Today – August 28 – is an
anniversary in our country. On this day
in 1963 I was 13. I remember the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream”
speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. My memory was formed by television where I
watched the speech. I do not remember if I saw the speech live or on the news,
but the memory of my 13 year old self is how thankful people were because it
was peaceful.
Three years later, in the winter of 1966 our family moved
from Connecticut to South Carolina. My
regional high school in Connecticut had been 30% African American. My cultural
awareness – connecting the dots of life
beyond my own – began that winter and
spring in high school in South Carolina as I watched African American students
attend that school for the first time. For the one semester I was in South
Carolina, (my Dad’s job transferred us a
lot!) I knew I would move again in June, so I was an outsider for that one
semester, keeping to myself but watching my classmates.
For my senior year of high school and first year of
college in Southern California, I watched the summer of love unfold before my
eyes. I witnessed hippies, drugs, sex and rock and roll, again as an outsider,
a spectator to events and relationships I did not understand. A personal transition
from observing to speaking out came when I gave a talk on Christian meditation
at an Inter Varsity chapter lunch meeting following a speech by the Maharishi
Mahesh Yoga on our junior college campus. Yes, I was over my head
as I spoke to a room packed with over 200 fellow students, but it was a start
of a lifelong love of presenting Jesus Christ to a changing world. That same year
I read in English class Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Then both he and Robert Kennedy lost their lives at the hands of assassins. I began to pay more
attention to the news.
In the fall of 1968 when I began to attend Covenant
College, Francis Schaeffer and the faculty gave me a toolbox to work with to
understand people in our changing world as shifts in our culture were shaking
long-held assumptions, both in and out of the church. Schaeffer came to
Covenant College each of the three years I studied there, then when I moved on
to Covenant Theological Seminary he
taught a winter term class on evangelism. The take-away from that class –
with no loss of validity after 40 years – is this: listen for 50 minutes before you speak for
10. I must understand how a person is using words and what those words
mean to that speaker. I don’t hear my definitions and assumptions in someone
else’s words and context. Schaeffer taught us to look behind the curtain of
culture to see the foundations – both religious and philosophical. “Always listen to the person in the moment and do not project your profiled assumptions
on someone,” Schaeffer said. It is about context, communication and caring for
people because we have been loved by our Father through the finished work of
Christ. Also during that time in St Louis I expanded my attention to the news to listen to NPR to give myself more exposure to mainstream media.
One of the biggest cultural shifts in the western
cultural journey is going from truth to facts to data as a basis for decision making,
both in our personal lives and public policy. We manage risk and look for
return on investment based on data crunched by algorithms. This being said,
most people I talk with still use the word truth.
Truth today is personal, their truth,
created and shaped by their story. Truth
by this definition is not universal, and certainly not eternal or revealed. Commitments in a hook-up age are at best
temporary, making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back.
Conversions are almost always suspect, except for “coming out.”
We still have a long way to travel for the Dream of August 2013 to be fulfilled for people of all races in our nation that declared long ago, “… all men are created equal.” That check has yet to be cashed as the Reverend Doctor King said. I am still learning and have questions about “white privilege.” I still think Schaeffer’s Listen 50/Talk 10 is necessary today in conversations from race to social media to the effect of technology on learning and life to the words people use to tell their stories.
We still have a long way to travel for the Dream of August 2013 to be fulfilled for people of all races in our nation that declared long ago, “… all men are created equal.” That check has yet to be cashed as the Reverend Doctor King said. I am still learning and have questions about “white privilege.” I still think Schaeffer’s Listen 50/Talk 10 is necessary today in conversations from race to social media to the effect of technology on learning and life to the words people use to tell their stories.
