What Matters?

I could tell you about my foray into the world of Pokemon GO, or we could talk about serious things.  I'm kind of on a theme this week so let's leave the Pokemon for another day.  I want to talk specifically about the non-video game related cultural phenomenon today, what I have come to call the #hashtagwar.  The combatants are: #blacklivesmatter, #alllivesmatter, and also competing #bluelivesmatter (which makes less universal sense because police mostly wear brown where I'm from, but I get it).
The gauntlet was thrown down in Ferguson MO over a year ago, after the death of Mike Brown and the ensuing protests and riots.  #blacklivesmatter boomed into instant notoriety and in some points of view, infamy.  I have heard people (including black people) say they might actually rephrase it to read #blacklivesmattertoo. Many people from all over the spectrum have brought issue with the tag and the sentiment behind it.  It has had its share of apologists and antagonists to be sure, and out of the ranks emerged #alllivesmatter, which at first blush appears to make a valid point, all lives do matter for sure, police lives matter, Asian lives matter, white lives matter, Latino lives matter, LGBTQ lives matter, all of them do in fact matter, or as the Gates Foundation has proffered in proper and fully thought out language: all lives have equal value.
Yes, but it was the killing of black people that was being protested.  All of the other hashtags and sentiments were functioning as a negation of that emphasis.  There have been many clever analogies used to illuminate the dynamic, here are a few:

1. Two houses are on fire, there is only one fire-hose.  The owner of a house next door to the burning house is using the hose to keep his own house from catching fire, while the owner of the burning house protests that his house is on fire and needs that water more urgently.  In fact, it would serve both their purposes rather well if the actual burning house was no longer burning.
2. There are people at a table, one person has no food, and requests that he be given some food.  The other people at the table reply that they all deserve food rather than trying to rectify the situation.
3. There are people in a lifeboat, and another person in the water with sharks, crying for help.  The people in the boat say, "shark lives matter."

I wonder, if Martin Luther King had lived in the age of social media, Twitter would have picked apart his "I have a dream," speech.  The trolls certainly would have had a field day with his "I've seen the mountaintop" speech, and his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The reality is you can say very little these days without someone trying (and maybe succeeding) to negate your point.  Argument is fine, clarification is fine, but there are fires burning in our society that need to be put out.

I was talking to someone about the sit ins and civil rights protests of the 1960's the other day.  We were discussing how the commitment to non-violence was so crucial to whatever success was won, and how admirable it was that people could maintain that commitment in the face of brutality.

It was a remarkable feat of self restraint.  But it doesn't surprise me, as the years have rolled by that the patience of people, and their commitment to the road of peace has been tested and broken.

Howard Thurman in his preface to Jesus and the Disinherited, notes that Christianity always should have something important to say to those who "stand with their backs against the wall."  The investigation he takes on in his short but brilliant book is the many ways in which the organized religious expressions of Christian faith have not only failed to stand with the "least of these," but have often taken the side of the powerful against the weak.  Because we don't want to stand with the disinherited, the tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, addicts, minorities, foreigners, we would rather stand comfortably in the position of privilege.

So when we hear a voice cry out, even in the form of a hashtag, and we decide to negate or otherwise correct their cry for justice, even if our intentions are good, we have essentially betrayed the Gospel.  Remember again, what the story from Luke tells us comes from the mouth of the lawyer who is trying to test Jesus, "But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'Who is my neighbor?'"

"Wanting to justify himself..." Isn't that what we're doing when we respond to the raw and painful implications of #blacklivesmatter with some sort of correction or redirection? We're trying to justify ourselves at best, and we're playing Amaziah's card at worst, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah..." (Amos 7: 12)