You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself

It breaks my heart but I keep doing it. It breaks my heart but I keep on reading the news . . . for a long time every day. I haven’t been doing it forever. Sometimes I’ll go months without really paying attention but there has been something about the mood of society, something about the unrest that compels me to read, to listen these days . . . and it breaks my heart. Let me pick just a sampling of stories that have run and run, over these last months.

A judge in Cleveland said that he thinks there is probable cause to charge two officers in the shooting death of Tamir Rice but he doesn’t believe he has the authority to do anything about it. We’ll have to wait a while longer to see if justice will be done. Well at least those cops aren’t on the street right now. The wheels of justice seem to be moving a bit more quickly in Baltimore. Marilyn J. Mosby, came out swinging a few weeks ago. I listened as her voice, strident with righteousness spoke with clarity and purpose. God I hope she can get a conviction – assuming of course that the officers are culpable in the death of Freddie Gray. (If someone really wants to make the case that they are not culpable I suppose I’d listen, but for now their culpability is a safe bet.) Then there is Seth Blatter and his merry band of men. You’ve got to wonder just how a guy like that could be re-elected to his position. It reminds me of what my friend Eric used to say: the poor is the cheapest constituency to buy. There was this crazy business at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. I’ve seen the tape; the officer was clearly out of line. He resigned in response to the public furor. A High School Principal in Florida made a comment in support of the officer on social media. The school district issued a statement Wednesday announcing his removal and said that district employees “are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values.” He’s been reassigned. There was controversy at the Boston Public Library; you’d think you could count on a library to be a stable positive presence. Seems not. Apparently engravings by Durer and Rembrandt went missing for a significant time. The Mayor of Boston, apparently wanted to make sure the people of his city knew that he takes his job seriously, so he publically shamed the library President for how she was handling “the crisis” and she obligingly resigned. Even when they found out the engravings were misfiled, (not exactly a shock in a huge library), he asked the Chairman to resign. Across the pond in merry old England a Nobel Laureate, Sir Tim Hunt said some really, really ridiculous and offensive things about women in science labs. He too was forced to resign his position – fortunately for him, it was just an honorary position. In a truly disgusting turn of events a group of SAE fraternity members were caught on video, (caught isn’t exactly the right word; they seemed delighted to be on film), singing a racist chant that they learned at a national leadership conference for SAE. The University has expelled a couple of the guys, punished others and is requiring sensitivity training for others.

This of course only scratches the surface of the news stories coming at us 24 hours a day. I couldn’t bear to retell the stories of rape used as a weapon of war, and . . . oh never mind. You can fill in the blanks. When you think about it, a person could be forgiven for thinking that John Calvin was right about the total depravity thing. I don’t think he ever meant to say that all human beings are totally depraved in every way. I think he meant to say that the seeds of depravity lie in the center of every human being. A person could be forgiven for thinking that is true. In fact, I think most people do think that . . . or something like it. One theme seems to run through all of these stories. Someone is bad and must be punished; better still, they should be publically shamed and removed. I said “is bad,” not “did a bad thing,” because that’s what I hear when I read about this stream of human rot. It’s like everyone assumes that human beings are what they are and there isn’t anything we can do about that . . . except make sure the ones with over-ripe depravity seeds get their just due.

A person could be forgiven for thinking that John Calvin was right about this. They could be forgiven for thinking that human beings are irrevocably, inevitably, hopelessly caught in the clutches of our sinful nature. A person could be forgiven for thinking that, but they would also be wrong.

There is nothing permanent about our nature at all. It is not a static reality. Why? Because we are evolving. Everything evolves actually, not just humans, but certainly we humans are evolving. Individuals evolve and grow, and cultures evolve and grow. They evolve externally and internally. That is, I believe, the good news of the gospel. The Logos, the creative Word, what Whitehead called the “gentle persuasion towards love,” didn’t just become flesh, it is always becoming flesh. I simply don’t believe that John wrote his gospel, (or Matthew, Mark and Luke theirs), so we would know cool stories about Jesus. In each case Jesus is intended to be paradigmatic of a human being awake enough to know that God is at work in creation through them. Or as John put it, “ . . . to all those who trust in his name he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

If we were awake to that reality the news would be different. I don’t mean to say that horrifying things would not happen. I do not mean that there would be no more racism, no more violence. I do not mean to say that people will stop saying truly offensive and ridiculous things. But what would change is the discussion about what we might do about that. I deliberately chose a range of stories to tell. They all end of up with people who have offended society being publically shamed. Clearly we should have boundaries, laws that protect. Surely we need to stand up for justice. But we err if we do so from a stance that suggests people cannot change. Everyone can change. Everyone can wake up and grow up. Everyone can learn to live as a child of God. That does not mean that everyone should be allowed to stay in a position of authority if they have abused that authority. But it does mean that we need to at least consider the possibility that the person in question is not beyond redemption.