About the new 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Play

When I saw this 60 Minutes report on the new To Kill a Mockingbird play, I couldn't help thinking, "Why didn't Aaron Sorkin write a completely new work to address the issues of race and justice in a modern context, as he says is his purpose?"

I've loved Sorkin's and Jeff Daniels' work through the years, but truly if they want to turn Atticus Finch into a clueless, post-modern anti-hero, they're not really doing To Kill a Mockingbird.

This production seems like little more than the exploitation of an established work of art to me. I wish that Lee's estate had not to have settled on their case against it.

(Plus: Daniels, two years younger than me, is too old for the part of Atticus. He's 63.)

Heeding Christ's Call, Turning from Racism

Two events that have taken place over the past several days have disturbed me a lot.

1. An African-American woman of 65, from Alpharetta, Georgia, subjected to treatment by law enforcement personnel which the police department has said was wrong.

2. An African-American graduate student at Yale University was the subject of a call to Yale police. Her wrongdoing? She had fallen asleep in a commons area. To their credit, Yale police said it was not a police matter.

In both matters, two women were minding their own business but were deemed suspicious because they are black.

In America.

In 2018.

As to the first situation, I will be turning 65 later this year. I identify with the woman and so, find the treatment to which she was subjected deeply disturbing.

As to the second matter: Personally, when I was a student at Ohio State who commuted daily from my home on the west side of Columbus to campus, I often dozed off in the student union between classes. Nobody ever filed a complaint about me. Of course, among the other reasons why this was probably the case is that I am white.

The Yale case is disturbing in that the truly guilty party, the student who called the police, clearly acted out of racial fear. Another term for racial fear would be racism. This sin exists among us and within us to an extent that we white folks find hard to admit. But cases like these two are rooted in racism and no amount of denial can change that fact.

Racism is a sin and its existence has a continuing horrible effect in America on those who are its victims, as well as a devastating eternal impact on those who act upon it, refusing to repent or change. When we yield to racism, when we excuse it, we put our immortal souls at risk.

We must all change. This fatal disease of racism must be exorcised from each of us.

This is especially urgent for those of us who claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ. We follow a Savior, God-enfleshed, Jesus, who saves us from sin and death, not because of our virtue, but in spite of our sin. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And, all my neighbors, whatever the tones of their skin, are, like me, made in the image of God. So, those of us who trust in Christ are particularly called to turn from the sin of racism and to call our sisters and brothers in Christ to do the same.

God tells us: “... if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

I don’t know about you, but I pray for healing in this land. And I know it starts with me repenting, trusting in Christ, and then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, loving all my neighbors, fighting for justice for each.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

"Give me your tired..."

Statue of Liberty as it was dedicated 1886: #LOC pic.twitter.com/PJz9BhF20a

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 3, 2017

The New Colussus (the poem is posted at the Statue of Liberty)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus (November 2, 1883)

Americans and Our Stuff

"Possession is nine-tenths of the problem" (Dr. Winston O'Boogie, aka John Lennon)

I agree with my son who, when linking to this piece from becoming minimalist over on Facebook, said that the greatest threat to Americans, spiritually and in every other way, is our materialism.

In 21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own, Joshua Becker catalogs some bracing facts, some that really might surprise or even shock you.

A sampling:

1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times). [I worked for an inventory service when I was in college, counting by hand, items in grocery, discount, drug, and hardware stores from Columbus to Portsmouth, Lancaster to Nelsonville. It was tedious. But I have a feeling that counting items with the same techniques we used before the advent of bar codes and scanners would be more daunting in my own condo than counting the merchandise in those stores was.]

5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing (SSA). [I find myself chuckling almost every time I see the signs for self-storage facilities, imagining people walking into the units to store themselves overnight.]

7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally (UCLA). [No mention is made here of how many children spend hours playing with the boxes in which their toys have been packaged.]

15. Americans donate 1.9% of their income to charitable causes (NCCS/IRS). While 6 billion people worldwide live on less than $13,000/year (National Geographic). [We ignore Jesus' words, I think, to our own eternal peril: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" (Luke 12:48).]

19. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail). [I threw this one in because I so identify with it. It's frustrating, but it really is one indicator of having too much stuff, I suppose.]

Becker writes:

The numbers paint a jarring picture of excessive consumption and unnecessary accumulation. Fortunately, the solution is not difficult. The invitation to own less is an invitation to freedom, intentionality, and passion.* And it can be discovered at your nearest drop-off center.

I think that he's right. In the past few years, I've been flushing lots of my possessions, taking some to places like Goodwill, Volunteers of America, and Salvation Army, while taking books and some recordings to Half Price Books, more for the privilege of divestiture than for money, because Half Price doesn't hand out a lot of that. I've also enjoyed giving a lot of my classic vinyl records from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, to my kids.

Possessions and all that goes with them can hold us down. My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us to never have so much or be so rooted in a place that we weren't ready to move on a day's notice. Schein was warning us, in part, against identifying our lives too much by our stuff, houses, neighborhoods, and such.

This wasn't just advice of practical expedience for future pastors. For all of us, being so tied to what we own that we're not able to respond to what God may be calling us to do at any given time can destroy our eternal souls.

Jesus once told a man, "Follow Me." The man evidently was drawn to Jesus, but said in reply: "Lord, first let me go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59-60). What's interesting about this exchange is that we don't know if the man's father was dead, or even sick, yet. The man was tied to a place, to a way of life, maybe to his stuff, and so, asked if he could hold off following Jesus for a while.

The man was looking for the right time. But the right time to follow Jesus is now, no matter how inconvenient or hard as it can be to do so.

I do often wonder these days whether the times I've left one place to go to another was really done at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. (I'm serving the fourth church I've pastored in thirty-two years.)A recent unexpected encounter at the Cincinnati airport with members of the second church I served has only added to questioning my motives for moving to the next church.

For all my uncertainty on that score though, I am sure that the unwillingness to move when Jesus says, "Follow" is wrong and often prompted mostly by both our natural difficulty with change and our revulsion at the prospect of moving our stuff.** Sometimes, we have reason to wonder, I think, if we own our stuff or if our stuff owns us.

And that is precisely the issue Jesus confronts the disciples (both first- and twenty-first century varieties) with when He says: "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

There's nothing inherently wrong with wealth. Nothing intrinsically evil about stuff.

But they both present a strong challenge to our souls in that they can become the means by which we identify ourselves and the definition we put on what it means to live.

Possessions allow us to insulate ourselves from the realities that most people in the world for most of history have had to deal with, to, in a sense, become gods unto ourselves. All of our stuff makes it harder for the truth about human sin (our sin), our need of God, and our accountability to God and to our neighbor, to penetrate our minds, consciences, and wills.

Jesus once told a rich man who earnestly sought Jesus out that in order to be free--in order to grasp the outstretched hand of God that offers to change us from God's enemies to God's friends for eternity--he needed to sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.

Had Jesus been approached by a poor man, He likely wouldn't have given the same prescription. To be sure, Jesus still would have told the poor man to follow Him, whether that meant hitting the road or following Jesus right where he already lived. But, it's likely that the poor man would have other things of which his soul and his life would need divesting in order to allow him to take hold of Jesus.

But, as a member of the US middle class, I do stew about the power of stuff over my life and I stew about the power of materialism over our culture.

Materialism is a belief system, a religion that worships a false idol whose only desire is to appeal to our human egos and love of creature comforts.

As such, it drives a wedge between the God/Man Jesus Who came to save us from our sins--from our desire to "be like God" which materialism represents--and us, between life with God and us, between authenticity and us, and between eternity and us.

I think it's time for me to repent (again) of my materialism, to follow Jesus, and to clean out my closet for a trip to the local thrift store.

*I notice, with satisfaction, that Becker uses the Oxford comma.

**I wrote a song about the challenge of living with the possibility of God calling us away from places where we've grown comfortable and happy, especially with the friends we've made. It starts out:

Feeling fine
Drinking wine
Spending time with my friends
Love exchanged
Evil tamed
I thought it would never end
But when you're talking with the Holy Spirit
He may give you a call and you'd better hear it
Following Jesus is a Jenga game
He's going to tear down your bricks
You won't be the same

(c) 2016, Mark Daniels

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Americans' Three Favorite Sins

They may not be what you think they are. Thanks to Holly Boardman for tweeting this article my way.

The Christian Creed v. the American Creed

Among the reasons that, for all the lip service given to faith in our public life, Christianity isn't entirely at home in the United States is that the value most highly prized by Americans isn't the highest value commended by God.

If you ask the average American what the ultimate value is, the one thing for which they would be likeliest to fight to the death, I think the answer would be freedom.

On the other hand, though the Christian gospel--the good news of forgiveness and new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ--brings the ultimate freedom to people, setting them free to be the people God made them to be and not what sin, their own or others', dictates, freedom is not the ultimate value of Christian faith.

The ultimate value of Christian faith is love.

Christian love is self-giving love. It willingly divests itself of what the world knows as freedom in order to love others.

This is the love that Jesus gives.

The Christian gospel tells us that Jesus divested Himself of the freedom of being God in order to take on humanity and undertake love's greatest deed: God, unblemished by sin, submitting to death without resistance for His beloved, the human race, then rising to take an eternal kingdom, not for Himself, but for the benefit of all who believe in Him.

Christians are then called to live out the same sort of self-giving love. Paul writes in the New Testament book of Philippians:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:4-11)

Jesus has the Name above all names not because He lived and died for freedom, but because He lived and died and rose for love.

And He calls us to give His kind of love the ultimate place in our lives. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

When freedom is your ultimate value, you can become a monster: self-centered, ego-driven, materialistic. Make freedom your ultimate value and you will ultimately be enslaved by the things you chase as an expression of your freedom. You will be separated by a self-constructed wall from God, grace, and other people.

If freedom is your ultimate value, you might love, after a fashion.

But if God's love is your ultimate value, you also will be truly free.

And this brings up another reason Christianity doesn't entirely fit with our American culture. Americans are taught to believe in self-sufficiency, the notion that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and that, if we decide to be loving, or free, or decisive, or whatever, we can make it happen.

But no Christian is taught to believe that she or he can resolve to be loving or anything else. Christians know that resolutions and good intentions won't change us. Only Christ can do that. That's why the apostle Paul writes in Romans: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15). And later, "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25) Only the love of God, given in Christ, can set us free to be our best selves.

This applies especially to the ultimate value of love. We may learn over time to be loving by letting ourselves be loved by the God we see in Jesus, by submitting ourselves to no master but Jesus.

We open our wills to Jesus and let Him make us over into His image, including taking His love as the ultimate good in this life and the next. We cling to the words of John:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 1:10)

There have been Christians imprisoned for their faith in Christ who were infinitely more free than the jailers who held them and had the freedom to go wherever they wanted. That's because freedom is, in the end, not about getting to do what you want to do, it's about getting to be the person the God of love sets you free to be through Jesus.

I love my country. But I'll take "faith, hope, and love" over "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That's because in Christ, happiness has already pursued me. So has love. I don't have to go looking for it. I simply let Jesus Christ in. And that, by the by, brings freedom!