The Value of Black Life in America

Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Jordan davis, Eric Garner, Dontre Hamilton, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, Tony Robinson, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Samuel dubose, Oscar grant. WHO IS NEXT? This is a non-exhaustive live of black bodies that have been killed due to senseless violence. The vast majority of these people were killed at the hands of police officers.

What do I say to all this violence? America doesn’t care about black people. What do I mean by that statement? I mean this: America doesn’t care about black people. As long as America has existed it has left a “trail of tears” or a stream of blood. America with its imperial ways has shed the lives and pillaged the communities of Native Americans, has ripped African’s from their families and captured them from there continent to be forced in to lives of servitude and slavery. Raping black women, taking from their sons, daughters, for their own sinful pleasures and leaving there husbands powerless to stop it, only having the knowledge that they could not protect their own wives.

America has permitted some of the most heinous crimes in history. Don’t you dare try to be the moral police of the world when your own closest is not even clean? America’s bloody past is perpetuated today with racial profiling, police killing black people, and the inequality faced by minorities in this country. Why is this the case? Because America has devalued the black body, America has devalued black people to something they consider worthless. This is the only way that you could participate in something as cruel as the transatlantic slave trade and not have you conscience rip you apart. You have to rationalize in your mind that these people are sub-human. We still seem the legacies and remnants of this thinking in 2015.

Who is to blame? All of us have, so many of us have bought into this lie. It is far reaching in its destruction, the devaluing of black people. Are contributions are heavily relegated to entertainment and are less accepted in more serious endeavors like academics, law, politics, science, etc. Are young people have bought into this lie. The darker your skin, the more out of favor you find yourself. The lighter your skin the more attractive you are to potential suitors. Africa is the butt of many jokes as early as elementary school as some place that is primitive, dark, disgusting and un-enlightened. Black women are devalued aesthetically (Example Serena Williams). While white/Eurocentric versions of beauty are held up as the standard and the closer you are to that Eurocentric standard of beauty the more attractive you are. The further you are from the standard the uglier you are. Black men kill other black men like it’s a sport. Some will kill simply for initiation into a group, to feel accepted; others will kill simply because of the color someone is wearing. All kill because they have a deficit in their understanding of the value of that person’s life. Many of them don’t even value their own life.

Go to the dictionary and look up the definitions for the word “black” and then the word “white”. Some of those definitions reflect the sentiments that we see in society. The devaluing of black people is a far reaching phenomenon. It has reached every sphere of society from church, to academia, to professional life and it is perpetuated in part by images of the media. We have elected the first black president and it seems while he was in office the value of black life has not increased. President Obama has spoken several times on race with regards to Travyon martin and Henry Louis Gates for example. He has also come up with an initiative known as “My Brother’s Keeper, of which black males stand to benefit and I think these examples are great. I still think we have a long way to go before black people are fully valued in this society.

An entire academic dissertation could be written on this topic. I won’t do that today, but when you have video evidence of black people being murdered by police and you’re not sure if the officer will get off with a slap on the wrist or not, we have issues in this society. None of this is new. How dare you show more concern for a lion then a person? Lion King was one of my favorite childhood movies of all time but brothers and sisters are dying in the street EVERYDAY. Value your brother. Value your sister because America doesn’t know how to do that and they need someone to show her how it’s done. Black is beautiful. Black men are Kings. Black women are Queens. So act like it. We need to stop killing each other and we also need the law to start valuing our lives and hold murderers of black lives responsible; whether it’s another black person, a police officer, etc.

My trip to Belize: July 2015

First of all I just want to thank Jesus for the awesome opportunity to go to Belize. I had a great time. The kids were amazing. I met people from all over the country and all over the world, it was a phenomenal trip. It was amazing how much could be accomplished in just three short days with the kids.

My partner and I had 3 students, one of our students was immediately identified as a high performer. She was outgoing, courageous, well-spoken and just a leader in general. We had another student who was extremely shy. She didn’t want to speak, write, or type. She just wanted to use hand gestures, and shake her head to communicate.

Although this particular student was shy, I knew she had something to contribute so I told my partner, before these 3 days is up we are going to connect with this student, this is a personal mission of mine. I have come to find that people naturally are drawn to the “high performers” people want to invest resources into the best in the brightest but I was naturally drawn to working with this student that I perceived to be a diamond in the rough.

Over the course of the 3 days I worked with her and invested extra time into her and she began to open up to me gradually. The kids were working on an idea that they would have to present on Day 3 and on Day 2, this student came up to me and was like Jeff can you show me what I have to do, please show me how to do it. I was so happy because this girl wouldn’t say anything, she would only shake or nod her head or talk so low that you couldn’t decipher what she said.

She was really scared at the thought of presenting in front of a room full of people, when we were working on the power point, she was fine with typing in front of me, but when the other members of the group came over, she refused to type, saying she typed to slow, so I had to tell the other members to work with my partner on the other side of the room while I continue to work with this particular student. That’s how shy and self-conscious she was.

The day of the presentation she rocked it! Even during some of our dry runs. A weird thing happened right before my team went up to present. I looked at two of my students and said are you all ready? And the “high performer” told me she was scared so I had to reassure her and my particularly “shy” student told me that she was going to do good!

I was so proud when she got up in front of the entire camp and presented, she did awesome. I knew she could do it! The transformation that took place in her over 3 days was great. Throughout the 3 days it was hard to tell if I was reaching her or not but she gave me the bracelet that says “My treasure” in Spanish and wrote me a really nice message on my shirt.

Teaching in this context was one of the best things I can remember being a part of. Giving of yourself to someone else is an awesome action and the rewards are great. I know all of those kids have the potential to do great things so I was happy to share what I know with them. I expect great things from them all!

#LoveWon

Warning* Extremely long post. Feel free to read some, all, or to simply ignore.

*Please note – reading this post may inspire random acts of love and Christlike behavior (that is my hope, not a guarantee)

One of the things I love about the Christian message is how through Jesus two seemingly irreconcilable parties are brought together. God is a God of righteousness and his standards are perfection, a standard that none of can reach. Yet God is a God of love and his heart looks upon us with compassion. How do these two concepts merge? Well they intersect at the cross of Christ. There is where eternal righteousness and unconditional love meet. What does this mean? This means that God loved us so much that he wasn’t going to just allow us to perish without making a way of escape. Jesus knew that we fail short and had no hope of reaching his perfect standard on our own, but he also knew that he being a righteousness God could not just overlook sin, this would be an assault to his own perfect holiness. So what is a Righteous, loving God to do? Enter in sacrifice. Jesus became the atonement for our sin. Jesus being perfect and without sin could himself pay the penalty for our sins. So because Jesus loved you and us he swept sin under the rug? No. Overlooked sin? No. Said well everyone sin’s so we must change the rules? No. Because Jesus loved us he took the penalty of our sin on himself.

That’s the beauty of the Christian message, (not that sin is not a big deal to God, because it absolutely is) but because he loved us enough to take the penalty of sin himself so that we wouldn’t have to. What are we to do with this? Continue sinning because we think grace has given us a license to sin? God forbid. “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20). The Gospel is while we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly. (Rom 5:8).

Let us rejoice in the fact that Jesus died for us. Concerning recent events Jesus has given us an example on how to live and treat people in the Gospel. What is that example? That we love people without condition; that we realize that we are saved by Grace through faith, (not by works, lest any man should boast Eph 2:8); and also that we call sin, sin. (Isaiah 5:20 woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!)

Loving your neighbor and having the courage of your convictions are not mutually exclusive tasks (ex: Jesus). Christians – love your gay neighbors just as Jesus would. It is our job to love outrageously, stand for truth regardless of its popularity, and allow the Holy Spirit to convict. How did you come to Jesus yourself? Probably not through criticism, name calling, or getting bashed in your head by someone else’s Bible but it probably had to a lot to do (all) with the calling of God and the prompting and convicting of the Holy Spirit

I encourage you to stand for truth in a loving way. Have the courage of your convictions but also have the mind of Christ because they are not mutually exclusive. Have dinners with people who are different than you. One of the things I love doing is having dinner with people who have a completely different worldview from my own whether they are an atheist or homosexual or whatever the case, not because they are my latest conversion project but because I genuinely love people and Jesus commanded me to love people. This is a person who was created in the image of God and whom Jesus died for and my theology is large and robust enough to believe that for the person even if they don’t believe it themselves.

The message is clear, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Are we to be complicit with sin? God forbid, but you do not win souls through hate or intimidation, you do that through showing, living out, and embodying the love of the Savior Jesus Christ, because his love is irresistible and he thought you and your neighbor both were to die for, so why don’t we act like it?

Reconciliation in Light of Ferguson

Day 10 of “12 Days of Thanksgiving 2014”

Today is the tenth day of my “12 Days of Thanksgiving 2014”, and today I was going to share how thankful I am to be an American. Timing sometimes has a very interesting way of challenging your thoughts and intentions.

In light of recent events I will amend my statement to address a more urgent need. I am in deed thankful to be an American. Last night did not change something that has been building at this point for 25 years and counting. I however recognize that as an American, I have an obligation to pray for America just like you pray for that crazy uncle of yours who just can’t get right and embarrasses himself every time he comes around during the holidays.

Forgiveness takes one party, reconciliation requires at least two. Although I am thankful to be an American, America as it currently stands is woefully inadequate to fulfill its promise. America time and again has declared itself morally bankrupt and unwilling to cash the attempted withdraws of equality and equal value under the law for many of its own citizen.

I look at this as an opportunity to search the deep recesses of my own heart to see what role I can play in the healing of this nation, and towards reconciliation. We’ve reached this stage in our nation’s history because we have so many people who have such varied perspectives. It is only a small percentage of the populous that makes the effort to try and understand life from the perspective of someone different then him.
Now is not a time to blame and point the figure at the next person. Now is the time to look within ourselves to see what kind of role we can play in the healing of a nation. It starts with individuals all over the nation making a commitment to live a life of empathy towards people who are different then themselves.

I am a black man, so it is very easy for me to empathize with the plight of black men in America. It requires more work for me to empathize with women and how they are treated in society. Am I as passionate about the treatment that women endure in this country as I am about the black man? What about the Jewish immigrant? Or the Mexican worker? Am I taking time to read articles about their experience and research their history, and most importantly reaching out to them and holding conversations with them to gain a better understanding of their perspective?

If I am not yet doing these things than how can I demand that someone else do them for my benefit? Change must start somewhere and nothing will change until we all realize that all change must start within our own heart.

For Edmund Burke said that, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

So with that being said, it is still accurate to say that I am thankful to be an American. I am evening more thankful to be alive at such an important cross road in our nation’s journey to allow me to have a voice into the culture and an opportunity to effect positive change.

I will leave you with the immortal words of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Who do you Follow?

Leadership

We all by nature follow someone or something. When I was a child, I like many other little boys wanted to be like Mike (Michael Jordan). Michael Jordan influenced many people, so Michael Jordan was and is a leader. The ability to influence is generally a positive thing but can be used for positive or negative purposes. Influence can be judged by its fruit, that which it produces.

We are all influenced by someone. People can be influenced by friends, athletes, celebrities, community leaders, etc. As previously stated, all of the influence that we receive is not positive. There have been multitudes of people throughout the generations that have had their lives destroyed due to negative influences. The Bible says that bad company corrupts good morals. Bad influence can corrupt. With that being said it is important that we know who we are following and why we are following them. Jesus said that if the blind lead the blind they both will fall in a ditch.

I think that we should evaluate our leaders. We need a set of criteria that we can use to evaluate those who are leading us. The criteria that we should use, should be directly connected to where we want to go in life. I am only willing to follow someone whose life mirrors in some way something in which I would like in my own life. My founding pastor always says, “You multiply what you publish”. Why would I follow someone whose life does not resemble anything I want in my own life? That doesn’t make sense. Therefore we must intentionally choose to be influenced by people whose own life can offer something to support the God given vision we have for our own lives. Below I have included some of the criteria that I use to evaluate the leaders that I choose to follow. Hopefully it can help you establish your own criteria or maybe you already have your own established criteria and there is some overlap.

1. Jesus – A flourishing relationship with Jesus. You can have the whole world but if you lack Jesus you actually have nothing. Therefore I choose to follow people whose lives have tangible evidence and fruit that they have maintained a flourishing relationship with Jesus. They can offer me advice in my own walk with the Lord because they themselves have walked with Jesus.
2. Family – Family is important to me. One day I will have a family of my own, that by God’s Grace I will lead to the best of my ability. I choose to follow men whom have displayed servant leadership with their families. Men who love their wives and children and puts that love on display by how they lead them, how they treat them, how they serve them, how they nurture them, how they spend time with them and so much more.
3. Calling or Career – I embrace the call on my life to live as a Man of God in whatever field of endeavor the Lord has called and equipped me to do so. I choose to follow men whom have displayed a lifetime of success in an area of calling and gifting. Successful men have “sat at the feet” of other successful men. I therefore want to “sit at the feet” of successful men and learn from them what I can.
4. Community – Life is not lived in isolation. We are indeed our brother’s keeper. “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10) We live in such an individualistic culture where it is basically every man for himself. That is not the way. I choose to follow men who show love for their communities and seek to help out their fellow man.
5. Legacy – Legacy is what you leave behind. Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with saying, “When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying”. Accumulation of stuff is not the answer. Jesus said life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. Don’t get me wrong stuff is nice and it is good for men to leave an inheritance to their children and grandchildren, matter fact it is Biblical to do so. We however want to leave a legacy that is deeper than the things we have accumulated. I hope to leave a legacy that is full of the lives of people that I have touched. I want my legacy to be glorifying to Jesus and a blessing to others. I want my legacy to speak three things very clearly, Jesus loves me, I love Jesus, and because I love Jesus I love you. I therefore choose to follow men who are building such legacies.

These are some of the criteria that I use to evaluate my key influences. Not everyone who influences me will necessarily meet all of these criteria. I have people at my job who influence me, who don’t come anywhere near meeting this criteria, but they teach my how to do my job with excellence, so in that light they are an influence. This list is for the key influences in my life, those on a much more personal and communal level. I am blessed by God to have men and women in my life who meet these criteria. One thing I am sure of, Great Men never come about by accident. Great men emerge very intentionally. I therefore choose to follow great men. 

Who do you choose to follow?

School of Prayer: Session One

5/3/14

Greetings,

Today is a wonderful Saturday afternoon, the first in May and I am just full of peace and joy. I am battling some pain in my back, which is somewhat odd because I just had my second massage in the past week and a half yesterday at the most affordable Hand & Stone Spa.

                Today I spent about 4 hours at session one of the School of Prayer at my church. I am in the beginner’s class, but I would more accurately label it the foundations class of prayer. I’m not sure how many “beginners” were actually in that session, it was full of seasoned prayer warriors which was awesome.

                Learning about prayer is an awesome experience. It is important to realize that prayer is designed to be relational in nature, not transaction based. What if you only spoke to your wife or husband when you wanted something? Would that reflect a blooming relationship? No. It would reflect a relationship that is more one-sided and what can I get from you type of relationship, which is not a very good relationship at all.

                When we pray we should see first and foremost the heart of our Heavenly Father. We should seek him, before we seek anything else. We should be looking to be transformed through his presence and to earnestly seek after his heart. When we understand that prayer is relational, we can then be amazed at how trans-formative prayer actually is. There have been times in my own life where a quick prayer changed my immediate response in a situation from cursing out a person to instead blessing him. Which outcome do you think is a better witness?

                I don’t want you to think there is something wrong, or bad, or nonspiritual about making petitions and requests to God.  That is the further thing from the truth. If I am in a loving relationship with somebody and I am letting them know what is on my heart, I should be able to openly speak about my wants and desires. That is fruit of communication in a flourishing relationship. We should seek to speak to God often, openly, honestly, and lovingly. God can answer in one of three ways yes, no, or wait. When we are in a relationship with the Lord and know his heart and know his character, we can rest assured that his response is what is best for us. He is both loving and omniscient; therefore it is impossible for his response to be anything but the best possible response. This is why it is important that we focus on knowing God’s heart and having our heart’s transformed by his presence, because we will need that to help us peacefully accept the Lord’s response. We won’t always agree or like the Lord’s response but we can always pray for the Lord to grant us peace with his response and to help us through it if we are struggling with it.

                God loves us unconditionally, and this is the cornerstone of our relationship with him. Through Jesus we have direct, unlimited access to the Father. This is a truth that we should rejoice at. This alone is worthy to produce joy in the hardest of hearts. Prayer is a tool that we have, every believer has access to it and we should therefore use it. Not a believer? The scripture says that ALL who call upon the name of the Lord SHALL be SAVED. That is an unqualified statement backed by the unshakable integrity and character of him who is eternal. Praise be to JESUS.