored that finding a token black is difficult enough. It ignores the fact that all people deeply invested in the conversation of race understand that some blacks can enjoy white privilege, depending on their particular situation. People ignore the complicated nuance of the issue and gladly use their token black as support for something that the black individual would categorically denounce. It is also conveniently ignored that now the matter of general corruption could apply here. Perhaps the token black has ulterior motives, may be blinded to the sufferings of most of his own race, may be unable to resist the lure of personal flattery. 

4. Claiming to have a black friend. 

Rebuttal: Racism is a social issue. It is not a relational issue. There is no doubt that relationships help, but the solution is more in immersion in relationships with people of other ethnicities. And, certainly, having a child of color in one’s own home can help open one’s eyes to the issue. But relationships are not the panacea to racism. I grew up on a missionary compound in black Africa and I saw white missionaries who deeply loved their black servants and the black villagers outside the compound, but reserved deep imperialistic superior sentiments regarding black people generally.

5. Reductionistic blame-shifting. “The breakdown of the black family is the main problem.” “They should stop killing themselves in black on black crime.”

Rebuttal: Even if the above statements are true — and many in the black community would agree that these are problems — the shifting of blame by pointing out their flaws is classic deflection that minority groups have to deal with all the time. It reminds me how as a student I opposed the administration of my college over an egregious moral issue and they silenced me by focusing on the fact that I was not performing as well academically as I should have been and that my attitude was immature. This did not change the fact that they were harboring a child molester and I was vindicated shortly thereafter when the person was caught, convicted, and imprisoned. 

6. Decrying the politicizing. “The liberals are just trying to fan the flames of racism and score political points.” 

Rebuttal: This statement is actually a politicizing of the matter!

7. Fake Peacemaking – “Let’s not focus on what divides us.” 

Rebuttal: This is a form of spiritual abuse. A form of social shunning. Many of us have been in the situation of a broken relationship when one party refuses to talk about the matter.

Why Men Don’t “Cheer” in Worship

I’m tired of the analogy, but I admit that I have used it in times past. When discussing the worship of God in the church context the question is often put — usually in a not-so-subtle gotcha tone — “How come men can cheer so loudly and without inhibition at a football game but not express the slightest amount of excitement in worship?”

It used to make sense to me.

But I don’t buy the argument anymore. And I’ve rejected the guilt. I love sports and I love the corporate worship of God. I holler my fool head off in a game and give high fives all around when my side scores. I’m very restrained in worship, demonstrative only occasionally. But I’m entirely engaged.

This has caused me to reflect on why it is that the average man is unjustly charged with spiritual aloofness and why it may be that he is, in fact, spiritually disengaged in corporate worship in ways that are remarkably distinct from his behavior in the hockey rink. I will comment on just one reason here.

Sports is an objective experience and most church worship is subjective.
A man cheers loudly over an objective reality. The nose of the ball crossed the line by inches. BOOYAH! You can measure that. Everyone sees it. Some hate it, others love it. But it’s obvious. There is an objective reality with clear winners and losers.  On the other hand, evangelicals have turned the worship experience in church into a subjective soup, often emotionally manipulative, wherein spiritual realities that are, in fact, objective are hidden under a cloud of subjective, privatized experiences. And we flash the privatized for all to see. We all know that God is good (objectively), but must I weep about it or shout for joy? Both responses are appropriate. But the kid up front in the skinny jeans decides. And it’s usually according to his or her subjective determination. It’s clear that we are all supposed to share in the same subjective response to the objective reality. Or just stand there awkwardly. Hands in pocket.

Men who are already inarticulate in matters of the soul are forced to stand for forty-five minutes in a darkened room while artsy musicians emote into their faces. They have an emotional shut-down experience similar to the failed interactions they’ve had with the significant women in their lives who tried unsuccessfully to rouse the emotional responses of their men to the pitch of their own feelings when discussing issues. They are loyal to their wives and deeply love them but they feel frustrated because too often their wives walk away from the talk with hurt feelings, believing that their husbands simply do not care about what they care about because they didn’t respond with the same emotional intensity. Defeated, most men simply start to retreat from emotion-laced conversations even before they start. How did a discussion get so dramatic? They mumble out the necessary phrases they hope will be the key to escaping the cloud of feelings they feel engulfing them. But they’re looking for the exit even before they’ve fully stepped in.

This is what most evangelical worship is doing to me. It’s calling for an emotional response that rises to the pitch of the worship leaders’ experience or desired experience. Or, sometimes it’s completely different; I want to weep and they want to dance. It’s attempting to get the audience to realize a feeling about God as if the realization of that particular feeling is the ultimate goal of corporate worship. It’s openly saying that to fit in you must enter into emotional lockstep with the subjective experience of the men and women on stage. This is what led C.S. Lewis away from religion as a young boy. He simply was too intelligent to be emotionally toyed with, even if it was by his own subjectivism. “You will remember,” he said,  “how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made ‘realizations’ the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by ‘maistry’.”

“Realizations the aim of prayer.” Feelings the aim of corporate worship. I go to lots of evangelical churches and I’m tired of being manipulated. It’s a huge turn off. I retreat emotionally and start just mumbling the lyrics in a desperate attempt to stay engaged with the high drama in front of me because I know that’s where I’m supposed to be. I then chastise myself for twenty minutes for not being able to participate with all God’s blood-bought people because of my pride and just as I am humbled enough to overlook the subjectivism of the worship leaders being foisted on my soul some inane cliché that has lost its power since the first time I heard it thirty years ago is crooned into the microphone with the same cliché worship soto voce that American evangelicals seem to think is the only tone allowed for worship leaders. The irony always jars me: they want me to engage with the same intensity that I cheer at a football game while they murmur in a bedroom voice sweet little worship nothings about Jesus.

But sports is different. Many men love to play or watch sport precisely because of its objective and inflexible definition. The rules are fixed. Within the lines there is room for plenty of artistry and creativity, for sure, but the joy of involvement and the subjective impact it has on them are contained within a fixed paradigm. Win or lose, artistic or functional, there is pleasure in having been there for the experience because the goal is not to make the participants or spectators cheer. The goal is simply to play the game and win.  But evangelicals have taken sport and determined that cheering is the objective. Or, to use another analogy, they are making art and insisting that we all be subjectively impressed in perfect unanimity when we can hardly tell what the painting is all about.  Evangelical church worship music is akin to forcing non-artists to be impressed by impressionist art. They subconsciously feel what the first critic of impressionist art felt (and, supposedly, where the term comes from) when he scornfully said, “Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.

The men listening to the band are trying to tell themselves that since what they are forced to do is worship it must be worship. But they don’t see anything finished or definitive in what they are doing. While artists have their worship orgasms in full display, moved by their own art and willing the audience to feel as they feel about what they are doing, to have emotional “realizations”, most men internally recoil and think, “I’ll just stand here awkwardly until this flush of drama has receded.”

The average Christian man goes to church like a guy goes to have drinks with friends. To him, going to have drinks with friends means going to have drinks with friends. It doesn’t mean going on a wine tasting tour and becoming a poseur. He doesn’t like pretending he can tell the subtleties of different wines, swooning with others he suspects are pretenders too as they ooh and aah over the sommelier’s soliloquies about the fine finish of well-aged Bordeaux. He prefers the beer in front of him simply because it’s, well, the beer in front of him. And he thought that putting one or two of them down was what he had come to do.

Men need to know that they come to church to do something, not to feel something. I love corporate worship now because I don’t worry about feeling. When I go to a ball game I don’t tell myself, “Man, I hope I get some good cheering in!” Nor, do I worry about whether I’ll cheer or not. It simply never crosses my mind. In the same way I go to church now. I’m not thinking about the feeling I may or may not have. I’m going to do something with the team and people who share the same interest I have in God.  And I’m fully engaged. And when I get there I recognize the objective framework that corporate worship is supposed to have and has had for millennia and I relax.

It’s objective corporate worship that moves me most precisely because moving me is not the objective. Worship is. And corporate worship is not about personal feelings. It’s about corporate behavior in the presence of God, a defined response. There’s a call to worship, a confession, moments of consecration, communion, and the benediction. All with substantive words, denotative significance, objective realities, and my participation in them is as objective as  my catching a pass from my teammate and taking a shot. And I love it. Sometimes –often —  I miss the shot. Often I don’t score an emotional high. But I get it. I’m involved. I feel passion aroused. I’m stirred. Because there are lines, rules, goals, and everyone following the same framework. Some may shout, others may whisper. Some my feel deeply, others may participate with undemonstrative routine zeal. But we all were there, we liked it, and we’ll be back again.

Why do men cheer at a ballgame? Because it’s not about cheering. It’s about the objective game. Why are they often aloof and uninvolved in corporate worship? Because we’ve made corporate worship about cheering and not about corporate worship.

Parenting is a Boring Blessing

Throwing the ball back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. The endless repetition, the can-you-read-the-same-story-one-more-time. There were times I just thought, Give me a gun. [Father of small child quoted in “All Joy and No Fun” by Jennifer Senior]

In her fun and informative book, Jennifer Senior talks about how parenting, particularly of small children, disrupts flow and makes concentration harder for busy parents. Children are the last permanent relationships in our society, she says, “the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all.” New parents who have experienced years of autonomy suddenly find themselves trapped in a world of sleeplessness and boredom punctuated by moments of sheer panic,”lurching back and forth between  those two poles — boredom and anxiety –rather than being able to comfortably settle somewhere in the middle.” To be sure, it is joy and it’s all worth it. We know that and truly feel the truth of it. But it’s not often fun! Mercifully, there are often “bursts of grace” when the child presses her cheek to mommy and time stops, or suddenly dad gets an eight-year-old bear hug with no rational explanation available to the adult world for the exact timing of said hug.

I read Jennifer Senior with Christian and pastoral eyes. I know the value of children. The joy. The responsibility. And I love my children very much. But, face it, sometimes the disinterest I have in doing something with my kids makes me feel downright evil.

I admit it. When I go out to throw a ball with my son I sometimes have to tell myself I will throw fifty passes before I say, “Dad’s got work to do.” And I do exactly fifty throws. I count them! And, worse, when the kids were smaller, I have to admit that the dreaded jobs I’d avoided for months sound exciting and irresistible compared to reading the same little story for the three hundred and sixty-first time.

But I’m reminded of G.K Chesterton, someone I read when I didn’t have to read Dr. Seuss. In the child’s incapacity to be bored with the same action over and over and over again, he saw the glory of God. “Children are pashas of excess,” says Senior. True, but  G.K. Chesterton observed,

“. . . children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

I didn’t have children for the first ten years of my married life. And it took me almost ten years of having children before I started accepting the fact that I needed children more than children need me. In children I find out that I don’t have the capacity to endure in joy. My endurance is growing as I get more childlike in my faith. Because to be childlike is to see things with different eyes.

The toddler that visits my house wants to play the silly game I started playing with her the first time she came to my house, touching the dangling lights and choosing our favorite color. Every. Single. Visit. It’s as funny and intriguing and interesting and pleasurable to her as it was the first time we did it many times ago. Another toddler wants to play with my flashlight every time he visits because when he first came I set precedence by letting him play with my flashlight.  But my adulthood and individualism and selfishness and the allure of something more important have stunted me and shriveled my spirit so that the thrill of a thrown and caught ball, the pleasure of a silly story, and the fun in a senseless activity vaporize after a few repetitions.  My big-people-ness misses out on the the intriguing fact that flashlight toddler can come to my home and not ask for the flashlight until he sees me. Why?

Because he doesn’t just see the flashlight. He sees me as part of his flashlight world. I think I’m bored because I am thinking about the wrong thing when it comes to activities and things that children like and do. I see the book, the light, the game, the ball, the flashlight. I’m focused on the action, the thing; a child is involved in the action or thing. It’s a world to live in. It is a pleasant context wherein they live out certain joys.

Someone asked me if I got bored with the good weather in California. I thought it was crazy, but I’ve heard about people who think that the constantly good weather is boring! But that’s because they think about weather all the time. I don’t think about weather every day. If I did, I’d be bored. Instead, I relish all the things I can do and enjoy in the same weather day after day. So, I’m never bored with the weather. In the same way, the action or thing becomes a world, a context, and, for the child, it’s a thousand times better if that world and context is shared and owned with someone. Games and activities and books and films are all contexts for joy and pleasure. Each activity becomes a home for certain joys.  All my children friends have relationships with things and actions, involvement with these things, into which certain people can enter and relate with as precedence and opportunity dictate. My little toddler visitors don’t do the touch the lights game with anyone else. That’s their way of relating to me. I am the touch the lights and pick our favorite color person. That is where they enjoy me. That is the world that I can be involved in with them. It’s their way of saying, “Welcome to our joy place.” My son wants me to throw the ball to him. It’s not about a ball to him. It’s about sharing involvement with him. And the reason I feel guilty when I finally quit is because I’m not just ceasing to throw a ball and moving on to more important things even though that is what my adult logic is telling me. I’m stepping out of his world. Separating.

As parents we have to ask God to give us the strength to be child-like. Not childish. Not immature. But godly and wise and patient and joyful. And that means becoming strong in the childlike joy of doing the same thing over and over and over again and enjoying it like it is the first time we’ve ever done it. It’s a boring blessing. Boring because we have to grow up and be childlike. A blessing because time stops and we make friends with pure and undefiled little people who remind us that life is not so much about what we do but with whom we do what we do.

I partake in the ordinance of Holy Communion every week. I am not bored with it even though it is the same thing over and over and over again. But it is not about bread and wine, a religious ceremony. It is about a shared involvement. My childlike faith understands it clearly. When I am not childlike in my faith, I’m bored. When my faith is warm and alive and childlike I hear my heart saying, “One more time, please, one more time.”

That’s why I need the boring blessing of parenting. My children need me, true. But I need my children.