Google Reviews, Language, and Formation

There are certain bywords that raise my alarm bells.

As a foster and adoptive parent an obvious one is "actual kids" used in context: "Are you going to have actual kids someday?" It can be confusing because I can assure you, these children are not mythical. They are indeed flesh and blood. We can feed them a piece of fish a la Luke 24:42 if one insists.

Another linguistic eyebrow raiser is "urban". While this is a word in the dictionary and has legitimate uses, sometimes it is used as a synonym for "Black" and I know enough Black folks from rural Georgia to know that's not alright.

One of the most common examples comes with the word "sketchy" as in "sketchy neighborhood" or "sketchy part of town". A good friend of mine likes to say, "There's no such thing as a good or bad neighborhood." And I think all of us know this inherently on some level. Every community, people group, church, and neighborhood is a collection of people who fall all over the moral spectrum.

A quick quiz will reveal this to us quite clearly. Think of the neighborhood you grew up in, whether it was good or bad and answer:

• Was there anyone who was notably rude?
• Was there anyone who was notably kind?
• Was there anyone who seemed nice, but later revealed themselves to be anything but?
• Was there anyone you once feared that revealed themselves to be delightful? (James Earl Jones in The Sandlot I'm looking at you!)

This topic was recently sparked for me by seeing a Google Review for a mural around the corner from our neighborhood.

This mural (which I've mentioned before) commemorates a neighborhood known as Sugar Hill that once stood on the spot. And while I'm not here to put anyone on blast*, I do think this negative way of communicating and thinking is common. It's worth engaging and countering. Here are four reasons to be cognizant of the way we speak about a place.

1. Reinforcing Poverty

In a study called "Voices of the Poor" the World Bank interviewed people experiencing material poverty all over the world: Albania and Appalachia to Vietnam and Zambia. This study found that while people did talk about a material lack of money or possessions, they more starkly spoke of the social and emotional costs of poverty. They spoke of being isolated, dehumanized, and mistreated. To be poor is to be treated as "less than". And this treatment had a real cost.

Language that labels has the active effect of increasing the experienced poverty of those living in it.

2. Inherent Dignity

"God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness'" - Genesis 1:26 

Every person you've met . . . you know what, C.S. Lewis makes this point better than I ever could in his essay The Weight of Glory: 

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Human beings and the communities they form collectively are incredible and ordained with God's goodness. We ought honor and protect them.

3. The Footprint of History

We can come off foolish when we label a community without background knowledge. The Sugar Hill neighborhood is an example of this. If its history is examined, one will find that Sugar Hill was once a middle-upper class African American community. It was the home of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, the first Black millionaire in Florida. It was a vibrant neighborhood and connected to the arts and other historic Black neighborhoods nearby, but when Interstate 95 was being planned the chosen route ran directly over top of Sugar Hill. Much of the community was torn down and the interconnected Black neighborhoods on either side of the Hill were now disconnected and isolated from one another.

And none of this was accidental. The urban planning process never is. So, even if one wants to label it as a "bad neighborhood" a consideration of the context should disabuse our certainty in label placing.

4. Our Own Formation

To riff off of Lewis' last line above, the way we see others, the thought patterns we develop, the habits we fall into when considering one another's humanity has consequences. Historians will tell us about how this has played a role in wars and genocides. Horrors. And further, if we, as Lewis does, believe the part of God's image within us makes us immortal, then the moral arc that we are on will continue into eternity. Bitterness, superiority, and defamed thinking will progress steadily for centuries and millennia to their diabolical conclusions—unless interrupted by grace.

For our own sake, we need to be formed in the way of Jesus, in the pattern of love, and in care for those around us no matter what type of neighborhood they might live in.

To be a being imbued by the very image of our Creator, we can also direct his love, kindness, and grace out through our actions as we align with him in his work of redemption. Let us join his restoration project.

*I must admit I know I, too, am capable of misusing language or overlooking context. Just recently, someone questioned me on my use of the word "hood" when describing our neighborhood. I use it because it is a word that the community uses in a neutral, even positive way without negative connotation. But the person was right to ask me because when flippantly using that term around an experientially diverse audience, my attempt at sincerity might unintentionally bring disrepute on the community.

Thermostats

Acts 19 tells the story of the early church in the ancient city of Ephesus. The abstract of the summary version is this: Paul and some other leaders begin to preach and dialog with those in Ephesus and grow a small band of followers. A contingent of local merchants, who make their money in the crafting of physical idols and replicas, become upset and lead a riot against the nascent Christian movement. The riot is quelled and Paul continues his ministry in a new region.

What most strikes me about this narrative though is the strong reaction of those in Ephesus against the Jesus followers. They are so upset, their values are so threatened, their source of idolotrous income is so imperiled that they take to the streets with rage. At one point the text says they chant a single phrase in anger for over two hours. 

Today, though our economy could still be described as being built on idolatrous values, we don't see riots in the streets against Christians. 

A couple facts. 

1. Depending on how quantified, somewhere between 35%-75% of Americans identify themselves as followers of Jesus. 

2. We all know that there are practices that take place in our businesses that belittle people, oppress workers overseas, and take advantage of the poor. And we'd be right to identify these practices as unchristlike.

Most often our answer to why we allow it would be that its just the system we have or the cost of doing business, but someone, somewhere is signing off on these decisions. And if the statistics are to be believe there is at least a 1/3 chance and likely a much higher one that the corporate manager or the Board members approving these choices also would identify as Christians.

So what happens here? Why the disconnect? Why does no one stand up and say, "No."?

I think it is this. When they (or we) walk into that boardroom, we carry a primary identity of something other than Christian (a little Christ in the original language). We might be thinking of ourselves as an employee, a shareholder, a steward of company wealth, or any other number of things, but when we chose the practices (in ways great and small) that don't line up with the way of Jesus, we expose where our true allegiance lies.

I write all this with humility, knowing I also feel these pressures pull at me in their own ways. No, I don't sign off on any sweatshops across the ocean, but the allegiance confusion strikes me all the same.

In his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr hit this chord asking:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But they went on with the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.'”

Oh, that we too might be so defined and filled by God's Spirit that we would change the temperature by our mere presence and voice. 

Under Our Feet

Four years ago, I picked running back up as my primary hobby. I'd run since high school and off and on in the decades (gasp) since, but started with a new consistency when lockdown hit and I needed something that got me outside for at least 30 minutes a day. It's been a balm. I've run almost every path and road within a two mile radius of home. Sometimes I'll take off and make it my goal to cross as many bridges as I can on one long meandering run. It's quite a feeling of accomplishment when you find yourself in another neighborhood that would have taken you ten minutes to drive to and you've arrived there on foot . . . and then you realize you need to make your way back home on foot.

About ten years ago, I became familiar with the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative when I saw a recording of an event he did with Tim Keller on YouTube. I was impressed and impacted. And still too this day, I have not heard a clip, listened to a interview, or read anything from him that has not somehow left me challenged. Their organization does incredible work in civil rights and amongst these is a remembrance project where they are seeking to draw attention and memorialize the history of race-based lynching throughout the United States. Both at their main memorial and museum in Montgomery and on a local level where they have set aside memorials to be claimed and displayed by every county in the country where a lynching has taken place.

For the past two years, I have had the pleasure to work (in a very small way) alongside a non-profit in Jacksonville that is seeking to build an urban path system known as the Emerald Trail that once completed will total 30 miles of new and refurbished, interconnected trails that bring beauty, activity, economic development, recreation, and environmental restoration across over a dozen neighborhoods locally. It has been encouraging to see tangible progress of this trail come together as my running habit has persisted. New trees get planted along one section. A new path is paved elsewhere. And a portion of this trail runs directly through our neighborhood, Brentwood.

These threads were tied together for me recently as I was on a run through a particularly beautiful section of the trail that runs through our neighborhood. In fact, this specific stretch is where we took some of our wedding photos. As I ran, I noticed a plaque I'd never seen before. So, I debated in my mind the two highly held values and which would win out of 1) Always read the plaque or 2) Never stop on a run (I've run over a mile out of my way before to avoid having to stop and wait at a red light). This time the desire for knowledge won out and I paused my run to see what this plaque read.

And to my surprise this placard had been installed by the Equal Justice Initiative. They had installed the sign to mark the site of the 1919 murder of Bowman Cook and John Morine, two Black World War I veterans who were lynched by a mob of 50 white men at this spot. This story was news to me. I consider myself something of a neighborhood historian and someone aware of the history of racism and terror in our community, but I knew nothing of this even though it was less than a mile from home. Furthermore, when sharing this "news" with others I learned the plaque had been in place for three years already. It was hiding in plain site and I was unaware.

And this is the story of injustice. It lives in the soil beneath our feet whether we acknowledge it or not. It seeps into the ground where we make our home whether we know about it or not. It is there as we pursue our hobbies, drive our roads, and live our lives. Not only in the past, but the story persists into the present. After the murder, Mr. Cook's body was mutilated and then left outside of a Confederate monument in downtown Jacksonville. In future years, the City of Jacksonville would establish their City Hall directly in front of that monument. The memorializing statue would not be removed until over 100 years after that murder. When it was finally removed, the Mayor had it done unannounced and under the cover of darkness to avoid violence.

If we take another stretch of the Emerald Trail, you'll find a mosaic that's been installed in honor of a neighborhood called Sugar Hill. The public art piece is found under an overpass of I-95. Why? Because Sugar Hill was a thriving Black neighborhood that was selected to be demolished to pave the way for the highway. This was not a coincidence. And it is a pattern and story that was repeated in dozens of cities across the country. And not limited to the South.

Just a quarter mile down from Sugar Hill, another section of the trail runs along through the Durkeeville neighborhood near Beaver Street. This whole area was subject to ash pollution that required much of the topsoil in the whole area to be removed and replaced with clean fill in recent decades. Again, the location of the industrial incinerator that caused this contamination in a Black neighborhood, was also no accident.

And we could go on, another portion of the trail runs through the Brooklyn neighborhood, which I've written on before, as another community torn up via mid-century highway construction.

But, when we examine this history under our feet, we'd be remiss to just craft a story of oppression, violence, and destruction. Because there's more than that. There is beauty and triumph to be told as well. The La Villa neighborhood was the Harlem of the South and home to Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and other playwrights, filmmakers, and artists. Near the southernmost section of the trail, there is a historic Black church that a friend of mine pastors. It is over 160 years old and most of its founding members were formerly enslaved. This congregation has prayed, worshipped, and gathered for many generations of faithfulness. We ought to celebrate that. Along the path you'll find sites where Martin Luther King spoke and where the land is being regenerated, creeks long covered in concrete are being daylighted, and flowers are blooming.

As I write this, the day in Juneteenth. This day celebrates the joyous news of Emancipation reaching the state of Texas on June 19th, 1865. And as we commemorate it, we must note that this was two and half years after the Emancipation proclamation and over two months after the surrender at of the Confederacy that had ended the Civil War. Justice delayed and denied again and again. As we consider our history, our land, our roads, and more, we must hold all of this. Injustice exists under our feet, but so does great joy and beauty. 

We do well to lament, celebrate, and act for a more just future.

 

The Case for Ineffective Altruism

In recent weeks, a philanthropic movement called effective altruism has found itself tangentially in the news cycle. To read this post, you need not understand the depths of the movement and you don't need to familiarize yourself with why this has been in the news. As a further disclaimer, I'm not writing to perform some kind of "take down" of effective altruism, really this is more of a response from someone who has spent thirteen-plus years now in the non-profit space professionally, but also living alongside neighbors who many altruists would see as "clientele". Lastly, I'll acknowledge up front, much of this is more-or-less a philosophical disagreement that starts with definition of terms. What I mean by "good" and "impact" is simply coming from a different starting point than most effective altruism proponents.

Those caveats stated . . . let's dive in.

Effective altruism is a movement that seeks to use "evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis." It advocates ideas such as: 

• "Earn to give" that encourages individuals to seek as much wealth as they can so they can donate a much greater proportion than they could from a lower-earning career path. I heard a similar strategy suggested when I was in campus ministry, but those talks seemed directed at the folks in the room with more upward-bound career paths than those of us rocking Political Science/Religious Studies double majors.
• Impartiality, whereby, giving is encouraged to rely on doing good rather than geographic or personal interests and
• Maximizing impact, where evidence-based approaches and measurable results are prioritized.

These are admirable goals, but my concern largely lies with that last framing of "maximizing impact". For this goal can lead down unintended roads.

First, when one says "evidence-based" this means relying on metrics and all their weaknesses. Don't get me wrong, I personally collect data and do analysis on it to observe effectiveness. But also, I could spend my time doing better things. And I'm 100% certain all those kids filling out pre-test bubbles could be doing more effective things with their time. But, more concerning, this also opens a wide door for all sorts of disinformation to enter the picture. When funding and planning are tied to specific metrics, an incentive for deception and hyperbole is inevitably created. I've been asked to review enough funding proposals for other organizations that I can say with confidence that all "metrics" are not created equal or necessarily truthful.

Second, life is complicated. If we use my neighborhood as an example, the challenges and causes of generational poverty are multifaceted, so too are the solutions. And any examination of this requires an extreme amount of nuance. As an example, let's take a student of ours (renamed) Tariq. He was a student around when I first moved to Jacksonville. He's doing great today. He finished high school , then later got a degree and is progressing towards multiple advanced degrees. He's happily married and raising two kids with his wife. From his starting point this is a great outcome, but how do we assign the impact? He had an amazing mentor with our organization. That no doubt left an impact. But he also was part of ROTC in high school, surely they would claim some credit. His mother got a job that provided greater stability to the family in the midst of his adolescence, this too plays a role. He joined the military after high school, which is what made college-possible. He had entrepreneurial mentors who worked with him on considering career paths. And I could go on and on. Who most "maximized the impact" on him? 

I thank God for every single one of those people and circumstances, but it would be foolish to assign one as the "evidentiary champion". 

And all of this is not to mention the reality of systemic and institutional structures around all of this and how they play a role. Even with the best research, methods, and efforts prying apart impact is going to be a challenge!

Finally, and my primary impetus for writing here, not to make this a personal essay, but so much of what I spend my time on is terribly inefficient, terribly ineffective, and terribly unmeasurable, but I still believe its valuable. I still think it has a tremendous impact. 

A former co-worker of mine frequently said, "Step one for one person is step twenty for another person" and honestly, it took me a long time to understand what he meant by it. But then I thought of two people in our organization's "success story" column. One of them, finished high school and stepped into a full-ride college scholarship. Another, dropped out of high school and took until he was 27 to finish his GED and get a full-time job. And I would unequivocally say that both are tremendous examples of "maximized impact". 

That won't show up in a data set. I have no pie chart to demonstrate it. But I can say it, with confidence, without a hint of emotion or "pulling on heartstrings", that's impact. 

I run a program for senior citizens in our community. We do all kinds of activities (and have metrics for some to them), but also I frequently answer phone calls or chat with these seniors apart from the program requirements. From people who have no future earning potential. Who won't be increasing the GDP. Will start no small businesses. And may or may not lower their own blood pressures. But answering the phone when they call and talking, even just for 90 seconds is absolutely creating an impact on their lives.

So, as I laid out at the start, primarily there is a disagreement between me and the effective altruists about the definition of terms. I think it is very admirable for one to intentionally pursue a seven figure salary with the goal of donating 65% of it. Go for it. 

But as we, more broadly, go forward let us consider how impact is so often slow and full of stops-and-starts. And, honestly, sometimes, it never comes. Some stories end in tragedy. Even the happy endings all-too-often had close calls with utter disaster. But, if each person, and I do believe this, is made in the image of God as uniquely valuable and beloved, it is never a waste. It is never a bad investment to seek out that person. To spend time and resources on them. And to be present with them.

Even if the metrics don't like it. It's effective.

Not Optional

In the sixth chapter of John, Jesus proclaims a hard teaching to his followers and many of them desert him. But, when he turns to Peter and company and poses the question, "What about y'all?" (it's in the Greek, just trust me on that) the response he gets is, "Where else can we go? After all we have seen, after all we have experienced, what other way can we follow, but your way?"

I in no way seek to equalize myself with the apostles, but I find myself in this place frequently. I've now spent more than a decade living in this neighborhood here on the Northside of Jacksonville and while we have our challenges, I will stand against anyone who claims this place isn't full of beauty, wonder, and God's glory. I've long since passed the point where I feel more comfortable here than I do in more affluent environments. 

Being here has changed me. It has reframed the way that I see the world. Academic facts and figures about poverty or systemic injustice became personal. It was friends and neighbors, students and co-laborers rather than statistics and graphs. It is one thing to take a sociology course and another to watch your neighbor fill up a bucket with water from your hose because their utilities are disconnected. Similarly, it's one thing to read the story of the woman giving her last, small coins in Mark 12 and another to count the church offering one Sunday and see a person who lives on the street literally did the same, filling out an offering envelope proudly with her name and placing 7 cents inside.

Out of these lived experiences, my frame of reference has switched. With what I have seen, with what I know, I can't imagine a world where I'm not involved and deeply concerned about issues of justice and injustice. These causes aren't ancillary, tertiary, or optional. With what I have seen, where else can I go?

But akin to Paul's longing for his own ethnic group to turn to the reality of Christ's call in Romans, I find myself intensely desirous for my own people, white-American Christians, to answer the full counsel of God and follow him wholly. For all-too-often, I feel like the white American church misses the mark on these issues.

I seek not to paint with a brush too broadly. I understand that there are those in that tribe who daily follow Jesus in costly ways towards justice and I understand that I myself fall short and have certainly not attained to perfection in my discipleship.

But what I see in a generalized way is that for many white American Christians the following teaching is seen as, at best, optional and, at worst, an enemy of the Gospel. That teaching would be something along the lines of:

Where there is injustice of any type (systemic, interpersonal, racial, economic, etc) the children of God are called to declare that as wicked and to sacrificially invest their lives towards the abolition of it.

In my community, this teaching is not optional. Too many people are far too familiar with the costs of injustice to stand idly by. So they lend their hands, their voices, their votes, their dollars, their time, and their advocacy in love for the sake of those around them. 

But in much of the white American Christian community issues of justice and injustice are viewed along a continuum that runs from "problems for those special people called to that stuff" and "God-hating socialism". (And I'm not exaggerating, I saw a dear sister in Christ called a communist on Facebook yesterday).

Anecdotally, there are many clear pictures of this lack of concern or suspicion about issues of injustice, but there are also examples of how this plays out in the aggregate. For example, white American Christians display troubling attitudes about racial justice protests. The Public Religion Research Institute did a survey in 2020 and weighed public support for two similar statements:

It always makes our country better when Americans speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government.

It always makes our country better when Black Americans speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government.

Regardless of if one supports the general sentiment above about protests, we should be able to agree that in a just society the response should be consistent and identical, right? In this polling however white Americans of all types were more likely to affirm the first statement than the second statement, but the gap was more pronounced among white Christians (Catholics, mainline Protestants, and especially evangelical Protestants) than for the overall population. Clearly "Black" was an operative word in determining the response. 

In another example, social scientists use a measure called racial resentment to capture attitudes about race that a simple "Are you a racist y/n?" questionnaire is unlikely to reach. This methodology is viewed as sound and is widely used in sociology. When the nationwide data was analyzed by professor and pastor Ryan Burge one of the patterns that emerged is that religion impacts the results. And in fact, the groups most likely to hold racially resentful attitudes and views are (in order): white Evangelicals, Orthodox Christians, white Catholics, and mainline Protestants.

In light of this, it seems inescapable to me that something is amiss. So let me offer three theories of what might be causing folks to miss God's call to justice and even lead them to, wittingly or unwittingly, furthering the cause of injustice. And because I want to keep things positive, I'll also offer one way forward for each explanation as well.

There are explanations in the realm of theology, family, and discipleship.

In the theological, I recently heard it said that many American Christians know a very lot about a very little of the Bible. Many in our pews can pontificate about the atonement, the covenants, and eschatology, but perhaps have never heard a sermon from Amos or have not examined the modern implications of the Book of James' moral commands. I fear that we have been taught to take the Sermon on the Mount figuratively (perhaps not explicitly, but in a read-between-the-lines sort of way).

But more broadly, if one reads the entire narrative of Scripture it is clear that God cares deeply about justice. You could even argue He harps on the issue. It comes up again and again. God lays out very specific laws about justice and righteousness. He lays out very specific rules to assure that the poor are not taken advantage of. He shows deep love and care for the immigrant. And He paints a picture of an eternal future where the full rule and reign of God is marked by an end of injustice and the restoration of all things. To read past the justice narrative of the Bible is to read past the narrative of the Bible.

Or to put it another way, it would be like reading Harry Potter and replying, "Wait, there was magic?!"

In all ages and eras, the Church and groups within it have had blind spots, even at the highest levels. Augustine wrote terrible things about women, Calvin thought Anabaptists were worthy of execution, and Jonathan Edwards enslaved human image bearers. What in this era are our blind spots? What are we missing? One answer is that the white American church has failed to connect God's call for justice for the oppressed to our present moment and reality. Certainly, we could dive deeper into this and write many more words, but for the sake of brevity, let's look to how we can respond.

A way forward: White American Christians would do well to diversify their intake. Seek out Christians who look different and see differently from you and follow them on social media, listen to their sermons, read their books, and quote them to your congregations (Not just in February). Two very quick suggestions: you can't do wrong with anything from Charlie Dates or Esau McCaulley.

Next, in the area of family, I believe we have failed to identify one another the way the Scriptures tell us to. When asked "Because of Jesus, who is your brother or sister?" many would know the correct answer theologically, but if we drill down deep would fail the test. If we really believe that unity in Christ makes us siblings then there is no room for nationalism in our hearts. None. The majority of our siblings live in Africa and Asia, not North America. If we really believe these are our brothers and sisters because of Jesus then white Christians would have no choice but to believe their Black brothers and sisters and mourn with those who mourn after yet another police involved shooting rather than calling for "all the facts to come out". If it happened to your family, you would mourn, you wouldn't withhold your empathy until the investigation is complete. 

Further though, beyond our status as siblings in the Kingdom, we are called to a sense of unity as members of a common society. This is seen in the words of Dr. King who proclaimed, 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

We would benefit to examine where we place our allegiances and group memberships. To ask ourselves who or what we consider to be our tribe and how that might limit our love for our brothers and sisters.

So how do we move forward? In a word, proximity. We care about that which we see as being close to us. Mixing up our proximity can be found in the choices we make about our social engagements, our children's schools, our church, our news media sources, or even the novels we read. 

Finally, I think our blind spots are impacted by our discipleship. Tim Keller gives an example where he states (my paraphrase), "Depending on how you measure it anywhere from 30% to 75% of Americans say they are followers of Jesus, but we all know that many American companies have business practices overseas that none of us would look upon and call 'Christlike'. Statistically, there must be Christians at the table in those boardrooms and meetings when those decisions are knowingly made, so why are those decisions made still?" He posits that it is because when we go into work we operate from a different value set rather than that of Jesus. 

This incongruence of values is exactly what discipleship is about. To be discipled is to have the character of Christ formed in us. It is to have our hearts, minds, and actions to become conformed to those of Jesus. In the specific boardroom example the businessperson may be valuing prestige, acceptance, wealth, or (company) unity more than they are valuing justice for those overseas. But, because the Fall has impacted every community, every city, every career field, and every institution, we must ask where injustice plays out in our fields and assess which values we will hold highest when those come into conflict.

A way forward: Make an honest list of your values (those things that are important and motivate our actions internally). Analyze how those values might potentially conflict with the Christlike call to justice and righteousness in your life, work, and family. And make a plan to intentionally choose the way of Jesus.

While the road forward will be long, the good news is that there is grace for all of us in this journey. Some of the challenges above are simple and some are very, very hard. Some take a few moments and others require a lifetime of stops and starts. But because I believe with all of my heart (where else can I go!?) that these things are close to Jesus, I also believe that He will walk with each of us in any step, great or small, that you take towards this call.

Let us be people who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Data and Denial

Let's talk about data.

To ease us in, let's start with baseball. This will come to the chagrin of my Brewer fan friends, but the Cubs' Javy Baez is the best player in the National League. There's a statistical case to be made, where we could accumulate home runs and stolen bases. There's more sophisticated stats like DRS and WAR we could account for, but there's also an anecdotal case for Javy's superiority. Signs of greatness that cannot easily be tracked by the numbers. Baez is a creative force on the basepaths, a magician on the infield, and his spectacular play creates momentum for his team while demoralizing the competition. All of this adds up to a much fuller picture, albeit one that cannot be quantified easily. A level of nuance and investigation beyond that which is borne out numerically leads to greater understanding.

How much more then ought we take a nuanced approach to issues of far deeper importance.

In the past few weeks, I've seen a flood of responses on my social media timeline of friends either newly learning or newly becoming vocal about issues of racial injustice. But with that, I've recently seen a new thread developing.

This new position seems to be leaning heavily on statistics to support the claim that things aren't actually that bad. In particular, this train of thought seems aimed at disproving that Black men and women are disproportionately the victims of police shootings or brutality.

Before I go further, let me put some cards on the table. Yes, I have a bias in all this. Actually, I have many biases. And so do you. My white upper middle class upbringing left me with biases. The fact I've lived in a Black neighborhood for the past decade gives me a certain bias. My personality type is biased to generally trust comprehensive worldviews and expert opinions over personal stories. I have a social science degree, so I am not unfamiliar with soft science statistics (as well as how difficult they are to interpret). This too is a bias.

So with that said, I have some serious concerns.

First, I fear that the countervailing statistical analysis crowd is unfairly discounting the anecdotal reality that is not represented in official numbers.

Second, I fear the countervailing statistical analysis crowd is wrongly simplifying a much more complicated situation.

Third, I fear the countervailing statistical analysis crowd is miserably failing the test of neighbor-love.

Anecdotes

Stories don't tell the full story, but they do tell a story. They reflect real, lived experiences that impact how a person sees the world and sees their future. They are deeply powerful. And when I hear a similar anecdote, over and over and over again, it gains traction as a pattern that is more than anecdotal.

My friend was put in the back of a police car and unlawfully questioned while walking down the street. One of our college-aged interns was handcuffed in front of our students because he fit the description. Another intern was stopped and asked questions to determine if he was truant from school, while the white intern of the same age who was walking with him was not asked any questions. A victim of a robbery was aggressively questioned as if he was the suspect then when the interrogation ended the officer walked up to the white homeowner who had lent the victim a cell phone to call 911 and without provocation or invitation said, "I'm sorry you have to deal with human garbage like him."

Yes, these are all simply anecdotal evidence. None of them will show up in statistics because none of them were serious enough to merit an official report. But they are evidence nonetheless.

I could go on with more, but for one further example: I was teaching a class about the book Divided by Faith (which everyone should buy) at church and I asked the participants, if they felt comfortable, to share any experiences with racism they had. My invitation was not specific to issues around policing, but for the next 30 minutes person after person told stories of their encounters with law enforcement while every single Black person in the room nodded along knowingly.

Black people are not a monolith and do not have identical experiences. So, you might even have a real life acquaintance who would say they have never experienced anything like this and that's wonderful. I'm truly happy for them because for most Black Americans, they have and they carry these experiences around with them into every future interaction.

Simplifying

This season has seen a growing awareness of systemic racism, but many of the statistics I see being discussed fail to account for the existence of those systems.

We cannot draw claims out of a vacuum. We can't look at crime rates without also looking at poverty rates. We can't look at number of contacts with law enforcement without discussing the inattention paid to white-collar crime. We can't talk about "high crime neighborhoods" without a discussion of redlining, school funding models, and the history of highway construction.

Some statistical analysis that is seeking to control for other variables only serves to perfectly illustrate the need for greater care in gathering these statistics. A statistic without context is only a partial picture.

And statistics cannot answer deeper questions about motivations, backgrounds, and histories.

Further still, much of this countervailing analysis I see fails to seriously reckon with the reality that a plethora of statistics exist that tell us that discrimination in law enforcement is absolutely real. We can look at threat or use of force, traffic stops, racially disparate use of fines to fund the city budget, marijuana arrest rates, implicit bias in weapon identification, and on and on.

Love Thy Neighbor

Finally, and most problematic, my concern is heightened by the timing of these responses. If your Black brother says, "This is happening to me" and your heart or mouth's first response is "Let's see what the stats have to say about that." You have failed to love your brother. Full stop.

Again and again and again, the call for a time of listening and empathy has been made. When white Christians chose to disregard that and lean hard into an analysis that fits their pre-existing worldview it is nothing less than callousness. How long should this time of listening go on? I don't know, but I am absolutely certain that setting the timeline should not be up to those who are least impacted by the problem.

None of this is new. In fact, the Christian rapper Bizzle released a song six years ago that addresses everything I've discussed here. In the lyrics, Bizzle speaks of the broader reality of being Black in America, he name checks a list of Black men who have lost their lives wrongly, he talks of his fear to bring up these issue lest he lose his career, and even lists statistics that show this injustice. Most painfully, he laments that white Christians fail to hear his cries. In lines that may be hard to hear, Bizzle compares his experience to that of two twin brothers born and raised together. One of the children is being abused in secret. He expects his brother of all people should be the one who comes to his aid, but not only does his brother fail to listen and cry with him, the brother declares that Bizzle is overreacting and needs to get over it.

This is a time, in humility, to heed the voices of others.

White Christians, your Black brothers and sisters are saying something. They have been saying it all along. Long before cell phone videos or hashtags. Long before you were alive, this same narrative has been being told.

Let him who has ears hear it. Please do not obfuscate. Please do not troll. Please do not center yourself in the way you think and speak.

Do let yourself be challenged. Do sit in uncertainty. Do let yourself be uncomfortable.

Your witness depends on it. Your love for your neighbor depends on it.

Philosophy and Proximity

If you have met me in person for more than five minutes, it probably won’t surprise you the type of guy I was in college. I was a “in the dorm common room at 3 am having a conversation that was simultaneously deep and ridiculous” guy. These late night topic spanned everything from formulating the perfect form of government to relating Christian religious experience to eating different types of cake.

One of these conversations we returned to frequently was something a friend of mine and I called “the window of suffering”, which is basically the idea that in our human experience we process tragic events in accordance to their geographic or relational distance from us. So, a factory fire in Bangladesh might be processed by our mind far less intensely than a car crash in our neighborhood. Even if the fire resulted in one hundred deaths and the car crash caused *only* serious injuries, how proximate it is to us matters.

As is the case with all brilliant discoveries made by 19 year olds, in reality, many, many, many philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists had already written widely and studied our so-called “window of suffering”, but just because the academics got there first doesn’t mean that the topic isn’t worth considering further.

After college, I put these concepts into practice. In September of 2009, I moved to the Brentwood neighborhood just north of downtown Jacksonville. It is a community that my preferred term for is “under-resourced”. In fact, it’s precisely because of proximity to the community that I have a preferred adjective for describing the neighborhood. So rather than say inner city or at-risk or poor or hood (though that last phrase doesn’t really carry any negative connotation for me any longer), I prefer under-resourced. My community is given less resources, capital, and benefits than other areas of our city or nation.

Living in the community is intentional to the work that I am seeking to do because it moves that “window of suffering” closer to me. There are injustices or disparities that only existed to me as theoretical for the first 23 years of my life, but for the last ten years have become more apparent as my friends and neighbors have experienced them. It changes you when someone to whom you are personally close is the one being harmed by these systems.

I’ve had friends be unlawfully detained by police officers when they did nothing wrong.

I’ve had neighbors fill up buckets of water at our house because they have no running water.

I’ve signed up kids for our after school program in the living room of houses where there’s a literal gap between the wall and the floor that allows you the look down to the dirt below and hear about how the landlord has stated “that’s your problem” to the renter.

I’ve had students remark about their middle school that “they don’t even try to teach us there” and know from hearing it enough times that it’s more-or-less an accurate indictment.

These are all statements that carry extra weight because they are proximate to my experience. They are real life for my neighbors, students, and friends. But, even in this explanation, I need to be crystal clear that my proximity is always relative and always evolving.

I understood this proximity to injustice on one level my first few years in the community, but it took a step up once I lived with someone from the community and got to hear their perspective all the more. It’s one thing to use #blacklivesmatter on Twitter, it is another to have your roomate tell you he’s glad he got his ID updated to your address so he’s less likely to be accused of breaking in.

This proximity took a greater step forward when I became a foster parent and heard and saw and lived so much more of the brokenness. I became deeply enmeshed in the brokenness of our child welfare system and deeper still, grew more closely aware of how our society in general creates and perpetuates these issues in the first place.

There’s a necessary caveat here though that proximity doesn’t make one a hero. In fact, for real relationship and real partnership to happen all vestiges of heroism from an outsider need to be rejected. Because, still, my proximity is limited and my level of empathy is capped. At the end of the day in all my experiences in Brentwood I’m experiencing them by choice. I can leave anytime I want. Not just that, I’m also experiencing them as a white, college-educated, property-owning male with a car and tons of social capital. These realities make my experience of proximity fundamentally different.

Here’s what I’m trying to reckon with however, it shouldn’t take privileged folks like me having to move to the hood to experience and care about life in these communities. It shouldn’t be the case that when loud voices declare my neighborhood to be akin to living in hell, that it falls on deaf ears. It shouldn’t be the case that people can attack the lives of my neighbors with hateful rhetoric and be happily endorsed by the religious community I made my home in for a decade. It shouldn’t be that life experiences are drastically different based on our zip codes. Nor should it be the case that in our city, folks can simply cross back over the bridge headed southward and pretend that everything on MLK Parkway is “not their problem”.

Proximity changes how we interact. It changes how we see the world. But, we, as a people, need to expand the boundaries of our care. We need to change what it means to be proximate in our lives and values. This statement is all the more true, if you claim the name of Christ as a Christian or a “little Christ”. If you believe that the kids in my neighborhood are made in God’s image, regardless of how geographically near you are, your God demands that you care about his Image in every community.

In fact, He cares about how we use our possessive pronouns. If you are reading this and aren’t proximate to a community that regularly experiences injustice, ask yourself these questions:

• Who comes to mind when you think about the phrase “our community”?
• Who is or is not included in “my neighborhood”?
• Are their unconscious boundary lines for who is or isn’t part of “us"?

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

My admonition would be that we all need to care about the underserved communities in our city, but not just because it’s just or it’s right (which it is), and not just because our God of justice commands it (which He does), but because it impacts all of us. Jacksonville, Florida is not ok, if Brentwood is not ok. Mandarin is not ok, if Moncrief is not ok. Ponte Vedra Beach is not ok, if Old Arlington is not ok.

What happens to one of us, matters for all of us. It’s the evidence of the type of people we are becoming, it’s the evidence of they type of society we are becoming. And in the lives that we live and the investment of our prayer, resources, time, and care, we provide our answer to the question asked of Jesus two thousand years ago, “Who then is my neighbor?”