Tag Archives: culture

November 19, 2015

Refugees, The Prodigal Son & The Older Brother

By pbstone

syrianrefugeesThe current conversation in social media surrounding the Syrian Refugee Crisis has gotten me thinking.  I have read estimated reports that up to 9 million Syrians have fled their homes!  Where do they go?  Who takes them in?  How do they make new lives for themselves?

The Syrian Refugee Crisis, immigration issues, politics, all of it is really complicated and most of us who have opinions probably have only partially informed opinions.  I don’t know that I have an opinion as to whether we should allow however many tens of thousands of Syrians into the United States.  I don’t know if I am smart enough to have an opinion, much less an informed one.

But I do have an observation.

This morning I read the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15:11-32.  And I saw something of myself in the parable.  And as I saw myself, I think I saw many of us.

No, I don’t see the Syrian Refugees as the prodigal son who has gone astray.  But I saw myself.  I saw myself as the older brother. The GOOD brother.  The one who has done the right things: worked hard, made good choices, etc.

The Older Brother struggled when his younger brother, who lived a different lifestyle, came home and Dad wanted to throw down a party in celebration.  The older brother struggled because it meant loss to him.  The party would cost him his portion of the inheritance (the part not given to the younger son when he left).  At the end of the day, there would be less for him because someone who didn’t work for it was going to have squandered it one more time – at another party – this time thrown by his dad.

The older brother didn’t really love his father.  He loved his father’s wealth and was angry none of it had been given to him and he lashes out, “when have you even given me a little goat…!?”  The father, of course, reaffirms his love and that all he has is his and pleads compellingly, “This is your brother…!”

I wonder if we, as citizens of the United States, are more worried about what we will lose if Syrian Refugees come into the states than we are about their well being.  I wonder if we actually love our lifestyles and stuff more than we love the country we live in?  I wonder if we love our way of life more than we even love God?

Not only couldn’t the older brother find compassion for his brother, but he also couldn’t  see the blessing in having him home.  His own brother.

I think Dad might be saying, “This is your brother! This is your sister!”

I don’t think I want to be the older brother.

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September 19, 2015

Awkward…!

By pbstone

imageThe half dozen or so people were spread throughout the fitness center. Each one doing her, or his, own thing.  Most were on some sort of cardio machine and only one other was over by the free weights of this Houston area Planet Fitness.  I followed the unwritten rules of gym ettiquette (mostly because it wasn’t my regular gym) and worked out without engaging anybody in conversation.

It’s an interesting phenomenom, belonging to large nationwide gym.  And with Planet Fitness’ “no gymtimidation” policy, most people work out in silence, with headphones on and only on occassion even making eye contact.  Even then the eye contact is usually some sort of non-verbal communication around the use of a piece of equipment – not relationship…

Not here. Not Houston’s little PF on Fondren.  Not with LeRoy.

Let’s face it, public locker rooms are always a bit awkward; and when you are leaving the shower area with your towel wrapped around your waist, you feel particularly vulnerable!  Just saying… That’s how it was for me when I met LeRoy. Still sweating from my workout, but freshly showered before heading to the couple’s therapy training I’m in Houston for, I had my towel around my waist when I hear a southern accent say, “I don’ think I’ve seen you ‘roun’ here before?”

I look to my right and there before me is a tall, thin African American of about 60 years of age. He had a huge smile and held out his hand, “LeRoy.”

“Brian.”  And inside my head there is only one word sreaming loudly, AWKWARD!!!

LeRoy asks when I moved to the area and I explained to him that I was here on sabbatical getting some training on couple’s therapy. LeRoy’s smile immediately is replaced with a look of deep regret.

While we both got ready for the day before us, LeRoy told me about his failed marriage, that he moved to Houston to try and rebuild relationships with his kids and grandchildren, and how much he regretted not working hard to make his marriage work.  He was going to meet his two year old grandson for the first time later that day.

As I was getting ready to leave, he told me to learn a lot. Then he paused and asked, “Would you pray for me today? Maybe you have more pull with the Big Guy than I do.”

I’ve never prayed for anyone in a locker room before, at least I don’t think so, but I’m glad I did.  I will probably never see LeRoy again. But I think our world is full of LeRoy’s. People, like you and me, going through life with its struggles and joys, hurts and pleasures, successes and failures.

And all of us longing to connect more deeply with one another and with God.  Only very few of us will find the courage to step out of the unwritten rules of culture and become vulnerable enough to reach out and connect with others. 

I’m really glad LeRoy had the courage to start a conversation in a locker room – even if it was awkward.

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September 9, 2015

Who Goes First?

By pbstone

stop signAt 7:50pm 4 cars came to the intersection at roughly the same time.  I was second. The first driver was to my left and made a left hand turn.  As he cleared the intersection, I began to cross the intersection. I was second.  My daughter and I had just left the gym after working out, we were tired, thirsty and in desperate need of showers.  We were heading home when the lady from my right pulled out in front of me to cross the intersection.

At that moment you would have been hard pressed to find any love at the corner of Ravine and Nichols in the Kalamazoo area!  My windows were up and the air conditioning on so I don’t know what it was she was yelling out her window.  But as I uttered inside the confines of our 2001 Subaru Forester (180,000+), “Not your turn,” I could tell by the look on her face that she was maybe more angry than I was.

But, it was MY TURN! 

Have you ever noticed how often we think about it being “my turn?”

It’s my turn for a promotion at work. It’s my turn to go first. It’s my turn to be successful. It’s my turn to get the biggest piece. It’s my turn to use the car. It’s my turn to get… You get the picture right?

Ironically, just yesterday morning I had a conversation with some amazing people looking at how to live a more mission/other minded life and what it looks like to create more loving spaces in the mundane places of our lives.  It’s hard to live a life of love when we are focused on MY TURN.  In the book of Philippians, Paul reminds those of us who have been deeply impacted by Christ’s love to be more concerned with OTHERS than ourselves.  Here are the words he uses in chapter 2:3-4:

Don’t let selfishness and prideful agendas take over. Embrace true humility, and lift your heads to extend love to others. Get beyond yourselves and protecting your own interests; be sincere, and secure your neighbors’ interests first.

In spite of all the rhetoric about love wins, our culture is making it increasingly more difficult to live a life that is other focused and rooted in love. In fact, today Tim Cook and Apple will tell me that the new iPhone 6 I got two months ago is now obsolete, that my iPad is too small and that AppleTV is a real necessity!  Technology isn’t bad. That’s not what I am saying.  Our culture, however, continues to disciple us into thinking and behaving more and more individually and in self-centered ways.

But I am responsible for how I live and love – not culture.  I can make choices about who I want to be and the way I want people to experience me.  And last night there was a stranger who didn’t experience love while crossing an intersection.  Last night, without thinking, I also discipled my daughter teaching her to be as self-centered and unloving as I was.

I don’t have to be selfish.  I don’t have to be self-centered.  Because of Christ’s work in me I can choose to be different.  I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind. I have this amazing partner, the Holy Spirit, who helps me learn to lead myself.

Who will you be today? Will you choose with me to love someone you otherwise might not want to?

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August 18, 2015

Overheard At The PGA

By pbstone

1st teeWe were all set to enjoy a beautiful day of incredible golf.  We both woke up earlier than expected and so Brad and I made our way to stands at the 1st tee of the 2015 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in WI.  Sitting on the top row of the stands we drank coffee and people watched while waiting for the round to start.

Neither of us paid much attention to the three gentlemen who made their way up next to us where they stood on the bench leaning against the back railing.  And then their conversation caught my attention…

They had spotted to young ladies wearing matching dresses.

It was clear, when I looked, that they were high school aged girls with their parents, who were also wearing clothes that matched.  The whole family was clothing coordinated for the day!

The conversation next to us was really more of a monologue with appreciative male noises of agreement.  As word for word as I can remember, it went like this:  Look, those two girls are wearing the same dress. (grunts)  I wonder if they always dress the same… (grunts) I wonder if even their underwear matches… If they’re even wearing any. (more grunts) And down the bleachers they went.

When I looked, the speaker was a man about the age of 50 – gray hair and all – with his two sons.

Brad and I chatted about the conversation we overheard and then how shocked we were that it was the dad making those comments to his sons.  But the conversation stuck with me throughout the day.

And it got me wondering.

It got me wondering as I watched groups of single middle-aged men watch other girls…

I wondered how often in their lives women feel like they aren’t seen as persons but as bodies.  I wondered how often they know they are seen as bright, intelligent, creative women and not just for the clothes they wear or their body parts.  I began to wonder about all of the ladies there at the PGA on Sunday and how often during the day they felt uncomfortable because a stranger in the crowd decided to check them out.

I also began to wonder about the dad and his sons.  I wondered if scoping out young girls was really life giving to him.  I wondered if he knew he was created for more than that.  I wondered if his sons were embarrassed by his words and what they were learning about how to be a man.

We are all gendered beings. God created us this way – as male and female.  But we are so much more than just the sum of our genital parts.

In an over sexualized culture it takes intentionality to break out of the conditioning we aren’t even aware we have experienced.  I recently read a resource indicating that the U.S. is responsible for 89% of the world’s online pornography and that a porn film is produced every 30 minutes.  This same book showed that the average age of porn exposure is 11 and that by the age of fifteen 1 in 13 girls reports having participated in some sort of group sex.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at the conversation we overheard.  And, out of the tens of thousands of people at the PGA Championship, it probably wasn’t an isolated incident.  Somewhere along the way this dad, and so many of us like him, was taught a way of being, and got stuck.  Stuck in a way of seeing himself and others.

To move past this we are going to have to reteach ourselves how to see.  How to see ourselves as more than our gender or genitals. How to see others as more than their gender.  To grow past this we will need to learn how to rethink our sexuality in the context of the whole of who we are.

And we will need to do this in the midst of the overwhelming sexualization of the world around us.

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December 5, 2013

The Problem of Christmas Isn’t Lowes

By pbstone

Image

For the last several years I have had the same recurring conversations with similar people during this post-halloween-pre-christmas season.  The conversation usually revolves around how secular and consumeristic and politically correct our Christmas has become because of any one of the following reasons: how early the stores start beating the sales drum, the shift from “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays,” or the rampant spending that takes place.

The conversation always is about how Christmas is no longer about the birth of Jesus (who wouldn’t have been born during December, btw) and how it is THEIR fault.  THEY (stores, government, political correctness) have STOLEN the Christ out of Christmas, right?

Wrong. They, whoever they are, are not responsible for Christmas.  Can I say that again?  The stores, the government, the post office, the media – they are not responsible for Christmas.

I am.  We are.  You and me.

A friend of mine, Jim Herrington (he blogs here ), reminds me regularly that we are witnessing the death of cultural christendom.  As such, I believe we, the church, are also living in the midst of our greatest opportunity!  However, because we are indeed watching the slow decline and eventual death of “church” as the nation new it in the 1940’s & 1950’s, it should not be a surprise that in our culture the systems and structures are doing exactly what they are.

Stores, big box stores like Lowes, and little mom & pop shops, exist to sell goods to people who will buy them and in the selling of the goods, make money for the owners as well as the manufacturers & suppliers of those goods.  What does that mean?  It means this – Best Buy does not exist for the purpose of protecting Christmas or any other Christian tradition.  That isn’t their job.  Their job is to sell me what I need (actually, Best Buy sells a lot of what I want and very little of what I need); their job is to make money for their owners; their job is to provide jobs for workers.  See where this is going?

Years ago the USPS told their mail carriers they couldn’t say, “Merry Christmas.”  The right side of evangelicalism went ballistic.  The Post Office isn’t the church.  It exists for the purpose of delivering the mail.  But we, the church, got angry.

Why?

Because we want someone else to be responsible for our faith, our discipleship, our connection with God.  We feel better about spending exorbitant amounts of money at Toys-r-Us when the cashier says, “Merry Christmas.”

But here’s the truth, it is my responsibility to remember Jesus’ birth (which, btw, Jesus doesn’t even ask us to do…).  It is my privilege to remember not only Christ’s birth but EVERYTHING about it – from Genesis to Revelation – and be transformed by it.  My capacity to celebrate Jesus does not depend upon the box store’s decision to begin Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving Thursday (which, btw, might actually be an answer to prayer for some of the employees who worked that day and needed money for rent!).

I am glad the stores, the government, the schools and the media are not responsible for “keeping Christ in Christmas.”  During this time when the church is experience such dramatic decline and the North American version of Christmas has become about consumerism & economics, we have opportunity like never before!

Today, when people no longer have to hide the fact that they aren’t Christian, gives those of us who earnestly are being transformed by the Gospel an amazing opportunity to really be different.  Different from cultural; and, different from culture’s understanding of church.

Jesus calls us a light on a hill which in darkness cannot be hidden.  That’s cool.  I like that.  I want to live that kind of life.  Will you live it with me?

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October 21, 2013

I Think I’m Racist!

By pbstone

multicolored_hands

Don’t get me wrong.  Most people would look at my life and the people I hang out with and never suggest that I am.  In fact, for the most part, I wouldn’t say that I am.  But, there are these small little pieces in the secret places of who we are; and it is in there, that I think I am racist.  And, I am hopeful I will have the courage to press publish when I am done writing this.

Recently there were 3 Questions that really challenged me:

Two of them took came recently at a conference in NYC called Movement Day 2013.  I hadn’t been to Movement Day before and didn’t really know what to expect.  All I knew what that it seems that here in Kalamazoo God is doing something great and is generating a Gospel Movement to transform our little city, and that Movement Day is a conference about exactly that.  I went to the conference hoping to get some ideas to bring back, and understanding of how to steward such a movement, some practical tools and inspiration.  I got all that (it really is an amazing conference), and a whole lot more.

Already God was working on me in regard to what is happening in Kalamazoo and what needs to happen.  And then during the pre-conference it seems God really set me up.  Sitting with my friend Keith, we were to look at the current reality of Kalamazoo and identify what is missing.  It was clear to me what was missing – involvement from some of the African American churches.  In my head I am asking the question, “how do we get them to get involved in what we are doing, and why aren’t I doing anything about it?

Question 1

Moments later one of the African American leaders from another city talked about racial division and what racial collaboration can look like.  He shared how it first starts in relationships and finding the courage to meet one another on each others’ turf.  That troubled me.  I already knew it was about relationship.  And, I thought I had really good relationships with some African American pastors/leaders.  But…  I also knew, deep inside, that I hadn’t done anything to build a relationship with the pastors on the “north side.” Why haven’t I bothered?

Deep inside I was pretending I knew why I hadn’t. I’m too busy.  They’re too busy.  You know, the usual bull.  I looked at Keith and made a commitment to begin to build those relationships…

Question 2

One day later, in the middle of the conference, I am confronted by a very raw dialogue by Connally Gilliam (white and resourced) and Sherry Jones (african american & not as resourced) about their relationship and cross racial collaboration.  In that conversation Connally confessed to some areas of racism that I just hadn’t even thought about.  She said she realized that she believed “That Christianity was somehow a white religion and others got to just come along…” Some ways of just being in the world are inherited in a white, middle class, resourced life.  And I began to ponder with God…. What do I really believe?

I didn’t set out to be racist.  My parents certainly didn’t set out to raise me to be racist.  But I grew up in an all white little town in the middle of a mostly white state.  Wait…!   Remember the commitment I made to Keith – to build relationships?

The Monday morning after the conference I get an email from some guy I have never met.  It was an invitation to the prayer breakfast hosted by the Northside Ministerial Alliance.  Really God? I had never been to one of their meetings and I had never before been invited.  Clearly this was God’s way of opening a door for me to begin living into a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep.dr wright2

But God wasn’t done.  The featured speaker at the prayer breakfast was none other than Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright.  The Dr. Wright who made headlines because of harsh statements made about the United States and white people in general as a spiritual advisor to President Obama.  You know, the guy who made national news out of Chicago!

Thanks God.

I show up for the breakfast knowing I will get to sit with some other peeps I know from the community.  People from another nice suburban church.  What I didn’t know!  I didn’t know I should have dressed for The Oscars not my jeans and untucked button down.  I didn’t know I would be sitting right in the middle of the very front for everyone to look at – even as a high extrovert I was a little uncomfortable.  I didn’t know God wasn’t done bringing stuff up out of me.

Question 3

Dr. Wright gave a great message based out of Lamentations 4:17  and looking for help where there is no help to be found.  He was funny, sharp, brilliant and seemed to hit me hard.  In the middle of his talk he ran through a litany of where the Africans and then African Americans had looked for help in places it cannot be found.

In the middle of that litany I found myself feeling a wide array of emotions from anger, sadness, hopelessness, bitterness, etc.  I also found myself wanting, but unable, to distance myself from what he was saying. I didn’t want to hear in his voice the pain of the African people.  I didn’t want to hear from him the stark reality of the current situation.  My life is pretty squeaky clean and I like it that way. Why don’t I want to know the story and pain of the African American?

I love my life.  I have an amazing wife and family.  I get to do the kinds of things I know God has wired me and given me deep passion for.  I don’t like being racist.  And it isn’t that I have a dislike or hatred for anybody.  What I am discovering is that there is a part of me that loves the version of the American Dream I get to live.  I have been discipled by a white middle class version of the American Dream more than I have been discipled by Jesus and fear of stepping out of that keeps me stuck.

HOPE!

The good news is this.  God is reconciling all things and people to himself and the Spirit is alive!  And, I have a good friend, James, who has promised to help me. He wouldn’t have, however, if I hadn’t found the courage to authentic with him.

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