Will They Know We Are Christians Part 4: Forgiving Others

One of the saddest ironies of modern America is how seldom Christians are considered gracious.  We who call ourselves Christians may fault the media or the outliers for forging this reputation for mean-spiritedness, yet we have neglected to do our part to counter-balance that reputation.  An obvious opportunity that many of us fail at daily is forgiveness.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 284

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Personal History," by Katharine Graham.

He felt a newspaper was a public trust, meant to serve the public in a democracy and wanted a paper that would advance beyond what it had achieved even in its previous heyday and “take a leadership which could be
achieved only by exceptional quality.” In a March 5, 1935 address he spoke about the principles that he insisted on from the beginning, outlining them as follows:

1. That the first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained;

2. That the newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world;

3. That as a disseminator of news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a proper gentleman;

4. That what it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old;

5. That the newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owner;

6. That in the pursuit of the truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifice of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good;

7. That the newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.



President Kennedy's charm was powerful. His intense concentration and gently teasing humor, and his habit of vacuum-cleaning your brain to see what you knew and thought, were irresistible. The Kennedy men were also unabashed chauvinists, as were the great majority of men at the time, including Phil. They liked other bright men, and they liked girls, but they didn't really know how to relate to middle-aged women, in whom they didn't have a whole lot of interest. This attitude made life difficult for middle-aged wives especially, and induced or fed feelings of uncertainty in many of us in those years. Though the men were polite, we somehow knew we had no place in their spectrum. My ever-present terror of being boring often overwhelmed me in social situations with the president and at the White House, particularly whenever I was face to face with the president himself or one of his main advisers, and my fear was a real guarantee of being boring, since it paralyzed and silenced me.

I only felt secure when Phil, whom the president liked, was with me and could do the talking. Douglas Dillon's wife, Phyllis, who I thought was the height of sophistication, confided to me that she felt the same way: she complained that she was always left on the sidelines with Rose Kennedy at parties in Palm Beach.

One notable exception to the chauvinist tradition was Adlai Stevenson. Women enjoyed Adlai. In the end, my mother, my daughter, and I all had close friendships with him. Clayton Fritchey once told me a story that helps explain Adlai's appeal - and that contrasts it with what many of us felt about other men in the Kennedy administration, including the president himself. About three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, Clayton saw the president in New York, at a time when Adlai was the ambassador to the United Nations and Clayton was his deputy. The three men were together at a party, and Clayton was helping himself to a drink on the balcony overlooking Central Park when the president came up behind him and said, "We haven't had a chance to talk much tonight, but we've got a good subject in common," meaning Adlai. The president then told Clayton he didn't understand the hold Adlai had over women, commenting on how much Jackie liked and admired him and confessing that he himself didn't have the ease with women that Adlai had. "What do you suppose it is?" he asked, adding, "Look, I may not be the best-looking guy out there, but, for God's sake, Adlai's half bald, he's got a paunch, he wears his clothes in a dumpy kind of way. What's he got that I haven't got?"

Clayton's response hit on what I think women saw in Adlai and what they shied away from in other men of that era. "Mr. President, I'm happy to say that for once you have asked me a question I'm prepared to answer, one I can answer truthfully and accurately. While you both love women, Adlai also likes them, and women know the difference. They all respond to a kind of message that comes across from him when he talks to them. He conveys the idea that they are intelligent and worth listening to. He cares about what they're saying and what they've done, and that's really very fetching."

The president's response was: "Well, I don't say you're wrong, but I'm not sure I can go to those lengths."

 

Even today, some people think the whole thing was a minor peccadillo, the sort of thing engaged in by lots of politicians. I believe Watergate was an unprecedented effort to subvert the political process. It was a pervasive, indiscriminate use of power and authority from an administration with a passion for secrecy and deception and an astounding lack of regard for the normal constraints of democratic politics. To my mind, the whole thing was a very real perversion of the democratic system—from firing people who were good Republicans but who might have disagreed with Nixon in the slightest, to the wiretappings, to the breaking and entering of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, to the myriad dirty tricks, to the attempts to discredit and curb the media. As I said in a speech at the time, “It was a conspiracy not of greed but of arrogance and fear by men who came to equate their own political well-being with the nation’s very survival and security.”


 

[Warren Buffett] was parsimonious in the extreme.  Once, when we were together at an airport, I asked him for a dime to make a phone call. He started to walk some distance to get change for a quarter. “Warren,” I exclaimed, “the quarter will do,” and he sheepishly handed it over.

Will They Know We Are Christians Part 3: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

 

We romanticize hard childhoods, as if it's better for a kid to have a miserable life than a charmed one.  Yet there is at least one advantage to an upbringing of struggle and strife, which is that you quickly learn that the world is not looking out for you.  Which may seem obvious, but for children whose parents took care of everything, steered trouble away, and anticipated and met needs before they were even felt, it can be a rude awakening when no one in their adult life seems to be doing the same.

In such a space, it can be easy to just look out for number one.  And to be sure, there is something appropriate about this.  Self-awareness, self-value, and self-care are all good things.  But when they are the only things, that is not life-giving.  We all know that empathy, love, and sacrificial acts deplete us but also enrich us.  It is a profound yet simple irony of our existence that life is fullest when we empty ourselves for others.  

Being President, A Year In

 

A year ago this month I was named co-president of the economic consulting firm I've worked at since 2006.  The previous co-presidents did a great job making room for me to lead, so when people often ask "what's different now," I usually say not much in terms of the roles I inhabit, since I'd previously had opportunities to grow into my current position.  But there has been one noticeable difference.

I've said before that when I get together with my old friends who are pastors, they often ask me about business matters and I in turn ask them about how to take care of a congregation.  I think that's what's been new and fun and heavy about being a president, is carrying that responsibility of making sure you're people are thriving, both in their jobs as well as more broadly in a professional and personal sense.  At least that's what I aspire to for this workplace and for me as a leader in it.

Will They Know We Are Christians Part 2: Loving Your Enemy

 

We have become such a nasty society that the notion of loving your enemy is truly revolutionary.  And yet so rare.  More satisfying to dunk on others and then bask in the accolades of your fellow tribe members, right?

As with many commands in the Bible, "love your enemy" is both more aspirational and more freeing than we can hardly fathom.  Grudges, grievances, and animosity existed in the days Jesus first uttered this phrase.  And, in a less civilized time, it wasn't out of the question that violence and even death might ensue.  It was a brutish, dangerous time.  Kill or be killed, no?  But Jesus offered a completely different path.

Don't get me wrong: true love must have an aspect of hate to it.  Love does not mean tolerating what is intolerable, or laying down in the face of what needs to be stood up against.

But love has room to love, pray for, wish well of, and do good to those who oppose us.  It is simultaneously a heavy burden and a lightening of burden to strive to do so.  Heavy because our instincts are usually not so charitable.  Light because hatred for others is an unnecessary weight to carry around.

Loving those who love us is hard work because love is hard work.  But we put in the work because it is joyous.  Loving those who hate us is also hard work.  But there is joy there too.  We needn't be weighed down by meeting hate with hate.  And we can hold out hope that our love can be used to change others for the better.  What an amazing opportunity, even and precisely because this form of love is so rare these days.  

It may be a lonely road but it is ultimately a satisfying one.  We take our cues from who loved to the end, even as that love was met with accusation, condemnation, abandonment, and execution.  May we be similarly sustained to love at all times, including our enemies. 

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 283

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram," by Sarah Frier.

If Facebook was about friendships, and Twitter was about opinions, Instagram was about experiences—and anyone could be interested in anyone else’s visual experiences, anywhere in the world. 

Will They Know We Are Christians Part 1: Keeping Your Word

 

"For real."  "I'm serious!"  "Trust me."  And, the phrase of the moment: "Not gonna lie."  What do all these sayings have in common?  They are uttered after a statement that the speaker thinks people might doubt, so that extra qualifier is required.  

Back in Biblical times, the equivalent was making an oath.  It's where we get "I swear to God."  Or you might say "a curse on me if this isn't true."  Seems overly dramatic to use such extreme language.  But it isn't evil to do...is it?

In Jesus' famous "Sermon on the Mount," he talks about just this, and it's smack dab in the middle of warnings about other obvious sins as murder and adultery.  "Let your statement be 'yes, yes' or 'no, no'; anything beyond these is of evil" (Matthew 5:37).  

If you claim to be a person of faith and yet kill others or sleep around, we'd call you out.  Yet how many of us lack integrity in our words, such that we have to add qualifiers like "not gonna lie"?  Conversely, what would it be like to be noticeably pure in our utterances, such that people know that our "yes" is truly a "yes" and our "no" truly a "no"? 

This may seem a trivial first example of "will they know we are Christians" but I think it is an important one.  As with many facets of Christian behavior, I fall short daily.  But I strive to do better.  And I do so knowing that when, by God's grace, I am successful, it is something that honors Him by marking me as different in the world.  

In the noise and cynicism of this present age, imagine a people who are known by the fact that they always keep their word.  Not gonna lie: that would be special.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 282

 

 Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Native Speaker," by Chang-Rae Lee.

“Remember how I taught you. Just stay in the background. Be unapparent and flat. Speak enough so they can hear your voice and come to trust it, but no more, and no one will think twice about who you are. The key is to make them think just once. No more, no less."

“Shh!” she said, grabbing my wrists. “Don’t shame him! Your father is very proud. You don’t know this, but he graduated from the best college in Korea, the very top, and he doesn’t need to talk about selling fruits and vegetables. It’s below him. He only does it for you, Byong-ho, he does everything for you. Now go and keep him company.”




I wondered, too, whether he was suffering inside, whether he sometimes cried, as I did, for reasons unknown. I remember how I sat with him in those restaurants, both of us eating without savor, unjoyous, and my wanting to show him that I could be as steely as he, my chin as rigid and unquivering as any of his displays, that I would tolerate no mysteries either, no shadowy wounds or scars of the heart.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 281

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake," by Tiya Alicia Miles.

We forget that love is revolutionary. The word, cute and overused in American culture, can feel at times like a stuffed animal devoid of spirit or, worse, like a dead letter suitable only for easy exchange on social media platforms. But love does carry profound meanings. It indicates the radical realignment of social life. To love is to turn away from the prioritization of the ego or even one’s particular party or tribe, to give of oneself for another, to transfigure the narrow “I” into the expansive “you” or “we.” This four-letter word asks of us, then, one of the most difficult tasks in life: decentering the self for the good of another. This is a task for which we need exemplars, especially in our divisive times. Here in these pages, we take up a quiet story of transformative love lived and told by ordinary African American women—Rose, Ashley, and Ruth—whose lives spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, slavery and freedom, the South and the North. Their love story is one of sacrifice, suffering, lament, and the rescue of a tested but resilient family lineage. 

By loving, Rose refused to accept the tenets of her time: that people could be treated as property, that wealth was a greater value than honor, that some lives had no worth beyond capital and gain. Hers is just one telling example of refusal from the collective experience of enslaved Black women, who practiced love and preserved life when all hope seemed lost. Even when she relinquished her daughter to the slave trade against her will, Rose insisted on love. Despite and during their separation, Rose’s value of love prevailed. The emotional bond between mother and daughter held longevity and elasticity, traversing the final decade of chattel slavery, the chaos of the Civil War, and the red dawn of emancipation before finding new expression in the early twentieth century just as a baby girl, the fifth generation of Rose’s lineage, Ashley’s great-granddaughter, was born.