Just, please, say something!

I'm blessed with many people from around the world forwarding links to articles, videos, blogs, etc. to help us keep our ear on the ground of what's going on in the reconciliation movement. Our biggest concern is how people are being affected by the discourse. There's lots of people talking, but who are the listeners and what are they doing with what they hear? Is it helping or harming? Is it building people up, or breaking them down?

We were perusing through YouTube, read some articles about the "revolutionaries" of evangelical Christianity and finally caught up on an Oprah episode from December on amazing family stories. These seemingly disparate mediums had one common theme that jumped out at me.

There was a lot of talk...and nothing was actually being said. Why was that?

For example, there's a Joel Osteen video on YouTube where he and his wife are asked by Larry King their thoughts on homosexuality and what they'd do if/when one of their kids came out to them. Their answers did involve verbal response but the body language and lack of quality or depth of the answers was more emphasized.

On the Oprah episode, 14 Christian families in North Carolina adopted several orphans from Liberia while the children were in a traveling choir. No doubt the act is noble. When Oprah was wanting to learn how the culture shocks were dealt with, what the parents hoped for the children given this opportunity to live in America, etc....the answers were so on the surface, we learned nothing. I felt like they either hadn't thought much about it, or very deeply, or didn't want to tell the truth and only talk about God's nudge to adopt these children. It felt as shallow as asking them to tell me about the Bible and their answer would be "it's a good book."

This is something I've noticed for decades about people in general and something I self-check and make sure I'm working on. I used to teach a critical thinking course on the media. For a course with such subjective grading criteria, the only time an answer was flat out wrong was when there was no thought or effort behind it, when we learned nothing from it, like the Bible is a good book, the movie was "cool", and "I dunno, I just liked the TV show, it was good."

Sure, we don't have to analyze everything, but I do think it's worthwhile to challenge or at least pause once in a while and excavate where our beliefs come from - if they are really ours or are they our parents, or our friends, or an institution like church or government. God speaks to us through our intuition, which is our individuality. Do we tell the truth of our thoughts when we speak, even if it's good stuff like learning how Caucasian American families adjusted to African, Liberian teenagers in their home? Are we too much in the habit of saying what we think others want to hear, will approve of, will be the Christian answer, will be the "right" answer?

Owning our own beliefs and not having to tap dance or pretend when asked good questions worthy of thoughtful and sincere answers, builds us up and teaches others. So, I pray we shed the parroting, and speak thoughtfully so we can all learn something once in a while. I just want to learn from these articles, videos, blogs, I want to be fed nutritional meals of authenticity and wisdom. And I hope this blog is helpful, I hope it builds you up, I hope it feeds you like it feeds me.