The 'teddy bear' gives up -- for now

Yesterday I made a decision. I'm suspending my six-year search for a spouse, at least for the time being.

This is not to say that I've given up on marriage, even at my advanced age (48 next week) because I still believe I have something to offer a woman. But I was reminded earlier this week why I don't see myself doing things in the normal way. So I won't be going on any Internet introduction sites or approaching a woman I'm attracted to but don't know.

What happened? Well, I took a Facebook quiz, "What do people think of you at first sight?" -- and came up with a shocking answer, "You are cute," complete with a photo of a kitten with its head cocked to the side, indicating vulnerability. That may not sound like much until you consider my relationship history.

Weeks after I entered the fifth grade in a Christian academy in suburban Pittsburgh, a first-grade girl, apparently starved for attention, became very attached to me and treated me like a teddy bear (and never having experienced that, I didn't know how to respond). And she was not the last one to do that -- over the years dozens of women, mostly younger, have similarly demonstrated that they felt extremely, extremely safe around me. Cheerleaders fawned over me as an eighth-grade basketball player; during my senior year as an otherwise unpopular member of the high school band I won a school instrumental award and the first people who gave me a standing O were younger majorettes; once while having dinner in Pitt's dining hall during my junior year a freshman woman I had not previously met invited herself to sit with me. I've got stories galore about those kind of experiences.

Yet all that attention has rarely translated into dates -- it's almost as though I'm not a normal guy supposed to be attracted to women. One other woman I met during my immediate post-college days in the mid-1980s who would sleep with someone else at the drop of a hat loved curling up with me but said that she would slap me if I "tried anything." Even to this day women I'm friendly with display some surprise when I ask them out -- even as an escort for just one evening.

So what do I plan to do? Well, nothing, and that's the point. I think there's a message in it for me -- that, even with my frustration, I'm still obligated to treat women as princesses. After all, they are created by God in his image and not my toys to be thrown away when I'm done with them. I could be actually ahead of the game when it comes to marriage, which does require warmth, tenderness and communication -- all of which I do well.

'Liberty' run amok

Today, the city of Pittsburgh said goodbye to three policemen who were shot to death Saturday morning by a 22-year old gunman.

Taking place on Tuesday will be a "Tax Day Tea Party," a protest to be held here -- and, I'm sure, around the nation -- and sanctioned by the national Libertarian Party against "inefficient government."

The two are related.

For Richard Poplawski, now in custody for their murders, subscribed to a similar anti-government ideology based more on fear and resentment than on any historical perspective.

Well, perhaps that's not entirely true, because American political culture from the start was informed in large part by contempt for the English crown courtesy of immigrants from Northern Ireland -- known popularly as the "Scots-Irish" -- beginning in the 17th Century. Individualists to the core and quite militant, they have always maintained at least a suspicion toward any authority, whether economic, political or social, that doesn't answer to them. That has historically caused problems for the efforts to maintain a sense of justice, especially toward those whose rights have been abridged by law or custom.

Let's take the Civil War, which we often teach was fought to end slavery especially in the South. However, in the section of the country known as Appalachia, where many of the Scots-Irish settled and still live, slavery was non-existent and in fact resisted to a point where the state of North Carolina was considering seceding from the Confederacy over it and what is now West Virginia actually did so. Yet, the South had no shortage of soldiers because, according to that narrative, the real issue was "sovereignty" and the enemy was in Washington, D.C. (Try finding a statue of or streets or buildings named for Abraham Lincoln in the South, even today.)

The civil-rights movement similarly faced resistance, particularly because of the "sovereignty" issue; it turned bloody because Southerners, again, felt it was their sacred duty to fight the central government, which they considered the instigator. Some conservatives even tried to link Martin Luther King Jr. to Communists (a ridiculous charge on its face but understandable given that culture).

You see, in that atmosphere the pursuit of "liberty" at the expense of justice -- which is occasionally secured only by changing laws and customs and in which the "state" is often involved -- can lead to the kind of carnage we witnessed in Pittsburgh on Saturday. It is no accident that the Poplawski's victims were police; after all, they were agents of the "state" (in this case, the city of Pittsburgh), which in his view sought to curtail constitutional liberties almost by definition. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Poplawski subscribed to right-wing "conspiracy theories" and was an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama, whom he felt would eventually abridge his interpretation of the Second Amendment.

That's the connection to the "Tax Day Tea Party." Government, of course, runs primarily on taxes, and what better way to limit government by, in the words of anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, "starving the beast" of revenue? It's come to the point where many libertarian-oriented conservatives consider taxation "theft" and others insist that we can't "tax ourselves into prosperity." That argument falls short, however, when you consider that libertarian economic policies over the last three decades have led directly to the mess we experience today. Hate to disappoint, but government intervention is, for all practical purposes, necessary at this point.

It's easy to talk about "rights," important as they are; it's something else to talk about responsibility to society and one's fellow man. At some point we need to consider if our shortsighted focus on our own has actually sabotaged the rights of others. Thanks to Poplawski, three men have been deprived of their right to life, and if this "tea party" has any effect the government will be deprived of its obligation to restrain evil and administer justice. And without justice, no amount of "liberty" will make this a sane place to live.

A message to my conservative friends

Those of you who subscribe to a conservative ideological agenda and have tangled with me over the years probably consider me unnecessarily argumentative and unwilling to back down. I'm sure you look at me funny and think, "How can someone who calls himself a Christian believe what he does? Doesn't he believe in Christian unity? Doesn't he understand that we're only fighting for Biblical values?"

Well, there's a specific reason why I get in people's faces. Aside from my basic disagreements with the conservative agenda, mentioned elsewhere on this blog, there's another issue: My upbringing -- more specifically, my earthly father.

You see, I was raised by a man with no real moral center and who believed that life was about meeting his needs, refusing to deal with folks wouldn't feed his ego and convinced he was always right. Deeply resentful toward people whom he feel wronged him, he subscribed to the wisdom of the world, that you should make as much money as you can as soon as you can regardless of any calling or spiritual commitment and whom you hurt in the process -- in short, he was, in practice, a Marxist who subscribed to the Machiavellian principle "the ends justify the means." When I first heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a pre-teen it was certainly a distinctive message from what I was hearing at home. And when I did respond just before graduating from high school nearly 30 years ago, it was for that reason: I wanted something different from what I realized was the nonsense I grew up with.

Less than a year later I saw my first deviation -- the following January, while a student at Georgia Tech, in an independent evangelical church in an Atlanta suburb I attended with other students. The pastor before then had been recuperating from major surgery and had been out of the pulpit for several months; when he returned he started preaching conservative politics from the pulpit, especially against the Soviet Union, and punctuating each point with Hebrews 12:29, "[F]or our 'God is a consuming fire.'" At that time the church publicized an anti-Equal Rights Amendment rally (I was an ERA supporter) and improperly endorsed then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan (consider when this was and who was in office at the time). My spirit became uneasy because this didn't sound like the Christ I had pledged to follow, but it would take just one visit to a downtown church just off campus, where I ended up staying, to understand just what the problem was.

You see, there was no love in the first church -- for Christ, people or God's creation. It was all about fear about losing privileges, power, position -- the very opposite of Jesus' good news to me. And looking back now, the second church was warm and nurturing, while the first church was kind of cold. Just like my household.

Dad also had considerable racial resentment as well; I can't tell you how many times he used to refer to the "white man" -- of course, in a negative fashion -- which also began to turn me off. Granted, there were historical injustices perpetrated on African-Americans and I would later learn the specifics; however, growing up I had become an admirer of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- whom Dad didn't care for -- who decided to choose a different path, and I later became an early advocate of racial reconciliation in the evangelical church. (Oh, those two churches in Atlanta were white.)

That said, I would eventually learn that the ideological right has had its own issues with race and racism that it has never faced. In an interview with the New Yorker, Pat Buchanan, than an aide to President Nixon (whose whole political career was based on resentment), related a 1971 memo in which he recommended, among other things, that "bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country ... We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention" because doing so could help to "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

Reagan, however, would bring that to a whole new level, as he would ride some of those anti-black resentments all the way to the White House. Indifferent to the civil-rights movement and dismissive of King, during his 1976 campaign he referred to "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" and kicked off his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss., near where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, stating that he favored "states' rights" (read: "I would have opposed desegregation"). In fact, his "big government" shtick actually had a racist tinge to it, as guess who was perceived as benefiting from it? That pandering to racists might explain his endorsement from a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, saying that "the Republican platform could have been written by a Klansman." That's why I'm not a Republican.

But I digress. Anyway, in August of 1983 Mom, fed up with Dad's tyranny and fatigued by fruitless attempts to change the situation, decided to leave the marriage. Dad tried desperately to get her back but wouldn't change his outlook or way of dealing with things, so Mom filed for divorce, which was finalized in January of 1985. (She would later marry a more solid, stable man I referred to in another entry.) But even then he refused to humble himself and admit his failings; he remained resentful toward her to his death in 1993 from complications of his alcoholism.

What's the conservative analogy? Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

According to David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," conservative activists went so far as to file suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. in 1992 to have Clinton removed from the ballot -- because they knew he would probably win. And all during his presidency the political right, especially its media, hounded him, sabotaging his program and spreading unsubstantiated rumors about his corruption. Eight years later, after having failed to knock off Bill, they decided they needed to sabotage his wife, Sen. Hillary, then the junior U.S. senator from New York, on her road to the White House; a number of folks I talked to said that they would cross over to the Democratic primary to support Obama to keep her out. It never occurred to them that Obama would himself become a viable candidate.

There's a saying, however, that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Two years ago the Washington Times published a story with the false assertion that Obama had attended a radical Muslim seminary in Indonesia, and a number of people also filed suit to have Obama removed because of questions about his citizenship -- again, because they knew he could win. It was the political equivalent of getting back at a rival for "stealing his girl" -- never mind that she willingly left with him.

And there's still considerable resentment over Obama's victory -- I chided a man at dinner a couple of months ago for blaming the media for trashing vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the campaign; he became angry when I told him that she didn't need their help. There's also a Facebook group called "Nobama in '12" -- they're not even going to give him a chance?

One more personal note: Just weeks before my parents split I read the wedding announcement of a woman I had desired in high school. That situation, of which I'll spare you the details, was quite acrimonious to say the least, and for quite some time I blamed her for that.

But after Mom left the LORD spoke to me, saying, "Consider your part." You see, He showed me that the dynamics between her and me were similar to my parents' marriage, which I already knew why had failed. Also reeling from the trauma of flunking out of school for the second time, I went into counseling, began attending 12-step recovery programs and fell in with a group of people who helped me get back on my feet. After years of healing I extended her an olive branch and we later apologized to each other; we're still in touch even though we'll never be close friends. (I can honestly say I harbor no bitterness toward her today.)

You see, it was through that experience that God revealed to me the depth of my sin. Because I had already believed in Jesus Christ I knew intellectually that it was already forgiven; that said, sin was still affecting my life in ways I wasn't aware of at the time. Because I've worked through all that in my own life, I see that in others.

My situation reminds me of a rumor I heard about one of my favorite music groups -- I don't know for sure this is true, so I won't identify it -- that had fired a talented newer member for being high on stage. Members of this band, like many others, had previously abused drugs and alcohol but eventually came to their senses and were not about to tolerate something like that again in their presence. In the same way, having dealt with my own issues, I recognize hatred, resentment and bigotry when I see it. So if you want to be that way ... don't do it around me.

Tribute to a real man

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of the Rev. Dr. James Kelly Jr. The name might mean little or nothing to you, but part of the reason I'm writing this is because of him.

In his not quite 79 years of life he was a pastor, civil rights advocate, counselor, college administrator and very much a stand-up guy with the number of degrees he earned approaching double figures, including two doctorates. He ended his active career in 1985 as the dean of the school of education at my college alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh; he was the first African-American to serve in that capacity.

One other thing -- just after that, he married my mother. And that relationship proved good for both of us in the long run.

For openers, after she retired in 1994, they traveled all over the world -- England, Ireland, Thailand, even Africa. During their married life he did all the cooking. He introduced her to his circle of friends, who represented many of the movers and shakers in Pittsburgh of all races, and did quite a bit of entertaining. He took care of her quite well, which was an issue after she left my father due to his alcoholism and abuse. He also readily welcomed my brother and me into the family; he referred to me as his "main man." I don't think he realized that I needed to hear that. Or maybe he did and I didn't realize it.

Yet, from what I could tell, he never took pride in his status; rather, he regularly used his authority to help others, occasionally waiving tuition for students who were having financial problems. I was one of those he helped, pulling strings to get me back in school after I flunked out in 1983. And believe me, I appreciated it -- by the time I finally graduated in 1997 I regularly made the Dean's List. Even though his own health was failing, he was determined to get to the arena to see me wear that cap and gown, and when we got back home that afternoon he had me put on one of his academic robes. (I think he was trying to drop some hints.)

However, it was only after reading John Eldredge's "The Way of the Wild Heart" did I understand his essence. The book refers to the numerous stages of a man's life -- "Beloved Son," "Cowboy/Ranger," "Warrior," "King" and "Sage," and Eldredge mentioned that he had met very, very few sages. I can tell you that "Doc" was one of those, according to the book, because he came across as a man who always knew who he was and what he was about and was willing to share that with others. Eldredge also said that the influence of a sage should increase in his final years; folks are still talking about my stepdad.

Of course we all miss him, and now that he's gone I am more than proud to represent part of his ongoing legacy. Several years ago Mom gave me his Pitt watch as a birthday present, knowing that I would appreciate it.

But the most precious piece of jewelry I own is the ring I wear on the fourth finger of my right hand; at his viewing the former dean of the university's evening school came to pay his respects (he had signed off on the papers allowing me back into school) and I shook his hand -- and then showed it to him. He responded, "None of the people I've helped out has ever left me down!" -- telling him that "Doc" had judged my character correctly. And that's why I appreciate him so much; he believed in me to an extent that he was willing to stake his position to see me go somewhere in life. I would hope that, were I in his shoes, I would do some of the same things.

The Republican Party's 'Reagan problem'

You are probably aware that the Republican National Committee has selected Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, as its new chairman, the first African-American to hold that post. Arguably, part of his job description will be to attract fellow blacks to the party.

If that's their goal, they're wasting their time -- because the GOP's problem is that it got to where it was by alienating black voters. Specifically, its heart and soul, even though he is now dead, is keeping blacks out because, thanks to its notorious "Southern strategy," the right-wing policies it supported and he championed have done nothing but turn blacks against it.

"He," of course, is the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who is still revered in the Republican Party and the conservative movement but absolutely hated in the African-American community. Bet you didn't know that last fact. That's the problem, because conservatives don't even talk to black activists and leaders -- they simply want to neutralize, denigrate or destroy them.

And Reagan, as much as any political figure, was responsible for that polarization. Consider these facts:

-- Reagan ignored the civil-rights movement and, upon the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and while governor of California, was quoted in a Boston Globe editorial as calling the movement “a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break,” never mind that King broke the law only reluctantly when all other options were exhausted.

-- During his 1976 campaign for president, Reagan constantly referred to "welfare queens driving Cadillacs," his audience knowing full well whom he was referring to -- blacks.

-- Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss., where three civil-rights workers were found murdered 16 years previously, and announced that he favored "states rights" -- indicating to white racists, "I'm on your side."

-- During that same campaign, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia endorsed Reagan, saying that "the Republican campaign could have been written by a Klansman."

-- When in office, Reagan cut government programs for college grants and job training -- cuts that disproportionately hurt African Americans. (We often forget that demonstrations in major cities resulted.) As a result, the poverty rate actually went up.

-- Reagan, through his attorney general William French Smith, tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act because it "discriminated against the South." (Never mind that's where the problems were.)

-- Reagan appointed Clarence Thomas to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- ostensibly to weaken it by changing the rules to favor the employer over the employee.

-- Reagan, using the excuse of the Cold War, consistently opposed sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime and substituted an ineffective policy of "constructive engagement."

-- Even as he signed the legislation establishing King's birthday as a national holiday, Reagan replied to his political ally Jesse Helms, who voted against it on the grounds that King was a Communist, “We’ll know in about 35 years, won’t we?”, referring to FBI files supposedly "proving" his Communist activity -- indicating that he believed that nonsense.

Amazingly, Reagan won 14 percent of the black vote in 1980s. (He wouldn't get that today, for sure.)

Anyway, an op-ed published upon his death in the New Pittsburgh Courier was titled "Reagan made racism respectable." I don't think Reagan was himself a racist -- you have to care to be a racist and Reagan didn't -- but I have no doubt that he, more than anyone, caused the GOP to maintain racist strategies to remain in power.

However, that has come back to bite them. In late 2002, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, while attending a 100th birthday party for fellow Sen. Strom Thurmond, said that had Thurmond, who had run for president in 1948 as a "Dixiecrat," won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems" -- an oblique reference to desegregation. That remark cost him his leadership post (but only temporarily and only when other conservatives went ballistic first).

Don't think, however, this is merely about racist attitudes. As I mentioned, conservatives, thanks in large part to Reagan, have pursued policies that turned blacks against them, a situation they don't intend to face. They made a big stink about Sen. Robert Byrd's inadvertent use of the "N-word" and his former Klan membership, ignoring that he has changed his views in that time -- even voting for the King holiday -- and apologized immediately for that slur. (Byrd, of course, is a Democrat and was thus labeled a hypocritical "liberal.")

And even in the few times when the Republican Party ran black candidates they didn't get much support, from blacks or anyone else. Steele himself was badly beaten while running in 2006 for the U.S. Senate, as did Ken Blackwell in Ohio and former Steelers receiver Lynn Swann here in Pennsylvania when they sought to become governors. The GOP electorate's general disdain for blacks has come to a point where some black Republicans -- most notably commentator Armstrong Williams and former Tulsa congressman J.C. Watts -- said during last year's campaign they were considering voting for Barack Obama for president.

Bottom line, the Republican Party, if it's serious about attracting black voters, will need to repudiate much of its platform. But to do that it will also need to repudiate Reagan as well -- and I don't see that happening.

Kissing dating goodbye? Not so fast

I recently had reason to remember the controversial book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris, which I had received it as a gift a number of years ago. I was reminded why I had issues with it.

I think I understand what he was trying to say -- that people don't exist for our selfish purposes and we ought not to use them. But he wrote from the perspective of a very sheltered Christian upbringing with a strong family and church community that met his emotional needs, and thus the book doesn't speak to probably most Christian singles, which is to whom it was "sold."

Take me, for example. I'm a convert that didn't come from a Christian home and thus didn't have that kind of backup. My late father was an alcoholic and control freak who, in retrospect, never wanted me to leave home for reasons I won't get into here. I bring that up because I made a commitment to Christ due to the dysfunction in my family, specifically my mother's threat to leave him (and she would eventually make good on it).

However, I learned that people, especially men, who come from that kind of background are often shunted aside. In the fellowship I attended at a large secular university, the "strong" guys (most of whom came from Christian families) were chased by the girls and the weak guys were ignored. On top of that, I knew of at least six people who had attempted suicide (fortunately, none succeeded). Thus, Harris' "audience" has little connection in the real world -- it assumes a context that many of us cannot relate to.

A sequel, "Boy Meets Girl," that I paged through a number of years ago deepened my feelings of alienation. It focuses on a fantasy I had years ago -- asking the father of a "prospect" for the right to court his daughter. (I had that opportunity only once, and though he was OK with it she wasn't interested.) Besides, I've never met the fathers of the women I've dated; indeed, in only one case were any of them even living! And at my age, pushing 50, it's more likely that I will end up with someone who was "single again" and thus no longer under Dad's authority.

And then -- what about those occasions where people could use an escort? I never went to my high school prom and often had trouble getting dates for fraternity formals because in many cases the girls I asked often were so focused on "Will this result in marriage?" to a point that even if they had gone they wouldn't have enjoyed the evening. That's not fellowship.

Bottom line, most Christians, especially if they don't find someone before graduating college, do need to date, in large part because in the working world you don't have the time to "hang out." Not even a church, or even a singles ministry, offers that kind of bonding. Men especially need the opportunity to take women out so that they can learn to "take responsibility," and men learn to do things generally by actually doing them.

Since last year I've been privileged to develop a somewhat healthy relationship with a woman friend of nearly five years. I actually asked her on a date the second time I saw her but she resisted for a number of legitimate reasons; only a year-and-a-half ago did she finally say yes. It's worked out well; she has more responsibility than I at work and church, so when we go out together every few months I make it a point to take care of everything. Call it "dating" if you will, even though neither of us believes we'll be married -- at least to each other -- but it's mutually beneficial. And isn't that what Christian relationships should be about?

The theology of delight

I learned something recently. God likes me.

That may sound a tad silly or sacrilegious, especially for someone like me who comes from the Reformed school of Christianity where God is so utterly holy and not to be trifled with.

While that is certainly true, listening to Dr. Charles Stanley this week has given me a understanding of God that I had heard before but had never sunk in. The word he uses is "delight." He was, of course, speaking specifically of "[delighting] in the LORD" (Psalm 37:4), but after some thought I realized that it goes the other way as well.

To get a sense of it, I went back to my relationships with a number of friends -- primarily female, of course -- whose company I enjoy. Simply put, whenever I see or hear from them I "light up" -- a hug, phone call or e-mail from any of them will completely make my day. In the fall a friend whom I spent a lot of time with in 2004 and 2005 but whom I had not seen or heard from in months unexpectedly showed up in church, hoping to run into me; we spent that afternoon at a harvest festival. Two years earlier while attending another fall festival, she was admiring some roses that had been carved out of balsa wood. I asked her, "Do you want one?"

I didn't buy her that rose because I wanted anything in return; I simply was willing to pay for the privilege of her presence. It's something she naturally brings out of me.

I think that's what the Scripture means when it says, in too many places to mention here, to "delight in the LORD" -- yes, He wants (and is owed) our worship but also to be enjoyed as well. And when you have that type of relationship, serving Him becomes not a chore but an honor. Indeed, a story I heard from a former coworker who is an Orthodox Jew gave the impression that the person involved was excited over a potential opportunity to obey God.

But you can't delight in the LORD unless you've experienced that yourself, and in fact He first demonstrates His delight in us. Zephaniah 3:17 reads as follows: "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." John Eldredge, in "The Way of the Wild Heart," says that God seemed to be "in love" with him; while I think it overstates the case (I'm certainly not in love with my friends), there's an energy you receive when you know someone likes you.

Two jazz tunes come to mind: "Pure Delight" by guitarist Larry Carlton and "You Make Me Smile" by saxophonist Dave Koz. They remind me not so much how I should feel about God but how He feels about me.