Tag: Social justice

Yearning to Be a Better Person

On By Innermost BeingIn Spiritual GrowthLeave a comment
David Brooks said that he wrote The Road to Character to save his own soul. In looking at his own life, he realized he was too concerned with “resume virtues” and not enough with “eulogy virtues.” In telling the stories of people like Dwight D. Eisenhower and Frances Perkins, he hoped to learn how they developed character after descending into “the valley of humility.” The people he chose to write about were interesting, but they didn’t inspire me that much, perhaps because we each have our own passions and our own heroes. I found myself more interested in the idea presented at the beginning of the book – that human beings have two selves – one motivated by ambition and one motivated to seek a higher, moral purpose.
The Two Selves

In the introduction, Brooks explained an idea that he read about in The Lonely Man of Faith – that we each have two conflicting selves. The author of that book, Rabbi Joseph Soloveithchik, described two sides to our natures, which he named Adam I and Adam II. Adam I is the ambitious, achievement-oriented self. He seeks status and wants to be victorious. He follows a utilitarian logic, pursuing self-interest and the rewards we expect to get from our efforts. This self keeps busy building, creating, and producing. This self asks “what’s in it for me?” Adam I nurtures himself my cultivating his strengths and fiercely guarding his self-interests.

In contrast, Adam II, is the moral-seeking self. This side of us is motivated by a desire to love others just as we love ourselves, to do good and to be good. He wants to honor creation and his own potential, which means yielding to a “transcendent truth” and sacrificing the desires of the self to a greater good. Adam II lives by a moral logic that is completely contrary to the Adam I way of thinking. He wants to produce good fruits like kindness, love, and mercy. To nurture himself, he must confront his weaknesses. To fulfill this self, he must forget his own wants and think about himself less. For Adam II, achieving humility is the greatest success; pride is his greatest failure. This self asks “what’s the right thing to do?”

I see these two selves at work in me. I want to achieve my goals and have the things that make me happy. I pursue my own wants and interests. I see the world from my point of view. I think my own thoughts. I make my own choices about right and wrong because I have the will and the freedom to do so. But the other side of me recognizes that I don’t live in isolation. I am not the center of the universe; there are other people on my planet. Other individuals have their own wants and interests, their own ways of thinking and seeing and their own free will to make choices.

It is in my best interest to live in harmony with other people even though their interests compete with my self interests and even when it is not easy for me to yield to the wants of others. So I find a calling in me to look to a higher moral code that is above my self-centered ways. It may be in my selfish interest to lie or cheat to achieve the desires of the Adam I in me. But the Adam II in me sees that these behaviors are not good. Adam II sees that the best moral choices are honesty, fairness, respect for others and what rightfully belongs to them, kindness, patience and self-control.

When we truly desire for Adam II to be the victor in the battle within the self, it is hard to understand why Adam I continues to exert so much power over him. The apostle Paul attempted to explain the struggle for power over the self (from Romans 7). I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Paul recognized the warring sides of his nature – the inner being that delights in God’s law and the sinful nature that is always right there with him.

The Road to Character

I always liked the quote, life is a journey not a destination. It encourages me to savor my everyday experiences instead of worrying too much about where I’m going. It reminds me of the Harry Chapin song, Cat’s in the Cradle. The father was so busy pursuing the goals of Adam I that he missed out on the important things until it was too late. But when it comes to character, it is worth stopping to think about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

A road to character is a great metaphor for the process of developing character. It makes me think about bumps and potholes. Life can throw a lot of those your way and if you’re not careful, they can do some damage – damage that points out the need for repairs. On mountain roads, you have to drive slowly because of sharp turns, steep grades, and blinds spots. Other times life goes so smoothly, you can drive on autopilot or maybe take the slower, scenic route. But on the road, you must be prepared for unexpected detours and changes in weather. Nothing focuses you like driving in a blizzard.

Then there’s the issue of getting lost if you don’t know where you’re going. My pastor asked us the other day if we have ever gotten lost while driving and if we had, if we knew why we had gotten lost. He showed us the results of a survey that showed that 45% or so of people said they got lost because of bad directions. Almost the same percentage got lost because they missed a road sign. I’ve gotten lost for both reasons and I’ve gotten lost because I thought I didn’t need directions! I foolishly thought I could figure it once I got there. I found that I had to stop and get my bearings and get the directions I needed to continue on my way.

On the website for The Road to Character, Brooks wrote that he wants to have the “moral adventures” that lead to being a better person. Now, I wouldn’t call the situations that lead to character “adventures.” An adventure sounds like something fun and exciting. I would call the situations that develop character a refining fire that takes rough, impure material and turns it into something precious and beautiful.

Sometimes character develops from adversity, suffering or struggling through something difficult. In retrospect, you can see the benefits of the struggle, just as I learned to be a better driver by driving in less than ideal conditions. Romans 5:3-4 says “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

Growing up poor made me a stronger person. My ambitious Adam I self became determined to overcome and succeed. I learned the value of self-sacrifice and self-discipline. The Adam II side of me learned to not think too highly of myself and to have empathy for others. Most importantly, adversity taught me that I am not defined by external signs of success – what I have or what I accomplish – but by who I am on the inside.

Adversity may lead to character but how we respond to challenges reveal our true character at that point in time. For example, I sometimes respond to frustrations at work with a lack of patience and a desire to vent my anger. But acknowledging and confronting this weakness in me leads me to think about how I might practice better self-control the next time the network crashes on me or someone derails my work plans.

Shifting the Conversation

Besides hoping to become a deeper better person himself, Brooks said that he wrote The Road to Character because he wants to shift our conversation away from the cultural focus on external success. The hope is that we will relearn the vocabulary that past generations used to describe virtues and that we would focus more on “the internal confrontation with weakness that produces good character.” I agree. Many people don’t spend much time nurturing their moral side, confronting the weaknesses of their characters. But facing up to our weaknesses, though painful, produces moral growth – just as pruning a branch produces healthy new growth.

Indirectly at least, we are starting to have this conversation whether we want to or not. We’re talking about the dishonesty of political candidates. We’re using words that were not part of our vernacular before – xenophobia, narcissism, misogyny. We’re seeing an example of Adam I at his worst – pursuing selfish ambition, bragging about wealth and achievements while ignoring or denying weaknesses of character. Today, we’re facing cultural struggles that reveal the moral weaknesses of that culture.

Let’s talk about the kind of people we should yearn to be. Let’s talk about the seven virtues or the nine spiritual fruits – love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, patience, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Let’s talk about our weaknesses and how we can learn to be better people.

Love Will Prevail

On By Innermost BeingIn Faith and CultureLeave a comment

Someone posted a 22 minute video of the “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. I couldn’t watch more than a couple of minutes of it. It made me sick to my stomach. I know that I’m not alone in being upset about the hatred directed at blacks and Jews. It’s vile and disgusting. As a nation, we should be better than this.

Many people have spoken out about the false equivalency the president made between the behavior and character of white supremacists and that of counter-protesters. He said there was blame on both sides. He said that some of those people were “fine people.” But there is nothing fine or good about people who hate people of another race, religion, sex, or nationality. There is an evil darkness where their hearts should be.

Yesterday, we saw the outrage of a man who has no moral compass. His anger was directed at the people who pushed him to denounce the abhorrent behavior of racists. He showed his true colors. He is a man without morals. His comments shocked many but were absolutely consistent with everything he had already shown himself to be.

Last night, I went to bed distraught about racism, Anti-Semitism and the president’s defiant comments in defense of white supremacists. I prayed for my country. I had a dream that I was at some sort of protest. In my dream, I yelled out, “Jesus will prevail!”

My dreaming self reminded me that even when it seems that wickedness is getting the upper hand, hate will never win. Love is much more powerful than hate. It always has been and always will be.

Love builds others up.

Love consoles.

Love encourages.

Love gives me hope for my country.

Tonight, I pray the prayer of Saint Francis. Lord, in this torn and divided country, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is darkness, let me shine light. Where there is sadness, may I spread joy.

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

I am a watchman, Harper Lee

On By Innermost BeingIn Faith and CultureLeave a comment

My husband and I recently watched the documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. I don’t remember ever reading To Kill a Mockingbird but have watched portions of the movie multiple times. My local library didn’t have the book so I read Go Set a Watchman, the book that was published 55 years after Lee wrote it. Although the book has been criticized for not being as polished as Mockingbird, I found it worth reading and am glad it was published.

Sometimes timing is everything. If I had read Watchman when it was first out a couple of years ago, I don’t think it would have touched me in the same way that it does today. But coming after the election of a man who plays dog-whistle politics, it reflected my own feeling of betrayal by people I thought shared my belief that racism is wrong. It captured my own feeling of disconnectedness from the culture and politics of my time.

In Watchman, the 26 year-old Jean Louise (Scout), returns to the small town of Maycomb, Alabama for a two-week visit. At church, the music director messed with the familiar doxology by changing the tempo to make it more upbeat – evidence that the people up North were even trying to influence worship services. Then the minister, Mr. Stone, preached a sermon on a Bible verse that provided the title to the book: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” (Isaiah 21:6).

The pivotal event in the book began when Jean Louise found out that her father, Atticus, and her childhood sweetheart, Henry, were going to a Citizens’ Council meeting. She followed them to the meeting and watched from the balcony as an “ordinary, God-fearing man” gave a very racist speech to the Council, frequently using the offensive ‘n’ word. He ranted about blacks mongrelizing the race. He told the Council that God intended for the races to be separate. He spoke about preserving segregation and most hypocritically, of preserving “Christian civilization.”

Jean Louise was devastated to see her father and boyfriend sitting at the table listening to such vile racist speech. By being there and listening, her father seemed to be condoning it. Her father was the one man that she had ever “fully and wholeheartedly” trusted and she had always looked up to him as a true gentleman. In letting this racist man speak to the Council, she felt that he had failed her and “betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.”

Discovering that the man she idolized did not share her conviction that racism is wrong made Jean Louise wonder how she could have ever missed the clues when she was growing up. She realized “that all her life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her: she was born color blind.”

Later, Jean Louise’s aunt Alexandra hosted a coffee for the ladies of Maycomb.  Jean Louise had no idea what she would talk to them about. She listened to the idle chatter of Hester, a woman who didn’t seem to have an original thought; she merely repeated what her husband told her. Hester claimed that blacks up North were using Gandhi’s tactics – communism – to get a hold of the country. To herself, Jean Louise thought:

I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth. We were both born here, we went to the same schools, we were taught the same things. I wonder what you saw and heard.

Jean Louise chatted with another friend, Claudine, who wondered what it was like to live in New York. The friend had visited once but couldn’t imagine living there with blacks, Italians and Puerto Ricans. Jean Louise told her that she didn’t even notice them. Claudine told her she must be blind. Jean Louise realized she had in fact been blind to not “look into people’s hearts.” In growing up around blacks, she  never got the idea that she should despise them or fear them or mistreat them. She thought to herself, I need a watchman to lead me and tell me what he sees and to teach me the difference between this kind of justice and that kind of justice.

When Jean Louise spoke to her Uncle Jack about her disillusionment, he told her that the South was not ready for the political philosophy being pushed on it – the end of segregation and changes in the country’s attitudes about the role of government. The resentments were much as they are today:

The have-nots have risen and demanded and received their due – sometimes more than their due.

You’re protected by old age by a government that makes you save because it doesn’t trust you to provide for yourself in old age.

Uncle Jack told Jean Louise that “every man’s watchman is his conscience.” She had confused her father with God and attached her own conscience to his. Seeing him do something that was the complete antithesis to what her conscience said was right made her feel physically ill.

Near the end of the book, Jean Louise decided to leave Maycomb but Uncle Jack asked her to stay. He told her there were people on her side. He said “we need some more of you.” Jean Louise said “I can’t fight them” and “I can’t live in a place that I don’t agree with and that doesn’t agree with me.” But Jack told her, your friends need you when they’re wrong, not when they’re right. He encouraged her to stay and make a difference.

Betrayed. Bewildered. Confused.

This is how you feel when people you thought you knew and thought you could trust to do the right thing betray the values you thought you had in common. It is how you feel when you realize that you see the world differently than the people you grew up with or work with or socialize with. How can they condone racist behavior? How can they remain silent when someone says something so bigoted and outrageous? You’d like to understand how in they world they see the same things you see but fail to see or care about the injustices of racial stereotyping and unequal treatment in the criminal justice system.

The Swinging Pendulum of Social Justice

When I was in college, one of my professors told the class that throughout history progress has not been linear; it’s more like a pendulum swinging from one side to the other. When people on one side get uncomfortable with the rate of progress, they swing the pendulum the other way. In Watchman, the people of Maycomb resisted the efforts of the NAACP to end segregation and to change the jury selection process. In 2016, voter suppression efforts were implemented across the country.

I was born at the end of the Civil Rights Era so I was not aware of how bad things were at the time. Unlike Jean Louise, I grew up in a small white town in the Midwest. I had no direct exposure to racial issues. But I learned to sing “Red, brown, yellow, black and white, they’re all precious in His sight” and I believed it.

In my 50 plus years, I watched as racial stereotypes of the 1950’s and 60’s were broken. I watched African-Americans become more successful – financially, politically, academically, and professionally. Interracial relationships became acceptable. As a nation, we have made great progress, but we still have a long way to go. Racism, and prejudice still lurk below the surface. Inequalities of opportunities and outcomes still persist.

Eight years ago, I voted for the first black president. My Christian friends called Obama a socialist and the anti-Christ. I had a conversation with a loved one who told me that Obama was trying to force something into law because that’s what “they” do. I couldn’t understand why she would believe that. So much hostility has been directed at our black President and First Lady, it is hard to believe that racism does not play a role. The current president-elect repeatedly tried to delegitimize the President with the lie that Obama was not born in the U.S.

Then blacks started protesting the senseless deaths of black men, many at the hands of law enforcement. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. A new racial movement began – Black Lives Matter. And many whites, unwilling to listen to their concerns, countered with “All Lives Matter.” When famous athletes kneeled during the national anthem to call attention to racial issues, whites became angry that they weren’t showing proper respect for symbols of our flawed country.

History has shown that when people get uncomfortable with progress, they swing the pendulum in the opposite direction.

I am a watchman

It’s been 60 years since Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman. Watchman reminded me that history really does repeat itself. Throughout history, people have resisted social progress, often by spreading fear. Jean Louise’s uncle was a wise man. Those of us who believe in racial equality can let our friends know when they’re wrong. We can stand up for the rights of people of all races. This nation needs more people to be a watchman – a social conscience pointing out the difference between the kind of justice freely given to white men and the kind of justice that women and minorities have always had to fight for.

In Isaiah 21:6, a watchman was posted at the city wall to look out and report what he sees. I’m also watching and listening. I’ll tell you what I see. I see that racial prejudice still exists. I see that blacks are still not treated with the same dignity and respect as whites, even when they’re smarter and more capable. I see that blacks live in fear of being arrested for something they did not do, or worse, that their children will not survive to adulthood. I invite you to climb inside the skin of a black person and walk around in it.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. – Harper Lee

Today the United States is once again divided on issues of religion, immigration, race, globalism, and the role of government. Many people blame “others” for their own worsening socio-economic status. Yesterday Dan Rather asked how people would describe the age in which we find ourselves. One woman wrote that we’re in the One Step Back phase of progress. I agree. Thankfully, we’ve taken many steps forward in my lifetime. Now we’re regressing as people try desperately to get back to the way things used to be. But those of us who believe in social justice should see this as a temporary setback, as a call to activism. Let’s stand on watch and tell the world what we see. Let us be the social conscience of this country.