More than 'Courageous'

On Sunday I finally got to see the film "Courageous," produced by the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. and released in September. I admit that I found myself rooting for the lead characters, a quartet, three white and one black, of sheriff's deputies in Dougherty County, Ga., which includes Albany; and a Hispanic man who started out as a laborer and, by the end of the film, had worked his way up to management of a textile mill. The film culminates in a shootout between some deputies and street gang members, including a leader, who end up being arrested for drug possession and distribution.

The underlying message of the film is that men need to step up and reclaim their rightful roles as fathers -- which, of course, is a worthy goal. That said, however, I detected a number of weaknesses in how that message was portrayed.

1) There were no grandfathers in the movie; indeed, the only reference to any of the men's own fathers that I recall was Deputy Hayes' biological father, whom he said he never knew or even met. As a result, you never got a sense of what their own dads may have or hadn't taught them, whether actively or passively; you best believe that their own upbringing would have a major impact on who they became. It seems to me that, in pledging more responsible fatherhood, the men in question should consult with some older men, perhaps their own fathers if they're available, to learn how to become not just fathers in particular but men in a general sense. It was good that the men committed themselves to Biblical principles; still, they needed to see them worked out in the lives of other men that they respected.

The larger issue is the lack of true community that's required for children to develop, in times past usually including extended family such as uncles, aunts and grandparents. Since the 1950s our culture has focused on the nuclear family as being the be-all and end-all of what we call "family," and I don't think that the dissolution of our culture, which began then, is a coincidence. The old African proverb still applies: "It takes a village to raise a child." (We Christians don't always realize this because almost all of us are involved in such a community -- the local church.)

2) The legitimate Biblical concept of economic justice was totally glossed over, most noticeably with the one deputy who, it turned out, had been stealing drugs that had been seized as evidence with the intent to sell them and ended up being arrested. I caught that he noted the difficulty of raising a family on an annual gross salary of just $36,000, which is a little less than what I make for a job that's far less demanding and has less prestige. (And I'm single and childless.)

In times past in the African-American community, in large part due to racism, men were often unable to find work that paid enough to feed, clothe and shelter their wives and children; to make ends meet, in many cases the wives had to get jobs, often as domestics. Needless to say, that caused friction in the home and the men, feeling useless, either left or ended up getting kicked out. Situations like that cause children to lose respect for Dad; as a result he can neither teach his sons to become men nor "cover" his daughters so that they don't fall for the charms of the lech up the street.

Bottom line, a man needs work that pays well enough so that not only his family can survive financially but also that he doesn't always have to take second or third jobs that would take him away from them. Indeed, the very concept of "sabbath" represents, really, a guard against workaholism.

At the end of the movie, Hayes asked one young man who had shown interest in his daughter but was caught up in the shootout with the gang why he got involved with it, and he responded, "I don't have anybody, man." Sorry, but that also is a tad simplistic -- drug-dealing has always been a lucrative business and many in some areas see it as the only way to make any money and thus gain status. "Family" has little to do with it.

3) Being that this was the Deep South I was stunned, for reasons I've already mentioned, that racism was completely ignored. Christianity Today reported that Sherwood Baptist Church has thankfully been involved in racial reconciliation efforts in that city and thus has the authority to speak about that but chose not to; however, Albany was one of the first cities after Montgomery, Ala. that Martin Luther King Jr. attempted to integrate during the civil-rights movement. Furthermore, according to that same article, some of those same racist attitudes from back then still exist today. (One of my roommates at Georgia Tech, who was white, came from that city; he told me over 30 years ago that it experienced "white flight.")

4) One scene that jarred me was the promotion of Javier, the Hispanic man, who was asked if he would fudge a shipment -- when he said he wouldn't, he was offered the position because management said was looking for someone with integrity. It's more likely that companies would look for someone who would lie to make more money and believers certainly aren't immune; let's remember that Bernie Ebbers and the late Ken Lay, both CEO's of their respective corporations and who were supposedly devout Christians, were busted for unethical behavior.

5) There was virtually no mention about the men's marriages in "Courageous," a problem because a strong marriage is virtually a must to raise Godly children; I recall the saying: "The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother." The deputy who was caught with the contraband was divorced; another, who had just finished his rookie year on the force, had fathered a child out of wedlock. (In fairness, the same church also produced the movie "Fireproof," which focused on marriage but which I haven't seen.)

Basically, the producers of the film tried to make things as black-and-white -- no pun intended -- as possible. But in the process they isolated fatherhood from issues that surround it and thus, I believe, ultimately sabotaged the message they were trying to convey.

Some thoughts on persecution

"You let them cut you? You let them hurt you?"

I heard those words in 1996 from a then-retired, now-deceased African-American pastor who was attending my largely-white church. He was infuriated when I told him that, when I was a student at a mostly-white Catholic prep school, the N-word was directed toward me on a daily basis and I didn't react. Part of that was because I acted as though I was one of them and simply didn't cower the way other African-Americans likely might.

In light of the recent celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it's important to remember that, when you stick your neck out for the sake of truth, you might very well pay a price. And it was one I -- and he -- was willing to pay for the sake of racial reconciliation.

In his case, in the South it meant being arrested on trumped-up charges, irritants such as the cancellation of insurance and, ultimately, threats to his life. In mine, in the North it also meant rejection by "my side" of the relational fence -- being considered an "Oreo," a "race traitor."

The bigger picture, however, is not about the abuse we had to take; rather, we both kept our eyes on the prize in that we truly believed that reconciliation was the right way to go. Dr. King has not lived to see the fruit of his labors; I'm blessed in that I have -- today I'm even friendly with some of the people who tormented me in those days because I think they finally understood what I was about.

I would say that we American evangelical Christians who complain about "persecution" at the drop of a hat really should chill out. For openers, Jesus said that such would happen -- "if they hate you, remember that that hated Me first" -- and we don't want to make Jesus into a liar, don't we? That said, we need to ask ourselves if we're deliberately picking fights to make ourselves look like martyrs; trouble is, the only thing we do in the process is look codependent. Lose friends, families and jobs? That's what you signed up for when you began following Him. There is a time to fight, but there is also a time to suffer. I understood the difference.

It was in understanding that larger picture that I was able to respond to the minister: "They didn't hurt me!"

Just another holiday ....

Another Martin Luther King Jr. Day has come and gone, and I admit I was stunned to notice that a number of retail establishments used the day to promote sales. Or perhaps I shouldn't have been, because that seems to be the American way.

This may surprise many of you, but despite my longtime admiration for him I was never enthused about making his birthday -- he would have been 83 yesterday -- into the holiday that it has become for just that reason. I feared that it would be just another day off and another reason for people to sell stuff. And I find that a tad sacrilegious.

For openers, what was Dr. King's occupation? That's right -- a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is not for sale at any price. Moreover, he helped to lead a great social movement ignored by many of the Christians of his day and reviled by others but nevertheless was used by God to destroy Jim Crow in the southeastern United States.

And while I understand that God used Dr. King to transform an entire region of the country, let us never forget that God did it. Yes, he had help -- from churches, secular organizations, Congress, the Supreme Court, helpful Northerners and Jews -- but let's keep in mind that the miracle that the civil-rights movement tried to enact represented the pulling down of a spiritual stronghold. Because racial segregation, simply put, was sin and ought to have been considered as such.

So even though much of the church was late on the scene, we Christians ought to remember him as an influential Christian leader. (To its credit, the Episcopal Church has long recognized him as one of its "martyrs.") Indeed, this is one day which fills me with the desire to worship God -- after all, it was through the movement that I first understood the Gospel.

That's why I'm disappointed that even Dr. King's memory has been sold out for the sake of trinkets. Rather, the churches should be packed in gratitude for what God did through him.

Random ruminations on the 2012 election

-- Don't let the results of the Iowa caucus this week fool you -- absolutely nothing is settled on the Republican side. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the winner, of course is the choice of the "establishment"; former Sen. Rick Santorum, finishing a strong second, is the favorite of the social conservative wing; and the curmudgeon Ron Paul, with very, very deep philosophical support, went a close third. Keep in mind, however, that Santorum thus far has escaped media scrutiny in this race, which won't last long -- there are reasons why he was crushed on his second reelection attempt in 2006, and we'll find out why.

-- If there was a loser this week it was the tea-party movement, whose favorite candidate, Michele Bachmann, decided to pack it in. Another social conservative, Rick Perry, probably will, although at this point he hasn't done so yet. Newt Gingrich didn't do all that well either, but that may be meaningless.

-- You want to know why the GOP will have trouble winning elections from here on out? Check out recent remarks that Gingrich and Santorum made about what they would to about poor African-Americans. Such people apparently don't mind offending folks for the sake of their base; the trouble is that they risk turning off undecided voters -- just as the GOP did in 1992 with its "culture war" convention -- in the process.

-- Nothing that has transpired so far has made me change my mind about Barack Obama's being reelected, which I've believed since he was elected the first time. One, the Republicans have always spent more time and energy trying to defeat him rather than telling people what they would do differently would one of them ascend to the top spot. Two, the people who might have a chance to defeat him on those grounds literally can't afford to run against him -- he has already raised $750 million and could push that total up to $1 billion. (Recall that he bankrupted Hillary Clinton, not the easiest thing to do.)

Losing the future

Things are obviously getting desperate.

You know that's the case when the Christian political organization "Winning the Future" endorses former suburban Atlanta congressman and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination for president.

Think about this for a second: This group is supporting a man who has held only one political office in his entire life. A man who cheated on his first wife with his second and his second wife with his third. A man who sought power for its own sake, going up against Bill Clinton -- and totally lost, resigning his seat after being embarrassed in 1998. A man that, to my knowledge, has not produced a credible testimony as to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and a changed life as a result.

No, it seems that "Winning the Future" has only one goal: Reestablishing the clout of the "religious right," even if it has to compromise essential tenets of the faith to do it.

And that won't happen -- the 2006 general election pretty much put an end to that, what with the shellacking the Republican Party took despite James Dobson's efforts with his "Stand for the Family" rallies. Let's not forget that conservative Christians never took folks from their side of the fence to task for supporting an immoral (some say illegal) war in Iraq and especially in response to the Jack Abramoff-fueled lobbying scandal.

What's worse from that perspective, it especially has no chance to unseat Barack Obama as president. None of the Republican candidates in the race has the money to compete with him -- it's no accident that the better prospects decided to sit this one out -- nor do they have the temperament to do anything but bash him. In short, they have nothing to offer but the same old, same old culture and class war which that side lost long ago but refuses to acknowledge.

More to the point -- why are Christians endorsing any candidate at all? Do we realize that we're not going to change the basic sin nature of the human race simply by legislation or "changing the culture?" Or is our goal simply to change this world so that we can live in it and avoid spiritual warfare? (Do you really believe that God will allow that?)

That's why I yawned when I learned about the endorsement -- it won't make any difference, either now or in the long run. And when I mean the "long run," I mean eternally.

David Barton -- in denial about race and racism

Do you ever wonder why so few African-Americans vote conservative? David Barton should remind you. The modern conservative movement has never fully accepted its complicity in maintaining racist ideology and in fact has consistently tried to run from it, and Barton doesn't help matters.

Barton, head of the WallBuilders organization, which can be kindly described as giving a right-wing Christian spin on American history, and who once headed the Republican Party in Texas, has no training as a historian. Rather, from WallBuilders you get the kind of agitprop that distorts history and causes division. Earlier this week a friend forwarded me a number of his papers on black history which proved either irrelevant or misleading.

Let's take an entry on Richard Allen, founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. According to Barton, "Allen began to preach regularly at the St. George Methodist Church in Philadelphia. He suggested that Blacks should have a separate place of worship apart from Whites; and although his suggestion was at first resisted, his forceful preaching attracted such a vast number of Blacks to the church that when objections were raised, Allen's idea of a separate congregation was finally accepted."

However, Barton fails to note that the vestry of St. George had voted to build a segregated section of the church and that he had led a walkout in response. And that was hardly uncommon; black churches were established in the first place because black parishioners were abused or neglected in white ones.

In an entry on black voting rights published in 2003, Barton consistently mentions -- without perspective -- that the Democratic Party was the chief agent of racial segregation and discrimination (that was true only in the South). He's correct in saying that the Republican Party was founded specifically to take down chattel slavery -- but wait a minute. By the 1880s, with slavery gone and Reconstruction abandoned, the GOP had left its anti-racist past behind.

Moreover, what became known as the "New Right," pushed by William F. Buckley Jr. and developing appeal mostly in the West, was proving increasingly influential in the GOP in the 1960s, so much so that it was able to get Barry Goldwater on the ticket as its presidential candidate in 1964; Goldwater, who publicly opposed the civil-rights movement, was later denounced by Martin Luther King Jr. as "the most dangerous man in the country" at the time. Two years later, Richard Nixon enacted the GOP's notorious "Southern Strategy" which reached out to white Southerners by emphasizing, among other things, the national Democratic Party's commitment to civil rights (which was recast as "big government"). Slowly they began to trickle into the GOP but came full-scale with the election of Ronald Reagan -- who also opposed MLK Jr.

I wonder why Barton never mentions King and the civil-rights movement -- which of course came out of the black church and even to this day informs much of the African-American community -- in his writings. Perhaps because it clearly came from the political left and thus causes embarrassment to those on the right who want the exclusive franchise on religious activism. But that's a shame, especially considering his partisan view of history which leaves out much of the truth.

Tim Tebow -- hot now, but wait

Tim Tebow, the former missionary kid, has made quite a name for himself over the past few years. The first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy while attending the University of Florida and the subject of an anti-abortion ad during last year's Super Bowl, he now plays quarterback for the Denver Broncos, who have lost only one game since he was given the starting job about two months ago.

Lately he's been somewhat of a lighting rod for his open displays of Christian faith both on the field and in the media. Some love it, but others have said that he should tone it down. (One of his critics is the now-retired Kurt Warner, himself a believer who led the St. Louis Rams to their only Super Bowl championship in 2001.)

Here's the problem I have with all the attention Tebow gets: There does appear to be a lack of humility, let alone depth, on his part. He has played for winning teams throughout his short career -- UF plays in the Southeastern Conference, arguably the toughest in the country and whose games are broadcast on CBS. It's easy to "praise God" in such situations.

But wait until he starts losing games. Then we'll see what he's really made of.

In 1996, after losing a close playoff game to the Steelers, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Jim Harbaugh still gave props to Jesus. Going further back, consider pitcher Orel Hershiser, whose Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in 1988. However, two years later he needed surgery that prematurely ended his season; at a press conference, he said, in effect, "The same God that was there when we won the World Series is going to be there now."

And let's look at Warner, who played at the University of Northern Iowa, which participates in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) and had previously worked in a grocery store before resuming his career. Because he didn't go to a football factory, virtually no one knew who he was -- that is, except for pro scouts.

In the early 1980s I used to watch the 700 Club, and I couldn't help but notice that when it broadcast athlete profiles only these qualified: 1) star players; 2) from winning teams; 3) with Christian parents or spouses (or, in one case, a fiancé). Yet it's very possible that a third-stringer from a losing team who's unattached and doesn't come from a Christian home may maintain a deeper walk with God than any of them -- and needs to.

In such situations I'm reminded of the line from "Blessed Be the Name of the LORD": "Blessed be His name/On the road marked with suffering/When there's pain in the offering/Blessed be the name ... " It's easy to be "on fire for God" when you're on top, but when things start to fall apart -- that's when you learn what you're made of.