Month: June 2020

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Emerging on a New World, Part Five: What Remains

When I was a kid we used to play a game called “Spin the Statue.” Whoever was It would take each participant by both hands, spin her around and let her go, at which time she was supposed to freeze in position. Once everyone was frozen, It would survey the group and assign each person a part in a scene or tableau (“You be the car, you’re the driver, you’re the road, and . . . uh . . . you be the stop sign”). Then turn around and count slowly to 10 while everyone assembled themselves, and when It turned back the scene should be in place. (Though not for long, especially for the person who ended up being the road.)

When I first started on this series, the whole world was in the middle of an economic freeze, with no one as It to tell us how we were supposed to reassemble ourselves. Most of us agreed some changes would be permanent—big cities would begin to hollow out, more workers would be working at home, and possibly (on the downside) economic depression and suicide would deepend.  Some predicted explosions of excess when the lockdowns were lifted. I don’t recall anyone predicting literal explosions, but here we are.

Given the pressures of being cooped up for almost three months, any strong emotional trigger could set off a whole nation. One reason George Floyd’s death became the trigger is that it was so iconic. A black man crushed into the gravel with a white man’s knee on his neck—what better picture of the whole tragic history of race? The tinder was already there: the well-publicized 1619 Project, a dozen best-sellers from the recent past all on the same theme, widespread discontent at a supposed racist in the White House. All it needed was a spark.

When the center does not hold, things fall apart. The political center, guided by what we might loosely label “western values,” has been crumbling for decades. It’s impossible at this point to tell how many Americans even understand their country, or think it’s worth defending. There will be no savior from D.C., now or perhaps ever. Our culture, post-Christian, is quickly becoming post-American.

The one time in history God claimed a nation as his own, it wasn’t for national pride. “It was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery” (Deut. 7:8). The story of Israel’s roots, told in Genesis 12-50, is not the typical heroic narrative. Our own history is a complex narrative of lofty ideals and shameful deeds, heroic self-sacrifice and hypocritical greed. The potential for nobility creates a corresponding potential for venality. Freedom to achieve means freedom to deceive, and the United States is the story of both.

But it’s also the story of self-correcting over time: how the lofty ideals reassert themselves and remind us how far we’ve wandered. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is our national conscience, particularly, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . .” It’s human nature to default to but some are more equal than others (see Jefferson the slave-owner), but the principle is sound and biblical, and sound because it’s biblical.

In the current wild spin, what shape have be spun ourselves into? Could be a spasm, or signal for real and lasting decline. The United States as originally conceived is definitely worth striving for, yet we know for a fact that no nation lasts forever. Sooner or later—and we can definitely pray for later—the United States will disunite.

But we are dual citizens, and What Remains is the Word of God. Truth is stumbling in the streets (Is. 59:14) but it won’t disappear. If we (as a nation) will not have truth for our conscience, we will have it as our consequence, played out in literal and figurative street fights. But we (as a royal priesthood) will always have a place to call home.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Four: Power

What is power?

My first year in high school, I felt unseen. About 2000 students attended that school, and I joined the restless masses that thronged the halls at every bell. I had one friend, a holdover from grade school who felt as insignificant as I. We hatched a plan to get to school early one day and bring screwdrivers, with which to remove as many light-switch covers, and any other removable hardware, as possible. And we did. Because those were the days before surveillance cameras, we got away with it. The only effect was this: for the next few days, every time I passed one of those little acts of vandalism, I thought, I did that.

It was small and silly, but at the time I was small and silly too. Still, I wonder if I was motivated by the same impulse that causes spray-painted slogans and smashed windows.

That’s one form of power: the ability to be heard, be seen, and make changes. Over the last few weeks it has mostly been exercised by people who feel themselves powerless, at least individually. Corporately they march in the streets, hoping to impose change by signs and slogans—or spray paint and Molotov cocktails. Certain kinds of change will almost certainly happen: the law and policy kind. The heart kind of change has already happened, sparked by a 9-minute video. That’s the same way hearts were changed almost 60 years ago. by news footage of police clubbing people on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and setting their dogs against peaceful protesters.

The protests (not the riots) are a result of that heart change, not a cause. Any meaningful change, in policy or attitude, will come from the heart, not from law or policy.

Here’s another definition of power, from Culture Making by Andy Crouch: “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.” Notice the verb. Political change must be imposed by law and threat. Cultural change can only be proposed, by persuasion and example. Imposition forces; proposition appeals. One breeds resentment, the other sympathy. To take one example, the legalization of same-sex marriage came about not by vandalizing wedding chapels and boycotting Bed Bath and Beyond, but by persuading enough of the public that marriage was a basic human right, to which many of our fellow humans were unfairly deprived.

Emotional appeals work true and lasting change more than angry demands. Both are forms of power available even to the powerless, but how successfully any group proposes a new “cultural good” (such as meaningful change in race relations) depends on when, where, and especially how the proposal is made. Anger is powerful, but by nature anger doesn’t last in its purest form—it quickly burns off into resentment, vindictiveness, opportunism, radicalism, rationalization, frustration, apathy, and a host of other negatives.

“American race relations” is a huge, complex topic that has already taken up entire library stacks. I can’t address it in a column, except to say this: No one (except perhaps the very old, the very young, or the very sick) is completely powerless. Everyone has a certain degree of power and a platform for using it. Some will have a lot more than others, but all it takes is a voice, a mind, and a will.

The question is, what will you do with it?

The world proposes one way: get in their face and make demands.

Jesus offers another way: He who would be great among you must become your servant—not by groveling, but by hearing, encouraging, and investing.  

Martin Luther King understood this. He could not make America change her biases, but he could persuade her to change her heart by harnessing the influence of the black church, challenging the conscience of the white church, inspiring youth, and reminding his fellow Americans of their founding ideals. He invested his power in service, not violence. As much as some present-day activists would like to deny it, change happened (I was there; I saw it).

They say peaceful power doesn’t work anymore. I say it’s the only thing that works. Destruction squanders power (I did that); investment builds it. Whatever you have in your hand builds your power base, which grows as you share it with someone else: knowledge, skill, connection, even friendship. This kind of power doesn’t spread as rapidly as the other kind, but it’s more durable, and certainly more stable.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Four: Remaking Culture?

I graduated high school in 1968. What a great year—for race riots, assassinations, war protests and burning buildings! None of it affected me directly, as I was working my first summer job and realizing I absolutely hated the 8-to-5 routine. (Just like school! What was the point?) In other words, like most 18-year-olds I was totally self-focused. Things seemed pretty bad out there, but they were still out there. Had I a boyfriend who’d just received his draft notice I would have felt differently, but boyfriends of any kind were still in my future.

I doubt the perspective of 18-year-olds has changed much since then, but current events have leaned hard on them. These “uncertain times,” for the first time I can remember, have affected literally everyone. The late sixties and seventies were awful, but I was busy getting married and having babies and didn’t notice so much. 2020 may actually signal a profound turning point in a long process of coming apart (in the Charles-Murray sense).

Who’s in charge here? Nobody.

Never have officeholders seemed more hapless. Never has magical thinking been so pronounced. Never has a culture so obsessed over anecdotes while broad-based problems go begging for attention. Definitions are so blurred and signals so crossed that vandals burning property owned by blacks is excused in the cause of justice for blacks. Are we doomed?

Nah. This is America, in the best way. Our national superpower is initiative, and I don’t think we’ve lost it. It’s true that the academic left would do everything in their power to tar-brush our history and remake our character, but the academic left is not invincible. Polarization is as intense as it ever was—except for that situation in 1861, which was a little worse—and that’s not good. But neither is it hopeless.

I’ve been rereading Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, and here’s one thing, among a lot of things, that stands out: “I have become convinced that little good comes from straining to ‘change the culture.’” That’s a misunderstanding of what culture is and who we are. Whole books could be written about what culture is (and Crouch wrote one), but we can all understand who we are as a function of our community: family, neighborhood, church, club, or organization. And community is where we don’t change culture, but make it.

Volunteers who come together to sweep up broken glass are a community, quickly formed and just as quickly dissolved when the job is done.  But to get out there and make some culture requires something a little more deliberate, and I found Crouch’s subsection on “The 3, the 12, and the 120” especially helpful.

Every movement begins with a small group—perhaps just two or four, but three is the perfect number. Each individual springboards off the others, and three is just right for hatching an idea that’s feasible as well as inspiring. To carry it out, however, requires a larger group. Could be 8 or 13, but 12 has a nice historical—or at least biblical–vibe to it. The 12 provide essential support within a circle that pulls in many talents and skill sets. Then, as the circle widens, it draws in more people as accessories: say, 120. The 120 are not the core; mostly likely they will be involved in several other projects, as well as focusing on their own, but they form a kind of phalanx to extend the original idea, now refined to a cultural product, onto a broader platform—that is, into “the culture” at large.

As I read this I found myself thinking of Christ’s ministry, and sure enough: he began with his “3”—his inner group of apostles, or even the original Trinity. His “12” were the apostles who spent almost every waking moment with him throughout his ministry. But to launch that ministry into the world took the 120 believers who were praying in an upper room on Pentecost.

But the same pattern can hold for any new cultural good. Publishing a book, for instance. Andy Crouch explains that his “3” were his wife and a good friend, who sounded his ideas for Culture Making and supplied inspiration for further thoughts. Then his publishing team, the “12,” pitched in to make the book a reality: editors, designers, and marketer. To get the book off the ground took a platoon of bloggers, pastors, reviewers, and interviews, so that eventually Culture Making got to me and stimulated my thinking to look for my niche and my 3. Everyone makes culture; intentionally or not. Everyone has their potential 3 and 12, and perhaps even their 120. And everyone has power: the question is, how much, and what do we do with it?