Issues are rarely straightforward or isolated. Our choices in life are almost never between good and evil or even between good and best. We want life to be simple and it is not.
Take the cause of the unborn. Those of us who oppose abortion say we do so because we believe the unborn is a human being and as such has value. As Christians we believe human beings were created in the image of God, therefore all human life has inherent value. So therefore, we are compelled to protect the unborn.
But what happens after that child is born? Does he or she still have value? What happens when that child grows up? What happens when that child gets old and nears death? Almost all Christians would agree that every stage of that person’s life has value, even the elderly person who has dementia or a young adult who has some severe birth defect or brain damage.
What if that child smells or behaves differently than our own? What if that child is black or brown? Or poor? Or comes from a really messed up family situation? What if that child never accomplishes much in life by our standards? What if that child grows up and does something really, really bad and winds up in prison or on death row? What if that child happens to be standing in the way of our guns being fired to keep us safe? What if that child grows up and is taught to fire a gun at our grown-up child who has been taught to fire a gun at him?
Ah, the questions start to get awkward. We continue to agree that the answer is that all human beings have value, but we struggle with where this line of reasoning is headed. Why? Because we have other values as well and those are starting to clash with the inherent value of human life and we are uneasy with the tension all this clashing creates.
So, for the moment, let’s keep it simple. How can we preach that the unborn child has such great value that we will go to whatever length to preserve that life only to deny that child access to life after that child is born? You cannot preach for decades on end that some lives are more valuable than others and expect people to suddenly turn around and say all unborn human lives should be protected. You cannot treat some humans constitutionally as only three-fifths human and then expect that a couple centuries later everyone will have changed and start to treat the pre-born as one-hundred percent human.
You can’t fight for the life of an in-womb child and then abandon him or her when he or she is born into a highly dysfunctional family. You can’t say we should do all we can for that pre-natal infant and then not give them our all when they are going to school and growing into adulthood. You can’t tell me not to call that child a fetus and then call it names when it is full-grown.
We reap what we sow. Sow countless generations of disdain for certain forms of human life and you will harvest countless generations of disdain for certain forms of human life.
One organization has set as its goal to wipe out child abuse in five generations. Seems like a long time. People who study such things say it will take that many generations to completely undo the affects of abuse in society – three generations in a given family.
It’s only been a few terms since the U.S. Congress officially forbid lynchings. It’s only been a couple of generations since a black man with a Ph.D. could earn the right to vote only if he correctly named the exact number of marbles in a jar. It’s only been a handful of seasons since Evangelical whites started apologizing for pushing their black brothers and sisters away or turning a deaf ear on their pain.
We have a long way to go and a rough road to hoe to help our world stop disvaluing human life. And we have to start with ourselves. If we want others to value the unborn, we also must learn to value the born.
2009-02-09
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part IV
The Pro-Life Movement will only truly succeed when we as Believers repent of our corporate sins and those of our forefathers and foremothers, and recognize that sins of racism and sins of murdering the unborn are one and the same. You cannot be selectively pro-life.
There are some Pro-Lifers that preach a single note. They say the only issue we are to be fighting for today is the cause of the unborn. What they don’t understand is how much the issue of racism affects our inability to fight the plight of the in-womb child.
Prior to 1973, most white Evangelical Christians (there were exceptions) did not engage in the Civil Rights movement. Many actively opposed it even. For whatever reason, the American Evangelical Church turned a deaf and fearful ear on the move toward racial equality in this nation, preferring to concentrate on more “spiritual” matters.
There were raging debates behind secretive ecclesiastical doors in the 1950s as to whether blacks should be ordained in our (white) churches. Some preachers even stood on the steps of their churches to keep blacks out (not that very many were pushing to get in).
A few leaders like Billy Graham, who had gone along with racially segregated rallies earlier in his ministry, began to change and even take action. Graham started pushing integration in certain denominations by inviting people of color from those denominations to join his evangelistic team. In at least one of those cases, the offending denomination quickly and quietly moved to ordain the newly anointed team member.
But as has oft been said, racism cannot be legislated out. And so racism has persisted. Conservative white Christians disappeared out of the ranks of the Democratic Party from the mid-60s through the early 1980s as that party embraced the Civil Rights movement and blacks en masse. The Christian whites largely fled with their unrepentant racism to the Party of Lincoln, much to the harm of that party.
It could be argued that this shift came because the Republican Party embraced the Pro-Life movement – and that did play a role. But they fled the Democratic Party just as they had fled their old neighborhoods when the blacks moved in.
I watched all this and I documented it and found opportunities to preach about it. But I struggled with what more to do, sad that I had been born too late to be involved in the marches of the 1960s. I clung to my faith, having learned that all the questions don’t have to be answered for faith to be embraced. But I needed a solid foundation on which to support that faith. And like Gandhi, I wrestled with a Church and a Christ in polar contrast.
I have come to the conclusion that hypocrisy is no excuse for abandoning faith. At the same time I firmly believe that hypocrisy is always inexcusable and must be confronted wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head, especially when that hypocrisy is found in the house of faith.
Many Evangelicals are quick to say that racism is no longer an issue we need to deal with. We’ve had our ceremonial foot washings and have opened our doors to people of color. We’ve moved passed all that and it is time to move on.
In this they are dead wrong. Witness the Willie Horton affect in the 1988 Presidential Campaign or the not-so-subtle racial undertones in this most recent election. Witness the way in which white Christians still hesitate to see racism as a spiritual matter, one that the Church, especially their church, should speak out on, let alone do anything about. Witness the subtle ways in which the white church continues to keep people of color selectively at arms length or at a safe ceremonial distance.
Present sins or no, the racial sins of the American Christian past are heavy enough weights alone on the cause for Pro-Life today. Until we repent and get proactive about how we as believers value human life, we will never be able to convince a “heathen” nation that an unborn child has value.
There are some Pro-Lifers that preach a single note. They say the only issue we are to be fighting for today is the cause of the unborn. What they don’t understand is how much the issue of racism affects our inability to fight the plight of the in-womb child.
Prior to 1973, most white Evangelical Christians (there were exceptions) did not engage in the Civil Rights movement. Many actively opposed it even. For whatever reason, the American Evangelical Church turned a deaf and fearful ear on the move toward racial equality in this nation, preferring to concentrate on more “spiritual” matters.
There were raging debates behind secretive ecclesiastical doors in the 1950s as to whether blacks should be ordained in our (white) churches. Some preachers even stood on the steps of their churches to keep blacks out (not that very many were pushing to get in).
A few leaders like Billy Graham, who had gone along with racially segregated rallies earlier in his ministry, began to change and even take action. Graham started pushing integration in certain denominations by inviting people of color from those denominations to join his evangelistic team. In at least one of those cases, the offending denomination quickly and quietly moved to ordain the newly anointed team member.
But as has oft been said, racism cannot be legislated out. And so racism has persisted. Conservative white Christians disappeared out of the ranks of the Democratic Party from the mid-60s through the early 1980s as that party embraced the Civil Rights movement and blacks en masse. The Christian whites largely fled with their unrepentant racism to the Party of Lincoln, much to the harm of that party.
It could be argued that this shift came because the Republican Party embraced the Pro-Life movement – and that did play a role. But they fled the Democratic Party just as they had fled their old neighborhoods when the blacks moved in.
I watched all this and I documented it and found opportunities to preach about it. But I struggled with what more to do, sad that I had been born too late to be involved in the marches of the 1960s. I clung to my faith, having learned that all the questions don’t have to be answered for faith to be embraced. But I needed a solid foundation on which to support that faith. And like Gandhi, I wrestled with a Church and a Christ in polar contrast.
I have come to the conclusion that hypocrisy is no excuse for abandoning faith. At the same time I firmly believe that hypocrisy is always inexcusable and must be confronted wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head, especially when that hypocrisy is found in the house of faith.
Many Evangelicals are quick to say that racism is no longer an issue we need to deal with. We’ve had our ceremonial foot washings and have opened our doors to people of color. We’ve moved passed all that and it is time to move on.
In this they are dead wrong. Witness the Willie Horton affect in the 1988 Presidential Campaign or the not-so-subtle racial undertones in this most recent election. Witness the way in which white Christians still hesitate to see racism as a spiritual matter, one that the Church, especially their church, should speak out on, let alone do anything about. Witness the subtle ways in which the white church continues to keep people of color selectively at arms length or at a safe ceremonial distance.
Present sins or no, the racial sins of the American Christian past are heavy enough weights alone on the cause for Pro-Life today. Until we repent and get proactive about how we as believers value human life, we will never be able to convince a “heathen” nation that an unborn child has value.
2009-02-02
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part III
Some people, in what is called the “Pro-Life Movement”, like to say today that their movement and the Civil Rights movement of the middle of the last century are similar causes. I dare say that most people who believe that don’t know what they are talking about.
I agree with them, but not for the reasons they think. Many people who are crusading for the unborn say that they are the new civil rights movement, that they have taken on the mantle carried by the likes of Martin Luther King. They mean that they are as justified in their social activism as were those of the earlier movement. They covet the blanket of acceptability.
What we don’t understand is that many of today’s Pro-Lifers are closer to the truth than they realize. And in fact until they acknowledge that truth, their cause is doomed to fail.
What am I talking about? Back in the 1950s and 1960s a lot of good, religious people in America – white folks, that is – were very critical of the civil rights movement or were at least fearmongering about it. They saw King and his minions as a threat to God-fearing people and civil society in this country.
Evangelicals for the most part sat out the Civil Rights movement either because they didn’t think it had anything to do with spirituality and faith or because they were too busy reaching the lost. Maybe not reaching the lost Americans of Color, but reaching their lost white neighbors or the real heathen somewhere else.
Now consider the Pro-Life movement since Roe v. Wade. That landmark decision which catapulted the anti-abortion cause to the forefront of Evangelical thought happened in the waning days of the Civil Rights movement which had consumed and convulsed the country for the two decades prior. Evangelicals who had slept through the 1950s and 1960s or at least cowered behind their curtains and their moving vans as blacks took control of their neighborhoods were suddenly galvanized to do something about the poor innocents being slaughtered – as well they should have been. They even shed tears for poor innocent black babies, not that they wanted more, they just didn’t want to see them die in the womb.
Why did a life so unworthy of Christian compassion before 1973 become so worthy of Christian action after 1973? This troubling question is a very personal one for me.
I came of voting age in 1973. I was the youngest person ever to vote in my county because the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age took effect on my 18th birthday. Several things were culminating in my spirit – my right to a voice in American society, my coming into legal manhood, the birth of the Pro-Life movement, the end of the most active phase of the Civil Rights Movement, the winding down of the Vietnam Era, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was, to say the least, a very momentous year.
But it was a troubling age for me. It brought me to a deep and long crisis of faith because I could not understand how selective American Evangelicals had been in their acts of righteousness. And that troubled feeling was to grow over the next decade or so as I unearthed much of the corporate sin of my fellow believers throughout the decades prior in shutting blacks out of our churches and in opposing a movement that spoke out against this great sin of our nation.
In silencing our prophetic voice prior to 1973, we found ourselves spiritually hoarse in the years that followed. We lost our ability to be prophetic – and instead became pathetic when it came to preaching justice.
I agree with them, but not for the reasons they think. Many people who are crusading for the unborn say that they are the new civil rights movement, that they have taken on the mantle carried by the likes of Martin Luther King. They mean that they are as justified in their social activism as were those of the earlier movement. They covet the blanket of acceptability.
What we don’t understand is that many of today’s Pro-Lifers are closer to the truth than they realize. And in fact until they acknowledge that truth, their cause is doomed to fail.
What am I talking about? Back in the 1950s and 1960s a lot of good, religious people in America – white folks, that is – were very critical of the civil rights movement or were at least fearmongering about it. They saw King and his minions as a threat to God-fearing people and civil society in this country.
Evangelicals for the most part sat out the Civil Rights movement either because they didn’t think it had anything to do with spirituality and faith or because they were too busy reaching the lost. Maybe not reaching the lost Americans of Color, but reaching their lost white neighbors or the real heathen somewhere else.
Now consider the Pro-Life movement since Roe v. Wade. That landmark decision which catapulted the anti-abortion cause to the forefront of Evangelical thought happened in the waning days of the Civil Rights movement which had consumed and convulsed the country for the two decades prior. Evangelicals who had slept through the 1950s and 1960s or at least cowered behind their curtains and their moving vans as blacks took control of their neighborhoods were suddenly galvanized to do something about the poor innocents being slaughtered – as well they should have been. They even shed tears for poor innocent black babies, not that they wanted more, they just didn’t want to see them die in the womb.
Why did a life so unworthy of Christian compassion before 1973 become so worthy of Christian action after 1973? This troubling question is a very personal one for me.
I came of voting age in 1973. I was the youngest person ever to vote in my county because the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age took effect on my 18th birthday. Several things were culminating in my spirit – my right to a voice in American society, my coming into legal manhood, the birth of the Pro-Life movement, the end of the most active phase of the Civil Rights Movement, the winding down of the Vietnam Era, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was, to say the least, a very momentous year.
But it was a troubling age for me. It brought me to a deep and long crisis of faith because I could not understand how selective American Evangelicals had been in their acts of righteousness. And that troubled feeling was to grow over the next decade or so as I unearthed much of the corporate sin of my fellow believers throughout the decades prior in shutting blacks out of our churches and in opposing a movement that spoke out against this great sin of our nation.
In silencing our prophetic voice prior to 1973, we found ourselves spiritually hoarse in the years that followed. We lost our ability to be prophetic – and instead became pathetic when it came to preaching justice.
2009-01-27
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part II
One of the Niebuhrs (was it Reinhold or Richard?) said that it is much easier to sin corporately than individually. He, whichever one it was, may well have been referring to the nightmare in Nazi Germany. Even if he wasn’t, it is a “stellar” example of corporate sin. What we would never do on our own, we willingly do corporately.
Take that Nazi Germany example. How many people would go out and round up their Jewish neighbors and gas them to death? Only the most depraved. But put a lot of otherwise very decent people together and they can do the most despicable acts, like gas 6 million Jews.
We who live far removed from such atrocities can wag our tongues and our fingers, but are we so above these people? Are we not just as quick to fall into such sins?
What happens when a sinful act is done corporately is that blame doesn’t get assessed very well and where blame is murky, repentance is even less likely to occur. We can hide among the masses.
Take the racially based lynchings of the 20th Century. While most of these ended by mid-century, there were isolated occurrences right up into the far more civilized 1990s. The actual lynchings were done by only a handful of people, not necessarily white hooded either. But a lot of other people were usually standing around gawking if not cheering, none of them doing a thing to stop it. And when the “show” fell out of vogue, whole communities still played complicit roles in allowing such darkness to rule their nights.
Most of these people were what we call God-fearing, church-going. Why some of them were even preachers of the Gospel, no less – saved, baptized, sanctified, and all the rest.
What possessed them to act so vilely on Saturday evening and then go to church on Sunday morning and lift up supposedly holy hands to God in heaven? It wasn’t that they were more evil than others around them.
One of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard out of the Nazi trials was the one about the Jewish man who broke down in the witness stand. The compassionate judge apologized that he had to go through such an ordeal as facing the man accused of such heinous crimes against the witness’ family.
The witness replied that he wasn’t crying because of what that other man had done. He was weeping because he had suddenly realized that that criminal was a human being just like himself, and that even he the victim himself was therefore just as capable of such atrocities.
We like to compartmentalize sin so that we can feel safe – not safe from being hurt by others’ sins, but safe from feeling that we are capable of such darkness. But as soon as we do that, as soon as we say that the reason that sinners sin is because they are so much worse than us ordinary people, we make ourselves even more capable of sinning big time.
Listen to the rhetoric abroad among “good Christian people” today and what you hear is a lot of talk about how evil “those” other people, whoever “those people” are. The world is going to hell in a handbasket because “those people” are increasing in power and we need to do something to stop it – either push them out or cloister ourselves.
Reality is that if we hide from “them” we will all too soon discover that we have “them” among us who are hiding. As Pogo, the cartoon character, years ago said, “We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.”
Take that Nazi Germany example. How many people would go out and round up their Jewish neighbors and gas them to death? Only the most depraved. But put a lot of otherwise very decent people together and they can do the most despicable acts, like gas 6 million Jews.
We who live far removed from such atrocities can wag our tongues and our fingers, but are we so above these people? Are we not just as quick to fall into such sins?
What happens when a sinful act is done corporately is that blame doesn’t get assessed very well and where blame is murky, repentance is even less likely to occur. We can hide among the masses.
Take the racially based lynchings of the 20th Century. While most of these ended by mid-century, there were isolated occurrences right up into the far more civilized 1990s. The actual lynchings were done by only a handful of people, not necessarily white hooded either. But a lot of other people were usually standing around gawking if not cheering, none of them doing a thing to stop it. And when the “show” fell out of vogue, whole communities still played complicit roles in allowing such darkness to rule their nights.
Most of these people were what we call God-fearing, church-going. Why some of them were even preachers of the Gospel, no less – saved, baptized, sanctified, and all the rest.
What possessed them to act so vilely on Saturday evening and then go to church on Sunday morning and lift up supposedly holy hands to God in heaven? It wasn’t that they were more evil than others around them.
One of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard out of the Nazi trials was the one about the Jewish man who broke down in the witness stand. The compassionate judge apologized that he had to go through such an ordeal as facing the man accused of such heinous crimes against the witness’ family.
The witness replied that he wasn’t crying because of what that other man had done. He was weeping because he had suddenly realized that that criminal was a human being just like himself, and that even he the victim himself was therefore just as capable of such atrocities.
We like to compartmentalize sin so that we can feel safe – not safe from being hurt by others’ sins, but safe from feeling that we are capable of such darkness. But as soon as we do that, as soon as we say that the reason that sinners sin is because they are so much worse than us ordinary people, we make ourselves even more capable of sinning big time.
Listen to the rhetoric abroad among “good Christian people” today and what you hear is a lot of talk about how evil “those” other people, whoever “those people” are. The world is going to hell in a handbasket because “those people” are increasing in power and we need to do something to stop it – either push them out or cloister ourselves.
Reality is that if we hide from “them” we will all too soon discover that we have “them” among us who are hiding. As Pogo, the cartoon character, years ago said, “We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.”
2009-01-20
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part I
At various points in my life, I have come to a crossroads of faith. In those times, events internal and external have caused me to reexamine the whole foundation of my trust in God.
When I am in such moments, I long for simpler days of believing. But in the long run, these wrestling spells are pure gold for my soul. For they force me to face the truth of both my faith and my response to that faith – how I live out what I believe.
This day is a momentous one in the history of my home country, America. And yet I am intrigued, ok, confused by the response of so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Many are choosing at best to downplay the significance of President Obama’s inauguration, at worst to boycott it by literally and purposefully tuning it out. Generally political differences of the campaign season are put aside at the inauguration in respect of the office, but this time that “putting aside” feels embarrassingly anemic.
My spiritual siblings may have reasons for doing so – political differences, concerns about moral positions, other misgivings. But in so doing, their responses pull back the curtain on one of the core sins in the history of American Evangelicalism over the past century. The American Evangelical church has a horrible history on race relations, a heritage Twenty-first Century believers by and large conveniently forget or refuse to own.
For me, this issue is a personal one, not because I am a man of color, for I am not. I’m as white as they come. But because for me this issue, the default Evangelical response, has confronted me like a bad dream at each of these critical crossroads of faith.
For a while as a young man India’s great statesman, Gandhi, lived in South Africa. While there he sought to visit a Christian church. He himself was Hindu, but he had heard much good about Jesus. However, when he came to the church, there was a sign outside which read “No dogs or Indians allowed”, the “dogs” referring to blacks. He was embarrassed and confused and never got over that slap in the emotional face. Years later, he told his good Christian missionary friend, E. Stanley Jones, that he thought Jesus a great moral leader, one he deeply admired, but that the followers of Jesus hindered him from getting closer.
It is not enough to have faith, the Apostle James wrote. You have to live out that faith. In fact, he went so far as to say, show me your actions and I’ll tell you what you believe.
Anyone growing up inside the church has stared hypocrisy dead on, for the church as the embodiment of those who follow Jesus is far from perfect. We do well not to walk away from Jesus because of what we see in the lives of others who are redeemed. Rather, such imperfection can show us that we too are welcome even though we are not perfect. But when the church as a body has been unfaithful to the high calling of her Lord, it bodes well for that Body to repent of her sins and to do so thoroughly and publicly.
Repentance is not merely crying big tears or washing the feet of those who have been victimized; repentance is leaving behind the behavior that so pains the heart of God and embracing the new order of the Age of the Spirit. There have been times when specific Evangelical church bodies and leaders have shared publicly their repentance and repudiation of past sins, including racial sins. But rarely do we learn our history lessons as well as we should, and the sin of racism is a glaring example.
That the Evangelical world has been so slow to capture this historic moment in American life shows that we as believers, particularly white believers really do not understand the implications of our own history. Whatever actions Barak Obama does or does not take in his time as president, he, simply by taking the oath of office, has smashed one of the ugliest idols in American spiritual life. We do well to glorify God that this day has come at last. It does not mean the end of racism, but it is a significant milestone, one we as believers all can and should celebrate.
When I am in such moments, I long for simpler days of believing. But in the long run, these wrestling spells are pure gold for my soul. For they force me to face the truth of both my faith and my response to that faith – how I live out what I believe.
This day is a momentous one in the history of my home country, America. And yet I am intrigued, ok, confused by the response of so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Many are choosing at best to downplay the significance of President Obama’s inauguration, at worst to boycott it by literally and purposefully tuning it out. Generally political differences of the campaign season are put aside at the inauguration in respect of the office, but this time that “putting aside” feels embarrassingly anemic.
My spiritual siblings may have reasons for doing so – political differences, concerns about moral positions, other misgivings. But in so doing, their responses pull back the curtain on one of the core sins in the history of American Evangelicalism over the past century. The American Evangelical church has a horrible history on race relations, a heritage Twenty-first Century believers by and large conveniently forget or refuse to own.
For me, this issue is a personal one, not because I am a man of color, for I am not. I’m as white as they come. But because for me this issue, the default Evangelical response, has confronted me like a bad dream at each of these critical crossroads of faith.
For a while as a young man India’s great statesman, Gandhi, lived in South Africa. While there he sought to visit a Christian church. He himself was Hindu, but he had heard much good about Jesus. However, when he came to the church, there was a sign outside which read “No dogs or Indians allowed”, the “dogs” referring to blacks. He was embarrassed and confused and never got over that slap in the emotional face. Years later, he told his good Christian missionary friend, E. Stanley Jones, that he thought Jesus a great moral leader, one he deeply admired, but that the followers of Jesus hindered him from getting closer.
It is not enough to have faith, the Apostle James wrote. You have to live out that faith. In fact, he went so far as to say, show me your actions and I’ll tell you what you believe.
Anyone growing up inside the church has stared hypocrisy dead on, for the church as the embodiment of those who follow Jesus is far from perfect. We do well not to walk away from Jesus because of what we see in the lives of others who are redeemed. Rather, such imperfection can show us that we too are welcome even though we are not perfect. But when the church as a body has been unfaithful to the high calling of her Lord, it bodes well for that Body to repent of her sins and to do so thoroughly and publicly.
Repentance is not merely crying big tears or washing the feet of those who have been victimized; repentance is leaving behind the behavior that so pains the heart of God and embracing the new order of the Age of the Spirit. There have been times when specific Evangelical church bodies and leaders have shared publicly their repentance and repudiation of past sins, including racial sins. But rarely do we learn our history lessons as well as we should, and the sin of racism is a glaring example.
That the Evangelical world has been so slow to capture this historic moment in American life shows that we as believers, particularly white believers really do not understand the implications of our own history. Whatever actions Barak Obama does or does not take in his time as president, he, simply by taking the oath of office, has smashed one of the ugliest idols in American spiritual life. We do well to glorify God that this day has come at last. It does not mean the end of racism, but it is a significant milestone, one we as believers all can and should celebrate.
2009-01-13
Authenticity on a Pedestal – Part II
Many effective leaders and communicators project an intimacy with their audience that at least imitates their more private backstage selves. As a result, we the audience take away the impression that we really know the speaker even if the speaker doesn’t have a clue who we are. The effective speaker bridges the gap with the listener while maintaining a safe distance, thanks to the platform.
That platform protection is lost once the speaker descends. To maintain a necessary defense barrier, the public person learns to project a careful balance of warmth and arm’s-length positioning when working the crowd. People want to know that this person is touchable, that he or she is truly flesh and blood.
Some great platform communicators can exude the same platform warmth up close. Others struggle with it. I remember when I met Bob Hope in person when I was a college student. The dean had handpicked a few of us for a small group shot where Hope would field questions for a campus program he was filming to be aired on national TV.
On camera, he was vintage Bob Hope. We felt warm and connected. Afterward we got to shake his hand, get his autograph, and chat for a minute. As I did, I felt a strange and foreign presence – a plastic Bob Hope I’d not sensed a few minutes earlier or when I’d seen him on TV. Hope and I were trading commodities – or maybe we were the commodities to each other.
There is no way you can give yourself away to thousands and expect to have anything left, unless the self you are giving away is sourced elsewhere. Those who learn to pull off this sharing of self with the masses know how to refuel. They aren’t giving themselves away as much as they are allowing themselves to be a channel through which energy from elsewhere flows through them.
But no one can truly do this channeling unless they have a backstage life where they can fully be themselves and get their own needs met. Not just expressing what they choose to share in public, but where they share with the guard down.
A funny thing about muscles and muscle groups. If you use them 24/7, if you never relax them, they eventually lose their ability to function. A muscle is not a bone, which is set. A muscle is designed to tighten (contract) and loosen. And every person needs to exercise these public/private muscles or they will freeze in place.
The reason for the need for the public guard or defense, the reason Bob Hope couldn’t risk being intimate with my friends and me, is because the more intimate we are, the more vulnerable we become. We risk losing ourselves to the other person(s) entirely.
Contrary to the mindset of this modern hookup society, you can only do so – become intimate – in a very safe, secure setting. Anyone who has sex with a stranger is not being emotionally intimate, for you can only give what is intimate to you in a context where that intimacy is mutually shared and protected. Otherwise there is no intimate self to share.
When a public person no longer has those safe havens, those backstage hideaways, he or she is in mortal danger. The risk is high for failure of some sort no matter how strong a person is. Strength is not the issue. Human beings are designed for being open, and as I’ve said, openness requires protection, something you don’t get with strangers.
That platform protection is lost once the speaker descends. To maintain a necessary defense barrier, the public person learns to project a careful balance of warmth and arm’s-length positioning when working the crowd. People want to know that this person is touchable, that he or she is truly flesh and blood.
Some great platform communicators can exude the same platform warmth up close. Others struggle with it. I remember when I met Bob Hope in person when I was a college student. The dean had handpicked a few of us for a small group shot where Hope would field questions for a campus program he was filming to be aired on national TV.
On camera, he was vintage Bob Hope. We felt warm and connected. Afterward we got to shake his hand, get his autograph, and chat for a minute. As I did, I felt a strange and foreign presence – a plastic Bob Hope I’d not sensed a few minutes earlier or when I’d seen him on TV. Hope and I were trading commodities – or maybe we were the commodities to each other.
There is no way you can give yourself away to thousands and expect to have anything left, unless the self you are giving away is sourced elsewhere. Those who learn to pull off this sharing of self with the masses know how to refuel. They aren’t giving themselves away as much as they are allowing themselves to be a channel through which energy from elsewhere flows through them.
But no one can truly do this channeling unless they have a backstage life where they can fully be themselves and get their own needs met. Not just expressing what they choose to share in public, but where they share with the guard down.
A funny thing about muscles and muscle groups. If you use them 24/7, if you never relax them, they eventually lose their ability to function. A muscle is not a bone, which is set. A muscle is designed to tighten (contract) and loosen. And every person needs to exercise these public/private muscles or they will freeze in place.
The reason for the need for the public guard or defense, the reason Bob Hope couldn’t risk being intimate with my friends and me, is because the more intimate we are, the more vulnerable we become. We risk losing ourselves to the other person(s) entirely.
Contrary to the mindset of this modern hookup society, you can only do so – become intimate – in a very safe, secure setting. Anyone who has sex with a stranger is not being emotionally intimate, for you can only give what is intimate to you in a context where that intimacy is mutually shared and protected. Otherwise there is no intimate self to share.
When a public person no longer has those safe havens, those backstage hideaways, he or she is in mortal danger. The risk is high for failure of some sort no matter how strong a person is. Strength is not the issue. Human beings are designed for being open, and as I’ve said, openness requires protection, something you don’t get with strangers.
2009-01-06
Authenticity on a Pedestal – Part I
One of my favorite images from our life in Xi’an is of this guy who was operating a jackhammer on top of a pillar at the neighbor’s house across our little street. I detested the endless sound that went on for days and days. And, oh, the dust! But the visual of that man up there remains a fascinating and treasured memory. [You can see an actual photo by visiting hnkconnect.com/about-hnk.]
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
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