“The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damned them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope

“A large segment of Protestant liberalism defined man only in terms of his essential nature, his creative capacity for good. Neo-orthodoxy tended to define man only in terms of his existential nature, his capacity for evil. An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truth of both.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope

“At that time Duke University was somewhat withdrawn from what went on in the world. But that changed abruptly on 4 April 1968. We were sitting with theologians from all over the country in one of the university halls at a ‘Theology of Hope Conference’. I was just arguing with Van Harvey about the distinction between Geschichte and Historie when Harvey Cox burst into the room crying ‘Martin King has been shot’. We immediately broke off the conference, and participants hurried home, for by the same evening shops and businesses in the American cities were going up in flames. The black population rose with a cry of rage, while whites tried to protect themselves. Then the unbelievable happened: 400 students sat down in the quadrangle of Duke University and mourned for Martin Luther King for six days and six nights, in rain and heat. At the end of the week of shame and mourning, black students from a college nearby came and danced through the rows of white students and we all sang together: ’We shall overcome.’ From that day, the blacks in Durham became more self confident and the conscience of whites woke up.” ~ Jürgen Moltmann – “Black Theology for Whites” in Experiences in Theology

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King – The Trumpet of Conscience

Today 38 year old Mother, Rachelle Grimmer shot her two children Ramie (age 12) and Timothy (age 10) and then herself. This happened at a Texas Health and Human services office after a stand off with police. It all began with Grimmer revealing a gun to a caseworker after being unable to get food stamps. As of story time the children have survived but are in critical condition. Rachelle Grimmer did not survive.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, after listing a horrific litany of violent transgressions against children by adults, Ivan Karamazov offers this extended reflection:

Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level — but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it? — I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.

That is a lengthy quote. Ivan expresses a wide range of emotions: from a desire to see punishment for those who would perpetrate such a heinous crime against a child to a hope for all things – even the vilest offenders – to be brought into reconciliation with God but finally he comes to a rejection of God. Essentially Ivan for Ivan, no ultimate ends justify the means. Eternal punishment perpetuates suffering. Universal salvation for Ivan makes a mockery of the offense and our desire for justice. Even if every last vile offense is forgiven, all are reconciled to God and each other and all created things are in harmony for Ivan it does not justify the suffering of one child beaten and forced to eat excrement or another torn apart by dogs.

At the end of the day I hope with all I have that Ivan is missing something, some piece, something only God in God’s infinite wisdom can understand and that somehow someday harmony will come, and all will say of the God revealed in Christ, “Thou art just, O Lord!” And somehow in someway that we cannot really envision right now God will be all in all.

But when we read stories like this one, we ought to feel Ivan’s sorrow and his rage, as only a person who really believes in a God said to be at once all powerful and benevolent can rage (and Ivan does believe – he just rejects the God he believes in). If we can’t feel deeply Ivan’s sorrow for the suffering of children and sympathize with his anger, then perhaps we don’t really believe in this God we claim to believe in.

In fact from Job to Christ himself on the cross and many places in between the Old and New Testament scriptures provide ample example of those who express their sorrow and indignation to God. This space in the tradition to express lament and frustration – culminating in God crying out to God ‘Have you forsaken me?’ – is perhaps the main reason I am Christian.

Watch the Throne :: November 20 from Middle Collegiate Church on Vimeo.

I am a couple weeks behind. I finally watched this today. It is a sermon from Christ the King Sunday (November 20) by Rev. Adriene Thorne from Middle Collegiate Church in NYC. The title of the sermon if you are not familiar is taken from Kanye West & Jay-Z’s latest collaborative album. A word of WARNING!!! Watching this could prompt you to be more attentive to the presence of God in our world and in your life and more mindful to your heart’s yearning for an increased awareness of that presence. Serious reflection upon these things could even lead to a greater awareness of your vocation, that “place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (to borrow a line from Frederick Buechner) or “the thing you were put on earth to manifest or bring about” as Rev. Thorne puts it.

“I don’t believe in karma,
I don’t believe in luck
I’m sad as hell in this place
but don’t believe I’m stuck
I’m running out of energy
but I don’t believe I’m running out of time
I’m running on caffeine and anger
and I don’t believe in holding it inside
There’s a time for everything
and everything will be okay in time”

“I once believed that God became flesh in order to destroy flesh that I might escape flesh on the day God destroys all creation. I now believe God became flesh in order to test flesh by death and make flesh new by resurrection that I too might be resurrected on the day God restores all creation. If it’s not a completely different gospel, it’s certainly better news.”

The first quote I guess you could say is a note from my 23 year old self. It is from lyrics to a song I wrote back when I was trying to be a rock star.  The song was called “Sometime Somewhere.” It seems somewhat applicable today despite me being in a drastically different place in life than I was 12 years ago.  The second quote is a note to self from the not too distant past. Back in May, my final question during my denominational exams before the Classis of Holland in the Reformed Church of America was this: “Describe one way you have changed or matured in your faith journey during seminary?” The above quotation about flesh and resurrection was my answer.

I don’t like to quote myself often. But I these two seemingly disconnected fragments were running through my head this morning in conjunction with each other and with the 1965 protest song “Eve of Destruction.” For me I suppose this is all serving as a reminder that my current lot in life is but one small speck in a vast cosmos, in a human drama that predates me and will likely continue after me (unless you know something I don’t know). In this I am neither insignificant nor omni-important. I am trying to do my part to make the world a better place. But no matter how fantastic or shitty life seems at the moment, all things are in God’s hands.

I know this seems a counter-intuitive claim when times are tough for us personally. Times have indeed been tough for me lately. I graduated from seminary in May. I have been looking for a church for the past six months.  Despite several interviews all I have to show so far is tried and tested patience and tenacity and a stack of rejection letters. I have also been looking for any part time job in the meantime to supplement my wife’s income. But despite 20 or so job applications or resumes sent out, 11 years experience in retail, and a couple of degrees under my belt I still have not found work. Like many others – especially in Michigan – my family is feeling the sting of these tough economic times.

Recently my daughter has been experiencing hindering muscle contortions in her arms and legs. Yesterday we received a tentative, preliminary diagnosis of Torsion Dystonia. I have a form of this called Cervical Dystonia which manifests itself with odd postures, some discomfort and contortions mostly in my neck (which makes job interviews all the more interesting). With my diagnoses and a history of tremors and spasms on my father’s side of the family, her condition is quite possibly genetic in origin.  We are still in the midst of much testing and waiting to find out if this is indeed what has been bothering her. While now I am hoping and praying she does not have to be treated with deep muscle botox injections someday (as I know how painful it is to receive them), I am nonetheless very happy and relieved to be moving towards some clarity and potential treatment for our baby girl. But it does not always feel like this too is in God’s hands.

My faith informs me that God has a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.  But in the face of true tragic and evil occurrences in the world this claim often seems absurd. Take recent headlines in Uganda for instance. So many men, women and especially children are suffering there. For some time the “Lord’s Resistance Army” has been abducting children, killing or forcing the children to kill their own families and then training the boys to fight wars and forcing girls into horrible forms of slavery (an estimated 66,000 children have been abducted). For several years there has been an ongoing outcry in Uganda and around the world against a still pending proposed anti-homosexual bill supported by some prominent American “evangelicals.” If passed it would demand the death penalty for homosexuals and jail time for people “protecting homosexuals.” And most recently reports are surfacing that child sacrifices have resurfaced in Uganda over the past several years to appeal to deities for wealth. God is in control? God is making all things new?

While many people in Uganda and around the world cry out with the Psalmist, ‘How long O’ Lord,’ I too often repeat another cry of the Psalmist – the one repeated by Jesus on the cross – ‘My God! Have you forsaken us?’ And it seems like all of creation groans with us like a woman crying out from labor pangs.  In the midst of personal crisis or natural disasters we may question the strength of our faith or God’s Character. But in the face of war, atrocity, injustice and violence – especially when acted out in the name of God – many question the validity of faith in general or the existence of God altogether.  I am one of those who question. My personal conviction is that Christians ought to take more seriously than anybody else the Marxist critique that religion is a tool of the upper-class to prevent people from protesting their present sufferings.  In the face of so much abuse of religion I would probably have agree if it were not for a couple of often forgotten, perhaps absurd, yet indispensable tenets of the Christian faith:

1) Contrary to much popular belief my faith does not inform me to roll over and play dead.  Yes all things are in God’s hands and at the end of the day it is God who makes all things new. But the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are full of prophetic laments and protests against the systems of injustice in this world. They are full of instructions to take care of the orphan and the widow.  They also contain the assertion that in Christ all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  And while the powers that be at present may kick and scream and rage against it, God is reconciling himself all things in Christ.  We are invited to be part of a counter protest movement, daily declaring to these powerful systems that their days of corruption and abuse of power are numbered.

Of course, these systems sometimes raise their ugly head even within the scriptures themselves in the form of patriarchy, slavery or other institutionalized transgressions against humanity. Unfortunately this is the kind of thing that does often become a tool in the hand of  the powerful, claiming the Bible and religion in general to be in on the sanctioning of oppression. And this all becomes fuel for the fire of righteous indignation –in the believer as well as in the nonbeliever – against the misuse and abuse of religion.  One of my theological heroes Jürgen Moltmann has addressed this quite eloquently:

Observations about cultural history of this kind have little to say about the content of the narratives and testimonies about God in the Old and New Testaments… The fact that the Bible grew up in the world of patriarchy and slavery still does not tell us anything about the presence of eternity at that time or about the future in its past… No one reads the Bible in order to take over a world picture that is past and gone.  No one has to adopt the social concepts and the patriarchal sexual hierarchies of the Bible.  If that were so, for biblical reasons we should have to reintroduce slavery into Christianity, revert to absolute monarchy instead of democracy and so forth.[1]

I am reminded of these words often as I attempt add my small voice to the chorus that cries out against patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, racism, classism and other forms of injustice.  And as I confess and try to expunge such sickness of heart when it crops up in me.

2)  Also contrary to popular belief, the rules or Karma and perhaps Deuteronomy, my faith does not inform me that everyone gets just exactly what they deserve. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God by loving God, walking in God’s ways, and observing the commandments of God, then you shall live and become numerous, and God will bless you in the land says the deuteronomic historian.  But God calls Abram and blesses him based on nothing he has done.  And God declares Abram righteous not because of the good things he has done, certainly not for the lack of trust and respect Abram sometimes showed in God’s presence. Rather God blessed Abraham because of God’s claim on Abrahams life: God declared “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” And in this Abraham places his faith. This blessing of the whole earth has and always will be the reason God calls a worshiping community into existence. Jesus told Nicodemus that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The church too exists for the sake of the world and not for its condemnation.  In the meantime as Jesus reminds in the sermon on the mount we should pray for those we perceive as our enemies and remember that God for whatever reason causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

When a deuteronomic or karmic faith is our lens for viewing the Christ event it can indeed quickly become aid to the powerful systems of injustice currently in place in our world.  I think there is an ever present temptation for Christians especially to develop an attitude of ‘let’s just grin and bear our present suffering. Someday it will be over and the good people like us will bask in glory and the bad people will burn.’ But when we view God as entering into our suffering with us – for our sake and the sake of making the whole world new it radically changes everything!

I again turn to the German theologian Moltmann who in World War II became a prisoner of war to the British, during which time he was given his first Bible, and in his language he was ‘sought and found by Jesus.’  After surviving a few years of war and witnessing several deaths, including a friend who died in his arms, Moltmann became a POW on February 15, 1945.  It was in the camp Moltmann was confronted with “a feeling of profound shame at having to share in shouldering the disgrace of one’s own people.” This made him all the more surprised and forever changed by the kind and loving ways of the Scottish men who worked at the camps and their families.  They treated him and the other prisoners with dignity and respect.  This, together with a Bible given to him by a Chaplain at the camp turned Moltmann’s despair into a new hope for life.  He writes about his discovery of Jesus in the gospel of Mark,

Then I read Mark’s gospel as a whole and came to the story of the passion; when I heard Jesus’ death cry, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ I felt growing within me the conviction: this is someone who understands you completely, who is with you in your cry to God and who has felt the same forsakenness you are living in now.  I began to understand the assailed, forsaken Christ because I knew that he understood me.  The divine brother in need, the companion on the way, who goes with you through this ‘valley of the shadow of death,’ the fellow-sufferer who carries you, with your suffering.  I summoned up the courage to live again, and I was slowly but surely seized by the great hope of the resurrection into God’s wide ‘wide space where there is no more cramping’[2]

The rest of Moltmann’s life could be aptly characterized by the title of his first book, “a theology of hope.” This hope led him to seriously consider and participate in various liberation theologies, to speak up for women, to lend his white European voice to the endorsement of  American Black theology in the 60’s and to be an early voice in articulating an environmental theology of creation care and not dominion. Despite personal sufferings greater than I have known and an up close view of some of the greatest atrocities humanity has known, Motlmann refused to believe we were on the eve of destruction. He refused to believe this because of his profound sense that God is with us in our suffering and gives us voice to cry out against suffering! We cry out against the oppressor.  And we cry out with Jesus to God, ‘Have you forsaken us?’  God is big enough to handle or complaints. Our complaints are a sign of faith not doubt, even though they might express confusion as to God’s timing and even seeming lack of presence at times.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.  This is the gospel or in Greek εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion).  It is indeed good news!   This good news gives me comfort in times of personal crisis.  It also gives me a prophetic voice to speak out against injustice in the world and to admit and submit before God the evil that crops up in me. And it gives me a vision of hope to offer a hurting world.  I have gone through some pretty difficult times lately.  I too am saddened and outraged at the evil in the world. And in myself.  Life can be fantastic and life can be quite shitty at times.  The world is full of captivating beauty and at times overwhelming ugliness.  When life is great I am learning to accept this as a gift from God and refuse to believe I have done anything or believed anything or said anything “right” in order to deserve it. And when life is painful and headlines are tragic, I too refuse to believe that we are on the eve of destruction.

I came across this story today while catching up on Rick Chyme’s Blog. It is a tragic story about a racially motivated and senseless hate crime that lead to the death of James Craig Anderson in Mississippi. Seven teens attacked and taunted Anderson but it appears thus far only one teen, Deryl Dedmon has been indicted. While Dedmon is the one responsible for killing Anderson all of these kids should face charges for their involvement in a hate crime that lead to a fatality.

It seems stories about Racism have been in the news a lot lately. As the political season heats up allegations of Tea Party racism have once again been in the news. Of course this is nothing new. I mentioned this Tea Party related ordeal on this post back in January.

On the College Dropout Kaye West claims, “Racism is still alive they just be concealing it.” Those words are just as disturbingly true now as they were in 2004 . And no part of the fabric of American life has gone untouched by this societal ill, including our churches. Sadly, at times this is perhaps where it has been exhibited most clearly.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is renowned for having declared, “At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.” I do not want to be dismissive of the vast improvements and healing of racial divides that have taken place since Dr. King’s day; but neither do I want to pretend that we do not have a long way to go. The majority of American churches are, for the most part, still homogenous entities. We like to think that this is perfectly fine, even natural. We tell ourselves it is more about style and worship preferences than the vestiges of our racist history.

Among the many reasons I am proud to be a part of the Reformed Church in America is our community’s recent adoption of the Belhar Confession. Obviously the Belhar is a great source to turn to when facing the problem of racism and racial segregation in our denomination and our communities at large. As the confession states, “unity is both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain.” The honest nature of the document does not permit us to be dishonest with ourselves about our tendency to isolate ourselves from others different from us nor does it ignore the empowerment of the Spirit and the effort on our part that is needed to cross racial divides. But ultimately the reason I so Appreciate the Belhar Confession is that it puts us in conversation not just with abstract ideas but with scripture and tradition as well as with the real life situation of people – in this case the people in the church of South Africa during apartheid – their failures as well as their efforts towards reconciliation, unity and forgiveness.

James Craig Anderson Rest In Presence.

I remember sitting in my apartment by myself in front of the tv in shock and awe. ABC News. I felt bonded to Peter Jennings that day. For years to come ABC News was the only News I would watch. I took Jennings death in 2005 especially hard.

It was my first time ever living on my own I had just moved in. I remember calling my mother and crying together. I remember going to work that day at Meijer and people coming through my check-out lane stock piling can goods & water and giving false reports of car bombs going off in Chicago.

I remember hatred swelling up in my heart and the desire for revenge against some unknown enemy. And I remember in the coming days, months and years having my heart softened and changed. Slowly my longing transformed into a desire for the shalom that we proclaim will come. A prayer that resembled Psalm 137 slowly turned into a prayer that resembled the prayer that Jesus taught:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

How long oh Lord? Come Lord Jesus!

~wwb

On the Cover

I still remember the first time I heard the name, heard the voice, saw the image of Tupac Amaru Shakur in a baseball cap, gold chain and denim jacket surrounded by a group of black men in Klan-like hoods. It was an album Dan Quayle would soon say “has no place in our society.” If anyone made a judgement based solely on aesthetics – which let’s face it most of us all too often do – there would be little wonder this album, and Tupac’s subsequent art scared the wits out of white America, my parents most definitely included.

There is no doubt that this scare factor appealed to my teenage rebellion and is part of the reason I became a Tupac fan that day. But the problem with the image, the brand that was 2Pac, is that the man that was Tupac Shakur was far too complicated and at times contradictory to ever fit into any branding niche.

Of course this is nothing that was new or revolutionary with Tupac. Our lust for two-dimensional characters and a world that can be easily divvied up into heroes and villains is as old as human nature. And the ugly cult of celebrity that is largely dependent on this kind of narrow world view was perfected by Hollywood, the record industry and the media long before Tupac’s 1991 arrival into that world. And it has continued on just fine without him since it chewed him up and spit him out on the streets of Las Vegas in 1996.

Beyond the Image
Still, there was plenty that was new, perhaps even revolutionary about Tupac. Long before his untimely death, he was for better or worse the first real hip hop martyr. His first ever run in with the law came after his first album 2Pacalypse Now was released. He received a beating from police after a jaywalking episode. He bore the scars on his face for the rest of his life. Then there was the incident that led to Dan Quayle’s public backlash. A young African American male in Texas shot a state trooper and his lawyer claimed the young man was influenced by 2Pacalypse Now and its frequent referencing of police brutality. Indeed Tupac’s first single “Trapped” is a first person narrative of a young black male harassed and even shot at by the police. In the song the character 2Pac fires back. The song ends with the line “I’d rather die then be trapped in the living hell.” The video for the song features Tupac rapping from a jail cell.

Part of what was new – at least at that time – was the particular contradictions that Tupac embodied. A dear friend of mine at seminary wrote a fine exposition of the history of hip hop for one of his final papers at seminary. In that paper, he positioned Tupac in a Genre of his own in between the socially conscious rap scene of the late 80′s and early 90′s and the gangster rap sub-genre Tupac somewhat inadvertently helped launch permanently into the multi-platinum selling stratosphere. But even this was not completely unprecedented. A few years earlier Ice Cube and Ice-T had both already sold tens of thousands of records combining the political consciousness of Chuck D and the gritty street narratives of other rappers.

The first song I heard after I saw that album cover art was actually the last song on the album. I remember it well. It was right after church. A couple of girls from my church youth group asked me if I had heard of this new guy, so new that I think they were still pronouncing his name as two-pack. The song was called “Part time Mutha.” It was a haunting and largely sympathetic look into the the lives of three single mothers. The first verse is about a woman named Cindy whose sexual exploits with men occurred one after another as they lined up in “single file.” The listener hears “That would be cool if she was a lover/but f__ that Cindy was my dope-fiend mother.” The second verse, rapped by a female guest, is the first person narrative of a teenage girl sexually abused by a step-father. She too becomes a part time mother. The twist comes in the final verse, again rapped by Tupac, is when a one-night stand leads to the male narrator also being “a part time mutha.” It was not exactly a slogan for a women’s right campaign but it was noticeably different from the way women were being talked about in other hard core hip hop during that same time period.

This pattern continued and the contradiction became more blatant with each album. Two of the four singles from his second album serve as a fine example: “I get around” a song about how Tupac and his friends from the group Digital Underground “just don’t stop for hoes” and “Keep Your Head Up” a beautifully written song in which Tupac declares:

I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies

So who was the real Shakur?

Tupac: part scholar, part prophet, part political activist for black males and spokesperson for African American women

Or 2Pac: at that point in time my parents worst nightmare, a young black male, angry, vengeful and yes convicted of a sexual assault charge.

Was he a hero or a villain? Could he be both? It is not my intent to defend a sometimes self-contradictory perhaps latent sexist or to call into question his undeniable prophetic voice. But it is my intent to re-humanize the demonized figure and perhaps cast a shadow on the sainted one.

On the Inside?
Another unfortunate and sometimes devastating aspect of our obsession with fame and our people branding tendencies is that we often think we know the inner workings of our heroes and villains better than we really can from a distance. I certainly felt that way about Tupac. And I was not alone.

Of the various aspects of this multifaceted man it was the paradox between macho bravado – so typical of the male dominated rap music scene – and raw vulnerability that appealed to me most. This is something that has since and often been imitated but never duplicated by any artist in hip hop. My guess is that as Tupac inevitably matured his music would have went the more peaceful and even somewhat bohemian direction of his early poetry (which has since been published) but with greater maturity. But it is a guess.

I have heard several movie critics who were big fans of his work declare he would have eventually left music altogether and developed a fine acting career.

But it is not uncommon to read on a hip hop blog something to the affect of “If 2pac were still alive rap would not be so soft.”

All sides of this complicated man had their appeal. And nobody – really nobody – knows who he would be today if it were not for his untimely death.

Tupac was truly part of the last generation that had icons – icons in the classic Hollywood sense of the word, up on the silver screen or in news papers. People who -whether we chalked them up to be heroes or villains -  seemed untouchable to most of us. This has since changed drastically, at least in our perception. Now days even pop stars as big as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber can be “friends” on facebook or twitter with 10,422,183 of their closest fans.

Now we are all icons in the smallest sense of the word. Everybody is a brand. We have brought the stories of heroes and villains first told around the flicker of campfires and eventually the glow of the silver screen down to the 13 inch screen that sits in my lap. And most of us are on one. We all have our page, our miniscule piece of the world wide web. Next to the icon is a little description of political and religious beliefs, a place for a bio and what we do for fun. We can lie until our heart is deceived that it is content or we can be blatantly and brutally honest.  And then we can decide if the image another person is broadcasting to the world is what we deem to be good or bad. Are they red or blue? Believer or skeptic? We can now divide everybody up into heroes and villains, those we don’t trust and those for the time being we still do. We can relegate everyone to a category, a perceived level of intimacy or estrangement. If we want, we can assign people to an infinite number of concentric circles with varying levels of goodness or closeness. And we can do this all without ever leaving the comfort of our own home.

It would seem our lust for two dimensional characters and a world easily divvied up between heroes and villains would finally be satisfied. But we really don’t know each other any better than I knew Tupac or you know Lady Gaga. Everyone is an icon; and when everyone is an icon no one is. So many people feel more lonely, angry and disaffected than ever.

I think Tupac – at least the part of him that was undeniably a prophetic voice in the world – would say we have to change the way we eat, we have to change the way we live and we have to change the way we treat each other.If we don’t we are headed for a 2Pacalypse now, more than ever.

The old way wasn’t working. Why did we go even farther down that path? This is what happens when we do what we think we need to do to survive. Lord have mercy!

This is probably the hardest Mothers Day for me since the first one after my mom died in September of 2004. My siblings and I are the first in our family on either side to go to college. Last year at this time we celebrated my little brother finishing a BA in graphic design. My baby sister is currently working on a degree in education. I am so proud of them both. Tomorrow I graduate from Seminary. Mom would be proud of us all.

The final step of completing my M.Div was writing an autobiographical statement of faith called “Credo.” For me this turned out to be a 57 page document in 5 chapters (to put things into perspective that is a little over 20,000 words or about 80 pages in a typical non-fiction book at 250 words/page). The following is an excerpt from my first chapter. Happy mothers day Mom:

My mother modeled a deep faith for me most of my life. She was raised Roman Catholic but quit the church for a number of years. In my early childhood she began taking me and my younger brother and sister to worship every Sunday, whether my father went or not. It was a decisive breaking with her Catholic upbringing. We attended a variety of congregations, but always in a Protestant and decidedly revivalist tradition. My mom taught Sunday school, worked in the church nursery and attended Bible studies. She also suffered from depression and traumatic memories. She wrestled with God every day; sometimes just waking up was a struggle. I didn’t know it growing up but I actually come from a long line of folks who have wrestled with God.

I am part of a deep and wide family of faith that encompasses the Roman Catholic Church that my mother rejected as well as the revivalists and evangelical communities from which I have inherited my piecemeal faith. This faith family traces their lineage all the way back to the Patriarch Abraham of the Hebrew scriptures. At our worst this family is like any family at their worst – like my family of origin, like Abraham’s family – full of discord and rife with infighting. At our best we find ourselves – like Abraham’s descendent Jacob at the river Jabbok- wrestling, with no one less than the God of the universe in a front-headlock and the divine hand on our hip socket. We find ourselves pleading, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” In that process we like Jacob, come away limping. But, with a blessing and our identities altered, we limp towards a better future.

Happy Easter!