I Think I Smell Your Authenticity (or Maybe It's Mine)

I am currently in the midst of attempting to civilize four boys.  I start at a disadvantage, having only 18 years and a second-hand window into the strange landscape of the male psyche to work with, but I soldier on.  

They have eaten cat food, eaten bugs, eaten boogers, and eaten their scabs.  They have surreptitiously gone almost a week in the same socks and underwear.  

Even when their armpits smell like rancid chile dogs and their head is 1/3 greasy hair, 1/3 grass clippings, and 1/3 dirt, they beg with tears to be let out of a shower.  

For the first decade of their lives, words, food, and spit flew onto everything within a two foot radius of them at the dinner table.  Elbows popped out at right angles with every bite and milk was knocked over so regularly that I was tempted to pour a cup onto the table at the beginning of each meal, just to get it over with.  

The go-to explanation for almost every bone-headed decision they have made is either, "Did I do that?", "I didn't do that!", or "I didn't mean to do that!", accompanied by a shocked expression and big weepy eyes.  

That explanation has been trotted out to account for the broken window in the barn, the broken window in Papa's car, the broken window at the church gym, and (yesterday) the broken window in the garage.  

It has been used to explain sawed off trees, frogs in the glove compartment, knives in the microwave, and public belching.  

Fingers slammed in doors and stuck in keyholes, chipped teeth, black eyes, blown circuits, splintered furniture, and ripped clothing--it all comes down to this one statement of authentic incredulity.  

The problem is that the purpose of parenthood is not to excuse or enable the free expression of our children's "authentic selves".  

The purpose of parenthood is to raise up men and women who will become adept at living peacefully, politely, and lovingly as members of their families, so that they can transform into living peacefully, politely, and lovingly as members of society. 

None of us is an autonomous being, and where our "authentic" habits and impulses encroach upon others, the habits and impulses must go.  

Wait. A. Second.  What am I saying? 

Sheesh!

Who am I to ask my boys to give up their authenticity?  Sacrilege!  Authenticity is the holy grail of the modern age, and our highest calling is the free expression of our authentic selves, right?  

Oh yes, friends!  The culture has been talking and I've been listening. Authenticity is king. The 11th Commandment clearly states, "Thou shalt not ask me to change my stripes to accommodate you or anyone else.  This is 'who I am'."  

Your job is not simply to not judge me, not just to tolerate me, but rather to actively affirm and celebrate every outworking of my authentic being.

Every impulse and felt need must be validated.

Every belch and pimple, every windy effusion and ill conceived tweet, every half-baked lifestyle choice I advertise among my 1,327 Facebook friends must be stamped with a thumbs up or a smiley face.  In fact, I don't even want to know that opposing viewpoints or opinions exist. 

Give me my authenticity...and applause...and a safe space to practice my absolute Me-ishness...away from criticism of every kind...or give me death!

So where does this leave me with my boys? Hmmm...

Do I stop correcting their "misbehavior" and start applauding it so it won't be such a shock to them when they learn that all the explosive outworkings of their authentic selves during childhood were not actually immature and ill-conceived rudeness (as I had previously told them), but rather valid lifestyle choices?  

There may well be some in the culture at large saying, "Yes!  Let those boys be free!  Free to draw snot pictures on the patio doors and carve their names into the coffee table.  Free to decide their own menu/mealtime/bedtime/curriculum/gender expression.  Free to wander in and out of their parents' conversations at whim.  Free to slouch into churches, weddings, and funerals wearing their favorite old t-shirt and a pair of cowboy boots--or maybe no shoes at all, just socks!  Or maybe no socks!  Or maybe no pants!  Or maybe just their footie pajamas.  

Or a purple tutu. 

In all seriousness, when I look around the world these days, I feel like I am living in a dystopian novel.  Increasing confusion over the basic realities of life is understandable for a people who have lost their moral moorings, but it should not be bleeding into the church the way it is. 

Here is where everyone who is not a professing Christ follower can stop reading.  Not to be rude, but this does not apply to you.  

For the rest of us, I think it is time we remember that when we gave our lives to Jesus, we agreed to let Him have His way with us. We signed on because we saw where our authentic selves were leading us, and it was off a cliff.  

Jesus saves us from being slaves to our twisted authenticity by sending the Holy Spirit to lift us out of confusion and into the beauty that we were created to reflect as image-bearers of a perfect, holy, righteous God.  

Romans 6:6 says, "We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin."  

Ephesians 4:22-24 states, "You were taught with reference to your former way of life to lay aside the old man who is being corrupted in accordance with deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man who has been created in God’s image – in righteousness and holiness that comes from truth."

Christ is the only one whose authenticity doesn't stink after three days.  It is uncorrupted.  The rest of us stopped being able to trust ourselves in the garden of Eden.  So while I may (and do) still retain authentic skills, giftings, talents, and aptitudes, there are also within me a great number of propensities that I must now hold up to the light of Scripture, and where they do not match, I must allow God to conform me to His image.

He is true north.  He is the absolute standard--the only One who actually IS love, holiness, purity, righteousness, justice, and truth.  For me, these are attributes that I choose to wear or not wear.

I am loving...when I am not choosing selfishness.

I am true...when I am not lying.

I am just...when I am not being capricious.

I am holy...when I am not wallowing in sin.

I am faithful...when I am not straying.

Our goodness is fickle and fleeting, and our hearts are always waging war against us, which is why the only authenticity a Christian ought to embrace is God's, and why I think He uses such active and specific language in describing how we are to do that.  

Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God."

Colossians 3:9-10 "Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. "

Romans 8:12-13 " Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."

Colossians 3:5 " So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world."


Romans 13:14 "clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh."


We like the idea of being forgiven, and receiving love, and gaining heaven, but when Jesus comes into our lives and starts moving around the mental furniture, knocking out walls, and hauling our beloved collection of velvet Elvises to the dumpster, we can get defensive.  

The danger of being steeped in a culture of affirmation is that when some deformed aspect of our authentic self rears its ugly head and meets the weight of disapproval from either a person who is being hurt by it, a person who sees us being blinded by it, or by the Holy Spirit, we can easily flee to the approving arms of our Facebook friends or into the comfortable pews of the pick-a-flavor churches that populate our country instead of earnestly and honestly searching the Scripture to help bring our hearts in line.  

I guarantee that you can find a church congregation which will actively cheer you on in any path you want to take.  It is one of the side effects of living in an affluent and apathetic culture.  

When one's faith is not a matter of life and death, but simply just another lifestyle choice, we find that the clergy and congregants alike begin to wrestle the power of definition from the hand of God and run about in a mad frenzy of approbation, and soon God's voice is drowned out in a convulsion of back-slapping.

And sin slides in to do its ugly work.

Oh, Church!  O, Christian!

Oh, Self!

I truly wish we would hear much, much less about how we should be loving and accepting and validating one another's authentic selves in the church and instead turn our desperate eyes onto the only Source of authentic love, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, justice, holiness, truth, self-control, joy, gentleness, mercy, and grace.

It occurs to me that the ONLY "like" we need be concerned with is God's.  His thumb is bigger than anyone else's, and retains the right to judge our actions.  Matthew 10:28 says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

His standard exists outside of my opinion.  His authenticity is the one that will win.  If I don't bow the knee now, I will do so eventually, and not without wreaking a good deal of havoc on scores of hapless victims of my unbridled authenticity and destroying myself in the process.  


My authentic self likes to lose her temper and is prone to using her substantial vocabulary to machine gun whoever is irritating her at the moment.  

It feels good.  It feels, oh so natural.  But PLEASE don't let me live there!  Spur me on to love and good works! (Hebrews 10:24)

Your authentic self may be gossipy, or hyper-critical, or poly-amorous, or violent, or selfish, or lustful, or lazy.  I guarantee that any one of those traits can at once feel right and be affirmed by your own heart.

 If you don't know Christ, I love you too much not to tell you that you do not have to be a slave to those passions and tendencies.  He came to bring life, and life more abundant! (John 10:10)

How He loves us!  How much He longs to bring us to the sweet freedom of sanctification and release us from our self-inflicted prisons.  How can we look at what He sacrificed for us and not be serious about living--not in our authenticity--but in His holiness?

Titus 3:3-6 says, "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior."

If you do know Jesus, then your job is to encourage your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to continue to adopt the authenticity of God, and to challenge yourself to find more ways to put off anything that doesn't match His word or His ways.  

 Christian Friends, can we work on this together? 

There are aspects of every one of us that are good and worthy of being cultivated and celebrated for the benefit of those around us.  But the test must be whether an attitude or attribute falls inside or outside the boundaries prescribed for us in Scripture.   

Not Scripture in a vacuum, or contorted into a fun-house parody of itself, or as an addendum to what you were going to do anyway, or as a pick-a-passage validation tool.
 
We cannot keep studying the cultural fads with an eye to how close we can get to the fire without being burned.  

May we instead turn our eyes upon Jesus and read His word plainly, in context, by genre, with an earnest heart for truth and a commitment to bow before it--and watch as the Holy Spirit does its beautiful refining work in us.


The Bible is a road map, and God is a gentle Teacher, but we need to stop trying to arm-wrestle Him into agreeing with us and instead align our hearts with His.  

And so I will continue to preach to myself in the mirror every morning, and then go downstairs and preach the same message to the squirrels God has given me to raise:  "Rejoice! Jesus loves you just as you are!" 

And right after that: "Rein it in, Cowboy!  He also loves you too much to let you stay there." 

************** 

Philippians 1:6  "For I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will continue to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."

 

Letters to a Graduate

Christina Jean Birmingham--Class of 2016

 

***************************

 Christina,

From the very beginning, you have been a source of energy and happiness in our home.  Your vibrant spirit and love for life has been a wonderful complement to a family filled with often super-serious task-oriented people.  Although the busyness of life and the constant chaos of a large family can test the limits of anyone's expressions of joy, I appreciate the way that you are able to routinely cut through all of that and bring levity to our home.  Your passion for people and commitment to your family has been vital to our home and I know will continue to be.

It is my prayer that no matter what hardships, difficulties, or trials this world brings your way that you will continue to express your vibrant and loving personality in ever-increasing conformity with the character of God.  Just as the Lord has given himself for us, we are called to give of ourselves for others.  As we are all called to do as image bearers of Christ, I charge you to "in humility, count others more significant than yourself."  Philippians 2:3

 

Though there is always uncertainty in the future as well as regrets from the past, one thing that can be known with absolute confidence is the certainty of God's unending love for you and His perfect plan for your life.  I have been elated to see your passion for the Lord and his Word increase.  Our discussions on living as a Christian in a world that is aligned against a biblical worldview have been some of my happiest moments.

Paul expresses this mindset beautifully in Romans 12:2

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

No matter what path the Lord takes you on in the days ahead, always foster a discipline of thinking according to the revealed truth found in the word of God and expressed in the person of Jesus Christ.  Let his truth infuse every single aspect of your life, and you will never be able to be shaken, no matter how crazy the storms of life may be, whether coming from within or from the world around you.

You are entering a culture that systemically gives no consideration or glory to the God who is Lord over all.  It will not be easy to stand in the midst of such opposition.  But the God who loves you more than anyone will be your ever-present help.  The writer of Hebrews addresses this best, and I will paraphrase for you:  "Run with perseverance the race marked out for you, fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.  Because of the joy set before him he endured the cross (death and persecution).  So consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

We love you,  

Dad

*****************

 Dear Christina,

          As I contemplate the occasion of your high school graduation, I am amazed again by the fingerprints of God in your life.  I am grateful to your birth mom for choosing to give you life.  I am grateful for the neighbor who happened to hear you when you needed help.  I am grateful for the paramedics, policemen, and E.R. physicians who cuddled you up before my arms could, who cared for your wounds, and brought you to a safe place to recover.  I am grateful that the resident doctor who “happened” to be on call on your hospital floor that day in 2001, “happened” to be your future Daddy, so that his hands, which would be so instrumental in caring for your later needs, could also have a part in the healing of your tiny frame.  I love that you arrived on Mother’s Day.  I love how you and Rebekah captured my heart from the moment I saw you, and how you have it still.  

    

         If ever you doubt how precious you are to God, consider what had to happen to bring you all the way across the country and into our arms.  God had to blow up my plans for how and when I would have children.  He closed my womb.  That is all there is to it.  The doctors said, “There is no reason you cannot have children.”  But there was a reason!  My heart had to be opened to the possibility of YOU!  He brought the right people to speak gentle truths to us about how God might be building our family.  He softened our hearts and moved our feet into foster parent training. Then He allowed me to miss multiple placement phone calls—infants, tiny siblings—always placed  in other homes by the time I could call back.  He moved me to begin feathering my nest—for girls!  He knew!  And then He took the tragic circumstances of your early life and redeemed them, placing you where you would learn of Him, of His love for you, of the gifts He has given you, and of His plans for you.

 

         

 And what wonderful gifts you possess!  My earliest memory of you is of walking into the facility where you were brought after your release from the hospital.  There was a sweet, smiling redhead leaning against a table—and, streaking across the room, a tiny, curly-headed toddler with chubby cheeks and a great big grin. It is a perfect picture of you, as you have continued to approach life with that same spunky attitude and enthusiasm.  For better or worse, you are fearless and adventuresome.  You are brave and curious and full of wonder.  This has led you to the edge of a precipice a time or two, but God, in His providence has always provided a pair of strong hands—sometimes His, sometimes ours, sometimes others’—to pull you back.  Take this not as a desire to curb your freedom, but rather as a sign of His great love and protection!

 

  What I love about you:   Your wonderful sense of humor.  Your tenderness toward the weak, hurting, and disabled.  Your intuition and your observations about life and people.  Your industrious spirit.  Your love of music.  Your willingness to help with absolutely anything that needs doing.  Your instinctive and instructive way with children.  Your protectiveness toward your family (no beady-eyed vultures be gettin’ those boys!)  Your increasing love for and submission to the Lord.

 

          My charge to you:  In ALL your ways submit to God and He will direct your paths.  Embrace adventure, live fully, say yes to opportunity, but do it under the protective and loving gaze of your Heavenly Father.  There is freedom in His statutes and they will enable you to get the most possible joy out of life.  Make your closest friends people who love God as much as or more than you do, but never forget there is a world full of hurting people who need the love and truth that you have.  Always try to serve them and see them as God does.  Bad things will happen, but remember, God is the redeemer.  You have seen Him redeem the past and you can trust Him for the future.  He is faithful.

       And finally, I want you to know how very much we love you, how proud we are of you, and how glad we are that God has allowed us to be your parents.  You are a treasure and a gift, and I can’t wait to see what God has planned for your life! 

All my love, Mom

 

       

        

     

I, Racist or I, Human?

     I just finished reading a book about pain--specifically the pain carried by one person as he navigated the American experience as a black man, born and raised in the inner city.

        He was steeped in the poverty, violence, hopelessness, and the discrimination which is so common in urban areas, and taught to fear and hate the descendants of those who had perpetrated all the horrors of mental and physical slavery upon his ancestors. 

     He spoke of these atrocities with all the freshness of something that happened yesterday, and drew bitter lines from those days to the present, circling himself, his people, and his descendants in a protective barrier of mistrust.  

     He wrote of pale-skinned people as if we were a monolithic group, often attributing evil motives to us, and accusing "us" of waging a cultural and institutional war on him and everyone like him.


      Sometimes, he said, we act ignorantly, sometimes deliberately, but always we are acting with a will to power, within a structurally racist system, and with the subconscious need to keep minority people groups under our feet or in our pocket.

     Furthermore, I am told that I am unable to even speak to my inherent racism, having lived my whole life as a member of an intrinsically racist collective and as an unconscious beneficiary of it.  

     The book was called, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and it really was a thought-provoking read.  It was useful in that I think I better understand the great burden of anger and pain that so many African Americans carry every day.

     Maybe he is right about the inevitability and pervasiveness of racism in this country.  There are certainly large numbers of voices, both white and black, telling me he is.


     But what if they are only documenting the symptoms and not the cause?  What if the issue is more complicated than black and white, or more nuanced than the simple need for reparations, or more difficult than a government program could ever fix?  


     What if these problems don't just originate in a slave past or persist because of systemic modern-day corruption?


     What if the problem is not that some are black and some are white, but that all are human?  

     Would the solutions look any different if the problem was seen to be with the heart and not with the skin?

    As the protective mother bear of three bi-racial children, I have spent many years with my "racism radar" out, and on occasion I have found it.  


     It existed in pockets of angry ignorance, among small, bitter-spirited individuals.  Sometimes it came from strangers, and sometimes I found it in people who were close enough to me to know better.  

     I am happy to say, that in every case where I encountered racist rhetoric or attitudes from friends or relatives, the sweetness and beauty of my individual children and the relationships they established worked to erase those negative attitudes.


     I never drew my children's attention to comments I heard, and always told them to assume the best about others, and to this day, my 18 year old daughter cannot think of a circumstance where she felt diminished or discriminated against because of her color.  


    But even that, I am told, is evidence that I have stripped her of part of her birthright as a woman of color, specifically her "black-consciousness".  I have read a number of posts that intimate that without a connection with a larger collective black identity, a person of African descent is missing authentic personhood--i.e. identification of her "true self".


     So what does this mean for her and my other two racially mixed children?  Does being raised by white parents make her less of a person in the eyes of other African Americans?  

     Does her adoption make me akin to a modern day slaver, stripping my black children away from their roots and community in order to satisfy my desire to be a mom?  Or, as I've read, to exert my continuing superiority over African Americans by "saving" black babies from being raised by their own distinctive cultures due to my low opinion of that culture--in short, my subconscious desire to be the "white savior" to the black race?

      I read these arguments and I try to understand them.  I hear more and more Christians condemning my for the racism I am doomed to participate in simply because of the color I was born.  I am told I cannot even speak about the topic coherently because I am so steeped in it--"like a fish isn't qualified to talk about the water he is in because he knows nothing else." 

     I know that ignorance of a sin does not absolve a person of its guilt, but if I am not qualified to examine my own motives for adopting and loving my children, then who is?    

       It seems to me that racism, like so many sins, is born of the mistrust between all humans everywhere who are different in some way from one another.  It is also born of selfishness--the desire of one person or group to exalt himself/itself at the expense of another.

       The tangled and messy history of relations between the white and black folks of this country is a story that has been played out thousands upon thousands of times throughout human history in countless other places. 


    It has happened here among people of different colors.  It is happening in the Middle East among people of different religions.  It is happening even today on the continent of Africa among people of different tribes.   

      I think this is one of the problems I have with accusing white parents of stealing the black experience from their children.

     What really is the "African culture" which helps to comprise the "black consciousness?"  Ta-nehesi Coates refers often to the attitudes and attributes that black people have retained from "mother Africa", as if the vast African continent with its 50 plus countries, its 2,000 plus languages, its 3,000 plus unique tribes, and its billion plus individuals could possibly give birth to something called " the black experience".  


     In my opinion, such beautiful diversity does not deserve such a broad brush.


     As in this country, there are people there living in communities shaped by dire poverty and people living in vast wealth.  There are individuals who struggle daily with drought and famine and those living in lush landscapes.  There are urban cultures and rural cultures, people accustomed to war and people living in relative peace.  


     They eat different foods, wear different clothing, sing differently, dance differently, think differently, organize their communities differently, raise their children differently, and practice religion differently.  


     How patronizing it seems to lump them all into one, monolithic cultural group based on the darkness of their skin! 


     Even in this country, I think it is simplistic to talk about the "black experience", as if every person of color is marching through their life here in some deterministic lock-step.  There are people of color descended from slaves, and people who immigrated freely.  There are farmers, business owners, educators, artists, athletes, tradespeople, and engineers.  Country folk and city dwellers.  Heroes and villains.  It seems to me that black Americans, like all Americans, live rich and varied lives.  

      So what exactly is the "black culture" I should be giving to my children?  Too much of the literature I am reading seems to indicate that a good part of it involves a constant dredging up and meditation on horror and injustice, the inherent mistrust of others based on the color of their skin, and justifying and excusing the misbehavior of a small segment of lawless and irresponsible young men who insist on terrorizing their own neighborhoods.  If that is the case, then I will take a pass on giving that legacy to my bi-racial children.  


     Like others of  partially African descent, my children have some shared physical features, but that does not define them.

     Neither does this:  my bi-racial children all came from backgrounds of poverty and sadness, and they all tragically lost their first families. They all suffered through a season of uncertainty before we brought them home, and none of them look like the people who are raising them--but even with these shared traits they STILL cannot be painted with a broad brush.



     They are individuals and the way they have responded to every event in their lives is unique to them.  


     What they share with one another more than anything else, is a history of early pain that no child should have to endure on this earth.  The indignities they endured didn't happen to their great-great grandparents.  They didn't just happen to people somewhere who had skin like theirs, or hair like theirs, or genetic material like theirs.  


     Injustice happened to THEM, and since that time we have spent our lives trying to help them redeem the evil that was done.  


     This means helping them to see the infinite value they possess before the God who created them.  

     It means surrounding them with a community of people who affirm their worth as human beings.  

     It means teaching them how to forgive as we would want to be forgiven.  


     It means giving them a safe place in which to process their pain, trauma, and loss, and helping them understand a world that creates people who would hurt children-- so that they will know that they were not to blame for their parents' bad decisions.  

     It means helping them look for ways to minister to others who have been through hard times.  

     It means choosing to focus on the goodness and potential within them instead of dwelling on the pain and scars.


     Because there is no power in victim-hood.  The power lies in grace and the ability to acknowledge the reality of evil and yet not give it a foothold.  

     It seems to me that when life is viewed through a prism of grievances (either real or perceived), you forfeit your power to rise above them, becoming instead defined by your hopelessness and anger.  


     My children have the "right" to be embittered, distrustful, defensive, and angry, but those are rights I hope they will lay down.  

     I want them to have compassion for their birth parents.  I want them to see themselves as strong and capable and beautiful, not as impotent or damaged, and to live lives so bright and hopeful that others will want to lay down their pain and follow after.  


     After everything else, I would hate to see them imprisoned in their own never-ending nightmare of finger pointing and injustice collecting.  

     I have told them about the atrocities that happened during the Civil War, about the wrongs that were committed during the Civil Rights Movement and since then, but only so they can see the kind of tendencies we are all prone to when we consider our own selfish interests and do not choose to build bridges to one another--not so they can add to the list of ways they have been held back (or may be held back in the future).


     I think this is what I wish I could tell Ta-Nehisi Coates and the other people who are spending their lives in an endless blame game.  No one wins. 

      I'm not saying that we should never speak of humans in terms of shared characteristics or experiences, and I will be the first to say we should advocate on behalf of those who have been mistreated, but I wonder greatly at the wisdom of taking the horrors of the past and endlessly projecting them onto present and future generations of their descendants.  


     I also reject the idea that I, whose ancestors did not even live here during that awful time, am guilty of the crimes of slavery and racism, simply because I happen to suffer from the same lack of melanin as those who were guilty.  


     What if we all drew lines back?   I came from Viking stock, which means I probably owe  reparations to some native Swedes.  

     But then I also had some Moravian ancestors, who underwent severe persecution for several hundred years, routinely being forced to flee, losing their property, and being martyred for their beliefs.   

Several hundred years of being hunted down for the simple desire to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience!  Who should be held responsible for those horrors?  Maybe I should start a movement.


     But then, another line of my family tree comes up through the Kentucky Hatfields, who perpetrated horrendous murders and assassinations against the McCoy men, women, and children for several decades.  Where is the justice for the families burned in their sleep and young children tied to trees and shot? 


     But then, I am also a woman, a demographic which has been treated as chattel for thousands of years, and which continues to be subjected to the whims of the stronger sex even to this day.  

     What should be the price for the countless innocents of my own kind whose voices have been silenced and whose rights have been and continue to be trampled?  

     More recently, on separate occasions I have been personally scorned for having a large family, rudely questioned about the validity of my decision to homeschool, and made fun of for my Christian beliefs.  Shall I start a personal list of grievances and make sure my children learn it young?


     We live in a world full of misunderstandings, prejudice, fear, greed, and mistrust.  It comes out in various forms of ugliness until either the persecuted group rises up to address the wrongs, or another group rises up on its behalf--or both. 


      And so it goes.  Down and down through the entire sordid history of the human race.  


     So what is the answer to this dilemma?

     As with so much, it all comes back to God for me. Christianity, specifically--a faith which so beautifully lays out how the path to knowing God--opens the door to being able to love others well.  

     It is, first of all, supremely counter-intuitive, which is why I think children often understand it so quickly.  

     They are not thrown by apparent contradictions--the idea of a Savior loving us by dying for us...

     ...the call to find our lives by losing them...

     ...the idea that the last could be first, that weakness is strength, that humility is power, that in laying down our rights we are made royalty, that beyond our visible end is an invisible and infinitely better beginning. ..

     ...the truth that there is no "Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free", but that we are all one race of infinite worth, showing our beauty in thousands of different colors, cultures, features, sizes, ages, interests, and abilities.

     I have told my children that because we have been forgiven much, we need to forgive much.  And that since we can never out-forgive God, we have no right to keep a ledger against anyone else.  Ever.  

     So maybe the reason my girl can't recall being the victim of racism is that she chooses not to be one.  

     I have heard her laugh off inadvertent comments made by friends.  I have heard her graciously field awkward questions posed to her by children.  I have seen her smile at the rudeness of strangers who say with surprise right in front of her, "Is she yours?"  

     If one day she bears the brunt of a more violent form of discrimination, be it in a racial, religious, or moral context, I trust that even though she was raised by white folks, she will still know that she is perfectly loved by the One who made her, and be able to lay that injustice in His hands and walk forward.    

     Brown and beautiful and uniquely her.  

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 Micah 6:8

"What does the Lord require of us?  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God."