I used to work for an organization called “Young Life” that partnered with local high schools to help kids learn about Jesus, life, relationships – just about anything we could do to journey with them as they navigated their teens. It was one of the most challenging jobs I’ve had.
It was also one of the most clueless episodes of my life. I won’t list all of the awkward things I perpetrated there, partly because there’s not enough storage on my WordPress account, and partly because I don’t want to re-hash it all.
However, just to illustrate how bad I wrestle with this…
I went on a date with a friend’s cousin. Nothing huge, no fireworks, neither of us was really into it. At the end of the date, I parked the car in front of her apartment, unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door and started to get out. She got agitated and said, “No. No, it’s OK, you don’t have to walk me up.”
As someone who’s always struggled with social anxiety, trying to figure out norms, protocols, and the myriad games we’re supposed to play, especially the ones that apply to girls, I thought I had run into something new. Maybe girls don’t actually like being walked to their door. Maybe it makes them feel some kind of pressure to invite you in, or kiss you because you went out of your way.
My next date, some time later, with a different girl who worked with Young Life, went way better, until the end when I didn’t get out of the car. I didn’t want to freak her out, or put some kind of pressure on her – I thought I was doing a good thing.
By writing what follows I’m in no way implying that any kind of blindness, especially the permanent kind, is good, or beneficial. I sort of lost my sight for a day and got my eyes opened, but thankful that it was temporary.
Here’s the story…
5 years ago I was diagnosed with a thing called RA. My immune system will occasionally flare and attack my joints. It’s super painful and can result in permanent disability if it’s not handled rightly. But somehow, about two years into the diagnosis, I convinced myself that if I exercised super hard I could manage this without RA meds, which are super scary.
It “worked” for a couple of years, but last week I started experiencing a burning sensation in my left eye, which got worse day by day. Pretty soon, the only time I could open either eye was in a dark room.
Wife rushed me to the ophthalmologist who said I had an ulcer on my eyeball, most likely caused by the RA which he believed wasn’t being managed well. Can’t tell you how painful it was.
The next day we visited my RA doc who gave me a bunch of dirty looks for not going to the doctor for two years, put me back on meds. Eye’s feeling better, still burns a little – having a hard time writing this morning, but I hope what I learned by not being able to see for day stays with me for awhile.
It’s weird at first, being driven around in cars, not being able to see anything, or sitting in your living room with your eyes closed, nothing to do.
You can’t turn on the TV, read the news, or soak in some social media. I had no idea how much crap was coming into my brain through my eyes. I’m not mature enough to read someone’s rant on Facebook and not let it into my soul, so I’m frequently feasting my eyes on things that take me to the dark side.
I also couldn’t judge anybody, which for me has become a staple of being, a coping mechanism of sorts. I pick on the frailties of others to make myself feel good, which works in the moment, but the bill that comes later is big, and gets paid out of my quality-of-life budget.
But the hardest thing about my temporary loss of sight was that I couldn’t get anything done. I’m a “do-er.” I derive my value and life’s purpose from what I can accomplish – especially if it’s something impressive. That’s why being a stay-at-home-dad has been so difficult. There are no paychecks, no measurables – nothing I can throw out in a conversation to give evidence to my worth as a human.
That’s difficult in a world that worships accomplishment.
For years, sociologists have drawn an interesting distinction between “doing” and “being” cultures. Ours is more of a “doing” culture. We’re busy, tied to the clock, frequently talking in terms of accomplishments and accolades. Things like achievement, awards, education, goals, money, real estate, and other signs of “success” are what we value.
That’s not a bad thing. Every culture needs to have a “doing” aspect to it, or… well… nothing gets done.
Cultures that focus more on “doing” are typically more wealthy and powerful than “being” cultures, which place more weight on things like artistic expression, parties/gatherings, celebrations, friendship, and a general care for one another. Folk in “being” cultures enjoy more intimacy, more interdependence, and far less anxiety, loneliness, and depression than folk in “doing” cultures.
If there was a perfect culture, it would have a healthy amount of “being” and “doing,” and neither would exist at the expense of the other.
But for now, our culture makes it difficult to value people, relationships, etc. We’re too heavy on the “doing” end, and suffering for it.
But when you can’t see, when you have to spend an entire day getting nothing done, all you can do is “be.” Contentment is easier for me when I manage to say no to “do.”
So, I sat in the silence of my living room chair with my eyes closed for hours. For the first time in my life I rode in the car while dad drove, totally un-annoyed by his lack of respect for the lower end of the legal speed limit. Instead of worrying about all the stuff I want to get done, I thought about my wife, thankful that I get to spend the rest of my life with her.
I felt present. I couldn’t think about all the things I was dreaming about, or the list of things needed to make them come true. I never realized how distracting my dreams are, how much they keep me from being present with the people I love, or with the things that are truly beautiful and meaningful that I’m constantly surrounded by. I live, day to day, with huge contentment barriers.
I’m so taken by “what’s coming next” that my life is like a long, steel tunnel. I can see what’s at the end, and it looks great, like nothing else matters, but I can’t see what’s around me – the beauty, the weight. Peace. The things that are most important to me will occasionally poke their hands through the tunnel and try to get me to come out, but that impedes forward motion, and makes me angry.
Not being able to see for a day showed me that I’m too heavy on “doing” at the expense of the “being” that my soul is craving.
So, for now at least, I’m not going to spend the time I usually spend on Sunday AM blogging, and go hang out with the fam.
And although the NFL will fine any player who publicly protests during the national anthem, we’re already seeing more of it – highly paid professional football players acting in a manner we find disrespectful; and us getting really angry about it.
But I don’t think we understand what it is that we’re really angry about.
Hang with me here as I do my best to explain.
Say, hypothetically, that the US passed a law allowing parents to beat their children. Slapping, punching, screaming, starving – all became legal. And because of the good and bad of social media, we’d be daily bombarded with images of abused children.
And there’d be nothing any of us could do about it.
Or say that Hilary was president, and she found a way to ban all public expressions of Christianity – not any other religion, just Christianity. No more t-shirts, tattoos, jewelry. No more talking about Jesus in bars or with co-workers No more Easter Sunday outdoor services, small-group Bible studies, Christian youth camps, etc.
So, NFL players start taking a knee during our national anthem because they feel like they can’t, in good conscious, stand as everyone sings about America.
Would that bother you? Would that break your mind?
Of course not.
They’d be heroes.
We’d support them if they were protesting something we valued.
But they’re not, and that makes us mad.
Our problem with the NFL protests isn’t that taking a knee is disrespectful to our flag and country. What’s making us mad is that we believe, with every fiber of our being, that there’s nothing to protest.
Football isn’t the only place this is happening.
Recently, lots of folks got mad when Donald Trump announced that black unemployment was at an all-time low (which is true) and everyone stood up to clap, except for most of the black people in the crowd. They sat in protest.
Why?
My social media feed lit up with people saying things like “how dare they,” and “they don’t know how good they have it.”
Fox News interviewed a few spokespeople from the black community to assure us that these people should have celebrated.
This was proof to so many that blacks in the US are entitled, whiny, divisive malcontents.
But most white people I know can’t articulate why these black people didn’t stand.
Black unemployment has always been twice that of white unemployment – always – since we started measuring employment statistics long ago. No matter how educated or empowered black people become, or whatever good comes from affirmative action, blacks will always be 100% less employable than whites.
Why?
I wouldn’t have stood up either.
When NFL players kneel, they’re convinced that our systems – our economic systems, our educational systems, our law enforcement systems, our economic systems – are rigged in favor of whites at significant cost to non-whites.
And we get mad because we’re firmly convinced that they are dead wrong. Sure, we’ve got problems with racism in the US, but it’s not that bad.
If that’s how you approach all of this – If you believe that non-white NFL players have nothing significant to protest, you simply haven’t done your homework.
There is a MOUNTAIN of statistics that support the fact that our systems are white-skewed at the expense of non-whites. Turns out there actually is something to protest. Here’s an article that puts a lot of this in one place, with links to sources. It’s a great place to start if you haven’t been exposed to any of this.
But despite the fact that these statistics, studies, research etc. have been around for the last 20 years, us white Christians keep finding creative ways to ignore them. So, whenever a non-white cries “injustice,” white people, especially white Christians, turn a blind eye. That’s what we’ve always done.
Have you noticed that, with very rare exception, it’s white people that get the most angry about the protests? People that have no experience with racism whatsoever, people that are more likely to get hired when the economy’s good, people that are less likely to get fired when it’s bad, people who are less likely to be incarcerated, etc., all say “there’s not a problem here.”
I have white friends who would say, “hold on a minute, white people are the victims of racism all the time.” A Facebook friend recently commented that any form of discrimination where a black person is chosen over a white person is racism.
That’s not racism…
Racism says “there’s something wrong with a person because of the color of their skin.” Affirmative action, even in it’s most broken expression doesn’t do that. You can call it wrong if you want to, but you can’t call it racist.
We don’t know what racism is. We have no experience with it. If we did, we’d love it when our NFL stars and others protested. We’d march. We’d organize. We’d fight.
But because we don’t understand, we vilify those that do, especially the ones who take a stand on their knee.
And we get angry. We call it righteous anger, but rest assured, 99% of the time, anger is far from righteous.
As someone who does an OK job at following Jesus, and as a former pastor who still mentors people from time to time, it’s become clear that the places we’re angry are the places we’re the most broken, the places where we need to be begging Jesus for help.
If these protests are making you mad, you’ve got some work to do.
If you’re a Christian, what would it hurt to pray to Jesus, “Am I missing something here?” Or surrender to Him, “You can do whatever you want to me, just make sure that I’m not on the wrong side of this thing.” Even the great King David prayed that God would protect him from himself.
But we don’t pray that. Why would we? There’s not a problem here.
Unless you’re willing to start listening, these protests are going to keep ruining your Monday nights, because there is a problem here. A big one. And it’s not going anywhere until the people who have all the power at the expense of the people who don’t, do something about it.
I know, when people start talking about “white privilege,” it makes us angry. White privilege isn’t a thing right?
That’s what you believe when you haven’t done your homework.
At least do your homework so that, when people like me start ranting, you can have a conversation, a debate, maybe the two of us can get somewhere we haven’t been before. But this homework will complicate the problem of knee-taking at football games.
It’ll make it harder to point fingers and run to simple, black and white, judgmental solutions that require little more than an emotional response and some heated social media ranting.
