Category: Ruminations

IN MEMORY OF TIM KELLER

The best way for me to honor my former NYC pastor Tim Keller may be for me to come out of the closet about some particulars of my Christian faith. I honestly think that’s what he would want. It will be hard for me to resist “making this about me,” subtly bragging about behind the scenes banter before my delivery of a song around one of his sermons, or whatever. That’s been my MO (or, as he would put it, my idol) – to draw attention to myself, to find ways to make me feel better about a self I really don’t like all that much, maybe to help me feel a little less alone.

But Tim’s whole thing was directing our gaze beyond ourselves. The phrase many of us are quoting, which he said often, “You are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, but at the same time more loved and accepted than you ever dared to hope” was his radical, vivid, dead-on accurate depiction of the gospel message. So simple and yet so complex in its implications. And really hard to hang onto, especially when you’re not in a community of like-minded believers, or when you’re avoiding your own questions.

Attending Redeemer Presbyterian took care of these problems for me during the years I spent there. I was encouraged to stay active in a small group. My friends Kari Jo and Cory Cates hosted the one I was involved with the longest, and later Pastor Charlie Drew and his wife Jeannie, who became dear to me. These groups felt like family, but welcomed newcomers. We met regularly for Bible studies, prayer, meals together. There was always joy and a sense of belonging.

Tim was the ideal pastor for a skeptic like me. I would hang around after services with a few others who’d pepper him with questions. He always hosted this little Q&A, which I found incredibly brave because the people who showed up could ask anything at all – and they threw him some humdingers. Specifics are hard to recall, but there was that one time I brought him my issue with praying to a trinitarian God. His answer was simple, empathetic, and supportive. What struck me then and still does about how he dealt with doubters, agnostics, and atheists, even those attacking him, was his lack of defensiveness, and his compassion. I had this sense that when he looked at seekers he saw himself, as a young man before deciding to follow Christ. And also that he followed Jesus’ example of looking on the crowds with compassion, “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). He never seemed to be about sticking it to anyone but rather showing you this incredible treasure he had found.

Skeptics Welcome

That is what I want for whatever is left of my life. For I’ve found this treasure too. It has been mine from a very young age, but I kept a film over it – a veil of familiarity that made it really hard for me to see it clearly. Many Bible passages and verses resonated with me, but I often neglected their context. I didn’t see the full scope of the Bible – that it tells this miraculous cosmic story and we’re all a part of it. Only just now am I beginning – in my mid-fifties – to look beyond the veil.

What I’m seeing is that the more I gaze at the beauty of Christ, the more I can become like him (2 Cor. 3:18). That I can love without fear (1 John 4:18), that I can truly forgive because I have been forgiven (Eph. 4:32). That I can live in real freedom (Gal. 5:1), and that I find him present in the most unlikely, unattractive, marginalized, poor, cast out people (Matt 5 and a bunch of other places, especially my own experience). I’m learning that the story is way bigger and more wonderful than I ever imagined, and that my own part in it is simultaneously minuscule and incredibly significant.

That’s really about it. The stuff we fight over, those traps people set for folks like Tim Keller? Well, they kind of remind me of the denarius question the Pharisees and Herodians hurled at Jesus. Tim preached a great sermon on that (and I can’t be sure, but the voice reading the scripture sounds an awful lot like my old friend Michelle Jennings). I recommend it: https://youtu.be/U79Eef6U9nw .

THE MATTER OF OUR WORDS

This week The Atlantic published “Ukraine and the Words that Lead to Mass Murder” by Anne Applebaum. She quotes a character in the novel Everything Flows by Soviet writer Vasily Grossman:

I’m no longer under a spell, I can see now that the kulaks were human beings. But why was my heart so frozen at the time? When such terrible things were being done, when such suffering was going on all around me? And the truth is that I truly didn’t think of them as human beings. “They’re not human beings, they’re kulak trash”—that’s what I heard again and again, that’s what everyone kept repeating.

It seemed….familiar.

I consider the Russian propaganda narrative, the one saturating their news feeds – that Ukrainians are Nazis. Degenerates.
Drug addicts.
Russophobes.
Trying to destroy us Russians.

Then I think about us here in our free, relatively peaceful, ultra-blessed country. How quickly we put down our neighbors, out of ignorance, lack of curiosity, jealousy, insecurity…

But at other times from a nobler motive – when “calling out” or “holding accountable” goes nowhere, pushing further. To deplore (not just their actions but the people themselves), to disdain, to dehumanize.

Then.. to kill?

We do it in stages. One step at a time.

We do it on social media.

Look familiar?

Here are a few narratives I’ve picked up on over my years on Facebook, both implicit and explicit. I’ve left a space at the end to reflect on our own versions.

  • Police = assholes
  • Blacks = thugs
  • Southerners = racists
  • Northerners = hypocrites
  • Democrats = child murderers
  • Whites = oppressors
  • Mexicans = drug gangs
  • Muslims = terrorists
  • Christians = bigots
  • Men = pigs
  • Urban = elite
  • Rural = backward
  • Republicans = full of Hate
  • Biden voters have blood on their hands.
  • Trumpers are stupid.
  • Scientists (and other experts) are liars.
  • They want to control us. They want to impose their values on us. They want to destroy our way of life. They want to kill us.
  • ________________s (insert your enemy) are trash.

How many steps? Four? Five? Before we have moved from the calling out to the disdain to the dehumanization to cynicism to apathy to killing?

What Applebaum notices in the Russian people is not self-righteous outrage (although that probably showed up at first) but cynical apathy, by design from their own government. A belief that we cannot know the truth so why bother. This reminds me of a refrain I often hear to end an uncomfortable debate: “Well, we can’t really know what’s happening. We can’t trust the experts. We can’t trust our leaders…”

Applebaum further observes that Russian propaganda focuses not on the utopia they seek but on their enemies. This brings to mind what I see around me – a trend toward grievance politics. Both on the Left and the Right. I hear far more outrage over the excesses, oversteppings, and sins of the other side than what we hope and work for.

Why hope? Does it even make a difference? Aren’t you just being naive and enabling, Pollyanna Budd?

The Warrior Emotion

Nick Cave is a musician who suffered the death of a child. Day by day he makes the choice to let his suffering crack open his heart. I find wisdom in his take on hope, not as dreamy escape or naiveté but as courageous – choosing to love. I tend to regard wisdom as the Big Perk of aging. “What are a few wrinkles when I get all this wisdom?” But it’s more than age that makes us wise. One of the wisest human beings I ever met was a teenager permanently in a wheelchair. There is a radiance in her smile, the kind you might see in the very elderly. She makes a daily choice. If I suffer and respond by making the other choice, to close my heart, then no wisdom for me.

Here’s what Cave wrote:

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.

Wow. Right?

That list of “narratives” I compiled above? It’s only a sampling. And I’ve been just as guilty as you of perpetuating these stereotypes of our enemy-neighbors.

But that is not who I want to be.

Keeping ourselves in check

I want to do better in my corner of the world. Here is my commitment:

  • To guard against these dangers in my own outlook and my family’s.
  • To check how I think about others, especially those I find hard to understand.
  • To remind myself to acknowledge their humanity.

Will you join me?

To start, I’d like to recommend two books:

  • Monica Guzman’s “I Never Thought About it That Way.” Read it along with me. I find her insight extremely relevant to our current situation, and her humility refreshing. When we are finished, I will review. And we can discuss.
  • Amanda Ripley’s “High Conflict” (now out in paperback!). I will re-read this book that’s been so influential on me over the last year. And I’ll finally write a proper review. Probably not until the summer. The review may not be timely, but the book sure is.

Here’s to waking up from the spell. Here’s to bravery. To hope. Here’s to cultivating that “warrior emotion” so that in time we find the world is indeed worth believing in and defending.