A brief companion to yesterday’s reflection on how a family must sometimes fight to preserve itself and maintain integrity. Families also don’t leave. They don’t stop when members do painful things. They love deeply, especially in the context of disagreement and disappointment. That is not acquiescence to wrong. It is the decision to love someone even if her opinion is wrong. It is the decision to love when you just can’t like. It is patient and kind, neither envying nor boasting. It is not arrogant, rude, irritable or resentful. It rejoices in truth, not wrongdoing. It does not insist on its own way. It bears, believes, hopes and endures and never ends. This is the love of a family in a fight and it is so damn hard.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35
Even when you’re wrong family, I love you and will not leave.
This won’t be long or profound. There is no image I borrowed to entice you. It is only a heartfelt response to the last week and the people I love – – my family. My family is now nuclear after the passing of my mother this year preceded six years ago by my father’s death. One wife and three sons. My older brother and I are not close at all. My sister and I love and respect each other, but are not entwined, let alone enmeshed.
This family is the family of Christ.
I call myself a follower of Christ rather than a Christian for reasons that are apparent to any who have tried to unpack the baggage of the latter term. I want to follow the example of Christ as a man, and I acknowledge the divinity of Christ as the firstborn over creation. Perhaps that is the litmus test for a Christian. Is Christ divine? ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’ are legitimate answers held with integrity by those I consider friends. But, for orientation, my answer is ‘yes’ and now is not the time to argue why. It does, however, identify me as part of the family of Christianity in at least the primary color of its enormous spectrum.
If you’d like to read this post by Russell’s wife, it gets very close to my heart on this. If you choose not to read, I’ll summarize the thesis: she is confused and disappointed by Christians who don’t welcome Syrian refugees or Muslim refugees in general. Further: those who don’t welcome Muslims, or [insert other human here] confuse and disappoint her.
Do I, a member of the family of Christ, share her disappointment?
I do. Deeply so. It is like the disappointment I felt when I first discovered why Southern Baptists were so named. It was like the disappointment that stained my subconscious even after the apology twenty years ago for that evil stance on slavery and racism. How could that be prospectively tolerated 170 years ago then willfully maintained for 150 years? Didn’t my family read the scripture? Didn’t my family think? Didn’t we argue? It was like the disappointment I felt after learning that Martin Luther was a rabid anti-Semite. I thought Jesus was Jewish. What did I miss? How could such a brilliant theologian have such a hateful blind spot?
So, here’s the thing about a family. We will confuse and disappoint each other. We will hold diametrically opposing views at times ensuring that one of us is wrong. I’ve certainly been on the wrong side of many arguments. On this one, I’ll stick to an anchor of scripture:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
Why would a follower of Christ cast out the refugee? Why would the follower of Christ not welcome a fellow creature of God? Why would the follower of Christ fear death from a bullet or a bomb? I just don’t get it. Isn’t this life to be lived to his glory with gratitude and the next life to be eagerly anticipated?
I love you family – – but you are wrong. The brothers and sisters who want to love, want to accept, want to understand will need to disagree and even fight within the family to keep the family together. Are we not light? It doesn’t feel like it now.
There is a problem in all of us. For every in-group, there is an out-group. We are each rejected by many people in some way and we likely reject others whether or not we know it, just by the nature of the identities we adhere to. Neuroscience shows that each of us subconsciously values some groups of people more and others less in some ways. The problem is, when we don’t learn about this and take real and regular action to fight against that tendency, it can lead us to dehumanize others. Unchecked it very often leads many of us to devalue some groups of humans so much that the moral laws we normally follow regarding how we treat other humans no longer apply. One key weapon that exacerbates this is propaganda. In this time of terrorism and racial divide, we all need to be vigilant. We need to examine ourselves every day with every news article, Facebook post, Tweet, comment from a friend or family member, political debate and media report. Each bit of information that comes in has the ability to shift the needle of our heart away from the humanity of a group that isn’t our own. When this goes unchecked long enough, we believe the lie that “they” aren’t as valuable as “us.” Then… death.
I’m going to ask you do something. Please, watch this video. It starts slow, but it is so good and relevant to the recent events that I’m willing to beg you to engage with these ideas. If it helps even one person realize that we’re all capable of dehumanizing and withholding normal morality towards other groups, and you and I are not exempt to this – I’ll gladly beg. Please, watch it.
That was just a clip that wasn’t very explanatory of the video. Please see the full episode called “Why Do I Need You?“ from David Eagleman’s series on PBS called The Brain.
I’m not writing about this solely because of the deep sorrow we now feel about what happened in Paris. A friend recently posted these links along with the statement, “It is estimated that around 100 people, many being innocent men, women, and children, die in Syria EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. What happened in France is tragic. So is the murder of ANY human.” Here’s the death toll count and a wikipedia article about the casualties. This is about human nature. And I don’t mean to universalize it. It’s about my nature. It’s about your nature. We each need to understand how you and I work and how to combat the things about us humans that lead to suffering – in us and those around us. I’m working on it as well. It’s about raising the bell curve, and we can only do that collectively – as a collective of individuals.
Compassion fatigue. That’s a term my wife used last night and I love it on so many levels. But for some groups, the phrase falls short of the deep bias that we don’t see because so many of our neighbors share it. I’ve heard about the “blue eyes–brown eyes experiment” from the video several times before and found it extremely useful for helping people visualize the injustice and irrationality of prejudice. In today’s racially divided world full of terrorism, I think we all need to consider what it means and find a way to convey that meaning to others.
I, like many of you, am now seen by some others as a terrorist. It doesn’t matter that, in my case, my “atheism” isn’t a belief that no God exists. I much prefer weak agnostic weak atheist possibilian, with a big focus on the possibilian part. Technically, I’m as much of a theist as an atheist since much of the time I think some causal prior intelligence is as likely as no prior intelligence. Some moments I think it’s even more likely. Just owning the atheist label has marked many of us, as most labels do, with a misrepresentation of our actual views.
The last thing I want to do is write about events of suffering and pain and death. When I experience activation of the pain matrix (see the video for what the means), I’m not drawn to writing about it. I usually suffer in silence. If it’s about the loss or pain of another that I cannot affect, I want to hug my children and my wife. I want to hit the pavement, the trail, or the gym. I want to spend time in quiet contemplation, identifying and grieving with the families, those suffering in the hospital, and the families of those who caused such devastation, and yes I even offer up prayers. Where I’m drawn though, is to the terrorists themselves. Always to them. I don’t know if this is normal and I understand that many will disagree. I did not lose my child to the actions of a terrorist, so I cannot possible imagine how I would feel or judge those who default to hatred. I only know that my heart gravitates to those who are committing or have committed the atrocities. Christians may find themselves unconsciously whispering, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I identify with the notion I’ve repeated many times on this blog.
We should be both humble and allow some uncertainty in our ideas about the universe and God because statistically some of our ideas must be false, especially some closely held ones since those are, on average, the least objectively examined ones.
We cannot know for certain that – if we were born in someone else’s environment with their DNA (neither of which any of us have any control over) and shared their exact experiences – that we would be any different from them.
These are both relevant to everything I write on this blog as they are central to my philosophy and why I respect those who disagree. Part of my goal is to illuminate the first point (1) so that all cultures can exercise some caution and expand their understanding of the flawed reasoning that plagues us all (cognitive biases and logical fallacies).
The second point (2) is an explanation for why I respect all people, even when I do not share their conclusions or opinions. They are me. I am you. I’m not saying that things are completely deterministic. Quantum uncertainty affects some percentage of our decisions in some ways, but we are still bound up in our DNA and experiences. Everyone’s beliefs are rational and justified to them at the time. There’s another level at we each judge another’s beliefs or actions, and we form groups and collectively judge them. That is necessary for societies to function and we all understand it. The point in this post is to explain that I, personally, may disagree with you but I don’t judge your beliefs too harshly, because I can see myself in your actions and in your beliefs. I did not choose to be me and not to be you when I was born. Can you offer me the same courtesy and recognize that you could have been me? Can you do the same for the victims? My father once said that there is a fine line between being willing to die for a belief and being willing to kill for one. Can you see yourself in the beliefs and actions of terrorists, were your birth in accordance with theirs? Can you love them? And not because you feel God commands it, but because you identify with them as a human. Not a sub-human. A person… just like you.
I am certainly not advocating that we justify their actions. Because I understand someone does not mean I lay down my objections to the consequences of the beliefs and actions they impose on others. Nor would I want you do allow me to trample another. But we all already know how to hate, and rage, and seek death, and prosecute, and yearn for revenge. I know of few who will benefit from a post encourage such a response to the perpetrators of violence. That’s built into being human. I do believe we need to fight against the ideology that leads to terrorism, but terrorism is just one example of those on the other side of the bell curve. The best way to do it may not be involve being completely devoid of understanding and compassion for those engaged in the extremist beliefs (potential terrorist are one example). This post isn’t about how to hate jihadists (if you aren’t one) because that’s natural. It’s about the part we don’t often see through the rage – the subtly shifting compass needle of compassion that eventually prevents us from caring about those whose views we see as extreme.
I’ll be picking up Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism to help me understand the culture that creates beliefs that would lead to terrorism. I think if we’re serious about loving others who disagree with us then beginning to identify with the hardest-to-relate-to will move us a long way in that direction. Things like – certainty that God calls you to some beliefs and actions towards other groups, witnessing genocide of your people caused by these “other” groups, belief of a reward in the afterlife for certain faith and actions, continual “anti-other-group” propaganda poured into you from your in-group throughout life – these things and more continually reinforce that belief that the “other” group is sub-human. We could be them. I hope they can look at you and see the same of you. They may hate you, but if they only knew they could be you, and that you have reasons for you beliefs that make sense to you, if only they’d take the time to get to know you.
I disagree with terrorists, but I respect them as people just like I respect you. I don’t want them to dehumanize me, and I want to be careful not to dehumanize them. For the sake of our shared existence, and our shared humanity, I pray for them. If there’s a God listening, perhaps it may help on some level. But ultimately, I pray because it helps me synchronize my heart with theirs. Wars, and the fear of them, will rob us of our humanity as we blow past compassion fatigue and into red hatred. Our only hope is to actively and intellectually carve off the calluses that our nature secretly encases around our heart. Cling to the message of Jesus, or Buddha or the scientific rationality that our similarities outnumber or differences. Let us build on those similarities. Maybe, in time, as we try to understand one another, our similarities will diffuse the power of the ideologies that lead to human-human suffering and death.
Conclusion
As we dehumanize others, we dehumanize ourselves, but we also dehumanize a version of us that we could have easily been (and in some real sense, a version of you that is). We are all biased against other groups in our subconscious. We can only prevent that bias from growing and resulting in dehumanization by consciously fighting against it through attempting to understand those with whom with differ. That’s the point of 1 and 2 above and the recent posts on raising the bell curve. David Eagleman’s video is immensely useful in understanding the complexities we’re talking about.
As a final effort to let this resound, I want to share a story with you that, if it were believe to be true by a society, would lead to the most moral behavior of any society I can imagine. It’s like the Veil of Ignorance but with narrative and a compelling call that echoes for long after the end of the story. It was written by Andy Weir who wrote the very excellent book that just became a blockbuster movie, The Martian…
Please read The Egg and let me know if it moves you. I may put the full contents of that story in a future post.
A short post on a long book? The graphic by Minard above is hanging in my study. I first saw it in consultation with our hospital’s statistician. He described it as the best information graphic ever. I purchased the inexpensive print in an Edward Tufte conference on the graphical display of information that my oldest and I attended together 5 years ago. Hobby Lobby did the rest.
The graphic depicts Napoleon’s march to and retreat from Moscow in the War of 1812. And that was the extent of my knowledge until reading Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace. Like a visit to Israel, reading and reflecting on this book takes time. Tolstoy has fascinated me since I read that his apologetic influenced but did not convince Gandhi. I took Oprah’s advice to read Anna Karenina and found my favorite opening line ever, an explanation for my upbringing, and a hope for my children and grandchildren:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Like so many of you, my history and future is an amalgam of the clauses of this brilliant sentence. I found that Anna Karenina was a profound portrait of humanity and I found in Levin a man I could admire and even emulate in his pursuit of authentic faith. So, when the the itch to read War & Peace arose, I was ready to scratch. I listened to the story from Audible, just less than 1 hour a day with occasional splurges on the way to the airport. It took a quarter of a year.
And here I am – – done. I wrote the topics that Tolstoy approached in my journal and I’d like to share them here soon. It is astonishing. Calculus, astronomy, medicine, literature, theology, history, philosophy and so much more. The characters, at least 20 major, became friends or even worthy opponents. And here I am – – done. As the Texas Winter begins I can’t help but feel let down. Finishing an amazing book leaves me wistful. Will my life ever be apportioned with the time and knowledge to write like that, even read like that in more than borrowed minutes?
Consider this an introduction if you will. I missed you in the blog and hoped that writing about reading would help get me off dead center. May I ask?
Do you enjoy long books?
Do you feel a let down when they are done?
Have you read Tolstoy?
What were you surprised to learn in War & Peace?
Pascal – – 1:16
photo credit: Charles Joseph Minard’s work, hanging in my study
This is the view from a place I had never been before on the trails in my morning run. A man I admire had pointed out a new series of trails that I had not explored. This was the morning to do it. The kids were at school and I was off work, preparing to leave with my bride on a long anticipated vacation. Grandparents waited at home, happy to take care of our sons. So, as the sun rose I ran and found this trail that others had clearly trodden. But not me. It was new to me, so exciting and a little intimidating. My mileage clicked up a half mile at a time and I ran farther and farther from the car, knowing that each new trail would have to be traversed to return. And I got a little lost. Only a little. I could still hear sounds of traffic so had the reassurance that I had a point of reference. But a little lost. I couldn’t have directed you to where I was, and I’m not quite sure I’ll be able to find this trail next time. Don’t follow me, I’m a little lost too.
Or, follow me, because I know what it is like to be a little lost. I know what it is like to be hopelessly lost. I will never judge you for your partial or complete lostness. To the contrary, I’ll come to find you if you’re gone too long. Off then with my bride. Our friendship grows with each passing year. Next summer we’ll celebrate half our lives spent in the marriage contract that strengthens us both. Russell promises to write in my absence.
Forgive my absence from the blog. I completed a difficult assignment at work where I primarily work in the hospital with sicker patients. I then traveled for committee work and experienced the wonders of perpetual delay in the flight back home. That said, I read, considered and ultimately liked Russell’s last post very much. What do I mean like? Yes – – I hit the like button after reading the post and thinking carefully about it. Perhaps for another day, but I think that you choose love and don’t necessarily choose like. I like my bride and that has made all the difference for us. I would love her from choice and obedience to a standard that is greater than me. Love can be, often is, painful. Like is pleasure of the purest form. Diversion complete.
I liked Russell’s post because it really does reveal who he is – – one of the most moral and compassionate people I have met.
So what? I downloaded the Charity Miles app. I’ve begun to use it. I pray for people who don’t have water as I marvel at how blessed I am to go to any sink or hose bib in my home and know that the water is potable. I’ve stopped using distilled or filtered water and my tastes and thoughts have changed.
For the people who have joined us in this blog, would you please join our team? You have many choices besides water – – that’s just the one that moved me on a base level. The screenshot above is our team. You can see that my friend Russell is more kinetic than me. As a believer, do I welcome an atheist challenging me to put action to faith? Oh yes I do. I’m so thankful that my friend called me to action. And will you join our team? Please do. I really don’t know why our follower count increases daily. Perhaps our generation is ready to respectfully reason together. Could you help our charity miles team grow as well by downloading the app and joining RussellandPascal? You could. Will you?
Pascal and I use this blog to partially identify, work though, and record for posterity our individual and evolving ways of approaching life and discovering (and rediscovering) its meaning for each of us. We welcome each of you into this discussion and every thought you contribute joins us together and improves our unified experience. Thank you.
As I hinted through Pascal’s post called Russell Unplugged, I’m often a little disappointed that my approach consists largely of criticizing the logical soundness and resulting confidence-level in conclusions that some of the faithful maintain despite (what seems to me) less-than-iron-clad reasoning. I don’t like being that guy, and expressing where I differ and why often leaves me feeling like my posts are missing the point of what my process of reasoning is all about. I’m not a cold, calculating robot. I’m a deeply compassionate human, and I believe that you are too. The nature of our discussions – where we spend our time – often leaves the appearance that I’m only interested in the strength of rhetoric, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, I focus on avoiding being “confidently wrong” and holding as many true beliefs and as few false ones as possible, but ultimately I care about living well. That means identifying with my fellow conscious minds out there (that’s you), understanding cognitive psychology, why and how we decide and feel as we do (each equally valid in our different opinions), and how we suffer well despite the differences in where our hope is placed.
Meaning matters. Pursuing it matters. Life matters. Love matters. Justice matters. You matter.
I want to step back from the technical and philosophical tone of many of my posts and give you a glimpse into the real Russell. And I want to invite you to join in a movement that we can all share together, across the theological divide. It’s a movement of compassion and love. If you only read one of my posts, I hope it’s this one, because it’s tangible. It does what none of the reasoning can do on it’s own – it leads to actual changes, now, in the lives of those who suffer.
Join me…
That’s a long intro to two simple apps. Yes, smartphone apps. If you have a smartphone such as an iPhone or Android phone, I really hope you’ll do two things.
1. Download each of these apps and use them at least once.
2. Leave a comment that you did it and what you thought, and tell me if you can think of any other apps or charities we can get involved in.
Please consider doing this. Not for me. For yourself, your children, those who suffer, and for all of us (our societies are made up of individuals).
Here are the apps and how we use them in my family.
The “Charity Miles” app
Every time you go on a jog, bicycle ride, or even just a walk around the house, to the grocery store, on the treadmill – basically any sustained movement you make under your own power – open the Charity Miles app first. You can pick a charity and corporations will sponsor you, just like they do when people run marathons, and donate money to the charity you picked based on how far you moved! The donations aren’t exorbitant but they add up over time.
Our 5-year-old, Ella, and I both use this app to raise money for a charities – just by moving under our own power. I keep it on while working from my home-made treadmill desk – which I set up this way specifically for this purpose (thanks again for the treadmill, Pascal!). Ella has it on our old WIFI-only iPhone 4S and runs around the house with it or walks on the treadmill to raise money while watching a show on the iPad in front of her. We also turn it on when walking to and from her school. As I write this I’m earning money for a charity called “water” which provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
Well over 500,000 people die every year due to inadequate drinking water. Many of these and similar deaths are preventable. Every minute a child dies due to a water-related disease (often in their parents’ arms – parents who are often desperately pleading to God for an intervention). You and I, working through such charities, are the only physical intervention people in their situation are likely to receive. According to the charity description, the continual state for some of those the charity supports includes digging in the sand with their children to find water. Others who benefit from their charity would normally have to walk 5 miles to fetch water which they then carry home in yellow fuel cans (80 lbs in total) after waiting in line for 8 hours. Water is only one of many amazing charities available to you. Get this app and improve lives around the world (and definitely involve your children if they’re old enough). 🙂
The “Donate a Photo” app
The second app is Donate a Photo by Johnson & Johnson. Open this app, pick a charity from the list, and then take a photo (or select one from your photo library) and upload it. Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 (each day you donate) to the charity you select that day. That’s up to $365 per year to save and improve lives – from this app alone – and it only takes a few seconds each time. 🙂 I’ve been targeting Nepal earthquake survivors recently.
A joint calling
We can’t all share Christ or Muhammad, peace be upon him, with conviction and honesty, but we can all share love with honesty. Tell your friends about these apps. Get involved and get your children involved. There are few better ways to raise a child to be compassionate and empathetic of the plight of others than to involve them in community service or charity work. There are many ways to donate and many charities to get involved with, many religious, many not. Prayer should lead to action. We are involved in some religious ones as well, but the point is to act. To do something. Apps like these lower the barrier for involvement and action, so please pass them along.
Whether you, like me, are more skeptical of that traditional faiths, or like Pascal, are affirming of a specific higher-power, I hope we can all agree about many lessons from the Christian Bible (encouragement to have compassion and be a good Samaritan, etc.). The following two verses from the New International Version sum it up well:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. – 1 Corinthians 13:1
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13
I lost another friend to the cliff last week. This was a literal cliff, challenged by a colleague my own age, because it was there. This was a man who kept his promise to only leave his marriage by death, and did. As we gather again to support his family and to embrace the community at work I grieve in a very different way. I understood his sense of adventure and his pursuit of fitness that allowed him to do hard things. I last spoke with him 4 weeks ago when he welcomed me to CrossFit and explained why he did it. I understood, as a hiker, the draw to climbing rocks that I was just too cautious to embrace. I admired him for taking the risks that I would not take. And when he fell I do not reproach him. I don’t ask him to do it over, to live a safer life. Could my perspective be that of his bride or children the age of mine? It is honestly too soon to contemplate asking. Yet I know that her husband did not break promises. And I know that their father was a hero.
The cliff of infidelity is avoidable, and I strive to live away from its ledge. The cliff of death will touch us all in a free fall or slow slide. I honor my friend for his choices, his bravery, and his life. I grieve that we won’t enjoy his company for longer here. Our family will seek practical means to comfort and support his. In 6 weeks I’ve lost 2 friends to traumatic death. Friends within 2 years of my age. In my profession, half of the people I meet know that they are dying sooner than they expect. So yes. I think much about death even when it doesn’t brush this close. And yes. That is one of the main reasons I believe – – the hope that the dead will rise.
Pascal – – 1:16
photo credit: David Hiser, 1937-, Photographer (NARA record: 3651517) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Dear Russell & Friends,
russell & pascal 