The Musings of an Urban Christian

So I am the very last person to chime in on the crumbling facade that is Tiger Woods. And all I have to report is that I don't care. And, when I say that, it really means, "I don't care." Not, "leave the man alone and let him have his privacy." Not, "look at how righteous I am that I am not giving in to the salaciousness or the schadenfreude." Not, "I have my own problems, no time to worry about someone else's." No, it's for none of those reasons. I simply don't care.

Yes, there are so many nuances one could be interested in and blog about, like celebrities and privacy, infidelity, or race. Yes, there are so many juicy elements to this story that one can get lost in, giggle over, or be snarky about. And yes, there are very significant moral lessons that one can derive from this very public incident. But I just can't seem to muster any interest in the topic. If someone's talking about it, my ears are not perked. If a headline or link catches my eye, I have no desire to find out more. I haven't even felt any urge to turn over some of the angles of the story, to see if there is some nugget to consider; and this is someone who will blog about the most mundane of things.

Now, let's talk about something really interesting, like carbon taxes or economic development or urban agriculture.

I keep two blogs regularly: this one, Musings of an Urban Christian, and another, more family-related one, called Huang Kid Khronicles. Now that my mom is home from the hospital, and is about to get set up on the computer, I'm going to try to post more stuff - musings, photos, and videos - on Huang Kids. Which may mean, since this month has been absolutely bonkers in terms of busyness, that I might post less musings here at Urban Christian. So feel free to check us out over at Huang Kids - if you like me, you'll like my kids even more! (Btw, if you're reading this from your Facebook account, sorry I can't figure out a way for my Facebook page to suck in both Urban Christian and Huang Kids; it only seems to allow one blog to get automatically posted here.)

After morning service, many of my fellow congregants stick around in our fellowship hall for snacks and conversation. One table is reserved for the little ones, and it quickly becomes a riot of animal crackers, juice, and wriggly bodies. I do all I can at the end of the morning service to hold Aaron and Jada back until they can be excused to the fellowship hall, so much do they enjoy this snack time.

Yesterday, I quickly got Aaron and Jada set up with food and beverage. Two other kids were jawing at each other from across the table, employing an escalation of clever name-calling to make fun of each other. I asked them both to stop, and when they reluctantly did, I then asked them to apologize to each other. One apologized in a very fake way, while the other refused. They looked at me with a bemused look, thinking I had no leverage over them because I wasn't their parent.

I smiled back. I looked at one of the kids and said, "You know, I know your mother, and if you don't apologize, I will tell your mother about every single one of the names you just used." I then looked at the other child and said, "I know your mother, too, and if you don't apologize, I will tell your mother about every single one of the names you just used."

Not surprisingly, apologies followed. We parents may have our hands full with our kids, but we do stick together. If it takes a village to raise a child, part of the villageness is many more eyes than just my own keeping watch over my kids. I would expect the other parents to do the same thing I did if it was Aaron or Jada acting up. And I know that they will.

You may have heard of people who feel rich, old, or powerful enough that they can speak their mind without caring about what people think. Sometimes, it's just an improper license to be mean; and sometimes, it's a refreshing honesty that everyone and every organization would do well to make sure they have access to.

As a Christian, I believe that speaking hard truths is important. To pull punches is to leave important things unsaid. And to speak hard truths in an insensitive way can be even more hurtful than keeping your mouth shut.

So how to thread the needle between these two undesirable outcomes? As always, my role model is Jesus. If you read the gospels with an open mind, you'll be surprised how many times He says things that seem pretty harsh. He certainly made a lot of enemies with His words. But He was also gentle and caring enough to be beloved by children, sinners, and outcasts alike.

I think being Jesus-like in speaking truth boils down to three things. First, Jesus' self-worth was firmly anchored in His relationship with the Father; it's what allowed Him to say and do unpopular things without factoring in what effect they would have on people's opinion of Him. Second, Jesus knew His mission as having been sent by the Father; and speaking truth was a non-negotiable, even if it meant riling up some and losing others. Third, Jesus' behaviors were captive to an overall value system, which was about humbling those who were improperly exalted and exalting those who were improperly humbled, and which was ultimately about correcting, healing, and restoring people towards right relationship with the Father.

An anchored self-worth, a mission understood, and a value system to frame it all. Easier said than done, but for me it provides a framework to speak truth in a way that is correct, neither lacking courage to say what needs to be said nor saying it in a manner that tears down rather than building up.

It is natural, when reading the Bible, to equate what is said with what is important. If the Bible talks a lot about God's concern for the poor, or what we do about money, or that we have Him and only Him as our God, we take that high frequency of coverage to mean these are core issues to the believer. What can be harder to divine from a scan of the Bible, but I believe is no less important, is what is not talked about a lot, and therefore what must not be nearly as essential.

There are millions of churches in almost every nation in the world, and we all have access to what the earliest church, in first century Jerusalem, looked like. So while there is obviously room for a wide range of expressions and doctrinal interpretations, given the diversity of experiences and agendas represented by congregations around the globe, it is instructive not only to consider what is covered in the New Testament but what is not covered.

Deliciously, although somewhat tragically as it relates to the unity of the Church, many of today's most divisive and controversial topics are not touched on much in the New Testament. Two come to mind immediately. First, many choose their congregation based on its worship style; but instructions concerning worship style are largely absent from the New Testament. Second, a major dividing point between Protestants and Catholics is the Catholic Church's veneration of Mary, mother of God; and yet, as noted in a recent Desiring God post, Mary isn't mentioned at all in the New Testament after the first chapter of the book of Acts.

I do not mean to conclude that worship style is unimportant, that Mary does not merit some honored status in the Christian faith, or that it is wrong to have strong feelings about any of these subjects. I am just pointing out that the New Testament is noticeably light on its coverage of these two topics. What is clearly stated in the New Testament, let us as a Church get our act together on; and what is given far less coverage, shame on us if we let it enrage, distract, or divide us.

One of the perks of living and working in University City is being able to leech off of the many resources of the University of Pennsylvania. The campus itself is an amenity my children and I enjoy many times a month. The Penn community supports a depth and breadth of retail options we otherwise would not have access to. The university is responsible in part for the elementary school we'll send our kids to, and even gave us $15,000 when we bought our house, as part of a mortgage incentive program in the late 1990's designed to encourage Penn-affiliated people to live near campus. (My wife worked for the hospital at the time.)

Of course, Penn's greatest resource is intellectual. And in the past two days, I have capitalized, attending three separate events that happened to intersect with my work portfolio as well as my personal interests. There was a fireside chat about the future of cities, of which one of my bosses was a panelist. There was a symposium on public health, which included a session on urban food networks, a topic I'm exploring in a current assignment. And then I went with one of my bosses to a talk by Economy.com's Mark Zandi on the importance of universities in long-term national economic growth.

In all three cases, getting in and out was a cinch, I didn't have to pay a dime, and I even got some free food to boot at the last event. If you know me, you know that intellectual stimulation, convenience, and free are three very important things to me. In that regard, have I told you lately how much University City suits me? Thanks to Penn and to the many community members who pulled off these three and other such events; you'll see me stopping by again and again to partake.

1950, when Philadelphia's population hit 2 million for the first time, making it third only to New York and Chicago, also marked a time of great infrastructure investment in the nation. Philadelphians, thinking that their population would only trend up, braced themselves to manage a city of 2.5+ million.

Fifty years later, instead of going up 500,000, it went down 500,000. Manufacturing got mechanized/suburbanized/offshored, the Interstate Highway system helped suburbanize America, and cities got caught in a vicious cycle of job loss, middle class flight, and blight.

Thankfully for cities like Philadelphia, the last decade has largely brought about the end of the transition from industrial economy to knowledge economy. Downtowns have enjoyed a renaissance as places of employment and residence. Energy and environmental considerations have made far-flung suburbs less viable, while dense, transit-rich urban centers have become more compelling.

We may not get to 2.5 million or even back to 2 million, but it has been good to see we are losing population less fast this decade. And it was heartening to read yesterday that we actually probably posted a gain from 2007 to 2008, according to revised Census estimates: +93,000, putting us back over 1.5 million.

While I want to give pats on the back all around to Philadelphia for this piece of very good news, I would be remiss if I did not also at this time offer a recommendation to ensure that there will be more of these gains in future years. If you look at all the cities that are growing, you'll see it's less about retaining existing residents - vibrant cities lose as well as gain - and more about replacing them with new residents, most notably immigrants. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, the Bay Area are all destinations of choice for immigrants.

Philadelphia is not in that top tier; but if it gets there, we might just have enough bodies to use all the infrastructure, physical and institutional, that we already in place. If you look at those top tier immigrant destinations, you'll also notice that they're all doing pretty well, too; draw your own conclusion as to cause and effect, but to me it's clear that being very welcoming to people who are making life choices about where they want to live and work will almost certainly lead to a more vibrant economy, job creation, and business formation.