Remembering Dr. King’s Legacy

January 22, 2008 //

Our daughter, like many other four and a half year olds, has lots of questions. For example, why didn’t she have school yesterday, even though it was a Monday – and doesn’t she go to school on the day after church? We explained that it was because we were remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and everything he had done for us. Her eyes lit up and she smiled, asking, “He was a king?”

We began to explain to her who Dr. King was and why he was so important, especially for us as Asian Americans. I don’t want to talk down to my daughter, as if she cannot understand anything simply because she is a child, or try to gloss over the problems our world faces. But, at the same time, systemic racism is a weighty and difficult discussion for anyone to have, at any age.

While we were eating Pho on Sunday night, CNN was showing a retrospective of Dr. King’s life and legacy. We didn’t realize this, though, until our daughter asked us what those people were doing with the hoses and the “puppies.” We tried our best to explain how people who were African American were mistreated and abused in our country, and can you believe that someone would try to hurt others with firehoses and attack dogs? Our daughter was horrified — she explained indignantly that hoses are supposed to be used to help people by putting out fires and that we shouldn’t use puppies to hurt others.

We told her how Dr. King believed that God created and loves everyone, and that we should treat everyone the way that God wants us to, with dignity and respect. We explained that even though Dr. King shared this message peacefully, without fighting or hurting people, he was still put in jail. At this point, it was almost too much for our daughter to bear. Extremely frustrated, she said, “No — those people should have been put in jail because they were hurting people and being mean!”

My wife explained that, today, our daughter can go to school and be friends with everyone because of what Dr. King had done. While we hope to sit down with her one day and share, in the words of Dr. King, “…the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” we were glad to have this small chance to remember Dr. King’s legacy together as a family.

Categories asian american, communication, community, faith, family, race, reconciliation

The Doors Were Open

January 17, 2008 //

I shared my recent near-grifting last Sunday during our weekly teachers’ meeting. We marveled together at our capacity as human beings to lie so brazenly at times and how we could discern those who are truly in need. It is altogether too easy, in the name of being wise about sharing our resources, to close the door completely to anyone who asks for help.

The sanctuary in which we gather to worship together every Sunday afternoon opens almost directly onto a major street in town. When the doors are open, I can see the sidewalk and street from the pulpit. This past Sunday, while we were reciting Scripture together during our worship gathering, I could see a tall stranger, obviously in need, appear in the doorway. The first to speak with him was one of our Sunday school teachers. Because of that morning’s conversation about grifting, she told us that she was very cautious, and a little bit skeptical, in listening to this man’s story. A couple of minutes into the conversation, I saw this teacher leave in order to speak with my wife, who is also one of the pastors here at church. My wife greeted this man and spent several minutes in conversation with him as well.

Although he was looking for help, he did not ask for money. Rather, he asked my wife if the church could help him find some diapers for his two young children (seated in a car, visible, about ten yards away). My wife found one of our youth group students and the three of them walked across the street to buy diapers for his kids. While they were there, my wife purchased a large box of diapers and some juice for his kids. When this man asked how he could repay her, my wife simply told him, that when he was back on his feet, to share what he had with someone else in need.

As my wife listened to this man’s story, she asked him how he ended up coming to our church to ask for help. He told her that he had been to several other places that morning, including other religious communities, and had been rejected at every stop. He said he drove by our church and saw that our doors were open and thought, maybe, someone could help.

One of the things I admire most about my wife is her pure heart to love, serve and help those in need. To me, this story is a snapshot of what grace looks like. Sure, there’s always the chance that this man was running some strange hustle (I don’t know, re-selling these diapers on ebay or something) but grace always runs the risk of being misunderstood, abused or exploited.

Chuck Swindoll quotes Maryn Lloyd-Jones in The Grace Awakening:

If it is true that where sin abounded grace has much more abounded, well then, “shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound yet further?” First of all let me make a comment, to me a very important and vital comment. The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it… There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.

While the Lloyd-Jones quote above is referring specifically to God’s salvific grace extended to us through Christ, there is a similar principle at work in how we see and treat those around us.

I am not advocating recklessness in how we share with others. Generally, we do not give money to people on the street who might ask, preferring instead to buy food if they are hungry or, in this instance, some diapers for a family in need. However, there is always something risky about extending grace, unconditional love. In a world in which outreach feels like a timeshare sales pitch (Sure, it’s free… but first you have to sit through our 90 minute presentation) and “free” carwash fundraisers actually cost a five dollar minimum donation, grace is strange and unfamiliar.

Grace is stumbling across an open door. The grace Jesus extended to others, even those He knew full well would reject, swindle or otherwise disrespect Him, is hard to comprehend (some might even say amazing). Part of our dream for our community is that, when faced with the choice, we will risk grace. If our life is our mission and each one of us is part of the priesthood of all believers, then grace must be at the heart of it all.

Categories asian american, church, communication, community, missional

Is This The Kind Of Thing You Want To Publicize?

January 12, 2008 //

So, this Saturday, one of the NFL’s finest will be wearing hot pants to the game.

The kicker for the Seattle Seahawks will be wearing heated pants for their upcoming game in chilly Green Bay. I realize that kickers do not inspire much fear in opposing teams but should they really add this much fuel to the fire?

A quick note to the rest of the Seahawks team: should you win on a last-second field goal, please do not douse your heated-pants kicker with Gatorade. In addition to the risk of electrocution, you might give him a cold :)

Categories communication, just grinning

Broadcasters: Please Use A Thesaurus

January 10, 2008 //

Last week, one of the announcers for the Golf Channel stated on air that younger players, in order to combat his dominance over the sport, should take Tiger Woods into a back alley and lynch him.

Apparently, the announcer has apologized publicly on air and privately in a conversation with Woods and Woods’ agent calls the whole matter a “non-issue.”

After last year’s commotion over Dom Imus (who, incidentally, is back on the air in New York) and his derogatory racial & gender attack on the women’s basketball team of Rutgers, one might imagine on air personalities being a bit more careful in their choice of words.

This Golf Channel announcer may not be a racist (though I have my doubts about that — this particular kind of language doesn’t fall out of the sky) but she has made herself and the Golf Channel look like an amateur production. It is, after all, part of the job description for on air personalities to be able to think on their feet and find words that are not loaded with the historical weight of racial oppression, violence and death.

For example, the announcer could have said: Those young guys need to give Tiger the ol’ smackdown or The only way they’ll stop Tiger is if he is abducted by aliens. Or, she could have skipped the whole “no, really, I am funny” routine and simply said that, in order for these players to achieve Tiger’s level of dominance, they need to put in a whole lot more practice.

Categories boo!, communication, controversy, race, reconciliation

High Plains Grifter

January 9, 2008 //

Because of our church’s location, we encounter a relatively steady stream of people — many of them homeless — who come in and ask for money. Even in the year or so we’ve been here, we have met quite a few characters with a wide range of stories that span the spectrum of believability.

Yesterday, however, I met a man with the most elaborate story yet. For about forty-five minutes, John laid out his story of the difficult divorce he was enduring — that his wife of almost thirty years had been seeing another man for about a year and was in the process of draining him of all his resources: financial, emotional, etc. He said he worked in the area and had passed by our church many times but was compelled to stop by today because he was at the end of his rope and needed someone, anyone, to talk to.

My heart really went out to John. After all, who hasn’t felt let down by life before, harassed and helpless before a constant barrage of circumstances beyond our control? And, from the way he described his circumstances, things were going to get much worse before they might become any better. He said he was alone — no parents, no siblings, no kids. I listened, asked questions, tried to reassure him that God never abandons us, even if it appears that all hope is lost.

However, by the last third of our conversation it became readily apparent that he was asking for money. If we could just float him a loan for $150 he would pay us back by Friday, payday. This would cover his hotel costs for the week, you see, and he was totally good for it.

I don’t mean to come across cynically in sharing this story. In fact, my wife and I were ready to strain our meager financial resources in order to help him out. We want to be wise, however, in how we choose to help. I made a couple of phone calls and it became quite clear almost immediately that John’s story did not check out. He left for a “meeting” and, when he returned, I told him the church would not be able to help him out financially. He left quickly, but not before asking half-heartedly, “You don’t have any money, do you?”

At the risk of sounding naive or idealistic, I am still pretty shocked when a person can lie so brazenly — clearly, John knew which buttons to push and which heartstrings to pull. I suppose, since he was asking for more than just a couple of dollars to eat a meal, he needed an appropriately large story to match. I can understand a person’s struggle and desperation to make it. To quote Kanye West, “So I did, what I had to did, because I had a kid…”

I want to be part of the solution. I believe in contributing to organizations that have experience and expertise in dealing with the root causes of poverty and injustice. I wonder with the same ambivalence if that panhandler asking for a dollar will spend it on alcohol or drugs. Like others, I think I prefer to give a sandwich or buy a meal for someone who says that they are hungry. Had John’s story checked out, my wife and I were prepared to drive down to his hotel and cover his bill until Friday.

But, at the same time, I want to do more than cut a check from a distance and call it a day. As Shane Claiborne writes in The Irresistible Revolution:

Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: “you fed me.. you visited me in prison… you welcomed me into your home… you clothed me….” The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed.

Learning to sort through and filter out the hustling, lying and scamming is part of the territory. Choosing to enter into the mess of someone else’s life always means getting your hands dirty. I don’t want the audacity of some grifter to harden my heart to others who are in need. Even John, who thought he’d come and pull a fast one on some dumb pastor, is someone deeply in need.

Categories church, community, faith, ministry, sigh